He paused a second, looked as though he might throw in another query, then nodded and went back to his notes.
Walt brought fresh coffee but it went cold on the table in front of us. At one point I glanced over and found that Harriet and Trey were standing by the kitchen cabinets, the crockery all put away now. They were listening to every word. The boy was white-faced, as though hearing about it again made it all that bit more real. Harriet had her arm around his shoulders.
Andrew’s second interruption came when I got to the part about the shoot-out at Henry’s place. As soon as I was done he demanded the details then relayed the information to his colleagues in a short phone call. He didn’t, I noted with relief, explain to them where the information had come from.
I gathered from his reaction that nobody had connected the incident at Henry’s with my much-reported killing spree. I wondered how Oakley man had explained away his involvement. If he’d known about Xander’s call to the emergency services did that mean he’d been on duty at the time? But if so, why hadn’t he been in uniform? Was he really a cop?
Well, I suppose now was my chance to find out.
“. . . uh-huh. Get back to me as soon as you have it,” Andrew rapped out now and finished the call without saying goodbye. One of the benefits of being in charge, it seemed, was an ability to dispense with normal politeness.
“Oakley man is the only one I can’t work out in all this,” I said. “He was one of the two cops who brought Trey home from the Galleria, but that was down in Fort Lauderdale. I assume he really is a cop, but if so what’s he doing responding to emergency calls in Daytona Beach? Somebody must be able to identify him.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to tell me how to do my job, Fox,” Andrew said. “You let me worry about the peripheral players in this scenario, huh?”
“‘Peripheral players’?” I echoed smartly. “He’s one of the major players. Either he’s working for Keith or he’s working on his own, but he’s got plenty of manpower and he’s not afraid to kill anyone who gets in the way.”
“I’ll have people working on tracing him,” he said, frowning again. “We’re gonna have to check out your story some first. So far, you’re claiming a body count of—” he checked the previous page of his notes, “—what? Six or seven dead and a couple of wounded? But we’ve only found the two kids at the motel and the cop. And now this guy Henry.” There was doubt in his voice.
“Why would I lay claim to more if it wasn’t the case?” I said tiredly. “This looks bad enough as it is. Why do I need to dress it up any further?”
He didn’t respond to that question, posing one of his own instead. “And this guy you call Oakley man, you say he stopped for long enough to pick up his dead before he took off from Henry’s house, right?”
“Right.”
“You have to admit that’s kinda convenient. Not leaving behind any bodies, that is.”
“Of course he didn’t leave them behind – he’s a cop,” I said, the tension making me snappy now. “There’ll still be blood. There’ll still be evidence. If you care to look for it. Maybe he was trying to leave you pointing at me because he knows from firsthand experience that you’ll take the route of least resistance when it comes to pinning this whole thing on somebody.”
Andrew’s face flushed a little at the jibe and Walt, realising things were about to deteriorate, spoke up for the first time since I’d begun recounting my tale.
“Why don’t you have a look see if any bodies have turned up over the last coupla days with gunshot wounds?” he suggested. “Might go a little way towards clearing this up, son,” he added gently when his nephew still hesitated.
Suppressing a grumpy sigh, Andrew got back on the phone. I leaned forwards, resting my forearms on my knees and trying to roll the rigid ache out of my neck. I had the Barbie-pink bag clenched tight on my lap like a talisman.
Walt patted me on the back of my hand and, when I looked up, he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he did so. Whatever Andrew’s qualms, the old man believed me. I was surprised how much that realisation gave me hope.
But hope of what? I was stuck in Walt and Harriet’s house with an armed and twitchy FBI agent who was fairly convinced I was lying through my teeth in everything I’d said to him. I tried to tell myself that I’d always known it was going to end sometime – we couldn’t stay on the run forever. But not like this, I admitted privately. Not like this.
They weren’t going to let us just walk out of here again, not without violence that I wasn’t prepared to use, but the thought of sitting in a prison cell while Gerri Raybourn and Whitmarsh and Oakley man were still out there, manufacturing more damning evidence against me, made my skin go cold.
Special Agent in Charge Till was getting shirty with someone at the other end of the line. “Well why in the name of hell didn’t you tell me about this last night?” he demanded. “Not relevant? You developed sixth sense now, that you can tell me what might be relevant to this case and what isn’t? Fax the report through to me right now, y’hear? No, I’m still at my uncle’s place.” His eyes flickered across me. “No, I think I’ll be here a little while longer. Something’s come up. OK.”
He punched the end call button and let his breath out fast down his nose.
“What is it?” Walt asked.
“Report came in late yesterday. They found a body down near Lake Hell ‘n’ Blazes in Brevard County. Coupla tourists hired an airboat and happened upon a little more of the wildlife than they bargained for. According to the local boys the guy had been in the water a day or so and he’d been pretty badly chewed up. You throw meat in the swamp and there’s plenty out there will take a bite out of it.”
“Pretty badly chewed up?” I murmured, not liking the mental image conjured up by his words. “So you won’t be able to tell who it is?” In my mind I’d already started running through the list of possibles.
Andrew broke through my thoughts. “He’d been gut-shot – handgun most likely. Not a good way to go. But they found ID on the body. Turns out he was a Brit too. Name of Sean Meyer.” He met my eyes level and without apparent guile. “Sound like anybody you know?”
Eighteen
All at once the world stopped. And my heart and lungs stopped with it.
I tried to tell myself that I’d known, right from the moment I’d found the SIG in Sean’s empty room, that he was dead. It didn’t seem to make any difference to the shockwave that hit me now. Didn’t lessen the impact. A part of me fiercely didn’t want to believe it, but at the same time another part of me had always known that it was true.
The explosion inside my head was monstrous, but made no external sound. At the edge of my vision debris started to rain down all around me, but nobody else saw it fall. Fire raged, and froze me to the bone.
I shut my eyes, just briefly, aware of the sting of suppressed tears under my lids. I didn’t let them loose.
Then I felt the mechanical jolt as the world started turning again. It had all taken just a split second. All the time out of reality I was allowed.