Time of Departure
Page 31
The cops were diligent, but not one of them had been smart enough to wonder why every single interior door in Tribe’s house had a hollow-core design. Every door was adorned with an identical decorative panel. All someone had to do was remove the panel on his bedroom door, and he would have found an envelope filled with Polaroid photographs, each one featuring one of the girls lying naked on a bare mattress on a dirt floor.
Naked … and terrified.
Luckily, none of the cops had been clever enough to notice that the only modern feature in Tribe’s forty-year-old house was its interior doors.
Earlier this morning, he’d pried the panel off. He’d spent an hour lingering over the pictures, wallowing in the memories. But he hadn’t retrieved the envelope just for titillation. The time had come. The photos had to be destroyed. As soon as he put the groceries away, he would burn every one of them and flush the ashes.
It was something he should have done a long time ago.
He slammed the tailgate and carried the groceries into the house. He set them on the kitchen counter. He tugged a folded newspaper from one of the bags. He leaned on the counter, studying the front page story.
There was a rustling noise behind him.
“Hello, Tribe.” A woman’s voice, silky and calm.
He spun around.
“You should have listened,” the voice continued.
Tribe stared, uncomprehending.
“Listened to what?” He stared at her. “You look like that woman!” His jaw contorted. “I don’t understand!”
A gloved hand raised a matte black nine-millimeter pistol. It was mounted with a silencer. “Do you understand this?”
Tribe went pale. “Yes.”
“I saw the photographs. I laid them out on your dresser so the police will find them.”
Tribe let out a resigned breath.
She fired. The slug tore into his chest. He flew back, caromed off the counter, and crashed to the floor. A grocery bag toppled, spilling fruit and canned goods over his twitching form.
Rebecca Hastings knelt in front of him. She looked straight into the dying man’s eyes. “My mother left you a bullet. Maybe you should have used it.” She pressed the muzzle of the pistol against his nose and pulled the trigger.
The bullet ripped through his skull. Blood and brains tattooed the floor and cupboard behind him.
She rose. She picked the newspaper off the counter. She studied the headline:
AMTRAK DISASTER!
27 CONFIRMED DEAD; 1 MISSING
An aerial photo showed wrecked railcars lying zigzag in shallows next to the base of a damaged trestle.
Embedded in the article’s text was another photograph.
A photograph of her mother, Claire Alexandra Talbot.
The caption read:
CONTROVERSIAL GAINESVILLE PROSECUTOR CLAIRE TALBOT MISSING IN AMTRAK WRECK
Rebecca folded the newspaper. She knelt down. She lifted Harlan Tribe’s bloodless right hand and placed the newspaper under it.
She left the house.
* * *
Just before sunrise on the day Marc and Rebecca Hastings would leave Florida forever, they parked their U-Haul van in the breakdown lane on US 17, just south of the bridge over the St. Johns River. They walked slowly out onto the span. Three hundred yards downstream, a crane car sat on an undamaged section of a railway trestle, heaving and groaning. Thick steel cables sang like giant bowstrings as the crane strained to raise shattered railcars from the murky waters below.
Marc and Rebecca stood next to the railing, watching the recovery operation.
Behind them, cars and trucks whipped past, engines straining, tires clacking and rattling on the uneven bridge surface.
But they heard nothing.
Time stood still.
Rebecca clutched her father’s arm.
He sagged against the railing.
She held him while he wept.
About the Author
Douglas Schofield was raised and educated in British Columbia, where he earned degrees in history and law. Over the past thirty years, he has worked as a lawyer in Canada, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands. He has prosecuted and defended hundreds of cases of murder, sexual assault, and other serious crimes. Schofield and his wife, Melody, live on Grand Cayman, along with their most excellent and amazing talking cat, Juno. Visit him at www.douglasschofield.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Letter to Daughter
Claire
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Lipinski
Chapter 32
Claire
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Marcus
Chapter 50
Claire
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Rebecca
Chapter 57
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
TIME OF DEPARTURE. Copyright © 2015 by Douglas Schofield. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by John Hamilton Design
Cover photograph © Agha Waseem Ahmad/Stocksy
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Schofield, Douglas.
Time of departure / Douglas Schofield. — First edition.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-1-250-07275-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-8461-8 (e-book)
1. Women lawyers—Fiction. 2. Public prosecutors—Florida—Fiction. 3. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9275.C393S36 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015022092
e-ISBN 9781466884618
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; First Edition: December 2015