“This is sheer travesty,” Hamper declared. “She’s winding you up.”
“Like a clock, Mr. Cummins. With this rap sheet of yours, going down again means you’re looking at a whole new career path.”
“Don’t listen to her. It’s total rubbish, what she’s saying.”
Skyler rounded on his attorney. “What are you talking about, man? I know the score here.”
“And I’m the one who’s going to get you out!”
“Yeah? So how come I didn’t even make bail?”
Wilma Blain’s calm voice acted like a goad. “Listen to your jailhouse lawyer buddies, Mr. Cummins. They know a lifer in the making. You’re going to get to know them real well.”
Hamper shrilled at her, “You shut up!” To Skyler, “She’s paid to scare you.”
“What for? I’m already locked up!” Skyler addressed Wilma straight on. “You got something to say to me?”
“What are you talking to her for?” Hamper flipped his chair over as he bolted to his feet. “She’s the DA!”
Wilma replied to Skyler, “I think I might have something here that might interest you.”
The prisoner demanded, “You want to deal?”
“If we can do business here and now, absolutely.”
Hamper shouted, “I forbid this!”
They both ignored him. Wilma continued, “Basically, you’ve got two choices. I can have your charges reduced to misdemeanor, and you serve a year—”
“No time.”
“No chance, Mr. Cummins. We know what happened. But we don’t have the backer’s name and we don’t know who the third guy was. You get me? We know this was a capital offense in the making. Right now, we can lay the whole thing at your feet. If that happens, they’ll carry you out of Central Prison in a box.”
Gradually the yellow suit darkened with sweat. “And I’m telling you. No time.”
Hamper shrieked, “I demand to speak to my client privately!”
Wilma gave no sign she heard Hamper at all. “I don’t bluff, Mr. Cummins. And I don’t deal in fables. You keep up that line, we lay the whole case on you. I’ll retire to go play with my grandkids and you’ll still be inside, weeding your little garden patch and trying to remember what your last beer tasted like.” She smiled once more. “Forty years ago.”
“So?”
“So today we’ve got us a sale. From life down to twelve months. All I want is the guy who hired you to steal that baby.”
Hamper inserted himself into the discussion by hammering both fists on the table. “Quit talking directly to my client!”
Only the manacles kept Skyler from making a grab for Hamper’s throat. “I’m not doing life for nobody!”
“Don’t you understand what’s happening here? She’s trying to flip you!” To Wilma. “We need a week to think over your offer.”
“Why?” From Skyler. “So you can get me shanked?”
Hamper wheeled about and waved at the deputy through the faceplate. “Open this door!”
“Doesn’t his behavior strike you as a little strange, Mr. Cummins?” Wilma hurried her words to get it said before the guard unlocked the door. “Why is he so intent upon keeping you as his charge here? I’d suggest that it’s because you’re not his client!”
The door shuddered open. Hamper declared, “My client and I are outta here.”
Wilma asked Skyler, “Mr. Cummins, do you wish to return to your cell? Because if you leave this room, my deal is off the table.”
“You won’t get life!” This from Hamper. “We can go to the parole board!”
“What, in twenty years?” Skyler remained where he was. “That’s it? A couple of names and I’m done?”
“From your lips to my tape player.” Wilma planted her recorder on the table. “I want to hear you say why you were there, and who hired you.”
Hamper was sweating harder than the prisoner. “You know how much is at stake here?”
“Yeah,” Skyler replied, not even glancing his way. “The rest of my days.”
Hamper leaned back over the table and covered the tape recorder with both hands. “Don’t forget the money.”
Wilma showed surprise for the first time that day. “Excuse me?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, man, I haven’t seen a dime. You’re the one walking around in your thousand-dollar suit. I’m in here looking at life.”
Wilma again. “Did you say money?”
“I ain’t going down for nobody.” Skyler’s manacles rattled as he tried to take aim at Hamper. “You’re fired, man.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Point of law, counselor. He can.” Wilma withdrew another sheaf of pages from her briefcase. “Mr. Cummins, would you care to use my pen?”
He had to lift himself from the chair to hunch over the pages. Hamper had turned an ashen shade. “You’re finished, Skyler. Finito.”
Wilma looked at the attorney. “Would you mind lifting your hand from my machine and repeating those words about money for the record?”
Skyler finished signing and planted himself back in the chair. “You’re not Mafia, man. Matter of fact, you’re nothing but history.”
“Mr. Cummins, are you declaring this man is no longer your attorney?”
“Absolutely.”
Wilma lifted the pages and waved them like a battle flag. “Counselor, I suggest you use what little free time you have left to find yourself a good lawyer.”
Marcus took that as his cue.
The last thing Marcus saw through the one-way glass was Hamper righting his chair and replanting himself. He used both hands to clamp himself down tight. “Until this man has new counsel, I insist on remaining to protect his rights.”
“No problem there.” Wilma Blain cheerily waved Marcus past the guard and into the interview room. “Matter of fact, I’ve got someone right here who will be happy to advise your former client.”
Hamper Caisse had a difficult time recognizing Marcus. Awareness came in stages—who he was, why he was there, how Hamper had been set up all along. Marcus saw the last realization come in a flash of panic-stricken rage. From sweating lawyer to cornered feral beast in the blink of an eye.
Hamper catapulted over his chair and launched himself into Marcus.
Marcus dropped his jaw to his collarbone to keep Hamper’s hands from locking around his throat. He launched a series of pent-up blows, going in low and hard. Hamper grunted when Marcus found the soft flab beneath his ribs. But Hamper’s fingers kept weaseling in, seeking a lock on his neck. Marcus saw the fear in Hamper’s gaze, the wild rage. And matched it with his own. A portion of his brain took note of Wilma shouting for more guards and the deputy grunting and cursing as he sought to unwind Hamper’s arms. Hamper screamed and blew spittle in his face. The prisoner had himself a good laugh over a bad man going down. When Hamper’s thumb came within reach, Marcus bit into the fleshy portion of his palm. Hamper’s scream hit a new note. Marcus put everything he had into three more punches, two into the man’s flabby gut and a strong right jab directly at the heart.
The fight left Hamper in a whoosh of putrid breath. Marcus spat out the sweaty mouthful and backed away. A second guard shoved himself into the overcrowded room. Black limbs the size of a pro wrestler’s pinned Hamper to a massive chest while the first guard cuffed him. Hamper struggled futilely and rasped, “I’ll kill you.”
“Deputy, why don’t you show our new guest to his suite.”
Hamper sought to hold himself in the room with a foot on the doorframe. “You’re dead, Glenwood.”
“Oh, I think your killing days are over.” Wilma waved them off. “Charge him with assault. I’ll be back directly to see what else we can cook up.”
The prisoner gave Marcus a yellowed grin. “You’re a lawyer?”
“Yes.” His jacket was ripped down one sleeve. Marcus took it off and used it to wipe his face. “Unless the DA wants to weigh in otherwise.”
“Not me, counselor.” Wilma
looked almost as happy as the prisoner. “Now that I’ve seen that left of yours at work, I’d best keep you on my side.”
The prisoner turned to Wilma and declared, “I like this dude’s style.”
“I can serve only as a temporary adviser,” Marcus warned. “Potential conflict of interest means I can’t represent you.”
“That makes it in my book.” Wilma waited until the kicking and screaming diminished down the hallway. “Counselor, why don’t you join us for round two?”
CHAPTER
———
54
WORKING THROUGH SKYLER CUMMINS’ account took the better part of two hours. Marcus left the building utterly drained. Sometime while he was inside the day had passed into twilight. He glanced at his watch. Six-thirty. The day seemed far older. Ancient, in fact. Full of dirty secrets and stained motives and plans that cared little over who got mauled in the process. He turned on his phone and dialed Dale’s numbers. No answer. Yet another worrisome development.
His phone rang just as he was shoving it back into his pocket. When he answered, Kirsten breathlessly announced, “I caught the only nonstop from La Guardia to Wilmington. Can you believe it? I made it by a hair.”
“When do you get in?”
She caught his tone. “Tell me what’s the matter.”
“This,” he replied, “has been a really long day.”
“But a good one.”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“And it’s about to get even better.”
He clenched his eyes shut. Fatigue pummeled him with bruising force. “Kirsten, I’m pretty certain I know who was behind the kidnapping.”
“So do I.”
“But I don’t know why.”
“I do.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and told him about her meetings with Evelyn Lloyd and the oncologist.
Marcus rubbed his face hard, striving to force blood through his sluggish brain. “I have to go to the DA with this.”
“You can’t.”
“Kirsten—”
“Just listen to me, okay?” Swiftly she related the call from Goscha, and the conversation with Reiner.
“Dale doesn’t have ten million dollars.”
“I know.”
“Putting together the five has wiped him out.”
“The second offer did not come from Dale. I’m certain of that much.”
“Then why is Reiner coming to Wilmington?”
A pause, then, “Do you have any idea who bought Dale’s house?”
“He said it was kept anonymous. My money’s on Kedrick Lloyd.”
“It’s a bitter thought, but I think you’re right.”
A silver Explorer with dark-tinted windows cruised slowly by. “I can’t keep this from the authorities.”
“Reiner said if we bring in the police, they’d kill the child.”
“The DA has to know.” And Dale. He would have to tell the man what was happening. If Dale could be found. “Wilma Blain is a good woman, Kirsten. I think we can trust her.”
A pause. “All right. But be careful.”
“Give me your flight details.”
“No, Marcus. I’m a big girl. If you’re so busy I’ll make my own way into town.”
He was in no state to argue. He turned his back to where the Explorer had pulled up and parked on the darkened street away from the station. “This is not how I wanted the day to play out.”
“The day,” she breathed, “is not over yet.”
He clicked off the phone, but could not bring himself to rise from his station on the wall. He punched in Dale’s mobile number. One more try, then he would go speak to Wilma Blain.
Marcus could not tell what was more surprising, the fact that Dale answered or the sound of footsteps scraping up behind him. “Dale?”
It was the last word he spoke for a very long while.
CHAPTER
———
55
THE WILMINGTON AIRPORT was a scene straight from the fifties. Kirsten deplaned via roll-up stairs and walked across the tarmac to the main building. She searched for Marcus, knowing he was probably tied up with Dale but disappointed just the same that he was not here. She did not want to work on the case. Not tonight. First she wanted some serious face time with this man. See if the reality held a candle to the fantasies. She had to smile. It was probably good for everybody concerned that their first meeting not be here in public.
She called Marcus at the Hertz counter, but he was not answering his phone. Rental contract in hand, Kirsten stepped out into the dwindling daylight. Two weeks away and she had already forgotten the intensity of a Carolina summer dusk. She took a deep breath. She could actually smell the sea.
The Hertz spaces were at the back of the airport’s miniature parking lot. By the time she found her car, the night’s velvet cloak was gathering more tightly. The first stars appeared, tiny beacons to all the secrets she kept sealed in her heart. For now.
A silver Explorer cruised along the bank of rental cars. The windows were opaque, as though the night had been painted across the glass. The lights were off. The Explorer continued slipping up quietly toward her, a rude intrusion into the warm stream of things to come.
Then the door opened. “Hello there, dolly.” The overly taut features formed a rictus grin as he moved toward her. “Don’t that sound like a song to you?”
She did not need to smell him to flee.
But she had not taken two steps before the fist gripped her hair and plucked her back so sharply her feet kept going right out from under her. The pain of her hair being pulled out by its roots was a brilliant light behind her eyelids.
Sephus Jones did not try to break her fall. Instead, he fell with her, or at least his arm did. The fist in her hair directed her head toward the fender of her rental car. She partly caught her weight with one hand, but the fist in her hair was pulling hard now, and her skull struck the metal with such force she lost consciousness.
The next moment she lay sprawled out on the pavement, her head shrieking the pain and fear her mouth could not seem to form.
Sephus’ grinning face looked monstrous from this position, his slender stripe of a forehead creased with foul humor. “Oh, good. I was hoping you’d come around for the show.”
She knew she should be screaming. But the jolt to her skull robbed her of breath, much less a good yell.
Then he picked her up by her hair.
He clamped his free hand over her mouth and dragged her bodily into the Explorer’s backseat. He tossed her inside, slipped in beside her, and said, “If you gotta do it, man, now would be a good time.”
She could not name the bizarre little beast who appeared in her streaming vision. But she knew the electric blue glasses. He did not look at her, not really. Instead he took aim for her arm. Kirsten felt a pinprick, then heard him say, “It is done.”
“What a waste.” The fist in her hair shook her hard. The Explorer slipped into gear and drove off. Then the hand over her mouth rose such that the man’s wrist hovered before her eyes. In the glare of passing streetlights she saw a puckered white scar. “See what you did to my body art? I had all sorts of plans for us, dolly. The slow kind.”
“Enough with the talking.” Reiner. That was his name. Reiner Klatz. Strange how the name appeared at the same time that the pain in her head began to recede. Stranger still how her thoughts all began slowing down. Reiner’s voice slipped further away as he said, “We are approaching the exit. Hide her in the back as well.”
Sephus Jones released her, now that she could no longer feel the grip he had kept on her scalp. She heard a rustling, then from the end of a very long tunnel came the words “Yeah, she oughtta like that.”
Hands lifted and slid and dropped her down into the space behind the seat. “You two already know each other, so I won’t bother with the intros.”
The last thing she saw was Marcus’ face. He looked so troubled in his sleep. Like a bad nightmare had caught them both.
She wanted to lift her hand and gentle it away. But her limbs would not work. Then the veil of night was cast over them both, and she could hold herself there no longer.
CHAPTER
———
56
VOICES DRIFTED THROUGH Marcus’ fog of pain. Voices and the sound of a rhythmic clanking. “This don’t make any sense at all.”
“I have orders. We both do.”
Something pounded in time to his thudding heart. The pain was enough to compress tears from the corners of his closed eyes.
“Listen, Adolf. This is America. The land of the free, okay? Here we make our own rules.”
“The man giving orders also has the money!”
The metallic clangor halted. Marcus heard the footsteps grind through the sand around his head. He was on the beach. Then he heard the other sound. Waves. Impossibly close.
“All I’m saying, you don’t stake them out, man. A bullet, a knife, you watch the end, you walk away. Job well done.”
“Yes. Fine. This job, your way, it is more important than being paid, yes?”
The clanking started anew. Only this time Marcus was aware enough to feel it resonate down his right hand. “You got a point there, Adolf.”
“My name is Reiner!”
“Whatever.” The pounding stopped. Marcus felt his right hand being hefted as the man pulled on the ropes.
Then his consciousness returned fully. With it came new pains. Four of them. He was staked spread-eagled in the sand. His wrists and ankles were tied impossibly tight. His arms were extended beyond their full reach, to either side of his head. His legs were splayed so far apart he felt the threat of being split down his middle. He could actually feel the blood pulsing down his arms and legs, only to break upon the ropes like hot waves against knotted dikes.
The man named Sephus Jones gripped him by the chin and squeezed so hard Marcus could feel his jaw being dislodged. “Open your eyes, sport. That’s it. Remember me?”
A bizarre little man stood to his right. The moon was rising behind him, casting silver shadows over his sandy legs and arms. The man reached into his pocket. “We must hurry.”
Winner Take All Page 34
