First Drop tcfs-4

by Zoe Sharp

  Keith twisted and put his hand on Trey’s shoulder, gave it a pat. “I’m real sorry, son,” he said. “I know how much she meant to you, but it’s just you and me now.”

  Trey looked up at him, tears forming in his eyes, and just for a second I thought he was going to fold.

  “You gotta be joking,” he snapped, lip curling as he ducked out from under his father’s hand. “You were gonna sell me out. I’d rather end up in Juvenile Hall than stay with you, you bastard.”

  His bottom lip began to quiver. He turned his filling eyes on me. “Why can’t I stay with Charlie?”

  I put my hands up. “Whoa,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended. “That is not an option.”

  “Well I’m not staying with him and you can’t make me!” Trey said, a little wildly now, but his face was obstinate. There’d be no shifting him on this one.

  Till looked uncomfortable at this display of teenage angst. “Well, I guess we can call in Child Services until we get this one sorted out,” he said, his voice dubious.

  Trey’s lip quivered all the more. I felt like I’d just shot Bambi’s mother.

  “Don’t worry, Trey,” Walt said then. “You’re welcome to come stay with me and Harriet just as long as you need.”

  I tried not to make my relief too obvious. The kid had had enough shocks and rejections for one day. Still, what was one more?

  Once Till’s men had Whitmarsh, Lonnie and Mason roughly patched up, we all transferred to the undamaged airboat and took the other under tow. I mentioned the black guy Lonnie had dispatched, but it was almost completely dark out on the swamp now and, as none of us could accurately pinpoint his location, Till was reluctant to start a full-scale search.

  “First light tomorrow will be soon enough to look for the remains,” he said.

  I wondered if he’d chosen those particular words deliberately. The way the alligators had been going at the body, there wasn’t going to be much left to find.

  Conversation became difficult once we were under way but I needed more answers out of Till, even so.

  “So when are you planning on picking up Brown?” I shouted over the roar of the engine.

  He glanced at me, irritated, but said, “He’s making a speech for his fancy clients at the clubhouse right now. My boys have got the place under surveillance. Soon as we get back to the dock we’ll go get him.”

  “I want to be there,” I said.

  “No way, missy,” Till shot back. “I am not taking civilians on an operation like this.”

  I couldn’t help my gaze straying over his shoulder to where Walt was piloting the airboat with the easy skill of long association. I don’t know if he could have heard what we were saying, but the old man gave me one of his crinkled-up smiles.

  Till caught the gesture. “Oh no, no,” he said quickly. “That’s way different.”

  I raised my eyebrows but didn’t argue further. Not yet.

  Sean was sitting next to me, staring at nothing. As I watched, his hands flexed briefly, just once, as though reliving the moment they’d finished off Haines. He still had the bloody lines around his wrists. A reminder of his captivity, his helplessness.

  I wished I knew what thoughts were going round inside his head but he’d got them buttoned down tight. As though aware of my silent scrutiny he turned his head slightly and met my eyes. He didn’t need No Entry signs and barbed wire to warn me that I should keep out. I didn’t try to go against him.

  Maybe we both needed a little time to come to terms with all of this.

  ***

  More FBI men, with lights and vans and a paramedic ambulance, were waiting for us on the small dockside when Walt brought the two airboats alongside. As soon as the lines were secured and the engine cut, Till jumped out. He immediately started throwing quick and efficient orders to people who appeared by his side then melted away again. It was a pleasure to watch such oiled machinery at work.

  They took Whitmarsh away on a stretcher with an oxygen mask strapped to his face. They stabilised Lonnie’s smashed arm and bundled him in, too. Somebody appeared with blankets for the rest of us which they draped around our shoulders. How on earth did they know to bring so many blankets, for heaven’s sake?

  Sean and I stood with Trey and let the mêlée ebb and flow around us. I noticed Walt accost his nephew at one point. I don’t know what was said but if the body language was anything to go by, Walt won the argument. Till looked vaguely annoyed as he came back over to us.

  “OK,” he said. “I’m sticking my neck out here and there’ll be hell to pay but if you want to be in at the finish, let’s go.”

  We were on the move before he’d even finished speaking.

  “Not you, Trey,” I said as he made to join us.

  “Aw, c’mon,” Trey complained. “I deserve to be there, too.”

  “You’ll get to hear all about it later,” Walt told him. “Let’s let these good people go do their job, huh?”

  I expected the kid to put up more of a fight than that but he just nodded and hung his head. Walt put an arm around his shoulders and after a moment’s hesitation Trey leaned in to him. There was something right about the two of them, standing there like that. If Trey was serious about severing his ties with his father, I reflected, he could do a lot worse than Walt as a surrogate.

  Till had already jumped into the passenger side of a dark nondescript saloon and Sean and I jogged across to take the rear seat. The driver gunned the engine and we headed back up the rough track towards Livingston Brown’s luxury resort. The lights of at least two other cars followed behind us.

  I sat forward in order to talk to Till. “So you found Gerri’s body,” I said.

  He twisted in his seat. “Yeah, and for a little while we thought you were the most likely candidate for the job,” he said. “Until we found that recorder in your bag, that is. I gotta hand it to you, Charlie, that tape was pure dynamite.”

  “Will it be enough to definitely nail Brown for the shooting?”

  “Oh yeah, no doubt about that. With that and the other evidence we’ve uncovered, he won’t see daylight again.”

  “What other evidence?” Sean asked.

  “Turns out Brown was investing heavily in the software company Pelzner worked for,” Till said. “He didn’t just want the program, he wanted the whole nine yards. Hardly surprising considering if that program ever hit the market, they’d all be billionaires. Only problem was, Brown didn’t have the money to pay the going price. In fact, he’s practically broke.”

  It was hard to keep focused on him when we were bouncing around over every pothole. I held on to the seat in front of me and tried not to clout my head against the roof of the car. It was like being back on that damned rollercoaster ride with Trey.

  “So,” Till went on, “it looks like he was trying to destabilise the company, arranging sabotage of property and intimidation of the staff. It all helps rock the boat. I should imagine that’s why Ms Raybourn called in you guys.”

  Sean nodded.

  “The company owner told us that he also secretly leaked some advance news of the program to the financial press, trying to keep the stock price up,” Till went on. “Our guess is that’s when Brown cooked up the scheme to make it look like Pelzner had run out on the deal.”

  “But they messed it up,” Sean said.

  Now it was Till’s turn to nod. “Oh yeah, they messed it up all right,” he said. He glanced at me, his expression brooding. “I suppose that’s all thanks to missy here.”

  “And then he found out that Keith couldn’t make the program work, after all,” I put in. “And it was just a case of stopping us falling into the wrong hands and then getting rid of us as fast as possible.”

  “Well he sure left a trail of destruction trying to do just that,” he replied. It’s gonna take months just to fill out all the paperwork.”

  I smiled. “But then Whitmarsh found out from Henry that Trey might just hold the key.”

  “Which he
doesn’t.”

  “I wasn’t there for this part,” Sean said. “Who’s Henry?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said. There would be plenty of time for talking later. I turned back to the FBI man. “So do I assume from all this that we’re more or less off the hook.”

  He favoured me with a slow appraisal. “Sure looks that way,” he said. “Particularly if you was to agree to give evidence in court.”

  I sat back in my seat. “Well how about that?” I murmured with more than a hint of irony in my tone. “Chief suspect to star witness all in the same day.”

  ***

  The first person I saw when we walked through the main entrance doors to the clubhouse was Randy, the time-share salesman I’d hijacked to get to Brown.

  He did a classic double-take. First at the fact that both Sean and I were coated in slime and leaving a wet muddy trail across the tiles behind us. And second when he recognised me underneath it all.

  “Oh my God,” he yelped, “somebody call the cops!”

  “No need, sir, she’s with me,” Till said, flashing his official ID. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “FBI? You’re with the FBI?” Randy repeated, looking dazed. He blushed at the memory of what he’d tried to do with me up against a filing cabinet. “Am I under arrest?”

  Till sighed. “Just take us to Mr Brown,” he said.

  Randy led the way with much more eagerness than he’d shown last time I was there. He eventually stopped just outside a pair of large double doors with a plaque on one that said Party Room. By the sounds of it Brown was just rounding off his big welcome speech on the other side. Nobody listening to the old guy’s melodious voice would ever guess he was a vicious murderer.

  Till spoke fast and low into his radio, then issued brief instructions to the men he had with him. They all seemed to know the drill without needing long explanations, in any case.

  When the moment came they kicked the doors open and went in at a run. There were a few squeals and shrieks from the assembled crowd, but mostly it was all over before anyone had the time to get excited.

  It was only then that Sean and I were allowed into the room. Several hundred pairs of shocked and bewildered eyes followed our entrance, but the most stunned belonged to the harmless-looking old guy with the wispy grey hair, currently face down on the floor with two FBI men on top of him, cuffing his hands behind his back.

  Brown was loudly announcing his outrage at this manhandling and, I considered, was making a pretty convincing show of wronged innocence along the way.

  “You don’t begin to have the right to treat me this way,” he protested, sounding hurt and a little self-righteous, just as he would if he was truly blameless. “You don’t have a single shred of evidence against me.”

  “Oh I’m afraid we do, Mr Brown,” Till said. “Not only do we have a boatload of witnesses, as it were, but thanks to this little lady here we even have a tape recording of you actually in the act of carrying out a homicide. In fact, we got so much on you it’s gonna take from now ‘til Thanksgiving just to file the charges.”

  Brown managed to turn his head enough to look right at me. The surprise on his face was followed quickly by disgust. Not for me, I realised, but for himself. That he’d been fooled.

  “She was just a girl,” he muttered as Till’s men dragged him to his feet. The disbelief was a faint tinge around the edges of his voice. His eyes slid to Sean and then back again to me. “She was Meyer’s goddamn girlfriend. A nobody . . .”

  Special Agent in Charge Till put a hold on his satisfaction just sufficiently to give me his own brief, sombre appraisal. He took in the sodden filthy shirt and the matted tangle of revolting pink hair. And he saw that above it all I was still standing, still in there. Right to the bitter end.

  He nodded to me, just once, and turned back to his prisoner.

  “Yeah,” he said, and his stern face cracked into the first genuine piece of emotion I’d seen him display. A big grin. His voice had never sounded so laconic, so laid back as it did then.

  “I guess if you was a stupid man,” he said, “you might just make the mistake of thinking that.”

  Epilogue

  “So, Charlie, how are you?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m fine.” But we both knew I was lying.

  “That’s good,” he said, not fixing me with that piercing stare, careful not to let me know outright that he could tell. That wasn’t his way, this quiet man. He made a few notes on the pad in front of him. “And how is Sean?”

  “He’s fine, too,” I said. Another half truth.

  The man sighed at that and laid down his pen. It was a nice pen, a shiny chrome Sheaffer and he was careful how he placed it, with precision, between the pristine blotter and the small framed photo of his wife and children. He was a careful man altogether.

  We were in his office. A quiet room, but then, I wouldn’t have expected anything else. Outside his window was a tranquil view onto public parkland, with trees in the hazy distance.

  Nobody disturbed the emptiness of the space except a solitary dog walker. Later, the office workers would be out to sunbathe on the parched grass and return, pink and sleepy, to their afternoon desks. For the moment, though, the dog walker had it all to himself.

  “I found a news cutting since your last visit that I thought might be relevant,” the man said now. “I saved it for you, if you’d like to see it?”

  It was phrased politely but if I refused it would send up flags. Denial. I shrugged, suddenly reminding myself of Trey.

  He reached into the desk and brought it out, a folded magazine rather than a clipping. As he handed it across I looked at the page header out of curiosity and found it was a copy of a US financial journal, dated a week ago.

  I opened the magazine out and there right across the top of the left-hand page was a picture of Walt and Harriet. They were standing in front of what could only be described as a mansion in the modern American style. They were arm in arm, and smiling.

  I started to read the article, heedless of the fact that the meter was running. The man opposite brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘time is money’. My only consolation was that it wasn’t me who was footing the bill.

  The piece turned out to be an interview, the gist of which was that in the last four months this self-effacing retired law enforcement officer had come from nowhere to become one of the most successful intra-day traders on the US futures market.

  I read on, frowning. It wasn’t until I turned the page that it all became clear. There were several smaller pictures there, including one, a little group shot tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner, that showed half a dozen kids sitting around a swimming pool and grinning self-consciously. Walt presided over a barbecue nearby. He was wearing a chef’s apron and his usual battered Panama hat.

  The text told me that Walt and Harriet were using their newfound wealth to continue fostering kids from broken homes. They didn’t mention Trey by name, but they didn’t need to for me to recognise him.

  He was lurking in the background of the photo. The braces had clearly served their purpose and been discarded, and he no longer had his hair short and blond and spiked, but there was something familiar about the eyes, the line of the chin.

  And next to him was Scott, looking self-conscious for the photo, standing with his arms folded and his weight on one hip, striking a pose. But he was standing. On his own two feet. That was the main thing.

  I put the magazine down slowly onto my lap.

  “Son of a bitch,” I murmured. “So he really could make it work.”

  “How does that make you feel, Charlie?” He picked up his pen again. Another incomprehensible scribble. Was he condemning or redeeming me?

  I stared at him a little blankly. “Feel?” I echoed. “I don’t know. Glad, I suppose. Glad that it wasn’t all for nothing, just a monumental waste of time and effort and life.”

  “So you feel regret at the loss of life?”
<
br />   “Of course I do,” I said, but it was the bystanders I was thinking of. The woman at the theme park who’d lost a lung to Haines’s wild shot. She would always have that to remind her of the day of fun that turned into a living nightmare.

  The young cop, whose only mistake had been eagerness to make his mark but who had never lived long enough to grow out of being known as the rookie. He’d had a wife and a ten-month-old baby son who would never know his father.

  And the teenage couple at the motel, away together for the first time, who’d found death instead of love.

  Not the men I’d killed, though. Even though I knew their names now, it had failed to make them more real to me. They had been professionals who’d known the risks and gambles when they’d agreed to play the game. And not for Haines, either.

  I looked up. “Of course I feel regret,” I said again.

  But most of all, selfishly, I was regretful for myself and for Sean. For the people we’d been before. The people who had been more or less in control of the demons.

  Those people – that control – was gone. The box was open and I was afraid we might never get them back inside.

  Which was why I found myself here, in the offices of this eminent psychotherapist. I’d been coming to him once a fortnight since I’d returned from America, but in all honesty I didn’t feel we were making any real progress towards fixing what lay inside my head, inside my soul.

  I wasn’t unrealistic enough to think this man could change that. But if he enabled me to keep a grip on my humanity, to live with myself knowing what I’d done and what I could do, then it would all have been worth while. It would give me something to take forwards. To enable me – and Sean – to move on.

  The worst thing – the thing that frightened me the most when I woke sweating in the dark hours of the early morning – was that the greater part of me didn’t feel broken. A part of me felt this was how things ought to be. How they always had been.

  And, just maybe, how they always would be.

  From the Author’s notebook

  The idea for this story came through my day-job, working as a photo-journalist for many years. I used to go out to the Spring Break Nationals every year to cover the car and car stereo show. Daytona Beach was always crawling with teenagers who came from all over the States to celebrate the first proper break from school, to hang out, party, and check out the cool cars on display. If you were on the run with a wanted teenager, I thought idly, what better place to hide out?