She didn’t have time to open the book to ‘The Tyger.’
Instead, someone bellowed at her from the bedroom doorway. ‘Put your hands in the air right now!’
Peach wheeled around in surprise. A big man filled the doorway, with a gun pointed at her chest. She gasped and thrust her hands upward with her elbows bent. The book was still in her hand.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ the man demanded.
Peach struggled for something to say, but she said nothing. Behind her sunglasses, she studied the man. He was in his forties, with wavy blond-and-gray hair. He hadn’t shaved. He wore a tan sport coat over a collarless black T-shirt, with navy slacks and black sneakers. His clothes fit snugly; his frame was heavy. A film of sweat made a mustache on his upper lip.
‘Who are you?’ he said, dragging aside a flap of his coat so she could see a gold badge dangling from his belt.
A cop?
No. She recognized the southern drawl in his voice. This was the man who had phoned her, claiming to be Detective Curtis Clay of the St Petersburg Police. He was a liar and a stranger, and looking at him, she knew that he was no cop. He was here for the same reason she was here. To find Justin’s secrets.
‘Whoa, chill, buddy. My name’s Rebekah,’ Peach said, modulating her own voice so it sounded like a New Yorker. ‘I’m crashing with my mom in the condo upstairs. Could you put that gun away?’
The man who called himself Clay kept the gun pointed at her. ‘I asked what you’re doing here.’
‘Jeez, I thought I smelled smoke. I figured I better check it out, you know? Mom’s like the manager here. We’ve got snowbirds who are gone a lot, and she watches over things, so she’s got a master key.’
‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘Tell me who you really are and what you’re looking for.’
‘Hey, I already said—’
‘I know what you said. You’re lying. How did you know Justin Kiel?’
‘I didn’t know him at all. I don’t know who owns this place.’
He stared at her in the dim, dusty space. ‘Show me your ID,’ he said.
Peach shrugged, but she wasn’t going to do that. ‘Yeah, well, show me yours,’ she said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’
The man took a menacing step toward her. She could smell him as he came closer; he smelled of menthol, like the goopy pain patches she wore when she pulled a muscle. He holstered his gun. He dug in his coat pocket and came out with handcuffs, which dangled from his fingers.
‘Maybe you’ll feel like talking after a few hours in jail,’ he said.
She didn’t know where he planned to take her, but it wasn’t jail.
Peach bolted. She dove into the bathroom and locked the door. The man chased after her, but he stumbled on the debris and fell with a loud curse. She yanked open the glass shower door. Inside the shower, a small window near the ceiling faced the beach. She reached as high as she could and was barely able to undo the lock and slide the window open. Noise and wet sea air rushed through the space.
The man’s shoulder crashed into the locked bathroom door. It splintered and came off its frame, tumbling inward.
Peach grabbed the window ledge and pulled herself up the wall, but her shoes slipped on the tile. Her feet pedaled helplessly. She jumped, propping both hands against the frame and squeezing her elbows into the tight open space of the window, which was barely wide enough for her body. Her head jutted outside, then her shoulders and torso, and she could see the green water and the people on the beach and the sand and grass two stories below her.
She also saw Annalie Martine on the beach, running from the shoreline, arms waving, black hair flying.
Curtis Clay grabbed her ankles inside the shower stall and dragged her backward. Like a mustang at a rodeo, she bucked wildly, trying to dislodge him as she clung to the window frame. His grip was as tight as a bear trap, but when he yanked on her foot, her shoe came off. He stumbled, hitting the shower wall hard. The water turned on, blasting the stall, and when he lurched for her again, his feet slipped under him on the wet tile. He crashed down.
Peach squirmed through the window and threw herself outside.
She was free, she was falling. Her body twisted in mid-air. The Gulf dune roared up to meet her face.
9
I’m back. Miss me?
Cab unfolded a copy of the newspaper photograph that Caprice had given him, with the warning scrawled in the thick ink of a red Sharpie. He held the paper so that Hamilton Brock, the leader of the Liberty Empire Alliance, could see it. The two men sat in uncomfortable plastic chairs six feet apart. A video camera watched them from a corner of the ceiling.
‘Who sent this?’ Cab asked.
Brock’s dark eyes flicked to the page and studied the ten-year-old photograph, but he said nothing. His face was devoid of expression.
‘Bring back memories, does it?’ Cab went on. ‘Kind of like Springsteen, right? “Glory Days”?’
Brock’s eyes refocused on Cab with barely veiled contempt, but he remained silent. So far, he hadn’t said a word since Cab introduced himself. The hour-long drive north on I-75 to the Coleman Federal Correction Complex, which was located in Middle-of-Nowhere, Florida, in flatlands across from grazing cattle, felt like a waste of time. Brock had no interest in talking.
Cab had expected a hardened skinhead, but Hamilton Brock looked more like a suburban soccer dad. He was a high school football quarterback, ex-army, auto mechanic, father of four. At thirty-nine years old, he had neat black hair, no tattoos, and a physique that looked prison-lean, but not ripped. His face was carefully shaved. He sat with his hands folded in his lap and his long legs pressed together. His posture was perfect.
Ten years ago, Brock had been an all-American Wally World shopper with a 2,200-square-foot house in Bartow. His wife home-schooled their kids. They had annual passes to Disney World. At night, he’d recruited converts in the basement of a Lakeland church to a volunteer militia whose website advocated mass deportation of illegal aliens, an electrified fence on the Mexican border, a ban on Muslim immigration, defiance of the Internal Revenue Service, and – among blog posts Cab had reviewed – forced sterilization of welfare mothers who gave birth to a third child. The Liberty Empire Alliance had also stockpiled dozens of assault weapons, handguns, ammunition, plastic explosives, barbed wire, copper, canned goods, bottled water, and doses of the anthrax antibiotic Cipro in a U-Stor facility raided by the FBI in Fort Meade.
You never could tell.
Cab tapped a long finger on the newspaper article again. ‘The Orlando reporter who wrote this? Rufus Twill. He wrote a lot about you and your group back then. Somebody repaid him by beating him within an inch of his life. Is that how you deal with people who don’t see the world the way you do?’
The room was silent except for the rustle of the paper and the ticking of a decades-old clock high on the wall. Brock’s mouth twitched. His head tilted a fraction, and he looked toward the floor and shook his head with disdain.
‘Right, I don’t get you, you’re misunderstood,’ Cab said. He waited until Brock met his eyes again, and he added: ‘I know about your father, Mr Brock. Thirty-one years with the same company, and then his job was outsourced to India. He spent three years looking for another job and didn’t find one. He shot himself when you were seventeen. You found the body.’
There was no emotion in Brock’s face. The man had channeled his emotions into hatred long ago. He also had smart eyes, as penetrating as a snake’s stare. Hatred and intelligence were a dangerous combination.
‘Chuck Warren says you’re innocent,’ Cab went on. ‘He called you a political prisoner.’
Brock showed the barest flicker of interest at the mention of the Republican’s name. ‘Mr Warren is correct. That’s exactly what I am.’
‘Oh, so you can talk,’ Cab said. ‘Good. Actually, I knew you could talk, because you’ve been on Warren’s show. I w
as able to dig up the archives online. Here’s one of my favorite quotes: “People accuse us of hoarding weapons because we want to overthrow the government. Not true. We need to be armed for when the government comes to overthrow us.”’
The man’s eyebrows arched with irony, and he cast his gaze around the prison visiting room.
Cab smiled. ‘I get it. They really did come for you.’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘The jack-booted thugs of the FBI?’
Brock exhaled with a loud sigh. He leaned forward and spoke in an unusually quiet voice. ‘You make jokes, Detective Bolton, but did you know that government officials with automatic weapons raided my home and the homes of half a dozen other patriots and kidnapped our children at gunpoint? Nineteen children hauled away and stripped from their parents. The oldest was eleven years old.’
‘They wanted to make sure you didn’t use the children as hostages. Human shields. It’s been done before by extremist groups.’
Brock shook his head. He was talking now. He wanted to talk.
‘The government was the one using children as hostages. Not us. This is the same government that waged a legal battle to have our children permanently taken from our custody and relocated under different identities so we could never find them again. Is that the America you serve, Detective?’
‘The feds lost that fight,’ Cab said, ‘thanks to another branch of government called the American judiciary.’
‘True enough. If you have children, I’m sure you will welcome a two-year battle against the behemoth of the federal government to enjoy the freedom to keep them. Not that we have many freedoms left in this country. Those of us who defend American values wind up here.’
‘You’re here because you didn’t pay your taxes, aren’t you?’ Cab asked.
‘I’m here as a scapegoat, because the government needed someone to blame for a murder they couldn’t solve.’
That was what Cab expected Brock to say. It was the standard excuse of a guilty man. The trouble was, based on everything he’d read about this man, he expected him to be proud of what he’d done. To tell everyone, to take credit. Not to deny it and hide behind a lie.
‘Most people think the government solved the murders,’ Cab said, ‘but they couldn’t make the case because you and your allies stonewalled the investigation and destroyed records. Dozens of militia members disappeared. Including, most likely, the shooter.’
‘We were standing up against a witch hunt,’ Brock said. ‘This was a vendetta.’
‘Even Chuck Warren thinks the murders could have been committed by one of your Alliance members acting on his own.’
‘That isn’t true.’
‘Actually, I believe you,’ Cab said, ‘because I don’t think anyone in your group would go forward with a plan like that without your say-so.’
Brock nodded. ‘That’s why I know it wasn’t one of us.’
‘Are you really saying you didn’t want Birch Fairmont dead?’ Cab asked. ‘Birch and the Common Way Party were ferocious enemies of your movement. Their policies on gun control and immigration were anathema to your group. Birch was a supporter of aggressive legal authority to combat domestic terrorists. That’s what he called you, Mr Brock. Birch Fairmont said you and the Liberty Empire Alliance were the poster children for domestic terrorism. And he was on his way to joining the United States Congress, where he would have had considerable power to target groups like yours.’
‘If you’re asking me to say I’m sorry that Birch Fairmont was killed,’ Brock said, ‘I won’t do that. He was an enemy of free people.’
‘But you didn’t kill him.’
‘I’m not in the business of making martyrs of my enemies. That just gives them more power.’
‘Do you know who did?’
‘I assume it was someone who wanted me in here. They got their wish. They took down a patriot like Chuck Warren at the same time. Obviously, we had a mole inside the Alliance. Someone who was able to point the authorities at us. As it is, they had to settle for trumped-up tax charges when they couldn’t link us to the murders.’
‘So you think you and the Alliance were deliberately targeted. Set up as fall guys.’
Brock shrugged. ‘Here I am.’
‘Are you still the leader of the Liberty Empire Alliance?’ Cab asked.
‘I still have a voice,’ Brock said in the same quiet, determined tone he had used from the beginning. ‘They can lock me up, but they can’t silence me until they put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. They can’t change the truth of what I say. Did you know that in less than thirty years the founding race of this country will be in the minority? The takers are outbreeding us. This will no longer be America. It will be Hispanica.’
‘I guess I better be nice to my girlfriend,’ Cab replied. ‘She’s Cuban.’
Brock tensed. For the first time, Cab saw a flash of anger, as if rage bubbled under the man’s skin.
‘More jokes,’ Brock said. ‘Do you think this is funny? Millions of people feel the way we do. We have allies and converts everywhere. More and more people are hearing our message. Workers. Mothers. Fathers. Even police officers, Detective. And prison guards.’
Cab ignored the diatribe. Instead, he held up the newspaper photograph again. ‘Let me ask you again. Who sent this?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Is Diane Fairmont in danger?’
‘If she is in danger, she has no one to blame but herself. People who try to stage a coup always the run the risk of the guillotine.’
‘A coup?’
‘That’s what the Common Way Party is planning,’ Brock said. ‘That’s what this campaign is about. She has been systematically erasing the obstacles on her way to power. If you don’t think it’s a conspiracy, you’re naïve.’
‘Ramona Cortes is the GOP candidate this year. She led your defense team nine years ago, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, she did. Real Americans all over this country contributed money for our defense. Ms Cortes was the best. However, it doesn’t matter who represents you when the system is rigged to assure your guilt.’
‘Are you still in touch with Ramona?’
‘No.’
‘But you share her politics,’ Cab said. ‘If it were a two-person race, if Diane were out of it, Ramona would be winning. You’d like that.’
Brock stood up. ‘You’re wasting your time. This election isn’t about me or the Alliance. We’re simply pawns. Just like last time. If we didn’t exist, the Common Way Party would have had to invent us.’
‘One more question,’ Cab said. ‘If you wanted Diane killed, could you arrange it? Could you make it happen from here?’
Brock smiled. ‘Do you believe that if I wanted you dead, I could make sure you never walked out of this prison?’
The threat was so calm, so casual, and so real that Cab felt a chill. He didn’t reply. He reached for a joke and didn’t find one.
‘Actually, I do believe that,’ Cab admitted.
‘See, that should tell you something,’ Brock said, enjoying Cab’s discomfort.
‘What’s that?’
‘If I wanted to kill Diane Fairmont, she’d already be dead.’
10
The day washed away.
Peach and Annalie sat in cheap folding chairs on the beach at Honeymoon Island, which was connected to the Gulf coast by a causeway from the town of Dunedin. Peach propped her leg on a third chair. She’d twisted her ankle as she landed, and it was tightly taped with an athletic bandage she’d bought at Walgreens. Her other foot dipped in the hot surf. Her body ached, and she had scratches on her face and arms. Whenever she moved, she felt the grit of sand inside her clothes.
Annalie’s phone rang, playing a song by Gloria Estefan. ‘Rhythm is Gonna Get You.’ Peach watched Annalie check the caller ID and ignore it. It wasn’t the first call she’d ducked.
‘Do you need to be somewhere? You don’t have to hang out with me.’
�
��No, I don’t need to be anywhere,’ Annalie replied, shoving the phone back in her pocket. She wore a wide-brimmed yellow hat, and her face was shadowed from the sun. ‘Saturday afternoon at the beach is pretty great, particularly since I thought I’d be working all day.’
She toasted Peach with a tilt of a warm beer bottle. Offshore, speedboats sliced the waves. The beach around them was crowded and noisy. Dozens of seagulls dodged the children and picked at the foam. Pelicans skimmed the surface with lazy wings. They sat in the midst of the calm water, near an uprooted palm tree half-buried in the sand. A cooling breeze took the edge off the heat, but when Peach closed her eyes, she felt the burn on her face.
‘You change your mind about calling the police?’ Annalie asked. ‘If some guy’s out there pretending to be a cop, they should know.’
‘They’d say it was all about Justin and drugs,’ Peach said. ‘They’d figure that’s why I was there, too. Besides, I can’t get the police involved in anything without talking to Deacon and Ms Fairmont.’
‘Justin was murdered. This isn’t political.’
‘Everything’s political.’
Annalie shook her head. ‘Well, it’s your call. Just watch your back, okay? You can identify this guy, and he knows it. Maybe he’s the one who killed Justin, did you think about that?’
‘Yeah, I thought about it,’ Peach said.
She’d thought about it, but she didn’t believe it was true. She didn’t think the killer would risk coming back, not after the police had already torn Justin’s life apart. Whoever the man was in Justin’s apartment, he was looking for answers, like her.
‘You don’t believe his death was about drugs, do you?’ Annalie asked.
‘I have no idea.’
‘I’m stepping into his shoes, Peach. I have a right to know if I’m putting myself at risk.’ Annalie reached out and put a hand on Peach’s wrist. ‘Do you know what Justin was working on before he was killed?’
Season of Fear Page 9
