Envy the Night
Page 21
Nora shifted on her seat and thought about reaching out and tapping Ezra’s shoulder, asking him to stop and turn around. Take me back, she could say. I’ve been thinking about it, and this is wrong. We shouldn’t come out alone. We should leave that to the FBI and the police. They’ll know how to protect me; it’s what they do.
Ezra actually turned and looked at her then, and for a split second she wondered if she’d voiced her thoughts aloud, but then he faced the water again and she’d let the moment pass without saying a word.
A few minutes later he did slow the boat, and the motor quieted and Nora’s hair fell back around her shoulders. Out here there was nothing to look at but trees and water, no sign of another boat. Then she saw an island ahead, over Frank’s shoulder, partially blocked by his body.
“Shit.” This came from Frank. “There’s somebody down there, Ezra. Somebody on shore.”
Ezra leaned to the side for a clearer look. “Sure is. And it looks like the fella’s having a bit of trouble with his boat motor. Might be we should stop by and offer a bit of assistance.”
“He’ll recognize Nora and me.”
“Bound to happen sooner or later.” Ezra brought the boat’s speed down even more, eased in closer to the shore, and Nora looked over Frank’s shoulder and saw the man and the boat for the first time. It was the gray-haired Lexus driver, Vaughn, and he was looking up from the motor, his attention focused on the approaching craft. Nora slid down into the seat and tilted her head a bit, trying to put herself back behind Frank, out of Vaughn’s sight.
“Little trouble?” Ezra said, shouting over the sound of the motor.
Vaughn waved them away. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Sure about that? Doesn’t look like it’s going well.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“Tell ya what,” Ezra yelled. “How about I come in and give it a look, and then you and me and your girlfriend have a chat? I’m the caretaker of this cabin. Feeling a bit guilty about the way I been neglecting you all.”
Though Ezra’s voice had been friendly, it produced a new rigidity to Vaughn’s body. He took a step back and let his hands fall away from the motor, studying them carefully now.
“The caretaker?” he asked. He was speaking to Ezra, but his eyes seemed to be on Frank.
“Uh-huh. That place has been my responsibility for a damn long time.”
“We’re doing fine,” Vaughn said, and the boat had drifted so Nora could no longer see him. She sat up straighter to compensate, and when she did Vaughn’s eyes locked on her face and she felt the recognition across the water a split second before he reached behind his back.
“Don’t.” It was a single word, spoken and not shouted, but somehow Ezra’s voice still seemed to boom out across the water and shake the trees. Nora saw that his arm was extended, his gun pointing at Vaughn. How in the world had he gotten that out so fast?
Vaughn stood with his arm behind his back and didn’t say a word. Ezra kept his gun pointed while he adjusted the wheel with his left hand, bringing the boat in close to shore, the water now shallow enough that Nora could see the bottom. Frank had been keeping his back to Vaughn, but when he heard Ezra’s one-word command he finally turned, and Vaughn’s eyes flicked to him.
“How you doing?” Frank said. “You owe the lady here a car, and owe both of us some answers.”
“Don’t hurt her,” Vaughn said. His voice was high and it cracked on the last word. Nora felt a moment’s confusion—don’t hurt me?—before she realized that he was talking about the woman on the island.
“Nobody here has done any hurting, or intends to,” Ezra said. “But your buddies have. And we need to talk about that. Now put that gun of yours on the bottom of your boat, and then catch the bow line when Frank tosses it to you.”
Vaughn dropped the gun. It took him four tries to catch the bow line and pull them to the beach.
25
__________
Vaughn was back to that damn chattering even before they were all ashore, the same routine he’d gone through while waiting with Frank for the tow truck two days earlier.
“. . . and I don’t know what you’ve been told or what you think, but I was going to come back on Monday and give you the money I owed you, which, you know, there’s no reason to be pulling guns on me, your car is fine, I promise it’s fine, and I didn’t know any—”
“Stop,” Ezra said.
Vaughn stopped. His face reminded Frank of a dog his mother had when he was a kid, a beagle that would always sit with its tongue hanging out. Frank’s father would say, Put your tongue back, and the dog would snap his jaws shut, hiding the tongue, and look at Frank’s dad with a perplexed expression. Vaughn looked about as sure of himself as the dog used to.
“Gonna be plenty of time for you to talk,” Ezra said, “but I figure we should all be present and accounted for. You could work on slowing down a touch, too, give us a chance to hear what the hell it is you’re saying.”
Vaughn nodded, and Ezra gestured up at the cabin.
“She in there?”
Another nod.
“Then let’s go up and have us a seat and bit of conversation.”
They walked across the beach to a trail that led up the bluff. Vaughn went first, slipping a few times, his footwork awkward and clumsy. Frank was last, following Nora, who walked easily. He didn’t know what she was thinking. Probably hadn’t been real encouraged by the way Vaughn had reached for that gun.
The cabin was in remarkable shape for a building that had sat empty for so long, but Frank didn’t marvel over it. He expected no less from Ezra, who would take care of an empty cabin that didn’t belong to him better than most men would ever care for their own homes. Vaughn took the steps up to the porch with a quickened stride and was talking before he reached the door.
“Renee? We got some company. Man here says he’s the caretaker—” Vaughn twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open and stepped into the house just as the blond woman stepped out. Frank saw the gun in her hand, then saw it in Ezra’s eye socket. She just stepped onto the porch and stuck the gun in his eye, no hesitation.
“You reach under your jacket any farther,” the woman said, speaking to Frank without taking her eyes off Ezra, “and I’ll kill him.”
“Shit, Renee, what are you doing?” Vaughn was standing in the doorway, jaw slack.
Renee Matteson. That would be the full name. She was something to watch. Even in this moment, when the only ready-to-shoot gun was the one in her hand, Frank was taken with her. So poised, so strong. He let his hand fall away from his jacket and took one step backward.
She’d stuck the gun into Ezra’s eye with enough force to open up the skin and start a small trickle of blood. Now Ezra cleared his throat and said, “This isn’t a real good way to get things started.”
“He’s the caretaker—” Vaughn began, but she cut him off.
“Caretaker my ass. I saw his gun, Vaughn.”
“We’re not the ones you should be scared of,” Frank said. “Though you should know that they are not far away.”
“He makes a good point,” Ezra said, the blood flowing down his cheek. “Perhaps it would be best to save the gunplay for those gents of whom he speaks.”
The blond woman, Renee, was staring Ezra in the eye, their faces separated only by the length of her arm and the gun.
“What I’m saying is, the way things are developing, y’all are going to need your bullets,” Ezra said. “Hate to see you waste one on me.”
“Maybe if I took out my gun and set it down,” Frank said, his voice loud, and he made the slightest motion with his arm. It was enough, as he’d hoped it would be. She looked at him instead of squeezing the trigger as she’d promised, and when she did Ezra snapped his head sideways and his arm moved with the speed of a whip, laced up and then down and then Renee’s hand was in his own and her gun was pointed at the ground. Frank had the Smith & Wesson out by the time that was done.
“Felt pretty sure she would.”
“Me, too, but I was a little less excited about testing the theory. Always the man with the gun in his eye who’s the bigger fan of patience, though.”
He said all this with the casual delivery of a man in a barber’s chair, working the gun out of Renee’s fingers as he talked.
“Now, we got lots of guns around, everybody noticed that? Way too many guns. I’m thinking it’d be nice to put ’em all away, every one, and then just do some talking. Hell, this porch is nice enough. Let’s have us a seat out here, enjoy the day.”
He stepped back when he had possession of her gun, put it into his waistband, and motioned at the porch. She hadn’t moved throughout all of this, seemingly hadn’t blinked, just stood there and held his eyes with a stare so cold it seemed like it could pass through Ezra and carry out to the lake, put a skim of ice on the water.
“I could have killed you, and I didn’t,” she said. “Now let’s see if that was a mistake.”
She turned from him, walked to an old wooden bench beside the door, and sat down. Vaughn sat beside her and reached for her arm, but she shrugged away from his touch and slid to the other end of the bench.
“All right,” she said. “Talk.”
“I think that’s your job,” Nora said. The sound of her voice surprised Frank; hell, it seemed to surprise everyone. She’d been so still and quiet it was as if they’d forgotten her presence. When they all turned to look at her, she met the stares with a shrug.
“What? We didn’t come out here to tell them who we are. We’re not the ones responsible for getting good, innocent people killed. I want to hear their story, not mine.” She jabbed a finger at Renee and Vaughn.
Renee looked at Nora for a long time, as if she were intrigued. Frank tried to guess her age, and couldn’t. She had the body of a young woman, but her face carried some lines and her eyes were those of someone older. Or were they just tired?
“Where are the police?” she said. “You found us, so why not tell them to come out here and ask the questions?”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Nora answered, “but I listened to it.”
Renee nodded as if that made sense, then turned to Ezra. “You’re really the caretaker? You’re how these two found us?”
“Yes.”
“Then your name is Ezra.”
“Uh-huh.”
She nodded. “I’ve heard about you.”
“From Devin,” Ezra said, and Frank felt an unpleasant tingle at the sound of the name. “Where is he?”
“Dead,” she answered.
Frank and Ezra had agreed the previous night that they wouldn’t share any information at first, just hear the story as these two were prepared to tell it. Now, after hearing Renee proclaim her husband dead, Ezra merely nodded in Frank’s direction.
“You don’t know young Frank, I take it?”
Renee turned her cool gaze to Frank and searched his face. He was standing about five feet from her. She shook her head.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who he is.” Talking as if she and Ezra were the only people on the porch.
“Last name of Temple,” Frank said. “That help you any?”
Vaughn looked from one to the other with confusion on his face, but Renee got it.
“Your father,” she said. “Devin and your father—”
“Killed people together.”
“The way I heard it, that wasn’t a joint project.”
“Then you heard it wrong,” he said. “And allow me to be the first to congratulate you on Devin’s demise. You’re better off with him gone. Everybody is.”
She came up off the bench in a smooth, fast motion and slapped him in the face. The sound of the blow made Vaughn step toward them, hands out, but he didn’t touch anyone. Nora made a soft sound of surprise, and Ezra just stood there and watched. Frank took the slap and looked down at Renee with his cheek stinging, didn’t say a word.
“Now that we got the greetings out of the way,” Ezra said, “maybe we ought to talk about the people who are still alive, sort out things with the dead at another time. Seems that you two have led a pair of unfriendly types into the area. Some innocent people suffered as a result. I think it’s time to hear what it’s all about.”
The woman stood where she was for a long time, staring at Frank, challenging him to say another harsh word about her husband. He had none. His mind was too occupied by what that slap meant, by the way she’d risen so fast to defend Devin. It was not the action of a woman who’d wanted him dead. The idea he’d had, then, that they would come out to this island and meet with the two people who’d put bullets into Devin’s back, no longer seemed to be the case. The reality had just spun away from the expectation, driven by the palm of her hand against his face. He looked at her and felt the tingle on his cheek, the heat of the blow fading into cold needles, and with it the truth he’d wanted.
“I’ll tell you what it’s all about,” Vaughn said as Renee finally turned and stalked back toward the bench, “it’s about these two innocent people”—he waved his hand between Renee and himself—“suffering for Devin’s mistakes.”
“Explain,” Ezra said.
“You know about Devin, you know what he does.”
“Right,” Ezra said, “but what do you do?”
Vaughn leaned forward on the bench, ducked his head so his eyes were hidden.
“I work—worked—at a prison in Florida. I’d been at it for about twelve years when I met Devin. Or when he approached me, would be a better way of saying it. I’d done the job right until then, too. I had.”
“Because nobody had ever offered him any money before then,” Renee said, and the scorn in her voice seemed to drop Vaughn’s head even lower.
“What did he pay you for?” Ezra said. “Smuggling to people on the inside?”
“Right idea,” Vaughn said, “wrong direction.”
“You were taking something out of the prison?”
“Instructions,” Frank said. This made sense already, had since Grady’s call the night before. “He was a postman, Ezra. A messenger. For Manuel DeCaster.”
An image of a newspaper photograph was trapped in Frank’s mind, a picture of DeCaster as he was led out of the courthouse on the eve of a guilty verdict. The man’s sallow, jailhouse skin was contorted into a sneer of contempt. He looked nothing like a man whose world had crumbled, and more like an emperor amused by the weak efforts of peasants hoping to overthrow him. And why not? With men like Devin Matteson to handle business on the outside and men like Vaughn to carry the messages, maybe his rule hadn’t been all that interrupted by steel bars and block walls and barbed wire.
“Yes,” Vaughn said. “Manuel DeCaster.”
“The big boss,” Ezra said, his voice dropping into an even slower drawl. “So Devin recruited you to work as the messenger, keep DeCaster in touch with the outside world in ways that monitored phone calls and visits could not.”
“That was the idea,” Vaughn said.
“I understand how that could have brought some trouble down around you,” Ezra said, “but these boys that followed you into Tomahawk, they aren’t the police sort of trouble.”
“No.”
“So who are they?”
“They work for DeCaster. I don’t know how they found us.”
“You left them an easy trail,” Frank said. “There was a tracking device in your car. That’s how they got here, and I’m wondering when they had a chance to put it on your vehicle.”
Vaughn stared at Frank in confusion, mouth half open, but Renee Matteson lifted her hands to her temples, eyes going wide and then squeezing shut.
“What?” Frank said.
“I should have remembered,” she said. “Damn it, I should have remembered.”
“You knew about the device?” Ezra said.
She shook he
r head. “No. Well, not specifically, but I knew they’d been following him. A long time ago, Devin was following him.”
“Devin was following me?”
“At first,” she said, nodding, “he wanted to be sure he could trust you. Wanted to know what you were doing, where you were going. I didn’t think about there being a device on the car, and that was so long ago . . . that was a year ago . . . and it was Devin, not the bastards who shot him.”
“But they would have known about it,” Frank said. It made sense. Devin and the rest of DeCaster’s team would have wanted to follow Vaughn at first, make sure there were no covert meetings with cops, no betrayals.
“How many of them are there?” Renee asked.
“Two that we know of,” Frank said, thinking that this changed everything, made Devin’s role less important, the whole thing less personal. If these two were hiding from DeCaster’s crew, then it was no mystery why Devin had fled from the hospital. His survival odds were better on the run than inside, waiting for someone to come by and finish the job. This was bad, very bad. Stepping into the middle of a personal vendetta between Devin and these two was one thing. Stepping into the middle of a power struggle that ran back to Manuel DeCaster was a damn death sentence.
“Two that you know of? Well, there will be more than that if they call for help,” Vaughn said.
“All right,” Ezra said. “So we got some bad boys and big troubles. Everybody pretty well understood that. You’re dancing, though. I asked what it was you did to attract this. Haven’t heard that one answered.”
“I didn’t do shit. Devin, he got his eyes on the throne. The longer Manuel sat in a cell, the cockier Devin got. He started talking about what he could do on his own, talking about eliminating people closest to Manuel, starting with his cousins, who were key to the whole operation, guys who are so damn mean that when you look at them—”
“Slow down,” Ezra said, “and just tell us what happened. It ain’t that hard.”
Vaughn took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, completely avoiding Renee’s hard gaze.