by Jeff Abbott
24
‘Whit,’ said Gooch. ‘I’d like you to meet Helen Dupuy.’ Gooch, back earlier than Whit thought he’d be, by one in the afternoon on Friday, stood in Whit’s courtroom as the last juvenile case wrapped up and a boy, chronically truant, and his embarrassed-to-the-bone parents left.
Whit still was in his robe, sitting at the bench. Gooch had an arm around a young woman, a slight thing, hair a little too frizzed, a hard, worn look to her, but pretty if maybe she ate a little more, slept a little more. Wearing faded jeans and an old blue T-shirt with a little rip in the shoulder that needed mending.
‘Hello, Helen,’ Whit said. ‘I’m Whit Mosley.’ He shook her hand.
They were alone now in the courtroom, Gooch biting his lip, Helen looking like she didn’t know why she was here.
‘I brought Helen back with me from New Orleans,’ Gooch said.
‘I see.’
‘We caught the first flight out this morning,’ Gooch said.
‘You must’ve,’ Whit said. ‘You didn’t tarry long in New Orleans.’
‘I felt we ought to be back here ASAP.’ He glanced at Helen. ‘Helen, I need to talk to His Honor private-like for a minute, if you don’t mind.’ He gave her some change. ‘There’s a Coke machine down the hallway – take a left. Get yourself something to drink and I’ll be there in just a minute.’
‘Nice to have met you, sir,’ she said to Whit.
‘You don’t have to call me sir.’
‘I know better than to mouth off at a judge.’ Helen gave Gooch a smile, went out of the courtroom.
Whit waited until the door shut after her. ‘Who is she, Gooch?’
‘She’s a whore,’ Gooch said, ‘but not a crack whore.’
‘That’s good,’ Whit said. ‘Why on earth did you bring this young woman back from New Orleans with you?’
‘Albert Exley. Ring any bells?’
It did sound familiar. ‘It sounds like Allen Eck.’ Whit told Gooch about the crazy treasure hunter described by Jason Salinger of the Laffite League and that Jimmy Bird was dead.
‘Albert Exley. Allen Eck. Alex,’ Gooch said. ‘His names seem to be shrinking.’
‘So who’s Albert Exley?’
‘The name used by the man who paid cash and stayed at the motel Jimmy Bird called and nearly killed that nice girl that just left.’ Gooch explained what Helen had told him. ‘If he’s the same guy that Stoney Vaughn took to Mexico, then Stoney knows Allen/Albert/Alex. Triple A…’
‘Triple A?’
‘I ain’t calling him by all his aliases,’ Gooch said. ‘Triple A was in touch with Jimmy. And Jimmy used to work for Patch. There’s your connection.’
‘But no proof. Nothing to give to David. Albert Exley and Allen Eck could be two entirely different people.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Gooch said. ‘Names too similar. One guy. Triple A.’
‘So why was he in New Orleans?’
‘From that phone call Helen heard and got shoved through the glass for, I think he was there to kill someone. I’m gonna do some hunting today, get Helen to help me, see if who all in New Orleans went missing or turned up dead during the time he was there. She’s a quick learner.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Don’t you be that way, Whitman.’
‘Shouldn’t you have stayed in New Orleans to do this?’
Gooch shook his head. ‘Triple A is here, man. Here. If he’s this guy that Jimmy was in contact with, and he’s the same treasure hunter Stoney knew, he’s either been here or he’s still here. Most of what I was going to look for is in newspaper archives. I can do all that via the Internet.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I sure as hell wasn’t leaving you alone here, sniffing around. This guy’s a freak.’
‘Why’d you bring Helen, Gooch?’
‘I could use some help, and let’s just say she’s motivated to find this Alex. He hurt her pretty badly. And second, well, she needs a vacation. Whores don’t get vacation time. Least not paid. And plus, she knows the guy. We don’t have a picture. I thought maybe she could find an artist in town, describe this guy, get a sketch for us.’
‘Like a police sketch? Artists don’t do that generally, Gooch. It’s very specialized work,’
‘Whatever,’ Gooch said. ‘The key is finding this guy, Whit. If the three different guys are all one and the same… you got your man, I’m telling you.’
‘Take her to see Jason Salinger,’ Whit said. ‘Let them compare notes. That should help us know if Triple A is one person or not. Maybe he has a photo from Mexico.’
‘Then, maybe later,’ Gooch said, ‘I might take her to a movie. If we’re not tracking down this fuck.’
‘Gooch, you aren’t sleeping with her, are you?’
‘Yeah, we slept together last night. Didn’t screw. Just slept.’
‘Just slept.’
‘Yeah. She snores a little. That doesn’t bother me.’
*
‘I think, in short, you’re screwed,’ Suzanne Gilbert said.
Whit had thought he was done with the juveniles, with teen court ended and Gooch gone, but Suzanne was waiting for him in his office, arms crossed, still wearing black shirt, black pants, despite the hazy heat that had broiled Port Leo. Pouting. Pissed as a spoiled teenager being told no.
‘Don’t you feel like a solar panel?’ Whit said.
‘Don’t fuck with me,’ she said. Her tone was still pleasant.
‘I’m not. What’s wrong?’ He pulled the robe off, over his head. He hated wearing black, even in the air-conditioned comfort of the courthouse.
She watched him smooth out his lime shirt and hang up the robe.
‘Shut the door. This conversation is private.’
He did, gave her an indulgent smile, thought, You have about five seconds to turn nice.
‘Lucy. She is apparently the sole heir of Patch’s estate.’
Legal news traveled fast. He wondered who told her. Maybe Lucy. Maybe the lawyers. Maybe David. ‘So I’ve heard. I haven’t seen a will, though.’
‘And her lover is in charge of the inquest.’
‘Lover. I don’t know if I’ve ever been called that before. Don’t most people say boyfriend?’ He sat behind his desk.
‘It’s going to make a nasty headline in the paper,’ Suzanne said. ‘You should recuse yourself from the case.’
‘Lucy is not officially under suspicion. And she’s not a blood relative of mine or a relative by marriage. I don’t have grounds to recuse myself.’
‘Of course she’s not a suspect. Not with you working hand in hand with the police.’
‘David Power is not exactly president of my fan club,’ Whit said. ‘They don’t listen to me as to who they suspect. They handle the evidence, they make the calls. Jimmy Bird is the guy they think did this, Suzanne, so why are you pitching a hissy fit?’
She was mad about all that land and money not coming to her, and whatever he said wasn’t going to placate her.
‘Jimmy Bird has a wife and family, and he just suddenly turns to burglary? I don’t buy it,’ Suzanne said. ‘Lucy, somewhere, has her hand in this. That will’s going to get a hard look, too. And for you abusing your position to protect her, I’ll go to the papers-’
‘You know, go and do what you please, Suzanne,’ Whit said quietly. ‘You’re mad because Patch cut you out. You’re a disgruntled relative. The papers will give you the tenth of an inch you deserve.’
‘Your career as a judge will be over.’
‘I’ve been threatened with that before,’ Whit said. ‘It’d work if I got found screwing a goat. And even then it’s only a maybe. I screw up, the judicial board’ll spank me and I’ll take it. You and the papers can try what you please.’ He smiled. And he meant it. Before being elected, he’d run an ice cream shop, taken pictures for the newspaper, run a messenger service. All were decidedly less stressful than sitting on the bench and taking crap from this no-talent whiner. ‘Bet I’m more popular in town than you
are.’
‘Don’t make that bet, Whit.’ Her tone softened. ‘We can deal, can’t we? I won’t make a scene in the papers. I won’t take your career down, which you seem to think is invincible but isn’t. But we need to reach an agreement.’
‘On what?’
‘Lucy can afford to be… generous to me. Share a little.’
Whit stared. ‘You’re unbelievable.’
‘I’m very believable.’
‘You’ll make trouble and contest the will – unless you’re paid off?’ He shook his head. ‘Go paint your butt and roll yourself another bad mural.’
‘She’s not worth it, Whit. Not worth your career. She’s a phone psychic, for God’s sake. Do you think she’s, at heart, anything more than a con artist?’
‘Con artist. That’s good coming from you. You’re better at working the cocktail party crowd than you are the canvas. It’s the only way to explain why anyone would buy your shit.’
She stood. ‘My paintings hang in the houses of lots of really, really good lawyers around here, Whit. Tell Lucy I won’t contest the will if you withdraw from the case and she’s willing to share, oh, let’s say thirty percent. I won’t be greedy.’
‘You sure as hell won’t be, because you’re not getting one red cent.’
‘Now that’s up to Lucy to decide,’ Suzanne said. ‘Isn’t it?’
The people Claudia Salazar had known in her life hovered around her, as though they could step on the waves and not dampen their feet. Her abuelitas, one stern, the other smiling. Her parents, her mother chiding her as though the boat she leapt from was the same as a good man: Why would you leave a perfectly good boat, silly girl? David reaching a hand down toward her, then vanishing. Whit, with his bad-boy smile he didn’t know he had. Ben, sweet, folding his arms around her, letting her rest her head against his shoulder. She knew she was hallucinating, hunger and exhaustion and the salt water she couldn’t keep from her mouth in the rolling waves working their toll. Her skin felt like it might slide off her organs, her bones. She had wearied long ago of alternating between treading water, swimming, and waving the electric-red pillow, of riding the waves up and then down again into the swells. The jeans – tied into knots of air pockets – didn’t float and she finally let them sink into the emptiness below her. If she thought too long about the water beneath her – its depths, with bull sharks and jellyfish and the dissolved bones of sailors lost long ago – her breath caught in panic. She forced herself to stare at the sky, the vastness above, more comforting than the vastness below. The clouds could not hurt you.
She had tried to swim toward the coast, maintaining a steady pace, but it seemed to grow no closer. She wondered if the distant smudge of coast really was coast, or maybe a trick of the light and the water put there to tease her.
She swam, waved the red pillow, swam some more. She thought she saw a sailboat briefly in the distance but it seemed to vanish in the haze.
You can quit now, a voice she didn’t recognize piped up. It’s okay. Just stop. Give up. Sink.
‘Shut up,’ she croaked through cracked lips.
No shame in lying down. The water is only cold for a while.
Some instinct made her stop for a moment in the chop, wave the little red pillow with leaden arms.
There are things worse than being dead. Better drown yourself before the sharks get ahold of you.
‘I won’t taste good,’ Claudia said. She swam again toward the smudge she thought was coast and wondered about Danny. About Ben, if Ben were alive or dead. The sky had been empty of planes and choppers and a cold ripple of grief in her belly, and between her shoulder blades, said, No one is looking for you. They don’t know where to look.
She figured it was now past noon, and she used the sun as a guide to find west, to swim toward land. She wondered if this was the last time she’d see the sun, felt the hollowing sting in her eyes of having looked at it too much in trying to check her bearings. Maybe the next time the sun rose she would be lost for ever under the waves. Bones never found, her flesh broken apart by the salt water, her atoms scattered by the tides over the next century or so. She’d get to Thailand, Australia, India, Sweden, all the places she’d dreamed of traveling, a little bit of her in the grains of sand, in the foaming curl of the surf. Just let go. Let go. Let…
‘No!’ Claudia screamed.
Between her and the ever-distant smudge was a dot, moving, with a crescent of sail. Getting bigger.
She screamed with all her might, rose up out of the water, waving the tattered, sodden red pillow. Waving, waving, waving and screaming her throat raw.
25
Lucy was getting ready to leave Patch’s house, purse in hand, dressed in jeans, a plain white T-shirt, fat-lensed sunglasses, and a baseball cap. Whit pulled up, parked his Explorer to the side so she could move her Chevy out. She opened the car door, tossed in her purse, stood by the car, waiting.
‘How was afternoon court?’
‘Slow. Glad to finish a little early. Where you going?’ he asked.
‘A few errands,’ she said. ‘I haven’t gotten a thing done since Patch died.’
‘I can do that for you.’
She forced a smile. ‘It’s okay. I’d rather go myself. I need to stay busy.’
He told her about the conversation with Suzanne. Behind the sunglasses she gave no sign of emotion, but she crossed her arms, tapped her feet in anger.
‘Well. What do you want to do?’ she said.
‘If I recuse myself, the press might make an issue of it. Think that you’re more of a suspect than you are. But this is really your decision, Lucy. At least about the will.’
‘Mine. You mean ours.’ She gave him a smile, the thin kind that is barely meant. ‘We’re a team, aren’t we?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then forget Suzanne. Spoiled little bitch. She crossed a line she’s never going to be able to step back over.’
‘Okay.’
She gave a sick little laugh. ‘I have no family left, Whit. Patch and Suzanne were it, and now… I’m not going to be able to forgive her.’
‘Never say never. She’s upset. So are you.’
‘She’s greedy. I hate greed in people. It’s corrosive. Did you know that most of the callers at the psychic hotline want to know if they’re going to get rich? Or win the lottery?’ She shook her head. ‘They never ask if they’re just going to be happy. Find love. That’s not enough for people anymore.’
‘Forget the errands. Let’s go inside, just be alone.’
‘No. It’ll be good for me to get out. A little alone time.’
‘Okay, Lucy. I’ll cook us some dinner.’
‘No need. The church ladies and Patch’s friends brought a ton of food. Heat yourself up some dinner. There’s salad, too. Open wine if you want. Don’t wait on me. I may be out for a while.’
He watched her pull out of the driveway. I have no family left, she’d said. I’ll be your family, Lucy, and he nearly laughed, the odd way love kept sneaking up on you.
The fishing cottage was small, on a couple of private acres on the south edge of Laurel Point, fifteen minutes away from Port Leo. It was owned by one of Stoney’s widowed clients who lived in San Antonio and rarely bothered with fishing. She’d given him a key a few months ago, asked him to get the real estate appraised, and he’d made and kept a copy for himself.
It was empty, of course, neat as a pin, decorated badly with nautical motifs: starfish light-switch plates, a mobile of crustaceans, fake compasses mounted on the walls like clocks. But very comfortable, a television in the corner, old bourbons and whiskeys in the bar.
‘What the fuck good is a compass mounted on the wall?’ Alex said.
‘It’s decorative,’ Stoney said.
‘It must be nice to have a house you don’t even need.’
The old woman who owns it, her husband invented an important valve on oil pumps. She’s so rich she doesn’t have to wipe her own ass if she doesn’t want to.’
Alex had inspected the cottage, took a deep breath, said, ‘It’ll do.’ The cottage was isolated, quiet, not a place anyone would look for Stoney. Earlier, he’d outlined the plan.
‘Sooner or later your brother and his girlfriend are going to be missed. People come looking for them, they want to talk to you. But you’re gone. So’s your boat. So you’re presumed missing, too.’
‘Like I’ve been kidnapped?’ Stoney said slowly.
‘Yeah. At least until we see what’s happened. They turn up alive, your brother might not be real thrilled with you since you wouldn’t pay and told them to kill his girlfriend.’
‘I never said that-’
‘Listen. But if the gang that kidnapped them had operatives that also kidnapped you…’
‘To get the money they couldn’t get before,’ Stoney said. ‘Yeah.’ So he thought for a moment, told Alex about the cottage, and they’d headed over after burying Danny’s body in a thick grove of oaks, twelve miles inland. It had been hot, even in the shade, and both men were grimy and sweaty.
Alex washed his face off in the cottage’s sink. ‘Now that I’ve done the thinking to save your ass, where’s the Devil’s Eye?’
‘I told you. You can have the rest of the treasure, man. Take it and go with your share. You want to come back when I’m ready to stage the dig on the Gilbert land, help me fake it, that’s cool, too. I trust you. And I’ll pay you well.’ Cool confidence in his voice now. He’d killed a man and his hands weren’t shaking, his stomach wasn’t in knots.
‘No. You’re telling me now.’
‘Remember. Anything happens to me, your name surfaces. Immediately.’
‘Why should I believe that?’
‘I managed to take down my investment firm’s computer by remote control, Alex. I kept a virus executable file I could run on the servers, one the servers weren’t protected against, in case I needed to freeze up my computers, if the Feds wanted to look too close at my records. I don’t keep real backups. It’s all insurance. I’m just a big believer in it.’
