“You think he’s dead,” panted Sanchez, wheezing a bit.
“Wanna check?” I gasped, bent over.
“Hell, no.” Sanchez walked over, picked up his backup piece, and put one into the back of Boon’s head, for good measure. “Man ain’t got no heart, kill a girl like that. Best take no chances.”
Sanchez and I stumbled back toward the compound in the rain, soaked, sweating, wheezing, bleeding and exhausted. The heavy rains pounded us until we got off the runway and cut back through the jungle. We heard a terrible cry off to our right and stopped dead in our tracks. At first we thought it was an animal, an ocelot who’d been injured in the firefight, perhaps hit by random spray from gunfire. The eerie cry echoed through the jungle, even above the loud pounding of the rain. Then through the wall of water I saw her and pointed. She was on her knees in the mud, doubled over. It was Holly Carmichael.
As Sanchez and I moved toward her we began to make out words between her agonized sobs. “My sweet, sweet boy. I’m so sorry.”
When she heard us she turned, and I saw her face for the first time. Even soaking wet, with red and puffy cheeks and swollen eyes, she was as lovely as her album cover. But there was something wrong in the eyes, something broken. When I looked past her I saw the pile of earth marked by a tiny wooden cross. Holly’s wracking sobs and her anguished words, “My sweet, sweet boy,” gave me a good clue as to who was buried there.
Sonny and Katarina were approaching from the other side of the house, taking a circuitous route through the compound to make sure we would have no surprises. The compound was littered with bodies. I reached down and offered my hand. “Let’s go inside, Holly, out of the rain.”
Her beautiful brown eyes filled with years of pain. Perhaps she had waited for death’s release with open arms.
“It’s not time yet, Holly,” I said softly. “You owe it to Susan, and Cheryl, and that boy in the ground, to live. And you owe it to Laura, Susan’s sister. She needs to hear about Susan’s last days, Holly. You’re the only one who can give her that. You’re the only one who can give her peace.”
While I’d been talking, the rainy torrent finally slowed to a drizzle. Sonny and Katarina finally made it through the maze of bodies scattered across the compound to join us.
Holly’s eyes finally came back from whatever dark abyss she’d wandered to. She glanced at Katarina’s waterlogged clothes and the scoped rifle she had pointed at the ground. Holly squinted as though she were having trouble focusing. She looked from Sonny’s torn and muddied shirt, to the blood-soaked sleeve of Sanchez’s shredded shirt. She stared a long time at my ripped and blood-stained jeans and bleeding hand. She whispered, as though she could not believe it, “It’s…over?”
“Only for Boon, Holly. For you, life’s just begun. Take my hand and we’ll go inside, out of the rain.” She sat motionless in the mud for several seconds, looking at the hand I’d reached down as if it were a strange, unfamiliar thing. Then she turned away and stretched out over the grave. She placed her lips on the wet soil just a foot or so from the makeshift cross, and kissed Brian goodbye.
Sonny took the small flare gun we’d been given by the military, and fired it into the air.
Holly suddenly sat up and placed her hand in mine, and the four of us walked away from the dead with her.
Forty-Four
Holly spent most of the time before the official party arrived sitting on her bed, staring out the bedroom window at Brian’s grave. The bullet in my side had gone through flesh, which bled a lot, but wasn’t serious. The cut on my leg was deep, as was the one on Sanchez’s arm. Both of our hands were cut. Boon had attached a sharp barb to the end of the leather fall end of the whip. The cuts to the hands weren’t deep, but they were painful. My leg hurt the worst. Sanchez was bleeding more from his arm, but it was the shoulder he was holding, because it was giving him pain. The wolf bite was clean, a one-shot where the beast hadn’t had time to whip his head back and forth and cause more damage before I shot him, but it went deep.
Katrina and Sonny were messy from the rain and jungle, but had escaped with only scratches and a few abrasions. She had tied a tourniquet around my leg and Sanchez’s arm to keep us from bleeding even more than we were. Molina’s contingent had a medic I was looking forward to seeing.
While we waited for Lovato and Molina and his troops to arrive I told Holly how we’d found her. It was a long story, beginning with Cheryl falling to her death off the shore in Manta. Telling it to Holly as she sat with her legs curled up underneath her on the bed, staring out at Brian’s grave, distracted me from my own physical pain, allowing me to focus on another, different kind of pain not my own.
When I finished, Holly whispered, “I got so many people killed.” We waited. They were the first words she’d spoken since we’d brought her into the house. It had been her jungle prison for a very long time.
“Poor Susan. When I got back after our last session and found my passport gone, I panicked. I tried to call her but she’d already left. Nothing else had been taken, so I knew it was Boon. I threw everything in a suitcase, knowing in my heart she was already dead. What I didn’t realize, was that I was dead too. He was outside waiting for me. He took my face in his hands and told me how much he’d missed me. I asked him what he’d done with my passport. He just smiled, and said I’d never need one again.” She wiped away her tears.
“He brought you here?” I asked quietly.
She nodded. “He showed me the Paris newspapers first, three of them, all reporting my suicide. I knew it was Susan, and I just…lost all the fight I had left. Boon didn’t even have to get me hooked. I was submissive, alive but not living.” She swallowed so hard you could hear it. “Until a year ago.”
“Brian and Cheryl?”
“Oh, my sweet Brian. He was just a boy, but he loved me so. Boon had found them in Puerto Lopez. Boon only brought them here for me, so I’d have some company. They told me what had happened, why they’d run away. I told them about Susan. Brian was so in love with me. It was just so hard to resist, love from someone who adored me in a nice way. One night Boon had to make a delivery personally. I couldn’t stop myself. I found myself in Brian’s room, and he made love to me all night. I’d have worn him out if he hadn’t been so young, and so in love with me that he thought he was in heaven. I felt things I hadn’t felt in so many years. God, I loved that boy. Cheryl was sweet and I was like a sister to her. We had this little secret family for a while, hidden from everyone here, including Boon.”
She smiled, and became almost beautiful. But a storm cloud quickly moved across her face.
Katarina asked, “How did he find out?”
“Cheryl, but it wasn’t her fault. Boon began to notice how happy I was. I tried to hide it, but I couldn’t. He knew something was up. He went after Cheryl with a knife, threatened to cut her up if she didn’t tell him what was going on. I was outside, and Brian was helping the men stack weapons in one of the warehouses. Cheryl thought he was going to kill her, and he probably would have.”
She was very far away for a moment.
“What happened,” asked Sonny.
She sucked in a deep breath. “Boon came walking out. He smiled at me, his wickedest smile. Then he turned toward the warehouse. He dragged Brian out into the compound. Brian was a big strong boy but…” She turned to look at me, her eyes pleading. “I don’t have to tell you about how Boon is, I suppose, from the look of you.”
“No, Holly, we know.”
“He toyed with Brian for hours, letting him land a punch once in a while to give him hope, then he’d beat him senseless, or cut him, wait for him to recover so he could play with him some more, like a cat with a mouse. Cheryl and I were both screaming and crying at the top of our lungs, Boon’s men holding us back. But there’s no one out here to hear you. The men liked Brian, but they were all afraid of Boon.”
Sonny said, “No wonder.”
“When…when Brian was finally so beat down that he cou
ldn’t put up a fight any longer, he dragged him over to that spot next to the house, next to my window so I could see what I’d done. Cheryl and I were so hoarse we couldn’t scream any longer. He…cut off his genitals while he was still alive.” She sobbed and then wiped her face. “He stuffed them into his mouth and buried him like that. I think…I think Brian was still alive…a little.”
“Jesus.” That was Sonny.
Sanchez said, “Kinda makes me want to go shoot him in the head again.”
Holly looked at him, and actually managed a smile. It was a good sign.
“You got Cheryl to try to mail the tape?” She nodded. “Why? I mean why not a note for help to the police?”
She shook her head back and forth.
“Boon said he had police in his pocket. I didn’t know who to trust. I knew about Susan’s sister because she’d told me. I figured no one would believe a note saying I was alive. But if someone famous like Laura began searching into her sister’s death, it would lead them here, to rescue Cheryl and me.” It was pretty much how I’d had it figured.
“How did you know where to mail the tape?”
“I didn’t, Cheryl used one of the computers to get her address online. Boon had taken the tape of the last session before he burned Susan’s office. He never listened to it anymore. So I was able to switch it with a blank in the file cabinet where he kept it. I figured he’d never notice.”
“Except he did,” commented Sanchez.
She sighed, a very defeated sigh. “Yes. We had it all planned. Cheryl was going with him to Puerto Lopez. He said he couldn’t trust her now that Brian was dead and wanted to keep an eye on her.”
“She was going to mail it, send out your mayday.”
Holly nodded. “When she didn’t come back with Boon, I knew he’d murdered her.”
She started crying, and it lasted for several minutes. Katarina went over and put her arm around her. When she stopped crying I changed the subject.
“The woman in the compound?”
“Oh, God, that was the most horrible thing I’ve ever witnessed. Even worse than Brian, for pure cruelty. She hadn’t been here long. Boon caught her looking at something she wasn’t supposed to be. He said she was a traitor. I don’t have to tell you what he did to her. She was alive when he did them, like Brian. He let her bleed to death. I begged him to shoot her, but he just laughed at me. I really believe Boon went mad. He wasn’t like this years ago. He was messed up, but not evil.”
I’d heard Lovato and the men coming, and waved Sonny out to greet them while she was telling us about the woman. We heard footsteps and suddenly Lovato and Molina were standing in the doorway. Lovato nodded to Holly, as did Molina.
“Detective Lovato, Colonel Molina, I’d like you to meet Holly Carmichael, survivor.”
Forty-Five
Everything happened quickly once all the shooting had stopped. Knowing the story was so big that it would be picked up all over the globe, Lovato gave us a few hours head start so that Holly could be on the sea at an undisclosed location when it broke.
Sanchez and I spent an hour being patched up by Molina’s medic at the compound while soldiers outside filled body bags and made a pile of them near the airstrip. After cleaning our wounds and stitching us up, the medic plied us with enough antibiotics to cure the common cold. In addition, he gave Sanchez a rabies shot — just in case. By the time he finished, military helicopters had arrived to fly us back to Tena. Molina and his troops remained to secure all that lovely weaponry, ensuring that it didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Caroline cried and threw her arms around me when I came to pick her up. I’d never been so glad to see anyone in my life. She couldn’t stop fussing over my wounds and I didn’t mind. I’d felt very far away from her out there on the river, and in the jungle. I hadn’t liked it.
Anne similarly fussed over Sanchez, as though they were already married. We’d had to hurry, because Lovato could only hold off for so long. We parted ways at Tena, Sonny and Katarina heading back to Miami while Sanchez and Anne returned to Cozumel. Anne was already making arrangements to transfer her studies to Partenon University in Cozumel. They hadn’t set a wedding date but there was no doubt they would. How and where, considering Sanchez was a cop and Anne’s father was, well, Fernando Marquez, was anybody’s guess.
As Holly, Caroline and I headed for the boat, Caroline called Laura with the news, and the plan, which was to bring Holly to Boca Raton to meet Laura, and give both of them some closure to old wounds. The journey would give Holly time to get used to her freedom, used to the idea that Boon was dead, no longer a shadow following her.
The plan got altered. Laura had wrapped up her television season so she decided to join us aboard Sweet Caroline off the coast of Manta. So we had remained, waiting for her arrival. I had used the interim to call Krista, because no one had heard from Vlad.
“Hello?” she answered, in that pretty southern drawl of hers.
“It’s Seth. How is everything working out, or is it none of my business?”
“Of course it’s none of your business, but I’ll tell you anyway,” she laughed. “Vlad had to make a decision. He was offered the directorship or Grand Poobah or whatever they call it over there, of his agency. His boss, apparently, was one of the people involved in the deal.”
She might have been talking about being made CEO of a frozen chicken outfit, but I knew she wasn’t. I wondered if she did.
“What did he think about it?”
“He didn’t want to at first, but then he realized it was a way to get Katarina out, so she can stay with Sonny. He wanted to repay her for her loyalty, and all the trouble he caused. He’s really such a dear, sweet man.”
Just a big old teddy bear, that was Vlad, alright. If the teddy bear had great big teeth and no conpunction about doing what needed to be done.
“So he took it? How’s that going to work out for you two?”
“Well, he’ll have to spend most of his time in Russia, so he sort of implied that however much he loved me, he couldn’t ask me to stand by him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. Vlad’s not getting rid of me that easy. He thinks he has, because he’s never been with a southern girl before.”
I had to laugh, and I suddenly felt a little sorry for Vlad, and happy for him at the same time. This was going to cause him no end of trouble, but she’d be worth it. Vlad might even discover that spring was eternal if he wasn’t careful.
We picked up the news on our transistor and listened to Lovato being bombarded with questions about Holly’s location at the huge news conference being held. He was asked whether Holly was in touch with Laura Garner, who had mysteriously disappeared. Lovato told them that Holly was in a safe location and would not make a statement until such time as she was ready. He could not, of course, speak for Laura Garner, whom he had never met.
Further to his credit, he didn’t take all the credit. He made it clear at the news conference — which would certainly be played ad nauseam around the world — that the investigator working for Laura Garner, Seth Halliday, along with Detective Daniel Sanchez of the Cozumel police in Mexico, had participated in and been instrumental in the seizure of the arms, and the liberation of Holly Carmichael.
Lovato couldn’t mention Katarina, so he left out she and Sonny, which was just fine with both of them. He made it a point in his statement to clarify that information gathered by me while investigating the decade-old disappearance of Susan Garner had led them to the arms dealer, and to Holly. Susan Garner, he was sad to say, had been murdered by Eugene Boon, and mistaken for Holly Carmichael. Information, he was clear to point out, which had been discovered by Seth Halliday in Paris.
Now that I was in the clear, Athea Christos unloaded in Paris, and papers were having a field day with Baum’s story, including his attempt on my life and Caroline’s life on the streets of Paris. She played up Benoît’s ten year quest to see justice done, so papers
were building him up to be Quince ME. I couldn’t help but smile, wondering now if it wouldn’t be that beautiful wife of his, whose sexy photos graced the walls of his office, who would be itching to tell everyone that Benoît was her husband.
Once Laura caught up with us in a small sea plane, Holly, who’d seemed okay, all things considered, broke down. She and Laura went below and didn’t come back on deck for hours. Caroline had given Laura the tape Susan had made for Holly. A tape she hadn’t lived long enough to mail.
Caroline was so simpatico with Laura they really could have been sisters. Between Susan’s loving words of friendship, and the friendship of Caroline and Laura, Holly became more assured, and more comfortable in her freedom each day.
We took our time reaching Miami. Harry loved having Holly and Laura on board because they hadn’t heard all of his old sea stories like we had. Well, that was one of the reasons, anyway. Laura Garner was Laura Garner, as nice as she was lovely. Harry was a little starstruck, which I never thought I’d see. He liked Holly, too. She had begun to get lovelier the longer we were at sea. Whatever had been taken from her by Boon gradually began to return.
One morning, early, as the orange sky began to illuminate the blue sea, she found her album among my collection, and put it on. She went up on deck, staring out across the blue water as Easy to Love and Cool and Breezy played. She listened to the entire album.
When we were close enough to Miami that we could see the shoreline, Holly surprised us. I had shut the big diesels off and we were drifting, sitting on deck as the sun set. We’d decided to put off arriving in Miami until morning, knowing life for Holly would be crazy for a while. Maybe for a long time.
“You guys have been great. I can’t believe what you’ve done for me. I’ve been thinking about what I do now. Listening to that album again, told me. But I need to be insulated from the vultures. I just want to make music, have people enjoy it.”
The Long Gray Goodbye: A Seth Halliday Novel Page 27
