Suspicion of Vengeance

by Barbara Parker

  Ruby was busy talking with her friends, so Gail hid for a while behind a group of women with crosses on their breasts. They all held candles, which had not been lit and would in any event be useless in the bright sunshine.

  People jostled each other and raised signs in the air. Gail craned her neck to read them. HOW CAN KILLING STOP KILLING ? EXECUTION IS NOT THE SOLUTION. THOU SHALT NOT KILL. She read the ones on the other side of the rope. REMEMBER THE VICTIMS, which had a photo of Amber and the baby. HE EARNED HIS WAY TO DEATH ROW. A photo of Kenny with a red circle around it, and a line drawn through. WHOSOEVER SHEDS THE BLOOD OF MAN, BY MAN SHALL HIS BLOOD BE SHED. GENESIS 9:6.

  Someone bumped her, and she nearly stumbled across the yellow rope. She was drunk on lack of sleep, and her reflexes were slow.

  A pickup truck drove by, and a man in a camouflage cap cupped his hands at his mouth. "What day is this? Fry-day."

  "You dimwit," Gail said aloud. "They don't use the chair anymore."

  The anti crowd booed the man in the truck, and some in the pro crowd cheered. Others told them to be quiet, that wasn't what this was about. Back in the media area, reporters stood in front of cameras. Their mouths moved, but Gail couldn't hear them. Another crowd had gathered around the trucks, watching the monitors inside.

  A man's voice a few feet away said, "Shut up. Listen. The Supreme Court just denied his appeal." Someone turned up the volume on a portable radio, and the voice of the governor came through.

  "... have finally reached an end. Mr. Clark has received the due process that our Constitution affords him, but enough is enough. Twelve years is more than enough. We need only point to the tragic suicide two days ago of the victim's husband, who could no longer bear the heavy weight of his grief To his family, and to hers, my deepest condolences. To Mr. Clark I say, I harbor no ill will toward you, sir, but you deserve the justice being meted out today. May God have mercy on your soul."

  A cheer went up.

  Groans.

  The nuns began to sing "Amazing Grace."

  Gail walked away, pushing past a man handing out anti-death penalty buttons. She stepped over the rope and stood with her back to the crowd. The ground sloped downward a bit, and another correctional facility was just to her left, but an area of grass stretched out ahead of her.

  She reached for her shoulder bag and remembered she'd locked it in the trunk. She had wanted her cell phone so she could call Karen, who had been too little in her mind these last days. She'd wanted to tell her hello and say she would be home soon.

  Gail walked a little farther, thinking of her promise. She and Karen would go somewhere, just the two of them. Not even Anthony. They wouldn't even wait until Anthony left to take his grandfather to Cuba. That would be later next month. The old man had been patiently waiting for Anthony to come home, something Gail had never thought he would do, wait patiently for anything.

  A flock of birds flew by, and Gail turned to follow their progress. They were heading north. She supposed the snow had melted already. The days were getting longer. The breeze was warm.

  She sat down on the grass. How fine it was, such long, tender shoots. Not like that in Miami at all. It had rained recently and the ground was moist. She gathered a handful of grass and held it to her nose. It smelled of earth, sweet and fresh.

  Her shoe had come untied. She reached over to retie the laces.

  CHAPTER 29

  Thursday, April 12

  The sun was going down. The hotel's shadow stretched across the sand, and the clouds over the Atlantic had turned pink. Standing on the terrace, cell phone at her ear, Gail listened to Anthony's voice telling her to leave a message.

  "Damn." She snapped the phone shut and went inside. Anthony had left three hours ago, and she'd hoped to be home before dark. Karen was expecting her, and Gail longed to see the last of Martin County for a while.

  "Still no answer?" Jackie was setting the last box on the stack of them by the front door. She had come to say good-bye, but when Anthony hadn't shown up, stayed to help Gail finish packing the suitcases, computer equipment and files in the Clark case.

  "I don't know where he could be. He said something about going with Hector to pay the divers for those underwater photos of the sinkhole. I suppose they all got into a conversation about the good old days of the CIA, God knows what, and he forgot the time. Maybe he forgot to turn his cell phone on too."

  "Did you try Hector?"

  "His isn't on either."

  Jackie's calm brown eyes followed as Gail put her cell phone by her purse and tapped her nails on the kitchen counter. "You're worried."

  "Not really. He's with Hector. I'm just annoyed that he hasn't called me back." This wouldn't have bothered Gail so much if he hadn't been in such a weird mood the last couple of days. His face seemed carved out of stone, and he barely spoke. She had awakened in the middle of the night, and his side of the bed was empty. From the terrace she had seen the figure of a man walking along the deserted shore line, too far away to hear her call his name. Anthony, so careful to maintain his professional distance from cases and clients, had been swept into the dark vortex of Kenny Clark's execution.

  Jackie said, "Well, I'll just stick around till he gets back, if that's okay."

  "I'd like you to." Grateful to have her cousin's companionship, Gail said, "Something's going on with him. He's so angry at everything, and particularly at Whit McGrath. The last thing Kenny said to him was to let it go, it's not worth it, but he can't seem to get past it. I think time will take care of people like McGrath and Rusty Beck. That's what Ruby told me. I have to believe it, or I'd go crazy. Maybe getting the search warrant will help. Tell Garlan we appreciate what he's doing. Truly."

  Jackie followed a few moments of silence with a little shrug. "He's just doing his job."

  "It's more than that, Jackie. He's sticking his neck out."

  Gail could tell that Jackie regretted having failed, on the eve of Kenny's execution, to persuade her father of his innocence. Even so, she had convinced Garlan, of the possibility of four bodies entombed in the trunk of a car. He was using his clout to get a search warrant, hoping to find something that would link the bodies to Rusty Beck, the man who fired the shotgun. And if charged with murder, who knew what kind of deal Beck would ask for. He might turn on Whit McGrath.

  In the morning Garlan Bryce would take the warrant to Judge Willis for his signature. Garlan would give him a copy of the Mendoza deed, the underwater photographs, and state records that showed who owned the car. It wasn't much. Gail could imagine Whit McGrath's lawyers and PR people lining up to fight the inference that McGrath was connected in any way to what might be found at the bottom of that sinkhole. They would probably succeed. There was no physical evidence against McGrath. But the scandal of hauling up four skeletons would put a pall over River Pines and possibly cause McGrath to lose the vote on Phase Two. It would cost him dearly.

  It wasn't enough, but it was something.

  Gail put her hand on Jackie's arm. "Anthony and I were talking about a complete investigation, top to bottom, to prove who really killed Amber Dodson. There wasn't time before, but now there's no rush. Would you like to help?"

  A smile appeared. "Sure. I'll help you."

  "No matter what we find, we won't convince everyone, but Kenny deserves to have the effort made. It's what Ruby wants, and I think it's going to make Anthony feel better. Me too. If you could write down everything you know about the case, including that conversation you had with Gary Dodson—" Gail swung around on her stool. "Jackie, you wanted me to ask him about Aunt Lou, and I did ask, but I forgot to tell you about it with everything else on my mind. He told me that she came to his office a few days before she died. You wanted to know if she seemed depressed. Remember?"

  Jackie nodded. "What did he say?"

  "He said no, he didn't think so. She wasn't depressed, she was angry. She was angry at Whit McGrath for talking her into committing a crime."

  "A crime?"


  "Notarizing the deed when she hadn't seen the Mendozas sign it. She wanted to make sure it was all right, but McGrath wouldn't tell her where they were, so she went to see Gary Dodson. He gave her the standard lie, that they'd left the country."

  As Gail watched, the color slowly left her cousin's cheeks. Her freckles stood out clearly against the ivory pallor. "Jackie, your mother didn't kill herself. It was an accident. That's what you really wanted to know, wasn't it?"

  "She wanted to find the Mendozas?"

  "Dodson told her they'd gone home," Gail repeated.

  Jackie inhaled a long and not quite steady breath. "The night I talked to my father, I asked him if Mama was drunk when she went off the road. I'd always thought she was, but he said no, she was speeding. Gail, I don't remember my mother ever driving that fast, but he said she'd have to be going about seventy around that curve to fly off the road the way she did. He said her rear bumper was dented. They thought at first she'd been hit from behind, but the only skid marks were hers, where she put on her brakes. So they decided the bumper damage wasn't related, and she'd been careless."

  Suddenly too cold, Gail crossed her arms. "Jackie, what are you trying to tell me?"

  Her voice had the cool, uninflected tone of a police officer on the witness stand giving testimony. "When we were looking at Rusty Beck for Amber Dodson's murder, we wanted to know about fender damage, because a pickup truck with fender damage had been seen near the Dodson house. Diddy told me about Rusty's fender bender. He told me something else too. Rusty bought a new truck in 1988, and he replaced his front bumper after an accident. My mother died in September 1988."

  "When did Rusty replace the bumper?" Gail asked.

  "I don't think Diddy said." Looking to one side, Jackie tried to reconstruct the conversation, then shook her head.

  Gail said, "It could be a coincidence."

  Jackie raised her eyes to Gail's. "The night you and Anthony went over to McGrath's house, Rusty Beck nearly ran you off the road."

  "He wasn't trying to kill us."

  "Are you defending Rusty Beck?"

  "God, no. I just think there ought to be some evidence before we assume he's guilty and make ourselves crazy with it. I mean, how could we ever prove such a thing?"

  "He had a motive. My mother knew the Mendozas had disappeared, and she suspected they were dead. Isn't that what Dodson told you?"

  "Not exactly." The memory of her conversation with Gary Dodson flitted just out of reach, but Gail could recall clearly one thing he had said. "He told me your mother wanted to go to the police, and he talked her out of it. He told her she wasn't blameless, so she shouldn't make trouble. My impression was, she dropped it."

  "She wouldn't have dropped it," Jackie said fiercely. "My mother wouldn't have just let it go, not something like that. She was a good woman. She was honest and true."

  "I know she was." Gail could see her cousin's emotions revealed in the gleam of unshed tears, the tightness of her lips, the rigid set of her shoulders.

  "You're right, Gail. We can't prove it, not after thirteen years. But it so fits, doesn't it? In my bones I have this feeling, I know, that Whit McGrath said, 'Hey, Rusty, take care of this bitch. Scare her or something, like you did with Vivian Baker.' And Rusty went after her, but he didn't stop at scaring her. She knew too much. He slammed into her car, and she went off the road and died, and McGrath didn't say shit about it. Or maybe he wanted her dead too, and he told Rusty to kill her. That's possible, isn't it? I don't know what happened, and I'll never know for sure, but Jesus, I want to do something about it. It's funny. I'm the one who's always telling folks they can't take the law into their own hands. Trust the system. What does that mean? Nothing. It's words. I'm thinking, what if I had a chance to even things up and get away with it? Would I do it? I don't know. I might."

  "No, you couldn't."

  "Yeah." Jackie closed her eyes. "It might be that Mama was coming through that curve too fast, trying to get home, and that's all it was, but I hate McGrath and Beck for everything else they've done, so I want to nail them for this too."

  For a long while neither of the women spoke. Gail's insides churned, and she could feel herself shaking, as if the temperature had plummeted.

  Her cell phone lay on the counter where she had left it. She flipped it open. No messages. Dread descended on her, a dark premonition of disaster.

  "I'm worried about Anthony."

  "Why? You said he's okay with Hector."

  "Hector used to be an assassin. Did you know that? It's true. I don't know how many people he's killed, but he's never been caught. He's with Anthony, and Anthony hates McGrath. He despises him. He promised Kenny he would let it go, but he hasn't. He can't. It's eating him up. Dammit, Jackie, where is he?"

  "Give me the phone," she said. "I'll see if I can locate McGrath."

  The surface of the water moved as if alive, but the smell was of stagnation and rot. Anthony stood on the shore thinking of what words might be appropriate for the dead that lay beneath. He didn't expect ever to see this place again, nor wanted to. Strands of algae clung like hair to the rocks and swirled slowly in the lift and ebb of ripples. The sky reflected gray, and the evening star had come out.

  He heard the murmur of voices behind him and turned. The two men had stowed their gear and laced their boots. Lean men, quick and hard, even with gray hair and deep lines in their faces. Hector had given up only their first names to Anthony. They shouldered their packs, telling Hector they'd be in Miami on the weekend, they'd settle up then.

  Anthony stepped away from the water's edge. There were handshakes. Then the men became shadows quickly moving west, keeping more to the trees than to open ground, until the foliage became more dense and took them out of sight.

  Hector busied himself checking for evidence that anyone had been there. He scuffed his soft-soled shoe over a patch of dirt, erasing a print. Hector had said that earlier today McGrath's company had brought in the bulldozer and backhoe that now waited by the construction shed. There was little chance, however, that the sinkhole would be filled in tomorrow. Hector had removed a few parts that would incapacitate the machines without immediately revealing the cause. This would give the sheriff more time to get the search warrant, if the warrant could be obtained at all. Anthony hoped, but he had his doubts.

  "Hector, vamos." Anthony was ready to get out of here. It was late, and they had left Hector's car some distance away. It would be necessary to walk through pine woods and scrub palmetto that grew in great, spiky clumps. Hector gave another look around, then moved east, taking the lead. Anthony didn't mind this. He was sure of his own ability to become lost in these woods.

  Under his jacket, the butt of his pistol pressed into his ribs.

  Jackie accelerated out of the parking lot before Gail had finished buckling her seat belt. Jackie had located McGrath—more or less. Using the name of a woman detective with the Palm Beach sheriff’s office, she had learned from McGrath's wife, Tay, that he had gotten a phone call and left for River Pines almost an hour ago. He was going to meet someone. Who? Whit hadn't said, but he had seemed agitated.

  Gail held on to the door grip as Jackie sped west over the bridges to the mainland. She wasn't afraid of a crash, only of being slowed by some grayhair or a deputy who didn't recognize the Isuzu Trooper. But luck and traffic were with them, and they sailed through town, over the south fork of the river, and past Palm City, picking up more speed on Martin Highway.

  Jackie had already found out that McGrath wasn't in any of the business offices at River Pines. She was waiting for a call from the sheriff’s office dispatch to tell her if anyone had seen McGrath's Land Rover. She was shamelessly pulling strings. They assumed that McGrath had gone to meet Anthony. They didn't know where, but with no other ideas at hand, they headed further west.

  The reddening sun touched the horizon. They didn't have much time. Gail tried not to think about it, but the scene played out in her mind. Anthony confronting McGrath, beating
him bloody. Hector ending it with a bullet. Weighting McGrath's body and sending it to the bottom of the sinkhole to join the four others. Or even worse: McGrath lying in wait with a shotgun. Anthony lifted off his feet by the blast.

  She gnawed her thumbnail. They were out of the residential area, heading into grove land and ranches, the scenery blurring past. "Jackie, are we overreacting?"

  "I hope so." Jackie kept her eyes on the road. She had told Gail not to get into a panic. If they found Anthony, and if he was in a situation with McGrath, Jackie would stop them. No need to assume that Anthony was in danger. On the other hand, Hector could be a problem.

  Jackie's phone rang. She picked it up and listened, then thanked whoever had called. She braked so hard her wheels screamed and took a left at the next intersection, heading south. "They saw McGrath about fifteen minutes ago on Grant Road. It runs along River Pines Phase Two property. It's near the sinkhole, Gail. I think that's where they are."

  Hector felt the strange tickle in his chest that signaled danger. He turned with a finger at his lips, and at the 'same instant a man in jeans and a denim vest stepped onto the path just behind Anthony. The man was bearded, and long, graying hair was tied behind his neck. He held a double-barreled shotgun. Rusty Beck.

  "Hey, slick."

  Anthony spun around. Hector froze. He kept his hands away from his jacket, not to signal that he was armed. But Anthony touched the front of his windbreaker.

  "Try it, suck, I'll blow you apart."

  A voice from the other direction said, "Hands up, both of you. Way up." Whit McGrath stood on the path ahead of them, blocking their way with a chrome-plated .44.

  McGrath said, "Keep them up. Rusty, see what they've got."

  This man liked to think he was in charge, Hector noticed, but he was wearing clean, pressed pants and leather-soled shoes. On these damp pine needles his feet might slip, if he were pushed. "Para ahora, haz lo que dicen," Hector said quietly.