“There’s nothing.”
Penfield turned to Deputy Baker.
“Bring us a map, something that shows the waterways around here.”
Baker looked to Slater. He hesitated a moment and then nodded. Baker opened the door and exited the room.
“Think back to the weeks before your father was killed. I know Bobby was under a lot of stress, but did he ever talk about the time when you were all kids? Did he ever reminisce about those days?” Penfield asked.
He could see Charles Ray searching his memory and then something came to the surface.
“He did, but just once.”
“What did he say?”
“He spoke about Wilton. He said he wished that I could have known him better.”
“What was the occasion?”
“We’d just brought the boat back. Dad had already left. Even though they were living together by then, they’d sometimes drive to the marina separately.”
“Did you think that was strange?” Slater asked.
“No. I just thought Bobby had stuff to do afterward. I also thought he just didn’t want to go back. He hated it there. He would do anything to stay away.”
“What did you say after he brought up Wilton?” Penfield asked.
“I said that I wished the same thing. He was several years older than me. Maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal now, but as a kid, it’s a lifetime apart.”
“Was there anything else he said about Wilton?” Penfield asked.
“No, just that. I thought it was kind of strange because he said it out of the blue. Then he got into his car and drove away. I forgot about it.”
Penfield turned as he heard the door open. Deputy Baker entered the room and handed Penfield the large map. He unfolded it on the table. He looked back at Baker.
“Do you have a pen?” he asked.
She reached into her pocket and handed him one. Penfield looked at the map again.
“Okay, help me find Ben Hall’s house and your mother’s house on this map.”
It took them less than a minute to locate the properties. Penfield marked each one with the pen Baker had given him.
“Now let’s find the Mobjack Bay Marina where The Sally was kept.”
Penfield was able to find that himself, and he placed another mark on the map. He then used his finger to trace the route he thought he’d taken when he’d found the Tatum boat out in the water. He guessed where Wilton Tatum had been standing when he’d fired the flare gun. He placed a fourth mark on the map. The distances between the locations had seemed far when he’d driven them over the last few weeks, but now he saw just how close they were from a bird’s eye view.
“This looks like it would be fairly easy to reach all of these sites by water, and they’re not very far apart,” Penfield said.
He looked over to Charles Ray.
“You know these waters a thousand times better than me. If you had to hide out along these parts, where would you go?”
Charles Ray leaned closer to the map. Penfield watched as Charles Ray’s eyes followed the various lines that represented the waterways. Then he saw a look of recognition in his eyes.
“Here.”
Penfield watched as Charles Ray pointed to a spot on the map. It wasn’t far from the Tatums’ house, and it looked like there was a direct and easy route from the water behind their property to where Charles Ray was pointing.
“There’s an old warehouse there, just off the water. It’s been abandoned for years. Me and my brothers used to take this little motorboat over to it. We’d pull up on the shore around here and hike to the place. I don’t even remember what it used to be.”
“I know it,” Slater said. “It used to be an old furniture shop. It’s been closed for over three decades now.”
“So it would make a good place to hide,” Penfield said.
Slater nodded.
“It’s out in the middle of nowhere. Probably the only reason the owners built there was the land was so cheap. No reason to go there now unless you want to climb through the old place.”
“That’s where he’s got her,” Penfield said. “How soon can you be ready?”
“We’re ready now.”
“You really think it’s him? You really think Wilton is alive?” Charles Ray asked.
“He’s there. I just hope we can get to him in time,” Penfield said.
“I hope he doesn’t go after my mother again. I know she said she was moving back home. She’s all alone there.”
“She’ll be fine. Nothing’s going to happen to her,” Slater said.
Chapter 30
The Grave
Slater thought back to Penfield’s comments. “I hope we can get to her in time.”
There was no “we” about it, at least not in Slater’s mind. If Penfield thought Slater was going to allow him to help on the raid, than he was even crazier than Slater thought.
Slater was impressed by the response time of his people. Their training and dedication to saving a colleague was clearly to be admired. He balanced his arms on the roof of his car and pointed the binoculars again at the warehouse. There’d been no movement that he could see for the last five minutes. He began to suspect Penfield had gotten it wrong.
The warehouse seemed smaller than he’d remembered, but he hadn’t been to this place since it was open decades ago. It was in even worse condition than he’d guessed it would be. All of the windows were broken, and the sign that had once hung proudly above the massive front door was now lying on the ground. There were two barrels near the front of the building. They looked like they’d been used as makeshift fire pits, most likely used by the local teenagers. Slater saw a large collection of smashed beer cans and broken bottles scattered around the barrels.
Slater turned to Joe Debney and nodded. He, in turn, motioned for the other deputies to move out. They approached the warehouse from all four directions. Slater felt an uneasiness in the pit of his stomach as he waited for the sounds of gunfire to ring out. Nothing happened, though. Slater, Debney, and Ann Baker, who made up the team at the front of the building, reached the opening where the door had once been. Debney nodded to Ann. She returned the gesture and then Debney moved inside, followed by Baker, and Slater at the rear.
The interior of the warehouse was one giant empty room. All of the furniture-making equipment and supplies were long gone. There was no place for Wilton Tatum to hide. The deputies spread out and looked for any evidence that Wilton had ever been there.
“Over here,” Debney called out a moment later.
Slater and Baker walked over to Debney, who stood beside one of the metal support beams that ran from the floor to the ceiling. Slater followed Debney’s gaze and saw a large pool of blood on the cement floor. He also saw two plastic zip ties that had been cut. Both ties were smeared with blood.
Jackson Potter, who was one of the deputies who had gone to the back of the warehouse, entered through a large broken section of the wall.
“Did you see anything back there?” Slater asked.
“I think he had a boat tied up. I saw drag marks on the shore.”
Slater hesitated. Then he reached into his pocket and dialed Penfield’s number.
***
Penfield ended the call with Slater and cursed. Emma was gone again, and he had no idea where Wilton would have taken her. He tried to calm his racing mind. He knew he’d be of no help to Emma if he couldn’t think this puzzle through. Criminals made mistakes. They always did. There had to have been something Wilton would have done or said that would tip off his intentions. Penfield just needed to figure it out.
He closed his eyes and replayed the phone calls from Wilton in his mind. He started with the call he’d overheard between Emma and Wilton. He then went over the calls he’d personally had with the man.
There had been no errors, though, at least not any he could recall now. Then he realized he was concentrating on the wrong Tatum. Penfield determined that he’d made two critical mis
takes during the interview with Charles Ray. The first was that he’d been too quick to accept the explanation for why he’d decided to run when he’d heard Emma approaching his trailer. Penfield bought that people were scared of the law, especially with all the bad PR in the media these days, but he doubted that would have translated to a high-speed chase.
The more likely explanation is that Charles Ray thought he’d been caught. He was somehow involved with the murders, and he assumed Emma had finally figured that out. Maybe he didn’t help carry them out or even plan the attacks, but he was aware of what was going on.
The second mistake Penfield had made was his inability to pick up on Charles Ray’s acting while they were looking over the map. He’d found the warehouse way too quickly. Penfield had been so desperate to locate Emma that he’d immediately accepted that Charles Ray had legitimately remembered his childhood hangout without it actually appearing on the map. It might have come to him after looking at that map for a long time, but it certainly wouldn’t have occurred to him after less than a minute.
Charles Ray already knew that’s where Emma was being kept. He also knew that his brother would have moved her by the time Charles Ray revealed the hideout. He’d played it perfectly, and they’d walked right into the trap. The sheriff’s department would be preoccupied with the warehouse, which would free up Wilton to be some other place. But where?
Penfield was back to the original question. He had to admit to himself that there was a better than average chance that Wilton had killed her and dumped her body in the water after making his escape by boat. If he hadn’t done that, though, then it made sense that she was still with him since he would need leverage against Slater.
Wilton had played this all perfectly. Penfield knew he was a smart man, but he still couldn’t figure out what his endgame was. He suspected Wilton would have been able to kill Slater whenever he’d wanted to, so why hadn’t he? There was only one possible answer, at least in Penfield’s line of thinking. Wilton wanted the man to suffer. Then Penfield realized there was a second possibility. He wanted to kill him at a place of his choosing, and the warehouse wasn’t it.
Penfield thought he knew why. It had no symbolic relevance. Everything Wilton had done so far was filled with that. He’d set his boat on fire, the one that had most likely been used to dispose of his brother’s body. He’d dug up the empty wooden coffin to expose the family’s lies, and he’d killed everyone that was there at the time of Jimmy’s death, everyone but himself, Slater, and his mother. He’d had the chance to kill his mother, yet he hadn’t. Penfield didn’t know if that was a reflection of her innocence or if Wilton had deemed the timing not right.
He remembered Charles Ray’s last words in the interrogation room. He’d said he was worried that Wilton would go after their mother. He’d already done that, and he’d left her unharmed. Furthermore, how did Charles Ray know his mother was going back to her house? He’d left his trailer in a hurry, and Sally was still there when Penfield had visited her.
“Damn it,” Penfield growled as he realized Charles Ray had practically handed him an invitation to where Wilton was going. He grabbed his phone and sent Slater a text message: Wilton going to Tatum house. Penfield started his car and drove as fast as he could. He stopped a half mile from the house and exited his car. Wilton would be waiting for them. He certainly wasn’t going to do what Wilton expected and walk right up the Tatums’ driveway.
Penfield ran through one of the neighbor’s yards and entered the thick woods at the back of the house. He pushed his way past the thick brush and the low tree limbs until he got to the shoreline of the marsh. Then he turned right and walked toward the Tatums’ property. It was slow-going because of the topography.
He struggled with each step as his feet sank into the mud. He saw a small motorboat pulled up onto the tall grass. It had to be the one Wilton had been using these last few weeks. Penfield walked away from the marsh and entered the woods again. He followed the path he’d taken before until he emerged from the woods and found himself at the smaller clearing where Jimmy Tatum’s gravesite was supposed to be. He was shocked to see that the wooden coffin was no longer there. The hole wasn’t there, either. The only thing he saw was a shovel tossed on the ground beside the small gravestone with Jimmy’s name. He suddenly realized what this meant. Emma was buried down there.
Penfield snatched up the shovel and began to dig. Even with the ground being loose from the previous dig, it still took Penfield close to a half an hour to strike the wooden lid. He silently cursed Slater for not being there to help. What in the hell was taking him so long? Penfield jumped down into the hole and cleared the rest of the dirt away with his bare hands. He knew the original lid had been destroyed when someone, presumably Wilton, had dug the coffin up a week ago. Wilton must have cut a new one.
He tried to pry the lid open with his fingers, but it wouldn’t move. He reached into his pocket and removed his tactical knife. He opened the blade and shoved it under the lid. He leaned down on the knife, and a portion of the lid opened a half inch or so. Penfield repeated the process at several points along the lid until he could see that most of the nails were now partially exposed. He closed the knife and shoved it back into his front pocket. He managed to shove all of his fingers under the lid. He strained with all of his strength until the lid finally popped free.
He barely managed to toss it out of the hole. The wooden lid teetered on the edge and almost fell back on top of him. Penfield looked into the box and hoped he’d find Emma still breathing. Instead, he saw the most horrible thing of his life. The right side of her face had been completely crushed. Torn skin and shattered bone were lying on the base of the wooden coffin. The other side of her face was covered in blood. Her hair was pulled away from her face, and Penfield could see that her ear was missing. He looked down at her hand and saw one of the fingers was gone. He looked at her clothes. They were also covered in blood, but he could still recognize them as the outfit she’d been wearing when he’d last seen her. It was Emma. There was no doubt about it.
Penfield climbed out of the hole and reached for his phone when something slammed into the back of his head and knocked him to the ground. He rolled away and tried to face his attacker when Wilton swung the shovel at him again. This time it hit him on the top if his shoulder. The shovel’s blade continued in a wide arc and almost hit him in the head a second time. Penfield’s vision blurred, and he felt a wave of dizziness wash over him.
Wilton grabbed him and pulled him across the rough ground. Penfield did his best to fight back, but the ringing in his head only increased, and he nearly passed out. Penfield felt himself being dragged through the woods as various stick and rocks poked and pierced his back and legs. Then he felt his body get wet as Wilton dragged him into the marsh.
Wilton shoved Penfield’s head underwater. Penfield’s brain tried to process what was happening to him, but then his body’s natural survival instincts kicked in, and he instinctively gasped for breath, only to have his mouth filled with dark water. He choked as the dirt-infused water rushed down his throat and into his lungs. He knew he only had a few seconds to get air, or he’d black out. He tried to stand, but strong arms pushed him back down.
Penfield’s mind seemed to slow down even more. Everything looked and sounded like it was happening in slow motion. He heard the sounds of the water as his body thrashed around. It sounded like a giant tsunami crashing over his body. He tried to breathe again, and more water rushed into his mouth and down his throat. He thought of Emma. He could picture her corpse in that box. He could see and hear the hammer crashing down on her head as she begged for mercy. He then thought of Atwater’s dream. He’d thought he’d escaped that death when the waterman pulled him out of the bay. Now Penfield knew this was the moment Atwater had actually seen. This was the vision of his death that he’d been warned about. He wouldn’t give up, though, not yet.
Penfield struggled to reach into his pocket. He barely managed to slip out
the tactical knife and open the blade. He felt the lock click as the blade was fully extended. Then he rammed it into Wilton’s forearm. He tried to pull it free so he could strike him again, but Wilton yanked his arm violently back, and the knife was ripped out of Penfield’s grasp. Penfield struggled to get his head above water. He vomited and the muddy water spewed from his mouth. He looked over to Wilton and saw the knife blade was still jammed deeply into his forearm. Wilton screamed as he struggled to pull the knife free.
Penfield was on his knees now, and his upper body was finally out of the water. He took long, deep breaths in and out. Wilton now had his knife, though. He looked down at his wounded arm. Blood mixed with the muddy water. Wilton held the knife in front of him and stepped toward Penfield.
Wilton thrust the knife at Penfield’s stomach. Penfield stepped back and twisted his upper body. The knife grazed his side, and Penfield felt the warm blood flow across his skin. Wilton jammed the knife at him a second time. Penfield grabbed Wilton’s forearm with one hand. He squeezed down hard on the injured limb, and Wilton dropped the knife into the murky water. Penfield used his free hand to strike Wilton in the throat. Wilton stepped away from Penfield and gasped for breath.
Penfield was about to move toward him when he heard a loud noise echo across the marsh. Wilton’s head exploded in a cloud of red mist a millisecond later. His body remained upright, though, and Penfield struggled to make sense of what had just happened. Then Wilton tumbled forward and splashed into the water in front of Penfield.
He watched as Wilton’s body sank to the bottom of the marsh. Penfield looked toward the shore and saw Slater standing at the edge of the marsh. Both of his arms were still fully extended, and he held his gun in a two-handed grip. Penfield looked toward the water again as Wilton’s body floated back to the surface.
It was finally over.
Chapter 31
Emma
Twenty-Eight, November.
“’The righteous perish and no one takes it to heart. The devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace. They find rest as they lie in death.’ Isaiah 57, verses one and two.”
Dead Rise: An Alex Penfield Novel Page 20
