“I found it,” he said, a hoarse croak.
“Yes. You did,” said Kate gently, glancing down at the surface of the mirror, seeing only the dull glimmer of the ornate gilt frame and the stained silvery reflection in the ancient glass. The ceiling light over their heads. The shelves of linen. Part of Rainey’s body where he was leaning over it. And, by his shoulder, her own pale, tight face staring back at her.
Her chest relaxed slightly.
It was only a mirror, at least for now.
“I looked into it,” Rainey said.
Kate reached out and lifted it out of his hands, turning it to the wall and leaning it there. The card was still attached to the ancient wooden backing—
With Long Regard—Glynis R.
“And what was there, Rainey?”
His angry look shifted into something else.
Loss?
Confusion?
“Nothing. It’s black.”
Kate looked at him.
“Black?”
“Yes,” he said, in an abrupt accusatory tone, packed with indignation and resentment. “You’ve painted it over, haven’t you? So I couldn’t look into it again. You painted it black, didn’t you?”
“Rainey, sweetheart, we haven’t touched the mirror.”
“No?” he said, reaching out and jerking it backwards, holding it out to her.
“What do you see?”
Kate saw her own face, pale and drawn and her anger rising up, two small round pink spots on her cheekbones. “I see my face.”
Rainey jerked it back, turned it to face him, staring into it. Kate leaned forward and saw his reflection in it, his hair hanging down over his eyes, his face bright red, his mouth slack.
“I see you, Rainey. What do you see?”
Rainey looked up at her, his skin going from red to pale white.
“It’s black. Why is it black?”
She leaned back against the wall and spoke as softly as she could, although all she could think was neurological damage visual hallucinations brain damage dear God please no.
“Is that what you see when you look into it, honey? Do you see black?”
He looked back into it, and yes, that’s what he really did see, but now that he really studied it, it wasn’t a black like it had been painted, but a black like a cloud or a scarf—a clingy black scarf—had been pulled over it.
This frightened him and made him angry and he wanted to yell at her but Cain spoke up and said these people want to put you in the crazy farm for the rest of your life you can’t act crazy you can’t let them know that you know what they are planning and her buzzy electrical voice calmed him down.
He put the mirror down, and leaned back, and closed his eyes, and Kate’s heart went out to him, he looked so sad and confused.
She took the mirror away, gently, and wrapped it up in the blue blanket, and put it away. Then she helped Rainey to his feet and walked him back down the hallway to his room.
He was so tired he was staggering by the time she got him into his bed.
“Why couldn’t I see into it?” he said, as she sat by him and looked down at him.
“Well, sometimes when a person is very tired, they don’t see things properly. But after a good night’s sleep, everything is better. You’re just exhausted, and you’ve had a terrible time recently. Too much is going on. Everything will look better in the morning.”
make nice now make nice
“Should I say good night to Nick?”
“If you want. Or I can say good night for you.”
“Maybe that would be okay.”
ask about the others
“Axel … is he okay? I didn’t get a chance to ask him.”
“He’s fine. He’s trying to cope with a lot.”
“Yes. They killed his daddy too, didn’t they?”
not good not good get off that
Kate’s skin changed and her eyes grew darker.
“Well, he lost his daddy too, but Rainey, honey, nobody killed your dad.”
he had it coming
“That lawyer guy, Warren Smoles, I watched him on the television and he said that Nick and Sergeant Coker executed Axel’s dad, that they didn’t even give him a chance.”
shut up go to sleep shut up
Kate was shaking her head.
“Mr. Warren Smoles is a bad lawyer who takes money to tell big fat lies and make up things so bad people don’t have to pay for what they did. That’s what he does. It’s how he makes his living.”
smolessmoleswarrenwarrensmoleswarren
“Now Axel is an orphan too, isn’t he?”
don’t talk get rid of her
“You’re not an orphan, Rainey. You have us now. We’re your family.”
get rid of her get rid of her or we will
He closed his eyes and said he was sleepy.
Kate flicked off his light, walked softly away, and closed his bedroom door.
Cain had a lot more to say and she was still saying it when Rainey finally drifted away.
But when he woke up on Friday morning, he knew what he had to do and exactly how to do it.
Friday
The Roots of Evil
The divers from the U.S. Coast Guard Air Sea Rescue base at Sandhaven Shoals came in to Patton’s Hard on an MH-60 Jayhawk just after dawn on Friday, rattling windows all over Niceville and sending the willows along the riverbank into a swirling riot of whipping branches as it settled down onto a cleared section of hardpan lit up by the headlights of four squad cars.
Tig Sutter and Nick, and Lemon Featherlight, were waiting for it, had been waiting for an hour, nursing their coffees.
No one was talking about Rainey or Axel or Beau Norlett because they’d already talked it out—Beau was in the ICU and many more operations were ahead of him, and the Rainey and Axel thing was a subject they couldn’t discuss at all right now.
Lemon wasn’t asking questions, mainly because he didn’t want to attract too much attention. He was here at Nick’s invitation because Lemon and Kate had found the car in the first place. It was a compliment and Lemon valued it, and right now was honoring it by being silent.
So they were all quietly watching the light change as the sun came up behind Tallulah’s Wall and the city slowly emerged from its long shadow. The rising sun first lit up a ruffle of lacy branches as it touched the tops of the taller oaks and pines. Against the pink sky they could see the tiny black swirling flecks of the crows as they flew up into the morning light.
They swarmed into flocks that looked like smoke clouds and the sunlight bounced off their shiny wing feathers so that shimmers of gold rippled through the flocks like flames. They were too far away to hear and anyway the thrumming beat of the approaching chopper as it thundered in was too loud for anything else, even for clear thought.
The Jayhawk set itself massively down onto its struts, sinking into the hardpan. The gate popped and several fit-looking men and women in Coast Guard flight suits emerged, bending low to deal with the prop rush even though the rotors were several feet over their heads.
Lemon held back while Tig and Nick came forward to meet them, as their obvious leader, a wiry young woman with the blue and silver bars of a CWO-4 on her shoulders and a tag on her chest with the name FARRIER engraved in black on a gold plate came up to them.
She had a broad smile and careful eyes and the muscles in her neck stood out like wires.
Tig, looming over her, wearing a tan suit and a blue shirt, held out his huge hand and she bravely put hers into it, still showing that smile.
“Lieutenant Tyree Sutter?”
“I am. Call me Tig. This is Detective Nick Kavanaugh.”
“I’m Chief Warrant Officer Farrier.”
She turned around and introduced the uniforms gathered behind her, six people, all petty officers in different grades, four men and two women. They were all lean and mean-looking and, as far as Tig was concerned, much too young to be flying around in a Jayhaw
k without notes from their mothers.
In the way of all military people, they were cool and friendly and politely distant and had nothing much to say after they had all said “Good morning, sir.”
Chief Warrant Officer Farrier gave a few soft-voiced orders and the crew walked back to the chopper to off-load their gear. She turned around to face Tig and Nick again.
“So we’re thinking a Toyota?”
Nick answered that.
“Yes, Chief—”
Farrier held up her hand.
“Please. I’m Karen. You’re the Special Forces captain, am I right? Fifth SOG out of Fort Campbell. You’re the one who—”
Nick deflected this as gently as he could, with a wry smile.
“These days I’m just plain Nick, Karen. If that’s okay?”
She seemed to pick up at once that Nick didn’t do war stories and she let it go, although her whole crew had talked about him all the way in from Sandhaven. She sized him up in a friendly way and nodded.
“Nick? Okay. Works fine for me. Have we got a crane or a tow truck, if we can get a cable onto this car?”
“Yes,” said Nick. “Niceville PD has a heavy lifter on the way. It’s a stabilized crane with extendable pads and has a good reach. It was strong enough to pull a Humvee out of the Tulip down by the Cap City Bridge.”
“That’ll do it,” said Farrier. “Can we go look at the site?”
“We can,” said Tig, motioning for Lemon to come up. He introduced him as the person who had located the car in the first place. She gave him a once-over and said, “Marines?”
Lemon smiled, a rarity with him lately. Nick watched with a flicker of amusement as Farrier reacted to that pirate’s smile.
“Ex. Is it that obvious?”
“We get kidded a lot about being the Knee-Deep Navy. Usually by Squids. The Navy left its mark on you, but you didn’t give me any attitude. So, you’re probably a marine. A lot of Seminoles in the Corps. So I made a leap.”
“Mayaimi, not Seminole,” said Lemon, taking her in and liking it. “Other than that, a perfect score.”
Farrier smiled back at him, held it for a moment longer than she needed to, and then broke off, all business now.
They walked down the wet grass to the head of the narrow path that led under the arch of willows. It was colder inside the tunnel of trees and the mud squelched under their shoes. The air smelled of mold and wet leaves. The trails that Lemon and Kate had followed in were still partially visible, although they had been heavily overlaid by the larger wheelbases of Crown Vic squad cars.
The ground was pretty chewed up along the track, but once they got to the bower entrance the narrow ruts the Toyota had carved out were pretty clear.
Two uniformed Niceville cops, a man and a woman, were waiting for them by the edge of the willow fall. They were both new to Nick, but Tig seemed to know them. He spoke with them briefly, introducing Chief Warrant Officer Farrier, Lemon, and Nick.
They had been on duty at the site since midnight and they both looked happy to be handing the place over.
The female officer, a Middle Eastern–looking woman with almond-shaped brown eyes and round cheeks, held up the curtain of willow branches for them to step under, saying, as she did so, “It’s pretty weird inside there, ma’am. Like a big green tent and the trees are talking all the time.”
Farrier stopped and looked at her.
“Talking?”
The officer nodded, her expression quite serious. She glanced at her partner, a slender kid with restless eyes and a tense way of holding himself. “Am I right, Kenny?”
“They whisper,” he said, backing her up without hesitation or any sign of embarrassment. “Not like in words, but after a while, you’re here all night, it starts to make sense. I know it’s just the wind in the branches and the sound of the river, but it’s …”
“Freaky,” said the woman. “Just plain freaky. We’re off duty now. Ma’am,” she said, addressing the Coast Guard officer, “you be careful if you have to go into that river here. There’s a big whirlpool about fifty feet offshore, because of the way the river bends through here. And the current is really strong. You lose your grip on the bank and you’re gone, ma’am, you’re gone.”
“I will,” said Farrier, smiling at her, and then she stepped through the curtain and found herself in what looked like a large green vault made out of willow branches and supported, like a circus tent, with three huge willow trunks, intertwined sixty or seventy feet overhead into a tangled green web. Farrier looked up at it, craning to take it in.
“Man,” she said, “reminds me of a church. How old are these trees, anybody know?”
“They were old when Niceville got started,” said Tig, “and Niceville got started in 1764. There are engravings of the town, over at City Hall, made around 1820, and you can see them there along the Tulip. An arborist from Cap City told the mayor that these may be the oldest willows in America.”
“That’s difficult to believe. We had willows when I was growing up in Maryland and most of them didn’t last longer than a hundred years. These sure look old, don’t they?”
“They smell old, anyway,” said Nick, who shared Kate’s dislike of Patton’s Hard. “You can see the tracks run right through here.”
Although the sun was rising fast it was still shadowy under the willows and he used his Streamlight to pick out the twin ruts that had carved a path through the mud and dead leaves. The tracks ran through the curtain fall on the river side. The inference was pretty obvious, and Farrier was all business from there on in.
As she and Tig went on to look at the site, Lemon and Nick stopped to look at the battered old lawn chairs that were all that remained of Rainey and Axel’s hideout collection.
Everything had been photographed and tagged and bagged and taken back to the forensics lab at the CID HQ on Powder River Road. For what purposes, neither man was ready to speculate.
Especially not Lemon Featherlight, who, after what he and Doris had seen on top of Tallulah’s Wall, was beginning to think that dark things were swirling around Rainey, and the fact that he was the only person who had been able to see Merle Zane meant that he was tangled up in it somehow, whether he liked it or not. Brandy Gule, the half-feral young woman with whom he had been living, had fought with him over what she called his obsession with “that creepy crypt kid” and now she was gone.
They heard a rustle of leaves. Tig and Farrier came back under the canopy, Farrier’s expression verging on grim.
“That’s a hell of a river you guys have there. Diving it’s going to be like catching a ride on a moving freight. We’ll need that hook set up before I put one of my divers into that current.”
And that’s what they did.
The operation took over six hours, from the time the mobile crane managed to power its way into the willow line—cutting a huge swath through the trees, but there was no help for that.
The operator had no faith in the load-bearing quality of the riverbank, so he set the apparatus up on solid ground at least thirty feet back from the bank and extended the crane at a forty-five-degree angle until the hook was over the place where the car had gone in. Once the rig was set and fixed, the divers came down to the site, four of them in dry suits and carrying full-face masks with closed-circuit cameras attached.
Only two of them were wearing single-tank backpacks. The other two were dressed to go in if they had to, but their job here was to pay out the running lines attached to the divers and monitor their safety while they were in the water.
The divers, both petty officers, one a rangy kid named Evan Call and the other a short bulky fireplug of a guy named Mike Tuamotu, hooked their safety lines onto the strongest tree trunks they could locate, did a final check-down, and eased into the murky water about twenty feet upriver from the point where the car had gone in, paying out their safety lines and riding the current down along the riverbank.
Farrier had turned up the loudspeaker on the CCTV sys
tem, so Tig and Nick, standing back from the console, could see what the divers were seeing, and hear their cross talk.
Lemon was standing at a distance, less caught up in the process than he was by what was at stake.
On the screen the image was coming from the camera of the lead diver, in this case Mike Tuamotu. The Tulip was a muddy river, and running fast. On the diver’s left as he eased down the riverbank they could see an immense wall of matted and tangled tree roots, an unbroken thicket of twisting vines and branches that disappeared into the dark water below the divers’ flippers.
“Stay out of that stuff,” they heard Tuamotu say as he brushed past a section of willow roots that seemed to reach out for him.
“Heard that,” said Call. “Looks like a mangrove swamp, doesn’t it?”
“He’s right,” said Farrier. “Those roots must go down to the bottom of the river. Like that all along here, you think, LT?”
“These willows here are the largest in Patton’s Hard,” said Tig. “But, yeah, I’d say so.”
“How long’s this park, anyway?”
“A mile. Little less.”
Farrier shook her head.
“Man, look at that root system. It’s like a dragnet. Or a sieve. Look at all the stuff that’s caught up in there.”
They could see every kind of debris that a river could carry embedded in the wall of roots, shreds of old clothing, a rubber boot, beer cans and plastic bottles, bits of matted fur that looked like roadkill. A lot of what looked like baskets made of bone, hundreds and hundreds of those, large, small, varying in color from gray to brown, trapped deep inside the root mass all the way along the bank. The current swirled and tugged around the divers and their lines were wire-tight.
“Mind that whirlpool, guys,” said Farrier, as the divers got closer to the eddying pool of spinning water that lay just a few yards offshore.
“Roger that,” said Tuamotu. “I can feel it right here. Real strong clockwise spin on it. What you figure those basket things are?”
“Lots of animals go into the river,” said Nick, thinking about the dog that Kate had tried to save right about here almost twenty years ago. “I guess the roots catch them up and there they stay.”
The Homecoming Page 29
