The Sentry - By Robert Crais Page 0,94

was okay, but he wanted her to leave him alone.

“Hey, you know what? I don’t know if you’ve heard yet. Those assholes who killed Button and Futardo? You hear about them?”

Pike knew Futardo had killed one of the men, but the other was missing.

“What about them?”

“They used to be DEA agents. The one who called himself Straw, his name was Norm Lister. That other cat was named Carbone. They worked the Rainey case way back in day one. Lister, he was fired, and the other resigned. I guess they decided to go for the gold, huh?”

Pike recalled the files he had taken from the Malibu. Most of the reports had been written by Lister.

Pike said, “Too bad about Jerry. Futardo, too.”

“She was a nice gal. Posthumous Medal of Valor.”

Hydeck finally pushed away from the rail. She settled her gun.

“Okay, bud, I’m history. I’ll see you around.”

Pike looked at her.

“Thanks for helping out like you did.”

“You’re not supposed to sit there with your feet hanging over.”

Hydeck smiled, and ambled back to her car.

Pike went back to staring at the house.

The federal and state investigators from Louisiana had come and gone. They had interviewed Pike, and shared their information. They denied Rainey’s assertion he had stolen only eight-point-two million, and related multiple accounts from arrested participants that Rainey had stolen a minimum of twelve million and as much as eighteen million dollars from the Bolivians. Pike believed them. Rainey’s nature was to lie, so Pike had no doubt he continued lying until the end.

Rose Platt convinced him.

Pike swung his legs around, pushed off the wall, and walked to the Sidewalk Cafe. He sat in the outdoor area, two tables away from the one he had shared with Rose Platt.

The young waitress there, the one with the dimples, smiled when she saw him. He was a regular now.

“Green tea?”

Pike nodded.

Pike sipped the tea, and stared through the passing people at the ocean without seeing them or the water or anything else. He thought about nothing except the warmth of the tea and the cool ocean breeze, and how good the sun felt as it melted into the horizon.

When the sky was dark, Pike paid his tab and returned to the canals. He followed the sidewalk along the canal past the Palmers and checked Jared’s window. Jared was up there, wearing headphones and swirling to a rhythmic, unknown beat.

Pike moved on, stepping onto the tiny dock at the back of Steve Brown’s house, where the kayak hung on twin wooden posts.

Jared told him Steve Brown would return by the end of the week. Jared had also told him other things, like how Rainey would sit on the little dock at night, and how he’d go out in the kayak at night, and how Jared had twice seen Rainey wading in the canal at night.

Always at night.

But it was Rose who convinced him, with the things she said at the end, how she couldn’t walk away from that kind of money, how she had lived like a rat for that money. The way she had looked at him when she thought she would lose it. If only you knew.

Pike wondered if she had known where it was, or if Rainey told her in the moments before he died. Either way, she seemed to be talking about much more than three hundred forty-two thousand dollars.

Pike ran his hands over the kayak’s smooth skin, then lifted it from its hooks. Pike knew the money wasn’t in the little boat because he had checked it two days ago, but he enjoyed the feel of its weight.

He set the kayak back on its hooks, then sat on the dock. It was a nice night, cool, and the water would be cold.

Eighty-five concrete stones lined the bank from one side of the property to the other, arranged in five staggered layers of seventeen blocks each. Pike knew this because he had counted them when the water was down. He had returned at night twice, and waded to the center of the canal, where, at its deepest point when the tide was high, the water reached his neck. He had probed the bottom and the plants that grew there in feathery clouds, then began checking the blocks to see if any were loose or movable.

Pike searched the blocks beneath and around the dock first. It was the obvious choice, but Pike had found nothing. Each block had been firm and secure in its file.

There were more blocks to check.

Pike took off