was indeed made out to Tony Markham. I frowned: Tony’s first name was Anthony. This couldn’t be a coincidence, though. There was a credit card, too, in the same name. Then I found the license and Caldwell ID with the name “E. Fishbeck” on them. There were also two pictures. One was of the Lawton Yacht Club, the other was of the Funny Farm.
I felt the world swim around me, and I clutched at the side of the table to keep from keeling over.
“Don’t worry,” Erik said quickly. “Don’t worry. I was careful to only touch the corners and edges. When we hand the wallet over to the police, we’ll ask them to dust for other fingerprints.”
I had the sense that he was speaking to my panic rather than concerns about fingerprints. Why was he thinking about fingerprints anyway? “When we hand the wallet over.” I repeated.
“Don’t know if our friend here is going to make it as far as that.” Erik reached over and yanked the tape off the man’s mouth. I flinched and the guy screamed. Then he started cursing, and Erik reached over and backhanded him hard in the face. In spite of all I’d seen so far, my mouth fell open in shock.
“Stop that, there’s a lady present. Or have you forgotten that you’re not the only one who knows how to hit people? My Raylene’s a nice girl, a good mother, she stopped me from…And she was right: What if the kids had come down?”
He leaned into the guy, and I could see him trying to back away from Erik as much as his bonds would allow. “But I could have gone all night long.” He paused. “Still could, Ray’s not here. You don’t mind, do you, Emma?”
I shrugged. “Whatever. I’d rather get our answers,” I said, hoping like hell that Erik was just talking. He had me convinced at any rate.
“Let’s start with that and see where we go from there. What’s your name? Your real name.”
“Tony…Tony Markham,” the guy said.
“I don’t believe you,” Erik said. “I’ve been tending bar far too long not to recognize a fake license, no matter how good it is. I’m betting the name on the Caldwell ID is fake, too.”
I’d seen the license and thought it genuine. How was Erik so sure?
He turned to me. “Emma, what do you do when you don’t believe people?”
I leaned against the cabin wall and crossed my arms. I didn’t say anything for fear of ruining whatever plan Erik had, or betraying my own fear of this guy, this situation. I hoped I looked tougher than I felt.
“Right,” Erik said. “We increase the desire to reply.”
He raised the shotgun up, sighted on the guy’s chest, then drew a bead down his body. He lingered with the shotgun aimed at the guy’s crotch, shook his head briefly, annoyed with the cliché of it, then paused at the kneecap.
“A lot of people like the kneecap for this sort of thing, Em,” Erik said, as if he was discussing the best way of carving a turkey. “But I think too many things can go wrong. It’s too close to the femoral artery. And with all the medical advances, these days, with our aging and yet more physically active population, it’s not as much of an issue as it used to be. Besides the pain, of course, which is excruciating. Myself, I like to think longer term. An ankle. Lots of fiddly little bones in the foot, ligaments, tendons, lots more difficult to fix up, if that’s still an option.”
It was then that I noticed that the guy was barefoot. I couldn’t help but feel the cold metal of the shotgun barrel as it pressed against his ankle. He jerked back too, and when Erik racked a round into the chamber, “Tony” began to scream again, this time for someone to come help him.
I almost stepped forward, convinced that Erik was going to do it, but then he glanced at me and the question Raylene had asked came back to me: Do you trust us, Em? I owed it to Erik to give him the credit of faking all this before I spoke up.
He had ten more seconds, I decided.
“Scream your head off if you like,” Erik said, “but if I’m far enough off the coast for the shotgun blast not to be an issue, you can be sure that I’m not going to sweat your little noises.” He turned slightly to me, nodded, winked suddenly.
That’s