gang’s sworn nemesis,” McIntyre said. “He tracked them down for years and once came close, but one of his deputies, his cousin, was killed in a shootout.
“Then sometime in 1924 he laid an ambush on the Sebastian River bridge. When John and three of his gang went for their guns, all four were cut down. The rest were eventually killed or captured or run out of the state. But who knows about their descendents?”
When she was done, both of us stared at her in appreciation.
“Be a long stretch, huh?” she said, smiling over the rim of her wineglass.
I thought of Ashley, sitting slumped in his chair at the table, looking into the glow of his whiskey and turning the crystal glass in a circle as he’d seen me do. Could a genetic hate for the law and a throwback’s love of a wild place fester into homicide? There have been lesser reasons.
I cleaned Billy’s kitchen while he and his lawyer friend finished their wine on the patio. I flicked on the wall- mounted video screen and watched the news. A manhunt was growing. The lake behind the two-story pastel house in Flamingo Lakes was still being searched for any scrap of clothing or footprint or sign of a boat or body being dragged ashore. Neighborhood groups had rallied and, as in the other cases, were organizing to pass out leaflets with a photo of the missing girl.
News of the dead dog had been leaked and one reporter had “a source close to the investigation” confirming that a quick necropsy of the animal had been done and determined that a “razor-sharp blade” had been used to slash through the shepherd’s throat and instantly silence the dog.
“My sources tell me that such an attack would have required great strength and a knowledge of animal anatomy to have been done so quickly and efficiently,” the reporter said, laying it on with just the right tone of professional knowledge and solemn warning before tossing it back to the studio.
In the other abductions it had been three or four days before the GPS coordinates were sent to the police, and I knew Hammonds’ people had to be scrambling. The feds were in full strength now and I vaguely remembered the craziness in Atlanta years before when they finally closed in on Wayne Williams after twenty-two children and young adults had been killed. Twenty-two.
I switched off the television report when Billy and Dianne McIntyre came back inside. She retrieved her suit coat from the back of the couch and slipped on her shoes while Billy set their glasses in the sink. I was caught in a bad place. The roommate that shouldn’t be there, intruding.
“Billy,” I started, “I was just thinking of going…”
“Max, it was a pleasure to meet you,” the woman deftly interrupted. “I absolutely must go. Depositions at eight o’clock sharp.”
She shook my hand and smiled. There was an intelligent sheen in her dark eyes that was not alcohol-induced. They went out into Billy’s lobby, closing the door behind them. I filled a cup of coffee and went out onto the patio. A half moon, balanced on its tip, was sitting high in the summer sky and the clouds nearby picked up its light at their edges. The air was still. Below I could faintly hear the uniform rhythm of surf washing the sand.
Billy joined me in less than five minutes. He’d retrieved his glass from the sink and sat down hard in a chair, saying nothing. I stood at the railing.
“Nice lady,” I finally said. More silence.
“Brilliant,” he answered without a hint of stutter.
When I looked at him he was staring at the moon. I didn’t ask which he was referring to and after letting it set awhile he finally took a sip of wine and changed whatever subject we might have been on.
“How d-did you get that n-nasty bruise?”
I told him about the backwoods boys, the altercation in the parking lot and how Brown had held an obvious provenance in the Loop Road world.
“So d-do you really th-think they need you to take the heat off them?”
“No. There’s something else working there. Blackman’s angry, Ashley’s sullen, Sims is caught in the middle and Gunther’s carrying around a load of guilt,” I said, trying to grind the stones down to their essence. “And Brown is trying to save them all.”
“Man in a foxhole full of w-wounded,” Billy said.
In the morning I called a local auto-glass repair service out of the yellow pages. They