Lethal

Chapter 43

When Honor heard the song, she clapped both hands over her mouth, but started screaming behind them.

Coburn didn’t silently scream, but he felt like it. Fear, a foreign emotion to him, struck him to his core, and the mightiness of it stunned him. Suddenly it was clear to him why fear was such an effective motivator, why it reduced hardened men to mewling children, why, in the face of fear, individuals were willing to barter their god, country, anything for the threat to be removed.

His mind became a slide show of horrific images that he’d seen in war zones, the bodies of children burned, beaten, hacked at, until they no longer retained human form. Their youth and innocence hadn’t protected them from a violent, unconscionable egomaniac demanding absolute surrender. Such as The Bookkeeper.

And The Bookkeeper had Emily.

“Okay, Doral, you’ve got my attention.”

“I thought I might.”

His smug chuckle rankled. “Or are you bluffing?” Coburn asked.

“You wish.”

“Singing Elmos are easy to come by. How do I know it’s Emily’s?”

“Nice place Tori has got there on the lake.”

Coburn’s hand formed a fist. Through gnashed teeth, he said, “You hurt that little girl and—”

“Her fate is up to you, not me.”

Honor still had her fingers clamped over her lips. Above them, her eyes were watery, wide, and stark with anguish. Entering into a pissing contest with Doral wouldn’t get Emily returned to her unharmed. Although it galled him, he dispensed with the threats and asked what the terms were for getting Emily back.

“Simple, Coburn. You disappear. She lives.”

“By disappear, you mean die.”

“You’re nothing if not smart.”

“Smart enough to survive the car bomb.”

Doral didn’t address that. “Those are the terms.”

“Your terms suck.”

“Nonnegotiable.”

Mindful of the time he’d been on a phone that might possibly be traced, Coburn asked, “Where and when?”

Doral told him where to go, what time to be there, and what to do when he arrived. “You follow these instructions, Honor drives away with Emily. Then it’s you and me, pal.”

“I can hardly wait,” Coburn said. “But one last thing.”

“What?”

“Since you’ve botched everything so bad, why are you still breathing? The Bookkeeper must have a reason for keeping you alive. Think about it.”

Doral disconnected, muttering a stream of vile language.

Coburn was playing him. He was well aware of that. But Coburn was good at it.

Because he had tapped into Doral’s worst fear: He was nothing more than a flunky, and after everything that had gone wrong over the past seventy-two hours, an expendable one.

He looked over his shoulder into the backseat where Emily was sleeping, dosed with the Benadryl that he had given her so she wouldn’t be afraid or put up a fuss when it became clear to her that Uncle Doral had fibbed about why he’d taken her in the middle of the night from Tori’s lake house.

Just as he’d pulled the trigger to end Tori’s life, a piping voice came from behind him. “Hi, Uncle Doral.”

He spun around and there had stood Emily in the doorway of Tori’s bedroom, wearing a nightie, holding her Elmo and bankie, and, most disconcerting of all, happy to see him.

“Aunt Tori and I made mud pies. And guess what? Tomorrow she’s going to let me play in her makeup. How come you’ve got gloves on? It’s not cold outside. Why’s Aunt Tori on the floor?”

It had taken him several seconds to process her unexpected appearance. She started coming farther into the room, and with only seconds to spare, he had a burst of inspiration.

“She’s hiding her eyes and counting because we’re going to play hide-and-seek.”

With complete trust, Emily had played along. Sneaking downstairs with him, and out to the car that he’d borrowed from his cousin for the night, and into his backseat, Emily had stifled her conspiratorial giggles. They were several miles from the house before those gave way to wariness.

“I don’t think Aunt Tori can find us if we hide this far away.” And then, “Are you taking me to Mommy? Where’s Coburn? He’s gonna buy me an ice cream. I want to see them.”

The questions had become numerous and unnerving, and he was glad that one of his sisters had once remarked on the effectiveness of the liquid antihistamine for sedating kids. He’d stopped at a 7-Eleven, bought a cherry Slurpee and a bottle of the medication, and soon after drinking the laced slush, Emily was sleeping soundly.

That’s when he’d called The Bookkeeper to report his success. He wasn’t praised for a job well done, but he actually thought he heard a sigh of relief. “See if you can get Coburn to answer your brother’s phone. Set it up.”

Now things were in place and all he had to do was wait for the appointed time. He faced forward, unable to look into Emily’s angelic face and acknowledge what a creep he was for exploiting her affection for him. This was Emily, for crissake. Eddie’s kid. He’d killed her father. He would have to kill her mother, too. Sourly he thought that making an orphan of a sweet little girl like Emily was some fucking career, wasn’t it?

He wondered how he’d come to sink this low without his noticing. He was in so deep he couldn’t even see the surface anymore.

He’d chosen this path and there was no going back. Initially he’d thought that closing all his escape hatches was a good thing. He’d thrown off his old life the way a snake shed its skin. Having had his fill of kowtowing to his fishing charter clientele, and his usurious creditor, he had turned his back on that business and had exchanged customer service for adventure and violence. He’d relished being licensed to bully and intimidate and, if necessary, kill.

Looking back now, however, he remembered those days on his charter boat as being much less complicated than his days were now. The work had been backbreaking and the income dependent on factors beyond his control, yet he remembered that time with a nostalgia that bordered on yearning.

But when he’d signed on with The Bookkeeper he’d made a covenant with the devil, and it was a commitment for life. There was no do-over. He couldn’t throw his life into reverse.

As for his grandiose idea of eliminating The Bookkeeper and assuming control of the operation, who was he kidding? It would never happen. Even if he had the courage to attempt it, he would blunder and wind up dead anyway.

No, he would stick to the path he’d chosen until he came to a dead end.

But before he cashed out, whether it was twenty years or twenty minutes from now, he was going to kill Lee Coburn for killing Fred.

Immediately after Coburn disconnected from Doral, he punched in the number of Tori’s lake house and got an automated voice mail message.

“What’s Tori’s cell number?” he asked Honor, hoping that Tori had defied him and restored her phone’s battery.

She lowered her hands from her mouth. Her lips were white from the pressure her fingers had applied to them. They barely moved as she dully recited the number.

That call also went straight to voice mail. “Dammit!”

Tremulously she asked, “Coburn? Is Emily alive?”

“If they had killed her, they wouldn’t have anything to bargain with.”

He could tell she wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe it.

She hiccupped a sound. “Is he holding her hostage at the lake house?”

“Sounded like he was in his car.”

“Do you think Tori is—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question and ended on a whimper.

Coburn punched in 911, and when the operator answered he gave her the address of Tori’s lake house. “A woman at that address has been assaulted. Send police and an ambulance. Got it?” He made the operator repeat the address, but when she started asking questions, he disconnected.

Honor was trembling. “Will they kill my baby?”

As bad as the bald truth was, he refused to lie to her. “I don’t know.”

She made a sound of such abject despair that he put his good arm around her and pulled her hard against him, laying his cheek on the top of her head.

“We’ve got to call the police, Coburn.”

When he didn’t say anything, she raised her head and looked up at him. “We can,” he said quietly.

“But you don’t think we should.”

“She’s your kid, Honor. You’ve got to make the decision. Whatever you decide, I’ll go along. But I think if you bring the cops into it, The Bookkeeper will know in a matter of minutes.”

“And Emily will be killed.”

He nodded bleakly. “Probably. The Bookkeeper wouldn’t back down. He’d have to follow through on the threat or he’d look weak. He won’t let that happen. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I won’t bullshit you.”

She gnawed her lower lip. “The FBI office?”

“Is no better. Case in point, VanAllen.”

“So it’s up to us?”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to save her life.”

“Whatever it takes.” Both of them knew what that implied. “That’s the deal, isn’t it? You for Emily.”

“That’s the deal.” But he didn’t say it with his customary shrug. He wasn’t as indifferent to his mortality as he had been only a few days ago. Death was no longer a possible outcome he regarded with nonchalance.

“I don’t want you to die,” she said huskily.

“Maybe I won’t. I’ve got another good bargaining chip.”

He released her, sat down at the computer desk, and accessed the contents on the USB key.

“We don’t have time for this.” Honor stood at his shoulder, wringing her hands. “Where do they have Emily? Did you hear her crying?”

“No.”

She made a mournful sound. “Is that good or bad? She has to be afraid. Why wasn’t she crying? Do you think that means… What do you think that means?”

“I’m trying not to think about it.”

Her near hysteria was justified, but he tried to tune her out long enough to concentrate on what he needed to do hurriedly but without making any mistakes. He opened Gillette’s web browser, went into a web-based email service, and used his password to access his account. He sent the file on the USB key as an attachment to an email, then reversed the process by rapidly logging out and closing the browser, but not before remembering to clear the browser history, so that no one could tell, not in a timely fashion anyway, that he’d visited an email service.

The email address to which he’d sent the file was assigned to only one computer, and it could be opened with a password known to him and Hamilton exclusively. The location of the computer was also known only to the two of them.

The job done, he pulled the key from the port, stood up, and placed his hands on Honor’s shoulders. “If it wasn’t for me, you could have died of old age without ever knowing the significance of that tattoo. None of this would have happened.”

“You’re apologizing?”

“Sort of.”

“Coburn,” she said, shaking her head frantically. “I don’t care about an apology now.”

“Not for what I’ve done. For what I’m about to ask you to do. If you want Emily back alive—”

“You always use her as leverage.”

“Because it always works.”

“Tell me what to do.”

Following his conversation with Hamilton, Crawford had stepped outside the building, whose walls had ears, and used his cell phone to call police officers and sheriff’s deputies he trusted implicitly. He’d asked for their immediate assistance. It was imperative that he beef up his search for Mrs. Gillette, her daughter, and Lee Coburn.

He had a brief and secret meeting with those whom he enlisted and emphasized discretion. Some he asked to patrol areas they’d already patrolled. “Go back to the boat, Coburn’s apartment, Mrs. Gillette’s house. We might have missed something.”

He dispatched others to follow up on various leads, everything from the crazy lady on Cypress Street who called in at least once a day reporting sightings of Mussolini, Maria Callas, and Jesus—who’s to say she hadn’t mistaken Coburn for one of them?—to a rural couple who’d returned home from a two-week Mediterranean cruise to discover that during their absence a car had been stolen from their locked garage, their kitchen had been rummaged through, and the apartment above the garage had been inhabited by what appeared to be at least two people. The occupation looked recent. The towels in the bathroom were still damp.

Probably these would be dead ends, but at least he was being proactive, not reactive, and he hadn’t liked having his hand spanked by Hamilton of the big, bad FBI. He decided to interview Mrs. Gillette’s father-in-law himself.

Stan Gillette, who popped up anywhere the action was, had what seemed to be a direct line into local law enforcement. His association should have ended when his son died. It hadn’t. And that bothered Crawford. A lot. Just how much did Gillette know about Honor’s so-called abduction? What was he withholding?

He didn’t want to wait until daylight to pose these questions to Gillette. He would wake him up and go at him hard. People dragged from bed were groggy and disoriented and more likely to make mistakes, like giving up information they wouldn’t ordinarily disclose.

But when he arrived at Gillette’s house and saw that it was lit up inside like a Christmas tree, Crawford felt a tingle of apprehension. A veteran Marine might be in the habit of rising early, but this early?

Crawford got out of his car and went up the walkway. The front door was standing ajar. He pulled his service weapon from its holster. “Mr. Gillette?”

Getting no answer, he tapped on the front door with the barrel of his pistol and, when that received no response, pushed the door open and stepped into a living room that looked like a cyclone had gone through it. Drops and smears of blood showed up bright red on the beige carpeting.

In the center of the room, securely taped to a straight chair, was Stan Gillette. His head was bowed low over his chest. He appeared to be unconscious. Or dead. Moving quickly but carefully around the bloodstains, Crawford made his way toward him, calling his name.

The man let out a moan and raised his head just as Crawford reached him. “Is anyone else in the house?” the deputy whispered.

Gillette shook his head and replied hoarsely, “They left.”

“They?”

“Coburn and Honor.”

Crawford reached for his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Gillette asked.

“Calling this in.”

“Forget it. Hang up. I won’t have my daughter-in-law arrested like a common criminal.”

“You need an ambulance.”

“I said forget it. I’m okay.”

“Coburn beat you?”

“He looks worse.”

“Mrs. Gillette was complicit?”

His lips hardened into a firm, straight line. “She had her reasons.”

“Honest ones?”

“She thinks so.”

“What do you think?”

“Are you going to get me out of this chair or not?”

Crawford replaced his pistol in the holster. As he sawed through the tape with the sharp point of his pocketknife, Gillette filled him in on what had taken place. By the time he’d finished with his story, he was free from the chair, stamping to restore feeling to his feet, flexing and extending his fingers to increase circulation.

“They took the USB key with them?” Crawford asked.

“As well as the soccer ball.”

“What was on that key?”

“They refused to tell me.”

“Well, it had to be something significant or your late son wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to hide it.”

Gillette said nothing to that.

“Did they tell you where they were going?”

“What do you think?”

“Give you any hint? Did you pick up on anything?”

“They were in an awful rush when they left. As they raced through here, I demanded to know what was going on. Coburn stopped and leaned down, putting us eye to eye.

“He reminded me that when a Marine has a duty to perform, he doesn’t let any obstacle stand in the way of performing that duty. I told him yes, of course, what of it? Then he said, ‘Well, I’m a former Marine, and I’ve got a duty to perform. Intentionally or not, you could be an obstacle. So you should understand why I gotta do this.’ Then the son of a bitch slugged me, knocked me out. Next thing I know, you’re here.”

“Your jaw is bruised. Is it okay?”

“Have you ever been kicked by a mule?”

“I don’t suppose you saw what kind of car—”

“No.”

“Where’s your computer?”

Gillette led him down a hallway and into the master bedroom. “It’s probably in sleep mode.”

Crawford sat down at the functional desk and activated the computer. He checked the email server, the home page on the web browser, and even Gillette’s documents file. He didn’t find anything, nor had he expected to.

“Coburn wouldn’t have left us a trail that was that easy to follow,” he said. “I’d like to take your computer with me, though. Give it to the department techies, see if they can find what was on that key. I guess all we can do now—”

He drew up short when he stood up and turned around. Stan Gillette was holding a deer rifle in one hand and pointing a six-shot revolver at him with the other.