Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 17

WHO IS IT?” BRITT WHISPERED.

“I don’t know. I just caught a glimpse through the window above the kitchen sink of someone moving around.”

Peering through a tangle of wild shrubbery, he watched the window for a full minute but no longer saw the moving shadow. However, he knew he hadn’t been mistaken. His first impulse was to charge into the cabin and confront the intruder. But he hadn’t been able to determine if the person was male or female, large or small, a potential threat or someone who was lost and seeking the help of a stranger.

Given the event of last night, he feared the worst.

Apparently Britt’s thoughts were moving along the same track, because she looked at him with apprehension.

“Stay put,” he said.

But when he tried to move, she grabbed his arm. She seemed about to beg him not to leave her alone. Instead she nodded. “Be careful.”

Raley took a deep breath and stepped from behind the concealing shrubbery. If the intruder happened to look out a window, he would see him running in a crouch toward the north exterior wall of the cabin. The distance could be covered in seconds, but during those seconds Raley was exposed and virtually defenseless.

When he reached the cabin, he hunkered down beside a brick pier. He expected a shout, a challenge, something. Nothing. He’d made it across the clearing unseen. He assumed.

He looked back toward Britt’s hiding place. He couldn’t see her. If he couldn’t, probably no one looking out a cabin window could, either, which gave him some relief as he crept along the wall toward the front of the cabin, where he hoped to catch the intruder when he or she came out.

He was moving along the outside wall of his bedroom. Hearing movement inside the room, he halted and cursed under his breath. It sounded like someone was searching the room. Opening drawers, closing them. He heard the familiar squeak of his closet door, hangers being moved along the metal rod, someone knocking against the wall.

Then there was a crash and the sound of breaking glass and he figured that casualty was his reading lamp on the TV tray. If you backed too far away from the closet without looking, you’d bump into his makeshift nightstand.

Then for several minutes there was no sound from inside. Just when Raley was about to go and investigate, he detected footsteps through the wall, the volume of them fading as they went from bedroom to living area.

Keeping against the wall, he crept to the corner of the cabin and remained crouched there as the screen door was pushed open and a man stepped onto the porch. “Anything?”

Until then, Raley hadn’t realized there was a second man. He was seated in the passenger side of the pickup, apparently searching the glove box.

Raley ducked out of sight and held his breath. If he was seen, he would have to face these guys without a weapon. He was convinced that this was no ordinary burglary, and that it was no coincidence the pair of them had shown up the morning after two men had tried to kill Britt.

He heard the glove box being snapped shut, then the passenger door of his truck. “There’s drying mud on both sides of the floorboard. He’s had a recent passenger. What about inside?”

“I’ll tell you on the way back.” The man on the porch leaped over the three steps and started across the yard. “But I think my hunch was right.”

Raley didn’t want them to leave without his getting a look, so he risked peeking around the corner of the cabin. The one who’d been in his truck had already got in on the passenger side of a maroon sedan. He was in shadow, but Raley could make out his profile. Sloping jaw, sunglasses, receding hairline. Nothing noteworthy that Raley could detect from this distance.

He got a better look at the one who’d been inside the cabin. He was of average height, slender and fit, mid-forties. A no-nonsense haircut. Conservative dark slacks and a light blue knit golf shirt.

There was nothing noteworthy about him, either-except for the pistol he returned to the holster clipped to his belt at the small of his back before he climbed into the driver’s seat, started the car, and backed away. He executed a precise and economic three-point turn, then drove off down the lane toward the highway.

Raley made note of the make and model of the car and memorized the license plate number. He didn’t move until he could no longer hear the car’s motor. Then he slowly came to his feet, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and shaking his legs to return circulation.

Staring down the empty lane, he thought, This changes everything. Then, out loud and with heat, “Son of a bitch.”

Galvanized, he took a more direct route back to where he’d left Britt. When he was still a ways off, he called to her. “It’s okay. They’re gone.” There was no movement of leaves, no sign of her white pants and black shirt. “Britt?” Still nothing. His heart hitched. He ran the remainder of the distance to the clump of shrubbery and pushed aside the branches. “Britt?”

She was where he’d left her, but her back was to the cabin. She was sitting on her bottom, her knees hugged to her chest, and when she raised her head and looked up at him, she looked like she’d just seen a ghost. And in a way she had.

“He was there. At The Wheelhouse. That night.”

Raley hustled her into the cabin. “Gather up that stuff I bought you this morning, whatever you want to take. We’ve got to get out of here, and we may not come back for a while. Hurry.”

While going through the living area, he surveyed it with a keen eye. After Britt’s rampage the day before, when she’d launched a reckless hunt for a telephone, he had put everything back in its place. On the surface it seemed as though nothing had been disturbed. It took someone who lived here, lived here alone, someone trained to store firefighting gear to exact specifications and keep everything spotless and ready for use, to notice that things had been moved, even a fraction of an inch.

Whoever had searched had been meticulous about replacing things, but not so well that Raley couldn’t tell that drawers and cabinets had been opened, cushions squeezed, rugs lifted, pieces of furniture scooted aside, then replaced.

It was the same in the bedroom. Even the TV tray had been placed upright. The lightbulb was missing from his gooseneck lamp. He remembered the long minutes of silence following the crash. Had the tidy intruder been sweeping up the shattered bulb? Obviously. Also obvious was that he’d taken the broken glass with him, because Raley didn’t see even a sliver of it.

He registered all this within a second of entering the room, because he looked immediately toward the bureau. One drawer, which he knew he hadn’t left open, was slightly ajar, but he expelled a light laugh of relief and said, “He didn’t find it.”

Aware that Britt was watching him as she stuffed her new clothes back into the plastic sacks, he lifted the jar containing the sweet potato vine off the top of the bureau and set it on the floor. He pulled tendrils of the vine away from their anchors tacked to the wall and coiled them around the jar.

“You said it was a nice touch. I didn’t think anyone would disturb it.” Then he put his knee and shoulder to the heavy bureau and pushed it away from the wall. “There’s a hammer in a toolbox on the floor of the closet. Bring it to me, please.”

Britt found the hammer in seconds and carried it to him. He used the claw at the end of it to pry away several nails, then pulled a section of the cheap paneling away from the wall. Behind it was a hollow space. He reached in and withdrew several folders. They were banded together with a thick rubber band and wrapped in protective plastic.

“Your files,” Britt said.

“Yeah.”

“Did you see the guy?”

“Both of them.”

“There were two?”

“One searched the truck while his buddy was in here.”

“What did the other one look like?”

“Like the one you saw. Like guys who just walked off the eighteenth tee, except with guns.”

Reaching beneath the bed, he pulled out a duffel bag and placed the package inside it, then grabbed handfuls of underwear, socks, and T-shirts from the bureau drawers. From the closet he got several pairs of jeans and crammed them into the duffel. He gave her a look, then reached into the closet again, took a ball cap from the top shelf, and handed it to her. “Put your hair up under this and pull the bill down low.”

Then he took his one pair of dress shoes and a dark suit from the closet.

“You still plan to go to the funeral?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She opened her mouth, but he cut her off before she could say anything.

“We’ll talk about it on the way.”

“On the way to where?”

“That’s part of what we’ll talk about.”

“Raley.” She caught his arm as he moved past her, carrying the hastily packed duffel bag and his suit. “Were these the men who pushed me off the road last night?”

“I wouldn’t bet against it.”

“Who are they?”

They had no time to lose, but he took a moment, holding her gaze. “I don’t know who they are, Britt. But I can guess who sent them. And I know they aren’t fucking around.”

Raley had heard one of the intruders say “on the way back.” “I assume that means they’re returning to Charleston,” he told her as they sped away from the cabin. “If that’s the case, we’re probably okay for the immediate present.

“On the other hand,” he said grimly, “these two assholes seem to enjoy vehicular homicide. They could be waiting at the intersection with the main road, knowing this road is a cul-de-sac, the only way in to my place, the only way out. Sooner or later, we’d have to pass this way, and these guys strike me as men who wouldn’t mind the wait, even indefinitely.”

He reached beneath his seat and, to her startlement, produced a pistol. “I’m surprised the guy searching the truck didn’t find this. Or maybe he did, and just didn’t want me to know he did.”

It was a revolver. A big, evil-looking thing with a long barrel. He released the cylinder and checked it. From where Britt was sitting, she could see that each chamber was loaded. He snapped the cylinder back into place.

“They’re under the assumption that we don’t know about their visit,” he continued. “That we’re unsuspecting. They could be waiting at the main road planning to pull out behind us, follow us until we reach a convenient spot, and do another hit-and-run that would look like an accident. We’d be found dead, end of story. No one would suspect murder.”

They were fast approaching the intersection he was concerned about. Raley told her to lie down on the seat. “I want you to keep your head down. Understand?”

She nodded, but apparently he didn’t trust her to do as instructed. His hand was firmly planted on the top of her head when he barely slowed to check for oncoming traffic, then shot out onto the road and jerked the truck into a turn so sharp, the tires squealed and smelled of burning rubber.

He kept his hand on her head for several more minutes, until he was convinced that no one was following them. Then he told her she could sit up, but he still drove fast, his whole aspect alert and tense, his eyes shifting often to the mirrors. She was relieved when he replaced the pistol under the seat.

“Would you have shot at them?”

“If they’d tried something like they did last night? You bet your ass, I would’ve.” His tone left her with no doubt.

“Then I’m glad they weren’t waiting to follow us.”

“Now I’m thinking that maybe they didn’t need to,” he said. “The guy searching the truck could have put a tracking device on it. They’ll take us out when they get the go-ahead from their boss, and it’s convenient.” He ruminated for a moment, then looked over at her. “Is there anybody you can go to?”

“Go to?”

“Stay with. Till it’s safe for you to come out of hiding.”

“No.”

“Family?”

“No.”

He looked at her dubiously.

“No, Raley. No one,” she said. “My parents are dead. Both of them were an only child, and so was I. No siblings, no aunts, uncles, nobody. Okay?” Realizing she sounded defensive, she changed tones. “Even if I had a clan of kinfolk, I wouldn’t involve anyone else in this. I’m a fugitive. Besides-”

When she broke off, he looked over at her. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I’m onto a huge story. I’m not just reporting it, I’m living it.”

“Living it,” he said with scorn. “Yeah. For the time being.” Then, angrily, “Jesus, Britt, this isn’t a game. Five minutes from now you could be dead.”

“I realize that. I was the one in the flooded car last night, remember?”

“I remember. Do you?”

“Your life is on the line, too. Would you give up your investigation?” she demanded. “Well?” she prodded when he didn’t respond. After several more seconds of stubborn silence, she continued. “I’m not giving up my story, either. And I’m not going into hiding. That’s that.”

A mile whizzed past. Maybe two. Finally he said, “You could surrender to the police. You’d be safe in police custody.”

“No I wouldn’t. If Fordyce and/or McGowan can’t kill me, they’ll make dead certain I’ll be convicted of killing Jay. You said so yourself. They’ll make sure I look so guilty that no one would believe anything I told them about Jay, the fire, nothing.

“You should know. They stopped just short of having you charged with Suzi Monroe’s death. If it hadn’t been for your friend Candy’s influence on Fordyce, he probably would have seen you tried and convicted of something. Not premeditated murder, but something where you would have been muzzled and put away for a long time.”

When he muttered a heartfelt goddammit, Britt knew she’d won the argument. To seal it, she added, “Unfortunately, I don’t have a Candy running interference for me.”

“I hate to call and ask a favor. It’s been five years since I’ve talked to her. Besides, she’s busy with this Senate confirmation thing.”

Britt’s jaw went slack with disbelief. “Are you…Is…Your Candy…Candy Orrin…is Judge Cassandra Mellors?”

“Yeah. I thought you knew that.”

“No!”

“Oh.” He shrugged an apology of sorts. “I always think of her as Candy. She hated Cassandra when we were kids. Wouldn’t answer to it. Said it made her sound stuck-up. Now, I guess it sounds more professional.”

“Judge Mellors is your friend,” Britt said, trying to wrap her mind around this startling revelation.

“A friend I haven’t talked to in years. I started to contact her when her husband died but figured she didn’t need me crawling out of the woodwork when she was trying to cope with her personal tragedy.”

Britt knew from the background research she’d done for her feature story on the judge that she had been married less than a year when her husband, some kind of software developer, had been killed in a ferry accident in New York harbor. He’d gone there on business and was calling on clients on Staten Island. His ferry had been struck by another vessel and sunk rapidly. He’d perished along with twenty-four others.

“I know her,” Britt told him. “I did a piece on her, and we got along well. I tried to contact her…actually it was the day you kidnapped me. I was trying to line up support from influential people. Anyway, I called her office, but she wasn’t available to take my call. But she might now, especially if she knew I was with you.”

“I hope I can get her to myself for a minute or two at the funeral. Gauge her thoughts on Jay without coming right out and asking for her help. She put her career on the line for me once before. I don’t think she’d want to do so again, not before the Senate vote anyway.”

Britt understood his reasoning, but having Judge Mellors in their corner certainly couldn’t hurt. Lost in that thought, she gazed out the passenger window. Nothing looked familiar. It wasn’t the route he’d mapped out for her last night. “Are we headed toward Charleston?”

“Ultimately. But we’ve got to have new wheels first. Just in case the truck’s got a transponder on it. Even if it doesn’t, we can’t drive around in this. They know it now.”

Noting the severity of his expression, she said, “They really and truly are after us.”

“They really and truly are.”

“Then why didn’t they do something at the cabin?”

He frowned. “I can’t figure that. Maybe, as I said, they get off killing people in their cars. Or maybe their contract was just to locate me and now they’re waiting for further instructions. Maybe they want an advance on their fee before committing a double murder. Maybe what the guy found in my cabin threw him for a loop.”

“He didn’t find your files.”

“But he found you, and he thought you were dead.” She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, he asked, “How’d you recognize the guy? Did you get a clear look at him?”

“Through the window in the bathroom. He looked out. His face was perfectly framed. He was there fifteen, twenty seconds, searching the area at the back of the cabin.”

“He didn’t see you?”

“I’m sure he didn’t, or he would have reacted. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I was frozen with shock because I recognized him instantly.”

“You’re sure? You’re positive you saw him at The Wheelhouse?”

“It was like one of those flashbacks you described, except it stayed fixed in my mind. I remember seeing him the moment I arrived. He was seated at the bar, near the door. When I walked in we made eye contact.”

“Did you speak?”

“No. Just looked at each other the way strangers do. No smiles were exchanged, just pleasant-like. You know. Then I spotted Jay and…Wait.” She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut. “I may have seen him when Jay and I left the bar. There was a man sitting in a car, parked across the street from the bar’s entrance.”

“Ordinary sedan? That’s what they were in today. Maroonish?”

“Maybe. You know what the traffic is like on East Bay during the dinner hour. In between passing cars, I saw…” She strained to remember clearly, but the image remained cloudy. “There was a man sitting in the driver’s seat, but I don’t know for sure that it was the same man as the one at the bar.”

“But you’re sure the man at the bar and the one in the cabin today were the same?”

“Positive.”

“Okay.” He gnawed the inside of his cheek, thinking.

“What?”

He tapped the steering wheel with his fist several times. “Couple of things I can’t figure out. First, why did they come snooping around my cabin? What were they looking for?”

“How did they find you?”

“It wouldn’t be hard. I have a driver’s license. I pay property taxes. It would be easy enough to find out where I live. But why did they come looking?”

“They could’ve put two and two together.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mentioned Yemassee to Bill Alexander. If they located your address-”

“And saw it wasn’t far from there.” He nodded. “Yeah. I see where you’re going. They would have thought that was a weird coincidence.”

“Maybe McGowan and Fordyce are thinking you’re a loose end they can no longer afford to leave loose.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” he mumbled. Giving her an uneasy glance, he said, “And so are you, Britt. A loose end they thought they didn’t have to worry about anymore. Bet it came as a shock to discover that you’re still alive and in my company. That would make them real nervous.”

To stave off her rising fear, she insisted again that the man in the cabin hadn’t seen her. “If he had, he would have done something.”

“But the Target bags were on the bed in plain sight. He would have looked inside them, checked the date on the receipt, seen the clothes, seen the new makeup in the bathroom. I doubt they’d mistake me for a cross-dresser.”

“You could have bought all that for another woman.”

“What other woman?”

“Any other woman. A living woman. They think I’m fish food at the bottom of the Combahee.”

“I hope that’s what they think. But if I were them, and I hadn’t seen your corpse for myself, and I saw new clothes in your approximate size in the home of a man with whom you have something in common, like being screwed over by Jay Burgess and friends, I’d be thinking that maybe you hadn’t drowned. I’d have a hunch, just like this guy said. So until proven wrong, I’m going to assume this is a fight, and it’s us against them. For reasons known only to them, they didn’t take us out at the cabin, but that doesn’t make me any less paranoid.”

He left the pickup’s motor running while he went into a bank to “cash out,” as he put it. When he returned, he brought with him a zippered bag, which Britt figured contained currency.

“I’ll owe you half of our expenses,” she said. Her wallet was in her handbag, in her car, in the river. She didn’t like being completely without means, but she had no ATM card or ID with which to withdraw anything from her bank. Not that she would anyway. A bank withdrawal would be the first thing Clark and Javier would watch for.

“Don’t worry about it,” Raley said. “Money’s the least of our problems.”

“What have you lived on for the past five years? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I sold my house. The cabin cost a fraction of the equity I got from that sale. I had another car. Sold it, sold my fishing boat and trailer. Liquidated everything. Bowling ball, skis, bicycle, scuba gear, everything. I don’t have as many toys now, but I don’t have as many expenses, either.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“I’m fine with that.” He looked over at her and added, tongue in cheek, “About as fine as you are with having no family.”

He slowed down to survey the inventory of a place on the highway that advertised used cars, boats, trailers, generators, and propane tanks. Easy terms. Priced to sell.

About fifty yards past that was an AME church. Raley turned in to the church parking lot and pulled the pickup into the shade of a live oak draped in Spanish moss. He counted out several thousand dollars from the money bag and pocketed the hundred-dollar bills. He told her to stay in the truck. “If anyone comes close, honk the horn, and I mean sit down on it.”

He walked back to the car lot. She watched as he moved along the row of cars and pickups. Soon a short, potbellied man, whose shirt showed sweat rings under his arms, came out of the sales office and approached Raley. They shook hands, had a brief exchange, then the salesman began pointing out various models for Raley’s consideration. He dismissed some straightaway, inspected a few, deciding against them until he was directed to a sedan with a generic body style and drab color.

While the salesman gave his pitch, Raley walked around the car kicking the tires, then got behind the wheel. He turned on the ignition, popped the hood, checked the engine, looked underneath the body to check for oil drips-or so Britt assumed-then seemed to make up his mind. He followed the happy salesman into the office and emerged a few minutes later with a handful of yellow papers and a set of keys.

He drove the car to the church, parked it behind the pickup, then came to the passenger side and opened the door for her, handing her the new set of keys as she alighted.

“You drive that car. They won’t know to look for it. I’ll take the truck. If something happens-”

“Like what?”

“Anything. You keep going. Drive straight to Charleston and throw yourself on Detective Clark’s mercy. Got it?”

“I thought you would trade the truck in,” she said as she followed him over to the new purchase.

He stuffed the paperwork, including the title and a short-term insurance policy, into the glove compartment. “A trade-in is a transaction too easy to trace. Besides, I like my truck.”

“Where are you going to leave it?”

“The airstrip. I thought about taking it to Delno’s, but I don’t want to involve him. I don’t think they know about the airstrip, so it’s best to leave it there, even though it means doubling back several miles.” He saw her settled behind the wheel of the sedan. “All right?”

She adjusted the seat and the mirrors. “The upholstery stinks.”

“Can’t have everything. Follow me, but stay close. Don’t let a car get between us. Okay?”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

He closed the door but left his hands in the open window. “Remember what I told you, Britt. If something happens to me, you keep going.”

But nothing untoward happened. They arrived at the airstrip without incident. They took their belongings, including the pistol, from the pickup, then got into the sedan together, although he took over the driving. She noticed him giving his pickup a wistful glance as they pulled away from the old hangar. He was abandoning his one remaining toy.

“Now where to?” she asked.

“Home sweet home.”

“Where’s that?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

It was quaintly called a motor court. Twelve cabins were tucked into a grove of trees set back off Highway 17, west of the Ashley River, which they would cross to get into Charleston proper. The motel had little to recommend it. There was a swimming pool, but it had been drained; the bottom of it was littered with debris both natural and man-made. Enclosed in a chain-link fence was a rusty swing set that had a yellow plastic seat hanging by only one chain. The rest of it was missing.

Again Britt was left alone while Raley went into the office. He returned. “Number nine.”

“Presidential suite?”

“Yes, but there’s no room service after ten p.m.”

The appointed cabin had two double beds with a nightstand and lamp between them. There were a small table with two chairs, a bureau with a cracked mirror above it, a TV, and an air conditioner in the window just under the ceiling. Raley flipped a switch, and it came on with a reassuring hum and a waft of cool air.

Britt lifted the bedspread and inspected the sheets. She didn’t see any unsightly or suspicious-looking stains, and the percale smelled of strong detergent and bleach. There was a paper band across the bowl of the toilet, which was also reassuring.

“Not too bad,” she said as she emerged after washing her hands in the minuscule sink.

Raley had taken off his shirt. Seeing his bare chest was a reminder of the night before, which caused her to stub her toe on the doorjamb. “Mind if I take a turn?” He motioned with his head toward the bathroom behind her, but her mind was still snagged on the erotic memory and she failed to answer. “I’m gonna be late,” he said.

Snapping out of it, she stepped aside, and he squeezed through the narrow doorway, carrying his suit and dress shoes in with him. Since his hands were full, Britt reached for the door knob and closed the door for him.

She sat on the bed she’d claimed as hers, looked up at the acoustic tile ceiling, down at the orange shag carpet. The commode was flushed. Water ran in the sink. She heard a thump, as though a bony body part had bumped against the tile wall, followed by a muffled curse.

She’d never lived with a man and wondered if this was what it sounded like. Hearing a shoe drop, she smiled.

He came out five minutes after going in, but the change he’d brought about in that period of time was remarkable. He was dressed in the suit slacks and an ivory shirt. His hair had been finger-combed. He’d put on the dress shoes but was carrying the suit jacket.

“You look nice,” she said. Actually, he looked great.

“Thanks. I’ll put on the jacket when I get there.”

“Tie?”

“Forgot it because I didn’t see it in my closet. Maybe I threw them all away. Anyway, when Fordyce and McGowan see me, they won’t be thinking about neckwear.”

“So you’re going to make yourself seen?”

“Oh, yeah.” He glanced at the bank bag he’d set on the table, along with the plastic-wrapped files and the pistol. “In case of emergency, take those and run.”

“Do I have your permission to look through the files?”

He hesitated, then said, “After you do, don’t rush out and call your cameraman.”

“I won’t.” He looked at her with patent mistrust. “I won’t. I promise.”

He gave a curt nod. “Keep the door locked. Don’t even look through the peephole without having that pistol in your hand. Don’t open the door for anybody except me. Remember, not even a cop could possibly know you’re here, so don’t be deceived by a uniform. I’ll stop on my way back and pick up some food. Any requests?”

Come back soon. Come back safe. Don’t go at all. “Lysol spray.”

“For?”

“The car upholstery. And Diet Coke. Now go. Being late to a funeral is the height of disrespect.”