Nautilus felt the bottom drop from his stomach. “Buck didn’t think it was funny, obviously. So he took it out on Carole Ann. Do you have any idea what your employer did to her, Crandell?”
Crandell shrugged. “This is my last job for the Kincannons. Buck’s getting worse. The wrappings are about to tear loose.”
“Pity. I’ll bet you’ve made a shitload off the family over the years.”
“Enough to retire on. I only came back to put a little extra gravy on the taters, so to speak.”
“Not out of a perverse loyalty? Help in their time of need?”
Crandell wagged an admonishing finger at Nautilus. “Loyalty is not a word the Kincannons understand. If they were sure they’d never need me again, I’d be dead.”
“They’d Crandell their Crandell. Where would it stop?”
“I don’t want to know. That’s why I’m checking out and heading to Rio. Time for me to learn to samba.”
A cell phone rang from Crandell’s jacket. He slipped it from the pocket of his blazer, looked at the incoming number and winced. He put the phone to his ear.
“What, Race?”
Crandell stood and walked to the shadows in the corner of the barn.
“What the hell are you talking about? How the hell did you get that idea? It’s fucking ridiculous. No, don’t call Nelson. Here’s what you do, open another bottle of scotch, call one of your girlfriends over, relax. What? Racine, calm down, buddy.”
Crandell flicked the phone off, stuck it back in his pocket. When he returned, he was holding a semiautomatic aimed at Nautilus’s heart. Crandell looked at Nautilus and sighed.
“Dealing with this family truly is herding cats, Harry. Racine’s drunk and babbling about how I’m fired or something. Typical. I’m sorry to cut our evening short. If you come stand here at the head of the ditch I’ll make it clean, you won’t feel a thing.”
Nautilus took a deep breath and spat across the trench, his spit falling short, landing on Crandell’s loafers.
“Game to the end,” Crandell said, cocking the weapon. “I like a man with spirit. But if you don’t get up here, I’m gonna put one through your knee.”
Nautilus laughed. It was real and full. “You’re a sick and sad little boy, Crandell. I expect I can deal with it.”
Crandell stared in disbelief. He shook his head and raised the weapon, finger curling around the trigger.
Three hard reports echoed through the barn.
Crandell seemed to lift from his feet for a split-second. He staggered three steps backward, slammed into the wall of the utility room, then crumpled to the ground. The weapon tumbled into the ditch.
Nautilus stared wide-eyed at the dark. Lightning flashed and he saw a man crouched at the edge of the door. There was a gun in his hand, the muzzle scanning the barn’s interior.
“Racine?” Nautilus called. “Racine Kincannon?”
Pace Logan rounded the corner, his service weapon trained on Crandell’s writhing form. He crept to Nautilus.
“Jesus, Harry. What’d you get yourself into? Who’s that crazy fuck? Who’s Racine?”
Nautilus sat with his mouth agape, unable to find words. He stood, and his head swam and his knees wobbled. He sat down again. Logan advanced toward the supine Crandell, who was moaning, rocking side to side, the front of his shirt turning to a scarlet swamp.
Nautilus managed a breathless whisper. “What the hell are you doing here, Pace?”
“You sounded bad worried when you told me how you were looking for a curly-haired blond guy Shuttles might have met up with.” Logan nodded toward Crandell. “Him?”
“Him.”
“It got me started thinking. You know Dominick Purselli was Shuttles’s training officer?”
Nautilus said, “I tried to talk to Dom a couple days ago. He’s way the hell up in Canada.”
“Dom Purselli’s a good buddy of mine,” Logan said. “I had his cell number, called, got lucky. I asked had he ever seen the guy you described. Turns out that when Shuttles joined the force, the two of ’em did some stuff together. Shuttles told Purselli he knew a guy came to town now and then, always stayed at this old farm on about thirty acres, would Purselli like to go squirrel hunting there?”
Crandell’s mouth opened and closed like a dying fish gulping air from the surface. His eyes rolled back in his head. Logan knelt and put a finger against Crandell’s throat, feeling for a pulse.
“He’s gone. Purselli said when they got there, they announced themselves at the house on the property. It was a blond guy, curly hair, strong-looking, square as an outhouse. A hinky kind of guy, like he didn’t want to be seen, and that’s why Purselli remembered him.”
Logan stood, holstered his weapon at his side, walked to Nautilus.
“Purselli said Shuttles drove. Dom couldn’t remember where the farm was. But he’d walked all over it hunting, and described a rectangle of land with a barn about half a mile from the road, a white house on the far side of a windbreak, two decent-sized ponds toward the back of the place, a creek cutting between the ponds.”
Logan pulled a handcuffs key from inside his jacket. “Guess what happened then, Harry?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess, Pace.”
“I remembered Shuttles babbling about this place on the Internet where you saw aerial views of just about anywhere, pictures from a geo-satellite or something. Purselli knew the basic area, low on the delta and east of Chickasaw. I went to the library, got a library lady to help me get on the doggoned Internet, Harry. Me.”
“You found this place from above?”
“It was wild, Harry, like I could fly back and forth over the area-go up and down, too-and I just kept looking at all the ponds up there. Then I found a couple ponds with a creek between them, saw the roof of a house and barn a hundred yards apart…”
Nautilus held up his bound wrists. Logan slipped the key into the cuffs, popped them loose.
“You did all this in under three hours, Pace?”
Logan showed a wistful smile and shook his head.
“I’m almost gone and maybe I’m beginning to figure things out, Harry. Jeez, now there’s an epitaph, right?”
CHAPTER 50
Each step toward Kincannon’s house felt like putting my foot into a canister of hornets. Trees averaged every fifty or so feet along my journey, and I made my way from tree to tree, leaning to catch my breath and wipe rain from my eyes. Lightning turned the Kincannon grounds into a series of spectral snapshots.
With less than a hundred yards to go, I dove to the ground as headlights swept up the drive from the road below, hoping the dark coat kept me invisible on the grass. I watched the lights outline the huge Brahma bull sculpture near the road, continue up the long lane, stop in the circular drive in front of the house.
A white Audi. My heart stopped.
It was Dani.
She hustled out, opening an umbrella, jogging the two dozen steps to the porch. I wanted to yell out her name, scream Get back in the car, drive away!
Buck Kincannon walked out the door. He moved to Dani with outstretched arms, tried to hold her umbrella for her. She avoided his touch. There was a minute of conversation before Kincannon gestured toward the house. They walked up the steps to the porch, Dani slow, seeming reluctant.
They went inside.
I limped, fell, crawled. Lightning slammed a tall longleaf pine a hundred feet away, sending a flaming branch spiraling to the ground like a hobbled comet. But I made it. The huge house had a wraparound porch. I climbed to the side and crouched around the corner. The porch was fifteen feet deep, the front side holding several large wicker chairs and wooden rockers, two tables, a bench like a church pew. Oversize carriage lamps bookended the wide front door, throwing light the color of honey and laying deep shadows behind the furniture.
“I’m leaving!”
Dani’s voice. The front door banged open. Dani crossed the wide porch, her arms tight to her chest. She wavered on the top step, arms crossed. Kincannon stepped outside.