‘I need some more information from you if we’re to find your… boyfriend.’ He said the last like he had a roach in his mouth.
‘David,’ she said gently, ‘this clearly upsets you. Why don’t you let me talk to another investigator?’
‘It doesn’t upset me.’
She let it be.
He sat on the edge of the bed, had a notebook out but didn’t open it.
‘What else did you want to know?’
‘Um…’
‘Because I’m exhausted, David. I’m really, really exhausted. I’d like to get some sleep.’
‘Sure.’ He stood. ‘sure. I’ll be back soon. You rest.’ And awkwardly, he leaned down and kissed her forehead, quickly, chastely.
She watched him step out of the room.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she’d be out of the hospital. She’d check herself out, help in the search for Ben and Stoney. The FBI, she knew, would be poring over the Vaughn house, looking for Jupiter up and down the Texas coast.
Maybe Ben still breathed. She’d find him if he did. And if he didn’t, she’d find the bastards who’d killed him.
She fell asleep.
27
The elderly couple had lived near Encina Pass for nearly seventy years, close to the bay, in an old, small house made of heavy cypress. When the knock came on the door both were nearly asleep, having dozed off during a particularly boring cable movie. The old woman nearly jumped out of her skin with fright, touched the rollers in her hair in case one had worked loose. The old man rose from his recliner and answered the door.
The young man standing on the front stoop was sopping wet, with a heavy bruise marring his nose and cheekbones, like he’d been in a crash, smelling of the bay, shivering in the night heat, a broken pair of handcuffs dangling from his wrist. One finger was purpled, clearly broken.
‘Could you – could you please call the police?’ the young man stammered. ‘My name is Ben Vaughn and I was kidnapped by some crazy people. I think they killed my girlfriend.’
Alex Black returned to his motel room Friday night, tired, frazzled, in need of a shower. He stood in the shower’s hot spray for nearly twenty minutes until the water began to cool. He scrubbed soap hard into his skin and scalp until his body tingled. Then he toweled off with a vengeance, put on shorts and a T-shirt.
His cell phone rang. He picked it up, glanced at the readout. His father, calling from south Florida. At least it wasn’t that dumb shit Stoney, him he couldn’t deal with any more tonight.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey, son, how are you?’ Big Bert’s voice was dry with cancer, but optimistic, like always.
‘You chasing the ladies tonight? Taking a breather to call me?’ It was an old game between them, pretending an active romantic life was barreling ahead at full steam. Suddenly Alex’s throat felt thick.
‘I chase ’em but they run faster’n me these days.’ A pause. ‘Sure would like to see you soon.’
‘Probably another few days,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there soon.’
‘Dig keeping you busy?’
‘Client’s a big pain, but it’s okay.’
A dry click in his father’s throat. ‘Find anything interesting?’
‘Well, not as interesting as gold,’ Alex said, trying to cheer the old man up.
‘What you getting?’ Big Bert asked.
‘Pottery shards, bones, arrowheads.’
‘Not much junk to keep you from your old man.’
Alex didn’t like his tone. Not telling something, skirting an issue. ‘You feeling okay?’
His father gave a soft burp and Alex figured one of Big Bert’s friends had sneaked him beer into the hospice again. ‘Don’t you get thrown out of All Saints, having a party.’
‘That was from a Pepsi, thank you kindly.’
‘I’m glad you’re feeling okay,’ Alex said.
‘I never said I was.’
‘Well. Okay. I got to go, Dad. I got an early, early morning.’
‘Yeah. You got pottery shards calling your name.’
‘Okay then. I’m gonna be there soon. Promise.’
‘Don’t take too long.’
Christ, what did that mean? ‘Dad. Are you worse?’
‘I just want to see you soon. Good-bye, son. I love you.’
‘Yeah, back at you.’ He did not want to think of his father wasting away in a hospice bed, the cancer he’d ignored for too long seeping through his body like rot. Big Bert belonged on a boat, diving for galleon treasure, hauling up lost Spanish coins. But always just to have Florida bureaucrats snatch them out of his hands. Bureaucrats had ruined him slowly with promises while breaking him on the rack of their antiquity laws. Here, go get yourself an ice cream, Big Bert would say to Alex as a little boy, handing him a piece of eight from 1690 or a doubloon from 1712. Knock yourself out with a double scoop. Funny, yes, but then the state government would take most of the gold, the IRS would sniff around Big Bert’s boat, squatters would try to maneuver their boats over his dive spots, the treasure would be nibbled away by a thousand grasping hands more clever than good-natured Big Bert’s.
His way was better, Alex knew, but he didn’t want to discuss it with Big Bert. Let his father think he still scrabbled through the loam for pottery and beads and crap. He’d sell much of the treasure quick. He’d go to that hospice – such a nice crisp word for a death place – grab Big Bert, fly off to Costa Rica. Let him die in blue splendor under a bright, forgiving sun. Die happy.
Every day you waste with Stoney is a day you don’t have with your dad. Tomorrow he’d get it sorted out. Find the Eye, eliminate Stoney. Screw Stoney’s threats of posthumous exposure. He was tired of this game. He needed his money, he needed it now. He’d made new identities before, he could do it again. No one in Costa Rica would give a crap about him. And he could stay there for ever.
Alex clicked on the television, waited for the ten o’clock news out of Corpus Christi. First story was a dramatic hostage standoff at a church in Dallas, two people killed. Then the news was all Port Leo: a boat wreck in St Leo Bay, a Port Leo police officer rescued from out in the Gulf, Ben Vaughn’s face on the screen as a kidnapping victim. Then Stoney’s face, also described as possibly missing. At the least the authorities wanted to ensure he was well, considering his brother had been kidnapped.
Shit. Claudia Salazar was alive. But there were no other details offered, no mention of a connection to the deaths at Black Jack Point. At the end of the newscast the pearl-toothed anchor broke in to say that Ben Vaughn had been found in Encina Pass, alive and well, no details yet on his missing brother, financier Stoney Vaughn.
He picked up his cell phone, called Stoney at the fishing cottage.
‘Your brother’s alive,’ Alex said. ‘Congratulations.’
‘I just saw on the news.’ Stoney’s voice sounded a little funny. Like he was surprised to hear from him. ‘Where you at?’
He suddenly didn’t like the question. ‘Just around. Keeping a close eye on you.’
‘So how long do I need to lay low? I can’t stay holed up here for ever.’
‘I suppose that depends on what your brother says,’ Alex said. ‘He accuses you of anything, you’re fucked.’
‘Ben would never do that to me.’
‘You just fucked him over royally, Stoney. You might have lost that old brotherly love.’
‘Ben’s not like that.’
‘You mean he’s a better person than you,’ Alex said. ‘I think you want to stay there a couple more days, Stoney. Let them get good and worried about you. Maybe we’ll make a fake ransom demand to your brother, just for show. Then you can crop up, no worse for wear.’ Yeah, right, dream on. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. Stay low.’
‘I will.’
Alex got up, packed his bag. He liked knowing where Stoney was but didn’t like Stoney knowing where he was. He checked out of the Sandspot, drove across town to a smaller motel, the Surfside – did every coastal hotel have to have an S in the title? – checked in, got settled.