“I haven’t returned. I’ve made a detour to regroup. A lot of my next direction depends on the ID of the girl they pulled out of the Louisiana swamp.”
Dave nodded. “Unfortunately, there are too many missing young women. Police say she’s a Jane Doe until a family comes forth to connect her to a missing persons report or some kind of DNA evidence. In the case of Courtney Burke, without DNA from Courtney, there’s nothing to match to the dead girl. One news commentator is calling for Andrea Logan to give a DNA sample to see if a dotted line can connect to the corpse. Hell, Sean, Logan’s Democratic opponents might be coming after you for a DNA sample. With the election coming very soon, it’s gone from mudslinging to throwing feces like hardballs.”
Nick got up from his barstool, stepped to the port side of Gibraltar, and stared out the window toward the marina office and the Tiki Bar. “Looks like a few more TV news trucks have set up camp. Maybe something’s breaking. Sean, maybe they’re linking you to blowin’ up the cigarette boat in South Carolina.”
“I don’t think so. The closest eyewitness was a train engineer, and he saw my back as I was running for my life.”
Dave said, “So you believe the sniper who shot your windows out, who came within an inch of taking your head off, was the same guy you got on camera saying Timothy Goldberg and presumably Senator Lloyd Logan had issued orders to take Courtney out?”
“I recognized the boot tread, down to a cut on the sole of his left boot.”
“But yet somebody sends you a text message threat, saying that the rifle bullet through your Jeep windows was a warning shot, along with the demand about the video. Maybe the shooter just missed and they made it seem like a warning because you were still alive.”
Nick said, “Just from those glass cuts on your face, you’re damn lucky you didn’t lose an eye.”
Dave stirred the ice in his drink. “The irony is you pull this assassin out of the St. Johns River, literally, as a big gator is closing in, and then you take him out, or vaporize him, in the Savannah River. You’re going to release that video, aren’t you?”
“It was an insurance policy to keep Courtney safe. If they killed her … I’ll release it and let Logan’s handlers handle that.”
Nick glanced up at the TV screen behind Dave’s bar. The sound was muted, but the picture was on, images of a reporter near a wetland in New Orleans. “What’s this?” Nick asked, reaching for the remote control. He turned up the sound.
I wasn’t ready to hear it.
81
Max barked, her hound dog ears following movement on the dock. Nick looked out the starboard side of Gibraltar. “A news cameraman is walking toward your boat, Sean. The guy decided to go around the locked gate and the no trespassing signs. I see another one following him.”
Dave said, “It’s the tip of the iceberg, and right now Gibraltar is beginning to feel a bit like Titanic. As long as you stay sequestered aboard, Sean, we should avoid a collision with a media mob. I’ll call security and the sheriff’s office. Turn up the sound on the TV, Nick. Looks like they have reason to call what I’m seeing as breaking news.”
The scenes were of a Louisiana parish sheriff and two FBI agents holding a news conference in front of the sheriff’s headquarters. The voice-over came from a news anchorman who said, “That was the scene minutes ago when the results of forensics tests were announced by Sheriff Ralph Perry and special agents with the FBI. Let’s go to Peter Zimmer live at the crime scene where the girl’s body was found. Peter …”
The camera shot cut to the field reporter, a square-jawed, dark-haired man wearing an open sports coat, standing next to an airboat. “That’s right, Larry, police and FBI say they have made a positive identification in the tragic death of a young woman found here in Barateria Swamp by a tour boat operator. Investigators are saying the body is that of nineteen-year-old Gina Boudreaux, reported missing more than a week ago. Two remaining teeth in the girl’s body matched with dental records. Then police got a DNA sample from the Boudreaux family in St. James Parish. Also, we’re told there was an apparent match of a small tattoo, a sunflower, on the girl’s left shoulder. Her distraught parents say the last time they saw their daughter was last Saturday when she came into New Orleans to visit the area voodoo shops. Gina Boudreaux’s car was found abandoned three blocks from the French Quarter. Police and federal agents have few leads and apparently no suspects in this grisly murder. Reporting live from Barateria Swamp, this is Peter Zimmer, now back to you in the studio.”
The image cut to a blonde news anchorwoman who said, “Thanks, Peter. On a national scale, the news of the murdered girl’s identification means that the whereabouts of Courtney Burke, wanted in connection with the deaths of three carnival workers, and the young woman who may be the daughter of Andrea Logan and her college boyfriend, Sean O’Brien, is still unknown. Andrea Logan’s husband, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Senator Lloyd Logan, says he stands by his wife, and says that their long-time relationship and marriage has no bearing on what happened in the past, after Andrea Logan gave a baby up for adoption twenty years ago. More on this breaking story tonight at eleven.”
Nick hit the mute button and turned toward me. “Wow, what the hell are you gonna do now?”
“Find Courtney.”
“Nobody can find her, and everybody is looking.”
“But they’re not looking in the right place. I don’t know why she went to New Orleans, but I know where she’s going. She’s trying to find her uncle, my brother, Dillon.”
“Why?” Dave asked, turning his head from the television to me.
“Retribution, among other things. He killed her mother, his sister — our sister, and raped Courtney when she was a young woman. I have a feeling in my gut that he killed the three carny workers.”
Nick’s dark eyebrows lifted. “What? You said Miami cops just picked up a guy who left a thumbprint on the ice pick.”
“They did. His print along with Courtney’s print is on the same ice pick. No eyewitnesses. No security camera video. The suspect says he wasn’t there and didn’t do it. But he was there, at least working for the carnival as a motorcycle stunt rider. He’d been hypnotized to become fearless to drive a motorcycle in the Cage of Death. If hypnosis, with a guy like that, can remove his fear of death, could it eliminate his fear of capture or guilt in a killing?”
Dave said, “Killing as in murder, of course. Not self-defense.”
“Exactly. What if a master hypnotist could plant a post-hypnotic suggestion, or a command, to have someone killed? Maybe that order is triggered from a cell phone call or some other remote way to prompt whatever psychological tripwire that’s needed to send this person into a robotic kill mode and not recall anything after it’s done. The killer could beat any polygraph because he has absolutely no connection to the act. Courtney said Dillon Flanagan is a master hypnotist. He knew Courtney was going to cause trouble for him, bring in murder and rape charges. He killed her mother and father. He’d have no hesitation to kill her, or frame her for murder … especially if he could hypnotize someone else to do it.”