“David, there’s more to the case now than you know. Carol-Ann is dead.”
“Carol-Ann Meacham? From-how?”
“I think Daggett murdered her. Or paid someone else to do it.”
“My God.”
“There’s more. Yesterday, Daggett took my partner hostage and threatened to kill her if I didn’t find you.”
“I see,” he said. His eyes shared the colour of the sea behind him. He stooped and picked up the blanket, shook it free of sand and wrapped it around him. Like he would have done with his tallis had he not been forced to leave it behind. “And now you have.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not planning to swap you. But he gave me a deadline of Monday. Why?”
David looked out across the dunes. “It was his next scheduled procedure.”
“On Mrs. McConnell.”
“You’re very well informed.”
“And Daggett wanted you to assist again?”
“Yes. Dr. Reimer’s wrist hadn’t healed yet and Daggett told Stayner not to bring another party in. The fewer people who knew about his enterprise, he said, the better.”
“Why did he send those goons after you? What happened?”
He looked down at the sand and swept a pattern back and forth with the toe of his shoe. “Mr. Patel’s death was so unnecessary. Malignant hyperthermia. A standard exam would have discovered his allergy. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The others had been doing this a while-maybe they were more inured to the possibility something could go wrong. At first I thought I could keep quiet. Dr. Stayner begged me to because Daggett had threatened his son. Then he called me in and told me I had to do it again, and I refused. And I guess I made some comments about going to the police.”
“To Stayner.”
“Yes.”
“How long between your talk with Stayner and the night they tried to grab you?”
“Two days.”
“He sold you out.”
“I know. But don’t think badly of him,” David said.
Shana said, “What? How can you say that?”
“Because I can imagine doing the same in his position.”
I said, “David, if you can come back down among us mortals a minute, I need you to help me find Jenn.”
“If you want mortal, I can tell you how afraid I am personally of Sean Daggett. Even if he needs me to perform that surgery Monday, he’ll kill me after.”
“I won’t let him.”
“You think you can protect me from him?”
“I can do a better job than you can. And I have help.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Tell me what you know about Halladay’s Funeral Home.”
“You think he’s holding your friend there?”
“He threatened to harvest her organs if I didn’t come through.”
“Then that’s where he’d have her. Or have to bring her by Monday evening. Okay. Let’s go back in the house and I’ll fill you in.”
As I was turning to go back across the sand, a flash of movement caught my eye: I whirled back to see David lunge at Shana and shove her roughly to the ground. Then he turned toward me and the top of his head came off in a bloody burst. The crack of a shot came a split second later. As he staggered clumsily back his throat blew open and the second shot and Shana’s scream together split the roar of the ocean’s rage. He fell back on the sand and didn’t stir.
I dove on top of Shana and pinned her beneath me as she screamed again. A bullet whined past us and I pressed harder against her, trying to shield every part of her. I reached out and grabbed David’s belt and pulled his body closer to us and turned him onto one side. He was dead, nothing more could hurt him. Another round smacked the meat of his body and Shana cried, “No!” I reached across my waist to the stiff new holster on my hip, unsnapped it and drew the Beretta. Thumbed off the safety.
The gunman had been firing single rounds at us so far. As soon as the next one came, passing over us, hitting nothing, I jumped up and ran forward screaming, firing at where the shots had come from. I kept my finger on the trigger and the rounds kept blasting out. As I ran, my eyes scanned everything in front of me and I finally saw him standing with a long gun with a scope on it, caught deciding whether to run or shoulder the weapon for another shot at me. He saw me spot him and ran for it, the gun at port arms. I fired a few more rounds but I wasn’t a good enough shot to hit a moving target while running. I stopped and dropped to the ground and fired three more as he disappeared around the side of the house. I lay there, panting, waiting, in case he was planning a sneaky buttonhook move. No one came. A minute later I heard an engine rev, and a car bolted down the road beyond the Coopers’ gate.
He was gone. Him and David both.
Shana was still face down when I got back, sobbing into her arms. I knelt beside her and put my hand on her shoulders, felt the knot of tension at the base of her neck. When she sat up, tears mixed with sand in dark muddy lines down her cheeks. “You used him as a shield, you bastard. You used him to protect us.”
“He was already dead.”
“How could you be sure?”
“There was nothing left after the first shot, never mind the second.”
“That is so fucking cold.”
“It’s what had to be done.”
“I still don’t-I can’t …”
“You don’t like it? Fine. At least you’re still here to not like it and I’m still here to deal with that.”
“Did that man follow us here?”
“He must have. I kept a pretty close watch this morning as we left town, and didn’t spot anyone. But they could have used multiple cars phoning back and forth, falling away and replacing each other.”
“I feel sick.”
“Do what you have to do and let’s get out of here.”
“Aren’t you going to call the police?”
“No.”
“But we have to.”
“If we do, I’ll spend the next twelve hours at some police station, trying to explain this to a county sheriff or state trooper. Now that David is-gone, I have to think of another way to get Jenn. I need to stay out and moving.”
“We can’t just leave him here.”
“We have to.”
Her eyes filled with tears and the muddy streaks grew darker. “It’s his body, Jonah. It has to be prepared the proper way.”
“We’ll call from the road, okay? First pay phone we see.”
“I have my cell.”
“They can trace that. We’ll call from the road and the authorities will find him and contact his parents. He will have a proper burial, the Orthodox way. They’ll wash him and wrap him and they’ll sit over him until his father gets here. Now you have to stand up and walk with me to the car. Drive back to Boston and help me with one more thing.”
“What help have I been so far? Other than leading that man right to David?”
“I need to get close to Marc McConnell.”
“The congressman? Why?”
“To show him a picture.”
“Of what?”
I didn’t say. She’d only hate me more. I walked her back through the house and into the car and then hurried back to the dunes with my camera.
CHAPTER 27
Whatever hope I had felt on the drive up was gone, replaced by crashing waves of shock and anxiety as powerful as those that had hammered the ocean shore. David Fine was dead. My one lifeline to Jenn had been cut. Shana looked like she was going into shock, huddled in her seat as we sped back across the causeway that connected the island to the mainland.
His father had hired me to find David. To bring him back safely if I could. Instead, it seemed, I had led a killer right to him. And the head that had housed his beautiful mind, his stirring ambition, had been blown apart in front of me.
I called Ryan as soon as we were back on the turnpike going south. He was in the same cafe we’d been in the day before, watching the entrance to Williams Wharf. On his fourth coffee and about to take his third piss, he was saying, when I cut him off and told him about David’s murder.