Nobody made any attempt to release Sean’s hands, which were still bound behind him with police-issue handcuffs. It made sitting on the cramped makeshift bench difficult and probably uncomfortable but with Sean it was difficult to tell. If he was in pain he didn’t show it.
The van pulled out, lurching as it gathered pace. We seemed to be making a series of sharp turns, weaving through the back streets rather than risking the exposure of the main drag.
I jerked my head to Whitmarsh. “You must have the keys,” I said. “Uncuff him.”
Whitmarsh just gave Sean a careful glance and shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.
It was pointless to argue with him. I settled for sitting close to Sean, thigh to thigh, needy for any kind of contact. It still didn’t quite feel like it was really him. Why, I wondered, had it seemed more real to me to accept that he was gone than it did to find him suddenly resurrected?
I reached up, uncaring of the eyes fixed on us, and touched his face with a gentle hand. The stubble on his cheek prickled against the backs of my fingers. The blood there had dried into black flecks that came away like ash.
“I thought you were dead,” I murmured. “I thought they’d killed you.” And as I said it I realised with a cold shiver just how close I’d come to executing an innocent woman for that crime. It created a big dark hole somewhere in my mind. I teetered on the edge of falling into it.
“I know. They told me the same about you,” he said, adding with a quiet vehemence, “but I knew they were lying.”
“How?”
The black, expressionless eyes skimmed across the men opposite, then back to my face. “Because if you had been,” he said simply, “they would have had no reason to keep me alive any longer.”
I turned my own gaze on Whitmarsh. “So who was the dead guy you dumped with Sean’s ID on him?” I asked. “Don’t tell me – you keep a stock of corpses in the freezer, just in case?”
“Didn’t need to this time,” Whitmarsh returned with scorn to match my own. “You helped us out good there, Charlie.”
I stilled and he laughed when he saw me do it.
“Remember the two guys who followed you out of the motel before you had that shoot-out with the cop? Well, they were Brown’s boys. You plugged the driver in the gut – lucky shot through the door of the car by the look of it. He got away but he bled out before they could treat him. After that, well,” he shrugged, “I guess it was just too good an opportunity to waste.”
I considered that information for a moment, filing away the fact that I had another death on my hands. I was running out of fingers to count them all on. The mouth of the hole grew larger and more gaping and was lined with jagged teeth like a shark. When I looked down into it I couldn’t see the bottom. I closed my mind to the lure of the edge.
“That old Breitling of yours is still ticking, by the way,” I said to Sean absently, aware of the inconsequential comment.
“That’s good,” he said in turn. “It’s a nice watch.”
Whitmarsh gave one of his gasping laughs. “I hope they bring a good price on the secondhand market,” he said, “‘Cos one thing’s for sure, neither of you will be the next to wear it.”
I tried to keep my face cool and haughty. “Come on, Jim, do you honestly think Brown’s going to let you walk after what you’ve tried to do to him?” I laughed too, but it was a brittle, mirthless sound. “You go through with this and you’re going to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”
“Well, whichever way you square it,” he said, a touch of bravado creeping in now, “it’s gonna be longer than yours.”
“Brown will kill you,” I said, talking to Lonnie as much as Whitmarsh himself. “He’ll kill both of you. There’s too much at stake for him not to.”
“Brown’s an asshole,” Whitmarsh dismissed. “He got caught out bad when we had the last big hurricane through here and that fancy time-share he’s building is just about to go belly up. Why d’you think he’s gotten himself into this?” Another asthmatic laugh. “And for what?” he finished bitterly, with a vicious glance at Keith.
I followed his gaze. Keith was sitting with his thin knees hunched up in front of him, arms wrapped round his shins and his chin tucked down so his straggly little beard nested between his kneecaps.
I had a sudden vision of the way Trey had sat, just like that, in the enamelled steel bath at Henry’s place. If the boy hadn’t lied about his part in the program, I wondered, would Henry have been tortured and murdered? Would Scott have been half-paralysed?
As if suddenly aware of the hostile scrutiny Keith lifted his head, pushing his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “At least we have until sundown,” he said, like that made all the difference. “Isn’t that what Livingston said?”
Whitmarsh almost snorted. “Yeah,” he said, disdainful, “and you know why that is, don’t you?”
Keith shook his head.
Whitmarsh waited a beat, like a schoolboy dragging out a gory tale to see if he can make the little girls in his class sick. “That’s when the ‘gators come out to feed,” he said, baring his teeth in a malicious smile. “That way there ain’t no bodies for the cops to find.”
***
For a while after that nobody else had the energy or the inclination to speak. We sat and glared at each other, or avoided eye contact with each other, as the van rocked and bounced and vibrated at speed along the road south.
It seemed to take a hell of a lot longer to get back to Brown’s resort than it had done to get from there to the Ocean Center. Maybe they were just taking a more circumspect route.
Eventually, it was the music that gave it away. I heard the same raucous blare of manically cheery pap that had been pouring out of the clubhouse when I’d gone to confront Gerri. Was that really only a few hours ago?
The noise grew louder, then faded as we passed and drew further away from it. Perfect Doppler shift. The comparatively smooth metalled road gave way to what sounded like gravel, then to a rutted track that threw us around like we were the steel ball inside a tin of spray paint. By the time we stopped Keith had started to look slightly green. I don’t know if it was travel sickness or just anticipation.
When they opened the van doors Mason and his sidekick had the Mossbergs to hand again. They stood far enough back to make any thought of rushing them a suicidal one.
Whitmarsh and Lonnie got out first, moving smartly aside so Brown’s men had a clear line on the rest of us. I suppose I could understand their caution. If I’d had the opportunity I wouldn’t have hesitated to put either one of them between me and a shotgun blast.
As I climbed out I looked around me. We had come far enough on from the time-share so there was no sight or sound of it beyond the impenetrable body of trees that more or less surrounded us. The van and the Suburban had pulled up on a pad of cracked concrete that had been bleached white like old bones by the sun.
There was a single-storey building to one side of us, its walls made from silvered timber. Flakes of faded yellow paint still clung to the wood and every metal fastening was pitted with corrosion. A barely readable washed-out sign by the door announced airboat rides twice daily but I doubt it had seen a paying customer in years.
To the other side was the swamp, which was what Brown’s development must have looked like before he drained and reclaimed and reshaped the land. The concrete extended down to the edge of the sluggish water where two airboats were tied. Drums of fuel for their massive exposed V8 engines sat on the tiny dock.