“You know we’d be turned down again,” Lefebvre said. “Not enough to go on yet.”
“You sure your snitch said here?”
“Yes.” Lefebvre looked back toward the yacht, as if this conversation no longer interested him. Hitch bristled over the dismissal.
“Call came in anonymously?” he asked.
“He already told us it did,” Rosario said, impatient with Hitch’s mood. Hitch gave her a dark look, but she ignored it.
Lefebvre’s attention remained with the yacht. “Is that yacht moored legally?”
“What, you want to leave Homicide and join the Harbor Patrol?” Hitch asked.
Lefebvre turned to Rosario. “Is that yacht—”
“How the hell should we know?” Hitch interrupted.
“No,” she said. She turned to Hitch. “I like to sail,” she said, “but in case you’re wondering, no, I don’t want to join the Harbor Patrol, either.”
Lefebvre quickly hid a smile, but Hitch noticed his amusement. “You might end up working there anyway,” he snapped at his partner.
Lefebvre started walking down the dock, toward the yacht. Leaving Hitch behind, Rosario hurried to catch up with him. “Why are you so interested in it?” she asked.
“Rats with wings,” Lefebvre said.
“What?”
“Seagulls,” he said, walking a little faster. “They usually stay put for the evening, right?”
She then saw what he saw, that birds were gathering around the yacht. “Maybe the bait shop—”
“That’s what I noticed. The birds are ignoring the bait shop and going for something on the boat deck. And whoever’s belowdecks hasn’t come out to see what they’re interested in.”
“Amanda,” she said, reading the neat lettering on the stern. “Somebody has bucks. She’s a beauty.”
She said that before they came close enough to see what was aboard.
First Lefebvre saw the blood and then the man lying not far from the hatch. “Call for backup,” he said. “Wait here on the dock.” He stepped aboard amid noisy birds and flies, shooing them off as he moved cautiously toward the body.
Hitch had the only radio. He was still sauntering along.
Rosario shouted to him to make the call.
Lefebvre quickly checked the victim — the body was cold. As he headed for the companionway, he saw Rosario stepping aboard. He sighed with exasperation. “Put your hands in your pockets and don’t step on any of the obvious pathways — or in the blood.”
“I know enough not to mess up a crime scene,” she said testily, but obediently put her hands in the pockets of her slacks. She stared at the dark, open gash on the victim’s throat and turned pale.
Lefebvre watched her, then said, “If you’re going to be sick—”
“I won’t be.”
He said nothing else to her; he had already turned to look down the companionway. He swore when he saw the girl’s body, then drew his gun and moved awkwardly down the steps, doing his best not to disturb the bloodstain patterns. Rosario took her own weapon out and came closer.
“Oh, no,” he heard her say. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”
More faintly, from the docks, Hitch’s voice. “Christ almighty!”
Rosario shouted, “Get on that radio, you fucking asshole! We’ve got at least two dead — one’s a kid.”
Lefebvre kept moving toward the battered door to the head. He pushed on it — it opened only a few inches; something heavy was on the other side. Through a narrow, splintered slit that had been hacked into the door, he saw more blood — and then the boy. Lefebvre quickly holstered his weapon, got down near the floor, then reached inside. He pushed in a little farther and touched skin — cool, but not the cold of the bodies behind him.
For one brief instant, the memory of the cooling skin of another young man flickered across his thoughts, but he closed his mind to it.
Not this time, he swore to himself. Not this time!
And in that moment felt a faint pulse.
He turned to Rosario and shouted, “Still alive! Get an ambulance here!”
Even as she began relaying this to Hitch, Lefebvre saw the ax. He grabbed it, and heedless of Rosario’s shout about prints, swung it hard but with precision, striking the wood near the upper hinges. With the fourth swing, the door began to give — he dropped the ax and turned, catching the door’s weight, slowing its outward fall. He gently lowered it, and with it, the boy.
Lefebvre gathered the unconscious young man in his arms, keeping pressure on the bloodstained towel at the boy’s throat, holding him close to warm him, speaking to him in a low voice, a desperate litany of “Stay with me, keep fighting, come on!”
Rosario found a sleeping bag among some camping gear near the companionway and brought it over. She covered the boy with it, helping Lefebvre bundle him within it, but when she touched the boy’s skin, Lefebvre heard her sharp intake of breath.
“Lefebvre,” she said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder.
He shrugged it off. “Stay with me!” he repeated to the boy, bending closer to him, as if shielding him from her lack of faith.
“Lefebvre,” she tried again, but when he would not relent, moved closer, holding on to a boy he knew she believed to be dead, silently adding her own warmth to his.
4
Thursday, June 7, 10:30 P.M.
Las Piernas General Hospital
The boy was awake, and watching him.
Two days earlier, the first time Seth had awakened, it was as if from a nightmare. He had looked wildly about the room, his face contorted in terror and pain; he batted his swathed hands in the air as if warding off blows. One of the doctors and his mother had tried to calm him, but their efforts seemed to further upset him.
Lefebvre had said one word: “Easy.” Seth turned toward the sound of his voice, ceased struggling, and quickly went back to sleep.
The doctor, after subjecting Lefebvre to a long and considering look, gave orders that the detective should be allowed to stay by the boy as long as he liked, any time he liked — provided Mrs. Randolph had no objections? Lefebvre thought she hid the smallest trace of resentment before answering, “No, of course not. Detective Lefebvre saved my son’s life.”
Now Lefebvre sat at the side of Seth Randolph’s hospital bed, hoping for another miracle — that the boy would be able to identify his attacker. Seth had lived. That, he told himself, was miracle enough. The boy’s vocal cords had been damaged, but a slightly deeper cut would have severed a major artery and killed him. A laceration on one shoulder had required stitches. His hands were covered in bandages, but the doctors thought he would eventually recover most of the use of his fingers. He had lost a lot of blood; this would undoubtedly cause him to suffer weakness and fatigue. Those, of course, were only the physical injuries.
He was the son, Lefebvre had learned, of Trent Randolph — the first of the victims they had found on the Amanda — a wealthy local industrialist, divorced, and recently named a member of the police commission. The case had been making headlines all week, resulting in more interference than progress toward its resolution. Other than bloody footprints, and a report that someone had heard a powerboat with big engines near the area, the police had little to go on.
Lefebvre surprised his boss and most of his coworkers by taking a less active investigative role than expected, insisting on staying at Seth’s side. Elena Rosario came by every day. She thought she understood why he kept watch over the boy. Lefebvre knew she didn’t, but never corrected her notion that he had formed some sort of bond with Seth during the rescue. It was, after all, not entirely untrue. It simply wasn’t the whole truth. Yesterday she had come by a little later than he expected, and he found himself checking his watch and looking at the door every few moments until her arrival.
Seth’s mother, Tory Randolph, also came by every day. Today she had stayed until about half an hour ago. While Lefebvre knew she would have wanted to be here for this occasion — the first time since his surgery that Seth had awakened for more than a brief moment — he was not sorry she had left. Once she learned that she couldn’t hint Lefebvre out of the room, they fell into a pattern of strained civility and long silences.