Chapter 96
“Come on, where are you taking us, Eddie?” King called out over the sounds of the twin Mercs mixed with the thunderstorm.
He was bound hand and foot with fishing line and was lying on his side on the deck next to the captain’s chair. Sylvia sat in the stern seat, similarly bound, as Eddie drove standing up, the wind whipping his thick hair around.
“What do you care? It’s not like there’s a return ticket from this trip.”
“So why kill us? You filled out your scorecard. You got everybody you were after.”
“Not everybody, old buddy. By the way, I won the bet.”
“What bet?”
“When you caught me, you said it was over, I said it wasn’t.”
“Congratulations.”
Eddie changed course to the east, cutting across a big wave that jolted the FasTech hard. King hit his head on the molded fiberglass behind him.
“If you don’t slow it down, you’ll kill us long before you get to where you’re going.”
In response Eddie eased the throttle forward even more.
“Eddie, please,” wailed Sylvia from the back.
“Shut up!”
“Eddie—,” she began again.
Eddie turned and fired a bullet within an inch of Sylvia’s left ear. She screamed and threw herself on the deck.
With an enormous crack a thin bolt of lightning hit a tree on a small island as they flashed by. The oak exploded, sending charred wood sailing into the water. The accompanying clap of thunder was far louder even than the Mercs.
King inched himself forward. Tied up like this, he had no chance against someone as physically strong as Battle. Even in a fair fight he probably couldn’t hold his own. He glanced back at Sylvia. She still lay on the deck. He could hear her sobs over all the other sounds. He struggled to sit up, finally making it. He slid his back against the side of the boat and managed to finally hoist himself into a seat next to Eddie.
Eddie looked over at him and smiled. “You like the view from there?”
King gazed around. He knew the lake well, although as every experienced sailor knew, things looked very different in the pitch-dark. Yet at that moment they passed a landmark that he recognized, a five-story condo building built on a clay point that jutted out into one of the lake’s main channels. He shouted, “Looks like we’re heading east, to the dam.” He prayed his cell phone connection was still open. If it wasn’t and Michelle tried to call him back, he couldn’t hit the answer button, and the ringing sound would give it away in any event.
“East to the dam?” he said again, even more loudly.
“You know your lake,” said Eddie, who took another swig of his warm beer, seeming to savor every drop.
“I know why you killed all those people, Eddie.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I figured it out. Tyler, Canney, Junior, Sally. And Hinson and Pembroke to throw us off. One tick off, right? One tick.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“Your father was a horrible man, Eddie. I know he drove you to this. You killed because of him, what he did to your mother, your brother.”
Eddie pointed his pistol at King’s head. “I said you don’t know shit about why I did it.”
King bit his lip, trying to keep his nerves in check, not exactly an easy thing to do right now. “Okay, suppose you tell me?”
“What does it matter, Sean? I’m a psycho, okay? If they don’t burn me in the chair, they should just lock me up and throw away the key. Let somebody slit my belly while I’m asleep in my cell. Then everybody can just take a nice long breath. No more Eddie. It’s cool, no more Eddie, and the world just keeps right on trucking.” He eyed King and smiled. “Hey, at least when you die, there’ll be plenty of people to mourn you. I don’t have anybody.”
“Dorothea?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Remmy will.”
“You think so?”
“You don’t?”
Eddie shook his head. “Let’s just not go there.”
“Tell me about Steve Canney.”
“What’s to tell?”
“You’re an honorable man, Eddie. You should’ve lived a hundred and fifty years ago. So grant a condemned man his last request. Talk to me.”
Eddie finally smiled. “What the hell? Okay, here it is. I’d just gotten back from college. My parents were on the outs again. Savannah was about two years old, and Dad was already tired of her. I knew the bastard was screwing around again. I followed him and saw him with the Canney woman. When she had her son, I broke into the hospital, checked the blood-type records. Roger Canney wasn’t the father. I knew who was.”
“Was Savannah Bobby and Remmy’s child?”
“Oh, yeah. I think Dad believed Mom was really going to divorce him this time. So she suddenly ended up very pregnant. Whether the sex was consensual or not, you’d have to ask her.”
“Why the hell didn’t they just divorce?”
“Bobby Battle’s wife leaving him? No way that control freak would ever let that happen. That would’ve been a sign of failure. The great Bobby Battle never failed. Never!”
“Remmy could have divorced him if she’d wanted to.”
“I guess she didn’t want to.”
King debated whether to ask the next question, deciding this might be the only chance he got. He was also thinking that the longer he kept Eddie talking, the longer he and Sylvia would stay alive. And who knew, he might just be able to persuade him to let them both live. “Why didn’t you kill the boy, Eddie? Tommy Robinson?”
“Figured he’d set up his old man, make my life easier.”
“Come on, you couldn’t be sure of that.”
“So there was no reason to kill him. So what? You think that makes me a Boy Scout because I managed not to kill one stinking kid? You saw what I did to Sally. What the hell did she ever do to me, huh? I smashed her face down to the bone.” He looked down and eased back on the throttle.
The storm was growing fiercer by the minute, and even the FasTech was having difficulty cutting through the now massive wakes. Formula built some of the best boats in the world, and King prayed the fiberglass of this boat could withstand the beating it was taking. Yet they were only one lightning strike from being incinerated when the fuel tank ignited.
“And Junior?”
“That one I felt really shitty about. That stupid Sally. Why didn’t she come forward? Hell, I liked Junior.”
“He wouldn’t let her tell the truth. He didn’t want to hurt his wife.”
“See, there you go. Always better to tell the truth. They’d both be alive if they’d just done that.” Eddie sucked the last drop of beer out of the can and tossed it overboard. He rocked his head back and forth, loosening the thick muscles in his neck. “You’ve killed people before, Sean.”
“Only when they were trying to kill me.”
“I know that, I wasn’t lumping us together. What did it feel like, right before you saw them die and you knew you’d done it?”
King at first thought Eddie was making light of this, but when he caught the man’s gaze locked on the darkness ahead of them, he understand exactly what Eddie was really asking.
“It felt like a piece of me died with them.”
“I guess that’s where you and I are different.”
“You mean you enjoyed it?”
“No, I mean I was already dead when I started killing.” He flexed his arms and shook his head clear. “I wasn’t always this way. I never hurt anyone or anything. I wasn’t one of those people who started out torturing animals and worked my way up to humans. The kind of crap Chip Bailey went on and on about.”
“I never thought you were a run-of-the-mill serial killer.”