“Coffee?”
Louis turned. A tall man in slacks, dress shirt, and jacket was standing there holding a Styrofoam cup. There was a gold badge hanging from his breast pocket. His name tag above it read MAJOR GENE CRYER.
“Thanks, Major,” Louis said, taking the coffee.
Cryer looked out over the pen and the trees. “Lot of land,” he said.
“Four thousand acres,” Louis said.
Louis looked over to where Burke Aubry stood with three deputies. He had a map of the ranch open on the hood of the cruiser and was helping direct the search.
They had questioned Swann, Aubry, and Louis. Cryer himself had grilled Louis for more than an hour.
They had taken the rifle and Louis’s Glock; it was routine in any investigation. But after Louis had told them what had happened and that he hadn’t shot Tink Lyons, they had begun a search for a second gun. They were also looking for other victims. No one, not even Louis, could be sure there weren’t more.
“I’ve had some time to go over everything,” Cryer said. “And right now, I am inclined to believe you’re telling the truth.”
“What about Carolyn Osborn?” Louis asked.
“We’ll check her out.” He paused. “She’s a senator, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What makes you think she had anything to do with this?”
Louis was quiet for a moment. “I just know.”
“Well, senators are printed for security clearance. So, if she was in the Bronco, we’ll find out.”
The crunch of gravel drew Louis’s eye to the road. A tan sedan pulled between the cruisers and stopped. A bulky man got out and looked around.
“Christ,” Louis muttered.
Barberry spotted him and came toward the cruiser, his badge on its chain bouncing on his belly.
“Hey, Major,” Barberry said. He didn’t even give Louis a glance.
“Where the hell have you been?” Cryer said.
Barberry finally looked at Louis and ran a quick hand through his messy hair. “I was home in bed all night,” he said. “Got a damn stomach thing going on.”
Louis could smell the medicine stink of Listerine from where he sat.
“Why didn’t you respond when Kincaid called you last night?”
Barberry gave a shrug. “Nobody called me.”
“I checked the logs, Ron. You were paged four times. You never answered.”
Barberry looked at Louis. “Look, I don’t know what this asshole’s been telling you, Major, but I’ve been all over this case from day one. You can check my reports.”
Cryer stared down at Barberry, then turned away, his jaw grinding. “Get out of here,” he said.
“What?”
Cryer looked at Barberry. “Just get out of here.”
Barberry shot Louis a final glare and stomped off. Louis watched the tan sedan back out and disappear down the gravel road.
Cryer tossed out the last of his coffee in disgust. “I’ve been looking for a reason to unload that guy. Maybe I can get him demoted to warrants.”
“Well, he looks good in puke green.”
Cryer managed a smile. “You’re from Fort Myers, right?”
Louis nodded.
“Somebody said you’re hoping to go home soon.”
Louis nodded again. He was dog-tired, and the wound on his cheek hurt like hell, even with the antiseptic and butterfly bandage.
“I’ll try to move your Glock through the pipeline and get it back to you in a couple days,” Cryer said.
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Cryer was surveying the scene, and when his eyes got to the brown spot in the pen’s sand where Byrne Kavanagh had been slashed, he let out a breath. Then he shook his head and walked over to one of his deputies.
Louis rose slowly from the cruiser. He was stiff, his muscles still releasing their adrenaline high. Beneath his bloody shirt, his skin hurt, but he couldn’t tell exactly where, so it felt like a million bee stings.
He shivered, looking around. There was no reason for him to stay here anymore. He saw Aubry coming toward him. He had taken off his denim jacket and held it out to Louis.
“Better put this on, son.”
Louis didn’t object. The jacket smelled like horses and was stained with Swann’s blood, but it was warm.
“That young fella gonna be okay?”
“Andrew’s going to be fine.”
Aubry gave a nod as he looked back at the cattle pen. Louis realized he was staring at something on the fence. It was the small sign that said archer preserve. He suspected Aubry was thinking about how he was going to tell Libby Archer what had happened here.
When Aubry turned back, Louis was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “I don’t have any way to thank you,” Aubry said.
“For what?”
“The truth.”
Louis just nodded.
“Come on, I’ll drive you back, and you can pick up your friend’s fancy little car.” They were halfway to the Jeep when Aubry paused. “I almost forgot. What about that kitten back in my bathroom?”
Louis closed his eyes. He’d forgotten about the damn cat. He couldn’t take it home.
“How about I keep the little fella?” Aubry said.
Louis smiled. “You’re a lifesaver, Mr. Aubry.”
Chapter Forty-one
Byrne Kavanagh was going to live. He would have a hell of a scar across his throat, and it would be months before he could talk, and even then, the doctors said his voice would likely sound as if his throat were lined with sandpaper.
Louis stepped from the elevator on the fourth floor of the Palm Beach County Hospital and walked down the hall toward Room 456. Louis had been here every day for the last three days, but so far, Kavanagh had been too weak or too drugged to make any kind of statement.
Louis hoped things would be different this afternoon. The extra days spent sitting around Reggie’s house waiting to wrap things up felt long and unproductive, despite the trickle of information that was still coming in.
The deputies had found four sets of footprints near the Bronco: Sam’s, made by the oversized boots she was wearing, which proved to be custom-made for her husband before his stroke and identical to the pair found in Reggie’s home.
Tink Lyons’s, made by her beaded slippers.
Byrne Kavanagh’s, made by brand-new loafers.
And a fourth set that led from the Bronco south toward the cattle pen, then veered straight west toward the asphalt road, where they simply stopped. They were made by a woman’s dress boot, size eight. Louis believed, without question, that it was the wearer of those boots who took the gun, fleeing the scene after Tink was killed. How she got back to Palm Beach was still a mystery.
Although she wasn’t Louis’s prime suspect, they had to check out Bianca Lee. It took the sheriff’s office only an hour to find out that she had hung a sign on her shop door that said CLOSED FOR THE SEASON and was boarding a plane to Madrid at almost the exact moment Louis and Aubry were racing toward the cattle pen. The unidentified boot prints could not be hers.
Which left Carolyn Osborn.
They had enough evidence to question her: her fingerprints in Sam’s Bronco and the bullet removed from Tink’s head, which turned out to be a German 9mm, made for a Luger or a P38, circa World War II. The deputies never found the gun, but everyone knew that Nazi militaria was the cornerstone of Tucker Osborn’s collection.
But Major Cryer was a cautious man, and, like Louis, he knew Carolyn Osborn would claim that as a friend of Sam’s, her prints had been left in her truck at another time. As for the German handgun, it had probably been dropped in a drainage canal by now, its brackets in Tucker Osborn’s gun cabinet mysteriously empty.
Which is why Cryer wanted to hear what Kavanagh had to say before he knocked on a senator’s door and started talking murder.
Kavanagh was the only person who could place Carolyn Osborn out at the cattle pen that night, making her as guilty as Sam of kidnapping, torture, the murder of Tink Lyons, and the attempted murder of Kavanagh. And if Louis could tie Carolyn to Kavanagh’s attack and the Orchid Society, he could link her to Mark Durand.