Again, Walt was silent for a moment, frowning while his mind turned over. I didn’t push him. Whatever he was reaching a decision on, it was clearly heavy enough to require such thought. Rushing him would not, I reckoned, be in my best interests.
“I guess so,” he said at last, quietly, and he nodded almost to himself. “The guy you called Oakley man?” His tone made it a question.
“Yeah.”
“His name is Haines,” he said, flat, “and you were right – he’s a cop but that’s not all he is.” His gaze searched my face for reaction but I didn’t have one to show him. “When he’s off duty he moonlights as a security consultant. Early last year he did a little private work down in Miami for a company manufacturing auto parts.”
I shrugged. I didn’t see the significance. “So?”
“At that time the head of security at the company was a lady called Gerri Raybourn.”
I couldn’t keep that one from making its mark. It hit me like a fast unexpected blow to the stomach, stealing the air from my lungs in a rapid hiss. I’d known Gerri was behind Whitmarsh, but confirming her connection to Oakley man made her solely responsible for everything that had happened.
A whole host of chaotic thoughts tumbled out of the back of my mind, jostling against each other, striking sparks. And following them was a slowly spreading black rinse of anger.
Gerri Raybourn had murdered Sean. It might not have been her personally who pulled the trigger, but she’d done it, nonetheless.
I looked back at Walt, aware that my face had locked down and my body had stiffened with the shock.
“Has Special Agent Till picked her up yet?”
“On what grounds?” Walt asked, his voice reasonable. “The only person who’s accusing her of anything is you and, you have to kinda admit Charlie, right now that don’t account for a whole heck of a lot.”
“So what are you saying, Walt?” I asked bitterly. “If I don’t turn myself in, she gets away scot free?”
“No,” he said, voice careful. “But it would sure help if you could provide some evidence.”
I went still. “What kind of evidence?”
“Well, you’re maybe the only person she’s likely to make any kind of a confession to,” he said. “Just supposing you were to get to talk to her, and just supposing you was to be wearing a wire of some description.”
“So, your nephew’s looking for someone else to do his dirty work for him,” I said.
That earned me a raised eyebrow and a calm stare that made me regret my hasty jibe. It was only stubbornness that kept my face defiant.
“Andrew’s a fine agent and he’s a fine young man. Fair-minded and thorough,” Walt said. “But he has to work within the law, not outside it. If we – you – can bring him something solid, he won’t ignore it, that I can safely promise you.”
I tilted my head and gave him a cynical smile. “You reckon you can talk your nephew – not to mention the FBI – into planting a wire on me and sending me all the way down to Fort Lauderdale to try and prise a confession out of Gerri?” I asked.
“Gerri’s not in Fort Lauderdale,” Walt said. “She has a time-share apartment a little ways down the coast from here and ever since there were reports of you and Trey being in this area, she’s been staying there.”
“And the wire?”
“Well, I don’t have the access to that kinda equipment that I used to,” he admitted, “but I got one of those little voice-activated memo recorders that works pretty good.” He nodded towards my bag. “It would fit in there OK and she’s not likely to search you.”
I glanced back across the street. Trey was on his feet now, looking poised to flee. I gave him a small wave to try and reassure him. He sank back into his chair again but didn’t appear any less tense, even so.
I thought of Sean, dead and mutilated in a Florida swamp. Of all the ways I’d feared our relationship might end, that hadn’t been on the list.
I turned back to Walt, who was standing with his hat brim tilted so the sun was out of his eyes.
“OK,” I said. “Where do I find this time-share.”
Walt studied me for a moment, his face grave. “If you’re sure you really want to do this, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll take you there myself.”
Nineteen
Walt drove me south in an eight-year-old Lincoln Town Car with cracked cream leather trim. We didn’t speak much once we were on the road and I was happy enough with that. The mood I was in, I wasn’t looking for polite conversation.
Walt drove down through Daytona Beach and crossed back over the Intracoastal on the same William V Chappell Jr bridge we’d used when Trey and I had gone to meet Henry. There’d been a lot of water under it since then, both physically and metaphorically.
In daylight the buildings looked faded and even a little shabby, the colours washed out without the reinforcement of their night-time neon. It matched my mood – down-at-heel, subdued.
I’d entrusted Trey to Xander and Aimee’s care, much against his will. He’d thrown a controlled tantrum at the prospect of being left behind but I didn’t have the time or the temper myself to stand that kind of bratty behaviour from him. After a few futile attempts at whiny persuasion, he seemed to realise as much and gave up trying. He settled for quiet and sulky instead, barely able to bring himself to say goodbye or good luck to me.
“Look after him,” I’d said to Xander and he’d nodded, face serious.
“Don’t sweat it,” he’d said. “He’ll be fine.”
Aimee had grinned at me. “Go kick some ass, girl.”
I’d promised them I’d call Trey on his mobile as soon as I was done. Then I watched them walk away from the little diner together. They stopped by the kerb a little way further down the street and were about to cross when Trey suddenly glanced back at me, frowning.
Whatever doubts I may have had about trusting Trey’s safety to anyone else, I dismissed them. The only alternative to Xander and Aimee was leaving him with Walt, which could be the same as handing the kid over to the authorities. I had a sneaking suspicion that the old couple could only hold out against their nephew and the all- consuming government body he represented for so long. Better not to put temptation in Special Agent Till’s way by having the boy dangled under his nose. Much better that he simply didn’t know where either of us were.
The only other alternative to that was to take Trey with me. That idea was out of the question from the start. If I could get Gerri Raybourn to admit the part she’d played in Sean’s death I was planning on doing more than tape-recording her and the kid had already seen too much death in my company. Not quite the kind of thing Keith had been hoping for when he’d made some throwaway comment last week about the fact I was British being good for broadening Trey’s horizons.
Now, as I sat in the faded luxury of Walt’s car listening to something in the rear suspension creaking every time we hit a lump in the road, I found myself wondering coldly where Trey’s father fitted in to all this? How much of the responsibility did he share for Sean’s death?
The answer to that one didn’t so much hit me as rise slowly and uncomfortably into my mind, like sitting in the bath while it fills from a slow-running cold tap. Livingston Brown had told me that he’d seen Keith leaving the house in Fort Lauderdale apparently of his own volition. But he also said the man had seemed nervous and in a hurry.
Supposing that wasn’t because Keith had been running away. Supposing Brown had misinterpreted the reason for Keith’s unease and instead it was because his every move was being watched by people who’d told him they had already kidnapped his son.
As the thought formed, I was half-tempted to let it go but it stuck to my fingers like static cling and I couldn’t shake it loose. Little things kept popping into my mind. Like the fact that Whitmarsh had known instantly from
