Gone ’Til November (23 page)

“Maybe he thought he could handle it, handle whatever came after, too.”

He tapped the pencil.

“Would have thought he was smarter than that. But money can do that to a person, I guess. Wake up one day, think they deserve something they haven’t earned. Decide to go out and take it. But it never works out. They can never hold on to it.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said.

“Money. People think it’ll cure all their troubles. Then they find out the way things really work.”

“How’s that?”

“Forget about money,” he said. “Pain’s the only currency. And everybody pays their way.”

•  •  •

She pulled up the driveway to JoBeth’s house. A cruiser was parked in the sideyard, Clay Huff at the wheel, drinking takeout coffee. He nodded at her as she got out, went up the steps. The sky to the east was lightening.

She knocked softly, and Andy Ryan opened the door. He was dressed, a clip-on holster on his belt, a .38 snugged there.

“Come on in, Sara. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. How’s Danny?”

“Still sleeping. He got up once during the night, asked for you, but that’s it.”

“He know about any of this?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He shut the door behind her.

“I’ll make up my bed for you,” he said. “I’m up for the day anyway, already had my first cup of coffee.”

“That’s okay. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“No trouble at all.”

“I want to check on Danny first.”

“Go on.”

She went down the hall to the extra bedroom, the door ajar, a night-light on. She opened the door wider, saw him there, sleeping on his side, hugging the pillow against him, breathing softly. Fragile.

It was a teenager’s bed, had belonged to JoBeth’s brother before her parents divorced and he’d gone to live with his mother in Gainesville. Danny seemed lost in it.

Someday, sooner than you expect, he’ll be a teenager himself, with a life beyond the hospital and doctors and drugs. Then an adult, with, please God, all this sickness just a bad memory. Someday he’ll leave your house, make his own life. He’ll be a man, and you’ll be old and gray. And alone.

She shut the door quietly behind her, sat on a chair, and pulled off her mud-spattered sneakers and socks. Her sweatshirt came next, leaving the T-shirt she wore underneath. She climbed into the bed, her back to the wall, and put an arm around him. He stirred, mumbled.

She laid her head on the pillow, felt him breathing next to her, and slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

By the next afternoon, the cold front had blown through and gone. Sara drove out to CR-23 in the Blazer, pulled onto the shoulder and parked. The sky was bright blue, dotted with billowy white clouds. Sugarcane moved in the breeze.

Why she’d come here, she wasn’t sure. She got out, walked along the edge of the incline. There was no sign of the teddy bear or cross, though she knew she had the right location. She wondered if a roadside trash crew had picked them up.

She took off her sunglasses, hung them from the collar of her sweatshirt, looked around. Swamp on one side, cane fields on the other, the dark shape of the abandoned Highfield refinery in the distance. Billy’s father had worked there, his grandfather before him. It had been closed for fifteen years, all those jobs gone south, out of the county, the building left to rot.

The air was cooler now, the sun starting to sink. Her left leg ached, and there was still a faint ringing in her right ear. She went back to the Blazer, sat with the door open, got the Aleve from the glove box, shook two out, washed them down with a long swig from a bottle of water. She looked back at the refinery, already deepening in shadow.

She hung her sunglasses on the rearview, got her cell phone from the waistpack, called JoBeth.

“How are you making out?” Sara said.

“Fine, we’re watching TV. I was about to start making dinner. Are hot dogs all right?”

“Sure, Danny loves them. Is there a deputy there still?”

“Yes. They changed shifts again. Should I bring something out to him?”

“Not a bad idea.”

“When will you be back?”

“Twenty minutes, half hour at the most.” She looked at the darkening refinery. “But if Danny’s hungry, go ahead and start without me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll call you on my way back.”

Maybe it’s worth checking out. Have a look, scratch it off the list.

If she called the sheriff, he’d scramble a tactical team double time, maybe twenty men, half a dozen vehicles. Bring them all the way out here so she could sheepishly explain why she’d called in the cavalry for no good reason. Why she hadn’t bothered to check it out herself first, had sat in the car until
the men arrived. And if there was nothing there, it would all be a waste. Worse than a waste.

You’re a sheriff’s deputy. You’re out here now. It’ll take five minutes. Have a look, head back.

She shut the phone, dropped it on the passenger seat, started the engine.

As it grew dark, Morgan packed the last of his things in the Monte Carlo, checked the room again. He wouldn’t be coming back.

He sat on the bed, ejected the Beretta clip, reloaded it, slid it back home. He checked the Walther as well, chambered a round, lowered the hammer.

Flynn had called that afternoon, given him a time and place. If it was a setup, Morgan would be ready for him. If the money wasn’t there, he would make Flynn take him where it was. End it there and be on the road by midnight, heading north.

He slid his right pants leg up, exposing the elastic ankle support he’d bought at a drugstore that day. The Walther went into it, tight against the skin, but easily reached. He let the pants leg drop down to cover it.

When he stood, the pain hit him with such suddenness it took his breath away. He stumbled into the bathroom, barely got his pants down before it came, a hot rush that seemed to flush out his entire body. Sweat filmed his forehead. He wiped at it. It was thick, oily, and harsh.

He sat on the toilet until the cramps stopped and his muscles started to relax. When he could move again, he cleaned off, flushed. He drank from the faucet, splashed more water on his face. He thought about the Vicodin, decided against it. He would need to be sharp. The pain would be better. It would keep him focused.

After a while, he left the bathroom, shut out the light. He pulled on the windbreaker and gloves, used a hand towel to wipe down everything he might have touched. Then he got the Beretta from the bed and left the room for the last time.

Sara turned down the refinery service road, the Blazer rumbling over the metal bridge that spanned the canal. The refinery was three stories high, set back from the road. Weathered wood, broken windows, gaping holes in the sloped roof. She drove slow, the road pitted and worn.

There was a chain-link fence around the property, sagging in spots. A metal frame gate with steel letters—
HF
—mounted on it, like the brand from a western ranch. Beyond the gate was what would have been the truck yard, a hard dirt clearing surrounded by overgrown brush and scrub trees. The road continued past, up to some small satellite buildings, shacks really, low and empty, windows boarded. Workers’ quarters maybe. The paint all but stripped from them by wind and weather.

She parked the Blazer, got out. The gate was secured by loops of chain, a heavy padlock. The lock was rusted shut, its coating of grit and dust undisturbed.

She got back in the Blazer, drove up the road toward the shacks, parked in front of them, shut the engine off. As she stepped out onto the hard ground, she tugged the Velcro snap of the waistpack, closed her hand on the Glock, drew it out, and held it at her side.

Three shacks, side by side, the plywood on the windows still tight. The doors had been nailed shut with sawn boards. She tugged at them, no give.

She went around to the back. No windows on this side. There was a small tractor barn farther back, sliding door pulled shut. She looked at the ground, saw no tracks of any kind, as if the dirt had been brushed clean.

Nearly dark now. She went to the barn and pushed at the door. It creaked, slid open a foot. The glint of metal inside, the silver of a high bumper. A truck.

From behind her, Billy said, “Hey, Sara.”

She didn’t move. Her hand tightened on the Glock.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said.

She tried to swallow, couldn’t.

“The sheriff’s on his way,” she said.

“I don’t think so. If he was, you would have waited for him, right? Or maybe not, way you are. Doesn’t matter now, though. Go ahead and turn around. Not too fast, though, okay?”

She turned, saw the gun. It was a Colt Python .357 with a ventilated barrel. She’d seen him with it before, at the range. He raised it now, pointed it at her face. She didn’t move, the Glock still hanging at her side.

They looked at each other. He wore jeans, boots, a flannel shirt, sleeves buttoned. Dark circles under his eyes.

“Should have given you more credit,” he said. “Guess I always did underestimate you. Why don’t you go ahead and let that weapon drop?”

She shook her head. “Can’t do it.”

He steadied the gun. She looked into the darkness of the wide muzzle.
Breathe. Think
.

“I’ve got nothing to lose, Sara. Not anymore.”

When she didn’t move, he thumbed the Python’s hammer back. She heard the drag and click.

“Let it go,” he said. “Think about Danny.”

She looked from the gun to his eyes. She let her grip loosen. The Glock fell to the dirt.

“Now take a couple steps back,” he said. “Stop. That’s good.”

He came forward, the Colt still on her, dipped and picked up the Glock.

“You wouldn’t be carrying a backup weapon, would you?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you pull up the legs of your jeans there? One at a time.”

She did, looking up at him as she bent.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s take a walk. Get out in front of me. I’ll tell you where to go.”

“Why don’t you let the hammer on that pistol down?”

“Through those trees there. Go on.”

When she came to a gap in the fence, the chain-link sagging almost to the ground, she said, “I can’t see where I’m going. It’s too dark.”

“You’re fine. Just watch going over, some sharp ends there.
And please, Sara, don’t try to run. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you make me.”

She lifted a leg high enough to clear the hanging fence, stepped over, and brought the other one up behind. She took two steps, stopped, heard him cross the fence behind her.

“To your right.”

They passed through trees, thin branches snapping at her in the dark, then came into the clearing behind the refinery. There was a loading dock back here, and a rusted two-story framework that had once been a chute and conveyor system. Across the back wall was a long row of windows, most of them broken.

“Go on,” he said. “Through the door.”

She saw it then, a metal door, rusted hinges. She hesitated.

“I can’t leave you roaming around out here, Sara. Not now. Go on in.” She heard him come up behind her.

At the door, she reached out, put a palm against cold metal, pushed. It swung open into blackness.

Morgan almost missed the refinery in the dark. No lights out here, just a canal and cane fields on one side of the road, swamp on the other. When he got to the crossroads and the blinking yellow light, he realized he’d gone too far. He pulled onto the shoulder, backed and filled, killed his lights, and headed back the way he’d come, the road long and straight and empty. He powered the window down, listening.

The moon was low in the sky, but bright enough that he could see the dark outline of the refinery. He slowed, saw the
bridge and the access road Flynn had told him about. He drove past.

There was another farther down, as he’d expected. He turned down it, slowing the Monte Carlo to a creep. He bumped over the bridge, heard metal groan, drove slowly ahead into darkness.

When she stepped through the doorway, she heard Billy come in behind her, the rusted creak of the hinges, a bolt being thrown. He touched her on the back, prodded her forward.

“Go ahead,” he said. They were in almost total darkness.

Noises to her right. She turned to see him lighting a Coleman lantern with a match. He set the lamp atop an overturned crate, adjusted the wick until the flame grew brighter. He still held the Python. Her Glock was tucked into his belt.

They were in a big, high-ceilinged room, the concrete floor stained and chipped, the remnants of some type of machinery in one corner. On the front wall, massive sliding doors, closed now, a smaller door beside them. Grids and gaps in the concrete where other equipment had once been, empty crates. An iron staircase led up to a second-floor catwalk. There were gaping
holes in the ceiling, and she could see the first stars against the blackness.

“What am I going to do with you, Sara? You always complicate things.”

He eased the Python’s hammer down, pointed to her waistpack. “Your cell in there?”

She shook her head.

“You sure?”

“It’s back in the Blazer.”

Something fluttered near the ceiling. She looked up.

“Pigeons,” he said. “Bats in here, too. Didn’t get more than an hour’s sleep all night.”

Her eyes were adjusting. There was trash scattered on the floor, broken bottles, graffiti on the walls. A sooty blotch against one wall, as if from a fire.

“Nice place, isn’t it?” he said. “Go on up those stairs there.”

“Why?”

“Just do it, Sara. We don’t have a lot of time.”

The stairs were spotted with pigeon droppings, rust. She went up slowly, heard him behind her. He’d left the lamp where it was, but its glow was bright enough that she could see where she was going. Sweat crept down the nape of her neck.

“Up there on the left,” he said.

She reached the catwalk, saw the open door there.

“Go on,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”