Blood tracks, p.14
Blood Tracks, page 14
‘Desperados,’ Po said. ‘Or assholes.’
‘A bit of both,’ Tess said, echoing her earlier words. She suddenly realized that Po was still holding her hand. It had grown comfortable there in his palm, but perhaps the gesture was more intimate than either of them intended. She drew it away.
Po wasn’t finished. ‘You told me you caught Jim Neely apologizing about you to some friends: it was because of what happened, right? And he was ashamed of you? What a jerk!’
‘Seeing the back of him was the only good thing to come out of the worst night of my life.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Everything else I lost I’d’ve liked to have held on to.’
‘So completing this case is about making amends, right, restoring your reputation? Kind of make or break? Well, if you want to go to the police then so be it, it’s probably the right thing to do. But if you’d rather throw away that rulebook, like I said, and go after Wynne’s abductors, well … I’ve still got your back.’
‘Oh, believe me, I want to go after them, but there’s a problem: I don’t know where to start.’
Po held up the transponder. ‘Now they’ve got Wynne, they might give up on us. But I don’t see it. We’ve both seen two of the guys working for Sower, so in some respects that now makes us witnesses. You know what happened to all the others, right?’
‘They’ll come after us.’ The prospect should have terrified her. She straightened, turning to look Po directly in the eyes. ‘Good. Let them come. We might be able to salvage this case if we can take one of them in.’
SEVENTEEN
Tess and Po were back on the road, and they’d little to say to each other as they privately ruminated over their latest discoveries.
Much of their theory concerning Wynne’s disappearance was based on supposition, but it gave Tess focus after being beaten to the punch, and Wynne snatched from under her nose. Of course, even the fact that Wynne was missing was based on assumption, but it seemed highly probable. He hadn’t left the house bleeding without reason, and he hadn’t been responsible for breaking his way out of the back door midway through preparing lunch either. It appeared that more than one person had forced Wynne from the premises, and he’d been bundled out of sight through the backyard and along a narrow alley towards the grounds of the church they’d checked out. Presumably the parking lot alongside the church was where his abductors had left their vehicle while they came upon Benoit’s house from behind. Droplets of blood on the crumbling asphalt showed that Wynne hadn’t stopped bleeding before he was forced inside the vehicle and driven away. From the church grounds to wherever, Tess had no clue where next, but she was certain that at that time Wynne was still alive. How long he’d keep breathing was hard to tell. She had to also assume that once he’d been forced to the car and there was no further need for mobility, his abductors might well have finished him off.
Was there still time to save Crawford Wynne’s life?
Doubtful.
Calling the police wouldn’t help him either, because where would anyone look? It was a defeatist attitude, but also a pragmatic one. When considering Mitch Delaney’s murder, no mercy had been shown. The slaying was brutal, and also punishment, and Tess had to force down the images she conjured of what Wynne must be suffering right now.
Visualizing Wynne’s fate made her nauseous. He was a criminal, a racist, a thug, but he was still a human being: no one deserved to die like that.
Po sat stoically behind the wheel. His profile was more aquiline than usual, his nose more pronounced, but that might be because of the way he chewed at his lower lip. She couldn’t tell if he was thinking about Wynne, plotting their next move, or mulling over what he’d just learned about her. In hindsight, exposing her past as fully as she had was probably a bad idea, and she wished she could take everything back. He’d caught her when she was emotional, sickened by having missed Wynne by a whisker, and discovering the horrible truth that they’d been played ever since leaving Maine. Had Po gone in for the kill when she was vulnerable and open to manipulation? The slick son of a bitch had even held her hand to coax her story from her.
She closed her eyes, exhaling wearily.
What if she was wrong about Po’s motives and was doing him a disservice by thinking the worst of him? Maybe, she considered, having learned the truth about her, he was revaluating his original opinion of her, the way she was of him. Initially she’d found him frustrating and annoying, his pig-headedness and contrition rubbing her up at every turn, but now, after she’d bared herself so fully, it was as if she’d earned some respect from him. Well, if she had to be honest, his willingness to remain at her side had also won him some respect in return.
‘Where’d you put the transponder?’ Tess asked, breaking her train of thought.
‘Glove compartment.’
‘Switched off?’
‘On. I thought it best we didn’t let those assholes know we’d found it.’ He finally glanced at her. ‘You do still want them to come after us, right?’
‘I know it’s a big risk, but yeah. My first instinct was to destroy the tracker, but I’m glad I didn’t. It’s evidence that we were being used. And it might bring them to us.’
‘If it’s either of the two we’ve already seen I’m not worried. What if it’s the other guy?’
‘Then all the better,’ Tess said. ‘If we can capture him, it would probably break the case wide open.’
‘Except he might not be as easily captured.’
In her mind’s eye Tess again conjured the shocking violence the killer was capable of. Closing her eyes didn’t help. She shook her head, then reached for her purse where she’d dumped it on the back seat. Pulling it into her lap, she delved inside, feeling the cold metal of the gun, but that wasn’t what she was looking for. She lifted out her cell.
‘Calling Emma Clancy?’ Po asked.
‘I’m still putting off my next update; there’s something I want to check before I speak with her.’ She didn’t ring a number, but brought up the browser application instead, opening the website of the Daily Review – a local news agency. Already the first hasty reports were coming in from the scene at the Cottonmouths’ clubhouse. The reports were sketchy but – yes – shootings had been reported to the local PD. There were no details concerning the number or identities of the fatalities, but it didn’t take much imagination to piece the facts together. ‘Oh, man,’ she moaned.
‘Not good news, then?’
‘The worst.’
Po exhaled deeply through his nostrils, but that was as far as his show of regret went. Perhaps he’d grown inured to violence while incarcerated at the Farm. When she was a deputy, Tess had dealt with violent death, and like most cops she’d formed an ability to compartmentalize the horror and shock most people experienced, but she had to admit it had been a while, and the deaths of Marnie and the others weighed heavily. She didn’t doubt that the fundraising Cottonmouths were far from the paragons of virtue Marnie made them out, but still …
‘Their deaths aren’t your burden to carry,’ Po warned. ‘Let it go, Tess, or it’ll eat you up. The only ones responsible for their deaths are Sower’s punks. Let it go, OK.’
Tess’s vision grew blurry. ‘Sower’s people followed us to the clubhouse; they wouldn’t have gone there otherwise. Those people would still be alive.’
‘You can’t say that. They’re resourceful, they would’ve probably tracked down Wynne themselves, and the outcome would most likely have been the same. Instead of blaming yourself, use your anger for something else. Let’s focus it on taking down these sons of bitches before they hurt anyone else.’
She used her sleeve to mop her eyes. Po was right. Tears and recrimination wouldn’t help. After the Chinese clerk died in the convenience-store shoot-out, they hadn’t helped then. Circumstance was a bitch, and not something she could change. As a reminder of that simple truth she studied her scarred wrist. Her fingertips tingled.
‘How do you suggest we do that?’ she finally asked.
‘I’m not sure yet. One thing’s for certain, we need to get on the front foot again.’ He had steered the Honda out of Morgan City, and they were back on the levee between Lake Palourde and the Atchafalaya River retracing their route back to Baton Rouge. ‘You left your stuff locked up at the hotel, right? We followed my methods to get here,’ he went on, ‘and it’s done us little good. I’m thinking it’s time that you worked some of your wizardry and gave us a lead as to who exactly we’re dealing with. You up to that?’
‘You expect me to do what the police have been unable to?’ Tess shook her head in remorse.
‘Yes I do. We’ve a starting point they hadn’t.’ Po gave her a quick nod. ‘Has Clancy replied to your text yet?’
Clancy hadn’t replied yet, though Tess hadn’t given it much thought since hitting the send button. Perhaps Clancy wasn’t the texting type, and was waiting until they spoke in person before offering the information she’d asked for.
‘You don’t think they’d be as stupid as using their own vehicle? It’s likely that it’s a rental; I don’t know how they knew where we were coming, but after they followed us from Portland I think they picked up a car at New Orleans the way we did.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Po said. ‘But did they expect us to spot them, and check them out? Those guys didn’t come over as the most professional to me. They could’ve made an amateur’s mistake when hiring the car and used their genuine details.’
‘That’s hoping for a lot.’
‘That’s the thing with most criminals. They’re not the geniuses they’d like us to believe.’ Po grunted deep in his chest. ‘Even I got caught, remember?’
Tess laughed at his frankness.
She caught a sly grin from her companion, and realized he’d intentionally lightened the mood.
‘I guess it’s one lead to follow. I might be able to come up with something else too. You know that the principle behind plotting family trees is similar to how cops collate known criminal accomplices, right? Perhaps if I follow similar threads I can pinpoint who’s doing Sower’s dirty work.’ She took in a deep breath, steeling herself now that she had a plan in mind. It felt good to have direction, even if it might not play out. She took out her cell again: now was as good a time as ever to get started. But one look at the screen told her that the detective work would have to wait. Now that they were back out in the bayous cell coverage was poor, and her Internet service was non-existent and would probably remain that way until they returned to civilization.
EIGHTEEN
‘You seriously believe that bars and steel doors will keep me from you?’ Albert Sower clenched his fingers, released them slowly, as if mentally testing the strength of his constraints, and then sneered at their ineffectiveness. ‘All I need do is point my finger at you and … well, I’ll leave you to form that picture inside your own pretty head.’
Emma Clancy didn’t respond to Albert Sower’s threat. She sat opposite him in a secure interview room at Maine State Prison, controlling her revulsion for him through the knowledge that, yes, she did believe he was securely locked up, and if she had any say in the matter he’d never walk free again. She folded her hands in her lap, crossed her legs, and watched him while he smiled at her silent insolence. His smile was a mask; she suspected he was raging inside.
If she’d met him on the street, with no knowledge of the crimes he was responsible for, she might’ve found his wavy dark hair, tanned complexion, and startling black eyes attractive. For a man in his early forties he had a good body, lithe and strong, tall for a man of his heritage, and where his forearms emerged from the sleeves of his shirt they were muscular, as were his manicured fingers. They were the kind of arms some women would like to be embraced by, but Emma was under no illusion: those arms were more likely to beat and crush than hug tenderly. His fingers were the kind that fit tightly around throats. She knew that if she wasn’t careful he could easily reach across and throttle the life from her, and had noted the flexing of his fingers each time he wished to make a point. Thankfully his hands were shackled to the table top that separated them.
Throughout her career as a private investigator, and latterly working for Richard Jackson on behalf of the DA’s office, she’d met bad people, but she’d also met decent folk caught up in bad situations, so had always cautioned herself against making snap judgement concerning their nature, but with Albert Sower her first instinct had been correct. The man was evil. There was no lesser description for him, and she suspected he knew it and revelled in the fact. He’d been counselled against speaking to her by his defence team because it might affect the outcome of his upcoming bail hearing, but it was apparent now that he’d agreed to the meeting because it fed his malicious intent to spread terror and taking pleasure in his ability to do so. He didn’t expect his second hearing to be any different from the first, so why be concerned about adversely affecting the outcome? As far as learning anything important she could use against him, she’d drawn a blank. Emma had been on the end of a barrage of sly insults and now he was resorting to making threats.
He eyed her wedding ring, aiming an index finger at it.
‘If you think you’re safe from my reach, you should think again, Mrs Clancy. Haven’t you heard: my enemies swear I’m a ghost, I can walk through walls and locked doors, I can enter your bedroom when you’re sleeping and can spirit you away from the arms of your husband.’
He’d have an impossible task doing that, considering she was separated from her estranged husband by the breadth of a continent; he’d moved to Los Angeles with his mistress pending finalization of their acrimonious divorce. But Emma wasn’t about to divulge her private life to him, not when it could be used as ammunition against her. Instead she said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as it is this: the personification of my will can come for you at any time, wherever you are. All I need do is direct it.’
‘Threatening me isn’t helping your case, Mr Sower.’ Emma glanced at a corrections officer waiting near the door. The guard stood with his hands clasped over his belt buckle, his shoulders rigid, seemingly aloof to the proceedings as he deliberately stared into space. He might deny overhearing their interaction, but it wasn’t the guard that Emma referred to. The room came equipped with CCTV and audio surveillance. ‘I should remind you that everything is on record, and can be presented in evidence against you in court.’
‘I won’t make it to court. Not if there’s nobody left to present a case against me.’ He touched his extended fingers to the sides of his head and his gaze grew diamond-hard. ‘My will is strong, Mrs Clancy, and directed.’
‘Is that an admission, Mr Sower? Would you like to admit to your part in the disappearance of certain key witnesses? Is there something you’d like to put on record regarding the murder of Mitchel Delaney?’
Sower sat forward, his manacled wrists extended over the table, presenting his palms to her. Despite understanding she was playing into his game, she watched as he fisted his left hand – miming grasping something – while with the other hand he made a cutting motion. He flicked his left hand upward, and snatched at the air with his teeth. Next he smacked his lips. ‘Mmm, delicious,’ he said.
Emma shook her head, before catching herself. The last thing she should do was react to his goading, but he was disgusting. He sat back, smug in the knowledge he’d won a rise out of her.
‘I should remind you that I haven’t been charged with murder.’ Sower smiled. ‘If I had my case would now be in the hands of the Attorney-General and not underlings of the lowly District Attorney.’
‘You might think that you’re untouchable,’ she said, ‘but you’re not. I know what you’ve done, and will present witnesses to stand against you, and you will be tried and found guilty for murder alongside all your other crimes.’
‘Witnesses? Ah, you’re referring to our man in the Deep South?’ Sower was careful not to directly mention any names, but he noted the minuscule squinting of Clancy’s eyes when he could only be referring to Crawford Wynne. ‘I wouldn’t hedge your bets on him: right about now I expect he will be growing very tight-lipped.’
‘Would you care to explain what you mean by that?’
‘I think you’re already clear on my meaning.’ Again he leaned over the table, but this time he lowered his head and muffled his words into his cupped palms so neither the CCTV nor audio recordings would be admissible. ‘I warned you about the personification of my will: it beat your bloodhound to our quarry.’
If what he claimed was true, then Tess Grey had failed to find Wynne before Sower’s killer had. But Emma couldn’t be certain that Sower was stating a fact, or if this was just another of his nasty manipulations he enjoyed. How could he even know she’d sent someone to find and bring back Wynne in the first place? Oh, it was easy enough: if drugs, alcohol, and weapons could be smuggled inside a supposedly secure prison then word could. But it troubled her that information known only to a select few had found its way to Sower.
She’d have liked to push him for his source, but he’d already lounged back again, and raised his eyebrows, waiting her reaction. If she did, she’d only confirm she was rattled that someone close to her or Tess was feeding information to him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
Apparently Sower was attempting to lead her down a certain path, as evidenced by his next words. ‘How highly do you value loyalty, Mrs Clancy?’
‘Loyalty is generally overrated,’ she said, ‘and can’t be relied on, except maybe from a pet dog. You should know this when you consider how many of your people were prepared to turn against you. Oh, wait,’ she clicked her fingers for emphasis – ‘that was before you had them murdered.’
Sower grinned, but deigned not to answer the accusation. ‘You make the very point I was about to. You can only guarantee loyalty through two things: fear and greed. You don’t appear frightened by me, so what is your price?’
