Deadline (17 page)

In a matter of keystrokes, she was on a website for the FBI’s Most Wanted, looking into the face of the man who had been a fugitive from justice for decades, searching his glowering features for any resemblance to the man she had loved and married, then had grown to fear.

There wasn’t one. Between the photograph on the monitor and Jeremy, she didn’t detect a single similarity. But maybe she wasn’t seeing it because she didn’t want to. Was desperation making her blind to it?

She rejected the thought that Jeremy, the father of her children, was the son of criminals. Murderers. It simply couldn’t be.

Yet FBI Agent Headly, certainly no fool, was convinced, and had DNA evidence backing him up.

Jeremy had manifested a violent streak.

Burying her face in her heads, she expelled a long breath, carrying on it a fearful prayer, “Dear God, please no.”

Harriet was beside herself with excitement. “He fed them to
dogs
?”

“Willard claims his wife was dead when he found her.” Dawson, seated on the foot of the bed in his hotel room, pinched the bridge of his nose till it made his eyes water. Only by inflicting physical pain could he make the agony of this conversation tolerable by comparison. “She died of a close-range shotgun blast to the chest.”

“Willard’s shotgun. You said his fingerprints were the only ones on it.”

“Yeah, but he swore under oath that he didn’t shoot her.”

“What’s his version?”

“On the witness stand, he admitted that he’d been drinking all day while he searched in and around Savannah for the cheating lovers. Eventually he gave up and drove out to this place in the woods where he cages and trains his fighting pit bulls. He claims he was so drunk he couldn’t even get out of his pickup before passing out.

“When he came to, it was hours later, after midnight. He noticed immediately that his shotgun was missing from the cab of his truck. He climbed out, stumbled around in the dark, trying to figure out which end was up.

“He made it into the shack—his crash pad out there—and found a flashlight. He said the dogs were going nuts, and that’s a quote. So he staggered over to the pens, shined his light around, and inside one of cages was Darlene. What was left of her. His shotgun was propped up against the outside of the cage.”

“He expects the jury to believe that?”

“I don’t know what he expects. That’s what he testified. In doing so, he admitted to committing several felonies by participating in dogfights.”

“What did he have to say about Jeremy Wesson?”

“Doesn’t have a clue what happened to him. Evidence that he met the same fate as Darlene is inconclusive. A patch of hairy scalp in the stomach of one dog. Blood in the pen.”

“That’s not conclusive?”

“When the ME testified, that’s the word he used. The defense attorney picked up on it and made it his mantra.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“Willard saw Darlene’s remains, panicked, bolted. It took police a couple of days to track him down, and only then after they got an anonymous tip about his possible whereabouts. In that amount of time, the digestive process—”

“Jeremy was doggie poop by then.”

Dawson was thinking why, if the dogs had made a meal of Jeremy, they would have been ravenous for Darlene. But he didn’t address that incongruity. Vampira was lapping up the grisly elements of the story.

He continued. “Willard swears he never saw Jeremy. His attorney tried to plant in the minds of the jurors that it was Jeremy who took the shotgun from Willard’s pickup while Willard was unconscious, killed Darlene, pushed her body into the dog pen, then hightailed it into the marsh, never to be seen again. Possibly it was he who called in the tip.”

“His wife’s lover framed poor Willard for her murder.”

“The lawyer didn’t use those words, but that’s essentially the seed of reasonable doubt he tried to sow.”

“Does he have a snowball’s chance in hell of being acquitted?”

“Juries sometimes pull surprises.”

Dawson was past ready to wrap up this obligatory call. The less interaction he had with Harriet, the happier he was. Beyond that, he was whipped. Straight from that disastrous meeting with Headly and Amelia, he’d gone to the courthouse. Having invested days in Willard Strong’s trial, he needed to come away with something to show for his time and expenses or there would be hell to pay with Harriet when he got back to DC.

When court was adjourned, he’d been tempted to cruise River Street until he found someone of Ray Dale’s ilk, who could replace the stash of pills he’d flushed away. He resisted the temptation. Deputies Tucker and Wills would love nothing better than to get another crack at him, and he hadn’t been completely cleared of suspicion of murder.

Besides, taking prescription drugs bought on the street was stupid, self-destructive behavior. He hadn’t needed Headly or Amelia pointing that out to him.

So he’d returned to the hotel room and, with no more fortification than a shot of whiskey, finally responded to the dozens of voice mails Harriet had left for him. The first sixty seconds of their conversation had been a blistering diatribe about his unreliability. Was it true that he’d been questioned by police about a young woman’s murder? Someone in the magazine office had seen it on the Internet. She wouldn’t have believed it had she not linked to the story and read it for herself.

Finally cutting in, he threatened to hang up if she didn’t shut up. “Keep talking to me like that, and I walk, Harriet, and I mean it.”

“Like I fucking care.”

“Fine. You can explain to your new boss why your best staff writer sold his sensational story to another magazine.”

He’d hooked her with that, and she had calmed down enough to listen to his glossed-over, abbreviated explanation about his night in lockup and how it had come about. “I was questioned along with everybody else who was seen with the victim that day.” Which wasn’t quite true, but it wasn’t wholly false. “Worse thing about it, I didn’t get to brush my teeth till this morning.”

He’d then outlined the story he wanted to write.

She said now, “I have to hand it to you, I thought you were blowing smoke. This is a great story, especially since Jeremy Wesson was a decorated war veteran.”

“That’s the angle. War hero meets a bad end back home.”

“Good, good. Go with that. What’s Willard Strong like?”

“Mean-looking. Hulking.”

She picked up on his qualifying tone of voice. “But what?”

“I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “He also seems thick-skulled. This was a complex crime.”

“You don’t think he’s capable of committing it?”

“Capable of shooting the cheating pair with a shotgun, yes. But then I think his instinct would be to run like hell and keep running until he was caught. To hang around and try to destroy the evidence, especially in such a bizarre fashion…That strikes a sour note with me. The overkill seems out of character, too well planned. I think—”

“That’s your problem, Dawson. You think too much. Analyze too much. Not every story has to be about the subject’s goddamn psyche, originating when the cell divided. Just write the story as though it’s a crime piece. For once, don’t trowel on the psychological bull crap. Make it titillating, make it gory, make it sentimental from the war-hero angle. Readers will eat it up. No pun intended.”

“Ha-ha. I get it.”

“Can you finagle an interview with him?”

“With Willard? Not until after the trial, if then.”

“What about Amelia Nolan?”

A shaft of desire and pain went straight through him. “I gave it a shot. She slammed the door.”

“Figuratively or literally?”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s not talking. Especially now that she’s dealing with another tragedy.”

“The nanny’s murder. Hmm. The dual tragedies could be a new angle. Try again. Use your charm.”

“Don’t hold your breath. Right now, I’m beat. I’m gonna grab a shower, a burger, and a ball game on TV. If you want more of the gruesome details, you’ll have to read them in my story, like everybody else.”

Dawson clicked off, put his phone on vibrate, then fell back onto the bed and laid a forearm across his eyes. He hadn’t lied about being exhausted. He needed sleep, but he’d sworn off antianxiety pills and sleeping meds. Whiskey had lost its dulling power, providing only a temporary buzz followed by a cottony head and queasy stomach.

Which left him to his own devices to find tranquility. By God, he’d get there by sheer force of will.

But when he closed his eyes and tried to focus only on clouds drifting across snowy mountain peaks and brooks rippling through primeval forests, his mind stayed stubbornly fixed on the woman who had walked out of his life earlier today.

The woman he wanted like hell, but couldn’t have.

Headly had asked him why he didn’t go after her. Wasn’t the answer clear enough? She hadn’t wanted him to. She’d “had it.” He was an opportunist, a con artist, working the inside track, even baiting her children, to get the goods. That was her opinion of Dawson Scott.

But even if he’d been straightforward with her from the start, had come clean and told her everything, won her confidence and possibly even her affection, he still would have let her walk away today. He was no martyr, but he wasn’t a completely selfish bastard, either. The last thing Amelia Nolan needed was another man in her life who woke up every night screaming.

He was struggling with that humiliating memory when he felt his phone vibrate. He picked it up and, seeing Headly’s name, swore. He started not to answer, but that would only delay the inevitable. He clicked on. “I’m about to get in the shower. Can I get back to you?”

“No. This is urgent.”

“You sound out of breath.”

“I am.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Yapping at their heels.”

“Whose heels?”

“Sheriff’s office, Savannah Metro, finally got Knutz involved. Good thing I kept yapping.”

“If your blood pressure goes up, Eva will—”

“They lifted a fingerprint off the rain slicker.”

Dawson bit back the rest of what he was about to say.

“It matched so well I got a hard-on. Guess whose print.”

“Jeremy Wesson’s.”

“Skip the shower and get over here.”

A
gainst her will or reason, Amelia was captivated by Carl Wingert’s Wanted poster.

In 1970 he had launched himself from the rank of petty crook and troublemaker to notorious outlaw by boldly robbing a federal bank in Kansas City. He did it in broad daylight on a busy Friday afternoon. He didn’t wear a mask or disguise of any kind, as though he’d wanted to be recognized and given credit for the crime, which included the execution-style shootings of the bank president, the teller who’d emptied her drawer for him, then ill-advisedly set off an alarm, a guard who made a valiant attempt to thwart him, and a city policeman, who, by sheer happenstance, had been waiting in line to deposit his paycheck.

Security cameras had captured numerous photographs of Carl that day because he’d made no attempt to avoid them. The time-lapse photos had been enlarged, enhanced, and were the only images of the criminal that existed except for class pictures, which chronicled a public-school boy’s transformation from a scowling child into a thug who looked progressively angrier with each advancing grade. He dropped out after his sophomore year.

The best of these exclusive pictures of Carl as an adult had been selected for his Wanted poster, and as Amelia studied them, she asked herself repeatedly if this man was, as Gary Headly claimed, her sons’ grandfather?

That possibility alone was upsetting. But it was especially disturbing to think that Jeremy might have known. If he had, had he kept it a secret because he was ashamed of his heritage and wanted to protect her and his children from disgrace? Or had the reason for his secrecy been more sinister? It was a chilling possibility.

Suddenly she became aware that the room had grown dark except for the laptop’s screen. She hadn’t meant to stay this late. But as she made to push back the desk chair, her motion was arrested by a noise coming from downstairs.

She knew every nook and cranny of the house, each stair tread that groaned beneath someone’s weight, every hinge that squeaked unless oiled regularly, which drawers stuck when the humidity was especially high.

Only someone that intimately familiar with the house would recognize the scraping sound the kitchen door made against the floor when it was pushed open.

That’s what she’d heard. And then silence.

That, even more than the sound of the door being opened, caused her heart to lurch. Quickly she closed her laptop, pitching the room, indeed the whole house, into total darkness.

“Remember, just act normal.”

“Got it.”

“You’re just coming back to get your stuff from the beach house before you leave for home. If he’s out there somewhere watching her, that’s what he needs to think.”

“Got it.”

“We don’t want him—”

“Goddammit!” Dawson snapped. “I said I’ve got it.”

Headly had been giving him instructions since they’d left the ferry dock. Dawson was driving Headly’s rental car at an unsafe speed. Headly was hunkered down out of sight in the backseat.

Behind them were two sheriff’s units and an unmarked car carrying four FBI agents from the Savannah office, including Cecil Knutz. All were driving without headlights, keeping back so that it appeared that Dawson’s car was the only one on the road.

“Until Amelia is safe, the last thing we want—”

“Is to tip him that the cavalry is out of sight behind the hill,” Dawson said, quoting Headly, who’d used the analogy earlier when he was talking through the plan with the swiftly assembled team as they crossed the sound to Saint Nelda’s.

“If he realizes we’re on to him, he’ll have nothing to lose by killing her, if only so he can go out in a blaze of glory.”

“If he hurts her, I’ll personally see to it that he does. I’ll blow his fucking head off.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. You’re a writer, not a law officer.”

“A wordsmith.”

“What?”

“That’s what that asshole Tucker called me.”
You’re gonna let this pill-popping wordsmith do police work?
Dawson’s impulse had been to launch himself at the deputy and demonstrate just how dangerous a wordsmith could be when provoked, but he’d let the insult slide. The personal satisfaction he would have derived from a one-on-one with the guy wasn’t worth the precious time it would have cost.

Already an hour had elapsed since Headly had called him and told him about the fingerprint. During that agonizing sixty minutes, no one had been able to reach Amelia. She hadn’t answered either her cell phone or the landline at her Savannah apartment.

It had been Dawson’s idea to contact George Metcalf, who confirmed that the children were still with him and his wife. Amelia had told them she would be spending the afternoon at her beach house, and that her chores there might extend into the evening. There wasn’t a landline in the house on Saint Nelda’s.

The deputy who’d been guarding the crime scene in Mickey’s parking lot had been pulled off the detail and returned to the mainland when his shift was over, and
someone
had deemed it unnecessary for a replacement to be sent. No one claimed responsibility for that regrettable decision, which had left no one available to drive out to Amelia’s house, check on her safety, warn her of the possible danger, and remain with her until reinforcements could arrive.

“Tucker’s a blowhard,” Headly said now from the backseat. “Forget him. But remember that he and the others are trained law enforcement officers. You’re not. The only reason you’re in on this is because you can reconnoiter for us without setting off Jeremy’s alarm bells. If he’s even in the vicinity. He could be in Canada by now.”

“Do you think he’s in Canada?”

Headly didn’t respond. If he thought that, they wouldn’t be racing to alert Amelia of the latest development.

“Bernie’s house looks deserted,” Dawson told him as he blasted past it. “Jesus, she’s been out here all by herself. There’s a car at her house, but not a single light on. And she hasn’t answered her phone.”

“Drive on past.”

“Fuck that.”

He braked and got out of the car, practically in one motion. Leaving Headly cussing a blue streak, he ran toward the back door of Amelia’s house. It was unlocked. He eased it open and paused to listen.

The silence was profound and portentous. If everything was okay, the lights would be on and there would be sounds of activity.

He glanced around to see that Headly was coming up behind him, talking softly into his cell phone, describing the situation to the personnel in the vehicles behind them.

Dawson, realizing that their covertness was about to be compromised anyway, banged into Amelia’s kitchen, hit the light switch, and shouted her name. From the kitchen he charged into the formal dining room, from which he could see the living area, the front door, and the porch beyond. Nothing. Moving swiftly, he rushed toward the stairs and tripped over her handbag on the bottom step.

His gaze tracked up. She was standing at the top of the staircase, poised and tense, gripping the banister. Then, upon recognizing him, she sank down onto the top step.

He took the stairs two at a time. “Are you all right?”

She whispered yes, but clearly she wasn’t. She was trembling and looking beyond his shoulder with dismay, watching as her house filled up with armed men.

Her eyes were wide with shock and bewilderment when they reconnected with Dawson’s. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Jeremy’s fingerprint was found on the rain slicker.”

She nodded her head slowly, as though resigned to acknowledging what she had so persistently denied. Then she gripped his arms. “The boys?”

“Safe. Guards have been posted around the Metcalfs’ house.”

“They’ll be frightened.”

“They won’t know. The Metcalfs have been informed, but Headly gave the order for the officers to remain invisible. No marked cars, or light bars, nothing like that.”

“This is all so…” It seemed she couldn’t find a word that adequately described the circumstances. With her misery apparent, she said, “I didn’t want to believe it. Any of it. But it’s all true, isn’t it?” Tears spilled over her lower eyelids.

Dawson placed his hand on the back of her head and tucked it between his neck and shoulder. Sliding his fingers up through her hair, he whispered into it, “If I could make it untrue, I would.”

Deputies were dispatched to patrol the beach and surrounding area on foot.

Tucker and Wills, the FBI agents, Amelia, Headly, and Dawson gathered in Amelia’s living room. To bring everyone up to speed, Headly summarized Carl and Flora’s criminal career and disclosed Jeremy’s relationship to them. He shared the theory that Jeremy had killed Stef, mistaking her for Amelia.

He explained to Tucker why they’d been interested in seeing Dirk Arneson. “We thought perhaps Jeremy had assumed another identity and was using the girl to get information on Amelia and his sons.”

“Instead of doing that song and dance, why didn’t you just tell me?”

Headly threw him a bone. “In hindsight, I probably should have.” Tucker looked mollified.

Cecil Knutz was as agreeable a guy as Headly had described him. He was a few years younger than Headly, but wore the aging process more visibly. He was paunchy and balding, but savvy and senior enough to be the RANC.

Dawson admired his gentle and respectful attitude toward Amelia as he questioned her. She gave him an overview of her marriage and divorce, but, unfortunately, had nothing new or enlightening to tell him.

“To me, Jeremy died more than a year ago. If he’s alive, I have no idea where he’s been or where he is. Although, lately, I’ve felt a
presence
, like someone was watching me. I blamed my uneasiness on Willard Strong’s trial and having to talk openly about things I’d rather forget.”

She told the group about the beach ball mystery and about a set of photographs of her and the children that had disappeared without explanation. “A friend delivered them when no one was at home, but they weren’t where they’d been left.” Dawson appreciated that she didn’t cite him as the “friend.”

She also told them about a boat she’d noticed. “It remained anchored offshore for several days. Other than that, nothing’s been out of the ordinary.” But as she said that, she’d glanced at Dawson.

The team debated whether she and her sons should be moved into a safe house until Jeremy was captured. Headly nixed the idea. “At this point, he thinks he’s in the clear. If she’s placed in protective custody, we’d just as well go on loudspeakers throughout the Deep South and tell Jeremy that we’re on to him.”

Tucker said, “All this is assuming he is alive. That hasn’t been firmly established.”

“What do you need to firmly establish it?” Dawson demanded.

“Something more than a latent fingerprint lifted from a wet raincoat. It could have been there for years.”

“Unlikely,” one of the FBI agents said. “On a nonporous surface like that? Most likely it would have been wiped off or badly smudged by now.”

“It hasn’t been digitally enhanced yet,” Tucker argued. “I’m not going to accept with one-hundred-percent certainty that Wesson is alive until—”

“He whacks Amelia like he did her nanny?” Dawson said.

“Why are you so eager for me to buy into this? So I won’t arrest
you
?”

Deputy Wills stepped in. “Considering all the unexplained things that have happened to Ms. Nolan lately, plus the fingerprint, which I grant needs further analysis,” he said to his partner, “plus the fact that we never located Jeremy Wesson’s body, I think we should proceed as though he is alive.

“If we err on the side of caution, the worst that can happen is that we’ll look like a bunch of bozos for supposing even for a moment that a dead man killed Miss DeMarco. But the alternative, which is to ignore the possibility, comes with considerably more risks to Ms. Nolan and her children.”

Even Tucker agreed that taking safety precautions was warranted.

Headly submitted a plan. “Actually this house is as easy to guard as any. This is the tip of the island. On an open stretch of beach there aren’t that many good hiding places. Jeremy can’t get here by water—either the sound or the ocean—that we won’t see. He can’t drive on without coming over on the ferry.”

“And he can’t walk on water, even though he can rise from the dead.” Wills’s joke eased lingering tension, but his statement was a further indication that he believed their quarry was Jeremy Wesson, alive and well.

Before they dispersed, Tucker got in one last potshot. He said to Dawson, “If I need you, do I look for you here first?”

The question and its embarrassing implication toward Amelia caused everyone else to go still and silent. Dawson saw red and wanted to knock the deputy on his fat ass. But Headly, sensing his fury, clamped a hand on his forearm and said blandly, “If you need to locate Dawson, you can always go through me.”

Everyone left except for the deputies who were to guard the house. Personnel from the sheriff’s office in Savannah were dispatched to pick up Hunter and Grant and bring them to the island. Amelia requested that the Metcalfs be allowed to accompany them. “They’ll be afraid of strangers.”

They were delivered about an hour later by two deputies, one a young woman. The Metcalfs were mild-mannered people, who seemed a bit overawed to find themselves in such a situation.

The boys knew no such restraint. After the two-day separation from their mother, they were excited to see her, talking over each other to gain her attention. Dawson stood back and watched as she hugged them tightly, kissing their faces when they let her, running her hands over them as though to reassure herself that they were well and safe.

The kids’ joy over finding Dawson there was almost as exuberant. Amelia introduced him to the Metcalfs by name only. They probably took him for a plainclothes policeman assigned to guard the family. In any case, they hadn’t questioned his staying behind when they and the two deputies left.

The boys then conducted him on a tour of the house that included everything from their Playstation to the empty bowl where their goldfish had met his demise at the beginning of the summer.