Deadline (19 page)

J
eremy Wesson idly scratched his full beard as he listened to a ten p.m. local radio news update, which obliged him with a shorthand summation of Willard Strong’s courtroom testimony earlier that day.

Willard’s time line had been off by a few hours, but otherwise his recollections and suppositions were damn near on the money as to how things had gone down the day Jeremy had killed the man’s wife with his shotgun while he was sleeping it off in the cab of his pickup truck.

Whether or not a jury bought Willard’s explanation was a wait-and-see, but it wasn’t looking good for the accused. Jeremy didn’t hold a personal grudge against Willard, who had been handpicked to play an essential role, and he’d served his purpose well. He looked the part. He’d acted the part. And had Jeremy not been directing those events, Willard was of such a violent nature, he eventually might have killed both Jeremy and Darlene for their cheating.

However, there was never a chance of that happening. Jeremy had propelled the plot from the beginning to the end. Willard’s conviction would seal the deal, so to speak. In everyone’s mind, beyond a
reasonable
doubt, Jeremy Wesson would be dead along with poor Darlene.

The mission—to set up Jeremy Wesson’s ruination as a testament to America’s turpitude—had been painstakingly planned and meticulously carried out. He had set himself up as someone who’d seemingly had everything a man could want: beautiful wife, esteemed father-in-law, two perfect sons, a bright future. Ruination of that American dream had occurred when he returned from war—damaged, self-destructive, and on a slippery slope to a disastrous end.

It had taken years to pull off, and some of the guises he’d had to assume were more easily adaptable and maintainable than others.

He’d made a good Marine. Applying his marksmanship skills had come naturally, but so had instructing others. He’d enjoyed the camaraderie, particularly during his tours to the Middle East. He’d even cultivated a few friendships that, later, he regretted having to sever. Of course he hadn’t bought into the God-and-country dogma of the corps. He’d had to fake that, but he’d done so convincingly.

Becoming Amelia Nolan’s suitor had been much more challenging. His callowness hadn’t all been pretense. He felt much more at home in a military barracks than in a ballroom. Randy and Patricia had taught him the basic rules of comportment, and he’d attended enough officers’ functions to know how to conduct himself on formal occasions.

But the Nolans lived in a rarified society that had intimidated him as an enemy target never had. The guidelines of southern gentility hadn’t been written down in any book, yet everyone in the Nolans’ circle seemed to know and understand them. Often, he’d reconsidered the choice of whom he should court with a goal toward marrying. He’d thought perhaps the bar should be lowered a notch or two.

However, to his amazement, his gauche bumbles had made him more lovable to Amelia, not less. He was different from the beaux she was accustomed to, and that was his allure. His etiquette missteps appealed to her rather than appalled. Once he realized that, he’d played into the role and became a puppy, whose efforts were ardent if clumsy and who was eager to win favor.

The ruse backfired somewhat, because her unqualified acceptance had made him fall in love with her. A little. Much more than he’d bargained on. He’d expected never to feel anything except contempt for her and everything she represented—the wealthy, rapacious, greedy, soul-stripping aristocracy of the US of A.

Often he’d wished she didn’t love him so much. If she’d been judgmental and critical, if she’d patronized him, if she’d been intolerant of his postwar condition rather than extremely concerned, it would have made the mission easier. His goal had been to break her, not to break her heart.

He’d also wanted to despise with a passion his father-in-law and his patriotic, flag-waving idiocy. He’d scorned the statesman’s politics and the government he represented, but he’d discovered that it was hard to work up that level of antipathy for the man himself. Nolan was a fair-thinking, generous gentleman.

But the hardest act of all was the evolution of a loving daddy into a drunken, abusive brute that his sons feared. They’d gone from running toward him, arms raised, all smiles because he was home, to cowering whenever he walked into a room and cringing at his raised voice. He had a lot to make up to them.

Soon he would.

After all these years, the goal was days away from being achieved. Willard Strong would be convicted of killing Darlene, and, by extension, Jeremy Wesson. After that, he could wage his private war with impunity. He could wreak havoc in all fifty states, and nobody would be looking for a dead man.

There
was
one hitch that needed to be ironed out.

He’d been shocked to learn that the woman found dead behind Mickey’s wasn’t Amelia. Jesus, he still couldn’t believe he’d mistaken another woman for her.

The day of the storm, the ocean had become so choppy, he’d decided against going all the way back to Savannah, and instead had docked the boat on Saint Nelda’s. He hadn’t been to the island that much, so he wasn’t concerned about being recognized.

If he happened to cross paths with someone who’d known Jeremy Wesson, it was still unlikely they’d see through the thick beard that covered the lower third of his face, or beyond the cap he wore to cover the patch of missing scalp he’d sliced off himself and tossed into that dog pen. In the fifteen months he’d been in hiding, he’d also put on thirty pounds.

So when he tied up at Saint Nelda’s pier during the downpour, he hadn’t felt in danger of being discovered. He’d been standing inside the wheelhouse of the boat, drinking a cup of coffee and staring out at the water-logged village, when he spotted her.

The rain had been like a curtain, and it was well past dark. She might have gone unnoticed if not for the raincoat. That loud, ugly rain slicker Amelia had bought in Charleston was hard to miss, even in the feeble glow of light coming through the windows of the general store.

For the four hundred and eighty-something days since he’d left those damn dogs fighting over Darlene’s remains, he’d been biding his time until he could remove Amelia and reclaim his sons. It would have been lunacy to attempt anything as bold as kidnapping Hunter and Grant while Amelia remained a key factor in Willard’s trial and was frequently the subject of news stories. Besides, he knew that her testimony would help convict Willard, and he hadn’t wanted to hamper that.

But over those boring days and lonely nights, he’d contemplated several scenarios, thinking hard about how he would bring about her removal when the time was right. He searched for an option other than death, because…Well, just because.

There was such a thing as overplanning, however. Sometimes one could miss an opportunity while strategizing. When a plum was dropped into your lap, it was practically obligatory to accept the gift from Fate, wasn’t it?

Reclaiming his sons would be more easily accomplished with their mother permanently out of the picture. The unfairness of that could be contemplated later. But at that moment in time, he had to act.

He’d set his coffee aside, secured a ball-peen hammer from the toolbox, and tucked it inside his own slicker. A man making a mad dash through pelting rain wouldn’t arouse suspicion. But it didn’t matter, because he made it to the parking lot behind Mickey’s without anyone seeing him.

He’d hunkered behind the Dumpster to wait.

But—
damn it all
—when she emerged from the store, the guy was with her, the one who’d been playing on the beach with his kids, the tall, rangy stranger with whom Amelia had sat on her porch the night before, in side-by-side rocking chairs, drinking wine.

Heads down, they ran to her car. He could hear them laughing as they dodged puddles. The guy opened the car’s rear door and stowed her purchases in the footwell. She opened the passenger door and tossed her purse onto the seat. They exchanged a brief good-bye, then he jogged away, back toward the store.

As she was making her way around the rear of the car, she dropped her keys. She bent down to pick them up. He seized the moment. He didn’t think of her face, her eyes, the body he’d made love to. He didn’t think of her kind nature, her musical laugh, or her cute frown of concentration. He thought nothing of her humanity. She was a target, like the dozens he’d taken out in Iraq and Afghanistan from hundreds of yards away. She had to go. That’s all there was to it.

He heard the sound, felt the give, when the hammer breached her skull, only fractionally impeded by the hood of the slicker.

Never knowing what hit her, she fell face-first into the mud. He took her by the ankle and dragged her behind the Dumpster. He straightened the hood over her head. Then he ran back to the boat. It had been remarkably easy and quick. His coffee hadn’t even gone cold.

Dawson Scott was the name of the guy who’d almost spoiled it. He was a hotshot writer for a magazine. Jeremy had heard all about him this morning while he was eating a tall stack with a side of sausage at a truck stop off I-95. He was sitting at the counter, so he could see the TV mounted up on the wall above it.

The sheriff’s-office spokesman was coy, but, when pressed by reporters, told them that Dawson Scott had been held in jail overnight and was still a person of interest in the girl’s murder. It had been all Jeremy could do to keep from laughing out loud.

Investigators were also questioning some other guy. Jeremy couldn’t remember his name, but it was inconsequential. What mattered was that one person they were
not
looking for was the late Jeremy Wesson.

He’d feel damn good about things if not for that one hitch: he’d have to figure out something else for Amelia.

He was looking forward to the day when he could leave this cabin, with its moldy walls, saggy bed, clanking generator, and cookstove that smelled of propane even when not in use. Every critter in South Carolina seemed to find its way inside. He couldn’t even identify most of the scat he had to sweep up every time he returned to the cabin.

Its one redeeming feature was that nobody knew it was here.

Which was why, as soon as he turned off the radio and heard the light thump, indicating that somebody had stepped onto the porch, he acted reflexively. A yank on the dirty string killed the single ceiling light. Moving soundlessly and efficiently across the buckled hardwood floor, he slid the pistol from his waistband and flattened himself against the wall on the backside of the door.

By habit, he kept a bullet chambered. The pistol was ready to fire. He raised it to chin height, held his breath, and waited.

Jeremy heard the doorknob move fractionally. After that, nothing. But even without that telltale, almost inaudible metallic squeak, he would have known someone was on the other side of the door. He sensed a presence that signaled danger, and hell if he was going to wait and let some yokel deputy arrest him. Or try.

He grabbed the doorknob, jerked the door open, and thrust his gun hand forward. The bore of his pistol came to within an inch of the other man’s forehead.

Jeremy’s breath whooshed out and his arm dropped to his side. “Hell, Daddy, I almost shot you.”

Looking harried, Headly blustered into the kitchen through the utility-room door. Taking in the scene, he noticed the empty candy wrapper on the table. “Got any more Hershey’s?”

Dawson said, “Fresh out.”

Amelia offered to make him a cup of hot chocolate.

“That would be great, thanks.”

He pulled a chair from beneath the table and sat down. “How are you?”

He’d addressed the question to Dawson, who raised his shoulders in a laconic shrug. “Fine. Why do you keep asking?”

Headly opened his mouth as though to answer, then seemed to think better of it. He turned to Amelia instead and asked about Hunter and Grant.

“When they got here, they were keyed up. It took two storybooks to get them to sleep.”

“I’m sure they were glad to have you tuck them in.”

“Actually, Dawson read them to sleep.”

Headly’s gaze swung back to Dawson and held until Dawson said querulously, “You barged in here like your hair was on fire. What’s up?”

“The boat you noticed?” he said to her, nodding his thanks as she delivered his cocoa. “Coast Guard’s routine patrols made note of it because it stayed anchored just offshore for several days. But it was only a guy fishing, they said. Nothing suspicious. No interaction with other craft.”

“Did they get the name of it?” Dawson asked.

“
CandyCane
.” Headly paused as though waiting for an
Ah-ha
from one of them. “Nothing?” he asked, looking at her.

“To my knowledge, Jeremy never did any boating and very little fishing.”

“Where’s it registered?” Dawson asked.

“Rhode Island. But to an owner who doesn’t exist.”

Amelia exchanged a glance with Dawson and when she looked back at Headly, he continued.

“We don’t know that Jeremy and the
CandyCane
are connected, and we won’t until we find it. But it fits. It was offshore and in sight of your house for days, during which time creepy stuff happened and you sensed yourself being watched. And…” He paused and sipped from his mug of chocolate. “It docked at Saint Nelda’s pier on Sunday evening.”

“Walking distance from where Stef was murdered,” Dawson said.

“The guy who tends the gas pumps ran out to tell the boater that he was out of luck if he needed fueling. The power was out, so the pumps were shut down.”

“I must have been his last customer,” Dawson remarked.

“You were. He confirmed that to Tucker. Anyhow, the boater—only person onboard as far as the gas guy could tell—said he was just waiting out the storm.”

“Did the gas guy note what time the boat pulled out?”

“No. He closed down and retreated to his one-room apartment behind the bait shop. He says he curled up with a book and a Coleman lantern, read for a while, then went to bed. The
CandyCane
was gone the next morning. That’s all he knows. But I doubt Jeremy hung around for long after killing the girl.”