Deadline (20 page)

Every time Amelia heard words to that effect, they jarred her. She was functioning as she must, speaking her lines correctly, but whenever Jeremy was cited as Stef’s murderer, she underwent a cruel reality check. She was still finding it impossible to accept.

It had been a crime of such deliberate but detached violence, she tried to imagine it of the sweetly smiling man with whom she’d exchanged wedding vows, who’d held Hunter for the first time with endearing awkwardness, who’d swung Grant in his arms until he’d squealed with delight.

In her mind these images of Jeremy the husband and father, and Jeremy the killer, were irreconcilable. It was even hard to imagine that level of depravity from the man she had fled the night he struck her.

How many faces had Jeremy worn? Which was the real Jeremy? Would she ever know? Did she want to?

Her mind came back to the present and to Dawson, who was asking Headly why Tucker hadn’t bothered to ask before now about boats that had docked at Saint Nelda’s on Sunday.

“He did. People who live or work around the dock were canvassed. The gas guy mentioned the
CandyCane
, but Tucker didn’t follow up because he didn’t think he needed to. You and Arneson were better prospects.”

Amelia asked, “What did this boater look like?”

“Stocky, full beard.”

“Stocky doesn’t sound like Jeremy.”

“Weight gain is as easy as growing a beard,” Dawson said. “It just takes longer, and he’s had time.”

Headly finished his hot chocolate and pushed the mug aside so he could lean forward on the table. “Amelia, I need you to tell me every single thing you can possibly remember about him.”

“I have.”

“Not even close. You gotta dig. Friends, enemies, likes, dislikes, fears, phobias, people, places, and things, anything he ever mentioned to you, any name he ever dropped. A receipt you found on his dresser. Matchbook. Post-it note. Movie ticket. Itinerary.”

“You’re talking about years,” she exclaimed.

“I realize that. But he’s proven himself to be incredibly resourceful. He’s successfully faked his death for more than a year. He might have been shadowing you for all this time, and you never knew he was there. He wants his children and—”

“You don’t know that.”

“Then why isn’t he long gone from this area? Why did he kill a girl he didn’t even know unless he mistook her for you?”

She looked at Dawson, who said, “You know what I think.”

Yes. He had already argued these same points with her.

“He wants his kids, Amelia,” Headly said gently. “And you’re an obstruction he must eliminate.”

She hugged herself tightly. “You’re scaring me.”

“You should be scared,” Dawson said. “You
need
to be. Because this guy is not screwing around, and if you ever doubt that, you only have to remember how viciously he killed Darlene and then Stef. Defenseless women. In cold blood. Think about that. Remember who his father was.”

Thinking back to the photograph of Carl Wingert, which had held an inexplicable fascination for her, she recalled the ruthlessness that had defined his features. She pictured Jeremy as he’d looked during one of his rants, and while their facial features bore no resemblance, the intensity of their malevolence was identical.

She exhaled and said with resignation, “Of course I’ll do whatever I can to protect my children.”

Headly appeared satisfied. “With any luck, he’ll make a mistake and trip himself up. He did with the fingerprint. Same as Carl.” He chuckled. “The slippery bastard had never been fingerprinted, which was a major frustration to those of us trying to catch him.

“That is, not until the late eighties when he used a homemade bomb to blow up a mail truck. First and last time he ever used explosives, because apparently he wasn’t very good with them. The thing went off as soon as Carl set it into place. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill him, but all he lost was his thumb and index finger. He also left the print of his middle finger on one of the bomb fragments. We didn’t—”

He must have realized that both she and Dawson were gaping at him. Dawson hissed, “Son of a bitch.” Then he came out of his chair so suddenly it toppled backward.
“
Son of a bitch!
”

“What?” Headly demanded.

She wheezed, “Which hand? Which hand is missing fingers?”

“The left.”

She covered her gasp with her hand. Dawson spoke for her. “He’s Bernie.”

J
esus, I can’t tell you how glad I am to be ditching this old geezer.”

Carl pulled the loud pink shirt over his head, balled it up, and tossed it into the trash can. He popped a pair of contacts out of his eyes and sighed with relief. “Hate those damn things.” The contacts went the way of the shirt. They wouldn’t be needed again. Bernie wouldn’t be needed again.

Jeremy took two beers from the rusty refrigerator, twisted off the caps, and passed one to his father. “I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.”

“I didn’t expect to leave the island until tomorrow, but things were getting too hot over there.” As he exchanged plaid Bermuda shorts for a pair of khaki pants, he told Jeremy about the deputies who’d been at Amelia’s house earlier that day.

“Why so nervous? They weren’t looking for you.”

His son’s amusement annoyed him. “I haven’t escaped capture this long by being careless. Cops get close, I get as far away as possible as soon as possible.”

“You went to the writer’s house on Monday morning while the cops were there.”

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the place. But then you had gone and killed the wrong woman. Here you had crowed in my ear—by the way, you weren’t supposed to call me.”

“I’ve explained about burner phones, Daddy. They can’t be traced.”

“I don’t trust them. None of that technology shit. Don’t use the phone again. Anyway, you boasted that you’d killed Amelia. Next thing I know, Dawson Scott is at my back door and Amelia is cozied up in the passenger seat of his car! The following morning, I had to go over there to see what was what. For all I knew, they were telling her that her supposedly late ex-husband had killed her nanny.”

“A dead man can’t be suspected of murder.”

“You could have been identified by the guy who runs the filling station.”

“Not a chance. We shouted at each other through a downpour for ten, fifteen seconds tops, then he ran back into his shop. He was at least twenty yards away from me. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like. I’ll be a blur to him, too.”

“You’d better hope.”

“I don’t exactly look like a spit-and-polish Marine anymore,” he said, patting his expanded belly.

“What about the boat?”

“Taken care of.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Weapon?”

“At the bottom of the sound.”

“Because we’ve come too far with this to start making mistakes.”

“Nobody is after me. Okay?” Hitching his thumb over his shoulder, he said, “I picked up groceries, if you’re hungry.”

“In a while. I need to think.”

They sat in mismatched chairs and drank their beers. Jeremy was the first to speak. “How are my boys?”

“Good, last I saw them, which was Monday morning when I drove Amelia and them to the ferry. When I talked to her this afternoon, they were still at the curator’s house.”

Jeremy thoughtfully picked at a loose corner on the label of his beer bottle. “Do they ever talk about me?”

“Not that I’ve heard.” Noticing Jeremy’s pained expression, he said, “You haven’t been around for a long time. They’ll have to get to know you again.”

“When can we get them?”

“We’ve got to take care of Amelia first.”

Jeremy shifted in his seat. “About that, why don’t we just snatch the boys and disappear? Why does she have to die?”

“Because she would never give up looking for them, that’s why. You were married to her, you should know. Even after the law dusted their hands of ever finding them, she wouldn’t. She’s got the means to hire people to track us down. I don’t want to be worrying about that for the rest of my days. Better to simply—” He made a chopping motion.

“I guess,” Jeremy mumbled and took a swallow of beer.

“Needs to be soon, too.”

“You’re right. If we’re going to do it, let’s get it over with. I want my boys. The longer we wait, the dimmer their memory of me becomes.”

Carl murmured in agreement, but he was only half listening. Thinking out loud, he said, “Something’s not right.”

“Not right with what?”

“This situation.” He finished his beer, then got up and began to pace. “I feel like I’m missing something, and when you miss something, you get caught.”

“Amelia doesn’t suspect that I’m still alive, does she?”

“She’s given no indication of it. Even when I saw her today, she was definitely upset over the nanny, but she acted like herself and said her sweet good-bye to dear old Bernie. ‘Until next summer…’ Like that. She was sad to be closing up the house and leaving the beach. She loves that place. The kids, too. They play—” That sparked a thought. “Where are the pictures?”

“Bottom drawer of the bureau.”

“None of me, right?”

“No. First thing I looked for. I know how you feel about pictures of us. Mom told me that the maddest you ever got at her was when you caught her taking pictures of me as a toddler.”

That wasn’t the maddest he’d ever got at Flora, but Jeremy didn’t need to know that.

He found the pictures—apparently taken by Dawson Scott—in the drawer, paper-clipped together. He took them over to the dining table so he could spread them out for better viewing.

“Damn fool thing you did to get these,” he said to Jeremy as he joined him at the table.

“Curiosity got the better of me. I saw y’all leave, saw him jog over to her house and put something under the doormat. He was dressed up, so I figured he was going to dinner, too, and wouldn’t be back for a while. I got back to the
CandyCane
with time to spare.”

Carl still thought his son had been reckless to row a dingy to shore and then back to the boat. The margin for error had been huge. And for what? The photos seemed harmless enough, hardly worth the risk Jeremy had taken to obtain them.

Jeremy picked up a picture of his sons playing in the surf. “As long as he was at it, I wish he’d taken more shots of them and fewer of Amelia.”

“Why’d he take them at all?” Carl asked. “You checked him out on your computer?”

“Didn’t even have to dig. He’s exactly what he claims to be. He’s won prizes. He covered Afghanistan for his magazine. Just back from there, actually.”

“So what’s he doing down here?”

“Besides lusting for Amelia, you mean,” Jeremy said as he held up a photo of her.

“Feeling’s mutual, I think,” Carl said.

“Really?”

“Something’s there. She looked kinda sick when I told her I’d seen him with Stef.”

“Is she sleeping with him?”

“Do you care?”

“Not really. I’d be surprised, is all. Pregnancy killed her libido.”

Carl wasn’t convinced of Jeremy’s indifference when it came to Dawson Scott and Amelia, but his concerns about the man were much more serious. “What gets me,” he said, “is that this writer showed up out of nowhere, moved into the house next door to your ex-wife’s, and edged in on her and the boys.”

“You said yourself that he was running down the story of me, Darlene, and Willard.”

“That’s what I said, but…”

“What else could it be?”

“I don’t know,” Carl muttered. “That’s what worries me.”

“It makes perfect sense that he’d want to interview Amelia to get background stuff about our life together.”

“True. But it seems to me that he went to an awful lot of trouble to cover a murder trial in out-of-the-way Savannah.”

Jeremy blurted a laugh. “The man went to freakin’ Afghanistan for stories.”

Carl turned to Jeremy and must have telegraphed his rising anger, because his son’s amused grin collapsed. “Are you humoring your old man?”

“No, Daddy.”

“You think I’m getting soft in the head?”

“Of course not.”

“You think you’re smarter than me?”

“No! Jesus!”

“Others have thought they were. They didn’t listen to what I told them, and you know what? They’re either dead or fighting off queers in a goddamn prison.”

“Daddy, I—”

“The day you think you’re smarter than me—”

“I don’t think that.”

“Is the day somebody will take you down.” His left hand had been maimed, but his right hand worked just fine, and he emphasized those last words by poking Jeremy in the chest with his index finger. Carl held him in a hard stare for several moments more, giving the message time to sink in, then removed his hand and turned away. “I’ve worked up an appetite.”

They fixed thick sandwiches of deli meats and cheeses. The freezer wasn’t that great, so the ice cream was soft, but it tasted good. Over cups of coffee they continued their discussion.

Carl said, “Look, son, I get cranky sometimes. I know you’re eager to get your boys back. Hell, I can’t wait until we’re all together, either.”

“They’re gonna love British Columbia. I remember those days we spent there as the best time of my life.”

During one summer vacation, Carl had agreed to meet the Wessons—after so many years, even he had come to think of Randy and Patricia by that name—near Vancouver. They’d rented a cabin on a lake and had spent their days fishing, lazing about, and having cookouts on the shore.

They were scheduled to stay for two weeks. He and Flora left after six days. She’d cried when he’d made her leave, but he’d become anxious and paranoid. Even the patrolling park rangers made him nervous. It was never a good idea to stay in one place for too long.

As an afterthought, Jeremy added now, “That was the summer before my senior year. It’s the last time I remember feeling like a kid.”

“You had to grow up soon after that.”

Jeremy sipped his coffee and lapsed into a brooding silence that reminded Carl of Flora. He left the table and began to pace again.

Watching him, Jeremy asked, “Does your hip hurt?”

“No.”

“Then what’s with the face?”

“I still think that something is off.”

“Off?”

“Like I don’t have the full picture. I’m missing a critical piece and it’s nagging me.”

“What could it be?”

Carl scowled. “Hell if I know. I’m thinking.”