Move to Strike (59 page)

‘I need you to be quiet and listen to me,' said the very pregnant woman before her.

‘You need to get the hell out of this conference room,' returned Amanda, moving from behind her desk.

‘This trial ends now.'

‘Excuse me?' Amanda could not believe what she was hearing. ‘Are you completely delusional?'

‘Your star witness isn't coming.'

A disbelieving Amanda took a breath. ‘If you are referring to Doctor Logan I can assure you he will be here for the afternoon session. What the hell is your problem, Miss Davis?' The woman was really starting to piss Amanda off. ‘Has your boyfriend done a runner? I know you have been absent for most of the week, Miss Davis, but in case he hasn't told you, he is losing this one big time – the jury know it, the press know it, and judging by Cavanaugh's mysterious disappearance this morning, he knows it too.'

‘Katherine de Castro is dead,' said Sara.

‘What?
Who?
' None of this was making sense.

‘Logan's business partner. The good doctor found out she knew what he was up to, so he shot her.'

‘I don't understand,' said Amanda, trying to take it all in. ‘When? Where?'

‘Late last night or early this morning at her Back Bay home. The police are at the scene now.'

‘I don't believe this.' And in that moment it was like a million butterflies were released inside Amanda's head, thousands upon thousands of illusive little details – and she knew that once they came to rest, the one thing she had been missing (or perhaps ignoring), would finally become clear.

‘And that is why David was . . . ?' She called him David, and she saw Sara flinch.

‘He found her – along with Joe Mannix and Frank McKay.'

Amanda shook her head, as if assisting the butterflies in their mission to find a place to rest.

‘How can I be sure what you are telling me is true? I mean, Logan has a stellar record, he is America's sweetheart, his son shot his wife. He . . .'

‘Carleton Blackmore and William Dukes run and work at a gun shop in Las Vegas called Hunting Rifles Inc., and Jeffrey Logan, whose real name is Jason Nagol, has been buying weapons from them for decades. He owned the rifle that killed his wife – but laundered it through the Garretsons so as to erase any link to his culpability. Deirdre McCall is Logan's mother; Logan killed his father years ago and so far has made two attempts on his mother's life. Michael Lopez is the Las Vegas detective investigating McCall's recent shooting which Logan arranged via his links to organised crime.'

Amanda realised what Sara was doing – she was rattling off the people on that mystery witness list, the one Logan claimed to know nothing about. ‘Where is Logan now?' she asked, the fluttering finally starting to abate.

‘We believe he is either on his way to, or already in, Chatham, Cape Cod.'

‘Does he have a weekender there?'

Davis hesitated. ‘We believe so – or one of sorts.'

Amanda nodded. ‘What is it you want from me?' she asked after a pause.

‘I . . . we, my boss Arthur Wright and I, we want you to call the State Police and arrange for us to fly to Chatham by helicopter.'

Sara was referring to the State Police's Airwing Section. The Massachusetts State Police had the largest and most comprehensive full-time public safety aviation unit in New England, and considering Amanda Carmichael was a high-ranking ADA, she had the power to call one of their three bases and organise a transport ASAP.

‘Where is your partner?' she asked.

‘I am not exactly sure,' answered Sara, and Amanda noticed her shudder. ‘But if I know David, he is already on his way to Chatham.'

Amanda met her eye, and in it she saw the controlled panic, which was when the butterflies finally settled and she moved back behind her desk.

‘I'll need to confirm all of this with Mannix,' she said.

‘All right,' said Sara.

‘But first I'll call the MSP's base in Plymouth,' she said. ‘And see if they have a chopper that can pick us up at Logan Airfield. I am coming with you, Miss Davis. It is my duty as the prosecutor on this case.'

Sara did not argue, simply let out a sigh of relief.

‘Thank you,' she said, as Amanda picked up the phone.

And then, as Amanda got on to MSP headquarters, and waited to be put through to the Airwing Service in Plymouth, her eyes lifted to meet Sara's once again.

‘I suppose I should say I am sorry,' she said.

‘What for?'

And Amanda knew her apology had nothing to do with the Logan case – and the look in Sara's pale aqua eyes told her that she knew it too.

‘For persisting.'

‘It's okay,' said Sara. ‘To me, it doesn't count if your persistence was never returned.' A question rolled up in a statement.

‘Never,' said Amanda, a half lie.

And Sara nodded with the slightest of smiles, just as the Airwing Commander came on the line.

Jeffrey Logan could smell it. It was a subtle aroma, the salty, organic scent of the ocean and the plant and marine life that resided beneath it.

He had heard the early forecast and spent the better part of the morning
waiting for the fog to come. He had sat out on the deck, watching the fishermen leave the dock and marvelling at the powerful harbour seals that had followed them out in hope of snaffling the rejects of their catch. And now, as he walked along the scenic Shore Road into the tiny township of Chatham, he could not only smell it but
feel
it, the periphery of its ghostly mass licking across the water – the living, breathing, incoming fog that within the hour would swallow the little seaside town in a dense and impenetrable mist and give Logan (who was wearing dark glasses and a low-riding Red Sox cap), a natural cover of anonymity.

They would be looking for him. They would know he had taken her car. Of course it was garaged now, hidden at the back of his whitewashed timber-shingled cottage, but they would find him, David Cavanaugh would find him, and the thought of it was
bliss
.

Killing Katherine was sublime. Witnessing Stephanie's ultimate demise was satisfying but given the nature of the situation – the fact that his children had
intervened
– meant that it was nowhere near as enjoyable as it should have been. In effect they had robbed him of the experience – but at the very least, they were paying for it now.

But killing Katherine was sublime. He had known what she was up to the moment she brought up the Davis woman.
I mean, seriously, how Goddamned stupid did she think I was
? He had been wrong about her, he knew that now. The bitch would never have gotten off her high fucking horse no matter how much he worked on her. She did not deserve him. She'd had the audacity to think she was
better
than him – and deep down he knew that she had always believed that he should be the one bowing and scraping to
her
. She thought she had discovered him, but in reality it was he who discovered
her
. He would have become the identity that he was with or without her fucking assistance, and the fact that she had been more than happy to spend close to the last twenty years riding his coat-tails just proved what a fucking sponge she was.

That is why killing her had brought him such pleasure, seeing the shock on her face as he casually walked into the living room a good two hours after he had left. Watching her eyes widen and her skin sit up in a million miniature bumps of horror as he pointed the trusty little Smith and Wesson .38 at her head and pulled the trigger.

The weapon was so light and reliable, like a diffident little friend. Not
that there was anything modest about the hole it left in Katherine's forehead; he gave her a third eye so that she could stop using the other two to spy on him – fucking Goddamned whore.

Taking her keys had been easy – she left them on the hallway dresser as she always did, and she was in too much of a flap to notice him slide his hand over them and scoop them into his pocket as she showed him out the door.

He knew they were listening – he had felt the rise of wire under her bra. He even saw the van out the front, and it took all of his restraint not to wander on over to the tinted windows and offer Cavanaugh and his useless detective pal a friendly how-de-do!

So now they knew, and Logan was glad of it. Hell, the thought of Cavanaugh seeking him out was enough to make him . . . well, let's just say, for fear of drawing attention to himself, he had to send the thought away as he neared the strip of colourful shops and cafés that sat like decorations along the scenic Main Street.

He would create another identity as he had done so many times before. He might even travel abroad, start somewhere fresh, find himself a woman and . . .

And then he felt it, that delectable tingle of anticipation that rose like a tide inside him. He had not expected it to come so quickly, but there it was nevertheless, prompted by the sight of the elderly ginger-haired woman now walking quickly up the other side of the street. It was Cavanaugh's secretary – the self-important one who paraded around Cavanaugh's place of business like a fucking mother hen. She was here. They knew!

And so Logan could not help but smile as he crossed the street and settled into a rhythm behind her, the mist now swelling around him, as he took a long slow breath of it and revelled in the ecstasy of what was to come.

It was like someone turned off the lights. From the moment David crossed the Segamore Bridge onto the Cape, the fog swallowed him whole. For much of the trip he had used Joe's portable siren light. But it would be of no use to him now as he made his way through the soup that covered Route 6, and thickened by the minute as he tracked east towards Chatham.

His cell phone had been ringing incessantly, but he hadn't bothered to pick it up. Logan had made this personal the moment he slaughtered Stephanie and proceeded to drag David's loved ones into his sick little game of cat and mouse. Now Nora was down here – alone – thanks largely to David's determination to beat his murderous nemesis. He would find her, and make her safe, before hunting Logan down and ending this thing for good.

‘This is Mannix,' said Joe, raising his voice over the siren. He and Frank had taken one of the Boston Police Department's blue and whites the minute they realised their unmarked sedan was missing, and they had been flying down the freeway ever since.

‘Chief,' said FBI Agent Susan Leigh, ‘Martinelli just gave me the heads up.'

Joe had asked his CSU commander Dan Martinelli to take control of the forensics end of this investigation while he and Frank high-tailed it to the Cape.

‘I'm sorry, about the business partner and all,' she said, and Joe knew that she meant it.

‘Me too. You got news on the gravy boat?' he asked, knowing there was no time for chitchat, and Susan would not expect it.

‘Yeah. Cavanaugh was right. We enlarged the gravy boat and enhanced the reflections using video imaging capability software, then we used a colour video printer with the most superior resolution on the planet to capture the images frame by frame and effectively freeze the reflections. The script is word for word, Chief. You have the fucker.'

But Susan had no idea how wrong she was.

Deirdre McCall was starving but she daren't leave her room, at least not yet. She was staying at the Chatham Bars Inn – one of the most expensive places on the Cape – with no means of paying the bill whatsoever. She had given the desk reception manager her credit card (knowing that even if they traced it, it would soon be over one way or the other), before calling upon her skills as a performer to spin a story about her retired corporate executive husband who would be joining her in a day or two.

She'd had no choice. The resort was the only place in the township with
a view of his cottage – the inn's main building sitting like a historical bastion of yesteryear, its semicircular form capturing sweeping views of the waterfront cottages and the silver ocean beyond.

And early this morning her patience had finally paid off. She had seen him, she had
seen him
after all these years, and sadly and yet not unexpectedly, she felt no sadness or maternal nostalgia at all, only anger and determination and resolve.

And so, she would wait, her empty stomach rumbling as the sea mist engulfed the quaint east-facing balcony and shrunk her visibility to zero. She would wait at least an hour until the fog was at its thickest before making her way down towards his bunker. And then she would confront her son and do what she should have done all those years ago – put an end to this thing, once and for all.

Nora Kelly had been at the Captain's Table for over an hour, eating her chowder slowly, hoping beyond all hope that Deirdre McCall might walk in the café's front door at any moment, and order a late seafood lunch. But the likelihood of that happening was diminishing by the minute, given it was now half-past two. So Nora took a calculated risk and approached the waitress at the cash register, knowing that she needed to locate McCall by nightfall, and that she was running out of time.

‘Excuse me,' she said. ‘But I was wondering if I might ask for your help?'

‘Your chowder okay, ma'am?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Nora, with a smile. ‘It was delicious but . . . the thing is, I have come to the Cape to look for my sister.' It was a reasonable lie, given she and Deirdre did look somewhat alike. ‘She is in Chatham on a brief vacation and she told me on the phone last night that she had enjoyed a number of meals here, and given today is her birthday, I drove down from Boston in the hope of surprising her and . . .'

‘I am sorry,' said the woman. ‘I haven't been working here for most of the week and . . .'

‘Is this the woman that other girl was ringing about?' asked a voice from behind, a young man, who had obviously overheard their conversation from just inside the kitchen.