"Standing around cussing about the one we shot when I saw him. Could be hidden by now. Or I guess he could be down at the beach with the others."

I stopped to think and said, "But he's probably covering the road between here and the ferry."

Joey said, "Yeah. I guess. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense."

"Because their job is not to let us get out of here alive."

"That would be it."

"So, can we take out the ones watching the boat? I mean, if they're spread out, couldn't we just take them out one at a time?"

Joey stopped scanning the land between us and the Bodines and looked at me. "You okay with killing two more men?"

"I didn't say kill anybody. We could just knock them over the head or something, couldn't we?"

Joey returned to scanning the surrounding countryside as he spoke. He said, "Not unless you know something I don't. And I know how to take somebody out without making a sound. That's something I did learn from the Navy. But you don't do it by 'knocking 'em on the head or something.' You do it with a knife."

"That's not an option. I shot the guy back there because he was trying to shoot me. We are not going to start cutting throats."

Joey said, "It's not really a cut. It's actually more of a stab and twist thing."

"Joey."

"I know. I wasn't arguing to do it. I'm just explaining that you can't sneak up and bop a man on the head with the b.u.t.t of a gun like on Mission: Impossible and expect him to fall over without a sound and wake up later with a b.u.mp and tiny little headache. You hit a guy hard enough to knock him unconscious and you're probably gonna kill him anyway. And if you don't hit him pretty much hard enough to kill him, he's gonna squawk and bring in his buddies, who will shoot you full of little holes."

"I got it, Joey. The horse is dead and beat to h.e.l.l."

"Just trying to be helpful." Joey said, "So, what now? You're supposed to be the smart one."

Joey was talking too much, and he was doing it for a reason. He wasa"none too subtlya"trying to keep my mind off Susan, and, even though some part of my brain was able to a.n.a.lyze the conversation and realize what he was doing, it was still kind of working.

I said, "Well, I'm not an old Naval Intelligence man or an ex-cop, but it seems pretty obvious to me that the Bodines are going to be watching the road and the ferry. If we wait until dark, we can probably get by whoever's watching the road. By then, though, the ferry will quit running. Which doesn't really matter, since, like I said, they'd be watching it anyway. And we can't just run into the motel and scream for the cops, either. First of all, there aren't any. Second, we're the ones who killed someone out here today. These guys haven't done anything but look for us. All of which means we wait until dark, head toward the other end of the island, and see if we can find an unguarded boat along the way." I paused. "At least, that's what I think. You got a better idea, I'm all for it."

Joey said, "You're a very a.n.a.lytical person." I looked at him. He said, "And you're probably right."

An hour pa.s.sed. The sun shone directly overhead now, and Joey trotted off to check out the beach while I did reconnaissance on the road and Hayc.o.c.k's cottage. It wasn't easy, and, if I hadn't grown up hunting in the tangled forests along the Alabama River, I might never have picked out the outline of a lone man crouched in thick cover along the roadside. But I did pick him out, and I started to feel pretty confident that Joey and I could circle around him and get out well before sunset. And since it was just past noon, that was not an inconsequential discovery.

A little over thirty minutes after we split up, I returned to our hiding place nestled between a tall sand dune and a cl.u.s.ter of wild azaleas. Joey was waiting. I told him about the man guarding the sandy road leading away from Hayc.o.c.k's cottage and how I thought we could circle him in daylight. He agreed. Then the phone vibrated in my pocket.

I flipped it open and said, "Loutie?"

"Yeah. It's me. Let me talk to Joey."

I asked, "Are you in Seaside?"

She said, "It'd be better if I talked to Joey, Tom." And my face turned cool and clammy just as it had earlier when we were stuffing automatic weapons into little black bags.

"What happened?" She didn't answer. I said, "G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Loutie. What happened?" Joey reached for the phone but took his hand back when I met his eyes.

Loutie said, "It's Susan, Tom. Looks like they waited till we were all gone and sent somebody in here."

"She's gone. Is that what you're saying?"

Loutie paused, and I listened to three or four seconds of mild static. Then she said, "I'm sorry, Tom. Yes, Susan's gone, and it doesn't look good. The house was shut up. I could still smell gunpowder when I came in. And, I'm sorry, Tom, but somebody lost a lot of blood in the kitchen." She paused again and said, "There are drag marks, like feet or legs, from the blood in the kitchen to, well almost to, the front door."

My face and hands felt sleep-dead, and I lowered the phone. Joey pulled it from my hand, and, as if from a distance, I could hear him talking with Loutie. My cheeks p.r.i.c.ked with numbness, and a cruel claw began to stir my guts.

I felt movement and looked up to see Joey walk away to leave me to grieve in private. Time pa.s.sed, a lot of time, and sickness turned to anger and then quieted into stunned withdrawal, and I came to realize that Joey had been gone a very long time.

I was just rising to go in search of my friend when he stepped into view. Joey walked toward me, standing straight now, and said, "Let's go to the boat."

I looked at him without comprehending.

He said, "Come on, Tom. Let's go."

I asked, "What about the men? Are they gone?" Joey was silent, and I looked into his face. Surface calm masked pure rage.

Joey said, "They're dead."

I studied his face. "How many?"

As Joey turned in the direction of the beach, he said, "All of 'em."

This time Joey drove the open boat, and he gave me some time before he spoke again. We were a hundred yards off Carrabelle when Joey said, "Just so you'll know. I paid cash for the boat, but the guy at the marina knows we took it out and were headed for Dog Island. Not much we can do about that." I didn't feel like talking, and I didn't. He went on, "Not much to worry about, though. There's just one cop in Carrabelle. They don't even have a police station. The place is kinda famous for that. This cop just hangs around a phone booth and waits for it to ring." I looked at him. "No s.h.i.t. The town was famous for about five minutes twenty years ago when Johnny Carson talked about it on The Tonight Show."

Joey was trying, once again, to make me think about something other than Susan. I said, "You think we could talk about this later?" He gave up and concentrated on steering a course to The Moorings, which was fine with me.

The marina was open. We did not go back inside. We tied up the boat, loaded the Expedition, and left. Two hours later, as we cruised through the unsightly jumble of Panama City, Joey turned north onto Highway 231 and drove away from the coast.

I asked, "Where are we going?"

"Mobile. But right now, we're making a big d.a.m.n circle around Seaside."

Until then, I had thought of nothing but loss. Now, my mind conjured the too-vivid image of Susan lying in a pool of blood in that tacky designer cottage. I asked, "What about Susan and Loutie and the cottage?"

"Loutie's taking care of everything. By tonight, n.o.body'll ever know we were there. Rented under an alias. Loutie's doing cleanup."

Cleanup. What a nice, descriptive term. I said, "Why don't we just call the cops? As far as I'm concerned, all bets are off. Sanchez didn't protect anybody. What's he going to do? Threaten to kill me? The h.e.l.l with him."

"We don't need to do anything right now, Tom. We gotta get somewhere and think this mess out. You gotta realize, it ain't Sanchez or Purcell killing you I'm worried about. I mean, you know, that wouldn't exactly make me happy, but we got other problems too. We just left four dead guys piled in a beach house on Dog Island. What're we supposed to tell the cops? We were in a shoot-out, and they lost? h.e.l.l, three of 'em aren't even shot. How do you figure we're gonna explain two guys with their jugulars knifed open and one with a broken neck?" He turned to look at me, then turned back to watch the road. "s.h.i.t. I don't know. Maybe that is what we wanna do. But I'd kinda like to think about it before we volunteer for the electric chair."

I thought out loud. "Second degree or manslaughter. Wouldn't be the electric chair."

"Huh?"

I said, "Nothing," and closed my eyes. "Turn around."

"Why?"

I opened my eyes and looked out at the strip-mall and fast-food mess scattered across the north side of Panama City. "I want to go to Seaside."

Joey slowed, but he didn't stop. "That's a bad idea, Tom. You sure you wanna do it? 'Cause some major-league bad s.h.i.t has happened today, and we need to put some s.p.a.ce between us and..."

"You going to turn around?"

Joey mumbled, "Well, just f.u.c.k me," but he pulled into the parking lot of a Chevron station and circled back out heading south. Less than an hour later, we pulled up next to Loutie's car outside the rented beach house in Seaside.

I knocked on the canary door. No one answered. Joey called out, "It's us, Loutie. Open the door."

Immediately, the door swung aside, and Loutie motioned for us to hurry inside. She said, "You're not supposed to be here."

Joey looked down and shook his head from side to side. "Tell him that."

Loutie said my name, but I had already walked out of the room. In the kitchen, the gray metal boxes full of eavesdropping equipment had vanished. Our food was gone. Our presence had been erased, and so had Susan'sa"or, hopefully, someone else'sa"blood. I turned around and saw Joey and Loutie standing in the doorway, watching me.

Joey said, "There's nothing to see, Tom. We all need to get out of here fast."

I looked at Loutie. "Is Purcell still in Mobile?'

Joey cussed. Loutie didn't answer.

"Answer my question, Loutie. Where's Purcell?"

Loutie sighed and said, "He got back a little over an hour ago. I heard him come in before I unhooked the equipment."

I started out of the room, and Joey stepped in front of me. "Tom, let's talk about this a minute."

"Move."

Joey put his hand on my shoulder. He did it in a friendly way, but it was meant to stop me. "Let's just sit down..."

I looked up and met his eyes. "Get your hand off me, Joey." He smiled, but he didn't move the hand. "You can move, or I can move you."

Joey's eyes narrowed. "You sure you can do that?"

My hands trembled with adrenaline and rage. None of it was aimed at Joey, but he was in the way. I said, "Step aside, Joey."

Joey dropped his hand from my shoulder and surrendered with a grin. "Be a h.e.l.l of a fight. I'll say that much." He stepped to one side. "If you're gonna go, mind if I go with you?"

I said, "That's up to you," and walked through the living room and out through the front door.

I didn't look at beaches or birdhouses or pastel architecture. I watched my feet strike sand for a hundred yards, and I was on Purcell's front stoop. The k.n.o.b twisted easily in my hand. The door swung open, and I stepped inside. The huge beach house was quiet. I pulled the Browning from my waistband, chambered a round, and clicked off the safety; then I started in. Purcell's living room, dining room, and kitchen were all clean and cool, well-lighted and empty. The last room on the ground floor was his study, which was where I finally found what was left of the former University of Florida football great.

Closed blinds blocked out the afternoon sunshine. The only illumination was a cone of yellow light radiating from a bra.s.s ship's fixture suspended over the desk. Beneath the fixture, Purcell's lifeless form and the attendant handiwork of a deeply s.a.d.i.s.tic person stood out in sharp relief beneath the single lightbulb.

chapter twenty-seven.

Purcell hadn't been dead long, so the smells inside his air-conditioned study were the slaughterhouse odors of fresh blood and butchered meat. Whatever horrible things the man had done during his first forty years on the planet, he had paid for many times over during his last hour.

The heavily muscled ex-jock lay spread-eagle across a cherry partners' desk that had been cleared off and used as an operating table. Yellow seams of fat and jagged clumps of gray muscle protruded from a gaping incision extending across his belly; thick ropes of intestines had been pulled from the wound and draped over his sternum where they lay in a ma.s.s of thickening fluids. A blood and saliva-soaked hand towel had been stuffed inside his mouth to m.u.f.fle his screams.

Even as I wondered if the killer was still in the house, I found myself edging closer. Strange. The corpse was empty and flattened somehow, like a snakeskin nailed to a board to dry in the summer sun. And I could see now that that was close to the truth of it. The tortured body had been restrained by forty or fifty ten-penny nails driven through the skin of his arms and legs and through the outside of his rib cage. Under the glow of the overhead light, his thick neck shone like melted wax where the skin had been stretched out like gills on either side and nailed to the desktop. I gagged and gagged again as I stepped back away from the blood-soaked carpet. Stomach acid burned in my chest and against the sides of my throat.

I heard footsteps on the carpet behind me. I turned and saw Joey spin Loutie around and shove her out the door before closing it tight. He came up beside me. All he could say was, "What the..."

"I guess he didn't take Susan."

"I guess not." Joey took a tentative step forward before recoiling. "s.h.i.t, Tom. They even nailed his n.u.t.s.a.c.k to the desk. Who would do that?"

Joey didn't expect an answer, but I said, "He called him a 'mean-a.s.s spic'"

"Huh?"

"Nothing. I don't know."

Joey raised his voice. "Well, can we please get the f.u.c.k out of here now?"

"Let's go."

Joey moved out ahead of me, pushing Loutie ahead of him and pausing only twice to wipe two doork.n.o.bs clean of our fingerprints on the way out.

Back inside our rented beach house, we stopped in the living room to catch our breath. I was numb. Loutie looked like she was going to be sick. Joey's face had grown pale and hard, and his hands trembled at his sides.

Loutie said, "I've never seen anything like that." It was a stupid commenta"none of us had ever seen anything like thata"but stupid is what shock does to you.

Joey walked into the kitchen and came back with a gla.s.s of water for Loutie. She took a small sip.

Joey looked at me. "We need to go."

I asked, "Is the place clean?"

Loutie nodded.

I looked at the tough ex-stripper and asked, "Are you going to be okay? Can you drive?"

She nodded.

I said, "Joey. Drive her. I'll see you back at Loutie's house in Mobile."

Loutie shook her head as if trying to shake off the image from Purcell's study. "No. My car's jammed full of equipment and stuff. There's no room for Joey even if I wanted him to come with me, and I don't. I'll be fine. You two get out of here. I'm going to give the place a final once-over and I'll be right behind you."

Joey said, "We're not leaving you here."