P. Parrish - The Little Death

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

Cryer was surveying the scene, and when his eyes got to the brown spot in the pen’s sand where Byrne Kavanagh had been slashed, he let out a breath. Then he shook his head and walked over to one of his deputies.

Louis rose slowly from the cruiser. He was stiff, his muscles still releasing their adrenaline high. Beneath his bloody shirt, his skin hurt, but he couldn’t tell exactly where, so it felt like a million bee stings.

He shivered, looking around. There was no reason for him to stay here anymore. He saw Aubry coming toward him. He had taken off his denim jacket and held it out to Louis.

“Better put this on, son.”

Louis didn’t object. The jacket smelled like horses and was stained with Swann’s blood, but it was warm.

“That young fella gonna be okay?”

“Andrew’s going to be fine.”

Aubry gave a nod as he looked back at the cattle pen. Louis realized he was staring at something on the fence. It was the small sign that said archer preserve. He suspected Aubry was thinking about how he was going to tell Libby Archer what had happened here.

When Aubry turned back, Louis was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “I don’t have any way to thank you,” Aubry said.

“For what?”

“The truth.”

Louis just nodded.

“Come on, I’ll drive you back, and you can pick up your friend’s fancy little car.” They were halfway to the Jeep when Aubry paused. “I almost forgot. What about that kitten back in my bathroom?”

Louis closed his eyes. He’d forgotten about the damn cat. He couldn’t take it home.

“How about I keep the little fella?” Aubry said.

Louis smiled. “You’re a lifesaver, Mr. Aubry.”

Byrne Kavanagh was going to live. He would have a hell of a scar across his throat, and it would be months before he could talk, and even then, the doctors said his voice would likely sound as if his throat were lined with sandpaper.

Louis stepped from the elevator on the fourth floor of the Palm Beach County Hospital and walked down the hall toward Room 456. Louis had been here every day for the last three days, but so far, Kavanagh had been too weak or too drugged to make any kind of statement.

Louis hoped things would be different this afternoon. The extra days spent sitting around Reggie’s house waiting to wrap things up felt long and unproductive, despite the trickle of information that was still coming in.

The deputies had found four sets of footprints near the Bronco: Sam’s, made by the oversized boots she was wearing, which proved to be custom-made for her husband before his stroke and identical to the pair found in Reggie’s home.

Tink Lyons’s, made by her beaded slippers.

Byrne Kavanagh’s, made by brand-new loafers.

And a fourth set that led from the Bronco south toward the cattle pen, then veered straight west toward the asphalt road, where they simply stopped. They were made by a woman’s dress boot, size eight. Louis believed, without question, that it was the wearer of those boots who took the gun, fleeing the scene after Tink was killed. How she got back to Palm Beach was still a mystery.

Although she wasn’t Louis’s prime suspect, they had to check out Bianca Lee. It took the sheriff’s office only an hour to find out that she had hung a sign on her shop door that said CLOSED FOR THE SEASON and was boarding a plane to Madrid at almost the exact moment Louis and Aubry were racing toward the cattle pen. The unidentified boot prints could not be hers.

Which left Carolyn Osborn.

They had enough evidence to question her: her fingerprints in Sam’s Bronco and the bullet removed from Tink’s head, which turned out to be a German 9mm, made for a Luger or a P38, circa World War II. The deputies never found the gun, but everyone knew that Nazi militaria was the cornerstone of Tucker Osborn’s collection.

But Major Cryer was a cautious man, and, like Louis, he knew Carolyn Osborn would claim that as a friend of Sam’s, her prints had been left in her truck at another time. As for the German handgun, it had probably been dropped in a drainage canal by now, its brackets in Tucker Osborn’s gun cabinet mysteriously empty.

Which is why Cryer wanted to hear what Kavanagh had to say before he knocked on a senator’s door and started talking murder.

Kavanagh was the only person who could place Carolyn Osborn out at the cattle pen that night, making her as guilty as Sam of kidnapping, torture, the murder of Tink Lyons, and the attempted murder of Kavanagh. And if Louis could tie Carolyn to Kavanagh’s attack and the Orchid Society, he could link her to Mark Durand.

And Durand’s murder-premeditated and involving torture and decapitation-made the senator eligible for the death penalty.

Louis stopped at the door to Kavanagh’s room. There was a deputy seated outside, leafing through a magazine. Normally, there would be no reason to assign a cop to guard a victim, but Cryer’s cautiousness didn’t stop at the idea of ruining a political career without due cause. He reluctantly yielded to Louis’s insistence that not all of the killers in this case were dead and assigned the guard until Kavanagh was released.

The deputy outside Kavanagh’s room got up from his chair as Louis approached.

“Has Major Cryer been here?” Louis asked.

The deputy shook his head. “Not today. He had a long night and asked me to call him only if the guy was awake and talking.”

“Nothing yet?”

“No, sir. But if he says anything, let me know, okay?”

Louis nodded. “Will do.”

Kavanagh was awake, the bed elevated. His face was still bruised from Dickie Lyons’s assault, but it was his body that was jarring to see. He was bare to the chest, his skin marked with a web of cuts. An air tube protruded from the turtleneck of bandages that wrapped his throat.

Louis stepped to the side of the bed.

Kavanagh’s eyes slid to him, teary with pain.

“My name is Kincaid,” Louis said. “I’m an investigator. You up to talking to me?”

Kavanagh motioned weakly toward a small dry-erase board and a marker on the night table. Louis gave them to Kavanagh.

With everything the guy had been through, Louis didn’t want to be insensitive. The best thing to do was to keep his questions pointed so Kavanagh could supply one- and two-word answers.

“Who did this to you?” Louis asked.

Kavanagh wrote something and angled the board so Louis could read it.

DONT KNOW

“I’m sorry?” Louis said. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Kavanagh underlined his answer. DONT KNOW

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe this will help. You were found out on a ranch near Clewiston with your throat cut. Do you know how you got there?”

NO

Louis stared at the board, baffled. He had seen a lot of victims in his life, some so traumatized it took them weeks to put together a cohesive story. But they were usually visibly shaky and barely able to begin reliving the event. Kavanagh looked tired but in control. In fact, he seemed mildly annoyed.

But maybe his reluctance to talk was something else. He was only twenty-three, paid to provide sex to rich older women. Maybe he felt humiliated that he had been overpowered and almost killed by those same women.

“Look, Kavanagh,” Louis said. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. And if someone has a gun on you, you do what you’re told. I understand that. So will everyone else.”

NOT EMBAR

“Then tell me who took you to the pen and attacked you,” Louis said.

Kavanagh erased the board with his hand and wrote in hard slashes.

DONT KNOW

Louis glanced at the door, wondering if he should find a doctor and ask if Kavanagh had suffered some form of amnesia. Then he decided against it, not wanting some nurse to force him to leave. He’d find out himself what this kid remembered.