Greg Iles - Third Degree

He craned his neck over his shoulder and looked at the house. Worst case, what could be happening in there? Shields could be beating the hell out of his wife. He might even be threatening her with a weapon. Truth be told, Danny thought, he could have killed her already. But that was nuts. Warren Shields was no killer. Danny hated to make assumptions, but Shields wasn’t going to shoot the mother of his children-not for screwing somebody on the side. Maybe if he’d walked in on Danny doing her doggy-style in the conjugal bed… maybe. But certainly not based on hearsay evidence, which was all he could possibly have, barring a confession. Someone must have seen Danny and Laurel together somewhere. It could have been the hug they’d risked this morning. And that was easily deniable. Danny had coached Laurel on what to say in this type of situation; she knew to deny everything, no matter what.

He didn’t envy her having to bluff it out with her husband. Warren Shields was smart, and not just regular-doctor smart. Danny had known doctors who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel. But Shields wasn’t one of them. He was obsessive about everything he did. He had only been flying for a year, but he probably knew more aerodynamics than Danny did after thirty years in the cockpit. If Warren really suspected that Laurel was cheating on him, he’d tear at it like a bulldog until he was satisfied. On the other hand, he was like any other man. Deep down, he didn’t want to believe that his wife would open her legs for anyone but him. It just went against the grain of the masculine mind. If Laurel stuck to the plan and denied everything, she would be fine.

Danny wondered if he should risk sending a reassuring text message. If Warren had possession of Laurel’s secret cell phone, it was all over anyway. He would already have seen Danny’s message about “Star” going to Baton Rouge for the day. From that alone he could figure out everything. Even if Laurel had deleted that message as soon as she read it, Warren could trace the phone to Danny’s obliging friend. So where was the additional risk in texting her? Another possibility was that Laurel’s clone phone was stashed safely in her car, as it should be. But Danny knew from experience that she sometimes risked taking it into the house with her. At least on those occasions she always set it to SILENT. His only other option-the only one that didn’t involve losing Michael-was reporting a Peeping Tom at the Shields house. Or better yet, a bomb threat. The Sheriff’s Department would have to go inside, then. But if Laurel had things under control, that kind of intrusion would only make things worse. Best to leave it at sending a reassuring text message.

“Hey there!” called a scratchy male voice in the upper register. “You lost or something?”

Danny looked across the passenger seat at the sunburned face of a bald man in his late seventies. “No, sir. Just sitting for a minute.”

“You making a delivery out here?”

“Nope.”

“I thought you might be bringing me my crossties.”

“Pardon?”

The man spread his arms as far as they would go. “Railroad ties! To border my garden, shore up the bank.”

Danny smiled. “No, sir. But I’ve used some of those myself, now and again.”

The man stared at him as though awaiting an explanation of what Danny was doing on this street.

“Well,” Danny said, grinding the truck into gear. “I guess-”

“Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Sure! I saw you in the newspaper. Something about the war. Iraq or somewhere. You won some medals over there, right?”

Military fame is a funny thing. You can leave a town as a pimply faced teenager and not come back for anything but funerals, but as long as you have a living relative there, or somebody still remembers you, your picture will pop up in the Sunday paper above an announcement of your latest promotion or, rarely, an item trumpeting the receipt of a medal for bravery under fire.

“No, sir,” Danny lied. “I’m over from McComb, checking out sites for cellular towers.”

The man’s face scrunched into a near parody of suspicion. “ Cell towers? Here in Avalon? Now listen, we got restrictive covenants against that kind of thing.”

“Is that right?”

“Damn straight we do! That’s why these lots are so expensive. You need to just drive on down to Lake Forest or Belle Rive, mister. Ain’t gonna be no cell towers round here.”

“I reckon not,” Danny said, smiling. “My mistake. Thanks again.”

“Don’t thank me. You get on out of here.”

Danny drove off, wanting to make a last pass by Laurel’s house, but knowing he was already late for a flying lesson with a lady lawyer. He wondered if the old man had noticed that his truck had Lusahatcha County plates.

Warren held the barrel of his revolver against Laurel’s right ear as he searched a pantry drawer with his free hand. His motions were jerky, his breath bad. He hasn’t brushed his teeth since yesterday, Laurel realized. Her left cheek stung as though someone had poured acid over it, and when she ran her fingers over the skin, she felt hard particles embedded in her flesh. Gunpowder. The idea was too surreal to fully accept. Then Warren lifted a heavy roll of duct tape from the pantry drawer.

He’s gone over the edge, she thought. I’m in serious fucking trouble here.

“Get back into the great room,” Warren said, shoving her ahead of him, driving her through the kitchen and back down to the sectional by the coffee table. When Laurel reached the sofa, he forced her down onto it.

“Lie on your back,” he ordered.

“Warren-”

“Shut up!” He ripped a long strip of tape off the silver-gray roll and wrapped it tight around her ankles.

“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand.”

“You understand, all right. It’s because I can’t trust you. You’ve proved that.” Another long strip of tape tightened around her ankles. “All that remains is to find out how deeply you’ve betrayed this family.”

“Warren, you don’t have to do this. Can’t we just talk?”

“Sure we can.” A false smile split his lips. “Tell me why you’re so afraid of me looking into your computer, and I’ll send you on your way right now.”

Send me on my way? What the hell does that mean? Freedom? Or death?

“More love letters?” Warren asked. “Pictures? What? Just tell me where the files are, and you can sit with me and have a glass of pinot noir while we look at them together.”

She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

He nodded slowly, as though settling something in his mind. “Every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie.” He wrapped two more lengths of tape around her calves. “I ought to tape your goddamn mouth shut. Hold out your arms.”

Laurel began to cry. She didn’t want to, but the realization that she was now helpless was overwhelming. Not in her deepest troughs of guilt had she imagined something like this. Warren bound her wrists with the thick tape, then pulled her into a sitting position.

“Don’t move unless I tell you to.”

He dropped the tape roll onto the coffee table and retrieved her Vaio from the kitchen, where he’d left it. He set it up on the coffee table again, carefully plugging in the AC cable, which looked as though it had suffered minor damage when Laurel ripped the computer loose. “Let’s see if this baby survived your little escape attempt.” He pressed the power button, avidly watching the screen.

Laurel prayed that the Sony’s hard drive had been smashed, but a moment later she heard the halting mechanical sounds of the computer booting up. Then the clicking stopped. Prematurely, she thought. Warren’s face was taut. He unplugged the Sony, removed its battery, shook the computer, then reinserted the battery and plugged the AC cord back in. This time the Vaio booted normally.