John Miller - Too Far Gone

“You mean Unko? Ken Decell?”

“I mean anybody. I know it’s going to be hard, but can you do that for me?”

“Anything you say, but…You can’t mean even Grace?”

Alexa nodded solemnly. “Normally I wouldn’t be sharing as much as I have, but since you’re responsible for my involvement, I’m breaking protocol a lot more than I should. Protocols are in place for good reason. It dictates we share almost no information with a possible suspect, or anyone who might share our information with someone who might be involved, and giving you premature information that could change has obvious drawbacks and risks, putting you through needless emotional turmoil, or might give you unrealistic expectations. I’m making an exception here because I think you need to know certain things so you might see something we don’t or make some connection we wouldn’t that’s useful in locating your husband.”

“Okay,” Casey said softly. “Nobody. I promise.”

“You should also understand I’m not warm and fuzzy when it comes to my work, and what I tell you may seem blunt or harsh. I hope you’ll understand that it isn’t because I don’t empathize with you. Empathy can be detrimental. Casey, I promise you I’m going to do everything I can possibly do to find Gary, but you have to understand that I might not succeed. As much as I hate to say so, there are no guarantees. I’m not in control of this, and may not ever be. But I will do everything in my power to resolve this satisfactorily.”

“I’m really much tougher than I look,” Casey said.

“I’m sure you are. I need Grace’s social, phone numbers, and her current address,” Alexa said, taking out her notebook.

A fly landed on Leland’s top lip and crawled right into his nose like it lived there. He turned, pinched his nostril to pin it, closed his mouth, pressed his index finger to close the clear nostril, and expelled the stunned fly out into the shallows, where a minnow ate it right off the surface, then vanished into the murk. What he was doing wasn’t hard work, but it was time-consuming, and he had things to get done.

Overhead, a line of honking geese churned the air as they rose from the bayou. Turning from his task, Leland watched the flowing line of geese start to straighten, and he smiled at how the birds formed up into a flying V. How could they learn such precision, know a letter of the alphabet like that, with brains no bigger than a rat turd.

After field-dressing them-removing their innards so they couldn’t float up-Leland had filled the empty cavities of the corpses with chunks of concrete, then tied up their torsos with nylon rope. Blood had made the deck so slippery, he had to move carefully to keep from falling. He had decided to bait some gator hooks on the way back to camp so he wouldn’t waste time. He didn’t want the warden’s boat, because the twin engines were smaller than his one, and it was too sloppy in the turns for his taste. Before he’d got the better boat from Doc, he mighta kept it and painted it and used it to work out of, but his boat was a lot, so he didn’t mind scuttling theirs.

As he approached the last gator hook, hanging over the water from a tree limb, he slowed and let the vessel coast in under the tree. A fat cottonmouth swam across the water, sitting up so high it didn’t appear to be getting wet as it made for the shore, vanishing into the reeds. Leland wished he could catch it and put it in with the others, but he didn’t have time just then, and he’d find one just as big when he did.

Leland took the last piece of meat off the bone and baited the hook with it. After he was satisfied that the tendon would make the meat difficult for the gators to steal off the hook, he looked at the way the sock was rolled down under the ankle before throwing the leg bone, socked foot and all, up into the weeds onshore.

“Grace isn’t involved,” Casey insisted. “I know her like I know myself. Better even.”

“I have to check out everybody who’s involved with you and Gary on a regular basis. It’s standard operating procedure to look first at everyone close and work our way out. Make me a list as soon as you can. For the time being, I’m assuming that whoever did this knew yours and Gary’s schedule-when he’d be where.”

“Grace Smythe. One twenty-three Durban Place. I’ll make up a list of our other friends and close associates and their addresses and phone numbers.”

“Okay,” Alexa said.

The phone rang.

“Grace’ll get that,” Casey said. “Every time it rings I pray it’s a kidnapper just asking for some money. If they ask, I can pay the ransom. You wouldn’t interfere with that, would you, Alexa? If an exchange got messed up and Gary suffered for it, I couldn’t live with myself.”

“It’s totally your decision, Casey. I’ll make suggestions based on my experience, though, and you’d be smart to take them. If you get a demand, you should let me know immediately.”

“They usually say not to tell the police, don’t they?”

“Yes, but they won’t know you did.”

After a few seconds spent in silence, Grace Smythe, wearing a worried expression, came back with a chilled bottle of water in her hand and gave it to Alexa absently and unopened. “It’s Lucille Burch. The bottle blonde with the sharp nose and whiny voice. The reporter, or whatever she calls herself.”

“What does she want?” Casey asked.

“She told me she wants to get your reaction to something.”

“Gary?”

“No. She says that she’s been told that the Danielson woman is out of the hospital. She’s trying to confirm the story before she puts it on the air.”

Casey gasped.

Alexa knew who Sibby Danielson was, but not that she had been released from the hospital she’d been committed to after murdering Casey’s parents twenty-six years before.

“Don’t talk to her,” Alexa advised. “Grace, tell her Casey has no comment.”

“No comment always looks worse than anything people say,” Grace insisted.

“I know Lucille Burch,” Casey said. “She’ll never give up.”

“She’s likely just looking to get her facts in line and spice up a story by getting you to tell her something she doesn’t yet know is true,” Alexa said. “She probably doesn’t know about Gary’s disappearance yet, or she wants to get confirmation if she has caught wind of it. You shouldn’t talk to the press until the time is right, and I don’t think it is.”

“I’d think you’d want people calling in tips,” Grace told Alexa.

“We need good tips, but we don’t have the manpower to run down hundreds. So far we’re lucky not to have to deal with the complications the media would provide. When the time is right, we’ll fill them in and ask for their help if we think it’s in Gary’s best interest. I’ve been here before. Trust me. With the hurricane heading this way, and nothing from you to fuel chasing after Sibby rumors or looking into a tip about Gary, she’ll probably put it on a back burner. When and if we decide to announce that Gary has been abducted, we’ll get maximum exposure. Let’s give it a few hours before we make that call. If this is a kidnapping, the perps probably will be watching the news, and the media will make any coming and going unobserved very difficult.”

“You could say she doesn’t concern you,” Grace told Casey. “You could say if she’s cured, it’s cool, or something like that.”

Casey’s eyes went from Alexa to Grace and back. “Tell Burch I said this is the first I’ve heard about it. Tell her I won’t involve myself in speculation.”

Alexa nodded. “Grace, tell her Casey has no knowledge about Ms. Danielson nor any comment at this time.”