John Miller - Too Far Gone

“My former partner. We worked together for six years.”

“You failed to mention to me that you brought him in,” Alexa said.

“I just told you.”

“I’m not always good with time lines, but you mean to tell me your ex- partner wasn’t already watching Decell’s house when we were at River Run?”

“You think I’d keep information from you on purpose? I didn’t think it was important, I guess. I didn’t know for sure how Decell was involved.”

“Gosh, Michael, I sure hope not. If I thought I couldn’t trust you, I’d be really upset. You are the one who pulled me into this mess,” she said, anger rising.

“Casey West did that,” he protested.

“If I hadn’t been in Casey West’s kitchen, she would never have asked for me. Who was it that woke me in the middle of the night, and placed me there?”

“Not like you were asleep.”

“Is this about who gets the credit?”

“No! Look, I wanted to compile more before we had a meeting to assimilate our separate findings and make a plan for bringing this to a joint close. Sometimes I play things close to the chest. Habit. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Alexa said. “Clean slate. So what have you compiled so far from Fugate’s?”

Leland’s mouth was packed with a large wad of Juicy Fruit and he was humming a song his daddy used to sing all the time. Something about me ho my toe down the bayou. Leland’s boat pulled the wardens’ piece of crap flat-bottom easily. Leland’s father had said his son had eyes like razor blades. That morning when he was leaving to check lines and get gas, he had spotted the tree camera because the sun made the thing cast a shadow where he’d never seen one. He had searched the bank and found the place where a boat’s hull had pressed reeds down and left the impression of its bow in the mud, so he followed the boot prints across the peninsula to the suspect tree and looked at the camera from the side.

He had known that whoever had put it there would come back for it, and when they did, he’d make sure they paid for invading his place and spying on him. He remembered now that he had spotted the game wardens several times in the past two weeks, far more often than he usually saw wardens. One had been the bastard whose name was something that sounded like pump handle. The bastard had ticketed Leland more than a few times over the years, so he knew him.

Nobody liked them wardens.

Nobody would miss them.

Even if one was a woman.

He had never made a woman disappear before.

Their boat was aluminum.

Leland truly loved his boat’s shallow-draft fiberglass hull, but he was suspicious that Doc was going to try to pull a take-back deal. Doc had told Leland not to tell anybody he owned the boat or where he’d gotten it. He couldn’t see why he should tell a lie about it, so he’d told Moody it was his on account he did a job to get it. Leland didn’t like liars. Well, you could lie to wardens, because they were sneaky bastards that thought they owned the birds, the fish, and everything else God put around the world.

Most people couldn’t be trusted to do what they said. They’d say they just wanted to talk to you, then they’d handcuff you, lock you up, and stick needles in you and say you were crazy.

Leland knew that he was only safe from being monitored deep in the swamp, because they wouldn’t ever dare come in here. He had fixed it so if they ever did somehow track him to his cabin, they’d never get a chance to tell any of the others about it.

The boat was his because he had done everything Doc and the woman with the dark hair told him he had to do for it. If they kept adding things onto the list as long as they felt like it, Leland would have no choice but to fix them both good.

Every time Leland turned around and finished one thing, they had this next thing that needed to be done, and Doc went on about how they only trusted Leland to do it right, and how much the boat was worth, like he wasn’t close to being even.

Doc said an FBI lady was fixing to make trouble, and what they might need to do about that, which meant what Leland might need to do. Doc said she could put Leland back in the hospital for keeps. Okay, if the FBI lady really had a mind to put Leland back in there and let them bastards shoot electricity into his head and all that, he’d knock her in the head. If need be, he would.

Well, maybe he could do one or two more things. It was a nice boat.

Grace Smythe unlocked her door and entered carrying packages containing clothes and things she’d be needing. She was surprised to see a paper bag and a bottle of wine and a glass on her kitchen table. Inside the sack were several stacks of new currency.

Grace smiled. She had expected the money, but the wine was unexpected lagniappe — a little something extra.

She picked up the stacks of new one-hundred-dollar bills. It would be fifty thousand dollars-traveling money.

She went into the bedroom and dropped the bags she’d brought in, as well as the sack of cash. She rushed into the bathroom and started hot water running into the tub.

Back in the kitchen, she opened the wine. Grace took the bottle and the glass with her to the bathroom, where she tested the water. The way to appreciate a good vintage was to open your pores with hot water, and sip the wine slowly, savoring the fragrance, the richness, the variety of flavors.

She poured herself a glass and took a test sip. She rested the glass on the side of the tub, and scooted the bottle to the floor so she wouldn’t knock it over accidentally. You didn’t waste wine this good. Not this special a Burgundy.

Lowering her pants and sitting on the toilet, she sighed as relief swept through her like a warm wave. After she finished, Grace stepped out of her slacks and underpants and removed her blouse and bra. Standing naked before the door mirror, she admired her body for several long seconds, turning first one way and then the other, trying to see her buttocks. She could stand to lose a few ounces, perhaps pounds, and inches here and there.

She put in her blue contacts, removed her wig, took out the hairpins, and shook out her bleached blond hair, which reached almost to her shoulders. Using her fingernails, she scraped the gold studs from her ear. Using cotton and polish remover, she rubbed the glue residue that held them on, and slipped on a pair of dark-framed eyeglasses. You are not Grace Smythe anymore. After tonight, Grace Smythe is no longer.

She turned again to look at herself in the mirror, and smiled. She looked, if not just like Casey, like her actual sister. They had always been sisters. Thinking about Casey made her feel giddy, and she blushed. She hugged herself, closed her eyes, and imagined she was in Casey’s embrace, feeling Casey’s beautiful body against hers, their tongues entwined.

Soon it would all be over, and Casey would be hers alone. Grace understood, far better than Casey, that Gary had never belonged in their world. He said he loved Casey, but he could never love her like Grace did. He said he loved Deana, but, despite what he said, Deana was more Grace’s daughter than his. The fact that he had given his sperm didn’t mean anything. There were laboratories that did that without the complications a man brought to a situation. And the lily-hearted asshole had been going to give twenty-five million of Casey’s money to a bunch of Africans for drugs and food, and who gives a shit if they die like they’re supposed to anyway.

Grace had taken care of Gary-taken the bull by the horns. Now, after tonight, Gary would be no more. Casey would understand once and for all that it was Grace alone who loved her-only Grace who cared about the real Casey LePointe. Darling Casey, the girl whom Grace had been with until she was a woman-a woman who had given her heart to Grace as children, who had shared all of her pain, insecurities, and her sadness with Grace alone.