Randy White - Hunter's moon

“Wray’s plane caught fire after it landed. No survivors. Suggestive?”

“You know more than you realize…”

Significance…?

“… one of them a brilliant plastic surgeon, near a volcano in Nicaragua…”

“You’ve been following events in Panama…”

“Thomas Farrish is the most dangerous man on earth…”

“Not the only reason I chose you. You’ll figure it out…”

Nicaragua… fire… Managua… fire.

Nicaragua… burn scars…

“You are the perfect man for the job, Dr. Ford. When I visit you at the lab, I’ll sign a photograph for your son…”

Fire. My son.

How does the president know I have a son?

As I slept, random data sparked until it catalyzed the old, familiar dream. Once again, I was returned to that place, suffocating with dread, and the stink of flames fueled by innocence.

Fire.

I sat up, sweating in the chill, gray light of a November morning, seeing water, the sailboat’s mast, relieved to know it was only that damn dream. Again. But the relief was soon replaced by a sickening awareness.

After landing safely, a chartered plane caught fire in the jungles of Nicaragua.

I now understood the significance.

Seven people had been burned alive, one of them a plastic surgeon. I knew their murderer.

Praxcedes Lourdes.

It was the sociopath who had kidnapped my son, who maintained contact with Laken even after being extradited to Nicaragua. Writing letters or e-mails, describing his “symptoms,” and discussing behavioral anomalies caused by injury and birth defects. A predator’s ruse to keep the prey within grasp.

Prax was out. The Man Burner was free. He was killing again.

Tomlinson was in the aft bunk, asleep, but the president was gone.

I felt a moment of panic but then took stock. It was an hour before sunrise. The world was shades of charcoal and pearl, a few stars showing. But there were dock lights and sodium security lights on the island. I could see that our dinghy was tied next to a boathouse a hundred yards away. I stuffed my shoes in the back of my fishing shorts, jumped from the stern, and swam.

The main house and outbuildings were Mediterranean-style salmon stucco with roofs of red tiles. The lawn hadn’t been tended in weeks and the pool was clogged with palm fronds. I assumed the place was empty but banged on the back door, anyway. No response. The door was locked.

I pressed my face to the window and saw furniture covered with white sheets and a television that had to be twenty years old. The island was a multimillion-dollar property, but seldom used.

“Ford. I’m in here.” Wilson was outside the boathouse, wiping his hands on a mechanic’s rag. Behind him, the horizon was banded silver, silhouetting the tops of trees. He turned and disappeared, closing the door behind.

Unlike the other buildings, the boathouse was a remnant of Old Florida: cypress-shingled, built on low stilts, barn-sized, large enough to house one of the elaborate wooden yachts from that period.

But there was no yacht. Instead, when I stepped through the door I found the president standing on the pontoon of a single-engine airplane. Amphibious-it could land on water or a runway. He had the engine cowling open.

Hoping I was wrong, I said, “Praxcedes Lourdes-was it him? Is he the one who… attacked Mrs. Wilson’s plane?”

The president turned in my direction, holding an oil dipstick, then returned his attention to the engine. “I knew you’d figure it out.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure of my sources.”

“Then that explains why you came to me. You know what Lourdes did to my son.”

“Motivation is important.” Wilson turned again, briefly. His expression had changed, as if a mask had slipped. “I want that son of a bitch. And you’re going to help me get him.”

“Then you were right. I’m the perfect man for the job.”

“I told you you’d get used to it.”

“But my son-”

“He’s in no danger. He’s still in California with his mother-I confirmed that before I met you at the party on Useppa Island. And Lourdes, hopefully, is still in Central America.”

“Where?”

“On the run. That’s all I know. He escaped-or so they say.”

“Bullshit.” I was shaking, I realized. My clothes were soaked on this cool morning, but it wasn’t just that.

“I agree. Someone bought his freedom. There are powerful people who don’t want him caught. Elections are coming up in Nicaragua and Panama. You know what that means.”

Yes, I knew. Lourdes had been raised by Miskito Indians in Nicaragua. In his early teens, he’d murdered his adopted family by torching their hut.

It was the beginning of a lifelong fetish even though he, too, was badly burned.

An element of Lourdes’s fetish was his fantasy of harvesting an attractive face from a victim. That’s why he’d kidnapped my son. Lourdes’s face was a horror of scars and plastic surgery gone wrong.

Threaten a village with a visit from the “Man Burner” and the vote was guaranteed. Among the superstitious, he was believed to be a monster with inhuman powers. They were right.

“Who has the most to benefit from using someone like him?”

“The determined or the depraved. Or both.”

An evasion.

“No matter who’s paying him, sir, it’s possible he wasn’t after you. There was a plastic surgeon aboard.”

“Yes. Dr. David Miller. A good friend. Brilliant.”

I said, “Lourdes could have been after him,” and explained why.

“I don’t see how he could have known David was on the trip.”

“The Wilson Center has a Web page. Could it have been mentioned there?”

The president hadn’t considered it. I could tell. “Possibly.”

“Are you certain all seven people aboard that plane died?”

The subject was painful and it made him impatient. “ Yes. You’re getting off track-my contacts are convinced Lourdes was hired to assassinate me.”

“Because of the elections? But you no longer have any influence-” I stopped myself.

I watched him check and recheck the dipstick, then close the engine cowling, before responding. “You’re right. I no longer have the political influence I once had. But I told you before that events don’t change world history. Events as symbols change history. I’m a symbol. A far more powerful symbol than an Austrian archduke. There are religious zealots, as I’ve said, who are determined to start a world war. Armageddon. They long for it.”

I replied, “In that case, if someone hired Lourdes, so he’s not the only one you’re after.”

The president had been standing on the floating dock next to the plane. Now he stepped onto the main dock and walked toward me, using the mechanic’s rag to clean his glasses. His eyes were luminous-the light of obsession.

“I’m after anyone who had something to do with murdering my wife, and six other good people. Most of them friends.”

His voice became incrementally louder as he got closer-a man no longer struggling to keep his anger in check. “But first, I want him. I want the sick son of a bitch who poured gasoline in a plane, struck a match, then blocked the door. Can you imagine anything closer to hell? That image is in my head, asleep or awake. What it must have been like to be trapped inside.

“ It was me they wanted! But Wray suffered, my poor, dear girl. Now do you see why I’m willing to risk so much?”

He stopped; stood looking into my eyes, his own eyes coal black through his tinted glasses, nostrils flared, and I took a step backward, intimidated by his rage. It seemed to be directed at me. In a way, it was.

“There’s another reason you’re the perfect choice, Dr. Ford. It’s because I know you had the chance to kill that animal nearly a year ago. He kidnapped your son. Lourdes came close to cutting the boy’s throat-I read the Coast Guard report! You had him alone on that ship for how long?”