“It’s a goddamn mess here on the west side of the island,” the sheriff reported. “We have a power line down and a couple of roads washed out. What’s going on?”
Tim told him about the call from Troy Landers.
“Yeah, I know,” the sheriff replied hurriedly. “He called me. Are you on your way to the Logan place?”
“Yes. I’m wondering if I should get back up help from some of the Guardians. Um, is Troy a Guardian?”
“No. I had a deputy who was also a Guardian about two years ago, but I fired him. His name was Parker. Guardians gave him the heave-ho too. He was a real pain in the ass. He moved off the island. Anyway, I wouldn’t call any Guardians yet, Tim. Let’s just see who’s out there first. I gotta go.”
Tim clicked off the cell phone as he approached the turnoff. He spotted Troy Landers in a police rain slicker at the edge of the street. Troy turned on a flashlight and waved it. Tim flashed his brights for a second.
Turning onto the little road, Tim switched off his headlights, then came to a stop. He noticed the patrol car, parked along the pathway.
Troy stepped up to his window. He had the hood up on his rain slicker. But his face was still wet. Tim killed the ignition, and rolled down his window. “Is our guy still there?” he asked.
Troy nodded. “I just checked a couple of minutes ago. I saw him in the kitchen. I don’t recognize him at all. But he’s a jumpy son of a bitch. He keeps looking out the windows, and twice he’s stepped out on the porch. I think he knows we’re out here. Do you have a gun? I have an extra rifle in my trunk you can use.”
“Thanks, but I’m okay.” He grabbed Al’s automatic out of the glove compartment, then tucked it in his jacket pocket. He glanced at his wristwatch. Claire still had another thirty minutes with Moorehead.
Tim rolled up his window, then climbed out of the car. “Troy, we’ll have to work real fast,” he whispered. “I need be somewhere in about a half-hour. I’m looking after Mrs. Shaw, and it’s important that I—”
He didn’t finish. Without warning, Troy Landers hit Tim in the stomach. It was a sucker punch that knocked the wind out of him. Tim doubled over in pain. He couldn’t breathe.
Troy didn’t stop there. With his fist, he socked Tim in the jaw. Tim was stunned. He reeled back into the mud.
“That’s for having me put on stakeout duty, you motherfucker,” he heard the deputy growl.
The rain beating down on his face, Tim lay on the wet ground, unable to move.
Troy hovered over him. He pulled the gun out of Tim’s jacket pocket, and tucked it inside his rain slicker. Then he took the cell phone, ambled over to a tree, and smashed it against the trunk.
“You don’t need that anymore,” Troy Landers said. “You won’t be talking to anybody—ever again.”
“Claire, are you feeling all right?” Dr. Moorehead asked. He leaned forward in the club chair.
Sitting across from him, Claire slumped to one side and stared back at Moorehead with half-closed eyes. “I’m just so tired,” she murmured. “I don’t know what it is…”
He got to his feet, stepped over toward Claire and picked up her purse from the floor. He returned to his chair, plopped the purse in his lap, and started searching through it.
Claire gazed at him listlessly. She chided herself for not kicking him in the groin a moment ago when she’d had the chance. She could have made her escape. Then again, that might have been totally unnecessary. She didn’t know what he was up to. The business with the antidepressants was awfully suspicious. And as she pretended to grow more and more sluggish over the past several minutes, Moorehead didn’t seem a bit surprised.
At the moment, feigning fatigue was her only defense. Moorehead’s guard wasn’t up. A kick or a punch in the right place, and then she could run like hell to the Fork In The Road, where Tim was waiting.
Dr. Moorehead took the bottle of pills from Claire’s purse. “I bought these up in Vancouver. They’re Rohypnol, the ‘date-rape-drug.’ Sorry, Claire, but I need to steal these back, and put them where the police will find them.”
“What?” she mumbled vaguely. She pretended to be more interested in the storm raging outside his window.
Moorehead stood up again, and headed for his desk. “This bottle of Rohypnol will be in Tim Sullivan’s room at The Whale Watcher Inn. They’ll think he gave you this stuff.”
She couldn’t see what he was doing behind his desk. He reached for something in one of the lower drawers. “But before I do that, I’ll need to make sure at least one of these little pills gets in your system.”
She heard a strange snap. It had a thin, rubbery sound to it. She realized he’d just put on a surgeon’s glove. He came around the desk with a handkerchief in his gloved hand.
“I know you didn’t swallow that pill, Claire,” he said.
She sprang to her feet.
All at once, Moorehead was on her. He grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back. Claire shrieked, but he cut off her scream. Moorehead pressed the handkerchief over her mouth and nose. It was soaked with something that burned and made her eyes water. She tried not to breathe.
Claire struggled, but she felt herself slipping out of consciousness.
“Don’t fight it,” Moorehead whispered. “Just breathe in, nice and quick. I don’t want to rub this in your face. Chloroform can irritate your skin.”
His lips brushed against her ear. “And I don’t want any burn marks, Claire. I want you to look pretty when they find you.”
Beep.
“Claire? Sweetheart? You there? C’mon, pick up. I’m still at the plant. Where are you? It’s past seven. You should be back from your appointment with Moorehead by now. I can’t believe you’re not home. I tried your cop friend’s cell phone, and I’m not getting an answer there either. What the hell’s going on? I can’t believe you’re out in this weather. Well, I’ll be home soon. I hope you’ll be there when I get in. Bye.”
Walt Binns and Ron Castle stood in their friend’s pantry and listened while Harlan left the message.
“If we’d written a script and had him read it over that machine, it couldn’t have suited our plans any better,” Ron said glumly.
Ron had entered the house with a spare key Harlan had given Linda ages ago. He and Walt had already packed a small overnight bag for Claire: makeup, toiletries, perfume, her sexiest nightgown, slippers, and a robe.
Ron knew Harlan kept a semiautomatic in his workroom. He and Walt had been surprised to find the door broken in and a smashed bottle of bourbon on the floor. They couldn’t figure out what had happened.
“You know how this will look?” Ron had said to his friend. “It’ll look like he didn’t even stop to get the key. He was so mad, he broke down the door to get his gun.”
They’d fetched Harlan’s gun for him, and made certain it had a full clip. It was all part of a plan, conceived at a secret meeting of the Guardians earlier today. They’d come together to discuss a solution to the “Claire Shaw problem.”
The way they were setting it up left little room for doubt. Harlan Shaw, his wife, and that rookie cop would be found in a remote cabin the Guardians had already chosen. It was the Miller place, about two miles down the road from Walt’s cabin. Investigators would determine that all three victims were shot with bullets from the semiautomatic Ron had taken from Harlan’s workroom. The gun would be in Harlan’s lifeless hand. And the naked corpses of his wife and that rookie cop would be nearby—in the cabin’s bedroom.
They hated to lose a good man like Harlan, but it was a necessary sacrifice. There was no other way.
They already had Harlan on tape, expressing concern and anger over his wife’s attraction to the handsome cop. Dr. Moorehead had recorded a ten-thirty session with Harlan this morning. Ron would also recount for investigators an incident weeks ago at a Seattle police station when Harlan violently attacked Officer Tim Sullivan.
The message Harlan had just left Claire was like a bonus.
“I’m telling you,” Ron said, as they took one last look around his friend’s family room. “There won’t be any loose ends here. This thing will be wrapped up even tighter than the Davalos matter.”
“You don’t have to sound so goddamn smug about it,” Walt grumbled. “I’m losing my best friend.”
“Hey, he’s my buddy too.” Ron patted Walt on the back, and they started toward the front door together. “I feel as bad as you do. But Harlan brought all this on himself, you know. He never should have taken Claire to that Guardian assembly. She just wasn’t ready. We all told him so. But Harlan wouldn’t listen.”
Stepping outside, Walt paused in the doorway. He shifted Claire’s overnight bag from one hand to another, then turned up the collar to his jacket. He looked out at the rain and sighed. “I keep thinking of poor little Tiffany, an orphan.”
Ron opened up his umbrella. “I was just mulling over the same thing. She’s a sweet little girl. Maybe Linda and I can adopt her.”
“Slow down, and hang a right up ahead, sport,” Troy Landers said. His back against the door, he rode in the front passenger seat of Tim’s loaner car. He’d pulled down the hood of his slicker. A cocky smile on his face, Troy had Al’s gun pointed at Tim. “Pull in front here,” he said.
Wordlessly, Tim followed his directions. His jaw was still throbbing from where Troy had hit him. They’d been driving in the hard rain for the last fifteen minutes. Tim recognized the cabin at the end of the narrow, gravel path. It was the same cottage the Killabrews had rented three summers ago.
“Looks like we’re the first ones here,” Deputy Landers announced. “Kill the engine.”
Tim switched off the ignition. “We’re expecting company?”
“Yeap, your girlfriend, Mrs. Shaw, will be here in about a half hour. Her husband’s coming too—along with some others.”
“Guardians?”
“Yeap, it’s gonna be a regular party.”
“I didn’t know you were a Guardian,” Tim said.
“I’m not—yet.” Troy smiled and hoisted his gun a bit. “We’re a little early. So relax, sport. Keep your hands where I can see them. By the way, nice job driving.”
“Thanks,” Tim said, staring out the rain-beaded windshield.
Troy snickered. “Yeah, you’re pretty good behind the wheel. After that number I did on your brakes the other day, I didn’t think I’d be seeing your pretty puss again.”
Tim unbuckled his seat belt and turned toward him. “That was you?”
Troy nodded.
“Is that the kind of work they require from a Guardian-wanna-be? Or did they ask you to shoot a couple of teenagers too?”
“Smart guy,” Troy muttered, his smile waning. He still had the gun pointed at him.
For a few moments, they didn’t talk. Rain tapped on the car roof, and the wind was howling.
“Is the sheriff a Guardian?” Tim asked, finally breaking the silence inside the car.
Troy laughed. “Hell, no. The sheriff’s clueless. So is Ramon. The Guardians and I are doing their jobs for them, and they have no idea.”
“Did the Guardians kill Brian Ferguson?” Tim asked.
Suddenly, part of a tree branch fell across the windshield, then rolled off the car’s hood. It didn’t do any damage. It merely startled them—and distracted Troy.
All at once, Tim lunged for the gun. He grabbed Troy’s hand and twisted it. A loud shot rang out. There was an explosion of glass as the bullet pierced through the windshield. “Fuck!” Troy bellowed. “My eyes!” It was like a cloud of glass-dust in the front seat of the car.
Though blinded, Troy wouldn’t let go of the gun. He was relentless—until Tim slammed his elbow in the deputy’s face. Troy reeled back and banged his head against the passenger window. Blood leaked from his nose, and the whites of his eyes had turned red. He looked dazed.
Tim realized he had the gun. He hurled back and struck the butt end of it across Troy Lander’s temple.
The deputy went limp and flopped against the dashboard.
Tim caught his breath. The windows had fogged up inside the car, and he couldn’t see outside. Troy’s Guardian buddies were due any minute now—along with Claire and Harlan. Tim wondered what kind of plan they had in the works.
He grabbed Deputy Landers by the front of his rain slicker, and pulled him up to a sitting position. Blood still trickled from Troy’s nose. Tim frisked him and found a gun. He was hoping the deputy had a cell phone on him, but he didn’t. “Shit,” Tim muttered.
He took the keys out of the ignition, opened the car door and stepped outside. Unlocking the trunk, he popped it open, then hurried around to the passenger door.
Deputy Landers stirred a bit as Tim pried him out of the car. With the rain pelting them, Tim dragged the deputy’s heavy, limp body toward the back of the car. He hoisted Troy up, then dumped him inside the trunk. His body hit the trunk floor with a thud.
Just as Tim shut the hood, he saw a pair of headlights in the distance, piercing the darkness.
He hurried back into the car and started it up.
The other day, when he’d been here with Walt, Tim had noticed a little alcove and a back road. He couldn’t see it in the dark, not with a cracked windshield, and all the rain. But Tim crept along the narrow drive with the headlights off, and eventually he found the inlet behind some bushes.
He shut off the engine, and climbed out of the car again. He’d wanted to check that cabin for a phone so he could call the sheriff—and Lieutenant Elmore. He needed backup. But he was too late. The other car was pulling up in front of the house. Tim recognized Fred Maybon’s Honda Accord.
But he didn’t recognize the man climbing out of the car with Fred. Another Guardian, obviously. Fred had his assault rifle with him.
Tim stayed hidden behind some shrubs. Because of the rain, he couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. Fred’s friend carried an umbrella, and they huddled under it as they approached the front door. Fred pulled out a set of keys.
“…Should be here with that cop by now,”
Tim heard him remark.
Suddenly, there was a loud banging sound. Tim swiveled around. The noise was coming from the trunk of his own car.
He turned to look at Fred and his pal. Pausing at the front door, they squinted toward him. Fred seemed to have his rifle ready.