Orchid Beach

CHAPTER

54

Holly was wakened from a deep sleep by the telephone. She reached over Jackson’s inert form and picked it up. “Hello?” She listened for a moment. “Where?” she asked. “Have you ordered any equipment?” She listened. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Holly got out of bed and looked at the clock: just after one A.M.

“What?” Jackson mumbled.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. She got into a robe and padded down the hall to the guest room where Harry Crisp was sleeping.

Harry’s light was on, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes. “Was that call what I hope it wasn’t?”

“I’m afraid so. Some mullet fishermen found the car up next to the north bridge. They’re trying to get it out now.”

“Give me five minutes,” Harry said, heading for the bathroom.

Holly got dressed quickly and met Harry downstairs. On the way, Harry was quiet. At the north end of the island Holly headed for the bridge, but turned off the road before reaching it, into a roadside park with a few picnic tables and a boat ramp. Two police cars were parked beside the ramp, their headlights illuminating the area, and a large wrecker had backed down it to the water’s edge. A man in a diving suit emerged from the water.

“Okay!” he yelled. “It’s hooked on.” He came and stood next to Holly while the wrecker winched the car up the ramp. “Looks like somebody just drove it right down the ramp,” he said. “It was only a couple of feet underwater.”

The car came backing out of the river. When it was securely on the ramp, the wrecker drove forward a few yards until the car rested on dry ground. There seemed to be nothing wrong with it, except that it was wet.

Holly and Harry looked inside the car, opened the doors, checked the backseat. Holly took the keys from the ignition. “Let’s have a look at the trunk,” she said. She walked to the rear of the car, found the right key, and unlocked the trunk. “Oh, Jesus,” she said.

Harry stood next to her. “The bastards!” he said.

Rita’s naked body lay on top of the spare tire. Her gun, her ID and her cell phone were scattered around her.

Harry took out his phone and punched in a number. “This is Crisp,” he said. “Who’s the duty officer? Put me through to him…. Warren, it’s Harry Crisp,” he said. “I’ve got a dead agent in Orchid Beach. It’s Rita Morales. I want you to get hold of the best pathologist in the Miami area and fly him up here immediately. He’ll be met at Orchid Beach Airport and brought to the local hospital. I want the most thorough possible postmortem.” He broke the connection.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” Holly said.

Harry began talking on the trip back, his voice low and sad. “She came over from Cuba on a raft when she was eight years old,” he said. “She nearly died of thirst before they were picked up by a pleasure boat and brought to Miami. Her mother did die, but her father made it. He’d been a lawyer in Havana before Castro. She got a law degree from the University of Virginia and joined the Bureau right out of school. She was first in her class at the academy. She was only twenty-six, but she was as smart an investigator as I’ve ever worked with. She had a real future with us. She was ambitious, and she wasn’t afraid to take chances. That could be what got her killed.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Harry,” Holly said quietly.

“I know it wasn’t, in my head,” he said, “but in my gut, I know it was.”

“She was qualified for the job. You trusted her judgment. In the circumstances, it was the right call.”

“I know it was,” Harry said. “But sometimes the right call can rise up and bite you on the ass. And it hurts like hell.”

Back at the house, Jackson scrambled them some eggs, and they ate disconsolately. It was just after nine when the call came for Harry. He took it in Jackson’s office and left the door open. He listened, nodding. “Thank you for coming up here, Doctor,” he said finally, then hung up. He came back to the table and sat down heavily. “Cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, probably from fists. Ligature marks on both wrists and ankles. All her ribs were broken, massive internal injuries. First, they raped her…every orifice.”

“Was the doctor able to collect any sperm samples?” Holly asked.

Harry nodded. “The samples will be in Washington by noon. The lab will pull out all the stops—we don’t lose an agent all that often.”

They were quiet for a while.

“Maybe you’d better call the judge,” Holly said.

Harry nodded and stood up. “I’ve got to call Rita’s father first,” he said. He went to Jackson’s office and closed the door behind him.

Holly and Jackson drank coffee, saying nothing.

Half an hour passed, and Harry came out of the office and sat down. “Jackson,” he said, “I need a place to marshal my people. A big place—warehouse, theater, something.”

“What time of day?”

“After dark, until morning.”

“The community college has a gymnasium that’s also used as an auditorium. It’s separated from the rest of the school by a stand of woods, and there’s a big parking lot.”

“You know anybody there?”

Jackson wrote down a name and handed it to Harry. “That’s the president,” he said.

Harry went back into Jackson’s office and closed the door.

The phone rang, and Holly picked it up.

“Chief, it’s the dispatcher. You had a call from a Barney Noble.”

Holly dialed the number and asked for Barney.

“Hi, Holly. You asked me to call if Rita Garcia didn’t show up for work this morning. She didn’t. We called her home number, but there was no answer.”

She wanted to scream at him, but instead, she said, “Thanks, Barney.”

“Has her mother heard anything?” Noble asked.

“No.”

“Let me know if you hear anything. Maintenance will want to find a substitute if she’s not coming back.”

“I’ll let you know, Barney.” She hung up. “I wish I could just go out there and shoot him right now.”

“I’d help,” Jackson said.

Harry finally came out of the office. “Okay,” he said, “we’re set. I’ve got over three hundred men coming—FBI, DEA, ATF—every federal agent we could muster. They’ll be arriving at the community college after dark in vans and cars, and they’ll be heavily equipped.” He sat down. “Holly, there’s not going to be a lot in this for you—not even Barney Noble.”

“I had a feeling,” Holly said.

“Killing an FBI agent is a federal crime. I want him for that. If we can’t put together the evidence to support the charge, then you can have him on the falsification-of-records business, and you can have whoever did the work for him at the capitol, if the state doesn’t take it away from you.”

“What I want most is the murderers of Chet Marley and Hank Doherty,” Holly said. “Can I have that, if you take Barney?”

“Sure, you can. I’ll talk to the federal prosecutor for you.”

“I’m going to have to get a confession, or somebody to finger them, so I’ll need interrogation time.”

“You’ll have it, I promise. In the meantime, I think you’d better go to work, keep everything as normal as you possibly can. You and Jackson can come out to the gym tonight around nine. I’ll leave word with the sentries that you’re to be admitted. I want your input on how we go about this. Ham’s, too, of course. He’s the only one with any hard information about what we’re up against.”

“Sure,” Holly replied.

Harry looked out over the sea, and he seemed far away. “This is not going to be an easy one,” he said.