Smoke and Mirrors

128

SUNDAY

The reinforcements had arrived half an hour after Styer died. They took Estelle out to a waiting ambulance and put Brad in another, both headed to a Memphis trauma center. Both Estelle and Brad needed better medical care than they could have gotten locally. Winter rode to Memphis in a cruiser. Alexa stayed at the house.

FBI and ATF agents arrived, fresh from the equipment barn, and everybody waited in a shed away from the house while the ATF found the bomb in the basement, disarmed it, and carted it away.

It was almost noon on Sunday before the doctors at Baptist Memorial in Memphis told Leigh and the children that Brad was going to be as good as ever-except he would only have one eye. Hamp said it was a lucky thing he hadn’t lost the eye he aimed with.

Estelle had two.22-caliber bullets removed and the doctors were hopeful of her full recovery if there were no complications like migrating blood clots or infections. One of the bullets had hit her in the back of her head and knocked her out, and the second was stopped by her spine, thankfully not severing her cord. After the operation she had regained consciousness and had promptly asked for a Coke.

The FBI had found Jason Parr’s corpse in his suite at the Roundtable. Pierce Mulvane’s body was found near the exploded equipment shed. Best they could figure, he was dead from a gunshot wound in his forehead. He had been in the trunk of the limousine when the blast hurled his corpse fifty feet into a pile of tree limbs, where he’d hung across a branch like a Christmas-tree ornament. Woody had located Dr. Barnett’s body in a closet in his home.

Kurt Klein had left for Europe that morning after he’d given a statement. All he knew was that Mulvane had missed a planned dinner, and he was asleep in bed when the sheriff from the next county had awakened him.

Winter’s hip was sore from the bullet wound and he had three fractured ribs from his fall down the stairs. He ate a late breakfast in the hospital cafeteria and looked at the television screen, where a newscaster was getting about ninety percent of the facts wrong on the events in Tunica County. It was something he was accustomed to.

Sean had wanted to come back to Memphis, but he’d convinced her to wait for him to return to Concord.

Winter suddenly felt a presence over his shoulder and sipped his coffee as a man he thought he’d never lay eyes on again sat down across from him. The cutout put his coffee cup down on the table.

“Been a while,” he said.

“A year,” Winter said to the man whose name he had never gotten when they’d met at a small airport in Arkansas to discuss Paulus Styer.

“How’s the leg?” the man asked.

“I’ve had worse,” Winter said.

“We didn’t imagine you’d come out of this in one piece,” he said. “You never fail to surprise, Massey.”

“I’d sure like to stop doing that. What do I call you?”

“Mike.”

“Mike it is.” Winter waited.

“Odd you never mentioned you had Styer’s DNA.”

“You never asked.”

“That’s fair. I thought I owed you, so we’re taking care of the details on this one.”

“When have you not?”

“We also know you moved a friend of ours in the SUV. Took a while to figure that one out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t. You know, we could use someone like you.”

“Work’s too hard, it’s dirty as hell, and I don’t like your management.”

“We have new managers now,” Mike said.

“Yeah, but you keep getting them from the same sewer.” Winter stood. “Try not to burn your mouth on that coffee, Mike. If we’re done?”

Mike opened his hands and nodded. “Call if you need anything.”

“I won’t.”

Winter used his crutches to walk over to where Hamp was performing magic for a bald child in pajamas.

Winter placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s you and me go upstairs and check in with the girls.”

“First, my big finish,” Hampton said, standing.

Winter waited, smiling as Hampton Gardner seemed to pluck two playing cards from thin air, placing one in each of the child’s small hands.

The child laughed, and his parents applauded.

The Great Mephisto put a hand to his stomach and bowed deeply.