Trouble in Paradise

Forty-Four

Nothing had happened to her, and maybe nothing would. Harry and the Indian had paid no more attention to her as she lay on the couch. Two other men came in. Would they do something to her? The taller of the new men had a red ponytail; the other one was smaller and had his black hair slicked into a ducktail. My God, a ducktail! Both men looked at her curiously.

“Dessert?” JD said to Macklin.

Marcy felt the terror again, rippling through her like an electric serpent.

“Leave her alone,” Macklin said.

“Shame to waste her,” JD said.

“You touch her, and you’ll have to explain it to Crow after we’re finished,” Macklin said.

JD looked at Crow. Crow glanced at him for a moment. JD made a motion that might have been a shrug or a shiver.

“She’s safe with me,” JD said.

“She better be,” Macklin said. “I’m going to ask her when we come back.”

Marcy felt the serpent again. They had come in here and pointed a gun at her and tied her up and gagged her, but she had already begun to see them as protectors. She didn’t want them to leave her with these other men. She made a noise.

“You breathing okay?” Macklin said.

She nodded.

“Want to go to the bathroom?”

Marcy shook her head.

“You’re scared of these guys,” Macklin said. “No need. They won’t touch you, will they Crow?”

“They won’t,” Crow said.

Marcy could hear in his voice what the two men heard, and she realized they wouldn’t dare cross him. She felt grateful to the Indian.

“Sit tight,” Macklin said to Fran and JD. “Don’t answer the phone unless it’s me. Monitor the calls on the answering machine. We’ll be back in half an hour.”

Mr. Smith and the Indian went out the door and Marcy was alone with the two strange men. They both looked at her silently for a moment and then ignored her.

The Stiles Island Patrol was part of a security company called Citadel Security, which was run by a former Marine captain named Kurt Billups. Billups dressed his men like drill instructors complete with campaign hats tilted sharply down over their noses. There were no fat, aging rent-a-cops on the Stiles Island Patrol. All his men were trim and neat. Their pistol belts were polished. Their shoes gleamed. The khaki shirts had military creases in them. The red and white Ford sedans they drove were always clean. Like most of the patrol, Michael Deering and Dan Moncrief were Marine Corps veterans. Deering had been to the Gulf. Moncrief had spent his full enlistment in San Diego. Deering was driving, and both were drinking the first coffee of the day as they came over the hill on Sea Street with the morning sun warming the car.

They were on the seaward side of Stiles Island, at the point farthest from the bridge. There was a long section of Sea Street reserved as green space by the resort planners. There were no houses on that section, and the trees came down to either side of the road. Kids used it sometimes to drink beer and smoke pot. And people with dogs brought them here to let them run despite the Island leash law. This morning there was a maroon Chevy van skidded off the road, and a man lying in the street beside it. As Deering and Moncrief drove toward the scene, a man struggled out of the van and crouched beside the prone figure. Deering pulled over on the opposite side of the street, and he and Moncrief got out and walked across.

“What happened?” Deering said.

The man on the ground rolled over onto his back and shot Deering through the forehead. Moncrief didn’t even get his hand onto his gun before the man on the ground shot him through the forehead too.

“Nice,” Macklin said.

Crow got up, let the hammer down on his gun, dropped the magazine from the handle, methodically replaced the two rounds, slapped the magazine back up into the handle, and holstered the weapon. Then he and Macklin pulled the two dead men by their ankles into the woods. Macklin stripped the uniform shirt from Deering. Crow began to cover them with leaves and branches. Macklin drove the patrol car into the woods on the other side of the street and piled boughs they had already cut to conceal it.

They got into the van together, Macklin driving, and pulled away. The killings and concealment had taken three minutes and eight seconds.

“Gatekeeper?” Crow said.

“Yep.”

“Who you going to put in there?”

“On the bridge? Fran. He says he can blow the bridge from there.”

“Perfect.”