Page 110 of Deadline

“Maybe an inside source tipped him to it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, or you won’t tell?”

“I don’t know. But if I did, I wouldn’t tell.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to ask him myself.”

“Good luck with that.”

The bitch hung up on him. After patronizing him, she’d rudely hung up. About what you’d expect from a woman put in charge.

Carl had learned what he’d wanted to know, however. Dawson Scott had come to Georgia to cover the Willard Strong murder case and write a story about it.

What Carl still didn’t know was why? Why would a writer based in Washington, DC, recently back from overseas, become intrigued by this particular crime? When compared with writing about war, a double murder in Georgia seemed tame. Why would it have captured Dawson Scott’s interest?

There were several logical explanations, of course. But Carl mistrusted logic. Too often it didn’t apply to a situation. He had never staked his life on what was logical, and he wasn’t about to change that practice now.

“I’m coming in!”

The shout came from outside. He went to the door and opened it for Jeremy, who was tramping through the undergrowth toward the cabin, carrying several grocery sacks.

A road to the dwelling would have certainly made access more convenient, but one had never been included in the plan. Roads led people to places, and Carl hadn’t wanted anyone to accidentally happen upon this hideout after taking a wrong turn or following a road simply to see where it went.

He had bought the property under a name that meant nothing and continued to pay annual taxes to keep nosy bureaucrats from coming to check it out. He liked it okay, and having it had come in handy, but at any given time, he was willing to walk away from it and not look back. He never became attached to a piece of real estate. For that matter, he didn’t form biding attachments to anything. Sentimentality could get you killed.

After murdering Darlene and setting up Willard to take the fall, Jeremy had left the scene on foot, following Carl’s instructions to cover his tracks well. Carl had picked him up on the main road, provided some antiseptic cream and a gauze patch for the self-inflicted wound on his head, and drove him as close as he could get to the cabin. Jeremy had gone the rest of the way through the marsh on foot.

Sandwiched between that brackish marsh on one side and a dense forest on the other, the cabin was so far off the beaten path that Jeremy had been able to hide in it for fifteen months.

During that time, he’d changed his appearance. He’d let his hair grow out long enough to cover the bald spot, which had healed, but was unsightly. He’d also cultivated a beard and gained weight.

Carl had brought him supplies once a week. Occasionally Jeremy had complained about the isolation, the leaky roof, and the lousy TV reception, which could only be obtained with a camouflaged antenna on the side of the roof. But he’d endured these inconveniences, knowing that the sacrifices would eventually be rewarded by getting his sons back.

He and Jeremy had built the cabin themselves while he was stationed at Parris Island. Although it lacked amenities, Flora had loved it because it had allowed them to see Jeremy periodically. She had campaigned for it to become their permanent home. Carl had refused to live permanently anywhere, so she’d had to be content with short visits to the place.

Those times spent here with Jeremy had made her happy. In truth, she was easily made happy by the smallest of things and the most insignificant of gestures. But she also became sad easily and anguished over things that couldn’t be helped and should have been long forgotten. That was a character trait he’d found maddening.

Jeremy clumped inside. “Well?” Carl asked. “What did you learn?”

“The car was still in the lot where ‘Bernie’ left it. I didn’t get too close, but it looked to me like there was a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. Other than that, there was no sign that it had been noticed.”

Carl gnawed on that. “Strikes me as odd that they haven’t impounded it. How long do they usually wait to haul in cars with parking violations?”

Jeremy shrugged as he took a carton of orange juice from one of the shopping bags and gulped directly from it.

“You didn’t spot any cops staked out to watch it?”

“No, but there are industrial buildings surrounding that parking lot, each of them several stories tall. They could be surveilling it from any one of a thousand windows, but I don’t think so, Daddy. Who would be lying in wait for Bernie to return? Bernie is a nobody, a nonfactor in any of this.”

Carl eyed his son shrewdly. “Then why don’t you look happier?”

“They’re all over the boat.”

Carl muttered a stream of obscenities.

Defensively, Jeremy said, “They were bound to follow up on any boats that had put into Saint Nelda’s dock on Sunday. I guess the gas pump attendant remembered the name of it.”