Little Girls Lost (26 page)

Rrrrrrrrraaaaaaaahhhhhhhhheeeeeeeee…

The sound was like a lion crossed with a siren, Sandhill thought, his face yanked to the door by the insane howl. Atwan turned to the door. Mattoon. Confusion in all eyes.

Rrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaa…

Rose Desmond exploded into the room like a rabid bull. Atwan whipped his pistol toward Desmond, but it fired uselessly into the floor as Desmond’s shoulder hit Atwan like a cannonball, blasting him sideways into the bulkhead beside Sandhill. Desmond didn’t stop, but crashed through a chart table and into the side bulkhead.

Atwan stumbled upright, stunned, shaking his head to recover and moving the pistol up. Sandhill wheeled in front of the man, his hand jabbing the knife high, slashing across Atwan’s eyes. He howled and fired a blind shot that exploded through a side porthole.

Sandhill swung the knife low. Slipped it through abdomenal fascia. Pulled hard upward as he stepped away.

Pink loops of intestine began to cascade from Atwan. The gun dropped to the floor. Atwan followed, kneeling in his innards before dropping face-first into the viscera and appearing to swim in them for several seconds before his engine shut down.

Sandhill scrabbled under the chart table for Atwan’s fallen gun as footsteps thundered up the metal stairs to the bridge. Sandhill yelled for Jacy to crawl beneath a desk. He crouched behind the table as two crewmen ran inside waving weapons like B-movie cowboys.

Sandhill lifted his badge, yelled “Police!” and two-tapped the lead attacker’s chest. The man dropped like a sack of wet flour. His companion screamed and fell, clawing his way back out the door. Sandhill let him escape, heard his footsteps scramble away. Sandhill grabbed the PA microphone.

“This is the FBI,” he said, his voice reverberating throughout the ship. “Everyone on deck with your hands high.” He paused, keyed the mike. “FBI operatives, hold your stations. US Navy at Pensacola reports helicopter strike force arriving in minutes.”

Sandhill covered the door with the gun. Was it enough to confuse the crew? He hoped the man who’d run was now telling others about a
badge-clutching lawman at the helm. They’d also heard the potent “FBI” over the PA, hopefully suggesting the shields were in charge if not in sight.

Believing the atmospheric cavalry was on the way might ice the cake.

It was silent until Sandhill heard a roar from port. He saw an inflatable cutting the water, moving away, a dozen men bouncing within the craft.
Thank God for cowardice,
Sandhill thought, watching the craft shrink in the distance.

There was no dark-suited man aboard the inflatable.

Sandhill studied Rose Desmond, sprawled on the floor, eyes focused either inside or on something at a great distance. Spittle was dripping down his chin. His clothes and skin were a motley of crusted blood. His legs were as loose as a rag doll, blue sneakers splayed on the floor. Sandhill stripped the belt from the dead Atwan and bound Rose’s arms behind his back.

Sandhill slipped Jacy into a closet at the rear of the bridge. He bent and kissed her head. “I’ll be back.”

Mattoon’s neck wasn’t bleeding heavily, but enough to leave a trail. Sandhill tracked the drips to a suite of rooms on the level below the bridge. The trail led to a back bedroom. After five minutes of cautious searching, Sandhill found the ship owner’s hiding place.

“I figure we’re about forty miles from land, Mr Mattoon,” Sandhill estimated, prone on the floor, steadying the gun at the figure quivering beneath the canopy bed. “Why don’t you breast stroke out from under there. You’ll need the practice.”

Sandhill walked from his bedroom buttoning the vest Marie had crafted for the day: Purple velvet embellished with gold brocade. He winked across the room at Ryder. “Setting up Nautilus as already digging the dirt on Ducky was genius. You guys broke him open and out squirted a psychopath.”

Ryder leaned back in the chair and pulled on a beer. “What about Clay’s sentence? Accessory in Squill’s death, you think?”

“Clay’ll cop a plea by singing, but still draw heavy time in the iron-bar Hilton. Where it gets strange is muscle-boy. Roosevelt Desmond seems to remember nothing. Can’t do much for the memory circuits to have a nine millimeter parked in your skull.”

“A skull hard as yours, I guess.”

Sandhill slipped on his crown, canted it to a rakish angle. “Wasn’t his skull that stopped the bullet. It was his arm. When Atwan fired, Rose instinctively threw his arms out. The bullet went
in at his palm and popped out above the elbow.
Whap.
Smacked him right between the eyes. But after plowing through all that muscle, the bullet lacked the oomph to penetrate the cranium. It stuck halfway through.”

Ryder shook his head in disbelief. “Then he came around and headed for the
Petite Angel.
A man on a mission.”

“Climbed the stern rungs with one arm, Ryder. And a bullet in his noggin.”

“You really sat beside Rose in the crapper?”

Sandhill grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. “I saw his blue shoes under the divider and thought he was a crewman. I figure he hid out, wondering what to do until Mattoon’s announcement on the PA boomed through the ship. It pulled Rose to the bridge. He must have been right outside when Atwan shot the vase. It set Rose off and he came charging through the door.”

“Must have been a sight to see.”

“I’ll hear that sound in my nightmares, Ryder: Rose Desmond screaming through the door like a banshee on PCP. Bulldozed Atwan down and ran right into a wall.
Bam
! Just laid there like he’d spent everything he had.”

Ryder furrowed his brow. “He was trying to recapture Jacy, right? Or could someone like that actually…” Ryder let the words trail off.

“A rescue?” Sandhill shrugged. “I’m going to believe he’d had a change of heart. We’ll never know, but it costs nothing, and makes me feel good.”

The door below opened and Marie yelled up the stairs. “You boys joining the party or are you gonna stay up there and be heroes all day?”

Sandhill nodded toward the door. “Let’s go, Ryder. Not every day a man watches his daughter turn nine.”

They headed downstairs, Sandhill in the lead. He stopped midway and turned to Ryder. “I’m glad Nautilus came to the party. He’s staying on the force?”

“Nailing Duckworth gave him new wind.”

Sandhill started back down the steps. Ryder said, “Early on, Harry told me to watch you. I took it to mean you weren’t to be trusted.”

Sandhill paused. Frowned. “That so?”

“I misunderstood. What he meant was watch and learn.”

A sign on the door of the restaurant said
Private Party, Open at 4 p.m.
Chairs and tables had been pushed aside at the rear and a dozen children played Twister. Etta James poured from the sound system.

Ryder looked to a nearby table and saw Nike studying the children, Nautilus studying Nike, Marie studying Nautilus. Ryder winced and headed over to distract someone, not sure who.

The front door jingled open. Norma Philips entered warily, a brown-bagged bottle jutting from her purse.

“Is this a private party?”

Sandhill ambled over, took her hand. “I sent you an invite, remember?”

“I thought it might be a mistake, given your views on politicians.”

“I’m mellowing in my dotage. What’s in the sack?”

Philips produced a bottle of Taittinger champagne. Sandhill’s eyes widened. “What’re we celebrating?”

“I just talked to Bidwell. Desmond’s hidden computer drive led to Maya Ledbetter. She was hidden in the guest house of some millionaire pervert in Ohio.”

“Maya, alive in Ohio? My God. How was she? I mean…”

“There’s good news there, Mr Sandhill. The man hadn’t touched her, still salivating or whatever. Maya’s mother and aunt are flying to pick Maya up now. I made sure the city bought the flight. The poor girl’s going to need counseling, but…”

“But Maya’s alive, Mayor. That’s more than LaShelle, or Darla, who was—”

Philips closed her eyes. “I heard. Just tossed into the ocean, according to the captured crewmen.”

The two shared a long silence until Philips looked at the group of children laughing, contorting, falling, rising to play again.

“Look at the innocence, Mr Sandhill. Sometimes the world feels a bright and hopeful place. Then a rock moves aside and something like the Desmonds or Walter Mattoon crawls out.” She paused. “Bidwell also told me that Mattoon’s body washed ashore this morning. Guess he jumped overboard, right?”

Sandhill walked to the front window and studied the blue sky through the bright scrollwork of his new sign. “And the sea rejected the poison like vomit, purging itself on the white sands.”

Philips said, “Coleridge? Homer?”

He turned to her and winked. “Sandhill. So how’s the election coming now that Runion’s ties to the scummy dealings are front-page news?”

“I jumped a couple points in the polls,” Philips deadpanned.

“How many?”

“Around thirty-seven. Which reminds me, when I’m elected, I’ll be in a position to make some changes. I’d like them to include you.”

Sandhill watched Jacy skip across the floor in her new Marie-fashioned crown, a smaller and less battered version of Sandhill’s. Jacy snatched a cupcake from a table and shot a wink at Sandhill.

“I don’t know about tomorrow, Mayor. There’s too much yesterday to deal with yet.”

“I kind of figured that.” Philips reached into her pocket and produced a sheet of paper, shaking it open and slipping on her reading glasses. “But just in case, I’ve spoken with the brass and they’re prepared to offer you…”

The lady that just came in the door is the mayor. She’s talking to the Gumbo King. I bet the mayor is asking him how to do things the right way, the King way. He’ll probably say what I heard him
tell Aunt Nike the other night: Sometimes it’s hard but you just keep believing in yourself.

I’m going to live with the Gumbo King. I’ll live with Aunt Nike, too. I can switch back and forth when I want.

I started out calling him Daddy, but something about it seemed weird. I think it seemed weird to him, too—when I called him by it, he frowned and crunched his teeth together. The way it came out is I call him King, he calls me Princess. That feels just right to both of us.

Like walking through a book that turned real.