Suspicion of Vengeance (40 page)

"I want you to sit there and listen to me. Don't interrupt." Quintana looked over at the glass in the door, then leaned closer and spoke quietly.

After a while, Kenny sat up straight and stretched his shoulders. He looked around. Through the glass he saw guards bringing somebody else through. Blue shirt. Population inmate, a young black guy. The door closed in the next interview room.

Kenny put his arms back on the desk. "The prison chaplain came to see me this morning. He said he'd come every day if I want. Get right with God. You believe in that?"

"Not really."

"Me either." He bounced his knees and listened to the jingle of metal. "How's Glen doing?"

"Not bad for a man with twenty-six years left on his sentence."

"I never thought he'd rat on Rusty. Usually a guy who rats, you don't respect him." Kenny waited to see what Quintana would say about it.

He said, "I think Glen has his priorities straight."

"Yeah, maybe. What's the word from Tallahassee?"

"Nothing yet."

"Gail told me it was fifty-fifty, and to keep my hopes up. Is she wrong?"

Quintana looked straight at him. "Probably. There isn't much chance. I would guess five-to-two, maybe four-to-three against us. The problem is the eyewitness. The jury believed her, and the appellate courts don't second-guess a jury. We'll file the appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court, but they rarely grant it, even with a claim of innocence."

Kenny knew already, but it was like a cold river going through his guts when he let himself think about it. "How come Gail tells me fifty-fifty?"

"Because she believes it. She has to believe it, and I won't tell her otherwise, not now. It would be too much. She is exhausted. Her heart is skipping beats."

"Does she have a bad heart?"

"No, no, it's tension. I tell her to rest, but she won't. She won't eat, she won't sleep. She works. She ignores me."

"Not getting any, huh?"

"Not lately."

"When are you and her getting married?"

"I don't know. She won't give me an answer."

"Buy her a big ring. And get her pregnant. That way, she can't say no."

Quintana laughed. "Maybe I should try that."

Kenny heard muffled voices through the wall. "Are you sure Rusty killed Amber Dodson?"

"Not completely." Quintana shrugged.

"Are you sure I didn't?"

"Yes, I am sure of that." He asked again, "What about the Mendozas?"

"Do you think Whit McGrath is going to give up Rusty Beck?"

The dark eyes looked back at him. Didn't blink. "I doubt it."

"Then why should I tell you a damn thing?"

"Maybe I'm wrong. I'll give you another reason. Rusty Beck should pay for what he did."

"I like that reason."

"Here are four more. Ignacio, Celestina, Ramon, and Jose. They need to go home to Guatemala to their family. They should be buried properly, in a grave. Someone should say mass for them."

"That's true." Kenny closed his eyes, and he could hear the scrape of metal over rocks. "Glen told you the truth. Rusty shot them. He told me to get in the car and drive. I followed him to the sinkhole back in the woods, and we pushed it in."

"A sinkhole? Glen said it was a lake."

"No, it was a sinkhole."

"Do you remember where it was?"

"Not right off. We ended up pretty close to where we started, but Rusty drove all over hell and back trying to find a good spot. He was pretty freaked out. I thought he was going to shoot me and Glen too."

"You followed his truck?"

"That's right." Kenny could see the next question coming, so he said, "I could have got away, but I didn't. I could have veered off and drove to the police station. But I said, damn, they'll arrest me for murder. Glen too. Who's going to believe us? I was scared. I was a scared kid, but I can't make excuses. I could've done something. Soon as I saw Rusty had a shotgun, I could've got out of there. But I didn't. I shouldn't have let him hold it on the boy, but I stood by and let it happen. I was a coward. That's what it was. If you look at a thing like that real hard, you see how you can't blame it on somebody else. I had no business being there at all."

Kenny expected Quintana to argue with him, say he was forced, but Quintana nodded. "This is so. We are responsible, even those who stand by."

"Yeah." Somebody in here before him had scratched some letters on the desk. M-I-C. Kenny wondered what the guy's name was. What had he used? The edge of his cuff, maybe. Kenny put his wrist to the desktop and started scratching. Quintana noticed, but he didn't say to stop.

"You'd be surprised, a lot of the guys in here believe in the death penalty. I do too, for some cases. Like Danny Rolling. He killed five college students. Cut them up. When he goes, I'm not gonna cry about it."

M-I-C-I. Kenny turned his wrist to finish the
K.
"And this guy in the Cell next to me, he told me he beat his girlfriend's son to death, three years old, to get back at her for cheating on him. Should he die for that? You ask most of the guys on the row, they'd say, hell yes. But what do you do with an ordinary guy? How do you decide if he snapped or if he's bad through and through? It's not easy to tell."

"That's true," Quintana said. "It isn't easy. When will I hear from you?"

M-I-C-K. Maybe the next guys in here would finish it. MICKEY MOUSE. Kenny sat back in his chair. "Call me when you get to Miami."

Quintana reached out his hand, a big hand with two rings oil it, and some gold shining under his cuff Kenny took it.

"Vaya con Dios."
He had a good grip.

"You too. Take care of Gail."

"She makes it difficult, but I'll do my best."

Kenny's throat felt tight, and he laughed. "Boy, she's a fighter. She's like Ruby. They both think I'm going to walk out of here. Maybe they're right."

Quintana nodded. "Maybe they are."

The guards took Kenny back to Q wing. The moke at the desk scribbled on his chart:
3:45
p.m
. Inmate returns to cell.

Kenny lay on his bunk and the thought came into his mind again. Seven days. Ice water ran inside his arms and legs and made his hands shake.

He got up and asked the guard for a pen. The guard came over and handed him a flex pen through the bars. Kenny sat down on his mattress and picked up the letter from the prison chaplain.
If you find yourself in need of spiritual guidance-—

Kenny turned it over to the blank side and tried to visualize the west part of the county. The way to the Mendozas' place. How he and Glen had followed Rusty through the orange grove. The moon coming through the branches, the light and shadow on the ground. The shuffle of leaves under their feet. Glen finishing a beer, tossing the bottle. How the glass had clinked on a pebble.

He remembered the thick black hair of the woman, her white blouse. How she fell to her knees, praying in Spanish. Now Kenny knew what she was praying for. She'd seen her husband and boy and father die. She wanted to get it over with.

Kenny stared at the empty paper.

They were all there in his memory, somewhere, buried way down. He'd tried to forget, but they had come back in his dreams, and in the last few weeks they'd shown up every night, standing just outside the bars, waiting for him.

He had seen the car float, then go nose forward and disappear. Bubbles boiling up, then fewer of them, then none. The moon had jumped and swayed on the dark, rippling water, and he was down there with the dead, locked in the trunk.

CHAPTER 25

Monday, April 9

Jackie waited at the end of the road while the others walked down to the gate. It was locked with a heavy chain. A slight clanging noise filled the silence: a NO TRESPASSING sign, moving in the wind. She put on her sunglasses to cut the glare.

They looked out over the rocky field, broken up by a few puddles from the thunderstorms last night. Gail stood in the middle between the men. Anthony had his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, but Hector Mesa wore a gray suit. He had a holster under it, and one on his ankle, but Jackie had pretended not to notice.

Her shift had ended at three o'clock, and she'd turned in her car and followed them out here in her own vehicle, not taking the time to change out of uniform. They had waited around till she could come too, so if Gail and Anthony decided to stand here all afternoon, that was all right with her. They had a lot to mourn.

Late Friday the Florida court had announced its decision: four-to-three, stay of execution denied. The bottom line was, four justices thought Kenny Clark was guilty. If they'd thought he was innocent, they could have found a way around the rules. Kenny would be dead in two days, unless something happened.

A solitary hawk drifted overhead, gliding on the wind, wings perfectly still. The field, dotted with pine trees, stretched to some woods about two hundred yards away. An old construction trailer was out there, and some piles of brush. About halfway between the road and the woods was a small body of water. A little lake. The future fountain at the entrance to the River Pines Hotel. Jackie couldn't see it for the trees, but Gail and Anthony said it was there.

They drove up from Miami this morning. Hector Mesa had been here a couple of days already, talking to local geologists and looking at aerial maps. Nobody could say for sure—yet—if it was
the
sinkhole, but there weren't that many in the county. There was only one way to find out.

From her higher vantage point on the shoulder of the road, Jackie saw the black truck before the others did. It appeared first as a plume of dust, then the shiny grille of a new Ford 150. It slowed coming by the rental car and Jackie's Isuzu Trooper, then swerved over to the left lane. Rusty's arm rested on the open window. The sun picked up the red in his mustache and goatee. A Browning twelve-gauge lay in the gun rack, and his bullwhip was coiled around one of the hooks.

Jackie walked over to see what he wanted.

He turned down the music. A smile lifted the corners of his mustache and cut lines into his skin. "Officer Jackie. What's going on?"

She looked at him through her sunglasses, her face level with his. "Just a little sight-seeing. You have a problem with that?" Up close, she could see the pock-marks on his cheeks. She thought of Vivian Baker with a knife at her breast. The people down there in the mud.

Rusty said, "This is private property."

"The road is a public thoroughfare," Jackie said, "and you're driving in the wrong lane."

"It's not your jurisdiction, sweet thing."

"I could make it my jurisdiction. Why don't you move along?"

Over by the gate, Anthony Quintana was keeping Gail behind him, an arm extended to the side.

Rusty cupped a hand at his mouth. "Hey, slick. You get that car fixed yet? Officer Jackie, you ought to see the way this guy drives. He's loco. Big Miami lawyer, thinks he owns the fuckin' road."

During this, Hector Mesa had casually walked up the slope and now stood a few yards away.

Rusty reached over his shoulder with his left hand and lifted his bullwhip off the rack. He whirled the end of it. "Come on, Pedro. Let's see if I can snatch them ugly glasses off your face."

Hector smiled.

Jackie came closer. "Be glad I'm here, Rusty. Real glad. You better get going."

He shrugged, then saluted her off the brim of his cowboy hat. "See you later, darlin'." His tires screeched making the turn, and the truck went back the way it had come, engine popping and rumbling.

Jackie glanced around at Hector Mesa. He was looking after the truck like somebody had taken his toy away.

"Hector?"

"Yes,
señorita?"

"Don't even think about it."

Jackie said she would drop Gail off at Ruby Smith's apartment. They were going to visit for a while and maybe have dinner together, depending on when Anthony got back from wherever he was going. He and Hector took the rental car, Hector behind the wheel, the car kicking up some gravel, then getting smaller down the long stretch of road. It had to be doing eighty.

"Where are they going?" Jackie asked.

"West Palm Beach. Hector has some friends in the tropical fish business. Scuba divers."

Jackie smiled. "They're going into the sinkhole."

"I hope they have better luck there than they did finding my engagement ring."

Gail had told Jackie about that. They'd had a laugh over it, Gail saying it was all she could do, laugh.

Right now she wasn't doing much of anything. She had her eyes closed and her head leaning on the headrest. Jackie thought she might be asleep until she said, "I wish Rusty Beck hadn't seen us. He could get on a bulldozer and push enough dirt in that hole to make it disappear."

"The way he acted, he's not worried about a thing," Jackie said. "You gotta know Rusty. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Whit McGrath doesn't know what's down there."

"He has to know. Rusty must have told him."

"Why? Would you? 'Hey, I just dumped a car with four bodies in that sinkhole on your property' Gail, the hole wouldn't still
be
there if Whit McGrath knew. I mean, that's what I think."

Gail was pressing hard into her chest with the heel of her hand. She saw Jackie looking at her. "It's nothing. My heart flutters sometimes."

"You should rest."

"I will, as soon as this is over."

The plan was to get some underwater photos of the sinkhole and show them to Whit McGrath, force him to give up Rusty for the murder of Amber Dodson. The last time they'd gone after Whit, they'd been bluffing, and Whit had known it. With hard proof, he'd be backed against the wall. Whit McGrath would have to imagine a chain hooked to the axle, the car coming up out of the mud, and a news helicopter circling overhead, waiting to see what the police found in the trunk. And then he'd have to figure the chances of getting Phase Two past the commissioners after they saw
that
on the six o'clock news. Forget Phase Two. He'd have to explain what the bodies were doing there. If this didn't work—if the sinkhole was empty—they'd be out of options.

"Oh, God, Jackie. Two days. I don't want to see Ruby right now. Can you take me to the hotel? Maybe there's something I could work on."