The Final Victim (48 page)

    Then she hears a male voice and the name, "Dorado."

    
"Detective?
Is that you?"

    "Yes! Mrs. Maitland… Are you…?"

    "I'm sorry, your voice is breaking up." She shifts hurriedly into park and steps out of the car, hoping to get a better signal. It works.

    "Mrs. Maitland, where are you?"

    "I was trying to get home, but the causeway is closed."

    "Don't go home. Whatever you do, don't go home! Do you hear me?"

    
"Not very well.
It sounded like you said don't go home."

    "I did! Listen to me very carefully…"

    
More static.

    Behind her, she hears a shout and sees that the cop who stopped her is waving his arm in a circle, signaling her to get back into the car and turn it around.

    
"In a second!
I have a phone call!" she shouts to him. But her words are drowned by rain and borne away on the wind.

    "Detective Dorado…" Frustrated, she steps farther from the car, buffeted by the gale. "What did you say?"

    His next words are punctuated by another burst of crackling interference, but the few she does make out chill her to the bone.

    "Royce… and… Aim…
kill
."

    Clutching her cell phone against her ear, Charlotte is certain she misunderstood, because…

    She can't have just heard what she thought she did.

    Heart racing, she moves farther away from the car, shouting over the wind, "What did you say, Detective? It sounded like-"

    "I
said
,
Royce Maitland and his daughter Aimee were killed in a car accident ten years ago in New Orleans."

    The
manilla
envelope is tucked safely into the waistband of Tyler's trousers, beneath a protective layer of shirt and his soaked
trenchcoat
.

    The wind repeatedly turns the umbrella inside out as he zigzags his way northeast, toward police headquarters on the corner of Oglethorpe and Habersham. Finally, the metal spokes begin to pop away from the center, and he shoves the umbrella into the nearest trash can. It was useless, anyway, in this storm.

    He supposes that a man who wasn't hell-bent on self-punishment would have gone home with the envelope, figuring the contents will keep for another day or two.

    But this has waited long enough.

    Come hell or high water-and Tyler
is
enduring his share of both at the moment-he will get this information to the authorities today.

    At last, he's arrived at the familiar station house where his business has brought him so often in the past.

    The desk sergeant greets him by name.

    "Mr. Hawthorne, what brings you out in this weather?"

    He hesitates only briefly before answering.

    
Just long enough to send a silent apology to Silas and Gilbert, wherever they are.

    "I have no idea what you're trying to say to me!" Charlotte protests into the phone, screaming to be heard above the roar of the storm, and the louder roar of panic beginning to mount inside her. "Royce and Aimee are at
Oakgate
. I'm trying to get home to them now."

    Even as she speaks, his baffling words echo in her brain.

    
Killed…

    Ten years ago?

    Ten years ago!

    What in the world is he talking about?

    "No-please, Charlotte…" Gone is the masterful interrogator; gone is the Mrs. Maitland-or, for that matter, Ms. Remington.

    Dorado's voice is strained as he says, 'You have to listen to me; I just read the obituaries myself, I saw the pictures myself. Royce was forty at the time of the accident ten years ago, and bald. Aimee was
fifteen,
and a redhead…"

    "No, no, no," she says, relief melding into the river of panic within. 'That isn't them. They-"

    "Charlotte-"

    "You have their names mixed up with somebody else… Aimee is a blonde, and Royce certainly isn't fifty, or bald," she protests with a brief, brittle laugh, wondering how on earth he got so confused. "You met-"

    "Charlotte! For God's sake, listen to me. Your life and your daughter's life might depend on it."

    
Your daughter's life…

    "Royce and Aimee Maitland are dead. They were hit by a drunk driver near the French Quarter during
Mardis
Gras ten years ago." His tone leaves no room for argument.

    'Then who-"

    She tries again, struggling to stay sane in the face of her own hysteria.

    "Who is at my house with my daughter?"

    When Dorado speaks, the three words are drenched in the same frantic anguish that has broken like a tidal wave over Charlotte.

    "I don't know."

    Anxiety gnawing at her gut, Mimi sits on a bench in the station house outside the office where Dorado is presumably attempting to alert the authorities on
Achoco
Island.

    Why would the imposter known as Royce Maitland have fooled his own wife, for God's sake? And it isn't just him-it's his daughter as well.

    Mimi can't help but remember a movie she once saw, about the witness protection program-or so you were led to think. In the end, it turned out the hero and
heroine really were
running for their lives, and had taken on the identity of a dead couple to save themselves.

    
But even if that's the case with the
Maitlands
…
Where…
How does little Theo fit into the picture?

    Another wave of nausea sweeps through her, along with yet another memory of the drowning on her watch.

    All she wants is to go home, but she can't. Dorado convinced her that she's stuck here now, for the duration of the storm.

    She did manage to reach her mother by telephone and learned that they've lost power out on the island, but that she found candles and flashlights. Cam is doing just fine playing shadow puppets on the wall.

    "What about Jed?" Mimi asked, unable to forget her husband's ominous comment about hurtling himself into the Atlantic during a storm.

    Her mother told her that he'd been sleeping all afternoon. Mimi made her go check him again, and held her breath until her mother came back on the line to say that he was there, in bed, snoring.

    So here Mimi sits, mulling over the latest incredible turn of events involving
Gib's
family, and then noticing an agitated elderly man talking to the desk sergeant.

    He's a distinguished-looking fellow, despite a shock of wet, windblown white hair and a soaked trench coat.

    Intrigued when she overhears him say, "Remington," Mimi casually gets up and goes to get a drink of water at a fountain within earshot of the conversation.

    "No, it isn't life or death
this very moment
," she hears him saying, "but it is life or death for anyone who-" He breaks off, glancing at her.

    She realizes she's forgotten the water fountain and is staring directly at him.

    Embarrassed, she stoops over the spout and presses the lever.

    The man resumes his conversation with the sergeant in a stringent whisper, all but drowned out by the running water.

    But Mimi releases the lever just in time to hear the one phrase that compels her to instantly give up all
pretense
of good manners:
Kepton
-Manning Syndrome
.

    
"Stop!
Hey!"

    Charlotte ignores the angry shout of the police officer behind her; ignores the black-and-white car with the flashing light as she sprints past it, onto the causeway.

    It's about a mile, she calculates as she hurtles herself forward, driven by sheer panic.

    Thank God she had jammed her feet into sneakers, and not her usual sandals this morning.

    Each footstep that lands in the streaming roadway sends up a spatter of spray; she's being soaked and battered from every direction by stinging rain and a wind so strong it's all she can do to stay centered on the causeway.

    I've got to get to
Oakgate
.

    
Got to get to
Lianna
.

    Got to get to-

    No, not Royce!

    He isn't-

    
Yes, he is. He has to be
.

    He's her husband. She loves him.

    And Aimee-Aimee is his daughter.
Her stepdaughter.

    Aimee wasn't lying. Detective Dorado said it himself.

    
Aimee was telling the truth… You were right about her being innocent all along.

    Yes, she was right.

    Aimee is innocent.

    
I knew she wouldn't hurt Royce. I knew it.

    So what in the world is Detective Dorado talking about?

    Maybe that wasn't him on the phone right now. Maybe it was somebody who read something in the media and decided to play a cruel prank…

    A sharp stitch pierces Charlotte's left side.

    Panting, she slows her pace.

    
Just a little.

    
Just enough to relieve the pain in her side.

    She can't stop altogether.

    She's only a third of the way across the bridge. She can see the towering white foam hurled repeatedly against the man-made rock retaining wall on the distant shore.

    Turning her head to look down for the first time, she realizes that angry green-black waves are breaking close to the road's surface, held back only by a low concrete barrier.

    If that washes away, so will
she
.

    And she'll be overcome quickly-no doubt about it.

    The strongest swimmer couldn't survive more than a few minutes in that churning vortex.

    She'll drown, just like her son.

    
Oh, Adam.

    Oh, baby…

    Maybe that's what is meant to happen.

    Maybe she, too, is meant for a watery grave. Maybe-

   
 
No!
Lianna
.
Lianna
needs me. I can't die.

    There's nothing to do but go on. Keep her feet moving, one splashing down right after the other. Get to the island. Get to
Oakgate
. Get to
Lianna
.

    
And Royce?

    What about Royce?

    Royce is as much a victim as she is.

    Somebody tried to kill Royce… Or were they trying to kill her?

    Well, it couldn't have been Aimee. She was in New Orleans.

    And obviously it couldn't have been Royce. He was the one who got shot. He didn't do the shooting.

    So who was the phantom figure that Charlotte saw lurking among the tombstones in the cemetery?

    Who shot her husband?

    "Excuse me? Hello?"

    Jeanne stiffens, hearing the door open at the foot of the stairs leading up to the third floor.

    "Is anybody up there? Jeanne?"

    She doesn't answer.

    She just sits in her wheelchair, and she waits, her hands clutching the mother-of-pearl handle beneath the woolen shawl on her lap.

    Footsteps creak on the worn wooden treads.

    Tentative footsteps, climbing toward Jeanne's private roost-the only part of this old house that is hers… if any part of it ever really was.

    The top of a blond head grazes the bottom of her line of vision down the steps.

    "Jeanne? Are you okay up here? I'm looking for
Lianna
. Is she up here with you?"

    Jeanne doesn't reply.

    The next
stair tread
creaks; more of the blond head appears.

    The bangs, Jeanne notices, are still damp from where they peeked out from the hood of the black rain cloak.

    
This is insane
, Charlotte tells herself, nearing exhaustion. She stoops into the wind, dragging each foot forward as the furious sea spits vehement waves over the concrete barrier on either side of her.

    What is she doing here?

    What is she trying to prove?

    Dorado's voice reverberates through her mind.

    Aimee was telling the truth…

    Yes! She was!

    So why is Charlotte risking her life out here?

    Rising water is beginning to lap at her feet. She's almost across. Just a few more yards, and she'll be there.