Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (38 page)

As soon as Kade closed the door behind us, I said, “He was taken, wasn’t he?”

Chief put his hand on the back of my neck. “I think we have to consider it as one possibility.”

“Does that make sense, though?” Kade said. “How would anybody know he was even here?”

“We’re talking about Sultan.” I heard my voice go as far up into fear as Flannery’s. “He uses Marcus Rydell’s eyes to watch us, just like he did Sunday night. And if he has him …”

I plunged my hands into my hair and jerked toward the door. Chief caught me by the shoulders and held on.

“Don’t go there yet, Classic. Let’s just stay with this and see where it takes us.”

“Can I say something?”

We all looked at Stan who was at the sliding glass door shining an LED Maglite into the midst of us.

“I don’t know what any of this is about but it sounds like we oughta bring the cops in on it.”

“I would have done that an hour ago if I had reception.” Kade threw his cell phone onto the bed where it bounced aimlessly. “I’da had the Coast Guard, the SWAT team—”

“My truck’s the only vehicle that’ll make it into town,” Stan said. “I’ll drive in and notify the police. We’re still in St. John’s County, right?”

“I should go with you,” I said. “I know who to talk to—”

“I think you should stay here in case Desmond shows up, which he still might.”

I knew Chief didn’t believe that was going to happen. The lines cut so far into his face I could have crawled into them. His eyes gave away what he did believe: that I would go after Detective Kylie with my fingernails and teeth and wind up in a cell.

“I’ll go with Stan,” Kade said.

“That works,” Chief said.

He pulled me out of the way so the two of them could get out the door. He didn’t let go when they were gone.

“I’m going to keep looking for him, Classic,” he said. “And one way or the other, we’re going to find him.”

“I can’t just stay here and do nothing.”

“You’re going to do nothing?” His eyes dug into mine, as if he were clearly taken aback. “You’re not praying? Because that’s what I’m doing.”

I swallowed hard. “What are you praying?”

“The only thing I can think of,” he said. “DearGoddearGoddear God.”

No one slept. Flannery only dozed fitfully in her blanket, pressed as close to me as physics would allow. She woke up every time Chief and Joe returned to shake the storm off of them and see if by some miracle Desmond had come back on his own. Each time they went back out through the glass doors, more of my hope went with them. If it weren’t for Hank, praying and listening and folding her hands, I would have lost it all.

Two hours after Kade and Stan left, Kade returned with Nick Kent. A search-and-rescue team arrived behind them, and after questioning Flannery and me, they, too, went out into the now-waning storm to look for Desmond. By then, I knew he wasn’t out there.

I took Nick Kent down the hall where we talked in whispers.

“I appreciate you coming,” I said. “But why didn’t Kylie come himself? Or send a crime-scene unit? He still doesn’t believe me, does he?”

Nick chewed at the corner of his freckled lip. “I don’t know what he believes. He said he’s working it on his end and for me to find out anything you hadn’t told Kade.”

“What is his problem? Why wouldn’t I give Kade all the information …”

Nick looked away.

“He said that’s why he sent you, but that’s not it, is it?” I said.

“Nope.”

“He wants you to placate me so I’ll stay out of the way.”

“I’m not going to do that. It wouldn’t do any good, right?”

“You’re in enough trouble as it is because of me. You can go back and tell him I’m just sitting tight.”

Nick chewed his lip for another few seconds.

“As long as I’m here, I might as well have a look around. Have y’all touched anything back here?”

“Just the candle, but Kade can tell you where he found it.”

“You think Flannery would walk through it, show me where she was and where Desmond was, all that?”

“Yeah. It would be good for her to have something to do besides beat herself up.”

Flannery was actually in the midst of another round of that when Nick and I returned to the living room. Kade was on the couch with her, smoothing the hair that was drying into a tangled clump.

“It’s not your fault, Flan,” Kade said. “How could you even think that?”

“Because if somebody took him—”

“Who said anything about that?”

“I’m not deaf. I heard you guys talking.” Flannery sat up. “If somebody took him, I bet it was Elgin, coming after me.”

“Flan, no.” Kade got her face between his hands. “Listen to me. You need to stop putting this on yourself and start focusing on believing.” His voice left him, and he pressed his forehead against hers until he got it back. “He’s my brother too,” he said. “And I’m not going to stop until we find him.”

When sunlight finally smeared across the water, the ocean was still raising her voice even though the storm and its rain had largely passed. The search team said they would keep looking, that hopefully they would have better luck in daylight. None of them said anything to Chief when he wordlessly followed them back out. Nick had already left by then, after going through everything with Flannery, and Hank and Joe were ready to head back to town. Hank offered to take Flan with her.

“I want to go to Ms. Willa’s,” Flannery said. “She’s going home today, and she’s going to need me to check out the nurse.”

I suspected Flannery was the one who needed Ms. Willa, and I was happy to let them hold each other up. What
I
needed was to go home and find out which way I was supposed to go. Nick Kent had been right not to believe I was going to sit tight.

After Hank and Joe left with Flannery, Kade assured me he’d tell Chief where I was off to, and that he would keep me informed if he got any news from the team, if he ever got cell phone reception again.

“We’re going to find Desmond,” he said.

I was delayed a few minutes longer while he cried hoarsely in my arms.

That wasn’t the only thing that slowed me down. Although A1A was largely passable, I had to bring the van to a crawl through standing water in several places. I was testing the brakes on the St. Augustine side of the bridge when my phone rang.
Now
I got reception.

I pulled over into the parking lot in front of the fish market and answered, my heart pounding in my throat.

“Yes?” I said.

“Good morning, Ms. Chamberlain,” a muffled voice said. “Are you ready to find your son?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I squeezed the phone. “Who is this?”

“Your only hope. Follow my instructions exactly, and you will see him.”

My thoughts spun, but I grabbed onto one. “I want to talk to Desmond.”

“After you follow your first set of instructions.”

“Put him on the phone!”

“We’ll do this my way or no way, Ms. Chamberlain. What’s it going to be?”

I twisted the phone away from my ear and pressed my mouth into my wrist. I couldn’t mess this up.
PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod, the words.

I put the phone back to my ear. “What do you want me to do?”

“You’ve made a good choice. In one hour, go alone to Forty South Palmetto Avenue, Palatka. Ask for Mr. Ozzy.”

“Wait.” I opened the console and dug frantically for something to write with. “Tell me that address again.”

“You heard me, Ms. Chamberlain. One hour. No more. No less.”

The call ended. I stared at the phone until it blurred in front of me. He had him. He had my son.

DearGoddearGoddearGod—

Go. Go the mile.

“That’s
thirty
miles, God!”

I let my head drop to the steering wheel. What was I saying? I would go as far as I had to for Desmond. And the whisper, no matter what it meant, was still the whisper. God was still there. I sat up and restarted the engine.
Forty South Palmetto Avenue—

The van shuddered and died.

“No! Nonononono!”

The dashboard lit up, and I trounced on the gas pedal and pushed on the key until it cut into my finger.

“Don’t do this to me! Please!”

I stomped on the pedal again, and the engine gasped its way back to life. But it ran rough and the chassis shimmied. It wasn’t going to stay alive for long.

Coaxing with my foot, I pulled back onto the road and forced myself to breathe while I thought what to do. There was only one option, and that was to go home and get the bike. The jackal on the phone said one hour, no less. I could change out of Kade’s sweatshirt and into riding clothes and still get to Palatka in time. I just didn’t let myself think what I was going to be in time
for.

The van stalled twice more before I reached Palm Row, sealing my decision, until I turned into the lane and saw Hank’s car parked in front of my house. I might have backed out and taken my chances with the van if she hadn’t pulled aside the kitchen curtain.

Think think think think …

I prayed all the way to the side door for a face that gave nothing away. Hank opened it and said, “You’ve heard something.”

I nodded her back and looked around the kitchen.

“She’s upstairs taking a shower. What gives, Al?”

“If I tell you something in confidence as my spiritual adviser, you can’t tell anyone, right?”

“What did you do?” she said.

“Nothing yet. But I’m about to, and you have to swear that you’ll keep it to yourself unless I’m not back here with Desmond in two hours.”

“Al—”

“Please. Promise me. I have to do what he said.”

“Who?”

I told her about the phone call while I put on jeans and a shirt from the laundry basket and crammed my feet into my boots. She did nothing except shake her head, but when I stood at the door with the Harley key in my hand, she closed her eyes and said, “The Lord be with you, Al.”

“And also with you,” I said. “With all of us.”

At first the roads were ponded from the storm, but the further inland I rode, the less often I had to drive straight down the middle of the highway to keep my wheels from disappearing into the receding wash. Once I no longer had to concentrate so hard on navigating, I let myself think about the phone call.

The voice had obviously been disguised. I would never be able to identify its owner, but he was definitely male and not uneducated. That ruled out Marcus Rydell.

Which didn’t reassure me. Nor did the fact that his tone wasn’t aggressive or immediately threatening. The arrogance, the cold certainty that I would do exactly what I was told—that rendered Marcus Rydell a schoolyard bully in comparison. I had no illusion that whoever it was would hand Desmond over to me when I got there. He wanted something from me, and he was going to get it. As long as he let Desmond go, I would do anything.

That was why I hadn’t called Chief or Kade or Nicholas Kent. They wouldn’t let me risk my life doing this. And I had no doubt that was what I was doing.

The road was potholed where the water had stood and I had to focus on it and on the fact that now that I was in Palatka, I had no idea where Palmetto Avenue was. I saw a Citgo station ahead and signaled a right turn. And then suddenly I was jolted above the pavement by a rock I didn’t see until I was airborne.

I forced the front wheel to stay straight, but all I could do was pray that the back one wasn’t thrown one way or the other, or the Classic and I were going down. We hit the pavement on both wheels so hard my teeth slammed together and I could almost feel my brain sloshing in my skull. But we were upright.

My jaw wasn’t the only thing that had been jarred. If I was going to get through this and get Desmond back, I couldn’t let my mind go chasing after what-ifs.

“There is only what is,” I whispered.

Then go.

I followed the directions the woman at the gas station gave me, and the address on the cinder block building read: 40 Pal etto Aven e. But I still stared from the bike for several minutes after her grumble faded. The sign above it said Wildwood Convalescent Center.

If this was that jackal’s idea of a joke, it was a sick one, and I was far beyond laughter.

I had to be buzzed in through the front door to get to the reception counter. An uninterested black woman cleaned out her ear with her little finger as she asked me what patient I was looking for.

“Mr. Ozzy?” I said.

She examined the wax she’d retrieved. “Is that an answer or a question?”

“I was told Mr. Ozzy was here.”

“You were told right.” She pushed her chair back and stood up to lean across the counter. “Go down that hall,” she said, pointing. “He’s in Room 110. And thank the Lord somebody came to see him. Maybe he’ll hush up that cryin’ he’s been doin’ ever since he got here.”

I headed toward the hall.

“You’re welcome,” she called after me.

Room 110 was five doors down, and I reached it before her voice faded in the Pine-Sol–scented air. I didn’t set myself up for what I was going to see. It didn’t matter what shape Desmond was in as long as he was alive.

But when I pushed open the door, it wasn’t Desmond’s chocolate-eyed gaze that met mine from the bed. Even in the dismal half-light I knew the almost nonexistent eyes that blinked behind the thick, smeared lenses belonged to Maharry Nelson.

It took him a moment longer to recognize me, and when he did, he fought to sit up, but restraints on his wrists kept him latched to the bed rails.

“Maharry, what on earth?” I said.

“You came.” His voice crackled with the effort to breathe. “They said you would but I didn’t believe them.”

My mind spun again, but I forced it to stop right where I was. Think now. Think.

I put my hand up to quiet Maharry and opened the door to the bathroom. It was empty. I crossed back to the hall door and locked it. By the time I got to his bed, the thoughts were coming one at a time.

“I’m taking these things off,” I said. “But you have to promise to stay quiet, okay?”

He nodded, but I was sure he couldn’t have spoken anyway. His voice contorted into dry weeping.

“Shh, Maharry. I’m going to send somebody back to get you out of here, but you need to help me help you.”

“Don’t help me,” he said. “Help Sherry Lynn.”

I got one wrist loose and Maharry grabbed my hand. I was shocked by the icy feel of his bones.

“Where is your oxygen?” I said.

“They brought me here to die.”

“Who?”

“Sultan’s people. They brought me here to die.”

“I don’t understand. Why would they do that?”

“Because I shot Sultan. A year ago I shot him.”

My fingers froze on the strap.

Maharry let his hand fall to the sheet that only half-covered his diminished body. “I shot him to protect Sherry, and I’ll lie here and die for that. But you have to make sure they don’t go after her.”

I loosened the other restraint and pressed the frigid hands between mine. His pain pulsed against my palms, but it wasn’t guilt I felt there. It was the fear of a parent who would sacrifice anything for his child.

“You didn’t shoot Sultan,” I said. “Your eyesight is so bad you would have had to have been right on top of him and you weren’t.”

“He had a big back. I got lucky.”

“He was shot in the head, Maharry, and you didn’t do it. You’re protecting Sherry
now
, aren’t you?”

Panic seized his face, and he lurched up, gasping. I somehow found the release for the bed rail and got one knee up on the mattress so I could take hold of him. He was no more than a skeleton in my arms as he breathed again, shallow, tearing breaths.

“Okay, we won’t talk about that right now,” I said. “I’ll take care of Sherry, I promise.” My inhale was only a little less ragged than his. “I just need to know one thing, Maharry, because my kid is lost too.”

He nodded. The drawstring skin around his mouth was blue.

“I think the same people who brought you here sent me to see you, but I don’t know why. Do you?”

“The letter,” he said.

“What—”

“In the drawer.”

The only drawer I saw was in the bedside table. I helped him back onto the pillow before I yanked it open and found a folded piece of paper.

“Is this it?” I said.

Maharry licked at his lips as if he could barely find them. “He said to give it to you and then I could have my nurse.”

“When did he say that?”

“Just before you got here. Can you get her for me? The redheaded one. She’s the only one who takes care of me.”

“I’ll find her right now.” I leaned close to him. “Maharry, I have to go, but I
will
get you out of here.”

“Just find Sherry Lynn,” he said. “Tell her to keep running.”

I made myself leave the letter unopened as I marched down the hall. The woman I’d talked to before was standing in front of the counter with a flier and a roll of tape.

“I’m calling the authorities about that man’s care,” I said. “I suggest you provide him with oxygen before they get here.”

She waggled her head. “He has oxygen.”

“No ma’am, he does not.”

She looked at me with the first trace of concern I’d seen on her face.

“And he wants his nurse,” I said. “Redhead?”

The woman brushed past me and squealed her tennis shoes down the hall.

“Where is she?” I called after her.

She didn’t answer until she reached the door to Room 110. With her hand on the knob she said, “Look on the counter.”

I saw nothing on the counter except the flyer, lying face down with four rolled pieces of tape fixed on it for hanging. Dread bit at me before I even turned it over.

IN MEMORIAM, it said—above a fuzzy photo of a smiling Brenda Donohue.

DearGoddearGoddearGod.

My return to the Harley was like a run in a bad dream, thick and horrifying. My mind was the only part of me that raced as Sultan and Maharry and Brenda and Marcus Rydell chased themselves in a surreal circle. It stopped when I finally reached the bike and opened the letter.

Good choice, Ms. Chamberlain,
it said.
You will get your son back when you have brought me the rest of my betrayers. Go home and wait for my call.

There was no whisper from God to go. Perhaps because there was no other choice.

When I got to the house I went straight to the living room to plug my phone into the charger on the end table. Hank was on the couch, holding a sobbing Flannery. My heart stopped.

“What is it?” I said. “Did you hear—”

“No,” Hank said. “Hon, come on, tell Miss Allison what happened.”

I sat on the other side of Flannery, who handed me her phone. “I don’t ever want to see this again.”