Holland lifts a remote control from his lap and presses a button.
The big screen above the mantel lights up, showing what looks like a scene from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. In reality, it must be security cam footage of the interior of a deer-skinning shack. Hoists and hooks are bolted to the walls and ceiling joists, while knives, bone saws, and pliers hang from the wall. Tied to a six-by-six post at the center of the screen is Nadine Sullivan.
She’s naked except for a pair of panties, and a rag has been tied around her mouth. Her eyes look glassy from fatigue, or fear, or perhaps narcotics. Behind her the wall is stained with blood. It looks like old blood, but with this video setup it’s hard to be sure. The camera’s wide-angle view shows me a big drain in the floor, surrounded by something wet. A small pile of clothes lies at Nadine’s feet.
It’s all I can do to hold down the contents of my stomach, which feel like nothing but acid and whatever casserole my mother’s friends brought over after my father’s death. I’m about to speak when Paul reaches out and grips my arm hard enough to stop me.
“Is that the bookstore girl?” he asks. “Nadine?”
“That’s right,” says Beau Holland. “She had the cache your mother made. The one designed to destroy your father. And us, if necessary.”
Paul glances at me, then back at Holland. “How’d you find out she had it?”
“Your wife told us.”
This throws Paul off-balance. “My wife?”
Tommy Russo answers the question. “We sent a couple of guys to talk to her this afternoon.”
Holland can’t bear to let Russo have the floor. “As soon as Jet realized her kid was in danger,” he says, “poof, no more cache problem.”
Paul takes a deep breath, sighs. I may be the only man under this roof who understands that he’s already in the grip of homicidal rage.
“You sent men to interrogate my wife?” he asks softly.
“Had to, Paulie,” says Russo. “And it’s a good thing we did. ’Cause she gave up the Sullivan girl without hesitating. And Nadine talked just about as quick. She thought she was being smart. She hid the cache in a safe-deposit box in a bank in Monroe. Since the bank had just closed for the weekend, she figured we’d have to keep her alive at least till Monday so she could get it out for us.”
“But . . . ?”
“But,” Holland says with a grin, “she didn’t realize that Claude knows every banker from Texas to Alabama. We had that cache in hand ninety minutes after Nadine told us about it.”
Paul sniffs and looks over at Buckman. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“She also told us that Marshall never had anything more than what she fed him anonymously,” Holland adds.
“What about some kind of fail-safe mechanism?” Paul asks. “She dies, and copies get sent out to the FBI and the media? There could be a dozen copies out there in the cloud.”
“There aren’t,” Russo assures him.
“How do you know?”
Russo nods at the TV. “We made sure. Take my word for that.”
My hands are shaking. It’s all I can do not to jerk Nadine’s gun from my pocket. Worst of all, I feel guilty for having the pistol at all. Maybe if she’d had it, Nadine could have defended herself against the men who abducted her.
“Okay,” Paul says with what sounds like weariness. “So what’s everybody doing here? Why the big confab?”
Buckman draws on his cigar, then answers in his gravelly voice. “You’re going to have to earn your father’s seat, son.”
“How do I do that?”
“By killing McEwan.”
Paul sniffs again and looks over at me. He doesn’t look surprised by this order. “What about the Sullivan girl?
“She’s not your problem,” says Holland. “Nadine and I have a little unfinished business.”
Paul snorts. “Having a hard time getting laid, Beau?”
Holland grins with maddening arrogance. “Never.”
Paul surveys the semicircle of faces, then settles his gaze on Buckman. “So the price of my father’s seat is Marshall’s life?”
Holland’s grin widens. “That’s right.”
“Who’d you kill to get your seat, Beau?”
The real estate man’s grin gets brittle.
“That’s what I figured.”
Buckman says, “The demands McEwan made this morning could cost us in the neighborhood of seventy million dollars, Paul. That’s unacceptable.”
“The club and the city together, you mean.”
“Marshall was never going to honor that deal,” Holland cuts in again. “He was going to write another book. Try for another Pulitzer.”
“What if I don’t kill him?” Paul asks.
The old banker leans forward. “Then we’ll know your priority is not the club. But this is all academic. If you killed your father tonight, I can’t see how killing Marshall could be any more difficult.”
“Hell,” says Holland, smirking, “I’d think you’d enjoy capping this asshole.”
I hear muffled laughter from the semicircle, but Paul seems not to notice. There’s a coldness in his eyes that I know is a prelude to violence.
“Let me be sure I’m clear on the terms,” he says. “I kill Marshall, my family is free and clear. I ask because I know Pop protected my wife in certain circumstances. And he’s gone now. If I kill Marshall, Jet is safe. Right?”
Buckman regards Paul through the smoke rising from his cigar. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
Paul rolls his shoulders, then cocks his head and looks down at the old man. “Why’s that?”
“You’ll find out in a minute,” says Holland. He glances at his watch. “Less than a minute, actually.”
“Have some Scotch,” Russo suggests. “I’ll pour you one. This is all gonna work out, bro.”
“I don’t know,” Holland says. “Paul doesn’t look too happy. I figured this would be a relief for him, but he looks a little constipated.”
Paul gives Beau Holland his full attention. “That’s because I’m not as confident as you seem to be about how safe we are.” He turns to Buckman. “I told you Wednesday it was a mistake to kill Buck Ferris—which this asshole did, along with his sidekick.”
Paul must be referring to Dave Cowart.
“Still, you made a deal to contain that damage, and Marshall means to keep his promise.”
“That deal was too costly,” Buckman declares. “Especially given that we don’t need to honor it now.”
“Are you sure about that? If Marshall and Nadine die, it’ll draw a hell of a lot of attention to our little town. Especially after the newspaper that came out this morning. Marshall’s a goddamn celebrity in D.C., which none of you seem to understand.”
“That’s as may be,” Buckman concedes. “But we can’t afford any more stories like the ones he published this morning. It’s worth the risk to be sure we put an end to them.”
Paul looks around the semicircle again. “I still don’t know what you’re all here for. To watch me put a bullet in him? I’d think you’d want to avoid that.”
Before anyone can answer, I hear the sound of a helicopter over the trees. The distinctive whup-whup-whup I recognize from my early reporting days as a Bell 206B JetRanger. I know of only two locally owned JetRangers: Matheson Lumber has one; the other is owned by Prime Shot Premium Hunting Gear. Since Paul is the pilot for Matheson Lumber, I assume the pilot of the JetRanger overhead must be Wyatt Cash, the owner of the island beneath our feet.
Standing at the edge of the pavilion, I see a white nose-light boring in from the east. Red running lights appear behind it. Twenty seconds later, the JetRanger becomes discernible against the clouds, descending fast. Several men stand and turn away from the rotor blast while the chopper flares and lands in the space between the camp house and the pavilion, throwing up a hurricane of pinecones, pea gravel, and grit. If it hadn’t rained earlier, the storm of debris would be worse.
Sure enough, the white JetRanger has the Prime Shot logo painted behind its door. As we stare, the aircraft’s big side door pops open. A man wearing paramilitary gear gets out, then helps someone to the ground.