“Brockton, can you hear me? You in there?”
“Yes,” I said weakly. “But I’m tied up. Kinda beat up, too.” Through the fog of pain, I struggled to remember something, but what? Seth. Why had the sheriff said Seth? Who was Seth? I knew the name, but didn’t know why.
“Delozier, get your ass out here. Now. Hands up.”
“Coming.”
I heard a clatter, and saw the handle of the lash bounce and twist as it hit the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief, but my relief was short-lived. Delozier’s legs crossed my field of view. He grasped the handle of a tool that was leaning against the wall of the barn, and I saw to my horror that it was an ax. He walked quickly again to the bed where Cochran was tied. In the surreal glow of the blue strobes, I saw the shadow of the ax rise and then descend with a splintering, sickening thud. “Twenty-one, by God,” Delozier whispered. He turned and walked slowly to the door, the ax hanging from his right hand. “I’m coming out.”
When Delozier reached the barn door, he stopped. “You,” he gasped in the direction of the sheriff. “I know you. It’s been forty-five years since you and Cockroach put my friend in the trunk of your car, but I’d know you anywhere, you sodomizing son of a bitch.” He made a low, growling sound—an enraged, animal sound—and ran out of the barn, ran toward the strobing lights. A gun fired—once, twice, in quick succession, and, after a pause, a third time. The third shot was followed by a silence so heavy it seemed solid.
In the silence, I heard the answer to the question I’d asked myself a moment before: Seth was Cochran’s first name. The sheriff knew Cochran, and knew him well, I realized; he’d known him well enough to let Cochran select boys for him to molest. The sheriff had known that Cochran didn’t die in the fire at the school. And he’d known that Cochran was here; maybe he’d even known that Cochran was luring me into a trap.
And maybe now the sheriff was going to finish what Cochran had started.
“Brockton?” Judson appeared in the doorway. My only hope, I decided, was to pretend I hadn’t heard what Delozier had said just before the sheriff shot him.
“Who’s there? Sheriff, is that you? I think I blacked out for a minute. Did I just hear a gunshot? What happened? Are you all right?”
There was a pause while the sheriff took in what I’d said, turned it over in his mind, evaluated it, decided what to do. “He came at me,” Judson said. “Delozier. He went crazy, said some crazy stuff, and came at me with an ax. I shot him in self-defense.” The sheriff walked slowly toward me. His gun was still in his hand.
“Sheriff, could you untie me?”
He didn’t answer. He was standing two feet away, looking down at me, his gun still in his hand.
Suddenly I saw his head turn slightly, listening. I heard it, too: a car careening down the dirt road, then the sound of locked-up wheels sliding to a stop; a door being flung open. Stu Vickery raced into the barn, his weapon drawn. “Agent Vickery,” said the sheriff slowly. “Glad you could make it.” During the tense silence that followed, I heard my heart thumping. “I was just about to untie your man Brockton here, but I’ll let you do it instead.”
Should I warn Vickery about the sheriff? Could I warn him, without causing the sheriff to start shooting?
Vickery lowered his gun and stepped toward me, stepped between the sheriff and me, and then—just as I was about to shout a warning—spun and aimed his gun at Judson’s chest. “Put down the weapon, Sheriff.”
“Vickery, have you lost your goddamn mind, or are you just bound and determined to ruin your career?”
“Put down the weapon, Sheriff. You’re under arrest.”
“The hell you say.” The sheriff’s gun began coming up.
“Put it down. Now.”
“Under arrest for what? For shooting a murderer in self-defense?”
“No. For being a murderer. You’re under arrest for the murder of Winston Pettis. We’ve got evidence that puts you at the scene of his death.”
“You’ve got shit, Vickery.”
“We’ve got genetic evidence that puts you at the scene. You really shouldn’t chew tobacco, Sheriff. Filthy habit. All that juice. All that spit. All that DNA. One of our crime-scene techs found a nice wad of your spit in Pettis’s yard. Perfect match with the wad of spit you left in the ferns the day we found the graves.” Vickery paused. “That’s not all. We found the tracking collar you took off the dog. One of our divers pulled it out of the Miccosukee River. It’s got your thumbprint on it, Sheriff. And there was a .45 in the mud beside it.”
Judson’s eyes flickered as he took in Vickery’s revelations and evaluated his options.
In the darkness outside, I heard a siren racing toward us and, underneath it, another one. Judson heard it, too, and lowered his gun. Suddenly he was an old, weary man.