Along the way to the restaurant, she even tried to convince herself that everything she’d seen had all been in her imagination.
No, she had seen the man. She had never set eyes on him before she had seen him at Sea Life, but she had known it was the same man when she had seen him in her yard.
She didn’t think he wanted to hurt her.
So why was he there, watching her?
Meg was coming, and Matt with her. And they had already helped save her life once.
Lara smiled drily to herself. She was educated, she was savvy—she’d been in politics, for God’s sake. She was strong. She wasn’t a coward, and she could handle this, whatever this was.
Liar.
This was creepy. Body parts turning up in the lagoon and men who simply...disappeared.
All right. She was starting to get scared at last. But friends were on the way.
The idiot in front of her suddenly slammed to a stop in order to cross three lanes of traffic. She swore beneath her breath and gave her full attention to her driving. To her relief—and, she was sure, to that of the drivers all around her—a siren instantly sounded. Didn’t happen all that often, but that was one jerk who was going to get caught.
She turned her radio on just in time to hear the deejay remind people that this was Talk Like a Pirate day.
A pirate phrase quickly came to her mind.
Dead men tell no tales.
She couldn’t help but think that maybe—just maybe—they did.
6
Brett was frustrated.
Their boss, Special Agent in Charge Colin Marshall, had texted them the image one of the boys had captured on his cell phone—then shared with half the world via social media—and the police sketch. While the phone image was pretty low-res, it was enough to show that the police artist had done an excellent job—especially because, Marshall had assured them, the drawing had been done without the artist having seen the photo.
It was the perfect image of a dead man. A dead man who’d attacked the man who had been his best friend in life.
Brett and Diego weren’t going to be able to reach the doctor who had signed Randy Nicholson’s death certificate until late that night or the next day; he was in transit back from a medical convention in California. With only so many hours left in the day, they decided that the first thing would be to see the family and request that they approve an exhumation, which would make things much easier than trying to proceed without the family’s agreement. Randy Nicholson’s son, Henry, was appalled that people thought his dead father had risen from the grave, not to mention that he could have killed a friend. He was incredulous that anyone could believe that it was even possible, and he was willing to prove that it wasn’t. Better yet, he spoke for the whole family. He’d seen the digital photo, of course, along with the police sketch, and he agreed both looked just like his father.
But he’d been with his father in the hospital when he’d died, so as far as he was concerned, a picture wasn’t worth a thousand words or much of anything else.
Brett told Henry that they would waste no time; he intended to see that the body was exhumed by the next day.
Once that was set, Brett and Diego decided to see the three boys who had witnessed the crime. The parents could have stood in their way, since the boys were adolescents, but they didn’t. In fact, they offered to bring the boys in, but Brett wanted to talk to each boy individually. He wanted to make sure that their stories jibed and didn’t sound rehearsed.
Brett and Diego went to see each boy in turn. Two were fourteen; the oldest was fifteen.
They talked to Thomas Clayton first. He had a little sister who hid behind her mother when Diego and Brett arrived, and his father remained in the living room as they talked, silent, but there to protect his son if need be. But despite his growing obsession with the case, thanks to his connection to the Gomezes, Brett knew how to tamp down his personal feelings and interview an adolescent. In a few minutes Thomas was talking easily about seeing Arnold Wilhelm on the platform. Ricardo Clemente, one of the other boys, had been showing them a video when they’d seen the other man—the killer they’d describe to the police. Thomas said the victim had looked surprised but also pleased, as if he’d been about to go and hug the guy. Then Ricardo had decided to take a selfie of the three of them on the platform, and it was as they’d been setting up the shot, their backs to the older men, that the killer had rushed his friend, right when the train was coming.
The boy started to cry. He’d never seen anyone die before, and Brett hoped he never had to see it again.