“Son, are you okay?” Chad yelled, although Amy still had the phone.
Justin said, “Not really. I just killed somebody.”
Amy gasped. Chad demanded, “What is it?” Amy could not answer.
Justin kept speaking, his voice flat with shock. “I killed . . . him. You know, the one who took me. He had his knife out to throw. I killed him with the shotgun. I don’t know whether I’m in trouble.”
“Justin, where are you?” Chad demanded, his face next to Amy’s, his mouth close to the receiver.
“Maypop.”
“Maypop,” Amy repeated for Chad. As her mind started to function, she clarified, “Justin, do you mean Maypop, Florida?” A small town they passed through on their way to Panama City.
“Yes.”
“We can be there in an hour,” she said to Chad.
But Justin was the one who responded. “Please. The police are coming for me. I hear the sirens. I’d better go.”
Amy’s voice rose an octave. “No, Justin, stay on the line!”
But only a click and silence answered her.
She tried to put the phone back in the cradle, dropped it instead, and clung to Chad for support, feeling his arms tight around her, so natural she decided to forget that comfort had ever been gone, withheld. His embrace strengthened her.
“Take a deep breath, honey,” he said. Honey. And he sounded as if he needed a deep breath too.
“Oh, my God,” Amy said against his shoulder. “Oh, my God, I can’t believe it.”
Without letting go of Chad, she was aware that Ned picked up the phone she had dropped, found the most recent number on its screen, and pressed the green Talk button. He listened, then shook his head.
“Justin shut the phone off?” Chad demanded hoarsely.
“Somebody did, or else somebody’s using it.”
Amy let go of Chad and stood not quite steadily on her own.
Ned said, “What are you waiting for, you two? Get going. I’ll take care of things here.”
• • •
Bernie Morales arrived first on the scene, in large part because he knew exactly where it was. As he got out of his cruiser in front of the pink house, a man opened the front door and beckoned to him urgently. “Bernie!” the man called. “Thank God!” and not until then did Bernie recognize him as Forrie Leppo. It was as if Forrest had been to war overnight, the past day had changed him so much. He looked steelier, sharper, like he’d been in combat. Even his voice had sharpened. “We need an ambulance!”
“Coming right behind me.”
Without answering, Forrest disappeared from the door. Heading inside, Bernie put his mind in first-responder mode to memorize the moment like a movie still. Forrest on his knees beside a woman lying under a blanket on the floor: his mother? Bernie didn’t ask, because he could see she was alive and being cared for, while the other person bleeding into the carpet looked very dead and that was a more serious matter. Bernie framed a mental snapshot of the guy’s face—what the hell was wrong with it?—and the bloody mess where his chest had been and the potentially deadly knife close to his slack right hand. He leaned down to touch one of the man’s wrists, checking the condition of the body—no pulse, but still warm. Then he straightened up and took in the rest of it: shotgun on the floor, boy sitting on the sofa looking stunned. Quinn sitting beside him, intent on a cell phone.
It was not Bernie’s job to ask too many questions; that was for the detectives to do. He walked closer to Quinn and waited.
Quinn held up the cellular, one of those smartphones that might as well have been a computer. He presented the screen for Bernie to see. Bernie wondered why he was looking at a photo of Justin Bradley. He remembered the case, a heartbreaker across the state line in Alabama, boy abducted in broad daylight, not found yet.
Then he looked at the kid sitting next to Quinn. The kid faced up to look back at him, his eyes dazed, terrified.
Bernie said, “Holy shit.”
“Justin Bradley, meet Deputy Morales,” said Quinn.
“Stoat had me,” said Justin Bradley hoarsely, looking at the body on the floor as if checking; was it still dead, or would it stand up and attack him?
“Stoat!” Bernie exclaimed. “Is that him?” He stared at the swollen, discolored face that had been ugly enough to start with.
The boy said all in a rush, “Yes. He was beating Lee, um, Miss Lee Anna with the shotgun. We got it away from him, but he was going to kill somebody with the knife. So I shot him.”
“Bernie,” Quinn said urgently, “Justin’s parents are on their way, going crazy to have him back.”
Another siren sounded, and more wheels pulled in, crunching the sand. Bernie parted the window drapes to look. “State police,” he reported.