Terrified that the gunman outside would rush the shattered window, Caitlin snatched up her pistol from her purse, then backed into the narrow crack between Henry’s bed and the wall. The deputy was still shouting, but he didn’t have the weight to overcome the resistance of both Caitlin and the locked wheels under the bed.
“Lock down the hospital!” she shouted. “There’s been a murder!”
With shaking hands, she took out her phone and speed-dialed John Kaiser. The FBI agent answered after two rings. Caitlin spat out what facts she could. Her words sounded garbled to her own ears, but Kaiser seemed to understand them perfectly. He was parking his car behind the hospital, having returned to question Henry, and said he would be outside Henry’s door in forty seconds. Then he said something that chilled Caitlin to the marrow: “If anyone tries to enter that room before you hear my voice, pull the trigger and keep pulling it until your gun is empty. Door or window, you take them down.”
The deputy had stopped pounding on the door. Caitlin glanced fearfully at the shattered window, then looked down at Henry, whose eyes still had life in them—or seemed to. She wanted to cradle his head, but she worried she might kill him by doing that. Very lightly, she pressed one fingertip beneath his jaw and felt for a carotid pulse. There! He was alive.
Caitlin aimed her pistol at the window and tried not to look at Sherry’s body lying motionless on the floor. Even a child could have seen she was beyond help. “Please hurry,” she whispered, picturing John Kaiser’s confident eyes and military bearing. “Please, please, please …”
At last a Klaxon alarm began to ring.
CHAPTER 78
TO SPARE KIRK BOISSEAU conflict with his girlfriend, who had complained bitterly about him diving the Jericho Hole yesterday, I e-mailed him from the Examiner and asked him to meet me at a corner house, two down from his, as soon as he could manage it. Kirk spends most of his off hours on the Web, networking with other kayakers and ex-marines, so I felt sure that he’d see my mail quickly. In the end, I had to sit outside his place for forty-five minutes before he texted me that he’d be out soon. Another ten passed before he actually appeared in my passenger window.
“Back already?” he asks with a grin, dropping into the seat beside me. “I must have done good yesterday.”
“You got your name in the paper. Did you mind that?”
“Not me, man. Nancy wasn’t too happy about it, but hey. My life, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Sorry I took so long. Domestic issues.” He taps my dashboard with irrepressible energy. “So, what’s up now? More bones to salvage?”
I shake my head and let him see that tonight’s errand is far more serious. “I need to question somebody, Kirk. And he’s not going to like it.”
He nods slowly. “Like a field interrogation?”
“You could call it that.”
“Tough guy?”
“Not exactly. He’s probably over eighty.”
“What?”
“But he might have some people with him that I wouldn’t want to have to handle on my own.”
“I get you. Do I know him?”
“Brody Royal.”
Kirk whistles long and low. “Whoa, brah. Hey, we just heard his daughter was in the hospital.”
“That’s right.”
The marine’s eyes widen. “Don’t tell me you had something to do with that.”
“No comment.”
He makes a sound I cannot decipher. “Well … I’ll help you, but there’s one little problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Royal owns the Royal Cotton Bank, and I’ve got an outstanding note there on my dozer. He sees me working as muscle for you, he’s liable to call my note tomorrow.”
“How much is left on the note?”
“About twenty grand.”
Less than I figured. “Tell you what. If Royal calls the note, I’ll pay the balance, and you can pay me if and when you get the money.”
The silence lasts a few seconds. “This is some serious shit, huh.”
“Yep. That’s the second part of this conversation. Brody’s son-in-law is a real bastard. A killer, Kirk. He attacked me in a restaurant at lunch, and Caitlin had to shoot at him earlier tonight to keep him off her.”
“And you need me to keep him in line?”
“Discreet backup, let’s say. But things could get violent fast.”
He shrugs, then rolls his enormous shoulders with fluid grace. “Sounds better than watching Sex and the freakin’ City with Nancy.”
“This isn’t diving the Jericho Hole. Brody Royal’s tied in with the Double Eagles and some corrupt state cops in Louisiana. There’s drugs involved, and God knows what. They’ve killed a lot of people.”