Slap. “Wake up.”
Slap. “Wake up.”
Slap.
A male voice crept into my head, vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t focus enough to connect a name to it. Each hit was a little harder. Trying to will my eyes open, I braced myself for the big one. He didn’t disappoint me.
Shaking my head, I opened my eyes to find Jace Wittman looming over me, all sixty-six inches. He didn’t put his weight behind the slaps, thank God. To him, they were light taps, but my head begged to differ. I caught a whiff of diesel fuel. The room swayed as it came into focus. I was on a boat.
Ropes bound me to a metal chair in the middle of a cabin on Hines’ Sea Ray Sundancer 400, on which we had celebrated his Patron of Florida Culture award six months earlier. My chest, arms, and legs were strapped tightly. My ribs screamed for relief. I couldn’t clear my head.
A small female form sat on a white row of cushions to my left near the glass door that opened to the stern. By her sat a man with a tall glass in his right hand and his left arm around the girl.
“Please, that’s enough, Daddy,” said a young voice coming from the couch. Julie Wittman’s bright red hair came into focus. Neither alarmed or frightened, she sounded very unemotional. Was she medicated or drunk?
“Yeah, Jace, I think you have Mr. Holmes attention,” said Bo.
The boat rocked, forcing me to swallow Five Sisters’ red beans and rice that wanted desperately to reappear. The bile burned my throat.
“You don’t look so good,” said Jace chuckling. With his face inches from mine, I smelled bourbon on his breath. Fighting the urge to vomit and still trying to clear my head, I assessed my predicament. The boat was drifting. We were the only four people on it. Hines had a pistol on his lap. I steeled myself and looked into Wittman’s eyes.
I smiled and said, “Beep.”
He backhanded me, toppling the chair. I hadn’t moved my head quick enough to dodge the blow. I felt his ring rip my cheek and saw stars and maybe a few planets. He said, “You think this is funny, you son of a bitch?”
Blood ran down my cheek. My eyes teared from the pain. I didn’t say a word, not sure how my voice would sound.
Bo handed Julie the handgun and helped his brother-in-law right the chair. I smiled again.
“Jace, calm down. Mr. Holmes wants to get your goat,” Bo said. “We have things to discuss with him.”
Red-faced, Wittman jabbed a finger in my chest. I couldn’t avoid wincing.
“I hate this prick,” he said. “He never lets up.”
“That’s what you like to hear, isn’t it, Walker?” said Bo as Jace retrieved his drink from somewhere behind me. “You love being in people’s heads, don’t you?”
“I wrote with no malice towards you or your brother-in-law,” I said, hoping my voice sounded steady. My Mississippi drawl became more pronounced when under pressure, which gave each word an extra syllable. “I hate his politics, not him.”
“I am my politics,” Wittman yelled. “Dammit, don’t you understand anything?”
“Why are we here?” I said, looking at my bonds. “Isn’t this a little overkill, Bo?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe.”
“What is this about?” I said.
Jace moved to sit on the white couch on my right. I was positioned on the wooden deck between them. The moon reflected on the Gulf in the row of windows behind his head. Wittman’s belligerence had waned, replaced with smugness.
He said, “Your newspaper is sinking fast. Your advertisers are bailing. You’ve bounced checks with your staff and vendors. Your shareholders are ready to cut their losses. Next week, your bank is going to call in your loan.”
“Nothing new, been there before,” I said, not sure how confident I sounded.
“We can make it all go away.”
“How?”
Hines said, “You move on to another story. Let the petition drive run its course without any interference—”
Jace added, “Who gives a shit about a Yankee and his baseball team?”
They were tag-teaming me, forcing me to turn my head back and forth as if I was watching a tennis match. I heard my brain rattle with each swivel.
Stringing them along, I said, “What’s in it for me?”
Hines flashed his winning smile and said, “New advertisers and money to pay off your vendors and the bank. Consider it a gift that the IRS won’t ever discover.”
Maybe I should have told them that I needed time to think about their offer, but I couldn’t avoid asking, “What about the Arts Council trial?”
Hines’ smile froze. “My lawyers are cutting a deal with the state attorney. I’m providing testimony against Pandora Childs, the real thief.”
“But Childs is dead,” I said.
His eyes bore down on me, willing me to shut up.
“What?” asked Wittman. “When? Where? We had no idea where the bitch was hiding.”
“No details. You slugged me before I could follow up on a text.”
Wittman pulled my phone out of his windbreaker. “What’s your password?”
I gave him the password. It wasn’t the time to worry about my privacy.
When I did, Jace read Harden’s text and put the phone back in his pocket. He took a big swallow of his drink. “Bo, you said she probably was hiding out in the Bahamas or some other Caribbean island.”
He slurred the word “Caribbean.”
I said, “Not hardly.”
“Shut up!” said Hines, backhanding me. Somehow the chair didn’t topple over. Through sheer will power, I kept it upright.
He said to his brother-in-law, “He’s lying, Jace. Trying to pit us against each other.”
Wiping his eyes and running his hands through his thick hair, Wittman said, “The bastard is just screwing with us. Right, Bo?”
I tasted the blood running from my nose. The metallic flavor pushed me to continue. I spit it out.
“Jace, why do you think I was at O’Riley’s?” I asked. “I was there to meet Childs. I got a text from—”
“I said shut up!” shouted Hines. He hit me with his fist, knocking the chair over. I lost consciousness.
When I awoke, I was on my side still tied to the damn chair. I heard Hines and Wittman yelling at each other outside. Their words were indecipherable through the glass door.
Julie Wittman sat on the couch. The gun was lying in the fifteen-year-old’s lap.
“Help me,” I whispered. “Untie these ropes.”
At first, she pretended not to hear me, but I kept repeating, “Help me.”
Julie stared ahead, looking over me out the windows, not at me. She mumbled something.
“What?” I asked. “Please help me.”
“Bo would be mad at me,” she said.
“Your Uncle Bo and father are in big trouble,” I said. “I can save them from themselves before it’s too late.”
She looked at me, waved the gun in my direction. “Bo would be mad at me.”
I tried to scoot across the floor and maybe loosen the ropes. They began to give a little. Hines and Wittman entered the cabin as I almost freed my left hand.
Laughing Hines said, “Well, what do we have here? Trying to escape, Holmes?”
“Uncle Bo, he asked me to untie his ropes,” said Julie.
“Good girl,” he said and kicked the back of my chair. A wave of pain racked my chest.
Jace straightened the chair and untied the ropes. Bo took the gun from Julie and pointed it at me. I rubbed my wrists, coaxing the circulation back into my hands. I reached up and felt the stitches on my head. Thankfully they were still intact. I wiped the blood off my cheek, nose, and lips with my sleeve. Then I looked at the scarlet streaks on my white shirt.
I smiled again. The hell with these beatings.
“Julie, bring Mr. Holmes a washcloth with some ice,” said Hines. “We’re not savages, Walker. All of this is a misunderstanding.”
Bo matched my smile, but his didn’t reach his eyes. They were reptilian. He wanted me to think that he would let me go soon. Maybe he even convinced Jace that was what he would do.
When she returned with ice wrapped in the washcloth, I applied it to my nose and upper lip. Jace sat quietly, drinking his bourbon with a blank stare. Again, I was caught between them. Other than the moon’s reflection, I could see no other lights outside.
Bo began to spin his tale. “Sue and I gave Pandora keys to our condo months ago. She wanted to take her nephews to Dollywood. She must have made copies before she returned them.”
“What about her meeting me at O’Riley’s?” I asked.
Jace said, “We don’t know anything about that. Bo said you hung around O’Riley’s on Friday nights. We sent Julie inside. When she spotted you, Bo texted you. I hit you when you came out.”
I bit my tongue, seeing the glaring hole in the story. How did Bo Hines obtain Childs’ cell phone? Wittman was too smart not to see it, but he was drunk. I needed to keep Jace engaged in conversation and keep him from passing out if I was to have any chance. He wouldn’t want his daughter to witness a murder. Hines didn’t seem to care.
“Why kidnap me?”
Wittman couldn’t remember. He looked at his brother-in-law.
“We haven’t kidnapped you,” Bo said smiling again. “We needed your undivided attention so you would understand our offer.”
“Why tie me up? Why the beatings?”
Jace said, “Tying you up was Bo’s idea. You provoked the beatings. Those are on you.”
My nose had stopped bleeding. I had to keep them talking.
“How about a drink of water?” I asked.
Bo said, “Julie, bring Mr. Holmes a glass of water.”
After she left the room, I said, “Jace, you don’t want her to see all this. Do you?”
Bo answered before his brother-in-law. “My niece knows how to keep her mouth shut. She needs to learn how the business world works, how deals are negotiated.”
After Julie handed me the glass, Hines squeezed her leg as she sat down beside him. He still had the gun pointed at me.
I asked, “Why tonight? Why not wait until you finalized your deal with the state attorney?”
Jace found his voice again. The alcohol had dulled his cognitive abilities, but he was shaking it off, like a bear waking from hibernation.
“When the porn bust hit, Bo said it was the perfect time to grab you because everyone else would be distracted,” he said. “If anything happened to you, people would think it was connected to your reporting on a child porn network.”
I said, “But nothing is going to happen to me, right? You and Bo just want to talk to me.”
“You always have to be prepared, Walker,” said Bo as he got up and stood over me.
“We aren’t going to start with the hitting again, are we?” I said. “As hard as it may be to believe, I’m not a fan of getting my ass kicked.”
Julie giggled.
“This is all your fault,” said Hines to me. His reptilian eyes had returned. The bourbon on his breath was overpowering. “You brought all this upon yourself.”
He made two drinks and traded Julie a bourbon and Diet Coke for the gun. He put his arm around the teenager and kept the handgun on his lap. She didn’t pull away, and Jace ignored them.
“Which one of you got Celeste Daniels pregnant?” I asked. It was a jump, but maybe it would buy me some time. The longer I dragged this out, the better my chances for survival.
Jace bolted up, spilled his drink, and rushed toward me. I grabbed his wrist before his punch connected with my chin. “I said no more hitting.”
He wrestled his arm away, picked up his red Solo Cup, and went to the bar. I started to stand.
Bo said, “Sit back down, Walker. We’re still negotiating.”
He squeezed Julie. “You wouldn’t want to deprive my niece of her education?”
I sat down, not taking my eyes off Hines.
“My guess, the baby was yours.”
Wittman started laughing. “You really are clueless,” he said. “Bo’s impotent, shoots nothing but blanks.”
Bo said, “Be quiet, Jace.”
Jace continued to laugh. “He can’t get anyone pregnant. Not Celeste, not Sue.”
“Be quiet,” Bo repeated.
I said, “So, you’re the father?”
Jace stopped laughing. I had hit a tender wound. Instead of striking me, tears filled his eyes.
“Yes,” Wittman said. “I loved her, really loved her. Everybody thought I dated her to hurt Stan, but she was special.”
He continued, “We kept it from her family, but I couldn’t keep secrets from my mother. She demanded Celeste get an abortion, even offered to pay for it. Celeste and I wanted to marry and move to Mobile or Birmingham.”
Bo tried again to stop his brother-in-law. “Is this the kind of tale you need to discuss in front of your daughter?”
I needed Wittman to continue talking. I asked, “Why didn’t you go ahead with your plans?”
With a tear running down his cheek, he said, “We were supposed to meet with her parents. We needed their permission to marry. I waited for her after school at the Burger King outside of Town and Country Plaza so we could rehearse our speeches, but she never showed.”
I said, “Why didn’t you tell this to the police?”
Wittman said, “I wanted to, but my mother told me to keep my mouth shut. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I didn’t know where Celeste was. The police would suspect I killed her and I would lose my college scholarship. I was a coward.”
“That’s enough ancient history,” said Hines. “Jace, you’re working yourself up. Let’s review our offer to Mr. Holmes. He stops writing. Your petition halts the park, and he saves his newspaper. Win-win-win.”
“How was she supposed to get to the mall?” I asked Wittman.
“Bo was supposed to give her a ride.”
Hines said, “I waited outside Catholic High for about an hour. She never showed up. I assumed she had found another ride.”
Jace said, “I went home, too afraid to call her house. I didn’t learn she had disappeared until the next day.”
Hines said, “We searched everywhere. Remember, Jace, how we talked to all her friends, visited her favorite spots. We got nowhere.”
“Yeah, we did,” said Jace.
Another thought popped into my head. “Jace, why did you start the petition? Was it because you needed the contract rebid so your consulting company would make money?”
“Walker, what’s with all the questions?” asked Hines.
“Humor me. I’m a journalist.” I said, finishing my glass of water. I tried to scan the room without being too obvious. The cabin was too clean, too tidy. Nothing to grab for a weapon.
Hines said, “I was going to make a lot of money on that maritime park. I cut Jace into the deal at Sue’s suggestion to help him pay his late wife’s remaining medical bills. She also wanted them out of the house.”
Julie mumbled, “Aunt Sue never liked me.”
“You fucked everything up with your Arts Council story,” said Hines as his voice got louder with each word. He pointed the gun at my chest. “You wouldn’t leave it alone. You had to take me down.”
“You stole the money,” I said staring down the barrel of the gun.
“Shit, I was going to pay it back once I could draw on the city contract,” he said. “You had to hurt me. You were jealous of my success.”
I shook my head. “Bo, people lost their jobs, paychecks bounced, and performances were cut because you stole the grant money.”
He began to shake his head. “No, no.”
I said, “You supported the petition drive because you wanted the city to cancel the construction contract and rebid the work. You didn’t care about the maritime park, but you and Jace wanted the money.”
“You can’t prove it,” Hines said. “You can’t prove I stole from the Arts Council either. No one can.”
I said, “No one can because you killed Pandora Childs.”
At the corner of my eye, I noticed Wittman had raised his head. I had his attention.
“Again, no proof,” Bo said, dismissing me with a wave of his hand.
I said, “There will be records, evidence tying you to the money and her death.”
Laughing Hines said, “This ain’t my first rodeo. You aren’t that smart, Holmes.”
Looking at Jace and then back to him, I asked, “What are you talking about? First rodeo? Have you killed before?”
Hines smiled and took a big sip of his drink.
Jace asked, “What are you talking about Bo?”
Hines said, “Shut up, Jace.”
“He killed Celeste Daniels,” I said and decided to push it. “He was jealous of your relationship with her. He couldn’t stand Celeste loving someone else more than him.”
Hines jumped up and pressed the gun against my chest. My ribs throbbed. I gasped and held back a scream.
“Enough of your shit,” he said. “I could blow you away, dump your corpse into the Gulf. No one would ever miss you.”
Gritting my teeth, I said, “My dog would.”
Julie giggled again. I had forgotten she was in the room.
Hines shoved the gun into my rib cage one more time. The chair tilted back and my feet were off the floor. He liked to see me wince. Getting that pleasure satisfied his bloodlust for the moment. He went back to the couch, set down the gun between his niece and himself, and began to drink. He was relaxed, in control, and completely enjoying himself.
He said, “Again, you have no proof, not even a body.”
Jace stood. A storm had come up, and the boat began to rock more forcefully. Swaying, Wittman fought to keep his balance. He was also trying to clear his head.
“You killed Celeste?” he shouted at his brother-in-law.
“Of course not. Holmes wants to set us against each other. Mess with our heads. He wants to be let go.”
Wittman said, “But that’s what we agreed to do. Scare him, get him to back off, and put him back on shore.”
“Yes, Jace. Sit back down, rest. I’ll crank up the boat in a few minutes, and we’ll go to the marina. Promise.”
I said, “Jace, he’s going to kill me like he murdered Celeste Daniels and Pandora Childs. He may have even poisoned Sue.”
Hines charged me and hit me so hard that I fell off the chair. He began to kick me repeatedly. He picked the chair up, held it high and took aim for my head. Wittman crashed into him, knocking him against the glass door.
“Stop it, stop it,” shouted Wittman. He was bigger than Hines by four inches and twenty pounds.
Hines let go of the chair. He had his hands on his knees and was breathing heavily. So was Wittman. The two aging, one-time high school athletes were like a couple of old lions fighting over an antelope’s carcass.
Jace said, “Holmes, you found the suicide note. We all know Sue killed herself.”
My left eye was nearly swollen shut. I struggled to keep consciousness. My brain was shutting down. “What was the secret?” I rasped.
A soft voice spoke. Julie Wittman said, “I am.”
Jace charged Bo. A gun fired, and I blacked out.