The Big Finish Read online

  There was buzzing as he pushed into an opening in the trees, a sandy patch covered in decaying leaves, and there was a dead body circled by flies and wasps and bees and butterflies with shiny blue wings and every other insect Herbert had ever imagined or seen. He wasn’t sure which exactly he was doing now, seeing or imagining. But one of those. It didn’t matter really. The butterflies were a beautiful blue.

  The woman seemed real, and about as dead as a woman can get.

  He kneeled down beside the stink, horseflies orbiting his head.

  He touched her cheek with a fingertip and found it cold. The bear had worked on her face, torn open her mouth and cheeks, and her belly too, ripping her clothes, and it was messy there and wet and the flies were feasting all around where the bear had been.

  Herbert decided he wanted to see her snatch, just a look. Nothing sick. He wasn’t going to climb on top of her. He wasn’t one of those creeps, though he’d met a couple in jail, at least that’s what they bragged they’d done, made unholy love. But not Herbert. That wasn’t sane. But just a look, maybe a feel, pluck a few hairs if there were any and take them back to the shack, put them in his stash. Just that. Nothing more.

  But then, shit. There she was.

  Herbert’s mother said, “Herbie, what do you think you’re doing? The woman’s dead. It’s a sacrilege what you’re thinking. The woman’s immortal soul would be forever damaged.”

  Herbert’s mother was like that. Immortal souls were her main line of work. She harped on them. Not happy with Herbert living out in the woods, scrounging like he did, peeping on lovers, but tolerating it. The old woman mainly lay low and didn’t bother him, but he knew she was there all the time because like now, she’d speak to him clear as pie. She’d say the words to steer him from the bad things he was about to do and direct him to the good.

  But just a quick look at her snatch was all he wanted. She had blond hair on top and he’d never seen snatch that color. Just a quick look and no touching. That was okay, right?

  But then his mother was back.

  “You need to report the tragic death of this woman. You need to walk down to that highway, flag down a car, let someone know there’s a body. She’s got loved ones. People care about her just like I care about you, Herbie, and how would you like it if I just disappeared without a trace and you never knew where I was or what happened to me. Not to mention my immortal soul.”

  So shit.

  Herbert stood up and looked around at the woods.

  He knew his mother was dead and the dead didn’t speak. It wasn’t possible. But still, her voice was clear as pie. Clear as warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream on a Sunday afternoon on his twelfth birthday and she made it special for him, special for her only son, just the two of them having a birthday party, Herbie, her child who she watched over so carefully and cooked for and made his every wish come true, as many as she could manage.

  “Flag someone down. Report it, Herbie. Do what’s right.”

  But she wasn’t real. He knew that. His mother’s voice was in his head. That’s what the docs told him. Not a real voice. Like a dream without the pictures. He could tune it out.

  And anyway, all he wanted was a peek. Maybe harvest a few hairs.

  * * *

  After he left Tina’s house, Sugarman went home, lay down on his bed, and tried to sleep for a couple of tormented hours, then paced around his house till he thought it was safe to call Sheffield.

  At eight, Sheffield answered, clearly coffeed-up, saying sure, Sugarman was free to drop by, he’d be on the second floor of the motel painting the interior walls. It was a motel he’d inherited from his old man, a bit run-down, but it was smack on the beach, which meant it was worth a shitload more in land value than anything Sheffield could sell it for as a functioning motel even after he finished fixing it up. But, as he told Sugar, Frank wasn’t interested in selling.

  Sugar waited through Frank’s ramble, though he’d not asked Frank about the motel. But Frank was on a tear, telling him that by now he’d sunk so much money and so many hours refurbishing the old place, restoring its mom-and-pop charm, that he wasn’t going to take any amount of money for the place, not even the five mil he’d been offered last week. What the hell else was Sheffield going to do now that he was fully retired from the FBI, except run the motel, do right by the place where he’d spent the happiest hours of his life back in the day when Miami was actually a very sweet town to grow up in.

  Sheffield talking without pause like he was starved for social contact. He didn’t ask Sugar why he’d called, and Sugar didn’t broach the subject because he wanted to see Frank face-to-face in case there was some deception at work in this mess, some interoffice ass-protecting the likes of which Sugarman had experienced often in his years of law enforcement. It could be that Madeline Cruz was working an angle that overlapped with something Frank had going on, then Frank would try to bullshit him about the whole deal, which was why Sugar was making the hour-plus drive up to Miami even though he’d just finished doing a five-hundred-mile round trip to St. Augustine and back.

  * * *

  It was nine-thirty when he located Sonesta Drive, hung a left off Crandon Boulevard on Key Biscayne, drove a few blocks toward the Atlantic, all the way to the end, and pulled into the empty parking lot of the Silver Sands Motel, hidden in the shimmering shadows of two thirty-story glass cylinders. The motel had an impressive hundred yards of oceanfront with a few dozen coconut palms stirring in a trickle of morning breeze.

  Sugar climbed the outdoor stairway and got halfway down the hall when he saw an open door and smelled fresh paint. He rapped on the door.

  “Go away, I’m working.”

  Sugarman came inside and Frank Sheffield craned around a corner, held up a paintbrush, and said, “You handle one of these? Don’t need to be Rembrandt.”

  “This won’t take a minute. Just a question, I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “How about a beer?”

  “It’s not even ten o’clock.”

  “But it’s Saturday,” Sheffield said. “That’s got to count for something.”

  Frank wiped his big paws on a rag and they shook hands and Sugarman admired the paint job for a minute, said he liked that particular shade of blue, though in truth he thought it was way too purple, more like the walls of a strip joint than a family motel at the beach.

  “So what’s with Thorn? He start another world war yet?”

  “I believe he might be working on it.”

  He watched Sheffield examine some recent brushstrokes that were lit by the sunlight streaming through the front window. Sugar was trying to get a fix on Frank’s mood. He’d worked alongside Sheffield a few times, knew he was about as laid-back as a federal agent could be and survive in an uptight agency like the FBI, but Frank was also a canny son of a bitch who had made a career of hiding that shrewdness behind an amiable facade.

  “Madeline Cruz,” Sugar said. Springing it on him. Test the reaction.

  Sheffield picked up a brush and touched up a spot on the wall. Face empty, studying the wall like Sugar hadn’t spoken.

  “Five seven, dark hair, pretty, carrying FBI ID. She consulted with you about the case she’s working, one that involves Thorn and Flynn Moss.”

  Frank lowered his brush and turned to Sugar. Still giving away nothing.

  “Madeline Cruz?”

  Sugar said, “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “How pretty?”

  “Slim and trim,” Sugar said. “But businesslike, with brown eyes. Probably Mexican descent, a little Aztec too, I’d guess.”

  “Never met her, never heard of her.”

  “Look, Frank, I understand. If you can’t talk about the particulars of the case, fine. You have to keep things confidential. All I need to know is that this woman is genuine. She can be trusted.”

  Sheffield’s mouth flattened like he was disappointed in Sugarman’s approach, treating Frank like a goddamn civilian.

  “Well, gran
ted,” he said, “my memory is getting spotty, but damn, I believe I’d remember a pretty woman named Cruz discussing Thorn and Flynn Moss. I’m not that far gone.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding. You never heard of her?”

  “How many ways can I say it?”

  “Shit.” Sugarman stared out the window at the silver glare of early morning sunlight on the ocean. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “You sure you don’t want a beer?”

  “She had to know I’d check, find out she was lying.”

  “Maybe you and I should sit in the shade, you can lay all this out. I’m intrigued by what I’ve heard so far.”

  Down at a concrete picnic table that faced the beach, Sugar told Frank the story while Sheffield guzzled his first beer quick, then opened another. Sugar explained how Flynn had been sending regular postcards, his way of keeping Thorn apprised of his journeys, then a postcard came yesterday, the Neuse River, no postmark, a call for help, and they’d set off for Carolina, and how they’d stopped at the gas station along the interstate, Cruz appeared, badged them, and Tina, coming back from the restroom, saw what was going down and made a run for it, stole a car, and fled. Guns in a duffel, a mess of cash.

  How Cruz pressured them to continue up I-95, stringing them along with bits and pieces of a story, saying if they were going to find Flynn, they’d need her help because there were dangerous people up on the Neuse River, and she was running a larger federal operation, and it was Tina’s job to deliver Thorn into some kind of trap, and if he and Thorn barged into Pine Haven without knowing the cast of characters, Flynn was a dead man. Then in the early evening Cruz steered them to a motel near St. Augustine, sent Sugarman for takeout dinner, ten minutes later, when he returns with the food, she’s convinced Thorn to cut Sugarman loose.

  Finished with the retelling, Sugar slumped forward and said, “I hear that story coming out of my mouth, and Christ, it sounds totally batshit crazy.”

  Sheffield took the last slug of his second beer and set it aside.

  “That it does, my friend. That it does.”

  Sugarman stared out at the Atlantic, at the mild surf lapping the beach, at the weekend sun worshipers arriving, rolling out their towels.

  “She kept dropping your name, Frank. Said you advised her Thorn might be willing to help her out. She quoted you verbatim, about Thorn being a social misfit. She was very persuasive.”

  “How hard would it be to know my name? Last twenty years I was a public figure, head of the regional field office of the FBI. Anybody who read the papers knows Thorn and I had a couple of encounters. And you can take one look at Thorn and tell he’s a misfit. Tell me this, she say anything might be considered private information about me?”

  Sugarman sighed. Shook his head.

  “She sold us this twaddle, we swallowed it like a couple of schoolboys.”

  “A woman shows you a badge, she’s a slick talker, you trust her story, not so surprising. Maybe you were a little gullible, yeah.”

  “Thorn was worked up. Getting that postcard, a call for help. He was emotional, off balance. Primed and ready to head off. I got swept up in his fever.”

  Sugarman came to his feet.

  “Now where do you think you’re going?”

  “Fly up there. See what I can do.”

  “Sit down, big fellow. Being rash, that’s Thorn’s bailiwick. You’re the levelheaded one, remember? Think this through. Say you go driving into this hayseed town, what if no one’s heard of Cruz or Thorn, they’re nowhere to be found? This whole Pine Haven thing, it’s a fake-out, Thorn and this Cruz woman are somewhere else entirely? Hey, you’ve just wasted a lot of time and money and you don’t know one thing more than you did already. So relax. Take twenty-four hours for Tina to check in. Maybe she’s embarrassed, hiding out somewhere, licking her wounds. Meanwhile, do your research. Give me Tina’s vitals, I’ll call in to the office, have them put her in the system.”

  “I should’ve been tougher, more suspicious. Tina’s disappeared, and Thorn’s walking into some kind of setup.”

  “Easy does it, man. There’s no need to worry about Thorn. That guy’s luckier than a two-dicked tomcat. And he’s got twice as many lives.”

  “And he’s used up more than his share already.”

  Down on the beach an elderly couple in swimsuits had begun to dance with graceful and unembarrassed intimacy. No earbuds, no boombox playing nearby, just swaying to the music of the natural surroundings. They moved together like old lovers, each step and swirl and dip synced with the roll and crash of the surf, the beat of a passing speedboat, its hull hammering the chop in rhythm with their waltz, and the sweet soaring flights of a pair of gulls that were rising and plunging in time with the dancers.

  “You okay, Sugar?”

  He blinked his eyes clear and smiled quietly at Frank.

  “Thorn’s saved my life a half dozen times.”

  “Yeah? And how many of those times did he put your life in danger to begin with?”

  “Thorn’s in trouble. Big damn trouble.”

  “Give me Tina’s info. I’ll get that part started.”

  “Thought you were retired.”

  “Still got a friend or two at the bureau. Sit tight, let me find out what I can. Give me one day.”

  PART TWO

  FOURTEEN

  PASSING THROUGH SOUTH CAROLINA ON I-95, the car was quiet. Pixie had run dry of stories. Napping. From the glances Thorn took in the sun visor mirror, Cruz seemed to be reading texts or e-mails on her phone, answering some.

  Thorn was looking out at the forest of pines along the interstate when a phone rang somewhere deep in the car.

  Cruz craned forward over the seat.

  “What the hell?”

  “Sounds like a ringtone,” X said.

  It rang three more times, distant, muffled. Then stopped.

  Cruz sat back in her seat.

  “Next stop,” she said to X, “find it.”

  The phone started to ring again. It rang five times, then ceased.

  “La Marseillaise.”

  To arms, to arms, ye brave. March on.

  Thorn stared out at the pine trees flashing past. The doubts he’d been having about Cruz and X-88 were gone. He sat quietly, unmoving, trying to breathe.

  * * *

  An hour later, sometime after three in the afternoon, X-88 exited I-95 onto a two-lane highway, US 13, heading north and east. Miles later at a crossroads called Spivey’s Corner, X pulled into a Citgo station and the women got out to pee.

  “And you, Thorn?” Cruz said through his open window.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I can wait.”

  “Watch him,” Cruz said to X.

  When she and Pixie were inside the station, he got out. X-88 was watching the numbers fly by on the gas pump, holding the nozzle in place. Thorn put his palms against a supporting beam, bent forward, and pretended to stretch his back. Positioned to block X’s path back to the pump.

  The Olds’ big tank filled slowly. A minute, another minute. Thorn continued to stretch.

  Back in the station, Cruz finished in the bathroom and was standing at the checkout counter with a Coke and a bag of chips. Beside Thorn the pump’s numbers whizzed by, fifteen gallons, sixteen.

  He looked back at Cruz. She was talking to the clerk and Pixie was beside her, Pixie looking out the station’s front window at Thorn, her big sunglasses gone, curious. He’d seen Pixie before somewhere.

  The pump bell dinged.

  Thorn stretched some more.

  X-88 stepped over to him.

  “Hey, asswipe,” he said. “Move aside.”

  Thorn broke his pose, turned to X, and held out his hand. The helpful passenger—doing his part, returning the nozzle to its slot.

  X gave him a leery look, then handed it to him, and Thorn moved toward the pump, then waited till X had turned back to screw on the gas cap.

  He took a quick half step, raised the nozzle, and hammered the trigg
er guard against the back of X’s head. The big man collapsed against the car, but didn’t go down. Thorn thumped him again above his right ear, and when he’d crumpled to his knees, Thorn squeezed the fuel trigger and drenched his clothes with gasoline. That should slow them down.

  X sputtered, flung out an arm to defend himself, and tried to roll over. Thorn kicked him in the side of the head. X groaned, breathing hard, shaking. Thorn crouched beside him and dug the car keys from his pocket, hopped over his quivering body, and hustled to the driver’s side.

  Cruz had spotted the action and was sprinting out of the store. She’d drawn her weapon and had it aimed his way. Twenty yards off.

  Thorn was quiet inside. All the overheated fury and pain he’d felt a hundred miles ago had turned to a block of ice. He’d finished brooding and no longer cared about Cruz, about her gun, the bullets, he didn’t care about any of it. He started the car, eyes locked on Cruz. She shouted at him to halt. Took a shooter’s stance.

  Thorn slipped the shifter into drive, hit the gas hard, smoked the tires, swung the wheel to the right, and veered toward the highway.

  She didn’t fire.

  In the rearview mirror, he watched the three of them. Cruz lowering her weapon and trotting over to X, who was on his knees, struggling to rise. Off to the side, Pixie stood alone, arms folded across her chest, her eyes following Thorn’s flight. Striking the same pose as yesterday, the girl whose car Tina Gathercole had stolen.

  * * *

  A half hour later Thorn pulled into the gravel parking lot of a general store with a single gas pump outside. A rusty Dr Pepper sign hung cockeyed above the screen door, and next to the metal sign was a hand-stenciled placard that said GREAT HOPE SUNDRIES.

  He parked, got out, opened the backseat driver’s-side door. The floor mats were clean. Pixie and Cruz had taken their handbags into the gas station restroom, but Pixie left her baseball hat behind. That’s all he found. He dug his fingers between the seats, worked his way down its length and encountered grit and a couple of old coins, sticks of gum, a bobby pin, and a Metallica CD. He crouched down and peered under the front seats, knowing this was useless.