The Big Finish Read online

  “Plans change.”

  “I did what I was supposed to. Now I’m supposed to go home and wait. This isn’t how it goes. She and I worked it out. The step-by-step process. I cooperated. I was a hundred percent certain Sugar would go along with Thorn, and before he left the island he’d call me and tell me he was leaving, and I had my story ready. It was all planned out. It went off without a hitch. Until now.”

  “You talk a lot.”

  “Did you hear what I said? Cruz is a federal agent. She’s tracking terrorists. She’s after Thorn’s son. I was just helping out her investigation.”

  “Sure you were.”

  “I was being a good citizen.”

  X-88 said nothing.

  “You’re not going to let me go. You’re going to murder me.”

  “Don’t take it personally.”

  “Does Cruz know you’re doing this? Does she?”

  “This is you and me, Tina. Is Cruz here? Do you see her? We’re off the reservation, you and me. This is my play.”

  A tear broke loose from one of Tina’s eyes. Then a second tear.

  “Did you hear what I said? This isn’t the plan. I did what Cruz asked, every single thing. She’s your boss, right?”

  “Nobody’s my boss.”

  “You got to let me go. I won’t tell anybody about all this.”

  “Let me ask you something,” X said. “I were to let you go right now, what would you do? Give it to me, the play-by-play. What would you do?”

  “Find some way to get home, ride a bus, whatever. And I’d never say a word to anybody. Never a word.”

  “This guy, your boyfriend, Sugarman. He cuddles up to you later on, it’s late at night, you’ve made some sweet love, and he whispers in your ear, asks you real nice, what’s the deal, Tina? You’re not going to tell him anything?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’d never say a word.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you say that. But, Tina, you’re a talker. I’m around you two minutes I can see that. You like to gab. Am I wrong?”

  She licked her lips.

  “No,” Tina said. “I’d never speak to a soul about any of this.”

  “But see, I can’t trust your word. And I’m in an awkward position. This woman, Cruz, she’s got one thing on her mind and one thing only, like Ahab and his great white shark. And she’s in such a goddamn hurry to accomplish that one thing, she forgets about loose ends. She never thinks what might come back to bite her. And that’s fine for her, maybe nothing will ever bite her. But I’m not that way. I don’t like loose ends, see. Because sooner or later one of them is going to come back, and before you know it that loose end has wrapped itself around your throat and you’re hanging from it.”

  “It was a whale, not a great white shark. Ahab and his whale.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. It’s a book about whales.”

  “I been saying it wrong all this time?”

  “You’re thinking about Jaws, that’s the one with the shark.”

  “Ahab and his whale,” X said. “Well, thank you.”

  “Look.” Tina put her hand on her heart. “I swear on my mother’s grave I won’t say a word, never, ever.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but that part’s over, we’re finished with it, okay?” X looked up at the dark sky, easing into this. “So listen, Tina, you familiar with ‘gavage,’ the word?”

  Since she seemed confused he spelled it for her.

  She drew back, eyes tightened as if peering at him from a great distance.

  “Before Raiford, I didn’t know it either. What it means is force-feeding. You know, how they handle a prisoner on hunger strike, jam a tube down his throat. And how they do ducks and geese to fatten them up for foie gras. Gorge, that’s the literal meaning.”

  “Look, I know what,” she said. “You got a cell phone. Let me call Cruz, talk to her. At least let me do that. Maybe you misunderstood something, she can straighten it out.”

  “Tina, Tina. Don’t you hear me? Cruz isn’t here. This is you and me. We’ve moved on. We’re done haggling. Look around you, look at the sky overhead, the stars, take it in. It’s time to say good-bye to all this.”

  “No, no, you’re a good man, you’re good. Please.”

  They always said please. Every one of them. Please, please. Like if you got polite, made nice, the abracadabra word they’d learned when they were kids, that would set them free. Please, pretty please. Never once had X-88 said the word, not in his entire life. Never heard it in his house growing up. Lots of other words, but not “please.”

  “Oh, mother of Christ.” Tina looked away into the dark woods, swallowing again, buying a few seconds, then in a defeated voice said, “Look, do this for me, at least do this. Will you? Tell Sugarman something, will you?”

  X was quiet, waiting for her.

  “Tell him I meant no harm. Cruz came, I told her what I knew, the postcards Thorn gets. She offered money if I’d help. I needed it. My shop, I’m bankrupt, can’t pay my lease. Tell Sugar, okay? Will you? I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. Tell him I love him. That’s the truth. Tell him that for me, I love him, I really do. Will you do that for me?”

  “If I meet up with him, sure, I’ll repeat every word of that speech. Now, you ready for this, or you going to talk some more?”

  “Oh, holy Christ.”

  With his left hand he clutched Tina’s hair and rocked her head back. She fought him, twisting side to side, but X outmuscled her, got her still.

  “Think of this as drowning,” he said to her. “Everybody says drowning isn’t such a bad way to go. So this is drowning, only not in water.”

  Using his free hand, he dug out the three hamburger patties.

  He balled up the meat one-handed and crammed it into Tina’s mouth. When most of it was inside, he clamped his hand over her lips.

  Tina gagged, snorted, tried to bite the palm of his hand. But X held his hand firm against her flailing, plugging up her airway to a count of ten, to a count of twenty.

  When he felt her weakening, he released her hair, pinched her nose shut, cradled her in the crook of his arm like a waltz partner until Tina’s struggling slowed and she grew still. Her weight slumping against him.

  That’s the technique Manny Obrero taught him at Raiford finishing school, the hands-on, natural way to keep the target from howling for help. Brutal and simple. Steal something solid from the cafeteria, ball it up, back the target in a corner, no tools, no blade. A mouth packed with food, keep the lips shut. A reverse Heimlich. Manny liked to say killing this way sent a message to the intemperate indulgers, the gulpers. Put the fear of god into them. A method so quick and outrageous, some didn’t even put up a fight.

  X-88 hadn’t thought to bring a shovel.

  He dragged her body fifty yards through lashing branches and spiderwebs, so far into the forest he could barely make out the parking lights.

  He laid her out flat. Looked at her body for a moment. He spoke her name, Tina Gathercole, like a last rite, then he turned and left her remains behind.

  Fresh meat. An offering to that sick old bear waiting in the shadows.

  SEVEN

  JUST AFTER EIGHT, CRUZ TOLD Sugar to take the next exit, look for a motel, Holiday Inn, Hampton, one of those.

  “We’re driving straight through,” Thorn said. “Sugar’s on a schedule.”

  She turned, flashed a hard smile, and said, “Pine Haven is not a town you want to arrive in the dark.”

  Sugar said, “I’ll stop, but you level with us or we’re ditching you here.”

  “It’s very simple. To locate Thorn’s son, you’re going to need my help. You barge into this without knowing the cast of characters, chances are very good Flynn’s a dead man.”

  Thorn and Sugar shared a quick look. Neither trusted her, but damn it, this wasn’t a risk they could take.

  Along motel row, Cruz pointed them to a Best Western. A Waffle House on one side, burger joint on the other.

>   They carried their bags inside, Cruz handling the duffel. She set it in her room, unlocked the door on her side. Sugar did the same and swung it open.

  Thorn stood in the center of the motel room, eyeing the anonymous furniture with a nagging sense of dread. A hard pressure was growing in his chest, and the atmosphere seemed to have thickened as it does just before a thunderstorm, a density and weight to the air that registered against the skin as lightly but as surely as the first brush of a bull shark.

  He sat on the foot of the bed, absently ran a hand across the bedspread, its surface tacky from the fluids of the strangers streaming through the room. There was an undertone of mildew.

  “Listen, guys, I’m starving,” she said. “Would you mind, Sugar?” Cruz motioned through the open drapes at the burger joint glowing in the night across the parking lot. “I’ll lay out the details over dinner.”

  “You keep stalling.”

  “Over dinner,” she said.

  Sugar shrugged, took their orders, and on his way out the door he shot Thorn a warning look. Don’t try some harebrained stunt while I’m gone.

  When the door shut, Cruz went to her room and returned with a laptop computer, set it on the desk by the front door, and switched it on. She got on the Internet, typed in an address, and stepped back.

  Thorn rose from the bed. He didn’t believe in premonitions, but the burn prickling across his shoulders was impossible to ignore.

  Through the window he watched Sugar trudge across the parking lot, head down, shoulders slumped, reduced to an errand boy.

  Cruz turned the laptop around. Motioned for Thorn to sit. He moved over, lowered himself into the chair. The chills still jingling across his back.

  “This is a Web site,” she said, “the press office section for ELF. I believe you’re familiar with the ELF.”

  “I am.”

  “Use the down arrow to scroll.”

  At the top of the page there was an image of a man in a black ski mask cradling a young goat against his chest. Below him was a series of mug shots with a paragraph posted next to each face.

  “What’s this have to do with anything?”

  She nudged the laptop closer to him.

  The page’s headline: “Snitches and Informers.”

  “The people in these photos were activists busted by the FBI or another branch of law enforcement. Once in custody they saw the light and flipped, took a plea deal, cooperated, wore a wire, testified in court, things of that nature, and for their cooperation they either got a reduced sentence or immunity. And their faces wound up on this Web site.”

  “Why’re you showing me this?”

  “Scroll down.”

  Thorn pressed the arrow key and the pages rolled by. Most mug shots were of white kids in their twenties, mainly guys, a few females, a single Asian, and a black woman. He read about a couple. The crimes they were busted for, their plea deals, the names of those incarcerated because of them. Their eye and hair color, distinguishing features, tattoos, scars. Last known location.

  “And that?”

  He nodded at a photo of a pudgy young man with long curly hair and thick glasses. There was a bright red X marked across the photo image.

  “It’s not obvious?”

  “They caught him.”

  “And dealt with him.”

  “Say what you mean.”

  “That particular case, I don’t know the specifics, but if the kid was lucky, a bullet to the back of the head.”

  He paused, staring at the screen, tried to focus, concentrate on the young man’s face, block out the dizzy spin of the room.

  “What does this have to do with Flynn?”

  “Keep scrolling.”

  He tapped the down arrow, continued to scroll through the page until he came to a dark-haired girl whose eyes stopped him. Intense, but with an impish squint. A vague familiarity. Another red X across her face. Printed in bold letters, her name was CARMEN SANDIA CRUZ.

  He looked up at Madeline and she closed her eyes and nodded.

  “In that photo she was nineteen,” she said. “Since the time she was old enough to walk she adored animals. The kid who brought home snakes, iguanas, stray dogs, birds wrapped in fishing line. We built cages in the backyard for the possums.

  “She went off to vet school in Georgia, befriended a woman in the ELF. This person is taking courses in the daytime, spending her nights breaking into chimp labs or SUV dealerships, tearing up the places. Her new friend talked Carmen into going along on a raid. Carmen thought it was a harmless political protest for a cause she believed in, but it turned out to be more than that, a lot more, and afterward she felt so guilty about the vandalism they’d committed she confided in me and I passed along a few names to my superior at the FBI and some of the culprits went to prison. Though not her friend, not the leader.”

  “And her friend figured out where the leak came from.”

  “Yes,” Cruz said. “She did.”

  She stared out the window at the shadowy parking lot.

  “When did it happen?”

  “Sixteen months ago. Carmen was thrown from the rooftop of a four-story apartment building in Atlanta. Supposed to look like suicide.”

  “And you’ve been tracking this woman.”

  “Since it happened, every hour, every day. I’ve gotten close, lots of near misses. But now I think I have her. Where you and I are headed, Pine Haven, North Carolina, the woman who did this to Carmen, she’s holed up there, she may be injured. She and your son, Flynn, are members of the same group. In fact, I believe you may have crossed paths with her before. She calls herself Cassandra.”

  Thorn repeated the name quietly.

  Cruz said, “Red hair, thick and curly, a tall woman. Athletic. Imposing.”

  Thorn nodded. That was her. That was Cassandra.

  “And Flynn?”

  “Cassandra and Flynn and a few others were in Carolina, planning some kind of action against a hog farm.”

  “Hog farm?”

  “Concentrated animal feeding operation, known as a CAFO. A high-density process, large number of animals crammed into tight quarters. A heavy environmental impact on the surrounding community. Just their sort of target.”

  “I don’t understand,” Thorn said. “What about Tina, the guns, all that?”

  She tapped him on the shoulder, motioned for him to get up.

  She took his place in front of the computer and brought up a Web page with a black background and faint yellow print. Lots of boxes filled with brief messages.

  She scrolled through several pages until she found the one she was after, then stood up and signaled for Thorn to sit.

  “What you’re looking at is a message board where the radical ecocommunity congregates. A public forum, so they mostly speak in code, it’s not easy to follow. But this particular message is straightforward. Posted ten days ago, just before Thanksgiving. Jellyroll, the one who signed it, he’s a member of Cassandra’s cell.”

  Dobbins Hog Farm, NC. U dont hear from us tmrow, come lookin for bodies.

  He turned to look at her.

  She pursed her lips and expelled a breath as if blowing out candles.

  “That was a week and a half ago,” she said. “Nothing’s been posted since.”

  He absorbed her words and the message on the screen for a long while then came slowly to his feet. He drew in a deep breath but it did nothing to relieve the swelling inside his chest. He moved toward Cruz.

  She stared into his eyes and held her ground. He came close, raised his hand to her chest, pressing her against the wall.

  “This is a lie. Flynn’s not dead. I’d know if he was. I’d feel it.”

  “Every parent thinks that. But would you? I know I didn’t.”

  He cocked his arm, pressed his forearm against her throat. Trying to hold himself back, to quiet the teakettle’s scream in his ears.

  “Step back.”

  “This is a lie, it’s a fucking lie.”

&nbs
p; “Step away from me, Thorn. Do it now.”

  He got a breath down and said, “It can’t be.”

  “No one’s said your son is dead.”

  Thorn lowered his arm and turned away. His heart floundering.

  “The group was attacked and some of his associates were killed. We believe Flynn was shot, injured. He and Cassandra have gone into hiding. They’re still in the area. That’s why I need you, Thorn. You can entice him.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He learns you’re in town, he’ll seek you out. That’s the outcome I’m looking for. You get your son back, I get Cassandra.”

  “How do you know this? How do you know he’s injured?”

  “I went to Pine Haven immediately after I saw the post on the message board. I met Webb Dobbins, the owner of the hog farm, met the sheriff, got the lowdown.”

  “How badly is he hurt, how’d it happen? I want details.”

  “We don’t have time for this right now. You’ll have to trust me. I’ve got a plan. You’ll get Flynn, I’ll get justice.”

  “Trust you? Why should I? A couple of hours ago you were talking about dangerous people hanging out by the Neuse River, a larger federal operation under your command, Tina’s job was to deliver me, she was leading me into a trap. Now it’s something else. It’s about Flynn and Cassandra.”

  “What I said earlier was for Sugarman’s benefit, not yours. What I’m telling you now is the truth.”

  “Then you lied pretty goddamn easily.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So don’t believe me. Go ahead, you go to Pine Haven, you and Sugarman. Go on your own, fumble around in this minefield, see how that works out.”

  “How do you know Flynn was hurt? That he’s still alive?”

  “Listen. We have to sort out Sugarman before he gets back.”

  Thorn couldn’t name the feelings rocketing through his chest. His face was hot. His ears rang. Body clenched.

  Cruz said, “Sugarman can’t be involved. It’s got to be you and me, Thorn. Just the two of us.”

  He gripped the back of the chair, looked around at the unsteady room.

  “He is involved.”

  “Not after tonight.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”