Kill Tide Page 28

  The landing hurt him. Everywhere.

  He eventually got to his feet and limped to the Camry.

  “Mano, you’re getting mud all over El Diablo!” complained Angel, as Pepper pulled himself into the passenger side. “And what’s that, more blood? Good thing I’m already taking you back to a hospital. What the hell happened?”

  As they drove away toward Hyannis, back toward the hospital, Pepper told Angel everything that had happened. About finding the Emmas and Delaney in the oil delivery truck. And that fake text message from Delaney’s phone had lured them to the Big Red Yard.

  He summarized his fight with the man who turned out to be Gus Bullard. He described the running battle through the contractor park and the intervention by Stinky the monster dog. And how everything ended, with Delaney putting an axe through Bullard’s skull.

  Pepper finished his story, and for once in the many years he had known Angel, his buddy was at a loss for words.

  “So she…? Coach Bullard…? Fuck…”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The next day, Friday, was a long one for Pepper.

  By luck or miracle, no one had challenged him for being away from his hospital bed during the night for almost two hours.

  On Friday morning, the nurse found Pepper out of bed, foolishly doing stretching exercises. She predicted he would rip some of his stitches. Her prediction turned out to be right, or so the doctor thought as he sewed up Pepper again.

  But Pepper’s blood pressure had finally improved. He was young and strong. And the hospital was over-crowded. They discharged him around noon in a lot more pain than he would admit to anyone.

  Mrs. Eisenhower and Zula drove Pepper home from the hospital because his dad and Lieutenant Eisenhower were up to their necks in the aftermath of the crime scene at the Big Red Yard. Zula and her mother didn’t talk much, letting Pepper doze during the half-hour drive back to New Albion. He was grateful to them for that and relieved to be free of the hospital.

  Before he got out of their car at his home, he remembered to thank Zula for gathering the research on Scooter McCord’s two names, especially the death certificate. “That was impressive,” he said to her. “You might be the real investigator in your family.”

  Zula had blushed and waved him off, seeming both embarrassed and pleased.

  Pepper napped heavily all day.

  That night, around ten o’clock, Pepper sat with Delaney Lynn in the sand on Dill Beach by a little driftwood fire. The fire was big enough to be romantic and give them some warmth, but hopefully small enough to avoid attention from Pepper’s police colleagues or the neighborhood busybodies.

  Delaney looked sensational in a peach tank top and white cutoff shorts. Pepper was just as casual in a blue T-shirt and jeans.

  He had a little Bluetooth speaker going with a classic rock mix. Just loud enough, just sexy enough. They sat together, wrapped in a blanket. Because it was a little chilly, right?

  Before long, Delaney was telling him everything she had gone through the day before, just like she’d told the police.

  Gus Bullard had ambushed her in the Langham Arms parking lot as she returned home from visiting Pepper at the hospital. Bullard had overpowered her, tied her up and put a blindfold on her. Then he’d taken her somewhere.

  Many hours later, Delaney felt Bullard start untying her. Maybe to rape her, she’d thought. The man stopped when she was partially free and left her alone for a few minutes. She broke a binding which held her hands, then finished freeing herself. She climbed out of the oil tank, trying to escape to freedom.

  In the pitch blackness of the oil tank, she hadn’t seen the two Emmas—she only learned later that they were in there too.

  While escaping, she grabbed an axe from a random truck to protect herself in case she ran into Bullard.

  She was sneaking along a muddy path, trying to find her way clear of the contractor yard, when she heard Bullard yell he was going to kill her. It was mostly dark, but she saw him running in her direction as he shouted.

  So she used the axe to defend her life, like a farm girl would. Delaney explained it to Pepper just like that. Simple. Unapologetic. She shivered, reliving the moment.

  “The thing I keep wondering,” she said. “Why me? Why’d he grab me?”

  Pepper wanted badly to tell her the truth. That she’d been bait to lure him to the Big Red Yard, so he would die there and get labeled the second half of the Greenhead Snatcher team. Bullard probably figured that the FBI would eventually reject the idea Flammia had acted alone and would look for a second, smarter person. A person with the missing $2 million.

  Bullard must have planned to stage the scene to look like Pepper had worked with Leo Flammia on the kidnappings and Dennis Cole’s murder, then had finally snapped under the pressure. Make it look like he’d killed Delaney and the Emmas, then killed himself like a coward. Everyone would wonder what Pepper had done with the $2 million, but the money would be gone forever. Gone wherever Bullard ran off to…

  Pepper couldn’t explain all of that to Delaney because he had to keep his name out of last night’s events. Feeling terrible, he shrugged and said to her, “Bullard’s dead, so who knows? But you were crazy brave. Really amazing. I wish I could have been at your side to help.”

  He meant it more than she knew.

  Delaney snuggled closer. “Did the FBI figure out why they snatched the two Emmas? Did Flammia or Bullard have a particular reason to snatch them or was it all random?”

  “My dad says they believe the kidnappings were mostly about Bullard. New Albion High forced him to give up coaching hockey one year short of his twenty-fifth season, a huge insult to Bullard, especially when the community didn’t step up to support him. So he wanted to get revenge to the tune of $2 million, then disappear. By the way, the police found the money in a duffel bag shoved behind the front seat of the oil delivery truck.”

  Delaney squeezed closer to him. “But why the two Emmas? And the third girl—Leslie Holbrook?”

  “The police and the FBI think Leslie Holbrook was random—a crime of opportunity. But the two Emmas’ mothers attended New Albion High during the same years as Gus Bullard, and they were both very pretty and popular. Maybe the two mothers shot down Bullard in his high school days and grabbing their daughters was another part of his crazy desire for revenge. The detectives will try to figure that out.”

  Pepper added a log to their little beach fire. Sparks popped and disappeared upward, burning out in the smoke and darkness. He put his arms around Delaney and pulled her close.

  It was time to change the topic. Pepper tickled her low on the side of her back. “So, are you finally going to tell me the story about your cool tattoo? The song lyrics?”

  After a little convincing, Delaney told all. She explained that while growing up in Georgia, she’d fallen in love with the wrong guy as a teenager. A real asshole. He’d been abusive—physically and emotionally. He’d told her she was worthless, ugly, all that shit. Trying to control her.

  She left Vidalia, Georgia, in the night, alone and with almost no money. She’d come to Cape Cod because there were lots of summer jobs. As soon as she saved up enough money, she got the lyrics of “American Girl” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers tattooed on her lower back to remind herself to never let a guy take advantage of her again. That’s what the lyrics meant to her. However, she hadn’t truly felt strong until last night in the Big Red Yard when she fought back against Bullard.

  “I finally earned my tattoo. Unfortunately…” she said with a long sigh.

  “No doubt,” Pepper said, and he kissed her.

  They sat quietly for a bit, mostly looking up at the stars but also very aware of how close their bodies were to each other.

  Then Delaney said quietly, “I have some other big news.”

  “You’ve got another tattoo to show me?”

  She laughed and elbowed him. “No, I decided this morning I’m making the leap. I’m actually moving to Nashville
. I need to take my shot at making it in music.”

  “That’s great!” Pepper said. “With your voice, you’ll be a big star in no time!”

  She laughed again. “We’ll see. At least now I know I’m strong enough to do pretty much anything on my own. Although if you want to join me, we can give it a shot together.” She leaned over and kissed him on the ear.

  This was the toughest decision Pepper ever had to make, but sitting there in the sand he was finally seeing his situation clearly. The handcuffs he’d been fighting against all summer weren’t put on him by other people—he’d put them on himself. He didn’t need to run away from his situation on Cape Cod, or from his college plans. Or from anything.

  No, Pepper finally needed to decide what was next for him, on his own terms. Finally be an adult. Stop blaming others for holding him back or imposing expectations. As hard as that might be. And in his heart, he knew the right decision to make.

  “I’m sorry, Delaney. It’d be an amazing adventure with you, but I have to say no. I’ve made commitments already and I need to see them through. Going to Harvard. Playing college hockey. I can’t walk away from all the hard work I did to get there.”

  Pepper had to give it his best shot, even if he flamed out…

  Delaney hugged him, then looked away. “I understand. Well, this’ll only be goodbye for now, right? Four years is fast. You’ll be a college graduate, I’ll be a country music superstar.”

  “Country music? Not rock?”

  “You bet your ass.”

  So it didn’t look like he and Delaney would live happily ever after, at least not yet.

  “That’s the story of my life,” she said with a thin smile. Not exaggerating her southern accent this time. “Bad timing.”

  They sat in silence, both thinking. Then Pepper said, “But we’re here now. How about we stay out here tonight? Watch the stars?”

  Delaney laughed again, harder. “Watch the stars? How many girls have you used that line on? And what about getting eaten alive by those damn greenhead flies?”

  Pepper hugged her close. “Nope. We had a super high tide…it knocks down the population. You never heard of a kill tide? Yep, we’re done with those greenheads for the rest of the summer, I promise.”

  Delaney turned her head and studied Pepper for a long moment, then leaned in to kiss him. And he kissed her back. Pepper eased off her tank top and Delaney gently helped him out of his shirt, kissing her way down his chest…finding each bruise and wound… Making the pain go away. Which led to other things, finally, even better than Pepper had imagined.

  The night was warm, and they spent it together, there on the Cape Cod sand, tucked away behind a dune, hidden from the rest of the world.

  This one night was theirs—and they didn’t waste a minute.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The next afternoon, Pepper was alone in the driveway behind his family’s home, washing his truck. He’d retrieved it from his mechanic a few hours earlier. Before he turned on the hose, he double-checked the gas cap was on tight and that he wouldn’t get any more water in the gas tank…although he was pretty sure that’d been a dirty trick by Leo Flammia or Gus Bullard to slow him down.

  Pepper’s body hurt as he washed the truck, scrubbing away road dirt and grease. It was a sunny, warm day again and it was great to be alive. Especially after all the danger he’d faced that week.

  It wasn’t even the end of July yet, but Pepper’s Cape Cod summer was almost over. He’d decided to drive his truck up to Harvard a few weeks early and was somewhat optimistic it’d get there without breaking down.

  El Diablo crunched down the Ryans’ long oyster-shell driveway and parked beside Pepper’s truck.

  “Hey, mano!” said Angel with his usual big, open smile. “Look at you back on your feet, doing menial labor! But you missed a spot!”

  Pepper threw his sponge at Angel. Then he took a break to catch him up on the aftermath of the Greenhead Snatcher investigation.

  When Pepper got to the part about Gus Bullard, Angel interrupted. “Did the FBI figure out why Bullard pulled something this crazy? Sure, he got canned as a hockey coach, but his response was pretty extreme!”

  “They think he had a medical condition called CTE. Bullard had a lot of concussions in his old days in the East Coast League. It can totally mess up your brain and throw off things like memory, judgment and fear. They’ll know for sure after the autopsy.”

  “If Bullard lived, his lawyers definitely would have used the CTE defense,” agreed Angel. “A bunch of football players have. And that old wrestler… Superfly Jimmy Snooka?”

  Pepper also filled in Angel about some other evidence the FBI had gathered which explained Bullard’s plans. He’d basically used Leo Flammia as a pawn to grab the girls. He’d convinced Flammia the two of them and the three girls would escape Cape Cod together and start a new society in a remote part of the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. Like one big happy communal family.

  “The FBI thinks Bullard’s secret plan was to kill Flammia with a drug overdose in the oil delivery truck, then get the police to show up and find the girls. Meanwhile, Bullard would have disappeared with the $2 million. But I screwed up his plan when I killed Flammia.”

  It still didn’t seem real to Pepper, even when he said it out loud. He’d killed someone…

  Angel picked up the sponge and started cleaning the truck.

  “And the Rhode Island police arrested Casper Yelle last night. He was at the Greyhound station in Providence, trying to catch a bus south toward Mexico. He also violated his parole by having child pornography on his laptop and by tampering with his ankle bracelet, so he’s headed back to prison.”

  “Crazy!” said Angel, sponging dirt off a rear tire. “Speaking of bad guys who weren’t the main bad guy, did you hear the news about Scooter McCord? He got picked up by ICE!”

  Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Pepper hadn’t heard they arrested the redhead, but he had passed along the info to Detective Sweeney about the death certificate for an eleven-year-old boy named Alastair McCord and the other suspicious info he’d learned along the way about McCord. Sweeney had been grateful for the hot tip. “Why?”

  Angel let out a burst of his loud, contagious laugh. “He was from Scotland and overstayed his visa! He’s been using some dead kid’s birth certificate and Social Security number for years. His real name’s not even McCord! It was on the news!”

  Aha, thought Pepper. That explained the man’s two names, the UK passport and why he had been acting guilty. McCord had nothing to do with the Snatcher kidnappings, but he had been desperate to stay out of law enforcement’s spotlight.

  “At least all’s well for us, right? What’re we going to do to get the hundred thousand reward for locating the two Emmas?”

  And here it was. Pepper paused. “Angel…about the reward. We can’t tell anyone it was us. We have to keep our names out of it. Sorry, pal, we won’t be getting that money.”

  Angel looked confused. “Mano, when we explain the whole thing, they’ve got to give it to us!”

  “That’s what I’m saying. We can’t tell them we were there. We have to leave it as anonymous.”

  “Jesus, why would we do that? It’s one hundred thousand dollars! You know how many pizzas I’d have to deliver! And you’re broke too. It’d be nuts!”

  But that was the way it had to be, because Pepper couldn’t tell anyone he was part of the crazy battle on Thursday night at the Big Red Yard. It looked like Pepper would get officially cleared for the brown van incident and the death of Leo Flammia. However, if Detective Miller learned what he did on Thursday night—and the many other sketchy things he had done that week—he could quickly end up in all kinds of legal jeopardy.

  Which Pepper explained to his friend. “Angel, that’s the way I have to do it. That asshole Detective Miller would ruin my life if he got a whiff I was involved. I’m sorry.”

  He had a second big reason he didn’t tell An
gel—he didn’t want to get credit for solving a problem he helped create himself by killing Flammia so recklessly.

  No, Pepper would stay anonymous as punishment for his rebellious actions and lies that week which could have led to the deaths of the two Emmas, Leslie Holbrook and Delaney Lynn. And his unprofessional gossiping which probably contributed to poor Dennis Cole’s death.

  Angel’s face was flushed, and he was breathing hard.

  “I wish we could take the credit, but we can’t,” said Pepper. “This one’s got to stay buried. You need to trust me on that, brother…” He took the hose and rinsed the area Angel had been scrubbing.

  Angel was silent for a good while. Studying Pepper’s face. Looking like he would explode. Finally he let out a pained sigh and spoke. “Mano, with friends like you I’m never gonna get rich. I don’t understand it, I think you’re nuts. But if that’s how it’s got to be, then damn it—good enough for me.”

  What a friend.

  Angel wrung out the sponge in the bucket. “This looks like a pre-trip washing,” continued Angel. “The Ivy League calls soon, huh?”

  “Yep. I’m heading up on Tuesday.”

  “You give ’em shit, kid. And don’t worry about me—by the time you get home, I’ll own this town.”

  Pepper didn’t doubt it. If he could avoid getting kicked out of Harvard before the snow flew…

  “You did good,” said Angel. Then he gave Pepper a half-hug and a punch on the shoulder. “You’re finally all grown up, Pepper Ryan! And I think I did a great job raising you…”

  Then Angel grabbed the hose and blasted Pepper with water, so Pepper chased him around the truck, laughing and cursing.

  When they finished half-drowning each other, Pepper said, “I’ll settle for just being a college kid for a while.”

  Angel gave his belly laugh again. “Mano, some people are called to greatness…and some people are called to trouble. We both know which kind you are. But don’t forget us little guys down here on the Cape.”