Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(62)

“Come in here,” I told Garrett.

He didn’t look too happy about it. I’d ripped down the plastic and boards, and removed the blockade of furniture inside the door, but the floor was still tough to navigate with a wheelchair. Besides, Garrett knew I wouldn’t have asked him to come down here unless I wanted him to see something important and unwelcome.

“Look around,” I told him. “What do you notice?”

I tried not to sound harsh. At least I think I kept my tone pretty cool. But Garrett winced like I was beating him up.

“Some of Alex’s old stuff,” he said. “His board. His fishing gear. That’s the poster I got him in Frisco.”

I resisted the urge to correct him. Nobody who’d ever lived in San Francisco called it Frisco any more than natives called San Antonio San Antone. There was something improper about it, like calling your mother Toots.

“What else?” I asked him.

“A refrigerator.”

“The power is off,” I said. “You can open it.”

He looked confused by this statement, but he wheeled over and did as I suggested. Inside was no food. Only chemicals. Bricks of plastic explosives. Coils of copper wire. A selection of pipes and timing devices.

“A bomb maker’s supply cabinet,” I told him. “Notice the security system?”

“What?” Garrett looked dazed.

“The light,” I said. “Look at the refrigerator light.”

He stared at the green metal orb where the light should’ve been. “That looks like a grenade.”

“It is,” I said. “Old drug dealer’s trick. You put a lightbulb cap on the grenade, stick the filaments inside. When the door opens, the electric current hits the explosives. Anyone who comes snooping and doesn’t know to unplug the refrigerator first—”

“Jesus.”

“I almost didn’t unplug it. It occurred to me when my hand was on the handle.”

He looked at me like I was a ghost. “Tres, there’s no way Alex…This can’t be his stuff.”

I didn’t bother to argue. The room spoke for itself.

Garrett picked up something from the workbench. A red plastic guitar pick. It sat there amid timing fuses and pliers and a pile of firing caps. “Alex couldn’t kill people.”

“He was in the army.”

“He was a cook.”

“Not where he started.” I handed him some papers I’d found in the file cabinet—army transcripts. “He had demolition training, but he was transferred out.”

Garrett looked up blankly. “Transferred…why?”

“I don’t know. But he had the skills to make bombs.”

“He made fricking fireworks!”

“A good cover for getting some of the supplies he needed.”

Garrett shook his head. “No way. I can’t buy it.”

I’d expected denial. I didn’t push him. There was nothing I could say that was more convincing than just being here, in the place where Alex had fashioned his IEDs.

“Look, little bro.” Garrett’s voice was ragged. “Alex is a victim here. He’s missing, remember? He’s—he’s probably been murdered.”

“Or he made it look that way.”

“Come on! Can you see Alex blowing people up? Or shooting a lawman in the chest? Or hitting his own manager on the back of the head?”

He waved the guitar pick as if it were weightier evidence than all the bomb-making equipment.

“Garrett, Alex went out of his way to barricade this room. He lied about the ceiling collapsing. He knew what was in here. He had to. He was making bombs.”

“What do you want me to say? You want me to turn on my last goddamn friend?”

In the daylight from the unboarded windows, Garrett’s beard looked grayer than usual. His shirt was pale blue with a fading parrot on it, a remembrance of Buffett concerts past. He looked exhausted and defeated, but he’d still taken the time this morning to comb his hair, the same way he’d done on the Fourth of July, so many years ago, hoping to impress a girl.

“We need to find Alex,” I said. “He was ready to surrender before this weekend. He started negotiating with the marshals, anyway. We need to convince him to give up.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, little bro?”

“Yeah, Garrett. It’s been a hell of an enjoyable weekend. Exactly the honeymoon I had in mind.”

He wheeled himself over to the refrigerator and stared at the equipment inside.

In the silence, I heard something in the hall—a wet floor-board creaking. I tensed, looking around for something to use as a weapon, but there was nothing except my flashlight and several pounds of high-grade explosives. I opted for the flashlight.

I peeked outside. There was no one in the hall, yet I caught a scent that wasn’t salt water or mildew or even death. It was the faint amber scent that might have been Benjamin Lindy’s cologne.

When I came back into the workroom, Garrett had unscrewed the grenade and was holding it in his lap.

“Where is he?” Garrett asked.

“Who?”

“Alex. If he’s hiding, we have to find him. Where is he?”

I thought about Benjamin Lindy, and what he might have overheard if he’d been eavesdropping. I thought about where a man could go on an island this size in the middle of a hurricane.