Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(69)

The old man was sitting at the top of a sand dune, staring out at the sea. His white hair was blown the wrong way, like a frosty wave. His expression was empty. I imagined he could turn to stone up there and no one would know the difference.

I wondered if Lindy might go free for killing Alex Huff. The crime scene, the body, the evidence would be hard to use. Not impossible, but it would take an act of will to bring charges against a well-known local attorney and make them stick. I wondered what the D.A., Peter Brazos, would think of all this.

“I’ll tell the truth,” I told Maia. “Not sure it will do any good.”

“Lindy wants to be punished.” Maia was sizing the old man up, the way I’d seen her do many times with clients. “It fits with his idea of right and wrong.”

“Some system.”

“Everybody needs closure,” she replied. “This is his. He’ll want people to know he took his revenge. He succeeded.”

He succeeded.

I remembered Alex’s attitude in the lighthouse—fatalistic, resigned. But also denying that he was a killer. I didn’t kill Rachel.

It may have been his shot nerves, the cumulative effect of years of a double life that made him sound so convincing. But his denial bothered me.

I looked down the beach where Markie was talking with the boat captain. Telling survivor stories. Ty stood to one side, calmly eating a granola bar. Chase was sitting in the boat like a kid ready to go home. He had an orange blanket around his shoulders, though the sun was rapidly warming things up. When he met my eyes, he asked me a silent, anxious question—Will you tell the police about the drug running? His weekend of panic behind him, reality was starting to sink in. He was beginning to realize that he might go to jail, or worse.

Garrett and Lane were talking nearby in the shade of the washed-up oil tank. Lane was sitting on her suitcase, Garrett in his chair. They were holding hands.

The waves washed the beach. The fires seemed to be burning out. Soon, Rebel Island would be just another sandy dot along the Gulf Coast. No distinguishing features. Its stubborn landmarks finally scoured off the map.

Something was wrong. It took me a minute to think what.

“Where are Jose and Imelda?” I asked.

I stood.

Maia’s face turned pale. “You don’t think they were inside?”

I looked at the burning wreckage of the hotel and the crumbled tower. “I’ll be back.”

Maia asked where I was going. There was, she reminded me, no place left to go.

“Almost no place,” I agreed. And I headed toward the ruins.

The Coast Guard guys paid me no attention. They were making no effort to contain people, or keep us separated the way any cop would know to do in a crime scene. These guys were first responders. Their job was to rescue us, feed us. Not interrogate us. That was just as well. At this point, no amount of investigation was going to bring justice.

I imagined Benjamin Lindy would say the same thing.

I walked around the side of the hotel. The path was still there in places—gravel and paving stones blown with wet sand in a tortoiseshell pattern. I made my way past a burning tree trunk, a broken rowboat oar, a spray of sodden clothing half buried in the sand. Gnats wove a hazy cloud above the sea grass. Sand fleas had survived, too. They were delighted to find my legs—fresh meat walking through their territory.

The heat of the building was not as intense now. I could walk next to it without feeling like my shirt would combust. My leg still felt like it would collapse on me any minute, but I managed to hobble over the rise and down the other side of the island.

The boathouse was the only structure still standing, though ashes had settled on its blue-shingled roof along with an odd assortment of other flotsam—a few dead fish, some seaweed and part of a shrimper’s net. The door was open. Jose was standing in the doorway, watching me approach as if he’d been waiting.

He had changed clothes. He wore jeans and a red beach shirt and sandals that all reminded me uncomfortably of Alex Huff’s wardrobe. As I got closer, I realized it was Alex Huff’s wardrobe.

“Is Imelda all right?” I asked.

Jose considered for a moment, then gestured inside the boathouse.

“The Coast Guard is here,” I said.

“Yes. I saw them.” His eyes drifted up toward the hotel. “Did you find Mr. Huff?”

“We found him.”

“Was he—”

He faltered as Imelda came up behind him. She, too, had changed clothes—a simple gray cotton dress. Her hair was pulled back and her face looked older in the sunlight—her wrinkles deeper, her eyes sunken and pale.

“Señor,” she said. “Is—is your wife all right?”

“She got out before the explosion,” I said. “Barely.”

Imelda’s shoulders relaxed a little. “I am glad.”

“You two made it out as well,” I noticed.

“We were lucky,” Jose said. I noticed the señor was gone, no doubt burned up with the linens and the kitchenware and the dead bodies.

“The police will be here soon,” I told him. “They’ll hear the story of Calavera. I think we should talk before they get here.”

I nodded toward the doorway. Jose regarded me, then said reluctantly, “Yes. Perhaps we should.”

Inside the boathouse, Jose and Imelda’s possessions were stacked neatly against one wall. Two battered suitcases, a few cardboard moving boxes spotted from the rain, a garment bag full of clothes.