Cold Vengeance - Lincoln Child [27]
June Brodie watched through the window, face impassive, cold blue eyes unblinking, until the car receded into the distance. Then she turned toward her husband. “Do you think he bought it?”
Carlton Brodie was polishing the china plate. “The police bought it—didn’t they?”
“We had no choice about that. But now it’s public.”
“It was already public.”
“Not newspaper public.”
Brodie chuckled. “You’re giving the Ezerville Bee too much credit.” Then he stopped and looked at her. “What is it?”
“Don’t you remember what Charles said? How frightened he always was? ‘We must stay hidden,’ he’d insist. ‘Stay secret. They can’t know we’re alive. They would come for us.’ ”
“So?”
“So what if ‘they’ read the paper?”
Brodie chuckled again. “June, please. There is no ‘they.’ Slade was old. Old, sick, mentally ill, and paranoid as hell. Trust me, this is for the better. Get it said, and said our way—without a lot of rumor and speculation. Nip it in the bud.” And he walked back toward the kitchen, still wiping the plate.
CHAPTER 15
Cairn Barrow
D’AGOSTA SAT IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT of the rented Ford, looking disconsolately out at the endless gray-green moorlands. From the height of land on which he’d parked, they seemed to stretch into a misty infinity. And for all the luck he’d had, they might as well go on forever, cloaking their dark secrets for all time to come.
He was wearier than he’d ever been in his life. Even now, seven months later, the gunshot wound was still kicking his ass: here he was, winded by something as simple as climbing a set of stairs or walking through an airport terminal. These last three days in Scotland had driven it home with a vengeance. Thanks to a solicitous and competent Chief Inspector Balfour, he’d seen everything there was to see. He’d read all the official transcripts, depositions, evidence reports. He’d been to the scene of the shooting. He’d spoken to the employees of Kilchurn Lodge. He’d visited all the houses, farms, barns, stone huts, mires, tors, dingles, dells, and every other damn thing within a twenty-mile radius of this godforsaken place—all without success. It had proven exhausting. Beyond exhausting.
And the cold, drizzly Scottish environment hadn’t exactly helped. He knew the British Isles could be damp, but he hadn’t seen the sun since he left New York. The food was lousy, not a plate of pasta within a hundred miles. He’d been persuaded to eat a dish called haggis the evening he’d arrived and his digestive system hadn’t been the same since. Kilchurn Lodge itself was elegant enough, but it was drafty, and the cold worked its way into his bones and caused his old wound to ache.
He took another glance out the window, fetched a sigh. The last thing he felt like doing was going out onto that moor again. But in the pub the evening before, he’d heard by chance of an old couple—mad, or just a little touched, depending on whom you talked to—who lived in a stone house out in the Mire, not far from the Inish Marshes; they raised their own sheep and grew much of their own food, and almost never came into town. There was no road to their place, he was told, only a small footpath marked by rock cairns. It was in the middle of nowhere, well off the road and twelve miles from where the shooting had taken place. It was impossible, D’Agosta knew, that a gravely wounded Pendergast could have reached it across all that distance. But nevertheless he owed it to both himself and his old friend to check this one last lead before heading back to New York.
He took a last look at the topographic map he had bought, folded it up, and shoved it in his pocket. He’d better get started—the sky was lowering, and threatening clouds were gathering in the west. He hesitated a moment longer. Then, with a grunt of effort, he opened the door and heaved himself out of the car. He pulled the waterproof tight around himself and started out.
The trail was clear enough: a gravelly path that wound among tussocks of grass and