Killer Move

The worst of it was that Barclay had known at the start, from day one—the first time he ever met the guy. He hadn’t known it would amount to this, but he’d known Warner was at the wheel of a Bad News Express and sooner or later it was going to pull into a station. You could call it cop savvy—he’d been Deputy Barclay for three years by the time Warner arrived back in town—but he didn’t believe it was that complicated. It was basic chemistry. It was what animals have to keep them safe among predators. It was a red-flashing-light-and-siren combo broadcasting on a silent, invisible wavelength.

It said: There is something wrong with this man.

And there was, though the others had never seen it. Well, they saw it, kind of—Hazel in particular had said things, a couple times, way back—but they didn’t pay attention. They knew he wasn’t the same as them, but they’d never understood just how big the difference was. Barclay hadn’t, either, not until he’d got the call from one of the CSI guys late that morning.

He’d been standing outside the house having a cigarette, wondering what to do—and what to be seen to do—about the apparent disappearance of one of the richest men on Longboat Key. The tech team had been getting ready to ship out, having found nothing more than that single splash of blood. The senior tech said the trace was indicative of a larger quantity, inexpertly cleaned, and thus was suggestive of foul play, but no more. In those amounts it could just have been the result of a finger nicked while cutting a drink-bound lime. Barclay was sure it was going to amount to more than that—which is why he’d held a presence there for so long and insisted on having every tech he could lay his hands on, and the full CSI wagon outside—but for the time being, there wasn’t what you’d call proof.

Then one of the younger techs had come out of the sliding doors. “Uh, Sheriff?” he said, and Barclay noticed how the boy—previously cocky, “Look at me with the science stuff”—looked awkward. He reached up and pushed his sandy hair back. “We found something. It’s, uh, dunno . . . you probably want to come and see.”

Barclay dropped his cigarette to the deck, thinking: Here it is, at last.

He followed the tech through the living area. He’d been to this house before, though the tech wasn’t to know. It was a perk Barclay had received for doing his job. Not his actual job. His other job, the role he’d been playing for twenty-five years. Since Phil Wilkins had died, most of the group’s enthusiasm had waned—not least because everyone was getting older. Life starts to seem complicated enough without screwing with the basic rules. But not Warner. He wasn’t going to give it up, and that was the problem. He was by far the wealthiest of them. Grew up locally, left and founded his computer-games company on the West Coast, sold it at the right time. Moved back to Sarasota, started dabbling in condo development, turned out to be good at that, too. Good at money, good with women. Good-looking. Broken inside.

Every year Barclay had said it was time for them to quit. It had been Warner who’d turned him around—just like he’d turned around the others. Not through reasoned argument, either. Barclay couldn’t even claim that in his defense, though Warner was a very convincing guy when he put his mind to it. No, he’d been compromised by simpler means. Cold cash, sometimes. Also, getting invited to the kinds of events a cop wouldn’t normally get near—not to mention being introduced to the kinds of women who could be encouraged to attend that style of house party, for whom the proximity of wealth (and a big bowl of cocaine) operated like an access-all-areas skeleton key. Warner’s house operated a strict what-happens-in-Vegas policy. It was actually kind of amazing what a couple of nineteen-year-old girls would countenance with a grizzled middle-aged man with a gut, and when you knew the girls had been flown in for the event and would be on a plane back to Hicksville the next morning (never having learned anyone’s names, and not caring), it was easy to indulge yourself. Everybody has a price. It’s never so very high. It’s always paid in the same currencies.

The tech led him along a wood-paneled corridor and through a door that led to a set of stairs. Barclay knew where they went—a large, temperature-controlled wine cellar built into a concrete bunker excavated beneath the house. When they’d tramped down the stairs, Barclay saw the other two techs and Hallam standing to one side.

Barclay noticed that a section of the limestone floor had a sheen to it, as if it had been recently cleaned. Hallam detached himself from the group and went to a bank of the racks on the far side of the room. He took hold of a section loaded with expensive-looking bottles and gave it a tug. It didn’t move.