Now Brenda’s eyes widened.
“Boyce encouraged you to move away?”
“Yeah. I should’ve been long gone. It’s just too difficult leaving this place. There are a lot of memories, you know? My husband, my son.” Mrs. Cumming sighed.
“When exactly did he ask you to leave?”
“Last week. He even gave me a bus pass.” She showed Brenda a ticket dated the previous Saturday. Brenda had arrived on Sunday.
An excellent way to make her leave before I got here.
“I think we’re done for now,” Brenda told her. “Thank you very much for tea and your time, Mrs. Cumming.”
“Anything that’ll get you to the bastard that beheaded my son.”
Brenda was taken aback by the rage in her voice.
“I will,” Brenda replied. Then she got up to leave.
“One more thing, Brenda,” Mrs. Cumming called as she opened the door. “You should talk to Tim’s friend, Greg. I never liked him. Still can’t see what my Tim saw in that guy. He might know something that would help.”
“Okay. Just Greg? Nothing else?”
“Nothing else. I don’t know what he does for a living, where he lives, any of that. I just see him hang out with my son a lot. And I’ve got a hunch that he’s responsible for my son’s behavior.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cumming. You’ve been of great help.”
“And, oh, he’s got a tattoo on one side of his face. It’s the tattoo of a lotus flower.”
“Thank you,” Brenda said. Then she walked out and closed the door gently behind her.
Brenda felt like she’d walked into another world. The sun was hot, but it was refreshing after the lifeless stillness in the house. She’d learned a few important things in her meeting with Mrs. Cumming.
There was a major discrepancy in the police report. Boyce had been in charge of this case. At first Brenda couldn’t see why Boyce would fabricate the report when Mrs. Cumming was around to contradict it. But that changed when Mrs. Cumming revealed that Boyce had asked her to leave. The pug of a detective hadn’t expected Brenda to meet her.
One more thing nagged at Brenda as she opened the car door. Greg with the tattoo—she’d read about him in the files she had. The few people she’d interrogated also made mention of seeing him around. The next course of action now was to find out who this Greg was, and get to him.
Brenda got into her car, and turned the ignition. The car sputtered and died. Her eyes narrowed in confusion. She started the car again. It did the same thing—sputtered and died out. The car was in excellent health when she rented it. She hadn’t had any problems with it, until now. She popped the hood open.
She was about to get out when she caught movement from the nearby palm trees. Brenda only had one moment for the meaning of what she saw to hit her. There were two men at the palm trees. The only thing Brenda could do in that split second was duck below the glass.
The hail of bullets shredded the bliss of the surrounding area, but most importantly, Brenda’s car.
Chapter Four
It had been over a week since Mack had found a headless corpse in the trunk of his vehicle. He knew he’d been set up and wouldn’t get out of Palm Island alive if he didn’t play his cards right. He’d been going head on against one of the most dangerous criminals in the country. Now it turned out Dimitri wasn’t just dangerous, he was also smart. At least, smart enough to turn his predator into prey.
Mack hadn’t seen Dimitri yet, but the headless body in the trunk coupled with the note fit what he’d learned. The man’s bloodthirst was as mischievous as it was brazen. Mack didn’t know who the body in the trunk was. And he didn’t know who to trust. He could call the chief of police, who’d sent him down here, but he figured that word of his supposed crime must’ve reached him. There were whispers in certain quarters that the chief was giving undue favor to him. The chief couldn’t stick his neck further than he already had.
Mack had weighed his options. The local police would probably be looking for him immediately. He had seen how the Palm Island police ran their investigations, so he knew what would happen if they found him. The body in his trunk was a noose, and he had to keep it off his neck. He knew who held the other end of the rope.
One man owned Palm Island. It didn’t matter how many government institutions were here. They couldn’t so much as breathe without his permission. If he let himself be captured by the police, he’d be murdered, and then slid under the carpet alongside numerous other
murder cases.
Mack ran from the garage with the body in his trunk, threw a few things he needed into his backpack, donned a baseball cap, and left the apartment. As if on cue, he heard the call of sirens as he disappeared into the foliage of trees nearby.
Mack had kept his head low since then. He booked a room at a bed and breakfast, shaved his head and his facial hair, and got an artificial tan. He knew he was dead if he got caught. One slip-up could mean the end of everything.