Orchid Beach (Holly Barker 1)

“I’m petrified, you know? We’re on a public highway, and they’ve just shot the chief of police. Then I see Barney looking inside Chet’s car, and he goes to the trunk, too. Then he and Mosely get back in the car and we drive off. Mosely’s at the wheel, and Barney’s giving him instructions. He doesn’t say where we’re going, but a few minutes later we arrive at Hank Doherty’s place. Barney tells me to stay in the car. He and Mosely get out, and I can see that Barney has a shotgun. They go inside, and I can hear the dog going crazy—the dog never liked Mosely—but a minute later that stops. I guess Hank put her in the kitchen. Then, half a minute after that, I hear the shotgun, just once. A few minutes later, Barney and Mosely come out of the house. I start to ask questions, and Barney tells me to shut up. They take me back to where my car was. Barney gives me a thousand dollars in cash and makes me sign a receipt for it, then they drive off.” Hurst stopped talking.

“Who shot Chet Marley?” Holly asked.

“It must have been Barney. I gave him the gun, and I saw him throw it away.”

“Who shot Hank Doherty?”

“Barney had the shotgun when they went in; he didn’t have it when they came out.”

“What’s going on out at Palmetto Gardens, Bob?”

“I don’t have the slightest fucking idea, and that’s the truth. Barney never told me anything, and I sure wasn’t going to start asking questions, after seeing what happened to the accountant and Chet and Hank.”

“Who else was giving Barney information about Chet and the department?”

“I don’t know, I swear it. I’d tell you if I knew.”

“And that’s all of it?”

“That’s everything I know from day one, I swear to God. I mean, shit, Holly, what could I have done? I didn’t know he was going to kill Chet.”

“You could have arrested him as soon as you heard the shot,” Holly said. “If you’d done that, Hank Doherty would still be alive.”

Holly switched off the recorder. Bob Hurst began to cry.

CHAPTER

57

H olly, Daisy, Hurd, Jackson, and Ham all arrived at the Community College gymnasium as the sun set. There were at least forty vehicles in the parking lot, mostly plain sedans and vans, some of them towing boats. Holly could see why Harry had wanted a quiet place to assemble.

The gym was a hive of activity. Piles of duffel bags lay around the polished wood floor, and weapons were everywhere. Men were checking assault rifles and small submachine guns. Everyone was dressed in black.

Harry waved Holly’s group over to a folding table that had been set up on the gym floor. “Everybody have a seat,” he said. He had a sheet of paper in his hand. “I’ve just heard from the National Security Agency,” he said. “They’ve decoded the microbursts on the transmissions from the Palmetto Gardens com center.”

Holly leaned forward in anticipation. “Do they shed any light on what’s going on out there?”

Harry looked at the sheet of paper in his hand. “Apparently, they’re having a golf tournament.”

Nobody said a word.

“This is a list of the entrants,” Harry said, and started to read. “Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Walter Hagen, Harvey Pennick…” He read off another fifteen names. “Anybody got any ideas about this?”

Ham spoke up. “Harry, are you a golfer?”

“No.”

“You know anything at all about the game?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know that all the people whose names you just read out are either dead or very, very old?”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Anybody got any ideas?”

“Harry,” Holly said, “why would they go to the trouble to encode into microbursts the names of twenty dead golfers? Is this some kind of cryptographic joke?”

“Is there anything else in the microbursts?” someone asked.