Eben stood up, and Enos stood with him. “We’re not kids anymore, and you’d be facing prison. I don’t think you’d spend the rest of your life in prison for us, do you, Enos?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Enos said.

Caleb started to rise, but Eben pushed him back in the chair.

“No,” Eben said. “If we’re going to burn our bridges, we’d better start now.”

Chapter 58

SETH HOTCHKISS SPOKE UP. “I know what that place is,” he said, tapping his finger on the thermal image. “It’s an old boathouse. The main house burned down, I don’t know, maybe fifteen years ago, and they never rebuilt, so it was taken off your map, Sergeant. But the boathouse is still there. There’s a little creek that runs up to it, about right here.” He tapped the map again. “But it’s overgrown, and I don’t know whether it’s navigable.”

“Would the picnic boat make it up that creek?” Stone asked. “It only draws a foot and a half.”

“It wouldn’t be the depth that’s the problem,” Seth replied. “You’d have to make your way through a lot of brush.”

“Is there a way to the boathouse by road?” Sergeant Young asked.

“There’s an old gate about here on the main road,” Seth said, pointing to a place on the map. “There was a dirt track down to the boathouse—I delivered some sails there once—but that would be overgrown, too. You could make it through there in a four-by-four, I expect.”

“My Range Rover would do it,” Rawls said. “It’s got a lot of ground clearance.”

Young looked at his watch. “I’m going to have to get search warrants for the two buildings, and I’ll have trouble getting people over here before tomorrow morning, when the ferry starts running again.”

“Can you get a search warrant this time of night?”

“I can call a judge I know and send somebody over to his house with a warrant, then he can fax it to me here. But there’s still the matter of people.”

“We’ve got enough people right here,” Stone said.

“You’re not law enforcement.”

“You’ve got one cop, two ex-cops, a couple of federal agents, and a retired army NCO,” Stone said.

Ham flashed a badge. “It says here I’m a police lieutenant in Florida, even if I am a dollar-a-year man.”

“Deputize us,” Stone said. “We’re all armed, and we know how to handle it. We ought to go in there just before dawn, by land and by sea.”

“You want to try the creek with the picnic boat?” Young asked.

“Yes; we can always get out and walk if the going gets too rough.”

Young nodded.

“Wait a minute,” Holly said. “There’s not going to be anybody in the boathouse.”

“Why not?” Young asked.

“I don’t think anybody lives there. When I was using the computer, the only other light in the room seemed to be candles, and the computer was working on battery power. The place smells disused: no cooking odors, no cleaning fluids or furniture polish recently used.”

“She’s right,” Stone said. “We ought to go into Caleb Stone’s house first. The twins have left Nantucket; they might be back home.”

“I keep telling you, it’s not the twins,” Holly said. “It’s one man.”

“Maybe it’s both,” Stone said.

Young looked doubtful. “You think it’s credible for a father to conspire with his twin sons in a string of murders?”

“Maybe not, but it’s credible for a father to protect his sons, even from the law.”

Tags: Stuart Woods Stone Barrington Mystery
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