Orchid Beach (Holly Barker 1)

“Show me your Colt thirty-two,” she said.

“I don’t have it,” he replied. “The cops must have took it when they searched the van.”

“Where was the thirty-two in the van?”

“In the glove compartment.”

“You have any other firearms?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head. “Just the one, and I don’t have that one no more.”

“You’d be wise not to replace it,” Holly said.

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I heard your testimony in the courtroom. Did you leave anything out?”

“No, ma’am. I answered all the questions they asked me.”

“What about the questions they didn’t ask you?”

He looked at her narrowly. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, Sam—you were all over this area that night. You had a flat where the chief was later shot, you were camped here, you drove up and down A1A all the time. What did you see that nobody asked you about?”

“I didn’t, ah, see anything,” he replied.

“All right, then what did you hear?”

He looked at the grass under his feet.

“Come on, Sam, this is off the record, just between you and me.”

“I reckon we got back here five minutes before it happened,” he said.

“Go on.”

“I heard them talking. They sounded angry.”

“How many?”

“Two, maybe three. I couldn’t see nothing. You see how dense that brush is,” he said, pointing toward the road.

He was right about that, Holly thought. The brush between where they stood and the road, some fifty feet away, was virtually a wall. “What were they saying?”

“I couldn’t make any of it out, but it was angry. Both sides of the conversation was real mad. Then I heard the shot.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t do nothing. I wasn’t about to stick my nose in something where there was shooting going on.”

“Then what happened?”

“I heard something hitting the brush and then fall to the ground. I don’t know why, but my first thought was a hand grenade. I kept waiting for something to explode.”

“That was the Beretta?”

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