Wells
FOURTEEN
The Disguised Voice: Maskers have long altered their voices to match their costumes, so the sound gives nothing away even when the face is guessed. The orders that night came through something robotic, built so no one could ever pull a man out of it.
I slip out of the suite at five thirty. It's still black outside of the windows, and Cera's still asleep in the other room. The drive from here to St. Petersburg is about twenty-five minutes at this hour, so that will give me enough time to get there and get situated before Dane gets off.
The elevator is empty. I ride down watching the floor numbers drop, and by the time I reach the lobby, my head's already on the job, compartments closing.
The driver's waiting curbside in a black Escalade as ordered, engine running. I climb into the back and pull the door shut without saying a word. He knows the address. I sent it over last night.
"East Port docks in St. Petersburg," he says, confirming. "You want me to wait or circle?"
"Park where I can see the gate."
"Got it."
He pulls into traffic. The city's still half asleep, streetlights fading in the early gray. I check my watch. Five fifty-nine. Dane works the third shift at the port and clocks out at seven. I want eyes on the gate before he walks through it.
I could've hired someone to do this. That's what most people would have done: sent an investigator with instructions and waited for a report.
I don't like anyone knowing what I know before I understand exactly what's going on.
I would never hand that search to a contractor who could be questioned later by police, or whoever cleaned Ronnie Louvre off the board.
I pulled everything myself, from systems I can reach without leaving anyone wiser.
The driver merges onto the highway. I open the file on my phone.
Dane Carter, 41. He lives in one-third of a triplex off Tyrone and works receiving at East Port Container Services.
Clocks in at eleven, clocks out at seven, six days a week.
I know that because I pulled the payroll myself, backdoor through the port's accounting contractor, nothing flagged, nothing logged.
The older model pickup truck he drives is a white Ford Ranger registered to his name, plate 7JCY39.
I've got stills from the lot cameras showing exactly where he parks every morning, fifth row back from the south gate, same spot every time because dock workers are creatures of habit, and Dane's no different.
I swiped internal security footage and mapped his walk from the gate to the truck. Two hundred and forty feet, no deviation. The man's predictable, which means I don't need to guess where he'll be or when.
The driver pulls off the highway. We're close now, industrial sprawl stretching flat in every direction, dock lights cutting through the last of the dark. He turns into a lot across from the gate and parks where the SUV faces the exit.
"Here work?"
"Perfect."
I pull up the most recent photo of Dane I could find, a DMV shot from two years ago. Thinning hair, heavy around the middle, the exhausted slump of someone who works nights and doesn't sleep well during the day. I study it until I could pick him out of a crowd in the dark.
Then I set the phone facedown on my thigh and wait.
A little after seven, the gate opens. Workers start filtering out in twos and threes, lunch pails in hand, shoulders rounded. I scan each one.
Then I see him. Dane Carter is slower than the others, heavier, that same slump from the photo, but walking the exact same path he does every morning at seven to his truck.
I open the door and step out onto the pavement.
He's halfway to his truck when I step into his line of sight. He frowns, not alarmed yet, just tired and irritated at being stopped after a long shift.
"Help you?"
"I'm Robert Stone's son."
His face changes and the exhaustion bleeds out, replaced by wide eyes. His shoulders pull back, and his hand tightens around the handle of his lunch pail.
"If you don't want any trouble, you'll come with me."
I don't say what kind of trouble. I don't need to. He knows what he's been running from, and now it's standing right in front of him.
"Look, I don't—"
"The Escalade is right there."
I nod toward the blacked-out SUV. Dane's gaze cuts to it, then back to me. His breathing quickens. He's calculating whether he can bolt, whether I'm alone or have a weapon, whether this is the end he's been waiting for since the night he stood outside that warehouse.
He walks toward the SUV, and I follow behind him, scanning to make sure no one is clocking us.
I open the back door and motion for him to get in. The driver doesn't turn around. Dane sits pressed against the opposite door, hands flat on his thighs, staring straight ahead. I slide in beside him.
I let the silence sit for a beat. I want him to feel the panic.
"Did you know Ronnie's dead?"
Dane's jaw tightens. He doesn't look surprised.
"No. But I'm not shocked. I guess you killed him?"
"Why aren't you shocked?" I don't confirm his rhetorical question, letting him believe I did.
"I told him not to go back to New Orleans." Dane shakes his head. "Doesn't matter in the end. You found me anyway."
"It wasn't hard."
His hands curl into fists on his thighs.
"The night my father died. Who hired you?"
Dane swallows. His voice comes out rough.
"Duvall."
"What was the job?"
"We stood outside the warehouse. That's it. A grand each to stand there and call a burner if anything went down."
"That's it? Did you go inside? Did you see Duvall, hear any commotion?"
"Never went inside. Nothing happened, so we never even called anyone. Just stood there and shot the shit. We had nothing to do with your father's murder. I never even saw him."
He's talking faster now, defensive, trying to convince me he's not what I think he is.
"Once we heard it was Robert Stone who died in there the next morning, we got the fuck out of town. Both of us. Ronnie went west. I came here. We didn't—"
"Stop."
I lean forward slightly, just enough to put weight behind the words.
"I'm not here for your confessional. Call your priest for that. You stood outside the door the night my father was murdered. You took money to be part of it. I don't care if you didn't hold the knife. As far as I'm concerned, you're culpable."
Dane's breathing gets shallow, and a bead of sweat forms on his forehead.
"I'm not here to kill you. That's not how I work. I take men apart in other ways. What I want is the rest of the story."
His eyes snap to mine, wide and wet.
"I told you everything."
"You told me what Duvall paid you for. Now tell me what you saw."
He stares at his hands, working through whatever calculus keeps a man alive when he knows too much.
"There was an envelope of cash left for us in the back of my truck. A thousand each. We were told to be outside the warehouse at seven that night and stay there until someone called to tell us we were done."
"What time did the call come for you to leave?"
"Just before midnight."
Something tightens in my chest. Ridge got his call at the same time while we were all sitting at the Black Orchid that night. It was the one telling him to come to the warehouse on Poydras, where he found our father.
"Duvall called you?"
"I don't know who it was. It was an unknown number. The voice was wrong, like it went through something robotic."
My jaw sets once before I loosen it. That's the same call Ridge got: unknown number, distorted voice.
"Who came and went while you were there for those five or so hours?"
Dane shifts in the seat, pressing his back against the door. His hands rub up and down the navy blue utility pants, leaving a damp trail on his thighs.
"Only two men came after we got there. One was Vin Moreau. I knew him from the docks, but we didn't speak. The other guy had a birthmark on his neck. That's all I remember. Juno, I think. They called him Juno."
Vin doesn't land wrong on me. He was my father's right hand.
If anyone got a call about a Stone warehouse going sideways that night, it would have been him, same as Ridge.
It's the other name I write down, the birthmark, the man I've never heard of standing somewhere inside while my father bled out.
"You said you didn't speak to Vin?"
"No."
"You're sure."
"I'm sure. We didn't talk to either of them, and there was no one else."
"And you're not the one who called Vin to come there?"
"Fuck no. I don't have his number. Why would I call him there? We were useful idiots, not hitmen. I can't speak for Ronnie, but he didn't tell me anything and I didn't know nothing."
I let the silence stretch. Dane shifts again, uncomfortable, waiting for me to tell him whether this is enough or whether he's about to find out what I meant when I said I could take him apart.
"You said you never saw my father, Robert Stone, that night?"
Dane shakes his head fast.
"No. Never saw him at all. Looking back, I figured he was already inside before we got there. But I didn't see him go in, so I can't swear to it."
Dane watches me, waiting to see what I'll do next.
"Get out."
He blinks.
"What?"
"I'm done with you. If you're smart, you'll disappear. Someone didn't want Ronnie to talk, and I can imagine that same someone is coming for you next."
Dane scrambles for the door handle, fumbling it once before he gets it open. He spills out onto the pavement, stumbles back a step, staring at me like he still doesn't believe I'm letting him walk. He left his lunch pail on the floorboard.
I pull the door shut.
The driver glances at me in the rearview.
"Back to the hotel."
"Roger."
He pulls out of the lot. I watch Dane shrink in the side mirror until the SUV turns and he disappears.