34. The Marsh Whispers
Thoughts flooded Sally as the Mustang sailed out of Greatstone along a coast peppered with bright, multicolored beach huts, as evenly spaced as blips on a cardiogram.
She'd seen Nancy Cagen just this morning. Barely seven hours ago. Alive. Spirited despite her age. Witness to the first body, and now part of the crime.
How?
Liam continued shouting into his phone in the back. The road hewed close to the beach, the blacktop faded to a narrow gravel track, and Sally barely skimmed the sea wall as waves beat against the steep shingle.
How could anyone have managed this? Had they grabbed Cagen as Sally left the beach. It was remote enough, quiet enough, and they already knew the killer had control over all the CCTV cameras.
Snatch her. Transport her. Lay her down by the Ears.
Kill her.
It felt like a blow through her own chest. Her eyes burned on the road, stinging as cold air streamed in through the open windows.
"The victim's Nancy Cagen," she shouted. "Liam, did you hear me?"
"What?"
"Nancy Cagen. The woman who found the body. I met her this morning on Dungeness."
Liam said nothing for a moment. Frozen as much as Sally was, maybe. That meant a lot of things. It meant the killer was right here still. Moving amongst them, their tracks interweaving.
Then he pressed the phone tighter to his head. "Ma'am, we have positive ID on the victim."
Sally tuned him out and stared ahead.
"Left here," Bledd said, the calm eye in the storm. They tore past a mobile coffee shop, just a booth on a tuk-tuk frame, then swerved alongside another long black sewer. Bledd directed her through another tiny village and out to the open marsh.
"This is it," he said. "St. Mary's in the Marsh. They could be anywhere on our right."
Sally accelerated, eyes darting across a now-familiar landscape, partly obscured by willow hedges and split by sewers.
"It's too big," she said, feeling the scale of the land slipping away from her.
"They're on a boat," Bledd said. "The sewers will limit them. I'm guessing they'll cut east then north, manhaul the boat across St. Mary's Road at the bend then keep on toward Orgarswick."
"Akilota's been deployed to the Ears," Liam called from in back. "Local forces mounting toward an exclusion perimeter, AROs still 20 minutes out."
"Right here." Bledd pointed, and Sally made a hairpin turn onto St. Mary's Road. The willow hedges dropped away and visibility expanded, revealing empty husk fields stretching as far as she could see.
"How far?"
"You're coming up on the self-storage place now."
It passed in a flash, a grand house with a gated yard containing the white roofs of caravans beyond. Past it a large sewer ran alongside the road and Sally scanned ahead.
Nothing. More willows pollarded into bulbous fists. And then–
"There!" she shouted, pointing at a clutch of dark silhouettes in the distance, heads barely rising from a distant dip in the land.
"That's them," Bledd agreed.
"We have sighted the Rooks!" Liam shouted into the phone. "Right side of St. Mary's Road, about half a mile on from the self-storage place."
"We head them off," Bledd said calmly. "They're not expecting you here."
The road curved right and the Rooks' sewer arced left to meet it; their figures clearer now, three men on a moving boat, the roar of their outboard motor drilling into her head.
Sally pushed the Mustang to 70, fears sparking in her chest; what Edwin Pike had said about bearding a Rook in his den. Roarke had almost killed her in the marsh. Now there were three, and they were almost certainly armed, and the minutes to come played out in fast forward in Sally's head.
Racing up to where the sewer broached the road. Heading off the Rooks. And then–
Roarke Rook looked up. For a glimmering second, their eyes met, and he looked ahead to the intercept point.
He knew. He started shouting at his brothers.
What could Sally do? She had no weapons. No armed backup for another 20 minutes. No way to make them stop.
Except…
A mad thought rushed in her mind and she embraced it.
"Seatbelts!" she shouted and pulled off the road.
The Mustang thumped down the embankment, smashed through a wooden fence in an explosion of splinters then rocketed out across the open field.
"What are you doing?" Liam shouted behind her.
Bledd said nothing, only slipped his drone case to the footwell and tugged his seatbelt on. Sally pressed the gas and the Mustang ripped closer, the heads of the Rooks clearer than ever, watching her with wide eyes.
She leaned on the horn and the sound wailed out.
Then Roarke bent over and rose up from the bed of the boat with a shotgun in his hands.
"Holy shit!" Liam cried.
He pointed the barrel and Sally ducked as buckshot hammered sparks up the hood, pounding the windshield into starred fractals with a gut-deep crunch. The vehicle zagged, the safety glass held but she could barely see a thing as the boom pealed over them.
"Pull away, Sally!" Liam cried.
Sally fought for control on the slick grass, registered Liam's demand and saw right through it. Pull away now and they'd fire broadside through their side windows. Brake and he'd hit the windshield until it blew through.
Instead she hit the gas. She glimpsed Roarke's surprised face through the fractured glass, twisted the wheel just enough, then the Mustang bucked over the sewer's shallow embankment, flew for a split second, and hit.
The grille hammered into the flat-bottomed boat with a rending crash, cracking the hull and sending its splintered halves whipping away like pieces of a bobbed cork.
The Rooks were tossed violently into the water. The front air bags blasted into Sally and Bledd's faces. The Mustang's front wheels bounced and the chassis surfed across the narrow channel of water then slammed into the far bank.
Sally rocked and gasped as the bodywork furrowed deep ruts into the grass then halted.
The world spun and there were screams. Sally blinked and slapped down on the air bag. The seat belt wrung tight across her chest, and she managed to free it, then turned.
Bledd looked back at her. He had a cut on his forehead, trickling blood, but otherwise seemed OK. In the back Liam was tangled in two sets of seatbelt straps, staring back at her wide-eyed.
"What the fuck, Sally?" he croaked.
"Rooks, now!" she rasped back, then kicked out the door and tottered out onto the grass.
The Rooks were in the water. Sally ran unsteadily, head spinning, picking out Roarke. He was ashen-faced, eyes wide and lungs wheezing, the shotgun gone. He waded toward the bank, right arm clutched by his left.
Sally fumbled for the cuffs from her belt, retrieved them on the second try then jumped into the water beside him. He didn't even seem to see her. She grabbed his right wrist and swung it behind his back.
"What the hell happened?" he muttered. "I don't… what…?"
Shock. Sally used it, snatching his left arm. The wrist felt loose, probably broken, and he shrieked as she clamped the cuffs tight.
He cried out. "Shit! Watch my wrist!"
Sally shoved him toward the bank, the words coming unbidden. "Roarke Rook, I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Jason Harrow and Nancy Cagen." The words sounded stronger and clearer than she felt. "You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say–"
"Cagen?" he shouted, twisting his head awkwardly. "She's not even sodding dead!"
"–anything you do say may be used against you in a court of law."
A splash came in the water beside her. It was Arthur Bledd. He strode through the sewer like it was his second home, like the water didn't slow him at all.
"I've got this one," he called, grasping Jerome Rook bodily in a tight bear hug.
A third splash followed. Liam was there, cuffs in hand, heading directly for Silas Rook. The slim Rook brother was already to the other side of the ditch, trying to tug himself onto the bank.
Liam dived and caught Silas' trailing leg, yanking hard. He flopped sideways back into the water, splashing and spluttering. Liam got the first cuff on him while he flailed, dodged a wild punch then caught that arm and dragged it down into the cuffs.
Silas swore and thrashed, trying to headbutt Liam, but with the cuffs on he was now a spent force.
"You've broken my arm," Roarke Rook barked, staring at the scene in disbelief; the car buried in the bank, the boat split in two, two blue and white coolers bobbing on the black water. "Bitch. You fucking bitch. How did you do that?"
"Little bit of Owler magic, you littering piece of shit," she answered. "Now come on. Out."
She drove him toward the bank, just as the distant sound of sirens carried across the wide open land.