Rink came back within the hour, looking more morose than ever. He had dark mud on his boots and spattered up the backs of his jeans. There were even droplets of mud sticking to his black T-shirt and on his face and forearms.
'Almost ended up in the swamp with the goddamn car,' he announced. And then he smiled, and it was good to see. It was the first ray of light through the cloud that had been hanging over his head since the news about his mother's illness.
He was holding his mobile phone cupped in his left hand.
'You've heard something?'
'Yeah,' Rink glanced round the room, taking in Harvey and Marianne, noting that they too wore expectant faces. 'Doctors have stabilised my mom and she's feeling much better. Must be; she's been giving my father a hard time for trying to pull me away from my work.'
I went over and held my friend.
'Thanks, Joe,' he said. It's not often he uses my given name; only in moments of tenderness like this. It means a lot.
Harvey came over too. He hugged Rink and they said their bit to each other.
Marianne didn't know what to do. She just sat down on the bed and put her elbows on her knees and smiled up at Rink. My friend, not the shy and retiring type around young women, went over and sat down next to her. Patted her on the knee and said, 'OK, Marianne. Now we can get on and sort out your problems.'
Marianne bobbed her head. Smiled sadly. Then she asked, 'Is your mom ill?'
'Yeah,' Rink didn't expound, but he didn't have to. The gravity of the situation must have been clear in our reaction to the good news.
'And she's all the way across the country?'
'Yeah.'
Tears welled in Marianne's eyes with the confirmation that there was still good in the world. Here were three men ready to put their own lives at risk for her, to push aside their own needs and desires to see to her safety. 'Thanks, Rink,' she whispered. Then lifting her head, she looked at me and Harvey. 'Thanks to you all.'
'Don't worry about it,' Rink spoke for all of us. He patted her on the knee again, then stood up smoothly and nodded at the door to the bathroom. Steam still pervaded the space beyond the open door. He indicated his muddy arms. 'Unless you've used all the goddamn hot water?' he said in mock anger.
Marianne smiled again, this time not so sadly.
'Marianne's safe for now.' Looking across at Harvey and receiving a nod of confirmation, I continued, 'Harvey can take her to the safe house. It's time you got on that plane, buddy.'
Rink shook his head.
'You aren't going to miss anything, Rink. Catch the red-eye out of Miami. You can be there and back again in a few hours. Go on. Go see your mother and father.'
'You sure?' he asked. All three of us made shooing motions, which got us a smile. 'Best get that shower then, huh?'
Meanwhile Harvey had been industrious with the computer.
'Hunter. Come take a look at this.'
He had the CNN news site on the screen.
It showed a story about the mysterious slaying of a young family. Nathaniel and Caitlin Moore, and their eight-year-old daughter, Cassandra, had been murdered in their home in the suburbs of Miami.
Yes, it was sad. A terrible reality in today's world where a family can be wiped off the face of the earth to appease one man's sick fantasy. It was exactly this kind of story that made me do the things I did.
'What're you getting at, Harvey?'
'You said the shooter used a Beretta 90-two,' Harvey said.
I remembered looking down the barrel and thinking how there was no way to avoid the 9 mm bullet headed my way. In that moment of epiphany I'd identified the gun. 'Yeah,' I agreed. 'This murderer used a Beretta, as well? Popular gun.'
'Taken singly, it wouldn't mean anything.' He tapped the screen. 'But a witness also saw a tall man with long white hair leaving the house in the early hours. Sounds like your shooter, doesn't it?'
More interested now, I leaned down, placing my hands flat on the bed to get a clearer look at the screen.
'Then there's this.' Harvey highlighted a block of text in the story so I could better read it.
' ''The thunders of judgement and wrath are numbered," ' I read out loud. 'Written in Cassandra's blood on the living room wall. Jesus!'
'Sounds like your usual whacked-out religious freak,' Harvey agreed. 'Until I did a search on those words.'
He brought up another site he'd been holding in a bank along the bottom of the screen. A History of Enochian Ritual was emblazoned across the page.
'Black magic?'
'Goetic magic,' Harvey corrected. 'Something taken from a grimoire written hundreds of years ago by an Elizabethan astrologer named Dr John Dee.'
I'd heard of John Dee. He was the court astrologer to the first Queen Elizabeth. Purportedly he was also her top spymaster, and something of a legend among the security community. He went by the code number of 007; maybe there was no coincidence when Ian Fleming was developing his fictional James Bond character.
'I think I know where this is going now,' I said to Harvey.
He pressed a few more keys. A page came on the screen and there were the same words the murderer of the Moore family had scrawled on a wall in an eight-year-old child's blood: