Free Dead Silence by Randy Wayne White Page A

consultant, he would’ve had no trouble piping information to the FBI.
    I was thinking about the third question I had asked Choirboy when we were in the water: Who is your contact in America? His organization had known the senator’s schedule. There had to be an informer.
    Choirboy gave me a name. A code name, really. If I hadn’t been freezing, I might have experienced my first emotional chill. The name was linked to my own personal history. If I believed in evil, the name might have once defined it.
    “Tenth Man,” Choirboy told me, although it was difficult to hear because of his chattering teeth and the congealing fluid in my inner ears. Salt water and blood both crystallize at thirty degrees Fahrenheit.
    Tenth Man made no sense. An alternative translation had come to me later while under a hot shower at the station house.
    Tenth Man . . . ? Ten Man . . . ?
    No, Choirboy had said Tinman.
    Maybe the same person, maybe not. I had my suspicions, nothing confirmed.
    Tomlinson, my friend and neighbor on Sanibel Island, sometimes worked as a roadie for the classic rock band America. His favorite song: “Tinman.” It didn’t prove a connection, but the song wasn’t his only linkage. Like me, he’d traveled the world. Like me, his past life was a gray region, an old map with unexplored territories. Because returning to Florida was now a priority—there was equipment I needed—I would also have my chance to discuss the significance.
    I was eager to talk with Tomlinson.
    My eyes moved around the room, seeing James Montbard at the back of it. He’d lost interest, too. Was it because he’d already heard the story from Harrington?
    Barbara listened while going through a stack of faxes. Her face, seen in profile, showed the patrician nose, the strong chin. The starched collar of her blouse framed a glossy sweep of hair, and my eye moved naturally downward, the curvature of buttons incongruous with the detached expression on her face.
    I pictured Barbara, not the Mackle girl, when the agent said, “...if it’s not a hoax, we expect a second photo before they bury him. A photo of the box with the boy inside. Showing off. Like a trophy. Probably taken just before they close the lid.”
    By the time I had forced the image out of my head, the agent was saying, “Krist told Ms. Mackle the batteries would last a week if she was careful, but the fan would quit in two days if she wasted power. Understandably, she became hysterical when Krist sealed the box and she heard dirt being shoveled onto the lid.
    “He told her, ‘Shut up and stop acting like a baby.’ That’s an exact quote from the report.” The agent’s expression read See the kind of people we’re dealing with?
    He continued, “Two important points: If they bury Mr. Chaser, there’s a chance we will get him back alive. Ms. Mackle was found—almost accidentally, by the way—eighty-six hours later, weak and dehydrated but still alive. Almost four full days. It proves a person can endure what these people are threatening to do. The key is giving the kidnappers what they want. That’s hard for the FBI to say, but there it is.
    “The second point isn’t pleasant. The note mentions an air cylinder and a water tube. Nothing else. Ms. Mackle’s abductor was a megalomaniac, a loser by every definition of the word, but he at least exhibited some empathy. He provided a little food, a few personal items and enough room for Ms. Mackle to bend her legs and arms.”
    The agent was referring to the tube that would be taped to Will Chaser’s mouth. Either the coffin was too cramped to lift a canteen or the kidnappers planned to bury Will with his hands bound. Why else make him drink through a tube?
    When the agent described the tube and how Will’s hands were taped, Barbara’s attorney stood, made a coughing sound, then rushed from the room. Two staffers followed, maybe to help but more likely not.
    “He’s better off dead,” I heard one of them say.

7
    W hen