My mind moved back to Richie.
“How are you feeling?” Frank asked.
In my head, I kept replaying the moment Richie had found my mother, a bloody pinprick in her neck, her white comforter covering her chest and body. How the rookie’s voice had cracked as he framed my mother in his cell phone while I stood a thousand miles away, helpless.
Now it was Richie in a hospital bed.
“We have ’til morning,” I said. “We just need to keep moving. Checking leads. Making calls.”
As we drove, Frank and I moved through the pile of messages, sorting them into priority, non-priority, and irrelevant. Hotlines and tip lines attract the oddest of society, yet among them, law enforcement usually finds its best leads. Triaging them is critical.
“You think he got Amber?” I asked Frank. “Based on our files?”
Frank sucked in the skin of his cheek. Bit it and turned to me. “I do.”
“Damn it,” I said.
Within an hour, we had made our way through the Ocala National Forest. As we got farther south, rain fell in a sudden downpour. The droplets were enormous. They hit the windshield and seemed to separate from each other of their own accord as if drawn away from the glass by an electric current.
A quarter mile from the shores of Lucas Beach, the rain stopped, and I could smell salt in the air. But out ahead of us, the sky showed thunderheads as we drove through a neighborhood of low-lying ranch-style homes.
“Hurricane weather’s coming,” Frank said. “You can smell it.”
I looked around. The sidewalks were rounded and the lawns carefully manicured. Shooter had met with Natalie Kastner at an area restaurant, where the post-funeral reception had taken place. But we were heading to Natalie’s home, which was on Avalon Street, fifteen blocks from the water.
We parked. Palm trees lined the road, and tiny American flags were planted in the grass near every mailbox. Our eyes landed on a two-story house painted a butter yellow color, with stacked stone running from the windows down to a line of bushes that flanked the front of the place.
It was 4 p.m.
Without our help, Richie Brancato would be dead by morning.
We rang the doorbell, and a woman answered. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Frank said, holding up his badge. “My name is Frank Roberts. This is Gardner Camden.”
The woman’s eyes widened, and she looked past us as if expecting someone else. “What’s this about?”
“Are you Natalie Kastner?” I asked, confirming we were in the right place.
“Yes.”
I thought of what Shooter had told me as I stood in the stairwell in D.C. after Freddie Pecos’s funeral. What Natalie had been told by the ME in Hambis.
“Your cousin Freddie Pecos,” I said, keeping it simple. “We’re looking into irregularities in his death. Can we come in?”
The woman directed us through a living room furnished with an overstuffed white couch and into a sunroom, which let in a breeze that smelled of sand and salt air. Natalie was in her late thirties, and her hair had streaks of brown and red in it, the kind that come from sun exposure. She pointed for us to sit down, and we each grabbed a chair.
“We’re looking for some background on Freddie,” I said. I pulled out my phone, but instead of showing her the sketch of El Médico, I found a photo of Richie. “Before we get started, has this man come by and spoken to you?”
I handed her my phone, and she studied Richie’s picture. “No,” she said. “Who is he?”
“A member of our team,” Frank said. “He’s not in a position toconfer with us today, and we thought he might’ve already reached out to you yesterday.”
“I was at my mother’s house for the last day,” she said. “We had a funeral for Freddie, and she asked me to stay over.”
We nodded in understanding, and Frank started in, collecting background from Natalie. First, asking questions we already knew the answer to, to establish fidelity. Then probing for information on her relationship with Freddie.
“When’s the last time you saw your cousin?” he asked.
