Page 58 of Last Resort

“Do you think Holden Carr will show up at the ritual?” Ben asked when they were nearly finished. His plate and salad bowl were empty, and he nibbled his third slice of bread as he toyed with the wine left in his glass.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Erik replied. “I intended to let Chief Hendricks know.”

“What’s in it for Carr?” Ben mused. “There’s no reason to think he’s a witch, although he might have a witch helping him. So what would going to the ritual do for him?”

Erik took a sip of his wine before replying. “He shows up just at the time Tom comes out of hiding. He always bragged about his occult interests and ‘connections.’ His whole joke about ‘making a deal with the devil’ for his success isn’t funny in retrospect. What if he did make a bargain with a witch who knew his connection to Edwin Raines, and retrieving the treasure is his long-due repayment?”

Ben’s eyebrows rose. “There are a lot of intuitive leaps in that sentence. Hell, you damn near pole vaulted across a ton of ‘what ifs’ to get to that conclusion. But…it’s worth considering.”

“We still don’t know who sent Frazetti after Tom, or sicced the goons on me,” Erik went on. “But it’s interesting that they’re not hunting down Carr too.”

“That we know about,” Ben pointed out. “If Hendricks knew where Carr was, he’d have brought him in for questioning. If we’re going for wild-ass theories, how’s this? Carr made a deal with a witch, and now he owes the heist money to pay his debt. The witch alerted him to Tom coming to Cape May, but Tom died before Carr got to him. Carr had some inkling about Edwin leaving clues and knew his connection to the Quinn family, but not what the object was. But he’s got an ace—or thinks he does. The witch gave him some sort of object—a relic of some sort—to help him do—I don’t know—something.”

“If Carr has any hint of abilities, he’s got to feel the waxing energy of the genius loci for the equinox,” Erik theorized. “There are all kinds of locator spells and objects that help find missing objects. Maybe Carr wants to ‘juice up’ himself and his special relic to look for the treasure, like a dowsing rod.”

“That’s a hell of a theory based on almost nothing.” Ben took the last sip of his wine. “You realize that, right?”

“Of course. And yet—it’s not entirely improbable,” Erik conceded. “Carr showed up here with suspicious timing. He’s always been connected to the occult—and drawn to darker power. The ‘magical mafia’ or whatever we’re calling them, had previous connections with the Raines family. Carr knew enough to seek out the Quinns.”

He paused until a car stopped honking. “We’re taking factual points and spinning a theory to connect them. That’s what they do in every detective show I’ve ever watched.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well those TV detectives have a script writer working for them to make sure they find all the clues. Real life usually isn’t that tidy.”

“Still,” Erik countered, “it’s like putting pins in a map. Start with what you know for certain, connect the dots, and see what you can figure out from the results.” In the distance, a dog barked, and Erik glanced out the window to make sure no one was nearby.

Ben tipped his chair onto its back legs. “Okay, I’ll play your game. Maybe his relic led him to the Quinns, but he was in the wrong place. What if he thought his Hand of Glory, or whatever the fuck he has, would find the treasure in the Quinn’s house, and instead, it just pointed him to where the key used to be hidden?”

Erik nodded in agreement. “So he decides to try again—by following us. But he wants to be ready, and he gets wind of the Commodore Wilson nexus. Maybe he’s known about that all along since Edwin worked for one of the guys who owned the hotel. And he thinks that if he gets a power boost and levels up, he’ll be able to find the treasure. And somehow he discovers we have something in our safe.”

“This sounds like a bad video game,” Ben replied.

“It’s all speculation, but it’s not bad for a working theory since we don’t have anything else to go on. And while it might explain Carr’s actions and his thinking, it doesn’t change our next steps. We still go to the ritual, expect another attack or at least a sighting, and try to make sure when we find out more about the code on the poker chips that Carr doesn’t follow us.”

Erik’s phone rang, and he frowned as he looked at the number. “Hendricks,” he mouthed before he answered and put the call on speaker phone.

“Mitchell—we found where Carr’s been staying, and I need you and Nolan to make sense of what’s here. It’s like something out of theX-Files.”

“I’m guessing that Carr’s still at large?”

“Yeah. He must have realized we were closing in because he left most of his stuff and that fancy sports car too,” Hendricks replied. “How soon can you take a look? I can text you the address.”

Erik exchanged a glance with Ben, who nodded. “We can leave now.”

“Good. I just sent you the address. Be careful—we flushed Carr out of his bolthole, but I have the feeling he hasn’t left the area.”

“Hendricks sounded a little weirded out,” Ben said as they drove to the hotel. “That can’t be a good sign.”

He pulled up in front of a mid-price chain hotel on the edge of town. “It’s not a no-tell motel by any means, but I’d expect something fancier for a guy who drives a spiffy car and wants everyone to believe he’s a star.”

“A lot of things about Holden Carr don’t hold up when you look closely,” Erik replied.

Hendricks and his deputy were waiting when they arrived. “Glad you came. I know better than to dismiss what’s in there as mumbo-jumbo, but it’s not what they taught me at the academy.”

“Did you touch anything?” Erik asked, worried.

“No. Give me some credit. I watch enough spooky shows on TV to know that’s a bad idea. Just took pics of everything.”

“Any cold spots? Strange smells?” Erik pressed.

---