“Good advice,” she said. “I’ll remember that next time I sleep with a chick.”
“You sleep with chicks?”
“Sometimes,” she said, “but I prefer men.” She pulled him to her and kissed him on the mouth. “Now, go forth and sin no more.”
He raised an eyebrow. “This mean I’m forgiven?”
She smiled. “Not hardly.” She opened the door.
A light rain was falling.
“Friends?”
“Just get out,” she said, biting his lip and pushing him toward the door.
“Okay,” he said. “You realize you’re pushing me out into the rain?”
“You won’t melt,” she said. “That’s for damn sure.”
He shrugged and walked onto her balcony.
“Oh, John…wait.”
He hoped for a reprieve—or at least an umbrella.
“My pal in CID got the report on that suicide up in Naples,” she said, handing him a manila envelope. “I didn’t really get a chance to look at it, but here you go. And you didn’t get that from me.”
“Said the man to his syphilitic wife,” Simon said.
“Thanks, Kay,” he said. “I just want to say one more time how—”
“How incredibly sorry you are?” she said, her hand on the door.
“Yeah,” he said. “You got caught up in something you shouldn’t have. It wasn’t personal.”
“Shit, John, I know that.” She smiled and closed the door.
“Who knew?” Pilate said, running through the rain.
“You’re just lucky this storm blew in, or I’d be out there all by my lonesome looking for the treasure,” Taters said.
“I know, I know.” he said. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Oh I doubt that, John,” he said, leaning on the galley sink below deck on the TenFortyEZ.
Pilate took in the elegant mahogany and teak paneling of the boat’s tiny stateroom. He looked back at Taters. “Well, it happened, all right?”
“Things happen,” he said. “So what now?” Taters asked, offering Pilate a coffee.
“Instant?”
Taters nodded.
“Pass.”
“Sorry, but I forgot my fancy-ass espresso maker back at the office.”
“I guess I can forgive you this time,” Pilate joked. “Anyway, now we go back out and look at this thing in the middle of broad daylight, and if necessary, you dive on it with your SCUBA gear.”
“Fair enough,” he said, “but that day ain’t today. Weather’s shite now, and it’s gonna get worse tonight. Come back tomorrow morning at daybreak, and we’ll go.”
“I guess I better sleep onboard tonight.”
Taters shrugged. “Surely,” he said. “Maybe tonight you’ll actually make it.”
“I’m going to risk getting a change of clothes and some other stuff out of my place,” he said, “but I don’t want to be there all night.”
“John, by now, if they’re dogging you, they’ve seen you with me, at your place, and in the arms of the lady cop,” he said. “You’re probably no safer here than anywhere else. In fact, the safest place you could be is with the lady cop, and you—”
“Screwed that up,” he said, bumping his head on the doorway as he climbed to the deck. “But you’re right. Maybe I should just get some sleep in my own place. Could you loan me your pistol?”
Taters took the .45 from the drawer beside the galley sink and carried it on deck. He laid it on a small shelf beside the steering wheel. “I didn’t see a thing,” he said, turning his back.
Pilate tucked the heavy gun in his waistband. “Me neither.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pilate saw no signs of forced entry—or that anyone was watching—when he returned to Trevathan’s place. He grabbed a bag and quickly packed enough clothes and toiletries to last him a few days at sea. He set the pistol on the desk beside his laptop and checked e-mail. He had one from his parents—in ALL CAPS—saying they “MISSED HIM” and hoped he was “HAVING FUN IN THE SUN” in Key West. An e-mail from his agent, Angie, went unopened—no doubt telling him to hurry his ass up. He also saw one Kate had sent him two days prior, before the big argument, but he didn’t stop to read it, assuming anything she had to say in it had been rendered irrelevant after their more recent call.
Instead, he studied the Incident Offense Report, the IOR, as the police would have called it. It resembled a photocopy of a photocopy to a factor of ten even before Kay’s friend at CID had even photocopied the completed version. There were several sections of the report. The first section was VEHICLE, and the various boxes in that section were blank. The next was PROPERTY WEAPON. It described in detail the type, registration, and description of the shotgun Lindstrom had used.
The third section was NARRATIVE. Written in all-caps (Must be a thing with parents and cops, he mused) was the officer’s report on the scene. Using unemotional cop vernacular, it described the discovery of a corpse with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound—a wound that destroyed the victim’s face.
Below that was STATUS, which included date, time, information on the officer making the report and the reviewing officer, and in a small box in the lower left corner of the page was CASE STATUS: Further Investigation.
Pilate called Kay.
“John, I thought we were going to let this go,” she said.
“Well, yes,” he said, “but could you please answer one question for me about this police report?”
“Fine,” she said, stern and impatient. “What?”
“The report says the case status is ‘further investigation.’ What does that mean?”
“It means they’re waiting to see what the ME says,” she said. “If the ME decides to do an autopsy, it will take a while.”
“What do you mean, if they do an autopsy? This was a violent death.”
“Yes, but if the suicide doesn’t look unusual—if there’s no reasonable doubt, like if it’s believed the decedent had good reason to do it like illness, money problems, love life issues, facing jail time, what have you—then the ME might forgo the autopsy,” she said.
“What if the body was unidentifiable? Would that qualify as a suspicious-enough death to warrant an autopsy?” he said. “What if the face was so badly damaged—teeth, eyes, the whole face?”
“It’s case by case, John.”
“How do I know if they’re doing one?” he asked.
“Call the medical examiner’s office,” she said. “It’s public record.”
“Okay. Thanks, Kay,” he said.
“Is there anything else?” she said.
“Do you really sleep with—“
“Yeah, yeah,” she laughed. “Grow up, John.”
Click. She ended the call.
Pilate looked up the Collier County medical examiner website and discovered the procedure to getting a copy of the autopsy report: e-mail a formal request that included the name of the decedent, date of death, and Pilate’s own contact info. It didn’t say how long it would take to get a response, but he sent the e-mail anyway.
“No, John. He was cremated,” Trevathan said.
“Really? When?”
Trevathan cleared his throat. “Um, well, I guess after the family was contacted.”
“Right, but do you think they did an autopsy?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “You’d think they would’ve in a case like that.”
“Well, I did some research, and if the suicide doesn’t look suspicious, or if the person had presumed motives to take their own life, they might not.”
“I see. Well, Jack certainly had some reasons to end it all,” Trevathan said. “He was wanted on charges—would likely have done twenty or thirty years.”
“That’s a life sentence for a guy his age,” Pilate said.
“Coulda been, yeah,” Trevathan agreed. “He was in his late fifties.”
“Yeah,” Pilate said.
“Wait…what are you getting at, John?�
� Trevathan’s voice had a tone that was very similar to the wary, tired, almost contemptible one he’d used when he’d first met Pilate.
“What if Jack’s not dead? What if he faked his death?”
“That’s some kind of primetime drama bullshit, John, and you know it.”
“No, just think about it,” Pilate coerced. “The guy’s boxed in, facing charges that will put him away for the better part of whatever life he has left, disgraced. His wife left, and I’m sure he had some money squirreled away somewhere. So, what does he do? He picks up somebody off the street—in a bar or whatever. He finds some gullible or drunken idiot roughly his size and build, lures him back to that place, and blows his face off to make it look like a suicide, knowing the police will assume the identifiable victim of his build was him.”
“John, that’s mighty fanciful stuff,” Trevathan said. “You ever consider doing some writing with that imagination of yours?” he joked.
Pilate didn’t find it funny and went on, “Look, I talked to some of Jack’s neighbors. They told me that the night of his death, he was seen helping some drunk guy out of a boat on the canal beside his condo.”
“You talked to his neighbors? What the hell?”
“Just hear me out,” Pilate said.
“Okay, fine. So he was seen helping a drunk guy. So what? In my book, that makes the guy a good Samaritan, not a fraudulent murderer.”
“Think about it, Trevathan. Jack Lindstrom, helping some drunken stranger out of a boat—our Jack. Does that really add up?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Trevathan said. “I get it. It doesn’t really sound like him. But go on.”
“I’m tellin’ you, I think he’s out there…and if he is, he may know I’m on to him,” Pilate said.
“What? For Pete’s sake, what are you saying, man?” Trevathan’s voice rose an octave.
“I got a call from the Naples area,” Pilate answered. “A garbled voice said ‘dead end.’”
Trevathan jolted up in his chair. “John,” he said, his voice steady, quiet, and deliberate, “you need to stop whatever the hell you’re doing and get your nosy ass back to Cross.”
“So you believe me?”
“What I believe is that you’re working too hard, and you need some people around. I think you’re losing it.”
“I am not imagining things!” Pilate bellowed.
“You tell him,” Simon said.
“John, Kate is extremely worried about you,” Trevathan continued, “as am I.”
“Well thanks for your concern, but I can’t leave just yet,” he said. “I have to finish this damn book and see if there is anything to this Lindstrom stuff.”
“John, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it sounds to me like you might be getting into fruitcake territory,” Trevathan said.
“Well, didn’t you once tell me that all the nuts roll downhill to Key West?”
“John, you’re blowing it with Kate,” he said. “This is serious.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I messed up a good thing,” he said. “Look, I love her more than I can even put to words, but if what I suspect about Lindstrom is true, then I have to find out—to protect Kate and Kara.”
“John, if he’s alive and on the lam, I guarantee there’s only one thing he’s doing—just one.”
“And what’s that?”
“Keeping the hell away from anyone who might recognize him,” Trevathan said. “Use that crazy head of yours, would ya?”
“Well, what about the phone call I got? What if that was him? Or do you really, genuinely think I am losing it?”
Trevathan leaned back in his chair and rubbed the steel-gray hair around his temple with his left hand. “John, you don’t know if it was him,” Trevathan said. “Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that he is alive and calling you.”
“And?”
“If that’s the case, it means he’s come completely unhinged—just like you’re in danger of doing, apparently—and probably looking for trouble. If you think this is what’s going on, my friend, you need to be calling the police, not me.”
“I did that,” Pilate said, “in a manner of speaking.”
“And what did they say?”
“They just said that I, uh…well, they said it wasn’t worth pursuing,” he said. “Look, will you do me one favor?”
“What?”
“Don’t tell Kate about this—about what I’m doing. Don’t even tell her we spoke, okay?”
“What good will that do?”
“It will keep her good and mad at me, and that will keep her out of harm’s way down here.” Pilate lit a cigarette and exhaled in choppy breaths.
“Maybe,” he said, “or it might just bring her—and me—running.”
“It’s only a couple weeks till everyone’s planning to come down. Can’t you wait until then?” Pilate implored.
“All right, John. I’ll agree to that as long as you promise to let go of this Lindstrom business—at least until I get there. Is that a deal?”
“Do I have any other choice?” Pilate said.
“Nope,” Trevathan snapped.
“Okay. Well, in that case, it’s a deal.”
After Trevathan hung up, he looked in the doorway into Kate’s worried face. “He’s got his wheels turning,” he said.
“We’ve got to get down there,” Kate said.
“Well, yes, but right now we’re at the end of semester and finals.”
“So?”
“Kate, you know as well as I do that neither one of us can leave right now,” he said.
“Well screw that!” she said, turning to walk away. “Fire me if you have to, but I have to go…now.”
“Kate—wait! Just stop!” He made a halt gesture with his hands. “What if I call a friend of mine on the police force? Would that help?”
“Who are you gonna call? Lenny, the interim sheriff of Cross Township?” Kate turned back to Trevathan with a skeptical eyebrow raised.
“No, not here. I mean in Key West,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“An old buddy of mine is retired Key West PD,” Trevathan said
“Retired? What good does that do?”
“Well, he’s a real stand-up guy. He does some fishing and a little private investigation work these days, and I’d be happy to ask him to keep an eye on John.”
Kate pointed at Trevathan’s phone. “Call him. Right now.”
That evening, Pilate drank Stoli from a Key West souvenir shooter for a half-hour or so, leaning on the back legs of his chair on the balcony. He lit the occasional cigarette but found the heat of the Keys increasingly incompatible with smoking. A tinny laptop speaker version of Colin Hay’s “Fisherman’s Friend” broke the silence in continuous replay.
Pilate didn’t opt to get drunk this time—just buzzed enough to let him sleep. The new bars on the downstairs windows and front door gave him a reasonable degree of comfort, and the weapon he’d borrowed from Taters was within easy reach. Though he was no marksman, the pistol filled in any doubtful gaps he felt about his safety and security.
He heard the loud bellows of boat horns in the harbor and people walking the streets below. He looked at his silent cell phone, plugged in to its charger. I should have had cell service during all that life-or-death shit at Cross College, he pondered. Sure woulda made things a hell of a lot simpler.
“But think of all the fun you would have missed,” Simon called to him from the bottom of the vodka bottle.
Pilate blew into the bottle, making tooting sounds to drown out Simon’s commentary.
A while later, drowsy from stress and vodka, Pilate looked at his wristwatch: eight thirty. Taters expected him to report for duty on the dock at sunrise. He sat up, closed the balcony doors and shutters, brushed his teeth, and stripped down to his underwear. He bounded downstairs, double-checking the locks on the doors and windows, as well as the security bars.
Back ups
tairs, he caught sight of himself in the mirror and made a mental note: Heavier on the sunscreen tomorrow, buddy.
He brushed his teeth, then set about shaping cushions and pillows in the upstairs bedroom to appear as if it were him asleep in the bed.
He turned off the light and sat in a cushioned cane chair in the darkness; gun, cell phone set on vibrate, and a shooter of vodka at his side.
“A little Sean Connery of you, don’t you think?” Simon said.
Pilate didn’t respond to his inner voice; instead, he sat in the dark, silently turning over the many pieces of the puzzle in his mind.
The poker/memory chip. Clearly, it was the key to something hidden among the outer Keys—something perhaps buried on the seabed, or maybe it had already washed away or been found, stolen, or moved.
Jack Lindstrom. Dead or alive? Am I insane to think that a man—who I admittedly dislike—is devious and cruel enough to perpetrate such a deadly hoax?
The phone call from the Naples area. Who was that? Was it Jack Lindstrom or someone else—perhaps someone trying to throw me off the scent of the map from the chip? How did they get my number anyway?
Samantha. Pregnant, perhaps carrying my child, damn it. The fates would be too unkind to hand him that particular gift. Of course, there was a time when he had wanted children with Sam, but that was back when he thought Sam reciprocated his feelings. Now he wanted Kate, and Kate would love to have his baby, but he knew all the drama with Sam could ruin all of that, even if her kid did turn out to be the offspring of Dave the idiot bartender.
Sam and Dave. Pilate nearly laughed aloud. I never thought of that.
“If you had only said ‘Hold on! I’m comin’!’ it might have solved your problem with her,” Simon said.
Pilate rolled his eyes in the darkness. Picturing Kate, he whispered a few lines of “When Somethin’ Is Wrong with My Baby.”
A loud creaking sound broke his thoughts. He listened intently, his hand on his pistol, frozen in place.
Silence.
Pilate looked at his glowing watch dial: It was now ten thirty. The house had been dark for nearly two hours.
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