“It’s probably nothing,” I said in a wobbly voice, “but we’re so worried. Do you think your sweetheart might have heard anything?”
“Oh Hayley, of course you’re worried. I’ll ask him,” she said. “He’s only a patrol officer and obviously he’s off today. And he’s had a couple of beers. But I’ll ask. Maybe he knows something. Call you back in a few.”
Several minutes later, her name lit up my screen. “There’s some kind of sting going on. It’s big, and many of the high-level guys in the police department are involved. That’s all he knows. Or all he can say. How did it go with Palamina?”
I laughed. “Ha. She got soused and ate more than I’ve seen her eat the whole time we’ve known her. I have a sneaking suspicion that she wants us to do an exposé on the KWPD.”
“She must have been loopy to suggest that,” Danielle said. “Try not to fret about Nathan. I swear if I hear one more word, I’ll text you instantly.”
I thanked her, hung up, and explained what she’d said to Mom and Sam.
“Call the department and insist they patch you through to Steve Torrence,” my mother suggested softly. “He won’t give you the brush-off if the call comes from them.”
“It’s Thanksgiving night. And I’ve called twice already.”
“It’s Nathan,” said Sam.
Chapter Twenty-four
Besides, she could smell a scandal like other folk smell rotten eggs.
—Ann Cleeves, Red Bones
After making yet one more unanswered call, this time to Torrence via the dispatcher at the police department, I started home. I took the back shortcut toward Santiago’s Bodega instead of riding through town, which would be bustling with drunken tourists by now. This way, I could skirt the edges of the new park and come out on Truman, which would funnel me directly home.
There were more lights in the Shipyard condominium complex than I was used to seeing. Probably guests or owners who’d escaped to Key West for the long weekend. As I rode, my mind spun. I felt both furious with Nathan and sick with worry about him not showing up.
As I rounded the corner toward the Bahama Village, I wondered again what the town was going to do with those abandoned brick buildings. At least the park area around the new amphitheater was beginning to look like actual green space. I slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road to check for messages that I might have missed. Nothing from Torrence, which was fair enough, even though it wasn’t like him. He would know that I was edging toward hysteria. On the other hand, it was Thanksgiving—time to be with either the family you were born with or the one you chose. The scared and hopeless part of me worried that I was neither to Nathan. Instead of zipping past the spooky area containing the older brick buildings and the previous missile site, I stopped for a moment to peer down Angela Street.
I swore I could feel a tingle of danger. I suspected that my mind was suffering a miniature meltdown under the influence of Lorenzo’s scary cards and Nathan’s absence. Where could he be? And why wasn’t anyone calling me back? Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a car that looked very much like Nathan’s rental. I backed the scooter up and drove down the street to get a closer look.
Stopping several car lengths behind the silver SUV, I pulled the scooter over and hopped off. This street ran between a block of older Bahama Village homes and the rear edge of the Shipyard condominiums in the Truman Annex. I couldn’t imagine what Nathan would be doing here. With my fingers poised to dial 911, I crept around the car, checking the doors. Locked. Using the flashlight app on my phone, I peered down toward the floorboards in the front and back seats, dreading, dreading, dreading what I might find. I once again saw Ziggy’s dog bed and the big fleecy bone in the back seat. Nothing else. But then I heard ringing, a vintage telephone ring like the one Nathan had downloaded. The area under the driver’s seat flashed with light each time the ring sounded. Nathan never forgot his phone.
Only one of the homes on the right side of the street was lit up, and through the front picture window I saw an older couple watching television. I was feeling desperate and frantic enough to march up the sidewalk and tap on their door.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” I said when the man answered. He had dark skin and gray hair and wore gray pants and a white shirt. He peered at me and then around either side of me, as if puzzled and trying to place me.
“Can I help you?”
I nearly burst into tears. “My fiancé is missing and we are supposed to get married tomorrow. He’s a Key West Police Department detective, and for some reason his car is parked out here. I was so worried because he hasn’t answered his phone all day, and now I see it under the driver’s side seat. But there’s no sign of him.”
With a shaking finger, I pointed to the silver car. “You haven’t by any chance seen a man get out of this car and walk around the neighborhood? He’s tall with broad shoulders and usually wears a blazer and jeans. Ridiculously handsome.”
Now I started to snuffle.
The man insisted that I come inside. Their home smelled of turkey and bacon and pumpkin pie, like half the homes in the country tonight. “This girl has lost her fiancé,” he said to his wife. “She wonders if we’ve seen anyone in that silver Buick parked outside?”
The woman struggled out of her recliner and came over, looking concerned. “You look so sad. Can we get you a little glass of something, a coffee, or a piece of pie?”
“Oh no thank you,” I said with a wobbly smile. “I am very full of pie already.”
I explained again what Nathan looked like and pointed out their window to his car.
“Now that we’re talking about it,” the man said, “I did see a fellow when I was taking out the garbage. But that was yesterday I think, last evening. Not today at all.”
“No,” the woman said. “That must have been last night. I’d said we’d better empty it early because of Thanksgiving dinner and the turkey carcass and all, remember? We had the grease from the bacon and all the potato peelings and the cans, and it would have been overflowing onto the floor, remember? Tonight’s trash is still in the kitchen.”
I gently interrupted her before she could describe every item they’d discarded.
“Did it seem that he was looking for someone or something? Was there anyone with him?”
“He had a small flashlight,” the man said, “so I wrote it off to a dog walker. Although come to think of it, he did not have a dog. Not with him, anyway. And he was moving quickly, like an athlete, going in that direction.” He pointed south, the way I had driven in.
“Can we do something for you?” the woman asked, her eyes full of concern.
“I wonder if … Would you mind calling the police and mentioning that there’s an abandoned car on the street and maybe say you saw a suspicious man? At least that way we’ll get some officers here in this neighborhood. I’m going to drive around and look for my fiancé.”
I thanked them, got back on my scooter, and headed the wrong way down the one-way street in the direction the man had pointed. I noticed a funny smell in the air, something burning. Maybe one of our island visitors had decided Thanksgiving wouldn’t feel right without a fire in the fireplace. Most people didn’t have fireplaces in Key West, and even if they did, it was usually too warm to build a fire unless you jacked your air-conditioning up, and what sense did that make?
I turned toward the abandoned buildings and drove slowly, peering from one side of the street to the other, looking for any sign of Nathan. As I drew closer to the first building, the odor got stronger. It wasn’t cigarette smoke or marijuana, but the stink of burning clothing and wood and something bitter, like smoldering hair and hay and rotten apples. Nothing that I should be smelling here tonight.
Then I noticed a narrow plume of carbon-colored smoke snaking out of one of the broken windows high up. It reminded me of the tarot card I hated most. The tower shown on that card, with flames licking out of the windows and horrifying figures falling to their death, meant chan
ge was coming. Not necessarily disaster. The memory of Lorenzo telling me many times over the past few years that the Tower card should not be taken literally flashed to mind. But this was a fire, a real fire, a fire where there shouldn’t be one. My brain zinged with a new jolt of fear, and my heart began to pound nearly out of my chest. I stopped the scooter, pulled out my phone, and dialed 911.
While I was waiting for help to arrive, I left my scooter parked by the side of the road and began to creep around the perimeter of the complex. I couldn’t get close to the building, as the doors were blocked by a tall white fence. Even if I’d had the strength to hoist myself over the fence, the doors were boarded up with pieces of plywood. I was feeling as frightened as I’d ever felt, and horribly vulnerable. Spotting a two-by-four lying in the grass, I picked it up and kept moving, staying to the shadows. On the far side of the building, the fence petered out. Thick, black smoke poured out of the windows above a door covered with plywood. I ran over and touched the plywood, which felt warm. A bad sign if anyone was inside.
Choking on the fumes, I pulled my shirt high to protect my nose from the acrid stink and banged on the plywood with my two-by-four and yelled. “Nathan! Nathan, are in you there? The fire department is coming! Can you get yourself to this door? I’m here. I’ll help you.” The last bit came out incomprehensible as I’d started to sob, my voice clogged with fear and hoarse from smoke. I heard heavy breathing and saw movement to my right. Without thinking, I swung hard—the wood-chopping move that Leigh had taught me at the gym.
I heard a terrible crunch, then “Oof,” “Dammit,” and the thud of a body hitting the ground. I took a quick peek to be sure I hadn’t clobbered Nathan, then bolted for the street.
Moments later, the area was swarming with fire engines and police cars. With all the historic wooden structures and a history of blazing disasters that wiped out entire sections of town, Key West doesn’t fool around with fire. Firefighters in their heavy tan-colored suits and big hats and masks began to unspool the hoses from their trucks. Their shouts echoed in the darkness. They surged over the white fence, and I heard the splintering of the plywood covering the nearest door.
A young cop came up behind me, grabbed my elbow, and pulled me away from the building. “Did you call this in, miss?” he asked sternly. “It’s not safe to be this close.”
“I’ve knocked a man out,” I squawked, pointing in the direction of the form in the tall grass and holding up my piece of wood. Then I told him about noticing the smoky smell and finding Nathan’s car parked down the road, and how he’d been MIA for probably twenty-four hours and totally missed Thanksgiving dinner with my family. By the time I started on the wedding date being tomorrow, I was blubbering, and he was searching madly for tissues and any words that might staunch the hysteria. “If he’s in there, we’ll find him.” He spoke into his radio, summarizing what I’d told him, only without the drama. Two firefighters jogged up to the man I’d hit and carried him off on a stretcher.
More smoke swirled out of the building, and the firemen tugged pulsing hoses inside. I tried to edge closer but the young police officer pushed me back.
“Officer down!” came a muffled call from inside the building.
I knew in my heart that it was Nathan. More firefighters carrying a second stretcher rushed into the building. What seemed like forever later, they carried someone out, about the size and heft of Nathan. His face was black with soot and his clothes were bloody. A medic ran up to slide an oxygen mask over his face, while a second man applied pressure to what appeared to be a wound in his right leg.
“Please,” I implored the officer who was holding me back. Neighbors from the streets nearby had begun to gather to watch the unfolding drama. “That’s Detective Bransford. We’re supposed to get married tomorrow.”
“Stay here,” he said, “I’ll check this out.” He jogged toward the knot of medics surrounding the stretcher.
Minutes later, he returned. “He has some injuries, but he’ll be fine.”
What could that optimism be based on? They loaded Nathan into the waiting ambulance and roared away.
“Meet them at the hospital,” the cop said. “Do you need a lift? They didn’t want to wait.”
And that scared me even worse. I choked out my thanks and waved him off. Instead of heading north, I sped back over to my mother’s house, lurched the scooter onto their lawn, and pounded on the door.
“Nathan is hurt badly,” I shouted when they answered, wrapped in matching pink and blue terry bathrobes. “Can you take me to the hospital? I’m afraid I’ll crash my scooter if I drive myself.”
My mother gasped and pulled me into a tight squeeze.
“Of course,” said Sam. “Let us throw on our clothes.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Although most people talked of hunger as a matter of the stomach, what Asha recalled was the taste—a foul thing that burrowed into your tongue and was sometimes still there when you swallowed, decades later.
—Katherine Boo, Beyond the Beautiful Forever
Steve Torrence was waiting outside the emergency room. He grabbed both of my hands and kissed me on the cheek. I didn’t know whether this meant tragic news or good. “I came as soon as I heard. He’s in surgery right now. I’m sorry they couldn’t wait for you to see him. Honestly, there wasn’t much to see.” He tried for a laugh.
But I gripped his hands and squeezed back the waterworks that threatened to take me over. “What happened? What kind of surgery?”
“He was shot in one leg; the tibia might be broken in the other. And his face looked a little battered. We won’t know the extent of the damage until the doctors can get a closer look.”
“But what happened? Why was he in that building?” Sam asked.
“I’ll find out,” Torrence said. “Wait here. I will be back as soon as we know something more.”
An hour later, a nurse bustled up with Steve in her wake and informed us that Nathan was almost out of treatment—they hadn’t needed to perform surgery after all. He had been assigned to a patient room and would be transferred there soon. She narrowed her eyes at our group, and I knew what was coming. But Steve nudged her a few feet away before she could get the words out and whispered an urgent plea.
“Hayley … Her parents … married …” He came back over. “Let’s go up before they change their minds.”
We took the elevator to the top floor and Steve ushered us to the end of the hallway, where a fierce, uniformed officer was pacing outside the door. “Family,” Steve explained as we sailed into Nathan’s room.
I perched on the edge of the empty bed, shivering. “This place is so cold,” my mother said, circling an arm around my back and rubbing. “Are they trying to freeze their patients out?” she asked of no one in particular. I leaned into her warmth.
“Does your father know you’re here?” Steve asked.
“No.” I hadn’t seen the point of telling the other side of my family what was going on—they would hear tomorrow and might as well get some sleep. Ditto Miss Gloria, who slept like the dead and was unlikely to notice I was missing until morning.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t return your texts and calls,” Steve said. “I had the ringer off because we were waiting outside the Buoys’ Club thinking our man would come out shortly. We’d planted one of our guys inside to try to make a deal with him. We believe he killed his partner Wednesday night.”
“Marcel?” I asked.
Steve nodded.
There was a clattering noise out in the hallway and Nathan was rolled in on a gurney, his face as pale as the sheets wrapped around him. But he was alive. His eyes flickered open. He looked groggy, his green eyes dull and murky. But he smiled when he saw me. Then he spotted my mother and whispered hoarsely, “So sorry about Thanksgiving dinner. I’m not usually that rude.”
She laughed, and I pushed the tears back and straightened my shoulders, feeling bad that I’d spent any time being mad at him. We moved away from
the bed while the orderlies transferred him, the nurse fussing with his IV and connecting the monitor that squatted by his bedside.
“This will measure his blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, and so on,” she explained when she saw us watching. She adjusted his johnny coat and tucked extra pillows under each leg, one of which was in a boot, the other bandaged from knee to groin. He groaned with pain. “He’s got a fracture of the fibula on the left. And a gunshot wound on the right above the knee. Fortunately, it passed through the flesh without doing much damage.”
When she was finished, she waggled a finger at us. “I’ll give you ten minutes, and then we want everyone out so he can rest.”
“What in the world happened?” my mother asked once the staff cleared out.
“We can talk tomorrow if you’d rather,” said Steve.
“I’m busy tomorrow,” Nathan said, winking at me.
A nod to our wedding, which would have to be postponed. Bummer, but I’d rather have him alive and still my fiancé.
“I was following him—”
“Which him is that?” Steve asked.
“Marcel’s partner, Zane Ryan. Though if I had a partner like that, I’d rather work alone.”
“Partners in what?” Sam asked. “Hayley was thinking it was something to do with culinary ingredients?”
“That was their cover,” Nathan said. “Culinary gold and Indian saffron and such. But those were being used to disguise the drugs. Cocaine and heroin.”
“So you were following,” I prompted. “And what?”
“I lost track of him completely when the light turned red on Duval and the post-Thanksgiving hordes pushed across the street. If I’d had my police vehicle, I could have hit the lights and siren.” He frowned and plucked at the top sheet. “I drove into the Bahama Village, thinking where would I store stolen goods if I had them? I figured the abandoned buildings where you found me would be perfect, if there was a way in. So I parked on Angela and walked over.” He shifted his position and grimaced as the monitor beeped and chirred. “Could I get a sip of water?”
A Deadly Feast Page 19