“Yeah, well. Anyway, I did a fictitious name search on BEG. State of Florida site. Fill in a little box, a screen pops up, it’s all in alphabetical order, click on BEG, it lets you download the original PDF file, the document the person had to record with the state to grab that name. And there it is, the address, the ID number, and the owner.”
“Which is?”
“It’s an address in Tamarac.”
“Tamarac? Wait, let me guess. The name is Antwan Shelton.”
“Football player, right? Played for the Dolphins, the guy on the billboards. Always showing off his sexy bare chest?”
“You think Antwan’s sexy?”
“Is that what you were looking for?”
“Yeah, I think it is, Julia. Thanks.”
“You still there, Claire?”
“I’m here.”
“Hey, if you ever need a place to stay, I got a spare room with its own bath and everything. I’d like to meet you finally.”
“Thanks,” Claire said. “I’d like to meet you, too. I’ll let you know.”
When the waitress came back they ordered grouper sandwiches, then sat in silence.
Claire watched a couple kissing on the dock. A tall boy and his tall girlfriend. They seemed a perfect physical match, a cozy fit. After the kissing was done, the girl tucked her head against the tall guy’s chest and he held her while they looked out at the water. A stand-up cuddle on a beautiful Miami night. Dizzy in love.
She looked back at Frisco and found him watching the same couple. He rolled his eyes to her.
“Young love,” he said. “Nothing like it.”
“This city can be an aphrodisiac. It can make you lose your head.”
Frisco blew out a breath, ducked his eyes, and consulted the back of his hand for a long moment. She’d never seen him look quite so ill at ease. Whether she deserved it or not, she took credit for his brief discomfort. Felt slightly more in control.
She said, “So it’s Antwan who owns that house.”
Frisco was silent.
“Antwan, not Browning.”
“You’re around those two all the time, Claire. Can you tell which one is pulling the strings?”
“I know, I know. But it’s Antwan’s company that owns the house.”
“Legally, that’s worthless. If he was confronted, Antwan could spin it like he’d done a good deed. He owned this house, it happened to be vacant, he knew Gustavo was sick, so he let the Pintos use it short-term while Gustavo was getting chemo in Miami. Some bullshit excuse. Bullshit is that guy’s stock and trade.”
“So the fact is, Antwan could take that house back any time he wants. Kick the Pintos out on the street.”
“And he probably intends to do just that. Gustavo swapped his eternal soul for a wad of cotton candy.”
She watched the cuddlers move down the dock, holding tight to each other.
“So where are we?”
“I want you to make a phone call, Claire.”
Frisco finished the last of his beer and slid his stein to the side.
He held out his cell.
“Who am I calling?”
“Donaldson.”
“Why is that?”
“Tell her what you and I have been doing the last few hours. Everything we’ve learned since we saw her last. About Ana Pinto, the house in the Grove. Antwan, everything.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
“She should hear it from you.”
Frisco turned and watched a pretty waitress pass by with two pitchers of beer.
“Why?”
“You’re a suspect, Claire. It would be an act of good faith, passing on evidence to the lead investigator.”
“But that’s not really why you want me to call.”
Frisco kept his eyes down.
“If I agree to call Donaldson, that proves to you I’m innocent. If I’m collaborating with Browning or Antwan, I’ll refuse. That’s your gambit?”
“Will you make the call?”
“I can’t believe you still don’t trust me.”
Frisco drew Donaldson’s card from his jeans and placed it in front of her.
“You’re one brutal son of a bitch.”
Claire picked up the phone, flipped it open.
“You’ve got messages,” she said.
“Call Donaldson. Tell her what we know.”
It wasn’t like her, but Claire was pissed. She punched Frisco’s voicemail and listened to them, one by one. The first five were the string of messages Claire left late last night just after the shooting. In the first one her voice was frantic, pleading, almost unintelligible, she hardly recognized herself. But with each new call her shock and panic subsided, her speech became more plaintive. It was like listening to the ramblings of a dying woman, each message slower than the last, more resigned, more final.
Then a message from someone else, a man, jovial, profane.
“Frisco, you need to hear this. It’s Chief Mullaney, a couple of hours ago.”
She handed him the phone and he listened, then replayed it.
He set the phone down on the table and said, “You know someone named Sugarman?”
“No.”
“How about a guy named Thorn?”
“Never heard of him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Why? Who are they?”
“It’s something about a real estate transaction. Earl signed some papers, made some kind of deal with this guy Thorn. Last night just after Earl was killed, Thorn went missing. His friend Sugarman believes his disappearance is related to Earl’s murder. Mr. Sugarman is headed to the ranch to fill me in.”
“Earl signed some papers?”
“Apparently he did.”
“What? He was selling the ranch to this guy?”
“Or something,” Frisco said.
“The radical change.”
He nudged the phone closer to her. “Call Donaldson,” he said. “Add those names to your list. Tell her about Sugarman and Thorn. Maybe she’s still at the ranch. She can talk to this guy, see what’s up.”
She dialed the number, holding Frisco’s gaze. Donaldson’s voicemail picked up. Claire turned on the speaker, held the phone up for Frisco to hear the woman’s recorded greeting.
“Okay, Sergeant. What now?”
“Leave her a message. All the details. Say your name, so there’s no doubt who it is. Tell her to call back as soon as she’s able to.”
When she was done, Claire snapped the phone shut and set it in front of him.
“Okay, you satisfied? Somehow that proves I’m innocent?”
“It helps.”
Frisco looked out at the glittering rows of sailboats. He ran a hand through his coarse brown hair and took a long breath, then let it go with a soft whistle at the end like a man summoning the courage to do something he’s long dreaded.
He reached to his side and retrieved the leather cylinder. He popped its lid and drew out a large sheet of rolled paper. It rattled in the breeze as he set it on the picnic table. He stretched it out, put his beer stein on one end, and held the other with his hand.
Claire stood up, moved around the table for better light.
It was a survey map with a dozen red circles clustered in one corner. A dotted line marked the boundaries of the property, and the land itself was shadowed darker than the ranches surrounding it. It was a shape as recognizable to Claire as the outline of the state of Florida. It was Coquina Ranch. And those red circles were all bunched together in the far western quadrant, the fenced area now used as the game preserve.
“Is this the map you saw on the table last night?”
She studied it for several seconds, then looked him in the eyes and nodded.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Where’d you get that?”
“It was given to me by my grandfather when he decided I’d come of age. For me that was thirteen years ago on my twenty-first birthday. In Browning’s case, appare
ntly Earl thought that boy needed to mature a little longer. I think your husband got his copy sometime in the last month or so. That’s what started this mess.”
“What is this?”
“It’s the Hammond family test of loyalty.”
“Loyalty?”
“Loyalty to the land. To that ranch out there.”
“These red marks, what are they?”
“That’s oil, Claire. Those red dots are the sites of exploratory wells dug seventy-five years ago. Millions of barrels of crude are down there, about ten thousand feet below Coquina Ranch. A mother lode of oil.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
* * *
IT FELT AS IF SOMEONE had fired a nail gun into the belly of Thorn’s leg muscle. He collapsed in the field he was crossing and tried to stretch it out, but the stretching set off another cramp in his left foot. He relaxed, or tried to. Slowed his breath. In a minute or two the pain eased, and he stood up again.
It had to be dehydration. Except for the half cup he’d squeezed from his shirt, he’d gone almost twenty-four hours without water, made worse by all that alcohol the night before, then sweating in the sinkhole, sweating as he climbed that wall of rock, sweating as he killed a man and climbed that wall a second time, then ran across the plain, sweating as he hiked through the woods.
As he set off again, an ice pick stabbed his right quadriceps, and the slab of muscle knotted hard. In the dark, he held his breath and stood flat-footed for a moment and willed himself to settle down. He concentrated on the call of a barred owl in a nearby tree. “Who, who, cooks for you?”
A mournful question that the owl repeated and repeated again.
“Rusty Stabler,” Thorn said quietly. “That’s who.”
Though the truth was Rusty wasn’t much of a cook. Her only true specialty was a cheese omelet. Then again, it was a damn good omelet. With bacon crumbles and spicy salsa and avocado. Damn good.
Thorn thought about that omelet as he stood in the darkness, waiting for the pain in his thigh to subside. He thought about Rusty, her lean, hard body, her restless energy, the two of them in bed coiled together like matching strands of DNA.
After a minute or two, he took an experimental step, then another. Soon he was walking across the meadow, walking steadily without pain in what he judged was a westerly direction.
Out in that open field he tried to get his bearings from the stars, but the clouds were still so dense even the moon was in hiding. Picking his way carefully he set out across that field, the muscles cooperating better now, his stride lengthening. He was guided by a faint and distant light that glowed on the horizon.
He’d never known how dark it could be out on the pineland flats. In that first mile he stumbled and fell three times. He skinned both knees, barked his palms, but got up each time and resumed his march across the plain. It was grassy for a while, then he crossed a patch of barren ground, with crumbled seashells and sand underfoot. It was impossible to walk for long across the unpaved parts of Florida without crunching across the remains of ancient marine life.
He was crossing a rocky pasture when he sensed movement nearby. He halted. To his left then to his right he heard something like the swishing of horse tails chasing away biting flies, then the wet flutter of lips. He strained to see but in that thick darkness could make out no more than the stony ground a yard or two ahead. He extended one hand before him and the other to his side like a blind man crossing a log. He kept going like that for twenty or thirty feet.
The creature he collided with was far bigger and hairier than the antelopes he’d seen earlier. At Thorn’s touch, the animal bucked and snorted, let out a bellow that must have been the war cry of its species. Bison or buffalo or some exotic moose or elk. A hundred of them at least, for the darkness rumbled around him as the herd he’d spooked stampeded to the north, one of them butting him to the ground, another stamping his rump, they jostled and jolted and bruised him from every direction. Lying on his side, Thorn tucked into a fetal ball and absorbed a few more licks. In seconds they were gone, leaving in their wake a fragrant swirl of manure and crushed rye grass, and the sharp stink of animal terror.
In the second mile or the third, he skidded down the bank of a ditch, and came to rest ankle-deep in standing water. Squatting down, he cupped some up, brought it to his mouth, and almost gulped before he caught its putrid smell. It was stale piss of one kind or another. Certain animals did that, used the same spot for their latrine, one after the other, covering their rivals’ scent in an endless striving for dominance.
For a moment he was tempted to take just one sip. But his thirst, he finally reckoned, was not yet that severe. Thorn wiped his hands on his shorts, climbed up the bank and pushed on. He passed through more glens and crossed meadows of broomstraw and wire grass and a pasture where a chorus of frogs accompanied his passage with tinkling croaks like a hundred plastic combs strummed by fingertips.
Winds aloft skimmed away the clouds, and the half moon that floated into view put a sugar glaze on the scrubland before him. He reached the meadow where he’d been trapped in the pit and saw in the distance the blaze of house lights.
He worked his way forward, located the wooden platform that covered the old well. Saw the tips of an aluminum ladder cocked against the opened hatch.
He drew his pistol, and stood for several moments at the edge of the deck, listening for any human sound. When he was satisfied no one was moving around down there, he lowered the Glock and tucked it back in his pocket.
In the halo surrounding the cabin he saw the red four-wheeler Jonah had been driving, and parked nearby was a compact car with all four doors swung open.
Thorn edged forward to the perimeter of the illuminated area and skirted the cabin, searching for a garden hose, an outdoor faucet, water trough, or cistern. But seeing none of that.
He eased into the shadow of a utility shed that gave him a view of the house’s rear. Inside the house there was no movement, but strange music was sifting through the air. It seemed to be coming from the car’s speakers, something with flutes and the mournful voices of Indian chiefs crooning on behalf of their ancestral spirits.
A phone trilled inside the cabin. It trilled three more times. No one picked up.
He waited with his shoulder braced against the shed, trying to take the weight off his unsteady legs. Five minutes passed, but nothing moved at the windows. Maybe Jonah was frying up the batch of conch fritters Thorn ordered earlier. Or crushing ice for a pitcher of margaritas.
Thorn knew he was going a little nuts. Lips glued shut, tongue a leather flap.
He stepped away from the shed, following the shadowed path of a pine tree that led toward the house. He stayed within its cone of darkness till he was ten feet from the car. It was one of those hybrid jobs with an ugly shape, an uglier paint job.
Thorn ducked into the front seat and saw the key in the ignition.
He gripped the key for several moments then drew back his hand.
He’d done too much running for one day. And he needed water. Needed it worse than he’d ever needed water before.
The iPod on the passenger seat was like the one Rusty used on her morning jogs. A white cord connected it to a plug in the dash. Thorn picked up the unit and touched its dial. As Rusty had shown him, he made a circle with his fingertip against the smooth face, cranked up the volume, then twisted the knob on the dashboard to push it higher.
He backed from the car, angling across the sandy yard to the four-wheeler. He crouched behind the ATV and waited to see if the music drew Jonah from the house. But minutes passed and nothing happened. A few more minutes, and a lot more nothing.
Only the Indian chanters and the flutes and drums and tambourines echoed across that moonscape. That land of ghostly darkness was dense with ghostly noise. Thorn held the pistol slack at his side and scanned the house from end to end.
For a better view he climbed onto one of the knobby wheels of the ATV. From that angle he made out a living room wi
th couch and chairs, and what appeared to be a long dining room table. There was clutter on the shelves, a heap of clothes in one rocker. A sliver of the kitchen was visible. Old appliances, counters littered with bowls and dishes and frying pans and plates of half-eaten food, cabinet doors swung open. All the markings of a messy bachelor pad. Then his eyes fastened on the kitchen faucet and the glistening ribbon that trickled from its spout.
Thorn worked his jaws, and tried to swallow. Lodged in the back of his throat was a chunk of cinder. He tried to coax some spit into his mouth, but got nothing. He tried chewing on the edge of his hard tongue, and got the same result. He found himself leaning forward to better see the water dribbling.
He was losing it all right. That was clear. His body was in revolt, cells garbling their messages to one another. He’d begun to question his reflexes and his judgment.
With the back of his arm he mashed his raw lips, trying again to manufacture juice inside his mouth. It didn’t work. Nothing was going to work but the real stuff.
He jumped down from the tire and mapped his route. Only a madman would barge in the front. Then again it had a certain fittingness. One madman calling on another.
Running in a stoop, he stayed below the level of the windows and stole close to the cabin wall. He worked his way forward to the porch.
He mounted the three wooden steps, then held back in the shadows and tilted his head around the window frame to scout the interior of the cabin. Table lights blazing. Overhead lights on, ceiling fan whirling at full speed. Papers tacked to the walls fluttered in its breeze. On the mantel were a dozen fat red candles of different heights, each with a trembling flame.
Through the kitchen entryway, Thorn could see the running faucet.
Even in his untrustworthy state of mind, he knew it was a trap. Not that it mattered. He was going in. He was going through that door.
Out in the yard the iPod finished its playlist and ceased. After a stretch of pineland silence, there came the slow whoots of a great horned owl reclaiming its share of the night. From some nearby pond or marsh a collection of competing frogs tuned up their orchestra. The marble-clicking-against-marble call of the cricket frogs and the cheep-cheep reply of oak toads and dozens of tiny cricket frogs bleating like a lost herd of sheep.
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