Dead Silence

by Randy Wayne White

  When he said, “I might have,” I felt the same weird transference as when I had cupped the little chunk of granite in my hand.

  The island was south of Myakka Inlet, he told me, only two miles from the man’s beachfront property at Falcon Landing. That put it about forty miles north-northeast of Sanibel, close enough that I was suspicious. I’d never heard of the place. But then he explained, “That’s what we’ve always called it. On maps, it either doesn’t have a name or it’s called something else. It’s about ten miles north of Hog Island.”

  I had boated past Hog Island, but it took a few seconds to make a more important connection. Hog Island was where police had trapped and arrested Barbara Mackle’s kidnapper, Gary Krist. My intuitive senses, never strong, were suddenly and subtly displacing reason. But I continued asking questions to assemble proof.

  Myles told me his family had owned the island since the 1920s. It was small, about fifteen acres, mangrove bushes on the eastern rim, coconut palms, and a section of beach that faced Charlotte Harbor. His grandfather had built a private fishing camp that had become a retreat for three generations of Myles men. Myles had used the island as an occasional meeting place for his Skull and Bones friends.

  I listened closely, trying to see his eyes in the dim dash lights, as he told me the island’s main cabin was built of block and stone. It had a complicated lock system, steel rods through all windows and doors, to discourage vandals. “Even though there’s nothing really valuable inside,” he said. “Some fishing gear and canned food, that’s all. But we don’t want outsiders wrecking the place.”

  I thought, Right.

  Like all islands with high ground, Tamarindo would be an easy place to dig a grave. Soft sand and shell, only a few feet above sea level. It’s where I would have left the boy if someone had screwed up my plans to use the horse-sized hole in the Hamptons.

  My intuitive senses seemed to be right. Will Chaser was on Tamarindo—I knew it on a gut level buttressed by reason. There was a chance I’d find the Cubans there, too.

  I checked my battered old Rolex: almost ten p.m. Ten hours nine minutes before the boy’s air ran out . . . if he was still breathing.

  Hog Island was a little over an hour from Dinkin’s Bay in a fast boat, and I owned a fast boat. Suddenly, I was as eager to be free of Nelson Myles as he was eager to be free of me.

  But now the man was talking nonstop, glancing occasionally at the little stainless-steel pistol I had placed on the console but also paying attention to the headlights of passing cars. I should have linked his behavior to the way he’d tried to manipulate me earlier, claiming he would talk more freely if we returned to Falcon Landing.

  Even when a Wells Fargo security car appeared out of nowhere, skidding in behind us, yellow lights flashing, I didn’t grasp the significance.

  “Rental cops,” I told him. “Keep your mouth shut or we both go to jail.” Myles wasn’t much of an actor either. He exaggerated his confusion as he craned his neck around to look, then overplayed his relief. “Don’t worry,” he said, speaking as if we were partners. “I know these two guys. I see them all the time.”

  “Then get rid of them.”

  He tried to lower his window, then tried to open his door, but I’d locked everything with the master switch. There was no override on the passenger side.

  “I can’t tell them to go away,” he said impatiently, “if I can’t talk to them, now, can I?”

  I was thinking about it as I watched the guards in the mirror. They rested their hands on their holsters as if unconcerned as they approached what had to be a familiar vehicle.

  I said, “We’re not on Falcon Landing property?”

  Myles said, “No, the county maintenance people use this place.”

  “Then why are they bothering us?”

  “Relax,” Myles told me. “They’re probably bored. They don’t get many calls. And they’re dumb as rocks. Let me handle it.”

  I didn’t like the man’s airy tone. Was tempted to start the engine and drive away, but that guaranteed attention from the police—real cops, not the four-hours-of-training imitators.

  The locks clicked in tandem when I touched the master switch, then lowered both windows. A Gulf wind flooded the cabin. I said, “Don’t get out,” looking at Myles, seeing his sullen face strobe in yellow rhythmic light.

  I glanced in the mirror. Christ, now the security guards were drawing their weapons as they separated, one on each side of the Range Rover, crouching slightly as they came toward us.

  I slid the Seecamp under the seat, then grabbed the cell phone from the dash. I punched the recorder’s OFF icon as I said, “Tell them who you are. That everything’s okay. We’re just talking.”

  The man lay back in his seat as if he didn’t hear. I hissed, “Do it now!” He turned to me, a weak, nervous smile on his face. “Sure. But give me the cell phone first. Then I’ll get rid of them.”

  The phone with his recorded confession.

  I reached for the ignition. “I’ll take my chances with the rental cops.”

  “Wait!” Myles tried to pull my hand away.

  I said, “You’re not getting the phone.”

  “But you’ve got to give it to me! They’re here because I called them . . . with this.” He was holding what looked like a garage opener. It had been clipped to the sun visor, the same visor he had grabbed to balance himself. “It’s a panic alert that works if you’re near the property. Press it and the security guys come running. But sometimes they call police, too!”

  He sounded anxious, the way he said it, “police, too!,” as if he already regretted pushing the button. Now I understood why he had tried to maneuver me back to Falcon Landing.

  “Give me the phone,” Myles said.

  “Not a chance.”

  “I’ll tell them it’s a false alarm. I swear.” Then he said, “Shit!,” leaning toward the window, listening. I could hear what he was hearing: the warble of sirens a few blocks away.

  He began to panic. “Give me the phone! The real police will be here any minute!”

  I shook my head no. I was still tempted to start the car and run for it, but that would’ve been the stupidest possible move. I had to let it play out. I said, “There aren’t many murderers who turn themselves in. I want to see how the cops react.”

  “I had no choice. This is your fault.”

  “It’s always someone else’s fault, right, Nels?”

  “If you don’t give me the phone, I’ll them the truth . . . that you kidnapped me and threatened to kill me.”

  Myles didn’t know I had a more compelling reason to avoid the police. But I said, “Maybe they’ll put us in the same cell. That would be nice, huh? Just the two of us . . . alone.”

  I was watching the security guards in the mirror. They had stopped behind the car. One of them hollered, “Mr. Myles! Everything all right?,” talking loud because of the sirens.

  I called through the open window, “Mr. Myles is just fine. We’re talking about going into the recording business.” I looked up at palm trees where fronds reflected the blue strobes of a squad car, slowing to turn into the parking lot. I looked at Myles. “I think we might have a big hit on our hands, Nels. Can you picture the headlines?”

  Talking fast, he said, “I’ll help you find the missing kid, I swear to God. Give me the phone. We can use my boat if you want. I’ll tell them it was a false alarm. If I tell them, they’ll believe me. We don’t have to do this!”

  “You’re right,” I replied. “You’re taking a stupid risk. Get rid of them. But it’s your call. No matter what, I keep the phone.”

  He was looking out the side window. “Jesus Christ, they’re here! Why are you being so damn stubborn? I offered to help you.”

  I said, “Tell them you hit the button accidentally. You claim Bonesmen are noble? Prove it by helping me help the kid. I’ll decide later if I give the recording to police.”

  A lie. Annie Sylvester’s family deserved to know whe
re she was buried and who had killed her. Myles probably realized what I was doing: The shrewd anticipate deceit by projecting their behavior onto others. But the man had no choice . . . Until a polite policeman told us to step out of the car, then asked me for identification.

  “It’s procedure,” he said, sounding bored until I hesitated, undecided if I should break one of my own rules and lie to a cop. I own several false passports, but it was pointless to carry one in my own home state. All I had was a driver’s license.

  “Left your wallet at home, did you?” the officer suggested, suddenly more interested. “What’s your name?”

  That’s when Myles surprised me, saying, “I can vouch for this man. He’s a business associate of mine.” He was standing near the security guards, who had made their deference obvious.

  The cop appeared satisfied, but he was also studying Myles—seeing the stained pants, the swollen ear—as Myles turned to me, thrust out his hand and said, “I bet you left your wallet near the pool. Give me my cell phone, I’ll call the wife.”

  I looked at his hand, aware the officer was staring. “I didn’t lose my wallet,” I said. “I think I left it in the car. I’ll take a look.”

  I opened the car, pretended to look for the license and handed it to the officer. I watched his face, then winced inwardly at the man’s reaction as he read my name.

  “Marion Ford,” the cop said, sounding cheerful, but his cheeriness was steel. “As in Dr. Ford, the biologist?”

  “That’s right.”

  Now the officer was smiling but also backing away as he touched a hand to his sidearm and unsnapped the holster. “I have some friends who’ve been looking for you, Dr. Ford. So what I’d like you to do right now is empty your pockets, then have a seat in the back of my vehicle.”

  He glanced at Myles, the rich, respected Falcon Landing resident, who looked from me to the cop, his eyes signaling a reminder. The cop’s eyes signaled respect in reply.

  As I processed the exchange, the image of an iceberg came into my mind. Odd, until I remembered a conversation I’d had on a faraway winter beach. The father of a dead girl, Virgil Sylvester, had described an iceberg he had seen off Nova Scotia, its peaks like fire at sunrise, the ocean dark beneath.

  “It’s that kind of power they got,” the fishermen had told me. “Even when they use it, you don’t see it.”

  I’d heard the man’s words but was deaf to their gravity.

  “Oh, one more thing, Dr. Ford,” the cop said. “While you’re emptying your pockets, give Mr. Myles his telephone back, okay?”

  28

  The police detective, a woman named Shelly Palmer, told me she lived in Cape Coral, not far from Pine Island and the fishing village of Gumbo Limbo, where the late Bern Heller had owned a marina until he was sent to prison and his business went into foreclosure.

  On the drive from Sarasota to Fort Myers, she had tried to bait me, saying things like, “I hear the man was a monster . . . Locals say the man who killed Bern Heller did the world a favor . . . What was he like, Dr. Ford . . . your personal opinion, I mean?”

  Whenever she pressed, I removed my glasses and leisurely cleaned them, putting space between my anger and my intellect. She gave up after half an hour, as we traveled south on I-75, forty miles between the Sarasota County line and Lee County, our destination.

  Now we were leaving a police substation in North Fort Myers after stopping to pick up her boss and assemble paperwork. I listened to Detective Palmer tell me, “We’re going to do what we call a roll-by. Attorneys and judges call it a show-up. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  A roll-by/show-up was a prearranged meeting with a witness who had consented to look at a suspect. It required two squad cars, the witness sitting anonymously in the back of one vehicle, while the suspect stepped out of a second vehicle and presented himself for inspection.

  My guess: The woman Bern Heller had attempted to rape was waiting to inspect me somewhere nearby.

  I said, “I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t understand what we’re doing.” Which wasn’t the whole truth.

  Truth was, I was more concerned with Will Chaser’s deadline, eight hours away, than I was with protecting my legal rights. Under any other circumstances, whether I was innocent or guilty, I would have spent the last hour in silence after demanding an attorney.

  It was a gamble, with two lives on the line, one of them mine. But even in a worst-case scenario, they would only lock me in a prison cell, not bury me in a box. I was willing to risk a few weeks in jail, waiting for a court date, on the chance of arriving at Tamarindo Island a few hours earlier.

  Detective Palmer said to her boss, Captain Lester Durell, “He’s waived all rights, like I told you. He signed the consent sheet. Satisfied now?”

  Durell said, “Well, they say scientists are eggheads,” exaggerating his southern vowels. “I guess this one’s proof enough.” He turned to look through the Plexiglas shield that separated backseat from front in this unmarked car, as Palmer drove us across the Edison Bridge into Fort Myers. “What happened to you, Doc? That big ol’ football player scramble your brain when he gave you that beatin’?”

  Heller had almost knocked me unconscious a year ago only days before he murdered Javier Castillo.

  I said, “That has nothing to do with it. I’m in a hurry. You know why.”

  “Wish I could help.”

  “I already told you how. Have your marine division get a boat to that island, with a chopper as backup.”

  “Thirty years, I’ve fished these bays,” Durell replied, “and Tamarindo’s a name I’ve never heard.”

  Was the man intentionally trying to make me mad? Twice, I’d explained why it wasn’t on charts.

  I said, “Why not assume I’m right? Your people would get some extra night-ops experience, and just might make headlines if they find the boy.”

  Durell didn’t want to hear it. “Who we supposed to believe? Our local guy at the FBI says you wore out your welcome. Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department thinks the same as this here lady detective: You’re lookin’ for a way to shift attention from a dead-solid murder charge. And even if you’re not”—he paused to take a cigar from the pocket of his sports coat—“doin’ this without talking to a lawyer is no excuse for bein’ so damn dumb.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was putting on a show for Palmer or for me. Durell was a wide-bodied man who’d boxed Golden Gloves and played pulling guard for Florida State before taking his degree in criminology out into the much tougher world of law enforcement.

  I had known him for many years. Once upon a time, we’d been peripheral friends. But cops on every level soon develop a social armor that separates them from the civilian world as effectively as it shields them and the inevitable scars that come with the job.

  It was unlikely that he considered us friends now. Maybe he wanted to make that clear to Detective Palmer. Or me. If anything, a pro like Les Durell would be tougher on someone he knew. But he’d never struck me as the flaky, scalp-collecting sort of cop who viewed hanging an acquaintance as a badge of honor.

  I said, “I signed the release. Isn’t that what Detective Palmer wanted me to do?”

  Durell turned his back to me, grumbling, “Also a good way to risk screwin’ up this case if it gets to court,” which the woman ignored until the big man turned to look at me again.

  “Shelly?” he said to her. “You got a problem with me sittin’ in the backseat with Dr. Ford? There’s a coupla things I’d like to discuss with the man. Personally, I think mosta the evidence your team scraped together ain’t worth a crap.”

  When the woman snapped, “Yes! I do have a problem with it!,” I knew what they were setting up. Good cop, bad cop—an old routine. No, Lester Durell obviously wasn’t my friend.

  I listened to the woman speak her lines, asking, “Who is this guy, another one of your locker-room buddies? Captain Durell, the days of the good-ol’-boy system are gone forever. At least I hope to hell t
hey’re gone. But if you want to risk me filing an internal complaint—”

  “Now, now, Shelly dear. This here’s a respected man. Lives out there on Sanibel with the rich folk, pays his taxes and obeys the law—mostly he does anyway. It can’t hurt letting the two of us just talk sorta privatelike—”

  I interrupted, “Les, save us some time. You have questions? Fire away. I don’t mind if Detective Palmer listens.”

  The woman said, “Should I be flattered?,” still in her bad-cop role—or possibly a woman who was naturally foul-tempered.

  Durell said to her, “How long before we’re supposed to meet our witness?” It was 11:15 p.m.

  Palmer replied, “She’s covering third shift but can take a break from the floor after she signs in, around midnight.”

  In the dim light, I saw the man wince. He was pained by Palmer’s use of the gender identifier she. But the woman had told me far more than either realized with her one-sentence response.

  Palmer had just told me that the witness worked at a hospital—nearby Fort Myers Memorial, most likely. Third shift wasn’t the woman’s normal schedule. It was probably changed to mitigate stress after the trauma of an attempted rape: She didn’t want to be alone at night. It also suggested that the witness was single, had no children and was receiving psychological counseling. And she wasn’t a nurse. She was either a physician or a physician’s assistant. Nurses don’t cover floors, they work in units: peds or ER or critical care.

  Extrapolating from what I knew about Bern Heller’s many victims, the woman was probably Caucasian, between twenty-four and thirty-two years old, drove an eye-catching car and was sufficiently confident to park in unlighted areas of public parking lots. Odds were that she had shoulder-length brown hair, was fit, with small breasts and, although confident, had a friendly, eager-to-please demeanor.

  Implicit was a scenario that included a successful young woman who had fallen for one of Heller’s many gambits after she’d finished her shift at the hospital and probably after working out at a nearby fitness center. But the witness was also a person with character. She had a strong sense of civic duty. Why else would she risk coming out at night to identify a man suspected of murder?