A False Dawn (15 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT

When I got back to
Jupiter,
I could hear my cell phone ringing as I stepped in the cockpit.  I entered the salon, walked down to the galley, and saw it was Leslie’s number.

“Hold a second,” I said into the phone. I carried if fifty feet down the dock  before I spoke.  “I’m here, Leslie.”

“There is a definite match with the victim’s shoe.  We photographed everything.  It’s the same size, color, style, fabric, and brand.”

“What’s the word on the toothpick?”

“That will take a few more hours.  I’ve got a rush on it.”

“Run a DNA test on Richard Brennen.  Maybe his DNA will match the hair found on the duct tape.”

She was silent for a moment.  “That’s going to make the six ‘o clock news if the media get wind.  I may have to go around Slater for that one.  I’ll see if I can get Dan Grant working the legal end and logistics with some excuse so he doesn’t tip off Slater.  We’ll catch Brennen with a court order for the DNA, otherwise, only time we’ll see him open his mouth is at one of his fund-raisers.  I’m lovin’ it.  Have you found Nick?”

“Not yet.  He hasn’t returned to his boat.”

“I’ll do a search.  Maybe we picked him up for something.”

“Can’t imagine that.”

There was a long silence.  She cleared her throat and lowered her voice.  “Are you doing anything tonight?”

“You never know.  My plans have been rather interrupted lately.  I want to do two things: find Nick and keep out of the county jail.”

“I’ll do what I can to help on both counts.  Somewhere in there you have to eat.  I make a pretty good steak.  I probably can’t compete with Nick’s cooking talents when it comes to fish, but Dad did teach met me how to grill a good steak.”

“What time?”

“Around sevenish?”

“Okay,” I heard myself say.

“I’ll call you later today with directions, bye.”

After she hung up, I looked at my cell phone for a few seconds.  I don’t know why, but for some reason the phone seemed like an alien device in my hand. 
Beam me up, Scottie, I have no idea where the hell I am on this planet at the moment.
  I did know what I was going to say to whatever alien life forms were listening in through the bug.  I went back aboard
Jupiter,
lifted the bug off the table, picked up one of my deep-sea rods, walked to the bow, and stepped out on the long bowsprit. 

A breeze came across the lagoon and tidal flats, bringing with it the smell of oyster bars and fish.  I looked at the brackish water below me.  The tide was incoming, traveling with the wind.  A pelican sailed effortlessly by, cocking its head toward me.  The bird seemed to know that I wasn’t using shrimp or minnows for bait.  It flapped its wings and flew over the mangroves.

I held the bug close to my mouth and whispered. “Listen closely, assholes. You’re out of control and I’m going to stop you.  If you have Nick, let him go.  You touch him and I’ll come for you.  I’ll track you down.  Then I’ll hook you and reel you in.  Remember this sound.  It’s what you’ll hear in your head when I find you.”

 I took the large steel hook and pushed it in the center of the bug, cracking and breaking through the shiny metal like opening a tin can.  I cast the line as hard as I could. The bug, with the hook and line attached to it, formed a high arch before plunging into the bay.  It made a splash like a baseball hitting the water.  I watched the ripples until they panned out, lost definition, and joined the rising tide coming toward me.               

THIRTY-NINE

I hoped the gnawing in my gut would subside if I actually ate lunch.  At the tiki bar, I ordered a blackened grouper sandwich.  Kim brought my order, set the food down, and stared at me.  “You okay?” I asked.

“I’m just a little nervous because you haven’t eaten here in a while.  I just wanted to make sure your sandwich is okay before I serve the table behind you.  Corona?”

I nodded and took a bite.  She opened a longneck Corona with specks of ice sliding down the sides of the bottle.  “Enjoy, handsome.”

“Kim.”

“Yeah?”

“Food’s great.”

She smiled and left to wait a table.  I heard the sound of a motorcycle entering the parking lot.  Within a few seconds, Nick pulled into his parking spot in the grass, killed the engine, and got off his bike.  He glanced toward the tiki bar, saw me, and shook his head in a look somewhere between a grin and a grimace.  He walked up to the bar and flopped down on one of the barstools.

“Sean, you’re not gonna freakin’ believe where I’ve been.”

“Try me.”

Kim came around the bar, saw Nick and said, “The prodigal mariner.  Your pal here, O’Brien, has been pacing the restaurant trying to figure out if Martians captured you.  Whatcha drinking, Nicky?”

“Bud.”

Kim opened a bottle of Budweiser and pushed it in front of Nick.  He took a quick sip, scratched at the stubble on his chin and shook his head in a hound dog kind of resignation.  “Man,” he began, “I go to get you outta jail and I go to jail.”

“What?”

“This cop, I swear he musta been waitin’ for me.  I get on my bike to go bail you out.  I go about a half mile down the road, and all these blue lights start flashing.  This cop pulls me over.  Says my taillight is burned out.  I say, no problem, thank you.  I’ll get it fixed.  He asks me if I’ve been drinkin.’  I told him only two beers.  Then he tells me to touch my nose with this finger…then this finger.  I do okay, but the cop, the same cop on your boat with onion head, he said I’m under arrest for DUI.  I ask if he’s kidding me.  The next thing I know is I’m being handcuffed, read my rights, put in the back of the police car, and taken to the jail.  They put me in a big cell with lots of people who were really drunk.  The place smelled like shit, man.  Vomit on the floor.  Blood on shirts from fights.  And there I sit.  No phone.  No lawyer.  No nothin’.  I couldn’t even tell you where I was, and I was probably not far from you.  Come mornin,’ I explain to the judge, dude called Judge Pappas, what went down.  ‘Cause they didn’t get a breath test, brother Pappas threw it out.”  Nick drained the can and got Kim’s attention.  “I’ll have what Sean has.  But bring me a hamburger instead of the fish.”

“Okay, Nicky.”

“Sean, what the hell’s going on?  These cops really think you’re goin’ around knockin’ off farm girls?”

“Women who are held against their will, sexually exploited and sometimes killed.  I have a problem with that.  And onion head, as you call him, has a problem with me.”

“I say we go rearrange his face, ‘cause now he’s really pissin’ me off.”

“His fall is coming.  I’m going to do everything I can to make it happen before any more women are killed.”

“He’s the killer?”

“Don’t think so.  Someone more cunning, smarter than Slater, is involved.  Slater’s role is probably PR.”  I finished my beer and watched a seagull battle a blackbird for a piece of shrimp that had fallen from the table a teenager was busing.

“Nick, I found a bug on
Jupiter,
hidden in the smoke detector.”

Kim brought Nick’s food.  He attacked it, taking two bites in a row out of the hamburger.  Chewing, he managed to say, “What?  Somebody spying on you?  Listen to everything we talk about?”

“You got it.”

“
Everything
?  Even about women?”

“Probably.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“Somebody really wants to either pin all or some of this on me, or they think I know a lot more than I do.  Either way, I sent them a message.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought they’d picked you up.   Maybe holding you against your will.”

“I was in jail.  That’s against my will.”

“I know, but I thought it might be something worse.”

“What’s worse than being sober and spending a night with a dozen drunks vomiting on themselves?  I coulda caught some disease in that place.”

“I don’t know how deep and far this thing is.  I have a hunch there’s sexual slavery here.  There could be a lot of people involved at different levels.  Underage women from anywhere in the world, forced to become prostitutes.  Their Johns are probably the people who bring or import them into the country.  These girls are scared kids with nowhere to go.  The customer base probably includes some pillars in their respective communities.  Maybe a few politicians, cops, churchgoers, men used to buying whatever they want: teenage girls, kinky sex, threesomes, toss a lawyer in because they’re always involved in some level of corruption, and there you have a lot of powerful reasons for secrecy.”

Nick shook his head and ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek.  He sipped his beer, searching for words.  “What’d we do?”

“You keep catching the big fish in the sea.  I’ll try to catch the land sharks.”

“Man, I know I’m not a cop.  I know you have all the professional training, but I’m strong, fast, don’t take no shit from nobody.  You need me, Sean.”

“I need you to stay alive.  To go fishing with me.  To tell me about the Greek Islands and why I need to live the rest of my life there.”

 Nick started to protest as my cell rang.  It was Leslie.  I thought she was calling to either cancel the dinner or give me directions to her place.

“Hi,” I said on the second ring.  “I forget to ask you what kind of wine you like.  I’ll pick up a bottle.”

“Sean,” her tone was serious.  “I got some early results on the toothpick.  Jonathan, in the lab, busted his butt to get it done fast for us.  No rush charges.”

“What do you have?”

“DNA on the toothpick matches the DNA under the fingernail of your victim.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure.  We’ll run the tests again, but it looks like Silas Davis, the jerk who tossed the toothpick in your face, beat up the face of your victim.  I’d say you found the killer.  Congratulations.”

FORTY

It was a couple of hours before sunset, and I jogged toward the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse.  I ran past tidal flats, dotted with small mangrove islands, past shallow pockets of brackish water, much of it no more than a foot deep at low tide.  As my feet pounded the bike path, I could see Silas Davis’ smirking face, a chewed toothpick in the corner of his mocking mouth, the smell of unwashed scalp, the odor of sweat and reefer clinging to dreadlocks like compost.  Now I knew his skin cells were under the dead girl’s fingernail.  I ran harder.

A dozen cars were in the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse parking lot.  Tourists snapped digital souvenirs of the old brick lighthouse that rises more the 175 feet above the surrounding land.  I cut through the parking lot and jogged on the beach, making my way back to the marina. 

Except for the gentle roll of breakers, it was almost still and flat.  I slipped off my sneakers, socks. T-shirt and ran into the water.  It was warm, and the water seemed to embrace every pore on my skin.  I dove beneath a wave and swam underwater a half minute, feeling the coolness in the water the deeper I went.   When my hand touched the sandy bottom, I headed back for the sun.  Breaking through the surface, I inhaled a chest full of air and floated on my back. 

I could only hear my breathing and the distance sound of the surf.  I closed my eyes and simply listened.  A laughing gull called out.  A small fish broke the surface near me.  Beyond that, nothing.  I laid my head further back in the warm water, allowing it to cover my ears.  Even the sound of a gull faded away.   

“Sean, find your peace…”
  It was Sherri’s voice.  It came from the deepest reaches of the ocean.  Soft, distant and loving.  Was it spoken between levels of my own consciousness, or did I really hear something?  I opened my eyes and watched the lavender sky fill with warm hues of straw-tinted clouds. 

I hadn’t been out to sea since I had released Sherri’s ashes.  Now I floated alone on a desolate copper ocean.  And I deeply missed my wife.  I lifted my left hand and let the water run out of my palm.  Somewhere in there, I thought, were traces of Sherri.  Somewhere in there were traces of me.

I swam slowly to the shore.  I could tell the tide was rising, pushing the surf further up the beach.  I got my things and started across the sand to the path bordered by sea grape trees.  I heard a wave crash, and I had an urge to turn and look at the ocean one last time.  But instead, I walked toward the setting sun and followed long shadows all the way back to
Jupiter
.

As I shaved and showered, I thought of what lay ahead.  I was going out, or staying in, with a woman.  The first since Sherri’s death.  My emotions were like a tossed salad, lots of pieces in one ceramic bowl with a hairline crack in the center.  I was starting with a woman who was in the same line of work that I’d left, sworn off.      

For the first time in a long time, I made a conscious effort to think about what I’d wear.  If clothes make the man, my choices on
Jupiter
were limited.  I dressed in fresh jeans, polo shirt, and boat shoes without socks.  Then I picked up a bottle of cabernet from
Jupiter’s
vast collection and headed out.  I stood in the cockpit, locked the doors, set the paper-clip alarm, and suddenly sensed my own insecurity.  I felt like a kid going on a first date.  Maybe this was what I’m supposed to expect.  Since Sherri’s death, I’d never rehearsed this moment.   

Then why did I feel bad by trying to feel good?   I started down the dock wondering if I’d do well with the meaningless chatter that dating people often spew like bounced spam.  I didn’t want to go there, but I didn’t want to stay in emotional isolation, either.  I liked Leslie.  Liked her smile, her head, and her laugh.  And I liked her body.

One foot in front of the other
, I thought.  But I didn’t know if I was on the right path.