Collateral Damage (17 page)

“Thanks. Did you happen to note whether Peterson had made advance reservations for his flight?”

“He didn't. He was a walk-up at both airports. No checked luggage either.”

I was up early the next morning, sitting on my patio as the light of a false dawn seeped over the sleeping island. The sound of a boat engine occasionally floated over me, a fisherman headed for the artificial reefs that were submerged a few miles offshore. I heard the distant siren of the Cortez Bridge warning motorists of an impending opening of the draw. Across the bay, the low hanging clouds were taking on the hues of orange and red that preceded the sun's first peek above the horizon. Birds were leaving their nests on Jewfish Key, flying west toward the Gulf and breakfast.

I pondered the odd convergence of events from which we were beginning to discern vague patterns. I had this feeling that someone was dogging our trail, cleaning up after themselves. I had gone to Savannah and Macon, talked to Jim's widow Meredith and Bud Stanley and somebody tried to kill me. My trip to Charlotte was followed by the apparent disappearance of the Brewsters, although it was too early to know if they'd disappeared or had just for some reason cut off their phone. Maybe they'd decided to replace the land line with a cell phone. The termination of their phone service may have been perfectly innocent, but there was a nagging feeling in my gut that whispered danger signals. Why had they lied to me about Doug Peterson having dinner with them on the night of their daughter's murder? What was Doug doing aboard
Dulcimer
on the night of his fiancé's murder? Why had he left in such a hurry if he hadn't killed Katherine?

Questions. Lots of questions, but no answers. I was beginning to think that there was no connection between Jim Desmond's death and the murders on
Dulcimer
. Not if Peterson was involved. Still, there was that Asian connection to Jim through Soupy in Laos, and I had been attacked
right after talking to Bud Stanley, who had a connection to Soupy. And the same Asians who attacked me were aboard
Dulcimer
the night of the murders.

I heard the sliding glass door to my living room open and Jock walked out, a mug of coffee in hand. “Want to go jogging? That always clears my head.”

“Yeah. Finish your coffee, and we'll head for the beach.”

We jogged in silence, pounding the sand, keeping up a pace that would complete the four miles in thirty minutes. The Gulf was flat and serene, the beach deserted, the August heat keeping sane people indoors. We were running along a stretch of beach that was bordered by large houses hunkered behind small sand dunes. We reached the house that marked the end of the second mile and turned back north. An all terrain vehicle, one of those conveyances that seems to be a cross between a four-wheeled tractor and a motorcycle, was coming our way, bouncing over the little hillocks of sand that had been carved out of the beach by last night's tide.

“Uh-oh,” said Jock, pointing at the ATV.

“Relax,” I said. “The cops are the only ones who use those things on the beach.”

“You sure?”

There was something in the way he asked the question, in the timbre of his voice or maybe just the tightening of his face that made me question my assumption that the rider coming toward us was a cop. Jock had been in too many dicey situations for me to discount his intuition.

“Maybe not,” I said. “Let's head toward the houses.”

The ATV was very near now. We turned to our right, toward the row of homes that lined the beach. Most were empty in August, their owners taking a gentler sun in northern climes. The ATV had the angle on us and I knew we wouldn't get past the dunes and into the yards of the beach-front houses before he caught up with us. He came closer, and I could see that the rider was wearing a motorcycle helmet with a dark facemask, a dirty white T-shirt, jeans, and white athletic shoes.

“Ground,” I yelled to Jock.

He dove head first into the sand, sliding as if he were a base runner
taking a header into home plate. I was right behind him, diving and rolling to my left. Sand kicked up between Jock and me, bullets fired quickly. There was no report from the pistol, no sound. A silencer. The rider was bouncing on the ATV as it hit the little humps of sand, throwing off his aim.

I rolled to my left a couple more times and reached out for a piece of driftwood partially covered by sand. The gray wood was a tree limb, about the size of my arm, probably from one of the Australian pines that covered the north end of the key and were forever falling into the sea, their shallow roots unable to withstand the gale-force winds that sometimes scoured our island in summer.

The ATV was coming on at a speed that I knew was its maximum. My rolling had taken me ten or twelve feet from Jock, who had maneuvered himself into a squatting position, his hands on the ground, like a football lineman. He was making as small a target as possible, but was ready to launch himself at our attacker as soon as he got a chance.

The driver seemed to be homing in on Jock, ignoring me. I was still lying on my back on the ground, watching him through half-closed eyes, my fingers wrapped around the driftwood limb. Maybe he thought that he'd hit me with one of his errant shots and saw Jock as the more dangerous foe.

The ATV was slowing now as it moved toward Jock, the driver taking aim with his pistol. I had come to rest with my feet pointing toward the Gulf. The ATV was cutting across the sand at a forty-five degree angle to my body, the driver's concentration on Jock, his body tensed, his pistol raised. Jock was staring at the driver as if daring him to take the shot. I couldn't see our attacker's face, but I thought their eyes must be locked. The hunter staring down the prey, going for the kill, knowing there was only one ending to this little ritual of death on the sand.

The ATV closed on Jock. He was about ten feet from me when in one fluid movement I came to a sitting position and heaved the driftwood at the driver. It hit him on his left shoulder almost unseating him. He struggled to stay on the ATV, trying to right himself at the same time that Jock sprang from his squatting position. He took four steps and vaulted over the handlebars, colliding with the driver, both of them tumbling to the ground.
The attacker dropped the pistol as he went over the back of the ATV with Jock on top of him. The ATV sputtered to a stop, its momentum bleeding off as the driver's hand left the throttle.

I rushed to the weapon, picked it up, and turned to the two men in the sand. Jock had the driver in a headlock, one arm around his neck with the other hand grasping the man's chin. Jock was a second or two from breaking his neck.

“Hold up, Jock. We're going to need him.”

“No sweat, podna. I'm not going to kill him. Not yet anyway.”

“Let's get that helmet off him,” I said. I stuck the pistol under the driver's chin and told him not to move as Jock unbuckled the chinstrap.

The helmet came off and the man screamed. Jock had almost taken one or both of his ears with the helmet. He wasn't being gentle.

I was surprised. I was expecting an Asian, but instead I saw a young white man who probably was not yet twenty years old. He had a scraggly goatee and longish red hair that hadn't been washed in a month. His teeth were yellow and crooked and his rancid body odor flooded my nostrils. He was sitting on the sand, his hands in his lap. I kept the pistol pointed at him.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked.

“Don't kill me,” he said, his voice trembling.

“I'm trying to decide whether to shoot you or let my friend here break your neck.”

“No,” he said, his voice trembling.

“Who are you?”

“Clyde Bates.”

“Okay, Clyde. Why are you trying to kill us?”

“Two thousand bucks.”

“What does that mean?”

“That's what I'm being paid to kill you.”

“By whom?”

“I don't know.” I poked the muzzle of the pistol up under his chin, forcing him to raise his head.

“No,” he said. “I don't know his name.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Just some guy that comes into O'Reilly's.”

“What is O'Reilly's?”

“A bar over in Palmetto.”

“Describe him.”

“White guy, about fifty, maybe a little older, gray hair and beard.”

“You sure he was white?”

“I think so. He had a good tan, but I don't think he was Mexican.”

“Could he have been Asian?”

“Well, maybe.”

“What about his eyes?”

“Do you mean were they slanted?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I guess I do.”

“I couldn't tell.”

“Didn't you look at his eyes?”

“He was wearing sunglasses. I couldn't see his eyes.”

“Short, tall, fat?”

“No. He's about your height. He looks like he keeps in shape.”

“Accent? Anything like that?”

“He's from the South. You can tell.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Just met him yesterday.”

“And he decided to pay you to kill us? Just like that?”

“Just to kill one of you.”

“Which one?”

“Guy named Royal.”

“Why try to kill both of us?”

“I didn't know which one of you was Royal.”

“That'd be me,” I said. “Who set you up with the guy with the money?”

“Big Tony, the bartender, knows that I do this kind of work sometimes. I think he told the dude I'd handle it for him.”

“You've killed people before?”

“No. I just talk about it.”

“Talk about it?”

“Yeah. There's some bad biker guys what hang out at O'Reilly's, and I don't want them to think I'm some kind of pussy. So I tell stories.”

“Where'd you get the ATV?”

“Stole it from one of the houses up the beach. Fool people left the keys in it.”

“How did you know where to find us?” I asked.

“I was watching your house. Saw you come out and head for the beach. I followed you.”

“Did he pay you up front?”

“Gave me two hundred bucks. He's going to pay the rest when you're dead.”

“Where are you supposed to meet him to get the rest of your money?”

“O'Reilly's.”

“When?”

“When you're dead.”

“How are you supposed to let him know you've finished the job?”

“He gave me a phone number to call.”

“What's the number?”

“It's on a piece of paper in my pocket.”

I looked at Jock. “Anything else?”

“No. Let's get the police down here.”

I shook my head. “I want to try that other number first.”

I turned to my would-be killer. “Stand up, pea brain.”

He did.

“Now, reach slowly into your pocket and get me the phone number.” He did.

“You got a cell phone?”

He pulled one out of his pocket.

“Give it to me.”

He did.

“I'm going to call your boss. I'll give you the phone and you tell him you've killed me and want to meet him this afternoon to get the rest of your money.”

“Okay.”

“You blow this and my friend here is going to break your neck.” “Okay.”

I used Bates's phone to dial the number. I got a recorded message. I closed the phone and started laughing. “You idiot. There is no such number.”

“That's the one he gave me. He wrote it down himself.”

Jock laughed. “You've been had, my friend. That two hundred bucks you got is going to cost you about twenty years in prison.”

I pulled my cell phone out of a pocket and dialed the Longboat Key Police Department.

Officer Steve Carey came walking down the lawn behind the nearest house. I'd been able to give the police an exact address on Gulf of Mexico Drive because the street number was also painted on the seawall that protected the property from the Gulf.

He stopped at the end of the grass and stood surveying the scene. “So Jock, you causing trouble again?”

Jock laughed. “Good to see you, too, Steve.”

The cop walked on down to where we had Bates sitting on the sand. “What've you got here?”

I pointed to Bates. “This is Mr. Clyde Bates. He tried to kill us. He's not too smart.”

“He can't be too smart if he tried to kill you two.”

I told Steve what had happened and what we'd found out from Bates.

“I'm sure Detective Duncan will want some formal statements. She'll be here in a minute.”

“You guys okay?” The question was shouted from the lawn. I looked up and saw J. D. Duncan coming our way.

“We're fine,” I said.

I watched her make her way down the lawn and over the short sea-wall. There was a grace about her even when she was wearing the big pistol on her lovely hip. I was not above fantasizing about her, but knew that's all it would ever be. A fantasy. The more time I spent around her, the more the fantasy grew. Ah, the damage we men do to ourselves chasing the unobtainable.

J.D. spent a few minutes talking to Jock and me and then to Bates. He'd ridden his scooter out to the key and parked down the street from my
house. When he saw us leave for the beach, he followed. He was going to ride the scooter down the beach, kill us and make a fast getaway. When he was coming down the little road that served as public access to the beach, he saw the ATV parked in the carport of a small house that sat on the access road a couple of hundred yards from the beach. He thought it would handle the sand better. He left his scooter in the carport.

“Where'd you get the gun?” J.D. asked.

“The dude in the bar gave it to me.”

“The same one who gave you the two hundred bucks?” she asked.