Final Exam: A Legal Thriller (28 page)

“We could upgrade that to a convertible for an extra twelve dollars a day.”

“A convertible?”
 
Ben said.
 
“What kind of convertible?”

“A Chrysler Sebring.”
 
Twelve bucks wasn’t that much considering he wasn’t paying for it.
 
He turned and looked out the glass doors for the parking lot, hoping to spot one of the convertibles.
 
Noticing, she said, “You see it?
 
It’s that red one in the first row right by the sidewalk.”

“Yeah, I see it,” he said. “Okay, that’s fine.
 
I’ll take it.”
 

Five minutes later, he peeled off the wind shirt and tossed it in the back seat of the red Sebring, pulled his sunglasses out of his briefcase and climbed inside.
 
He took a couple of minutes to figure out how to lower the top and pretty soon, he was ready to roll.

Following the directions he received from the woman behind the Thrifty counter, which seemed slightly different from the directions he had printed off the internet while back home, Ben took a couple of turns, got off one expressway, got back on another, paid more tolls than he could count and then finally hit the ramp for the exit pointing in the direction of “North Turnpike”.
 
Ben spent twenty minutes fumbling for a good radio station.
 
He never really found one - only occasional good songs.
 
Unlike northern Illinois, where a driver is lucky to find dead grass in the middle of a divided highway, the Florida Turnpike, apparently now known as the Ronald Reagan Turnpike, came replete with palm trees, flowering plants and other lush vegetation, and even a pine forest or two along the way.
 

Ben kind of liked the Sebring.
 
It handled well and had good acceleration, and Ben enjoyed the feeling of his wispy blond hair flying in the breeze.
 
He pushed the case and the reason for his visit to the back of his mind and concentrated on the heat of the sun, the roar of the engine and the speed of the Sebring as it blew past scenery heading north up the Turnpike in excess of eighty-five miles per hour.
 
About twenty miles south of Ocala, Ben split off onto I-75 North and ten minutes later, as he slowed to a more respectable seventy miles per hour, he began to see horses grazing with the cattle in the pastures by the side of the highway.
 
Just south of Ocala, he spotted a small group of buffalo, maybe six or eight.
 
He didn’t know what groups of buffalo were called grazing there in a semi-circle.
 
He always liked buffalo.
 
They seemed to be such powerful, almost regal animals.
 
He thought of Jim Schulte raising buffalo in Hayward, Wisconsin and shivered despite the heat.
 
Since Jim Schulte was just about the last person he wanted to think of blazing up the Ronald Reagan Turnpike in central Florida, he turned the radio up for the rest of the trip, which wasn’t long.

He flew down the ramp at the Ocala/Silver Springs exit and took a hard left onto College Road.
 
Passing through the underpass, he saw the hotel, a Marriott Courtyard, just up on the right.
 
He parked the Sebring out front and went inside to check in.
 
A small lobby greeted him with a restaurant/lounge at the far end.
 
A glass case stood against the wall next to the front desk filled with New York Yankees memorabilia - autographed hats, balls, pictures and gloves.
 
This puzzled Ben a little bit because he didn’t think that Ocala was a spring training town.
 
He couldn’t understand the connection to the Yankees until he noticed a gold plaque on the wall which proclaimed, “This is a Steinbrenner-Company Hotel.”
 
That explained it.
 

He found his room at the end of a corridor not far from the laundry.
 
The room was nice and clean, with a single king-size bed and a small sitting area consisting of a love seat and a Williamsburg-style desk.
 
Good enough.
 
Ben tossed his stuff on the bed and pulled the curtains open to crack the window and let some fresh air inside.
 
He shuffled through his briefcase looking for the map to Nora Fleming’s house.
 
According to Yahoo, the house was about twelve miles from the hotel with an approximate travel time of twenty-nine minutes, which seemed long.
 

Ben looked at his watch - almost five o’clock local time.
 
He didn’t want to call ahead and tip her off that he was coming, but he didn’t know what time she would be home either.
 
He decided that one way or another he needed to find her house.
 
He would set off now and if she was there, great.
 
If not, he could grab some dinner and try back again later.
 
At least he would know where the house was.
 
He made sure that he had a couple of business cards on him and set out.
 

He pulled the Sebring out of the parking lot and turned right onto College Road with the top down and the radio on.
 
College Road appeared to be one of the main drags through Ocala and Ben assumed there must be a college or university associated with it someplace.
 
The road moved generally from northeast to southwest and Ben headed southwest, apparently away from town.
 
After a mile or so, College Road became Southwest State Road 200 with the usual assortment of car dealers, restaurants and the ubiquitous vacation property sales offices.
 
After about seven miles, Ben took a sharp left on Southwest 103rd Street, which appeared to be largely residential in character.
 
The homes were nothing to get excited about, mostly one-story ramblers made of cement block construction in a slightly Spanish style motif.
 
Occasionally, he’d see some odd-for-Chicago colors like turquoise blue, pale pink or lime green.
 

After about four miles, the houses began to thin somewhat and the area became less developed.
 
He looked at the map.
 
He had to be getting close.
 
He had gone about the right distance.
 
He saw a sign for Ocala Waterway Estates, which looked promising at first, but didn’t pan out into anything.
 
He took a right and went down a small road that led off toward a row of scrub trees in the distance, then abruptly stopped.
 
He paused at the intersection beyond which Ocala civilization seemed to cease.
 
To his left, a teenage girl in cut-off jeans and a halter top showing way too much skin for someone her size washed an SUV with a garden hose.
 
He looked back at the map.

“God damn it.
 
It should be right down here,” Ben said aloud.
 
The roads he saw on the map should be right in front of him, but all he saw was open landscape.
 
“There must be a way to get back there,” he said.
 
The sun was beginning to sink low in the sky.
 
He took a left and sped along looking for a road where he could cut in on his right hand side.
 
All he found was more trees.
 
Several blocks down, he saw a bulldozer parked off to the side of the road as though road construction was about to commence.
 
He continued a few more blocks and reached a dead end in the road.
 
Now the undeveloped land stretched in front of him and to his right.
 
The only houses were to his left and back behind him.
 
“Fuck,” he said.
 

He spun the Sebring around and headed back in the other direction.
 
Maybe he could go back down the other way and then find another crossroad and come back at it from the other side.
 
Ben reached the intersection he had stopped at a few minutes earlier and pulled the car to a stop.
 
The area where he needed to be was now on his left, but he was at least three or four blocks away from it.
 
The problem was he had no way of getting in there.
 
He decided to keep going.
 

About three-quarters of a mile later, Ben hit a two-lane road and took a left.
 
The road seemed to bisect several developments in various stages of completion.
 
On his right, there was a development with mostly paved roads and a smattering of houses.
 
A sales trailer sat near the main entrance to Norwood Estates.
 
He had to be close now.
 
Up ahead on the left, he saw what appeared to be a road.
 
When he got there, he concluded that the term “road” was more than generous.
 
It seemed to be more of a path made out of packed-down dirt, somewhat like the precursor of a paved road.
 
It looked like the roads had been plotted, just not built yet.
 
Off in the distance, Ben thought he saw a small house.
 
The last thing he wanted to do was get the rental car
stuck
back there so he took a long, hard look down the path.
 
It appeared solid enough to support a car and wide enough for two cars to pass in opposite directions.
 
He looked in the rearview mirror - nothing coming behind him and nothing in front of him.
 
He could sit here and think about this for a minute.
 
He glanced to his right - the sun was setting now and daylight rapidly began to fade.
 
Ben could feel the air growing cool and damp.
 
If he was going to find the house, it had better be soon.
 

He eased the car off the road and onto the path.
 
It inched along for about a quarter of a mile before he came to a house on the left, a one-story, lime green job quite reminiscent of the ones he had seen earlier.
 
He looked at the number on the mailbox.
 
He was about two blocks away.
 
He crept along until he came to another larger house on the right.
 
This one was set back in a grove of trees.
 
The driveway was packed dirt just like the path.
 
Next door, a new house began to rise up out of the ground, its cement block foundation sticking out of the dirt.
 

Ben came to something of an intersection, where another fairly wide dirt path crossed this one.
 
He looked in both directions, but did not see any houses.
 
Further up on the left-hand side, he saw a mailbox sticking out behind a small clump of trees.
 
As he approached, he could see the name Scott painted in red on the black mailbox.
 
“Bingo,” he said.
 
He moved the car forward until he was even with the mailbox and his heart sank.
 
There was nothing there, just the mailbox, behind it a stand of scrub trees and wild overgrown bushes.
 
There was no house anywhere.
 

25

Ben leaned against the hood of the Sebring and pulled out his cell phone.
 
The car was running and the driver’s door open, the headlights illuminating the trees in the distance.
 
The sun had fallen behind the forest off to the west and daylight quickly slipped away.
 

“Where the fuck
am
I?”
 
Ben said into the phone.

“How do I know?”
Disko
answered from back in Illinois.

“You gave me the address and the directions.
 
The only thing this place lacks is alligators, oh yeah, and roads.
 
This is the place they go to
to
dump the body so no one will ever find it.”
 
Disko
didn’t answer.
 
“Okay, well, it’s obvious that I’m not finding anything else out tonight.
 
It’s almost dark here, so check it out and I’ll try and call you when I get back to the hotel.
 
I’m hungry.
 
I need to get something to eat.”

Ben took one long last look around, thankful that he was alone, and climbed back into the car.
 
Ten minutes later, he was back on State Road 200 heading in the direction of the hotel.
 
When he reached the hotel, he kept going down College Road looking for a place he could find a decent meal.
 
About a mile past the hotel, he came to a large glass complex lit up like the Fourth of July against the night sky.
 
He spotted a sign - Central Florida Community College.
 
That explained College Road.
 
A bit further up on the right, Ben saw the sign for the Lone Star Steakhouse.
 

“Good enough,” he said and pulled the Sebring into the lot and parked under a lush green tree.
 
He had only been in Florida a few hours, but had already gotten used to the weather.
 
The warm sun, blooming flowers and soft breezes sure beat the hell out of Chicago in February.
 
He struggled with the roof of the Sebring for a few minutes trying to get it latched before finally heading inside.
 
He was seated at a table in the middle of the room.
 
He ordered a draft beer which came in a frosted mug.
 
Just the right temperature, he thought savoring the first sip.
 
He ordered a rib eye steak, medium rare, baked potato, tossed salad with Italian dressing and ranch toast and considered his options while waiting for his meal to arrive.