The Whole Truth (7 page)

I go back to my computer, and try again:

When the paramedics can talk coherently, they report their conclusion that Ray suffered an abrasion when the bullet hit him from the judge's gun. Sometimes bullets ricochet off the very bodies they're intended to hit. This was what both paramedics believe happened, because they didn't observe an actual hole in his chest where the bullet struck him.

If that's true, Ray is not only gone, he's healthy, and certainly in much better shape than his victims. The police have already pieced together what happened next. He ditched his bloody shirt in a trash bin. He ran down to the New River, which flows through downtown, not far from the courthouse. There, he stole a life jacket from one of the boats that's permanently moored on the river. He may have washed his face and arms in the river. Then he made his way back up to Bahia Boulevard and boarded a free trolley for tourists.

The small skinny guy in the running shoes, dark trousers, and orange life vest looked a little odd to the out-of-towners on the trolley. But he didn't look all that odd compared to other weirdos they'd seen on their vacations in south Florida. Probably wore swimming trunks under those trousers, and just would rather wear the bulky life preserver than carry it. He smiled at them. Uneasily, they smiled back. How old was he, anyway"? Old enough to be out of school for the day? Strange-looking little person, they hoped he wouldn't ask for money. After a moment, as the trolley continued to fill up, they stopped staring, and ignored him in order to continue their sight-seeing.

With all of the tourists, Ray stepped off the trolley at the beach. He joined the mob of pedestrians strolling on the boardwalk. The last anybody saw of him, he was slipping into a public men's room.

And that is "the last known whereabouts" of Ray Raintree.

I get up from my desk again, and walk to my windows.

A guilty verdict, a shooting, an escape.

I decide to forgive myself for feeling a bit overwrought.

My sliding glass doors are open, and my air-conditioning is turned off so I can defrost after all the hours in Judge Flasschoen's frigid courtroom. I put my hands up to the screen, and feel the mesh on my palms. I can only imagine how the jurors are feeling. One of them told me that after the verdict Ray stuck his tongue out at them, obscenely miming a French kiss in their direction. That's why they looked so upset and repulsed before the shooting. As undone as I feel on this night, I picture them prostrate in their beds, staring at their ceilings.

Poor things, are they nervous with Ray loose out there?

I slide open the screen door, and step outside into my backyard.

I live on the west bank of the Intracoastal Canal, on the southern edge of a private, gated cul-de-sac just north of the Bahia Boulevard Bridge. From any spot on the water side of this five-room house, I can pull the drapes to get a floor-to-ceiling view of the canal and bridge traffic. At night, with the lights from the bridge, the boats, and the houses across the canal, it looks like Christmas all year-round, and I feel very grateful.

Fifteen feet below my backyard, the turbulent waters of the canal slap violently and constantly against the seawall, precluding any safe harbor for my own or anybody else's boats.

I chose this site with an eye to security, front and rear.

At the entrance to the cul-de-sac, a round-the-clock series of armed guards courteously requests identification from visitors. Nobody drives in unless the guard has their name on a list, or verifies their welcome with a phone call. There is no access at all from the water, not unless intruders are willing to risk getting their boats battered to pieces against the seawall. The cul-de-sac property owners with boats moor them elsewhere, in private marinas with their own armed guards.

The developers named this enclave Isle d'Bahia, even though it isn't an island at all, and hardly even qualifies as a peninsula, being more in the nature of a gentle outcurving of land around a point of the canal. My neighbors jokingly call it Paranoia Park, but we all have our reasons for valuing the security. For me, it's a matter of taking precautions against the types of people I write about in my books, and also against a tiny but peculiar minority of my readers.

I step back into my house, close and latch the screen.

With Ray loose out there, I feel safe in here.

Not that I'd be a target of his. The killers I interview think I'm their best friend until my book comes out. Then they hate my guts, because I've told the whole world the truth about them, which isn't anything like what they tell themselves. The book I am writing about Ray and his terrible crime isn't out yet—isn't even finished yet, and may never be—so he shouldn't be hating me yet.

It's a little early in the publishing schedule for that.

I smile to myself, and walk to another window, another soothing view.

With the windows open, I can hear the water splashing.

This house is the smallest on the cul-de-sac, a two-story apricot stucco flat-roofed cube, Italianate, with green shutters. From the street, the house is nearly invisible behind six towering cypress trees, three on either side of the double front door, which is painted a lacquered green almost identical in shade to the cypresses. The trees, themselves, are visible for miles in either direction from the canal, and are a landmark to the water traffic. From the air or the water, I can pick out the location of my home even before the big bridge comes into view.

Other people can't easily see me, however.

Their visibility is limited from the water by the fifteen-foot cliff and the fact that the house sits on just enough of a slope to block the view from the decks of boats. I can see them, if they aren't directly under my windows, but they can't see me. From my three back doors—one each from the kitchen, living room, and office—it is, oddly, a bit of an uphill walk to stand over the water.

I turn and look around my home.

Some people wouldn't agree, but I think: How fortunate I am!

There's nothing like a shooting to make you value your life.

From my foyer, the house opens into one large sunny living and dining room, all glass along the south wall. The west wing is kitchen, with wraparound windows, and a half bath. To the east is my office, on the canal side, and a bathroom and a guest bedroom behind it. My bedroom suite consumes the entire second floor, but since the house isn't large, the area seems perfectly proportioned to my sense of space, rather than seeming a room for giants. Taking my cue from the apricot stucco walls of the exterior, I have decorated the interior in the colors of the Italian countryside, or of a bowl of ripe fruit—lemons, peaches, oranges, frosted grapes, and strawberries.

"Okay, that's enough self-congratulations," I say.

I return to my desk and computer, after placing an atlas to my left where I can see it as I type. I should be hungry, but I'm not. I haven't stopped to eat dinner or change clothes in the hours since Ray escaped, but have used the time to interview every official who would talk to me. Then I hurried home to get it all down. I know that when I stop, I will feel dirty, exhausted, and starved, but while I am writing, everything else disappears.

It's one of the reasons I write.

Now, I want to make the larger escape scene clear, especially to my readers who've never been to Florida.

"On maps, Florida looks like a state where it ought to be easy to catch somebody," I type, with frequent glances at the map beside me. This is the state where I live, but it's the things a writer takes for granted that are the places where she's most likely to err. "The farther down south they are when they first escape, the easier it appears to catch them. It's a peninsula, after all, with water on three sides, where a person ought to feel just about as trapped as on an island. Anyone who has ever tried to negotiate 1-95 at any time, much less rush hour, knows just how trapped you can feel on the roads in Florida.

"From where Ray escaped, he couldn't run any farther south than Homestead, not unless he dived into Florida Bay, or let himself become all too visible on the causeway to the Keys.

"To the east from where he fled, there was only the Atlantic.

"The only through road directly west to the Gulf, from where he ran, was Interstate 75, also known as Alligator Alley, a toll road where it was easy to set up roadblocks.

"North to Georgia was a long, long way on foot, and the roads were heavily traveled whether he took A1A, Interstate 95, or crossed the state to continue on up 75, or even if he crossed into the middle to get to Highway 27."

But that's only on the one hand, I'm thinking.

On the other hand, in many ways Florida is uniquely suited to escapees.

The traffic and the crowds make it easy to hide, to pick up rides, to blend in. There may be water all around, but where there's water there are boats to steal, hijack, or stowaway. Jump the right ship, and a runaway can be stepping off in Colombia in less than a week. For every highway that's easy to blockade, there are dozens of little back roads connecting to other little back roads, many of them through Everglades, or swamp, or thick forest where a man can lose himself for a lifetime, provided he has the survival skills to forage for himself—or he forces other people to give him what he needs. Not only that, but many of the thousands of boats that tie up to Florida docks are empty most of the time, waiting for their owners to fly down from Indiana, or just to get a weekend free. Scores of houses sit empty a good portion of the year, too, waiting for tourist renters, or in new developments that are slow to sell.

In many ways, Florida is an escapee's paradise, and a law enforcer's hell.

This is assuming an escapee who knows what he's doing.

I write, "For any other escapee, Florida is a nightmare state of alligators, crocodiles, snakes, quicksand, mosquitoes, poisonous frogs and insects, impenetrable mangrove, black bears, panthers, other violent criminals, and a thousand different ways to drown."

I like that last phrase, and pause to admire it.

Next, comes the search, itself:

"Not even twelve hours after his escape, Ray Raintree is a man being hunted down by approximately 250 law enforcement personnel. Sheriff's officers from Howard, Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade Counties join in the search, along with officers from the Florida Highway Patrol, local police, and the Coast Guard. Many of those wear body armor, carry 9mm assault weapons, and are equipped with nightscopes. Add to that: dogs and human trackers and helicopters, and you have as close as Florida law enforcement can get to 'no stone unturned.'"

I've heard that the governor will call out the Florida National Guard, if Ray doesn't get recaptured right away.

"That'll probably be close to a hundred military police and support personnel from the closest Military Police Company," a state highway patrol officer has told me. "They'll help with roadblocks and search teams. Most of them are civilian law enforcement personnel anyway."

The search teams are already fanning out over Bahia Beach and beyond, attempting to stymie Ray's access to escape routes. I wish I could write it from Ray's viewpoint, but I am probably never going to know about that. He is likely to die, or be killed in this attempt. Hardly anybody survives manhunts of this scope, and then lives to die in the electric chair, although Ted Bundy did it, and in this very state. Even if they bring him in alive, Ray Raintree will never tell anybody the truth about what it has been like for him to be out there alone with 250 guns pointed at him.

My desk phone rings, and I answer it.

"Ms. Lightfoot, this is Detective Anschutz."

"Hi, Robyn."

There is soft laughter. "Hi, Marie. It's hard to get out of official mode."

"Tell me you've got him back in custody."

"No, that's why I'm calling, we need your help."

"Mine? Sure, what can I do?"

"Captain Giancola—Cynthia—asked Paul and me to go over all our notes on Ray, because we're trying to give the searchers some idea of where he might go. You know what I mean? Like, what he might be expected to do."

"Good luck," I say, wryly.

"Ain't that the truth," the cop agrees, with matching sarcasm. "But here's the way the captain figures it: Paul and I interviewed Ray, you interviewed him, and you interviewed us about our interviews with him. Did you follow that?"

"I did, indeed."

"So the captain says we should all go through our notes one more time, to see if there's any clue there. It's a lot to ask. Would you do that?"

"Of course, Robyn, although I'm not optimistic."

"Me, neither. You got my number."

"I do, and at home."

"So you'll call me right away if you find anything."

"Will you call me if you find anything?"

The detective laughs. "God, there's a price to everything."

"Ain't it the truth."

"All right, it's a deal."

Well, this is interesting. And this is good, allowing me to return some of the many favors the cops have done for me in the researching of my book. They've sat patiently through interviews, put up with a million of my questions, even posed for photographs. I am happy to do this for them, and a little excited at the idea that I might find a tidbit of information that could lead them right to Ray.

I make myself a fresh pot of coffee, and then turn to my files.

After curling up on my living room couch, I start with my own chapters three and four, because they lead up to the spooky moment when Ray first showed up in his own story, a moment that doesn't even hint at the horror to come in chapter five.

The Little Mermaid By Marie Lightfoot

CHAPTER THREE

Detective Paul Flanck appeared to be just ambling around, not doing anything in particular at the crime scene, but that impression was far from correct.

It is a widely held opinion in the police department that Paul takes a wider view of things than most people— like learning Spanish for the future. His boss, Captain Cynthia Giancola, likes to have Paul walk around crime scenes taking in the big picture. While others pick up—literally— the smallest details, Paul's job is to take it all in. The captain says it's like having close-up photos as well as panoramic shots. Both kinds are indispensable to the investigators.