“I need to go. Can I give you a lift home?”
“My neighbor is picking me up at noon and taking me back to school,” she said. “May I ask where you’re going?”
“New York. I’m going to put Stanley Kessel in jail.”
“I’d like to ask you for a favor. I hope you won’t be offended.”
“What’s that?”
“I have a picture in my mind of what you look like. May I touch your face and find out if my picture is anything like the real thing?”
“First tell me what your picture looks like.”
“I most certainly will not.”
He found himself staring at her. He’d avoided doing that, as if staring at a blind person was somehow cheating. What he saw was a woman of great character and moral courage. Taking her hand from his sleeve, he brought it to his face and allowed her fingers to run across the contours of his life. Done, she lowered her hand.
“Good luck in New York,” she said.
The Lexus had a phone in the dashboard that let Ricky make plane reservations from Charlotte to New York for later that night. The drive to the airport was about two and a half hours, and Valentine got settled in for the ride, then called Gerry on his cell phone.
“I’m in the Hattiesburg airport, boarding my flight,” his son said. “I said my good-byes and got the hell out of there. Lamar wants to hire us, but I don’t know.”
“Had enough of Gulfport?”
“That’s an understatement. They’re calling my section. Got to run.”
“Wait a second,” Valentine said, having remembered what had been bugging him since that morning. “Did they catch Huck’s retarded brother?”
“Not since I last talked to Lamar.”
“When was that?”
“About fifteen minutes ago. He asked me to call him from the airport and let him know I’d gotten there safe and sound.”
“And the north Florida cops haven’t caught him.”
“No. Look, Pop, the poor guy’s retarded. If he’s running around in the woods, he’ll probably end up dying from exposure.”
“That’s a cheery thought,” Valentine said.
“You know what I mean. What’s bugging you?”
“When I was a cop in Atlantic City, several guys on the psycho ward at the hospital took off one night. They weren’t very hard to find.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m dead serious, Gerry. Think about it.”
“I’m going to lose my seat, Pop. I’ll call you when I’m back home.”
The connection went dead. His son sounded pissed off. Valentine didn’t like to scare him, but something wasn’t adding up. If Florida cops were good at anything, it was tracking people. They knew how to hunt and used their skill as well as anyone.
He leaned back in his seat and felt his eyes start to droop. The memory of that night in Atlantic City flashed through his head. He and his partner Doyle had gotten one of the psychos in their car, and the guy kept climbing out. He was as slippery as an eel, and every time he got away, he’d laugh hysterically at them. It had been a long night.
The Lexus swerved to avoid something in the highway. Valentine’s eyes snapped awake. People with mental conditions were difficult to take out in public. So why had Huck brought his retarded brother along? He flipped open his cell phone and called Gerry back.
“Pop, we’re starting to taxi.”
“Did it ever occur to you that the Florida cops don’t know what Huck Dubb looks like?”
“But they identified him.”
“What if the retarded brother was told to say ‘I’m Huck’?” Valentine said. “What if he has some credit cards in his pocket with his brother’s name on them? What if the retarded brother is a plant? Just because Huck’s a redneck doesn’t mean he’s stupid, Gerry.”
“Pop, you’re scaring me.”
Valentine looked at his watch. Nearly noon. Nine hours had passed since Huck had gotten pulled off the road. Plenty of time to find another set of wheels and make it down to Palm Harbor. He said good-bye to his son, hung up, and punched in Yolanda’s number.
“Please be home,” he prayed as the call went through.
50
Huck Dubb sat in a pizza delivery car and stared at Gerry Valentine’s house in Palm Harbor a block away. It was noon, the street deserted. He’d commandeered the car a half hour ago from a shopping center where the pizza maker was located. The driver had been sitting in the car, counting his money, when Huck had stuck a gun through his open window. The driver had given Huck the keys and even thrown in his stupid hat for good measure.
Huck had stolen cars every hundred miles during his trip down from the Florida Panhandle. It had made the trip longer, but also safer. Changing cars every couple of hours made it impossible for the law to get a bead on him.
He stared at the address on the card he’d stolen from the registration desk at the Holiday Inn in Gulfport. The address on the card and the one on the mailbox were the same, but something didn’t feel right about the place. It was a quaint New England–style clapboard house and not what he’d expect an Eye-talian to be living in. Taking the driver’s cell phone off the seat, he called information and got the operator to verify the address for him.
A Palm Harbor sheriff’s car materialized in his mirror. Huck felt his heartbeat kick into high gear. It had taken him nine hours to get here after leaving Arlen behind. For every minute of that nine hours, he’d thought about how he was going to punish Gerry Valentine’s family. Cut and strangle and shoot was how he’d decided to kill them. Thinking about it had put a fire in his belly as powerful as any he’d ever felt.
Digging into his pocket, Huck removed his cash and pretended to be counting it while the sheriff trolled past. On the backseat of the car were boxes of pizzas in insulated bags. The food made the interior of the car smell real good. Huck lifted his eyes and saw the sheriff idling beside him. He smiled at the man behind the wheel.
“Hey, Officer, how’s it going?”
“Can’t complain,” the sheriff replied.
“Nobody listens. Want a free slice? I got a pie that went undelivered.”
The sheriff smiled and said no and drove to the next block. Huck watched him park in front of Gerry Valentine’s house and climb out of his vehicle. The sheriff walked around the house and then got back in his car and drove away.
Huck smiled to himself as he started up his engine. The police up in the Panhandle must have figured out that Arlen wasn’t him and alerted the police down here. In a way, he was happy he’d run into the sheriff. Now he knew to be on his toes—and that Gerry Valentine didn’t keep a dog running around his property.
He parked in the spot the sheriff had vacated. As he killed the engine, his stomach growled. He hadn’t put anything in his mouth since leaving Gulfport, and the pizza on the backseat was calling him. First things first, he told himself.
Getting out, he removed one of the insulated boxes from the backseat, then opened the trunk and removed the short-barreled shotgun he’d brought from his grandmother’s house. He stuck the shotgun beneath the box. It was just small enough to stay hidden.
He walked up the front path, wondering how foolish he looked in his coveralls and the pizza driver’s hat tilted rakishly on his head. At the front door he stopped and peered through a wire mesh screen door onto a porch. Baby toys were scattered across the floor. His breath caught in his throat. What did the Old Testament say? An eye for
