the penthouse floor of Jack’s high-rise. The search team, having finished with the Nissan and the CSGI office, had returned to the apartment, where they were methodically tearing apart walls. Complaints from the neighbors about the noise had been ignored.
The wholesale dismantling of an apartment was perhaps outside the strict parameters of a legal search. But the task force was convinced that Dance had hidden the syringe somewhere. It had not turned up in any of the obvious places. And, after all, the suspect had already demonstrated a fondness for secret panels.
Passing under the yellow crime-scene ribbon strung across Dance’s doorway, Moore followed Lovejoy inside.
The living room was three times the size of her entire apartment in Denver, lavish and plush, the giant windows framing a Cinemascope view. It must have been spectacular before the thick pile carpet had been torn free of the tacks, the paintings taken off the walls, the sofa cushions unzipped and emptied of stuffing, the drapes removed, the wall fixtures unscrewed.
Now it was a scene of orderly wreckage and controlled destruction, unoccupied save for the Justice Department attorney in charge of evidence recovery. He lounged on what remained of Dance’s sofa, listening to Jay Leno over the high-pitched howls of power tools.
In the bedroom two FBI men, Tobin and Mays, were cutting neat vertical slices in the plasterboard. They shut off their saws and raised their goggles when Lovejoy and Moore entered.
“What’s up?” Tobin asked. Five o’clock shadow darkened his cheeks and gave him a slightly disreputable appearance that was not improved by an overlay of plaster dust and sweat.
“I need to look at something,” Moore said, moving toward the nightstand.
“Nothing in the drawers. Believe me, we checked. Took out all his papers and knickknacks, even X-rayed some of them with the portable fluoroscope.”
“I’m not interested in the drawers.” She lifted the telephone handset off its cradle, studied it.
Sheila had said Jack was on the phone. But apparently she hadn’t heard him talking. She had merely seen him with the phone in his hand.
The handset was thin and lightweight. She saw no sign of tampering. But the cradle…
Heavy. Thick. She turned it over. The bottom plate was attached with two small screws.
Squinting at the screws, she saw abrasions on the minuscule grooves of the heads.
“This phone has been taken apart,” she said quietly. “More than once, I’d say.”
“Well, what do you know,” Tobin breathed.
Mays got a small Phillips screwdriver and carefully removed the screws, then lifted off the plate.
Inside the cradle, in a narrow cavity between the plate and the guts of the phone, was a single plastic syringe.
“Physical evidence.” Lovejoy showed Moore a broad smile, his first since the raid. “Thank God.”
“We would have found it eventually,” Mays said with a note of defensiveness.
Lovejoy ignored that. “You’d better get the syringe over to the LAPD lab and see if they can find enough fluid in it for serological analysis. Also, see about matching the needle to the puncture wounds in the victims’ necks. And find out if there’s any sort of brand name on this thing, some way of tracing its origin and distribution, determining how he got hold of it.”
Tobin already knew the procedure. “Right. Right.”
“And get Justice in here to preserve chain of evidence.” Lovejoy moved toward the bedroom doorway. “And check the other phones-Jack’s office phones, too-in case he tried the same gimmick twice. And-”
Moore, smiling, gave him a gentle shove from behind.
“And we need to get going, Peter. We’ve got a plane to catch.”
11
Jack Dance woke at dawn and rubbed his aching neck. Sleeping curled up in the runabout had left him sore and stiff.
He had beached the dinghy in the cove, on the seaweed-strewn mud flat, and camouflaged it with palm fronds. He didn’t want it to be spotted from the air in daylight.
Throughout the night, biting insects had harassed him without mercy. Only after arriving at the island had he realized that he’d forgotten to purchase bug spray. Sleep had been fitful, his fragmentary dreams disturbing.
Breakfast was a can of pears. He consumed the entire contents, including the heavy syrup. The thick, sugary liquid made his gut roll.
Jack sighed. Yesterday’s euphoria, born of plotting strategy and taking action, had faded. He pictured his apartment in Westwood-the well-stocked refrigerator, the comfortable chairs, the thick-pile carpet, the king-size bed. It made a disheartening contrast with his present circumstances.
Yes, he’d had quite a fall. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, he had gazed down on Los Angeles from a height, a monarch surveying his dominion. Now he was a sweaty, muddy, ravenous thing, a hunted creature seeking refuge in the wild, master of nothing, not even of ticks and sandflies.
He would rise again, though. He swore he would.
First light was breaking, a soft luster brightening the sky. Time to reacquaint himself with the island. Seventeen years had passed since his last visit here, with Steve Gardner, in the summer after their high-school graduation.
Leaving the cove, he immediately found the boardwalk that ran through the mangrove swamp. Sure, he remembered this. He and Steve had traversed the walkway many times. It was a haphazard, crooked thing, twisting and bending like a malformed spine. At its far end, as he recalled, was a forest trail.
He started off down the boardwalk, moving slowly, wary of weak spots in the old wood. But the structure seemed sturdy enough. Remarkably well preserved, in fact. In better condition than his memory would have led him to expect.
The swamp folded over him like a nightmare, surrounding him with rank smells and contorted shadows and sinuous shapes that glided through the murk. Clumps of mangroves, their skirts of aerial roots exposed at low tide, formed a labyrinth of twisted trunks and branches. In the narrow channels meandering among the trees, the water had the dark gloss of an oil slick, its surface puckered and dimpled with random bubbles.
This was a prehistoric world, fetid and lush, crowded with mysterious life. Jack almost expected to see Tyrannosaurus come sloshing into view with a bellows blast of breath and a jet-plane roar.
He kept walking. As he did, he ran his hand along the boardwalk’s wooden railing, studied the planks passing by under his feet. He began to feel the first stir of misgivings.
He’d counted on having Pelican Key all to himself. But the boardwalk’s condition was too good, too perfect. It had not been left to rot. It had been repaired-even partly rebuilt, he believed. There were sections where the wood looked new and the nail heads gleamed.
Jack frowned. Was the key occupied? Had old Donald Larson finally restored the old plantation house and taken up residence there, as he’d promised?
“Shit,” he muttered. If he wasn’t alone, he would have to leave in a hurry, before he was discovered.
No point in jumping to conclusions. Maybe the island was inhabited only in the winter months. In that case he could stay until at least the end of September. By then Teddy Lunt should have come through with the documents.
To find out, one way or the other, he would have to take a look at the house and determine if it was presently in use.
He could hardly walk up to the door and knock. But from a vantage point on the beach, he could scope out the place with little risk of being seen. He quickened his steps.
In less than ten minutes, the boardwalk delivered him to the hardwood forest at the center of the island. He hurried along the trail toward the red radiance of the sunrise, intermittently visible through breaks in the foliage.
His shoes crunched on the dry, crumbly soil, frightening small lizards out of his way. Walls of dense shrubbery and trees enclosed the path, forming a tunnel of green. Somewhere a parrot squawked.
