Maybe he did have the nerve.
“Hey, Stevie,” he said with a faltering smile, “relax. I didn’t
… do anything.”
“Only because I stopped you. All of a sudden it occurred to me that it wasn’t such a good idea to leave you alone with her.”
“You can trust me.”
“Like shit I can. Now listen to me, asshole”-Steve jabbed him rudely in the chest, the first time in their long friendship he had ever done so-“you keep your goddamn distance from her. Got that? Keep your fucking distance.”
“Sure. Sure. No problem.”
“Oh, yes, it is a problem. A big problem-for you. Remember what I said on the boat. You so much as touch her, and I’ll kill you. I mean it, Jack. I really do.”
Jack met Steve’s wintry gaze and understood that he was serious, he did mean it, he really would kill to protect or avenge his wife. It was the one hard spot within him, the one place where he was not weak and pliable and yielding.
In that moment Jack knew there would be trouble before the night was over.
Because regardless of what he’d promised, he no longer had any intention of allowing Kirstie Gardner to live.
26
The car phone chirped at seven p.m. Moore talked to a field agent in New Jersey while Lovejoy drove.
The Light Fantastic, New Jersey reported, had been sold to Albert Dance’s next-door neighbors, Jim and Jeanne Turner, in 1985. It was still berthed in Belmar.
Moore lowered the phone long enough to say, “Boat’s a dead end.”
Lovejoy grunted, unsurprised, and hooked left onto a side street on Plantation Key. To the west, the Everglades lay in purple silhouette against the reddening sun. A solitary bird circled the endless expanse of marshland, a blinking check mark in the sky.
“You interviewed the Turners, then?” Moore asked New Jersey.
“Yeah, we went over there. They remember Jack. Watched him grow up. Their daughter used to babysit for him.”
“Would she be worth talking to? Maybe they kept in touch.”
“She’s dead.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Accidental drowning when she was twenty-two. Her folks have got a sort of shrine on the mantel: her picture with flowers and candles all around it. Their only child. You never get over that.”
Moore had a thought. “What did this girl look like?”
“Blond, pretty, all-American type…” New Jersey caught on. “You think so?”
“Unlikely. Still… blue eyes?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Could her death have been something other than an accident?”
“Don’t know that, either. We’d have to ask the Turners for details-or see if we can dig up the police file.”
“File would be better. No use getting the family all upset for no reason. If you get hold of it, fax it to us at the sheriff’s substation in Islamorada.” She gave him the number and terminated the call.
“So you think you can tie Jack to an old homicide,” Lovejoy said. He executed a U-turn near a closed-down gas station; a huge fiberglass mermaid loomed over the service island, tail looped in multicolored serpentine coils. It was not the tackiest thing Moore had seen in the Keys.
She shrugged. “It’s a long shot, I know.”
“Not necessarily. The Behavioral Science profile indicated a high degree of probability that Mister Twister had experience in homicide prior to the first known killing.”
“So I recall. But this Turner girl… She used to baby-sit for Jack. If he did kill her when she was twenty-two, he must have been only a teenager.”
“There’s no shortage of teenage sociopaths-or even subteens, nowadays-capable of murder.”
Moore nodded, remembering Oakland’s mean streets. “True.”
Something made her shiver-perhaps memories of adolescent gangbangers, their eyes flat and dead as nail heads, or perhaps merely the chill of the air conditioning.
The sedan was cool, but the humid heat outside still pressed against the windshield, straining to seep through. For most of the afternoon Moore had felt curiously like a space traveler sealed in a capsule, gliding through an alien environment inimical to life. Occasional forays out of the car had meant plunging into a steaming sauna, to emerge bathed in sweat.
There had been little time to concern herself with comfort. The second half of the day had been as busy-and perhaps as fruitless-as the first.
She and Lovejoy had arrived in Islamorada at two-thirty and had promptly learned several discouraging facts.
First, an Islamorada postmark indicated only that Al Dance’s cards had been mailed somewhere along the fifteen-mile stretch of real estate running from the town of Plantation to the waterway called Channel Two at the southern tip of Lower Matecumbe Key. The Islamorada post office served the entire area.
Second, even if the search was limited to Islamorada, the town’s dramatically reduced summer population meant a large supply of vacant housing. Jack could easily break into any empty cottage and hole up inside.
Third, as an unincorporated part of Monroe County, Islamorada had no police department, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, headquartered in Key West, maintained only a substation here.
Fourth, the substation’s personnel and resources were too limited to permit the exhaustive search Lovejoy and Moore required.
The upshot: For the past four hours, Lovejoy had driven up and down U.S. 1, through Plantation, Windley, and Upper and Lower Matecumbe Keys, veering onto the parallel Old Overseas Highway at times, exploring short side streets that dead-ended at the water and mangroves, while Moore had studied every passing car, looking for either of the two vehicles lifted from airport parking last night.
She’d spotted two white Sunbird hardtops and one silver Dodge Dynasty LE. None had the right license number, but she and Lovejoy had checked out each in turn, anyway; plates could be switched. In every case the car had proved to be legally registered to its driver.
Along the way they had stopped at all the local marinas. None of the security guards had seen anyone matching Jack’s mug shot, and there had been no report of any boat stolen in the last sixteen hours. Of course, boat owners didn’t necessarily visit their vessels every day; many were snowbirds spending the summer in Maine or Montana, gone for months.
Hotels and motels had yielded no results, either; likewise for a sample of restaurants and tiki-bars. If Jack was here, he was keeping himself well hidden.
The sole positive development since their arrival had been the disappearance of Peter’s chronic sniffles and sneezes. The Keys were virtually allergen-free. Moore had not seen her partner use a Kleenex in hours. He was a new man.
Lovejoy pulled back onto Route 1, heading south. The westering sun blazed through the passenger-side window.
“Dark soon.” Moore averted her face from the glare. “What will we do then?”
“Keep looking.”
“You’re sure he’s here, aren’t you?”
“It’s our most promising hypothesis.”
Lovejoy squirted fluid onto the windshield. The wipers ticked briefly, erasing a paste of accumulated
