“Meredith’s friends told detectives that Jack had been openly hostile toward her for years, and that Meredith was afraid of him.”
The last of the coffee dribbled into the pot. Lovejoy poured two cups. “But apparently the D.A. didn’t file charges, or they would have shown up on Jack’s rap sheet.”
“That’s because Jack had an alibi.” She consulted the sixth page of the statement form. “On the evening of Meredith’s death, he took a long car ride with a friend. Steven Gardner.”
“Steve…”
Moore nodded. “The postcard. ‘Jack and Steve and I took the boat out yesterday.’ Same Steve, I’ll bet.”
“The skinny kid with the glasses.” Lovejoy carried the coffee to Moore, a boy bringing his teacher an apple. “Why wouldn’t the police see through a ruse like that? One friend lying to protect another. Hardly an unusual occurrence.”
“According to the report, Steve Gardner had a good reputation in town. A real straight arrow. And he stuck to his story pretty convincingly. Besides, the coroner’s office wasn’t certain of foul play. Meredith could have slipped and fallen into the shallow end-or hit her head on the diving board without leaving any obvious mark-or suffered a seizure in the water and struck the side of the pool while thrashing around. A hundred possibilities.”
“And of course, the authorities wanted the case closed.” Lovejoy sipped his coffee. “Looks bad for a town-one kid killing another, friend covering up. Better if it was an accident. Neater that way.”
“You’re a cynical man, Peter.”
“Just a bureaucrat at heart. I know how these things work. Getting to the truth is less important than sweeping a messy situation under the rug.”
Moore pushed her chair away from the desk. “So what do we do now?”
“Locate Steve Gardner and ask him a few probing questions.”
“At two A.M.?”
“Sometimes that’s when you get the best answers.”
A rap on the door frame. The sleepy deputy was there.
“ ’Scuse me, folks. Sergeant Banks’d like to see you.”
Moore stood. “He say why?”
Yawn and shrug. “Something turned up on patrol.”
The desk sergeant, Banks, was gray-haired, red-faced, and badly overweight. His uniform sagged in some places and clung to him skintight in others. Deep half moons of sweat had formed permanent discolorations under his arms.
He refused to talk fast. Leaning back in his chair, lording over the lobby desk, he seemed to savor each syllable as it passed, slow and sweet as molasses, through his lips.
“There’s this condemned restaurant over on Blackwood Drive, west of Route One. Patrol unit checks it out nearly every night. Rousting transients, y’know.”
He paused to clean his teeth with a ragged thumbnail. Moore had to step down hard on an urge to grab the man and shake the information out of him.
“So tonight Parker and Ross are cruising the area, and when they go around back of this place, what do you suppose they find?”
“A Pontiac Sunbird,” Lovejoy said, then caught himself making a definitive statement and added, “in all probability.”
Banks cocked an eyebrow. “Aw, now you’ve gone and spoiled my story.”
“Sergeant”-Moore kept her tone cool and professional, fighting back a rush of excitement-“did the patrol unit give you a description of the car? Year, color, license plate?”
“No plates. They’re gone. Vehicle identification number’s missing, too. Car’s pretty well junked. Not stripped, exactly, Parker says. More like… trashed.”
“What color is it?”
“White exterior, blue interior. It’s a four-door hardtop, relatively new. Could be a ’92.”
“That just might be the vehicle we’re looking for,” Lovejoy said.
Banks nodded heavily, multiplying his chins. “I know.”
“Jack trashed the car so it would pass for an old wreck.” Moore was thinking fast, her mind remarkably clear despite long hours without sleep. “Took the tags so we couldn’t link it with the airport theft.”
“Conceivably. On the other hand, the possibility exists that this is a different Sunbird altogether.” Lovejoy turned to Banks. “Was that location checked last night?”
“Doubtful. Darby and Brint work patrol on the Thursday p.m. watch, and those two sumbitches never do jack. Oh, they’re supposed to poke around behind the restaurant, sure, but more’n likely they were sawing lumber in their car somewhere out on Industrial Drive.”
“How about the night before?”
“No Sunbird then. I make the rounds myself on Wednesdays.”
“Time frame is right,” Moore said.
Lovejoy pursed his lips. “We have no proof that this is the car from airport parking or, even if it is, that Jack was the one who lifted it.”
“Well”-impatience struggled with Moore’s frayed self-control-“let’s quit yakking and find out. We need to contact Miami, get a search team down here, go over that damn car with a microscope and tweezers.”
“My recommendation also.” Lovejoy picked up the desk phone, then remembered courtesy. “Excuse me, Sergeant. Mind if I make a call?”
Banks moved his big shoulders. “At your service. Tell you true, though… you people sure do move fast.”
38
The swamp was hot and fetid, choked with clouds of mosquitoes, the pests swarming thicker here than in any other part of the island. Kirstie had lost the strength even to wave them off. They battened greedily on her, leaving a rash of bumps on every inch of exposed skin. When she brushed sweat from her face, her fingers came away dabbed with blood.
The bites didn’t matter. The heat and humidity, the sweat trickling from her hair, the aching exhaustion in every muscle-none of that mattered, either. Nothing mattered except planting one foot in front of the other, pushing herself remorselessly forward, crossing the endless yards of the boardwalk plank by plank, and arriving, finally, at the northern tip of Pelican Key. Then she would be at the cove, where maybe-just maybe-she would find the runabout.
Unless Jack or Steve found her first.
This boardwalk scared her. It was narrow and crooked and dark, and it could so very easily be a death trap. While making her way along it, she was as badly unprotected as she’d been on the beach. And an ambush would be easy in the swamp-the swamp, with its countless hiding places, its croak and buzz of ambient noise to mask more furtive sounds, its canopy of waxen leaves that eclipsed the stars and hung the trees in shadows.
She had never been here at night. The labyrinth of contorted mangroves and crisscrossing channels was creepy enough by day. Darkness made it a nightmare, some fevered blend of known and imagined terrors.
Cottonmouths glided through the opaque, tannin-stained water under her feet. Corn snakes and rat snakes writhed among the fantastically gnarled roots and branches of the mangrove thickets. The foul odor of hydrogen sulfide, signature of decay, hovered over the place like an unwholesome cloud. Somewhere a heron cried; to her left, a clump of marsh grass stirred with unseen activity; behind her, wood creaked in a low, regular rhythm, the footsteps of a restless ghost treading the boards…
She froze.
Footsteps.
Someone else was on the boardwalk. Whether it was Jack or Steve was unimportant. Both were killers now.
Was one of them shadowing her? Doubtful; the tread was heavy and quick, with no suggestion of stealth. It was the walk of a man in a hurry.
