and you’re not under arrest.”
“ Just a big office, huh? With rooms in the basement with lots of bars-and not the kind of bars I like to frequent.” The man reminded Jessica of Jimmy Buffet as he scrunched up his face and nose, considering his options a moment until he saw Jessica’s pleading eyes.
“ Just long enough to explain the maps to my partner,” she asked.
“ All right… anyone ever say no to you, Dr. Coran?”
“ Sometimes, sure.”
“ Stronger men than I…”
Jessica now took note of the beautiful setting and lush greenery here. The city was alabaster-white, almost all the buildings bright pastels or whitewash with exotic-looking orange- and red-tiled roofs in old Spanish style. Moss hung like strange garlands around ancient trees, giving them the appearance of alien Christmas trees. These ancient oaks and poplars lined wide streets, and palm-lined avenues-corridors to the city-were clean and inviting. From here she could see that the business, historical and government districts all shared the stage along the same spacious avenues. There were no skyscrapers here, the tallest of buildings perhaps ten stories, and these were rare-hospitals and banks. Like many or most Florida towns, Naples maintained a small-town atmosphere where parks along the waterways were filled to capacity with boaters and picnicking families, the children flying kites, chasing dogs and Frisbees and climbing up and down the town gazebo.
All in all, it was an elegant little city, the kind of place found only in dreams, the kind of place where evil died of loneliness, the kind of place where fear, ignorance, rage, prejudice, pestilence and poverty never entered-or rather hid very well amid the scarcity of shadow; still, it appeared the kind of place where only gentleness, kindness and light- heartedness could thrive, the kind of place lost in America’s past and found now only in imagination, the kind of place where people were lulled into believing that peace and safety and brotherhood and sisterhood and tranquillity and an unlocked door could actually exist on the planet. The little city by the emerald Gulf seemed quite out of keeping with the Night Crawler’s usual teeming haunts.
On their walk toward the expensively laid-out grounds of the police station here-a sure sign that all was not well in this little jeweled city-Jessica thought of the allusions in the Night Crawler’s poetry to stage and theater. She now voiced her thoughts to Quincey. “This doesn’t exactly look the perfect stage for the Night Crawler to crawl out on to strut his stuff.”
Quincey cleared his throat and thoughtfully replied, “Well, there’re areas, especially along the outer islands and north of here, that are teeming with nightclubs and nightlife.”
Elliot Anderson added, “If your guy’s here, the bastard’s most likely just casually trawling these waters while on his way to a larger arena…
” Jessica’s step slowed. “A larger arena?”
“ A major metropolis, like Miami,” Quincey filled in. n“ Tampa-St. Pete, I believe,” said Anderson. Quincey agreed instantly.
Jessica sadly agreed as well. “I guess you’re both right on one score.”
“ He needs a big kettle,” Anderson finished for her.
She nodded. “He feeds on the anonymity afforded by a large city.” Quincey quickly added, “Every predator needs a jungle.”
She added. “And every predator’s jungle must conceal him.”
FIFTEEN
To go and find out and be damned…
At police headquarters, Jessica had no trouble locating Eriq once she and Quincey found Mark Samernow nursing a cup of coffee and a gone-cold gyro. Although it was not quite 11 a.m., Samernow explained that he and Chief Santiva had been up all night with a character who might or might not have a line on the Night Crawler, a fellow who may’ve harbored the killer for a time. They’d just finished up with a lie detector test on him.
Jessica followed Samernow and Quince to the interrogation room, along the way locating the ready room where Elliot Anderson could set up his maps.
Quincey joked with Samernow, ribbing him about the news accounts they’d been hearing out on the Gulf. “So, I hear you collared a dead guy, Mark?”
Samernow’s ears reddened and Jessica could only imagine the scowl on his face, unable as she was to actually see the gaunt man’s features as he kept walking.
Quince dug the knife in deeper and twisted it by repeating what he’d said as if Mark hadn’t heard. “Heard you collared a dead guy?” He just couldn’t resist.
Samernow didn’t miss a beat this round. “You try it sometime. Hardest collar I ever got. Bitchin’ paperwork, and when we tried to stand him before the judge, well, all hell broke loose,” recounted Samernow, in rare form. Seeing his daughter had obviously helped his disposition.
“ Yeah,” Jessica teased Mark now, her smile growing. “Heard you brought in an Austrian?”
“ Cops here are gung-ho to bring in the Crawler. Can you blame them? They’ve never had a chance to make Top Cops or Unsolved, so they’re working overtime at it. Can’t say that’s the worst attitude they might’ve taken. So, how’d you guys do down south? How’d it go in Key Largo and Matecumbe, and why’d it take so damned long to get here?”
Quince answered with his own question. “So, Mark, what gives with Aileen and your kid?’’
“ They’re great, really…”
“ That good, huh?”
Samernow marched on toward the interrogation room, and they trailed after, the corridors here being extremely narrow, all the government outlay of funds having obviously been for exterior show. “Oh, by the way, the re- checks and double checks of the Miami harbors turned up zip on our guy, so we can kiss any leads coming out of that trail good-bye. Got word over the fax this morning from Noonan back at headquarters.”
There was a full-fledged interrogation going on, Captain Ford and Eriq Santiva doing the grilling on the inside while Jessica and Quince were shown to the one-way mirror where they might watch, but it didn’t sound promising. “Who’ve they got in there?”
“ Looking less and less like a suspect,” replied Mark. “Some guy who claims to’ve seen the killer. Claims he knows who the killer is, that he held a conversation with Allain.”
“ What does he have?”
“ The name Patric Allain, which everybody has by now, remember?” He didn’t mean for it to come out an indictment of her having released the information, but it did and it stung.
“ So what makes him special?” asked Quince.
“ Two things. He claims he knew something of Allain earlier, and that Allain showed up a few days ago at his shop.”
“ His shop?” asked Quince. Jessica added, “What kind of shop?”
“ Taxidermy shop.”
Quincey and Jessica momentarily gawked at one another, unable to believe their ears, and then back at the man under interrogation, a man who looked as if he’d fallen off a seventeenth-century ship and washed ashore in rags, a Robinson Crusoe appearance about him, even down to his earrings, shorts and open shirt. He wore a long, scraggly beard that looked both dirty and uncombed. As thin as a dime, he looked like part of the growing homeless population.
“ Rode his bike into headquarters just to tell us his story,” said Mark Samernow with a little shake of his head.
Quince asked, “What’s he ride, a Harley?”
“ Not hardly. Try a Schwinn, a bicycle. Old one at that.”
