“ Except for the billfish,” cautioned Stu.
Frowning, Buck explained, “A bill’s dorsal fin has to be prefabricated. No amount of processing can preserve some of the more delicate membranes.”
“ Any rate, now the science part is over,” said Stu. “In here it’s time for the art. To restore these babies to their original hues and lifelike appearance, it takes a master like Buck here. It takes talent-”
“ Bullshit, talent,” interrupted the spike-bearded Buckner. “Talent’s a dangerous word. More like skill born of experience and know-how. That’s more like it.”
“ Whatever you wanna call it. Buck here’s got more natural talent or skill born of experience and know-how than anybody on the damned planet.”
Buckner was blushing red below his gray beard, but he pretended nonchalance and went on with his explanation. “First we spray them with a white base coat; then we layer on several color shadings, some done by hand to gain the exact texture required for authenticity.”
“ A decent photo of the catch at the time it’s brought aboard a boat, or at least the moment it’s brought ashore, becomes invaluable here,” interjected Stu.
“ Tropical fish begin to lose their color the moment they’re snagged,” added Buck. “Anyway, a final clear coat is splashed on for protection and the wet look.”
“ How does what you do differ from the work done by other taxidermists?” asked Jessica.
Buck laughed a horse laugh, slapping Stu on the shoulder before replying, “A guy like me, specializing in marine work, is a whole ‘nuther animal from some bozo who stuffs birds and reptiles and bears and bobcats and squirrels, believe you me. We don’t have hide, fur or feathers to cover our mistakes.”
“ There’s no room here for error,” added Stu. “All we got to work with is a thin layer of skin which stubbornly resists preservatives.” Jessica smiled and replied, “You mean, it’s no job for amateurs?’’
“ That’s why Scrapheap didn’t care for that punk hanging around down in Key West. Said he always wanted to take shortcuts… was careless. Hell, you can see that from the yellowfin he brought in with him.”
Jessica gave Buckner a stunned look while Stu continued to fill her ear, saying, “Most of our customers are individuals, but Buck’s done work for corporations and museums, haven’t you, Buck?”
Buck nodded with grace, a faint, prideful smile parting his lips. “I’ve done work for Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Charlton Heston… you name it.”
“ King Hussein and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush.” Stu beamed with pride, too.
“ Pardon me, Buck, but did you say this Patric Allain brought something in with him and left it here?”
“ Yeah, a yellowfin… kinda like a calling card. He’d already skinned it, so he wanted us to do the mounting, but after I looked at it and found a hole large enough to drive a golf ball through, I told him we couldn’t guarantee anything approximating perfection.”
“ Did anyone other than you handle the skin? Would you know, if anyone else had done work on it?” she asked.
“ Oh, sure.”
“ So, had anyone other than Allain handled the skin?”
“ I had no reason to think so, no.”
“ Show it to me. I want that skin.”
“ It’s in the next room.”
“ Anyone else touch it?” she pressed as she followed Buck.
“ Stu? Anyone in or outta here this morning?”
“ Not a soul.”
“ Did you paw the fella’s prize?”
“ Naw, too busy to take any notice of it,” Stu assured them.
“ There it is, right on the peg where I hung it,” said Buck.
“ I’ll need to have someone come in and take your prints, Mr. Buckner, so we can rule them out. Any others we find, hopefully, will be those of the killer.”
“ You can peel off fingerprints from that?” He pointed to the lifeless scales of the yellowfin with which Patric Allain had allegedly walked through the door.
“ I can with the right tools… We have the technology, but it’ll destroy the skin.”
“ Take the damned thing. It’s old and brittle now any way; said he had it packed in ice the whole time, but obviously that was a lie. Said he caught it in the Cayman Islands, but that was a lie, too.”
“ He said Cayman Islands specifically?”
“ Yeah, I recall he did.”
“ Hmmmm. How could you tell that he was lying about the condition and age of the skin?” Stu jumped in, saying, “Hell, one look at it…” Buck offered, “I don’t figure it’d be in such good shape as it was if he’d hauled it so far as the Caymans. My guess, he snatched it or bought it at some other shop along his way to here from Key West.”
“ Why lie about the Cayman Islands? Why not simply say he caught the fish in the Gulf out there?”
“ I don’t know, pathological? Or maybe he knew the quality was bad, so he made up a cockamamie story.”
The tour had ended with something tangible, a possible clue that could specifically identify the killer. Moyler in England had a print, and if they could match his print with what they found on the fish skin, they could be surer of their prey. She asked Buckner for the use of his phone and contacted Santiva in the nearby van with this news. It took some, although not all, of the sting out of the Crawler’s having not shown up.
“ I’ll pack it and send it off to J.T. at Quantico; see what the lab can find for us in the way of useful prints. J.T.’ll put our best fingerprint tech on the job. It may be the first real gift that Allain has given us. If J.T. finds something, we can put it under an electron microscope and photograph it, maybe match it to what Moyler has in London.”
“ May’s well pack it in,” he suggested. “Not doing any good here.”
“ Let’s give it a little more time,” she suggested. “Maybe he got unavoidably held up.”
“ Yeah, don’t we wish the Coast Guard or the Florida Marine Patrol has picked him up for questioning?”
“ Could we get so lucky?”
“ I’ll get Ford’s best men down here to relieve us, let them watch over this place tonight, and we’ll get some R and R.” said Santiva.
After calling J.T. to tell him what he might expect in the overnight mail, so as to not entirely shock him, Jessica found herself with time on her hands, so she asked Buckner for the phone number of his old partner in Key West, and she then telephoned Scrapheap Jones and plied him full of questions relevant to his encounter with the Night Crawler.
Jones simply refused to believe that the Patric whom he had taught the rudiments of fish-trophy mounting was the Crawler. His mind could not wrap around the concept; he claimed the kid he trained was a wimp, fearful at the sight of blood even in a dead fish. Scrapheap told Jessica that she was on a fool’s chase if she were after that sullen, quiet one-joke boy he had known.
But even as Scrapheap Jones denied her, she read between the lines of what the man said. Allain was sullen, quiet, fearful of the sight of blood and apparently humorless. In point of fact, this profile sounded a great deal more like her prey than Jones realized. “What do you mean by one-joke boy?”
“ He’d say the fishing in the shark aquarium museum here in Key West was the easiest place to fish. Damned fool. Thought it was funny; thought it irritated me when he’d suggest taking a charter to the museum, let ‘em all dip their bait into one of the tanks there. Silly stuff like that, like it was real funny, but it wasn’t. Joke was lame, like the kid.”
“ Did he ever steal from you?”
“ Some… some chemicals, maybe, I ain’t a hunerd percent sure.”
“ Do you have anything in writing about your agreement with him? Did you have him sign a contract or agreement? It’s important.”
“ I did… at the time…”
“ Do you still have it?”
“ It may be in my files.”
“ If you find it, fax it to me at the Naples Police Department.” She gave him the number. “I’ll see what I can
