“ So he’s not talking?”
‘ ‘ Well, I managed to make him see the light, so to speak. He gave me enough to recognize the schooner when I see it.”
“ Schooner?”
“ World class. He said it had three masts and state-of- the-art equipment, that it was fully automated so that one knowledgeable seaman alone could sail her. That even the sails could be brought down and put up by a single man. Said it was of British manufacture, made for racing, had excellent teakwood moldings all around, and that while the name and call numbers were obscured, it appeared to be the Tau Cross.’’
“ Excellent. Then we’re on our way to the Caymans.”
“ Not so fast. Something else has surfaced.”
“ I heard something about a body in Madeira Bay?” Jessica was acutely aware that her words were causing quite a stir in Don Lansing; she was either going to frighten him away or excite him into following through on the flight out of here. It all depended on what kind of man he was. “Well, it’s not a bay, actually.” Eriq was giving her a geography lesson. “It’s oceanfront, and yes, a body has been left in the bastard’s wake, a kind of present for us. She’s already been IDed as a Naples Missing Persons case.”
Jessica audibly groaned. “We’ve got to end this freak show, Eriq.”
“ You’ve got to get back here, locate the Pinellas County Coroner’s Office and do your thing. See if the body can tell you-”
“ Tell me what. Eriq? Tell me what I already know? No, I’m not coming back there. I’m flying to the Caymans within the hour.”
“ Jess, it’s not good protocol to just let the body-”
“ It’s exactly what he wants, Eriq. Don’t you see that? The body was left for us to find in order to slow us down.”
Santiva was silent for a moment at the other end. She jumped on his silence, adding, “He’s yanking our chain. That dead body is his way of trying to control our movements and to cut down on his own damned drag!” Jessica realized only now that Lansing, on hearing additional snippets of her conversation, had carefully armed himself, placing a gun in his belt. She feared that perhaps she’d gone too far with her masquerade and that Lansing had only heard the most provocative words, most out of context.
“ You’ve secured transportation?” asked Eriq.
“ I have, and I want you here ASAP. Otherwise, I do this alone.”
“ No… no. you don’t. Give me your location.”
She gave him directions and the name of the place from which they were booking the flight. “You’re in a hospital. Pick up what you need in the way of Dramamine there, and then get right over here, Eriq.” Jess, this latest victim deserves our best, as much as any of the others.”
“ Then send our best field M.E. or pathologist over there. Tampa’s got to have someone who can take over.”
“ This young woman, Jess, lived her entire life in Naples and was some sort of a queen at her high school there; she wasn’t a tourist but a resident, a towny. She loved Naples and they loved her.”
“ Eriq, trust me. If I don’t see you here in forty minutes, I’m gone, so like I said, get right over here.”
“ And you’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?” he said, but she’d already hung up, wondering if the killer had any other bodies aboard the ship which Stallings had called the Tau Cross; did the bastard plan to drag the body of yet another victim the entire distance to the Cayman Islands with him? Now Jessica stood looking across the room at Lansing, who was nervously pacing, wishing he hadn’t said yes, anxious to find out more about her-or just anxious to get out of the deal? He kept looking across at her, sizing her up, curious about her and her story-and her friend on the other end of the line. The situation seemed more shady with each passing moment. The questions were pinging about his brain like a pinball, so palpable she could almost hear them ringing, and she realized she had him exactly where she needed him to be.
“ How long’ll it take for your friend to get here?” he asked now.
“ An hour, maybe.”
“ Maybe by then some of this stuff’ll blow over. Maybe… if things don’t take a turn for the worse…”
He tuned in the weather report, but the news only made both of them more nervous and fidgety, filled as it was with the latest happenings and the strange disappearance and possible literal “surfacing” of the girl from Naples, followed with reports that her body may have “washed ashore in a state of preservation, as if lost by a mortuary,” in the reporter’s words.
“ Damn, Madeira Beach’s not too far from here,” mused Lansing. Jessica tried to recall if she’d said anything about Madeira Beach which Don Lansing might’ve taken the wrong way. At the same time, a picture flashed on the TV for a few moments, a photo of the dead girl in happier times, telling Jessica that the victim had the same general appearance as all the others before her. Finally, Lansing clicked the TV off.
“ I just brewed some coffee. Would you like some?” he asked her.
“ Sure… that’d be great… might warm my insides a bit.” She was very aware of the small-caliber but quite deadly. 22 he’d holstered in his belt.
There was no clean place in the hut to sit. She remained standing, pacing, looking from time to time out the window as if any moment the strobe lights of a police car might be out there, giving chase to the fleeing suspect in Don Lansing’s florid mystery as it played out in his brain.
When he came to stand beside her at the window, the coffee extended, he, too, peeked out at the fog as if expecting someone.
“ Triple my usual’s going to come to a hell of a lot of money, lady. You do understand that?” He jotted down a figure on a pad and handed it to her. His twenty-four-hour day rate was $575 plus fuel, so the mysterious “Maltese Falcon” lady who’d just stepped into Don’s life was looking at over $1,700 just for starters. That’d buy him and Pete some time on those bloodsucking creditors; Pete would thank him for this later, Don assured himself, tell him that if he hadn’t taken this job, Pete would’ve killed him, and if Pete were here, he’d do exactly what Don was doing right this moment, up the ante.
He went to the phone, asked if it was all right if he called his partner, to let Pete know what was going on and where they’d be taking Pete’s plane.
“ Pete owns the plane?”
“ Yeah, it’s Pete’s plane…”
“ Sure, do what you have to do.” Lansing got only an answering machine, into which he spoke a cryptic message for his partner. “You’re doing the right thing,” she assured him. A long look into her eyes confirmed this for Don, she was sure. The clock on the wall seemed frozen in time at 5:09 a.m. She wished Eriq would get here before Don changed his mind and backed out.
“ Triple my usual,” repeated Lansing, “almost enough to go to hell for.”
She looked up at him. “Paradise, remember,” she replied.
He moved in a little too closely, and she stepped away. She wondered how far the Night Crawler might’ve gotten in the six hours that had elapsed since he’d eluded Stallings and Manley. She wondered how long it might take to catch the killer’s ship, imagining that moment when it would come into view; she imagined going on to Grand Cayman Island and simply waiting for Patric Allain to ease into port there and how simple it would be to apprehend the bastard beast when he stepped off the boat. They could then secure the boat as a crime scene, and she’d nail him six ways to Sunday and beyond for multiple murder. Next stop the Florida electric chair, the same as toasted the likes of Ted Bundy; see how Patric liked sailing that mother.
She imagined that Okinleye would want to hold Allain for questioning in the murders that had occurred in his jurisdiction, but knowing Ja and the problems of the islands, she also believed that the Cayman government would not stand in the way of an expedient order, so that Allain would stand trial in Florida, where he’d face the death penalty. She was only sorry that he could not be electrocuted separately for each victim he’d so tortured.
Eriq finally arrived in an unmarked police car, in the company of Samernow and Quincey, the small crowd making Don Lansing even more nervous about his decision than before, Jessica realizing how like Mafia types the two burly Miami cops and the tall, stolid Santiva appeared. Jessica caught the others outside, out of Don’s earshot, explaining that the only way she could get a flight out was to con this guy into thinking they were running from the law, so she told Quincey and Samernow to get a chopper from the police hangars as soon as the fog lifted and the
