“ He was going to kill you. Why?”
“ I don’t know.”
“ I was scared. I yelled but you didn’t hear me. Then I saw Rick’s Jeep and I yelled and yelled and he came.”
“ Are you okay?” Rick said.
“ Is he dead?” Judy asked.
“ He’s dead.”
“ What do we do now?”
“ Get the sheriff. Come on, get in.”
“ Shouldn’t somebody stay here with that?” Judy pointed to the dead man.
“ I’m not going to and I know Ann won’t, so that leaves you and J.P. It’s up to you.”
“ Let’s go,” she said.
Straining, Judy lifted her son over the tailgate. Then she climbed over herself, grabbing onto the roll bar to pull herself in.
Rick started the car, pushed in the clutch, shoved it into first and drove off the beach, going through the gears, driving fast.
The car bottomed out as it flew over the curb and hit the street. “Needs shocks,” Rick said, spinning the wheel to the left and going into a slide. He corrected by turning into it and adding power. Then they sped down Across The Way Road, turned right on Kennedy, and left the beach behind.
It was water clear to Gundry that the man was dead. Maybe he had a wallet. Maybe he had money or a watch. Maybe his shoes would fit. Maybe. Only one way to find out. Scratching his head, chasing the lice, Gundry rose, unzipped his fly and urinated. Then he started toward the corpse.
He had been a dentist before he’d started to burn his brain cells. An easy and safe career. A tooth doctor didn’t have to tell a mother her child had died on the table. An easy job for an easy man. A man who loved children and life. However, unfortunately, somewhere along the line he started to drink and, as it happens so often, he found that later on down the line he couldn’t stop.
Now he was little more than human refuse. A bum always on the lookout for a drink. An ape-like man, who walked with his face to the ground in a kind of simian shuffle. And like an ape, he was constantly scratching at the lice and fleas that fed off him.
Pushing his long, stringy hair out of his eyes, he looked down at the man. “Dead,” he muttered. “Dead for sure.” With large, swollen hands, he flipped the corpse face down into the sand. Then he went through the pockets.
He found a wallet, opened it, saw money, then stuffed the wallet into his rear pocket. The shoes were too small, but he saw a watch. He started to pull it off when the dead man’s hand grabbed Gundry’s arm in a dead man’s grip.
Malcolm Gundry screamed, tried to jerk away, but the grip held. He pulled harder, but still the dead man held on. He kicked the corpse, but still it held on. Again he kicked, but to no avail. His weak heart started pumping more blood than it was used to. His head hurt and his arm, held in that devil grip, felt like it was being crushed. He was going to pass out. He was going to die. Then, all of a sudden, he was blinded by light as he felt a white hot stab of pain in the back of his neck. He jerked back, free. He screamed, grabbing the back of his neck, feeling the wetness of his own blood, but this time it was a scream of triumph. He ripped off the dead man’s watch, picked up the dead man’s knife, then shuffled off the beach in search of a drink as the wind picked up, blowing sand.
“ Let me get this straight,” Sheriff Sturgees said, “he attacked Judy and you ran him down?”
“ Yes,” Rick Gordon said.
“ Where’s the knife?”
“ It was here.”
“ Where did it go?”
“ Someone took it.” Rick raised his collar against the wind. He was a head taller than the portly sheriff, but he didn’t let that distract him. Many people, to their everlasting regret, misjudged the sheriff, finding it hard to accept such a keen mind in his short, overweight body.
“ Who?”
“ How should I know?” Rick met his stare head on.
“ Don’t get upset, I’m not accusing you of anything.”
“ It was probably taken by the same man that turned the body.”
“ Say again.”
“ The body was on its back.”
“ That’s right,” Judy said.
“ He was laying on his back,” J.P. chimed in, “and he had a knife. A Jim Bowie knife.”
“ How do you know it was a Bowie Knife?”
“ Captain Wolfe has one. I know what they look like.”
“ Wolfe Stewart,” the sheriff asked, “the captain of the all day fishing boat that runs between here and Palma?
“ Yeah, the captain of the Seawolf,” Judy said.
“ And Captain Wolfe has a Jim Bowie knife like the one I saw,” J.P. said. “He wears it in a knife holster tied to his leg.”
“ It’s called a scabbard,” Judy said.
“ All right,” the sheriff turned to Rick, “the man had a knife.”
“ And he meant Judy harm,” Rick said.
“ How do you know?”
“ He would have cut me, Sheriff. I know it. He would have cut me and killed me. I was helpless. I couldn’t move.”
“ He was gonna kill my mom.”
“ J.P., get away from there!”
“ I’m not gonna touch him, Mom.”
“ Now J.P.!”
J.P. moved away from the dead man.
The sheriff bent over the corpse. “No wallet and he had a watch.”
“ How can you tell?” Judy asked.
“ Look for yourself.” He pointed to a white ring set off by a deep outdoor tan around the dead man’s left wrist.
“ Wow, that’s police work, isn’t it?” J.P. said.
“ Sheriff, can we go now?” Judy asked. “I’d rather J.P. didn’t have to see this.”
“ He was a witness, but I guess we can do without him here. I’ll talk to you after I’m done. Why don’t you take your boy and wait up by the cars.”
“ Thanks,” Judy said, overcoming J.P.’s objections.
“ Okay,” the sheriff said, after they were out of earshot, “now let’s talk about the Jim Bowie knife that isn’t here.”
Two blocks away Mr. Jaspinder Singh was ringing up a pack of Marlboros when the customer asked him a question.
“ Do you know Rick Gordon?” The man asked like a policeman.
“ I am truly not knowing him.”
“ About six feet, green eyes, maybe hazel. Brown, wavy hair, probably cut a little too long. Got a scar behind his left ear, here.” Storm touched the spot with a finger. “Wife named Ann, a looker, just a little shorter than him, shoulder length hair, Barbie Doll looks, the original blue-eyed blond, you’d seen her, you’d remember. That’s what everyone says. You know anybody like that?”
“ Not that I can recall.”
