seconds.”
“Did he look at you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“We’ll find him,” I said.
I must not have filled the room with my infectious optimism, because Ronnie said, “You don’t believe me.”
“No matter if we believe you,” said Ames. “It matters if we find him.”
“What did you do after you went outside and didn’t see him?” I asked.
“I went back in the house to be sure Horvecki was dead. Before I could call 911, I heard the door to the house open. Then a voice saying, ‘Throw your gun toward the door and stand up slowly with your hands high and your palms showing.’
“I did. I was read my rights and arrested.”
“Did you tell them about the person in the doorway and the man in the truck?” I asked.
“I did. They didn’t believe me, either. I’m glad Horvecki’s dead, but I didn’t kill him.”
“You have a lawyer?” I asked.
“You’re not a lawyer?”
“No,” I said.
“Goddamn it!” he shouted loud enough to make the guard almost slump to the floor. “I’ll kill Greg when I get my hands on him.”
“You really know the right things to say,” I said.
“What the hell are you then?”
“A process server,” I said. “And someone who finds missing people.”
“Who the fuck is missing here?”
“The person who shot Philip Horvecki,” said Ames, “provided that person is not you.”
“And,” I added, “whoever might have been standing in the open doorway when you went into Horvecki’s house.”
“Guard, get these two out of here,” said Ronnie. Then he turned to me and said, “I’ll get my own lawyer.”
“Suits me,” said Ames rising.
I got up, too. The guard was alert now.
We got to the door. Then Ronnie Gerall said, “Wait.”
I turned as the guard moved toward the prisoner.
“I think the person in the doorway was a woman.”
“Horvecki’s daughter?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Whoever it was might have seen the person who went through the window kill Horvecki,” I said.
“Or might have been the person who killed Horvecki,” said Ames.
“I’ve got no money, but I don’t want a public defender,” Ronnie said. It sounded like a challenge.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
Ames and I went past the guard and into the corridor.
“He’s scared,” Ames said.
“He’s scared,” I agreed as we walked toward the thick metal door.
“Full of hate,” Ames said.
“Full of hate,” I agreed.
“You gonna help him?” Ames asked as we got to the door.
“It’s why I get the big bucks,” I said.
“Philip Horvecki,” I said.
There were twenty-two wooden steps leading up to the three rooms under a pitched roof into which I had moved. This was on Laurel, around the corner and about half a block from the departed Dairy Queen. The steps had once been white. The railing, which shook if you put a hand on it, had once been green. I couldn’t call it an apartment. You had to move carefully under the ceiling or you would bump your head. The first room was a big, blank square with a bathroom across from the front door. The second room, about the size of a prison cell, looked as if it had originally been installed by indifferent Seminoles and recently painted white by someone who wanted to set the record for speed painting. There was a third room, a little bigger than one of Superman’s phone booths. With luck you might be able to get a rocking chair into it.
The walls of the big room were white painted plaster board under which the smell of sad and ancient wood managed to persist. The big and little rooms were connected by a varnished wooden door. There were no overhead lights, but Flo Zink, who had found the place, had not only painted it but put two bright floor lamps in each room. I had met Flo shortly after I came to Sarasota. I had found her husband, Gus, who was dying from too many diseases to count. Gus had been kidnapped to keep him from voting on a land issue in the City Council. Ames and I had gotten him to the meeting, where his last act on earth was to cast the deciding vote. He left Flo with enough money to sustain five widows comfortably for a lifetime. Flo felt responsible for me. Finding my new home was just one of the ways she had shown it over the last four years.
There were three small windows in the big room and one in each of the other two rooms. Ames had already moved the air conditioner from my last place overlooking the defunct DQ to a window in the big room. It was already clear that the air conditioner wouldn’t be able to adequately cool one room let alone two or three. There was more space than I needed.
As Augustine had said, my boxes and furniture had been moved. My meager furniture looked sad and frightened in these rooms.
The first thing Victor Woo had done was put up my Stig Dalstrom prints, including a recent painting Flo had given to me as a house warming present. Victor had pinned the Dalstroms to the wall in about the same places they had been in my former space.
“Philip Horvecki,” I repeated into the cell phone which I now reluctantly owned.
The phone was another house warming present. It was from Adele, who was just about to become a freshman at New College in Sarasota. She could have gotten into dozens of colleges, but she wanted to continue to live with her baby, Catherine, in Flo’s house. No dorm experience for Adele, but she wouldn’t regret it. Adele’s father had sold her to a pimp when she was fourteen. Getting her away from Dad and pimp had had its complications, but when Flo took her in, Adele blossomed, turned her life around, became an A student in high school, and was now going to college. There had been one major speed bump in the path. Adele had gotten pregnant by an older man who was now doing time in prison for murder. Adele had named the baby Catherine in honor of my dead wife.
“Horvecki. Did he have a criminal record?” I asked.
“I’ll check,” said Viviase. “The county might have something. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got another place you can look.”
I had walked back out to get better reception.
Victor Woo had followed me out and sat next to me on the top step. The Serita sisters, friends of Flo, lived in the bottom two floors of the brightly painted white and green wooden house. They owned the building, so I’d be paying rent to them, the same rent I had been paying behind the DQ.
From my seat on the top step, I could look past the freshly painted house across the street and into a yard where the edge of a screen-enclosed pool was visible. I stared at the water of the pool flecked with light from the setting sun and decided that I needed a shower.
“Check with Sergeant Yoder in the Sheriff’s Office,” added Viviase.
“Thanks,” I said.
The sun seemed to be dropping quickly now. I heard something below.
“Fonesca, you are one hard dog to find.”
It was Darrell Caton, which usually meant it must be Saturday, but I knew it wasn’t Saturday. Darrell was the fourteen-year-old that Sally Porovsky had conned me into being a big brother for. She was a county children and family services social worker I had been seeing socially and seeking in ways I didn’t understand.
Darrell was lean and black, wearing baggy jeans and a T-shirt that had something printed on the front. I
