a mullet cut morphing into a ponytail, hovered behind her.
“Saw what?” I asked innocently.
“You fed your dog in my restaurant.”
No clever retort came to mind. Guilty as charged.
“Sorry, I wasn't thinking,” I said.
“Leave,” Claire demanded.
“Excuse me?”
“And never come back.”
“I didn't mean any harm.”
“You heard me. We know who you are.”
“You do?”
Her husband piped up. “Yeah, you're that stinking cop with the sadistic temper. Everyone knows what you did, buddy.”
I blew out my cheeks.
“Get out, or we'll call the police,” Claire threatened.
I've never been thrown out of a place before. It made me feel lower than a snake's belly. I grabbed my order off the counter and left with my dog.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next hour passed in a blur. I left the Skell file at the Sheriff 's Department headquarters along with an IOU for three hundred bucks for Russo. Back at my office, I hung the copies of the victims' photographs and spread the copied files on the floor, just as they were before. Carmella's photo gave me pause, and I wondered if the body in her sister's backyard had been identified as hers. I supposed I'd find out like everyone else—from the TV.
Then I drove to the Sunset. I needed to jump into the ocean and wash away the scene at Claire's. Of all the rotten things that had happened to me recently, getting eighty-sixed from a crummy sandwich shop had been the most humiliating.
Parking in the Sunset's lot I remembered the transmitter attached to my gas tank. Whoever had put it there was probably still tailing me. I pulled the device free and walked down to the shoreline. Before I could throw it into the ocean, a black 4Runner pulled into the lot and parked beside my car. The FBI agent I'd roughed up earlier got out and came toward me.
The agent stopped when he was fifteen feet away. The first thing I noticed about him were his eyes. They were sad-looking and matched the gunmetal of his close-cropped hair. I pointed at Buster, who stood protectively by my side.
“He isn't friendly,” I said.
“Neither's his owner,” the FBI agent said.
He said this in a good-natured way. I told Buster to heel and showed the agent the transmitter.
“Looking for this?” I asked.
“What is it?”
“An electronic transmitter. Someone stuck it beneath my car.”
“Not me,” he said.
I heaved the transmitter into the ocean. Then I peeled off my clothes until I was standing in my underwear. My regard for the law had changed since my departure from the force, and I wasn't going to let this guy stop me from taking my swim.
“Jack, I need to talk to you,” the FBI agent said.
“That's nice,” I replied.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No, should I?”
He took out his wallet and showed me his credentials. Special Agent Ken Linderman, Quantico, Virginia. I'd heard of him. Linderman was the only living agent to receive the FBI Director's Award for Special Achievement for his accomplishments in hunting serial killers. Five years earlier, his daughter had vanished while jogging near the University of Miami, and it was no secret that he'd been hunting for her ever since.
“I'll be right back,” I said, and dove into the water.
Ten minutes later my mood had lifted, and I swam back to shore. Linderman sat in the sand, making nice with my dog. Standing in front of him, I let myself drip dry.
“What brings you to sunny Florida?” I asked.
“I moved to Miami six weeks ago,” he explained. “I'm running the Bureau's Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Teams throughout the state.”
I'd worked with plenty of CARD teams. The FBI had established them to deal with the overwhelming number of child abductions throughout the country. Each team had four members: two field agents supported by two profilers from the Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico.
“Is there someplace we can talk in private?” Linderman asked.
“Do you want to interrogate me?”
“Actually, I was hoping we could share information about Simon Skell.”
I felt myself stiffen. Linderman had dug up new evidence. That was why he'd tracked me down. I wanted to kick myself.
“How about my office?” I suggested.
“Your office it is,” Linderman said.
He followed me to Tugboat Louie's. My office was dark, and I opened the blinds and flipped on the overhead lights. He instinctively went to the wall where the victims' photographs hung and studied them. I went to Kumar's office and got another chair. When I returned, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, poring through the Skell file.
“Feel free to look around,” I said.
He looked up, embarrassed.
“Sorry. I should have asked.”
“That's okay,” I said.
He spent several minutes with the file. Knowing he had lost a child made me see him in a different light. I listened to the music coming from downstairs, the Doobie Brothers' “China Grove” rocking the house. Finally he got up and took a chair.
“Sorry, but I have an insatiable curiosity for cases that perplex me,” he said. “My wife says it borders on rudeness.”
Rose had told me the same thing many times. Taking a quarter from my pocket, I balanced it on my fingertips.
“Call it,” I said.
“Tails,” he said.
The quarter did several lazy gyrations above our heads. I slapped it on the back of my hand.
“Tails it is. You want to go first, or should I?”
Linderman hesitated. The sadness in his eyes was still there. I've heard it said that when you lose a child, you die every day.
“You go first,” he said. “I want to hear how you figured out Simon Skell was the Midnight Rambler.”
I paused to gather my thoughts. I'd spoken to no one about the case since the trial, and I didn't want to sound resentful for how things had turned out. As Jessie was fond of saying, it was water under the bridge.
Linderman sat with his hands folded in his lap. Something about his demeanor told me I could confide in him. Reaching across my desk, I punched a button on the CD player, and the Rolling Stones' “Midnight Rambler” came out of the speaker. The song, a thinly veiled homage to a notorious serial killer called the Boston Strangler, described a man breaking into women's houses late at night and brutally murdering them. The song was filled with rage; it described furniture and plateglass windows being broken, and how the Midnight Rambler tracked and killed
