Electric Barracuda (22 page)

Serge and Coleman began walking away.

“Come back! Don’t go!”

They continued across the lake bed, desperate cries behind them growing softer until they dissipated in the wind.

“Back to the cabin?” said Coleman.

“One more stop for the exit strategy. I need to prepare my Internet audience for tomorrow’s ‘Out.’ Then yes, back to the cabin.”

They climbed the bank and got in the ranger’s pickup. Another bounding ride through the night. Owls and opossums.

“Glad you turned me on to nature,” said Coleman. “I had no idea.”

“That’s why I like to come out here and mellow.”

Chapter Eighteen

The Next Morning

B
anging on the window of a Crown Vic.

Three sleeping agents awoke in grogginess.

More banging.

White sat up in the driver’s seat and rubbed his eyes.

Out the windshield was the man they’d met the previous night through a jalousie door.

“He’s back.” The tenant pointed at a taxi parked nearby.

White jumped out of the car, and the others followed up the stairs.

From back in the parking lot: “Tell him I need my toilet snaked.”

Banging again on a second-floor door. “Police.”

This time they heard movement inside. A shin banged a coffee table. Cursing. More movement. Glass slats slowly cranked open.

A gold badge appeared. “Agent White. Need to ask you some questions.”

The shirtless resident undid the chain and opened the door. Then he plopped in a chair and chased three aspirins with gin-flavored hair of the dog.

“You Carlos? The cabdriver?”

He nodded.

“Heard you had a suspicious fare yesterday.”

The driver rubbed his temples. “Please talk quieter.”

White stepped forward and pulled a mug shot from his jacket. “This the guy?”

Carlos squinted. “Definitely.”

“Where’d you drop him? . . .”

R
anger Jane stood next to her pickup. “What a surprise—you were still here when I woke up.”

“You misjudge me by one little incident of disappearing for six years.”

She pointed with a thumb over her shoulder. “Have to get to work. But you will call this time?”

“Absolutely,” said Serge, hoisting his backpack on the cabin’s porch.

“Promise?”

“Why wouldn’t I call?” He came down the steps and gave her a quick peck.

She threw her arms around his neck.

The pickup’s radio squawked.

“Just a sec.” Jane reached in the truck and grabbed the mike.

Coleman stumbled down the porch steps with his own backpack strapped to his stomach.

Serge walked over. “It’s supposed to go on the other side.”

“I know.” Coleman looked down at the teddy bear’s head. “I was having some trouble and it just ended up here.”

“Let me give you a hand . . .”

Jane jumped in the truck and turned the ignition. “Don’t go anywhere before I get back. I still want to talk to you.”

“What’s going on?” asked Serge.

“Something’s come up.” She threw the truck in gear. “Didn’t get the details, but I’ve never heard them so excited.”

The truck patched out.

“Let’s get going,” said Serge, heading into the woods. “That was a lucky clean break, no schmaltzy good-byes.”

“Didn’t she tell you not to leave?”

“Women always say that.” Serge pushed through branches. “But they actually
want
you to leave. They love that in a man.”

Coleman stepped over a log. “I thought they hated it.”

“They say they hate it, but inside they secretly want a rogue.”

“Are you a rogue?”

“No, but I play one in books.” Serge hacked through more branches. “You show me a guy who does exactly everything a woman wants, and I’ll show you the same guy six months later, standing on the sidewalk, wondering why some asshole’s toothbrush is in her bathroom where his used to be.”

“You know so much about chicks.”

“Except shoes.”

“Shoes?”

“You can’t get away with shoes they don’t like. It’s the one thing, don’t ask me why.”

Coleman looked down. “Where are your favorite sneakers?”

“Hid them in my backpack.” He splashed through shallow algae puddles. “Knew I was going to see Jane, so I bought these approved hiking boots.”

“But you love those sneakers.”

“They’re like a part of my body after all these years. The toes are starting to wear through, but they’re so comfy I just slap on a little duct tape and continue the happiness. But are women happy for you? No. ‘You are not wearing duct tape to a five-star restaurant.’ ”

“We don’t tell them what to wear,” said Coleman

“Except for the special costumes in bed. But they give us that one victory so we don’t stray or use the guest towels.”

“Jesus, the guest towels,” said Coleman. “Remember when you were married to Molly and I went in the bathroom and didn’t know the rule?”

“Been meaning to ask: What the hell did you do to those towels? They looked like evidence a prosecutor holds up at a murder trial.”

“Just washin’.”

Serge sidestepped. “Pile of shit.”

“Thanks,” said Coleman. He bent down and held out a hand. “Look what I almost stepped in.”

J
ane raced toward the guard booth at the main entrance into Myakka River State Park.

A dozen marked and unmarked police cars parked every which way, with more still pouring in from the highway. A tour bus arrived, blaring Kiss.

Nearly every ranger was there, too, clustered in various knots with city police, sheriff’s deputies, state agents.

A convertible T-Bird slowed as it approached the entrance. The driver noticed the pandemonium. She stopped on the opposite shoulder and unfolded a road map. A bright red fingernail moved across Sarasota County. But it wasn’t following a road. It traced a squiggly blue line. The driver smiled, re-folded the map and drove off.

Back by the guard booth, a chorus of questions and rumors.

“Everyone quiet down!” yelled White. “Who’s in command at the park?”

“That would be me.” A rugged outdoorsman in a light green parks department shirt stepped forward.

“You the one I talked to on the phone?”

He nodded.

“Where are the witnesses?”

“Over there.” He pointed behind the guard booth at a pair of glowing-pale people in knee-high white socks and the world’s largest binoculars hanging from their necks. “Canadian bird-watchers.”

The agent walked briskly and held up Serge’s mug shot. “Seen this guy?”

“Sure,” said the husband. “We were eating breakfast this morning in the hotel lobby and saw one of your American crime shows on the TV. Then we came out here for the pied-billed grebe and semi-palmated plovers . . .”

“. . . We weren’t even looking for the tufted titmouse,” said the wife. “Let alone a boat-tailed grackle. I took some pictures if you’d like—”

“Pardon me,” interrupted White. “The suspect?”

“Oh, yeah,” said the husband. “Then we were driving back to the interpretive center.”

“I always pay attention to the sides of the road,” said the wife. “Never know what you’ll see. And there they were.”

“The suspects?”

“No, yellow-throated warblers.”

White pursed his lips. “When did you see the suspects?”

She turned to her husband. “Between the warblers and loons?”

“That’s right,” he said. “The two were just standing right by the side of the road. Didn’t even spook at the sound of our car.”

“You’re certain?”

“Absolutely. The shapes of their heads, coloring. No way to mistake.”

“I got a picture.” The wife punched up the gallery on the digital camera preview screen and handed it over.

“It’s them!” White looked up quickly. “Where was this?”

The tourists gestured in the direction of the lake. “Outside one of the cabins.”

“How long ago?”

“Half hour, tops.”

Jane watched from the rear of the crowd, stomach twisting. She began slowly walking backward to her pickup and drove off at a mild speed. Until the truck rounded the first bend. Then she floored it.

“Please, God, let me get there first. I can hide them in the pickup and sneak them out the staff access . . .”

Back at the guard booth: “We got him!” Agent White told the troops. “Only one highway through the park.” He turned to the deputies. “Roadblocks at both ends of 72, east- and westbound. Check all trunks.” The deputies took off. Then to the city police: “Have rangers show you all other official-use exits and get a helicopter up.” Finally, to the ranger in charge: “Which way are the cabins?”

“Follow me.”

Hikers and assorted nature buffs scattered from the otherwise quiet road as a convoy of pickups and sedans raced through the winding, oak-canopied drive. Cabins came into sight.

Jane ran around the outside of number three. “Don’t tell me they left.” She checked inside again. Then back on the porch as a half-dozen vehicles screeched up.

A bolt of panic hit her chest. No way out of this one.

Her boss jumped from the first pickup. “Anyone in there?”

She shook her head.

He turned around. “Check the other cabins.”

Unbelievable. They thought she was with them and somehow had gotten there first.

Rangers and detectives soon regrouped. “Sir, all the other cabins are empty or just families.”

“Listen up,” said White. “We’re splitting in two groups. One will work outward from the cabin, and the other in from the park boundaries.”

“I can get some people on horseback,” said the head ranger.

“Appreciate it,” said White, looking up. “We need that helicopter . . .”

Jane felt her heart calming down. But where were they?

C
oleman took a branch in the face. “Where are we?”

“Almost to the lake.” Serge cleared a last thicket and pushed through tall weeds down to the shore. He ran along the edge as reptilian knotholes in the water watched. “Where is it?”

Coleman ran behind. “You mean the canoe you stole from the rental rack last night?”

“I stashed it right around here before we went to sleep in the cabin.” His head swung back and forth. “Damn it! I know every inch of this place.”

“But if we’re not being chased, why the hurry?”

“If you’re going to pretend, then
pretend
. Or get off the make-believe field.”

“What’s that?”

An aluminum glint. The tip of a canoe sticking out of the weeds.

Serge dragged it from his hiding spot and into the water. “Coleman, jump in and grab a paddle . . .”

T
he park was quarantined. Nobody in or out. Every police radio peppered with chatter. Not good news.

“Where haven’t we checked?” asked White.

“Some of the eastern quadrants,” said the head ranger. “And Deep Hole.”

“Deep Hole?”

“Remote area generally off-limits.”

“Can you get people out there?”

“Already on their way.”

White keyed his mike again. “Roadblock one, report.”

“Nothing here.”

“Roadblock two?”

“Still quiet. Just the Doberman.”

The deputy at the second roadblock cradled his mike and stepped into the road, flagging down an oncoming vehicle. The checkpoint was at the east end of the park, set up on a bridge so nobody could run the blockade by racing around the shoulders.

A convertible T-Bird pulled to a stop. “What’s going on, officers?”

Every deputy crowded around the knockout redhead, sucking in their stomachs.

“There’s a dangerous criminal on the loose.”

“My goodness. Am I safe?”

“It’s okay, ma’am, we’ve got it under control. But if you’d like to stay here with us until we catch him . . .”

They all looked up as the police helicopter flew low overhead. And Serge and Coleman paddled under the bridge.

Chapter Nineteen

Sarasota County

A
silver canoe drifted out of the state park.

Hanging vines, tannic water, lizards changing color.

“Are we there yet?” said Coleman.