Eye of Vengeance (14 page)

“OK,” he finally said to Carly after they’d wandered through the entire exhibit. “Which one do you like best?”

She looked up at him with that delicious look in her eye she used when she knew her father was about to do something she would adore, and then dropped his hand and he had to follow her around a wall to a far corner.

“This one, Dad.”

She chose not a photo of the Everglades, but a shot from behind a white-sand dune on one of Florida’s empty coasts. The sun was rising, the wind bending sea oats, the tiny ridges of swept sand so clear in relief you swore you could see the individual grains.

Nick studied it, giving the shot his appreciation, but he sneaked a look at the huge dark makeup of a silent river bend draped in a canopy of cypress. His daughter caught the look.

“I like this one because Mom would like it,” she said. “It’s like her.”

Nick quickly shifted back to the seascape.

“Yeah, you’re right, sweetheart.”

“That one’s lonely, Dad,” she said, gesturing toward the river that she knew was drawing her father.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”

Nick had the gallery keeper wrap up the seaside print.

In the car, he took a detour south to Chokoloskee Island and treated Carly to a visit of the one hundred-year-old Smallwood Store, where the original owner’s descendants, with the help of the historical society, had maintained the stilted trading post, one of the first in southwest Florida. She touched the old hand-wringer washtubs and the tanned pelts of otters and raccoons still hanging on the walls. Nick read to her from the original ledger that Ted Smallwood had kept in the twenties when his clients paid him in gator skins. Carly especially liked the Seminole Indian dolls, even though she never would have admitted that she was still into that sort of thing. Afterward Nick treated both of them to a stone-crab dinner at a restaurant in Everglades City. The meat of the stone crab claws is the most delicious seafood ever discovered, and having it fresh off the Everglades City docks where the crabbers came in from the Gulf was one of the wonders of the world.

On the trip back across Alligator Alley, it was only twenty minutes before Nick looked back through the rearview mirror to see Carly sound asleep. His cruise control was set at eighty, and he was feeling pretty good about himself. He’d spent the day with his daughter. She’d been relatively pleased with their adventure. He was being the dad he was sure he was supposed to be, the dad he promised to be over and over on moonlit nights when he went to his family’s grave site and sat in the grass, and whispered to Julie and Lindsay, “I will do the right thing by her, guys. I will do the right thing by all of you.”

When his cell phone rang Nick’s shoulders jumped as if a trumpeter had sneaked into the passenger seat and ripped a high C into his ear.

“Jesus!” he hissed and reached over to snatch up the phone. He didn’t recognize the number on the readout. He knew no one at the paper would bother him on the weekend, but it wasn’t a paper prefix anyway.

He was about to let the cell take a message but then pushed the answer button. Sources, he thought. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.

“Nick Mullins,” he said, businesslike.

“Mr. Mullins. This is Detective Hargrave.”

Mr. Uncooperative, Nick thought. No use for the press.

“Detective. What’s up?”

“I’d like to have a sitdown with you, Mr. Mullins. Go over some things that might benefit the investigation.”

Despite his reticence, Hargrave knew exactly how to dangle possibilities in front of a reporter. Even if the ploy was new to him in dealing with the media, Nick was sure Hargrave had used it with informants and inmates before.

“I would be more than happy to meet wherever you’d like on Monday, Detective,” Nick said.

“You know JB’s on the Deerfield Beach oceanfront? Just north of the pier?”

“Yeah,” Nick said, picturing the place.

“I figure it’s close enough to your home. We could meet there about eleven tonight.”

Nick didn’t answer. Why would Hargrave know where he lived? And though Nick knew how easy it was to find someone’s private cell number, it was unusual for a cop to check out the address and phone of a reporter.

“Detective, I don’t usually work on weekends. I like to be with my family.”

Nick checked the rearview The sun was going down in the west behind him. Carly was still asleep, her head flopped to one side against the door panel, her mouth slightly open.

“So eleven o’clock, then,” Hargrave said and Nick could picture the man’s hatchet face, impassive, unaffected by anything Nick had said. The detective had not called to ask. He was ordering, like he would if Nick were a suspect, or a confidential street source, or an underling. Nick didn’t like any of those labels. He was about to get pissed off and open his mouth again but stopped himself. A sentence seemed to slip into his head from the back seat:
You’re not the boss of me!
It was the girls’ favorite answer to each other when they’d argue and Nick recalled it as being cute. Petty. But cute.

“OK, Detective. If it’s that important, I’ll see you at eleven,” he finally said. Hargrave did not answer and simply hung up.

Chapter 15

E
lsa met him at the door. Always vigilant when her Carly was away, she had watched for the sweep of headlights coming into the drive. Nick checked his sleeping daughter and then got out and opened the back door. He slipped his hand under Carl’s legs and as he lifted her from the seat she instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck and lay her head on his shoulder, her eyes still shut. He carried her in as Elsa held open the door: “
Aaayyy, pobrecita, esta cansada,”
Elsa. said.

In Carly’s bedroom, the covers were already turned down. Nick laid her in her bed, took off her shoes and watched her scrunch her body into the pillows and heard her exhale contentedly. He bent to kiss her forehead, then turned out the dimmed lamp and started to leave.

“Good night, Daddy.”

Nick turned back.

“Faker,” he whispered and knew her smile was there in the dark. “Thanks for going with me.”

“You’re welcome.”

In the hall, he asked Elsa to make him some coffee and then went out to empty the car. It was ten o’clock when he sat alone at the kitchen table and ate the
salteñas
from the cooler and sipped his coffee. Why did Hargrave want to meet with him in a seaside bar, of all places? Not in his office. Not with Joel riding shotgun. He had been rolling the possibilities in his head since the detective had hung up and wasn’t any closer to a solid guess. It was well out of character for the guy, and Nick kept running the conference-table scene through his head, trying to pick out who in that room had gotten the worst of Hargrave’s skepticism and distrust, and decided it hadn’t been him.

“You are OK, Mr. Mullins?” Elsa said, breaking the silence with her quiet voice.

“Huh? Oh, yes, yes, Elsa. I’m fine,” Nick said, shaking his head back into the present. “We had a good day. But I have to go out again.”

The housekeeper pointedly looked up at the kitchen clock.

“I’ll lock up when I leave.”

Elsa did not bother hiding her worried brow.

“It’s OK, Elsa,” Nick said. “I’m OK.”

“You are going to talk to Ms. Julie and Lindisita?”

Nick had once confided in Elsa, told her of his night trips to the cemetery. He guessed that her heritage, her acceptance of the souls and ghosts of the dead, led her to be wary, but not overtly concerned. She wasn’t going to call the loony bin to come take him away.

“You will be home to take Carlita to church, yes?”

Sunday was the one day of the week that Elsa spent with her own family since the accident. Her grown daughter and now teenage grandsons would be expecting her. She’d given so much to Nick, he would never deny her that. But he was also feeling an apprehension in the old woman’s eyes. His late nights before the accident. The heavy drinking she had witnessed afterward.

“Yes, Elsa,” Nick said. “I will be back.”

Nick let the valet park his old Volvo because it was the only way at JB’s. Nobody in South Florida puts a parking lot on the waterfront, so restaurants and bars were forced to purchase alternative spots for their clientele, and they sure weren’t giving it out for free.

Nick took the stub, walked into the restaurant foyer and immediately wished he’d taken a shower and shaved. JB’s was an upscale place and the late diners looked wealthy and hip. A scruffy-looking guy in blue jeans and a polo shirt didn’t get so much as a look from the maître d’. That was OK by Nick. He figured Hargrave for the outdoor bar and walked right on by the
WAIT TO BE SEATED
sign and worked his way back. As he stepped out through the glass doors, the live, the slightly sour scent of the ocean washed up into his face and although the smell of low tide was pleasant enough to Nick, he wondered how the to-be-seen people could dine with the odor washing over their food on the humid breeze. He moved toward the bar and let his eyes go first to the corners, where he knew a cop like Hargrave would have his back against a wall. He found him there, sitting on a stool, his thin back straight as a stick, his pointed elbows stuck into the bar top. Nick thought of a praying mantis and then walked over in full view so the detective could see him coming. The burly sergeant was nowhere to be seen.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Nick said, never knowing for sure how plainclothes detectives wanted to be greeted out in the civilian world. He noted that Hargrave did not unlace his fingers to offer a handshake and he slid onto the open stool.

“Sticky,” Hargrave said.

Nick thought what multiple meanings that statement held and then fell back on the weather.

“Yeah, pretty humid,” he said and listened for a moment to the sound of the surf brushing up onto the sand fifty yards out into the darkness.

“Buy you a drink?” the detective said.

“Just iced tea.”

Hargrave’s hands hovered over a bourbon glass and with a nod of his head got the attention of the bartender and ordered Nick’s tea. Nick had not taken a drink of alcohol since he’d gone on a six-month bender after the accident, but he did not begrudge others their habits.

“Thanks,” he said to Hargrave when the tea arrived and they went quiet, both having run out of manners.

“You seem to have some kind of relationship with Ms. Cotton, Mullins. We’re the ones that caught Ferris, but she wants to talk to you first. What’s that all about?”

Nick waited until he finished ripping a couple of sugar packets and dumping their contents in his tea. A stalling tactic, to get his answer straight.

“Can’t say that I know,” he finally said. “I talked with her a few times when it happened and then only a little during the trial. She seemed to like the stories I wrote. I got the sense she liked being, you know, respected.”

Hargrave took a sip of his whiskey, looked down into the glass. “Yeah, I read your stories. You never called her homeless. The rest of the media kept calling her a homeless woman bringing her kids up in a car.”

Nick remembered the arguments he’d had with editors over that.

Hargrave let him think and then said, “She give you anything you didn’t tell us about in that room?”

This guy was going to be hard to slide anything by, Nick thought. “Not really,” he said, taking a long drink of the tea, trying to judge the guy. Hargrave was pushing this investigation, up late on a Saturday, reworking the already unusual ground of talking to a reporter. Would it hurt to give him the mention of the letters? Would the detective give him anything in return? Nothing ventured, as they say.

“You get the letters she said her attorney kept forwarding on to her? The ones from sympathy folks and people encouraging her?” Nick said.

Hargrave lifted one eye at him, making Nick think maybe something was wrong with the guy’s peripheral vision. “No. It wasn’t mentioned.”

“She said that she had held on to some of them, put them in a box someplace. I figured, you know, that I might go back,” Nick said, avoiding Hargrave’s look. “Might be some names, maybe some threats against Ferris, you know, ‘We’ll get that son-of-a-bitch’ types.”

“We’ll have to look into it,” the detective said, but Nick could see the mental note-taking going on in Hargrave’s head. He’d probably be at her door Monday morning, if not sooner.

He drank his tea. Maybe it was time to get something back.

“So what’s with the federal guy at the meeting?” he asked, knowing Hargrave would have checked the guy out with his own law enforcement contacts as soon as he could get out of the lieutenant’s sight.

“OK,” Hargrave said, recognizing the game of give-and-take. “He’s with the Secret Service. Sources say he’s down here as security on a political junket, but he’s got this hairbrush up his ass about snipers. They say he’s got a whole list of shootings that have anything to do with long-distance kills and high-powered rifles.”

“They say? Who’s they?”

Hargrave let something that might have been a grin come onto his face. “My unnamed sources.”

Nick tried to give the information an appropriate “That’s interesting” response. But he was thinking about his own list of shooting victims, the one he’d asked Lori to put together. It was still in his computer at work and he hadn’t taken the time to look at it all.

“You’ve seen this list?” he asked Hargrave.

“No. But Fitzgerald’s definitely got a hard-on about it. And with all this homeland security shit, that puts the pressure on us to cooperate with him.”

“And with me,” Nick said.

“The guy’s on a timetable,” Hargrave said, sipping again at his drink, but Nick could see there was nothing but ice left in the bottom.

“What do you mean?”

The detective again gave Nick another sideways look, while sucking a cube into his mouth and then gnashing the thing between his teeth.

“Jesus, Mullins. Don’t you read your own paper?”

“Yeah, but I only believe half of it,” Nick said.

Hargrave looked over the top of his whiskey glass as though he were trying to tell whether Nick was serious or joking. Nick shrugged.

“He’s Secret Service. The Secretary of State shows up next week for a meeting of the Organization of American States down at the convention center,” Hargrave said. “I figure this guy to be part of the advance team, but he’s a little too focused on the sniper bit. That’s usually taken care of in protocol, part of the overall security plan.”

Nick knew about the upcoming OAS confab. Representatives from most of Latin America would be present. Miami was pretty much the gateway to the United States for the Hispanic and Caribbean world now, and the Broward County convention center was north of Miami. Protestors would have a harder time getting there and the center was right next to the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport. They picked the site because it meant less travel for the dignitaries and was easier to secure. In fact, Nick figured Deirdre would be pulling him aside to do a piece about that security anytime now. But as a rule, Nick rarely paid attention to politics until it lapped over into his coverage of death or law enforcement. He recalled the time he was asked to write a story about some dustup after the President started using scenes of September 11 in his reelection advertisements. The editors came to him because Nick had interviewed families in South Florida who had lost loved ones in the Twin Towers. He had at least a fledgling relationship with them, along with their contact numbers. Death revisited. It was a shitty assignment, having to call people still emotionally raw and ask stupid questions. But he did it. And everyone he talked to said they were bothered by the use of 9/11 in any advertisement, political or not. Nick had written their responses, and had only the President’s press secretary’s rebuttal to balance it. The next day his phone and e-mail were filled with angry readers pissing on Nick personally and the “Liberal press” in general for being one-sided and taking a political stand against Republicans. Nick endured until the eighth or ninth call and then spouted off at some condo political captain: “It’s not a political story. It’s a human story, man. It’s about people’s feelings. It’s about people who lost sons and daughters and family and felt like they just got gouged again. Can’t you understand that? It’s about humans, not politics.”

The guy on the other end of the line just laughed at what he considered Nick’s naïveté. “Everything’s about politics, young man. You’ll learn that.”

Nick went back to his regular police reporting that day when the dismembered body of a prostitute was found in a Dumpster only thirty yards away from Federal Highway, and Nick was taken off the political advertisement story.

“You think the Secret Service has some kind of credible threat that a sniper is tailing the Secretary of State?” Nick said.

“Christ, I don’t know,” Hargrave said, hissing between his teeth. “I’m sure as hell not thinking that my guy is assassinating felons just to warm up for the Secretary of State. But if he finds something to link our guy to whatever he’s looking for, I’ll take the help. Right now I’ve got a homicide to work even if no one else gives a damn.”

Nick wasn’t sure how many whiskeys Hargrave had downed, but the reticent man was showing the pressure. The detective pushed his glass toward the bar gutter and peeled off a few bills and left them as a tip.

“I’ll give Ms. Cotton a visit on Monday for those letters, and maybe if I get a look at Fitzgerald’s list, I’ll let you know.”

He got up and slid past Nick without so much as letting his coat sleeve make contact. Nick said, “Thanks,” to his back as the thin man walked away.