Hawk Channel Chase (34 page)

Good for her, I thought. She had used the present tense, “tight as it is,” instead of the past.

Back out in the parking lot Alyssa drove northward while Beth and I started the motorcycles and fed our helmet straps through their loops. A red Mini Cooper pulled up facing me, a lovely woman with silver hair at the wheel, the lawn-mowing guy from Bay Point hanging out the passenger side window.
 

“Lucky thing I saw you two standing out here,” he said. “Out of the blue my neighbor who saw it all calls from Wyoming. He thought he left his trickle hose running in his sago palms. He said a helicopter landed in the water that day and a dude got off and into a fast boat of some kind. The chopper took off, the boat brought the man to shore and the boat went away. That’s all I know. See you.”

The Mini Cooper scratched gravel on its departure.

Everyone in a tropical hurry.

“Where to?” I said to Beth. “It’s your turn to guide us onward.”

“You’re plum out of gumshoe errands?”

“I get three thirty-minute breaks every twenty-four hours.”

She wiggled the twist-grip throttle, barely revved the engine to three grand. She went full-bliss at the sound of it. “Well… there is one thing.”

22

Eight minutes south of the restaurant, on Cudjoe Key, Beth Watkins signaled a right turn onto Blimp Road. It’s a traffic-free straightaway just short of two miles in length, and it ends abruptly at Florida Bay. Hard pavement into choppy salt water. She led me a hundred yards northward and pulled her cycle to the shoulder.

“I’ve been thinking about this for three weeks,” she said.

I knew what she had in mind. Twenty-four hours earlier she had said,
“The crap never lets up. Let’s run our lives so that riding always comes first.”

I pointed at the ground. “I’ll wait right here.”
 

“I’m not trying to make my dick bigger than yours, Alex.” She smiled and snugged her helmet strap. “I just happen to love this machine. I won’t kill myself.”

I said, “Okay, please survive.” I wanted to tell her that I’d once seen a car go off the boat launch ramp at road’s end. But she went belly-down to the tank, lifted the revs to hot-launch the Ducati, controlled her rear wheel spin like a champ and became a receding speck in four seconds. Under the twin exhaust tips’ intense blast I heard chirps of rubber. She hit her shift points and stayed gracefully shy of spinning her rear tire in each gear. I suspected she’d had lessons from a pro.

Even with the diminishing noise I barely heard my phone ring. Duffy Lee Hall’s number showed in the window: “I’ve had a few successes online,” he said. “Those topics you asked me to research. You probably want the details face-to-face.”

“You’re the renaissance man, Hall,” I said. “Transforming your obsolete occupation into numerous others.”

“Well, I miss my darkroom,” said Duffy Lee. “I curse the words ‘digital camera,’ even though I own three of the fuckers. You want to come on by?”

“I’m up on Cudjoe,” I said. “I’ll call when I get back into town, precisely at beer-thirty.”

“I’ll take that as your offer to buy.” He clicked off.

Duffy Lee had mentioned something that caused a distant bell to ring. Or a bell in a distant part of my brain. What the hell had it been? He’d been online; he’d had success; he cursed digital cameras; he’d wanted not to discuss anything over the phone… Bang.

I’d forgotten to chase an important detail.

I needed to go home, clean up and follow up.

Two-thirds of the way back from the water’s edge, Beth cut her throttle and coasted the Ducati, then braked to a quick, firm halt. She lifted her helmet, shook out her damp hair. “I want a road with corners,” she said. “I really need a performance driving school. Meanwhile, I treat the machine with respect.”

“And so easy on the tires,” I said. Heat radiated off the Ducati. “Did you work off your hate for Uncle Disgusting?”

“He’ll get his due.” She unzipped, pulled up her T-shirt to mop sweat from her face and from between her unadorned breasts, also damp, a dazzling cream color in direct sun, obviously delighted by the fast ride.

Her phone rang. The T-shirt fell to spoil the view. She checked the caller ID, frowned and took the call. I stepped away to give her privacy. She clicked shut her phone twenty seconds later.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “They found my murderer. The pawnshop paid off, thanks to you. Some shitbird from up north named Hernando DeBary. He’s denying everything, but the pawnshop has him on video.”

“Nice fake name. He tried to hock the hard drive?”

She nodded. “He brought in items from five different B-and-Es over the past six weeks. He claims he bought all the swag from some black guy on Whitehead Street, but they suspect him for a half-dozen other burglaries. God these criminals are dumb.”

“It can’t wait until…”

“He’s asked for an attorney. I need to convince a judge that he’s a murder suspect before he posts bond. I’d like to interview him right away, too, while he’s still scared. Get him to ignore his lawyer and spill his guts. And I’ve got to run through the rain locker before I meet with anyone.”

“Any clue to his connection to Hammond?”

“No mention,” she said. “How do you know it’s a fake name?”

“It’s a county north of Tampa and a city near Daytona. Where did you pick up Navy lingo for taking a shower?”

“I never told you? I’m a military brat. My father was an admiral, retired now.”

She zipped up, looped her helmet strap, cranked it up and left. I could hear the Ducati accelerate clear down to the Bow Channel Bridge, echoing off the puffy cumulus cloud that hung above the William Freeman Sheriff’s Substation at Drost Road.

I stood on the roadside surrounded by sago scrub and marsh flats, alone but for the blimp in the odd quiet. The breeze carried no scent though I might not detect smells that a newcomer would notice. I had piled up a lot of information to digest. The location of the Mansion, a/k/a the Porcupine; Sally’s misbehavior, her definite link to Cliff Brock; the idea of a murderous home invasion within forty yards of my own living room; Bob Catherman’s odd detachment from his daughter’s disappearance.

My phone rang again. Marnie said, “I think someone was in the house.”

“If you report it to the cops, do it in person.”

“Me go to the cop shop instead of them come here?”

“You don’t want them in your house, anyway,” I said. “They always find more than they were searching for. You want to be at the police station anyway.”

“I thought I picked up something on the scanner,” she said. “Where are you?”

I explained myself and told her that I’d check back in an hour.

I tried to assess the fool quotient in cruising Old Papy Road to search for the Porcupine Mansion. I wouldn’t learn anything beyond confirming its site, and the motorcycle provided the opposite of anonymity. Still—as if seeing it could provide a miracle insight, take me a single step closer to answering fifty questions—I wanted to view the source of all this official confusion and deception.

I pocketed my phone, began with the helmet, then saw the Monroe County green-and-white coming toward me, moving slowly down Blimp Road. Fifty feet away, the deputy lit up the car like a Tokyo disco. The roof rack, the grill flashers, the wig-wag headlights. I was surprised he didn’t have blinking blue neon under his rocker panels.

He angled the car so that its nose crossed the center line, perhaps to block an escape attempt though he must have known it was ineffective. When he exited the vehicle, I recognized Chris Ericson, a former city cop.

“Little over the top this time, eh, Mr. Rutledge?”

He could have been talking about any of ten infractions in the past three days. “How so, Deputy?” I said.

“We had a report a couple minutes ago. A motorcycle doing a hundred and… at least a hundred and twenty, maybe one-thirty out here.”

“I didn’t know Fat Albert was that good,” I said.

“Let’s just call it documented,” said Ericson.

“This Triumph is older than you are, Deputy. Does it look like it’s capable of running over a hundred?”

He stared at the motor and pondered the concept.

“Does it smell like a motorcycle that just did a high-speed pass?” I said. “You’d think it would heat up after quadrupling the speed limit. The motor, the brakes… I mean, I’ve been riding it today. But if I abused a leaky old beast like this, you’d see an oil puddle for starters.”

Ericson gazed up at Fat Albert, the tethered surveillance balloon. “I see your point.” He didn’t look down at the single drop of oil under the crankcase.

“Have you got an eyewitness to back up this report?” I said.

“I know you’re a friend of Sheriff Liska,” said Ericson. “And a closer friend of the lady detective. I know the game.”

I shook my head. “No game, Deputy. But I think the sheriff trusts me. It goes back to when both of you worked for the city.”

Ericson studied the flat land east of us, clusters of pisonia and pigeon-berry bushes, a line of sweet-bay hardwoods and a single unmolested manzanillo tree.

“So, hypothetically,” I said, “if Fat Albert had a video of an alleged speed event on this roadway, would someone in the blimp control building send it to the Mansion for relay to the county?”

The deputy kept his gaze on a distant point but tightened his jaw. “It’s logical. I suppose it’s possible.”

Pushing my luck, still guessing, I said, “Straight to one of the comm guys, the men who run the radios and monitor the fax?”

“I’ve only been inside once, at 3:00 a.m. for a cup of coffee.”

“Shame about that guy.”

“It’s a bitch, but we don’t know about that. We don’t know shit.”

“With you on that.”

“You didn’t notice another motorcycle in the vicinity, did you?”

“It might have been one of your tin-bearing brethren,” I said.

“Shit, that detective downtown?” Ericson pounded a fist into a flat hand. “Man, I’d like to nail her. I’d like to give her a speeding citation, too, but I have to respect the badge.”

I rode south to the end of Sugarloaf Boulevard then turned right, as Alyssa had directed, although you can’t turn left. It’s designated Florida 939A, but its name on the maps is Old State Road 4A. Locals don’t do route numbers. They call the dead-end stretch Old Papy Road, after a powerful state representative who brought loads of postwar improvements to the Keys. I supposed the naming confusion suited the Mansion. With its antenna array largely hidden by vine-woven vegetation, no passer-by could claim to have seen anything unusual. Except for the green-and-white county vehicle guarding a sturdy electric gate at the top of a two-rut driveway.

Not recognizing the deputy inside the car, I drove past and took several sweeping curves to the dead end a mile away. Stopped there, absorbing the quiet, I took a moment to palm my small camera. I wasn’t sure what I might document, but I wanted to sneak a few photos of property near the Mansion.

It didn’t happen. From a quarter-mile off, scanning the crest of the Sugarloaf Creek bridge, I saw the deputy leaning against his cruiser, arms crossed, eyes locked on me. It’s a free country and I can take pictures anywhere on a public road. Except… I slipped the Canon back into my pocket before I crossed the short bridge.

Was it Butch or Sundance who said,
“Who are those guys?”

The other then said,
“They’re very good.”

23

I had hoped to sift facts and sort thoughts on my ride back into Key West, but the dead-ahead sun was a blinding bastard and traffic was haywire. My concentration went to simple survival. Staying awake, remaining vertical, winning the inbound demo derby.

Except for the morning nap that Marv Fixler interrupted, I had been in Hawk Channel or on the motorcycle for most of twelve hours, after four hours’ rest. I had reached the point where my crusty logic required assistance: a legal pad, a felt-tip pen, a rocking chair and a cold beer. I still had to follow up with Duffy Lee Hall, but I wanted to park the machine and chill a few minutes before barging onward, trying to connect dots, make sense of too much info and too few confirmed facts.

I rolled the Triumph behind the house, my legs still vibrating, face caked with dried sweat. Someone should create a mesh crash helmet for ventilation. A patchwork of Kevlar and inch-square solar panels to power eight miniature fans inside the shell. Hell, if I turned myself into a backyard inventor, I could quit leaping into misfit occupations.

What was I thinking? Every meth lab dope rat in the hemisphere was a backyard inventor, of sorts…

I sensed change in the yard, something askew. A detail was off, something as trivial as a dead frond canted oddly or grass mashed flat, trampled where it might stand tall to remind me to mow. I hung the helmet on the handlebar and checked for a puddle to ensure that a water line hadn’t split under the shower, searched the mango tree for cracked branches, partial loss of crop. A siren cried several blocks away, but its wail faded. Beyond the details I sensed a vibe of regret in the still late-day air.