Hell's Bay (15 page)

“The clip is high-capacity?”

“That's right. But it's preban, it's legal.”

“How high is the capacity?”

“Holds twenty rounds.”

“Anything else missing, Mr. Hankinson?”

He gave her a lazy sneer that seemed to say, “Don't push me, I'm getting there.”

Sugarman forced his hands back open, spread his fingers, took a breath.

“An HK forty-five handgun, five boxes of shells, one camouflage jacket.”

“That's it?”

“I know my stock, and that's what he got. Asshole wasted a brand-new fucking pickup truck to rip off a rifle, a handgun, and a jacket. Oh, yeah, and two cheap walkie-talkies.”

“Somebody's going hunting,” Sugarman said.

Hankinson gave him a sour look, then turned back to the sheriff.

“You got twenty-four hours, Whalen. You don't slap the cuffs on the fucker, me and the boys kick it into gear. Twenty-four hours.”

She nodded wearily. Heard it all before. Didn't bother with a civics lecture, like she knew the guy was all bluster and bullshit.

“I hear a bass boat got stolen last night, too,” Hankinson said. “Off the lot at Fisherman's Paradise.”

The sheriff nodded.

“This fucking town been going to the dogs ever since you took over.”

She let Hankinson get halfway across the lot before she called his name. He halted but didn't turn. Not only was the sheriff a female, but black to boot. The very idea must have tormented his lizard brain.

“You behave yourself, John. Don't let me hear about you and your boys harassing our good citizens. Last time I checked you chalked up two strikes. Third fall's the charm, baby. So you take care now.”

He turned his head and gave her a red-eyed withering look and stalked back to his gun shop.

“And you must be Mr. Sugarman of Key Largo.”

She peeled off her gloves, then held out her right hand. She had a firm, no-bullshit grip.

“Welcome to Florida's heartland, where the glorious Southern traditions live on.”

“Those guys are everywhere,” Sugar said. “You don't have a corner on the bubba market.”

She gave Sugar a brisk look of appraisal as if he might be gaming her. Probably happened a lot to her. This town, these people. A constant struggle to find the proper balance between authority and deference, goodwill and suspicion. Sugar couldn't tell by the slight softening of her gaze if he'd passed the test or was still on probation. Probably the latter.

“So you've been employed by the Bates family to second-guess my police work. And out of the generosity of my heart and professional courtesy I'm supposed to throw open my books.”

Sugarman sighed, watched the deputies who were milling around the front of the store trying to look busy. A tow truck pulled into the lot, and a twenty-year-old kid with long hair jumped down, paced around a little, keeping to himself, sizing up the mechanics of the job.

“For eleven years I was a deputy for the Monroe County sheriff in the Upper Keys. I have nothing but respect for the position. The professionalism required, hard work, the whole deal. Nothing but respect. If you're inclined to share some information with me, that would be generous, but if you're not so inclined, I'd certainly understand.”

“A speechmaker.”

“I polished it a little on the drive up.”

She fought off a small smile.

“You used to be a deputy, but you quit. Went private.”

“I was bumping against the good-ol'-boy ceiling,” he said. “It was either spend the next twenty years running in place or take a risk on my own.”

“Has it worked out?”

“Less paperwork,” he said, “but I sure miss my dental plan.”

That got a full smile. Good teeth. Very white and straight.

“You didn't know I was the sheriff, did you? You walked up, decided to hit on the black woman. Play the race card. Afro to Afro. See what you could trick out of the poor dumb colored girl.”

Sugarman was silent.

“True or false?”

“Somewhere in between,” he said. “Not the ‘poor dumb colored girl' thing. Just trying to do my job. Same as you.”

After a few seconds of watching her deputies, she held up the plastic bag and gave him another look at the fabric.

“Look like blood to you?”

It came across as part challenge, part something else. Sugarman couldn't put a finger on the second thing, why she'd engage him like this. Intrigued, he noted it, printing it in bold letters for later consideration.

“When did the break-in go down?”

“I put it at around midnight,” she said. “Cut the phone line to disable the alarm, then rammed. Two hours ago a passing cruiser spotted it.”

“Well, that's too bright, too red to be blood nine hours old.”

“So what do you think? What's your professional analysis?”

“What it looks like is lipstick.”

Timmy Whalen smiled again, but the test continued.

“That's kind of a stretch, don't you think? A woman puts on her lipstick before she goes off to steal a truck, heist some guns.”

“Force of habit,” Sugar said. “Ritual. She's not thinking about it, just going through her routine to keep her nerves steady.”

Timmy Whalen watched the tow-truck guy amble over to one of the deputies. Both of them lit up smokes, started talking.

“Not bad. For most guys, trying to decipher the female mind is right up there with cracking the atom.”

“That's what you think?” he said. “Person who rammed the truck into the gun shop was a woman?”

“Either that,” she said, “or one hell of a kinky guy.”

Sugarman smiled, then took another look at the truck. One of the CSI guys in jeans and a police T-shirt was taking photos.

“Something I'm wondering.”

“Yeah?”

“Why doesn't she throw it in reverse, use the rear bumper to crash the doors? A lot less damage to the truck and to her. If things go right, she drives off after it's done. This way she's got to walk away loaded down with her loot. Or she's had to stash her own vehicle somewhere nearby. Or I guess she could have a partner, and he drives her away.”

“This one's a hard-ass,” the sheriff said. “Going in backward? No, I don't think it ever crossed her mind.”

“No?”

“First, if things don't go right, she's stuck just the same, so there's uncertainty. Plus, backing a truck in the dark at thirty miles an hour, I don't see it. Too tricky. Too many ifs.”

Sugarman rubbed the back of his hand across the stubble on his cheek.

“Still, it's weird,” he said. “The whole deal, headfirst or not. It has desperation written all over it.”

Sheriff Whalen watched her deputies work.

“What're you doing, interviewing for a job?”

“Just trying to be helpful,” Sugarman said. “Maybe bond a little.”

She smiled again, meeting his eyes. “Candid, aren't we?”

“It's the only way to go.”

“All right, Mr. Detective. Anything else pop out?”

“Not really. Just what the owner said. She goes to all this trouble, steals a truck, rams it into the front, then only steals four or five things, including a camouflage jacket? It's a weird list. Very short. Very precise.”

She took a deliberate breath and her eyes blurred again. When she spoke, her voice was flat, a long way from banter.

“It's what you said. She took what she needed. She's going hunting.”

The solemn tone, her eyes bouncing off his, then fixing on a blue scrap of sky, gave Sugar another thing to jot down on his memory pad.

Sheriff Timmy was confiding in him. But what and why, he had no idea.

 

 

 

 

John and Mona Milligan pressed flat against the deck while I crashed back through the snarl of the overgrown creek. Branches swatted and clawed at my face and bare arms, drew blood more than once, but I wasn't feeling anything. The second time the engine stalled, I had to tilt it out of the water to clear the tangle of roots and weeds from the prop before I could forge on.

Finally in the main channel, I flattened the throttle and milked every RPM from the Yamaha, screaming back down the Wood River, knifing around dozens of sharp bends and switchbacks on the Broad and then back into Ponce de Leon Bay. I yelled for the Milligans to stay down, as streamlined as possible, then I huddled behind the console out of the rip and scream of the wind and tried to hail Rusty or Teeter on theVHF.

But no one was answering.

As I rounded the last bend and entered Cardiac Bay, I caught sight of the Mothership about a mile off, still anchored in the same position. A light easterly breeze was riffling the bay, pushing silvery scallops out toward the horizon like the pulses of sound waves. The last fumes of elation from our fishing expedition had burned off, and at that moment the landscape looked stark and harsh, its austere beauty a cruel hoax.

I gave the VHF another try but got no response, then I fixed on the straightest heading to the houseboat, though I knew that course would take us across some risky oyster beds and rocky shoals. I believed the tide was just high enough for us to skim safely across them if I kept us in the narrow trench that cut across the flats.

Running that fast across such skinny water was always an act of faith and denial. A hypnotic state takes over, as if you were skating across an unbroken layer of solid ice. You tell yourself it'll all be fine if you stay in the blue water, or settle for the green, avoid the brown and the white. But the sun and clouds can scatter the colors into wildly different tones, producing a devious camouflage that can fool the eye and send even the most experienced boater slamming aground. I'd made my share of errors over the years, failed to see a shoal or coral head, and crashed the lower unit into unyielding boulders. Had to limp home or call for help or spend the night at sea until rescued by a passing boater. But at that moment, skimming the sleek skin of the bay, the skiff seemed to be airborne, riding a slippery cushion of air so insubstantial that I felt for a moment that we were about to break contact entirely with gravity and lift off into the clear atmosphere.

Halfway into the bay, just as I saw the dark outer rim of the oyster beds twenty yards ahead, something caught my attention in the distance. I rubbed the focus back into my eyes and craned around the console. From behind the Mothership, the yellow bass boat was slowly emerging. It seemed to be nosing around the mangroves that formed the sheltered cove of our anchorage.

Distracted by the distant boat, I angled out of the head of the channel, and the skeg clipped a rock, knocking the skiff hard to port. Mona yelped, and John was thrown against the bulkhead.

I tugged the wheel too hard, overcorrecting, and veered beyond the other side of the groove. The props banged another rock and the engine sputtered and died.

We lurched to a stop, and in the sudden silence, as I was reaching for the ignition key, faint pops of gunfire echoed across the water. Six shots, then six more after that, and a last group of six or seven, like the methodical hammer whacks of a master carpenter.

John Milligan rose to his feet.

“Get down, goddammit! I'm not saying it again.”

Milligan dropped to his knees and I got the engine started, revved it hard, plowing up a furrow of mud and silt behind us, ramming ahead until I had us back up to speed. I steered back into the narrow channel, once again racing flat out, but this time holding precisely to the twisty course.

I was just exiting the far end of the rocky shoal when the woman in the camouflage jacket turned her head and saw our skiff approaching.

Without another look our way, she gunned her sluggish boat up onto the gray sheen of the bay, made a wide loop around the mangroves, and roared west toward the maze of channels that led out to the Gulf.

There was something in the leisurely manner of her getaway that suggested she was trying to lure me into chasing her. But I didn't bite.

I streaked across the remaining half mile, my cousin and uncle lying side by side on the deck. A hundred yards from the Mothership I spotted a red object floating near the mangroves. It didn't belong there, wasn't right, but I kept my heading straight on the houseboat for those last hundred yards.

As I was backing down the RPMs, preparing to sweep alongside the rear platform and make fast to the cleats, the red object came into focus.

Teeter's chef hat.

It was waterlogged and about to disappear below the surface, bobbing on the dying wake of the bass boat.

I swung us in that direction, carved a tight turn around the stern of the Mothership, and tugged the throttle lever back to neutral. The skiff wallowed to a stop, and I cut the engine off.

“Teeter!”

I yelled his name twice more but heard nothing.

The Milligans rose, Mona dusting the last clinging spiders off her T-shirt, John climbing up onto the bow deck, peering ahead into the tangle of limbs and roots that rimmed our mooring spot.

“Over there,” he said. “Up on the bank.”

He pointed toward a hump of marl and muck that jutted out of the stand of mangroves. The water thinned out quickly in that direction, going from three feet where we were to only inches near the bank. So I tilted up the engine, undipped the fiberglass pole, and climbed onto the engine platform.

“Stay forward,” I told them. “Both of you. Up front.”

Mona stepped up onto the bow beside her dad, and when the boat leveled out, I got us gliding toward the bulge of mud and sand and rotting vegetation.

I saw Teeter's shoes first, old black basketball high-tops that he must have owned for thirty years. Then his white chef's pants, spattered with mud and debris. He was lying on the marl, propped up on his elbows, watching us approach. Chest heaving, mouth open, eyes dazed.

“Oh, shit,” Milligan said.