Love Kills (8 page)

Like most reporters, I take notes in my own style of shorthand and abbreviations. Sometimes they are difficult to decipher immediately upon returning to the office from a crime scene; these were nine years old. And, never one to waste paper, I always use both sides of each page and the inside covers.

Lawyers and cops, often eager to seize reporters' notes, don't realize that unless their specialty is hieroglyphics, it won't do them much good, at least not in my case.

I over-report. Always. Better too much detail than too little. One never knows how much space a story will be allotted. It depends on what sort of news day it is, how productive the staff, and the size of the news hole—the space left for actual stories after all that infernal advertising. The problem with over-reporting is you then face the dilemma of what to leave out. Favorite quotes, juicy tidbits, background, and color that you badgered your sources for—and worked your ass off to get—often don't make it into the newspaper.

Everything a reporter knows is never published.

I squinted at my old notes, as baffled as a pet dog trying to read a newspaper. I had the right pages. The little skull-and-crossbones doodle in the margin was clear evidence that I'd been sitting next to Spencer York at the time I drew it.

That story had been yet another skirmish in my daily war with editors. I remembered urging them to leave in more details about York and his “rescue missions” in other states. But space was tight that day, and my editors weren't especially interested in what he'd done outside our circulation area.

Something had to be cut, and that was it.

But as my notes confirmed, York had described snatching children in Arkansas, New Mexico, and Texas. The details came back to me as I read on. One case involved twin boys. He'd mentioned, without a trace of guilt, that their panicked mother had stumbled and fallen down her front stairs after glancing out a window in response to her children's screams and seeing York, a twin tucked under each arm, running to his old pickup truck. What went through that woman's mind before she discovered his explanatory note and her ex-husband's custody papers taped to her mailbox?

I thought at the time that York was damn lucky no one had ever shot him. Then somebody did. What if the publicity he loved had attracted a well-heeled client? Perhaps he had done another snatch to pay the rent. Maybe it went bad. Or a prior victim may have seized the moment, when news coverage made York a visible target. People from his past were all possible suspects.

The Custody Crusader had worked out of a post office box and operated on a shoestring. Where were the storage boxes with
his
notebooks and records?

I snatched up my phone on the first ring. Andy, the police desk rookie, sounded breathless. He had picked up snatches of Coast Guard radio transmissions. A survivor of the
Calypso Dancer
had been rescued and was being airlifted to a Miami hospital. Good news at last.

“Only one?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

“That's what I heard, Britt. It sounds like they're calling off the search.”

“Is the survivor a man or a woman?” I held my breath.

“Don't know. I'll keep listening. They haven't put out anything official yet.”

Lieutenant Skelly O'Rourke is not the first man who lied to me and probably won't be the last.

The Coast Guard public information officer had sworn he'd page me at the first hint of news about the
Calypso Dancer.
So much for promises.

He answered his phone. “Hey, Britt, I was just about to call you.”

“Oh?”

“You bet. We found a survivor from the
Calypso Dancer.
He's being airlifted to Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach.”

“He?”

“Sure thing. Marsh Holt, the missing bridegroom.”

I closed my eyes tight for a moment, thinking of the Hansens. “Any sign of her?”

“No.”

“You're still searching, right?” I didn't say I'd heard otherwise. Reminding law enforcement types that we monitor their radios encourages them to make it more difficult.

“The mission is no longer rescue but recovery,” he said. “And that may be impossible. It's seven hundred fathoms deep out there.”

“But if he's alive, she may be too,” I protested. “What if she's still out there?”

“Unlikely, Britt. Between you and me? They talked to the husband. Poor guy. The vessel sank. She was belowdeck at the time. He saw it go down.”

“Oh, no.”
He said he'd take care of her.
Her father's words rang in my ears. “What happened?”

“Sudden squall out of nowhere in the middle of the night.”

“But they had a radio. Why no distress call?”

“The boat took on water so rapidly he didn't have a chance. You know how fast shit happens.”

“Has her family been notified?”

“The Commander plans to give them a call. The son-in-law wants to talk to them first. Then we'll issue the press release.”

“How is he?”

“Suffering from sunburn, exposure, and dehydration. Emotional, as you can imagine. But considering he's been adrift, clinging to a small life raft for three days, he's in pretty good shape.”

“How'd he manage to find himself a life raft when he had no time to radio a distress call or rescue his wife?”

“That's pretty cynical, Britt. You having a bad day? It's one of those life rafts in a canister. When a vessel submerges it automatically detaches and inflates. They come equipped with a flashlight, laser, transistor radio, and night-vision goggles. Unfortunately, he lost the equipment in rough seas in the dark. Hell of a honeymoon.”

Not as bad as no honeymoon at all, I thought.

Just as Skelly O'Rourke broke his promise to me, I broke mine to the Hansens. I had promised to call them immediately with any news, good or bad. I couldn't. Let the son they never had break the bad news, the hunk who vowed to take care of their only daughter.

Life, I thought, is just one broken promise after another….

Lottie's telephoto lens captured Marsh Holt, wearing borrowed sunglasses, being assisted off the chopper at the hospital, a thin blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

After I was certain the parents had been told the bad news, I called.

“Marsh thinks she's gone. He was there,” the weeping father said. “We're praying for a miracle.”

“Until you hear otherwise, there's always hope,” I said.

The hospital refused to put calls through to the survivor from anyone but immediate family. The patient had been admitted for overnight observation, a spokesman said, adding that he would probably be released the following day.

A hospital source gave me his room number. Checkout time was 11
A.M
. I showed up at ten.

I carried a clipboard and a manila envelope and tried to blend into the hospital setting. A Channel 7 camera crew had invaded earlier, trying to interview the Honeymoon Survivor, as he had been dubbed on the eleven o'clock news, but had been nabbed by hospital security and escorted off the premises.

My worry was that Holt might have been moved to another room as a result. The door stood ajar. I knocked and then, heart pounding, stepped inside.

He was alone, staring absently out a window at the deep blue water of sparkling Biscayne Bay.

I had pictures of Holt but was not prepared for his striking physical presence. His muscular body made the hospital bed look small. His curly hair was dark, eyelashes long, his tan bronze. I'd seen his expression of numb disbelief many times before, lately in my own mirror.

His sunburned lips were cracked and peeling and he wore several days' stubble, the only outward signs of his ocean ordeal.

I bustled into his room and smiled.

“I brought you something,” I said.

“Are you from administration? I'm being released.”

I wasn't sure if the husky rasp in his voice was raw emotion or the effects of salt water on his throat.

“I was on the island about the same time you were,” I said. “A friend and I found your camera on the beach, washed up on the reef. Twenty-four frames had been shot. My friend's a photographer. When we got back, she had them developed.”

He looked confused.

“We had no way to return them. But when I saw the Coast Guard bulletin I knew they would be important to you and Vanessa's parents. I've already sent them a set.”

His dry lips parted but he said nothing, so I babbled on.

“You probably don't want to look at them now, but when you feel up to it—”

He ignored my words, took the proffered envelope, tore it open, and began to shuffle through the pictures, lingering over a laughing photo of the two of them on the beach. Eyes swimming, he swallowed hard.

“You found our camera,” he said, voice still raspy. “Nessa was upset when we lost it.” He raised wet eyes to mine. “These are the last—” His voice broke.

“I'm a reporter,” I confessed, “for the
Miami News.
Here, I brought you a copy of the story in today's paper. A photographer and I flew with the Coast Guard on one of their search missions. When we pinpointed where we'd found your camera, it helped narrow the search. Thank God you're safe.”

“Thanks for helping,” he said bleakly.

“I'd like to talk about what happened.”

He looked puzzled when I opened my notebook. “But why…?”

“Your survival's a miracle. People care. It's news.”

“News,” he said bitterly, “that I couldn't save my wife?”

“It's not your fault. The sea can be treacherous.”

He nodded. “The day was beautiful, exactly what we'd imagined. We joked that we'd never go home, just keep sailing away forever. Together.”

He studied the photo of her waving, in her white shorts and crop top, legs tanned, hair caught in a playful ocean breeze.

“What happened?”

He described a moonless night in the Atlantic and sheer terror. As Vanessa fixed dinner in the galley, he went topside to check a fish pot they had in the water for lobsters and a net for stone crabs. The wind velocity picked up. He saw the swells begin to build. Within minutes it was a full-blown squall with earsplitting thunder and lightning.

The
Calypso Dancer
bucked, rocked, and bounced. He secured things on deck, thought he smelled gas, and called down, telling Vanessa to turn on the blowers so the bilge fan could clear out the air.

He started down but there was an almost immediate explosion and fire. He shouted for her to stay calm and raced up the companionway for a fire extinguisher mounted next to the flying bridge near the helm. A gigantic wave swept him overboard as he reached for it. Water poured into the boat and gushed up from the bilges. Vanessa, still trapped below, was swallowed by the dark sea as the
Calypso Dancer
swiftly sank. He found himself alone in steep swells, calling her name, in shark-infested waters hundreds of miles from Miami. He came upon the tiny lifeboat amid the floating debris, then rode that tossing raft for three days beneath a blazing sun.

“I knew she was dead,” he said, voice ragged. “But at times I felt her there with me. I talked to her.”

The crew of a passing freighter spotted Holt and radioed the Coast Guard.

“You were lucky. You were far north of the usual steamship routes, which limited your chances of rescue.”

“Lucky?” The word was a hollow echo.

Uh-oh. Dreaded squishy sounds approached from behind me, the rubber soles of comfortable white nursing shoes on the hospital floor.

She wore an
Aha!
expression, eyeballed my notebook, and demanded my identification. Lip curling with unconcealed contempt, she scrutinized the photo on my press card.

I sighed. I admit it is not flattering. Shot on a rainy, blustery, bad-hair day, I resemble a bedraggled spaniel.

“You'll have to leave, miss. Now.”

The patient and I exchanged glances.

She tapped her foot.

“It's all right,” he protested. “We were talking.”

“Hospital policy—” she began.

Holt was about to be released anyway.

“Where are you going?” I asked him, after she left in a huff. I wondered if she'd be back with security guards.

“I'm not sure,” he said. “I don't have a credit card or a red cent. Not even shoes. Vanessa's dad is wiring me some cash.”

I said I'd drive him to Western Union and then to a hotel.

 

I picked him up on the ramp downstairs. Despite his protests, he arrived in a wheelchair pushed by an attendant half his size.

“How can I go home without her?” Exhausted, he leaned back in the passenger seat of my T-Bird. “But I have to,” he murmured, answering his own plaintive question. “I'm worried about Nessa's parents. They wanted to catch the next flight, but I told them there's nothing they can do here. She has asthma and he had bypass surgery last year. I don't know how they'll survive this, how any of us will. They're like my own parents, but they probably hate me now.”

“They say you're the son they never had.”

Holt was to make his official statement to the Coast Guard, he said, and meet with a representative from the charter boat company. Then he would arrange his flight home to Boston.

“Sorry to be so much trouble,” he said, as we left the Western Union counter at the big supermarket on the bay, “but you're the only person I know in Miami. I'll take it from here. I can catch a cab outside.”

I insisted on delivering him to a downtown hotel, close to the
News
building and the Miami Beach Coast Guard station.

“I still want to talk to you about Vanessa. Can the
Miami News
buy you dinner tonight?”

“I can't let you do that.”

“I won't. My expense account will. That's what it's for.”

I was touched by his loss. The sad, handsome man moved me. He reminded me of myself. Moreover, the tragic sea saga of the star-crossed lovers was a helluva story. Who better to write it than me?

We stopped at the
News
building, where Lottie snapped a few shots of Marsh Holt, still unshaven, eyes haunted. He used the phone on her desk. American Express would deliver a new card to his hotel by morning. A Boston neighbor agreed to go to Holt's apartment and overnight him some ID so he could board the flight home. The sea had swallowed his driver's license and passport.

“What a hunk.” Lottie whistled under her breath while he made calls. “And it looks like he's single now.”

“Good grief, Lottie,” I said, offended.

“Widowers who were happily married almost always marry again soon,” she argued. “That's a fact of life.”

I gave Holt the name of a downtown men's store near the hotel, dropped him off, and drove home to freshen up before meeting him at six.

 

I called Holt's room from the lobby. When he didn't pick up for a long time I began to fear he was out there, lost and vulnerable, wandering Miami's mean streets. But he answered and finally arrived in the lobby minutes later. He'd shaved and changed into a new blue shirt and casual slacks.

He turned the head of a pretty young desk clerk when he walked by.

“I'm not sure this is a good idea,” he said, as we pulled off the ramp. “I don't feel up to being around people.”

“You'll be okay. I won't keep you long.”

We found a back table at Joe Allen's. Unlike many local restaurants, there is no water view, the food is good, and the place is frequented more by residents than tourists.

He ordered Jack Daniel's, I had ginger ale. He had begun to sound better. He had a rich and mellifluous radio voice. “You're missing dinner with your family tonight,” he said.