Revenant (24 page)

“Why didn't you call the police?” I asked.

He turned to me, his expression tense. “I have a record in Tupelo. I got into some trouble. To get this job, I had to lie. If the police go snooping around, I'll be in real trouble.”

“I'm afraid it's too late for that,” I said, feeling both pity and revulsion. “You should have contacted them when she went missing Friday.”

“I know,” he said. “I kept thinking that she'd show up and say her folks had gotten sick or something.” He shook his head and I saw tears in his eyes. “My life changed when I met Tammy. I'd made a lot of bad choices, but it was going to be okay with her.”

“I didn't call the police, but I'm sure her neighbors did. I think it would be best if you went and talked to the casino management now.” He was only a kid, and he had suffered a terrible loss. I hardened my heart and stuck to business. “Then I'd put in a call to the police. They're probably on their way, but it will make it look better.”

He nodded, using the heel of his hand to dash his tears away.

“What were Tammy's plans Friday night?” If I could figure out where she'd been, I might be able to determine where she'd been abducted from.

“I didn't get off until midnight, and she was supposed to meet me at my apartment. She got off at five, and she was going to go shopping for some things for our house. Her mother and sister were coming down to give her a shower.” His voice trembled, but it didn't break. “She was going to look at dishes and things. At Edgewater Mall.”

“By herself?”

“She hadn't had a chance to make a lot of girlfriends. She liked her neighbors, but they were older. We were both working as hard as we could to save some money for a honeymoon. We were getting married in June.”

His shoulders dropped another notch. “How am I going to get along without her?” he asked.

I handed him my cell phone to call the police because I didn't have an answer.

W
hen a loved one was murdered, the repercussions were endless. Trust shriveled. My truck was parked a hundred yards down the road from Jimmy Riley's house, but I was across the street in a dense azalea bush that offered an advantageous view of Riley's front door and his boat slip, where a large craft bobbed at the dock. After all my years in Miami, I still didn't know one boat from another. That didn't matter. I only needed to make sure no one was home so I could board the boat and have a look around.

Since Riley had become a suspect in the murders, I'd had several revelations. I'd wondered how someone had walked Pamela Sparks out to the end of the public pier, especially since the gate on the beach had been locked at 10:00 p.m. in an attempt to keep stupid tourists or drugged teenagers from falling in the Sound and drowning. There were ways around the locked gate, but the most obvious conclusion was that Pamela had been brought to the pier by boat. Until recently, I hadn't considered that possibility.

My mind was speeding along when the front door of Riley's house opened and a slender woman stepped outside. She came down her front walk to the sidewalk and turned left.

The front door of the house opened again, and Riley stepped out. “Where are you goin'?” he yelled, his words slurred by drink. He must have been half-crocked when he called me, yet he'd sounded sober.

The woman I recognized as Yvonne Riley, his wife, stopped. “I was planning on taking a walk, but your bellowing has probably stirred up the whole neighborhood.” She returned to the house, brushed past Riley and went inside. The door slammed. For a long moment, Riley swayed on his front porch. At last he turned slowly and entered.

Dusk had slipped over me from the east. As night began to fall, I inhaled the odor of damp earth and leaves from beneath the azalea. A light flicked on in a front upstairs window of the Riley house. As drunk as Riley was, he'd probably passed out by now. If I was going to search the boat, I had to take a risk and do it while there was still a little light in the sky.

The grass was thick, lush, as I ran across the backyard. The short wooden pier announced my footsteps as I ran down it to the boat. I didn't have the tools or expertise to do an in-depth search, but if there was something obvious—like bloodstains or clothes belonging to the dead girls—I might be able to find that. Besides, I couldn't count on anyone else to even look.

Riley was a drunk, and chances were that he was a careless drunk. There was nothing more important in an alcoholic's day than a drink. It was a long shot, but I might get lucky.

The galley was the first place to start. The tiny kitchen was surprisingly spotless. I went through the drawers. The knives were neatly placed in their slots. The cooking gear was stowed away, and the floors and counters scrubbed. My take was that Riley didn't cook a lot.

The boat rocked gently in a westerly breeze, the tie lines complaining. Or was it something else? Had someone slipped down the pier and stepped onto the deck? I held myself perfectly still.

I'd been careful to make sure I wasn't followed to the neighborhood. The blue van still troubled me, but I hadn't seen it. Even though I told myself there were hundreds of blue panel vans on the coast, I still felt apprehensive.

After a long minute of waiting without additional noises coming up the deck, I continued in my search. The tiny bedroom was a repeat of the kitchen. The bed was neatly made, nothing out of place. Riley's clothes were folded in the drawers of the built-in dresser. Even the head was clean and orderly. Not so much as a bottle of headache medicine was there. Disappointed, I moved to the stairs.

The boat had been a long shot and a waste of time. I was climbing out of the cabin when I heard footsteps on the wooden dock. Before I could duck back down, a beam of light swung over the deck and caught me full in the face, blinding me. The boat shifted as someone boarded. In a moment, light flooded the companionway where I stood.

Yvonne Riley was standing on the deck over the stairs, a flashlight and a pistol pointed at me. “Come up here,” she said.

I eased up the short flight of stairs, my eye on the gun and the silhouette of the woman who held it. She didn't seem nervous or upset.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I'm Carson Lynch, a—”

“I know who you are. What are you doing here?”

I decided to risk the truth. “Looking for evidence.”

“Of what?”

There was no easy way to say I suspected her husband of murder. “Mrs. Riley, does your husband go fishing alone often?”

She was a smart lady. She lowered the gun but kept the flashlight beam on my face.

“Jimmy has a temper, but he didn't kill those girls.” She spoke in a monotone. “Believe me, I'd love to divorce him, but not by seeing him charged with a crime he didn't commit. He was fishing last Friday night.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I am.”

“He called me today and asked me to meet him at a bar at three o'clock. When I got there, the bar was empty, but he left a message for me. A threat.”

“Jimmy couldn't have called you,” she said. “He was asleep on the sofa all afternoon, from about eleven o'clock until just a few minutes ago.”

She sounded so sure, but I didn't hide my incredulity.

“Look, even if he did call you,” she said, “he didn't kill those girls.” She clicked off the light. “Now get off our property. I'm going to sit here and count to twenty. If you aren't gone by the time I finish, I'm going to call the police and charge you with criminal trespassing.”

 

“Carson!” Kev stood up from his desk and scooped me against his chest. Though I was tall, he made me feel petite. “You look good.”

“You, too,” I said, and he did. Kev had put on forty pounds from his lean high school days, but it was muscle he carried, not fat. I looked around his home office and saw that he had a simple but very professional operation. I turned my focus back to him. His hair was close-cropped and bore a sprinkling of gray, but his blue eyes were as intensely curious as I remembered. He'd been the high school football jock who'd also excelled at science. He'd hung around the house, talking to my father about a career in pharmacy. I realized suddenly that it had never been pharmacy school that interested him.

“How's Dorry?” he asked.

“She's a fool,” I said slowly, “and me, too.”

His smile was slightly embarrassed. “I was so in love with her that I couldn't see straight when she was near, but I played it so cool.”

“She never suspected you really cared, Kev.”

“I was never very good at telling folks how I felt. And once she met Tommy Prichard, she never knew there was anyone else around. I'm glad she didn't suspect my feelings because then she would have been uncomfortable around me.”

I sighed and tried not to think of what Dorry's life might have been like with Kev. She would have finished college and had a career. “Had I realized your feelings, I wouldn't have asked you to do this surveillance.”

“I have to say, my first impulse was to break the door in and beat the shit out of the good doctor.”

My lopsided grin told him how much I liked that scenario. “But you did the right thing.”

He sat on the edge of his desk. “Did I?” From the desk beside him, he pulled a manila envelope of photos and a VCR tape. “The good doctor is a little on the kinky side.”

I felt shame for my sister as I took the items he held out to me. I wouldn't further embarrass myself or Kev by looking at them now.

“I'm sure this is a pattern of behavior,” Kev said. “This nurse is one of a long line. I'm not cynical—I've just seen it so many times before. He'll screw her for a while, dump her, then move on to a fresh face.”

“Do you think he'll ever stop?”

He shrugged. “Depends on whether his self-interest kicks in and he realizes that the consequences are greater than the pleasures.” He frowned. “I doubt this has anything to do with whether he loves Dorry or not. This is all about his ego.”

“Fuck his ego. He could give my sister a disease.”

“He's a doctor. Let's hope he has some common sense.”

“He's a doctor with his dick in charge of his life. Excuse me if I don't put a lot of faith in his common sense.”

Kev sighed. “It's a shame I was so infatuated with Dorry. I think I overlooked a diamond in the rough. You talk like one of the guys.”

I finally laughed. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Graves.”

“What did you bring me?”

“It's in the truck.” I went out and got the matchbox and the note. When I put it on his desk, he bagged them and marked them. “I'll run them. If I get a match, I'll call you right away, but these things are probably clean.”

I nodded. “I have to try.”

“You want to talk about your suspicions?”

I considered it. If anything happened to me, Jimmy Riley might actually get away with it. “Riley wants me to stop asking questions, presumably about his past. Maybe because he killed those girls. Maybe for another reason.” I also told Kevin about my trip to Tammy Newcomb's apartment. I could tell I'd worried him.

“Carson, you've stomped all over a serious police investigation. They have a right to arrest you and they can make the charges stick.”

“It'll make excellent copy.”

I could see that remark flew all over him. Police officers hated to be reminded of the power of the press. “Appreciate my situation, Kev. I'm not dealing with you—I'm working with police officers I don't know. My past experience tells me that it's as easy for a cop to be a crook as an accountant or a banker or a schoolteacher. And this particular cop is the deputy chief.”

“And my experience tells me that it's real easy for a reporter to go off half-cocked and use the power of the press for the wrong reason.” His face was red and his eyes a hard blue.

“I know you're not that kind of cop, and you know I'm not that kind of reporter.” I spoke gently, trying to move away from the cliff of hard feelings we were both about to step over.

His features softened, but only slightly. “Carson, the Miami police did everything they could when Annabelle was killed. I talked with the investigating officer several times. They had absolutely nothing to go on, except your suspicions. Sure, they could have arrested Charlie Sebring and his cohorts, but they couldn't have held them. There was no evidence.” The last was spoken very clearly.

What he said was true, but that didn't lessen the sudden wave of rage that swept over me. “That bastard hired someone to burn my house and kill me. They killed Annabelle instead.”

“I don't doubt it. But the police can't arrest someone without evidence. You know this. Remember the '60s and '70s? For God's sake, remember when your friend's father was arrested and died in the jail? That's what happens when cops decide to be the judge and jury. You know that can't happen again. Not ever. Not even if some criminals get away.”

I was finding it difficult to breathe. “You wouldn't say that if it had been your daughter who burned to death in her bedroom.” The tears started and I couldn't stop them. “She thought she was safe. She was sleeping.” I was panting. “They waited until Daniel was out of town on business. They planned this because I was supposed to be home, but I was late. They didn't care that they killed my little girl.”

“There is absolutely nothing I can say that will ever make this any different for you. I won't try. But the Miami police were not corrupt. They tried, Carson. I know that. And you have to believe it.”

I swallowed a bitter lump of anger. “The horrible truth is that I do believe you, Kev. I know they tried. They just couldn't do anything, and Charlie Sebring is still building shoddy schools, and the next big storm that comes through, more innocent people will die. Probably children.”

He stood up and walked over to me. His large hands held my shoulders and he squeezed tightly. “He'll screw up, Carson. One day, he'll screw up. And he'll pay.”

“My daughter is dead. She paid with her life two years ago and she was innocent.”

He hugged me against his chest and held me tightly. “This isn't over, Carson. I promise you that. It isn't over.”

For just a moment I leaned against him and drew from his strength. I would feel ashamed later, but now I needed him. His hands stroked my back, giving comfort. It was a luxury I hadn't allowed myself in a long time. Strange that I could accept it from this man, a high school friend who was in love with my sister.

When he felt me begin to straighten, he released me and stepped back. He was smart enough to change the subject and quickly. “On the Jimmy Riley thing. Do you have any physical evidence that he's the killer? For that matter, do you have any evidence that he actually left those matches and note for you?”

It was good to meet the logical wall of Kev's thinking. Emotions played no role. I was back in control. “The fingerprints will be evidence. I'll check his phone records.”