The Night Monster (30 page)

I leaned back in my seat and took a deep breath. My wife was fond of saying that everything in this world happened for a reason. There had been a reason why I’d met Tony Valentine, and now I knew what it was.

“You just made my day,” I said. “Let me ask you something. Did the report mention Mouse’s hometown?”

“Hold on, let me take a look.”

Valentine put me on hold. I rolled down my windows, and let the hot air invade my car. Every tired bone in my body felt refreshed. I’d found the bastard.

Valentine came back on the line. “Your friend is from a small
Florida town called Chatham. I just looked it up on my computer. Chatham is about ten miles north of St. John’s River, in the central part of the state.”

Mouse had boasted to Ray Hinst that the police in his hometown wouldn’t arrest him. What better place for Mouse and Lonnie to hide than Chatham?

left Daybreak feeling better than I had in a long time. I knew the name of one of Sara Long’s abductors as well as the name of the town he and his partner were hiding in. Mouse and Lonnie were in my sights.

But rescuing abduction victims was never easy. And there was the matter of dealing with the sheriff of Chatham. Before I went charging in with guns blazing, I needed to figure out what his deal was.

It took an hour to reach my office. During the drive, my cell phone rang several times. I kept my phone on a Velcro strip attached to my dash, letting me see who was calling without taking my hands off the wheel. Burrell was trying to track me down.

I thought I knew what Candy wanted. She’d caught wind that I’d unearthed another corpse and wanted to know how it fit into my search for Sara Long. Being the lead investigator on Sara’s case, Burrell had a right to know
everything
I knew. Not telling her what I’d learned was against the law and could land me in real trouble. Only right now, the last person I wanted to be talking to was a cop.

I didn’t take her call.

———

Tugboat Louie’s parking lot was jammed, and I parked on the road. Kumar was checking IDs at the front door when I entered. Inside the bar, wild women were dancing on tables while drunk men stood and cheered. Party time had begun.

“A police detective has been calling for you,” Kumar said.

“Detective Burrell,” I said.

“Yes. She asked me to give you a message.”

“Just pretend you didn’t see me come in,” I said.

Kumar’s eyebrows went up in alarm.

“I hope you’re not in trouble,” he said.

Back when I was a detective, I’d learned that you weren’t doing your job right if you weren’t causing trouble. The trick was learning how to deal with it.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

Kumar covered his eyes with his hands. “Very well. You were never here.”

I went upstairs to my office. The commotion from the bar was so loud that my office furniture was vibrating. I sat at my desk and tried to block out the noise.

I booted up my computer and logged onto the Internet. It was hard to remember what detective work was like before high-speed computers. A great deal of time had been spent on the phone, trying to track down leads and information. Now most of what I needed was a few clicks away.

On Google, I did a search of Chatham. I was not familiar with the town where Mouse was from, but that didn’t mean much. There were thousands of small towns in Florida, many not big enough to be included on a map.

Chatham didn’t warrant a lot of ink. Fifteen miles north of the Ocala National Forest, the town did not have a website, nor was it included in the website of any of the neighboring towns. Outside of a few cheap motels that catered to hunters and fishermen, there was no real information about the place. In the infinite world of cyberspace, Chatham hardly existed.

I did a public records search of Chatham on a county website, and got a better feel for the place. The town was incorporated, and
boasted eight hundred residents. There was a mayor, a town clerk, and a sheriff, all of whom were elected officials.

The sheriff was the person I was most interested in. His name was Homer Morcroft. I did a search of his name, and discovered a newspaper article from 1984 that talked about Morcroft having just been elected sheriff. He’d been policing the town for twenty-five years.

A knock on my door broke my concentration. “We’re all friends here,” I said.

Kumar popped his head in. “The lady detective just called the bar, and asked the bartender to page you. He told her he thought he saw you come in.”

I cursed under my breath. I knew what was going to happen next. Burrell was on her way here, and would confront me. I shut down my computer, and rose from my desk.

“Thanks for the warning,” I said.

I got in my car, and fled south on I-95.

I knew what Burrell would do when she didn’t find me at Louie’s. She’d drive to the Sunset and look there. When that failed, she’d drive to my other haunts and look. We’d worked together eight years, and Burrell knew the places I frequented. The only way to avoid her was to not be at any of them.

It was time to bring Linderman into the fold. I called his office, and when he didn’t answer, tried his cell phone. He didn’t pick up, so I called his house.

“Hello, Jack,” Linderman answered.

“I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time,” I said, figuring I had.

“I was just heading out the door with Muriel. We were going to have dinner at our favorite restaurant on the Key. It’s our anniversary.”

“How many years?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Congratulations. I’m sorry to bother you, but I need your help.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ve determined the identity of Sara Long’s abductors. The giant is a mentally disturbed killer named Lonnie. His partner is a murderer
named Andrew Lee Carr. They’re hiding in a small town in central Florida called Chatham. I need you to help me catch them.”

There was a short pause. I could envision his wife, Muriel, standing in the foyer of their condo on Key Biscayne, all dressed up and ready to go out.

“Did you contact the police?” Linderman finally asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated. I’ll explain everything when I see you.”

Linderman breathed heavily into the phone. I had given up many weekends to help him look for his daughter. I’d never complained, and didn’t expect for him to, either.

“How long will it take for you to get here?” the FBI agent asked.

“Forty minutes, tops.”

“I’ll tell the guard at the front gate that you’re coming.”

“Thanks. Tell Muriel I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand,” Linderman said.

Muriel Linderman had her brave face on when I entered the condo. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, with expressive eyes and a tender smile. Before her daughter’s abduction, she had taught elementary school in Virginia, where she’d lived most of her life. When she spoke, I still heard the accent in her voice.

Muriel gave me a hug, and invited me to join them in eating Domino’s pizza on the balcony. I wanted to apologize for the intrusion, and for ruining their anniversary dinner, but the knowing look in her eyes told me it wasn’t necessary.

Their condo was on the south side of Key Biscayne, the view of the glittering bay filled with yachts nothing short of spectacular. I ate a couple slices of pizza without saying very much. Linderman sat beside me, sipping an iced tea. His eyes never left my face.

“Tell me why you haven’t called the police,” he said.

“Because it might lead to Sara Long getting killed.”

“I think I hear the phone,” Muriel said.

Muriel went inside, and shut the slider behind her. I chugged back
the last of my Heineken, and put the bottle down next to my plate. “If I call the police, they’ll contact Sheriff Morcroft in Chatham. I’m guessing Sheriff Morcroft knows what’s going on, and will alert Mouse and Lonnie.”

Linderman shot me a contemptuous stare. He did things by the book, and did not tolerate wild theories. “Let me get this straight. You think Chatham’s sheriff knows he has two ex-mental patients in his town who are abducting young women?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you have any proof that the sheriff’s involved?”

My chair made a harsh scraping sound as I pushed myself away from the table. “No, I don’t. But here’s my problem. If I contact the police, and tell them what I know, the information will be in the police information system. You know the cops in Florida all talk to each other, even those in small towns. It will get back to Sheriff Morcroft that he’s under suspicion. If he is involved, I’ll be signing Sara Long’s death certificate.”

Linderman considered what I was saying. I rose from my chair.

“So now what?” Linderman asked.

“I’m going to rescue Sara Long. Are you coming or not?”

Linderman’s eyes flashed. He put down his drink and gave me a harsh stare.

“You’re a goddamn loose cannon,” he said.

“Funny, that didn’t bother you before.”

The look on his face made me wonder if I’d lost another friend. At that moment, I didn’t care. I was going to handle this my way.

“All right, Jack. Just give me a minute.”

Linderman opened the slider and went inside. Muriel was standing at the sink in the kitchen washing dishes. Linderman put his arms around his wife’s waist and whispered in her ear. Her knees sagged at the news of his leaving.

I felt bad for her, and for him—only there was nothing I could do about it. I had a job to do, and that job wasn’t finished. They could celebrate later, when Sara was safe.

I turned and stared at the bay. The moon had cast a creamy patina over the water’s mirrorlike surface. It was a beautiful night, whatever the hell that meant.

inderman wanted to take his 4Runner to Chatham. I objected. Although his car was in better shape than my Legend, it still had Virginia license plates, and would stand out like a sore thumb when we reached our destination.

“Can your car make the drive?” Linderman asked.

“It hasn’t failed me yet,” I said.

I pulled my Legend into the condo’s covered parking garage, and parked it beside his 4Runner. Linderman opened the 4Runner’s trunk, and unlocked the stainless-steel footlocker in the backseat. From the footlocker he removed two Mossberg shotguns, two high-powered rifles with sniper scopes, a pair of Kevlar vests, and several boxes of ammunition, all of which got loaded into the trunk of my Legend.

“That should cover it,” Linderman said.

“We also need a pair of fishing poles.”

Linderman went inside the building to talk to one of his neighbors. He emerged with a pair of fishing poles covered with cobwebs.

“This was the best I could do,” he explained.

I put the poles in the backseat of my Legend so they stuck out the
open window. It made us look like a pair of rubes, which was exactly the image I wanted to create.

“Are these fishing poles our cover?” Linderman asked.

“Yes,” I said. “When we get to Chatham, we’re going to pretend we’re a pair of college buddies spending a long weekend together fishing and drinking beer.”