The Way You Look Tonight (17 page)

‘All right . . . well . . . the reason I think this killer may be – and I emphasise,
may be –
under, say, forty, or even thirty, is because there’s something . .
. you’ll think this is so strange . . . well, there’s something almost
puppyish
about the way he goes about it all. I’ve been looking at the post-mortem photographs
again, and you can almost sense his sheer enthusiasm when he marks them. The wounds are so prolific and extensive; he just can’t hold back.

‘And then there’s that first girl, and the relative speed at which he killed her compared to the others. I know it sounds bizarre but it speaks to me of an almost youthful impatience
and exuberance. I’m going to blush now but it reminds me of the way a young man is said to be when he takes a woman to bed for the first time. Very often it’s all over before it’s
begun, isn’t it? But they learn and go slower the next time . . . just like our man here.

‘Two more things. There’s the rate at which he’s killing them. He’s in such a
rush
, Lee. Excitement again, like a kid in a sweetie shop. And lastly, this
fingerprint business. It’s
so
over-confident and arrogant. I just can’t see an older man being quite so reckless.’ She paused for breath. ‘Does any of that help at
all?’

Despite the brutal subject matter, he found himself smiling into the receiver.

‘More than you can imagine. Right . . . I’ve got some buttons to push here now, but I’ll see you later. I have a portable shortwave radio so there’s no reason I
can’t have dinner with you at Largo Lodge – it’s only a mile or so from headquarters and I can be back inside five minutes if I get the call. Anyway, I might have more stuff to
run past you by then. I hope I do. Because so far, I have to say you’ve been a bloody goldmine, Stella.’

There was something going on. He knew it. It was goddamn obvious.

He’d come on shift at ten this morning and not only did there seem to be a lot more black-and-whites on Overseas Highway today but most of them were pulling over outside the offices of
rival taxi firms. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t right at all. In fact, on the way down to Cheeca Lodge to pick up a regular fare – the lodge’s owner’s mother who had
her hair permed every month – he’d heard his own radio controller put out a jokey call to all the boys.

‘Hey guys, we got the Highway Patrol here asking questions. So, who’s been a bad boy, huh? Who’s been— HEY! What the heck, officer, I’m
just—’

Transmission had ended abruptly with a squawk and it didn’t take a whole lot of imagination to work out why.

He chewed his lip as he drove sedately on south to Islamorada, the deep blue of the Atlantic to his left and the aquamarine of the Gulf to his right as he breasted another summit of one of
the spanking new concrete pontoon bridges. The old wooden ones had been pulverised so often by hurricanes that Florida and Washington had bowed to the inevitable and invested bucket-loads of tax
dollars on these indestructible replacements.

The dependability of the new upgraded road link that connected Key Largo the whole ninety miles down to the last island on the chain, Key West, was already taken for granted. Next stop,
Cuba? People speculated that if Castro took a hike, maybe someday there’d be a soaring, arching highway all the way from Key West across the shallow, narrow straits to Havana. That’d be
some bridge to drive over for sure.

But he wasn’t thinking about that this morning. He was wondering how the hell the cops had worked it out – or at least this much of it. The taxi connection.

He’d been so damned careful.

He was always scrupulous about pulling up on the blind side of the girls’ cars so drivers approaching from either direction would find it difficult to see the mostly obscured cab. He
switched his lights off, too, and it was usually getting dark. He was positive he hadn’t been spotted. If so, surely the
Courier
would have carried something. The police would have
an obligation to warn young women not to accept unsolicited help from a taxi driver, if they’d broken down or gotten a puncture.

It had to be this fucking English girl. HAD to be. His rose, indeed. The bitch had a sharp thorn on her. The White House guy was right when he told the
Courier
she was good. She was
damned good. He couldn’t for the life of him think how she’d put it together so fast – she’d only been down here in the Keys, for what, two, three days? But he could worry
about that later.

And work out how to make her pay.

For now, he had a small and fast-closing window of time to decide what to do. Not long – but enough.

He forced himself to think calmly. The only way they could pin the killings on him was by taking his fingerprints, and there were scores of other cab drivers working Key Largo who’d
have to be eliminated first. It would take hours, if not days, to round everyone up.

And he’d be long gone before they got to him.

He knew that vanishing overnight would put him top of the list as prime suspect for sure, but that didn’t matter. He was going to disappear in a way that would make Houdini look like
an amateur.

Suddenly he pounded the taxi’s steering wheel in frustration. He’d counted on a much longer run than this; in fact he’d figured he might be able to go on indefinitely, even
if that meant eventually quitting the Keys. Look at that London guy – Jack the Ripper – never been caught and no one knew who he was to this day.

He slowed to a crawl and when the highway was clear, made a careful U-turn, heading back north.

That old lady wouldn’t be getting her hair done today.

But he would.

Lee put the phone down and kicked back his chair on its castors, stretching his long legs out in front of him as it rolled smoothly away from his desk on the wooden floor. He
rubbed his face with both hands and managed to resist the temptation to pour himself another coffee. He was wired on caffeine already after at least six cups of the stuff over the last few
hours.

Mentally, he replayed his checklist. Was there anything he’d neglected to do? He didn’t think so.

Downstairs in what the uniformed guys called the ‘front office’, dozens of youngish cab drivers had already been efficiently processed, their fingerprints taken and compared to the
killer’s. So far there had been no match, but there were at least twenty more men to bring in. He reckoned they’d be pretty much through by this time tomorrow.

Realistically, though, he didn’t think their man would show. Lee increasingly regarded the whole mass fingerprinting operation as an exercise in flushing out his quarry. Once the killer
realised what was going on, he’d shimmy right out of the picture.

Every taxi firm had been phoned back and it had been emphasised that they must call the police the moment they suspected any of their drivers had dropped off the radar.

The call Lee had just completed was the last in a rapid series to organise the effective sealing off of Key Largo. He’d put police road-blocks at bottlenecks at the top and bottom of the
island – one to the east, at Little Blackwater Sound, where Route 1 veered sharply north over the shallows towards Homestead and Miami, and the other at the south-western end, straddling the
approach to the swing bridge at Tavernier. All vehicles were being stopped and their driver’s identity checked. Officers had been fully briefed on the profile of the wanted man and mobile
fingerprint units rushed down from Miami had been hurriedly set up alongside the roadblocks. Any man even vaguely fitting the profile was having his dabs taken. Lee thanked God they weren’t
in the holiday season yet – the queues would have been enormous if the snowbirds were down here in force. But Thanksgiving was still weeks away and his men were dealing with limited numbers
of mostly local, if infuriated, drivers.

He looked at his watch. Close to suppertime. Almost all the cab drivers on dayshift had been fingerprinted and eliminated; it was going to get interesting in a couple of hours when the
nightshift guys checked in for work.

Especially if – or more likely,
when
– one of them didn’t.

Lee grabbed his jacket and swept up the pack of cigarettes and his lighter from the desk in front of him. He turned to the overweight lieutenant who was methodically, if resentfully, working
through the patrol car records.

‘Anything, lieutenant?’

The man shook his head. ‘Nah. But we’re just covering our bases here; we don’t really think we’re looking for a cop, do we.’ It was a statement, not a question.

Lee felt a twinge of guilt about his earlier physical aggression.

‘Yeah . . . it’s got to be done, though . . . Look, lieutenant . . . about this morning . . .’

The other man regarded him coolly. ‘If you’re gonna apologise, Agent Foster, save your breath. For the record, I’d say you over-reacted, big-time, but I can live with it.
Where’d ya learn that choke-hold, anyway? Korea?’

Lee shook his head. ‘I was never drafted.’

The other man grunted. ‘FBI boot camp then, I guess. Shame they didn’t train you how to put a choke-hold on that temper of your’n at the same time.’

‘Well, anyway, I’m sorry.’

‘Well, anyway, fuck you.’

The sunset was, if anything, more spectacular than the evening before. Stella and Lee were sitting at the same table on the little beach but tonight the atmosphere between them
was frost-free.

Lee’s black FBI two-way radio was parked in the sand next to them, squawking and crackling every so often.

‘Good God,’ Stella had said when she saw him lugging it across the beach towards her. ‘I thought you said it was portable. That thing’s the size of a pirate’s
treasure-chest.’

‘I’ll have you know this is state-of-the-art communication technology,’ he said grimly, dropping it with relief next to the table. ‘Have you ordered?’

‘Yes – same as last night. And I got us these Key Lime Cocktails, too. Will that do?’

‘Perfect.’

He spent the next few minutes bringing her up to date on the day’s developments, omitting the part about the tinpot rebellion he’d nipped in the bud that morning. Stella smiled at
him when he’d finished.

‘You haven’t told me what your team made of the
Courier
story.’

He was blasé. ‘Oh, one or two grumbles, sure. No big deal. They needed a little straightening out, but everything’s fine now.’

She shook her head at him. ‘Come on, Lee. They were absolutely furious, weren’t they?’

He hesitated. ‘OK, yeah, they were. I told them not to be such jerks or they’d be off the investigation. Seriously, Stella, it’s OK. It’s all moved on. Like I told you,
now we’re just waiting for the killer to break cover. Which he will – in the next few hours or so. Someone’s not gonna check in for work. And a dime to a dollar says that’ll
be our man.’

The waiter arrived with their steaming little-neck clams, and the usual solicitation to avoid scalding themselves.

Stella sipped her wine, deep in thought. She’d kicked off her sandals and was curling her toes into the soft sand, still warm from the late evening sunshine. She looked out across the sea
at the improbably red, yellow, and azure sky, backlit with golden shafts from beneath a huge, shimmering pink cloud that floated just above the horizon. But the beauty of the sub-tropical sunset
was lost on her.

‘What if I’m wrong, Lee?’ she said suddenly. ‘What if all my grand theorising about cars and callow, murderous youth is bunkum? What if this revolting man is . . . oh, I
don’t know . . . a sixty-something school janitor? Or a hotel-owner? Or a fisherman? In fact, what if he’s—’

‘Hush. Stop it. Listen to me, Stella.’

He moved his hand down to take one of hers, and folded it firmly in his grip. Her eyes had widened at the gesture but she didn’t withdraw from him.

‘You’ve never done anything
like
this before,’ he told her quietly. ‘Oh, sure, you’ve studied case files and gone to university conferences and written
papers and given talks, but you’ve never actually gone on the trail of a repeat killer, Stella. This is where theory and reality connect; where intelligence and information and instinct fuse.
And it’s about real people in the here and now, and that makes it frightening because if you make the wrong call, there are consequences. Of course you have self-doubt. I certainly do, on
every single case I’m assigned to. But you have to trust what you know, what you’ve learned. Because that’s what so-called intuition or instinct is actually founded on – our
accumulated knowledge and experience.’

He smiled at her. ‘Let me tell you, Stella, I’ve never heard such a penetrating evaluation of such limited facts in a breaking case as I did from you today. You’re remarkable
– truly, you are. I have a whole operational strategy unfolding out there, based almost entirely on your analysis. And I wouldn’t have authorised it if I didn’t feel, deep in my
gut, that you were right. That means we’re in this together – so give yourself a break.’

He released her hand and waved vaguely at their plates. ‘Now let’s eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.’

But before a distinctly flushed Stella could reply, or either of them had even lifted their forks from the table, the radio under the table crackled fully into life and curtailed their meal with
unconditional finality.

He backed his cab into a space behind the hotel’s green-painted emergency generator that stood at the rear of the guests’ car park, ready for use if a hurricane
or tropical storm brought down overhead power lines.

He parked on the far side of the big machine, so that nobody in the lodge or eating at the tables outside on the beach could see the car. Not that it really mattered; no one would be looking
specifically for him yet, but it seemed the wise thing to do.

There was no guarantee he would see her and he had no intention of risking going into reception to ask for her by name. But it had occurred to him, as he was driving back home to collect his
things, that he would pass Largo Lodge on the way. It was the dining hour and she might well be having her supper while watching the sunset.