Bitter Legacy: A Matt Royal Mystery (Matt Royal Mysteries) (38 page)

On the run down, I’d told her about our trip to Andros, and what I’d found out about the forged document from the old preacher. We made
small talk over lunch, enjoying the view and each other. We had a table by the large windows overlooking the pass. A small uninhabited island sat in the middle, its beach full of families and their boats, the children wading in the water. The small-boat traffic in and out of the inlet was heavy. A police boat sat quietly at the edge of the pass, the officer making sure the speed limits were obeyed and that the boats didn’t endanger the people swimming near the little island.

You had to admire the police department’s taste in boats. She was a thirty-four-foot center-console, sporting triple three-hundred-horsepower Mercury outboards. She’d top seventy miles per hour at full throttle. Not many boats would outrun the cops in these waters.

J.D. and I finished our meal, dawdled over one more drink, and headed back to the boat. I cranked the engines while J.D. stood on the dock to untie the lines. I signaled that I was ready to cast off, and she tossed the lines into the boat and jumped down from the dock. I eased out of the slip as she coiled the lines and stowed them in their locker.

I idled toward the jetties and waved at the cop in his go-fast boat. On
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ss the helm seats are raised and you have to take two steps down to the cockpit. J.D. was standing in the stern watching the parade of boats coming in from the Gulf. I was fiddling with my chart plotter, dialing in the GPS coordinates for the Longboat Pass outer marker. I looked up in time to see a jet ski coming too fast toward me. I jerked the helm to starboard to miss him and was just coming back on course when the left windshield, the one in front of the passenger seat, exploded. I looked up quickly, saw a rifleman standing midway along the jetty to the left of us. He was raising the rifle to fire again. People on the jetty were scurrying out of his way. I called a warning to J.D., but she had already thrown herself to the deck. I ducked below the dash just as the windshield in front of the helm seat burst with the impact of another bullet. If I hadn’t made that quick adjustment in course to dodge the jet ski, the first shot would have come through my windshield and probably my head.

I looked around the helm seat into the cockpit. J.D. had rolled up against the left side of the boat, flattened out on the cockpit floor, making as small a target as possible. I doubted that the shooter could even see her.

I had to get out of harm’s way, but if I raised my head to see where I
was going, I would be a dead man. I could see the chart plotter screen from where I crouched. If everything was working like it should, I could follow the icon on the plotter that represented my boat and stay in the middle of the channel until I got through the jetties. If I didn’t plow into another boat, or a jet ski. I thought the radar would warn me of another boat, but I wasn’t sure about something as small as a jet ski.

If the GPS system was just a few feet off today, if the satellites that tracked my signal went off-line for even a second or two, I’d pile into a jetty. No choice. I stayed down and added juice to the throttles, picking up speed, trying to get out of range of the rifleman. As I came abreast of him, I could see him pointing the weapon at me. Either he couldn’t see me hunched down behind the dash or he thought I was dead. I was sure he couldn’t see J.D. His angle of view wasn’t right.

I saw him bring his rifle back toward his shoulder. He was going to fire again. I was afraid he had seen me and I didn’t think he’d miss this time. I stood up quickly, pushed the throttles all the way forward. I was near the right side of the channel, just where I should have been. I turned the wheel hard to the left, shot toward a slow moving boat coming in. I swung back to the right, hard, got past the incoming boat and swung back to my left. I was near the end of the jetties, the open sea my safe harbor. I made a sharp turn to the right and ran parallel to the beach.

I couldn’t tell if the rifleman had fired again. I thought maybe the surprise burst of speed and the zigzags had confused his aim. J.D. stood, gripping the handhold on the back of the passenger seat. “You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. You might want to stay down there. The wind’s tough up here.” The shattered windshield gave no protection from the wind churned by our speed. I was running flat-out, throttles all the way to the firewall, my GPS telling me I was approaching fifty miles per hour.

“I’ll hang on back here. Where are we going?”

I turned gradually toward the open Gulf, away from the beach. “We’ll get back to Sarasota.” I picked up the microphone on my radio. I called the Coast Guard, reported the shooting from the jetty. Told them we were okay and were headed for Sarasota. The Coast Guard radioman told me
he’d alert Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office and have a deputy meet us at the Marine Max facility just inside at New Pass. He said he had a helicopter patrolling in the area.

I looked back at J.D. and saw a go-fast approaching from astern. He was faster than I was and would be on us in a few minutes. “Get down,” I said. “There’s another boat coming up fast behind us.”

I turned back forward and saw another go-fast coming my way, a bone in his teeth. He was running at high speed, his bow wave throwing water from the point where the boat sliced through the surface. He was closer than the one astern. I couldn’t outrun him, I couldn’t turn back, and if I ran for the beach, he’d be on me before I made it.

The sea had picked up a little, small swells that would make a highspeed run uncomfortable, but not too difficult. The boat in front was headed for me at an angle, coming in from offshore. He was about a hundred yards away when I saw a flash from the front of his boat. Gunfire. The distance and the boat bouncing on the swells made too unsteady a platform to get a clear shot at us.

I did a quick calculation in my head. If he was traveling at seventy miles per hour and I was going fifty straight at him, we’d have a closing speed of about one hundred twenty miles per hour, or one hundred seventy-six feet per second. If I turned onto a heading that would take me directly at his bow, he’d be about one hundred yards, or three hundred feet, away. At that closing speed we’d collide in a little under two seconds. Bowon, I’d be a much smaller target.

I turned the helm forty-five degrees to port and lined up on his bow. He would not have expected this maneuver, because no sane captain would think of doing it. He’d have almost no reaction time. I was betting that he’d turn sharply one way or the other. If he didn’t, we’d collide and that’d be the end. On the other hand, if I stayed on the same course along the beach, he’d quickly get close enough to kill us. I didn’t know where the boat behind me was. My mind had taken a microsecond to make a decision. I didn’t have time to turn and see what the other boat was doing. I’d worry about him later.

The man at the helm of the go-fast reacted quickly to my change of
course. He swung out to his right, a sharp turn that pointed him out to sea. I saw the rifleman in the bow. The quick maneuver threw him off balance. As soon as I saw the oncoming boat start his turn, I turned the other way. We missed each other by feet. His wake washed under us, causing
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to almost go airborne. She came down hard on the other side of the wake. I turned again, trying to line up with the middle of the wake where the water was calmer.

I heard a siren from behind me. I looked quickly. The boat that had been off my stern had lit up his light bar, activated his siren and gone after the boat I’d almost collided with. The police boat from the pass. He must have seen what was going on, followed us, and realized that the oncoming go-fast was a bad guy.

“You okay?” I called to J.D.

She was getting up off the cockpit floor. “Yeah, but I doubt I’ll want to go boating with you again anytime soon. What the hell was that all about?”

I pointed to the boats. They were headed straight out to sea, the police boat dogging the tail of the bad guy. The lead boat seemed to be gaining, but it was hard to tell from my angle. I heard the beating of rotary wings coming from shore. A Coast Guard helicopter was coming fast and low, following the boats. He passed over us and within a minute I heard his loud-hailer over the sounds of my idling engines. I couldn’t make out the words. The boats kept moving. Then a burst of machine gun fire and everything came to a stop. The Coasties had made their point.

“I think we’re out of it,” said J.D.

“Looks like it. I don’t know how much damage the boat took. I’m going into the beach.”

I turned onto an easterly course, traveling at just above idle speed. We were off Casey Key, a couple miles north of the Venice Inlet. I called the Coast Guard on the VHF and explained why I was going to the beach instead of New Pass. I gave him my coordinates. He told me to get to the road on the key and he’d have a sheriff’s patrol car pick us up.

I eased the bow onto the beach and cut the engines. I toggled the electric windlass and allowed the anchor to fall onto the beach and play out some chain and line. I raised the engines as high as they’d go. I hadn’t checked the tide and didn’t know whether it was coming in or going out. I didn’t want the props bouncing against the bottom if we were on an ebb tide.

I took the stern anchor out of its locker, tied the line to a cleat, and jumped into the shallow water behind the boat. I walked out about fifteen feet and secured the big Danforth into the bottom. J.D. had grabbed her purse and was standing at the stern waiting for me.

We waded to the beach, and I dug the bow anchor into the sand. We were as secure as we could get. I’d call TowboatUS and have him come pull
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back to Cannon’s Marina on Longboat.

Large houses, estates used mostly in the winter months, separated the road from the beach, their lawns stretching down to the sand. I didn’t want to walk through yards to get to the road, because I had no idea what kind of security the mansions had. I didn’t want to get arrested for trespassing.
I saw what appeared to be a beach access point several hundred yards to the south, and we started walking that way.

A small rigid hull inflatable boat with an outboard beached about a hundred yards south of us. A kid out joyriding I thought. I didn’t pay him anymore attention. J.D. and I were walking and talking about the close call. We were both a little nervous and needed to bleed off some of the energy.

When we were very near the inflatable, I noticed the man sitting on the sand in front of it. He wasn’t dressed for the beach. He wore jeans, biker boots, a T-shirt with a picture of a motorcycle on the front, a red kerchief, a do-rag they called it, on his head. He had a pistol in his hand, pointing at us. He unfolded from the sand and stood ten feet in front of us.

I saw it in a flash. I’d wondered how the gunman had gotten on and off the jetty with a rifle. It had been easy. He’d parked his boat at the base of the rocks, probably tied a painter to one of the stones. His rigid hull would have kept the boat afloat even if it banged into the rocks. He climbed up, took his shots, and dropped back into the boat and roared off. He’d come around the end of the jetty and had a ringside seat to watch his buddies chasing us. The police boat had probably run right by him and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

“Mr. Royal,” the man said, “I bring you greetings from James Baggett.” He raised the pistol, preparing to shoot. J.D. moved behind me, as if for protection. I felt her purse drop to the beach, hitting the back of my left leg as it fell.

“Hold it,” I said. “The police will be here in a minute.”

“And I’ll be gone.”

J.D. whispered in my ear. “When I say ‘drop,’ you hit the ground.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked the man.

“Because my boss told me to do it.”

“Your boss?”

“Baggett.”

I sighed. “How did you find us?”

“Easy. My buddy in that go-fast out there running from the law followed you from Longboat. When he saw you go into the Crow’s Nest, he
called me to come get you. I just live about a mile from the jetties. It was easy. I came out in my little inflatable.”

“Don’t do it. This can’t end well for you.”

He scoffed, a guttural sound, deep in his throat. “Your girl looks a little scared. Honey, when I shoot Royal here, the bullet is going to go through him and take you out too. Two birds with one shot.” He chuckled at his own lame humor.

“Drop!” J.D. shouted.

I hit the sand, moving to my left. J.D. had her Sig out of her purse. It had been pointing at my back. The instant I dropped, she fired, shooting the biker through his black heart.

On Monday, Jock Algren walked into the little room deep in the bowels of a maximum-security federal prison in Montana. He wore an overcoat against the late spring chill. He was dressed in a suit, looking like some executive or lawyer. He carried a green canvas bag over his shoulder. It was thin and narrow, about two-and-a half-feet long. The guard showed him into the room, backed out, and shut the door.

There was a small metal table bolted to the floor, maybe four-feet long and two-feet wide. A chair sat on either side. One was empty and the other contained a shackled James Baggett. He was staring at the table, showing no concern about his visitor

“Remember me?” Jock asked.

Baggett looked up. Shock moved across his face, briefly. Then he grinned. “Fuck you.”

Jock sat down in the empty chair, settled himself in, reached over, and slapped Baggett’s face with as much force as he could muster from a sitting position.

“Guard,” yelled Baggett.

Jock slapped him again.

“Guard.” Baggett was calling at the top of his lungs.

Jock slapped him again.

Baggett started to open his mouth, thought better of it, and shut up. “You can’t come in here and beat me up.”

Jock smiled, a cold stare adding sting to it. “I can come in here anytime I want, Baggett. I can get to you in any prison in this country and probably in the entire world anytime I want to. And I can do anything to you I want to.”