Deadly Pursuit (26 page)

44

Kirstie lay supine on the bunk in the musty darkness, fighting hard for breath.

The poison had done something to her respiratory system. She couldn’t seem to get enough air. Twice in the woods she’d sunk to her knees in a swoon; only by lowering her head had she saved herself from a blackout.

She lifted her hand to her throat and felt for the carotid artery. Her pulse had been frighteningly weak and fluttery the last time she’d checked. Now she detected no pulse at all.

Dead, then. I must be dead.

The thought was meant as a joke, but she didn’t smile.

Thirst choked her. She wished she had water.

There was water in the house, and the house was not terribly far away. The old Kirstie could have walked there in five minutes. But this was the new, pathetically debilitated Kirstie, the Kirstie locked in a losing battle with whatever witches’ brew of toxins had been unleashed on her system; and this Kirstie could not walk another five feet.

It had required all her energy merely to take refuge in this one-room shack, part of a line of ramshackle row houses on the eastern end of the island. The shacks, she recalled Steve telling her, had been erected in the early part of the century, when a lime tree plantation had flourished on Pelican Key.

Two bunks, upper and lower, were built into one wall. There was no furniture, no lighting, no kitchen or bath; the one window long ago had been boarded up. The plantation workers had been housed like prisoners, two to a cell, without even a toilet of their own.

Hard to imagine how anyone could have lived in this filthy hole. But dying here—that was a different story. She was beginning to develop a disturbingly vivid picture of what that would be like.

Something whined in the dark. Mosquito, shut in with her. A tickle on her shoulder; the bug had alighted to feed. She was too weak to brush it away.

Well, let the goddamn thing drink its fill. Maybe the snake venom would kill it.

Distantly, the slam of a door.

She stiffened.

Had it been the wind? Had one of the row-house doors blown open and shut?

Another slam. Closer.

A brief pause, time enough for her to realize that she could feel her heartbeat now, its rhythm strong and fast, and then a third door banged shut, nearer still.

Someone was methodically checking the shacks, one at a time.

Absurdly she was seized with the impulse to fight. Crazy; she had no weapons, no strength.

But to lie here immobile and let death take her—to put up no final resistance, simply cower like a beaten animal ...

Her right arm hurt too much to move. Reaching down with her left hand, she groped on the floor. Her fingers brushed past the dried carapaces of dead insects, brittle as bits of eggshell.

What did she think she was looking for, anyway? A shotgun conveniently left under the bunk? Or maybe a hand grenade or a bundle of dynamite sticks? Hopeless.

Slam
. Closer.

She punched through a gummy meshwork of cobwebs under the bunk. Feeling along the wall, she touched something small and hard and slender, sharply pointed at one end. She withdrew it carefully.

A nail.

Some workman must have dropped it while boarding up the window. A good, long nail—three or four inches.

Slam
. Very close now.

A ripple of light-headedness passed through her as she struggled upright. She took a slow step, then another, treading lightly to prevent the loose floorboards from squealing.

Slam
. The next door down.

She found the door frame, leaned against the wall, the nail clutched tight in her fist.

Hardly a lethal weapon. But if she put it in his neck, she might disable him long enough to grab his gun—assuming he had a gun—and shoot him, shoot to kill.

She could kill now. Kill either of them. Yes, even Steve. He was not her husband anymore.

Outside, a crunch of footsteps.

There was a very good chance she would be dead within a few seconds. Oddly the thought did not frighten her. She had done her best. She could not have done more.

The door swung open. Pallid light streamed into the gloom. The emaciated shadow of a man stretched along the floor.

Kirstie raised the nail, holding it parallel with her line of vision.

The shadow wavered. The man leaned forward, his face in profile sliding into view.

At first she didn’t even recognize him. Mud streaked the bird’s-nest tangle of his hair. His eyes, sunk deep in the sockets, were underscored by dull crescents the color of dead flesh. Beard stubble dusted his cheeks, fringing cracked and swollen lips, the parched lips of a wanderer in the desert.

And his shirt—God—it was crusted with blood.

He didn’t see her. Though she had hesitated, though she ought to have forfeited the advantage of surprise, his glazed eyes, blinking vapidly, appeared to focus on nothing at all.

Against such a badly weakened adversary, even a three-inch nail wielded by a woman on the verge of collapse might prove as effective as a bayonet in a soldier’s hand.

But somehow she couldn’t make her arm lash out in a deadly thrust. It would be like ... like killing a dead man.

Instead, almost involuntarily, she breathed his name.

“Steve ...”

The sound of her voice took a second to register with him. He turned in her direction, eyes narrowed, lips pursed.

She couldn’t interpret the look on his face. Warily she lifted the nail in her clenched fist.

“Stay where you are. Don’t try anything.”

He didn’t seem to hear. With dreamlike slowness he reached out to touch her left hand, then gently pried open her unresisting fingers. The nail clattered onto the floor.

“Kirstie ...” he whispered in a voice like death.

The sudden violence of his embrace shocked her. The press of his mouth against hers seemed to capture and condense every kiss they had ever shared into a frenzy of desperate, hurried intimacy.

She didn’t understand—it made no sense, none of it—yet she found herself holding him tight, stroking his matted, brier-strewn hair, as his mouth brushed her neck and he spoke her name again and again, each separate moan a new, agonized confession of remorse.

If this was another trick, another trap, then she would let him deceive her, let him win.

45

The guardhouse at the marina was manned by an elderly wharf rat in a security guard’s jacket and cap. His name, he told Lovejoy and Moore, was Mickey Cotter, and he worked the night shift, from midnight to seven a.m.

Lovejoy showed him the mug shot. “The gist of the situation is that we’re looking for this man. His name is Jack Dance.”

Cotter put on a pair of reading glasses and held the photo under the lamp on his desk. “Face don’t look familiar. What’s he called again?”

“John Dance. Often called Jack.”

“I’m no damn good at remembering people. Boats I know. Never forget a boat.”

Moore saw an opportunity. Cotter looked as if he’d hung around this boatyard for decades, a permanent fixture.

“In the seventies,” she said, “Jack used to visit Islamorada with his father. They had a twenty-five-foot flybridge cruiser, the Light Fantastic.”

“Light Fantastic?” Cotter’s glasses slipped down, and he thumbed them back onto the bridge of his nose. “Oh, sure. I knew her. She tied up here every August. Unusual design—semi-displacement hull. She could be trimmed with flaps; you don’t normally see that feature on a canyon runner. I remember one time there was a problem with the flaps. She was riding high—”

Lovejoy cut short the reminiscence. “So you’re saying you did meet Jack?”

“I surely did. ’Course, he was just a kid back then. Smooth talker, though. Never entirely trusted him. Had a friend, nice boy, came with him every time.”

“Was this friend of his named Steve Gardner?”

“Why, yes. That was him. Stevie Gardner. Wait a minute. Pretty sure I heard something about that young man only recently.” He lifted his cap and scratched his sun-browned scalp, frowning hard. “I got it. Chet told me. He’s on Pelican Key.”

Moore was lost. “Who is?”

“Steve Gardner and his missus—they’re taking a vacation there.”

A startled glance passed like a spark of static electricity between Moore and Lovejoy.

“Pelican Key,” Lovejoy said. “Is that close-by?”

“Three miles due east. Why? You interested in finding Steve, too?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Lovejoy nodded grimly. “I think it’s fair to say we’re very interested in having a conversation with Mr. Gardner.”

“Well, heck. Chet’s about to head out there right now. He showed up a few minutes before you did, in a real sweat. Seemed peculiar to me; a little early for him to do one of his milk runs—”

Moore interrupted. “Where can we find him?”

“Basin C. Boat’s the
Black Caesar
. The man you want is Chester Pice. Better hurry, though.”

Lovejoy slid behind the wheel of the sedan. By the time Moore jumped into the passenger seat, Cotter had raised the gate. Lovejoy gunned the motor, and the car shot forward.

“Chester Pice,” Moore said as Lovejoy tore through the empty parking lot. “I talked to him at the restaurant last night. He’d heard of Jack, but he wasn’t sure where.”

“I’m guessing it came back to him.”

They left the car illegally parked near a battered pickup truck—Pice’s, presumably—and pounded down a flight of rickety steps onto the wharf. At the far end of the third basin, a thirty-foot sportfisher was easing out of its berth.

Pice stood at the controls on the flying bridge. Behind him, the sky burned with the promise of the still hidden sun.

Moore hailed him with a shout, barely audible over the engine roar. “Mr. Pice!”

“Miss Tamara Moore! Want a lift?” She nodded. “Well, hop aboard!”

A yard of water separated the dock from the moving boat. Lovejoy hesitated, muttered a quiet scatological protest, and sprang nimbly onto the gunwale. Moore took a breath and followed. She was grateful to land without a sprained ankle.

“Why don’t you talk to him, see what prompts this early-morning excursion?” Lovejoy fumbled his walkie-talkie out of his pocket. “I’ve got a call to make.”

Moore climbed the ladder to the flying bridge. She waited until Pice had maneuvered the
Black Caesar
clear of the dock, then asked, “You remembered something about Jack Dance, didn’t you?”

He grunted an affirmative. “Woke up an hour ago, and it was clear as glass. Fellow by the name of Steve Gardner mentioned Jack to me. He and his wife are finishing up a two-week stay in the old Larson house.”

“Are they the only people on Pelican Key?”

“Yes. Or at least ... I hope they are.” Pice throttled forward, guiding the sportfisher between the buoys that marked the harbor entrance. “I got on my radio at home, tried to raise them. No answer.”

“Why didn’t you call the sheriff’s department?”

“Prefer not to trouble them till I’m sure there’s a good reason. This could be a false alarm. The radio room in the Larson place is nowhere near the bedroom. If the Gardners were asleep—and most folks are, at six a.m.—they wouldn’t hear it. Figured I’d check things out for myself.”

“Alone? That would have been dangerous.”

“Not quite alone.” He pointed to a Winchester Model 70 carbine laid carelessly on the bench behind the helm seat. “Brought a friend.”

“Well, now you’ll have a whole bunch of friends.” The voice belonged to Lovejoy, joining them on the bridge. He turned to Moore. “I radioed the search-team leader, requested a flyover of Pelican Key.”

“They know which island it is?”

“Chopper pilot seems to. He says that he fishes these waters when he’s not flying.”

“A Huey can do more than a hundred miles an hour. It’ll get there before we do.”

“The sooner, the better.”

Pice left the harbor and steered southwest, chased by a strong breeze out of the north that raised a heavy chop on the water. The straits would be rough.

Watching the shoreline blur past, Moore wondered if this was the same route Pice had taken when he delivered the Gardners to Pelican Key two weeks ago.

Had the couple stood on this bridge, where she and Lovejoy were standing now? Had Steve Gardner thought of his earlier visits to the Florida Keys, the carefree times he’d spent with his friend Jack? Jack, whom he’d lied for, under oath. Jack, who’d made his first kill at age eighteen and had gone on killing ever since.

The real question was how well Steve really knew Jack, how many of Jack’s secrets he’d learned or guessed, and what secrets of his own he’d kept hidden from the world—perhaps even from his wife.

His wife ...

Moore turned to Pice, leaning over the control console, his face lit by dawn’s ambient glow and the lighted dials and gauges. “Describe Mrs. Gardner to me.”

Pice opened the throttle a little further, and the tach needles climbed. “Attractive woman. Blond. Nice smile, pleasant way about her. Kirstie’s her name.”

“What color are her eyes?”

“Her eyes? Blue, I think. Yes. Blue.”

Moore gripped the handrail tight, blinking against a fine mist of spray. She had no idea what was going on, how Steve and Kirstie Gardner fit into this puzzle now so nearly pieced together. But suddenly she was afraid.

Seven women had died. Eight, counting poor Meredith Turner. There could not be another.

Please, God. There could not.

As the
Black Caesar
swung east into Tea Table Channel, the red-orange rim of the sun burst through the horizon, setting the sea aflame.

46

Their embrace might have lasted a minute, an hour. They clung to each other, swaying slowly like dancers.

“It’s all right, Steve,” Kirstie murmured in a soothing tone. “Everything is all right.”

His breath was damp on her neck. “Forgive me.”

“I do. I do.”

The words felt like a second marriage vow.

Abruptly his knees weakened; he sagged in her arms. She helped him to the bunk and sat him down like a weary child. He slumped against the wall, eyes half shut.

Under the ragged remnants of his shirt, a faint trickle of fresh blood was visible. Droplets pattered on the bunk, red rain.

She looked him over more carefully. Blood had soaked not only his shirt but his pants, even staining the Nikes tied incongruously to a belt loop. His feet, bare like her own, were raw with lacerations.

He was not a dead man, as she’d thought. But he was close. So close.

She touched his cheek. His eyelids fluttered. He blinked at her, then noticed the incisions in her arm and shoulder, ugly and swollen and ringed with purplish vesicles.

“What ... what happened?” he croaked.

“Snake bit me.”

He nodded. His mouth curved into a brief, rueful smile. “Me, too.”

She knew which snake he meant. “Have you been ... shot?”

“Stabbed.” The word was a hoarse rasp. “Jack left me for dead. In the swamp.”

The swamp.

In her mind she saw it again: Jack plunging forward, the gun firing harmlessly.

At the time she had attributed her survival to some sort of miracle. And now it appeared she’d been right—only it had been a different order of miracle from what she’d imagined.

It had been Steve. Risking his life to knock Jack off his feet and prevent the fatal shot from reaching its target.

But if Steve had saved her—if he had been willing even to die for her—then why ...?

“Why did you try to shoot me?” she whispered.

“Shoot you?” He lifted his head, honest bewilderment in his eyes.

“On the dock.”

“I was never near the dock.”

“Dammit, I
saw
you.”

“It must have been Jack.”

She almost made some sharp reply, then hesitated. What had she seen, exactly? Steve’s nylon jacket, the glint of his eyeglasses, the gun.

He was wearing neither the jacket nor the glasses now. And the Beretta—Jack had that, didn’t he? He’d had it in the swamp.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “It
was
him.” And she had hidden in the black waters as Steve pleaded for her to answer. So much blood and pain could have been saved, so much horror. “If I’d known ...”

“Doesn’t matter now. Listen.” Every word, every breath, cost him an obvious effort. “We can still get away.”

“How?”

“Jack’s runabout. I helped him hide it. I was on my way to it when ... when I saw your footprints in the dirt.”

“Is it far?”

He coughed. A spray of vivid red bearded his chin. “Just beyond these shacks. Maybe ... fifty yards north ... edge of the beach ...”

She took his hand. “Then let’s go.”

He struggled to rise, pushed himself halfway to his feet, and then his legs folded and he sank to the floor, head lowered, gasping.

“Can’t,” he whispered, “No more ... strength.”

She gripped his shoulders and helped him up. He reclined on the bunk. Another sputtering cough brought fresh blood to his lips.

“Boat is ... camouflaged.” His voice was fading, barely audible. “Palm fronds.”

“I’m not going without you.”

“You have to. Get to shore. Tell the police. Tell them”—his eyes squeezed shut—“everything.”

She hesitated, then nodded. It was the only way. “I’ll tell them. And they’ll come for you. You’ll be all right.”

His labored breathing was more regular, his features smooth. He did not answer.

Unconscious. Perhaps slipping into a coma. The blood on his mouth—it signaled a hemorrhage, didn’t it?

She had to hurry. She’d gotten her husband back. She would not lose him again.

A last caress of his matted hair, and then she was moving toward the doorway. Distantly she was aware of new energy surging through her, a fresh release of adrenaline combating the poison’s effects.

She left the shack, shutting the door softly behind her, and headed down the line of row houses.

Fifty yards north, he’d said. Not far.

She reached the end of the line, turned the corner—and stopped.

“Out for your morning stroll, Mrs. G?”

Kirstie felt no shock, no fear. She felt nothing. The only words in her mind were a simple acknowledgment of the obvious: Well, of course.

She stared at Jack Dance, standing six feet from her in a haze of morning light.

No longer was he the neatly dressed, suavely smiling figure she had seen on the beach twenty-four hours ago. The crisp lines of his jeans and denim shirt had been chewed to ragged tatters. His hair, formerly combed and styled, was a disheveled horror flecked with black crumbs of earth.

And his smile—it was still there, stubbornly ineradicable, as if pasted on his face, but it held no humor now, not even the cruel humor of mockery. It was the frozen smirk of a madman.

Civilization had dressed him up in clothes and manners, concealing his essential self under a gloss of style. A night in swamp and jungle had scraped off that disguise. Now he was naked in her sight, a thing subhuman and despicable. She wondered if all his victims had seen him that way in their last moments.

So close , a voice in her mind whispered. I was so close to making it.

A hurtful, piercing sliver of regret was the only emotion she had the strength to feel.

“Nice day for a walk,” Jack went on pleasantly, trying for a light, bantering tone, the glib insouciance of the man he had spent his life pretending to be. “But an even better day for you to die.”

The Beretta in his hand slowly lifted, the muzzle targeting her chest.

She waited, safely past the final extremity of fear, at a point of surreal calm.

Though she was unafraid, she heard her heart pounding. Louder. Louder. The hard, steady throb unnaturally audible.

No. Not her heartbeat.

The
whop-whop-whop
of rotor blades.

Jack frowned. “What the hell ...?”

He glanced up, and his face froze.

“Shit.”

Kirstie followed his gaze, glimpsed a metallic glint in the western sky, brightening as it expanded.

Fingers clamped on her arm. Jack pulled her to the front of the building, kicked open the door of the nearest shack. A hard shove, and she stumbled through the doorway and fell sprawling on the floor.

He hugged the door frame, watching the sky as the chopper swung directly overhead.

“Miami P.D.,” he muttered. “Goddammit.”

She couldn’t quite understand. The police? Was he saying the police were here? It seemed like a dream. Everything was a dream.

Slowly the helicopter moved on, its rotor noise diminishing as it explored the north end of the island.

When he turned to her, his face was flushed and wild, his eyes unnaturally wide. “Looks like you get to live a little longer, Meredith. If I were you, I’d savor every moment.”

“My name’s not—”

The door slammed behind him. Darkness closed over her like a smothering embrace.

Outside, brief rattle of the doorknob. A thud, shaking the wall. Then, running footsteps.

Kirstie crawled across yards of bare floorboards till the wall bumped up against her groping hands. She pulled herself upright, crabbed along the wall to the door, and tugged at the knob.

The door wouldn’t yield. Jack had secured it somehow, though there was no lock.

The only other exit was the window, boarded up. She had no tools with which to work the nails free.

Trapped, then. She was trapped.

Her brief burst of energy was over. Her thoughts swam giddily; she could make sense of nothing. The police were here, but how? She hadn’t reached Islamorada, hadn’t even found the boat ...

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Despair and fatigue overwhelmed her.

She slumped against the door. The only desire left to her was a feeble, plaintive wish to see the sunrise.

Almost certainly the last sunrise of her life.