Tampa Burn (24 page)

Oh yeah. He'd taken a dislike to me for some reason.

I replied patiently, “O.K. Whatever you say. But I'm tired. I want to get home to a shower and a few beers. You can understand that.” Said it respectfully, too, thinking,
What's going on here?

Starkey shot back with a nasty chuckle, “Oh, I'll make 'er quick, sonny boy. Nearly fifty years carryin' a badge in the 'Glades, and I was never known to ramble when it come to settin' a lying fraud straight.”

He was baiting me, maybe. Even so, I stopped for a moment, irritated, watching him as he continued to limp along, using the walking stick as a third leg. We were several meters into the logging road. The shadow of cypress trees had changed the dominate odor from gravel and dust to moss, and dropped the temperature ten degrees.

“Hold on a second there, Mister . . . Detective,
sir.
I don't know what I did to make you mad. But if you've got a problem, why didn't you get it on the table while we were in the car? Instead, you tell me you were a friend of my uncle to lure me out here—”

The old man whirled to face me with surprising agility. He had a round, Santa-like face, which somehow seemed to make his expression even more fierce. “I never said I was a friend to Tucker Gatrell. I said I
knowed
him, and I did. I think your uncle was a lying, conniving, dope-smuggling son-of-a-buck. I'd use stronger language, only I never seen a need to lower myself to that kinda garbage-mouth talk.

“Oh, I
knowed
Tucker. If it warn't for what that swindler did to me, I'da been sheriff of this county long back, and I'd be retired already. Probably be shooting quail with the governor and a couple senators right now. Instead, I'll never make it past captain. Your uncle double-crossed me. He ruined my life.”

I was so taken aback by his words and his fury that it was a long, befuddled moment before I responded. “You're giving me a hard time now because you're still . . . pissed off at something my uncle did years ago?” After another moment, I added, “You're
serious.
”

“Serious as a snake bite.” The old detective pointed his walking stick at me, and jabbed it, saying, “But I think you're a bad'un for your own sake. You got a full dose of Gatrell snakiness in you, boy. You're a little too cute and tricky for your own good. Well, sonny, you ain't got
me
fooled. So you want to talk, jes' the two of us? Or you want me to talk public?”

I wasn't sure what he meant, but I didn't like the sound of it.

I looked behind me: Tamara Gartone was sitting in her car, hunched over a clipboard, waiting. Balserio, the two Nicaraguans, were gone, presumably on their way to be arraigned and then to jail. The last two squad cars were pulling out.

I looked at my watch. The sky was grape and molten brass through the lace of limbs, but I had to squint to read the numerals here in the swamp gloom: 8:42 P.M.

With luck, I'd be back at Dinkin's Bay Marina around eleven. Maybe in time to have a beer with Tomlinson before . . .

But no. Tomlinson, I remembered, was at the Miami Radisson with Pilar. Pilar was maybe getting a break from all the terrible stress. Probably having a few glasses of wine, spending quality time with her new best friend, my randy Zen Buddhist pal who was always eager to offer solace and comfort to distraught ladies—me, the hypocrite, thinking hypocritical thoughts.

I made Merlin Starkey walk with me deeper into the logging trail before I said to him, “Go ahead and talk. But no more comparisons with Gatrell, O.K.? I'm not a fan. I never was.”

He snorted. That nasty chuckle again. “I know about that, too, sonny boy. I know why you hated the man.”

“Oh?”

“Um-huh. It's 'cause of what you think he done to your parents. They was killed in a boat fire back when you was a kid. I knowed 'em both. Not well, but I'd met 'em. Good folk. You always faulted Gatrell for the fire. You decided he'd installed one a his idiot inventions as a fuel valve. A bad valve coulda caused that boat fire.”

Suddenly I was straining to listen to his every word. “You're right. How do you know that?”

“'Cause,” Starkey said, “I was one a the deputies who investigated the deaths. Gatrell'd already ruined my career by that time, and I was itchin' for ways to hang the slippery dog. Involuntary manslaughter at the least. I wanted to get him.

“I studied that fire from every angle. Found out you was doin' the same—just a young kid at the time, but smart. I'll give you that. You and me even met once. I come to your uncle's place to look at what was left of the boat. You'd been piecing her back together. Remember?”

I stared at the old man; studied his blotched, penetrating old eyes. It jogged a vague recollection of a young, athletic-looking man, military haircut, business suit and briefcase, who seemed to know in advance that my uncle was away. I'd gotten the impression he wouldn't have visited otherwise. But it hadn't been that many decades ago, and Merlin Starkey looked ancient.

As if reading my thoughts, he said, “Time don't scar a man nearly as bad as his failures. I failed to get my revenge on Gatrell. I wanted to prove he was to blame for your folks dying. Instead, I proved to myself he warn't.”

After a pause, he added, “A
different
person was to blame for that fire, that's what I figured out. So you've been wrong all along. I was so disappointed, I lost interest and let 'er drop. I warn't in charge of the case anyway. No one asked
my
opinion.”

Unaware that I'd even moved, I'd walked so that I was now standing face to face with the old man. He was leaning against the silver trunk of a cypress tree, and had his stick braced beneath one hip like a sort of unipod stool.

“Who was it? The person who killed my parents. Was it . . . accidental?”

Starkey smiled, his head bobbing. “Whoo-wheee! I just saw somethin' behind your eyes there, sonny boy, that I don't like. I seen it before. Men on death row up to Raiford, they got the same little thing that flashes back there. Not all of 'em. Just the good'uns, the real pros. Kind of a glow, like water over ice.” He hooted again. “Whoo-whee!”

I said softly, nearly whispering, “Knock it off. I asked you a simple question.”

Starkey held up an index finger, correcting me. “My propers. Show proper respect when you're addressin' me.” He'd plucked a tin of Copenhagen snuff out of his shirt pocket, and thumped it between his fingers, waiting.

The old asshole was enjoying the leverage he now had on me.

I said impatiently, “O.K.,
Detective
Starkey. Tell me what you found out. Who was it? I'd . . . appreciate your help.”

“Maybe I'll tell you. But first, you stand there and listen to a few things just so you know you ain't so smart—
Doctor
Ford. Tamara Gartone? I reckon she's just about the finest young woman ever to come to our department. She got the brains, she got the heart to do anything she wants. If I had me a daughter, I couldn't want her to be no finer person than Miz Tamara.”

Confused—why was he now on this tangent?—I said, “I agree. Ten minutes ago, when I was telling you how impressed I was, you wouldn't answer me. What's your point?”

“You lied to the woman, that's my point, sonny boy. That story about shots bein' fired at you from the Chevy. Pure cow manure. They never fired a round. But she believes you, and she's sent men to jail 'cause of it. You're settin' her up to make her look like a fool. I don't know what you're into, but if it's bigger'n it seems, it could come back and hurt her. Ruin her career. Just like your uncle did to me.”

The old man was still looking at me, but seemed uninterested in my response. He knew the truth. Because he knew, there was nothing to learn from my reaction. But
how
did he know?

I said carefully, “If that's supposed to make sense, you lost me. Even if it did, I wouldn't intentionally put her in jeopardy. I just met her, but I like her.”

“But that's
exactly
what you're doin', boy. Which is why you're gonna go bang on her car window right now and tell the lady what really happened. Don't mention that I give you a boot in the pants. I don't
want
credit. People in the department now, they think I'm half-senile, which is just the way I like it. So you set her straight like it was your own idea.

“After that, then maybe we'll get together and I'll tell you what I learnt about that boat fire. After all these years, you'll finally know.”

He had the snuff tamped down between cheek and gum now. He cleaned his fingers on his pants and spit, waiting.

There had been a time, long, long ago, when I was obsessed with discovering the exact cause of the fire and resulting explosion that killed my mother and father. Now, I seldom thought of those two.

I thought of them now.

To celebrate their twelfth anniversary, my parents took a cruise into the Ten Thousand Islands along Florida's Gulf Coast. The last time I saw them, I was standing on the dock of the Rod & Gun Club, Everglades City. My father was big-shouldered on the fly bridge, and my mother was facing me, waving goodbye.

I hadn't tried to recall that parting in years. Now a forgotten scene came back to me. I remembered how pretty my mother looked in the light of a morning river. Her face, her beauty—the clarity of those few seconds—was so vivid that I could smell the water, could hear her voice. Then my father turned toward me. He grinned and flashed a hand signal that he said only the two of us knew.

The memory was so detailed, the emotion so powerful, that I was startled. A weird feeling.

The vessel they were aboard had an inboard gas engine. If someone tampers with or damages an inboard's fuel system, gas fumes collect easily in the bilge. An arcing spark then becomes a detonator.

I spent more than a year after what was dismissed as a boating accident reassembling bits and pieces of that boat like a puzzle, fixated on determining the exact cause of the fire.
Who
was responsible?

I have been relentless about assembling meticulous data, observing and recording precise detail, ever since. That stuck with me, too.

 

 

THE old man said again, “Sonny boy, Miz Tamara's in the car all alone. Tell her the truth, and I'll tell you the truth. The person responsible is no one you ever suspected, I promise you that.”

The rage to learn who or what had killed my parents was still in me, I realized. Surprising—I'm not a sentimental person. Yet, I wanted to know. The desire swept through me in the same way fear or fury sweeps through the nerve tendrils. I felt like grabbing the old man and shaking the information out of him. I also gave serious consideration to giving him what he wanted.

But I couldn't. I'd promised Pilar that I wouldn't involve law enforcement, just as she had promised Lake's abductors. More compelling, I couldn't put the safety of my own son at risk just to satisfy the obsession—or maybe put right the wounds—of the boy, and the son, I had once been.

Balserio had to stay in jail.

I was shaking my head—a private reply to Merlin Starkey—as I said, “You seem so sure. Would you mind explaining why you don't believe me?”

“That's 'cause I
am
sure. You want to play it tricky? Then I'll spell it out for you.” He grinned again—he'd wanted me to ask. “You swore to our deputies the tall one was the shooter. The one you called Jorge. Say you saw him clear in your rearview mirror.”

I said, “That's right. But when Detective Gartone asked me, I changed my—”

“I know how you changed it,” he interrupted. “I know why, too. Let me finish!

“When I searched the Chevy, it was before we met, but the deputies told me your story. You swore the tall one fired from the passenger window. Which sounded O.K. until I noticed that both front seats was slid way forward. Our people didn't move them, so I asked the suspects. They all said the same. The two Nicaraguans are short, but Jorge's six-four, six-five. He always rode in the
back
with them two up front, seats way forward.”

I shrugged. “I was scared, confused. I made a mistake. So Jorge must have fired from the back seat. If it
was
him.”

Starkey was still enjoying it. “That's not the only mistake you made. All the spent brass we found landed on the right shoulder of the road. That worked in real good with your story about him firing from the passenger window. It still works in pretty good with him firing from the back seat, right side. But I noticed something different about Jorge. Know what that was? ”

I gave it a moment, thinking, then swallowed hard—
uhoh
—because I was remembering how Balserio handled the knife, passing it back and forth from hand to hand.

“What I noticed,” Starkey said, leaning toward me, his voice rising in a sort of victorious intensity, “is the man you say fired at you woulda never done it the way you said. There ain't no way in Hades. That's because the man's
left-handed.
Ain't no way a left-handed man is gonna fire from the right window of an empty back seat.

“Just to be sure, I had the deputy undo the tall man's cuffs. I made him take the little test where you sight a target through your fingers with both eyes wide open—” The old detective formed a circle with thumb and index finger, holding it away from his face, to demonstrate. “Close your left eye, and if the target stays in the circle, your right eye's strongest. Jorge's not only left-handed, but he's got a dominant left eye. No lefty with a dominant left eye shoots right-handed.
Ever.
So I knowed you was lyin' even before we met.