Chapter EIGHTEEN
Tuesday morning. The strains of The Girl from Ipanema roused me from a deep sleep. The anemic light of a false dawn was seeping through my bedroom windows. I looked at the clock on my bedside table as I reached for the phone: 6:30.
“Morning, J.D.,” I said.
“Sorry to wake you, Matt. Sharkey just called. There’s another body.”
“Where?”
“Leffis Key. I’m on my way there.”
“Jock and I’ll meet you. Where’ll you be?”
“Just come down the path. You can’t miss us.”
I woke Jock, brushed my teeth, and threw water on my face. We took my car and stopped for coffee to-go at the Village Deli that shared a parking lot with Tiny’s. We crossed the Longboat Pass Bridge and turned into the parking lot of the Leffis Key Preserve, nestled on the bayside near the southern tip of Anna Maria Island. A sand path ran from the parking lot toward the bay. A few hundred feet east of the parking lot the path forked, with each trail leading to a boardwalk that wound through stands of dogwood, fig, southern red cedar, green buttonwood, sea grape, and other plants, skirting the water in numerous places.
Longboat Key and Bradenton Beach police cruisers were in the parking lot. I saw J.D.’s Camry nosed in against a sand dune. Jock and I started for the path and were stopped by a cop in a Bradenton Beach uniform.
“Sorry, sir. The key is closed for now. You’ll have to go back.”
“I’m Matt Royal,” I said, “and this is Jock Algren. We’re supposed to meet Detective Duncan.”
“I’ll have to check, sir,” he said, and pulled his radio mic from the Velcro tab on his shoulder. The conversation was short. “Go on down the path, Mr. Royal. You’ll run into them.”
I thanked the officer, and Jock and I followed the path until we came to the fork. A half-dozen uniformed officers from both forces were standing around, eerily quiet, respectful of the dead woman who had brought them to this place. J.D. and a Bradenton Beach police lieutenant were at the edge of the knot of uniforms, talking softly. I could see beyond them to a stunted tree that stood at the apex of the fork in the path. A dead woman was propped against the tree, hands folded demurely in her lap. She was middle aged, possibly older, blonde hair that was two shades too bright to be natural, a thinness bordering on emaciation, tattoos on her arms and shoulders. She was nude and a rope snaked around her torso holding her to the trunk of the tree.
I recognized the three Longboat Key officers as men who would have been on the night shift, their tour coming to an end. Steve Carey was standing alone a couple of yards from the other officers. He nodded as Jock and I came up. “Morning, Steve,” I said. “Know anything yet?”
“No. J.D. just got here. We’re waiting for the forensic guys.”
J.D. saw us and walked over. I handed her the cup of coffee I’d brought, knowing she’d need it. She smiled. “Thanks, Matt.”
“Is it the same M.O.?” asked Jock.
“It is,” J.D. said. “Shot in the back of the head, small caliber slug, no exit wound.”
“And the whale tail earring?”
“Yeah. And the initials in the back of her neck.”
“I guess I did shoot the wrong man on Saturday,” said Jock. “Qualman was just a hired gun.”
J.D. shook her head. “The man you shot was trying to kill me, Jock. But I don’t understand your argument. If Qualman didn’t kill Nell Alexander, why did he have her BMW?”
“I think he killed Nell,” said Jock, “but he was just the messenger. I think whoever is running this show may be after you, and Nell was just a random kill. Something to get your attention, to draw you toward the Miami killings.”
Steve Carey had been looking toward the victim as we talked. I wasn’t paying any attention until I heard him yell, “Hey.”
I looked up in time to see him knocked to the ground, blood pouring from his left shoulder. In the same instant, I heard the crack of a rifle coming from the east, farther down the sand track that formed the southern fork in the path. Everyone hit the ground, a trained response to the sound of gunfire. J.D. was already moving toward Steve, and I had risen to my knee, pistol drawn, beginning to point toward the sound of the rifle, when it cracked again. Anyone who has been in combat, and I have, knows the sound of a round whizzing near your head. That sound took me back to the ground. In the second I was on my knee, I had seen two men in the distance, perhaps a hundred feet away at the point where the southern fork intersected with a boardwalk that ran down to a viewing platform at the water’s edge.
J.D. was next to Steve, who had not moved since he hit the ground. “He’s breathing,” she shouted. “We’ve got to get that sniper.”
Cops were coming alive now, firing from their prone positions. Jock was moving at a crouch through the trees and bushes that bordered the path. Seconds had passed since the first shot and Jock hadn’t gotten very far. The rifle fire had stopped, and I could see only one man on the path. He was holding a weapon, bringing it into firing position.
A hail of automatic fire came our way. It was high and I could hear the slugs ripping through the foliage above us. Everybody put their heads down again. No one wanted to be standing if the shooter brought the muzzle lower. He ripped off a fusillade and then disappeared. I stood, as did a couple of the other cops. The man stepped back into the path and fired again, a short burst, high. We went back to the ground. Jock hadn’t moved. He was still in the foliage, but only a few feet down the path. The man ducked toward the boardwalk, and seconds later, reappeared and let go another short burst.
The shooter disappeared again, and this time, he stayed gone. Nobody moved for a minute or so. We didn’t know if he was coming back. Jock moved a few feet down the path, still in the bushes. Another minute passed, and then I heard the roar of high-powered marine engines coming from the bay to the south of us where a sheltered anchorage lay.
Jock was moving at a run along the path. I got to my feet and followed. J.D. was ordering somebody to call for an ambulance. I wasn’t sure the guy with the gun was gone, and I ran on the edge of the sand, ready to jump into the bushes that lined the path if he showed again.
Jock was only two or three yards ahead of me when he reached the intersection. He turned right toward the boardwalk and I followed. We got to the viewing platform in time to watch a go-fast boat receding in the distance, her wake roiling the three sailboats anchored in the cove. The boat cleared the anchorage and turned right into Longboat Pass heading at high speed for the open Gulf of Mexico.
We ran back toward the fork and met some of the officers coming our way. “They’re gone,” I said. “They were in a blue go-fast boat with white topsides, possibly a Fountain, thirty-five feet in length, center console, headed out Longboat Pass.”
One of the officers said, “I’ve got this,” and began speaking into his mic, putting out the word to the Coast Guard and the marine patrols from the various law enforcement agencies. He also asked for a helicopter. I didn’t think it would do much good. That boat could run better than seventy miles per hour, and the Gulf had been flat when we crossed the Longboat Pass Bridge a few minutes before. The boat would be into Tampa Bay in a few minutes.
Steve was awake when we got back to the fork. He was in pain, but he only grimaced. “You okay, buddy?” I asked.
“I will be. I think. Matt, lean down here.” I did and he whispered something I didn’t hear. I shook my head. “Closer,” he said. And when I was close enough for him to whisper into my ear, he said, “You take care of J.D. She’s not as tough as she thinks she is, and I’m pretty sure that round in my shoulder was meant for her.”