Chapter SIXTY-SIX
I was in a deep sleep, dreaming of fire alarms. They didn’t stop and finally began to bring me back into the world. My phone. I looked at the clock on my bedside table. Four o’clock on a Wednesday morning. Who the hell was calling at this time of the day? It couldn’t be good news. Nobody calls in the middle of the night with any news that isn’t bad.
But I was wrong this time. I rolled over and answered. It was David Parrish. “You awake, Matt?”
“Barely. This better be good.”
“It is. We made a deal with Perez.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I’ll fill you in later, but suffice it to say, he’s ready to sing like the proverbial bird. Can you and Jock get down here to Miami?”
“Sure. When?”
“There’ll be an FBI jet at Dolphin Aviation at the Sarasota-Bradenton airport at eight a.m. It’ll bring you down and take you back.”
“What about J.D.?”
“I just talked to her. She’ll be at the airport.”
“Okay.” I closed the phone and called J.D.
She sounded wide-awake when she answered. “You going to Miami?” she asked.
“I am,” I said. “You want us to pick you up?”
“Sure. What time?”
“We’ll pick you up at seven. Grab some donuts at Publix, get coffee at Starbucks on the Circle, and start off our day with a wholesome breakfast.”
“You’re a sick person, Royal. Go back to sleep.”
Not seeing any reason to disturb Jock, I set the alarm for six o’clock, and rolled over for another two hours of sleep. I’d learned the lesson in the army that you sleep when and where you can because you never know when you’ll get a chance to sleep again. I could drop off in an instant and sleep as long as I’d allotted myself. I usually woke up just before the alarm went off.
I rolled Jock out at six and told him about my four a.m. conversations. He headed for his shower and I went to mine. At seven on the dot, we were parked in front of J.D.’s condo complex. She came down the elevator, got into the backseat, and we were off to the Publix Market at mid-key. I asked how many donuts we needed. Jock said he’d eat three and J.D. asked for a fruit salad. I figured a dozen donuts and the fruit would take care of us until we got to Miami. I’m a sucker for donuts.
We picked up coffee at Starbucks, and drove to the airport. The plane, a small, nondescript business jet lacking any markings that would identify it as government owned, was waiting on the ramp at Dolphin. We identified ourselves to the pilot and loaded onto the plane. We took off over the bay with a minimum of fuss and then flew southeast toward Miami.
As we reached cruising altitude, Jock’s phone dinged, indicating that he had received a text message. He looked at the display for a moment and said, “The twenty-two we found at Flagler’s apartment was the same one used to kill all the whale tail victims.”
Uh-oh, I thought. I hadn’t mentioned the pistol to J.D.
She had just taken a sip of her coffee. She put the cup on the table and looked at Jock, her face hard. “You found the gun?”
“Yes,” Jock said. “Didn’t Matt tell you?”
“No, he didn’t. That gun was the best piece of evidence we’ve got and you’ve ruined it. No court will ever admit it into evidence.”
“No judge will ever have to make that decision,” said Jock, his voice low and cold as ice. He locked eyes with J.D., staring her down.
She finally looked away, picked up her coffee, and moved to a seat at the back of the plane.
Jock and I sat, our conversation limited, each of us munching on our breakfast and staring out the windows. I was worried that we were pushing J.D. farther and farther away, showing her a side of Jock’s profession that she didn’t want to know about. I was afraid that she would let her disdain for Jock’s methods bleed into whatever relationship we may have had. I could feel her slipping away, and all I could do was watch it happen.
My thoughts turned to Perez and what he had to tell us. This could be a big break, an answer to our questions, perhaps a completion of the puzzle that had eluded us as we sought the killers and tried to discern the patterns that may or may not tie the new whale tail murders to the old and to the killing of the agents from Jock’s organization. As it turned out, we got a lot of the information we wanted, but not all of it. We wouldn’t know about the holes in the pattern for several days, and in the end, that lack of knowledge proved fatal.