But he wasn’t so sure. He loved his family; he was grateful for his family. Even so, the days seemed empty without his old friend.
He glanced at his watch. The damned Metrorail didn’t really go anywhere, in his opinion. It wasn’t like when you went to New York City and hopped on the subway. With the Metrorail, unless you lived right by a station, you had to drive there and look for parking, or have someone drop you off, or rely on a bus—which might or might not come at anything that resembled on time—to get you there. Even when you got on it, the Metrorail only ran north-south through the city, though with some switching around you could get all the way up to Palm Beach. It did go to the Jackson Medical Complex, though, which was where he needed to go every three months for his checkups.
Because he was an old vet.
Looking far south down the track, he thought he could see it coming. He was just about the only one waiting, except for a trio of teenage boys.
He glanced at his watch and then the schedule.
He sighed. Big outing. He was traveling all by himself, a grown-up going for his checkup. Fun. He decided he would stop for coffee at a Cuban café somewhere, try to bone up on his horrible Spanish so he could better chat with the older Cuban woman at the convenience store.
“Arnold.”
He heard his name and thought that his kids might be right, that his inertia really was bringing on some kind of mental-deterioration disease. It had sounded just as if Randy had called his name.
He turned.
And to his amazement, Randy was there.
“Randy?”
He’d seen the man in his coffin just three months ago.
But he was standing there, as hale and hearty as ever. Well, maybe not hale and hearty. His color was awful.
As if he’d been in the grave for three months.
And his face... Something was wrong with his face. It didn’t really move. It was as if he didn’t have any expression—couldn’t show any emotions—at all.
“Randy?” Arnold repeated. He invented an explanation in his head for what might have happened. The family had pretended that he was dead. They’d buried some kind of an effigy. Why? Something to do with money, having money, needing money... They’d kept Randy a prisoner down in the basement, which would explain his awful color, while they spent their ill-gotten inheritance.
And now he’d escaped. Except that he was...confused, probably from being in solitary confinement for months.
“Randy, yes, it’s me, Arnold.”
He started toward Randy, arms out to embrace him, to assure him that he could make everything okay. He would take care of Randy, and his family would become his old friend’s family, too.
He dimly heard the sound of the Metrorail as he reflected, still stunned, that he really was seeing his old friend again.
He didn’t have to walk all the way to Randy, because Randy was coming at him. Coming like a bull.
Randy slammed into him and sent him flying backward onto the tracks.
And Arnold was still so stunned that he never knew what hit him.
He was dead within seconds of his impact with the arriving train, dead long before his broken body fell to the ground far below the elevated platform.
5
There weren’t many good things to be said about finding a human head, Lara thought, although at least they had assumed the man was already dead, and Agent Cody believed that finding the head meant they would have a better chance of finding the killer. Rick called Grady to let him know they’d found what they were looking for, and Grady insisted that she go home, especially given her long night at the party and the stress of the morning’s discovery.
She barely saw Special Agent Brett Cody after the find. Other divers were headed to their location to continue the search, while Agents Cody and Diego headed back to shore with her and Rick—and their gruesome evidence. She gathered that more pieces of the victim were found—how many, she didn’t know, nor was she sure she wanted to.
When Cocoa seemed set, following the cutter home just as she’d followed it out to the bay, Lara sat in the galley with Rick, drinking the very decent cup of coffee one of the crew members had brought her.
“Dolphins,” Rick said. “They’re the most amazing creatures. I love our dolphins, and I wish people understood how much they enjoy working with us. The research we do is as much fun for us as it is enlightening for us, and even the entertainment side of things is enjoyable for them. They like people. Our guys, they’re the smartest. That’s why Cocoa could do this.”