I made arrangements for my neighbor to take care of Max while I was away. I didn’t know if I’d be gone a few hours or a few days. I did know that the FBI was interested in me, but why? The stories were now being carried by the national wire services. There were rumblings of a serial killer loose in the sunshine state, the land of Mickey and Shamu. The feds were being more reactive than proactive.
My immediate decision was whether to let them come find me, or go to them. I thought about it for less than a second before turning south on Highway 27. I wedged the Glock out of sight between my seat and the gearshift console.
I unzipped all of the windows on the Jeep and invited the wind along for the ride. The air was cool and mixed with smells of fresh plowed earth and orange blossoms. I drove through cattle country, sliced by drainage canals and dotted with orange and grapefruit trees. It was a cloudless morning, the sky deep blue, almost as if a bottomless indigo blow was covering the earth.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw a car following about a quarter of a mile behind me. I accelerated from fifty to sixty-five. My cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number. I did recognize the man’s voice.
Floyd Powell, the commercial fisherman, said, “I run into my nephew this morning. We got to talkin’ about that killin,’ you know, the one with the girl. He told me he was frog giggin’ near there that night. Had his light on the bank where the frogs is at, and he says he seen what he thought was two people having sex higher up on the bluff. Says it wasn’t but a few seconds later when he saw a car headin’ down the dirt road toward State Road 44. Bobby said he thought it was odd ‘cause the driver never turned on his lights until he was on blacktop.”
“Can your nephew identify the guy?”
“Says he was too embarrassed to look good when he caught ‘em in this light.”
I thanked Floyd Powell and hung up. Now I knew why the girl I’d found hadn’t suffered a broken neck. The perp was frightened by the boat lights and fled the scene.
The approaching car in my rearview window caught my attention, but the driver kept his distance. Then I kicked the Jeep up to more than eighty miles an hour. It didn’t take a full mile for me to be certain that I was being followed.
The driver was good. Staying far enough behind to appear that he or she had lost me. I tapped my brakes, slowing back to about sixty. The car drifted at a distance behind me. The image grew smaller in my rearview mirror. The driver suddenly whipped off the paved road, the car kicking up a long rooster tail of dust, speeding in another direction, going down a dirt road.
I dialed Leslie Moore’s number. “Leslie, you mentioned that the chemical analysis found in the vic’s shoe isn’t used to grow citrus. What does it grow?”
“Primarily tomatoes, at least in the concentrations we found.”
“What does SunState Farms grow?”
“They’re also one of the largest growers of tomatoes in Florida.”
“Text the directions to SunState for me. I’m two miles north of Lake Wells.”
“Okay. I got the DNA results back from the black hair you found in your boat.”
I was silent.
“The hair came from the vic you found. Sean, someone is trying hard to set you up.”
“Wonder who that might be? Is Slater there?”
“I haven’t seen him in a couple of hours. Why?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to see if the pit bull was out of his yard.”
“Slater met with two agents from the FBI. They showed up yesterday right after I arrived for work. Asked to meet with Slater. They met behind closed doors for about a half hour. Slater didn’t say anything to me about what went on.”
“Maybe Slater called them.”
“That’s not his style either. If there is any truth to the rumors that he’s considering a bid for sheriff, maybe he’s using the FBI in some capacity to help with this case. I don’t know. I think—” She abruptly stopped talking.
“Is someone there?”
“When will the car be ready? Good, please check the brakes, too.” She hung up.
I drove silently for the next fifteen minutes. Then my phone beeped with a text message. I read the directions to SunState Farms. And I also read her last line, which said: Slater knows I rode out to your place. Be careful!
TWENTY-FOUR
I was soon driving through the farm community of Lake Placid. The marquee on the Lake Placid Theater read: Ret rn of the Jed
As I pumped the gas at the Circle K, I watched a dozen or so farm workers in the parking lot. Jeans and T-shirts stained dark green from harvesting tomatoes and peppers. They sipped Mountain Dews, Dr. Peppers, ate sausage biscuits and microwave enchiladas while attempting to avoid my eyes.
At the register, a large black man was buying cases of cheap wine. MD 50–50, Thunderbird, enough of the stuff to give a platoon a hangover for a month. He glanced across his shoulder at me, black irises floating in twin pools of yellowish white, spattered with tiny specks of bloodshot veins. There was a half second look of suspicion, and then he turned away from me to face the female clerk who had finished ringing up the wine.
A scratchy voice came through vocal cords worn thin from years of cigarette smoke and nicotine. She said, “Comes to a hundred twenty nine dollars and two cents.”
The man reached in his pants pockets and pulled out a thick wad of bills. He peeled off two one hundred dollar notes and handed them to the woman.
“Where’s the dolly at?” he asked.
She snorted, clearing mucus deep in her throat. “Where it’s always at, in the corner, behind the mop, next to the ice machine.”
She looked at me. “You payin’ for gas?”
“Yes. The Jeep.”
“Be anything else?”
“No thanks.”
“Forty nine, fifty.”
I waited for change, watching the black man load cases of wine on the dolly. His biceps strained the T-shirt, which read: O-Rock 107 — The Christian Alternative.
The clerk handed me the change, and she reached for a smoldering cigarette.
“Can you tell me how far I am from SunState Farms?” I asked her. The black man stopped loading the last case of wine for a second, listening, breathing heavy.
The woman exhaled smoke through her leathery, pitted nostrils. “No more than nine or ten miles east on Highway 60.” She looked at the black man. “Silas, why don’t you have him follow you, if you’re goin’ to the farm?”
He leaned the dolly toward his gut. “I ain’t goin’ there.”
“No problem,” I said. “Wherever you’re going, it looks like it’ll be quite a party.”
“Somethin’ like that.” His tone had a challenge. “Who you want at SunState?”
“Richard Brennen. I understand he’s running for office.”
“So I hear.”
“You know where I can find him?”
“Depends. If you’re sellin’ stuff, he ain’t the man to see. He got people for that.”
“Maybe I want to make a campaign contribution.”
He looked at me through eyes cold as black lava rock that had turned to stone a lifetime ago. His disdain soaked into my skin like a coffee spill inching through a paper towel. I noticed a two-inch scratch on his left cheek. He gripped the dolly with both of his large hands and backed out the door.
I wanted to give him time to load the wine and beer. I bought bottled water and then walked to my Jeep while he finished stowing his cargo in a decade-old Ford van. I watched the van head east on Highway 60. I let him get a good distance down the road before pulling out to follow.
The first SunState Farms sign appeared sooner than I anticipated. The sign was not large, but its message was: