“ Absolutely, as soon as it is amassed.”
She gave him the NPD’s address in Naples. “Make sure it’s marked for me personally.”
“ It will be done. I wish you all good luck there, Dr. Coran.”
“ Thank you, Chief Okinleye. It does appear that we’ll need all the luck we can find.”
“ I apologize for my surprise when you first called,” he said.
She unnecessarily shrugged. “What for?”
“ I mean, I thought you were in Hawaii, that you had relocated and had married some fellow there?”
“ Well… not quite…”
“ Not quite? Or not quite yet?”
“ I’m not quite sure yet. Does that answer your question?”
“ I am sorry to pry; your happiness is all that I wish.”
She smiled at this genuine, simple desire, so sincerely stated. “Thank you, Ja, and I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
“ When will you come to dive The Wall in Cayman again? When will you come to see us? You will not believe how big my children have become. They were busting the house, so in keeping with my new duties, we have purchased a suitable abode far above the city, overlooking the city and the harbor.”
“ It sounds lovely, and I’ll visit as soon as I can, promise.”
“ Remember to take time to play; that life is not made for work alone, that work alone is not life.”
“ Thank you, Ja. I’ll remember that island wisdom.” Ja hung up and she played over his final words inside her head and heart. She knew he was right, that once again she’d become so entangled in her work that it had become her life. For that kind of advice from her shrink, she paid through the nose; getting it through Ja’s simple wisdom was cheaper, but no less painful.
Quincey and Samernow knew the so-called best barbecue place in Naples, so the foursome wound up at Brace’s for drinks and dinner. They tried to talk about anything and everything besides their great disappointment in not having had the chance to pounce on the Night Crawler this day. They talked of sports and weather and the Eddie Perlman trial, which had started in earnest in Seattle. Perlman was accused of the brutal murder of his six children, his wife and his mother-in-law. The case had been in the headlines for almost a year now as prosecution and defense jockeyed for position. It was a classic example of a defenseless defense resorting to blowing smoke, burning unrelated incense in the courtroom, fanning the flame of confusion and creating doubt where no doubt existed by playing one mirror off another, all in a superfluous effort to deflect and ultimately derail the truth while boring the jury to death.
“ When we do finally catch this bastard Allain, or whoever the hell he is, the damned legal system will drag it out, ass-over-backwards, for ten years,” complained Quincey, “and it’ll take some prison-cell justice to see the SOB gets what he deserves.” Jessica and the others drank to the sad truth.
Jessica reminded them how, after capture, Mad Matthew Matisak had been placed in a federal prison for the criminally insane, and how he had played the system for years, and how the moment his doctor’s defenses went down, he’d struck like a waiting cobra. He’d escaped, wreaked havoc and murder from Philadelphia to Louisiana, where he began stalking her, until finally she had cornered and killed him in a New Orleans warehouse. Final justice three long years after he was found guilty of the slow-torture deaths of the countless victims he had drained blood from to feed an insatiable appetite for the red fluid.
And so the conversation worked its way back around to what was eating away at them all tonight, the whereabouts of the Night Crawler.
“ Where the hell can he be?”
“ He’s like a damned crayfish, hiding in the mud out there-invisible but there.”
“ How’d he know we’d staked out Buck’s Trophy Shop?”
“ Was he maybe using Buck to decoy us away?”
“ What do you mean?”
“ Keep us here, while he goes north to Tampa?”
“ Is he just playing more cat-and-mouse games with us?”
The questions spiraled and threaded through their conversation, and Jessica sadly and resignedly began to believe that they were no closer to apprehending the monster than when they’d begun their effort so long ago in Islamorada Key. She voiced this feeling and the others stopped their drinking and eating to stare.
“ How can you say that, Jess?” asked Eriq. “We know a lot more about this creep now than when we began.”
“ But that’s not enough. Knowing about him hasn’t stopped him.”
“ Fact is, he gets off on letting us know bits and pieces, seems to me,” said Quincey. “Isn’t that why he cut loose three bodies in one day and left the nylon rope behind?”
Samernow agreed. “Isn’t that why he keeps writing the damned papers with his damnable poetry?”
“ Yeah, he feeds us… we feed him,” grumbled Santiva, who’d had more to drink than the others and was now completely despondent.
“ Anybody here by the name of Coran or Santiva?” shouted the bartender, waving a phone in one hand, hefting a stein of beer in the other.
“ Yeah, over here,” replied Jessica, going for the phone.
Quincey asked, “Who knows we’re here?”
“ Ford,” explained Santiva. “Told him to keep us informed of anything from his side.”
Jessica held firmly to the phone, as if its hard density might keep her from reeling; she felt a little light-headed, and too much beer, not enough pretzels and the news she was receiving wasn’t helping any. She gritted her teeth and stared back at the men she’d just left at the table. She met Santiva’s eyes, and he proved sober enough to read her body language. He could tell the call was serious, so he got up and joined her, asking, “What is it?”
“ Tampa Tribune got a love note from the Crawler. Looks like he’s in the Bay Area all right. Postmark is St. Petersburg.”
“ Damn, the bastard’s got us hopping to his tune.”
“ All part of his game. Only good news is that there haven’t been any other bodies to wash ashore from the Gulf.”
“ As yet, you mean
“ Let’s get up the coast. Think you can get us a helicopter?”
“ We’ll get some local help on that score. Be ready to leave”-he looked at his watch-”at midnight. What about a facsimile of the letter? Has Ford received one?”
“ He has.”Tell him to send a copy to my hotel room, and tell him we’re on our way to Tampa-St. Pete.”
Jessica did as instructed, thanking Ford for his cooperation and the help of his men, asking him to be on the lookout for a package arriving there for her postmarked the Cayman Islands and instructing him to forward it to FBI Headquarters in Tampa. She again thanked Ford before hanging up, then rushed out of the restaurant with Eriq, who’d left instructions with Samernow and Quincey. The two detectives would follow them by way of car or boat- depending on Anderson’s mood-the following day.
“ Tampa, Jess,” Eriq said to her in firm conviction.
“ What about Tampa?”
“ That’s where we’re going to corner this bastard.”
“ Yeah, well, for a time we thought the same of Naples, but it didn’t happen.”
“ The noose is tightening. We just have to pull on the rope.”
She realized he was just doing a bit of cheerleading, attempting to bolster her sagging spirits. It was Eriq’s way of trying to comfort her and bring her along emotionally.
“ I hope you’re right, Eriq,” she relented somewhat as they got into the car that would take them to the airport, where a chopper was holding for them.
“ I am right. I have to be right,” he assured her.
“ He’s led us on one hell of a chase.”
“ It comes to an end in Tampa.”
“ Promise?”
“ Promise.”
EIGHTEEN
I advance to attack; I climb to assault.
Like a choir of young worms at a corpse in a vault.
Tampa Bay, Florida