The watercops of the well-trained Florida Marine Patrol had been efficiently scouring Florida’s coasts from Jacksonville on the Eastern seaboard to Tampa Bay and Pen- sacola on the Gulf, checking every boat that resembled anything like that belonging to the alleged killer-but then, given the general nature of the description of the boat, they knew it might match literally thousands in these waters.
Stallings revved up his engine to the max and gave her full throttle, then laughed when Manley grabbed on to the railing of the now speeding Boston Whaler. The siren blared out across the enormous waters of Tampa Bay. It was exhilarating to open her up.
Both men knew all there was to know about the Night Crawler, and from the descriptions put out on the killer’s boat, they had created a guessing game, naming boats that might suit the killer’s liking and perverse needs. Manley had decided it was a fully equipped Davis 71 Sailsprinter, but Ken Stallings disagreed, saying it was more likely to be a faster, sleeker fifty-five- or sixty-foot Alden Motor- sailor like the one he’d seen win a race from Florida to Tennessee with a crew of one! Everything aboard the boat was fully motorized and easily worked by this one man, who knew what he was doing at all times. Stallings believed there was no more seaworthy a vessel than the Alden Motorsailor, and if inner police circles could be believed, this creep had come sailing into Florida waters from as far away as New Zealand or Australia. Such a boat for loners would be to the killer’s perverted liking.
The water was choppy tonight, the waves growing in intensity due to a storm sitting out in the immense Gulf beyond, one which forecasters warned could become a serious threat to coastal towns and cities, depending upon shifting winds and that lottery called fate. Thus far, it was a tropical depression, but everyone hereabouts knew how soon a TD could be upgraded to a full-blown hurricane, so while at the moment no one outside of law enforcement and other service groups had given much of a damn, the unofficial watch was on. If Stallings had learned one thing during his tenure as an FMP officer, it was that the sea was a very unforgiving “mother of nature,” that she simply did not condone, excuse or absolve stupidity or arrogance or any of their relative combinations; nor did the sea care if the people floating across her surface knew her intentions or not. It looked now as if the Bay Area would, in a few hours, be shrouded in fog. A light mist had come up, thickening as they got farther and farther from Tampa Bay proper and moved northwest along the coast, the Boston Whaler skimming now over the Gulf of Mexico under controlled speed.
They moved along more slowly as they passed areas where yachts and sailing vessels were moored. In the distance, Stallings spotted a boat with teakwood markings all along her sides, and from the look of her, if she wasn’t an Alden, she was damned close enough to stand in for one.
They had the right to routinely pull alongside any boat to make a spot check for licenses and booze containers; if they found captain and crew smashed, they had the right to arrest people and tow their boats into shore. If this proved another false alarm-as had so many since they’d been put on the alert for the Crawler-they’d simply feign a routine call on the boat.
The fast little Whaler was high up on plane now, her blue-to-red strobe light flashing, siren wailing as they approached the sleek, beautiful ship whose markings were obscured-perhaps deliberately, Stallings thought aloud, calling out his misgivings to Manley and asking, “Whataya think, Rob?”
Manley replied by jotting down what he could of her numbers, and he attempted to locate a name, but because of the angle of their approach and the seemingly mystical, evolving fog that’d rolled in to engulf them, this was impossible. “You may wanna send in the numbers we have as a precaution,” suggested Manley, handing the figures to Stallings, who had the radio at his fingertips.
County cops in Florida who filled in during peak seasons and watercops in other states might have little or no training, or even boat experience, before they were given the keys and told to cast off, but that wasn’t the case with the Florida Marine Patrol. Admittedly, they were spread thin- their duties covering eight thousand miles of coastline. Still, Stallings and Manley had put in their training time in the most rigorous marine law enforcement program in the country. They’d done an additional stint together at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center outside Brunswick, Georgia, in a three-week advanced marine law program, and a weeklong course in protocol on seizures and boarding on the high seas.
Stallings momentarily thought of the financial crunch which had recently halved the Florida Coast Guard’s budget, handcuffing those guys. FMP was up for cuts, too. He and Manley had studied under the Coast Guard for a time, but the Guard’s training program had since dried up due to those same budget constraints. Now the entire course consisted of classroom theory only-no practical experience on the water! Kind of nuts, Stallings felt. Then, taking advantage of the sudden scarcity of watercop training facilities, the Florida Marine Patrol repackaged its academy training into a one-week intensive course offered to state and local jurisdictions. So far, some sixty Florida police departments and departments from eleven other states had availed themselves of the FMP training. Now Stallings was considering an offer to become a training officer himself and lead a more stable life as a result.
His wife and children were all for the change, but he knew he’d miss the excitement out here on the water with Manley. They’d been through hell and high water many times together, from making drug busts on the water to fighting with drunken baseball players on holiday to wrestling with alligators wandering into people’s backyards. One damned fool had even captured a gator and dragged it aboard his boat, then called them in when the animal refused to die from the clubbing it was given. Damned fools. They didn’t like the fines or the time doled out by the judges, but somehow water recreation bred stupidity.
Stallings knew that a standard national training program in maritime law enforcement was absolutely necessary and remained a long time in coming, and he’d have liked very much to be a part of formulating the standard. Certainly, he had seen enough in his nine years out here. For a place like Tampa Bay, or Miami, guys could train for months every year and it still wouldn’t be enough, he thought.
Looking to Washington for money was futile… Funds would only come from a constituency committed to and in need of better-trained marine cops, and unfortunately, the boating public made it quite clear that they didn’t have any urgent desire for watercops, trained or otherwise.
Manley had the bullhorn now, and as they came alongside the suspect ship-and she was a beauty-Manley announced who they were and told the parties aboard the three-masted, schooner-class sailing vessel that they should prepare to be boarded.
There was no immediate response from the ship, and no one could be seen at the helm or on deck. In his hand, Manley, like Stallings, held a gun. This was no routine check. This looked suspicious as hell; this could be the Night Crawler, or it could be nothing. Either way, there was nothing routine about boarding another man’s boat, another man’s property line in effect. Unlike a road cop, Manley couldn’t ask the suspect to get out of the vehicle and kneel on stone-hard pavement so as to gain control of the situation; rather, the FMP officer had to follow an even stricter code of conduct for an effective, safe arrest.
Stallings and Manley stared at what they had. It appeared an empty, anchored vessel. Unless they found probable cause, they could not board the ship.