Above the distant palms, Ford saw the horizon change. Noticed the swollen, tumid blue of the sky, and he knew the sea was there; would have known even if he had not traveled this road before. Then he came to the bridge . . . not the old swing bridge he remembered, but a new, arching concrete monster that carried traffic high over the bay and down onto Sandy Key. From the top of the bridge, Ford could see the whole island: a long cusp of beach with casuarina midlands that had been chopped into a gridwork of canals and then smothered with a stalagmite jumble of condominiums and the bleak geometries of planned housing. A sign at the base of the bridge told him this was the handiwork of Sealife Development Corporation.
Ford wasn't impressed. He remembered Sandy Key from high school—a few fish shacks and a lot of empty beach—but that's not why he didn't like what he now saw. It had nothing to do with nostalgia. Ford seldom thought of high school or the years he had lived on Sanibel; never longed for what too many people remembered as those carefree teenage days. He much preferred adulthood, living in the present, and had little patience with the nostalgia freaks, people who escaped the obligations of Now by living in the rosy Then of their imaginations. The only reason he had returned to Florida was because of the bull sharks and the chance to open Sanibel Biological Supply. He had expected change. The west coast of Florida was attractive and people naturally gravitated to attractive areas. But Sandy Key hadn't just changed, it had been chopped up, reconstituted, and stamped from a mold. This wasn't change, it was greed; unimaginative greed, at that.
Ford drove through the sterile downtown area, immune to the tacky Polynesian fa9ades and cutesy boutiques. He took the address from his sports coat pocket and found Sandy Key Funeral Home: a beige stucco box on a sodded lot with palm trees.
There were a few cars in the parking lot, and Ford stepped out into the heat.
Some place for Rafe Hollins to end up.
Nine people showed up for the memorial service, all men. Knowing Rafe, Ford would have been less surprised by a room full of women. He had hoped for a chance to see Rafe's ex-wife, not that he thought she could or would tell him anything. Just wanted to see her; see the woman Rafe had chosen only to end up hating. He recognized most of the men. Former high school teammates, counter-culture Sixties' expatriates who had weathered the Age of Aquarius, the Drug Culture, and Beatlemania without noticeable scars, probably because they hadn't paid any of it much attention. They looked like businessmen or commercial fishermen, but their faces still had the weird beach boys light: good-timers who had joined the establishment without being ingested by it. They didn't look too happy now, though. Just uncomfortable.
Major Lester Durell of Fort Myers-Sanibel Municipal Police Department was there. Ford nodded and got a curt nod in return; the defenses still up. Someone touched him on the back, and Ford turned to see Harvey Hollins. Harvey was five years older than Rafe, just as tall and much wider, but without Rafe's grace and good looks. Harvey had always been the plodder. Bright, but slow in speech and deed. He had a thick pug nose, the Hollins cleft chin, and dark, dark eyes set beneath a heavy brow, and Ford could see that his eyes were red. He was taking Rafe's death hard, looking like a big, sad child in the black suit a size too small for him.
Harvey said, "He woulda sure wanted you here, Doc," taking Ford's hand in his, shaking it warmly. "Boy, you two were a pair. Never saw one without the other, and those jokes you used to play made me so damn mad. Like when you melted down that Ex-Lax and slipped it into my candy bar. Man, I coulda killed you two—" And caught himself, realizing what he was saying.
Ford said, "It's okay, Harv; I know. I'm sorry we had to meet like this. You need any help? I'll take over if you want."
"You already helped, Doc. That bitch of a funeral director cornered me when I first came in. Wanted to know where my friends got off questioning her ethics. I didn't even have to ask what friend; knew it was you right away. You and your double measure of gall. Too much, I used to think. But I figure your questioning her ethics cut four maybe five hundred off the bill, which will go to little Jake when we find him.
Ford said nothing, just stood there looking into the big man's red eyes.
"Rafe didn't kill himself, Doc."
"I know, Harv."
"There's only one reason my brother woulda killed himself. That's if he'd let something happen to Jake."
"I'm sure Jake's fine. Like you said, Rafe wouldn't let anything happen to his own son. He'll show up."
"He loved that boy more than anything. We didn't talk that much after I moved. People move, grow apart . . . even brothers. I've been asking myself why in the hell I didn't call him more. When we did talk, it was young Jake this, young Jake that. I have two daughters, so I know how a man feels about his children. Rafe wouldn't have killed himself. I'd bet my last dollar on it.
"I think you're right, Harvey."
"Do you, Doc? Do you really?" His expression was so filled with gratitude that Ford had to glance away. Harvey said, "I told all the other guys that, and they just sort of stared at me, feeling bad but not believing it. I told Les Durell and he acted like he didn't even care. And we played ball together."
Ford said, "Durell has to act like that. He's a professional with a conflict of interest: You guys are friends. He can't show favoritism, even if he's interested. He's got to be tough on himself and doubly sure of his facts. He heard what you said, though, you can be sure of it."
"You really think so?"
"You knew him better than I did. What do you think?"
"Well . . . Les was always smart. And not too easy to read. Mostly I asked him to help find Jake. Rafe's dead; there's no bringing him back. But we've got to find that little boy. You know what Les said? He said he'd make sure all the proper authorities had been contacted. The proper authorities. Even when I told him I'd offer a five-thousand-dollar reward, my whole savings, that's all he would say."
Ford said, "I'm sure everything possible's being done," feeling like a jerk for not being able to say any more.
Harvey didn't even seem to hear him. "Just the thought of it, Doc. . . . The idea of a Hollins child out there all alone, no one to look after him, not even knowing his daddy's dead, maybe waiting for his daddy to come back—" Harvey turned suddenly, looking at the wall until he regained control. He cleared his throat and said thickly, "We better get in there. The service is about to start."
The funeral director—out of spite, probably—had put Rafe into a green glass vase. The kind for long-stemmed roses, but with a lid on it. They'd put the vase on a rostrum between two candles, and Ford sat in the back row, wondering what a really cheap urn looked like. Organ music was being piped into the room, seemed to be seeping in through the walls with the smell of refrigerated flowers and thick drapes. There was a man in a dark suit sitting beside the rostrum. Ford hoped it wasn't a minister, but it was. The Reverend Somebody from the Sandy Key Baptist Church. He looked like a television evangelist with his chubby face and sprayed hair. The minister kept glancing at Harvey and smiling, as if to reassure.