To all appearances, these people had committed a wanton act of piracy and two murders — three, they thought — for no gain except a twenty-five-hundred-dollar Rolex wristwatch. It made no sense whatever, and that made Cat angrier still.
He knew that Katie and Jinx were lost beyond hope, that he could never have them back, but almost as much as he wanted the people who had killed them, he wanted to know why it had been done.
He began building toward a state of new resolve: He would spend every dime he had and the rest of his life, if necessary, to find out.
6
Cat climbed out of the pool behind his house and walked up and down on the flagstones for a moment, breathing deeply. This was so much easier than it had been in the beginning, he thought. He’d been as weak as a kitten when he had gotten out of the hospital. He’d started swimming laps to stretch his chest muscles, damaged by the shotgun blast, and he’d learned to enjoy the workouts, as much as he was capable of enjoying anything. It was better than sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead. He’d done enough of that.
He had lost thirty pounds in the hospital and nearly another twenty since. He weighed the same as he had the year he graduated from high school, and he felt in better shape, strong, tanned, and fit. He still surprised himself when he encountered a mirror — slim, clean-shaven, and close-cropped for the first time in years. He had gained the new fitness with swimming and with hitting tennis balls back at a machine. They were both suitably solitary activities. He had played tennis a couple of times at the club and discovered he didn’t want the company; he preferred to sweat in solitude.
Someone called to him from the back of the house. Cat turned to see Wallace Henderson, a retired Atlanta police captain, now a highly regarded private investigator, approaching. With a feeling of dread, he shook the man’s hand and offered him a chair at poolside while he got into a terry-cloth robe. He knew what was coming.
“It’s come to this, Mr. Catledge,” Henderson said. “My people and I have spent nearly three months and a considerable sum of your money running down every conceivable lead and theory of this case. We have telephoned or seen every dentist in San Diego and the surrounding Southern Californian communities and found two who have a son named Denny; one was a junior in high school and one was three years old. We have checked the crew lists for the last ten years on the yacht races this Denny says he sailed. Nothing there. We have liaised with the State Department and the Colombian police; the Colombians have distributed the artist’s sketches based on your descriptions of the two men — you didn’t get a good enough look at the woman for a description; they’ve circulated a description of your wristwatch and the engraving on the back. We’ve had the Colombian Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard on constant lookout for a sportfishing boat called Santa Maria — turns out that’s a very common name for a boat in Latin American countries — and there’s been no sign of such a boat. We’ve had a salvage company look at the possibility of raising your yacht and recovering the bodies, but she sank in more than a thousand fathoms of water and is unrecoverable.
“The fact is, sir, I don’t think that I can, in good faith, take any more of your money. I was a police officer for twenty-five years, and I’ve been a private investigator for nearly ten, and I tell you, I have never dealt with a case with so little to go on and so many dead ends. Now, there’s a chance that one or more of the queries we’ve made might produce some sort of answer sometime in the future — maybe they’ll find the Santa Maria, for instance — but that is unpredictable and entirely out of our hands.
“I’m not going to tell you, Mr. Catledge, that you should forget that your wife and daughter were murdered and your yacht sunk; I’m not going to tell you that we’ll never know why or that the people who did it will never be brought to justice. But I have to tell you that, right now, I don’t know of a single other way to make that happen.” The man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I just don’t,” he said with finality.
“Captain, we could send a couple of operatives down there,” Cat said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.
Henderson shook his head. “No, sir — I mean, we could do that; I could, through some of my colleagues, probably find a couple of Latinos who could blend in down there, but the Colombian police — thanks to the pressure you brought on the State Department — did what I consider a first-class job of investigation in Santa Marta. You’ve read the translated reports; no outsider I could send in there could possibly do half as well. At least you’ve got the interest of the police down there. If they turn up something, we’ll hear about it.”
Cat heaved a sigh. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, wearily. “I’ve paid you for your skill and advice, and you’ve given me both, Captain Henderson, and I’m grateful to you.” He stood. “I guess I’m just going to have to wait until something new turns up.” He offered his hand. “Send me your bill for any work outstanding.”
Henderson took his hand. “I want you to know, sir, that I consider this a personal defeat for me. But I’ve given it my best. I hope you’ll call me if you hear anything new.” The man left.
Cat got into the Porsche and drove. He was a fast driver and had the traffic tickets to prove it, but today he drove listlessly, carelessly. It had occurred to him more than once to take the car out somewhere and crash it into a tree or a bridge abutment and end the whole thing. All that had kept him going had been the hope of finding Denny and his cohorts, and now that seemed a remote possibility.
Ben and Liz had been wonderful, having him to dinner, inviting friends over, keeping him from becoming a recluse. There had even been a couple of attempts to fix him up with women, evenings that had fizzled. He simply had no interest in women, or, for that matter, anything else. Even the business, which had once given him so much satisfaction, had no further appeal for him. He had not spent more than a few hours at the office; the people there had tiptoed around him, and he hadn’t felt in the least necessary. Ben had been getting feelers about a takeover by a larger company, and that was fine with Cat, not that he needed the money.
He suddenly felt ill and pulled the car over. He sat on the grass verge of the roadway, fighting nausea, trying to think of something else to do for Katie and Jinx, for some reason to go on living, and not having much luck. Suddenly, there was a loud roar overhead, and a shadow passed across the car. Cat looked up and discovered that he was parked at the end of a runway at Peachtree Dekalb Airport, a general aviation field on the outskirts of Atlanta. He watched the light airplane climb, turn, and start back toward the field.
Cat started the car and drove around to the main entrance of the airport. Passing through the gate, he immediately saw a sign reading “PDK Flight Academy.” A few moments later he sat across a desk from a pleasant man who explained the flight-training program to him. Half an hour later he sat at the end of a runway in a Cessna 152 trainer and listened carefully to the fresh-faced young instructor seated next to him.