Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 33, No. 1, January, 1988

Friends Say They’re Sorry by Bob Tipee

“Dad, did Mr. Dexter kill Mom?”

Rob Kettleman pulled Tommy’s Captain Defendo pajamas out of the drawer and stood up, wondering how to deal with this. Tommy was old enough to be curious but too young to understand. Just be honest, he reminded himself.

“No. Mr. Dexter didn’t kill Mom.” He tossed the pajamas to Tommy. “Time to get into these, sport. What gave you that idea about Mr. Dexter, anyway?”

Tommy began to undress. “I was telling Mr. Dexter about how we won’t see Mom till we go to heaven. And he said he knew Mom died, and I told him everybody back in Tampa said she was killed. And he said he was sorry. If he didn’t kill Mom, why did he say he was sorry?”

Because, Rob thought, it’s what people say when they can’t think of anything else. A beautiful young mother, running errands in broad daylight, walks into the wrong place in downtown Tampa when people she doesn’t even know start shooting at one another. Drug wars. The mob. Nobody will ever be certain. Friends say they’re sorry. What else can they say? How do you explain that to a five-year-old?

“I think Mr. Dexter just meant he knows how sad you and I are that Mom got killed and he wishes it hadn’t happened.”

God, let that be enough, Rob thought. Tommy’s surviving parent had to be strong. But Tommy’s surviving parent, the former big city police officer, kept wondering why things had turned out this way. Police officers died in the streets with bullets in their guts, not young mothers, not in broad daylight. Tommy’s father understood little more than Tommy, but he had to pretend otherwise, and the pretending hurt more all the time.

Please, he thought, no more questions. Not now.

Tommy pulled the pajama top down and stared at Captain Defendo’s face painted brightly on the front. He smiled at Rob, struck a fighting pose, and in a forced, low voice snarled, “Captain Defendo!” Then he ran out of the room, fists high in the Captain Defendo Salute, and into the bathroom across the hall.

Rob sighed, off the hook for now.

By the time Tommy returned, Rob had turned off the overhead light and turned on the essential night lamp. Holding the covers open, he asked, “You like it here, don’t you, sport?”

“It’s okay,” Tommy said, sliding into bed. “I just wish there were more kids around.”

“What about your friends at preschool? And Mr. Dexter?”

“I’m showing Mr. Dexter how to throw a Frisbee.”

That explained the upside-down Frisbee in the pond behind their condo. He would fish it out in the morning.

“Is he catching on?” Rob asked, pulling the covers up to Tommy’s chin.

“No, but Mr. Sims is good.”

“Mr. Sims?”

“You know. Mr. Dexter’s friend.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“I think he lives in the condo next to Mr. Dexter. Sometimes he plays with us, and sometimes he sits up in his balcony and just watches.”

“Is Mr. Sims nice?”

“Yes. He threw the Frisbee all the way from the picnic tables to Mr. Dexter’s porch. And he has a gun just like yours.”

Rob chilled. A stranger with a gun? He’d have to talk to Dexter, who so gratefully had solved Rob’s main problem in becoming the Palm Shores security director: How to make certain that Tommy, already half way toward being an orphan, never felt alone, never came home to an empty condo.

“What would you think if we got Mrs. Darlington to be here afternoons when you got back from preschool?” Rob asked casually, wondering how he’d pay for the babysitter full time. Her rates had eaten up most of his salary when they moved in that first month, even with the free rent that came with his compensation package.

Tommy shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “She’ll let me play with Mr. Dexter and Mr. Sims.”

So there would be conditions. Rob decided not to pursue the subject until after he had talked with Dexter the next morning. “Goodnight, sport,” he said, kissing Tommy’s forehead and rising from the bed.

“Goodnight.” When Rob reached the door Tommy asked, “Dad, when will you and me go to heaven?”

The next morning, Rob steered out of the condo parking lot in his patrol unit — a compact pickup truck with emergency lights, a one-channel radio and portable side unit, and a shotgun behind the seat. It wasn’t much, but he’d have traded it for more people. He had two patrol officers and two security gate guards per shift. For a fifty square mile resort with a championship golf course at each end, fifteen miles of shoreline, one luxury hotel, a marina, and a thousand condominium and single-family units, a staff that size didn’t even amount to bluff.

Rob unhooked the radio’s heavy mike and pressed the key. “Unit One to Base. Morning, Rose.”

He didn’t have a dispatcher. He had a rental-office clerk who monitored the base unit, kept logs, and took shift reports for an extra fifty dollars a month. At least she was efficient. “Welcome to the world, chief. How’s things?”

It wasn’t Rose’s concern that neither Dexter nor Sims had been in their condos after Tommy left in the preschool van.

“I didn’t get any calls from the graveyard shift,” he said. “I assume it was quiet.”

“Routine,” Rose said; “A couple of loud parties in Bay Towers. Kids diving for golf balls in a water hazard. Nights are pretty quiet here.”

“Ten-four.”

A male voice crackled into the conversation. “I love that real police talk!”

“Good morning, Buster,” Rob said. Buster Thompson, retired from Miami PD, could have handled the Palm Shores chief’s position if he had wanted it and the board of directors hadn’t insisted on a younger man. “What’s your twenty?”

“There he goes again, Rose,” Buster joked.

“He means where are you?” she said.

“The hotel. Gate check complete. Day shift guards at both.”

“Ten-four,” Rob said reflexively, regretting the real cop talk immediately. “That was for you, Buster. I’m at the curve around the Sands course. Rose, if you don’t need me in the office for anything I’ll head to the yacht club.”

“Nothing here, chief. Looks like another boring day.”

“That’s how these retired folks and vacationers like it,” Rob said. “Quiet and safe. Which is why we’re paid our fabulous salaries. Unit One out.”

Rob wanted to head to the yacht club because of the pay phone at the marina. He could call Dexter from there. Rose could have patched his radio to a phone line, but the problem with Dexter wouldn’t have stayed private.

Pulling into the yacht club parking lot, he glanced across the street at the tennis courts. On one was a tanned woman his age, wearing a short white tennis skirt and blouse and a blue visor. She had brown hair like Mary’s. From here she looked like Mary.

Why did Mary have to die?

There he went, torturing himself again. He had done what he had to do: quit a dangerous job with Tampa PD and moved into something that, however boring, let him give Tommy the stability he lost when his mother was killed.

And now Dexter had screwed things up by letting this guy Sims flash a gun around.

Rob stopped in the alley overlooking the marina, with its white and blue yachts serene in their berths, a few people milling around. As he stepped out of the truck Charlie Ramsey called from the main gate guard shack.

“Got two guys here say they’re supposed to do some cement work at the docks. It ain’t on the schedule.”

“Do they have a work order?” Rob asked.

“Yeah, but like I said it ain’t anywhere on the schedule.”

The job schedule was Rob’s idea, a way to keep track of people inside the resort other than regular workers, residents, and guests. Not everyone was remembering to list their jobs yet, but Charlie enforced the system as if it had been in place for years.

“I’m outside the marina,” Rob said. “Be there in five.”

He could call Dexter from the guard shack as easily as he could from the marina.

They were young men with tans, wearing bluejeans and workshirts. Magnetic signs on their van said PANHANDLE MASONRY.

And they had a work order.

“Signed by Mr. Davis himself,” Rob said, recognizing the signature of the resort owner.

“I called Mr. Davis’s office,” Charlie said. “He’s out of town till next week.”

“You did just right,” Rob said. “Mr. Davis is in Atlanta for a resort owners’ convention.”

Rob leaned out of the guard shack, handed the work, order through the van window, and gave the driver directions to the yacht club.

“Thank you, sir,” said the driver. Charlie raised the guard barrier.

“Sorry you had to come all the way out,” the big guard said.

“I need to make a call anyway,” Rob said, reaching for the wall phone. No one answered at Dexter’s condo.

Back in the truck, Rob let his worries lead him in the direction of his new home, past the tennis courts and yacht club and toward the Sands golf course near his condo. As he made the big curve around the sixteenth green and seventeenth tee he saw the Panhandle Masonry van on the other side.

Rob turned on the emergency lights and stood on the accelerator. He caught the van within sight of his condo.

“I guess I didn’t pay good enough attention to your directions,” the young driver said sheepishly.

“Sign back at the cart crossing says ‘Residents Only,’ ” Rob said coarsely.

The driver shrugged and looked at his companion, who said, “We just never seen a place like this before, officer. Damn; it’s got everything!”

“Your turnoff’s a mile back,” Rob said. Newcomers often strayed into the restricted residential area, overwhelmed by the expanse and variety of this beautiful place. It did no harm to let them know that strict security rules came with the white sand and palms.

“This time watch for the grey condos on your right,” Rob said. “The yacht club parking lot will be right after that. Stay to the right of the clubhouse; the marina’s straight behind. Turn around in this next parking lot.”

As he pointed to his condo’s parking lot he saw them: Dexter’s Chevrolet and a Plymouth in the space that went with what must have been Sims’s place. He followed the van into the parking lot and pulled into his own space next to Dexter’s.

He found his neighbor and another man, obviously Sims, on the second floor balcony of the condo next to Dexter’s, two units down from his own.

“What a pleasant surprise!” Dexter called down. As usual, he wore slacks and a collared blue T-shirt contrasting with thick, silver hair. “This is Dave Sims. You’re just in time for iced tea.”

The men disappeared inside the upstairs room. In a minute Dexter drew aside the drapes of the sliding glass patio door and beckoned Rob inside. He pointed to a chair by the butcher block dining table in front of the door overlooking the pond.

Sims came out of the kitchen with iced tea glasses. He was younger than Rob had expected, maybe forty-five, bald, rangy, dressed in sports clothes like Dexter’s. Handing Rob an icy glass, he said, “Sorry, instant’s all I got.”

Rob didn’t feel like pleasantries. He looked at Sims. “Tommy mentioned something about a gun.”

Dexter snapped his head toward his neighbor, who said, “I didn’t know he’d seen it. I tried to be careful. It won’t happen again.”

“You’re right about that,” Rob said. “I’m going to hire a real babysitter.”

Dexter looked back at Rob with sad eyes. “But I told you I’d be here every afternoon, and I have been. He’s the one thing I have to look forward to each day.” Rob knew Dexter liked their arrangement as well as Tommy did.

“Tommy sees enough guns with his father being a cop. After what happened to his mother, I’m afraid he’s... well, fragile.”

Dexter clenched his fist and looked down. “I understand your concern. But Dave can be more careful.”

Rob squared around at Sims. “About the gun. I’m listening.”

Sims folded his arms. “I have a permit.”

“And a reason to have a firearm where a kid can see it, I suppose.”

Sims nodded.

“I’m still listening,” Rob said.

“It’s part of my job. That’s all I can say.”

Rob slammed the table with his palm. “Damn it! I’m security director of this place, and I want to know why the heat. Now.”

Sims stayed calm. “You can write my superiors.”

Dexter interrupted. “I’ll explain everything.”

He leaned forward and held his head in his hands, speaking slowly, painfully. Sims, he explained, was a federal agent guarding a witness in congressional anti-crime hearings starting the next month. Dexter had agreed to testify in return for protection and immunity.

“Immunity?” Rob asked.

“I had a flying service in Biloxi,” Dexter said. “Some people — bad people — came to me when they needed secret transportation up and down the coast.”

“The mob.”

“I’m not sure.”

“But you knew they weren’t going to Sunday school.”

Dexter nodded. “They lent me the money to get started in Biloxi. I didn’t know who they were then. I didn’t know until I’d been flying them around for a long time. Then it was too late. They’d have killed me if I tried to sell out. My wife didn’t even know. I kept going to protect her, our livelihood, myself. She died a couple of years ago. I started looking for some way to break free. Then I heard about these hearings and got in touch with some people in the government. They promised to hide me so I could do what was right.”

Sims softened his tone, but he obviously didn’t like this divulgence to someone he no doubt regarded as an amateur. “Now you know. Alan knows a lot: where key people went at important times. He’ll be a valuable witness.”

A sweat broke out on Rob’s neck. “And he’s like a neon bull’s-eye until then. What in hell were you doing babysitting an innocent little boy?”

Dexter winced. “Joan — my wife — and I, we wanted kids. We wanted kids bad. It never worked out.”

Sims had stiffened again. “We have people on the outside. I have no reason to believe Alan’s enemies know he’s anywhere in the state. Your boy’s safer with Alan and me than he could be anywhere, especially if you do your job and watch the gates.”

Rob stood up. “Don’t worry about me and my job,” he snapped. “Dexter, do you realize the people you flew around may have been the same scum that killed my wife?”

Tears filled the old man’s eyes. “It couldn’t have been,” he said, his voice constricted. “The people in Biloxi never went east of Mobile. And the tragedy with your wife was... well, too clumsy. There’s no connection.”

“They’re all the same to me,” Rob said, standing up. “Thanks for the tea. And stay the hell away from my son.”

Two nights later, Rob took Tommy to his favorite drive-in restaurant for hamburgers. When they were finished, he said, “This arrangement we’ve had the last couple of days — me picking you up at school and taking you on patrol until the shift ends — how would you like to make that sort of an everyday thing?”

Tommy sucked the last of his milkshake through the straw. “I thought you said Mrs. Darlington was going to be there so I could still play with Mr. Dexter and Mr. Sims.”

How did someone so young remember so much? “That’s the problem, sport. Mrs. Darlington got another job, so she can’t help us out like she did before.”

“I thought kids couldn’t go on patrol,” Tommy said seriously. Had Rob told him that?

“They can’t unless it’s the boss’s kid. I’m the boss.”

Tommy looked at the lights and buttons on the patrol unit’s dashboard in front of him. “I think I like throwing Frisbee with Mr. Sims and Mr. Dexter better.”

“But I don’t think it’s such a good thing for you to play Frisbee with people who carry guns. I’m going to have a talk with Mr. Davis and see if we can move, maybe into the Towers. We’ll find somebody even nicer than Mr. Dexter.”

Davis, Rob knew, would object. But he’d either go along or find himself a new security director. And Tommy would have to put up with his father. The boy didn’t protest, but he didn’t make it easy, either.

“You carry a gun, and we play Frisbee all the time,” he said. “What makes Mr. Sims any different?”

It wouldn’t work. Rob had too many responsibilities. He found himself cutting too many corners in order to get to school to pick up Tommy. He had to excuse himself from too many appointments, then break the speed limits he was supposed to enforce.

He couldn’t be Tommy Kettleman’s father — determined that this hurt little boy would never feel alone — and Palm Shores security director, too. He would find another job, something more flexible, less responsible if need be, something that would enable him to live up to the responsibility that mattered.

But he didn’t have time. He didn’t even have a week. The first call from Rose came by phone to Rob’s condo right after Tommy left for school the next Monday.

“Problems in Pine Estates,” Rose said sternly, referring to the single-family homes overlooking the bay. “Sounds like a break-in at 2412.”

“Keep the graveyard gate guards on station,” Rob said. “Tell Buster to ask them about suspicious vehicles. Then call the sheriffs office. I’ll meet them at Pine Estates.”

A fat, greyhaired woman with wild eyes and a yappy toy poodle under her arm met Rob at the front door.

“I think it’s a fine thing when somebody can just walk around a neighborhood like this and break into whatever house he chooses. A fine thing.”

“What’s missing, ma’am?” Rob asked.

“A TV set and a stereo. A very expensive stereo. I thought we had a security department.”

The break-in was simple enough: A door on the bay side had been kicked in, the television and stereo carted outside from a family room, probably to a vehicle parked out front. There were no obvious prints. Rob managed to learn between the woman’s complaints that her semi-retired husband traveled a lot; she had spent the night with friends.

Rob was briefing a young, aloof deputy when Rose’s second call came in on the portable radio.

“Bad news, chief. Another break-in. Tennis condos, Number 20.”

Buster reported from the front gate that there had been no suspicious entries or exits during the night.

“Attention, all units,” Rob said. “Restricted access effective until further notice. Rose, notify the county of this new problem and see if they can send more backup. I’m on my way. Buster, start patroling the perimeter road. Rose, better see if you can raise Mr. Davis in Atlanta. Unit One out.”

Rose patched Davis’s call through to Rob shortly after noon as he worked the third burglary call of the day.

“Hell of a thing,” Davis said. “I’ve been listening to presentations on resort security here. I could have stayed home and got the real thing.”

Rob couldn’t resist. “Did the experts there say anything about letting your security director know you’ve got hot federal property on ice?”

Davis cleared his throat. “I suppose I should have said something.”

“Would’ve been nice, seeing as how the federal property and I are neighbors.”

“There was a session on providing protection, as a matter of fact,” Davis said coldly. “Not much about burglaries, though. I think most people here think prevention is the key in that regard.”

Davis had this way of reminding his employees who worked for whom. “Yeah,” Rob said. “I’m at Number 3, in the Towers. And there’s another I haven’t got to yet in the flats by the Sea Breeze course. Buster’s working that one and trying to keep an eye on the perimeter road all at once. We’ve got three county units, too.”

Davis said nothing for a few seconds, then, “I’ll be there in two hours. And, Rob, what I said about prevention: I know you’re understaffed. You’re doing your best, and it sounds like you’ve got it under control. I appreciate that. We’ll talk about staffing later.”

“Yeah,” Rob said, exasperated, “let’s talk.”

Rose disconnected the telephone patch and asked, “Now that you’ve told off the boss, will there be anything else?”

Rob looked at his watch. There was no way he’d be able to pick up Tommy. “Patch me through to Alan Dexter. His number’s on a pad on my desk.”

Late that afternoon Rose called as Rob, in the studio unit where the fourth break-in call had originated, checked factors with the deputy in charge of the investigations.

“Got a call from the Sea Breeze clubhouse. A couple of golfers had to play around a red van parked on the beach by the fourteenth fairway.”

“Any marks?” Rob asked anxiously.

“Something about masonry. That’s all they remembered.”

“That’s it,” Rob said. “Attention all units. Suspects are two white males, late twenties, both tan, athletic, one with medium-length blond hair, the other with dark brown hair, shaggy-looking. Charlie, check the work roster. Buster, stay on the perimeter road. I’ve got a feeling they’ll be trying to leave that way on foot. I’ll check the van.”

Rob clicked off his radio and nodded to the deputy as he ran out to the truck. Charlie called as he was pulling away.

“No checkout for the guys from Panhandle Masonry last night, chief,” he said.

“Ten-four. Unit One’s en route to suspect van, code one.” Maybe the city cop talk sounded dense in this operation. But for the first time since Mary got killed, he felt his professional instincts coming alive. Even his differences with Dexter seemed secondary now.

Tommy, he knew, was in good hands. There was a job to be done, action at last. Exhilaration, accomplishment. Something to focus a person’s thoughts.

Screw them if they don’t like real police talk.

In Tampa he’d have had backup. Here, he had himself, his wits, his .38.

He approached the van carefully, stepping over scrubby beach plants just off the fairway. Nothing moved.

He checked the cab first. Empty. The rear door wasn’t locked. Inside was what looked like everything the burglary victims had reported missing.

“Unit One to Base,” he said into the pocket radio when he was certain the burglars were nowhere nearby. “I’ve got the goods but no suspects.”

“This is Davis,” the resort owner called. “That’s great news about the property. I’m at Base with Rose. How soon can you get here?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Rob said. “Why don’t you head this way? My people and the county guys are busy, and I need somebody to stand by this vehicle. We can talk when you get here.”

Rob searched the beach, heavily tracked by golfers, and found nothing useful. The burglars might have escaped the resort by a stashed or waiting boat. But why hadn’t they taken the stolen goods? More likely, they had panicked for some reason, abandoning the van, fleeing on foot, heading for the perimeter road, the only way out. He could still catch them.

“Unit Two,” Rob said into the radio after returning to his pickup next to the van, “sweep the whole perimeter road. I expect they’ll break for the outside after it gets dark.”

Rob glanced at the orange sky over the bay. It wouldn’t be long. He also saw Davis’s golf cart come over the rise behind the fourteenth tee.

“Rose,” he said, “patch me through to Alan Dexter’s apartment.”

Sims answered. “Tommy wanted to watch boats, so Alan took him to the marina. They’ll be back before dark. Alan’s having more fun than your boy is.”

Rob quickly described his day and said he’d probably be late. Sims wanted to know if any of the burglaries had been close to the Sands condos.

“Everything’s been by the Sea Breeze course, so it couldn’t be any farther from you,” Rob said reassuringly. “My boss just got here. Thanks for the help.”

Davis wore checked grey golf slacks, a solid yellow knit shirt, and a perpetual tan. Rob showed him the stolen goods.

“Excellent work,” Davis said. “To have recovered everything so quickly... I’m impressed.”

“We still don’t have the suspects,” Rob said, knowing Davis cared less about justice than about returning the property to his residents. “I’ve got a question. Your signature was on the work order the suspects used to get into the resort. Concrete work at the yacht club.”

Davis shook his head. “Forgery,” he said. “There’s no concrete work going on there. I sign a thousand things a day. They could have got a sample anywhere.”

The explanation made sense, but it didn’t fit. Burglars smart enough to use a business’s procedures against itself weren’t the kind to panic and run for no reason. The contradiction was an annoyance, not worth mentioning.

Rob walked to his pickup and pulled the shotgun from behind the seat. “I’m going to leave this and the portable radio with you and help out at the perimeter road. Hope you don’t mind playing deputy for a while.”

Davis took the weapon. “The stuff in this van is going to help me calm down some of my best residents. I’ll guard it like the significant amount of money it represents. And, for your information, one of the things I learned at the security seminar in Atlanta was that yes, the local security people should be notified when there’s a protection operation on the premises.”

That this could be anything other than common sense surprised Rob, but something else bothered him more. “They had a seminar on federal cover?”

Davis shrugged. “It’s more common at places like this than you think. I’m new at it myself.”

Rob slid into the seat of his pickup. The image seemed almost comic: resort owners — businessmen in designer sports clothes — talking about dangerous cover procedures at a convention. But he had other things to worry about.

“Keep your eyes open,” he said. Then he picked up the radio mike. “Unit One’s en route to the front gate. Rose, patch me to Dexter’s condo again.”

As Rob drove along the dark service road between the Sea Breeze course and hotel gounds, Tommy answered the telephone.

“Everything all right there, sport?” Rob asked.

“Mr. Dexter bought a Frisbee that glows in the dark,” the boy said. “Mr. Sims and I are going to try it out right now.”,

“Be careful of the pond,” Rob said. But he could hear Tommy’s anxious footsteps already slapping against the kitchen floor.

“We turned on the floodlights out back.” It was Dexter. “Dave’ll be careful. I’m frying burgers.”

It was funny, Rob thought, how the excitement of real police work changed his perspective. Dexter now looked like a victim of the mob, not a willing member. That put him on the side of Rob and Tommy.

“I was wrong about you,” Rob said.

“Does that mean—?”

“We’ll talk about it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You were protecting your son. Maybe you overdid it. He’s a tough kid.”

Tough? How could Tommy be tough when Rob himself still felt like an open wound. Until tonight. Until this thing with the burglars. Maybe that was it: Now he felt “tough” again, part of the world.

“Like I said, we’ll talk,” Rob said. “And thanks.”

He steered onto the road between the hotel and one of the Sea Breeze fairways. Looking back, he could see lights from the patrol units dancing on the perimeter road on the other side of the course.

In a minute he was on the palm-lined exit road with the front gate straight ahead. The radio crackled on.

“Unit Two’s got two... no, three suspects on the tenth fairway. On foot, running south toward the tee box.”

Rob turned on his emergency lights and sped toward the gate. “Unit One’s turning north onto the perimeter road from the front gate. You can follow the suspects on foot, Buster. Anybody between the front gate and tenth fairway?”

A deputy called from closer to the tee box. The fairway ran between the perimeter road and a long lagoon. The trap seemed perfect.

Buster and the deputy were putting handcuffs on three men when Rob pulled up. And Rose called.

“A guy named Sims is on the line for you, chief. Says it’s urgent.”

“Put him on.”

Rob waited a few seconds. “Rose?”

“He was there a minute ago,” she said.

“If he comes back have him hold. I’ll be right back.”

What could Sims want? Rob hurried to the tee box. Buster turned his flashlight onto the faces of the suspects, who squinted and looked frightened.

They were teenagers, not the men who had driven the Panhandle Masonry truck.

“I’m going to ask once, and if I find out you lied I’ll skin you kids myself,” Rob said, fighting sudden desperation. “What were you doing?”

All three kids started to answer.

“You,” Rob said, pointing to the one who looked oldest.

“Honest, officer, we were just diving for golf balls in the lagoon.”

Buster stepped toward the kid. “Don’t you know what swims around in there?”

Rob stopped the big officer with the back of his hand. “Never mind. How’d you get here?”

“The car’s on the other side of that road.”

Rob grabbed Buster by the arm and turned away from the kids. “Check out the car. If it’s where they say, let the kids go and stay on the road but don’t leave your radio.”

“But—”

“These aren’t the burglars,” Rob snapped. “Something’s very wrong. I’m headed for my condo.”

Sims was on his hands and knees, shaking his head, when Rob ran into Dexter’s condo.

“Where’s Tommy?” Rob asked.

“They want Dexter,” Sims said.

“Where?”

Sims shook his head, confused and in pain. He had to reconstruct events from an obviously scrambled memory.

“Tommy and I... playing Frisbee out back. Some guys came around the building where Tommy was, pulled down on me with automatic weapons. I hit the ground, rolled out of light toward the pond. One of the guys yelled it wasn’t Dexter. They grabbed Tommy. Said they’d let him go if I turned Dexter over to them in half an hour at the marina.”

Rob dropped to his knees. “When was that?”

“Nine. Five after.”

Rob looked at his watch. Nine twenty-five. He reached to his belt for the portable radio, which now was with Davis. He jumped to his feet.

Sims grabbed his leg. “You got to handle this right,” he said, obviously forcing himself to make the point. “They already fooled me once, doubled back, slugged me while I was trying to call you, took Dexter, too.”

“Did you see them?”

The agent shook his head. “Can they get out the gates?”

“Damn it,” Rob yelled, “you said they were going to the marina.”

“That’s what they said. That’s why I think they’re trying to get off the resort by car.”

“So you think they’ve got Tommy and Dexter, too, and don’t intend to let either one of them go.”

Sims sat up, held his head, and looked sadly at Rob. “They’re pros,” he said. “Make sure the gates are secure.”

“They’ve got my son.”

Rob’s voice cracked at that part of his radio orders. He didn’t bother with the wide loop around the Sands course; he drove across two fairways to save time.

Maybe Sims was right. Maybe the men had faked the story about the marina and were heading out by car. They certainly had proved themselves adept at diversionary tactics, which Rob now recognized the burglaries to be. He had kept Buster and the rest on station along the perimeter road and gates.

But he couldn’t bet everything on Sims’s hunch. Maybe there was a boat lying in the darkness off the marina, waiting to pick up the kidnappers... or were they assassins? If they now had Dexter, why had they taken Tommy, too?

“Unit One’s code one to the marina,” he said hoarsely. “Out.” And he switched off his radio.

Speeding out of the residential area, he thought of Davis, sitting out on the fairway, no doubt hearing all this, wondering what was going on, probably trying to call Rob’s dead radio now. How would the resort owner react when Rob told him he had tipped off the mob to Dexter’s whereabouts when he signed into the convention security seminar and asked questions about guarding federal witnesses?

It didn’t matter. What mattered was what he found at the marina. And if he found nothing, did that mean Sims was right or that Rob was too late? He turned off the truck’s lights and pulled into the yacht club parking lot.

Stopping next to the club building, he saw it: a big cruiser, maybe forty feet, running lights off, slipping into the shadows, engine barely audible.

Rob turned on his radio. “Rose, call Harbor Patrol,” he said, giving her a sketchy description of the vessel.

Then he pushed himself out of the truck and bounded onto the dock, knowing that the Harbor Patrol would never find the ship carrying away his son. The ship would hide in the dark vastness of the night sea, as its owners hid in the moral confusion of an uncertain people, evil guaranteed anonymity... except when someone made a mistake.

Rob trotted down the dock, eyes trained on the disappearing ship, giving up. Dexter’s body would turn up somewhere, a message. And Tommy? What did they want with Tommy, who, like his mother, just got in the way?

Was the little boy somewhere by the stern, looking back? Could he deal with this? Was he, as Dexter had said, “tougher” than Rob thought? Did his captors know he couldn’t be left alone?

Rob heard sirens that didn’t matter behind him. He tasted again the unfair poison of grief. He burned in his rage. And he looked below at the dark water. Could he find comfort there?

“Tommy,” Rob whispered, tears stinging his eyes. “Tommy,” he yelled into the darkness. “Oh, God, Tommy!”

“Captain Defendo!”

The affected, low voice came from the low deck of a sailing yacht behind him. Rob turned.

And he saw the tiny fists, the arms high in the Captain Defendo Salute, the beaming smile of his son standing up from play.

“Tommy!”

Rob jumped into the boat and pulled his son up in a joyful hug. “How long have you been here?”

The little boy pursed his lips and shrugged. “I don’t know. Those men took me on a boat ride. I thought they were bad men at first because they had guns and took me away from Mr. Sims. But they said Mr. Dexter would be there and everything would be all right, so I just waited, and sure enough Mr. Dexter came a little while ago. He talked with the men, and they put me in that boat, and Mr. Dexter said he was going for a boat ride but you’d be along. And here you are.”

This didn’t make sense. “Tell me again: Mr. Dexter wasn’t with you when you left the condo?”

Tommy shook his head. “I was real scared until he came.”

So Dexter had clubbed Sims, knowing the agent would have resisted his surrendering in return for Tommy’s freedom.

Rob set his son back down on the deck. “Weren’t you afraid out here all by yourself?”

Tommy raised his fists again. “Captain Defendo likes boats,” he said. “Besides, Mr. Dexter said you’d be here. And you know what else?”

Rob lifted his son, his tough little boy, onto the dock.

“No. What else?”

“He said to tell you he was sorry about Mom. I still don’t know why he says that, but he didn’t kill Mom.”

Rob climbed out of the yacht. “You’re right: He didn’t kill Mom. Let’s go home.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, sport?”

“How come we’re not waiting for Mr. Dexter to come back from his boat ride?”