Blood of Cain

54

When I arrived at the marina, I parked my Jeep away from the main lot and even farther away from the Tiki Bar lot. I walked quickly down the central dock that was adjacent to the seawall, the dock straddling most of the marina waterfront. The captain of the Sea Witch, a forty-four-foot, half-day fishing boat loaded with tourists, slowly accelerated the big Cummins diesels and headed out towards Ponce Inlet and the Atlantic. A half-dozen seagulls followed in the boat’s wake, the birds squawking over the drum roll of the engines.

Approaching the Tiki Bar, I turned left between the marina office and a yacht broker’s small building and walked to get a clear view of the parking lot. No news satellite trucks. No microwave trucks. No hordes of reporters grazing the perimeter. Maybe a few sat at the bar. At this point, I didn’t care. A woman had said she knew Courtney. And I wanted this person to speak to me before she spoke to the news media. My immediate plan was to walk into the bar, ignore any reporters who may be stalking the area, and then I’d find Kim Davis. I hoped she was there.

I entered the Tiki Bar through the rear delivery entrance. The cook, Big John, an Army veteran I knew, mid-thirties, pushing 280 pounds, sweatband over his thick eyebrows, poured fresh shrimp into a deep-fryer. He nodded and used his index finger to flick a piece of shrimp tail from the back of his hand to the floor. Then he grinned and said, “Dude, don’t blame you for comin’ in the back door. You doin’ all right?”

“Yeah, is Kim working today?”

“Her shift ended about ten minutes ago. She might still be out there. Angie’s here along with two servers.” He wiped his hands on a frayed white towel and folded his arms across his big chest. “I’ve worked here three years and never seen biz like it’s been recently. It’s slacked off today, but all this political crap on TV brought out the news crews and the gawkers. Man, I hope all this shit comes out clean for you.” He used a spatula to flip a burger on the grill.

“Thank you, John.” I walked around him in the small kitchen and entered the Tiki Bar. Two charter deck hands and a charter boat captain tended sweating cans of beer at the bar. A half-dozen tourists sat at wooden tables eating and drinking.

Kim was headed for the door, her back to me, purse hanging from her shoulder. I caught up with her and said, “I heard you got a strange phone call.”

She turned around. “Sean, how do you walk so quietly?”

“Boat shoes.”

She glanced down at my shoes and smiled, her brown eyes lifting up to meet mine. She looked around and adjusted her purse strap. “Let’s get out of here. Can we talk on your boat?”

“We can. Come on.” We stepped out the side door leading to the docks, unlocked the gate, and walked down L-dock. A forty-foot Beneteau sailboat was motoring into its slip, the captain using bow-thrusters to maneuver the boat, two women in bikinis sitting in the cockpit with him.

Kim said, “I can see Nick’s doing better. Looks like he’s grilling something in that smoker on his cockpit.”

Max sat in a canvas chair near the grill, Nick turning over sizzling fish, using a brush to apply olive oil and his special sauces. I said, “Max are you helping or just observing?” She jumped from her chair and ran around the cockpit, between Nick’s bare feet, barking, tail flapping, watching Kim and I approach.

Nick turned to us and grinned, his bruises no longer purple, the swelling was going down. “Hot Dog knows how she likes her fish. She watches me to make sure I get it right. Ya’ll hungry? Dave’s comin’ over to eat. I can toss another couple of pieces on the fire. Red snapper. Grilled with olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper, some paprika and a touch of garlic. Greek style, baby!”

Kim smiled and said, “No thanks, Nicky. Big John made me a lunch.”

Nick looked her, one eye squinting in the sunlight. “Big John is good, but he ain’t Greek.”

I said, “I’ll take a rain check, Nick. I can’t stay long.”

He shook his head. “That’s ‘cause shit happens, and you got some big shit happening. Did you find the girl?”

“No, not yet.”

“The news said three more bodies were found, but no sign of the girl, huh?”

“Some signs. Not many.”

Dave walked across the dock, a bottle of water in one hand. He said, “Kimberly, so good to see you on this side of the docks, so to speak. I’m assuming you’re providing Sean with the details of the woman’s call.”

“I’m about to. We just didn’t want to talk in the bar.”

“Can’t say I’d fault you two there. Media will be back when they get wind of your whereabouts, Sean. I was just following this on-going political saga on some of our esteemed cable news channels. If the pundits and pollsters are to be believed, it seems Senator Logan’s popularity has slipped in the polls by fifteen points in the last couple of days. Right now Courtney Burke has the fate of the Republican Party’s national agenda literally riding on her DNA. Law enforcement is speculating she may have left Florida. FBI has mounted a larger scale manhunt. So how long can a nineteen-year-old kid evade that kind of dragnet?”

I said nothing. Nick raised his shoulders in a shrug and tossed Max a small piece of bread. He said, “You think Bandini’s backing off since all this publicity is goin’ down with the girl?”

Dave said, “Perhaps, but it gives him a great cover, too. Assuming he even knew where to find her and take her out to avenge the death of his brother, people might suspect it had Logan’s fingerprints on it. But if a body isn’t found, suspicion can stay inside the public’s collective consciousness, but evidence is out the proverbial window.”

Kim said, “Maybe the call I received from the woman will help. Sean, she wants to speak with you. She keeps seeing your picture on the news, those images the news media shot of you and Nick that day in the marina parking lot. Anyway, she said if you’re the missing girl’s father, she wanted to talk with you because she feels very concerned for the girl’s safety. She told me that she gave Courtney Burke a ride when she found her walking on a road through the Ocala National Forest. Said she took her into DeLand and dropped her off at a medical clinic.”

Dave asked, “What’s the woman’s name?”

I caught the flash just over Dave’s shoulder. From a rooftop. “Kim! Don’t say anymore.” The flash was a wink of the sun off moving glass from the roof of a boat storage warehouse one hundred yards across the marina. I could see a man crouched beside an air-conditioning unit on the roof. He was holding a pair of binoculars trained my way.

“What do you see?” Dave asked, not turning in the direction I had just looked.

“Everyone act normal. No turning around and looking. One man, visible. Eleven o’clock position over your right shoulder, Dave. Top of Johnson’s warehouse.”

Nick picked up Max, and cut his eyes toward the building without moving his body or head in the direction. Kim looked at me, I could hear her make a dry swallow, arms folding across her breasts.

“Dave, have you or Nick seen anyone approach Jupiter?”

Nick said, “I haven’t seen much of anything lately.”

Dave grunted, “Nothing out of the norm. I haven’t observed anyone physically board your boat. I would have stopped them. A marine surveyor was crawling all over the Hatteras in the slip next to yours. Looks like that boat’s on the market now.”

I turned to Kim. “Let’s go inside and talk.”