Blood of Cain

64

It’s not difficult to find a sex shop in Daytona Beach. The hard part is going into one to buy something that’s not about sex, but rather about life or death. I needed a blow-up doll of a woman. The shop in the heart of A1A, a block from the Atlantic Ocean, smelled of latex and bleach. Its inventory of blow-up dolls was limited to one blond and three brunettes, fully blown up, all appearing to have the same anatomical assets. I picked a brunette. The beefy clerk was unshaven, lots of tats, one earlobe stretched with a black onyx piece of jewelry the size of a quarter. He had a silver pin through his right eyebrow. “Be eighty bucks,” he said.

I paid in cash.

“Have a nice night,” he said, sitting back on a stool in front of the register, picking at a scab in the center of a Daffy Duck tattoo on his Popeye forearm.

I walked outside and into a wall of humid heat in the late afternoon, the sound of the breakers clashing with the bass throb of rap music coming from a low-rider car at the traffic light. Max sat in the front seat. “We have company,” I said to her, setting the doll down in the Jeep’s rear seats, glad my new passenger was only five feet tall. Max stuck her head between the front seats, glancing back at the naked doll, and then up at me. She cocked her head, looking at me for a brief Max moment.

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Driving to my old cabin on the St. Johns River, about forty minutes west of Daytona, I rehearsed in my mind the conversation I was about to have with Dave Collins. It had to sound real, and it had to strike a sense of urgency that could set a trap for a killer or killers.

I made the call.

Dave said, “Hello.”

“I heard from Courtney.”

“You did? Where is she, Sean?”

“She was in New Orleans. She’s been driving back to Florida. The kid’s scared. She’s tired and wants this to end.”

“What can she do — what can you do?”

“Hold a news conference.”

“That should be an eye-opener. Where? When?”

“Soon. Maybe tomorrow. That way it’s all out in the wash. Detective Grant can take her into custody, at least she’ll be safer. I don’t believe he has the evidence he needs to get a conviction in the death of Lonnie Ebert. In the Bandini case, I think a jury will believe Courtney’s story, defending herself against a sociopathic rapist.”

“But the big question, the one the nation would like to hear the answer to is this: is Courtney Burke the girl you and Andrea Logan conceived twenty years ago?”

“It’s time to let the chips fall where they will. This is about the life of a young woman. It trumps political rhetoric.”

“Is she coming back to Ponce Inlet?”

“No, I gave her directions to my river cabin. I expect her around midnight. She’ll be coming down I-75, catching 441 over to 40. Dave, my battery’s dying. I gave her your number, too. If she calls, if she gets lost, remind her my place is two hundred yards on the right past the first Ocala National Forest sign off Highway 445.” I hit the End Call button and let out a long breath. Dave had been magnificent. All of his covert training continued to serve him well.

A half hour later, I was pulling into my gravel and oyster shell driveway leading down to my river cabin, a place I wish I could retreat to and take up yoga. Not today, and certainly not tonight. I was expecting guests, unannounced guests, and I’d leave the light on for them.

I was glad the seclusion of an old cabin on the river would allow me to walk into my home with a life-size sex doll and not give the neighbors a season’s worth of gossip. Although my anonymity was lost, no sense in carrying the label of a sexual pervert, too. My nearest neighbor was almost a mile away, at this moment in time, not far enough. “Max, what do you say we call our friend? How about Suzy?”

Max looked up at me and snorted.

I turned toward the always smiling doll and said, “We hope you enjoy our little place on the river. You’ll have a great view of the water. More importantly, those folks who’d like to shoot a bullet through your rubber head will see you, but not too well. At least that’s Plan A. I’ve been known to go through the alphabet with my Plan A’s. Back in a second.” I had a sudden recall of one of the scenes from the movie Castaway when the character that Tom Hanks played spoke to a soccer ball he named Wilson.

Max and I left the doll in the Jeep and walked around the perimeter of my cabin. I checked windows and doors for the slightest sign of intrusion, examined the dust and pollen on windowsills and doorknobs. I couldn’t see any overt signs that someone had entered my home.

And then there it was.

Max was sniffing something near a live oak. A boot print. A combat boot. I recognized the unique pattern or tread left in the dirt next to one of the largest live oaks on my property. The print was made from what was called a Panama sole. These combat boots are excellent in tropical terrain. I spotted some abrasions to the bark on the tree, a rather slight discoloration from the surrounding area of the trunk. The intruder had climbed the tree. When he’d dropped back down, he left the single well-defined boot print and a partial of another. Why had he climbed the tree? I looked from the perspective back to my house. A clear view.

Surveillance camera.

I jumped up to the first low-hanging limb, pulled myself on top of the limb and examined the tree. Someone had mounted a small camera to the limb. The camera was no larger than the water nozzle you’d attach to a garden hose. It was fastened to a metal plate bolted onto the limb. But the wires leading to a battery and a weather-sealed laptop were not attached. The job wasn’t finished.

So they already knew where I lived.

I dropped to the ground and looked at the western sky, to the horizon far beyond the oxbow in the river. It was less than a half hour before sunset, the clouds beginning to blush into pinks and soft merlot colors. I’d wait until the cover of darkness to move Suzy into the house. And then, at midnight, I’d wait for them. I walked twenty feet away from the tree, turned and fired a single shot into the lens of the camera they’d mounted, glass raining down like acorns dropping.