Deadly Pursuit

45

The guardhouse at the marina was manned by an elderly wharf rat in a security guard’s jacket and cap. His name, he told Lovejoy and Moore, was Mickey Cotter, and he worked the night shift, from midnight to seven a.m.

Lovejoy showed him the mug shot. “The gist of the situation is that we’re looking for this man. His name is Jack Dance.”

Cotter put on a pair of reading glasses and held the photo under the lamp on his desk. “Face don’t look familiar. What’s he called again?”

“John Dance. Often called Jack.”

“I’m no damn good at remembering people. Boats I know. Never forget a boat.”

Moore saw an opportunity. Cotter looked as if he’d hung around this boatyard for decades, a permanent fixture.

“In the seventies,” she said, “Jack used to visit Islamorada with his father. They had a twenty-five-foot flybridge cruiser, the Light Fantastic.”

“Light Fantastic?” Cotter’s glasses slipped down, and he thumbed them back onto the bridge of his nose. “Oh, sure. I knew her. She tied up here every August. Unusual design-semi-displacement hull. She could be trimmed with flaps; you don’t normally see that feature on a canyon runner. I remember one time there was a problem with the flaps. She was riding high-”

Lovejoy cut short the reminiscence. “So you’re saying you did meet Jack?”

“I surely did. ’Course, he was just a kid back then. Smooth talker, though. Never entirely trusted him. Had a friend, nice boy, came with him every time.”

“Was this friend of his named Steve Gardner?”

“Why, yes. That was him. Stevie Gardner. Wait a minute. Pretty sure I heard something about that young man only recently.” He lifted his cap and scratched his sun-browned scalp, frowning hard. “I got it. Chet told me. He’s on Pelican Key.”

Moore was lost. “Who is?”

“Steve Gardner and his missus-they’re taking a vacation there.”

A startled glance passed like a spark of static electricity between Moore and Lovejoy.

“Pelican Key,” Lovejoy said. “Is that close-by?”

“Three miles due east. Why? You interested in finding Steve, too?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Lovejoy nodded grimly. “I think it’s fair to say we’re very interested in having a conversation with Mr. Gardner.”

“Well, heck. Chet’s about to head out there right now. He showed up a few minutes before you did, in a real sweat. Seemed peculiar to me; a little early for him to do one of his milk runs-”

Moore interrupted. “Where can we find him?”

“Basin C. Boat’s the Black Caesar. The man you want is Chester Pice. Better hurry, though.”

Lovejoy slid behind the wheel of the sedan. By the time Moore jumped into the passenger seat, Cotter had raised the gate. Lovejoy gunned the motor, and the car shot forward.

“Chester Pice,” Moore said as Lovejoy tore through the empty parking lot. “I talked to him at the restaurant last night. He’d heard of Jack, but he wasn’t sure where.”

“I’m guessing it came back to him.”

They left the car illegally parked near a battered pickup truck-Pice’s, presumably-and pounded down a flight of rickety steps onto the wharf. At the far end of the third basin, a thirty-foot sportfisher was easing out of its berth.

Pice stood at the controls on the flying bridge. Behind him, the sky burned with the promise of the still hidden sun.

Moore hailed him with a shout, barely audible over the engine roar. “Mr. Pice!”

“Miss Tamara Moore! Want a lift?” She nodded. “Well, hop aboard!”

A yard of water separated the dock from the moving boat. Lovejoy hesitated, muttered a quiet scatological protest, and sprang nimbly onto the gunwale. Moore took a breath and followed. She was grateful to land without a sprained ankle.

“Why don’t you talk to him, see what prompts this early-morning excursion?” Lovejoy fumbled his walkie-talkie out of his pocket. “I’ve got a call to make.”

Moore climbed the ladder to the flying bridge. She waited until Pice had maneuvered the Black Caesar clear of the dock, then asked, “You remembered something about Jack Dance, didn’t you?”

He grunted an affirmative. “Woke up an hour ago, and it was clear as glass. Fellow by the name of Steve Gardner mentioned Jack to me. He and his wife are finishing up a two-week stay in the old Larson house.”

“Are they the only people on Pelican Key?”

“Yes. Or at least… I hope they are.” Pice throttled forward, guiding the sportfisher between the buoys that marked the harbor entrance. “I got on my radio at home, tried to raise them. No answer.”

“Why didn’t you call the sheriff’s department?”

“Prefer not to trouble them till I’m sure there’s a good reason. This could be a false alarm. The radio room in the Larson place is nowhere near the bedroom. If the Gardners were asleep-and most folks are, at six a.m.-they wouldn’t hear it. Figured I’d check things out for myself.”

“Alone? That would have been dangerous.”

“Not quite alone.” He pointed to a Winchester Model 70 carbine laid carelessly on the bench behind the helm seat. “Brought a friend.”

“Well, now you’ll have a whole bunch of friends.” The voice belonged to Lovejoy, joining them on the bridge. He turned to Moore. “I radioed the search-team leader, requested a flyover of Pelican Key.”

“They know which island it is?”

“Chopper pilot seems to. He says that he fishes these waters when he’s not flying.”

“A Huey can do more than a hundred miles an hour. It’ll get there before we do.”

“The sooner, the better.”

Pice left the harbor and steered southwest, chased by a strong breeze out of the north that raised a heavy chop on the water. The straits would be rough.

Watching the shoreline blur past, Moore wondered if this was the same route Pice had taken when he delivered the Gardners to Pelican Key two weeks ago.

Had the couple stood on this bridge, where she and Lovejoy were standing now? Had Steve Gardner thought of his earlier visits to the Florida Keys, the carefree times he’d spent with his friend Jack? Jack, whom he’d lied for, under oath. Jack, who’d made his first kill at age eighteen and had gone on killing ever since.

The real question was how well Steve really knew Jack, how many of Jack’s secrets he’d learned or guessed, and what secrets of his own he’d kept hidden from the world-perhaps even from his wife.

His wife…

Moore turned to Pice, leaning over the control console, his face lit by dawn’s ambient glow and the lighted dials and gauges. “Describe Mrs. Gardner to me.”

Pice opened the throttle a little further, and the tach needles climbed. “Attractive woman. Blond. Nice smile, pleasant way about her. Kirstie’s her name.”

“What color are her eyes?”

“Her eyes? Blue, I think. Yes. Blue.”

Moore gripped the handrail tight, blinking against a fine mist of spray. She had no idea what was going on, how Steve and Kirstie Gardner fit into this puzzle now so nearly pieced together. But suddenly she was afraid.

Seven women had died. Eight, counting poor Meredith Turner. There could not be another.

Please, God. There could not.

As the Black Caesar swung east into Tea Table Channel, the red-orange rim of the sun burst through the horizon, setting the sea aflame.