Midnight Rambler

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

At four a.m. my alarm clock went off. I dragged myself out of bed and rousted Buster. My dog rolled over, expecting to get his tummy scratched. Instead, I tugged on his hind leg.

“Road trip,” I said.

Five minutes later we pulled out of the Sunset's parking lot. Tampa was three hundred miles away, and my goal was to reach my wife's place before she left for work, and beg her for another chance. We'd been married for twenty years, and I wasn't going to let it end with a phone call.

Driving through the streets of Dania, I found myself wondering if I'd ever return to south Florida. I'd never run away from a fight before, but this fight was destroying me. I needed to regroup and come up with another strategy. Then I would come back.

But before I did any of those things, I needed to see Rose.

A1A took me to 595, which led to the Florida Turnpike. My car was old enough to have a tape deck, and I popped in a collection that I fondly called the soundtrack of my youth. It included songs by the Doors, the Allman Brothers Band, the Eagles, Crosby Stills Nash amp; Young, the Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin performing at New York's Madison Square Garden.

I reached the Vero Beach exit in two hours thirty minutes and got off. The sky was clear and there was a chill in the air. I took Highway 60 through Yeehaw Junction, a redneck burg of truck stops and squawking chickens strutting on the highway. Forty-five minutes later I stopped at a McDonald's in Bartow and ordered breakfast. As I pulled up to the take-out window, a teenage girl opened the slider.

“Two sausage biscuits and an OJ?” she asked.

“Not me,” I said.

She stared at her computer screen. “One egg biscuit and a small offee?”

“Wrong again.”

“You'd better repeat your order. My computer's messed up.”

There were no cars behind me in the take-out line, and I wondered how her computer could be placing orders for customers who didn't exist.

“Large coffee and hash browns,” I said.

I was back on 60 sipping my drink when my cell phone rang. Central Florida used to be one giant dead zone, but modern technology changed that. Caller ID said Unknown.

“Carpenter here,” I answered.

“Jack, this is Veronica Cabrero.”

“How's my favorite prosecutor?”

“I'm afraid I've got some bad news.”

Bartow was famous for its speed traps, and my foot eased up on the gas pedal.

“What's wrong? Don't tell me your case against Lars Johannsen went south.”

“Lars was found dead in his cell this morning,” she said.

“What happened?”

“He slit his wrists. The police think his wife slipped him a razor in court yesterday.”

I nearly said “Good riddance” but bit my tongue instead. Veronica was a devout Catholic who did not believe in capital punishment, and I could tell this turn of events had upset her.

“Any idea why he did it?” I asked.

“Lars knew he was going down.”

“How so?”

“I followed up on your hunch,” Cabrero said. “You told me Lars matched the profile of a predator who'd been beating up hookers in western Broward. I ran an advertisement in one of those strip club magazines with Lars's picture and asked any women who'd been brutalized by him to come forward. One finally did, and she agreed to testify.”

“So Lars knew you had him by the short hairs.”

“Yes. Now, I need to ask you a question. The police are considering charging Lars's wife as an accessory. What do you think?”

I braked at a stoplight and considered Veronica's question. If there was anything I'd learned as a cop, it was that there was no understanding the tangled relationships between men and women. Perhaps Lars's wife was an accomplice and into the same twisted things as her husband. But more likely she loved the guy and, when the truth became known, afforded him a graceful exit.

“I think you should leave her alone,” I said.

“Seriously?”

“Yes. She'll have to live with this for the rest of her life. That's punishment enough.”

There was a short, thoughtful silence.

“Thanks, Jack. I really appreciate this.”

“Anytime, Veronica,” I said.

I crept into Tampa with the rush-hour traffic. Tampa had the feel of a small southern city, the downtown streets paved with brick and uneven. The people were a lot friendlier, and it was rare to hear anyone honk their horn. The beaches weren't as pretty, but a lot more of them were unspoiled. And the sunsets beat any in the state.

At eight-thirty I pulled into Rose's apartment complex in Hyde Park. I had her address written down on a piece of paper and found her building without trouble. Her blue Nova was parked in front, and I parked two down.

I left Buster in the car with the windows rolled down. Rose's unit was on the second floor, and I took the stairs, feeling apprehensive. It had been a while since my wife and I had seen each other, much less had a real conversation.

A copy of the Tampa Tribune was stuffed into her mailbox. I pulled it out, then knocked. Rose answered in her white nurse's uniform.

“Surprise,” I said.

The resounding slap my wife delivered across my face had every ounce of venom in her body.

“You stinking bastard!”

She raised her arm to strike me again. I grabbed it in midair.

“I didn't sleep with Melinda Peters. Or Joy Chambers.”

“Let go of my arm,” Rose declared.

“You have to believe me.”

“Let go.”

I obeyed, and she slammed the door in my face.

“Don't you want your newspaper?” I asked.

“No,” she shouted through the door.

“It has my picture on the front page.”

“Lucky you.”

“Yours, too.”

The door opened, and my wife snatched the newspaper out of my hands. I got down on one knee and looked up into her face.

“I swear to you, Rose. I didn't sleep with them. You have to believe me.”

Rose stared at me impassively. She looked no different from the day we met. Small-boned and perfectly proportioned, with toffee-colored skin and big round eyes. She was waiting tables in Fort Lauderdale while going to nursing school, and I was six weeks on the force. In my face she'd seen my daddy's Seminole genes, and mistakenly thought I was part Mexican. We'd started dating, and ten months later Jessie was born.

“A woman would not say those things unless they were true,” she said.

“This woman did,” I said. “They're not true.”

“You'd better not be lying to me, Jack Carpenter.”

“I didn't drive all this way to lie to you.”

Rose scrutinized the newspaper to make sure her picture wasn't on the front page, then went inside. This time, she didn't slam the door in my face, and I followed her.

Rose's apartment was a one-bedroom with furnishings purchased from secondhand stores. My wife made enough money to spruce the place up, but instead she sent a monthly allowance to Jessie that I wasn't supposed to know about.

“You want a cup of coffee?” she asked.

“That would be great,” I said.

I cleared off the coffee table in the living room while she brewed a pot. Sitting on the table were five hand-carved wooden boxes, which Rose had owned since I'd known her. Each box had a drawing of a skeleton and contained a belonging from one of her dead relatives. A button from her grandfather, a lock of hair from her grandmother, and other keepsakes from her aunts and uncles. The boxes were part of Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a religious holiday celebrated in Mexico each year. In my wife's faith, not to remember the dead was considered a disgrace.

I handled the boxes gently as I placed them on the floor. Rose entered the room holding two steaming cups, and sat down beside me.

“Why did you come so early?” she asked.

“I wanted to catch you before you went to see the lawyer,” I said.

We drank in silence. My eyes drifted around the apartment. Hanging from the wall was the family photograph that also sat on the night table beside my bed. It was a painful reminder of our past.

“You've lost weight,” she said.

“Almost twenty pounds,” I said.

“You look like you did when we met. Lean and tan and. .”

“And what?”

She wouldn't let the word come out of her mouth.

“You look the same, too,” I said.

“No, I don't,” she said.

“You look beautiful.”

“Why did you really come, Jack?”

“Because I love you and don't want to lose you.”

Her cup hit the saucer hard. “Then why haven't you come for me? Why stay in south Florida and let people destroy your reputation? I love you, too.”

“I know you do.”

“Then why haven't you come for me?”

I moved closer on the couch and put my hand over hers. “Because I can't leave until I figure out how Simon Skell killed those women. If I do that, he stays in prison. If I don't, he goes free. I must resolve this. Then I'll come back to you.”

Her face melted, and I watched her fight back tears.

“Is that a promise?” she asked.

“Yes, it's a promise.”

She took my left hand and stared at the gold band encircling my third finger. Looked at it a long time, her eyes blinking with thought.

“Take it off,” she said.

“You mean my wedding ring?”

She nodded, and I tugged my wedding ring off my finger. I didn't know what Rose was up to, and I watched her lift my left hand and stare. The place where the ring rested was milky white, the rest of my finger dark brown.

“You never took it off,” she said.

Then I got it.

“Not once,” I said.

“Never went out on a Friday night and played the field?”

“No, honey.”

“No strippers on the side, or trysts with female cops? There were a couple who had their eye on you.”

“Nope.”

“You knew I was waiting, didn't you?”

“I hoped you were,” I said, smiling.

She rose from the couch and motioned to me. I stood up, and she unbuttoned my shirt and ran her fingertips across my hairless stomach. Her nose twitched, sniffing my skin, and before I knew it, her head was resting on my chest and I was holding her.

“I love you so much,” she whispered.

After a minute she called in late to work. Then, clasping my hand, she led me to her bedroom. She undressed me, then I undressed her. It was our little ritual and never failed to get us both aroused. We tossed the sheet on the floor and got into bed.

“I want to be on top,” she said.

“You sure?”

“Yes. Lie down.”

I was too tall for her bed, and my feet stuck out at the end. I wiggled my toes and pointed at them. She laughed and slapped me on the thigh.

“Move over, big boy.”

I slid across the bed until I was lying crosswise. Then Rose mounted me. At first our lovemaking was awkward, and I felt like a teenager doing it in the backseat of my car. Rather than be annoyed, my wife smiled at me. If she'd needed any more convincing that I wasn't fooling around, she just got it.

It only took us a minute to get our rhythm back, and then we were flying through the clouds. Rose knew what made me happy, and as I climaxed I was reminded of all the times in our relationship that she'd pulled through for me.

When we were done, she snuggled up beside me and put her head on my chest. Then she drifted off to sleep. Her energy was flowing through my overheated skin, and for a little while I felt whole again.