The Night Monster

CHAPTER 44

Linderman wanted to take his 4Runner to Chatham. I objected. Although his car was in better shape than my Legend, it still had Virginia license plates, and would stand out like a sore thumb when we reached our destination.

“Can your car make the drive?” Linderman asked.

“It hasn’t failed me yet,” I said.

I pulled my Legend into the condo’s covered parking garage, and parked it beside his 4Runner. Linderman opened the 4Runner’s trunk, and unlocked the stainless-steel footlocker in the backseat. From the footlocker he removed two Mossberg shotguns, two high-powered rifles with sniper scopes, a pair of Kevlar vests, and several boxes of ammunition, all of which got loaded into the trunk of my Legend.

“That should cover it,” Linderman said.

“We also need a pair of fishing poles.”

Linderman went inside the building to talk to one of his neighbors. He emerged with a pair of fishing poles covered with cobwebs.

“This was the best I could do,” he explained.

I put the poles in the backseat of my Legend so they stuck out the open window. It made us look like a pair of rubes, which was exactly the image I wanted to create.

“Are these fishing poles our cover?” Linderman asked.

“Yes,” I said. “When we get to Chatham, we’re going to pretend we’re a pair of college buddies spending a long weekend together fishing and drinking beer.”

“I don’t know anything about fishing.”

“Then I guess you’ll be buying the beer.”

I drove across Biscayne Bay, and headed north on the elevated stretch of I-95 through downtown Miami. Traffic had thinned out, and I stared at the towering office buildings that defined the Miami skyline.

The interstate split at the Broward County line. I went left, and entered the tollbooth that would put us on the Florida Turnpike. Linderman turned in his seat to face me.

“Tell me why you think the sheriff of Chatham is involved in these women’s abductions,” Linderman said.

The turnpike was quiet, and I flipped on my car’s cruise control.

“Because it solves the puzzle of how Lonnie and Mouse have been abducting young women-and keeping them-without anyone knowing about it,” I said.

“How does it solve it?”

“I have a theory about serial killers and serial abductors. Despite what people want to believe, these people don’t work in a vacuum. Their friends and neighbors know they’re doing something wrong, but choose not to get involved. I call it the ‘He was such a quiet man’ theory, because that’s what people usually say when a reporter tells them their next-door neighbor has a basement filled with rotting corpses.”

“Why would the sheriff of Chatham be looking the other way?”

“That’s a good question. Mouse boasted to a worker at the mental institution where he was living that if he ever escaped, he’d go back home, because the sheriff wouldn’t arrest him. I’m guessing the sheriff is doing something illegal and that Mouse knows about it. That’s Mouse’s insurance against the sheriff arresting him and Lonnie.”

Linderman seemed comfortable with my theory and leaned back in his seat. From the pocket of his windbreaker he removed a small package wrapped in aluminum foil. He opened the package and passed me several oatmeal cookies.

“Muriel make these?” I asked.

He nodded while he chewed. I bit into one and tasted raisins. Buster popped his head between the seats, not to be left out. Soon the cookies were a memory.

“What do you think the sheriff is doing?” Linderman asked.

“He might be running a prostitution ring, or selling moonshine. Or he’s holding dog fights on weekends. Or it could be worse.”

“Drug trafficking?”

“That’s a possibility. In the old days, drug traffickers brought their shipments in by boat, but the DEA got wise to them. The traffickers switched to small airplanes, and started landing in towns in remote parts of the state.”

“So he could be involved with one of the cartels?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“If that’s the case, there are probably other people in Chatham who are involved,” Linderman said. “We could be stepping into a hornet’s nest.”

I stared at the empty interstate. I had been so focused on rescuing Sara that I hadn’t considered all the risks. Linderman took out his cell phone and fiddled with the keypad in the dark.

“Who are you calling?” I asked.

“The director of the Jacksonville office of the FBI,” Linderman said. “I’m sure he’d be happy to send some agents over to Chatham to back us up, if we need them.”

I found myself nodding. I had been in tight spots with Linderman before, and had even seen him kill a man. Linderman wasn’t afraid of danger, or putting himself in harm’s way. Like me, he didn’t believe in backing down.

I’d chosen the right person to bring along.