"So what you're telling me is that you used her to set him up?"
"It was just an attempt, Sherry. It might have stirred up something to cause him to make a mistake, give up a lead. O'Shea was covering her," I said. "It didn't work out and if Morrison did have someplace to go, he'll stay the hell away from it now."
We both went quiet as we pulled into the parking garage and up next to my truck.
"Maybe not," Richards said and I looked at her. "I put a tracker on his patrol car the day after I told you about his file."
Now I was staring.
"You know, those GPS trackers that the delivery managers and armored car guys use on their vehicles so they can monitor their fleets or individual drivers? It clocks their stops and mileage and maps out every damn place they go during the day."
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "I know what they are. How the hell did you manage that?"
"Internal affairs," she said. "Morrison was already on their screen. I just gave them a nudge. They called in his car for a bogus maintenance check and stuck the tracker in there the other day."
"So you believed me," I said.
"I was opening myself up to possibilities," she said, not looking away. "I checked it this morning and last night after Morrison caught you up in his little DUI trap he went home to his residence until about midnight and then took this long drive out on Alligator Alley.
"He got about fifteen miles out past the toll booth and then turned north on some kind of trail, I'm guessing, because the map doesn't even show a road. He stopped there for thirty minutes. Then it appears he turned around and came back."
"Christ," I said. "That's where he takes them."
I could feel the blood in my veins, the adrenaline chasing it. Sherry saw it too, the scenario, the possibilities.
"And you've got the coordinates of this place where he stopped?" I said, opening up my door.
"I've got a mapped printout. It's in my briefcase."
"You know where he is now?"
"I can find out," she said.
I tried O'Shea again, got the recording. While I called Kim's, Richards handed me the printout of Morrison's trip to the Glades.
"I have a friend in dispatch," she said and then made a call of her own.
When I finished I looked in at her and she raised a finger to me, said thank you to someone and clicked off.
"Marci didn't show for her two o'clock shift," I said. "It's the first time she's missed since she was hired and Laurie can't get her on her cell."
"Morrison checked in at roll call and will be on patrol for the next eight hours," she said.
"All right, I'm taking this with me," I said, waving the printout. I expected her to stop me, to tell me to wait for a crime scene team, to at least demand that she come with me.
"You make that run, Max," she said instead, a sense of urgency in her voice. "I'm going to find this girl."
CHAPTER 31
I was ten miles west of the tollbooth, doing eighty in the rain and watching both the darkening roadway slide out under my headlights and the truck's odometer to mark the turnoff. Richards would be checking Marci's apartment and the hospital E.R.s and doing it without having anything broadcast out on the police radio band. She'd keep checking with a friend at dispatch to confirm that Morrison was still working in his Victoria Park zone. I was out after physical evidence only.
My wipers were running a delayed beat, a one-step brush and then silent. Sunset had long been shrouded by the cloud cover. The rain was light but had turned the freeway into a ribbon of asphalt that shined wet in my lights and then dulled and disappeared out where the beams could not catch up to my speed. The hiss of tires slinging water up into the wheel wells sounded just above the deep rumble of my engine. When I'd stopped to hand the toll-taker a dollar I'd noticed the cameras and knew that there would be yet another piece of evidence against Morrison if he tried to deny his trips out here.
When the woman gave me change I tossed it into the cup holder and punched the trigger on my trip meter. I was now watching for 21.7, the exact distance Richards's planted GPS tracker had recorded. As I got closer, I slowed to 50 mph, then 20. When the odometer crept to 21.5 I pulled over to the shoulder and crept along, looking out into the darkness on my left for a sign of disturbed gravel or a light-colored wheel track in the vegetation. Almost to the exact mileage mark I spotted a streak of matted grass leading off to the north and I stopped. I put on my slicker and took the long- handled flashlight from its place behind my seat and got out. It was a two-track, unmarked by anything official. But clearly it had once been used for some kind of access to the other side of the canal that ran the length of the freeway. I walked twenty yards out and shot my flashlight beam out to the north. A man-made earthen bridge had been built across the canal over a culvert which allowed the water to flow. Even in the dark my eyes could pick up the difference in black shades that showed a tree line. There was a hammock extending out from the freeway. There were no reflectors or fences or signage, just a path to nowhere.
I went back to the truck cab and dialed Richards.
"Your map was on the money," I said when she clicked in. "I'm going to walk it in and see what I can find. Any luck with Marci?"
There was a scratchy delay over the transmission and then it cleared.
"…to her apartment but nothing seems out of place. Her clothes are still there and her makeup. The manager said he doesn't remember ever seeing a marked police car out in front of the place. He said the last time he saw her was when she drove away Wednesday morning and he didn't notice her carrying a bag or suitcase."
While she talked I watched a set of headlights grow out of the east. The sound of low and powerful engine noise reached me before I could make out that it was a tractor-trailer rig. It blew past me, leaving a swirl of rainwater and wind in its wake that I had to turn my face away from. Its passing drowned out the first part of another sentence.
"…don't want to put the plate number out on the radio in case Morrison could recognize it but we're going to have to do something soon," she was saying.
"Look. The map shows it's only a half mile from here to where he stopped. I'll let you know," I said.
"Max?"
"Yeah."
"Be careful, all right?"
"Yeah," I said and hit the End button and stuck the phone in my raincoat pocket.
Before starting in I got back in the truck and parked it lengthwise across the entry to the trail. With the canal on either side, no one would be able to drive in and surprise me. On the other hand, it was a marker that I was here and on foot. I reached into the glove box and took out a handful of plastic ziplock baggies for evidence and stuck them in my back pocket.
I locked the doors by habit and started out with my rain hood off so I could hear the sounds around me. I had been living on the edge of the Glades for a few years now and trusted my senses. Morrison might know the tricks of the streets but I felt sure he could not match me on this turf. This had become mine.
I stepped carefully down the slight incline and used the flashlight to trace along the flattened grass and rut of the left track. When I got to the other side of the canal, I stopped when the beam glistened dully on the ground and then bent to look at a recent impression in a patch of clear mud. The tire track was not one of the wide, chunky off-road types that hunters and gladerunners used. It was a street tread. If it didn't rain too much more, it might be lifted with a mold and then matched against an existing tire. I filed the thought away and moved on.
Once I got used to the footing, it was easy going. I kept sweeping the light beam in a circle, up to judge the reach of the gumbo limbo lining the path and then down in front of me from one track to the other to check for any drop-off. The rain had stopped and I had not gone far before the sounds of passing traffic behind me were absorbed by the thickness of vine and fern and leaf cover. The hiss of the tires was replaced by the sound of wind in the tree branches. Off to the west I thought I could even hear the rush of acres of open sawgrass being pushed and folded by the breeze, the long stiff blades softly clattering. Twice the trail became enclosed in a tunnel of overhang and melding branches. If there had been a chirrup of frog or cicadas before my arrival, they were quiet now. I had learned from my late canoeing that the animals of the swamp were highly sensitive to any unnatural stirrings of water and air. The night dwellers would have sensed me long ago. They also would have marked Morrison's presence each time he came here. Nothing goes unwitnessed in this world.