“Unit Two,” Rob said into the radio after returning to his pickup next to the van, “sweep the whole perimeter road. I expect they’ll break for the outside after it gets dark.”
Rob glanced at the orange sky over the bay. It wouldn’t be long. He also saw Davis’s golf cart come over the rise behind the fourteenth tee.
“Rose,” he said, “patch me through to Alan Dexter’s apartment.”
Sims answered. “Tommy wanted to watch boats, so Alan took him to the marina. They’ll be back before dark. Alan’s having more fun than your boy is.”
Rob quickly described his day and said he’d probably be late. Sims wanted to know if any of the burglaries had been close to the Sands condos.
“Everything’s been by the Sea Breeze course, so it couldn’t be any farther from you,” Rob said reassuringly. “My boss just got here. Thanks for the help.”
Davis wore checked grey golf slacks, a solid yellow knit shirt, and a perpetual tan. Rob showed him the stolen goods.
“Excellent work,” Davis said. “To have recovered everything so quickly... I’m impressed.”
“We still don’t have the suspects,” Rob said, knowing Davis cared less about justice than about returning the property to his residents. “I’ve got a question. Your signature was on the work order the suspects used to get into the resort. Concrete work at the yacht club.”
Davis shook his head. “Forgery,” he said. “There’s no concrete work going on there. I sign a thousand things a day. They could have got a sample anywhere.”
The explanation made sense, but it didn’t fit. Burglars smart enough to use a business’s procedures against itself weren’t the kind to panic and run for no reason. The contradiction was an annoyance, not worth mentioning.
Rob walked to his pickup and pulled the shotgun from behind the seat. “I’m going to leave this and the portable radio with you and help out at the perimeter road. Hope you don’t mind playing deputy for a while.”
Davis took the weapon. “The stuff in this van is going to help me calm down some of my best residents. I’ll guard it like the significant amount of money it represents. And, for your information, one of the things I learned at the security seminar in Atlanta was that yes, the local security people should be notified when there’s a protection operation on the premises.”
That this could be anything other than common sense surprised Rob, but something else bothered him more. “They had a seminar on federal cover?”
Davis shrugged. “It’s more common at places like this than you think. I’m new at it myself.”
Rob slid into the seat of his pickup. The image seemed almost comic: resort owners — businessmen in designer sports clothes — talking about dangerous cover procedures at a convention. But he had other things to worry about.
“Keep your eyes open,” he said. Then he picked up the radio mike. “Unit One’s en route to the front gate. Rose, patch me to Dexter’s condo again.”
As Rob drove along the dark service road between the Sea Breeze course and hotel gounds, Tommy answered the telephone.
“Everything all right there, sport?” Rob asked.
“Mr. Dexter bought a Frisbee that glows in the dark,” the boy said. “Mr. Sims and I are going to try it out right now.”,
“Be careful of the pond,” Rob said. But he could hear Tommy’s anxious footsteps already slapping against the kitchen floor.
“We turned on the floodlights out back.” It was Dexter. “Dave’ll be careful. I’m frying burgers.”
It was funny, Rob thought, how the excitement of real police work changed his perspective. Dexter now looked like a victim of the mob, not a willing member. That put him on the side of Rob and Tommy.
“I was wrong about you,” Rob said.
“Does that mean—?”
“We’ll talk about it. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You were protecting your son. Maybe you overdid it. He’s a tough kid.”
Tough? How could Tommy be tough when Rob himself still felt like an open wound. Until tonight. Until this thing with the burglars. Maybe that was it: Now he felt “tough” again, part of the world.
“Like I said, we’ll talk,” Rob said. “And thanks.”
He steered onto the road between the hotel and one of the Sea Breeze fairways. Looking back, he could see lights from the patrol units dancing on the perimeter road on the other side of the course.
In a minute he was on the palm-lined exit road with the front gate straight ahead. The radio crackled on.
“Unit Two’s got two... no, three suspects on the tenth fairway. On foot, running south toward the tee box.”
Rob turned on his emergency lights and sped toward the gate. “Unit One’s turning north onto the perimeter road from the front gate. You can follow the suspects on foot, Buster. Anybody between the front gate and tenth fairway?”
A deputy called from closer to the tee box. The fairway ran between the perimeter road and a long lagoon. The trap seemed perfect.
Buster and the deputy were putting handcuffs on three men when Rob pulled up. And Rose called.
“A guy named Sims is on the line for you, chief. Says it’s urgent.”
“Put him on.”
Rob waited a few seconds. “Rose?”
“He was there a minute ago,” she said.
“If he comes back have him hold. I’ll be right back.”
What could Sims want? Rob hurried to the tee box. Buster turned his flashlight onto the faces of the suspects, who squinted and looked frightened.
They were teenagers, not the men who had driven the Panhandle Masonry truck.
“I’m going to ask once, and if I find out you lied I’ll skin you kids myself,” Rob said, fighting sudden desperation. “What were you doing?”
All three kids started to answer.
“You,” Rob said, pointing to the one who looked oldest.
“Honest, officer, we were just diving for golf balls in the lagoon.”
Buster stepped toward the kid. “Don’t you know what swims around in there?”
Rob stopped the big officer with the back of his hand. “Never mind. How’d you get here?”
“The car’s on the other side of that road.”
Rob grabbed Buster by the arm and turned away from the kids. “Check out the car. If it’s where they say, let the kids go and stay on the road but don’t leave your radio.”
“But—”
“These aren’t the burglars,” Rob snapped. “Something’s very wrong. I’m headed for my condo.”
Sims was on his hands and knees, shaking his head, when Rob ran into Dexter’s condo.
“Where’s Tommy?” Rob asked.
“They want Dexter,” Sims said.
“Where?”
Sims shook his head, confused and in pain. He had to reconstruct events from an obviously scrambled memory.
“Tommy and I... playing Frisbee out back. Some guys came around the building where Tommy was, pulled down on me with automatic weapons. I hit the ground, rolled out of light toward the pond. One of the guys yelled it wasn’t Dexter. They grabbed Tommy. Said they’d let him go if I turned Dexter over to them in half an hour at the marina.”
Rob dropped to his knees. “When was that?”
“Nine. Five after.”
Rob looked at his watch. Nine twenty-five. He reached to his belt for the portable radio, which now was with Davis. He jumped to his feet.
Sims grabbed his leg. “You got to handle this right,” he said, obviously forcing himself to make the point. “They already fooled me once, doubled back, slugged me while I was trying to call you, took Dexter, too.”
“Did you see them?”
The agent shook his head. “Can they get out the gates?”