Damn.
Breaking the news to Lily that he wasn’t going to make it for her birthday was not something he could leave in a message so he hung up. He’d try again in a couple days.
He stared at the steady red light of the answering machine, thinking now of Mel and Ben.
He thought, too, about the small group of people who circled in his life’s orbit. Dan Wainwright, the first chief he had worked with when he moved to Fort Myers. Dan had retired two years ago and moved to Arizona. And Sam and Margaret Dodie, the older couple who treated him like a son but lately only seemed to call on holidays. And his foster parents Phillip and Frances. Even his contact with them had dwindled. Last time he talked to them — was it a month ago or two? — they had bought a new Airstream and were planning to wend their way toward Yosemite.
Everyone was moving on with their lives, moving away from him.
Even Joe.
Especially Joe.
After she left her job at Miami homicide to take the sheriff’s job up in northern Michigan, they hadn’t managed to make good on their promises to visit each other. When he had called her last Christmas, she had said that maybe they should see other people. It wasn’t just the two thousand miles that separated them, he knew. It was the widening hole in his own life. Joe had put words to it.
I want you to want something for yourself. Louis.
And her unspoken words — and until you do I don’t want you.
He grabbed the receiver and dialed Joe’s cabin. He got the machine and hung up without leaving a message. When he dialed Joe’s private number at the Lee County Sheriff’s Department her secretary answered.
“This is Louis Kincaid,” he said. “Is the Sheriff still there?”
“No, I’m sorry, she’s not.”
Louis shifted to look at the clock on the stove. It was nearly seven. Joe was probably on her way home.
“Do you want to leave a message?” the secretary asked.
“No, thanks. I’ll try her at home.”
“Oh, she’s not there. She won’t be back in town until next Monday.”
Louis shifted the receiver to his other ear.
“Would you like to leave a message mister — ”
“Kincaid. Louis Kincaid. No, no message.” He started to hang up. “Wait, can you tell me where she went?”
The secretary hesitated.
“I’m a good friend,” Louis said.
“Yes, Mr. Kincaid, I know who you are.” She hesitated again. “The sheriff is on vacation. In Montreal.”
Montreal?
“She’ll be calling in to get messages, Mr. Kincaid,” the secretary said. “I can tell her you called.”
“What? No, no, that’s okay,” Louis said.
He thanked the secretary and hung up. He stood for a moment, staring into the deepening shadows of the living room, still wrapped in only the towel, his skin sticky from sweat. Finally, he moved to the air conditioner and flicked it on. With a groan, it began to split out a meager stream of cool air.
He grabbed the holstered Glock and went into the bedroom. It was nearly dark and he had to switch on the bedside light. He paused before he put the gun away, taking a moment to slip it from its holster.
The Buddha was in his head now, whispering.
For those of you who ride alone it is the only partner you’ll ever have.
Goddamn it. He was getting tired of riding alone.
He slid the Glock back in the holster, put it in the drawer and went to the bathroom. His hands still smelled of Hoppes oil and he washed them quickly.
The smell was still there.
That’s when he remembered it.
He opened the medicine chest, scanned the bottles on the shelves but it wasn’t there. He jerked open the door beneath the sink and rummaged through the bottles of hydrogen peroxide, shampoo and shaving cream. He found it behind the rolls of toilet paper.
He rose, staring at the small plastic bottle of Jean Naté After Bath Splash. It looked empty. He took off the top and upended the bottle into his palm. A trickle of green spilled out.
Louis brought his palms up to his nose and closed his eyes.
For a moment Joe was there and then she was gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“They seem to be doing a very meticulous job.”
Louis watched the two crime scene techs as they worked their way the through tangled brush sticking evidence flags in the ground, taking pictures and sifting through the dirt.
He looked to Katy. She wore a green long-sleeved shirt over an old t-shirt, a vest bulging with stuffed pockets and long camouflage pants. Her face — rendered dark brown by the tint of his sunglasses — was streaked with sweat.
“The sheriff said they’re the best techs he has,” Louis said.
She looked up at the sky. “I hope they’re quick,” she said. “It’s going to rain soon.”
He glanced up at the sky. Ugly purple clouds were building to the southwest and the humid air was heavy with the smell of ozone. It wasn’t just going to rain. It was going to be a palmetto-pounder of a storm.
Katy had wandered away from him, apparently not expecting a reply. Although they were fifty feet from the techs, her eyes were also locked on the ground. Louis knew she was hoping she would find something the techs didn’t. He understood that. Many times he had been at a scene, separated from the forensics team by yellow tape, but still he looked for something he thought only he could see.
Katy stopped under a tree and pulled off her ball cap to redo the scrunchie holding her ponytail. What a strange woman, he thought, quiet, reserved, somewhat disconnected from what was going on around her.
They had been together nearly two hours, walked maybe a mile, but she had spoken only three times. Once to ask how many days the techs would be able to come out here and once to caution him not to step on a Scarlet King snake. The third time she had stopped Louis and pointed to something up in a tree. His heart quickened because he thought he was going to see a panther but then he realized she was pointing to a purple and yellow flower high on a limb. She told him it was a rare clamshell orchid and like the panthers, the orchids were protected from poachers.
She was smiling — the first time he had seen her do so — so he just nodded, deciding not to tell her he already knew that. He had learned all about wild orchids from the weird case he had just finished over in Palm Beach — a string of grisly murders involving rich salacious women who all had an obsession with a rare flower called the Devil orchid.
He thought about telling her about the case because he wanted to convince her that he wasn’t just some hack PI trying to catch a chance with the sheriff’s department. For some reason, he felt the need to impress this woman.
That’s why he had gotten up early and stopped off at the Fort Myers Library. He had spent a quick hour reading everything he could find on Florida panthers.
The big cats, he learned, had once roamed over all of the southeast states and were hunted as pests, with the State of Florida offering a five-dollar bounty for every panther scalp. As the state’s human population grew, the panthers declined, their habitat shrunk by housing developments, highways and drainage canals. By the 1970s, everyone thought the animal was extinct.
But a Texas animal tracker named Roy McBride found evidence of surviving panthers. School kids took up the cause and pressured legislators to name the panther the state animal. Speed limits on the highways cutting through the Everglades were lowered and committees were created to save the cats.
It was an uphill battle. Only a handful of the cats were believed to still be alive and the ones that survived were weakened by inbreeding. Last year, in an act of desperation, the state had even started a sperm bank for the remaining males.