“T. Gurt.”
“That’s my name, ma’am. What are you doing out here?”
“Oh, I was supposed to meet someone. But he’s clearly standing me up.”
“Sorry about that. Can I help you call a taxi?”
“No, no, I have my car in the lot. I was just leaving.”
“All right, ma’am. Goodnight,” he said, and started to head back down the dock.
“Wait,” I called.
The young man turned back. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Do you have an Aunt Alberta by any chance?”
The young man nodded. “Yes, ma’am, Alberta Gurt.”
“I know her. She’s a very nice woman. So you must be Thomas?”
“That’s right.”
“She said you had a security job here in Hampton Bays.”
“I do, during the day.” He checked his watch. “And at midnight, I have another job to go to. Sorry to cut you short, ma’am, but I’m due to change the shift.”
“I understand. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
As Thomas Gurt headed back to the marina office, I recalled what Alberta had said about Thomas having trouble in his youth, but then straightening out after enlisting in the army. With all those “ma’ams” it wasn’t hard to believe he’d been a GI.
I hadn’t forgotten my suspicions of Alberta. She had motive to murder David, and Thomas was obviously comfortable with firearms. Still…the baby faced kid seemed so earnest.
“Murderers come in all temperaments, Clare. All shapes, all sizes.”
Mike Quinn’s words came back to me then. And I knew I shouldn’t let a momentary good impression persuade me one way or the other. In the end, I wasn’t ruling out anyone as a suspect. Which led me back to the reason I’d come here in the first place.
As I strode back down the dock and into the parking lot, I checked my watch. It was exactly midnight now. If Jim Rand had played me, I figured he’d also played the authorities—cooked up some bogus alibi to send the cops in another direction. But I wasn’t going to give up on Rand as easily as O’Rourke apparently had.
I decided to question the frogman myself. If he was telling the truth, I wanted to hear it with my own ears, find it believable with my own brain. But if he was protecting the person who hired him, I would find out who that person was.
I decided to drive over to Rand’s house in Bridgehampton, and if he wasn’t home, I would simply wait in my car until he showed. But one thing I am not going to do, I told myself as I yanked open my car door, I am not going to blow an opportunity to nail him.
“Giving up so soon?”
I turned to find Jim Rand standing no more than two feet away, his arms folded casually, his cocky confidence evident in his posture and expression. He’d cleaned up for our meeting. He’d shaved, exchanged his diver’s shirt for a seafoam green button-down. His blue jeans looked new.
For a second, I didn’t think I would find my voice. The man had approached me from behind, like a silent shadow in the dark marina parking lot. Somehow I managed to keep it together long enough to say—
“Yeah. You were a SEAL, all right.”
“I didn’t scare you, did I?”
“Were you trying to?”
“No. But a little payback is probably in order. You were trying to scare me, weren’t you?”
“When?”
“When do you think, Clare? When you sent the Suffolk County police to my house.”
I swallowed uneasily, didn’t expect to be put on the defensive. “I had to, Mr. Rand. You must have known that I would.”
“That’s why I’m very surprised to see you here. I’d already convinced myself you’d been playing me.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
He smiled. “Guess we think alike, you and I.”
“So are you going to take me out?”
He waved for me to follow him. We approached the rows of docks. But we didn’t go down the one I’d just left. Instead, he gestured to a lit boat on the far side of the marina.
“That’s not Rabbit Run,” I noted as we walked up to the slip.
“I never rent the same boat two nights in a row.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Throws off the scent.”
We boarded tonight’s rental, Rabbit Is Rich, and headed out. This yacht was about thirty-five feet, too, but unlike Rabbit Run, the helm on this vessel was open to the air. It was a nice night, warm and clear, and the smell of the ocean was strong as we motored slowly out of the marina then picked up speed on the open water.
“It’s a nice night.” I had to speak loudly, over the sound of the rushing wind. But I knew it was important to start the conversation. Any conversation. As Quinn once put it, “The best way to get a suspect to talk, is to get him to talk.”
Unfortunately, Rand had no reply to my riveting weather report. So I tried another subject.
“You know, Rabbit Run and Rabbit is Rich…those are both titles of novels.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rand said. “Updike.”
“Have you read John Updike’s Rabbit novels?”
“Do I strike you as the kind of guy who reads suburban angst novels?”
“Uh…”
“Don’t strain yourself. I read nonfiction. Geopolitical history mostly.”
“So who’s the Updike fan?”
“Byron Baxter Monroe, he owns the marina, he’s also a former college professor. He named all his rentals after favorite Updike novels and short stories.”
“You know him pretty well?”
“The guy’s bi-polar and mildly depressed, which he remedies via what he calls ‘self-medication,’ usually alcohol. The man likes to belly up to the bar and pontificate about the vacuity of the conventional upper-middle class suburban existence in general and Updike in particular. Why do I know this? Because as long as he’s buying, I’ll listen.”
“So you ‘self-medicate’ too? With alcohol?”
“I down the occasional beer. But risk is my kick. I’m an adrenaline junkie. Like you.”
“Like me?”
“Don’t you remember what you told me this morning? You get your nerve from eight to ten cups of coffee a day. Caffeine’s your drug, isn’t it?”
I bristled. “It’s a legal one.”
“And what I found you doing today in my rental house. That was legal, was it?”
Shit.
“You know, Clare, I could have told the police about what you did.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because…” He smiled. “I knew if they arrested you, then you wouldn’t be able to keep our date.”
Date. My god. Was he being sarcastic? Or playing me again?
I watched him drive the boat for a few minutes. We were paralleling the shore now. I could see faint lights from the Hamptons’ mansions on our left, which meant we were heading away from Manhattan, toward the tip of Long Island. If we kept going much longer, we’d be away from all land. We’d be out to sea.
“We’re traveling east, right?” I asked, trying to keep the nervousness out of my voice.
“Northeast.” He tapped the compass, just one gauge on the fairly dizzying array in front of us. There was sonar, global positioning, and a host of other technology I could only guess had something to do with communications and weather.
“Northeast,” I repeated. “And your fuel tank is full. That’s about all I can recognize on this dashboard, besides the steering wheel.”
Jim smirked. “Dead reckoning is more your style, right? Or, judging from what you’ve involved yourself in, maybe just the dead part?”
I didn’t know whether the man was making a bad joke or a threat, but I took it as the latter. “Don’t menace me, Rand. Ten people know I’m with you right now.”
Jim said nothing. He continued to drive for a few minutes and then he cut the engine. We slowed on the water; I could feel the waves lapping the boat, the vessel gently bobbing.
Is this it? I half wondered whether he was going to throw me overboard now.