“ Let me get this straight,” Sheriff Sturgees said, “he attacked Judy and you ran him down?”
“ Yes,” Rick Gordon said.
“ Where’s the knife?”
“ It was here.”
“ Where did it go?”
“ Someone took it.” Rick raised his collar against the wind. He was a head taller than the portly sheriff, but he didn’t let that distract him. Many people, to their everlasting regret, misjudged the sheriff, finding it hard to accept such a keen mind in his short, overweight body.
“ Who?”
“ How should I know?” Rick met his stare head on.
“ Don’t get upset, I’m not accusing you of anything.”
“ It was probably taken by the same man that turned the body.”
“ Say again.”
“ The body was on its back.”
“ That’s right,” Judy said.
“ He was laying on his back,” J.P. chimed in, “and he had a knife. A Jim Bowie knife.”
“ How do you know it was a Bowie Knife?”
“ Captain Wolfe has one. I know what they look like.”
“ Wolfe Stewart,” the sheriff asked, “the captain of the all day fishing boat that runs between here and Palma?
“ Yeah, the captain of the Seawolf,” Judy said.
“ And Captain Wolfe has a Jim Bowie knife like the one I saw,” J.P. said. “He wears it in a knife holster tied to his leg.”
“ It’s called a scabbard,” Judy said.
“ All right,” the sheriff turned to Rick, “the man had a knife.”
“ And he meant Judy harm,” Rick said.
“ How do you know?”
“ He would have cut me, Sheriff. I know it. He would have cut me and killed me. I was helpless. I couldn’t move.”
“ He was gonna kill my mom.”
“ J.P., get away from there!”
“ I’m not gonna touch him, Mom.”
“ Now J.P.!”
J.P. moved away from the dead man.
The sheriff bent over the corpse. “No wallet and he had a watch.”
“ How can you tell?” Judy asked.
“ Look for yourself.” He pointed to a white ring set off by a deep outdoor tan around the dead man’s left wrist.
“ Wow, that’s police work, isn’t it?” J.P. said.
“ Sheriff, can we go now?” Judy asked. “I’d rather J.P. didn’t have to see this.”
“ He was a witness, but I guess we can do without him here. I’ll talk to you after I’m done. Why don’t you take your boy and wait up by the cars.”
“ Thanks,” Judy said, overcoming J.P.’s objections.
“ Okay,” the sheriff said, after they were out of earshot, “now let’s talk about the Jim Bowie knife that isn’t here.”
Two blocks away Mr. Jaspinder Singh was ringing up a pack of Marlboros when the customer asked him a question.
“ Do you know Rick Gordon?” The man asked like a policeman.
“ I am truly not knowing him.”
“ About six feet, green eyes, maybe hazel. Brown, wavy hair, probably cut a little too long. Got a scar behind his left ear, here.” Storm touched the spot with a finger. “Wife named Ann, a looker, just a little shorter than him, shoulder length hair, Barbie Doll looks, the original blue-eyed blond, you’d seen her, you’d remember. That’s what everyone says. You know anybody like that?”
“ Not that I can recall.”
“ I heard they come in here.”
“ Many people are certainly coming in here. I cannot be knowing each and every one. Why are you asking?”
“ My name’s Storm, Sam Storm. I’m a private investigator.”
“ That is a very private eye kind of name you are having, Mr. Storm.”
“ Yeah, well I’ve heard that before.”
“ What has this person been doing to cause your looking?”
“ He makes bootleg CDs.”
“ And for this you are coming here? My eleven-year-old son makes them on my computer, is he in trouble too?”
“ I work for the RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America. They represent the music business and they’re mighty unhappy with Mr. Gordon. They’d like him to find a new line of work. As for your boy, if he’s just making them for himself, we don’t care.”
“ Why would anybody be buying something anybody can be making?”
“ The bootleggers are making collectable CDs now, with original packaging that’s hard to duplicate. The FBI busted someone in New Orleans last year, five agents, ten local cops and me. Quite a collar, but he wasn’t one of the big guys that started up the biz.”
“ Five FBI agents, how impressive. I guess the FBI hasn’t heard about what happened on September 11, 2001 or the war on terror. And ten local cops, that’s impressive too. I guess they don’t have murder, robbery or rape in New Orleans.” Jaspinder Singh snorted. “And now you’re thinking we have a dastardly criminal here in Tampico, pumping out these CDs.” Singh shook his head, what a sad excuse for a man this Sam Storm was.
“ No, I was following up a lead, that’s all. My brother-in-law thought he saw him up here last month. I thought I’d check it out.” That putz Herbie, Storm thought. This was the third time in as many years that he thought he’d sighted Gordon. Maybe he never should have shown him the pictures.
“ I am certainly sorry that I cannot be helping you. I do not know the man you are looking for,” he lied. Jaspinder Singh had heard enough-as far as he was concerned Rick Gordon had done nothing wrong. He would continue on the prudent course that he had set out for himself very early in life and mind his own business.
Sam Storm paid for his cigarettes with a twenty, pocketed his change and walked out the door, pausing for a second to check the magazine rack to see if there were any nudies. There weren’t.
After the sheriff had dismissed them with the warning that he would be coming up the hill later to get full written statements, they stood next to the Jeep, talking around the events that had left a man dead on the beach.
“ Can we stay and see what happens next?” J.P. asked.
“ I think we should go home and let the police do their job,” Judy said.
“ Aw, Mom!”
“ I think your mother is right, the police have enough to do without us getting in the way,” Ann said.
“ Can we get some Ding Dongs then?”
“ J.P. loves frozen Ding Dongs,” Judy explained.
“ So I’ve learned,” Rick said.
“ Rick likes ’em, too,” Ann said.
“ Does Rick like everything you like?” Judy asked.
“ Pretty much,” Rick answered for the boy.
“ Rick doesn’t get on with too many people, but he’s really taken to J.P.,” Ann said.
“ Not fair, I like people.” Rick brushed hair from his eyes.
“ In great moderation. It’s good this isn’t a big city or we’d have been long gone.”
“ So I like small towns.”
“ Is that why you bought the house on the hill?” Judy asked.
“ It’s always been our dream to settle down in an isolated house in the woods. Quiet and private, with nobody around.”
“ But you like to be around me, don’tcha?”
“ J.P., we couldn’t have a better person to share the hill with. We’re glad you moved next door and we like being around you. You can come over anytime you want,” Ann said.
“ I’m glad, because I like doing stuff with Rick. He doesn’t treat me like a kid.” J.P. was squinting, trying to see what the policemen were doing on the beach. He turned away and looked down the street. “Can we get the Ding Dongs now?” He pointed to Singh’s Bait and Convenience Store.
“ I don’t think so, J.P.,” his mother said.
“ But we’re out,” the boy pleaded.