“She’s counting on you, Doc. The woman’s got enough psych-up energy for ten people. The way she looks, the way she acts, can you believe that she’s got two kids? She was a middle-aged housewife, for God’s sake, before she kicked out her good-for-nothing husband and took her life back under control. What I’m saying is, she’s strong, man, very strong. In other words, partner, I don’t think she’s going to take no for an answer. And keep in mind, she really did come through when you needed her yesterday. If you catch my drift.”
I said, “You’re not suggesting that she’d try to leverage me, are you? Threaten to go to the cops and tell them the truth?”
Listened to Tomlinson say, “Probably not,” but I was thinking: Of course she would. She’s Tucker’s daughter.
Thirty minutes later, standing, waiting on luggage to be stowed aboard an orange, multipassenger Bell helicopter, I perceived an unmistakable chill from the two women deputies who’d stayed the night on Guava Key and stood guard over the girl.
Well, they’d supposedly stood guard.
One of them was Deputy Walker, who hadn’t exactly been my advocate during the interrogation the night before. I’d avoided her questions, true, and we certainly hadn’t struck up even a conversational friendship, but that didn’t explain her behavior or the behavior of her fellow officer.
As Lindsey and I approached the helipad, they seemed to make a point of ignoring me, and when I asked, “Is Waldman still around?” Walker shrugged and turned away.
I’m not a stickler for mindless social ceremony, but neither do I allow rude behavior to go unquestioned.
I moved close enough so she couldn’t ignore me. “Maybe you didn’t hear my question. Is Doug Waldman still on the island?”
There was something in her expression and her tone akin to contempt. She braced both hands on the gunbelt around her waist and said, “Why? You had your chance to cooperate last night.”
I took a couple of slow breaths before I said, “So maybe you got a lumpy bed and couldn’t sleep. Or the husband and you had a fight over the phone. What I’ll do is give it one more try. Is Waldman around? I want to ask him something about the investigation.”
The deputy told me, “We can handle it, believe me. We don’t need your assistance,” and walked away.
I received the same strange, inexplicable animus from Gale Storm, who touched me on the shoulder and, when I turned around, said, “Thanks for the help yesterday. I appreciate it.” But her tone said she wasn’t thankful and her quick, limp handshake told me she couldn’t wait to get away.
“No need to thank me,” I replied. “From what I saw, you handled yourself pretty well in a situation most people can’t even imagine. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed about.”
That seemed to infuriate her. “Ashamed? Why the hell would I be ashamed?”
I was tempted to say because she froze and lost her weapon, but instead I said, “Exactly the point I was making. No reason at all.” My shrug tried to tell her, How would I know anyway?
But she wouldn’t drop it. She was wearing navy blue shorts, gray Izod shirt, and a golf visor, plus the same little gray belly bag. She’d either retrieved her weapon from the dock or she’d found a backup. She removed the visor, wiping her forehead, as she said, “Look, before I went into the private sector, I graduated from the FBI academy at Quantico and three or four other schools you wouldn’t even know about. If there’s one thing I don’t need it’s some fisherman trying to insinuate that I somehow blew an assignment. So please don’t.”
Was everyone on the island in a foul mood? Or maybe Storm had received some kind of royal ass-chewing from Lindsey’s father. No way of knowing, but this time I wasn’t going to let it pass. I said, “One thing I can say for you, Ms. Storm, is you’d be a great train engineer.” When she raised her eyebrows quizzically, I added, “You’re always on time and on schedule. Your afternoon runs? I could set my watch by them. Plus you never varied your route. Not once. Just like you were on tracks. Very dependable. And predictable. I guess I wasn’t the only one who noticed, huh?” Then I looked into her face until she turned away.
Then Lindsey was beside me. She grabbed my hand and began to steer me away toward a hedge of hibiscus that separated the grassy landing area from the bay. She said to me, “I don’t care how shy you are, how proper, I’m not leaving without a good-bye kiss.”
I let her pull me along, saying, “What the hell’s wrong with these people? Yesterday I was a hero, today I’m poison. Even your bodyguard-what did I do to make her mad?”
“Gale?” Her expression said it was unimportant, why waste the energy? “Don’t worry about her. Gale’s always pissed off about something. It might be that she’s jealous.”
“She’s jealous because of me?” I smiled. “I don’t think so. She hasn’t shown the slightest interest. But I’m flattered you’d think that.”
“Not you, you big dope. She’s interested in me. She’s been wanting to come on to me for, like, the last month, but couldn’t work up the nerve. Too professional, probably.” She turned to face me, laughing. “That’s hilarious! Gale interested in you? She’s gay. Man, are you out of it sometimes.”
“Yeah, I don’t doubt that, but the question’s the same: Why would she be jealous? Unless you told her about last night. Which you didn’t
… did you?”
“I don’t tell her anything. She always, like, goes straight to Dad.” She paused for a moment. “Now that you mention it, though, um-huh, she is acting weirder than usual.”
Lindsey was still thinking about it. She stood close enough to speak confidentially. “Or it could be because of Dad. Yeah, that might be it. My father spoke to her this morning on the phone and had her close to tears, he was, like, yelling at her so much. I was in the next room and could hear him. That’s how pissed off he was.
“Same with the two women cops. With them, what happened was, my dad did a conference call this morning. Them and their boss at the Sheriff’s Department, Dad’s point being that they hadn’t done what they were paid to do, which, when you think about it, they didn’t… .” She let the sentence trail as we were approached the bushes. She turned to me again, made herself as tall as she could be on tippy-toes. Held my right hand to her chest as she kissed me gently, then harder. “I like you, Ford. We need to get together soon. Real soon.”
“It’s something to think about.”
She kissed me again. “No, it’s not. You think way too much. That’s your problem. Like the shoe commerciaclass="underline" Just do it.”
Smiling, I used my good hand to hold her away momentarily. “Okay, sure, you’ve got a point, so we’ll get together. But you know what I’m thinking about right now?”
In a torch singer’s smoky voice, she answered, “If it’s the same thing I’m thinking of, we’ve only got about five minutes, so drop your shorts and let’s get started,” then laughed at her own parody.
“No, what I’m wondering is how’d your dad know the two women cops screwed up? They were assigned to guard you, but you snuck out. How could he know that? That’s my point.”
She made a face and shrugged. “I’ve never figured out how my dad knows all the things he knows. I quit worrying about it long ago. He’s always watching me, always finding out stuff.”
I experienced a slow, uncomfortable dawning. “You mean he knows and the deputies know where you went last night, where you stayed? That we were together?”
“Maybe not but it’s possible. They usually keep track of me every damn second of the day. The bodyguard I had before Gale, she was like that, then Gale, and always because of Dad. They bug my room, bug my phones, tail me when I’m out. Because of the drug thing, only that’s not going to be a problem anymore. I’m serious, Doc, I feel like I’ve changed.”
“Phone?” I said, thinking of the cell phone she’d carried with her. I was aware of a satellite surveillance system, controlled by the National Security Agency, known as Echelon. An NSA operator could sit at his little screen in Fort Meade, Maryland, tune in on a cell phone conversation on the other side of the earth. Could also use the conversation as an effective direction finder; laser in on the precise location, know what street they were on in Singapore or Perth, know if the person using the phone was turning right or left. It was that exact.