James Patterson: Now You See Her

I didn’t even know why. I guess because it was fun and goofy and yet deep down seriously romantic, just like Peter and me.

Looking at the powerboat’s sleek lines, I thought for the millionth time how much Peter impressed me. As funny and fun-loving as he was, he was an even harder worker. And because he came from meager circumstances in, of all places, the Bronx, New York, his accomplishments were nothing short of amazing.

Without the benefit of a college education, he’d managed to buy this boat, not to mention this beautiful house in paradise that he’d redone himself. All the while becoming hands down the most well respected, competent cop on the island since the moment he’d transferred down from the NYPD seven years before.

Peter was the real deal, the big-city go-to cop that all the other cops called when the shit hit the fan. Unlike my ex-boyfriend, Alex—who had proven himself to be nothing but a completely self-centered jock, faithless and irresponsible, unwilling to deal with anything his talent didn’t easily overcome—Peter was a traditional guy who actually sought out the hard stuff, took on every challenge the world had to offer, the more difficult the better, knowing it to be the thing that, in fact, made him a man.

There was no doubt that I loved my Saint Peter. I loved him as much as you can love someone who is not only your lover and friend but your hero. If he hadn’t existed, I would have had to invent him.

“Brandy,” the groovy seventies singer’s voice crooned as I hit the boom box’s Play button, “what a good wife you would be. But my life, my lover, my lady, is the sea.”

By noon, I had finished polishing and waxing everything topside and I headed belowdecks. It was hot even by Key West standards, and down in the cruiser’s dim, claustrophobic cabin, the warm, icky, hazy air stuck like Saran wrap on my sweat-drenched skin.

I was putting away some paper towels under one of the galley’s lower cabinets when I noticed something curious lashed with bungee cords to the underside of the sink.

It was a gray plastic box, hard and flat like one that a tool set might come in. I was surprised by how heavy it was as I grabbed its handle and slipped it out. I sat on the cabin steps, set it on my lap, and popped its clasps.

My entire body went slack with a sharp intake of breath as I stared down at what was inside it. I pulled off my bandanna and wiped the sweat out of my eyes.

I’d been expecting some sort of first aid kit, but sitting in the gray foam padding was a gun. It was matte black, greasy with oil, a little larger than a pistol. A nasty-looking hole-filled tube surrounded the barrel, and there were a few wraps of gray duct tape around its grip.

The words “Intratec Miami 9mm” were stamped in the metal in front of the trigger. In the foam beside it were two thin rectangular magazines, the reddish copper jackets of bullets winking at their brims.

Being the daughter of a cop, guns didn’t faze me. I actually used to duck-hunt with my dad, so I knew how to use the shotgun and two nine-millimeters Peter kept in the locked gun cabinet in our bedroom closet.

But wasn’t it a little strange to have a machine pistol on the boat? Wouldn’t a shotgun make more sense? Why hadn’t Peter told me about it?

I tightly closed the lid of the box and put it back where I found it before heading back into the house.

Inside, I was startled to find Peter by the kitchen sink in his police uniform home early.

“Peter?” I said.

Then he turned around, and I saw the scowl on his face. I covered my smile with my hand as I saw that his entire front, from chest to crotch, was covered in the residue of white, rank-smelling puke.

“Go ahead. Laugh it up,” he said with a wide grin. “Look what a nice drunken lady tourist gave me over by the La Concha hotel. Nice of her, wasn’t it? Smells like she had the clam chowder for lunch, don’t you think? Did I ever tell you how much I love being a Key West cop?”

I quickly decided that now probably wasn’t the most opportune time to have a sit-down about Peter’s choice of firearms. It was probably just a rah-rah-cop gung ho throwback to his bachelor days anyway. He probably used it to shoot beer cans with his buddies when they went fishing.

“Let me get a garbage bag,” I said as the puke stench hit me. “On second thought, I’ll get some lighter fluid and a match.” I laughed.

“What are you talking about, Jeanine? I thought you said I look hot in my uniform,” Peter said, mischief gleaming in his blue eyes.

I knew that look.

“Don’t you dare,” I screamed, running as he came quickly around the kitchen island with open arms, puke emanating from his shirt front.

“Come here, Brandy. Where are you going, Mermaid?” he said, laughing as he ran after me into the backyard. “Time to give your husband some sugar, baby doll. Stay right where you are. We need to hug this thing out.”

ON THE EDGE of the manicured lawn, I sighed as a cello, flute, and violin trio played Pachelbel’s Canon in D with perfect, aching precision.

Work, work, work, I thought, filling another long-stemmed glass with two-hundred-dollar-a-bottle Krug brut champagne. The aristocratic wedding guests at the reception we were catering seemed every bit as elegant as the crystal as they laughed and hugged around billowing, white-draped tables arranged on the emerald grounds.

Even to a jaded veteran caterer like me, the wedding on the sprawling front lawn of the Hemingway Home was breathtaking. The famed Spanish colonial in the background had its hurricane shutters flung wide, as if Papa himself might come out at any moment onto the second-story veranda with a highball and offer the lucky couple a toast.

The bubbly that I dispensed in perfectly folded linen was ’92 Krug to be exact, the year the sleekly beautiful, dark-haired couple, a convertible bond arbitrager and an art dealer, both from New York, had met. Between refills, I watched them as they smiled, hand in hand, on the western fringe of the lush lawn, taking pictures to capture the Key West Lighthouse in the background.

One day I’d probably finish my English degree, I thought, as I sighed again. But until then, I had no problem chilling out here in wedding world, where it was forever Saturday afternoon, complete with classical music, popping corks, raised champagne flutes, eggshell and ivory, eternally blue skies.

Of course, I would have preferred to spend all day fishing with Peter, but he’d been working overtime on Saturdays for the last two solid months with a DEA task force. It was undercover work, which I knew was dangerous and I hated, but I also knew my husband. Peter was a hard-driving superstar cop, more than capable of taking care of himself and his buddies. It was the bad guys who needed to worry.

“Your wedding was better,” my boss and Peter’s coworker Elena Cardenas said, hip-butting me as she passed with a tray of sesame chicken.

“Yeah, right,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Which part did you like more? When Peter faked throwing me off the bar’s dock or his drunken rendition of ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’?”

“Hard to decide,” the full-figured blond Cuban said with a laugh. “At least he didn’t appear to have a pole up his keister like this groom. Anyway, Teo is up to his neck and running low on champagne at the bar. Could you run and grab another box of Krug out of the van?”

“Aye, aye, captain,” I said.

“And remember, watch out for the Jump Killer,” Elena called as I went toward the iron street gate.

The Jump Killer was on my mind and probably that of every young woman in South Florida that summer. An ongoing Channel 7 news story told about spooky abductions up in North Miami, missing prostitutes, an unsuccessful attack in which a man tied up a woman with parachute cord. The words serial killer were being used, though no bodies had been found. Gee, thanks for reminding me, Elena, I thought as I walked down the deserted street toward the van.