Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

“ Back to England?”

“ Maybe.” Fisher ceremoniously handed over the tape to them, adding, “I hope you people catch this bastard, so I can be on hand to watch him fry in the electric chair.”

“ We’re going to do our damnedest,” Eriq assured the man before they left.

In the parking lot, the drizzle now a silver-toothed annoyance, Jessica leaned across the hood of the car and called out to Eriq, “What’s our damnedest, Eriq? You mean our best? Well, damned if so far we’ve not done our best; so far, we’ve let this bastard run us around the entire coastline of this state and we’ve been unable to spot him even once.”

She left him standing in the rain, his mouth open, while she climbed into the passenger side of the car.

He climbed in after her. “Just what do you propose we do, Jessica?”

“ I say we get a plane or a helicopter out of here.”

“ What? We just got here.”

“ And we fly it out over the Gulf, and we take it on a course due southeast of here.”

“ Southeast of here? For what destination?”

“ The Cayman Islands, I believe.”

‘ ‘ What? You told me about the Caymans… that he was there, and that possibly he had left a body or two there. But you don’t know that for sure, now do you?”

“ Instinct tells me that he got away with murder in the Caymans, and that he never felt the least threatened there, because no one came close to IDing him there, unlike here. Fact is, they never knew what they had on the islands, and that’s got to sweeten the allure of a return for him. Here, we have an artist sketch, an a.k.a., a possible fix on his real name, and now a good idea of what his boat looks like. He’s got to know those two watercops were on the radio, that they gave a description of the boat-”

“ Precisely why he’ll try to unload it.”

“ Or he’ll take it out of American waters and unload it in a place like the Caymans.”

“ Even if you’re right, and he is running from American waters, why do you suppose he’s returning to the Cayman Islands? Why not Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, any number of places?”

“ He likes the Caymans. He’s familiar with the islands. He’ll go there first.”

“ You’re sure of this?”

“ I am,” she firmly replied, trying to quell all her secret uncertainties.

He thought about her notion a moment. “I may be crazy to go along with this, but okay. We go to the Caymans at first light. No point in going in this darkness with a storm approaching, is there?”

“ We must beat him to the islands, before he has a chance to sell the boat there.”

“ Do you think he’ll sell it or recondition it?”

“ Either way, he can’t get there ahead of us.”

“ So when do you propose leaving?”

“ As soon as possible.”

“ Do you think we can get a flight out on such short notice?”

“ I’m not interested in taking a jetliner, and I don’t want to use a marked police vehicle-I don’t want to spook this SOB into a suicide. I want him captured and brought to justice.”

“ For crimes against Florida, he’ll fry in the chair.” My sentiments are with his victims.”

“ Let’s do it. Set it up.”

“ I want to fly low along the most direct path to the Caymans in search of the boat.”

“ And Captain Anderson can plot the course you are assuming this creep is taking?”

“ Anderson’s still in Naples. We asked him to stay put in case we needed his services again. We can contact him through Ford, and he can send us word if there’s time, but we’ll talk to experts here, too.”

“ All right… do it, but are you really sure about what’s going on in this monster’s mind?”

“ It’s my best guess right now. Do you have any other suggestions?”

Santiva passed a hand along the stubble of a twenty-four- hour growth of beard, and gnashing his teeth, he finally muttered, “Another helicopter ride?”

“ It’s got to be private, or an unmarked police chopper. Either that or a cub plane.”

“ Either way, I’m a sick man.”

“ We’ll get you more Dramamine.”

“ I’ll double the dosage.”

“ And be asleep in my lap?”

He laughed. “I’ve been in much worse spots…”

Patty Lawrence felt she had to do something, and sitting in a hospital waiting room, crowded full with Manley’s people and Ken Stallings’s family and friends, wasn’t good enough. She had yanked her partner from the hospital and they’d agreed to return to the search out there off Madeira Beach for whatever sign they could find of the bastard who’d done this to Ken.

The search front had gone in carefully squared-off areas, the search boats squeezing the playing field, hoping to catch up to a killer who was likely as lost in the fog as they themselves felt. Their instruments, they hoped, were better than his, as they hoped their instincts were.

But several hours of searching had turned up nothing. Perhaps this maniac killer did know what he was doing when it came to maneuvering a sailing vessel.

Bill was now in the flat of the boat, scanning the waters with a pair of night-vision binoculars while Patty inched the Boston Whaler through the soup. A running joke had given their boat its private name. The Pantry-named for all the food Bill brought aboard, from potato chips and cold cuts to Pepsi-Cola and cranberry jam. Bill was a big man, as big as Rob Manley had been, and he had seen all manner of problems on this job. Patty’s Pantry, as some of the guys called their boat, was a misnomer; it ought more rightly to have been Bill’s Pantry. She ate three regulars a day and never strayed from her regimen, never snacking in between, however tempting Bill made it at times, however much he goaded.

They were in near-constant contact with the other search ships. People were getting short with one another; personnel were beginning to feel the emotional and physical strain, the stress growing minute by painful minute as the obvious began to sink in: They’d somehow let the Night Crawler crawl right past them all. The bastard was aptly named.

Tempers flared, ignited by frustration and anger and un resolved feelings. Patty certainly felt her share of the latter. She and Ken Stallings had left so many feelings unresolved. Bill knew about the special bond between them and had always been a gentleman and friend and never once made her feel guilty. But now Bill hadn’t spoken a word in the past fifteen minutes, and she couldn’t help but wonder what was going through his mind. Perhaps it was the same simple thought plaguing her: All appeared helpless, useless effort now.

Their radio crackled anew with the voice of a county sheriff’s guy she hardly knew, a man named Trilling, announcing something in the water at their location. He quickly gave the exact coordinates, repeating his message: “Something in the water! Something floating on top of the water! Something out of place…”

Patty had to fight through the radio traffic to ask, “What’ve you got? Describe it.”

Looks… looks like… yeah, Jesus… it’s a body.”

All the search vehicles were close now, so close they could see each other’s searchlights even in the fog. Patty Lawrence silently wondered at the new find. Had the killer left his own brand of calling card?

The find was called in to various dispatches on land, including Bob Fisher, Patty’s own dispatch. The news that they had someone in the water spread like wildfire. Moments later, it was confirmed by Trilling’s partner, and some details filtered over the radio waves: female, five-nine to six foot, thin, well-proportioned, nude and DOA. Apparent late teens, a black nylon rope twisted in a noose around her neck, strangled and drowned.

Each additional bit of information was like another blow to them all. Everyone had heard of the recent disappearance of the young woman from Naples Island, south of Tampa. Everyone wondered if this could be her. There seemed little doubt that whoever she was, she’d been victimized by the Night Crawler, and that he’d brutally used her. The word buzzing over the airways indicated that the girl’s body was as stiff as a long-preserved medical cadaver’s might appear.