P. Parrish - Claw Back

Louis got out of the SUV.

The men were heading down the street at a quick clip. Louis had made enough traffic stops and interviewed enough suspects to sense fear. A shift of the body to avoid calling attention to the weight of a gun in a pocket. A twist of the shoulders to release tension. A suddenly quickened pace.

He knew he shouldn’t be doing this.

He was nosing around in Katy’s territory and she was going to be pissed. But something told him to stay with them, just for a block or two.

At the corner, the thinner guy broke off. The stocky one took one last look back at Louis before turning down a side street.

Louis followed, about thirty feet behind. The guy was walking fast and stiff, his head swiveling back at Louis every few feet. Finally, he reached a yellow house with a yard full of toys and a plastic wading pool. He cut across the grass and quickly slipped inside. Then, despite the heat, he slammed the heavy door.

Louis jogged back to the SUV. Katy was in the driver’s seat, both hands resting on the wheel.

As he got in she wiped her face quickly.

“You okay?” he asked.

She shrugged but he could see she was struggling to not cry.

“Where’d you go?” she asked.

“I followed someone,” he said. “A guy in his twenties, stocky.”

“Why?”

“He was acting hinky.”

“Hinky?”

“He went into a yellow house over on the next street.”

Katy frowned. “That might be Hachi or one of his friends.”

“You know him?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not really.”

“He didn’t like me following him.”

“A black guy gets out of a FWC vehicle and follows you. What young guy here would like that, Louis?”

“Fair enough. But I’m going to run a check on him. What’s his last name?”

She hesitated. “Keno.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t get you in trouble with Moses.”

She stared at him for a long time then with a final look back at Betty’s house, she jammed the SUV into gear and pulled slowly away.

They were out on Alligator Alley heading west into the setting sun before Katy spoke again.

“She’s dead,” she said softly.

For a second Louis thought she meant her great aunt Betty but then realized she was talking about Grace.

Katy flipped down the visor to retrieve her sunglasses and slipped them on, but not before Louis saw her eyes well with tears.

“You don’t know that,” Louis said.

She looked left, to the huge empty expanse of the Everglades. “We’ve increased our search flights, we’ve got every officer out there looking and all the hunters on alert,” she said. “There’s no sign of her. She’s gone, Louis, Grace is gone.”

Maybe it was the emotion of the visit to Betty. Maybe she was just exhausted. But this was the first time he had heard defeat in her voice.

“Look,” he said, “Things go cold on cases but then you get a break and things heat up. You have to stay with it, you have to stay positive.”

She glanced at him then looked back to the road.

“Go home and try not to worry,” he said. “Have a glass of wine and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll start again early tomorrow.”

She was silent.

“You’ve got to trust me on this,” Louis said. “We’ll find her, Katy. We’ll bring Grace home.”

For the third time in the last twenty minutes, Louis checked his watch, this time even tapping it to make sure it was running. Almost eight.

Where the hell was Katy?

“Everything okay here?”

He looked up at the waitress. “What? Oh, yeah.”

“Top you off?” she asked, holding up the coffee pot.

Louis nodded absently and she refilled his mug.

Yesterday, after their visit to the reservation, Louis had asked Katy to meet him for breakfast this morning. The forensic report from Grace’s crime scene was due back today and he hoped to be able to show it to Katy to boost her mood. When he went to pick it up the tech said he would bring it over to the IHop when he came over to get his takeout coffee.

Louis looked out the window for Katy’s FWC Bronco. No sign of it on the morning crawl along Tamiami Trail. He glanced at the pay phone out by the entrance, but he had already called her apartment and gotten the machine. A second call to her office got him a secretary who told him she hadn’t come in yet.

The guy from the forensic unit came in the entrance, spotted Louis and came over to his booth.

“Here’s your prelim,” he said, tossing a manila envelope on the table.

“Thanks,” Louis said. “Tell the cashier to add your coffee to my bill.”

After the man left, Louis put on his reading glasses and took out the report. He skipped over the tire tread part, focusing in the boot prints that had been found. They were for a men’s size ten Timberland Flume, a common hiking boot.

He zeroed in on the cigarette pack. The lab had been able to lift two clean prints from the cellophane but there was no match to anyone in the system.

He turned the page, scanning quickly, then stopped. The techs had found human hairs tangled in some brush. The analysis read: natural black, from the head, straight with circular cross sections, medium-sized pigment granules, and a thicker cuticle, consistent with Mongoloid pattern.

Louis took off his glasses. “Mongoloid” meant someone of Asian or Native-American descent. But he knew this wasn’t going to be enough to convince Katy.

He glanced out to the parking lot. Still no sign of her truck. He put his glasses back on and went back to the report.

One hair had its bulb intact, which meant they could test for DNA. But Louis knew there was no point. He had read enough about the new technology to know that a test would take months to come back. Besides, they had no one — and nothing — to compare it to. That wasn’t really true, he thought. They had the cigarette butt from the hunting camp but what would that prove? Besides, he had promised Gary Trujillo not to involve him in the case and there was no way Mobley would foot the bill for the high cost of a DNA test.

Louis took a drink of his coffee but it had gone cold.

So would this case if he didn’t think of something.

But first he had to find Katy.

He rose, picking up his check. After paying, he called Katy’s apartment again. Still no answer. He tried her office, this time getting Jeff, the man who had been with Katy on the call to rescue Bruce from the patio. Jeff remembered Louis and told him that it was unusual for Katy to not check in.

“She’s been here every day at the crack of dawn since Grace disappeared,” he said. “She’s been pulling twelve-hour days and riding us all pretty hard.”

“You try to radio her?” Louis asked.

“Yeah, about a half-hour ago. No answer.”

“Try again, would you?”

Louis waited, listening while Jeff tried to raise Katy but there was no answer. Jeff came back to the phone.

“She could be out of range if she went out into the Glades,” Jeff said.

“Except she was supposed to meet me for breakfast.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said softly.

“Keep trying the radio,” Louis said. “I’ll check back in with you in a half hour.”

He hung up and looked again to the parking lot. He decided to go to her office. Maybe he and Jeff could go looking for her.

Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on southbound I-75 and the swirl of red and blue lights ahead told Louis there was an accident. He sat, hands tapping on the wheel, gaze wandering out the side window. A sign for the Miromar Outlet Mall caught his eye. He was right near Katy’s apartment.

He swung the Mustang onto the shoulder and sped up onto the off-ramp. The apartment complex backed onto the freeway and he found Katy’s building and parked. As he was starting toward the stairway he spotted her FWC Bronco sitting in a parking spot.