Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

“No,” Lovejoy said quietly. “Not necessarily a very long step at all. So you’re saying that all the assets you transferred were liquid? No house, no condo, not even a time-share?”

“Nothing like that. Albert was only renting his apartment in the retirement complex. He owned no real estate.”

Lovejoy moved to rise. “Very well, Mr. Gibson. Thank you for your time.”

“Those scrapbooks and things,” Moore said without getting up. “Did you comply with Jack’s instructions?”

Gibson smiled. “Couldn’t bring myself to do it. I thought that would make me as bad as Jack.”

“What did you do with them?”

“Kept them. Here, with my files.”

“May we see them?”

“I don’t see why not. Though I can’t imagine what you’d find in there to concern you.”

“Vacation snapshots. We’re interested in places Jack would know about. Places he might go.”

Gibson rummaged in a file cabinet and returned with four thick, leather-bound albums. Lovejoy and Moore took two apiece.

Then there was silence, broken only by the flipping of cellophane sheets and stiff cardboard pages.

“Here’s something.” Moore angled the scrapbook in her hands to show Lovejoy a collage of postcards. Mangrove islets, blue herons, hooked marlin: the Florida Keys.

“Check the postmarks.”

Moore peeled back the page’s acetate cover and removed the cards. “Islamorada. All of them. But the dates are different. The years, I mean. 1976, ’77, ’78…” She looked up. “August. Every time.”

“It’s August now.” Lovejoy felt his fingertips tingle.

Moore was reading the scribbled messages on the cards. “Jack went along on each trip. His father keeps referring to him. ‘Jack and Steve and I took the boat out yesterday…’ Wonder who this Steve was.”

“Personally, I’m more interested in the boat,” Lovejoy said.

“Oh, I can tell you about that,” Gibson broke in. “Al owned it for years, then finally sold it shortly before his retirement. Had some good times on that boat. I can’t recall the name…”

Lovejoy, studying the photo album in his hands, plucked a snapshot from its cellophane pocket and held it up. “Would this help?”

A man in his late forties-an older, heftier version of Jack Dance-posed on the deck of a flybridge cruiser. On the hull, part of the name was readable: light fan.

“Yes,” Gibson said. “I remember now. The Light Fantastic. But Al never mentioned any trips to the Keys. Guess he didn’t want to bring up anything that would remind him of Jack.”

“Do you know who bought the boat? Where it’s berthed now?”

“No, I didn’t handle that transaction. But I can give you the name of a tax attorney Al had retained in New Jersey prior to relocating. He might know.”

Gibson went back to his file cabinet. Lovejoy and Moore continued to turn pages.

“Look at this.” Lovejoy tossed a snapshot into Moore’s lap.

At the end of a pier, near a disdainful pelican roosting on a post, stood a teenage Jack Dance: longhaired, muscular, shirtless, smiling a smile of easy confidence, eyes concealed behind mirrored sunglasses.

“He could be any kid,” Moore whispered, then lifted her eyebrows, surprised at herself. “For some reason I wouldn’t have expected that.”

Standing at Jack’s side was another boy of the same age. He wore a New York Giants T-shirt, loose on his gangly frame, and prescription eyeglasses, the thick lenses shrinking his eyes. His hair was cut shorter than Jack’s, his smile less natural, suggesting the self-conscious embarrassment of someone nervous around cameras.

“Steve?” Moore wondered.

“Could be.”

Gibson gave Lovejoy a slip of paper filled out in his neat hand. “This is the lawyer Al used. Wallace Hardy of Montclair, New Jersey. May have retired by now. Unfortunately, I have only his business address and phone number, so you may have trouble tracking him down.”

Lovejoy smiled. “That’s what they pay us for.”

Back in the sedan, rushing south on 95, Moore used the car phone to dial Hardy’s number. She got a video-rental store. New Jersey information listed no Wallace Hardy in Montclair.

“Best option is to let the New Jersey field office handle it,” Lovejoy said. “They’ll find him if he’s still alive.”

“Think Jack bought that boat from his father?”

“Improbable, given the fact that the two of them were obviously estranged. Then again, Albert sold the boat before he ever met Gibson. There’s at least a small chance that he and Jack were still on friendly terms at that time.”

“If he did get hold of the Light Fantastic, and had it berthed in south Florida “It could explain why he came here. But all of this is strictly hypothetical. With luck, New Jersey will be able to give us some facts.”

“I’ll call them.”

“They can reach us at the car-phone number when they have to. I don’t plan on going back to the office.”

Moore looked at him. “Islamorada?”

Lovejoy nodded, eyes on the road. “Islamorada.”

Funny how it felt to have your world collapse.

Steve lay in bed, fully clothed, stretched supine on the taut bedspread; he hadn’t bothered to climb under the covers. With empty eyes he gazed at the ceiling, whitewashed with afternoon sun rays, speckled with the gently waving shadows of palm fronds.

Somewhere, either in the room or just beyond the open window, a solitary insect droned. It sounded like the hum of a distant lawn mower in his Connecticut neighborhood, a Saturday morning sound.

He wished he were in Connecticut. Wished he had never come to Pelican Key.

At dawn he had been a man with a wife, a job, a home, even a dog. And with a guilty secret, too; but he’d carried that guilt so long, he was wearily familiar with it. It was a pain he’d grown accustomed to, a dull ache from an old wound.

Now, only a few hours later, he had lost everything. Everything except the guilt, which was of a new and different order, not familiar anymore.

His life had taken on an unreal quality, a strange remoteness. Since returning from the reef, he’d found himself touching things-doorknobs, countertops-merely to feel the small shock of contact with something solid and firm.

In a dream there was no sensation of touch. So this was not a dream.

A sigh shivered through him. He thought about the gun. About using it. First on Jack. Then on himself.

It would be the best thing.

But he didn’t have the courage. And Jack knew it.

When you lied for him last time, he told himself as the palm shadows rustled in a breath of breeze, when you backed up his phony alibi, it wasn’t for friendship or loyalty or any other noble bullshit.

You did it out of fear. Fear of Jack.

He didn’t even know what he had thought Jack might do. Nothing specific, really. The mere prospect of disobeying and displeasing him had seemed as awful in its implications as angering some cruel, dark, tribal god.

Was that what Jack had been to him? And what, in some irrational way, he still was?

A god?

My private god, Steve thought. My personal deity.

His eyes squeezed shut. He moaned.

“Steve?”

Blinking alert, he saw Kirstie standing in the doorway.

“Steve, are you all right?”

“Sure.” Vaguely he was pleased to hear that his voice sounded normal. “Just resting.”

She approached the bed. He didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to see how beautiful she was, couldn’t help himself. He took mental snapshots of her features, focusing first on one detail, then on another-the line of her jaw, the bridge of her nose, the sunlit shimmer of her hair-storing up memories for his long exile.