Jonathon King - A Killing Night

O'Shea brought a couple of Nextel cell phones from his job so we could stay instantly connected. It was the way business was done. A high tweet came from the cell. I clicked back.

"Your boy is here," O'Shea's voice came over the Nextel. "And this one's got some balls, Freeman. He's in his goddamn squad car."

"You're sure?"

"Same guy I snapped the picture of. He parked the unit over on the other side of the lot and is walking into the front door of the bar now."

"He's in uniform?"

"No. Plainclothes."

"What's the number on the car?" I asked, and when O'Shea read it off I matched it to the number I'd scribbled down when watching the cop car in the parking lot, thinking it was security, knowing now that it was no such thing.

"When he comes back out, you're on him; if he leaves on your side, I'll follow and we can switch up the line."

"I know how to work a two-man tail, Freeman."

"Yeah, all right," I said. I was nervous. A two-tail was not a difficult technique, but South Florida was not a big urban city like Philly where parallel streets are a common layout and traffic moves like patterned waves that rush and stop at lights. But if I was correct, or better, lucky, most of this tail was going to be on the highway leading out to the western part of the county to the Glades.

If I'd read Marci right, she would be in Kim's now, down in front of the last seat, telling Kyle that I was a private investigator working for the family of some bartender from up north who'd disappeared down here months ago. In a way, it was a truth.

She would tell him that I had worked a theory that the girl had been picked up by someone who had dated her, killed her and then dumped her body. Another truth, and when I had gone over this part with Marci she had again blanched and the look on her face was exactly the look I hoped she was using now.

"And if he asks you why I think that, you tell him that I've found evidence, DNA evidence, and all I need to do now is find corroborating witnesses to set up a time line so the authorities will take the cases seriously."

The tricky part, I told her, would be if he didn't ask about where I got DNA. Then she was going to have to offer up the lie about my finding a body in the Glades. She had nodded at the instructions, said she could do it. But this wasn't some drunk she would be trying to convince. There was something raw about the way she used his name. I could not dismiss the feeling that she was too anxious to hurt this guy and if that showed through, no way was this going to work.

"Whatever you do, Marci," I'd said, "don't go with him." She'd tightened her mouth and I repeated my instruction. "Don't go with him or it's off."

Morrison was inside for forty-five minutes. O'Shea buzzed me when he came out.

"Guy's marchin,' Freeman," he said into the cell. "Looks like a man on a mission and hasn't looked left or right yet."

I started my truck, figuring his pattern would be the same and he would exit the center through the road in front of me just like he had the night his headlights had caught me on the stakeout.

"Headin' your way, Freeman," O'Shea said. "I'll fall in behind."

I pressed my head against the driver's side window, using the frame strut to partially hide behind and watched as the cruiser swung around the corner and onto the street. Morrison pulled a rolling stop through the first stop sign and I had to come out fast to stay within a reasonable distance. Either he was so focused he wasn't paying attention, or he was just arrogant. Both were good things. He wouldn't be thinking of a tail.

We were heading west through a residential area, then he took a right back toward Sunrise Boulevard to catch a light. It was the same way I would have gone to get on the main strip west toward the expressway.

"O'Shea, head up the back way to the park so you can get in behind him," I said into the Nextel. "I'm going to have to stop at the light with him and he's going to get a good look at my truck and I'll have to fall back to keep him from getting familiar."

"Roger that, big man."

"If he keeps westbound to I-95 you'll fit in with the rest of the traffic heading that way. I'll stay back a couple of blocks."

"We got this one, Max. Not a problem."

Christ, I thought. I'm partnered with Colin O'Shea. I could only hope he wouldn't hold to form and somehow screw this one up.

Morrison stopped at the light. It was difficult to see his silhouette through the dark glass of his back window in the daylight. The advantage to police cars in Florida was that they almost all had tinted windows so they were obscured from the outside. The treatments used to scare the shit out of us as patrol officers, pulling over some van or tricked out ghetto cruiser when you couldn't see if some banger inside was sighting up a shotgun at the window. Now law enforcement had followed the trend themselves. I again leaned into my driver's door behind the strut, hung my elbow out of the open window like I was a tired worker going home for the evening. I didn't think Morrison could have gotten much of a look at me when he slipped out of Kim's that first time I glimpsed him, but I was trying not to underestimate the guy.

He took a left at the light change as I expected and I followed but fell back. We were heading into a setting sun, the flare of orange spraying strong up into the clouds, and there was enough white light left to cause everyone to drop their visors a couple of inches. It was past commuter time, but South Florida traffic never seemed to ease. It was good for cover, bad if Morrison got nervous and made any quick moves.

"I'm in behind him coming up on the Sears curve," O'Shea reported over the Nextel.

"I'm three blocks back," I answered.

I had to think that Morrison would believe most of what Marci had reported to him. I wasn't exactly going out on a limb with this but maybe we could get lucky. If he wasn't our guy, he'd go home, or to the station, or to some poker game for all I knew. But if he was our guy, I was betting the mention of somehow finding a woman's body in the Glades would spook him. He wouldn't believe it, but the thought of it would get into his head and twist it. If he was as careful as we made him out to be, he would have to confirm it. I was betting on the Glades. Marci had just added to it with her description of someplace off Alligator Alley. Dumping bodies in the Everglades was a tradition in South Florida. The Indians had done it to early explorers, the ruthless farm bosses to slave labor. The mob had done it with their enemies in the twenties and the myriad criminals from dope runners to child abductors had done it in the modern era. Two and a half million acres of open land, shifting water, canals and sawgrass and plenty of reptiles to eliminate all traces: a perfect disposal site. I figured he'd head straight for the Alley and use the failing daylight to his advantage.

But maybe I thought wrong.

"Freeman, I'm losing him up here," O'Shea snapped into the Nextel. "Some asshole is trying to make a left over two lanes and I'm trapped and your boy just put his blue lights on and went up around everybody in the right lane."

I immediately pushed up my speed and moved to the right, passing through a crosswalk, forcing a hulking black man with a shopping cart to yank his load back and spit a string of tobacco at my pickup. I was sitting high enough in my cab to see the flashes of blue from Morrison's light bar and kept pushing. I cut off another driver moving too slow over the railroad tracks and gained another half a block. I saw O'Shea twisting his wheel and cursing out to my left as I went by and gave him a hand sign that I was chasing now.

I blew a red light at Ninth Avenue by barely a second and picked up Morrison's cruiser a block and a half in front. I sped up to get in the same traffic herd so we wouldn't get separated by another light, and exhaled. No big deal. This was why you did two-mans. It was the old way before every metro P.D. had helicopters and the undercover guys hid locators in their cell phones.