Jonathon King - A Visible Darkness

"Everything is quiet on the river," I said. "But we've got to get you out there again, work on that paddle technique."

"Yeah, sure," she said, but there was a grin on her face.

"No," I said. "This time it's your side of the woods where I think I need some help."

The waiter came and took orders, and as we sipped iced tea, I told Richards about Billy's theory about the insurance scam and murder. I gave her what sketchy information I could about the women's locations and similarities, and about the insurance investigator who, for lack of a better word, was working with me.

She listened, nodding and only interjecting with the proper street names and neighborhood tides. When the fish came, sizzling off the grill and surrounded by dirty rice, we both went quiet.

She finally broke the silence. "Even that many naturals, in that section of the city, wouldn't necessarily raise any flags. And even if Billy alerted us to it, I doubt it would push anyone off the dime to take a closer look."

I looked up from my plate.

"It's a high crime zone, Freeman. You know the drill. Keep the lid on. Try to make insider friends, keep the politics in check and don't sweat the small stuff. They've got bigger problems over there."

It was my turn to raise eyebrows, first at the small stuff comment and then as an unspoken question about the bigger problems. She took a few forkfuls of rice, pulled a loose strand of hair back behind her ears and began again.

She told me about a string of rapes in the same area over the past several years that had also passed across someone's desk. Some were reported, some were just street talk. The women involved were street girls, prostitutes and addicts feeding their habits and not too particular about what they traded for an eight-ball of crack or a dose of heroin.

"They only got reported when the guy got too rough and the women were found hurt. I answered one while I was still on patrol. Girl had marks around her throat like a thick rope had been wrapped around it. She said it was the guy's hands."

That case, like the others, had never been solved. The witnesses were too high to give good descriptions. The crime scenes were either forgotten or so contaminated that they were useless for processing.

She saw me looking at her eyes, watching the way they kept jumping away from mine.

"Goddammit, Freeman. I worked it as much as I could. I was only patrol. I handed it up to the detective bureau."

"I didn't say a word," I said, holding up my palms in defense. She went quiet.

The waiter came back. I ordered coffee and stared up into the canopy of the banyan, following the branches down into the thick mass of tangled roots that formed the trunk.

"So what has changed?" I asked.

"They started turning up dead."

"The rape victims?"

"The users, the hookers, then just women in the neighborhood."

"But not older women?"

"No."

The coffee came and she knew enough about my habit to wait until I'd taken two long swallows.

"So that's their more serious problem? They might have a serial guy out there?" I said.

"We're working the possibility."

Richards declined dessert.

"So when can I get an inside tour?" I asked, taking a chance.

"You're awfully pushy for an ex-cop who's left the job behind him, Max."

"Consider it a favor for Billy."

She looked into my face again. A grin pulled at the corners of her mouth.

"OK. I'll consider it as such. I'll have to get a waiver for a ride along, but your name is not exactly unknown. You do remember Chief Hammonds?"

Hammonds had been in charge of the abduction case. We did not hold a mutual trust.

"I would never hold either of you responsible if something should happen," I said.

A long moment passed. "Tonight then," she said, catching me off guard. "Meet me at ten in front of the office."

She got up, bent to kiss me on the cheek and walked away before the bill came.

"Thanks for lunch."

I watched her from our back table vantage point, heels clicking on the flagstone, never looking back so I could see if there was a smile on her face.

I called Billy's office. He listened to my description of the meeting with Mary Greenwood and then my lunch with Richards.

"What's with you two? Maybe we should get out for a sail again, heh?"

"No."

I refused to let his silence lead me to say more. I waited him out.

"She have anything to add?"

I told him about the rapes and murders in the area where his dead women lived.

"She's going to give me a tour of the zone late tonight. All right if I wait it out at your place?"

"I'll call Murray at the desk and I'll bring some takeout," he said and clicked off.

I took A1A north, through the condo canyons and past blocks of motels and businesses catering to the tourist crowd. On occasion there would be a stretch of thick green only interrupted by iron gates guarding driveways that twisted up to the backs of beachfront mansions. The huge flat paddles of sea grape leaves billowed up next to the road and twenty-foot high fans of white bird-of-paradise twisted in the wake of the cars. I passed a landscaping truck, mowers and string trimmers being loaded in the back by a crew of men. I thought of the whiskey-laced conversation I'd heard between three old dockside fishermen. One night they were betting on how long it would take the prodigious Florida ferns and vines and water plants to sprout through all the asphalt and concrete and reclaim the land if there were no humans here to cut it back.

"Thirty years and it'd be back to the high tide line," said one.

"Hell, fifteen," said another.

"No more'n ten."

The argument went on but not one of them ventured that it couldn't be done.

Billy lived in a new beachfront high-rise. I'd stayed with him there during my first few weeks in South Florida. His penthouse apartment was spacious, decorated in expensive natural wood and hung with collected art. His pride was the curving wall of glass that faced out over the Atlantic. The wide porch was always bathed in fresh salt air. The only sound was the low hum of wind nibbling at the concrete corners and the brush of breakers on the sand below. It was the exact opposite of everything Billy had grown up in.

I parked my truck in a visitor's spot out front. Inside the ornate lobby, Murray greeted me at the desk. Murray was a trim, balding man who always dressed in a suit and tie and spoke with a clipped and efficient English accent. Billy once did a computer dossier on him and discovered Murray had been born and raised in Brooklyn. But if quizzed, he could give you the specific walking directions from London's Hermitage to the Suffolk House and estimate the time it would take to get there based on the gait and stride you used crossing his lobby. He was a sort of concierge and security man for the building. The residents paid him well.

"Good day, Mr. Freeman."

"Murray. How you doin'," I said.

"Mr. Manchester has called ahead. Please do go up, sir. I shall unlock the doors electronically."

"Thanks for the lift, Murray."

Ever since Billy had told me about the Brooklyn thing I'd had to stifle the urge to mock his accent. Instead I'd just try to get a rise. It never worked.

At the twelfth floor the elevator doors opened onto Billy's private vestibule. The double doors to his apartment were of dark wood. The carpet was thick. The flowers in a vase against the wall were fresh. I heard the electronic snick of the lock and went in. The air was cool and sanitized. The place was immaculate and like always I found myself moving through it like a visitor in a museum. I went straight to the open kitchen and started coffee brewing. Then I slid open a door to the patio and stood at the rail, my nose into the wind.