Jonathon King - A Visible Darkness

"Nothing to tie him to the deaths of our women?"

"Nothing but a feeling, Billy. But we haven't been able to talk with him yet. I'll call you," I said and punched the set off.

The sun had gone white and the air in the cab was already thick and hot. I rolled up the window, kicked on the A.C. and went to find coffee.

I was sitting at a sidewalk table at a beachfront cafe watching the early sunbathers make their trek to the sand when McCane called.

"Hey, Freeman. I didn't catch you loungin' around in someone's bed this morning getting' a little on-the-job perk, did I?"

I took a long drink of hot coffee, counted five cars rolling by on the avenue and waited until my jaw unclenched.

"Freeman? You there, bud?"

"You lose your beeper, McCane?" I finally answered.

"Nope. Got it right here with, uh, three of your pages on it."

"You been on vacation?"

"Matter of fact I was down to Miami," he said, putting a southern "ah" on the end of the city's name. "You ever been on that Miami Beach, Freeman? There is some kind of modelin' show goin' on down that way, bud. Girls out on the sidewalk with legs right up to their…"

"Spare me, McCane," I interrupted him. "You bother checking out the news up here?"

"Well now, I did see where our Mr. Marshack bought his. Didn't pick up quite how in the papers, though. Kind of thing they tend to keep out, so's they can narrow down the suspect field," he said with a matter-of-fact tone in his voice. "But I suppose you got the inside story since you and your detective friend was there."

"You were watching?" I asked.

"I was just rollin' in. Was figurin' on setting up a little morning surveillance, follow the guy to work since the night tail wasn't getting me much."

"So you weren't there overnight?"

"Unfortunate," he said. "Your friends got any suspects?"

I didn't answer, wondering who it was that McCane might be tailing now since the doctor was no longer available.

"It might be a good idea if you and I get together and put some of these pieces together, McCane. If you're not too busy, I'm thinking Mr. Manchester's office this afternoon?"

"All right, bud. I got a few errands to run. But why don't ya'll set it up and page me with a time."

After McCane hung up I sat finishing my coffee, and watched a girl across the street on rollerblades take an ugly tumble on the sidewalk. A few other morning walkers stopped to help her up and even from here I could see a bright pink oval of blood on the side of her knee that had been sandpapered off by the concrete. While the small commotion attracted attention I put my money under my empty cup and slipped away, watching carefully for any parked cars nearby, looking for a single man sitting in the driver's seat.

I was back in my truck, just easing into traffic when the phone rang again.

"Freeman."

"Good morning. Heard you and Diaz had a wonderful time last night," Richards said.

"Yeah, a true conversationalist, that partner of yours," I said.

"If you haven't had breakfast yet, can you meet me over at Lester's?"

I'd spent the night in my car and looked like hell. In the rearview mirror it was even worse.

"Yeah, sure," I said. "What have you got?"

While I was stopped on the causeway waiting for the Intracoastal drawbridge to let a high-masted sailboat through, she told me of her excursion into Dr. Marshack's computer files at the jail.

It had taken some time to convince a judge to allow them access.

The city attorney argued that it was vital to a homicide investigation and that the hardware and software was already under the sheriff's control in their own facility. The judge countered that many of the files were psychiatric records that held a certain doctor and patient confidentiality.

"They finally agreed to have a court-appointed attorney look over our shoulder so that the patient files wouldn't be perused."

"Even Baines's?"

"Especially Baines's."

"So we got nothing?"

"On Baines we got nothing, but there was an interesting file in the hard drive that our tech guys had to hack into to get open. It's some kind of financial accounting of transactions between Marshack and someone or something called Milo."

She waited for some kind of response.

"Max?"

I was staring at a blinking yellow light on the bridge tower when the irritated punch of a horn snapped me back. The gates were up, cars were moving.

"Does that mean anything to you? Milo?"

"Catch-22," I said.

"Huh?"

"Did you print that out?"

"Sure. I've got it right here," she said.

"I'll meet you at Lester's."

When I walked into the diner, she was already in the back booth.

"Freeman, you look like sin."

"Thank you," I replied.

I could feel the beard bristles on my face. My non-wrinkle canvas pants were wrinkled. And I could feel a sheen of salted moisture on my skin.

I sat down heavily in the booth opposite her and coffee seemed to appear beside my elbow.

"You're not so fresh yourself," I said. The whites of her eyes had taken on a pink glow in the corners where several veins had gone red. She wasn't wearing any makeup and her hair was pulled up and knotted in a loose ponytail.

"It took most of the night for the techs to pull all of this stuff out of Marshack's hard drive," she said, pushing a folder of computer printouts across the table. "They figured that since this file was so well-protected it must have some meaning to it. What the hell did you mean by Catch-22?"

She had already ordered me pancakes, and they came while I started sorting through the columns of dates and rows of figures. The smell caused me to start absentmindedly cutting them with a fork and eating.

"Old Joseph Heller book," I said. "It's where they got the phrase. This bomber crewman is trying to prove he's crazy by flying these dangerous missions in WWII. But the fact that he keeps going up proves he's not crazy because he can still do his job. But if he refuses to go up, it proves that he realizes how crazy it is, so again he's not crazy."

"Never read it," Richards said. "And what's it got to do with Milo?"

I washed another mouthful down with coffee.

"Milo was a character in the book. A G.I. who was making a killing swapping out government supplies for illicit civilian goods. Billy tracked down McCane's work history and found out he worked in a Georgia prison and lost his job for running scams inside on the population."

"Yeah," Richards said. "Keep going."

"McCane and Dr. Marshack worked in the same prison at the same time. A prosecutor friend of Billy's said McCane was like the operator inside. You needed it, McCane was the bull to get it through. I took a chance on a guy I knew who'd been sent to the place and he used McCane's nickname, Milo. Said McCane was proud of it."

I let her digest the information while I was matching up the dates that Marshack had recorded apparent payouts with the time of death dates for Billy's women. They were close.

"If you fill in the blanks, Marshack was paying somebody three hundred dollars a few days before each death and two hundred dollars afterwards," I said, pointing out the figures. "Then within two weeks, he was getting eight thousand dollars from Milo."

"Tight little business," she said. "But if McCane is Milo, how much was he getting? And from where?"

"The investment group," I said. "With at least three people between them and the killer. And each of them set apart on a need-to- know basis. If McCane set this up, he wouldn't know who the hit man was, and Marshack wouldn't know who the investors were."

I reached for my coffee but Richards was just finishing the last of it.

"So you're figuring the psychotic patient, Baines, for the killer," she said. "But the last one didn't work the way they wanted it to, and your friend Billy had already stirred up the nest by looking into the other deaths."