Stuart Woods - Palindrome

Williams turned off the machine, sat down, picked up the phone gingerly, with two fingers, and dialed. "Who's this? Okay, this is Lee Williams; I have a possible crime scene, and I want a team out here right away-everything-the works, except no meat wagon; there's no corpse." He gave the address. "Also, I want a plate number for a new Volkswagen Jetta, white, registered to Mary Alice Taylor at this address, and I want an APB out on it right away. Ce the responsibility. If the car is found parked, I don't want it touched until I get there. I want to know if the Bobcats played Miami this past weekend, and if they did, how and when they traveled, coming and going. I want to know if Bake Ramsey was with them, coming and going. I'll be at this number if you need to reach me." He gave the number, then hung up and dialed again. "Hello?"

"Captain, it's Lee. I'm afraid I've lost my witness."

The doorbell to Mary Alice Taylor's apartment rang.

"Hang on, Captain." Williams got up and opened the door.

Bake Ramsey was standing on the doorstep; he looked puzzled. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked.

"Hi, Bake," Williams said, managing a surprised smile, "what are you doing here? I didn't expect to see you, either." Ramsey was staring at him very hard. "Mary Alice didn't show up for work tonight, and the hospital called the cops. I took the call."

"Why didn't she show up?"

Williams took Ramsey's huge arm and led him up the steps to the parking lot, talking all the time. "That's what I'm trying to figure out, myself. You have any idea where she could be?" He stopped and leaned against his car.

"No, I haven't seen her since last week."

"When last week?"

"Thursday night. We had a date."

"Did you talk to her after that?"

"Nope. I called her a couple of times from Miami. I was down there with the team."

"When did you leave?"

"Friday afternoon."

"And when did you get back?"

"This morning. It was a night game, and we stayed over."

"I see."

This was squaring with what he knew so far, but Ramsey's stories always squared. "Look, has something happened to Mary Alice?" Ramsey showed just the right degree of puzzlement and concern.

"Not that I know of. We have to check these things out when we get a call, though. Listen, you go on home, and I'll call you when I get some more news."

"Okay," Ramsey said reluctantly. He gave Williams his number. "Maybe I should take a look inside and see if anything looks wrong."

"Don't worry about it. Security is in there, now, and there's nothing too unusual. We'll lock up and get out in a minute. I'll call you. Good night, Bake."

"Good night, Lee." Ramsey ambled over to a Mercedes, got in, and drove away.

Williams breathed a sigh of relief; he wanted Ramsey out of there before any more cops arrived. He had the gist of Ramsey's alibi, now, though it wouldn't be admissible, because he hadn't read the man his rights. He could always do that later, when he knew a crime had been committed. A moment later, a police van arrived, and people spilled out. Williams reentered the apartment with the group and got them to work. Two hours later, they left with their evidence, and the security lady locked the apartment behind them. "Anything else I can do for you?"

Williams handed her his card. "Please let me know if Mary Alice Taylor returns to her apartment-make sure that all your people know to look out for her-and I'd like to know if Bake Ramsey enters the grounds at all."

"The football player?"

"That's the one."

"You got it." She handed him a key and a plastic card. "Here's a spare key for the apartment, should you want to get in again when I'm not here. The card will let you into the back gate of the complex, which doesn't have a guardhouse." He thanked her for her help and got into his car. There was fear in his heart as he drove away. He was afraid that, without Mary Alice Taylor's help, he wouldn't be able to break Ramsey's alibi for the Ferguson killings. But mostly, he was afraid for Mary Alice Taylor.

Liz sat in the cottage's living room and drank bourbon. It had gotten dark, and she hadn't bothered to turn on a light. The silence was broken by the scuff of a bare foot on the kitchen linoleum, and she knew Keir was back. She no longer jumped when she heard such a noise; he came and went that way so often that she had begun to think of it as normal. "Hi," she said, when he had time to reach the living room.

"It's not like you to sit alone in the dark," he said, sliding onto the sofa next to her.

"It's not like me to sit alone in the dark, drunk, you mean."

"How come you're drunk?"

"Because I found Jimmy Weathers's arm this afternoon-that alligator did something with the rest of him-and I can't forget it. I thought bourbon might help." She rested a hand on his bare thigh. "Why do you wear that loincloth?" she asked. "I always meant to ask you."

He laughed softly. "When I was a kid, I went naked a lot. Somewhere around puberty, I became a little self-conscious about it-I think I thought something was going to grab my crotch, and it had recently become terribly important. The loincloth was as close as I could get to naked and still protect my little cock."

"Not so little."

"It was, then."

"You're not surprised about Jimmy?"

"Buck Moses told me."

"I didn't think an alligator would do that. I mean, even when he came after me, I didn't really think he was a man-eater."

"Goliath is something special, you know. He's had precious little experience with man, and I think he must regard us as just larger-than-usual animals to hunt."

"Buck said he wouldn't come out of the water to attack a man; is that true?"

"I don't think anybody knows, anybody who's alive to tell us, anyway."

"Do you think he's really twenty feet long?"

"Yes, I do. I read somewhere once that the largest gator ever found in the United States was in Louisiana, in the last century. He was nineteen feet, two inches long, and the reason they found him was he was so old, he had crawled out of the water to die. I don't think they get that big anymore, because men kill them before they're old enough. But Goliath has been sitting out there in that lake for God knows how long-a hundred years?-with nobody to hunt him and plenty to eat. I wouldn't be surprised if he were the largest alligator alive."

"How do you know he's a 'he'? Have you checked?"

"Females don't get that big."

"Why do you think he went after Jimmy?"

"Maybe Jimmy got near his young. I what I did trying to photograph the little ones when he came at me."

"Just before he attacked, do you remember a noise like this?" Keir made high-pitched grunting noise in his throat.

"Yes! Exactly like that! How did you know?"

"That's the distress signal of the little ones. They make that noise, and mama and papa come running. I'll bet that was the last sound ol' Jimmy heard, except for his own screams. I just hope poor old Goliath doesn't come down sick from eating such a poisonous meal." Keir chuckled to himself.

"How can you talk like that about him?" she demanded drunkenly. "He was a human being, and he's dead! He was your cousin, for God's sake!"

"So what?" Keir said with some feeling. "If he'd had his way-and he very likely would have-he'd have raped this island from one end to the other; he'd have built on most of it and paved over the rest, believe me. It would look like Hilton Head and all the other barrier islands that the developers got their hands on."

"But he couldn't have done it," she protested.

"Sure, he could. Grandpapa won't make a will, and he was playing right into Jimmy's hands."

"But he has made a will!"

"You don't know what you're talking about. He has a thing about it; every time somebody brings it up, he throws a tantrum, threatens to disinherit us all."