by Paul Levine
* * *
Steve heard a yelping sound, realized it had come from him. A stream of blood ran down Amanda's face; a pink bubble emerged from her lips as she exhaled through the torrent.
Did I just see what I think I saw? Did Vic just TKO Amanda with a Granny Smith?
"Fucking bitch!" Amanda bleated, her hands covering her face. "You broke my nose."
"Put your head back till it stops bleeding," Victoria ordered, suddenly the Nurse Ratched of the law business.
"Jesus, Vic. Why'd you do that?"
He was flummoxed. In all their time together, the most violence she'd ever shown was a wicked backhand on the tennis court.
"Don't you get it, Steve? We can plead and beg and try to find that glimmer of humanity you think is inside this sick puppy, but it won't do any good."
"And punching her will?"
"You're a Democrat and I'm a Republican."
"Yeah?"
"You're suspicious of the use of force. But the only way we're gonna get anything from her is to go Abu Ghraib."
"No way."
Victoria had strayed off script. Steve was supposed to be the bad cop, but apparently he hadn't been bad enough.
Still bleeding, Amanda got to her feet. She reached for a cell phone from the coffee table, but Victoria grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm behind her back.
"Ow!" Amanda rasped. "What are you, a dyke or something?"
Victoria snatched the phone with her free hand and threw it hard toward the fireplace. Her aim was high—not enough follow-through—and the phone sailed into the painting of Kreeger aboard his boat. It left a gash in the canvas.
"Bill ain't gonna be happy," Amanda said, no more little girl in her voice. "He loves that picture."
Still hanging on to Amanda's wrist, Victoria used a foot to kick the woman's leg out from under her. Amanda fell to her knees, Victoria tightening the grip and bending Amanda's arm like a chicken wing. Blood flowed from her nose and puddled on the pine floor. Victoria used the woman's arm like a crowbar, pushing higher and higher, until the back of her wrist lay flat against her neck.
"Fuck! That hurts."
"Vic, what are you doing?"
"Trying to save a girl's life. Bobby's, too. Now, make yourself useful and find something to tie her up."
Steve thought it was possible that his lover and law partner had quite suddenly gone insane.
"Where is he, Amanda?" Victoria demanded. "Where'd he take Maria?"
"Fuck you."
Victoria pulled higher on Amanda's wrist until it passed over the shoulder blade. There was a pop. And a scream.
"That was your elbow dislocating," Victoria said. "I've done that in tae kwan do. Hurts like the dickens, doesn't it?"
Amanda lay prone on the floor, her wailing interrupted only by her pained breaths.
"Hey, Vic, could you ease up a minute?"
"We don't have a minute. If we don't find Kreeger, that child's going to die. Isn't that right, Amanda?"
No more "fuck you"s. Just some sobbing.
"Let's work on the other arm," Victoria said.
"Wait." Amanda got to her knees. "Bill likes little girls."
"No shit," Victoria said.
Who is this woman?
"He takes them, sometimes. I don't know what happens to them."
"Sure you do," Victoria said flatly. "If they can ID him, he kills them."
"I don't ask him. There was a girl from the Redlands. About twelve or thirteen."
Oh, shit, Steve thought.
"That girl who went missing down in the Redlands . . ."
Kreeger had tried to blame the disappearance on a boy with disabilities. No wonder the bastard knew so much about serial killers. His knowledge fell into the forensics category called "It takes one to know one."
"Where's he go?" Steve now, getting with the program. "Does he have an apartment somewhere? A cabin in the Glades? Where!"
Amanda didn't answer, and Victoria reached for her other arm. This time, it didn't take a snapped tendon. Amanda flinched, then surrendered. She turned her head toward the painting above the fireplace.
Steve focused on the painting, Kreeger and his big-ass sport fisherman, the Psycho Therapy. "The boat! He's got her on the boat."
Amanda didn't say a word, but her look told Steve he was right.
"Where's he keep it?" Victoria said.
"Grove Marina," Amanda whispered.
"C'mon, Steve. Let's get going."
"No."
"No?"
"Something's not right. You torture people, they always lie."
He remembered the photos of the boat in Kreeger's office. A dock, a channel, a mangrove island. The island was distinctive, and he remembered seeing it before. It provided a windbreak for the boats anchored away from the dock.
The island. The island. The island.
It wasn't at Grove Marina. Where was it? He tried to focus the way Bobby would. What could he remember? A breakfast. No. A brunch. That restaurant on the Rickenbacker Causeway on the way to Key Biscayne. From the restaurant, you look out over the channel, straight at the mangrove island.
"Crandon Park Marina. On Key Biscayne. That's where Kreeger keeps his boat."
"Then go!" Victoria ordered. "I'll make sure Amanda stays put."
"You're too late," Amanda said. Neither pleasure nor regret in her voice. "They'll be in open water by now."
"Where?"
"Don't know. The ocean, somewhere. Bill does the girls after he gets out to sea. Then he weights their bodies and chucks them overboard. Something about the water's all mystical to him."
Again Kreeger's words came back to haunt Steve. The guy didn't believe in ashes to ashes and dust to dust. He believed in a watery start and a watery finish. What had he called it?
"From the swamp to the sea."
Thirty-Eight
PSYCHO THERAPY
Great sheets of rain pounded the pavement, the winds clocking around to the north. The Mustang sloshed across the causeway, shuddering in the gusts at the top of the bridge.
Steve passed the Seaquarium, the steering wheel in one hand, his cell phone in the other. The 911 operator told him to call the Coast Guard. The duty officer at the Guard base said no, they could not dispatch a flotilla of patrol boats, cutters, and choppers to parts unknown on a citizen's hunch that a crime was being committed somewhere at sea.
He tried the police again. After two transfers and seven minutes listening to recorded crime-stopping tips, Officer Teele came on the line. "Funny you called, Solomon. We've been looking for you."
"Why?"
"Got a bench warrant to pick you up. Seems you didn't show up for anger-management therapy."
"That's bullshit!" Sounding like he needed his anger managed.
"Got Dr. Kreeger's affidavit right here."
"It's Kreeger you should be after. He's got Maria on his boat. He's—"
"You really got to get over this thing about Dr. Bill."
"Goddammit, listen to me! Kreeger killed that girl in the Redlands. He's gonna kill again."
"Okay, Mr. Solomon. Why don't you just come downtown? Then you can tell us all about it."
"Why? So you can arrest me?"
"You're sounding a little paranoid, Mr. Solomon. So tell me, where are you right now?"
Steve clicked off the phone just as he turned into the marina. The car splashed to a stop. Steve jumped out and jogged toward the dockmaster's office, leaping over puddles. A red triangular flag whipped on a pole atop the small building. Small craft advisory, the winds hitting twenty-five knots.
Steve figured Kreeger had a several-hour head start. The Psycho Therapy would be in "open water," according to Amanda, but where? He needed to find someone who knew where Kreeger liked to cruise. Maybe someone saw the boat leave the dock. If they could pinpoint the time, it would be possible to calculate the range. Steve needed something—anything—to go on.
Soaking wet in his jeans and T-shirt, he was ten yards fr
om the dockmaster's office when he caught sight of another flag. One pier over. A row of gleaming power boats in the forty to fifty-foot range. Flying from the top of an antenna was a flag imprinted with the image of a bearded man in an old-fashioned suit. The man looked familiar.
Sigmund Freud.
Now, who else would fly a flag with a picture of Freud?
Steve tore across to the pier toward the boat flying the flag. On a concrete piling, a stenciled sign in yellow paint: "The Freudian Slip." And on the transom of the white-and-blue sport fisherman tied at the dock: "Psycho Therapy."
Bow and stern lines taut, fenders in place. In the cockpit, both fighting chairs encased in their blue weather covers. Same for the console on the fly bridge. No sign that anyone was aboard or had been lately. So, Kreeger hadn't brought the girl here just before dawn. And now, in broad daylight, he surely wouldn't.
Amanda lied! Victoria had twisted her into a pretzel and she still lied.
Steve looked around. Lots of boats, but here not one person on this lousy nor'easter of a day. The rain pounded at the concrete, moving across the dock in seemingly solid walls, then stopping a few moments and starting again. The boats groaned in their moorings. Two seabirds flew overhead, battling the wind. On a nearby piling, a bleary-eyed pelican seemed to be staring his way.
Steve stepped from the dock into the cockpit. A teak deck, weathered and bleached by the sun, channeled the rainwater out the scuppers at the stern. He opened a freezer used for bait. Empty. Moved to a bait prep station, opened drawers. Fish hooks, pliers, knives, some spools of fishing line.
He slid a cushion off a bench and opened the lid to a storage compartment underneath. Fishing gear, deck shoes, life jackets.
No twelve-year-old girls.
Opened the lid on another compartment. Life rings.
An old fishing rod. Three metal buckets, brand-new, the kind you might use to mop the floor. A shovel, not new. It looked like a garden spade, a crust of mud along its curved sharp edge. And a canvas bag, maybe eight feet long, unzipped. Big enough to haul fishing rods or scuba gear . . . or a ninety-pound girl. Steve rooted around, running his hands over the canvas, half hoping to find something, half hoping not to.
What would be better? Evidence that she'd been here? Or nothing at all?
But the bag was empty. No little-girl barrettes, no little white socks, no notes saying, "Help!"
Then he caught the fragrance. What was it? He stuck his head into the bag and inhaled. Citrus. As if the bag had once held a couple dozen oranges.
Or a girl who borrowed her mother's perfume!
The fragrance Steve remembered from Bobby's room.
He tossed the bag aside and raced to the salon door. Glass in a metal frame. Locked. He grabbed the pliers from the bait station and shattered the glass. The sound startled him. But no alarms sounded. No one shouted. The only reaction was from the pelican, which flapped its giant wings and took off for quieter surroundings.
Steve unlatched the door from inside the jagged glass and let himself into the salon. Dripping water on the polished teak deck. A galley to one side. Stove, stainless-steel refrigerator, microwave, a built-in banquette and table anchored to the deck. On the walls, certificates attesting to the capture of a number of innocent fish in various tournaments. "Hello!" he yelled. "Maria!"
Nothing.
He went down several steps, his waterlogged running shoes squeaking. He checked out the staterooms. Beds made, neat and clean. No one home. He went into the head. A beach towel draped over a shower door. The towel was wet.
She's here! Or she's been here.
He went back into the salon.
"Maria!"
Still nothing. Water sloshed, the fenders squeaked against the hull. In the channel, a fifteen-foot outboard putt-putted toward open water, a couple of kids ignoring the weather warnings. From somewhere belowdeck, something creaked and something else rattled. Boat sounds. Meaningless.
"Maria!"
He heard a clunk. Metal against metal? No, a duller sound. It could be anything or nothing.
"Maria!"
Clunk. Clunk.
Again, belowdeck. He found the hatch in the deck, opened it, took a flashlight from a bracket, and crawled down the ladder into the pitch-black engine compartment. Moved the light over tanks and pipes, stringers and beams, and the two huge diesel engines. Shadows flashed across the bulkhead.
And there, on her knees, tape covering her mouth, ankles and wrists bound with a line attached to an engine mount, was Maria Munoz-Goldberg. Her eyes were closed as she banged her forehead against the deck. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.
Thirty-Nine
RESCUE PARTY
Heart pounding, Steve ripped the tape from Maria's mouth and winced as she cried out in pain. She had red marks above and below her lips, and her forehead bled from where she'd banged it against the deck. Her entire body trembled, starting at her shoulders and running all the way down to her legs and feet. She sobbed, great streaks of tears tracking across her cheeks. Her wrists were bound behind her back with quarter-inch line.
Steve worked at the line, but her chest heaved as she sobbed, and her arms shook, and it took a while to undo the knots. They weren't slipknots. They were knots never intended to come loose.
When the line finally came free, he gave her a moment to rub out the stiffness in each wrist, both raw and bleeding.
"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." She seemed to be chanting it between sobs. Steve wrapped his arms around her, could feel the tremors shaking her from the inside out.
The air was greasy and stale, and Steve felt the sweat drip down his arms. He tried to untie the line around her ankles, but it was too tight and she was bleeding where it had cut into her. The other end of the line was fixed securely to an engine mount.
"There's a knife in the cockpit. I'll be right back, Maria."
"No. Don't leave! Please."
Steve sat down with her. He'd give her a minute. "Where's Kreeger?"
The name didn't seem to register. Apparently, kidnappers don't introduce themselves. "The man who took you. Where'd he go?"
She shook her head. She didn't know.
Steve wondered if she was in shock. But then the words poured out. She started at the beginning. Bobby was acting up, and she decided to ride home without him. When she got to her bike, a man was waiting. He grabbed her and threw her into his car. A BMW, she noted. He reached up under her shirt and pulled off her bra, touching her. She thought he was going to rape her, but he just crumpled the bra and dropped it in Bobby's bike bag.
"Then he put my bike in his trunk. And I thought this was good. Like, no matter what he was going to do to me, he'd let me go, let me ride my bike home. But after he tied me up and we drove a little bit, he took my cap and put it in my bike bag."
"Your cap?"
"Well, Bobby's cap. That Solomon and Lord one he always wears."
Including the day we went to Kreeger's office.
"Then the man threw my bike in some bushes."
"Near the road?"
"Yeah. A few feet away."
Where the bike would be found. With strands of Bobby's hair in the cap, his prints and DNA all over it. Another piece of evidence, another nail in the coffin.
"Then he put me in the trunk inside a big bag, and I could barely breathe. I might have passed out, because the next thing I knew, I was down here, all tied up."
She started crying again.
"Did he say anything?"
"Only that we were going for a cruise, but he needed to wait for a store to open. I asked if he was getting sandwiches and drinks, and he just laughed."
A store? It made no sense to Steve, but there was no time to figure it out. Kreeger would be coming back. Steve put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Maria, we need to get you out of here. I'm going up to get a knife. Is that all right?"
She nodded. "But come right back, okay?"
Steve scrambled up the ladder, climbed through the hatch, and took
one step before the lightning bolt hit him. He felt his head snap back. He saw the pain itself inside his brain, an electrical flash behind his eyes. He heard thunderclaps. And then the world went quiet and black.
Forty
THE DEAD WEIGHT OF GUILT
Steve had a sensation of being awakened by being tossed into an icy shower.
But I can't be awake. I can't see anything.
He sensed movement. Side to side and up and down. And a sound. A dull roar.
Okay, the boat is moving, the diesels singing.
He felt the wind rushing by his head, sensed he was in the open cockpit, eyes closed. His face felt raw, like chopped meat, and the salt spray wasn't making it feel any better.
Why can't I move my hands?
A hard, cold rain pelted him, a million freezing needles. A rain so strong, it hissed in the air and pinged as it hit the deck.
He felt the boat ride to the top of a swell, then slide down the trough.
Great. Tied up, semiconscious, and I'm gonna be seasick, too.
A throbbing pain in his skull seemed to beat time with the engines. The boat was moving fast. Open water. Ocean, not the bay. He could tell that from the waves, even though he couldn't see anything.
His mouth felt dry. He licked his lips, tasted blood. He felt the spray hit his neck, the boat splashing down the side of a swell.
So why can't I see anything? Aha, my eyes are closed.
He tried to crank them open. A crowbar would have helped. Eyes swollen shut. He wanted to use a finger to push open an eye, but there was a problem. His hands seemed to be tied behind his back.
He concentrated on his right eye, tried to crank it open. It started to come up slowly, like a Venetian blind pulled by a piece of dental floss. He used his tongue to explore the inside of his mouth. He had bitten though his lip, and he spit out a chunk of tooth.
The rain came even harder, a solid wall of daggers. His teeth chattered. He had never been this cold in his life.
