One woman caught his eye. She wore a bright yellow sun dress and was coming down the street carrying a casserole dish covered with aluminum foil. A second woman followed her, slightly younger, carrying a basket of neatly folded laundry. The men parted to let them inside the house.
Suddenly Louis was somewhere else.
In Bessie’s old boarding house in Blackpool, Mississippi. A stranger in his own town of birth, sitting vigil by the bedside of a dying woman he could barely remember -- his mother. Women had come then, too. Black women carrying clean linens for his mother and casseroles and cookies for him.
He remembered none of their names but he remembered their voices. Soft and soothing as they gathered by Lila’s bed, the sound carrying across the hall to his room where he took refuge when he could.
And then, after Lila died, came the sound of their voices raised joyously in song, drifting up from the parlor downstairs. He didn’t understand why they were happy, these strange women, because his mother had lived a short ugly life, given away her children, given him away, and then she had suffered a painful death. It made him angry to hear their voices.
Bessie had been the one to explain it to him.
Death was a relief from agony. Death was a return to Jesus. Death was a going home.
Louis looked back to the house. The men had wandered off and the porch was empty. There was no one on the street but a couple of kids on bicycles.
Then the house screen door slapped open and two young men exited. One was thin and wore a black t-shirt and jeans. The second was shorter and more tightly muscled, like a football running back. He wore a loose fitting plain white shirt with an odd heavy silver necklace, like a scythe blade on a chain. Both men had long black hair pulled back in pony tails.
The men took a long look at the SUV then lit up cigarettes.
Louis sat up straighter. The stocky kid was still staring his way and Louis knew the kid could see his face behind the glass. The kid tapped the other guy on the shoulder, said something in his ear, and both started away from the house.
Louis got out of the SUV.
The men were heading down the street at a quick clip. Louis had made enough traffic stops and interviewed enough suspects to sense fear. A shift of the body to avoid calling attention to the weight of a gun in a pocket. A twist of the shoulders to release tension. A suddenly quickened pace.
He knew he shouldn’t be doing this.
He was nosing around in Katy’s territory and she was going to be pissed. But something told him to stay with them, just for a block or two.
At the corner, the thinner guy broke off. The stocky one took one last look back at Louis before turning down a side street.
Louis followed, about thirty feet behind. The guy was walking fast and stiff, his head swiveling back at Louis every few feet. Finally, he reached a yellow house with a yard full of toys and a plastic wading pool. He cut across the grass and quickly slipped inside. Then, despite the heat, he slammed the heavy door.
Louis jogged back to the SUV. Katy was in the driver’s seat, both hands resting on the wheel.
As he got in she wiped her face quickly.
“You okay?” he asked.
She shrugged but he could see she was struggling to not cry.
“Where’d you go?” she asked.
“I followed someone,” he said. “A guy in his twenties, stocky.”
“Why?”
“He was acting hinky.”
“Hinky?”
“He went into a yellow house over on the next street.”
Katy frowned. “That might be Hachi or one of his friends.”
“You know him?”
She shook her head slowly. “Not really.”
“He didn’t like me following him.”
“A black guy gets out of a FWC vehicle and follows you. What young guy here would like that, Louis?”
“Fair enough. But I’m going to run a check on him. What’s his last name?”
She hesitated. “Keno.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t get you in trouble with Moses.”
She stared at him for a long time then with a final look back at Betty’s house, she jammed the SUV into gear and pulled slowly away.
They were out on Alligator Alley heading west into the setting sun before Katy spoke again.
“She’s dead,” she said softly.
For a second Louis thought she meant her great aunt Betty but then realized she was talking about Grace.
Katy flipped down the visor to retrieve her sunglasses and slipped them on, but not before Louis saw her eyes well with tears.
“You don’t know that,” Louis said.
She looked left, to the huge empty expanse of the Everglades. “We’ve increased our search flights, we’ve got every officer out there looking and all the hunters on alert,” she said. “There’s no sign of her. She’s gone, Louis, Grace is gone.”
Maybe it was the emotion of the visit to Betty. Maybe she was just exhausted. But this was the first time he had heard defeat in her voice.
“Look,” he said, “Things go cold on cases but then you get a break and things heat up. You have to stay with it, you have to stay positive.”
She glanced at him then looked back to the road.
“Go home and try not to worry,” he said. “Have a glass of wine and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll start again early tomorrow.”
She was silent.
“You’ve got to trust me on this,” Louis said. “We’ll find her, Katy. We’ll bring Grace home.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For the third time in the last twenty minutes, Louis checked his watch, this time even tapping it to make sure it was running. Almost eight.
Where the hell was Katy?
“Everything okay here?”
He looked up at the waitress. “What? Oh, yeah.”
“Top you off?” she asked, holding up the coffee pot.
Louis nodded absently and she refilled his mug.
Yesterday, after their visit to the reservation, Louis had asked Katy to meet him for breakfast this morning. The forensic report from Grace’s crime scene was due back today and he hoped to be able to show it to Katy to boost her mood. When he went to pick it up the tech said he would bring it over to the IHop when he came over to get his takeout coffee.
Louis looked out the window for Katy’s FWC Bronco. No sign of it on the morning crawl along Tamiami Trail. He glanced at the pay phone out by the entrance, but he had already called her apartment and gotten the machine. A second call to her office got him a secretary who told him she hadn’t come in yet.
The guy from the forensic unit came in the entrance, spotted Louis and came over to his booth.
“Here’s your prelim,” he said, tossing a manila envelope on the table.
“Thanks,” Louis said. “Tell the cashier to add your coffee to my bill.”
After the man left, Louis put on his reading glasses and took out the report. He skipped over the tire tread part, focusing in the boot prints that had been found. They were for a men’s size ten Timberland Flume, a common hiking boot.
He zeroed in on the cigarette pack. The lab had been able to lift two clean prints from the cellophane but there was no match to anyone in the system.
He turned the page, scanning quickly, then stopped. The techs had found human hairs tangled in some brush. The analysis read: natural black, from the head, straight with circular cross sections, medium-sized pigment granules, and a thicker cuticle, consistent with Mongoloid pattern.
Louis took off his glasses. “Mongoloid” meant someone of Asian or Native-American descent. But he knew this wasn’t going to be enough to convince Katy.
He glanced out to the parking lot. Still no sign of her truck. He put his glasses back on and went back to the report.
One hair had its bulb intact, which meant they could test for DNA. But Louis knew there was no point. He had read enough about the new technology to know that a test would take mon
ths to come back. Besides, they had no one –- and nothing -– to compare it to. That wasn’t really true, he thought. They had the cigarette butt from the hunting camp but what would that prove? Besides, he had promised Gary Trujillo not to involve him in the case and there was no way Mobley would foot the bill for the high cost of a DNA test.
Louis took a drink of his coffee but it had gone cold.
So would this case if he didn’t think of something.
But first he had to find Katy.
He rose, picking up his check. After paying, he called Katy’s apartment again. Still no answer. He tried her office, this time getting Jeff, the man who had been with Katy on the call to rescue Bruce from the patio. Jeff remembered Louis and told him that it was unusual for Katy to not check in.
“She’s been here every day at the crack of dawn since Grace disappeared,” he said. “She’s been pulling twelve-hour days and riding us all pretty hard.”
“You try to radio her?” Louis asked.
“Yeah, about a half-hour ago. No answer.”
“Try again, would you?”
Louis waited, listening while Jeff tried to raise Katy but there was no answer. Jeff came back to the phone.
“She could be out of range if she went out into the Glades,” Jeff said.
“Except she was supposed to meet me for breakfast.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said softly.
“Keep trying the radio,” Louis said. “I’ll check back in with you in a half hour.”
He hung up and looked again to the parking lot. He decided to go to her office. Maybe he and Jeff could go looking for her.
Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on southbound I-75 and the swirl of red and blue lights ahead told Louis there was an accident. He sat, hands tapping on the wheel, gaze wandering out the side window. A sign for the Miromar Outlet Mall caught his eye. He was right near Katy’s apartment.
He swung the Mustang onto the shoulder and sped up onto the off-ramp. The apartment complex backed onto the freeway and he found Katy’s building and parked. As he was starting toward the stairway he spotted her FWC Bronco sitting in a parking spot.
He breathed out a sigh of relief. Maybe she had taken his advice yesterday to heart and gotten drunk and just slept in.
On the second floor, he knocked on her door. No answer. He pounded harder this time. Nothing. There was a window with closed drapes. He rapped hard on it, hoping it was Katy’s bedroom.
The door flew open. A woman poked her head out, her blonde hair wild around her tan face.
“What the hell is it?” she said.
The woman was wearing Joe Boxer pajamas and her face was creased with sleep-lines. Obviously the roommate.
“Is Katy here?” Louis asked.
“Who are you?”
“Louis. I’m a friend of Katy’s and she –”
“She’s at work.” She started to close the door but Louis wedged a foot in it to stop her.
“Hey!”
“Katy’s not at work,” Louis said. “You sure she’s not here?”
The roommate rubbed her face. “Yeah, I’m sure. I saw her leave early this morning when I got home. I work the night desk at the Clarion and we sort of pass each other coming and going.”
“Her car is still in the lot,” Louis said.
The woman stepped out and squinted down over the railing. “Huh,” she said. “That’s weird. She must’ve taken the Jeep instead.”
“What Jeep?”
“Her own car. She keeps it parked in number ten, next to her work truck.”
Louis looked down at the FWC Bronco then back at the roommate. “What time did she leave?” he asked.
“About six.”
“Was she dressed for work?”
The roommate nodded. “Yeah, the same thing she wears every day, khaki shorts, and one of her ranger shirts over a tee. And that ugly baseball cap.”
“Did she take her radio with her?”
“Yeah. She keeps it in a charger on the kitchen counter next to her keys and I saw her take it.”
“Does she have a gun?”
“Gun? Yeah, she has a gun.”
“Where does she keep it?”
“In her bedside table.”
“Would you see if it’s there, please?”
The roommate eyed him. “Stay here.” She shut the door and locked it. Louis waited, sweat beading on his face. Only nine-fifteen and it was already in the high eighties.
The door jerked open. “The gun’s not there,” she said, stifling a yawn. “We finished here? I’m pulling an extra shift today and I need my sleep.”
Louis thanked the roommate and went back downstairs to the FWC Bronco. It was locked. He looked in the window.
Immaculate as usual. No radio stuck in the console charger. Nothing strange. Except...
There was something on the back seat. He cupped his hands on the back window. Clothing. A white shirt with the prominent FWC emblem on the breast. And Katy’s ball cap.
What the hell was going on here?
Louis did a slow scan of the parking lot, his eyes focusing in on the asphalt around the Bronco and its surface. No sign of a struggle.
There was only one explanation. She had started off her day as normal, maybe to meet him for breakfast but had changed her mind. She had left in her personal unmarked vehicle but had apparently felt the need to shed her work shell. There was only one reason she had done it: She had gone back to the reservation and didn’t want to be seen as an outsider. But was it on a personal visit to see Aunt Betty? Or was she defying Moses and going to see Keno?
That would explain why she didn’t call him. But why hadn’t she at least checked in with her office or told them she was going to be late?
He walked back to his Mustang. As he was unlocking the door something in the next car caught the sunlight. He went to the Toyota and peered in the window. It was a piece of silver hanging from the rearview mirror. It was odd-looking, like a woman’s heavy silver necklace.
Louis did a quick scan of the Toyota’s back seat but saw nothing strange. He went around the back. The plate was from Hendry County, not Lee. The Seminole reservation was located in Hendry.
It meant nothing. But it could mean everything. He jotted down the plate number in his notebook then wiped a sleeve over his sweaty face, pulling in a painful breath.
Something didn’t feel right in his gut and it wasn’t his bruised ribs.
“You’re becoming a pain in the ass, Kincaid.”
Louis wasn’t in the mood to argue with Mobley but he understood the sheriff’s position. The evidence he had offered Mobley about Katy was razor-thin and there was no way the sheriff would authorize a search for someone who had been out of contact for less than four hours.
“I’m late for a meeting,” Mobley said.
He picked up a file and headed for the door but then he stopped and looked back. “Are you getting personal with this woman?”
“What?”
“Your Indian lady. Is something going on?”
“Goddamn it, Lance.”
Mobley shook his head. “Then why this knee-jerk reaction?”
Louis stared him straight in the eye. “How long you been a cop?”
“Seventeen years.”
“Haven’t you ever just had a bad feeling about something?”
Mobley’s jaw tightened. “What do you want from me?”
“Make a call to the Seminole police. They’ll talk to you.”
Mobley hesitated then turned to his secretary outside the office. “Ginger, get me the Seminole police chief on the phone.”
He went back to his desk and a few seconds later the phone buzzed. Mobley picked up the receiver. Louis waited while Mobley talked to someone he politely addressed as Chief Gilley.
“Ask about Aunt Betty,” Louis said.
Mobley covered the receiver. “Who?”
“Katy’s aunt. Make sure she didn’t die.”
Mobley stared at him and went back to
his call. A minute later he hung up.
“No one has seen her,” he said. “And Aunt Betty is still kicking.”
Ginger appeared at the door. “Sheriff, you’re really late for your meeting.”
“Fuck,” Mobley muttered, picking up his file again and headed to the door.
“Sheriff.”
Mobley turned with a heavy sigh. “What?”
“Put out an alert on her Jeep,” Louis said.
Mobley tapped the folder lightly on his palm, eyeing Louis, before he turned toward his secretary. “Ginger, give him what he needs.”
Mobley left. Ginger leaned against the doorframe, giving Louis an appraising glance. “He must really like you,” she said.
“No,” Louis said. “He likes cats.”
Ginger laughed and motioned for Louis to follow her back to her desk. “Give me the info on the alert,” she said, sliding a pad toward him. “I’ll get it out ASAP.”
Louis scribbled Katy’s name and a description of her Jeep, knowing Ginger could get the plate number herself.
“This is just an attempt to locate,” he said, handing her the pad.
“I got it,” Ginger said, turning to her computer.
As he watched her, Louis knew this wasn’t going to be enough. There was a good chance Katy wasn’t even in Lee County right now. Or any place where a cop would spot her Jeep.
He pulled out his notebook. “Run this plate, please.”
With a few taps of the keys, a name and address popped onto the computer screen. Louis leaned in to read it – HAYWOOD KENO, 1445 PALMETTO STREET.
Haywood...not Hachi. Unless Hachi was a nickname.
“Ginger, can you pull up this guy’s DL?” he asked.
It took a few moments but then the driver’s license photo came up. It was the man he had followed yesterday.
Then he remembered the weird silver thing he had seen hanging from the rearview mirror of the Toyota in Katy’s parking lot. And he remembered where he had seen one like it before -- around Hachi Keno’s neck the day he had followed him.
Keno had met Katy in the parking lot and she had left with him. But why? The only explanation was that he convinced her he knew where Grace was.
And it wasn’t on the reservation –- it was somewhere isolated, somewhere no one could hear or see the cat.
Claw Back (Louis Kincaid) Page 8
