by P J Parrish
Joe walked up next to him. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking there are no roads except the one we came in on.” He pointed north. “They came at my Mustang perpendicular from that direction. How the hell did they get their truck in here?”
“All-terrain vehicle?” Joe asked.
Louis nodded. “But this place is like a maze with all these canals. They knew exactly where to take us. They knew exactly how to get out. They knew we wouldn’t be able to follow them.”
“Byron Ellis’s last known address was Fort Myers but his sheet says he was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. Not many swamps in Gary.”
“So his buddy is local,” Louis said.
Joe looked out at the landscape. “Think you can find your way back to Copeland?”
Louis could see a taunt in her smile and gave her one of his own. “Come on, let’s go.”
Back in Copeland, they parked the Bronco and started walking. The town was just a collection of houses, no stores or central core. They started with the nearest house, showing Byron Ellis’s mug to anyone who would open the door. Few would. And no one recognized Ellis or remembered seeing his car, the old blue El Dorado. They approached the last house. There was a faded sign stuck in the yard. It read: HANK’S GUIDE SERVICE. YEAR-ROUND WILD BOAR HUNTING $150 INC. FREE CLEANING AND QUARTERING.
Joe nudged Louis and nodded toward the sagging carport. “Swamp buggy,” she said.
Louis looked at the weird machine. It was like a giant souped-up go-kart, with huge tires supporting an open chassis with seats on top. The tire treads were caked with mud.
They went up and knocked. It was a couple of minutes before the door scraped open. A scrawny old man with sun-seared skin peered out at them. He was shirtless, a pair of dirty jeans hanging on his thin hips. His eyes flicked from Joe to Louis and stayed there. Louis had the feeling there weren’t many strangers in Copeland. And even fewer black men.
“What you want?” the man asked.
Joe stepped forward and showed her badge. The man’s eyes bugged. “We’re looking for this man,” Joe said, holding out the picture of Ellis. “Can you help us?”
The guy tore his eyes off Joe’s face to glance at the photo. “Nah, don’t know him.”
Joe pocketed the photo. “Okay, thanks.”
Louis could feel the man’s eyes following them as they walked back to the Bronco.
“Even if he knew Ellis, he wouldn’t tell us,” he said.
Joe turned to look at him over the hood of the truck.
“It’s the small-town thing,” Louis said. “We aren’t going to get anything here.”
Joe looked around at the motley collection of houses and trailers. “I know. But I can’t shake the feeling Ellis has some connection here.” She let out a sigh. “Let’s get out of here.”
Back at the intersection of 29, Joe turned left and headed north. Louis knew she was heading to pick up Alligator Alley for a quicker shot back to Fort Myers. He settled into the seat, trying to find a comfortable posture to ease his aching chest.
Joe turned on the wipers. The droning sound was lulling and he leaned back into the headrest. The road was smooth and empty except for a few eighteen wheelers. There was nothing to break the green monotony and he was about to close his eyes when a flash of a sign caught his eye. He sat up, twisting around to look.
“Joe, turn around,” he said.
“What?”
“I saw a motel back there. Turn around.”
Joe found a turnoff and headed the Bronco back south. She slowed as they approached a sign for the Haven Motel. It was the standard block of rooms, lined up to face the highway with an office at the far end. Some time ago, maybe in the sixties, it could have been the kind of place a tired family might pull into when they had driven one mile too far on their vacation road trip. A plain concrete building but with clean sheets and a Coke machine outside. Now, however, the yellow paint was peeling, the screening on the doors was flapping in the wind, and some of the rooms didn’t have numbers anymore.
As Louis got out of the Bronco he looked up at the neon sign. The name of the place was really HEAVEN MOTEL —- the E was burned out.
A man was standing at the office door looking at them as they approached.
“Wonder where he keeps Mrs. Bates,” Joe said, pulling out her badge. “Excuse me, sir, Miami Police. We’re looking for someone and wondered if you would take a look at a picture.”
The man’s little pig eyes narrowed, although Louis wasn’t sure whether it was because Joe was a woman, a cop, or from Miami.
“Have you seen this man?” Joe asked, holding out the photo.
The man didn’t answer. But Louis was sure he saw something in the guy’s eyes. He stepped forward.
“We’re looking for a missing boy,” he said. “This man abducted him.”
The man rubbed his stubbled chin. “Yeah. Okay. He checked in yesterday, real early.”
“Did he have a boy with him?” Louis pressed.
“Didn’t see one. Only him. But it was raining hard so I didn’t look outside.”
“When did he leave?” Joe asked.
“He didn’t. Paid me for two nights up front.”
Joe glanced at Louis. “He’s still here?”
The man waved to the lot. “Well, his car is gone. Probably out getting something to eat. When he got here, he asked me where he could get some food. Ain’t much around here but I told him he could go down to --”
“The key,” Louis interrupted. “We need the key to his room.”
The man took a step back from Louis. “Is it legal for me to just give you a key?”
Louis held out his hand. “It’s your motel, isn’t it?”
“Okay, okay.” He disappeared into the office and came out a moment later. Louis and Joe followed him down the line of doors to the end. The man stopped at number seven. The numeral hung upside down, the drapes were closed. Louis could hear sounds inside -- canned laughter. The television was on.
The man unlocked the door. Louis pushed his way into the room, gun drawn.
The overhead light was on. The television was blaring. Twin beds, one with the covers and sheets in a tangle, the other untouched except for a pillow crammed in the corner. Plastic bags, beer cans, pretzels on the floor, a box of donuts on the dresser.
“Ben!” Louis called out.
Nothing. No one. He spun to the closed bathroom door and jerked it open. White tile. Towels on the floor. Louis tore back the plastic shower curtain.
When he came back out, Joe was standing in the middle of the room, shaking her head. “They’re gone, Louis.”
Louis turned, his head bowed, hands on his hips, his breathing coming hard from his aching chest. Then he reared back and kicked a trash can. It went flying into a lamp, sending it crashing to the floor.
The motel owner was hovering in the doorway and looked at Joe. “You cops are paying for that busted lamp.”
Joe ignored him, moving to Louis. “They must have seen the news,” she said, nodding to the TV. “Ellis must have seen his mug on TV and they split.”
“In a big hurry from the looks of it,” Louis said.
“Hey, you gonna pay for that lamp?”
Joe turned back to the motel owner. She let out an impatient breath and went outside, taking the man with her. After a few words, he left. When Joe came back into the room, Louis was moving slowly around the room. He carefully lifted a blanket, pulled open the dresser drawers. He knelt to look under the bed.
“What are you looking for?” Joe asked.
He stood up. “Some sign that he was here.”
Louis moved to the bed in the corner, picking up the corner of the pillow.
“Louis, you shouldn’t touch —-”
Louis paused, his eyes lasering in on a small ring of paper that had been under the pillow. He carefully used his pinky finger to pick it up. He turned, holding it out to Joe.
“What is it?” she asked.
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“A cigar ring,” Louis said. “Austin gave it to Ben.”
Joe came forward. “Ellis could have left it.”
“No. See this label? Macanudo. That’s what Austin smokes. It’s expensive. Ellis wouldn’t smoke this.”
Louis was quiet for a moment, staring at the little paper ring. “He left it on purpose,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Joe asked.
“Ben. He left this here on purpose. He’s trying to tell us something. He’s trying to tell us he’s still alive.”
Joe was quiet.
“You agree with Wainwright, don’t you,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You think I’m grasping at straws.”
Joe hesitated then smiled slightly. “Grasping at cigar rings maybe.”
Louis turned away, looking around the motel room. The room was cold, the trail was cold. Another door opened, another dead end.
“Come on,” Joe said. “If we leave now, we can make it up there by dinner.”
“Where?” Louis asked.
“Raiford. I was thinking that maybe Ellis hooked up with his partner while he was in prison. Maybe someone will talk. Maybe we can get a lead.”
Louis could see in her eyes that she knew it was a long shot, and he had a feeling she had suggested it just so they had an excuse not to go back to Susan’s and just sit there. But he didn’t care.
He slipped the cigar ring into his pocket. “Let’s go,” he said.
CHAPTER 27
It took five and a half hours to drive up to Raiford, and they arrived just as the warden was leaving. He balked at the idea of an impromptu visit by a private eye and an out-of-town cop. But when Joe threw the weight of a missing child and the Miami PD at him he relented. They had a meeting at nine A.M. tomorrow with Ellis’s longtime former cell mate, Yancy Rowen.
But for now, there was nothing to do but wait.
They stopped at a restaurant a couple miles east of the prison for an early dinner. Louis immediately went to the pay phone and called Susan for an update, hoping against hope that there had been a break in the case. Maybe the killers had called back, or Wainwright had a lead on Ellis, or even the most extreme hope that Ben had been found. But there was nothing. When he told Susan that he and Joe were at Raiford to track down Ellis’s past, Susan told him to be careful and added, “Thank Detective Frye for me, too.”
After they ordered dinner Joe went to call Miami and check in with her department. As he waited for her, Louis sipped his coffee, looking around the small restaurant. It was a crowded log-cabin place attached to a motel called THE LAST STOP. He wondered how many relatives had spent the final minutes of a loved one’s life inside one of the tiny rooms.
He rubbed the back of his neck. He was stiff from the long drive, his chest still aching. And he was tired from too little sleep, too much coffee, and the constant chill in his bones.
He glanced down at Byron Ellis’s file on the table. They had spent the drive up going over it, reworking what few clues they had, trying to put themselves in the minds of Ellis, his unknown partner, and even Austin Outlaw. But they had come up with nothing.
The waitress brought their food. Louis stared at his burnt rib-eye. He had ordered medium rare but he was too hungry and too tired to send it back. He picked up his knife and fork and tried to cut it.
Joe slid back into the booth across from him, pulling Ellis’s file toward her. “Listen, I had a thought,” she said.
Louis didn’t look up as he sawed the rib-eye. His brain was slowly shutting down, and a part of him just didn’t want to talk about this anymore. It had nothing to do with the need to find Benjamin. It was the futility of the day, the closed doors in Copeland, the constant rehashing of the information in Ellis’s folder, and the silence of Susan’s telephone.
He suddenly realized Joe had said nothing more and he looked at her. She was pouring ketchup onto her fries.
“What was your thought?” he asked.
“Never mind. Sometimes things get distorted when you look too long at them. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
He took another bite, wondering if she had seen the weariness in his eyes. His gaze drifted to the fogged window. The temperature this far north was a good twenty degrees colder than back at home, making everything feel even worse. He wiped his sleeve on the glass. Beyond the blur, he could see the string of doors for THE LAST STOP motel. He counted sixteen. There was one car in the gravel parking lot.
“Louis, can I ask you something?”
His eyes moved back to Joe’s face. That question usually meant something more personal was coming, something that would require he open a door to a place inside him to answer, a place she wanted or needed to go in order to get to know him better. He didn’t open those doors for many people and wasn’t sure he wanted to now.
A quick image of Mel Landeta flashed in his head, followed by his words -- you sure like living on your little island, don’t you?
Louis had eventually let Mel onto his island, both literally and figuratively. Now he would easily call Mel a friend.
Joe was still waiting for an answer.
“Sure,” Louis said. “Go ahead.”
“Are you happy doing what you’re doing?”
That wasn’t what he had thought she was going to ask. He hesitated. “I’d be happier if this steak was edible.”
“I mean the work you’re doing and where you’re doing it”
He didn’t want to go into all this. “Yeah, I like it fine.”
Joe sat back, swirling a fry in ketchup. She didn’t seem to feel the need to ask more, but now he was curious.
“Why do you ask?”
She bit off the tip of the fry. “Major Anderson asked about you.”
“Your boss?”
She nodded.
Louis waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t he took a bite of the steak, stalling, trying not to seem too interested. She continued to eat her fries, one by one, biting off the tips then dipping them in the ketchup.
“What did he say?” Louis asked.
“Just wanted to know how you were doing,” she said, shrugging. “Asked me what I thought of you.”
“Why did he want to know?”
She finally stopped nibbling at the fries and leaned forward. “The department is under pressure to diversify. They’re making progress at the patrol level, but the upper ranks are still a bunch of stale, pale males.”
He knew where she was going with this. He pushed his plate aside and leaned toward her.
“Now, he didn’t even come close to any kind of a firm job offer,” Joe went on, “but I know him and I know how he thinks. He’s already done some homework on you and he wouldn’t ask my opinion if he wasn’t considering something further down the road.”
“But not entry level.”
“I’m just guessing, but I think he’d want to keep you for himself.”
“Homicide?” Louis asked.
“Crimes Against Persons.”
Louis was quiet.
“Are you interested?” she asked.
“I have things to take care of first,” Louis said. “But yes, I would be.”
Joe ate a couple more fries then wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I think we should go snag some rooms,” she said.
Louis glanced at her half-eaten burger. “You’re not finished.”
She shrugged. “You look beat. I can get this wrapped up to go.” Before he could object she motioned to the waitress.
Louis waited for her outside under the awning, hands in his pockets. She came up next to him and they headed across the lot toward the motel office, heads ducked into the wind.
“Here, take this.” She handed him the wrapped burger. “I’ll get our bags. You go on in.”
Louis nodded and went into the office, a bell tinkling above his head. It was warm and stuffy inside, and a gnarled little man looked up from behind the counter. He set aside his newspaper and wobbled o
ver, laying his veined hands on the counter.
“I take cash only. Up front.”
Louis pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “No problem.”
“Rooms are twenty-five fifty, plus tax.”
Louis grabbed the pen off the counter and started filling in the card. The bell tinkled again and he felt a rush of cold air at his back. Joe came up to the desk, carrying their overnight bags. The man’s little brown eyes zipped to her, suddenly alive with interest.
“You got dinner. I’ll get this,” Louis said to Joe.
The man’s eyes went from Louis to Joe and back to Louis. “You two together?” he asked.
Louis looked up, the pen paused over the card. “That a problem?”
The man held Louis’s gaze for a moment, his whiskered jaw clamped shut. Then he grabbed a room key from the cubbyholes behind him and slapped it on the counter.
“We need two,” Louis said.
The old man glanced at Joe then turned and plucked a second key from the cubbyholes, setting it on the desk. Joe came forward and picked it up.
“Thanks,” she said. “How’s the heat in the rooms?”
Louis was amazed to see her giving the man a smile. And even more amazed to see the old geezer smile back.
“Not too good, ma’am,” the man said. “Old and rusty like me.”
“Awful cold up here,” Joe said.
“Yup,” the man said. “Happens every few years. The orange growers hate it. Call it a killing rain. But it ain’t never been this bad.”
Joe nodded and hoisted her bag, turning to the door. Louis followed. It had started to rain again, and as they hurried across the lot, he looked up. The rain glinted in the floodlights like tiny knives slicing through the darkness.
CHAPTER 28
Adam Vargas settled back into the cracked seats of the black ’71 Camaro. He had parked his car across the street from the Lee County Sheriff’s office so he could watch the cops going in and out the glass doors. He hadn’t wanted to use his own car for this. He didn’t want it to end up impounded like they had done with Bryon’s car. But there had been no choice, so they had been forced to backtrack to East Naples to pick up the Camaro. Like Byron said, they couldn’t keep stealing new cars.
