by P J Parrish
“The ring.”
She looked him dead in the eye. “There is no ring.”
Louis came forward and leaned both hands on the desk. Diane rolled her chair back in surprise.
“Look, lady, I’m sick and tired of your shit,” he said. “You told me to find your father. But you won’t lift a hand to help me. I don’t know what’s going on between you two. I don’t want to know.” He jabbed a finger toward her face. “But I don’t like being jerked around. Now where is the damn ring?”
Diane was staring at him in shock. He saw her eyes shift to the door and he knew the secretary outside had heard every word he had said.
Diane looked back at him. “I lost it.”
“Try again.”
Diane sat there, frozen in the chair. Then suddenly, amazingly, her eyes teared up.
“Please,” she whispered. “You don’t know what it’s been like. The TV people won’t leave me alone. I can’t go out of my apartment, I can’t leave my phone on the hook.”
She wiped angrily at her eyes. “Today when I got here, I found out that someone took a felt-tip and wrote “wanted” on my picture outside in the hall.”
That was why the picture out in the trophy case was missing, Louis thought. He stood up, backing away from her desk.
“It’s going to get worse,” he said “They’re getting a warrant to search this office. You know what that’s going to be like?”
He nodded out toward the desk where the secretary and now two other women were clustered, whispering and looking their way. “Do you really want them watching it? You want them to see the cops coming in here, going through your desk, your trash, tearing this place up like they did your home?”
Diane looked ready to cry again. But Louis could see the boil of anger beneath it.
“Give me the ring,” he said.
She rose slowly and turned her back to him. He watched as she slipped her hand inside her blouse. She turned back. Louis held out his hand and she dropped the ring into it.
“Now get out of my office,” she said.
“Not yet,” Louis said. “I need some information. I need to know about your mother for starters.”
Diane sat back down in her chair, shielding her eyes with a shaking hand. “I told you she died when I was little. I don’t remember much about her.”
“What’s her maiden name?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at Louis and saw the disbelief in his face. “I don’t know,” she repeated tightly.
“What about family records?”
“I never saw any.”
“What about your birth certificate? What does it say under your mother’s name?”
“I don’t know. I...I never looked at it.”
“What about your father?” Louis pressed. “Where is he from? Where did he go to school?”
Diane was frowning slightly. “I...he never said anything.”
“Is he from Fort Myers? Did he ever mention Sarasota?”
She was looking up at Louis now and he could see a change in her expression, an odd confusion, like she was looking at something that was supposed to be familiar but seeing something different.
“Diane, we can’t find anything about your father’s background before 1952,” Louis said.
“That’s the year I was born,” she said.
Louis didn’t respond. He just let it sink in.
“I need your mother’s maiden name, Diane,” Louis said.
A bell rang and Louis could hear the bustle and laughter of kids out in the hallways. He saw Diane’s eyes shift and he looked over his shoulder to see a wiry teenage boy come shuffling into the outer office, his head bowed, backpack dragging.
Diane pushed herself up from her chair. “I’m sorry, I have something I have to take care of,” she said.
“It can wait,” Louis said
Diane shook her head. “No, this can’t. That boy out there was accused of stealing another boy’s radio and I know he didn’t do it.” Her eyes drifted out to the boy outside. “I know Ricky didn’t do it even though his father thinks he did. His father is coming in and I have to convince him his son needs some attention...not another slap.”
Louis stared at Diane. “But you’re not going to help me,” he said.
“I can’t trust you,” she said, shaking her head.
“Little late for that now,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “Now please leave.” Her eyes were pleading.
Louis turned and left the office. The boy looked up at him as he went past. At the entrance, Louis paused and looked back toward the administration office. He could see Diane leading the boy into her office, an arm over his skinny shoulders. Louis turned up his collar and darted out into the rain.
“Hey! Kincaid! Louis Kincaid!”
He saw a flash of yellow coming up on his right. Heather Fox had seen him. He kept going.
“What are you doing here, Kincaid?” she asked, falling in step. He could see the cameraman hustling over, fumbling with the camera.
“Were you here to see Diane Woods? Did she have anything to say about her father?”
Louis kept walking.
“How did she look? Did she look upset? Did she —-”
Louis spun. “Get out of my face,” he said.
Heather Fox’s cheeks had black tracks from where the rain had run her mascara. “Don’t get testy,” she said. “She won’t talk to us and I’m just trying to get a feel for her. She seems like a cold fish to me and —-”
“Leave her alone,” Louis said.
Heather smiled. “Hey, I’m just doing a job here. Just like you.”
Louis sprinted to the Mustang. He started the engine and sat there for a moment, listening to the rain beat on the convertible’s top. He unclasped his hand and looked at the coral ring.
It was just a simple band but finely carved, like someone had taken great care with it. He slipped it on his left pinky. It was so small it didn’t even go over his first knuckle.
Had it been worn by Emma Fielding? Or any of the other missing girls? Had Frank made them wear the rings as some perverse symbol, like he was marrying his victims before he killed them?
Louis slipped the ring off his finger and put it in his pocket. He pulled out of the lot and headed west. When he hit 41, he turned north and followed the highway out until it narrowed to the two lanes leading to Pine Island. The rain was still heavy by the time he pulled into Bokeelia. He parked the car at the marina across from Cap’n Con’s Fishhouse.
He didn’t know why he had come out here. Maybe to think, get a clear take on things that were increasingly less clear. He sat there, looking out at Charlotte Harbor. He could make out the outline of Bessie Levy’s stilt house, but the driving rain had turned everything else into just a gray expanse of sky and water with no horizon to separate the two. The gray would blur with rain and then the wipers would sweep across, giving him a moment of clarity before the blur came back.
Endless gray...and a few seconds when he could see the dark green islands far out in the harbor. All those countless little islands out there where Frank Woods could be hiding. All those islands where he could have buried those girls.
He knew in that second, knew that was where he would find Frank. He would be with the victims.
The wipers slapped a clear picture of the islands into view and then it was gone.
Now all he had to do was find the right island.
CHAPTER 24
The ferry pulled into the dock and the crewman secured the lines. Louis, watching the ferry from inside the Mustang, sat up, lifting his bare legs off the seat’s sticky vinyl. His shorts and T-shirt were almost soaked through with sweat. He looked at his watch. It was just before eleven.
He picked up the binoculars and focused on the people gathering to board. A group of old women in sunhats and a sunburned family of five, Dad laden down with a video recorder and a crying three-year-old, Mom looking like she needed a stiff drink.
Louis set asid
e the binoculars. For three days he had been staking out the ferry parking lot, waiting for Frank Woods to make an appearance. All because Landeta had a half-assed hunch that Woods would show up.
“He’s gone,” Louis had said that morning.
“He’ll show. He’s a man who is scared,” Landeta had answered. “Men like that need the security of the routine.”
Easy for Landeta to say. He was sitting in an air-conditioned office working the phones and computers trying to find the other missing women. Not sweating his balls off for nothing.
Louis gave the group on the dock one more scan, then set down the binoculars. He picked up the copy of that morning’s News-Press.
Frank Woods was still the lead story, the newspaper playing catch-up on the TV reports about police upgrading Frank to a murder suspect.
He wondered how Diane was taking it, but he really didn’t care enough to call and find out. She had made her own bed and now the media wanted to see her not just lying in it but tied to the bedposts. Last night, watching Heather Fox on TV, he had felt a twinge of pity for Diane. Fox was doing a remote in front of the Fort Myers Library and the letters below said BOOKED FOR MURDER? Some idiot’s attempt at humor had made it seem like the serial killer librarian was finally arrested and the streets were safe once again. Louis knew it was only going to get worse for Diane. God knows what the press would do when Frank was actually caught.
If he was caught.
Louis’s eyes wandered back out to the dock. The two crewmen were talking, waiting for the call to cast off the lines.
Suddenly, Louis froze. He watched as the shorter of the two men, the one wearing a red shirt and a khaki fishing hat, calmly took the cigarette butt from his mouth, snuffed it out with his fingers and put it in his pocket. He jumped on board just as the ferry pulled out.
Louis threw open the car door and ran to the dock. The man in the red shirt was standing at the stern, looking at him. The beard was gone, but Louis was sure. It was Frank Woods.
“Shit!”
Louis raced into the bait shack. The lanky guy in the Grateful Dead ball cap was there, leafing through a fishing magazine.
“Get that ferry back here now!” Louis shouted.
“What?”
Louis thrust out his PI card. “Get that boat back!”
The guy glanced at the ID and shrugged. “Can’t do that. She’s got a schedule to keep.”
Louis pointed at the shortwave radio behind the counter. “Call and get it back!”
“No can do, dude.”
Louis spun to the window. The ferry was heading out into the sound. He slammed a hand down on the counter in frustration. The Deadhead jumped back.
“Where’s it going?” Louis demanded.
“Hey, man, chill!”
Louis grabbed the guy’s shirt. “Where is it going?”
“Away So Far Island!” The Deadhead jerked out of Louis’s grasp and backed up, eyeing him. “There’s a tourist restaurant out there.”
“I need a boat,” Louis said.
“You can’t take your own boat there. It’s private. They only let the ferry dock.” He went back to his magazine. “Your buddy will be back in about three hours.”
Louis looked back to the window. The ferry was heading north, cutting a quick wake across the sound. He could call Horton, get a police boat out there. But he couldn’t take the chance that Woods would slip away again. He was the one who had lost Frank, not once but now twice. And he was the one who was going to bring him in.
“You said you had a boat,” Louis said to the Deadhead.
“Yeah, but I ain’t taking it out there, man. When they say no trespassing, they mean it.”
“Fifty bucks,” Louis said.
“I told ya. They won’t let me dock.”
“A hundred.”
The Deadhead’s eyes narrowed. “I can take you as far as the flats on the east side.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “It’s low tide. Maybe you can walk in from there.”
“Let’s go,” Louis said.
The ferry was out of sight by the time the Deadhead throttled up his beat-up skiff and headed out into Pine Island Sound. The sun was high overhead, searing in the cloudless sky. The Deadhead told Louis that the island was owned by a family that ran a restaurant popular with tourists who wanted an “authentic old Florida” experience.
“A rip-off” he added, “just conch fritters, beer in plastic cups, and no air-conditioning. Shit, I can get that at home.”
Forty minutes later, the Deadhead throttled down the engine. They were coming up on a lush mangrove-ringed island. Louis could see the ferry sitting at the dock but nothing else except an old wood water tower rising above the trees. The Deadhead steered east, taking the skiff in a wide circle away from the dock. Louis saw several large NO TRESPASSING signs posted on the island. Finally, the Deadhead cut the engine.
“This is as far as I go,” he said.
They were about fifty yards from the island. Louis looked down at the shallow water, estimating it was only knee-high. He was wearing sandals, so if he was careful he would be dry when he got to the restaurant. He started to ease himself over the side.
“Hey, man, where’s my bread?” the Deadhead demanded.
“I’ll send you a check.”
Louis started toward shore, the Deadhead’s expletives following him. He heard the outboard start up but didn’t look back. By the time he reached the island, the skiff was gone.
The shore was similar to the place where they had found Shelly Umber’s body, a dense, dank stand of mangroves that rose from black mud to dry ground thick with brush. Louis paused there to wipe his face, trying to get his bearings, then continued on. The ground rose slightly and finally, he came to a path. He stood for a moment, trying to remember which way the dock was, and finally turned left, keeping to the narrow path. A sound came to him through the trees —- the clatter of dishes or pans —- so he followed it and a few minutes later, he saw a fence. He went through the gate, emerging at the back of the restaurant. He could hear kitchen sounds coming from the open windows. Keeping to the trees, he made his way around front.
It looked like an old Florida cracker house, white clapboard with a screened-in porch. He could hear the diners inside, laughing and talking. He stuck his sunglasses in the pocket of his shorts and went up the steps.
He paused at the entrance, letting his eyes adjust. It was a single large room, simply furnished with long wood tables and benches. There was a coral rock fireplace at one end and a primitive wood bar at the other, over which hung an old painting. Three ceiling fans turned slowly above, stirring the air, which was thick with the smells of frying fish.
Louis scanned the diners, but didn’t see Frank.
Damn, had he somehow gotten off the ferry somewhere else? Then, suddenly, there he was, emerging from a door with a MEN sign over it. Louis dropped back and watched as Frank stopped and began talking to the man behind the bar. The man nodded and disappeared. Louis braced, ready to move if Frank ran or tried to leave. But he just looked around the dining room, moved to a table in the corner, and sat down.
He was wearing the fishing hat, pulled low over his face, but Louis could see his eyes darting around the room, over the other diners, like he was searching for someone or something.
Frank wrapped his hands around a plastic glass before him but did not take a drink of the beer.
Then he spotted Louis and froze. Louis went to the table. Frank looked up at Louis, his eyes almost sad.
Louis slid into the chair across from him. Frank pulled the hat off his head. His hair was a mess, his jaw dark with whiskers. He was badly sunburned, his nose peeling. An odor rose off him, like he hadn’t bathed in days.
Frank dropped his head, his shoulders sagging. “How did you get here?” he asked softly.
“Never mind that,” Louis said.
“You weren’t on the ferry. How did you get here?”
“Frank,” Louis said, “I’m t
aking you in.”
Frank shook his head slowly, still not looking up.
“You don’t have any choice,” Louis said.
Frank shut his eyes. He was still gripping the beer.
“You go back on the ferry with me, nice and quiet, or I call the police to come out here and haul you back. Either way, you are going in.”
Frank didn’t move.
“You hear me, Frank?”
Frank’s head came up and his eyes darted around the room. For a second, Louis thought he was going to bolt, but then he sagged back into the chair. He was staring in the direction of the dusty painting hanging over the bar but his eyes were unfocused, almost dreamy.
“I haven’t been here in years,” he said softly. “It hasn’t changed.”
A young boy came up to the table. He was about ten, the strings of the white apron wrapped twice around his slender waist.
“Do you want a menu?” the boy asked Louis.
“No, we’re not staying, thank you.” Louis looked at Frank, who was looking at the boy.
“What’s your name, son?” Frank asked gently.
The boy stared at Frank, glanced at Louis in confusion, then looked back at Frank.
“Roberto, sir.”
“Roberto,” Frank repeated softly.
The boy left, Frank’s eyes following him until he disappeared into the kitchen.
“Frank,” Louis said, “who was that man I saw you talking to, the one at the bar?”
“No one.” He seemed to be staring at the painting over the bar again.
“Don’t lie to me,” Louis said. “Why did you come out here?”
"Non debui umquam ab hoc loco discesse.”
“What?”
“Non debui umquam ab hoc loco discesse. Si mansissem id prohibuere potuissem."
Frank was still staring at the painting. Louis turned to look at it. It was just a dusty old print of what looked like an orgy, a bunch of Roman soldiers and fat women. Louis touched Frank’s arm.
“Frank, talk to me, man.”
“It’s too late now.”
“What’s too late?” Louis leaned closer.
“I can’t bring them back.” He covered his face with his hands. “I just let them die.”
