Finding You

by Jenna Bennett

  “Not at all,” Ty said, and did. Mrs. Carlson clapped a hand over her mouth when he got to the part about the wounded cops, and Paula looked sick.

  “That’s barbaric,” Mrs. Carlson said from behind her hand. “Will they be all right?”

  Ty hesitated. “Sullivan will be fine. He got shot in the leg. In the fleshy part of the calf. An inch or two to either side, and the bullet would have missed him altogether. He’ll have to recuperate for a few weeks and take it easy afterwards, but chances are he’ll be back on duty in a month. Martoni...” He hesitated.

  “He’ll be all right, won’t he?” I’d never even met the injured Martoni, but poor Ricky Fuentes would never get over it if his assigning Martoni to guard Stan had resulted in Martoni’s death.

  “He lost a lot of blood,” Ty said reluctantly. “He’s lucky he was found as quickly as he was. But the bullet missed anything vital. And the paramedics started transfusions immediately. Last I heard, they thought he’d pull through.”

  “Can we stop and see him, when we go to the hospital to see Juan?”

  “Sure,” Ty said. “We have to stay here until they find Stan, though, Cassie.”

  Or until they admitted defeat and told us it would take longer than they thought, more likely. But I didn’t say that.

  THE CALL came at six-thirty. By then we had gotten tired of sitting in the courtroom and had adjourned to the anteroom, where at least there was a TV we could watch. The prosecutor and public defender had gone to join Judge Andrews and his bailiff in the judge’s chambers, as chummy as you please. When they didn’t come back, I assumed there was a TV there, too.

  Mrs. Carlson, Paula, Ty, and I were watching a sitcom that had aired originally before most of us were born. The local news was all about Stan escaping by shooting two police officers, and how he was considered armed and extremely dangerous. If spotted, do not approach; call the police tip line immediately.

  There was no information beyond that rather sensational tidbit—Mrs. Carlson and Paula turned paler and paler every time the news anchor said the same thing—and none of us wanted to watch a rerun of Law & Order: SVU, since it cut a little too close to the bone for several of us. So we were chuckling along with the Full House gang.

  At six-thirty, Ty’s phone rang. We all froze as we watched him dig the phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. “Connor.”

  Business call. If it had been personal, he would have said something else. His name or “Yo, dawg,” just to be funny.

  The phone quacked for a few seconds, then a few seconds more. “Got it,” Ty said. “Thanks.”

  He turned the phone off and dropped it back in his pocket before facing us. “We can go.”

  “They caught him?” Mrs. Carlson looked surprised but elated. And looked like someone being told there is no Santa Claus when Ty shook his head.

  “No. But they don’t want to keep us here any longer. Sunset’s in an hour. They want us safely inside by dark. There’ll be two cars outside the back door in five minutes to transport us to where we’re going.”

  He got up. “Excuse me. I have to go tell the judge and attorneys.”

  He headed out, leaving us there.

  “This is scary,” Paula said after a moment. Her mother reached for her hand, and it was hard to say who was comforting whom.

  “They’ll catch him,” I told them both. “It’s an island, so it’s easy to monitor who comes and goes. There’s only one road out of here. If he tries to leave Key West, he’ll be caught. And it’s a small island, so sooner or later someone will notice him. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Paula nodded, but swallowed. “I want to go home.”

  “Tomorrow,” her mother said.

  Paula tried a laugh, but it wasn’t very convincing. “I don’t even care about meeting Mackenzie Forbes anymore.”

  “You can always meet Mackenzie Forbes,” I told her. “Just come visit me in Chicago, and I’ll introduce you.”

  Paula nodded.

  I added, “Besides, after this, she may not even be coming here. They may be shutting down Key West. With last year’s rapist on the loose, they’re not going to want to add a whole lot of new potential victims to the mix. Everyone who was coming for Spring Break may have to go somewhere else. Or wait until after he gets caught, if it takes that long.”

  Mrs. Carlson nodded agreement. “We’ll get you to Chicago sometime, honey, if you want to meet Mackenzie Forbes. Cassie will introduce you. But I’ve had enough of Key West for now. Tomorrow we’re going home.”

  “Yes, Mama,” Paula said. They got up and headed for the back door, the better to wait for the car that would be arriving. I turned off the TV and followed.

  Ty had herded Judge Andrews, the bailiff, the court reporter—whom I had forgotten until now—Berryman the public defender and DeWitt the prosecutor, into the hallway by the back door. Without his severe black robes, the judge looked like a normal, reasonably friendly old guy. He nodded to us as he headed out the door to the first car. “Have a good evening, all. Stay safe.”

  He took the bailiff, the court reporter, and Berryman the public defender with him, leaving Don the security guard and Mr. DeWitt for us. The lawyer got into the second car with Paula and her mom, I guess for a last minute chat before they left tomorrow. “Cassie?” Mr. DeWitt turned to me.

  “I’ve got her,” Ty said, which sounded promising.

  “What are we doing?” I asked him as the second car drove off without us. Not that there was room for two more inside, although I suppose I could have sat on his lap for a while.

  Or not.

  “Enrique’s on his way. He’s going to the hospital, so I hitched us a ride.”

  “Oh.” That was nice of him to think of. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Juan. And I want to be there for the interviews with Sullivan and Martoni.”

  Of course. Duty first. It wasn’t that he’d tried to make me happy at all. Just that since he and Enrique were going to the hospital anyway, I might as well come along.

  Ricky Fuentes pulled up a few silent minutes later, and Don made sure the Courthouse door latched and locked behind us. He stood by, gun drawn, while we crossed the few feet of open ground and crawled into Enrique’s car; me in the back and Ty up front with Enrique. And then we waited until Don had crossed the parking lot and was safely inside his own car before both cars pulled out of the lot and headed in different directions.

  “News?” Ty enquired as soon as we were moving.

  “The road blocks are in place,” Ricky said. “The Coast Guard is patrolling. The tip line is going crazy with calls. Stan has been spotted everywhere from the Key West Cemetery to Sloppy Joe’s Bar to walking down Duval in broad daylight. One woman swore she’d seen him playing with the cats at the Hemingway House, and one man said he’d seen him set out from the Southernmost Point to swim to Cuba.”

  That last one did seem rather unlikely. It’s only ninety miles between Key West and Cuba, considerably less than between Key West and mainland Florida, at least along US-1. And I could imagine Stan wanting to get to Cuba if he thought it would keep him from going back to prison. But I doubted he’d swim. Much easier and safer to borrow a boat.

  “What are you doing about the tips?” I wanted to know, leaning forward between the seats.

  Ricky glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “We can’t follow them all. There are too many tips and too few of us, especially with two of my officers in the hospital and two more playing chauffeur. I had to pull the guard off Juan just to do what I’m doing.”

  “What’s the point of having a tip line if you don’t follow up on the tips?”

  There was a grinding sound. Perhaps from the car, but more likely from Enrique gritting his teeth. “We’re following up. We just have to choose to follow the tips that seem the most promising. I don’t think he’s swimming to Cuba, but we alerted the Coast Guard just in case. The bartender at Sloppy Joe’s knows Stan by sight, an
d said he hadn’t been in. I didn’t bother to follow up with the Hemingway House, and I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to walk down Duval in broad daylight.”

  Probably not. “Is anyone checking Sunset Key and Wisteria Island and all the other little islands up near Jewfish Basin? He could lie in wait up there for a long, long time without anyone finding him.”

  “The Coast Guard is patrolling,” Enrique said. It was starting to sound like a refrain.

  He was also starting to sound frustrated, so I sat back and let them talk without imposing my opinions on them. They were the professionals, and they didn’t need me to tell them their jobs. It was just that I was nervous, and being involved, however peripherally, made me feel better.

  For some reason I had assumed we’d end up at the same hospital I’d gone to last year, after Stan drugged me. We didn’t. Instead we crossed the bridge from Key West to Stock Island, and headed up past the Botanical Gardens to the Lower Keys Medical Center. Which made sense once I thought about it, since the tiny hospital from last year was attached to a women’s medical clinic, and naturally Juan and the two wounded officers wouldn’t be going there.

  We stopped by Juan’s room first. As Enrique had said, there was no longer an officer on the door, but Carmen was sitting next to the bed flipping the pages of a fashion magazine. When we walked in, she dropped it to her lap. “Finally!”

  And then she saw me. “Cassie!”

  “Carmen.” I gave her a hug, because I couldn’t get out of it. And because I’d liked her last year, after I realized she didn’t have designs on Ty. I didn’t like her so much this year, but since I didn’t want to hurt her feelings—and since I didn’t want Ty to think I still cared—I did my best to hide it. “How are you? How’s Juan?”

  He looked awful. The arm where the IV was attached was discolored from bruises, limp and flaccid, the golden skin more a sickly yellow under the florescent lighting. His face was jaundiced, too; the lips dry, and spiky eyelashes lay quiet in sunken eye sockets. He had bandages wrapped around his head, with tufts of black curls peeking out here and there.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told Carmen, my eyes tearing up.

  “It’s not your fault.” She put an arm around my shoulders. She’s a couple inches taller than I am, and the heels added another few inches. “It’s the fault of whoever hurt him. You had no idea it would happen.”

  No, but I still felt bad. Maybe if I hadn’t accepted his offer to walk me home, if I’d just left him at Captain Crow’s and gone home on my own, he wouldn’t have met whoever hurt him.

  “Any news?” Carmen asked Enrique, who shook his head, grimly.

  “We’re on our way to see Sullivan and Martoni. Maybe one of them has something helpful to contribute. If nothing else, I’d like to know who was careless enough to let Stan get the drop on him.”

  “Sullivan,” Carmen said.

  Enrique arched a brow, and she added, “I went to school with him, too. He tolerated Stan a bit better than some of the rest of us.”

  “Pretty sure the gun was Martoni’s,” Enrique said. “That’s why Stan got him point blank in the stomach and only winged Sullivan in the calf.”

  Carmen shrugged. Her breasts moved. I tried not to be jealous, but couldn’t quite manage.

  When I glanced at Ty, he was watching me. The curve of his mouth was amused. I looked away.

  “He still under?” Enrique asked, looking at Juan. Juan’s breathing was so shallow his chest under the blankets hardly rose and fell at all.

  Carmen nodded. “Until tomorrow. They’ll try to bring him around then. If there’s no change.”

  “I’ll try to be here. But with what’s going on, I’m not sure I can be.”

  “The rest of us will come,” Carmen said. “Mamá understands that it’s your job to catch Stan and the people who did this to Juan. We all want you to do that.”

  Enrique nodded. “If I can be here, I will. If not, let me know how it goes.”

  “Of course, ‘mano.” She reached up and gave him a hug. “Are you going to see your cops now?”

  He nodded. “You want a ride home when we’re done?”

  “Yes, please,” Carmen said. “I’ll stay here till then.” She sat back in the chair by the bed and picked up the magazine.

  Enrique nodded to the door, and Ty followed him out in the hallway. At the last moment, he turned. “Cassie? You coming?”

  “Yessir.” I scurried down the hall after them.

  We stopped by Martoni’s room first. He was right around the corner from Juan, being the more severely injured. And like Juan, he was in no position to give anyone his side of the story. He wasn’t in an induced coma, so he was awake—more or less—but not really aware. The morphine drip going into his arm probably had a lot to do with it. When Enrique walked through the door, he managed a goofy smile and a twitch of the unencumbered hand. I assumed it was supposed to be a wave, but it really was just a twitch. And although he opened his mouth, nothing came out.

  Enrique stopped by the bedside, and as Ty and I sidled up next to him—or I sidled; Ty walked, like he had every right to be there—I realized I’d met Martoni before. Last year, Enrique had sent a cop to drive me from the hotel to the women’s clinic. He’d had strict instructions not to talk to me, so we hadn’t exchanged more than the obligatory, “Thanks for the ride, Officer,” and “My pleasure, miss,” when he dropped me off, but it was definitely him.

  He probably didn’t recognize me, though, and now wasn’t the time to remind him.

  “You OK, man?” Enrique wanted to know.

  Martoni didn’t answer, but I saw the movement as his eyes slid toward the IV, and the slight upward curl of his lips. I guess the medicine was helping, and probably making him feel nicely floaty, too.

  “Any pain?” Ricky asked.

  Seemingly not, because Martoni managed a very slight right to left movement of his head on the pillow, with another glance at the IV.

  “I’ll check back with you tomorrow. You should try to get as much rest as you can. I’m gonna want your report as soon as possible.”

  Martoni looked distressed. His eyebrows drew together. He made an attempt to pluck at Ricky’s sleeve and opened his mouth. Enrique leaned closer. “What?”

  “Sully...”

  “He’s all right,” Ricky said. “Better than you. Took a bullet in the calf, but should be outta here in a day or so. You’ll have to stay a little longer.”

  Martoni looked frustrated. He opened his mouth again.

  “What?”

  “Stan...”

  It was just as much lip-reading as hearing, because he hardly made any noise at all.

  “Still on the loose,” Ricky said. “But we’ll get him. Everyone’s looking, and the tip line is getting hundreds of calls.”

  That didn’t seem to be what Martoni wanted to hear, because he still looked frustrated. But he also looked tired, and sank back into the pillows without trying to communicate any more. He was white around the lips from the exertion.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Ricky told him again. “Get some rest.”

  We filed out, quietly. Behind us, Martoni closed his eyes.

  “That’s the same guy you sent to drive me to the clinic last year,” I told Enrique when we were outside in the hallway.

  He nodded, frustration evident on his face. “One of our best officers. Hopefully this isn’t the end of his career.”

  “D’you think he helped Laszlo escape?” Ty asked.

  Enrique turned to him, and for a moment he seemed speechless. “No!” he said eventually.

  Ty shrugged. “It was either deliberate or careless. Your choice.”

  Enrique was silent for another moment. And then another. “Hard to believe it was either. He’s not usually careless, and I’ve seen no signs he sympathized with Stan. They weren’t close. Besides, he almost died.”

  “Keyword,” Ty said, “almost. Besides, if they planned it together, Laszlo had a very good reason
for wanting Martoni dead. He might know where Laszlo is.”

  Enrique shook his head. “I bet he doesn’t. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

  “Looks like you already are,” Ty said.

  Enrique grimaced. “Let’s see if Sullivan is awake. We’re likely to get more out of him.”

  We set off again.

  Sullivan was on a different floor, out of the ICU. He was sitting in bed with a blanket over his lap and a bandaged leg sticking out, surfing TV channels. When we walked in, he put the remote down. “Detective Fuentes.”

  He looked apprehensive. Maybe he was afraid Enrique was going to yell at him.

  “Officer Sullivan.” Enrique nodded. “How are you feeling?”

  Sullivan shook his head. He was a smallish guy, with dark hair and a heavy five-o’clock-shadow. “Not so good, Detective. Cody...”

  “We’ve seen Martoni,” Enrique said.

  “Is he gonna be OK?” Sullivan tried to straighten, and winced.

  “He’s hanging in. Heavily sedated. Wasn’t able to talk.”

  Sullivan’s face relaxed again. I guess he’d gotten into a position he liked.

  “You’re gonna have to tell us what happened,” Enrique said.

  Sullivan’s face tightened again. Maybe it wasn’t the physical pain so much as the anticipation that bothered him. “I don’t know what happened, Detective.”

  “You were there, weren’t you?”

  “Sure,” Sullivan said, “but it all happened so fast...”

  Enrique didn’t say anything, just waited, and after a few moments, Sullivan continued. “We were on our way back to the Courthouse after lunch. We were running late to begin with, because Stan spent a lotta time in the head before we left. Suddenly he began making these noises in the back of the car like he was dying. We tried asking him what was wrong, but he just groaned. So we thought maybe he’d eaten something, you know, that didn’t agree with him? Like, he was gonna hurl right there in the car?”