by Tim Dorsey
“Sure, the courthouse in DeLand,” said Serge. He looked up at the ceiling and began slowly waving his arms back and forth. “I remember it like it was just yesterday. You were standing at the counter in the clerk’s office when I came in to work on my family tree—”
“No! Stop!” said Heather. “Don’t do another fade-out!”
“What? You didn’t like the last one?” said Serge. “It had all the elements. Spanish-American War, Ybor City history, rage against the machine—”
Heather sighed. “I don’t mean to be curt, but could you get to the point? I’ve got work.”
“It’s about your father.”
Heather was taken off balance. “What about my father?”
“He’s fine. Just want to get that out of the way.”
“You know my father?”
“Absolutely. Do you have any idea what he’s doing now?”
“No, and I really have a lot of work to do, so if you don’t mind—”
“He’s a ranger at a state park.”
Another off-balance moment. And not that she cared, just curious: “He isn’t at the law firm?”
“Quit,” said Serge. “And I can vouch that he’s a completely different person now from the guy in the slick TV ads. He’s rededicated his life to the simple pleasures of the ink pad and stamp.”
“Ink pad?”
“Sorry,” said Serge. “I tried rehearsing this on the way over, but my mind has a mind of its own. Let that sink in.”
“I still don’t know why you’re here.”
“He misses you.”
“He should have thought about that a long time ago.” She looked down at her desk and began going through a file. “What did he do, send you?”
“It’s not like that,” said Serge. “He doesn’t know I’m here. In fact, he made me promise not to interfere, which obviously I’ve broken.” He pulled out a scrap of paper. “Here’s the number for the park.”
Heather still looked down at paperwork. “Keep it.”
“In case you change your mind.” Serge set it on the desk.
“Will that be all?” asked the agent.
“For now. Come on, Coleman . . .” He turned to leave, then stopped. “Wow, a corkboard!”
Heather looked over her shoulder. “You need to leave now.”
“You are trying to catch a serial killer, just like I guessed at the courthouse.”
She looked him in the eyes. “I can’t comment on any open investigation.”
Serge nodded vigorously. “I have a corkboard just like that. Notecards, pushpins, colored yarn.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Yeah, when I was a kid, we mailed in box tops. Now it’s spit. Times change. But the anticipation was déjà vu, sitting by the mailbox each day, waiting for my happiness packages. Once it was a kit to join the Monkees fan club, then the Banana Splits fan club, Saturday-morning TV before your time.”
“I really must insist that you leave.”
“Wait! Wait! Wait! So my new DNA kit arrived with several hits on distant relatives, and I’m building a fascinating family tree, turpentine and sponge divers and everything! I’m having a blast! Plus I’m also tracking a serial killer!”
What a fruitcake, thought Heather. Watching too many police shows.
Serge nodded again. “And when I said I had a corkboard like yours, I didn’t mean ‘like,’ I meant ‘almost exactly like.’ I have some of the same notecards.”
“I’m sure it’s very nice,” said Heather. “And now I’m going to have to be rude. Leave or I’ll have you thrown out.”
“My apologies. Please reconsider calling your father.” Serge grabbed Coleman by the arm. “Let’s go.”
Heather shook her head in exasperation as she watched the pair exit through the lobby. Then it was back to work on the cold case.
A notecard went up as another agent came over. “Excuse me for interrupting, but I have a couple of updates. Remember our victim Raúl Dixon with the dead wreath on the front door?”
“Vividly.”
“We were able to trace the murder weapons, but it turns out they belong to Dixon himself,” said the agent. “Detectives found credit card receipts and listened to a phone call recorded for quality control purposes. He bought the cutlery from an infomercial in the middle of the night while drunk.”
“You said a couple of developments.”
“Oh, and I just got off the phone with the ancestry company. You were right, someone did send in another sample after we got back our results. A fourth cousin.” He handed her a slip of paper. “That’s the name.”
Heather read it, and her eyes immediately shot toward the door to the lobby. She grabbed her gun and took off running until she was in front of the building on the sidewalk. She looked both ways up and down the street, but nothing in sight.
Arch joined her on the sidewalk. “What is it?”
“I was too busy being annoyed and trying to get rid of him. And angry at my dad,” said Heather. “How could I have not made the connection to those courthouse files?”
Chapter 35
Myakka River State Park
A Crown Victoria with blackwall tires rolled up to the guard booth.
Ranger Bobby was waiting at the window with a big smile. “Imagine my surprise getting your call.”
“This isn’t a social visit,” Heather said sharply. “It’s official.”
Still smiling. “A visit is a visit.”
“We need to talk someplace private.”
“You were a bit mysterious on the phone,” said Bobby. “We can use my apartment.”
The other ranger in the booth said he had things covered.
They arrived at a long cabin in the thick woods, and Heather stopped in a doorway. “This is where you live now?”
“Everything I need. So what’s the visit about?”
The agent pulled up a photo on her cell phone. “Do you know this man?”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Off the surveillance cameras at my office.”
“He came to visit you?” said Bobby. “He swore to me he wouldn’t.”
“So you do know him?” said Heather.
“Sure, he’s one of the park’s regulars.”
“What else do you know about him?”
“Not much,” said her father. “Except he did bring us together here today, despite ignoring my wishes.”
“I told you this is purely official,” said Heather. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Still good to see you,” said the ranger. “So is Serge in any kind of trouble? Did he do something?”
“I don’t know yet,” said the agent, looking at the dark green walls and subconsciously wondering about the paint selection. “It was strange enough getting a visit from him about you. And he’s a strange guy.”
“No argument here,” said Bobby. “And I’m guessing this is about an open investigation that you can’t discuss, which would explain why you’re being so cagey. Why don’t you spell out what you can, and I’ll do my best to help.”
“It’s a cold case, or rather was a cold case,” said Heather. “Serial killer who stopped years ago, but we might have just had a new related homicide.”
“And Serge is somehow relevant just because he visited you about me?”
“No, it’s the strangest coincidence,” said Heather. “We’re trying to solve the case with DNA.”
“That was a big breakthrough for law enforcement when the technology evolved.”
“And another big breakthrough when culture evolved,” said Heather. “There are now all these ancestry sites where nearly a million people have sent in samples.”
“I’ve seen the ads.”
“Hadn’t heard of it being done before, but the idea just popped into my head,” said Heather. “What did we have to lose by sending in a sample from one of the crime scenes under a fictitious name and seeing what ran up the flagpole?”
“You always w
ere smart,” said Bobby. “Are you trying to say you got a hit on the killer?”
“Not directly, but three distant cousins. So it’s now a challenge of building a family tree back generations, until we reach a common ancestor, then building it back down until we can generate a list of all cousins living today, and check them out one by one. I’m about eighty percent finished.”
“I’m missing the part about Serge,” said the ranger.
“We were making a round robin of visiting the first three cousins from the ancestry results, and a guy in Broward said someone had been by asking about the same thing. He was building a family tree from the same service and had the same three cousins. But he wasn’t one of our three. So there had to be a fourth. We put in a call to Ancestors R Us, and waited.”
“You mentioned a big coincidence.”
“Right after Serge left my office, one of my colleagues got an answer from the company,” said Heather. “The fourth cousin is your friend Serge.”
“Okay, so he’s just another innocent, distant relative like the first three.”
“I’m not dismissing him that fast,” said Heather. “These DNA companies on TV aren’t official forensic laboratories. There are no regulations, and there’s a margin of error. It’s just fun for the whole family, and if they make a mistake, nobody goes to jail.”
“I see where you’re going with this, but it still seems like a jump,” said Bobby. “Why would you suspect that the company’s margin of error could make Serge the hit on your crime scene sample?”
“One thing I didn’t mention,” said Heather. “Remember I told you about the guy in Broward?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Serge visits him, then a couple days later I visit, and right after that he’s murdered. Serious case of overkill,” said Heather. “There’s a saying in law enforcement: There are no coincidences.”
“I thought you just said you had a big coincidence with Serge.”
“Semantics, different context. You know what I mean.”
“Tell me how I can help.”
“We need to take Serge in for official questioning,” said Heather. “Fingerprints, and get his DNA looked at by our lab.”
“You’ll need a warrant,” said the lawyer.
“That’s a little dicey because sending in the DNA under false pretenses raises privacy issues with the company’s customers,” said Heather. “That creates problems with probable cause to get a judge to sign off. Still working on it.”
“Or trick Serge into giving up both by offering him a can of soda during questioning.”
“That was my backup plan.”
“Okay, I still think you’re wrong about Serge, but I’ll help if for no other reason than to clear him. I’ll talk to Serge next time I see him and do my best to persuade,” said Bobby. “But I can’t deceive him or force him to do anything or tip you off when he’s here. I can’t be that person anymore.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, you also can’t put the park under surveillance to catch him, or I won’t be a part of it,” said Bobby. “I need your word.”
“Deal.” Heather stopped and looked at the open Bible on the chipped desk. She hitched the strap of her leather folio, and firmly: “I have to go.”
Bobby stepped forward. “Please . . . just a few more minutes.”
Heather stood still a moment without reply.
“I know I don’t deserve it,” said Bobby. “Far from it. Just . . . stay a little longer, okay?”
Heather inhaled hard. She removed the strap from her shoulder but remained stern. “I have a few minutes. Only a few . . .”
Outside the weathered apartment, the weather picked up. Tree branches bent and scratched roof shingles. Brown leaves swirled on the ground. A deer trotted by.
Inside, a father and daughter were having the kind of conversation that nobody else needed to hear. Heather’s facade didn’t crack and tears didn’t come but wanted to. He did most of the talking.
Finally, and no longer stern, “I really have to go now.”
“Thanks for staying.”
He walked her out the door. No hugs or goodbyes, just a smile on his face . . .
Back down by the lake, in a parking lot at the country store, sat a sunbaked Chevelle. It was empty.
The driver had decided to take a hike, and he decided not to use the trails. He climbed over branches and thickets, and trudged through the fallen late-winter leaves. He saw a beetle on the ground and stomped on it. A few hundred yards deeper into the woods, he caught a glimpse of the first sign of man since leaving his car.
Hiking became creeping. He stopped and positioned himself behind a thick, moss-draped oak. In a crook of the tree, he steadied a zoom lens. In his viewfinder were a man and a woman standing outside a ranger’s apartment. The same woman he had been waiting for earlier in the day, parked across the street from her office on the other coast. He had gotten that address from a business card he had lifted off a Bible. And now, here he was, hiding in the trees at Myakka.
He adjusted the focus on his camera.
Click, click, click . . .
Chapter 36
The Next Day
A blue-and-white Ford Cobra pulled up to the guard booth at Myakka River State Park.
“Hey, Serge.”
“Hi, Andy.” He flapped a green book. “No ink pad needed. I’m solid.”
“You told me last time.”
“I got a lot going on upstairs,” said Serge. “Is Ranger Bobby in?”
“Yes, he’s been waiting for you.”
Serge chuckled. “You mean ‘waiting,’ like he knows I can’t stay away from this place?”
“No, actually waiting,” said the ranger in the window. “Been calling and calling up here to see if we’ve seen your car in case you went to another part of the park. I think he really needs to talk to you about something. He’s in his apartment.”
“That’s weird,” said Serge. “But it must be important, so I’ll head right over there . . .”
The Cobra pulled up to the rustic building in the trees, and Serge got out with his coffee mug. “I’m dying to know what this can be about.” He knocked on the door, and the ranger answered.
“Serge, Coleman, come in.”
“I just found out that frogs can explode!” said Serge. “It’s true! Crows have figured out that the tastiest part of a toad is the liver, and they peck them out—”
“Serge . . .”
“No, seriously, once they lose the function of that organ, it triggers a biological chain reaction of irreversible swelling until, bang!”
“Serge . . .”
“Wait! Wait! And then there’s Florida’s current invasion of poisonous cane toads from Australia—some probably right here in this park—that grow to ten inches and secrete a toxic—”
“Serge!”
“Gee, sorry.”
“Didn’t mean to yell,” said Bobby. “It’s just that you need to calm down and focus. I have something urgent to discuss.”
“Then I’m all yours.” He sat and closed his mouth and folded his hands. “Go!”
“You visited my daughter.”
“Sorry, had to follow my heart.”
“That’s not the problem,” said Bobby. “She’s in the middle of a cold case using DNA.”
Serge nodded. “Figured that from the corkboard in her office.”
“Can you please not interrupt this one time?”
Serge made a zipper motion across his mouth. “The floor’s all yours.”
Ranger Bobby essentially repeated everything his daughter had explained during her visit. “. . . And she would like you to come in for an interview. Get fingerprinted, and give a saliva sample.”
“I’d do just about anything you would ask of me,” said Serge. “But that one’s not in the cards.”
“Serge, I know you aren’t involved in this,” said the ranger. “This
could clear you, so why not?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” said Serge. “You’re right, I’m not involved, other than trying to crack the case myself.” A what-are-you-going-to-do shrug. “You know how I am about hobbies. And I’m sure you also know I’ve led an unorthodox life. Yes, giving samples would clear me in this matter, but there’s some other, let’s say, dubious moments that I’d rather leave in the past.”
“I figured something like that,” said the ranger. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to change your mind?”
“Afraid not.”
“Fair enough,” said the ranger. “And I don’t mean to rush you off, but I have to take over for Michelle down at the lake.”
“Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
He stood and headed for the door.
“One more thing,” Bobby called after him.
Serge turned around. “What’s that?”
The ranger’s serious, straight line of a mouth curled into a warm grin. “Thanks for getting her to visit.”
Serge waved a wrist dismissively. “Don’t be getting all mushy on me now, or we’ll both start bawling.”
They walked out onto the ranger’s porch for goodbyes. Serge suddenly spun toward the woods.
“What is it?” asked the ranger.
“I don’t know. Is somebody out there?” said Serge. “I thought I saw movement.”
Bobby laughed. “It’s a state park. Birds and animals. Something would be wrong if there wasn’t movement.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Serge. “My Florida survival radar is cranked to ultra-sensitive. Anyway, great seeing you as always.”
They shook hands . . .
Fifty yards south, a zoom lens rested in the crook of an oak tree.
Click, click, click.
Chapter 37
South Florida
A blue-and-white Ford Cobra took a left at the fork, where most people go right.
The fork was outside the Last Chance Saloon, and it led to the high-arching Card Sound Bridge. The road touched down on land again, crossing Saunders Creek, Mosquito Creek, Tubby’s Creek and Steamboat Creek.
