She wasn’t sure why Frank Sheffield was so tense. Maybe still worked up about the redhead who’d tossed the wine on him. Nervous she’d come back, find him sitting there with another woman. Hannah couldn’t read him. He seemed different from the breezy beach bum she remembered. Kept his eyes down, dodging hers, fumbling with the book, looking at the pages, but not really studying them. She wasn’t sure how she could tell, but he didn’t seem to be paying full attention. Leafing too quickly, looking at nothing long enough to absorb it.
“Look at the front, the numbers in the front,” Hannah said. “And the name.”
Sheffield took a breath and blew it out.
He flipped to the front, tilted the book so it caught the full light.
“J. J. Fielding,” he said.
He looked up at her. Holding her gaze for a couple of seconds, then his eyes straying off toward the tiki bar. Some folks over there dancing to a Phil Collins tune.
“Yeah, J. J. Fielding. His signature in a book that just happened to be lying in the middle of a table in the doctor’s office where I take Randall every week. Imagine that.”
“And you’re saying what?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious, Frank. Someone’s sending me a message.”
“Could be another J. J. Fielding entirely.”
“Oh, yeah, the name is so popular.”
“And what do you expect from me?” Still keeping his eyes from her. Sitting stiffly in his chair like he was on trial.
“Well, I thought you’d be intrigued. A little startled maybe. Some normal human response like that.”
“I’m intrigued. Sure, I am.”
He met her eyes. Smiling, but hiding something behind it. She couldn’t tell what. Maybe he thought she was nuts. Scribbled Fielding’s name in the book herself to get her parents’ murder investigation cranked up again.
Hannah said, “The case is still open, isn’t it? Fielding’s money-laundering indictment, the embezzlement? You’d still like to catch this guy.”
“Sure, we would,” Frank said. “And so would a lot of other people.”
“You mean the Cali cartel,” she said.
“How’d you know about that?”
“It was in the paper.”
“It was?”
“You should get off the sports page, Frank, maybe you’d learn something. Four hundred million and change, I seem to recall. I remember thinking, with that kind of money Fielding could hide anywhere. A penthouse at the Ritz, order room service till the end of time.”
“Four hundred and sixty-three million is the exact figure. Largest embezzlement in U.S. history.”
“But for some reason this doesn’t interest you. J. J. Fielding. The name of an FBI fugitive written in a book, that doesn’t arouse your curiosity.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What exactly did you say, Frank?”
“This is crazy. A copy of your book, Fielding’s name in it. It’s Looney Tunes.”
She stiffened.
“Give it to me.” She held out her hand. ‘The book. Give it to me.”
He hesitated a second, then handed her the copy of First Light.
She stood up, crossing her arms over her chest, pressing the book tight.
“Look, I’m sorry I bothered you. Just go back to whatever you were doing, forget any of this happened.”
“Wait a minute, would you?”
“I’ve got to get Randall home. It’s his bedtime.”
She turned and headed back down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. Then Frank was beside her, stride for stride. He put a hand on her shoulder and she halted.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You caught me by surprise, coming out of the dark like that. The book and everything.”
“Look, it’s nice to see you again, Frank. But I can take it from here.”
“Hey, wait a goddamn second, will you? I said I was sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you were Looney Tunes, I mean the book, the situation. This whole thing.”
She could see Randall watching from one row over. Sitting in the same position she’d left him. Frank stepped in front of her, his chest blocking her view of Randall. The curly hair lit up golden by the parking lot lights.
“Don’t you ever wear a goddamn shirt, Sheffield?”
He grinned.
“Only when it’s required.”
She took a step back, used her left hand to hold the hair off her face.
A white Lincoln caught them in its lights for a moment, then rolled on.
“You come out here, dump this in my lap, what exactly do you expect?”
“I guess I expected you to help,” she said. “But never mind. It’s after hours, you’re busy with all this.” She waved her arm toward the tiki hut and the beach.
“You want my help, like what, in an official capacity?”
“Official, unofficial. I thought you’d be interested.”
“I am,” he said. “I’m interested.”
Frank was looking at her, his gaze steady and resolute. But Dan Romano had taught her to mistrust eyes. An expert liar could fool himself into believing what he was saying was true, and bring that sincerity to his eyes. What you looked at was the throat. The amount of swallowing. A telltale sign of a liar’s dry mouth.
Frank’s Adam’s apple was bobbing. Every two or three seconds it moved.
“Look,” she said. “Those numbers in the front of the book, they’re some kind of half-assed code. Randall figured it out and it describes the murders, details only an insider would’ve known. And there’s an address there too. An address on Bayshore Drive, and a time for the meeting. By nine tomorrow morning.”
Sheffield nodded.
She said, “Randall is off to school at eight in the morning. I figure I can get to the Bayshore address by around eight-thirty. Maybe you’d like to drop by, we could see what this is all about. If you get lucky, you might even be able to make an arrest. You still make arrests, don’t you, Frank? You haven’t got so laid-back you don’t do that anymore, have you?”
Frank swallowed again.
“I’ll have to read my manual,” he said. “Brush up on how it’s done.”
“Eight-thirty then. The address is twenty-six forty-nine Bayshore. You need to write that down?”
“Twenty-six forty-nine. My memory’s still working fine.” Another swallow.
“Sure there’s not something bothering you, Frank? Something you want to talk about.”
He waved away a night bug dancing at his ear.
“Twenty-six forty-nine,” he said, mustering a smile. “I’ll be there at eight-thirty. But if I’m a few minutes late, you’ll wait for me, right?”
“I’ll give you five minutes,” she said. “Then I’m going in.”
“Okay, okay, eight-thirty sharp,” he said. “Scout’s honor.” And made a two-finger salute.
And another swallow.
* * *
Hal sat on his motorcycle in the large dark parking lot.
The air was different out here. It smelled like fish and seaweed. There was wind rattling through the palm trees. He watched as Hannah Keller got in her small car and started it and pulled out of the parking lot.
The man she had been talking to stood and watched her drive away.
Hal waited. He watched other cars pull out of the parking lot. They might be following Hannah Keller or they might not be.
Hal would ask somebody in the motel who this man was. He’d find out his name, what he did for a living, maybe even his relationship to Hannah. The man looked like a cop. That’s how he stood, how he walked, like a lazy cop, a cop who drank too much, who sat around and watched TV. Worthless, slothful. A doughnut lover.
After he learned who the man was, then Hal had another person he wanted to talk to, somebody else he’d seen. Somebody he was curious about. He could let Hannah Keller go for the time being. She was taking her son home to bed. A good mother. Tucking him in, singing him lullabies. What good mothers did. He could pick her up again tomorrow morning. That would be soon enough.
From where he stood in the dark, Hal could smell the beach. He could smell coconut butter suntan lotion.
He’d been to the beach once long ago. Summer vacation, the eastern shore. Someone took him, he couldn’t remember which one of his foster parents it was. Hal spent a while digging in the sand, then when he’d worked up his nerve, he walked down to the shore and stepped into the ocean. But the waves knocked him down and tried to drag him under. Like the ocean knew who he was, what an evil mind he had and the ocean wanted to kill him. Hal almost drowned.
A woman pulled him out of the water and carried him back to the beach.
The woman laid him on the sand and tried to press her mouth to his, but Hal pushed her away. He spit up water, then he got up and marched back down to the ocean and he walked into it and the ocean tried to push him down again. But Hal was ready this time. He kept his balance. He pushed back against the water. He slapped and punched and fought the ocean for a long time until the adult who had brought him to the beach yelled for him to come out of the water and go home.
By then Hal was exhausted. But he’d beaten the ocean. He wasn’t scared of it. He wasn’t scared of anything. He was seven years old.