“No, Sheffield. It’s absolutely out of the question.”
Helen had her back to him, staring out the bank of windows that faced Biscayne Bay. It was ten to eight, Tuesday morning, hour thirty-two of Operation Joanie. One-third of the way. No sightings yet, no scent in the air. Everyone a little frayed. Out the windows it was a gray morning, the sun muffled behind low leaden clouds. In the distance the bay stretched before them like a platter of badly tarnished silver.
Helen wore a pair of khaki trousers and a blue-and-white-striped shirt, sleeves rolled up to her forearms. Her hair was fastened back with some sort of spring-loaded plastic clamp that looked like it doubled as a torture device. No counterfeit smiles this morning. The air around her was dense with bitter fumes.
“I told Hannah I’d meet her at eight-thirty at the Bayshore address.”
“I don’t care what you told her, Sheffield. You’re not doing it. No way in hell. Tell him, Charlie.”
Senator Ackerman was in the kitchen pouring himself another cup of coffee. Charlie Pettigrew sat on the gray leather couch, a mug balanced on his lap. In the master bedroom, hunched in front of an oversized computer monitor, Andy Barth tapped keys and fidgeted. Frank could see on the screen a color-coded street map of Dade County, Hannah’s car was a glowing red dot. The other agents were green. A dozen of them moving in and out of contact with Hannah’s car.
“She’s approaching Pinecrest Middle School. Two blocks east,” Andy called through the open doorway. He was wearing red walking shorts and a yellow tennis shirt, purple flip-flops. Trying for Miami-hot-and-flashy, but getting world-class geeky instead.
Charlie Pettigrew had a sip of his coffee and set it on the end table.
“Why’d you do this, Frank? What were you thinking?”
“Charlie, I didn’t do anything. She came to me.”
“But you agreed to participate. Why, Frank?”
“This blows the whole scenario, Sheffield,” Helen said, turning her head, speaking over her shoulder. “Was that your intention, to queer the operation?”
The senator wandered back into the living room blowing on his coffee.
“Nothing’s happened,” Ackerman said. “I think both of you need to calm down. If Hal was following the Keller woman last night and witnessed her meeting with an FBI agent, he would probably see it as perfectly normal.”
“It wasn’t in the script,” Shane said.
“Well, maybe it should’ve been,” said Frank. “Maybe you didn’t design this as flawlessly as you thought.”
Helen swung around, her lips drawn back, quivering on the edge of a snarl. The air around her was so combustible a stray electron could set it off.
“Do the two of you have some kind of problem I should be aware of?” Ackerman said. “This rancor.”
Shane got control of her mouth, shook her head.
“A disagreement on strategy, Senator,” she said. “Nothing more.”
She moved out of the harsh gray light from the window and perched stiffly on the arm of one of the leather chairs. Bluish shadows were showing in the hollows beneath her eyes. Her raccoon genes starting to emerge.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Ackerman said. “Because I’d hate to see dissension in the ranks sidetrack us from our mission.”
“Look,” Frank said. “In the first place, Hal Bonner can’t possibly know every damn FBI agent in the U.S. on sight. I’m in plainclothes, I could be anybody. And let’s say he does make me, he asks around, finds out what I do. What’s the harm? Like the senator says, it’s perfectly predictable Hannah would seek me out and that I’d accompany her. It’d be more suspicious if she went in there alone.”
“No,” Shane said. “Absolutely not. You’ll scare him off, the whole plan is jeopardized.”
“My vote’s with Frank,” Ackerman said. “I think he has a valid point. He goes to the Bayshore address. Then afterward he drops away. It looks better that way. More natural. Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t think of using someone like Sheffield in the original plan, Ms. Shane.”
“She’s dropped the kid off at school, now she’s circling back toward Old Cutler Road,” Andy Barth called out. “Estimated ETA is eight twenty-eight. Traffic thickening ahead of her.”
“Anything following?” Shane said. She was staring at the marble floor.
“Far as I can tell, only our people,” said Andy. “But it’s rush hour, it’s hard to be sure.”
Frank stood up, checked his watch.
“I’ll get going, then.”
Helen’s glance was poisonous. She gave the senator a taste of it.
“I don’t like this,” she said. “Not one bit.”
“So noted, Ms. Shane,” said Ackerman. “But let’s not forget Joanie, shall we? That’s who this is all about. Not you, not Sheffield, not me. None of us. It’s not about scoring points, it’s about my daughter. What happened to Joanie Lynn Ackerman out on that snow-covered mountain slope.”
Everyone stood in place, a moment of silence for Joanie, and for the senator’s staggering, unrelenting grief, then Charlie Pettigrew stepped forward, put his hand on Frank’s shoulder, and steered toward the door of the apartment, then down the hall to the elevator. He jabbed the button and gave Sheffield a hard stare.
“Okay, so what’s really going on, Frank? Between you and Shane.”
“I can see that.”
“Fact is, we’re working on a pretty good personality clash. She came by my place last night, started talking trash about my dad. I threw some back at her and it got testy.”
“Well, get over it, whatever it is. There’s too much riding on this operation for a bunch of schoolyard name-calling. That clear, Frank?”
Sheffield nodded. He watched the elevator numbers count upward toward their floor.
“Senator’s got a tight grip on your short hairs too, huh, Charlie?”
“Damn right he does. And he’s got Director Kelly too. If we don’t nail this asshole soon, believe me, a lot of (ticks are going to get seriously shortened. And believe me, Frank, at this stage in life I can’t spare an extra inch.”
The doors slid open. Charlie Pettigrew reached out and held them wide. Randy Sanderson and Ronald Scruggs stepped off. His colleagues from the Miami field office, head-of-the-class poster-boys, there for a briefing. They nodded to Charlie Pettigrew, and both of them gave Frank a quick once-over. What the hell was this fuckoff doing with the big boys?
“Hey, Randy. Hey, Ron.”
They made their curt hellos and walked on toward the suite.
“It’s okay, guys, don’t worry,” Frank called. “Only reason they invited me along is for comic relief.”
They shook their heads and kept on going.
“Look, Frank,” Charlie said. “No more screwing around. Play this straight, okay? For old times’ sake if nothing else.”
Frank stepped aboard. Gave him the same two-fingered salute he’d used last night. Starting to like the gesture. Echoes of Bogart. Maybe he’d keep it in the repertoire.
On the way down he checked himself out in the mirrored stainless steel. He’d taken a little longer than usual dressing this morning. The tan slacks without the pleats, the Bass loafers, the black polo shirt. No jewelry, a light mist of some Ralph Lauren aftershave one of the secretaries had given him last Christmas. He hadn’t used cologne in a decade. Not since he was courting his ex-wife. Only woman he’d ever met who actually liked Old Spice, which should have told him something right there if he’d been paying attention.
He got a quick ride to the lobby and stepped out into the marble luxury of the Grand Bay Hotel. Lots of mirrors, lots of tall, slender beautiful people reflected in them. And whatever minor confidence in his appearance he’d enjoyed while looking at his stainless steel reflection, departed in a sudden rush.
This stretch of Bayshore Drive was filled with dignified old mansions built up high on the limestone and coral ridgeline. Most of the houses had large open porches and heavy tapered columns, staid, prosaic residences, more like something you’d find in a Chicago suburb than a neighborhood on the edge of a subtropical bay. When they’d been built, about the time Hannah’s parents were born, there were no marinas or restaurants or condos across the narrow highway which meandered before them along the coastline. Back then, in the thirties, these homes had sweeping and unobstructed views of a bay as blue and pristine as a Tahitian lagoon.
But in the last few decades the nearby village of Coconut Grove had swollen into a chic and noisy metropolitan center, a playground for feral teens and South American tourists. The narrow coast road had been widened to four lanes and a stream of cars and throbbing motorcycles passed at every hour of the day and night. All week long the Grove’s clubs and bars raved till dawn, so these elegant houses that had once presided over a wide and tranquil panorama now looked down on the blue haze of ceaseless Miami traffic, and what had once been a treasured address in the city was simply a row of faded villas with the moldy look of nursing homes for the dispossessed.
Hannah drove slowly, counting down the numbers until she spotted the address and swung her car onto the shoulder of the road. The house she was looking for was a faded pink stucco affair with two large dormer windows and a bleached-out red barrel tile roof. Its open porch ran the length of the front, and like its neighbors it was perched atop the high limestone crest. Craggy fissures of rock showed through the grass near the roadway. Sprawling oaks and banyans shaded the yard and obscured a large portion of the house. To the west a steep asphalt driveway mounted the bluff, then disappeared from view up on the plateau where the house stood.
She made a U-turn, cut sharply into the entrance, and held it in low gear as she rumbled up the steep asphalt drive. Frank Sheffield was already there, leaning against the door of a green Miata parked in the shade of an oak to the side of the house. His convertible top was down.
Hannah drew in behind him and turned off the engine.
As Frank approached, Hannah reached back into the jump seat and gripped her black leather bag. A few pounds heavier than usual, because of the loaded .357 Smith & Wesson in its suede holster. She hadn’t handled the pistol for five years, not since that morning when she placed it on a high shelf in her bedroom closet. It had been her father’s gun, the weapon he’d chosen that morning when the killers broke into his house, the unfired pistol Ed Keller was holding when he was killed.
She got out of the car as Frank ambled over. She was wearing jeans and a dark green cotton top, Nike running shoes, hair loose, no jewelry. Ready to rock and roll.
“Nice car,” he said.
He took off his sunglasses and squinted at her through the dull gray light.
“Randall talked me into it. I’m not much of a car person myself. He chose the color and everything.”
“Smart kid. He picks out his ride five years early, knows you’ll have it broken in by the time it’s his.”
“I don’t believe Randall has such a long view.”
“You never know. Kids can be sneaky. Regular little con-nivers.”
“Connivers?” she said. “Do you have kids, Frank?”
“Yeah, well, my son is no conniver.”
“That’s exactly what my mother thought, bless her heart.”
She looked at him for a moment, then glanced around the wide and empty lawn.
“So, is anybody home?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Couple of minutes.”
The front porch was bare, the lawn was shaggy. In several of the windows the Venetian blinds were in disarray, slats broken or twisted as if a recent storm had blown through the old place and left chaos in its wake.
“Anybody from work know you’re here? What you’re up to?”
“You mean like do we have backup?”
“Something like that.”
Frank shook his head.
“You worry too much, Hannah. Even in the unlikely event that Fielding’s here, the old guy would be close to seventy. Two trained law-enforcement types like us, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“At least tell me you’re armed.”
He reached behind him and patted the small of his back.
Through a stand of Australian pines that ran down the east perimeter of the property, Hannah could see a lawn-service company at work. Men in yellow shirts mowing and weed-eating. But otherwise there was no sign of life anywhere around.
“I was wondering,” Sheffield said. “You ever been in a kayak?”
She peered at him as if he’d spoken in tongues.
“A kayak,” he said. “Long and slender like a canoe.”
“I know what a kayak is, Frank.”
“Well, I have two of them. One’s a two-man, the other’s one-man. I was wondering if you and Randall might want to come out, take a little tour across the flats. Around sunset you see lots of interesting stuff. Rays, sharks, crabs. A few inches of water, that’s all you need, you skim across the surface like a water bug. It’s very tranquil. Or if you wanted to leave Randall somewhere, a baby-sitter or something, it could be just you and me in the two-man kayak. That would work too. Either way is fine. I like kids. They usually respond to me.”
“I bet they do.”
“So, you want to come out?”
“What’re you thinking, Frank? We’re about to walk in a house where the killer of my parents may be hiding out and you’re asking me for a date?”
“A kayak tour is what I was thinking. I guess you could call it a date. But that seems a little more formal than what I had in mind.”
She shook her head and sighed. Truth be known, it was the best offer she’d had in a while.
“Listen, Frank. I appreciate the gesture, but we need to take care of this little problem before we talk about kayaking. Okay?”
“Sure,” he said. “Okay, fine:’
“So how do you suggest we proceed?”
“Ring the bell or break down the door. What’s your preference?”
Frank was smiling at her, not taking this seriously. Only reason he was here was because she’d bullied him into it. What he wanted was to go kayaking. Skim across the surface. Be a water bug.
“Are you on the clock now, Frank? Or is this off time for you?”
The humor leaked out of his smile.
“Hannah, I’m at the stage in my career where that distinction has totally lost meaning.”
“So you’re not holding a search warrant?”
“We find something worth bothering a judge about, we can have a warrant in an hour.”
“Meanwhile we violate the hell out of this guy’s rights, give him a free pass out of jail.”
“I truly doubt it will come to that.”
She turned and marched across the pitted driveway and mounted the steep front steps. Red Cuban tile covered the stairs and ran the length of the porch. Perched on the railing near a rusty mailbox was a large gray squirrel. He eyed Hannah, unimpressed, and continued to munch on a seedpod.
The front door was a couple of inches ajar.
Frank was beside her. He reached out and nudged the door inward. Its rusty hinges creaked. Calling out a halfhearted hello, Frank Sheffield stepped over the threshold.
She followed him into a large high-ceilinged room, shadowy and dense with the mustiness of disuse. There was no furniture in the room. Simply a wide fireplace of quarried coral topped with an ornately carved mahogany mantel. The floors were dark, wide planks, probably old heart of pine from the days when such wood still grew in abundance throughout the state. There were dark, heavy beams stretching across the ceiling, and two wrought-iron light fixtures hung at either end of the big room, as round and large as wagon wheels with half the glass globes missing.
Frank called out another hello but his voice was swallowed up by the dark airless space.
“Looks like the banquet hall for a Viking warrior,” he said. “Big and dreary. And decidedly vacant.”
“We’ve just walked in the door, Frank. You want to give up already?”
She stepped over to the fireplace and ran her hand across its slick surface. The coral was etched with thousands of tiny squiggles, the unreadable hieroglyphs of its ancient biology.
She could hear the lawn mowers roaring next door, and the low drone of traffic from out on Bayshore Drive. And there was something else. Something on the lower register of her hearing. She made a quick tour of the two other rooms. A parlor with another small fireplace and a wall of built-in bookshelves, all bare. Then a large white kitchen with what looked an icebox from the previous century, and cupboards that ran from eye level to the fifteen-foot ceiling. The shelves barren, the refrigerator empty, electricity switched off.
Frank stood in the doorway and watched her prowl the room. Watched her open drawers and cabinets, peering in the cracks.
“I bet you were a good cop.”
“I was okay,” she said.
Wedged in a back corner of one of the tile counters was a white business card. Hannah turned her back to Sheffield and palmed the card, stepped away from the counter and slipped it into her hip pocket. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Sheffield. Only that his passion for this enterprise fell so short of hers that she felt a need to safeguard any stray evidence. No telling if or when Frank would get around to analyzing them on his own.
“This is the kind of place,” Frank said, rapping on a countertop with his knuckles, “everything’s built so well, it makes you sad thinking about the plywood bullshit we live with nowadays.”
“Let’s try upstairs,” she said.
“Right behind you.”
It was a curved staircase, more white coral worn smooth by years of leather footsteps. The railing was an intricate wrought-iron filigree, a floral pattern, hibiscus blooms and a tangled vine. When she reached the landing, she heard that same noise coming from further down the corridor. And recognized it now, a quiet voice.
She dug her hand in her purse, came out with the Smith.
“Whoa,” he whispered, and laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. “You’re a civilian, remember?”
He’d drawn his nine-millimeter, a bluish Glock.
She followed two steps behind him down the narrow hallway past one empty bedroom, then another, until they came to a closed door at the end of the corridor.
Frank put his left hand on the knob, back to the door, pistol by his cheek. He looked at her and winked, gave her a quick wag of his pistol, signaling her to stand clear, then he laid his shoulder against the dark wood and shoved it open.
He entered in a rush. Hannah lost sight of him briefly, then she brushed the door aside and charged forward into the unlit chamber, stumbling to a sudden stop.
Heavy curtains were drawn against the light on two sets of windows. For a moment her eyes were dazzled by the sudden darkness, then a second or two later she began to make out the blue shimmer of a large-screen television.
“Jesus,” Frank said. He was beside her now, a hand on her back.
For a moment Hannah saw only the fuzzy snow of faulty reception, then the image gradually resolved into slightly better focus. A desiccated man in a white nightgown was propped up in what looked like a hospital bed. Beside him several plastic IV bags dangled from a chrome rack and an array of tubes ran from the bottle to his forearm and chest.
The picture was grainy and had a halting slow-motion feel, and though she had only seen his face in a handful of photographs, there was no doubt that the withered man in the bed was J. J. Fielding. He had a long, narrow face, grown gaunt in the last five years. His hair was extravagantly full, a bright silver, and he wore it swept back on the sides and pomaded into place, as crudely out of style as the hairdo of some oafish Russian diplomat. He had a deep crease in his chin and the fleshy lips of a sybarite and deep-set eyes that seemed both cold and anxious to please as if this were a man who took no great pleasure in the cruelties his appetites required him to commit.
Beside him, wearing a blue surgical gown, was a tall, potbellied gentleman with windblown Einstein hair. He was scribbling with a ballpoint pen, paging through sheets clamped to a metal clipboard.
The television was a new model, a Sony. It sat up on a metal rack, the kind with rollers that you might find in the visual ed room of a high school.
When Fielding spoke, his lips seemed to be a second out of synch with the amplified voice that filled the room.
“So at this point, I’m told there’s nothing further they can do,” he said. “Nothing but painkillers, morphine, Demerol. They’re letting me self-administer the drugs, but I’m trying not to use too much because I want to stay clear-headed as long as possible. The good news and the bad news are the same. Pancreatic cancer is quick. Dr. Mau tells me I’ve only got a few days left. When I heard that, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed to do this. To let you hear from me. There are so many things I need to explain.”
The old man’s voice was a squeaky tenor, a warped violin, badly out of tune.
Hannah stepped closer to the television. The picture was framed with the familiar white border she saw every day on her own computer screen. Hannah touched the edge of the screen, running a finger along the cool glass as if to make certain it was real.
“This is the Internet,” she said. “The guy is broadcasting over the goddamn Internet. See? Right there, that line—www.Deathwatch.com. A Web address and everything. Can you believe this shit?”
On the screen, Fielding took a sip of clear liquid from a tall glass and handed the glass back to his doctor.
Then he craned forward in the bed and peered into the camera.
“I’ve sent you something, Hannah. I sent something to you. A secret message. I believe you’ve received it by now and that you’re watching me. I want you to come to me. I need to see you, to talk to you in person. Please, Hannah, I have something terrible to confess. It’s about your parents. The terrible things I’ve done. Please come, Hannah. Right away. There isn’t much time left. Look at the message I’ve left for you and do what it says. Please, Hannah. Please, I beg you.”