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DIVERS FROM THE SHERIFF’S Office and Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department Thirty-Four were down in the water just off the docks, in the precise location where I’d lived on Philip’s boat for nearly three years.
There was little left to the boat itself once the fire was finally extinguished.
Mike Stone, a veteran detective with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department took a drag from his cigarette and glanced at me as he inhaled. He let out a stream of smoke just past my head and gave me a stare. “Not surprised to see you involved here, Walsh.” He tossed the butt on the ground and rubbed it into the asphalt with the bottom of his shoe. He picked it up and tossed it underhand into a steel barrel a few feet away. “So tell me one more time. You used to live here, but you don’t any longer? And that was your boat?”
I shook my head. “The owner is a friend of mine. I took care of it for him while he lived overseas. So, yes, I lived on it. But he’d come back recently, so I wasn’t staying on it any longer.”
He narrowed his eyes and looked toward the Fire and Rescue boat—part of the F&R’s Marine Unit—just a few feet off the docks. He stuck another cigarette in his mouth and let it hang there without lighting it. It was a look I’m sure he got off the cop shows he watched just to perfect his tough-cop mannerisms.
Mike stepped toward the dock as the divers came up from the river. He said to one of the divers, “Any sign?”
The diver, a female, shook her head, pulled the mask from her face and walked away.
Mike turned and looked at Alex. “So what exactly were you two doing down here this early in the morning?”
I was about to answer myself, but Alex had a much better relationship with Mike than I did. So I kept my mouth shut.
“Henry was down here, out for a run.”
Mike looked me up and down. “You? A run?” He let out a slight snort.
“I was out for a walk.”
“Why here?” he said.
“Why here, what?”
“Why walk here? You said you don’t live here anymore, but you came here anyway?”
I looked him right in the eye but didn’t answer.
He gave Alex a look, cupped his hands over his cigarette and lit it. He turned back to me. “Where’d you walk from?”
“Why’s that matter?”
Mike took a drag from his cigarette. “If it didn’t matter I wouldn’t have asked.” He held his glare at me and exhaled his smoke, again, toward my face.
“I’m staying upstairs from Billy’s Place.”
He gave me a smirk. “That’s where you live?”
I turned and walked away from him.
“Hey, I’m not done with you,” he said.
But I ignored him, standing a few feet away looking toward the water and close enough to hear Alex and Mike.
Alex said, “Why are you treating him like some kind of suspect?”
Mike turned his head to me and raised his voice. “Am I treating you like a suspect, Henry?”
I turned and looked at him over my shoulder, without answering.
Mike stepped toward me. “Listen, you don’t have to take everything so personally. Am I a little suspicious you’re here? Yes. It’s clear you must know something. And I know the alleged victim is a friend of yours...even though he tossed you off his boat so he’d have a good night's sleep. Is that right?”
I turned a little, looked at him and nodded.
Alex walked ahead of us and leaned over the edge of the dock, her eyes down toward the water.
Mike scratched his head. “Was Philip here alone?”
Alex bent down and picked something up off the dock. She turned and looked back at me and Mike.
“I don’t know. He had a girlfriend. A fiancé.”
Mike’s smug expression dropped from his face. As if talking to himself, he said, “There could’ve been a second victim.” He squinted, again scratching his head as he took a drag of his cigarette. “Was she on that boat?”
I shook my head.
“But she’s here? In town?”
“She might be. I’m not sure.” I glanced at Alex. She had her back to us, looking out toward the river.
Mike walked away without saying another word, stopping to talk to a group of the men and women standing on the dock in diving gear.
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ALEX AND I STOOD BY her Jeep. “You don’t think you should tell Mike about Victoria?”
I shook my head and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. But I didn’t lie. I don’t know if Victoria was on that boat. As far as I know, she wasn’t.” I stepped up into her Jeep, grabbed the roll bar over my head and sat down in the passenger seat. “I tell him about the call, then what? She told Philip not to call the Sheriff’s Office. Mike gets involved, then what? They kill her? It’s all on me.”
“What if something happens to her and you didn’t tell them?”
I looked out the side view mirror toward the docks. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Not a lot of options right now.” I pulled Philip’s charred phone from my pocket and looked at it, front-and-back. “Know anyone who can get this phone to work?”
Alex turned to me, her eyes wide and her eyebrows high on her head. “You took evidence from the scene?”
I looked her right in the eye and paused for a moment. “Can you get it to work?”
She turned the key, started the Jeep, and took the phone from my hand. She looked at both sides of it, then tucked it in the storage box between our seats. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“See if we can get some numbers from it.” I could tell, watching Alex, her wheels were turning. “What’re you thinking?” I said.
She shrugged her shoulders. “If Victoria was really kidnapped...”
I cocked my head. “Why should we think she wasn’t?”
“Well...” She hesitated. “It’s just that Philip gets this alleged phone call, early in the morning, right?” She turned, her eyes my way. “How do they come and take her off the boat? Who would’ve known Philip wasn’t there? That he’d gone out for a run that early?”
Alex turned the steering wheel, maneuvered the Jeep around the Sheriff’s vehicles and Jacksonville Fire and Rescue vehicles. TV trucks took what little space was left in the marina’s parking lot.
“You know, something crossed my mind...I know this sounds a little crazy but what if that bomb was for me?”
Alex shrugged a shoulder and took a quick look at me, her eyes on the road. “Well, technically they’re not sure it was a bomb. But, either way...why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. I have my enemies, you know. And a lot of them might know I used to live on that boat.”
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WE WERE BACK AT ALEX’S house and sat in the driveway, neither of us stepping down from the Jeep.
Alex said, “I still think you need to tell Mike everything you know.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a detective with the Sheriff’s Office. It’s his job. It makes no sense for you to—”
“I know he’s your friend,” I said. “Or whatever you call him. But I can’t help it. I don’t trust they’ll do the right thing. That means putting Victoria’s life in danger.”
“But two people are missing. Who knows, they both might be dead.” Alex turned to me in her seat and tucked one leg up under the other. “You don’t like Mike because he does everything by the book.”
“No, I don’t like him because he’s got an ego the size of Texas.”
She paused a moment, looked straight ahead toward her house in front of where we were parked. She turned to me and said, “Henry, you know how they say that pilots, when they’re flying a plane—”
“Hold on,” I said. “What exactly does pilots flying a plane have to do with?”
Alex closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Will you just listen to me for a second? Pilots are supposed to trust their instruments. Period. They’re not trained to improvise unless it’s the last resort. You don’t fly with your gut.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the flying lesson.”
She gave me a look. “Mike trusts his instruments. You go by your gut. There’s a time and place for both. But you can’t fault him for being the way he is. He’s a good cop...a good detective.”
“Great work when Jackie Lawson was falsely accused and ended up behind bars, wasn’t it?”
Alex stared back at me, slowly shaking her head. She stepped from the Jeep and walked up the walkway to her house. Her dog, Raz, was waiting for her inside the door.
She turned and over her shoulder said, “You coming?”
I got out and walked toward her.
She stuck her key in the door and turned to me. “You and Mike would actually work well together. It’s sort of a good fit. You know how they say opposites attract.”
“I never believed that was true. Opposites are opposites for a reason.”
She held the door open with her hip and I followed her inside, the temperature not much different from the warm outside air, although it was cooling a bit with a break in the season, but still warm.
“Is your AC broken?”
She threw her keys on the counter in the kitchen and kneeled down to pet her dog, Raz. “That whole house fan that came with the place does a good job, especially at night. Sucks the warm air right out the roof without running the HVAC unit.” She stood up straight and opened the fridge. “You hungry?”
“I am. But I wonder if you’re right. Maybe I should talk to Mike. If Philip’s dead, there’s a chance we’ll never know who has Victoria.”