Murdock, he knew, would not appreciate the help.
Garcia spent the rest of the afternoon on Key Biscayne, showing Chemo’s composite to dock boys, bartenders, and cocktail waitresses at Sunday’s-on-the-Bay. By four o’clock the detective had three positive I.D. ‘s saying that the man in the drawing was the same one who had been drinking with Chloe Simpkins Stranahan on the evening she died.
Now Al Garcia was a happy man. When he got back to police headquarters, he called a florist and ordered a dozen long-stemmed roses for Paula Downs. While he was on the phone, he noticed a small UPS parcel on his desk. Garcia tore it open with his free hand.
Inside was a videotape in a plastic sleeve. On the sleeve was a scrap of paper, attached with Scotch tape. A note.
“I told you so. Regards, Mick.”
Garcia took the videotape to the police audio room, where a couple of the vice guys were screening the very latest in bestiality verite. Garcia told them to beat it and plugged Stranahan’s tape into a VHS recorder. He watched it twice. The second time, he stubbed out his cigar and took notes.
Then he went searching for Murdock and Salazar.
In the detective room, nobody seemed to know where they were. Garcia didn’t like the looks of things.
The copy of Paula’s sketch of Blondell Wayne Tatum lay crumpled next to an empty Doritos bag on John Murdock’s desk. “Asshole,” Garcia hissed. He didn’t care who heard him. He pawed through the rest of Murdock’s debris until he found a pink message slip. The message was from the secretary of Circuit Judge Cassie B. Ireland.
Garcia groaned. Cassie Ireland had been a devoted golfing partner of the late and terminally crooked Judge Raleigh Goomer. Cassie himself was known to have serious problems with drinking and long weekends in Las Vegas. The problems were in the area of chronic inability to afford either vice.
The message to Detective John Murdock from Judge Cassie Ireland’s secretary said: “Warrant’s ready.”
Al Garcia used Murdock’s desk phone to call the judge’s chambers. He told the secretary who he was. Not surprisingly, the judge was gone for the day. Gone straight to the tiki bar at the Airport Hilton, Garcia thought.
To the judge’s secretary he said, “There’s been a little mixup down here. Did Detective Murdock ask Judge Ireland to sign a warrant?”
“Sure did,” chirped the secretary. “I’ve still got the paperwork right here. John and his partner came by and picked it up yesterday morning.”
Al Garcia figured he might as well ask, just to make sure. “Can you tell me the name on the warrant?”
“Mick Stranahan,” the secretary replied. “First-degree murder.”
Christina Marks found the darkness exciting. As she floated naked on her back, the warm water touched her everyplace. Sometimes she stood up and curled her toes in the cool, rough sand, to see how deep it was. A few yards away, Mick Stranahan broke the surface with a swoosh, a glistening blond sea creature. He sounded like a porpoise when he blew the air from his lungs.
“This is nice,” Christina called to him.
“No hot showers on the key,” he said. “No shower, period. Cartwright is a no-frills guy.”
“I said it’s nice. I mean it.”
Stranahan swam closer and rose to his feet. The water came up to his navel. In the light from a quarter moon Christina could make out the fresh bullet scar on his shoulder; it looked like a smear of pink grease. She found herself staring—he was different out here on the water. Not the same man whom she had seen in the hospital or at her apartment. On the island he seemed larger and more feral, yet also more serene.
“It’s so peaceful,” Christina said. They were swimming on a marly bonefish flat, forty yards from Cartwright’s dock.
“I’m glad you can relax,” Stranahan said. “Most women would be jittery, having been shot at twice by a total stranger.”
Christina laughed easily, closed her eyes and let the wavelets tickle her neck. Mick was right; she ought to be a nervous wreck by now. But she wasn’t.
“Maybe I’m losing my mind,” she said to the stars. She heard a soft splash as he went under again. Seconds later something cool brushed against her ankle, and she smiled. “All right, mister, no funny business.”