And there she was in Florida: no camera, no crew, no star. So she had boarded the marine patrol boat with Mick Stranahan and Luis Córdova.
Standing in the moonglow, watching the tide lick the coral under her feet, Christina said again: “I can’t be a part of this.”
Stranahan put an arm around her. It reminded Christina of the hugs her father sometimes gave her when she was a child and something sad had made her cry. A gesture that said he was sorry, but nothing could be done; sometimes the world was not such a good place.
“Mick, let’s just go to the police.”
“These are the police. Remember?”
She looked at his face, searching the shadows for his expression. “So that’s who you’re waiting for.”
“Sure. Who’d you think?”
Christina pretended to slap herself on the forehead. “Oh, silly me—I thought it might be that huge skinny freak who keeps trying to shoot us.”
Stranahan shook his head. “Him, we don’t wait for.”
“Mick, this still isn’t right.”
But the hug was finished, and so was the discussion. “There’s a lantern back at the house,” he told her. “I want you to take a walk around the island. A long walk, okay?”
23
Joe Salazar said, “You got to steer yesterday.”
“For Christ’s sake,” mumbled Murdock.
“Come on, Johnny, it’s my turn.”
They were gassing up the boat at Crandon Marina on Key Biscayne. It was the sheriff’s department’s boat, a nineteen-foot Aquasport with a forest-green police stripe down the front. It was the same boat that the two detectives had borrowed the day before. The sergeant in charge of the marine division had not wanted to loan the boat to Murdock or Salazar because it was obvious that neither knew how to navigate. The sergeant wondered if they even knew how to swim. Both men were wearing new khaki deck shorts that revealed pale legs, chubby legs that had seldom been touched by salt or sunlight: landlubber’s legs. The sergeant had surrendered the Aquasport only when John Murdock flashed the murder warrant and said the suspect had been spotted on a house way out in Stiltsville. The sergeant had asked why they weren’t taking any backups along, since there was room on the boat, but Murdock hadn’t seemed to hear the question.
When the two detectives had returned to the dock a few hours later, the sergeant had been pleasantly surprised to find no major structural damage to the Aquasport or its drive shaft. But when Murdock and Salazar in their stupid khakis showed up again the following afternoon, the sergeant wondered how long their luck would hold out on the water.
“Go ahead and drive,” Murdock grumped at the gas dock. “I don’t give a shit.”
Joe Salazar took a stance behind the steering console. He tried not to gloat. Then it occurred to him: “Where do we look now?”
The day before, Stranahan’s stilt house had been empty. They had torn the rooms apart for clues to his whereabouts, found none, and departed in frustration. The whole way back, Murdock had complained about how the shoulder holster was chafing through his mesh tank top. Twice they had run the boat aground on bonefish flats, and both times Murdock had forced Salazar to hop out in the mud and push. For this, if for nothing else, Salazar figured that he deserved to be the captain today.
Murdock said: “I tell you where we look. We look in every goddamn stilt house on the bay.”
“Yeah, like a regular canvass.”
“Door to door, except by boat. You know the fuckwad’s out there somewhere.”
Joe Salazar felt better now that they had a plan. He paid the dock attendant for the gasoline, cranked up the big Evinrude on the back of the Aquasport, and aimed the bow toward Bear Cut. Or tried. The boat didn’t want to move.
The dock attendant snickered. “Helps to untie it,” he said, pointing with one of his bright white sneakers.
Sheepishly Joe Salazar unhitched the lines off the bow and stern and shoved off. John Murdock said, “What a wiseass that guy was. Didn’t he see we had guns?”
“Sure he did,” Salazar replied, steering tentatively toward the channel.