Claw Back (Louis Kincaid) (14 page)

“She’s at work.” She started to close the door but Louis wedged a foot in it to stop her.

“Hey!”

“Katy’s not at work,” Louis said. “You sure she’s not here?”

The roommate rubbed her face. “Yeah, I’m sure. I saw her leave early this morning when I got home. I work the night desk at the Clarion and we sort of pass each other coming and going.”

“Her car is still in the lot,” Louis said.

The woman stepped out and squinted down over the railing. “Huh,” she said. “That’s weird. She must’ve taken the Jeep instead.”

“What Jeep?”

“Her own car.
She keeps it parked in number ten, next to
her work truck
.”

Louis looked down at the
FWC
Bronco then back at the roommate. “What time did she leave?” he asked.

“About six.”

“Was she dressed for work?”

The roommate nodded. “Yeah, the same thing she wears every day, khaki shorts, and one of her ranger shirts over a tee. And that ugly baseball cap.”

“Did she take her radio with her?”

“Yeah.
She keeps it in a charger on the kitchen counter next to her keys and I saw her take it.”

“
Does she have a gun
?”

“Gun?
Yeah, she has a gun.”

“Where does she keep it?”

“In her bedside table.”

“Would you
see if it’s there
, please?”

The roommate eyed him. “Stay here.” She shut the door and locked it. Louis waited, sweat beading on his face. Only nine-fifteen and it was already in the high eighties.

             
The door jerked open. “The gun’s not there,” she said, stifling a yawn. “We finished here? I’m pulling an extra shift today and I need my sleep.”

             
Louis thanked the roommate and went back downstairs to the FWC Bronco. It was locked. He looked in
the window
.

             
Immaculate as usual.
No radio stuck in the console charger.
Nothing strange.
Except...

             
There was something on the back seat. He cupped his hands on the back window.
Clothing.
A white shirt with the prominent FWC emblem on the breast.
And Katy’s ball cap.

             
What the hell was going on here?

             
Louis did a slow scan of the parking lot, his eyes focusing in on the asphalt around the Bronco and its surface.
No
sign of a struggle.
             

There was only one explanation. She had started off
her day
as normal, maybe to meet him for breakfast but had changed her mind. She had left in her personal unmarked vehicle but had apparently felt the need to shed her work shell. There was only
one
reason she had done it: She had gone back to the reservation and didn’t want to be seen as an outsider. But was it on a personal visit to see Aunt Betty
? Or was she defying Moses and going to see Keno?

That would explain why she didn’t call him. But why hadn’t she at least checked in with her office or told them she was going to be late?

He walked back to his Mustang. As he was unlocking the door something in the next car caught
the sunlight.
He went to the Toyota and
peered in the window.
It was a
piece of silver
hanging f
rom the rearview mirror.
It was
odd
-looking, like a woman’s heavy silver necklace
.

Louis did a quick scan of the Toyota’s back seat but saw nothing strange. He went around the back. The plate was from Hendry County, not Lee.
The
Seminole reservation was
located in Hendry
.

It meant nothing. But it could mean everything. He jotted down the plate number in his notebook then wiped a sleeve over his sweaty face, pulling in a painful breath.

Something didn’t feel right in his gut and it wasn’t his bruised ribs.

             
“You’re becoming a pain in the ass, Kincaid.”

             
Louis wasn’t in the mood to argue with Mobley but he understood the sheriff’s position. The evidence he had offered Mobley about Katy was razor-thin and there was no way the sheriff would authorize a search for someone who had been out of contact for less than four hours.

             
“I’m late for a meeting,” Mobley said.

             
He picked up a file and headed for the door but then he stopped and looked back. “Are you getting personal with this woman?”

             
“What?”

             
“Your Indian lady.
Is something going on?”

             
“Goddamn it, Lance.”

             
Mobley shook his head.
“Then why th
is
knee-jerk reaction?”

             
Louis stared him straight in the eye. “How long you been a cop?”

             
“Seventeen years.”

             
“Haven’t you ever just had a bad feeling about something?”

             
Mobley’s jaw tightened. “What do you want from me?”

             
“Make a call to the Seminole police. They’ll talk to you.”

             
Mobley hesitated then turned to his secretary outside the office. “Ginger, get me the Seminole police chief on the phone.”

             
He went back to his desk and a few seconds later the phone buzzed. Mobley picked up the receiver. Louis waited while Mobley talked to someone he politely addressed as Chief
Gilley
.

             
“Ask about Aunt Betty,” Louis said.

             
Mobley covered the receiver.
“Who?”

             
“Katy’s aunt. Make sure she didn’t die.”

             
Mobley stared at him and went back to his call. A minute later he hung up.

             
“No one has seen her,” he said. “And Aunt Betty is still kicking.”

             
Ginger appeared at the door. “Sheriff, you’re really late for your meeting.”

             
“Fuck,” Mobley muttered, picking up his file again and headed to the door.

             
“Sheriff.”

             
Mobley turned with a heavy sigh. “What?”

             
“Put out an alert on her
Jeep
,” Louis said.

             
Mobley tapped the folder lightly on his palm, eyeing Louis, before he turned toward his secretary. “Ginger, give him what he needs.”

             
Mobley left. Ginger leaned against the doorframe, giving Louis an appraising glance. “He must really like you,” she said.

             
“No,” Louis said. “He likes cats.”

             
Ginger laughed and motioned for Louis to follow her back to her desk. “Give me the info on the alert,” she said, sliding a pad toward him. “I’ll get it out
ASAP
.”

             
Louis scribbled Katy’s name
and a
description of her Jeep, knowing Ginger could get the plate number herself.

             
“This is just an attempt to locate,” he said, handing her the pad.

             
“I got it,” Ginger said, turning to her computer.

             
As he watched her, Louis knew this wasn’t going to be enough. There was a good chance Katy wasn’t even in Lee County right now. Or any place where a cop would spot her Jeep.

             
He pulled out his notebook. “Run this plate, please.”

             
With a few taps of the keys, a name and address popped onto the computer screen. Louis leaned in to read it – HAYWOOD KENO, 1445 PALMETTO STREET.

             
Haywood...not
Hachi
.
Unless
Hachi
was a nickname.

             
“Ginger, can you pull up this guy’s DL?” he asked.

             
It took a few moments but then the driver’s license photo came up.
It was the
man he had followed
yesterday
.

             
Then he remembered the weird silver thing he had seen hanging from the rearview mirror of the Toyota in Katy’s parking lot. And he remembered where he had seen
one like
it before -- around
Hachi
Keno’s neck the day he had followed him.

             
Keno had met Katy in the parking lot and she had left with him.
But why?
The only explanation was that he convinced her he knew where Grace was.

             
And it wasn’t on the reservation –- it was somewhere isolated, somewhere no one could hear or see the cat.

             
Louis stared at the photograph. Keno’s eyes stared back, dark and unfathomable. He could read nothing in them. And that bothered him.

“Ginger, I need one more address,” Louis said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

             
“What the hell are you doing here?”

             
Louis almost hadn’t expected to see Gary Trujillo open the door of the neat green-shuttered trailer. With the flower boxes under the windows and the plastic flamingo in the yard he was sure when he drove up
that
he had the wrong house.

             
“I need your help,” Louis said.

             
“I told you I don’t want to get involved,” Gary said
, starting to s
hut the door.

             
“Katy’s missing,” Louis said.

             
“What? What do you mean missing?”

             
“We were supposed to meet for breakfast and she didn’t show. She hasn’t been to work or called
in
. I think she’s with a Seminole named Keno and I think he’s the guy who took the panther.”

             
Gary came out onto the porch. “You think he took Katy
, too
?”

             
“I don’t know. She might have gone with him because he told her he knew something about Grace. I don’t know. I just know I don’t like the feel of it.”

             
“How come you don’t just call out the cavalry?”

             
“The reservation is off limits,” Louis said. “But I don’t think that’s where they are. I think they’re out in the glades somewhere, but Hendry County is out of my jurisdiction. Besides, the cops would
n’t
know where to start looking.”

             
Gary was quiet for a moment. “You’re thinking he’s got this panther hidden somewhere. Somewhere isolated, like a hunting camp.”

             
Louis nodded. “And you know where they all are.”

             
Gary glanced at the sun, which was already starting its slow descent. “I’ll go get dressed,” he said.

             
Louis was wearing the same polo shirt and khaki pants he had put on that morning, and now, out here in the sodden-blanket air of the Glades, he was sweat-soaked and mosquito-bitten. It was after five and they were into their second hour of their search.

             
They had started at Gary’s camp, where there had been no sign of any intruders since Louis’s encounter there. They had done a quick search of all the “live” camps, but they had all been locked up tight with no signs of intruders. That left the abandoned hunting camps.

             
“No one knows exactly how many there are,” Gary said as they plowed through the brush in his SUV, heading south now. “These camps have been handed down for generations and some families have just given up and left.”

             
One and a half million acres.
That was the figure running through Louis’s head as he took in the desolate landscape of trees and brush. That was how large the Everglades were. How in the hell were they going to find Katy in all this?