Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (26 page)

J.D. called to tell me that none of the cars in the lot were registered to Katie. I finished lunch and sat some more. I had the radio tuned to a local talk show and was learning more than I needed to know about the underside
of Tampa politics as seen by people who had nothing better to do than listen to the idiot who hosted the show. I switched to NPR and listened to people talk of things that they knew even less about than I did. Finally, I found an easy-listening station and settled in for a long wait.

There was little activity on the street. An old man walked his yappy little dog, a woman brought her garbage bags to the curb, the occasional car or pickup drove by. I sat some more and then some more. I was bored and wishing I hadn’t gotten the large Diet Coke. I had to go to the bathroom. Finally, I gave up and drove to the McDonald’s to use their restroom. It was mid-afternoon, and I’d wasted the day sitting outside an apartment complex where Katie probably did not live and where I didn’t see one resident come or go. They were probably all working.

I decided to make one more pass by the apartment building. Maybe there’d be a new car in the lot. Maybe the place had burned down while I was in the bathroom. I just wanted something to happen to make up for my wasted day.

As I turned into the street on which the apartments were located, I noticed a woman walking southward on the sidewalk. She was thin with short dark hair. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and running shoes and one of those little carryalls known as fanny packs. Hers was turned so that the large pocket was in front. Katie? I couldn’t be sure. I drove past her and pulled to the curb half a block away. I got out of the Explorer and began walking toward her. I was wearing cargo shorts, a golf shirt, and boat shoes. I didn’t think I presented a threatening image. The closer I got to the woman walking toward me, the more I was convinced it was Katie. She kept walking, never breaking stride. She didn’t seem concerned about me, but I noticed that her hand was now inside the pocket of the fanny pack.

As I came abreast of her I kept walking and said in a quiet voice, “J.D. Duncan sent me.”

I was almost past her. She stopped abruptly and turned toward me. I stopped. She said, “I’ve got a gun in my hand. Do you need to see it?”

“No. I believe you.”

She wanted to make sure I knew she was armed. She pulled the pistol partly out of the pack, showing me the butt of it. “Who are you?”

“My name is Matt Royal. I’m a friend of J.D.”

“Who’s J.D.?”

“Your friend from college. The one you call Jed. The Longboat Key detective.”

She stood quietly, fidgeting a bit. She was about to take off.

“Katie, listen to me,” I said. “J.D. got the two text pictures you sent and the e-mail with the police car. She’s shared them with no one but me. She did what you probably meant for her to do and tracked down the location of the building. I came up here to find you. I drove around the neighborhood and figured you probably lived in the apartment house down the street. I’ve been sitting outside most of the day waiting to see you.”

“I don’t live in the apartments.”

“Use my phone. Call J.D. You know her number. She’ll tell you who I am and why you should trust me. I’m pulling my phone out of my pocket. Okay?”

“Let me see the phone.”

I slowly pulled the phone out and handed it to her. She took it with her right hand, her left still in the fanny pack holding the pistol. She backed up about three steps, putting some distance between us.

“I can reach my pistol before you can reach me,” she said.

I backed up a couple of steps, my hands in front of me, palms down.

She dialed the phone. Waited for it to be answered. “Jed, it’s me.” She was quiet for a moment and then, “I’m fine. Did you send some guy named Royal to find me?” More quiet. “I’m standing on a street in Tampa with a pistol trained on him.” She laughed. “Okay. I won’t shoot him. I’ll talk to him and get back to you.”

“J.D. says you’re her honey.”

“She used that word?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Let’s go to my house. It’s in the next block.”

The house was as old and as rundown as the others on the block, but the inside was immaculate. The furniture was new, the walls painted, the
terrazzo floor covered with expensive carpets. “Have a seat,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Tell me about yourself,” she said.

“Not much to tell. I’m a retired lawyer and live on Longboat Key and I’m in love with your friend J.D.”

“You look way too young to be retired.”

“Long story. Let’s talk about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Where have you been for the past year?”

“I lived in Atlanta for a few months and came here about six months ago.”

“What about Detroit?”

“What about it?” she asked.

“The texts you sent J.D. came from Detroit.”

“Yeah. A bit of misdirection.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Another story for another day. I may have to keep that channel open.”

“Why did you run away?”

“Long story.”

“Try me.”

“Not yet.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why are you in Tampa?”

“I’ve had to keep moving.”

“Somebody chasing you?”

“Probably.”

“Who?”

“I’m not ready to tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“I have to figure out whether I can trust you.”

“Didn’t J.D. vouch for me?”

“Yes,” she said, “but can I trust J.D.?”

“Your parents do.”

“They don’t know the whole story.”

“What story?”

“The one I’m not ready to tell you about yet.”

“Why did you get in touch with J.D. if you don’t trust her?”

“I’m tired of running, and she’s the only person I think I can trust. But I’ve got to be sure.”

“Are you going to run again after I leave?”

“No. Like I said, I’m tired of running. If somebody comes after me, I’m prepared. I can get out of here in a hurry and nobody will ever find me. If I have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, so be it. But I felt like I had to take this chance to come home, maybe my last chance.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Katie.”

“Maybe.”

“How have you stayed lost the last year?”

“My husband had a suitcase full of cash in our house. I took that with me. I don’t have a job or a car or a house or credit card or a bank account. I pay cash for everything. I use different names for different things with different people at different times. I’m off the grid, as they say, and as long as I’ve got cash, I can stay that way.”

“Where did the cash come from?”

“Jim was involved in illegal activities. He kept a lot of cash around the house.”

“What kind of illegal activities?”

“Not now, Matt. Maybe later. You go on home and tell J.D. I love her and that I’ll be in touch soon.”

“One more question, Katie. What does U166 mean?”

She smiled. “You’re pretty sharp. I hoped J.D. would pick up on that.”

“What does it mean?”

“I honestly don’t know. I heard my husband and another man talking about it like it was some really big deal. Drugs, maybe. I thought J.D. could figure it out.”

“Not so far.”

“Go home, Matt. We’ll talk more later.”

I got up to leave. “Katie, I know you’re probably worried about somebody being able to hack into J.D.’s phone. I want to give you a number of a friend of mine whose phone is absolutely unhackable.”

“All phones are at risk,” she said.

“Not this one. My friend is an intelligence agent for the federal government. His phone is completely safe, and no one who would want to hurt you even knows he exists. You can call him if you need help. Anytime of the day or night. He’s staying with me on Longboat, and I promise you any message you want to send will be instantly conveyed to J.D.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

I wrote Jock’s cell phone number, the one very few people had, on the back of one of my business cards and handed it to her. “It’s just in case of an emergency. If you really need help. If you’re in that much trouble, you’ve already been found by whoever is chasing you.”

“You’ve got a point. Now go home.”

She ushered me out the door, and I drove back to Longboat Key. It had been a very strange meeting. Maybe J.D. could make more out of it than I could. She’d known Katie for a long time. I called her and she said she’d be working late and that I could bring her up to date when she got home. She’d order pizza from Ciao’s and pick it up on the way to my place.

It was nearing dark as I pulled into the parking lot at Tiny’s. The golf foursome and the beer cart driver were sitting at a table in the corner. They’d been there a while and were cheerful in the way of drunks the world over. Except for Jock. He had an O’Doul’s in front of him and sat quietly listening to his friends.

“Did you win?” I asked.

“Not quite,” said Logan.

“We might have if Logan could ever hit a fairway shot,” said Randy.

Mike Nink laughed. “I shot close to par. These yahoos ruined it for me.”

“Yeah,” said Jock dryly. “Mike was only about thirty over.”

“I did my part,” said Les, the beer cart driver. “Even received some accolades.”

“From whom?”

“Logan, mostly,” said Les. “He said I was a much better beer cart driver than you are.”

“Was he drunk when he said it?” I asked.

“Well, uh,” said Les. “Yeah.”

That was about as good as the conversation got. I had a couple of beers and announced that I was headed home. Jock followed me out the door. “I talked to Sims,” he said. “He’s not going to announce the arrest of Peters until he has all the information he can squeeze out of him.”

“That’s probably a good plan. Does he know you were responsible for the killings in Lakewood Ranch?”

“He doesn’t know anything, but he suspects it. Peters wouldn’t talk about that. Told Sims his family was in danger if he said anything. But, Sims knows I was in the area because I was the one who called to tell him Peters was going to turn himself in. But there’s something else.”

“What?”

“It seems that Peters is not Bonino.”

“I don’t get that.”

“Peters is a go between. One more layer of security. He says he doesn’t know who the real Bonino is. They communicate by e-mail and burner phones. Peters is a smoke screen.”

“How do we know that?”

“Sims says Peters is scared enough to admit to anything. He also agreed to take a lie detector test. He answered all the questions truthfully, according to the examiner. Including the one about whether he was Sal Bonino.”

“Peters must have been a damn good smoke screen.”

“He was. I think Bonino, whoever he is, set this up so that Peters would take the fall if it ever got that far. Bonino must have had something to hang over Peters’s head. My guess would be that Peters’s family was at risk if he didn’t take the fall once he was discovered. My threat to his family was more immediate. Maybe Peters figured he’d neutralize the most imminent threat, me, and deal with Bonino later.”

“I need to talk to J.D. about all this,” I said.

“I know. She’s cool.”

“I’ll leave a light on for you.”

“I’m going to bunk in with Logan again and give J.D. and you a little privacy. See you in the morning.”

That worked for me.

Darkness was creeping over the island as I arrived home. J.D. showed up five minutes later with the pizza and a bottle of red wine. We sat on the sofa eating pizza as I told her about my afternoon with Katie.

“She’s playing it pretty close to the vest,” said J.D.

“She’s scared, doesn’t know whom to trust.”

“I’m a little hurt that she doesn’t trust me.”

“She’ll get there. I’m thinking there must be some pretty powerful people after her to make her so cautious.”

“What do you think we should do?” she asked.

“Let’s give her a little time. I gave her Jock’s number in case she needs us. I told her nobody would be able to hack his phone. She also has my number, but I don’t think she’ll be calling it. Not yet, anyway.”

“What if I went to see her?”

“That might spook her into running.”

“Let’s think about that. I’d like to sit down with her, talk this thing out.”

“I’ve got something else to tell you,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

I’d thought a lot about how much to tell her. She was a law enforcement officer and that carried certain obligations, ones she took very seriously. I wasn’t sure she could overlook the shooting death of four people, even if they deserved their fate. “I know something about the shootings in Lakewood Ranch last night. I want to tell you, but I can’t do it unless you’ll promise me you won’t start acting like a cop.”

“What does that mean?” There was a sharpness to her tone that I didn’t like.

“It means that if I tell you what I know, it won’t go out of this room. The information will stay with us.”

J.D. stared at me, her green eyes flashing, a look of anger that set me back on my heels. I’d seen that look before, but never directed at me. She said one word, “Jock.”

“I can’t tell you without your promise that it stays between us.”

“What if I told you that your silence on something this big could cause an irreparable rupture in our relationship?”

“That would break my heart.” My breath caught in my throat.

“We can’t have what we have if there are secrets between us,” she said.

“That’s exactly the reason I want to tell you about this.”

“But you put stipulations on it.”

“The only stipulation is that you keep it between us. If you weren’t a cop, that wouldn’t be an issue.”

“But I
am
a cop. That’s part of the package. It’s who I am.”

“And I love the whole package, but this is a matter of honor. I’ve never done anything in my life that violated that sense of honor, of my understanding of what honor is all about. That’s who
I
am.”

“I don’t understand how telling me about four murders can somehow violate your sense of honor.”