Rough Draft (38 page)

The marine patrol officer hesitated a half second, then jerked his hand to his sidearm, but by that time Misty already had her derringer aimed at his chest. Their eyes held for a second, the marine patrol officer with his .45 halfway out of his holster but frozen in that position.

“Take it out real slow,” she said, “and drop it over the side.”

The cop glanced down the empty canal. He looked back at Misty, took a deep swallow of air. Then he feinted to the right, lunged to the left, drawing his pistol as he moved.

Misty fired the .32. Winged him in the left shoulder, spun him around.

Behind her a few dozen birds exploded from the mangroves and sailed off into the blue sky. The marine patrol officer was stumbling to the side, still trying to dig his .45 out of his holster so Misty had no choice but to fire a second round, this one clipping him in the right shoulder and sending him floundering into his console.

A strangled noise came from his throat, then he slumped over the throttle and his big gray boat lunged forward. The line he'd tied to the cleat of the houseboat went taut and the
Margaritaville
reeled to the side, and felt for a moment like it was going to tip over. Misty lost her footing and a second later she was sprawled on her back, slipping across the slick deck toward the edge.

Twisting onto her stomach, she snatched hold of a chrome rail, dragged herself back away from the edge, got to her knees.

The Yamaha was revved up, water churned wildly at the props, the big gray patrol boat dragging them out of the mangroves toward the main canal.

Misty heard things crashing down in the cabin, glass
breaking. The marine patrol boat plowing ahead, ten feet, fifteen into the wide center of the canal. Its bow rose high out of the water, which sent the officer toppling backward off the controls.

He was still alive, arms flailing for balance. Misty could see the bullet wounds in both shoulders, the blood running down his arms, staining his gray shirt. He floundered against the leaning post and somehow got lodged there.

There was nothing Misty could do but pull the .45 derringer from her pocket and sight at the rope that was binding the boats together. But with the houseboat shuddering and rocking so hard, she couldn't get any kind of aim.

And now the marine patrol officer had gotten hold of the microphone for his VHF radio. He punched the button on the side and was just bringing the mike to his mouth when Misty fired the .45. The slug struck him in the left thigh, near his crotch, knocked him to the side and he dropped the microphone.

The throttle was still mashed flat, engine roaring. Both boats were plowing toward a piling in the center of the main canal, a creosote-soaked telephone pole sticking fifteen feet out of the murky water. They were moving fast enough, ten, fifteen miles an hour, if they hit that marker head-on there was a good chance it might split the houseboat in half.

Misty tugged on the rope, tried to unhook it from the cleat, but it was as rigid and unyielding as iron. When she looked up again the marine patrol boat was brushing hard through the mangrove branches. The boat wallowed to the side and sent the officer staggering toward the rear of his vessel.

He waved his big muscular arms like a tightrope walker, then he tripped over the transom and tumbled headfirst onto the top of the outboard motor. He grabbed at it, tried to hug it to his chest, his feet kicking. But his hands slipped on the slick plastic housing and he began to slide headfirst into the foamy water.

As his shoulders were just disappearing below the surface,
one of his boat shoes snagged on a rear cleat and his body was slung hard against the lower unit.

The motor shuddered and almost died, like a blender that's overloaded. Then the big Yamaha surged and the bubbles sputtering out behind the boat turned to red froth. The propeller twisted the officer, once, twice, with his boat shoe still snared on the cleat.

Ahead of them the piling was less than ten feet away, dead ahead of the houseboat. Misty pulled herself up to her knees and crawled to the rope, got out her .45, and fired into it. Her first shot just nicked the outer strands. She pressed the barrel to the rope and squeezed the trigger again, but the derringer was empty.

The marine patrol boat roared on, dragging the
Margaritaville
sideways into the pole. Misty dropped flat to the deck and gripped the chrome rail but when the boat crashed, her body was pitched forward and her chest slammed against a flag stanchion, the air knocked from her lungs.

Dazed and reeling, Misty raised her head. She felt the deck listing hard to the left. The big Yamaha had stalled out and for a moment the canal was silent. A breeze filtered through the branches. Two white butterflies danced around the leaves. Out in the middle of the canal a patch of bloody foam floated on the surface.

Misty lay back against the deck trying to catch her breath. She'd kidnapped a cop, then murdered another cop. All in the same day. She squinted up at the sky and listened to the hot rasp of her breath and felt the houseboat sinking beneath her.

Bloody foam on the canal. A hacked-up body floating in the bushes.

Behind her eyes, the burn of tears began to build. She was wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand when she heard the two splashes.

Misty stood up and hustled to the front of the houseboat.

Gisela and Randall were swimming side by side into the dense mangroves. The kid must've cut Gisela's hands free
and now the two of them were flailing around, searching for somewhere to hide.

Misty scrambled down the chrome ladder to the lower deck, found her blue gym bag on its side near the transom. The houseboat was tilting hard to the right, the sound of water rushing below deck.

She unzipped her bag, chose the M-4 Alaskan survival two-shot .410 and the Model 4 with the rosewood grip. She tucked one in each pocket. Then she crab-walked down the narrow side deck, reached up, and yanked down the long aluminum boat hook. She went forward to the open front deck, flattened onto her belly, and stretched out as far as she could, reaching with the boat hook until she snagged the bow rail of the marine patrol boat and dragged it over.

When it was near enough, she got to her feet, steadied herself on the edge of the gunwale, then hopped from the
Margaritaville
to the patrol boat. She untied the line, then slid behind the console, turned the ignition key, and after a couple of cranks the motor revved to life. She swung around, went back to the stern, unhooked the marine officer's shoe from the cleat, and let it fall into the dark water.

Then she put the boat in gear, cut it hard to the left, and idled up the canal toward where Gisela Ortega and Randall Keller had headed off into the thick tangle of mangroves.

It only took a minute to find them. They'd gone right into a dead-end canal and were treading water side by side, holding onto the stalky roots of the mangroves.

Misty idled closer. When the patrol boat was ten feet away, she shut down the engine and let it coast.

Gisela was shaking her head sadly, one arm around the boy's shoulder, one holding onto the mangroves.

“Let the boy go,” Misty said. “And move away from him. Do it now.”

Gisela continued to shake her head. Misty walked up to the bow of the boat and aimed the pistol at Gisela's face.

“I told you what I was going to do if you tried to get away. Now move
away from the boy. If you don't move away, I might accidentally hit him. You wouldn't want that on your conscience, would you?”

Gisela looked at Randall. The boy was crying soundlessly.

She pushed away from him and started to breaststroke out into the open water. Randall shrieked and grabbed at her blouse.

“Stay there, Randall. Stay there. She won't hurt you.”

Gisela swam ten feet from the boy. The sun was shining on her black hair, giving it a bright sheen.

“Okay,” Misty said. “Now turn around, look back that way.”

Gisela continued to tread water, facing her, Gisela's dark eyes holding to Misty's.

“Okay, then,” Misty said. “If that's how you want it.”

Misty Fielding leaned over the bow of the marine patrol boat and brought the pistol close to Gisela's face. The cop lady made a lunge for the pistol, splashing her arm through the water. But it was too late. Misty had already fired.

The woman's head snapped back in the water and then she slowly sank below the surface. A slick of blood bloomed on the water and a couple of birds squawked at the noise. But beyond that Misty didn't observe much about the moment. She was inside her head. Off in a drowsy haze, seeing Hal's face and seeing her father lying in his hospital bed praying to God.

Misty sucked down a breath. She watched the water where the cop lady had disappeared. She could still see her floating a few inches below the surface like a ghost that's left its body but is still hovering nearby.

“Okay, Randall,” Misty said. She motioned with the pistol. “Swim on over here, kiddo. Hurry up now, we've got a real big day ahead of us.”

That's when her cell phone rang. Hal calling.

“Everything okay?” he said.

“Oh, I hit a couple of snags,” Misty said, still waving her pistol at Randall. “Nothing I can't handle.”

Misty made a show of cocking the hammer back on the derringer. The boy let go of the mangrove root and started swimming slowly toward the boat.

“So go on and make the call,” Hal said. “You got her cell phone number, right?”

“Yeah, off my caller ID from when she called yesterday.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then I'll meet you along the causeway where we said. You just run the boat up on the beach, I'll be there.”

“Hey, Hal.”

“Yeah?”

“Can we say the words now?”

“Which words?”

“You know which words.”

Hal was silent.

“I need to hear them,” Misty said. “I just need to hear them coming out of your mouth, that's all.”

“You first,” Hal said.

“Okay,” she said. “I love you, Hal.”

He was silent. She could almost hear him cringing, teeth clamped.

While she waited, Misty helped haul Randall over the side of the marine patrol boat. He was shivering and he wouldn't look at her. He dropped down on the deck and hunched his back against the transom.

“You still there, Hal?”

“I'm here.”

“Well?”

“I'm at Miami International Airport right now,” Hal said. “If traffic isn't bad, I should be over there in about twenty minutes. I'll be driving a blue Taurus. Can you make it in twenty minutes?”

Misty watched as the cop lady bobbed to the surface, face-up, eyes wide open, staring through the bright skin of water up at the violent blue sky.

“Yeah, Hal, I can make it in twenty.”

“So I'll see you.”

“Yeah,” Misty said. “See you.”

The line was dead for a moment and she was about to hang up. Then his voice was there again. Quiet, in the same mechanical way he'd spoken from the beginning. All words uncomfortable in his mouth. But especially these.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you, Misty.”

When she entered the Orange Bowl, there were two souped-up lawn mowers racing up and down the bright green pasture with the precision of a military drill team.

Hannah passed through the maintenance gate and walked up the circular ramp for Section H. She kept following it up until she came to the opening at Level 3 where her father had owned season tickets to both the Dolphins and the University of Miami Hurricanes. For as long as Hannah could remember, she and her parents religiously attended all the home games. Sitting out in the baking heat or huddled beneath ponchos in those wonderful subtropical downpours. Cheering national champions one year, bumbling losers the next.

She found their old seats near the thirty-yard line on the west end of the stadium. In the center of the field, Frank Sheffield was talking to one of the men on the mowers. Frank was wearing jeans and tennis shoes and a white polo shirt and a khaki baseball cap. Hannah sat down in her old seat and took out her cell phone and dialed Gisela's number. Still busy. Had been since eight this morning when she'd called before leaving home. The phones at Dinner Key were always on the blink, but, still, she was concerned. She dialed the number again. And again it was busy.

Out on the field the man on the mower went back to his work and Frank turned in her direction. He stood there a minute staring up at her without moving, then he lowered his head and trudged across the field to the cement stairs.

As he approached she saw the grim strain in his face, his
eyes dodging hers. Saying nothing, he took the seat beside her, Ed Keller's place, and together they looked out at the mowers working up and down the green plain. Gulls circled the sky above the stadium. The dense gray clouds had broken up and now the sky was the tangy blue of sapphire. Frank shifted uneasily beside her, wouldn't look at her.

“You have something to say to me?”

He eyed her for a second, then looked away.

“Well,” he said. “You ready for a confession?”

“I know,” she said. “The film of J. J. Fielding is a hoax. He's been dead since August. You and your buddies at the Bureau fiddled with the tape, made it seem that Fielding was calling out to me. You set me on this wild goose chase, point A to point B. For some reason you called it Operation Joanie.”

He gave her a rueful smile.

“You're good.”

“So tell me, Frank. What was I going to find here at the Orange Bowl? Were you going to put my next clue up on the scoreboard lights? Where were you planning on sending me now?”

“Does it matter?”

He glanced at her, then looked back out at the field. He took off the baseball cap and crumpled it in his hands.

“What I don't understand, Frank, is why? What was so goddamn important you'd jerk me around like this? Throw my son into an emotional tailspin? Why, Frank?”