The Black Palmetto (24 page)

“Yeah,” Sam said, “but we should be able to catch up if Randy gets here on schedule. Oh, I almost forgot.” He showed J.T. the paper fragment. “I found this in Edison’s desk. Simone said it looks like the DEA seal.”

“Maybe. I’ll check with my DEA contact and see if he knows anything about the guy.”

They readied to meet the pilot at the dock, and after about twenty minutes, J.T mentioned that Knox had stopped in Marathon. “That would be a good place for him to top off the tanks.”

Sam’s phone chirped. Before answering, he glanced at the display and saw Lora’s number. He opened it and said, “Hello.”

“I called about Charles Ford, and he’s still asleep.”

“That’s too bad. I hope he makes it.”

“Yeah, me too. But I think things are about to break loose on these murders. I’m rolling onto Marathon now, and I just got a call from a reporter who works for the paper up here. He said he’s been following my stories and thinks he knows who the killer is. I’m meeting up with the guy in a few minutes.”

“Do you know anything about this guy? He could be the killer. Knox is in Marathon now. We have a tracker on his boat.”

After a brief hesitation, she said, “You’re breaking up, and I gotta go. I’m turning in at a marina, and I think I see the guy over there waiting for me.”

“Wait!”

The connection died. A feeling of dread swept over Sam. He punched in Lora’s number, but it went to voicemail after the first ring. A second try yielded the same result.

“What was that about?” Simone asked.

“I think Knox just kidnapped Lora Diamond.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sam called Randy back. “Where are you?”

“I’ll be landing in about ten minutes.”

“Okay, we’ll be waiting at the dock.”

He hung up and they headed out the door and down the pathway to the shore. Turboprop engines droned in the distance, and a moment later the plane appeared above the tree line and began its descent. Randy made one pass, banked a wide turn back, and aligned the craft with the shoreline. The pontoons touched down on the surface of the Gulf and the plane taxied to the dock, the props fanning a salty mist in their faces.

Sam hurried over to the door and opened it. “Don’t shut down the engines. We’re ready to leave.”

Randy gave him a thumbs-up. He appeared hung over, his face and eyes red.

The plane had accommodations for eight passengers, configured with four rows of seats behind the cockpit, one on each side of the aisle. J.T. took the co-pilot spot up front, Simone sat in the first row behind Randy, and Sam sat behind J.T. As they buckled their belts, a figure came out of the woods onto the dock. Harpo. He stepped over to the plane and popped the door open.

“Let me go with you. I can help.”

His eyes were wild, as if they belonged to somebody else hitchhiking inside his head. Maybe he
could
help. His information had led them to Knox, albeit indirectly.

“C’mon, you need me,” Harpo added. “I know places he might go.”

“Okay, get in.”

“You’re kidding,” J.T. said.

Simone shot J.T. a frown. “I agree with Sam. Maybe he knows something.”

Harpo stepped around Sam’s feet and down the aisle. The edge of the machete blade shone through a hole in the elbow of his baggy long-sleeved shirt. He sat on Simone’s side near the back.

The pilot throttled the engines and the plane eased away from the dock. They were airborne a minute later, and J.T. read off Knox’s coordinates. Randy entered them into the autopilot system, and the aircraft banked and climbed to cruising altitude.

“Knox is on the move,” J.T. said. “He’s continuing up the east coast.”

Sam wondered if Knox had Lora with him or had left her in Marathon. She hadn’t answered her phone on several additional attempts, and that could mean he had the phone, or something even worse. So far, it looked as if he had killed only to protect his identity and further his goal of obtaining the misplaced fortune in drug money. From all appearances, he had located the money. Chopin had probably mentioned them following him, so Sam hoped Knox had taken Lora only as protection.

The plane caught up to within a few miles of the Cigarette about forty minutes later.

“He’s stopped at a place south of Key Largo,” J.T. said.

Sam put the field glasses to his eyes. From that distance, he saw only trees and a rough shoreline. When the plane descended to a hundred feet or so above the treetops, a serpentine canal appeared, leading inland.

“He’s in that canal,” J.T. said. He told the pilot to head that way.

Within a couple of minutes, Sam spotted the Cigarette docked next to an old cabin. He tried to spot Lora, but palms obscured his view.

“I saw the boat,” Sam said, “You need to take us down.”

“I can’t land in the canal,” Randy snapped. “It’s too narrow.” He looked fidgety, his face florid, like he needed a drink.

“Then go back to the mouth. I think we can make it on foot.”

“That’s old man Sherman’s place down there,” Harpo said.

Sam turned to him. “How do you know that?”

Harpo shrugged. “I lived around here when I was young. Went up to Okeechobee to cut cane. Got pretty good with a machete.” He smiled, and Sam wondered what might be going through his mind; cutting cane, reliving good memories of his youth or using the machete on Knox.

“You think Sherman still lives there?” Sam asked.

“Nah. I guess he’s gone now. Had to be eighty back then.”

If the cabin was abandoned, Knox might have set up a hideout there.

The sun lay on the horizon in the west, a great ball of orange. The Key-Westers would be having cocktails on the docks, cheering it on, making a party out of it, thankful for another wonderful reason to have a few more drinks. Sam wished he could be there, rather than here facing the specter of yet another kill by Knox, this one much more personal than the previous ones.

“How long is this going to take?” Randy asked. “You said two hours. That’s just about up, and it’ll be dark soon.”

“I don’t think it’ll be much longer. Maybe another hour or so.”

“Yeah, well, I need to get back before too late. I told my boss I was going out for a quick spin to check out the electronics before I take the plane in tomorrow morning for maintenance. He’ll get suspicious before much longer. I’m kind of on probation, already.”

“Probation?”

“Yeah. I had a little too much to drink a few weeks ago on a trip taking some clients to the Bahamas. I flew the plane fine, but he saw the bottle I was nipping on. Said if he catches me with booze on the plane again, I’m gone. I come in late, he’ll be checking my breath and inspecting the plane. That’s one of the reasons I took this job today. If he cans me, I’ll at least have something to tide me over ‘til I get another gig.”

That didn’t sound good. He had been pretty handy when Sam needed a quick flight somewhere. If he lost that capability, Sam would have to find somebody else.

Randy glided the plane to the surface, and the pontoons smacked the water unevenly, one, then the other. Sam’s bag fell from the overhead compartment into his lap. As the taxi smoothed out, Simone turned to him and frowned.

The mouth of the canal didn’t have a place to dock, so the pilot eased the plane in under an outgrowth of mangroves. J.T. jumped out with a rope and tied up to a limb.

Sam, J.T., and Simone jumped out onto soft earth. Harpo followed behind. They plodded through several hundred feet of scrub and briars that ended at a rusty, six-foot chain link fence surrounding the property. Vines covered the steel mesh, hiding the place from outside view. The fence ran out over the edge of the water, probably to keep out the animals, including the two-legged variety. Sam paced around the other corner to the front of the property and saw a dirt road leading through the woods to the place. The fence gate had a padlock with a heavy coat of rust, and he knew it wouldn’t open with his pick. He went back to where the others stood.

“Give me and Simone a boost,” Sam said to J.T. “We’ll go check out the place.”

“I don’t think you should go,” Harpo said.

Sam turned to the homeless man. “What?”

“Dr. Worth said to steer clear of the valley of evil. Old man Sherman was a mean man.”

“Who’s Dr. Worth?”

“My advisor.” Harpo closed his eyes and cocked his head to one side, as if listening for instructions from the stranger inside his head. Obviously Dr. Worth. The machete hung from his hand by his side.

Sam said to J.T., “Keep an eye on him.”

J.T. told him he would and gave Sam the boost. He peered over the vines on the top of the fence and didn’t see anyone on the grounds. Boards covered the windows of the cabin, probably nailed there before the last big hurricane and never taken down. An old gravel path ran from the back door down to the water. While he knew the boat lay in the water down below the dock, he could see only the handlebars of the speed bike mounted on its rear deck.

When he dropped to the ground on the other side, Simone followed. Though the sun would be gone in a few minutes, glints of it still shone through the trees and illuminated the yard. If they tried to go down to the boat or into the cabin through the backdoor, they would be easy targets. They eased alongside the building toward the front, passing what appeared to be a toolshed built against the house. When they reached the corner, Sam peered around it and saw only an overgrown yard and the vine-covered fence. He wondered if this might be a trick.

They found a front door that stood ajar. Sam nudged it open with the tip of his shoe, his gun out front. Barely enough sunlight shone through to illuminate a kitchen inside. Old beer bottles and cans and empty food containers littered the floor, among a thin coating of dust.

A black spider raced across the top of the doorway and fell onto Sam’s arm. His pulse spiked as he shook it off. It scampered into the weeds. Glancing at Simone, he shook his head. He recalled what Harpo had said:
Valley of evil.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A vehicle approached on the road outside the fence, and Sam and Simone retreated around the front corner of the cabin. Sam heard two doors open and close, and a few moments later, a clanking noise, as if someone had fired a silenced weapon at the rusted lock on the gate. He peered around the edge and saw the front of a black SUV, like the one driven by the men who had tried to waylay him and Lora the night before. Two men stepped through the gate, one of them the man who had waved the gun at them to pull over. Only thirty or so, he had thinning black hair on top. He walked with a pronounced limp and a constant grimace on his face. Sam remembered the other man calling him Larson, assuming the other man had driven the SUV the night before. The second man wore a sling on his arm. Both had taken bullets, but here they were for another try at the computer card.

“They’re the guys who work for the senator,” Sam whispered to Simone.

“That means Knox told them we would be here, so he knows we were following him.”

“Yep. So much for a surprise attack.”

The sun had disappeared, and they would have only a few more minutes of light. Sam chanced another glimpse, and the men had disappeared inside. He called J.T. and told him about them. “No need in falling into their trap. We’ll wait for Knox to make a break for it out the back door. The gate around front is open, so watch it in case he heads out that way.”

After they hung up, Sam and Simone made their way to the back corner of the structure. They waited there a while, and sometime after darkness fell upon them, Sam heard the Cigarette start up, its engine revving. If Knox had come out of the cabin, they had missed him. They ran toward the dock and stopped a few feet from the sea wall. Sam could see the running lights of the boat down below, but couldn’t make out anything else in the dark.

Just as they were about to hop down to the dock, someone turned on a flashlight in their faces. The man with the arm sling stepped out from behind one of the timbers and said, “Stop right there.” He held the light in his sling hand, and a silenced semiautomatic, maybe a .45, in the other.

Sam fired and the man fell to the dock. A figure scrambled out of the boat cabin and opened the engine throttle. It sounded like a jet flying over. The bow rose into the air a foot or so and bounced back to the surface as the boat’s pilot cut an arc in the canal, turning back the way he had come. Simone fired and must have hit her target. The boat sped toward the opposite shore about fifty feet away. It hit the edge of the bank, went skyward for a few seconds, its engine blasting, the prop singing. It crashed down into the earth with a
crack
and skidded back into the water.

As the noise ebbed, another replaced it. Footfalls behind Sam. He swung the gun around, just as Larson slammed the butt of his own gun into Sam’s head. Simone yelled something he didn’t understand, and then the dusky world went into a spin. The ground came up to slap the side of his face, but he felt no pain. Someone threw a light onto his face. He stared at the shine on the man’s shoes in the dim light. Nice shoes. The guy had spent some money on those shoes.

****

Sam’s head bounced on the threshold, and he awoke as Larson dragged him through the doorway. His head throbbed, and he wondered about Simone. She’d said something right before he’d passed out, but thinking back, it seemed as if it might have been directed at Larson instead of him. Did he shoot her, too?

“I see you’re awake,” Larson said, throwing the bolt on the door. “Get up.” He had a sizable paunch, and was breathing hard from the effort.

Though still a little dizzy, Sam struggled to his knees and stood. Larson held the gun on him with one hand and shoved him with the other toward a wooden table and chairs in the center of a large rectangular room. Simone sat in one of the chairs, her hands bound behind her chair back, her head slumped forward. The man with the arm sling stepped through a door on the other side of the room. In addition to the sling, he wore only a Kevlar vest on his upper body, and Sam saw a pucker in the chest area where he’d popped out the round Sam had fired at him. Probably had a cracked rib or two.