Hell (12 page)

The thing about it – the thing that had attracted Sam's attention – was that it looked brand new, unlike the other notices, many of which had been laminated long since to protect them from the elements.

This one was not laminated, yet it looked crisp, recently posted.

Maybe by someone who'd expected them back . . .

‘Sadie's Boatyard,' Martinez said. ‘S.B.? Special message for Sam Becket, you think?'

‘I'd say that's a long shot,' Sam said. ‘You ever hear of Sadie's Boatyard?'

‘Uh-uh,' Martinez said.

‘“More than you'd expect”,' Sam read out loud off the handbill.

His gut already recoiling, almost certainly irrationally, at the thought of what the ‘more' might be.

‘Probably nothing,' he said.

‘But we're going anyway, right?'

‘Nothing to lose,' Sam said.

Martinez took an evidence bag and glove from his pocket, noted the address on the bill, then unpinned the handbill and bagged it.

On their way.

Grace's cellphone had lost its signal.

No way of calling Sam till it came back.

Nor of ascertaining Sara and Pete's location.

She'd never had signal problems here before tonight.

‘Murphy's Law,' she said out loud.

Any minute now, it would come back.

Knock on wood.

Martinez was driving, and Sam was reminding himself that this was most likely another waste of time, except this was not just one of his hunches, this was his partner feeling the same.

Traffic was heavy, but they were in no big rush, and Sam's PDA had yielded no listing for Sadie's Boatyard, which, according to the handbill, was on South River Drive not far from NW 9th Avenue – along with a whole bunch of boatyards, and not a spot they'd have picked for an evening drop-in.

But if they were right about this being
something
, then one key question was exactly when had the handbill been posted, and Sam couldn't picture Cooper himself risking it, but he might have slipped a few bucks to someone, in which case they'd need to find that individual. And if it was down to Cooper, he couldn't have known they'd go to the Flamingo Marina again this evening, so maybe there were bills pinned up at other locations too.

Too many ifs and maybes.

And almost certainly a dead end anyway.

The missing, sweet-eyed Ricardo Torres came into Sam's mind, and he said a swift, silent prayer for Lilian Torres, then cleared his mind.

Probably just an innocent handbill from a boatyard looking for business.

Probably nothing.

Grace's phone had a full signal now, but Sam's phone was going to voicemail, and leaving a message felt too much like the easy way out, like cheating on her promise.

She knew that if he'd been with her when Sara had called, he'd never have let her go without him, and it had still been light when Sara had called, but darkness was already descending, and there was an unusual clog of traffic on Crandon Boulevard, the ten minute trip taking much longer . . .

Turn the car around.

It would make sense, whatever Sara said, to call Fire and Rescue, identify herself as Pete's psychologist, tell them the score, maybe arrange for them to take her along to lessen his panic.

But Pete Mankowitz was a child in need.

He needed Grace, and he needed her
now.

So she made no call, left no message on Sam's phone, and kept on crawling along.

Sadie T. Marshall's Boatyard – to give it its full name – was dark and deserted.

‘
No one does it better than Sadie
,' read an aged beat-up sign.

Maybe once upon a time, but now the place looked more like a boat graveyard than a working establishment, and if security had ever been high on Sadie T. Marshall's list of priorities, they were non-existent now. Any fool, it seemed to Sam and Martinez, checking over the place with flashlights, could have made off with the cruddy, leaking old tubs here this evening.

Not that anyone would notice, let alone care.

‘See anything?' Martinez asked softly.

‘Not yet.'

The handbill was growing more suspect by the second, both men keeping a hand on the holsters under their jackets.

No ‘special deal' here, at least not of any legitimate variety.

And then Sam saw it.

‘There,' he said, his voice low, stilling the beam of his flashlight so his partner could see what he'd spotted.

Twenty feet or so to their right, tied to a hook.

Another toy dinghy.

‘Oh, man,' Martinez murmured.

They both drew their weapons simultaneously, smoothly, took a long, slow sweep-around with the flashlights, both men high-tuned to the possibility of ambush.

No sounds except traffic and night birds . . . A dog barking somewhere . . .

Sam's cellphone rang in his pocket.

He winced, silenced it.

They waited another long moment.

‘Let's go take a look,' he said, grimly.

She had no choice now but to leave a message, because the traffic had eased, and any second she'd have to call Sara, and Grace had been mulling over why this Charlie guy had chosen to take Pete to Jimbo's, though maybe he had meant well, maybe he was just clueless about troubled children, and he was probably feeling guilty as hell now . . .

She heard Sam's voice, took a breath.

‘Sam, please don't get mad, but I had an emergency call from Sara Mankowitz – remember I've told you about her son, Pete – and they're in big trouble, and she needs me to settle him, so I'm going to get them back to their place and call a doc to help arrange his meds. And I've tried you a few times, and I'll call you soon as I'm through, and don't worry about me, I'm being very careful – and there's no violence in Pete, just fear, and I love you, and you please take care.'

She ended the call and made another.

‘Sara, I'm almost with you. Tell me exactly where to find you.'

There was a plastic container in the dinghy.

No doubts remaining.

Except about the contents.

‘Could be anything, man,' Martinez said. ‘Could be a friggin bomb.'

‘Could be,' Sam agreed.

He crouched low, close as he could get.

The dinghy was about four feet away, bobbing gently.

‘You don't want to be touching it,' Martinez said.

‘Just looking.'

‘We need to back off, call this in.'

‘I know,' Sam said.

Except that calling in the City of Miami bomb squad was going to take time, and this was Jerome Cooper's doing, and Sam did not
feel
that it was a bomb, not for one second. And if that scumbag somehow knew that he and Martinez were here right now, that could mean he might be about to make a move on Grace or the rest of the family, and even if they were safe and sound in Daniel's Home Knox, he could not afford to waste one more minute than he had to.

‘You back off, Al,' he said, quietly, ‘and cover me.'

‘No way,' Martinez said. ‘I'm calling it in.'

‘Go ahead,' Sam said. ‘But I'm taking a look first.'

‘Fuck's sake, man, you got the family to think of.'

‘That's why I'm not waiting around.'

‘Shit,' Martinez said. ‘So let me open it. I got no one.'

‘You got plenty,' Sam said. ‘But that message was for me, not you.'

The S.B. in Sadie's Boatyard not such a long shot after all.

‘I still can't see you,' Grace told Sara.

‘I'm wearing white, waving my arms.'

The highway itself was well lit, but as Grace peered into the darkness to her right, she became suddenly aware of a new kind of fear taking root, because it was one thing trying to help a frightened child in his home or in a consulting room, but this was something else altogether, and she should not have agreed to this, she was too edgy to . . .

There.

A flash of white, arms flailing.

‘I see you,' Grace said.

Saw the exit to the pull-off, and took it.

No bomb.

No heart either.

Just a small single piece of paper torn from a spiral-bound notebook.

Handwritten, the script familiar to Sam.

Martinez spoke first.

‘Now I'm calling it in, no arguments.'

Sam didn't speak.

‘You OK, man?'

Sam nodded, took out his cell.

‘Message from Grace,' he said quietly.

He listened.

‘Damn it,' he said.

‘What?'

Sam was still staring at the phone in his hand.

‘She's gone out to an emergency,' he said. ‘Alone.'

‘Where is she?'

‘She didn't say,' Sam said. ‘Just that she was going to help out this mom and kid she's been treating and get them back to their place – which is near Claudia's house.'

‘Should be OK then,' Martinez said.

‘Get them back from where?' Sam said grimly.

He hit Grace's number, got voicemail.

‘Grace, it's Sam. Call me straight back.'

‘She'll be fine,' Martinez told him again.

Sam took a second, then nodded at him.

‘Go ahead,' he said. ‘Call it in.'

‘He's over there,' Sara said, fighting back tears as Grace got out of the Toyota.

They were in the access road leading to a big parking lot, now closed.

No lighting where they stood, rows of palms and a wide stretch of grass between the narrow road and the highway over to their right. A thicker cluster of trees thirty or so yards ahead where the road curved to the right, leading back to the highway.

‘I can't see him,' Grace said, peering into the gloom, and she'd left her headlights turned on, but the trees under which Pete had taken cover were well beyond the scope of their beam.

‘He's right there, hunkered down.' Sara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then raised her voice to call: ‘Pete, honey, Doc Lucca's here, like I told you.'

There was no movement, but suddenly Grace saw a smear of pale oval in the darkness, and her own nerves were blown away by a fierce pang of empathy with this boy and his confusion,
his
fears. And if this were another child, she might be wondering about an element of playing up his mom, perhaps to spite her because of the new boyfriend, but Grace had never detected a shred of meanness in young Pete.

‘Where's your friend?' she asked, quietly.

‘He drove his car around the bend somewhere, to get out of sight,' Sara said. ‘We both figured if Pete couldn't see him anymore, he might relax a little, come back out and talk to me, but he hasn't budged.'

Grace looked again toward the pale oval, raised her right hand in greeting.

‘What exactly happened to spark this off?' she asked.

‘Nothing more than I told you. Something spooked him back at Jimbo's, and then on the drive back, the more Charlie tried calming him down, the worse Pete got.' Sara's right hand twisted strands of her hair, her agitation intense. ‘Grace, if he won't talk to you, I don't know what's going to happen.'

‘It'll be OK,' Grace said. ‘I'm going to get closer, if he'll let me, and I want you to wait in my car because it's damned creepy out here.'

‘Please be careful with him.'

‘As if he were my own,' Grace said.

She began walking, very slowly, toward the boy, heard her phone ring, realized she had left it in its cradle on the dash in the car.

Sam.

She did not turn back.

‘Goddamned voicemail,' Sam said.

‘You said she's with a patient,' Martinez said, trying to sound reasonable, knowing that Sam didn't give a damn about any patient right now, just wanted Grace locked down safe and sound with the rest of the family.

‘She promised she wouldn't do this kind of thing until Cooper was off the streets,' Sam said. ‘She swore she'd be careful.'

‘It's a patient,' Martinez said. ‘One of her kids. I guess she couldn't say no, but it doesn't mean she isn't being careful.'

‘Meantime, I don't know where she is.'

‘Same for her,' Martinez said. ‘She lives with that every single day, man.'

Sirens heading their way.

Job to do.

Killer to catch.

‘I'm not going back with him.'

Pete's first words to Grace.

He hadn't spoken as she'd approached, had let her come, and she'd kept her movements slow and steady, hoping to maintain a calm front, though the dark shapes moving in the breeze all around her were spooky as hell, and Grace was horribly aware that putting one foot wrong, saying a single word out of place at this time could result in disaster . . .

At first, when she'd neared him, he'd looked like an animal poised for flight, but then she'd told him that all she cared about was keeping him safe, and she thought he'd relaxed just a little, though now he was still crouched low on the ground, his hazel eyes, huge with terror and resentment, on her face.

‘No one's going to make you do that, Pete,' she told him.

His eyes darted away, checking around. ‘My mom likes him.'

‘Your mom won't be liking him any more if he's done anything to hurt you.'

‘She thinks he's the bee's knees.'

Grace was still standing, her back to the Toyota, in which Sara now sat waiting for her son to be brought safely back to her.

‘Would you mind if I got down with you?' she asked.

He shook his head, and she knelt in the dirt, glad she'd worn jeans, and somewhere overhead a barred owl hooted, eerie in the night.

She waited another moment, composing herself again, and then she asked, quietly and calmly: