Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (20 page)

The only truly unlawful things had been done by Victor’s kidnappers—not Maureen, not Harry Henry, and not me.

Even so, the whole thing was ugly, and I wished I didn’t even know about it. The fact that I not only knew
about it, but was involved in it, made me so disgusted with myself that I didn’t linger for another cup of coffee. I left money for Judy and went out without saying goodbye.

Like a homing pigeon, I sped south on Midnight Pass Road and made a right turn onto my lane where a discreet sign warns
DEAD END, PRIVATE ROAD
. I felt better just to be so close to home. I wanted to talk to Michael and try to get my life back on an even keel. Slowing so as not to freak out the parakeets in the oak trees, I began to relax as I looked out at the sun-spangled Gulf. Distant sailboats made white triangles against the blue horizon, and I could make out the white track of a water skier behind a speedboat.

Motion in the rearview mirror caught my eye, and my heart began to leap like a trapped beast when I saw still another dark sedan in the lane behind me.

Half the people in the world drive dark sedans, but they don’t drive down private lanes unless they have reason to go to the house at the end of the lane. Cops drive unmarked sedans. If the car behind me was an unmarked cop’s car, that could only mean that somebody from SIB was coming to notify Michael that something had happened to Paco.

I
t’s funny how the world goes gray when you’re faced with something you’ve always feared, as if a layer of cheesecloth settles over all the color and dulls it. I pulled into the carport next to Paco’s truck and forced myself to open my door and slide out. If what I feared was true, I did not think I could bear it. Michael’s car was gone, which was either good or bad. Good that he wouldn’t be there to hear the news that would break his heart, bad that I would have to be the one who ultimately told him.

The sedan crawled to a stop on the shelled parking area, and the driver turned his head and looked squarely at me.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I half turned to run away. It wasn’t a deputy from SIB, it was Jaz’s stepfather.

Throwing his door open, he lunged from the car. The gray screen that had lowered over my vision dissolved, so I saw him silhouetted against a sky blazed by a feral sun.

With bald accusation, he said, “Where’s the girl?”

I took a half step backward toward the stairs to my apartment and played ignorant.

“What girl?”

He moved forward, but not just a half step. He was coming at me, and fast. “My stepdaughter! Is she here?”

There are times when I feel strong as a jungle tiger. This wasn’t one of them. Pure and simple, I was afraid of the man. Afraid of his size. Afraid of the gun I knew he wore under his left arm.

Grabbing the remote from my shorts pocket to open my hurricane shutters, I turned and ran up my stairs.

As the shutters began their upward glide, he thundered to a huffing stop at the bottom step. Red faced, he yelled, “You don’t know what you’re involved in, lady.”

I hate it when a sleazeball calls me lady. Makes me want to kick him where it would do the most good.

I looked over the railing and said, “I’m giving you two seconds to get in your car and leave.”

I tried to make that sound like “otherwise I’ll call down a rain of fire on your head,” but I didn’t really have an otherwise.

He must have known it, because he started up the stairs, moving with surprising speed for a man his size. My shutters made it to the top and clicked home, but I was trapped. He was halfway up the steps, and even if I pushed through my french doors and ran inside my apartment, he could come after me before I could lower the shutters again.

As he climbed higher, I did the only thing I could do. I ran to the top of the stairs, planted my foot in the middle
of his chest, and pushed. Surprised and knocked off balance, he flailed the air while I ran to my door. He grabbed for the banister, missed it, and stumbled awkwardly to the bottom step just as Michael’s car jerked to a stop downstairs.

Michael slammed out of his car, and I could tell from the expression on his face that he had seen me kick the man. That’s all he needed to go into white-hot fury.

I yelled, “He’s got a gun, Michael!”

Michael didn’t even slow down.

The man looked up at me and then at Michael, and began making erasing motions with both hands. “Lady, you’ve got it all wrong.”

I was afraid he’d go for his gun, but Michael reached him before he had time.

The only other time I’d ever seen Michael that mad was when I was twelve and he was fourteen, and a nasty boy at school had jerked up my T-shirt and pinched one of my newly budding nipples. Michael had come at him so hard and fast that the kid’s nose was flattened and a front tooth was hanging by a bloody thread before I’d even got my shirt pulled back down.

The guy at the bottom of the stairs didn’t fare any better. Michael smashed his fist into the man’s gut, then hooked him with a thudding uppercut to the chin.

As much as I would have liked watching Michael beat the living snot out of him, I yelled, “Michael, stop!”

He grabbed the man’s arm and twisted it behind his back so viciously that I cringed at the pain I imagined in the man’s shoulder.

Michael gave me a grim smile. “Why?”

“Because Guidry is here.”

It was true. Guidry’s Blazer was rolling across the shell by the carport.

Without releasing the man, Michael waited for Guidry to park and get out of his car. Guidry wore the look of a man who cannot be surprised but is willing to be tested.

I skipped down some of the steps and jumped down the others, sort of a semivictorious hustle. I had somehow managed to magnetize a man who was probably the head of a gang of thieves and killers. My brother had the man in a death grip, and now Guidry could arrest him and thank me.

I said, “Guidry, this is the man I’ve been telling you about, the one who’s Jaz’s stepfather.”

Guidry gave the man a curt nod. “I’m Lieutenant Guidry, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department.”

To me, he said, “What’s going on here?”

I said, “This man followed me home and threatened me. I kicked him down the stairs and Michael stopped him from escaping.”

The man said, “That’s not true. I didn’t threaten her. My stepdaughter is missing and I think this woman knows where she is. I’m just trying to find my stepdaughter.”

Guidry said, “Your stepdaughter would be the girl named Jaz?”

The man grimaced. “She calls herself that. It’s really Rosemary.”

Guidry said, “Whatever her name is, we have reason to believe she knows members of a gang wanted for murder.”

The man heaved a huge sigh and wiped his face with
the hand Michael didn’t have a grip on, rubbing it as if he wanted to erase his own skin.

He said, “Christ, I hate this job.”

We all waited. I wondered if he was actually going to confess that he was the head of a gang that he sent out to sell drugs and rob people.

He said, “I’m a United States marshal, Lieutenant.”

My mouth fell open, but Guidry merely regarded him with dispassionate eyes. He said, “Show me some ID.”

Wincing a bit, the man reached into his breast pocket, drew out a slim wallet, and flipped it open to show his creds.

Guidry said, “Michael, let him go.”

Michael narrowed his eyes and looked at the man for a long moment before he loosened his hold. Rotating his sore shoulder under his navy polyester, the man arched his back as if his entire spine hurt.

Michael said, “You need me here?”

Guidry shook his head and Michael walked toward his kitchen door. He was flinging his punching hand from his wrist to get the blood circulating, but otherwise he looked as if he had more important things on his mind.

Guidry said, “What’s your connection to the girl?”

The marshal looked up at me as if he’d prefer not to speak in front of me, then made a what-the-hell shrug. “She was a witness to a drive-by killing in L.A. Right now she’s the
only
witness.”

Guidry said, “You’ve got her in the Witness Protection Program?”

“That’s correct.”

Guidry said, “I guess that explains why you’re paying an exorbitant rate to keep her at the Key Royale.”

“It’s the safest place we could find. Guards at the gate, lots of security on the premises. Room service, maid service, unlimited movies on big-screen TV. It wasn’t going to be forever, just until the trial next month.”

With a surly glance at me, he said, “She stayed there until this woman and her friend interfered. After that, I believe she has been sneaking away. With all the security there, I don’t know how she managed it, but I suspect she’s left more than once.”

Guidry said, “The manager at the Key Royale says they gave you a special off-season rate.”

The man and I both stared at Guidry. I was surprised he’d got the Key Royale people to give up a detail like that, and I suppose the marshal was surprised they’d talked at all.

The man rubbed his face again. “One kid is more trouble than an entire Mafia family. Kids don’t understand the danger they’re in, they don’t have any self-discipline, you have to watch them every minute or they’ll call their old friends and give away their location.”

I said, “Did Jaz call those boys who’re looking for her?”

His face sagged. “I didn’t know any boys were looking for her.”

I said, “Three boys came in a house where I was working. One of them was named Paulie. They asked for Jaz by name.”

Guidry said, “We got latents from that boy and identified him. Name was Paul Vanderson, one of the three charged with the drive-by killing in L.A.”

The marshal said, “She wouldn’t have called them. She’s scared to death of them.”

I said, “I think she gave somebody a description of the honeymoon cottage she was staying in at the Key Royale. The boys just went looking for a house that fit the description.”

The man scowled. “I gave her a phone so she could call me if she needed anything, but I took it away from her because she was making calls to L.A. She claimed she only called a girl from her school, but if she told where she was, the girl could have spread it around.”

I thought about going over and kicking him. I said, “What is it with you government people? Are you all dead from the neck up? You leave a girl that young alone, of course she’ll call a friend! And of course the friend will talk about it! What were you thinking?”

For the first time, he looked faintly ashamed. “Look, terrorism is the focus now, and we’re spread all over the place. We don’t have the personnel to babysit teenagers. In the beginning, we assigned a female marshal to her, and the two of them holed up in a hotel room in Kansas. But the trial date got changed, that marshal got reassigned, and we brought her here where she’d have more freedom. I know it’s not an ideal situation, but I checked on her twice a day. I brought her comic books and candy bars. I even took her to Target a couple of times for shampoo and stuff. It wasn’t like she was in jail.”

“Couldn’t you have put her with a family someplace?”

He met my angry glare with dull eyes. “Until the murder trial is over, putting her with a family would expose them to grave danger.”

I said, “What about Jaz’s parents? Why aren’t they with her?”

“Her mother split when she was a baby, father took off a few years later. She lived with a grandmother, but the old lady died a few months ago. She was in a foster home when she saw the shooting. Everybody on the street scattered, nobody will talk. She’s the only one we’ve got.”

His voice was gruff, but tension around his lips said he felt sadness along with his frustration and anger.

Guidry said, “How long has she been missing?”

“She wasn’t at the hotel when I went to check on her last night. I checked again this morning and nothing had changed.”

His eyes shifted to me, as if he still hoped I knew where Jaz was.

Guidry said, “Could she have run away?”

“Her things were all there. If she’d run away, she would have taken her personal things.”

Guilt was pouring over me like hot oil. I hadn’t encouraged Hetty to give Jaz sanctuary, but I hadn’t discouraged it, either. With the best of intentions, Hetty and I had given Jaz an escape from boredom and loneliness, but the escape may have caused her to be killed.

I said, “I followed Jaz yesterday morning when she was on her way back to the hotel. She ran into the nature preserve behind the hotel, right at a spot where a Hummer was waiting at the curb. I think the guys from L.A. were in that Hummer. If I hadn’t been on the street, they would have grabbed Jaz then. They probably went back yesterday afternoon and caught her when she was on the way back to Hetty’s house.”

We all fell silent, each of us knowing the worst might already have happened.

The marshal took out a card and handed it to Guidry. “We’ll cooperate with any local investigation involving one of our charges, Lieutenant, but I doubt you’ll find the girl alive.” Bitterly, he added, “Without her, those guys will walk.”

With a barely civil nod to me, he walked to his car and drove away.

I still didn’t know his name and I still didn’t like him. On the other hand, he had tried to keep Jaz safe. At least he got credit for that.

I said, “How did you know he was here?”

“I didn’t. I came to talk to you about something else.”

Even with my heart heavy because of Jaz, a little bubble like a champagne blip rose through the sorrow.

He said, “I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Victor Salazar.”

I should have known. Now that Victor was dead, the investigation was no longer just a kidnapping but also a homicide. Guidry wasn’t here for any personal reason. He was here strictly as a homicide detective.

The little bubble took on feet, and one of its feet was mired in quicksand. I could almost hear the sucking sound it made as it pulled its foot up and got ready to stand its ground.

I said, “You’d better come upstairs.”

I
went up the stairs ahead of Guidry. I felt like a bear with a thorn in its paw. Guidry could just ask me his detective questions and leave. If the only thing he was interested in was what I knew about homicides, that’s all he would get.