Time of Departure (15 page)

I'd shut off my cell, but I'd forgotten to unplug the landline.

The annoying ringing derailed my train of thought. I'd been meaning to cancel the landline, since I relied mostly on my cell, but I just hadn't gotten around to it. I was still using one of those old-fashioned answering machines, so I just sat and waited for it to take care of the interruption. I figured the caller was Marc, and at that moment, I had no intention of speaking with him.

First I heard the computerized female voice give the generic greeting I had selected when I first set up the machine. “The party you are calling is not available. Please leave a message after the tone.”

A second later, my living room reverberated with the din of bar chatter and the clink of glasses. I heard someone's breath on the mouthpiece of a phone and then a slurred voice yelled, “Got Grayson's message, girlie!”

Lipinski!

I leapt up, spilling wine down the front of my jeans. I stormed across the room.

“Okay, listen … great idea here! After we arrest some senile old man on, like …
no evidence,
ya call a press conference! Ya can tell CNN how you 'n' Sherlock Hastings solved The Amazing Case of the Rosary Pea Killer! The networks'll eat it up!”

His last few words were nearly drowned out by male guffaws. I pictured a band of off-duty detectives sloshing around a drink-covered table. As I fumbled to disconnect the answering machine from the phone, I heard Geiger ask, “What if she's right?”

I froze, amazed that Lipinski hadn't ended the call.

After a beat, I heard his incisive reply: “Naaaaw!”

The line went dead as I ripped the telephone cord out of the wall.

*   *   *

Seven
A.M
.

I called Marc from the car.

He answered on the second ring. “Good morning.”

“You win,” I said.

“What happened?”

“I'll tell you when I see you.”

“When will that be?”

“In fifteen minutes. Feel like taking a drive?”

“The Suwannee property?”

“Yes.”

“I'm ready.”

“I thought you would be.” I disconnected.

When I drove up, he was waiting outside. He got in, and I pulled away.

“Feel like breakfast first?” he asked.

“How about a drive-through? We can eat on the road.”

“In a hurry, huh?”

“I am now.”

He nodded and settled back. We stopped at the McDonald's on Route 24, just before the intersection with Interstate 75. We loaded up on McMuffins, orange juice, and coffee, and then threaded under the interstate and set off for Cedar Key. Soon we were rolling down the straight stretch that would take us right past Archer, where I grew up.

Marc arranged some paper napkins across my lap, followed by an unwrapped McMuffin. He settled back and started working on his own sandwich. “Talk to me,” he said.

“I called Anna Fenwick.”

“Why?”

“To ask her about her cousin Doris.”

“The one she said was a bit strange.”

“Yes.”

“Lots of people are a bit strange, Claire. And we're talking about a woman here. There aren't too many female serial killers.”

“Point taken. But I still wanted to ask her what she meant by ‘strange.' I learned two interesting things. First: Doris was Doris Tribe, Harlan's sister.”

“Aaah … that
is
interesting.”

“And, second: Anna thought she was strange because she got heavily involved in alternative medicines.”

“Alternative medicines?”

“Yes.”

“Was one of those homeopathy?”

“She thinks so. She said that every few years, Doris would abandon what she was doing and jump into a new study area. She was pretty sure homeopathy was one of them. So we can at least theorize that at some point she might have had a homeopathy textbook lying around the house.”

“Where is she now?”

“Anna says she went to India to continue her studies and died of cholera.”

“Damn!”

“Yeah.”

Marc finished his sandwich. “So … what triggered the call to Anna Fenwick? Yesterday, you were swearing at me. You were ready to drop the whole thing.”

I told him about Lipinski's drunken message. “That bastard will never follow up on this,” I declared, staring glumly at the road ahead.

“He's not that stupid. Sam will expect him to investigate. On the other hand, you don't get to where Lipinski is without learning how to shape evidence. I'm betting he
will
run with this, but not in the way you'd want or expect. He'll start out by keeping it low key. He'll get Jeff Geiger to retrace our steps and ask questions. Lipinski doesn't want us to be right, so he'll concentrate on digging up counter-facts. What I mean is, he won't be looking for evidence that fits. He'll be looking for evidence that doesn't. If Geiger digs up enough to discredit our theory, Lipinski will stop right there and call Sam.”

“And if he doesn't? If our theory stands up?”

“Then he and Geiger will make a house call.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes. They'll interview Tribe.”

“That would screw everything!”

“Probably, but from Lipinski's point of view, there's no downside. The last thing he wants is to spend the next two months doing the kind of spade work you've been doing, reading his way through multiple boxes of evidence, looking for dots to connect, and trying to establish the movements of someone thirty years ago. The Ted Lipinski I knew was always looking for shortcuts. Because of that, he was next to useless on our task force. If Geiger finds any evidence that supports our theory, I guarantee Lipinski will wheel over to Tribe's house, push his way in, and confront the man with whatever he's got. Either Tribe will deny he's the killer or he'll confess. If he denies, we'll be dead in the water, which won't bother Lipinski one little bit. But if he confesses, Lipinski will get credit for the most dramatic arrest in the State of Florida since Ted Bundy.”

I was silent. After a mile or so, I said, “Don't think I haven't noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

“That you know too much.”

He grinned. “Really? I thought I wasn't young enough to know everything.”

“Very funny! Don't play with me, Marc! What have you got? Some secret source you're not telling me about?”

“You'll learn.”

“When?”

“When you're younger.”

I growled in frustration. I wasn't going to let him off this time. I grabbed his arm. “Listen! If you're so damned sure about what Lipinski is going to do, what are
we
doing? I mean,
what are we doing right now
?”

“Getting there first,” he replied. He gently removed my hand from his arm, gave it an affectionate squeeze, and placed it back on the steering wheel.

 

21

Marc looked up from the Levy County map on his knee. He pointed. “That should be it.”

I braked and swung the car off the gravel. We passed between two faded white stakes that had been driven into the leaf litter on either side of a double-rut driveway that wound into a forest of tall, spindly longleaf pines.

“It should be about a quarter of a mile,” Marc said.

“Here we go again,” I muttered uneasily as we moved into the forest. “I do the driving, but you're the one in the driver's seat.”

“It only seems that way.”

“What are we going to find here?”

“Only what we need to know.”

“You're talking in riddles again!”

He didn't respond. I glanced over at him. His head was bowed, and he seemed to be lost in thought.

We followed the ruts at crawling speed. Eventually, the trees opened up and we were at the edge of a large clearing. I stopped the car. Directly ahead was a dilapidated breezeway-style cottage—what Southerners used to call a dogtrot, and today's green architects still do. The basic design consisted of two adjoining cabins with a narrow breezeway between them, all under a common roof. In this case, the front entry into the breezeway was sealed off by a door. A lopsided veranda extended across the front of the entire structure.

The place appeared uninhabited. There were no vehicles in sight, the corrugated iron roof was covered in rust, and the walls looked like they hadn't seen a coat of paint in twenty years.

Marc tossed the map onto the dash. “Let's take a look.”

I eased my car across the clearing and stopped in front of the house. We got out. I scanned the ground. There was no sign of vehicle tracks other than our own.

I walked toward the cottage. As I got closer to the veranda, I noticed that vines from a line of bushes planted along the front had wound up, over, and around the railings. In a few places, they had crept all the way across the veranda floor.

Small, dark pods dangled from many of the branches. I picked one off and peeled it open.

Crab's eye peas spilled out into my hand.

“Marc!”

No answer. I turned.

Marc was gone.

Then I heard his voice. “Claire!”

I hurried toward the rear of the cottage. When I rounded the last corner, I stopped in my tracks. The back of the property consisted of a few sagging outbuildings and an overgrown stubble grass field that ran off toward the banks of the Suwannee River. In the distance, thick cypress trees lined the edge of the water.

But what riveted my attention was Marc. He was standing, almost transfixed, staring at the back of the cottage.

The rear wall of the building was completely overgrown with crab's eye vines. They covered the windows, much of the peeling door that closed off the rear end of the breezeway, and in several places, they reached as high as the eaves.

While I was still absorbing this sight, Marc came out of his trance. He strode over to the back door. He tested the handle. The door was unlocked. He began tearing away the vines that would hinder entry.

I couldn't believe my eyes. “Marc, don't! We need a warrant!”

He turned back to me. He'd been preternaturally calm when we got out of the car, but now he was sweating profusely. His shirt was mottled with dark, spreading stains. His face wore a haunted expression. “
You
might need a warrant. I'm a civilian.”

“You're a state agent!”

“Based on what? Grayson ordered me off the case, and the cops won't listen to me! I'm a private citizen.”

I rushed toward him. “I'm not a private citizen, and you're with me!”

“No, Claire. You're with me.”

He pushed on the door. Its baseboard scraped and chattered for a few inches and then jammed.

“Breaking and entering is a felony!”

“Only when there's criminal intent.”

“It's still criminal trespass!”

“So arrest me!”

He shouldered the door. It swung inward, hinges squealing. He shot me an apologetic look and stepped through the opening.

I stood frozen. Marc had just forced me to make a decision. I ran the known facts through my mind: the crab's eye pea in Jane Doe's locket; the toxin levels in Amanda Jordan's bone marrow; the possibility that Tribe had learned serial dilution from his sister's textbooks; the fact that he had lived here during the key time period; the location of this property in the red zone on Charlie McNabb's probability map.

I ran the odds. They were dead against us. It was one thing to drive onto the property and discover the crab's eye pea vines. It was quite another to enter the building without a warrant.

I was halfway back to the car when it hit me.

Looking back, I can only describe it as an overwhelming combination of recklessness, anger, and curiosity.

It stopped me in my tracks.

I took a deep breath, retraced my steps, and entered the cottage.

*   *   *

The dogtrot hallway was no more than four feet wide. The floor was bare plywood, swollen from moisture and blotched with mold. An open doorway on the left revealed a stripped-out kitchen. There were no appliances. A ragged pattern of holes and bent hardware on one wall stood as mute testimony to plundered cabinetry. A clutter of camp-style kitchenware gathered dust in a chipped enamel sink.

Thump!

The sound seemed to come from behind the kitchen wall. I hurried along the passageway. A door was open. I looked in.

The room was carpeted in wall-to-wall shag. Much of it was flattened with age and, in places, threadbare. Unworn sections near the walls were the color of pale urine. The fulvous wallpaper was equally unappealing. The sole sign of the room's previous use was a narrow cot jammed against one wall. There was no mattress, just a frame of angle iron rails with a sagging sleep surface of discolored cord and rusting wire.

Marc was kneeling near a small open closet. A wooden crate sat on the floor in front of him. The words
OCEAN SPRAY
were stenciled across one end. The crate appeared to be sealed, its top seated into the frame formed by the tops of the four sides.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

He didn't reply. He felt around with his fingers, located a gap, and pried the top loose. He set it aside. From where I stood in the doorway, I could see folded clothing.

Marc raised his head. “To answer your question … some psychos like to keep trophies.” He reached for the top garment. He held it up. It was a woman's pleated skirt.

A familiar prickly sensation rippled down my spine.

No, please! Not now!

“Marc, right now would be a really good time for us to leave! Please!”

The back of my neck started to burn. I could feel perspiration starting on my forehead and upper lip.

Marc ignored me. He extracted another garment. He rose to his feet and shook it free of its folds.