Vigilante (21 page)

“It’s great. We’re very happy.”

“As an old friend, I guess I should be glad,” she answered. “Unfortunately, I’m not.”

“We had our shot, Marcia. It didn’t gel. We’ve both moved on. Besides, when I was at the studio, I saw the way Nix looked at you.”

“The things some of us are willing to do for what’s left of our careers.” She smiled ruefully, then turned her gaze toward Nash, who was mingling with guests about twenty feet away on the far side of the deck.

“We won’t be able to talk for long because Nix doesn’t quite trust me with you,” she said. “He knows we used to date. He’s afraid I might get all giggly and accidentally let a few show secrets slip. You, on the other hand, know what a hard-ass I can be, so that’s never gonna happen.” She toyed with the plastic swizzle stick in her drink.

“Frank thinks Nash is a good guy,” I prodded.

She was silent for a few seconds. “I guess we all see what we want to.” Then she leaned slightly closer and lowered her voice: “Be very careful, Shane.”

“You want to give me something a little more definitive?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Just can’t. If you knew why, you’d understand. All I can tell you is watch your back, ’cause what’s coming will probably hit you hard.”

“There you are,” Nix Nash enthused as he moved up.

Now that we were at sea, he had added a white captain’s hat with gold braid on the visor. The snazzy lid was taking his already over-the-top costume to the edge of comedy. I would have said it made him look ridiculous, but I’ve learned any committed adversary, even one wearing a tutu, should command your complete undivided attention.

He looked at Marcia and said, “Would you excuse us, honey?”

“Of course,” she said brightly. “I was just on my way to talk to Brad and Larry about the script for next week’s show.” She smiled at me again and left.

“You have scripts?” I asked, in mock surprise.

Nash was shorter now because he was wearing boat shoes, not risking the three-inch Cuban heels on this rolling deck. He laughed good-naturedly and said, “I’m going to view your being here as a hopeful sign, Shane. Come on; I want to introduce you to a new, potentially exciting concept.”

I walked with him across the deck, then followed him down a narrow ladder to the crew quarters below.

I had no idea where we were going or what would happen next.

CHAPTER

35

Nash led me aft through a dim, lamp-lit corridor to the stern area and stopped in front of a large mahogany door. The gentle roll of the ship was pleasant as we crossed the mostly calm bay outside the jetty. I could hear the faint sounds of laughter along with the string quartet on the fantail directly above us. Nix took out a key to the captain’s quarters.

“I’ve kept this cabin off-limits,” he said as he worked a key into the lock. “Because of who I’ve become, I’ve found of late I need to have my chances to get away, create some distance between myself and the fawning public.”

Nothing too humble there.

We stepped inside; then he closed the door and turned the latch. The cabin was richly appointed in red leather with plenty of teak and oak. Across the entire stern was a row of mutton-bar windows, which provided light while affording a view of the frothy white wake stretching out behind us as we rolled along.

“Drink?” Nash asked, smiling congenially.

By way of an answer, I held up my bottle of water.

“Not taking any chances, are you?”

“You go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll use any advantage I can get.”

He poured himself a drink from a bar setup on the port side of the room while I checked out the rest of the magnificent cabin. The area ran the entire width of the ship and included a large table and seating, which I guess was designed to duplicate the captain’s mess where William Bligh entertained fellow officers while at sea.

Nash turned, drink now in hand, and studied me carefully. “You’re making a huge mistake not joining up with us,” he said. “We’ve got a good team.”

“I’m sort of a loner.”

“I don’t mind loners. I’m sort of one myself. There’re all kinds of ways to fight this fight, Shane. For instance, I’m no longer a cop or a lawyer, but right now I’m making an even bigger contribution to the legal system than ever before. If you join me you can also be more effective. We have right on our side and we have a powerful electronic megaphone, so people actually hear what we say. It’s important work. I won’t keep asking. This is sort of it. Last call.”

The ship lurched in a trough. I was braced, but Nix grabbed for the edge of the captain’s table. He regained his balance as the ship steadied its roll.

“Was this last-call concept the exciting idea you wanted to expose me to?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He took a moment to study me. “I wanted to expose you to a negative civic phenomenon, which you’ve been participating in. I’m going to try to get you to stop. It’s something called the broken-window theory. Ever heard of it?”

“Never.”

“Pretty simple, really. All it says is, in troubled neighborhoods when a window gets broken you must fix it immediately, because when people see broken windows they tend to lose hope and that loss of hope causes anger and anger causes more broken windows. I know you see me as some sort of anti-police spokesperson, but all I’m doing is going around fixing broken windows.”

“So am I.”

“Not so. You’re actually the guy breaking them. Arresting the Sanchezes was a broken window. Hannah Trumbull’s blown murder investigation, another.”

“Look, Nix, in the interest of not spoiling your premiere party, I don’t want to get into that whole Edwin Chavaria snipe hunt. Let’s just leave that and move on.” He held my gaze, looked speculative for a moment, and said nothing.

“I spent some time reading about you on the Internet,” I continued. “Made some calls to departments in Atlanta and Florida. I’m trying to understand why you have such a hard-on for cops. That’s the primary reason I accepted this invitation.”

“And what did you learn?” he said, his slightly superior smile in place, never taking his eyes off me.

“Getting thrown off the Florida Marine Patrol over losing that serial killer might explain some of it. At least that’s what the Marine Patrol cops in Dade County think. However, my bet is there’s a lot more than just that going on.”

“Lee Bob Batiste was a mistake,” he said. “I don’t make many, but that was a big one. Borrowing money from my law firm and not correctly accounting for it was another. I paid my debt to society on the so-called embezzlement charge and I count Lee Bob as an important lesson learned.”

“That swamp rat kills nine people in the Everglades, he’s still walking free because you blew up the case, and you think it’s an important lesson learned? You’re going kind of easy on yourself there, don’t you think?”

He frowned, then took a minute to gather his thoughts. “Since you seem so interested in that chapter of my life you might as well hear the real facts.” He sounded frustrated now, even annoyed.

“Bobby Batiste was illiterate and semi-educated. He barely spoke English. He was Cajun, raised in the Louisiana swamp, but he moved to Florida in the eighties. The guy was so loony he lived up in a giant cypress tree on the west side of the ’Glades. He ended up killing campers who crossed the imaginary boundaries of an imaginary empire he thought he ruled. He drew lines of death for miles around his tree house. Anybody who wandered in there got killed. He was a scavenger who’d steal food out of his victims’ backpacks and turn it into Cajun dishes over their own campfires. He had this strange dream of creating a kingdom in the swamp where he would bring kidnapped women to help him repopulate. He had actually already started building his capital city using money and credit cards he took off the dead bodies.”

Nash set his drink down before he said, “I wanted that collar. I wanted the killings to stop. I arrested him and had him in cuffs. He had some of the victims’ DLs in his wallet; I got a little anxious and started asking questions. I never thought Bobby would just flat out confess to nine murders right when I grabbed him, but that’s what he did. He thought he was a demonic angel, immune from human prosecution. I’d never seen that kind of deep psychotic illness before, so yeah, I learned a big lesson there. Before I end my time on earth, I intend to fully atone for that mistake.”

“Good shit,” I said dryly.

“You don’t like me much, do you?” he said softly.

I let that hang there.

He took another moment before he smiled and said, “It’s okay; a lot of people feel that way. It sort of comes with this gig. Because of what I do, it can get sorta pronounced, but there’s a deeper reason than just fame or jealousy. Wanna hear?”

“Sure.”

“If you make people
think
they’re thinking, they will love you. But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you. Since I really make people think, I have picked up a fairly long list of enemies. The good news there is, a nonthinking enemy is usually very easy to deal with.”

The boat lurched again. Nash was ready this time, but I almost went down. My bottle of water flew from my hand and rolled across the room. I started after it, but Nash waved me off.

“Leave it,” he said, and took a step closer, forcing me to turn back and focus on him.

“Do you know where we are right now?” he said.

“The point of no return?”

“I was thinking more about where we’re standing. Our location on this ship. Ever since I was a boy, the mysteries and social crimes perpetuated in this cabin have fascinated me.”

Oh, brother.

“HMS
Bounty
was rebuilt by King George of England and sent all the way to Tahiti to get breadfruit plants to take to the West Indies for cultivation. Do you know why?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“It was a cheap food source, which could be used to feed American plantation slaves. So at its heart, the mission the
Bounty
was rechristened to perform was a gross social corruption. But in the end fate had other plans.”

He moved closer to me. His eyes were wide and shining. There seemed to be a glazed insanity hiding behind that cherubic face and Cary Grant costume.

“Commander Bligh was just thirty-three and something of an innocent,” Nash continued. “He’s been portrayed in books and film as a terrible tyrant. But if you read the ship’s logs as I have, actually Fletcher Christian was the real malcontent. Christian had once been Bligh’s protégé. Christian organized a mutiny with eighteen out of forty-two crew members. After it was over and he’d taken the ship, only these original mutineers wanted to remain on the
Bounty,
while all but four of the loyalists boarded a leaking, unsafe lifeboat and went with William Bligh. They preferred to set off across thousands of miles of open ocean with their courageous captain rather than remain behind with the treacherous Mr. Christian.”

I had no idea what we were actually talking about. I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with Fletcher Christian or the mutiny on the
Bounty.

Nash paused, then asked, “Why do you suppose Fletcher Christian took the ship? What caused him to put his saber to William Bligh’s throat and force him into a lifeboat with only a sextant and a watch to navigate with? Can you discern the reason?”

“The goal gradient phenomenon?” I answered.

“You’re a lot smarter than you look,” Nash said. “Exactly right. William Bligh, if you read his logs, was a great commander. A great sailor and leader. Fletcher Christian was a young officer stuck in middle management, bored, unhappy, and filled with malaise. This is what spawned his moment of corruption. It’s the same situation I battle every day.”

Nash crossed the cabin and picked up my water bottle, then dropped it into the trash. When he turned back, he was smiling again.

“Our municipal police and politicians are the Fletcher Christians of modern society. They want control, but not responsibility. They’re staging a mutiny against the laws of democratic justice. Like Bligh, I’m backed up at the rail with a saber at my throat, offering you a chance to get in my leaking lifeboat. To sail a courageous voyage to help me free society from these lawless tyrants.”

“So you’re cast as our misunderstood commander, sent to prison by a bunch of ungrateful pricks because of a rigid management style?”

He stood there, his brow furrowed, angrily flexing the muscles in his jaw.

“The way I see this, it’s all part of the same fabric,” I continued. “We can talk about corruption and the broken-window theory, or the goal gradient phenomenon, but that’s just camouflage. What this is really about is revolution against social order and the real joke is you’re getting filthy rich while you’re doing it.”

He was standing opposite me, his eyes shadowed in the dark cabin, staring malevolently.

“A man can’t take everything and be everything at the same time. It creates isolation and that causes failure,” I said.

He pinned me with a withering gaze, then said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have other guests to entertain.” He turned abruptly and walked out.

CHAPTER

36

While I was at sea learning about broken windows and social corruption, Hitch had spent the day doing scut work on our two cases, trying to set up interviews with Lita Mendez’s balky neighbors and putting together a victimology profile on Hannah Trumbull. It had left him in a prickly mood.

One of the most important parts of a homicide investigation is establishing victimology. Neighbors and friends often know things about a victim that can be surprisingly helpful. I once worked a case where a neighbor told me the vic couldn’t wear cotton because it gave her a skin rash. The dead woman’s body was found in a motel lying on cotton sheets. But the neighbor had explained that when the victim traveled she always took silk sheets in her luggage to remake hotel beds. That information led us to realize the killer had obviously not known the woman well and was unaware of her allergy. He was trying to make it look like a suicide and had purchased new sheets to get rid of his semen stains. We were able to trace the sheets to a nearby Walmart, and a credit card led us to the killer. You never know where a case-breaking lead might come from.