Killing Pace Read online

  “We didn’t wait for the ambulance. She’d had some kind of seizure. She’d not only puked, she’d pissed herself. Evans and Fisk loaded her into the back of a unit and they met the ambulance on the way. It’s okay, Scott. She’s under guard. The feds called again, and we directed them there. They’ll take custody when she’s released.”

  She still hadn’t answered his simple question—why hadn’t she called him? Exasperated, Jardine let it go.

  “Did the lieutenant brief the boss?”

  “Yes.”

  There was something very wrong with all this.

  Something Jardine just wasn’t ready to accept.

  Belrose had known his partner for a long time, and he read his expression. “Want to head back to town, Scottie?”

  “Definitely.”

  Striding toward their car, Jardine held out his hand for the keys. “I’ll drive.”

  When they pulled out onto US 41, he said, “Lights.”

  Belrose activated their emergency lights, and they covered the next twenty-eight miles in twenty-five minutes.

  * * *

  At Physicians Regional Hospital in Naples, the paramedics had transferred Sarah Lockhart from the gurney to a bed in the ER. As they left, a severe-looking nurse appeared through the curtain. Sarah was lying perfectly still, apparently conscious, but nonreactive. As the woman took Sarah’s vitals, her expression migrated from mild puzzlement to quizzical. She left the cubicle, drawing the curtain behind her, and marched off.

  Sarah guessed she was looking for a doctor.

  A doctor who would quickly expose her.

  Time to go.

  She rose to a sitting position and crawled to the end of the bed. She peeked out through the curtain. The sheriff’s car that had transported her for the first part of the trip had kept pace after she’d been transferred to the ambulance, following it to the hospital. One of the deputies was still in the reception area, talking with a clerk. More like flirting with her, judging from the deputy’s body language. The other cop was nowhere in sight, and Sarah’s nurse had vanished around a corner.

  She launched herself off the bed, scooped up her sandals, and ducked out through the curtain. She strode purposefully to the nurse’s station. It was unoccupied. Her eyes swept the scattered clutter on the long desk. She spotted a set of keys.

  A set of keys that included a key fob for a vehicle.

  She snatched them and moved away quickly, putting distance between herself and the ER’s main reception area. As she’d hoped, the row of examination alcoves led to an interior door. Some were occupied, but their curtains were drawn. When she reached the door, she knuckled a round steel plate to trigger the automatic door opener and slipped through the widening gap. She quickly pulled on her shoes. It took a few more minutes and one wrong turn for her to find her way out of the building. She circled the complex. When she located the staff parking area, she strolled through the ranks of vehicles, pressing the key fob at intervals. She was aware that there were probably security cameras trained on the staff parking lot. Any facility that employed night shift staff would routinely install such equipment. Nevertheless, she was confident she’d have enough lead time to complete the first part of her plan.

  She noticed a Chevy Malibu’s signal lamps flashing.

  In less than a minute she was out of the parking lot and heading for US 41.

  * * *

  Seven minutes before they arrived at the hospital, Jardine got a call on his cell.

  “Scott, this is Larry at dispatch.”

  Larry McClure was dayshift supervisor in the communications center.

  Jardine had a sudden uneasy feeling. “Hi, Larry. What’s up?”

  “Thought I’d call you on your cell so you wouldn’t hear it first on the air.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your prisoner … that Lockhart woman. She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

  “I mean, vanished. Ducked out of the hospital. Gone.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Yeah, I know. Those two deputies are gonna be in deep shit with the boss.”

  “They’re in deep shit with me! But that’s for later. Right now, we’ve got to find her.”

  “Bolo’s going out in five seconds, but just thought you’d want to hear it from me first.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Larry.” He ended the call.

  “More trouble?” Belrose asked.

  “Big time.”

  While Jardine was learning that his enigmatic detainee, Sarah Jane Lockhart—wanted murderer, wanted kidnapper, and alleged amnesiac—had escaped custody, he had no idea that she had already passed him, heading east. When his police unit had appeared in the oncoming lane, grill lights flashing, she had dutifully slowed the Malibu and edged it onto the shoulder. It wasn’t until forty minutes after his arrival at the hospital that Jardine learned about the stolen car. The hospital’s security cameras had shown the woman leaving the ER, moving through the hospital’s corridors, and out the main doors. On the film, she moved lithely and appeared fully alert. It was obvious that the whole “seizure” thing had just been an elaborate ruse. But for some reason, there were no security cameras focused on the nursing station, and the nurse who owned the Chevy had been so busy with a cardiac patient and his distraught family that she hadn’t noticed her keys were missing.

  * * *

  Two and a half miles east of the Everglades City turnoff, Sarah spied the entrance to the Big Cypress Swamp Welcome Center. She’d noticed it that morning on her trip into town with Roland. She swung into the lot, parked, and strolled inside. It was a modern facility, with eye-catching exhibits, racks of publications, and a small souvenir shop. A fresh-faced young National Parks Service staffer was manning an information booth. The last thing Sarah needed was to be drawn into a conversation with anyone—especially while attired in vomit- and urine-stained clothing that was bound to draw unwelcome attention. She sidestepped out of the parks officer’s line of sight and pretended to be engrossed in a collection of botanical specimens in a glassed-in display. Intermittently, her eyes scanned the racks of leaflets on either side of her position. She spotted what she was looking for on a turnstile of free brochures.

  Back in the car, she unfolded it. As she’d hoped, it included a map of the preserve. It took her only a few seconds to spot Loop Road. Judging from the map’s scale, the turnoff was roughly fifteen miles to the east at a junction called Monroe Station.

  She drove on.

  Passing a sign on the highway that read: MONROE STATION BACKCOUNTRY ACCESS PARKING 1/4 MILE, Sarah made the turn. She passed what appeared to be a derelict roadhouse and a public restroom and headed down a narrow, gravel road that ran dead south between an ever-higher border of cypress and sabal palms. Watching the odometer, and relying on memory—a point of no small irony, she remarked to herself—she drove fast for the first six miles, kicking up a plume of dust that obscured the road behind. When she hit the seventh mile, she slowed, watching for the secondary turnoff to the cabin. As she rolled along, she noticed a vehicle approaching from the other direction. It was a tow truck.

  The driver gave her a friendly wave as he passed.

  Another mile and the road took a bend to the left. And there it was: the gate with the misspelled sign.

  She kept going for another quarter mile, looking for somewhere to pull off the road. She came to a widened stretch beside the next watercourse to the south. A sign read: SWEETWATER STRAND. The cypress trees that leaned over the stream were larger than most, bedecked in Spanish moss and thickly surrounded by ferns.

  She left the car and walked back.

  When she reached the gate, she slid around one of the rotting end posts that supported it and started up the driveway. Thick vegetation pressed in from both sides, but Sarah stayed close to one edge in case she needed to take cover. When she reached the clearing, she stepped into the brush and stood behind a tree, watching.

  Thinkin
g Detective Jardine might have anticipated her next move, she had half-expected to see a sheriff’s car. But the only vehicle in sight was Roland’s truck.

  She waited, watching the windows for movement.

  Minutes passed—five minutes … ten minutes. A horsefly attacked her arm. She pulled it off and crushed it against the tree.

  She waited.

  The first warning of movement was the sudden splash of daylight that appeared through the kitchen window. The front door, located on the far side of the cabin, had just been opened.

  Had he just entered? Or had he just left?

  In seconds, she had the answer.

  He appeared around the near corner, leaning on crutches. He hobbled across the clearing, angling toward a pile of cut tree branches that lay against the brush about fifty feet from Sarah’s position. Leaning and huffing, he yanked the branches aside, exposing the entrance to a forest trail.

  Sarah knew that trail. A month or so earlier, when Roland thought she was napping, he’d slipped away. The snick of the closing front door had roused her from her doze. She spotted him through a window just as he disappeared into the woods. Curious, she had followed. A winding path led to a small clearing next to a deep section of Clearwater Strand. A plywood shed sat at the water’s edge. The structure appeared to be considerably newer than their cabin. As Sarah emerged from the wood, Roland was in the act of locking the shed door. He herded her back to the cabin, explaining that the building housed the wellhead for their water supply and he’d just been checking the pump. The look on his face had told her that wasn’t the whole story. But she’d had enough on her mind and she hadn’t probed further.

  Today, she followed him again. As he inched along on the crutches, she trailed behind, carefully and silently, staying well back. When the path grew brighter ahead, she stopped and waited, mentally timing his progress across the clearing to the shed.

  Then she moved again. When she reached the end of the trail, he was nowhere to be seen.

  Fifty feet away, the door of the shed stood open.

  She moved in.

  She stepped through the door into the windowless murk of the shed.

  Roland was waiting. He was leaning on a single crutch. “Figured you’d be back,” he said with a warped smile.

  He had a semiautomatic pointed at her chest.

  10

  Sarah took a step closer.

  “Who did you figure would be back, Roland? Lisa … or me?”

  “Don’t matter. Now I get to finish the job.”

  She knew that smug tone. He wouldn’t pull the trigger until he’d proven to her how smart he was.

  She risked another step.

  “What job is that?”

  “Turning you into soup.” He waved the gun at a tall, stainless steel tank sitting on bricks in a corner. Next to it was a propane tank, its pressure line connected to a ring burner. A thick pipe with an in-line valve led from the bottom of the vat and out through the wall of the shed. “Sucker holds eight hundred gallons. Kept putting it off. Finding you out there, ’n those guys that hired me all burnt up. Looked like a win-win. Stupid me. Shoulda got on with the job.” He smirked. “Thing is, the fuckin’ was just too sweet.”

  Stepping closer, as Sarah had done, would have signaled her intentions to anyone who’d been properly trained. But lack of training was just another entry on Roland Lewis’s long list of deficits. In one flash of movement, his wrist was an excruciating ruin and Sarah was holding the gun. She kicked his crutch out from under him and he went down. She trained the pistol on his groin.

  “Yeah, stupid you.”

  She fired.

  Roland bellowed with terror.

  The 9mm slug blew a hole in the wooden floor between his legs, less than an inch from his crotch. Eyes bulging, he clawed at his pants, searching for blood.

  She kneeled and jammed the muzzle of the gun against his testicles. “This one won’t miss.” Her voice was hard, her eyes obsidian.

  “What do you want?” he croaked.

  “Start with who hired you.”

  “I don’t know their names!” She jammed the gun harder. “I swear! The Cubans came … said they’d subbed me out. No names, no questions. Paid me up front. Said two guys would bring a package the next night. Hadta bin them killed in that wreck you was in!”

  “Cubans? You mean the Marielitos?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You work for them?” Her eyes cut to the vat. “Doing this?”

  “Yeah. Ain’t pretty, but it pays the bills.”

  Sarah stood up. She tucked the gun into her belt.

  Roland’s rigid frame slumped with relief.

  But not for long.

  * * *

  Roland was alive, but after the beating she’d just given him, he was in pretty bad shape.

  She patted him down and took his phone and his wallet.

  The next task was a bit tougher. There were several loops of rope hanging on the wall of the shed. She selected one of the longer ones, tied his ankles together, and then dragged him out of the shed and back up the trail to the cabin. She had to stop a few times to clear clothing snagged on exposed roots, but within fifteen minutes she had Roland Lewis’s groaning frame through the door of the cabin. She dragged him straight to the safe room and locked him in.

  First things first …

  She stripped off her foul-smelling clothes and treated herself to a long shower. After she dried off, she picked through the single drawer of clothing she’d been wearing for the past several weeks. Some of the garments had been produced out of a battered suitcase that Roland claimed was the only one they’d had time to pack before he saved her from the shrinks. When she’d noticed they were a size too large, he’d said she’d lost weight after she got sick. Other clothes Roland had found for her during his forays into town. She’d been happy enough to receive them at the time, but recalling their condition when he’d produced them, she wondered if he’d stolen them from some charity group’s collection bin.

  Once she was dressed, she emptied all of the cash from Roland’s wallet and pocketed his phone. Then she picked up his gun.

  It was a collector’s item—a Beretta M1934.

  She’d recognized the weapon immediately when he pointed it at her. Her grandmother had owned one.

  Nonna. Thank God you’re not alive to see all this.

  Sarah had no intention of taking the pistol with her. It was most likely stolen, and not knowing if it was associated with serious crimes, she couldn’t take the chance of a ballistic match.

  So she had two choices: toss it into the swamp, or leave it on the table to be found.

  She split the decision.

  She cleared the chamber, ejected the magazine and emptied it of cartridges. She pocketed the rounds. Then she wiped her prints off both the gun’s frame and its magazine. Her prints might be all over the cabin, but there was no way she was leaving them on this suspect gun. She left it and the magazine on the kitchen table, along with the key to the safe room. She was tempted to leave Jardine a note, but then she had a better idea.

  She’d call him.

  She threw the ammo in the swamp as she walked back to her car.

  Before she pulled away, she checked the map. It was about eight miles back to US 41 if she retraced her route, or seventeen miles through the backcountry if she kept going and intersected the highway farther east. One way was faster, but the other was less visible.

  She chose the long way.

  For the next forty minutes, she drove along the gravel track without seeing another vehicle. She switched on Roland’s phone. She’d made it a point over the last few weeks to watch him whenever he opened it to play his incessant video games, so she’d figured out his passcode. For most of the drive, the phone was telling her there was no signal, but toward the end of the run, not long after the gravel turned back to pavement, the screen showed a few bars of service.

  She pulled over, searched online to find the landline numbe
r for the Everglades substation, and made the call.

  A bored voice told her Detective Jardine wasn’t available.

  “Can I take a message?”

  “Tell him if he wants to speak to Sarah Lockhart, he can phone this number.”

  “What number is that, ma’am?” The voice didn’t sound bored anymore.

  “It’s on the screen in front of you. Tell Jardine he’s got five minutes.”

  Roland’s phone rang in three minutes.

  “Sarah?”

  “Oh, we’re on a first name basis now? Okay, Scott. Listen to me. I didn’t kill those people.”

  “I believe you. Where are you?”

  “Send an ambulance to Roland’s place.”

  “Sarah!”

  “He tried to kill me. I’ll send you a full statement later.”

  “And that seizure of yours? What was—?”

  “Make the call, Scott!”

  Her tone of authority startled him. He dropped the phone, and she heard him giving quick instructions to another officer to dispatch an ambulance and a police unit.

  He came back on the line. “The seizure? You faked it?”

  “My grandmother fought in the Italian Resistance. She always said it was easier to escape from a fascist hospital than it was from a fascist jail, and the fastest way to get moved to a hospital was to frighten the guards.”

  “Your grandmother. So your memory’s back?”

  “Yes. And now I’m going to put it to use.” She paused. “There’s something you should know. When your deputies get to that cabin, they’re going to find a Beretta pistol on the table. You might want to run it for a ballistics match.”

  “Match to what?”

  “I don’t know. But if Roland had it, it’s probably been used in a felony. Oh, and by the way, I locked him in the safe room. The key’s on the table next to the gun. Now, there’s something else. L’urna della morte.”

  “What?”

  “The urn of death. There’s a trail that leads to the water, downstream from the cabin. It starts on the southeast edge of the clearing—I marked the entrance with Roland’s crutches. The trail leads to a shed on the riverbank. In that shed is a stainless steel vat. I drained it enough so you can see the bottom. Tell your people to take a look.”