“If I had to bet, Peter’s uncle, Jack, who was the head of Boston PD’s Internal Affairs, used every dirty secret and favor and string he had to squash our case. At least the stink I made got the punk to resign from the force.”
I closed my eyes, my forehead banging against my knees as all the breath escaped my lungs.
“If you ask me—” Yorgenson started.
Then my time had elapsed and the phone went dead.
The phone clicking back into its cradle sounded like a pistol shot in the silence. A bullet right through my brain. I stared down at my hands as they shook in time with the painful thump of my heart.
I wandered outside dazed. Blinking in the sunlight, I felt weary, drained, like I’d just completed a stint of hard labor. The sun-blasted steps and sidewalk were empty. The George Hamilton look-alike bum who’d been weaving palm frond hats was long gone.
What a coincidence, I thought, glancing up into the painfully blue sky. So was my mind.
I left my moped where it was and decided to walk. I headed south past a construction site where a bunch of black and Mexican laborers sat in the shade of a king palm on a metal tool cart, staring blatantly, silently, and rapaciously. Usually I was nervous about such scenes, but that morning, I stared back defiantly, daring them to whistle, to say something to me, to set me off.
Where was I going? I wondered as I made a turn and wandered down a picket fence–lined street. I didn’t have a home anymore. I’d never had one, in fact.
How stupid could a person be? I thought. Red flag after red flag had been raised, and I’d pushed them aside time and time again. It was over. I’d been duped, scammed, fleeced. The strangest and by far the worst part of all was that I was the one who’d conned myself.
Peter wasn’t my best friend, wasn’t the love of my life. I thought about the happy life of ease and suntan lotion on the deck of Peter’s Stingray I’d been envisioning less than twenty-four hours ago, and I started laughing. Instead of tanning myself topside, I was in a hole as black and deep as they come, and I had no idea how to get out of it.
It was a rabbit hole, I realized as I walked down the sunlit street, skating along the edge of my sanity. And I was Alice. Peter was the White Rabbit. Who had Elena been? The Queen of Hearts, I thought. And off went her head.
Key West was actually Wonderland, I thought. The theory made a lot of sense, especially if you’ve ever been to Duval Street after midnight.
Chapter 36
I RETRIEVED MY MOPED and got back to the house twenty minutes later. I went straight to the bedroom closet and took down a suitcase. I opened it on the floor of the closet and threw in some underwear, my shirts, my jeans.
I glanced up at the top shelf at the big white box that contained my wedding dress and shook my head. That was staying. All yours, Peter!
By Greyhound bus, it would take about four or five hours to get back to Homestead, my small Florida hometown. My mom was gone, but I knew a couple of people there. I had a grandaunt I could crash with for a few days. I lifted the phone to call a taxi. Maybe I could get a job at the Gap, where I’d worked summers, until I figured things out.
I dropped the phone back into the cradle.
Wait a second. What was I doing? That would be the first place Peter would look for me.
I was assuming Peter would just accept the fact that I had left him. But hadn’t the Boston cop said that Peter had stalked his wife when she tried to leave? I held my head in my hands as I sat down on the bed.
Was that what I had to look forward to? Would Peter stalk me now? Murder me in a staged robbery?
My hand covered my mouth.
Wait a second. No.
Just like Elena.
Jamaicans hadn’t killed Elena and the store clerk.
Peter had.
It all clicked into place. Peter had shot Elena with the machine pistol I’d seen on his boat and made up the story about the robbery.
It was over drugs, I realized, nodding my head. Which had to be why the FBI was involved. Peter was under investigation!
As I sat there, I knew it was true. All of it. I couldn’t believe how much denial I’d been in.
Peter wasn’t my hero. He wasn’t the love of my life. He was a corrupt, drug-dealing cop and an ice-cold-blooded killer.
What now, Mermaid? I thought, dropping onto the bed. I lay there for a while, staring up at the ceiling.
Then I sat back up and took out the FBI agent’s card.
I turned it in my hand as I stared at the phone.
Maybe I should call him? He knew the jam I was in. He could help me. He said so.
No! I thought, tapping the card to my forehead. Then everything would come out. What I’d done. How Peter had gotten rid of Ramón Peña.
I held my stomach in my hands. Staring down at the bulge that had already started to take over my belly, I envisioned myself giving birth in jail.
Unbelievable! I crumpled the card as I curled up on the bed. I couldn’t call the FBI either. I might as well get a taxi to the nearest prison.
It took a little over an hour for the third option to finally dawn on me: What I needed to do. How I could try to go about doing it. It was an absolutely insane idea.
Right up my alley, I thought, getting to my feet.
Chapter 37
THE FIRST THING I did was carefully put all my clothes away. After I replaced the suitcase, I went into the bottom of my sock drawer and shook out every nickel of catering-tip money I’d put aside to buy Peter a watch for our anniversary. Two hundred and eleven dollars wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
I quickly put the money into the pocket of my jogging fanny pack and changed into a gym shirt and sneakers and shorts. Finally, I went into the bathroom and put on some lip gloss before doing my hair up in a cute ponytail.
I needed to look my best.
I was, after all, going to be abducted by the Jump Killer this afternoon.
It was the news story at the hospital that had inspired me. The missing Marathon woman. The fact that the serial killer was now supposed to be in the Lower Keys.
Nineteen young women had gone missing, as if they’d disappeared into thin air.
I was going to be number twenty.
Peter wasn’t stupid, I knew. If my plan was going to work, it would have to be flawless, perfect in every way. The second he found out, he was going to be suspicious. So was my new FBI friend.
But I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted to get away from Peter, to get out of the immense hole I’d dug for myself, I had to try. It was my only shot.
I checked myself in the bathroom mirror one more time and then looked at my watch. It was just coming on noon. I went into the bedroom and stared out the sliders at the sunlit water. There was no sign of Peter’s boat. At least not yet. I’d have a six-or seven-hour head start.
I didn’t want to be late to my own funeral.
After I locked the front door, I pulled up my gray jogging T and patted my belly.
“Wish us luck,” I said to my baby. “Mommy’s sure as hell going to need it.”
Chapter 38
TEN MINUTES LATER, I was cruising at full throttle along Smathers Beach on my moped. Surprisingly, there were only a few people on its sugar white sand. A woman braiding her daughter’s wet hair and a couple of pudgy old men the color of leather, casting sea poles into the almost glass-still water. I looked up as a biplane sputtered by: COME TO THE GREEN PARROT! RIGHT BESIDE US 1’S MILE ZERO! THE MOST SOUTHERN BAR IN THE US! read its ad banner.
Mile Zero, I thought. That’s exactly where I was. Make that Mile Less Than Zero.
I suddenly put on the brakes as I spotted what I was looking for. A tall, skinny white kid with dusty blond dreadlocks was sitting on the concrete boardwalk in what looked like a yoga position. Yet another one of Key West’s many street kids and skate rats and punk rockers. A young beach bum come down to the country’s lower right-hand corner God knew why, escaping God knew what.
I w
as escaping, too, in the opposite direction, and I needed his help.
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping in front of him.
The kid held up a still finger, his eyes closed. After a moment, he stood, a guileless smile on his tan face.
“Mornin’, ma’am,” he said in a Texas accent. “Just doing a little Zen breath counting there. Sorry to make you wait. What can I do for you?”
Oddly enough, this was the way most Key West conversations went.
“I know this sounds weird,” I said, “but I was wondering if you could buy something for me.”
“Drugs?” he said, looking at me suspiciously.
“No, no,” I said. “Nothing like that. I need you to buy me some cord.”
“Cord?” he said, eyeing me. “Like rope? You gonna hang yourself? I don’t go for that kinky stuff.”
“Of course not,” I said. “It’s nothing like that. I need paracord. It’s a special kind of rope for parachuting. I use it in my parasailing business, and I’m out. My ex-husband owns the only marina supply store on the island that sells it, and I don’t want to give the son of a bitch the satisfaction of going in to buy it myself.”
I needed the cord for my escape plan, of course. The ligature was linked to several of the Jump Killer cases.
I knew the request and my explanation sounded fishy, but I also knew it didn’t matter. Despite its small size, Key West had a healthy big-city, screw-the-cops, left-wing street vibe. Even if this stoner put two and two together after my disappearance, there’s no way he’d go anywhere near the cops. Who better than some burnt-out street kid to be a go-between?
“What do you say?” I nudged him.
“Paracord, huh? That does sound pretty weird,” the kid said, adjusting his dreads as he stood. “But I’ve been down here for a month now and have heard a lot weirder. I happen to be in the cord-buying business this morning. Ten bucks do it for you?”
“Ten bucks, it is,” I said, waving him toward my scooter.
Chapter 39
AFTER MY YOUNG ZEN-COWBOY FRIEND scored the paracord for me, I hit a vintage clothing store in Bahama Village and then a CVS. A thin, homeless, twenty-something girl with sun-and-drug-wasted eyes holding a baby asked me for money as I exited the pharmacy, carrying two brimming bags.
Though I could hardly spare it, I stopped and gave her a dollar, praying that I wouldn’t be her pretty soon.
I took the Vespa back over to Flagler Street and stopped at my favorite bodega for lunch. I ate my cubano slowly as the sun crested almost directly overhead.
I figured it would take until probably midnight for Peter to come looking for me. If I was lucky, he might even wait until morning.
After I finished lunch, I drove back to Smathers Beach, which ran along the southeast side of the island. Near its most deserted end, by the airport, I pulled over and got off the bike and stepped across the sandy path to the dunes.
I walked along the beach to where the beach grass grew about chest high and hunkered down.
There was no one on the beach, no one in the water.
It was time.
The first thing I did was upend my fanny pack, which contained my keys and wallet. Then with a pair of scissors that I’d bought, I cut a length of the paracord and dropped it on top of my CD Walkman.
The next part of the plan was the one I’d been dreading. It was also the most crucial. I took a small package out of the CVS bag and opened it.
It contained razor blades. They flashed like mirror shards in the bright light as I retrieved one and looked down at myself, debating. I swallowed as I finally decided on the back of my left calf.
I bit my lip as I lowered the blade down and sliced myself open. I hissed as I started the incision a little down from the back of my knee. Then teared up as I dug in harder with the blade, parting my skin.
At first, only a little blood dribbled out of the wound, but after I began to flex my calf over and over again, more came until I had a nice red stream going. It began to drip down my leg and off my heel, darkening the sand. I hopped around on one foot, flicking the blood on my fanny pack, the sand, the sea grass, the piece of paracord.
After about ten minutes, the area looked perfect, a total bloody mess.
Why not? Peter had shot himself to make his crime scene look good. The least I could come up with was a bit of self-mutilation.
I hopped back a few feet and sat down in the sand. I cleaned and bandaged myself carefully with peroxide and gauze and bandages that I’d bought at the pharmacy. I was even more careful to retrieve every scrap of trash.
After I was bandaged, I went over and kicked some more sand over everything. Then I stared at the scene for a minute, resting my chin on my thumb like a painter before a canvas.
Finally I stood.
It would have to do.
I crossed my fingers as I turned and walked away.
Chapter 40
IT WAS AS DIM as a cave. The concrete floor was littered with cigarette butts and some wriggly-looking thing I didn’t even want to think about. The smell of urine made my eyes water.
Perfect, I thought, locking the door of the public beach bathroom a ways from my fabricated crime scene.
It was skeevy and scary, but the most important things were that the women’s side had a lock on the door and the sink worked. I turned on the sink’s rusty tap as I opened the CVS bag.
Twenty minutes later, I looked at myself in the mirror.
My reflection provided some much-needed comic relief.
My still wet, self-cut, bleached hair was already turning platinum, and I had more black around my eyes than a raccoon. In the Catholic-school plaid skirt, black Social Distortion concert T, and Doc Martens boots that I scored from the secondhand store, I now looked like a cross between Courtney Love and a homeless fortune-teller.
My disguise was complete. I could have been any of the punk-rock girl runaways who hung around Duval asking for handouts. Time to go.
There was a city bus to Marathon, but that would be the first place Peter would check if he wasn’t convinced by the crime scene. My plan was to hitchhike out, find some tourist passing by who would never link sweet young cop wife, Jeanine Fournier’s, disappearance to my new punk-rock persona.
The wind was picking up as I came back out onto the beach, the first gold shadows stretching over the sand. There was a roar, and I looked up at a small “puddle jumper” passenger prop plane coming in. Happy tourists about to touch down in paradise.
“One piece of advice. Take a pass on the Jell-O shots,” I called up to it.
I shook my head as I gazed at the ocean, at the curvature of the world that I was about to enter practically penniless, definitely friendless, with a baby inside of me.
My Doc Martens clopped loudly on the concrete jogging path as I pointed myself toward the first bridge and whatever the hell would come next.
Chapter 41
THE SPEEDING STINGRAY rose and dipped like a skipping stone as Peter opened up its three-hundred-horsepower engine full throttle on their way back in. This was Key West at its finest, he thought, looking through the spray at the red-gold sunset. Wind in your hair, cold beer in your hand, cooler bursting with amberjack.
The pink clouds starboard reminded him of the blood in the water when they’d fed Teo’s body to the sharks that afternoon.
The product that Peter had bought from him and Elena was supposed to have been pure. He’d paid for pure. But it had been cut. Not a lot. Just enough to get them both killed.
Peter took another icy hit of his Corona and placed it back into the drink holder, his blue eyes glued to the horizon. He thought what he always thought when push came to shove and someone had to go.
Goddamn fucking shame.
It was twilight as they turned into the bay. Killing the engine, Peter expertly drew up along the seawall and saw that all the lights were off in the house. He hopped out of the boat and went inside as Morley tied up and unloaded.
“Jeanine?
” he called.
He noticed that her sneakers were missing from the closet when he walked through the bedroom. A glance out the front door showed her Vespa wasn’t in the carport either.
He went back into the bedroom and made a phone call. The phone kept ringing. He hung up and sat on the edge of the bed, thinking. He looked in the closet again. All their bags were still there. All of her clothes.
Finally, he looked at their wedding portrait on the shelf beside the bed.
“Fuck,” he said.
Morley was at the picnic table, dividing up the catch into freezer bags, when Peter arrived beside him.
“What is it?” Morley said.
“Jeanine,” Peter said. “Something’s wrong.”
Chapter 42
IN THE RISING ENGINE WHINE of an approaching truck, I scrambled up onto the tiny concrete ledge on the highway bridge’s shoulder just in time. Blinded by headlights, road grit biting at the side of my face, I easily could have reached out and touched the side of the rattling, creaking, speeding eighteen-wheeler flashing by.
Or ended up underneath it.
My knees buckled as its swooshing waft of air came close to knocking me over the bridge’s shin-high railing and into the water. At least he was kind enough not to hit his eardrum-puncturing air horn as he clattered past like the truck before.
I hopped down off the ledge and soldiered on after the truck’s red taillights, swinging my CVS bag up on my shoulder. There wasn’t much left in it, half a package of Combos and a dwindling bottle of water. Supplies were definitely running low. My legs were OK, but my feet were killing me, starting to blister now in the Doc Martens after nearly four hours of walking.
Far out at sea, I spotted the red running lights of an anchored tanker. Above them, the clear startling night contained about a hundred billion silver-blue stars. I remembered how Peter and I had lain out in our backyard after our city hall wedding, drinking Coors Light and kissing in the dark like teenagers as we watched for shooting stars.