Authors: Hilary Norman
“Lieutenant Duval?”
“That’s right.”
“This is Lucas Ash. I treated your sister last – ”
“I know what you did.” Joe was curt. The sabotage might not be the cardiologist’s fault, but so far as Joe was concerned, the communications breakdown had been
unforgivable.
“I want to apologize for the delay in getting back to you – ”
“Thank you.” Joe cut him off again. “Do you have the information, sir?” He knew that his tone was too brusque, but he couldn’t help it.
“I do, Lieutenant.”
Joe heard the grim note in the other man’s voice, and knew.
“It was made by Hagen Pacing?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Are you sure?” Joe clutched at straws. “Have you confirmed it with your office?”
“I have, and in any case I remember every detail about your sister’s case, Lieutenant. I’m afraid there’s no doubt.”
Joe’s mind raced, going nowhere.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes.”
“I’m arranging to return right away. I’d like to be on hand in case I’m needed.” Ash paused again. “I understand from Detective Cohen you’re having some
difficulty locating your sister. I told him I knew she and Mr Barzinsky were probably going to Florida, but I’m afraid I had nothing more to offer.”
Joe went silent again.
“I’m sure you’ll find her soon.”
“I hope so.” Joe’s voice was stiff.
“I’m so very sorry, Lieutenant.” There was no mistaking Ash’s sincerity. “You sister’s one of the loveliest young people it’s been my privilege to
meet.”
“Yes,” Joe said. “She is.”
He put down the receiver. There was a pool of water around his feet, but he didn’t notice. The phone rang again, and mechanically he snatched it up.
“Did you hear from the doc yet?” It was Cohen.
“Just now. It’s bad news.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Anything else, Sol?”
“Nothing from Florida yet, but it’s still early.” Cohen hesitated, “I had a visit from Ferguson.”
“What’s up?”
“I told him about Lally.”
“You did what?”
“I know, I know, but the man was really on shpilkes, and then when he heard you were in the Berkshires, he got it in his head you were taking a break, and I got mad and told him. Joe,
I’m sorry.”
Joe heard his wretchedness. “Right now, Sol, Ferguson knowing or not knowing is the least of my worries.”
“Anyway, it really shut him up. He was very shocked, wanted to know if there was anything he could do for you, and I told him no, thank you, but at least now he’ll stay off your
back.” Cohen took a breath, and changed the subject. “Any news on Jess?”
“No change.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Yeah.”
“They’ll find Lally today, Joe.”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“What do you think?”
The names were heavenly. Big Pine, No Name, Big Torch, Little Torch, and Sugarloaf. The Lower Keys began below the Seven Mile Bridge, and their character was different again
from the islands that had come before. If Lally and Hugo had felt well-being and relaxation washing over them as far back as at Key Largo, these less commercialized islands, with their easy access
to Atlantic coral reefs, their wildlife refuges and tropical hardwood forests, and their quieter, calmer attitude to life in general, all but stopped them in their tracks.
On Big Pine Key on Saturday afternoon they had seen their first alligators close to, lying tranquilly near the shore of a big freshwater pond, and on Sunday, in the early morning mist in one of
the wilderness sections of the refuge, they spied two of the elusive, tiny white-tailed Key deer, the smallest in the world. For the first time since she’d become sick, Lally felt like
dancing for joy, but she controlled the impulse and stood very still, and Hugo, too, scarcely dared to breathe, and the two exquisite, fragile creatures seemed almost to be posing for them, and
though neither Lally nor Hugo risked touching their camera for fear of disturbing the animals, it was a moment they both knew they would retain for ever.
Chris Webber noticed no alligators, no deer, nor herons nor pelicans. He was an artist faced with deep and gentle colours, with lush vegetation and rare creatures and an
atmosphere so peaceful that at another time he would have put up his easel and not moved for hours or even days. But his eyes were still seeking the red Sunbird, and the dark-haired, grey-eyed
girl, and nothing else counted, nothing mattered, not the hungry growl in his stomach when he forgot to eat, nor the nagging ache in his head from the sun and ceaseless looking, and when, just
after noon he checked in with the police on Sugarloaf Key, he didn’t know that he was less than two hours behind Lally and Hugo, though for all the good that was, they might just as well have
been a thousand miles apart. But he forced down some local fish, and drank another cup of coffee, and though he tasted neither, they renewed his strength and his determination, and he got back in
his car, back onto Route 1, and drove on again.
Key West took Hugo’s and Lally’s breath away. It shimmered in the sun, was fragrant and lush with frangipani and hibiscus and mango trees and oleanders and coconut
palms, and lively and colourful with fishing boats and yachts and attractive houses and contented humanity.
“Spanish explorers named it
Cayo Hueso
or island of bones,” Lally told Hugo when they arrived just after two o’clock. “They found all these human remains
scattered on the shore, and no one ever discovered why they were there or who they’d belonged to, but the name stuck.”
“Not exactly descriptive,” Hugo said, his voice softened with wonder. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more perfect. I may never go home. Maybe we could open
Hugo II
here.”
“And we could both write novels.” Lally joined in the fantasy. “You remember what Bobby Goldstein said about all those Pulitzer prizewinners.”
“You could teach ballet here.”
“I’m not sure Nijinsky would like the heat.”
“It’s not all that hot.”
“That’s because it’s only January.”
“Oh well,” Hugo sighed. “If the cat doesn’t like it, we can’t come.”
Chris Webber hit Key West at ten minutes past four. He parked the Mercedes in a lot in the Old Town and found, as he had in every town, the police station.
“They’re here,” an officer at the desk told him. “Their car was spotted an hour ago.”
“And?” Chris’s pulse-rate rose again.
“And that’s it for now.”
“But you said someone saw their car.”
“Sure.”
“So?”
“So nothing else yet.” The police officer observed Chris’s growing flush of frustration and anger. “Mr Webber, this is a busy town with a lot of traffic, but assuming
they haven’t been here too long, most people stay a while because they like it.”
“So you do have people out looking?” Chris didn’t trouble hiding his irony.
“Naturally we do, sir.”
“Thank Christ for that.”
The officer was amiable. “This is the end of the line for the Keys, sir. They can’t go any further, unless they rent a boat, and we’d hear about that, so the only thing we have
to worry about is getting a hold of them before they get back on the highway and head back the way they came.”
Chris went to the payphone and called Joe Duval collect.
“I’m in Key West, and they’re here, too.”
“Thank God.”
“But we don’t have them yet,” Chris said quickly. “Duval, how much do the local police know about what’s going on?”
“The cops on the street know they need to find Lally fast.”
“But they don’t know she’s in danger.”
“Not exactly.”
“Can I tell them?”
Joe took a breath before answering. “No.”
“I think it might help if they knew.”
“It might help Lally, but it wouldn’t help anyone else.” Joe’s voice was tight with the strain.
“She’s your sister, Duval,” Chris protested.
“You think you have to point that out to me?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t waste time being sorry,” Joe said. “We have a clinic on red-alert here in Chicago, waiting for Lally.” John Morrissey, Marie Ferguson’s partner, had
called Joe direct to place the Howe Clinic at Lally’s disposal for the explantation of her pacemaker. “Just get back on the street, Webber, buy yourself a street map, and start walking.
Go to every café, every hotel, every restaurant, every tourist attraction. Show people the photograph, keep your eyes open – ”
“Believe me, my eyes are open.”
“Find her, Webber. Time’s running out.”
Chris’s stomach dipped. “You’ve heard from the doctor.”
“It was made by Hagen. They’re still crosschecking to see if it belongs to any of the other batches we know for sure were tampered with.”
“But it’s a possibility.”
“I wouldn’t still be telling you to find her if it weren’t.”
Chris followed the tourist trail blindly, playing a half-crazed game of hide and seek, with no cries of ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ to aid him. He went to the
aquarium, scanning the backs of the heads of people watching sharks being fed; he visited a house that had originally been owned by a US marshal who’d saved a neighbour from Key West’s
fire of 1886 by dynamiting their street; he went to the Hemingway House and saw the six-toed cats rumoured to be descended from the writer’s own animals; guessing that Lally might feel like a
break from commercialism, he drove to a wildlife refuge outside town, and then he drove back again to visit a bizarre cemetery where stone caskets rested above the ground and many of the epitaphs
were more humorous than poignant.
“At Least I Know Where He’s Sleeping Tonight”
seemed one of the favourites, but Chris hardly read any of them as he half walked, half
ran from grave to grave, looking at faces and backs and tuning into voices, trying but failing to find the one he sought.
“They haven’t checked in to a hotel or guesthouse yet – though of course most of them are full – but we’ll be doing the rounds again in an hour or
two.”
Chris was back in the police station. It was five minutes before six o’clock, and the sun was going down.
“Have you been showing the photograph?” he asked the officer on duty.
“Yes, sir, we have.”
Chris raked his hair with one hand and suppressed an urge to hoist the other man by his collar. “This is crazy. I mean, you told me they were here, and you’ve supposedly been
searching for them since three o’clock – what are you people
doing
, for Christ’s sake?”
“Everything we can, sir.” The officer was as cordial and maddening as his predecessor had been almost two hours before. “And we’ll have a couple of men at the Mallory
Docks in about ten minutes.”
“What happens there?”
“Sunset, sir.” The officer smiled. “If your friend’s in Key West, it’s a fair bet that’s where she and most every other tourist’ll be.”
“How do I find it?” Chris was already halfway to the door.
“North-west end of Duval Street.” The other man grinned again. “Even named the street after her.”
The place was jammed with life and noise. Men, women and children from everywhere, some there to entertain or to sell their wares, most there to be entertained and to spend
money. Chris’s eyes were dry and sore with staring, and he’d never especially enjoyed large crowds, but now he loathed them, had a wish to wipe them out, wanted them all to lie down and
shut the hell
up
so that he could yell out her name and have her hear him.
He saw jugglers and acrobats, mime artists and fire-eaters. He saw clowns and street vendors, and dogs wearing bonnets and two men with tattoos over every visible inch of their bodies. Twice, he
saw young women with long dark brown hair, and he sprinted towards them only to brake sharply when he saw they weren’t Lally, and once he thought – he
swore
– he saw Hugo
eating ice cream and laughing, but then he was gone, vanished off the street like one of Kirk’s crew beamed up to the
Enterprise
. And Chris wanted to scream, wanted to tear his hair
out and scream like a madman, and if he’d thought it might have helped, might have drawn Lally from the mass, he’d have done it without hesitation, but there was so much going on, so
much fun, so much pleasure and music and laughter and squealing, he doubted she’d even have noticed.
“It’s going!” someone yelled.
The sun gave a final dip, and hit the horizon, and the crowd cheered as if all their home teams had simultaneously scored the greatest winning touchdown of all time.
And Chris heard a bang.
Everyone around him heard it, too, craned their heads to see what had caused it, then lost interest, shrugging and smiling and gazing back at the ever-darkening horizon.
But Chris was terrified that he knew what it was, and he saw two police officers less than a hundred yards away, and they were looking, too, trying to fathom where it had come from, and he felt
the blood roaring through his arteries into his head, thought that if he was right, he might die too, and he couldn’t bear it if he was right, he just couldn’t
stand
it
–
He saw the cops start walking, fast, away from the square, and he started running like a demented thing, crashing into people, knocking over a postcard rack and a bicycle, almost sending a small
girl flying, stopping just for a second to check that she was unhurt and to pacify her enraged mother. The cops were moving up Duval Street, turning into Caroline, and Chris was almost on top of
them when there was another bang, and they all ground to a halt, and it was just a kid, a teenaged boy, letting off firecrackers, and the two cops laughed – he heard them
laugh
, and
okay, he felt relieved, too, more than he could easily express, but still he wanted to bang their heads together for laughing, and he couldn’t understand what was happening to him, because he
was such a peaceable man as a rule, but then again he’d never experienced such frustration, never felt such fear for anyone, not even Katy, as he felt for Lally Duval, for this woman he
hardly knew.
“What a circus,” Hugo said.