The Coldest Mile Page 11

  He stopped off at Bayfront Square and watched children climbing across jungle gyms, everybody wearing sandals or flip- flops. In some ways it reminded him of Central Park, but with more intense colors. Action anywhere you looked—you had to keep on your toes or be mowed down by a runaway rollerblader.

  Lila had never seen the ocean until the day they moved to New York. She loved going to Robert Moses and Fire Island, even though she was a little afraid to swim out more than twenty feet past the first breakers. The two of them spent a lot of time sitting in the surf, the tide dragging the sand around their feet.

  It was time to find the girl, Kylie.

  All he knew about Angie's sister Milly was that she was married to a professional surfer. Chase had thought that was sort of a dumb thing to do professionally, but as he gazed over toward the Gulf of Mexico and watched the white sands stretching before him, the waters a wildly dazzling green and the sunlight more vivid somehow than he'd ever seen before, he had a change of heart.

  He asked around for where the best surfing in the area might be and was told North Jetty, at the south point of Casey Key. He got out his maps and drove over.

  The ocean brimmed with muscular, golden-haired kids on boards. He sidled up to groups drying in the sun, lazily draped across blankets and drinking bottles of beer hidden inside Styrofoam holders. He hoped there weren't that many pro surfers from the area. They told him there were. They were wary and looked at him like he was a cop. Chase wondered exactly what the trouble was. A heavy drug undercurrent in the surfer world, smuggling shit in up from Miami in their board wax? He got a couple names and thought he should've brought a pencil and pad.

  Nothing to do except keep talking to anybody with a board. He moved from group to group, most of the kids ignoring him and hitting the waves the second he showed up. He pulled out his cell and called information. He reached a few of the surfers and asked questions, trying not to sound too invasive. Hey, you married to a girl named Milly? You got a kid named Kylie? He got yelled at and hung up on a lot.

  It took about another hour to connect with the right person on the beach. He was relaxing in the shade of some boulders, watching surfers do their thing and thinking he might want to try it one of these days when a couple girls in bikinis with yellow lycra rash guards tied around their waists walked past. He asked the question and one girl said, “You don't mean Aaron Dash, do you? The guy who got murdered?”

  “Yes,” he said, everything snapping into place at once, “that's who I mean.”

  No wonder the kids didn't want to talk to him. The cops and reporters must've already rousted them plenty.

  Chase imagined how it went down. Jonah showing up at the surfer's door, saying he wanted Kylie back. Milly asking about her sister. Jonah maybe even telling her the truth, explaining how Angie had shot him twice in the back because she wanted to get clear of him and keep him away from his own daughter forever. Looking into his dead eyes, Milly would know it was real, that her sister was gone and she'd never even be able to bury her. She'd scoop the kid up and make a run for it. The surfer standing there in his flip- flops, threatening to call the cops. Jonah slugging him two or three times in the gut, turning abruptly and driving his elbow backward into Dash's face. The surfer in good shape, making the effort even though his nose was broken, clambering to his feet. Jonah thinking enough was enough and popping Dash once in the forehead with whatever he was carrying, probably a .32. Then making his way to the back bedroom where Milly and Kylie hid even before the surfer's corpse hit the floor. Chase grew frustrated with Milly, thinking, Why the fuck didn't you go out the back door? But people hated to leave their houses, their places of protection, even when they were invaded, he'd seen it a dozen times when he used to burgle for crews. Jesus, there'd be so much screaming, Kylie terri fied because Milly was, and Jonah, steel and stone, marching down the hall, kicking the door in, maybe taking the time to get the girl clear but probably not, raising the gun and icing Milly while Kylie was still in her arms. The little girl falling onto the chest of her dead aunt, watching the blood flow free from Milly's mouth. Turning to look at her father and Jonah, incapable of feeling what other men felt, no love inside him, grabbing the kid and taking her into the bent life, spatters of blood already on the side of her face.

  “Any idea where this Dash used to live?” Chase asked.

  The teenager didn't know, but now that Chase had a name he called information and got out his maps. It took only ten minutes to get over to the Dash house, which was right on the water with a couple hundred feet of beachfront property.

  There was crime- scene tape over the front door. Chase was surprised at how similar the place looked to homes down by the Great South Bay on the south shore of Long Island, in the high- end townships. Lots of windows, glass doors, and a couple screened-in sunrooms. Surfing wasn't a stupid profession after all.

  He went to the front door, looked around. He noticed that the tape had been very carefully cut and then stuck back into place. The lock had no scratches on it. Either a pro had gone in or an amateur had been kept out. Chase had to wonder about that. Who else was coming by to check things over?

  He faded back across the yard and moved to the side of the house, searching for the smartest point of entry. Children's toys were scattered about. Little plastic cars you pedaled. A couple tiny tricycles lying on their sides.

  When Chase saw them a knifing pain took him low in the guts and he nearly went down. Jesus Christ, they'd had their own kids. He hadn't even thought of that before. Showed how he'd been obsessing but not thinking.

  He bent and righted the trikes. One green and one pink. A boy's and a girl's. So look at that, they'd had a little boy. What would Jonah have done to the kid? Chase knew his grandfather didn't feel things like regular people, but could he have snuffed a child? Chase caught a flash of his own eyes in the chrome of a trike. They seemed to think the old man could.

  A huge jungle gym designed of steel and block wood rose from the sand. He could imagine Dash doing chin- ups there, holding on to the metal rings sunk into the crossbeam while beside him Kylie and his boy clambered around on the little ladders. Chase figured she was young enough and had been away from Jonah long enough to call Dash her daddy. Why not. Would she even know Jonah? Chase couldn't see it.

  A wooden privacy fence separated the yards on both sides of the house, and farther back down the sand snow fencing marked vague property trails. It was called snow fencing on Long Island. Here, maybe cyclone fencing. The murmur of distant waves began to filter into his head above the sound of his own heavy breathing. He looked at the eyes in the chrome again and they were telling him something.

  A sharp call echoed up from the shore with a harsh snap. “Hey … you!”

  Chase stood and turned slowly toward the voice. You always moved slow when somebody spooked you, it showed you weren't edgy and you had a right to be wherever you were.

  Marching up the sand came a squat, overweight woman wearing a one- piece bathing suit. Blue nylon with little frills around it that flapped when she walked. You had to give some credit to folks who wore what they wanted to wear and didn't give a shit about what anybody might say.

  Frowning, she plodded forward, mounds moving one way or another or in two directions at once. She really knew how to put it out there, chin held high. Chase knew a lot of guys who would appreciate that and would've been wowed by her.

  She'd been in the water for a while. Her fingers were all pruney. Hair drying in the breeze into a wild horsetail. Her cheeks and forehead were so sunburned that he almost winced just looking at her.

  He waved and said, “Howdy.”

  She didn't respond until she got up close. Real close, jutting a forefinger into his sternum. “Who are you?”

  “Is this the Dash place?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  She wasn't offering anything. Lady was on the ball, wasn't about to be dissuaded and let him take the lead. She leaned slightly to the right, toward the
fence, like she belonged on the other side of it, and he figured this was the next- door neighbor, keeping an eye out.

  “I'm a relative.” It was the truth, but the wrong answer. He should've just said he was a friend.

  “Of Dash's?”

  “Of Milly's.”

  “Yeah, then what's her maiden name?”

  When you're cornered you might as well smile, hit 'em with the charm. He grinned, trying to look abashed. “I have no idea.”

  She let her teeth slide out from beneath her lips in an affectation that was pure Spanish Inquisition. Chase didn't know how someone who lived right on a beach in a mansion could ever look so pissy. “You expect me to believe you're related to Milly, but you don't know her maiden name?”

  “I'm a distant relative.”

  “Get out of here before I call the cops.”

  “Who are you, lady?”

  “I'm Esther Williams. What, you don't recognize me?”

  Chase let out a chuckle. It was a stretch of a reference for modern filmgoers, but some of Jonah's pals had liked Busby Berkeley films. When Chase was a kid he'd watched a few during a marathon on Channel 9 while they'd put together a plan to score an antique- gun shop.

  “What happened here? Someone told me he was murdered.”

  “I said to take off.”

  “What about the girl? Kylie. And they had a boy?”

  “Who the hell are you, mister?”

  “I told you—”

  “Yeah, but I'm not buying that bullshit. You a reporter?”

  What the hell. “Yes.”

  “No, you're not that either or you would've said so right off. You're a liar twice over now. Get your ass out of here.”

  She wasn't about to play it any other way. He liked her even more for that. No cajoling, no buying her off. She was raw and rude, and she must've had her reasons. He couldn't push too hard or she might actually follow through. Everyone who was in the know liked to rub it in the faces of those who weren't, and he got the feeling he could work this pruney fat lady if he could just figure out the right opening move.

  She was tough but real. Maybe he should respond in kind.

  “You know Kylie wasn't their kid, right? She's the child of Milly's sister, Angie.” He tried to remember everything Angie had told him about her life. He hadn't known her long and they hadn't talked much, but she had tried to win him over so that he'd make a play against Jonah, and she'd spoken some about her childhood and her sister. “Their mother died of uterine cancer when Angie was nine. Their father was a Cuban boozer who loved the Miami club scene and was a part- time gigolo. She hated him because he'd spend eight hundred bucks on a pair of shoes but wouldn't have money to feed the kids. He hit on a drug dealer's girlfriend and got snuffed in a men's room. Their aunt took them in after that. Any chance Milly ever mentioned any of that?”

  “Only the part about her mother dying of uterine cancer,” the lady said. A breeze drifted in off the water and flapped the little frills on her suit. “She had a scare herself a couple of years ago and we talked about it some. The rest at least sounds like you're finally talking the truth.”

  “I need to know what happened here,” Chase said. He let the truth rise up from the depths of his chest and soak his words. “I have to find the girl.”

  Her name was Francie Goodwin and she had a very large dog she called Assassin. Chase saw how it could fit.

  Chase sat at Francie's kitchen table drinking some herbal shit he couldn't stand and tried to ignore the fact that Assassin was staring with an unhealthy amount of interest at Chase's groin. Assassin was a white German shepherd and more than large enough to turn Chase into a eunuch with one bite. It was hard to keep his mind on what Francie was saying but he was doing his best.

  He'd given her the latest fake name and she hadn't believed him but didn't push it. She said, “You're trouble but you're not serious trouble. You really do care about Kylie.”

  “Yes.”

  “I've been married six times, and yes, you heard that right, me, six times, and they all thought they were the best charlatans, cheats, operators, swindlers, scam artists, bullshit artists, and rip- off artists in the state. The first three broke my heart. The next three, well, I wound up taking them for everything they had. Why they wanted me was their problem, and why I wanted them is my problem. But I learned from my experiences. You can't run a game or a racket on me.”

  “So I've learned.”

  She nodded. “Okay then, who are you really?”

  “I knew Milly's sister Angie,” Chase told her. “And I actually am related, in a way too weird to go into right now. I heard Aaron Dash was dead. Mur dered.”

  Her face tightened with displaced anger. “Ten days ago. Somebody shot him in the heart and left him to bleed out in his own living room.”

  Ten days. Right as Jonah was trying to set up his new string with somebody named Dex. Chase had been too slow, too late, he'd known what was going to happen and he'd stopped off to pick up cash he could've done without.

  But no, that wasn't what it had really been about at all. Chase had been sick and needed to decide for himself whether he wanted to live or die.

  Francie said, “He was strong. It took him three days to die. Milly and Kylie and Walt are missing. Possibly kidnapped, the police said.”

  Chase looked her in the eye and said, “But you're smart enough not to believe them. Nobody would take them and leave a body behind. You don't kill the person who would pay the ransom. They haven't been kidnapped.”

  Francie shook her head. “And her car was gone. Kidnap victims don't drive off on their own.”

  “That common knowledge?”

  “No, but she always parked her SUV in the drive and it's gone.”

  “You see anything? Hear anything?”

  “No,” Francie said. “No one did.”

  “Not even the gunshot?”

  “No.”

  “What time did it happen?”

  “Around three in the afternoon.”

  Made sense. In the middle of the night, slamming doors and shouts and screaming engines might stir the neighbors, but in the afternoon with the waves roaring, who notices anything?

  “Who called the cops?”

  “Aaron managed to crawl to a phone before he passed out. He never woke up again.”

  Sipping the tea, hating the taste and glad for that, Chase tried for the cold spot again and was shocked when he felt the spreading chill that quieted his mind and shut down his emotions, allowing for clarity.

  He reached out and patted Assassin's head, the dog licking his hand, sensing the change.

  “You know who did this, don't you?” she said.

  Chase tried to work it out. It started the same way as before. Jonah showing up at the door, saying he wanted Kylie back. Milly asking about her sister. Jonah maybe telling her the truth, explaining how Angie had shot him twice in the back. Looking into his dead eyes, Milly would know her sister was gone. She'd scoop the kid up and make a run for it. Both the children. Angie had told her about Jonah, she knew what to do. The surfer standing there in his flip- flops and threatening to call the cops. Jonah slugging him two or three times in the gut, turning abruptly and driving his elbow backward into Dash's face. The surfer in good shape, stronger than Jonah expected. Giving him a much tougher fight while Milly and the kids made it to the front door, got outside, clambered into a truck and booked. Jonah thinking enough was enough and popping Dash once in the chest, probably with a .32 because the sound hadn't even carried to next door. Then making his way outside and heading after the woman and the two kids. Chase had grown frustrated thinking that Milly hadn't left the house, but now he saw that she'd been smart and sharp and had immediately run. But where? Miami? It's where she and her sister had been raised.

  Or had Jonah caught up with them a few miles down the road and dumped her car and the bodies of Milly and little Walt in the ocean?

  Francie repeated herself with more force. “You know who did
this.”

  “I think I do,” Chase said.

  “Who is it?”

  “Kylie's father. Milly ever say anything about him?”

  “No. Just that she was watching the girl while her sister worked things out. It sounded like drugs were involved, rehab, that sort of thing. I didn't push it and she never said anything more.”

  “If she did run, do you have any idea of where she went?”

  “No. But she was strong too. Both of them were always swimming, jogging. She was a semipro surfer herself.”

  Tough, smart, on the run with two children. Or dead in the water.

  Francie, her sunburned face going even redder, that righteous anger rising, fists on the table, turning her head toward the home next door where nothing walked, allowed the opening note of a sob to break from her.

  Assassin moved to her, put his enormous chin on her enormous lap as the single note rang throughout the tremendous house of ex- husbands. Then it was done, buried beneath the silence, and she turned back to stare at Chase, still not trusting him, but trusting him enough.

  “You're going after him.”

  From inside the place where he was cool and smooth, iced down and feeling right, he said, “Yes.”

  He got a hotel room on the water and called Deuce and Georgie, checking in and putting pressure on. He needed to find Jonah. Any news at all, rumors, gossip, mutters or bitching, he needed to hear it. Put the word out, turn his cell- phone number over to everybody, whatever it took.

  In the meantime, Chase tried to stay active. He swam and ran on the beach. Shadowboxed and used the hotel gym. He ate well in Sarasota's restaurants and enjoyed the food.