Geography of Murder (29 page)

I should have known. The boat should have been the giveaway. How does a man who has no connection to the marina suddenly end up dead on a boat in the middle of the night? Had we been so blinded by our need to lay it on Jason that we never looked past him?

And where did Jason fit in? He worked for Phil. Had Phil used him to cover his crime? Or had it all been a terrible accident?

I plugged my Bluetooth into my ear and speed dialed Nancy.

I could tell when she answered that she was in her car.

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"Where are you?" she asked.

"Clearing downtown. I'm still at least an hour away." It should have taken me an hour and a half but at my speed I'd do it in record time.

"Well don't kill yourself getting here. You won't be much good to him in the morgue."

I raced around a Ford pickup, tires screaming, diving in front of a big rig that blasted his horn at me. I was gone before the echo of sound faded.

"Where's the Coast Guard?"

"They've been called," Nancy said. "They're looking up their records as we speak. Captain said he'd get back to me ASAP. Collins would have had to file a float plan. He should be pretty easy to find."

"And if he deviates from his filed course? This guy isn't going to tell them what he's planning to do."

"How do you even know Jason's out there with him?"

"Because he said he had a job with Phil today. He thought it was great that Phil was bringing him along again." I didn't tell her that Jason was also happy for the excuse to stay out of my reach. Those waters were mine to tread and drown in if Phil succeeded in what he was planning.

How the hell could I have been so blind to my feelings?

Had I beaten him so savagely because I wanted to drive him away? Or because I couldn't admit I cared? Oh, stop being such an asshole. You love the guy. Admit it to yourself, at least. You're too much of a coward to admit it to him.

"If he's smart," I said, thinking furiously. "He'll stage this one as some kind of accident. Hell, how many people go 283

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missing each year off boats or out at sea? The bodies go missing and little things like the presence of Special-K aren't there to point fingers."

"Why is he doing this?" Nancy asked. "That's the part I can't figure out. Why did he kill Blunt and Dutton and now he's after Jason? What's the connection?"

"That's what I didn't see for the longest time. But at the crux is the fact that Collin's daughter was abused by Blunt as a child. Remember how messed up she was? We knew she'd been abused, but we thought her child was the result of rape.

That it happened when she was an adult. I don't know what triggered him now, and not earlier, but I'll bet there was some kind of stressor that put him over the edge. I'm still trying to figure out Dutton, but I like Collins for it. I still think their service in Korea is related."

"Let's find him and ask him."

I like to think I'd stop long enough to ask the guy. But right now I'd blow him away like a bug without a second thought. My cold rage knew no bounds and frankly, it scared me a little.

"Wait a second, I'm getting a radio call..." Nancy was gone for several heart-grabbing minutes then she was back on air.

"That was the Coast Guard. They're on their way to the last reported position of the
Weeping Lady.
They should be in line of sight in a few minutes."

"Tell them to approach with caution," I said, feeling a heaviness in my chest. I remembered the way Blunt and Dutton had looked and the savagery that had gone into their deaths. "We don't know if he's armed or not."

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"They'll be careful, Alex."

I disconnected and goosed the gas pedal, the engine screamed in protest and red-lined. I didn't care if I damaged the thing. I had to get there now. I played road tag with one car after another as I would overtake them and by strength of sirens and lights, force them off to the other lane to let me by. Even the big rig drivers didn't argue with me for long. But still, time and miles crawled. The freeway shrank to a single lane in both directions and it got harder to get round the cars blocking my way.

Suddenly it occurred to me. Maybe I was a factor in what set Phil off this time. He had to know Jason and I were involved—hell, half the city apparently knew. I'd gone to Phil to talk him into letting Jason keep his job. Jason might have made some comment about my investigation. And I was instrumental in clearing Jason of the charges in the first place. If Phil had been hoping to lay the blame on Jason and thus avoid detection, then his plan had failed miserably.

Maybe the subpoena for the military records of the two men would give us the link we needed. Maybe Phil simply didn't want to take any more chances.

And just maybe my doggedness and refusal to let this thing go was going to kill the man I loved. There, I thought it.

I said the words, at least in my head.

I loved Jason.

I didn't want him to die. That was as simple as it was devastating.

I came screaming down the Conejo Mountains through Camarillo. I was on the flat plains above Oxnard where I had 285

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first learned about Lucy Chavez and her connection to the murders. I no longer thought she had sent the bird; it had come from Phil, sent in her name. As the initial revenge for what those men or men like them, had done to his daughter.

It must have eaten at him all those years that no one had done anything to stop Blunt or Dutton or the others. Too many of them were never brought to justice, slipping through cracks and getting off to continue wreaking their destruction on other innocents. How many others would Collins have killed if a confluence of events hadn't pointed us toward him and put Jason in jeopardy?

I didn't blame him for wanting those monsters dead. But Jason was as innocent as those kids. He shouldn't be collateral damage.

The Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean appeared on my left. Glimpses of it caught through the screen of trees showed a placid surface, full of colorful sail and power boats bobbing on the surface. In the distance a tanker glided toward the ports in Long Beach or San Diego, reminding me that this was one of the busiest shipping lanes in the U.S. Surely a boat the size of the
Weeping Lady
wouldn't be able to slip through.

I passed by Ventura and the Rincon and Red Mountains swelled on my right. Soon I'd be dropping down into Carpenteria. I passed oil donkeys, the ubiquitous drills that endlessly pumped oil, and round tankers that stored the crude squatting on the brown plain. Then I was through the flat wasteland of the tiny industrial city that hugged the coast.

Next stop Santa Barbara. One bonus: traffic out this way was light. I was able to fly by most slower vehicles with inches to 286

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spare when I darted back in front of them. I'm sure I left a lot of shaking people in my wake. I got Nancy back on the phone.

"What's going on?"

"They're still searching."

"Why haven't they found them?"

"They're doing the best they can, Alex. It's a big ocean and it looks like Collins isn't where he claimed he was going."

"He's running." I gripped the wheel so tight I wondered I didn't bend it. "Tell them to look harder. They have to be out there."

Neither one of us said what had to be on both our minds.

We might find them, but would Jason still be alive? I had to believe he was. I couldn't think of the alternative.

Another twenty minutes of torment and my phone trilled. I activated the headset. "Talk to me."

Nancy's voice was so long in coming that I though the connection had died. Then the words came, "They found the boat. The
Weeping Lady.
I'm sorry, Alex, Jason isn't on it."

"Do they have Collins? Is he in custody?'

"Yes, he is. They're bringing him in as we speak."

"Make him tell you what he did with him.
Make him
."

"They asked. He won't talk. But there were four people in the party, plus another employee, a Donald Reinhold. They were scheduled to spend the day at Anacapa Island. They've dispatched a cutter to check it out."

I thought hard and fast. It gave me a glimmer of hope that I immediately quashed. "No, he wouldn't do that. If he left Jason alive then he could testify. The ones he stranded, they 287

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won't know what was going on. He could claim an accident.

Who's going to doubt him?"

Nancy was silent for moment. Finally she spoke again. "I'll tell them that. But if he's not on the boat, where is he? If he was dumped into the ocean ... I'm sorry, Alex."

More silence that stretched like ground glass over my already frayed nerves. Nancy was back. "The Coast Guard says there is a missing Zodiac. They've already been to Anacapa and they found the abandoned passengers. No Zodiac there."

"So he must have abandoned it at sea with Jason in it.

Maybe to establish an alibi. He didn't kill him, he fled on his own in the Zodiac. Leaves him off the hook."

"The Coast Guard is bringing in a chopper. It can see more of the surface area than the boats can. The Zodiac comes equipped with an emergency broadcast system on it—"

"But it would have to be activated, wouldn't it? It's not going to go off on its own." I was minutes away from the marina. "How long before the bird gets there?"

"Ten minutes."

"I'll be there by then. Tell them I'm coming with them."

"I'm not sure they'll like that, Alex."

"I don't give a fuck what they like. I'm going up in that bird."

The brilliant orange Coast Guard helicopter was down on the hard-packed sand above the high tide mark. A crowd had gathered on the beach. The pilot had stayed inside, the rotors still powered up, rotating slowly.

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I'd never been in a helicopter before. I clambered in awkwardly and sat behind the copilot. The grim-faced pilot handed me a pair of headphones. I had always thought the headgear they wore was for communication. I quickly found when I didn't put them on right away and the pilot fired up the rotors that no, it wasn't to talk, but to protect my ears from the aural assault. The chopper vibrated and seemed to strain to leave the ground, then it surged free of the sand, skimming over the tops of swaying masts, so close, I was sure we were going to take out a few. Open water appeared below us and we raced over the waves. We were heading to where the
Weeping Lady
had been found. Apparently Phil had planned a run north. He refused to say where he had been going, but I didn't doubt for an instance he could have vanished there and made his way just about anywhere.

The Coast Guard had boarded and secured the boat and sent a launch team to Anacapa to retrieve the confused students.

We hovered briefly over the boat while the pilot talked to the Coast Guard response boat. After several agonizing minutes he nodded briefly and signaled we were flying north.

I scanned the surface of the water as we raced over it. I despaired when I realized just how big the search area was.

How could we hope to spot a lone man in, at best, a small craft in hundreds of square miles of water?

But giving up and despairing wasn't an option. The sun dipped down, sinking west. If we didn't find Jason by nightfall we never would, and this would change from a rescue mission to a body recovery. Already the temperature out there was 289

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falling. It might not reach freezing, but it would be more than cold enough to bring an unprotected body into a dangerous state of hypothermia.

I spotted it first. At first glance it was nothing more than a smear against a dark sea. But when we got closer I thought it was a solid object. I tapped the copilot and pointed toward it.

He pulled up his binoculars and swept the area. His thumb went up and my heart soared. The chopper swung toward it, dipping lower until we all had visual confirmation. The copilot was on the radio calling our sighting in.

It was a small inflatable black and gray dinghy that looked hopelessly tiny in the swells. I could make out a figure lying on his back in the rear of the thing. The wind from the rotors whipped the water into a frenzy of white froth, and Jason's shirt billowed in the artificial wind, but I could see no sign that he was even breathing. I was breathing for him, sucking in great drafts of air and willing him to move, to react to us.

To show me he was alive. Anything.

The helicopter hovered lower. The pilot shouted something and the copilot answered. It took me a minute to realize they meant to wait for someone to come out in a boat to effect a rescue. I shook my head violently.

"No," I shouted. "We have to get him out
now
."

"We can't. Someone would have to go down on a line and bring him up. You're not trained to do that." The pilot jerked his head at the other man. "He can't do it."

"I'll do it."

"Detective. I can't allow that. We wouldn't be able to bring you back up. You're not trained—"

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"Hook me up and send me down. You're not waiting for a fucking boat to come out and rescue him. He'll be dead by then."

They both argued, but I was adamant. I'd take the risks. If I failed then at least I had tried. Then it became a moot point when Jason started thrashing around in the small rubber craft. Water already cascaded over the low sides, and his violent actions brought more in.

"He'll dump that thing over," I shouted to the other two.

The pilot shook his head and shouted back, "Won't capsize.

Not unless the seas get a lot stronger."

"It doesn't mean he won't fall out," I muttered. Then I grabbed the copilot's shoulder. "I'm going down. We'll wait for the boat together."