Midnight Rambler_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [17]
I started swimming competitively when I was ten and was good enough to get my name engraved on a plaque at the Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale. My specialty was the backstroke. What started out as a sport had become my daily therapy. I made it a point to swim every day, rain or shine. When I didn't, I got grouchy as hell.
The ocean was the temperature of bathwater, and I waded in with minnows darting between my legs. A hundred feet from shore I began my laps. I started with the crawl, then reverted to the backstroke. There was no lifeguard at this end of the beach, or other swimmers to call if I should need help. If I cramped and drowned, no one would know. I'd sink like a stone and get swept out to sea. Death scared me as much as the next guy, but the idea of drowning never had.
Perhaps it was because I was not truly alone. Lurking just beneath the water's surface were scores of stingrays, tiger sharks, and jellyfish. I supposed I should be wary of these creatures, but I wasn't. Not once had I been stung, nibbled on, or had my space invaded. Someday I might get my arm chewed off, but until then, I was willing to take my chances.
I swam for an hour, then headed back to shore. I heard a siren coming over the bridge. Dania was God's waiting room, and I assumed it was an ambulance. But then the siren multiplied: two, three, four. Police cruisers, all in a line.
I hit the shore running. Sonny met me halfway, looking panicked.
“I blew it,” he said.
“What happened?”
“I went to piss, and the phone rang. Whitey grabbed it. Some cop asked if you were here. Whitey told them you'd gone swimming.”
My feet took the stairs to my room three at a time. Banging open the door, I called for my faithful companion. Buster jumped off the bed and followed me downstairs. Sonny stood in the bar's entryway.
“Hold my calls,” I said.
Beneath the Sunset was a shady space where the sand and the wood meet that was impossible to see from the beach. I hid there with my dog and peered out through a decorative latticework nailed to the side of the building. Four wailing police cruisers pulled into the lot, and a gang in blue piled out. Russo was with them and looked mad as hell. I guessed he'd already taken his Suburban to the shop.
The cops entered the Sunset, flat feet pounding hard boards.
“Where the hell is Carpenter?” Russo roared.
“Swimming!” Whitey replied.
I listened to Russo walk out of the bar and climb the narrow stairwell. At the top he addressed the uniforms searching my room.
“It's clean,” a cop said loudly.
“You couldn't have searched it that quickly,” Russo said.
“There's nothing in it,” the cop said.
“Search it again,” Russo said. “Tear the place upside down, rip the mattress in half, I don't fucking care. That file has to be here.”
I leaned back in the sand and shut my eyes. I'd forgotten all about the file.
The day I'd left my job with the sheriff 's department, I'd taken Simon Skell's case file with me, intent on poring over clues until I could unravel the mystery of how he'd made his victims vanish without a trace. I hadn't thought the file would be missed. So many things have vanished from the Broward County Sheriff Department's building, like bales of marijuana and thousands of rounds of ammunition, that one stinking file should have gone unnoticed. Stupid me.
Russo padded down the stairs and reentered the bar.
“That Acura parked in the lot. That's Carpenter's, isn't it?” he asked.
“That's his car,” Sonny said.
“You got a key?”
“No, but he leaves it unlocked.”
“I'm going to search it. I don't want any of you to move, understand?”
“No sir,” the Seven Dwarfs replied in a drunken chorus.
“That goes for you, too,” Russo said.
“I'm not going anywhere,” Sonny said.
Russo left the building and shuffled through the sand to the lot. He was twenty feet from where I was hiding, and I could hear him muttering under his breath. He was going to have a stroke someday, I'd make book on it.
Russo searched my car and returned to the Sunset, muttering even louder than before.