I was on the beach with a borrowed straw hat on my head and sitting under a wide umbrella. The breeze had gone flat and the ocean surface was calm and rolling like the slow swelling hide of some big sleeping animal.
I'd brought two sand chairs down after calling Richards and arranging to meet her here. My skull was still throbbing. I'd washed the blood out of my hair in the shower and poured peroxide on the wound last night. My attempt at a bandage came off during a twisting, turning sleep so I elected to leave it open to the sea air. A sure cure for open cuts, according to all those grandmothers who never lived near the ocean.
I was reading more of Adams's years in France when I heard her sharp whistle. I turned and Richards was up on the bulkhead, two fingers pronged into her mouth, the other hand shading her eyes against the morning sun. She waved me up but I shook my head and waved her down. Then I watched all her body language of frustration as she took off her business pumps and made her way down the wooden stairs in her dark slacks. She'd be pissed. But I never liked being called to someone's side like a dog to its master. She knew that, didn't she?
"Good morning," I said. "Too nice out here to resist. Here, I brought you down a chair."
If she was angry, she swallowed it and sat down in the low chair in the shade, taking obvious care to brush away any sand.
"How's the head?"
"Only hurts when I laugh." I tapped the straw hat and smiled.
"Well. Your carjackers aren't laughing. Sergeant Rhodes tells me one guy had to have his jaw wired and the other has four broken ribs."
There was no question in the statement. So I didn't reply.
"He says he's doubtful that you would be able to cause such damage alone, despite your extensive law enforcement background."
It still wasn't a question.
"Neither one of these gentlemen wanted to bring charges against you and refused to give statements. I told Rhodes that you'd probably do the same."
She was quiet and might have been listening to the brush of water on sand but I doubted it.
"I already gave him a statement," I said.
"Right. That you surprised them while they were breaking into your truck and they attacked you. You alone."
This time she waited me out. I knew what she wanted.
"I talked with O'Shea in Archie's," I said.
"And?"
"He was hard to read. It's been a while," I said, avoiding her eyes. "He admits he hops a lot of local bars. He admits he knew Amy Strausshiem. He went out with her. And he has no idea where she is."
"He brought it up?"
"Sherry, he saw me coming a mile away," I said. "Just like he made you."
She looked, out at the water, seeing some vision stuck in her head, thinking.
"I know you must have interviewed other bartenders, managers? Did they give you anything on O'Shea? Or anybody else you looked at?" I said
"Christ, Max. As soon as you put the idea of a serial abductor in their heads they start thinking gargoyle. Who's the ugliest, creepiest guy in the room," she said. "This generation doesn't even know who Ted Bundy was."
But they do know about the Gainesville Killer who slaughtered three University of Florida coeds and took out a boyfriend in the process. Give them some credit, I thought, but kept my mouth shut.
"The guy that looks like Freddie Kruger isn't going to get anywhere close to these women," she said.
I'd worked with detectives who focused on their convictions before, refused to back up and look wide.
"Look," I said. "O'Shea said he dated lots of women. You talk to any of them?"
"A few."
"He scare them?"
"No. They went out with him, had a good time on a date or two. Some he stayed friends with. Some he never called back."
I concentrated on not even moving my chin. She was watching for "I told you so."
"Maybe they weren't what he was after," she finally said.
"The missing girls have anything else in common?" I said. "Physically? Emotionally? Were they addicts?"
"No, goddammit! They were smart, lonely women who didn't have close families and were bartenders, Max."
I shut up and let her fume. She'd probably done this same dance with her supervisors half a dozen times. I could tell she was out there on her own on this one, obsessed. Maybe too much.
"The guy takes advantage of that loneliness, Max. The woman behind the bar is the one who runs the room and all the men who want a drink and a peek at her ass," she said and I was getting uncomfortable with the way she was staring out at the sea. "I see him as a guy who doesn't act like the others. He's smart. It's like a challenge to him. He's nonthreatening, likable even. He brings their guard down somehow. Just like O'Shea."
"And then what?" I said.
She didn't answer.
"Kills them for the thrill and disposes of their bodies without a trace? That's kind of Jekyll and Hyde," I said.
"Are you denying that O'Shea is a violent man, Max?" she said. "You saw him. You saw him boot stomp that guy last night. That was the two of you in the street, wasn't it?"
I didn't answer.
"You wouldn't cripple a man like that, Max."
"All right," I finally said, turning my face to the water. "The guy's got issues."
I knew it was a bad choice of words when I heard it come out of my mouth.
"Issues? He's got issues?" She stood up. "What? Are you defending him now? You guys have a few beers, relive old times and then go out and kick some ass together and become brothers in arms all of a sudden?"
I stayed in my chair, knew I hadn't played it well.
"He knows you're after him, Sherry," I said quietly.
"I am after him, Freeman. And whether you help or not, I'll still be after him."
It is hard to storm away from someone in soft sand. But Richards was a woman with talent and she did it effectively.
I stayed on the beach for an hour after she left, watching people walk the water's edge. The old shell hunter staring down into the sand who made a pouch for her collection in the folds of her long dress. The jogger with curls of gray hair on his chest and headphones clipped over his ears and his mouth moving to a song only he could hear. A young woman walking alone, her narrow shoulders down and her sunglasses pointed out at middle distance, not in a hurry, not with a purpose, her lips in a tight seam. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
I could sit here and let the blue drain out of the sky and the water. I could let Sherry Richards chase her obsession alone. I could let a man who had once saved me from a bullet twist in the wind. I could let the unknown fates of a number of innocent women remain just that, unknown. I could just listen, "no different than anybody else had done," Richards had said. Even though I couldn't change the world, "it's worth it to k-keep trying," Billy had said. But all the roads in this case led back to Philadelphia, a place I had run from long ago.
I sat and listened to the surf whisper and watched the light go out of the sky until the horizon disappeared. Then I got up and went into the bungalow and made some long-distance calls to voices I had not heard in years.