Paint It Black

“Where were you a week ago Tuesday, about six-thirty P.M.?”

Van Slate shook his head. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

“You’ll talk, Mr. Van Slate. If not to us, then to the sheriff’s department.”

“You fucking people . . .” Van Slate muttered, turning away.

Louis reached out and hit his shoulder, spi

Van Slate stared at him, shocked, then smiled. “Cops. You fucking cops.”

Over Van Slate’s shoulder, Louis noticed the two friends staring at them. Van Slate followed his gaze, then said, “Touch me again and they’ll be all over your ass, you son of a bitch. This is my boatyard. There’s not one fucker in here who will come to help you. You understand that?”

Van Slate’s friends were edging forward. Louis resisted the urge to look around.

“Don’t threaten me, Van Slate,” Louis said. Cops have rules. Little did this asshole know.

Van Slate flicked the ashes of his cigarette at Louis and they landed on his chest.

“I don’t feel sorry for either of those two . . .” Van Slate deliberately let his voice trail off, eyeing Louis.

Louis reached out and threw an arm around Van Slate’s neck, spi

“This is police brutality. I’ll report your ass,” Van Slate hissed.

Louis pulled tighter, keeping his eyes on Van Slate’s friends. “I’m going to ask you again. Where were you last Tuesday night?”

Van Slate gagged. “I was at home, watching a basketball game.”

“Who was playing?”

“Shit, I don’t remember. I was drinking. Let me go, you’re fucking choking me.”

“Anyone with you?”

Again, silence.

“Anyone with you?” Louis shouted, jerking on Van Slate’s neck.

“Yeah! Both of them guys. Now let me go!” Van Slate yelled, bucking against him. Louis released him and Van Slate stumbled away. He spun back to face him.

“I’ll have your fucking badge!” he screamed.

Louis watched the friends, who suddenly didn’t look too eager to deal with a cop.

“Good luck,” Louis said.

“I’ll see you again!” Van Slate shouted. “You can bet on that!”

“I’ll be holding my breath.”

Louis walked toward the gate, hearing the crunch of his shoes on the gravel, listening for a rush of bodies behind him. But there was nothing except the beating of his heart and the clang of the boatyard gate as he slammed it behind him.

Chapter Thirteen

Louis drove aimlessly, turning the encounter with Van Slate over in his head. Van Slate didn’t seem too bright. Most likely, Van Slate senior ran the office, leaving junior to bust his nuts sanding hulls. It occurred to Louis suddenly that the hull of the huge white Hatteras was painted a nice shining black. Vince Carissimi still hadn’t reported back on whether the Krylon can found near Tatum matched the paint on Anthony Quick’s body. Maybe it wasn’t spray paint after all. He made a mental note to bring it up to Wainwright.

Louis glanced at his watch. Just after nine-thirty. He decided to go check in with whoever was pulling surveillance on the causeway.

Louis spotted Officer Candy’s face behind the wheel of a Toyota in the small parking lot nearby where fishermen routinely left their boat trailers. Candy was sifting through that morning’s News-Press, looking tired after what was probably a long and boring shift. He smiled as he saw Louis approach.

“You didn’t bring any coffee, did you?” Candy asked.

“Sorry, man,” Louis said, leaning into the window. “Anything going on?”

Candy yawned. He was in civvies and looked like a tourist, not a cop. “Not a thing. We had four cars come over all night and I knew every one of them.”

A Cadillac came by and Candy eyed the occupants: an elderly couple with a Chihuahua hanging out the window. He dutifully recorded their Palm Beach County tag number as they passed through.

“You here to relieve me?” Candy asked hopefully.

“Sorry,” Louis said. “I’m thinking of heading over to Fort Myers Beach to talk to the hotel clerk.”

Candy nodded and looked out over the sun-silvered bay. “You really think we’re go

“We’re going to try,” Louis said. He slipped his sunglasses on. “Later, man.”

Traffic was light on the mainland but twice Louis had to resort to the map spread on the passenger seat. The map had been his bible in the last two weeks as he labored to familiarize himself with the area. Fort Myers wasn’t a big town by any standard, but he had managed to get lost in its tangle of two-named streets, subdivisions, and waterways.

Water . . . it seemed to touch everything here. Dodie had told him that life here revolved around the water, that you were never very far from it, what with the gulf, the Caloosahatchee River, and all the bays and inlets. What God or glaciers hadn’t carved out, man had added, with canals and waterways that interlaced every neighborhood.

Back in Michigan, water had been a simple thing he had never given much thought to—rivers, lakes, and creeks. But here—here, water was like a pantheon of exotic-named deities.

He had noticed it back at the 7-Eleven when he stopped to get coffee and study the map in an effort to figure out the easiest way over to Fort Myers Beach. He had never seen so many different names for bodies of water. It was like he had heard about Eskimos having a hundred different names for snow.

Hell Peckish Bay. Matlacha Pass. Hardworking Bayou. Pine Island Sound. Buck Key Cha

What the hell was a “bight” anyway?

It took one more look at the map before he found San Carlos Boulevard, the main drag leading to Fort Myers Beach. He drove through a commercial clot of marinas and stores, then over a high graceful bridge that deposited him onto the long narrow spit of land that formed the town of Fort Myers Beach.

Louis had to slow the car to a crawl as he started down congested Estero Boulevard.

Fort Myers Beach had little in common with its namesake city on the mainland and even less with Sereno. Out on the key, a glimpse of blue water and sky was never out of eyesight and the loudest noise was the squawk of a gull. Fort Myers Beach was a carnival crush of hotels, T-shirt shops, and fast-food joints. The sidewalks were choked with seared-ski

Louis spotted the Holiday I

He parked under a palm and got out, his eyes sca

The sheriff’s deputies had already questioned the hotel clerk and told Wainwright that nothing had come of the interview. Louis wasn’t sure what he expected to get out of the clerk, maybe some vibration someone else had missed.

A young man with neatly cropped hair looked up at him as he approached the front desk. His brightness quickly faded.

“Oh, man, another cop?”

“How’d you know?”

“Maybe it’s the walk.”

Louis smiled. “Sereno Key.” He glanced at the kid’s name tag. “You’re Kevin Grunow?”

“One and the same.” He sighed. “Look, I told everything I know to the other guys.”

“I’m just here to clarify some things,” Louis said.

Kevin stood up straight. “Okay. I was on duty that afternoon. I had just gotten off, around eight, and I heard a bang.”

“Go on.”

“I figured it was a car backfiring and I just forgot about it until the police showed up a week later. My boss called me in and they asked me what I saw. But I saw nothing, nada, zilch.”