We needed to move faster.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The four of us stood in silence, not sure what to do next. By tomorrow, unless we found El Médico or figured out what he had injected the rookie with, we’d lose Richie.
“Let’s split up,” I said. “Jo, Cass, get on a flight to Jacksonville.”
“What’s in Jacksonville?” Shooter asked.
Cassie reminded her about the data project, but Shooter just stared back as if the exercise was theoretical.
“You agree with this?” she said to Frank, her voice sounding exasperated. “Taking two of us off the board right now?”
“I dunno,” Frank said, looking to me.
I turned to Shooter. “Jo, there’s cops walking a beat with our suspect’s picture. Cops going through medical clinics. It’s on the news. But whatwedo is different.” I looked to Cassie. “This guy’s phone number is buried somewhere in that pile of ones and zeros. Believe in your instincts. Don’t try to be a great beat cop. Be a great agent for PAR.”
“He’s right,” Cassie said and nodded, her confidence buoying the room.
Shooter still looked pale. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll trust you guys.”
Beyond the glass, the Shilo police station was busy. Shooter and Cassie grabbed their stuff and left. I turned to the evidence I’d taped up on the wall.
“Richie is sharp,” I said to Frank. “But he’s one guy, and there’s four of us. Whatever he found—we’ll find it. Or we’ll find this suspect.”
Being in motion helps me think, so I grabbed half the pile of orange messages from the tip line. “I’ll take these,” I said. “I’m going to Lucas Beach to talk to Natalie Kastner.”
“I’m coming with you,” Frank said, grabbing the second half of the message pile.
We got in the car and moved east by southeast, down through Marion County. To our left were thick loblollies, and through them, I could see the dark green water of Newnans Lake.
Bodies of water in Central and South Florida often drain into a flood basin, and I remembered reading about this lake. In 2000, a drought had brought to the surface the remnants of canoes that dated as far back as 5000 BC.
Data. The past. Always inserting itself into the present.
Clues, always there, if you are looking for them.
I glanced at Frank. “So, Dallas,” I said, returning to the topic from the night before at the bar. “No good?”
“Dallas was different,” he said. “Spreadsheets. HR meetings. Budgeting.”
For years, Frank had been trying to move back to the state where he’d grown up. He’d applied for multiple jobs, all management level.
“But that’s what you wanted, right?”
He pursed his lips. “I thought so,” he said. “Was this job everythingyouwanted?”
I studied Frank. I had taken his job. But seeing him back here made me realize that I hadn’t. Frank had supervised us. Shepherded our careers. And handled politics. I did few of those things, preferring to solve riddles instead. I waspartof the team, not their boss.
“I tried to focus on what I’m good at,” I said. “Instead of trying to be you.”
I rolled down the window, even though the climate inside the car was perfect. The hot wind outside was oppressive, and I breathed it in, my lungs absorbing the wet warmth of Florida, my right hand along the windowsill feeling as if it were wrapped in fleece.
I turned my head to look out the window. The American South is full of burned-out houses, shuttered farms, and manufacturing plants that were once central to small towns but are now rusted out and discarded, the local population shrunk down to three digits in size. I have no emotional attachment to Florida or South Carolina, both of which I have lived in for the bulk of my life. But my mother, when I was young, would take me on long drives throughout the area.
What will become of us, Gardy?she’d ask.If we are okay with throwing away this many people and all this history?
I didn’t know the answer as a preteen. Now I hardly thought of it at all.
