Island of Bones(50)

Louis spun. “Get out of my face,” he said.

Heather Fox’s cheeks had black tracks from where the rain had run her mascara. “Don’t get testy,” she said. “She won’t talk to us and I’m just trying to get a feel for her. She seems like a cold fish to me and —-”

“Leave her alone,” Louis said.

Heather smiled. “Hey, I’m just doing a job here. Just like you.”

Louis sprinted to the Mustang. He started the engine and sat there for a moment, listening to the rain beat on the convertible’s top. He unclasped his hand and looked at the coral ring.

It was just a simple band but finely carved, like someone had taken great care with it. He slipped it on his left pinky. It was so small it didn’t even go over his first knuckle.

Had it been worn by Emma Fielding? Or any of the other missing girls? Had Frank made them wear the rings as some perverse symbol, like he was marrying his victims before he killed them?

Louis slipped the ring off his finger and put it in his pocket. He pulled out of the lot and headed west. When he hit 41, he turned north and followed the highway out until it narrowed to the two lanes leading to Pine Island. The rain was still heavy by the time he pulled into Bokeelia. He parked the car at the marina across from Cap’n Con’s Fishhouse.

He didn’t know why he had come out here. Maybe to think, get a clear take on things that were increasingly less clear. He sat there, looking out at Charlotte Harbor. He could make out the outline of Bessie Levy’s stilt house, but the driving rain had turned everything else into just a gray expanse of sky and water with no horizon to separate the two. The gray would blur with rain and then the wipers would sweep across, giving him a moment of clarity before the blur came back.

Endless gray...and a few seconds when he could see the dark green islands far out in the harbor. All those countless little islands out there where Frank Woods could be hiding. All those islands where he could have buried those girls.

He knew in that second, knew that was where he would find Frank. He would be with the victims.

The wipers slapped a clear picture of the islands into view and then it was gone.

Now all he had to do was find the right island.





CHAPTER 24




The ferry pulled into the dock and the crewman secured the lines. Louis, watching the ferry from inside the Mustang, sat up, lifting his bare legs off the seat’s sticky vinyl. His shorts and T-shirt were almost soaked through with sweat. He looked at his watch. It was just before eleven.

He picked up the binoculars and focused on the people gathering to board. A group of old women in sunhats and a sunburned family of five, Dad laden down with a video recorder and a crying three-year-old, Mom looking like she needed a stiff drink.

Louis set aside the binoculars. For three days he had been staking out the ferry parking lot, waiting for Frank Woods to make an appearance. All because Landeta had a half-assed hunch that Woods would show up.

“He’s gone,” Louis had said that morning.

“He’ll show. He’s a man who is scared,” Landeta had answered. “Men like that need the security of the routine.”

Easy for Landeta to say. He was sitting in an air-conditioned office working the phones and computers trying to find the other missing women. Not sweating his balls off for nothing.

Louis gave the group on the dock one more scan, then set down the binoculars. He picked up the copy of that morning’s News-Press.

Frank Woods was still the lead story, the newspaper playing catch-up on the TV reports about police upgrading Frank to a murder suspect.

He wondered how Diane was taking it, but he really didn’t care enough to call and find out. She had made her own bed and now the media wanted to see her not just lying in it but tied to the bedposts. Last night, watching Heather Fox on TV, he had felt a twinge of pity for Diane. Fox was doing a remote in front of the Fort Myers Library and the letters below said BOOKED FOR MURDER? Some idiot’s attempt at humor had made it seem like the serial killer librarian was finally arrested and the streets were safe once again. Louis knew it was only going to get worse for Diane. God knows what the press would do when Frank was actually caught.

If he was caught.

Louis’s eyes wandered back out to the dock. The two crewmen were talking, waiting for the call to cast off the lines.

Suddenly, Louis froze. He watched as the shorter of the two men, the one wearing a red shirt and a khaki fishing hat, calmly took the cigarette butt from his mouth, snuffed it out with his fingers and put it in his pocket. He jumped on board just as the ferry pulled out.

Louis threw open the car door and ran to the dock. The man in the red shirt was standing at the stern, looking at him. The beard was gone, but Louis was sure. It was Frank Woods.