Killer Move

Abruptly I pulled over to the side of the road. I was half a mile from the Circle, in a street of studiedly nonidentical but still similar properties in the $950K–$1.2M bracket. A man stood in the yard of one of these, watering his plants. He saw me sitting, staring straight ahead as if I’d been unplugged.

He bent down to the window. His voice was kind. “You okay, bud?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But thanks for asking.”

I backed up, did a careful U-turn under his calm and watchful eye, and drove slowly up toward the Circle.

I meant to just have coffee. But when I sat down at a table outside Jonny Bo’s café, the waitress—not one I’d seen before—happened to mention beer among the products on offer. I knew it was a bad idea, and I had no exit strategy for being ten miles from home with a car and excessive blood alcohol levels, but sometimes you just have to go ahead and do the dumb thing. Today was evidently that day.

My phone was down to twenty percent charge. This meant its battery icon had started to glow orange. I wish they wouldn’t do that. I know the battery’s low. One bar left out of five is a message I can understand. So leave it green, for god’s sake. Changing it to a warning color is just liable to stress people out. There was, of course, no voice mail from Stephanie and no text message, either. It was now nine o’clock, and I was getting scared.

While I waited for my beer, I did what I’d just started to do back in Krank’s. The phone rang and rang, but then finally picked up.

“Deputy Hallam,” he said, as if distracted.

“It’s Bill Moore.”

“Where are you?”

“He’s not missing,” I said.

“Who, sir?”

“David Warner. I’ve just seen him.”

“That doesn’t seem likely, sir. Though we would like to talk to you about him. We came out to your house a little while ago, matter of fact.”

“I’m not there.”

“We’re aware of that. Where are you?”

“Up in Saint Pete,” I lied. “At La Scala. Business dinner.” I fluffed the name of the restaurant, crashing “La” into the second word.

“Uh-huh. Have you been drinking, sir?”

“Not really any of your business, Deputy.”

“It is if you’re intending to drive back.”

“I’ll get a cab. Look, fuck the DUI tutorial. Why are you pretending Warner’s missing, when he’s not? I just saw him, half an hour ago. I talked to him. He jumped in his car and booked it.”

“Where was this?”

“Felton Street. I tried to talk to him, to, uh, tell him people were worried, but two passing assholes got involved and he got away.”

“That sounds like an interesting encounter. I’ll look forward to hearing more about it. The sheriff’s definitely going to want to talk to you tomorrow, sir. You want that to be at your office or at your house?”

“Why aren’t you listening to me?”

“I am listening. Listening hard enough, in fact, to know you’re lying about your current location, because there’s no way you could have gotten from downtown to Saint Pete in half an hour, especially the way traffic is on the Tamiami right now.”

“Deputy, okay. I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m not in Saint Petersburg. I’m in town and I’m freaked out. I cannot find my wife and I swear to God I really did just see Warner. He knew who I was but denied it, and then he ran away. He is in good health. I don’t know who got shot in that house but it was not him.”

“How long has your wife been missing, sir?”

“Only a day, and I know that’s not enough. But it’s not like her. We’re usually in contact the whole time. We had an argument last night, but this isn’t right.”

“What was the argument about, sir?”

“Stuff.”

“Okay. We generally require a longer absence to open a file. But I’ll check the reports, just in case. If she’s still missing when we meet tomorrow, we can get much more serious about it.”

I knew that was as good as I was going to get from him—that in fact he was being decent. “Thank you. Let me give you my phone number.”

“It’s right here on my screen, Mr. Moore.”

“Right. Of course.”

“My advice is that you cease drinking and get yourself driven home, Mr. Moore. Will you do that?”

“I will.”

“Great. Matter of fact, when you get to your house, why not give me a call. That way I’ll know how to get hold of you real quick if I hear anything about your wife.”

I said I would, but ended the call convinced that if I went home, a cop car would be pulling up outside real soon.

I ordered another beer instead.

It wasn’t a plan. It was just what I did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When Warner woke this time, he could tell that a lot of things were different. Seriously different. Gravity seemed to have altered, for a start, to be pulling him in a different direction. The rigidity of his position had changed, too, and felt less implacable. In addition to the pain in his thigh, to which he’d become horribly accustomed, there were now deep veins of discomfort spreading from his left arm and hand, the back of his head, and the small of his back.

Then he remembered why all this might be.