Rescue

slightly. “Right. Just a second.“
    He clacked some keys, then peered hard at the screen I couldn’t see. “Dawn called. Said you should come over to her house right away.“
    “Dawn.“ I stared at him until he looked from the screen to me.
    Clark seemed worried. “Something wrong?“
    I said, “When did you get that call, Clark?“
    “Oh, not more than twenty minutes ago.“
    I gave it a beat. “So you’d say she’s still expecting me?“
    “Yessir. She sounded like she really wanted to see you too.“
    “Thanks, Clark.“
    “Happy to help.“ .
    I walked as evenly as I could to the Sunbird, then started up and drove out to the highway and southward. I took the only route I knew past the bar and toward Adair’s house, which I hoped was the only way there was to get to it. Reaching the T-intersection, I pulled the car into a driveway just past it and still two blocks from hers. The darkened house I’d chosen was up on stilts, the windows shuttered. I backed into the shadows under the raised living area, getting out of the car and walking to the road end of the driveway. Looking toward the house, I couldn’t tell my car was there.
    Some thick bushes bordered the driveway. I settled down behind one of them and waited for the trap to close.

    Six minutes later by my watch, the first Sheriff’s Office vehicle went flying toward Dawna’s house. It was a Chevy Caprice like the one Deputy Billups had used to bring me into the substation, siren off but bubble lights throwing dazzling blasts of red and blue against the trees. Thirty seconds after that, a second cruiser, this one a Crown Victoria, roared past, again lights but no siren, and Sergeant Whit Tidyman behind the wheel, no collar to his shirt, as there would be if he was in uniform. I got a good enough look to identify him thanks to the headlights from the unmarked sedan behind him, two men in the front seat, following close on. Five minutes later came a cream and orange ambulance, siren wailing now.
    I waited another half hour before a second unmarked sedan blew by, trailing behind it a white minivan, the words CRIME SCENE stenciled on its doors. I didn’t know what the protocol was on the Keys, but I was hoping that pretty soon some of the uniforms would be leaving. I moved back to my car, and forty minutes later, I was proved right.

    I let Tidyman’s Crown Vic get a little past my adopted driveway, then started the Sunbird and drove out and behind it. Enough cars were on the road that I didn’t think he’d spot me. As we went north on Route 1, I figured it was even money that Tidyman would head south to the substation or, because he was out of uniform, on to his house. I got lucky: He continued north, away from the substation. Then I thought about my doing a similar drive a few hours before, back to the hotel, and remembered I’d left Lonnie Severn’s money in the riprap wall below my balcony. A legacy to the squirrels, but too late to worry about it now.
    The cruiser eased off Route 1 onto a parallel access road before Tidyman turned again, a residential street. I kept going on the access road, driving for two minutes before doubling back and taking the turn he had. The Crown Vic was easy to spot, parked inside the enclosure made by a solid stucco fence about three feet high, the pattern molded into the fence resembling wainscotting from an English pub. The house beyond the fence was of similar construction, some short palm trees like tilted bowling pins around it.
    I stayed on the road past the fence and watched for another boarded-up house. There was one five doors down, also on stilts, and I repeated the hiding of the car under the overhanging structure. Then I walked back.
    A mailbox was bolted to the top of the stucco fence. The stick-on letters formed TIDYMAN.
    I moved down the narrow driveway, keeping the cruiser between me and the small house. Tidyman had left his vehicle sprawled in the center of the gravel, as though he weren’t expecting anybody else to come visiting. There was a shed just about the size of a station wagon off to the side.
    Watching the front of the house between the palms, I saw a light shining from a big window. Then another light came on through a high, square opening that I took to be a bathroom window.
    Drawing the Colt from its calf holster, I moved quickly to the front door. When I heard the sound of a flushing toilet, I tried the door. Unlocked. I slipped inside a compact living room and flattened