One word surfaced in my swirling mind. It made sense that it had four letters. As I stood there, it was as if each one was being struck into the surface of my brain with the heavy-handed pound of an old-fashioned typewriter.
L-I-A-R.
Peter was a liar.
There was no construction job at Big Pine. No overtime. I also figured there was no DEA assignment and never had been. Peter had lied about the other night and about all the other double shifts over the last two months.
As I stood on the sidewalk in the dark across from the Best Western, the thing that struck me most—more than hurt, more than even anger—was the sudden knowledge of exactly how vulnerable I was.
Because my whole life revolved around Peter, I realized. The house was his, and so were the car and the boat. In the last two years, my six-dollar-an-hour, off-the-books catering job had paid for what? Some clothes from the Gap? The occasional meal?
I had nothing, I realized. Not even the University of Florida academic scholarship I had blown off when brilliant old me decided to throw caution to the wind and pull a Jimmy Buffett and take that last plane out.
I’d put all my chips on Peter, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that his car across the street meant that I’d lost big time.
No, wait a second. Correction, I thought, cupping my stomach.
It wasn’t just me who had lost big time.
So had my brand-new baby on board.
Well, what did you expect, Jeanine? screeched my next thought.
This new internal voice was my mother’s, I realized. The unforgettable tone was her black, drunken raging that occurred more and more after my dad’s death.
Are you really that stupid, Jeanie Beanie? What kind of cop would cover up a man’s death? What kind of cop would get rid of a body? An Eagle Scout? Did you really think you could make a bloody mess and not have to pay for it? And while we’re on the subject of bloody messes, what’s up with the machine pistol you found on your handsome husband’s boat?
A hair-raising pulse of terror gripped the back of my neck like a claw. I reared back until my shoulder blades found the video store’s wall. I started sliding down it until my butt touched the cold, hard concrete.
The traffic went by obliviously on the dark street as I covered my face with my hands like a toddler trying to make herself disappear. At that moment I realized something for the first time.
It had somehow completely escaped me.
I had taken everything Peter had told me about himself at face value.
I really had no idea at all who Peter was.
Chapter 20
IT WAS ABOUT ten soul-annihilating minutes later when one of the motel’s ground-floor rooms opened and a man exited.
Even though I’d been expecting it, it still felt like an uppercut to the chin when I saw that it was Peter.
That wasn’t the only blow, either. Peter was wearing a suit. It was a tailored dark blue one I’d never seen before, an Armani maybe.
I started sobbing. How could this be happening? How could the man who’d introduced me to “Brandy” and The Princess Bride and the joys of Japanese beer be the world’s biggest lying scumbag?
I watched Peter as he scanned the parking lot carefully. Seemingly satisfied, he pulled the motel room door closed behind him and headed for the Supra.
I turned and broke into a run for my moped as he opened the car door.
Was whoever he was with still in the room? I wondered, still flabbergasted. Or maybe they hadn’t met yet. Maybe he was going to pick her up?
“Hey, can I be the fifth wheel on your date, you son of a bitch?” I said to myself, truly losing it as I gunned my Vespa to life. “Thanks, Peter. Don’t mind if I do. Sexy suit, by the way.”
Duval Street, Key West’s main strip, was staggering room only as I buzzed onto it two cars behind Peter’s Supra a few minutes later.
With its packed bars and outdoor street stalls that sold beer and rum the way Coney Island sold hot dogs, Duval Street was to Key West what Bourbon Street was to New Orleans. Except in Key West, it seemed that Mardi Gras was every night.
I pulled to the curb in front of a crowded bar as Peter turned the car into a side alley beside a T-shirt shop and parked. What now, Peter? I thought. Some drinking and dancing? A late dinner perhaps?
My clenching hands shook on the moped’s sweat-slicked rubber handlebars. I still couldn’t believe this was happening.
I sat waiting about a block back, scanning the Friday night sidewalk parade of navy aviators, drag queens, college kids, beach bums, and trendy millionaire couples on vacation. Peter appeared a few moments later from the alley. He was holding a small green duffel bag now, I noticed.
How do you like that? I thought as he headed south through the crowd. Maybe Peter’s alter ego was now going to hit the gym?
A double shift? I thought, absolutely stunned, as I gunned my moped to life and started to follow him again.
It was more like Peter was working a double life.
I came to a hard stop, scraping my moped and ankle off the curb, when I saw Peter turn the corner onto Fleming Street around the south side of the more shabby than chic La Concha hotel. I hopped off, keeping in the shadows beneath the storied art deco hotel’s awning, as I jogged to the corner and peeked around the side street.
Peter was standing on the brightly lit sidewalk in front of a Hibiscus Savings Bank ATM. As I watched, he took a thick envelope out of the bag and slipped it into the bank’s deposit slot.
A late-night deposit would have been normal enough, I suppose.
Except Hibiscus Savings wasn’t our bank.
Our savings account was with First State. At least the account that I knew about, I thought, shaking my head.
I was trying to process that revelation when a small silver Mazda Z with tinted windows pulled past me. It slowed and made the turn onto Fleming. Peter turned as its horn honked and ran around to the passenger side and got in.
I ran back to the moped.
Peter’s night was apparently just getting started.
Chapter 21
A NEW POSSIBILITY slowly occurred to me as I tailed the Mazda Z off crowded Duval and onto the darker side streets of the adjoining Bahama Village neighborhood.
It was actually a comforting one. Definitely soothing, considering the current circumstances.
Maybe this was the DEA thing after all, I thought.
Maybe Peter really had to work undercover and had just invented the story about traffic duty in Big Pine so I wouldn’t be worried. Sure, he’d still lied to me, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as I had first thought.
Please let that be the reason, I prayed as I buzzed along behind him like a complete maniac through Key West’s pitch-black streets.
Ten minutes later, the car pulled into the empty parking lot of Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. I waited on the street by the park’s walled entrance, watching as the Mazda stopped in the center of the lot and sat idling. After a moment, its lights dimmed and went off.
Were they staking someplace out? I wondered. Doing a deal? Waiting for someone?
Wind began blowing through the darkened, creaking palm trees as I crouched along the stone wall, watching the car. As I stared down the deserted street at my back, I remembered Elena warning me about the Jump Killer. About how some people thought he was from Key West.
Great, I thought. Thanks again, Elena. Really appreciate it. I really need something else to freak out about around now.
I sank down behind the wall as the car suddenly started and screeched out of the lot.
I lost the car as I was getting back on the moped, so I decided to drive back to Peter’s car parked in the alley on Duval. The silver Mazda was letting Peter out beside the alley when I made the corner half a block north ten minutes later. I pulled to the curb in front of the crowded corner bar to see what would happen next.
The first thing I noticed was that instead of the green duffel I’d seen him with, Peter
was now carrying a much larger black leather knapsack.
A feeling of desperate, last-ditch hope floated in my chest. Did that mean there really had been some kind of DEA work? I wanted so badly to believe that what I had just seen was Peter working undercover.
The Mazda Z pulled onto Duval and rolled to the red light where I sat idling. Spanish music began to blare out of it as its tinted passenger window zipped down. I listened to horns and bongo drums racing each other as I laid my wide eyes on the two people inside.
I squinted in surprise and shook my head. That couldn’t be right, I thought.
I knew them both.
Teo, the skeevy bartender with the frosted hair, was behind the wheel doing what he seemed to do best, rubbing at his nose.
Even more surprising, beside him, my boss, Elena, sang along to the salsa with her eyes closed as she drummed on the dashboard to the beat.
Then the light turned and the tricked-out Mazda peeled off and disappeared into the traffic of upper Duval.
Still sitting on my buzzing moped, staring at its red running lights, I tried to piece together what I had just seen. For a moment, the fact that I knew everyone involved in the odd encounter gave me a feeling of relief. I actually wondered for a silly second if they were doing all this sneaking around for my benefit, as if they might be planning some kind of surprise party for me.
Then reality took hold. There was no party. Quite the opposite.
My husband is a bad cop? I thought.
No, I realized. It was Elena! Elena was the bad cop. Peter was working a case against her and Teo. I knew for a fact that Teo did coke and he probably dealt it, too. That had to be it!
That’s when the car behind me laid on its horn.
I turned the handlebars and throttled to get out of its way, but I must have given it too much gas. The back wheel spun out, the bike tipped, and I went down hard. I lay there for a moment, my elbow and knee in agony, my head in the gutter. Then I scrambled out from underneath the moped and sat on the curb.
I stared fascinated at my torn-open knee. A thin line of blood rode down the ridge of my shin and took a left as it reached my ankle.
As I watched myself bleed, the Rick James song “Super Freak” floated out into the street from the crowded bar behind me.
“When I make my move to her room, it’s the right time,” the drunken crowd sang along. “It’s such a freaky scene.”
“Hey, you OK? Can I help you?” called a beery male voice from somewhere on the sidewalk behind me.
I shook my head as I lifted the bike, got back on, and headed home.
Chapter 22
IT TOOK ME TWENTY MINUTES to get home. I took a shower and bandaged my knee. When I got into bed, I lifted the remote off the night table and turned on the TV. I was determined to stay up until Peter came home, but after only a minute or two I found myself nodding off.
The sky outside my bedroom sliders was the dark gray of predawn when I woke up. The TV was showing an aerobics program: thin young women with too much makeup, smiling like Miss America as they counted off toe touches.
Then the doorbell rang.
I stumbled out of bed. Was it Peter? Did he forget his key?
I was even more confused when I saw a squad car in the driveway outside the living room window.
I opened the door. It wasn’t Peter. It was a short female officer in a Key West PD uniform. I thought I knew all of Peter’s fellow cops, but I’d never seen her before.
“Jeanine Fournier?” she said.
Even in a dazed fugue, I could tell by her demeanor, by the intense look in her eyes, that something was seriously wrong.
I suddenly felt tired and powerless, thoroughly unprepared for whatever I was about to be told. Staring at the woman’s hard face, I felt like going back into my bedroom and lying down. The sun broke as I stood there, light rapidly filling the sky.
“Yes?” I finally said.
“You need to come with me, Jeanine,” she said.
What the? What was this?
“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” the lady cop said. “It’s your husband. Peter. He’s been involved in a shooting.”
Chapter 23
A SHOOTING?!
That one stupid thought kept repeating in my numb mind as I sat in the passenger seat of the speeding cruiser. Every few seconds, I would try to form another thought, but my indignant, stubborn brain wouldn’t have it.
A shooting? I thought. A shooting?
That meant that Peter had been shot, right? I stared down at the cop car’s incident report–covered carpet. It had to. Otherwise, the red-haired lady cop behind the wheel wouldn’t be involving me.
I needed to talk to Peter. To find out what was going on. Now he’d been shot? I didn’t know what to think as the cop car’s tires cried around a curve. What did it mean?
If I thought I’d been disoriented riding in the cop car, it was nothing compared to the skull slap I felt as we screeched to a stop beside a Shell gas station on North Roosevelt.
It looked and sounded as if the world was coming to a violent end. Besides a half-dozen siren-screaming patrol cars, there were three ambulances and a fire truck. Yellow evidence tape strung across the pumps wafted in the breeze from the nearby north shore. The whole block around the station looked like a huge present wrapped in the stuff. A crowd of tourists and beach bums stood silently, shoulder to shoulder, behind the yellow ribbon like spectators at a strange outdoor sporting event that was just about to get under way.
It seemed like every cop in the department was there. I glanced from face to face, marking the people I knew. At our pickup softball games and barbecues, these men had been so happy and laid-back. Now, as they secured the crime scene in their stark black uniforms, they suddenly seemed cold, heartless, angry, almost malevolent.
What the hell had happened here?
“She’s here,” a cop and good friend of Peter’s named Billy Mulford said as he saw me.
The last time I saw Billy, a blond, middle-aged fireplug of a man, he was doing a cannonball off a booze cruise boat at a retirement party. Now he looked about as fun-loving as a concentration camp guard.
“It’s Peter’s wife, Jeanine. Let her through,” he ordered.
I was too stupefied to question what was happening as the evidence tape was lifted up, and I was beckoned under. Why were they treating me like a first responder? The deafening siren of yet another arriving ambulance went off as Mulford quickly led me over the sun-bleached asphalt and past the pumps.
Just inside the door of the food mart, half a dozen EMTs were kneeling down beside someone I couldn’t see. My hands started shaking as I tried to figure out what was happening in all the commotion. I grasped them together in a praying gesture.
“Come on, come on! Give me some fucking space here,” a big black medic barked as he retrieved a syringe from a bright yellow hard-pack first-aid case.
“Coming out!” someone else yelled in a high, panicked voice a moment later. There was a tremendous clatter as a trauma stretcher was clicked into rolling position. The crowd of cops and medics began to part in front of it, letting the stretcher through.
My knees almost gave out when Mulford moved out of my line of sight and I finally saw who was on the stretcher.
I staggered back, shaking my head.
Something caved in my chest as Peter was rolled past me, his eyes flat and unfocused, his face and chest covered in blood.
Chapter 24
COPS MADE A TIGHT CIRCLE around Peter, shielding him from the public as he was rolled toward a reversing ambulance.
I noticed several things at once. He was sheet white. A thin spiderweb of blood was splattered across his cheek and neck. His uniform shirt had been cut open, and I could see more blackish blood caked on his arm, dripping off his elbow.
Peter didn’t just look shot, I thought, staring at him as he was lifted into the back of the ambulance. Peter looked dead.
“Let her through,” Mul
ford said, dragging me forward. “It’s his wife.”
“Not now, goddammit,” the burly black medic said, stiff-arming him away.
“Oh, God. Oh, God,” Mulford said, shaking his head as Peter was borne away. He squeezed my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Jeanine. This shouldn’t be happening.”
“What happened?” I said.
“We’re not sure,” he said, ashen-faced, as he shrugged his shoulders. “I just got here myself. We think Peter came in here to get some coffee during his shift. Walked into the middle of a robbery. Two Jamaican males. They had some kind of machine gun. Our guys were ambushed. We’re looking for them now.”
Mulford wheeled around as a wiry, startlingly muscular female EMT with bloody sneakers emerged from the food mart door.
“How is she?” he asked her.
She? I thought.
I stepped to my right and looked farther into the store. That’s when I saw the rest of them. Three more EMTs were surrounding another body.
When I stepped forward and saw the spill of blond hair beside a fallen police cap, I felt like I’d walked face-first into an invisible electric fence. For absolutely no reason, I began slowly nodding to myself.
My boss, Elena, her throat shot to ribbons, was lying in a pool of blood, dead on the floor.
Chapter 25
ONE OF ELENA’S UNMOVING EYES, the one that wasn’t shot out, was wide open, staring up at the ceiling. Blood was everywhere as if a mop bucket filled with it had been overturned. On her uniform. On a bunch of knocked-over plastic jugs of blue windshield-wiper fluid. On the surgical gloves that one of the EMTs snapped off with a loud curse. Ink blots and dashes and horrid smears of copper-smelling crimson red blood.
“I’m so sorry,” the female EMT said to Mulford. “Poor thing took at least half a dozen in the face and neck and another four in the lower abdomen. She’d lost too much blood by the time we got here. She’s gone.”