Free A Visible Darkness by Jonathon King Page B

church with his mother. He also knew the alley behind her house. Eddie knew all the alleys.

11
    B illy poured himself another glass of Merlot. I took another swallow of coffee. Both of us had had enough shrimp fried rice. I was ready for a prowl car tour of the area where Billy’s women had died.
    The beach run had been painful. The humidity of surfside Florida teamed up with the soft sand to make my three miles a fine torture. Most of my life my regular runs had been done on Philadelphia streets, several blocks east to Front Street and then north along the Delaware to Bookbinders and back. I was used to cruising on hard concrete, slapping a rhythm, dodging through intersections. If I went down the shore, I’d do miles on the Ocean City beach at low tide when the sand was wet and brown and hard. Here it was slogging, half your energy used digging out of each footstep. My lungs were burning but I’d sprinted the last hundred yards down in ankle- deep water.
    The shower afterwards was always a treat. Out at my shack all I had was a rain barrel above my porch that was fed by water flowing from the eaves and fitted with a hose and nozzle.
    Billy filled me in on his paper trace while we ate. His women had come to South Florida at different times and they’d bought their insurance policies at different ages but all within a close time period. They probably knew one another because of their era and proximity, but it would have been on a social basis. None was in business with the other. There were no family connections. No shared churches in the recent past.
    “Has McCane been any help to you?” I said.
    “He has accessed s-some dates and m-medical questionnaires on the policies his company h-held.”
    “You talking with him?”
    “Only on the phone.”
    “I’ll check with him tomorrow. Maybe I should have asked him along tonight.”
    We traded sideways glances.
    “Maybe not,” I said, and we both relaxed.
    I pushed the plate away. I’d already bagged my things, planning to get back to the river afterwards. I’d dressed in jeans and a dark polo shirt and black, soft-soled shoes.
    “How is Sherry?”
    “Looks good,” I said.
    “W-When are you two going to quit d-dancing around each other?”
    Billy was trained to be forward and blunt. But he rarely took that step with me.
    “She’s still got a ghost in her head.”
    “She’s the only one who’s b-been able to p-pull you off the river.”
    “Liar,” I said, fishing out my keys.
    “Well, I d-don’t count,” Billy said.
    I drained the coffee and tipped the cup at him.
    “Yes, you do.”
    When I got to the sheriff’s office I parked my truck near the front entrance and was starting across the lot when a spotlight snapped on me. When I raised a hand to shade my eyes, the light went off. Richards was backed into a spot and was behind the wheel of a green-and-white. I opened her passenger side and climbed in. She was in uniform. Starched short-sleeved white shirt and deep green trousers with a stripe down the leg. Her hair was pinned up. Her 9mm in a leather holster at her side.
    “Regulation,” she said. “Got to wear the whole rig if you’re driving a squad car,” she said in greeting.
    “I remember,” I said.
    She slid a clipboard over to me with a form on top.
    “Absolves the office if you get hurt. Sign the bottom.”
    “I think you’ve got the wrong impression of me and my propensity for getting hurt,” I said.
    “No, I don’t,” she answered, grinning as she shifted into drive.
    We pulled onto the street and headed west. The strip centers were single-story and second-rate. A carpet outlet. A fish market. “Jiggles” nightclub with “Girls, Live Girls.”
    We turned north onto a side street and a block and a half off the main thoroughfare we were into residential.
    There were no sidewalks but street lamps were set every two blocks. At this time of night cars were parked in most of the driveways, some on the grassless swale. Richards