Free Deadly Pursuit by Michael Prescott Page A

breath.
    “They were still finding skeletons in the jungle years later ... Sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”
    “It’s all right. I’m just as glad I didn’t know it before we got here, though.” She shook her head. “That’s a terrible story.”
    “It’s not the only one. I don’t know, maybe this part of the Keys is cursed. Sometimes I almost think so. Take the name Matecumbe. Nobody’s certain what it means, but a good guess is that it’s a corruption of the Spanish words mata hombre .”
    “Kill man,” she translated uneasily.
    “The Indian name was Cuchiyaga, which means essentially the same thing. Then there’s Indian Key, south of here. The Spaniards called it Matanzas: ‘slaughter.’ Legend has it that hundreds of French sailors were massacred by Calusa Indians on that island after their ships foundered on the reef. May not be true, but there was a Seminole raid on the settlement there in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Some of the settlers made the mistake of hiding in wells. The Indians found them and poured in boiling water.”
    “My God ... Who told you all this, anyway?”
    “Jack Dance. I thought he was making up stories, but later I researched the area’s history on my own. It was all true.”
    “Were horror stories a principle topic of conversation with him?”
    “Not often. His sexual conquests were more frequent seeds of discussion.”
    “Yours, too, I guess.”
    “I didn’t have much to say on that subject at the time. Certainly not compared with Jack. He was a ladies’ man, even at that age …” He looked away, and his words trailed off.
    “Have many people died on Pelican Key?” Kirstie asked, unwilling to let him slip into memories and silence again.
    “Not as far as I know. But they’ve had other kinds of bad luck. Remember those salt ponds near the cove?”
    “Sure.”
    “Somebody tried using them for salt manufacture about 1800. Went bust a few years later. Before that, the island was inhabited by the Calusas. Now they’re extinct. All that’s left of them is their burial grounds and garbage dumps.” He shrugged. “No one prospers here.”
    Kirstie frowned, rebelling against this grim inventory.
    “You did,” she said. “You prospered.”
    “Me? How?”
    “You got yourself some good memories. That’s a kind of treasure. Isn’t it?”
    He almost delivered some humorous response, then paused.
    “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he said slowly.
    “The island may not have been lucky for other people, but it’s been lucky for you.”
    “Yes. Yes, I guess it has.”
    She saw him smiling calmly, easily, like a man at peace, but the smile did not reach his eyes.

 
     
     
    8
     
    Mile marker 103.
    Jack was fifty miles out of Miami, heading south on U.S. 1, driving a stolen Sunbird. The engine hummed and the tires hissed on the pavement, and the endless stretches of the Overseas Highway blurred past.
    Through the open window on the driver’s side, warm moist air blew in like wet kisses. Jack tasted salt on his lips and smiled. He’d always loved water, any sort of water. Maybe that was why he’d chosen to drown his first victim so many years ago.
    Another green-and-white mile marker slid by. 102. The miles ended at zero in Key West, but he wasn’t going that far.
    Far enough, though. Far enough from L.A. and the life he’d led.
    He had left it all behind, all the nice things he’d accumulated since his release from prison. His Sony Trinitron. His compact-disc player and mountain of CDs. His expensive wardrobe. His corner apartment with its great view. His car.
    Oh, yes, and Sheila, too. Well, that was no great loss.
    The feds must be crawling all over his apartment by now, but he wasn’t worried. The only item that could link him with the murders was the syringe, and it would never be found. The law would continue to see him as merely a con artist, a white-collar criminal, hardly a top priority. In a few weeks he would be forgotten. Then he