Mitch could still picture the surprise on the woman’s face, a cheap little blonde floozy who worked at the café across the street from John’s old office. Mitch would never forget the calm, detached look on John’s face, though. Not dismay, not shame—hell, not even embarrassment that she’d walked in on his infidelities. He didn’t even have the decency to try to explain, much less cover himself.
“I didn’t think you’d be home this early,” was all he said before she’d slammed the bedroom door shut.
Mitch remembered walking into the kitchen, struggling to maintain her composure, feeling both anger at John for his actions and vindication that her suspicions were now validated. She walked back to the bedroom and threw the door open. The blonde was just crawling out of bed.
Her
bed. The woman froze when she saw the fury painted on Mitch’s face.
John made no attempt to get up. He lay there, not even a sheet covering him, and listened to Mitch with that same calm detachment.
Mitch’s voice was low and steely, fueled by hatred and disgust. “I don’t care who you are, or how you met him. All I know is that he is still my husband, and if I ever catch you in this house again, I will personally see to it that you don’t have any hair left. You have till the count of three to pick up your clothes and exit under your own power or I will bodily remove you from this house. One—”
“But I’m not dressed!”
Mitch took a step toward her and she scrambled for her clothes strewn on the floor.
“Two.”
The lady started to pull clothing on. Mitch took another step toward her.
“Katey, I’d leave if I were you. She’ll do it. Get dressed outside.” John looked on in amusement. He still lay in bed, his hands clasped behind his head.
Katey froze, unsure of what to do now that John wasn’t taking her side. Mitch took another step toward the blonde. Katey grabbed her remaining clothes and her purse and started backing toward the bedroom door, giving Mitch a wide berth.
“Three.” Mitch took two angry strides toward her. Katey squealed in fright. Before she disappeared through the bedroom door she screamed, “You’re a shit, John! A real shit!”
He smiled. “And you, my dear, are a cheap slut.” She reddened and ran. A moment later, the front door slammed hard enough to rattle the living room windows.
Mitch turned her fury on John. Her entire body shook with rage. “Let me tell you something. I will only say this once. If you
ever
bring another one of your whores into this house, not only will I throw her out without her clothing, I will call the sheriff’s office and have you bodily removed from the premises, and you will be served with divorce papers the next morning. From now on, until you can show me a good reason why, I will be sleeping in the large guest bedroom. Alone. If you want to fuck around, you go do it somewhere else. Do I make myself clear?”
She had hoped for at least an apology, for him to swear it was a one-time thing and it wouldn’t happen again, a reason to keep the marriage alive. Instead, he simply nodded. “Understood. “
Mitch recalled standing in the bedroom doorway, staring at him, trying to remember why she fell in love with him. She couldn’t. Despite what she’d told the blonde, any chance for her to stay married to him vanished when she opened the door and found the woman on top of him, his hands on her hips. Mitch suddenly felt a wave of tears threaten as she fought the nausea rising in her throat.
“Why?” she managed to choke out.
He shrugged. His equanimity infuriated her even more than his actions. “I got bored. You’ve been a good wife. I can’t say a bad word about you. I just need something else now.”
Mitch turned and ran from the house, barely remembering to grab her purse. She held back the tears until she was in her Bronco and down the street. For several weeks, she’d suspected something was up. He took more business trips, and acted evasive when she asked him how they went. She found cell phone bills with repeated calls to local numbers at all hours of the day and night.
She found a condom in his briefcase.
Mitch had hoped she was wrong, that it was a mistake, but John had started to pull away from her a couple of months after their marriage. Mitch thought he was a wonderful lover, and, at first, he seemed as pleased by her as she was by him.
She blindly headed to Aripeka, seeking solace and comfort there. By the time she pulled into the marina parking lot, she managed to get herself under control. She remembered the surprise on Ed’s and her father’s faces. When she stepped off the dock and into the stern, her dad closely studied her.
He put down the reel he’d been working on. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
That was all it took to start her sobbing. He put his arms around her and sat her down on the stern, rocking her, trying to comfort her. Ed patted her on the shoulder and kissed her on the top of the head before walking up to the dive shop to leave them alone.
Mitch finally got herself back under control. When she sat up, her dad offered her a clean rag to blow her nose with. He studied her face. “John?”
Her gaze dropped to the deck.
He sighed. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head and looked back up at him.
“Okay, sweetie. If and when you’re ready, you can talk to me. Promise?”
She nodded.
“You moving out soon?”
She nodded again.
He rubbed her shoulders. “I’m going to ask you this, and you better not lie to me. Did he or has he ever hit you?”
She vigorously shook her head. “No, Daddy. Nothing like that.”
He nodded. “That’s good. For
him
.” He sighed. “Are you going to tell your mother?”
She thought about it. “She loves John. The only thing it’ll do right now is make her try to talk me into patching things up. I don’t want to do that.”
“You’re right about that. You know you are always welcome to come back home, whenever you want and for as long as you want.” He put his arms around her and hugged her.
She rested her head against his shoulder. “I know, Daddy. Thank you. Not right now, but maybe in a few weeks or something. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”
Ed walked back down to the
Sun Run
and sat next to her. “You okay, hon?”
She looked up into his blue eyes and saw the genuine love and concern there.
“Yeah, I’m better, Ed. Thanks.”
He hugged her, ruffling her hair as he let go, something he used to do when she was a kid. “I’m here for you, too.”
* * * *
Mitch looked out over the saw grass flats behind the house and thought of Ed’s final statement to her that day before she returned to the Tampa house. Unlike John, Ed
had
been there for her when he promised.
She put her empty bowl in the sink and spied one of the pictures hanging on the wall at the end of the breakfast bar. Mitch dried her hands and walked over to it, studying it as if she’d never seen it before. It was of her and Ed, taken by her dad a couple of months before he died. She took the frame off the wall and looked at it. She held a fillet knife in her hand because she was getting ready to gut a grouper. Ed had his arm around her, hamming it up, but there was something different now, something she’d never noticed before.
He wasn’t looking at the camera. He was looking at her, with an unmistakable expression on his face. He had a look of wistful sadness in his eyes. Mitch’s fingers traced the shape of his face as she stared at the picture.
I’ve been through one marriage. Why would I want to repeat the same mistake?
Eventually, she replaced the picture and tried to sort out the confused emotions in her heart. On the one hand was the almost irresistible tug to be with Ed, but then there was the caution to protect her heart.
Pete’s barking on the porch startled her out of her thoughts and she looked out the window. Rick Singer was climbing her stairs. She opened the front door for him and Pete dashed in between his legs.
“I’m sorry to bother you here, Mitch, but I was over this way and thought I’d stop by. Am I interrupting anything?”
“No not at all. Come in. Want some coffee?”
He perched on a barstool at the counter. “Sure. That’d be great.”
She poured Rick a cup and sat across the counter from him. “What’s up? I know you. This isn’t just a social visit.”
Rick nodded and sipped his coffee. “Want to hear a little gossip?”
Mitch smiled. “Sure.”
“I made a few phone calls to some of my buddies. The talk is that the
Emmerand
was headed to this area when she sank.”
“Where? I’ve never seen that boat around here before.”
He shook his head. “They’re not sure. I don’t have to tell you how close-knit this community is. They can’t get a good inside man positioned to find out about the operation. They don’t know if it was coming here or Hudson or Hernando Beach, or maybe even Bayport. But it was somewhere in Pasco or Hernando.”
“This isn’t just gossip for my listening pleasure, is it?”
Rick smiled. “You’ve always been quick. Just keep your eyes open, if you see anything that doesn’t look right, if you hear anything—”
“I’ll do what I can. I can’t go around asking questions, though. You know that. Everyone’d think I was a narc, and there’d go my charter business.”
“Oh, that’s not what I had in mind. Just keep your ear to the ground.”
“That I’ll do.” She looked up at the clock. “Listen, I’ve got a few things I need to do today, and you’re not getting any work done, either.”
He finished his coffee and handed her the mug. “I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks again.” She walked him to his Bronco and returned upstairs to make the call to John.
Kenny Schoenborn made his way to his office, acknowledging the various greetings issued to him, but not really hearing any of them.
George watched his friend enter his office and waited a moment to follow him in. “Kenny, are you okay?” The major’s face was lined with exhaustion, making him look ten years older than his actual forty-seven.
Kenny dropped his briefcase on his desk and wearily collapsed in his chair. He scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to rub away the dreams that plagued him.
“No, George, I’m not okay. I’m exhausted.” He turned to look out his window at the magnolia tree next to the building.
“Is it the dreams or is it Romeo?”
Kenny looked over his shoulder at George. “Both.” He returned his attention to the magnolia tree. “I hate working cases like this anymore. I hate knowing he’s going to kill again.”
“You don’t know—”
“Like hell we don’t. He’s got the hang of it. He’s got a taste for it now. Thank God all he’s doing is killing them and not carving them up, too.”
“You want a cup of coffee?” George offered.
Kenny sighed as he opened his briefcase. “If you don’t mind, that’d be nice, thanks.”
George went out to the coffee machine and wondered if he should suggest Kenny see the psychologist. George moved up from Miami a year after Kenny, at Kenny’s recommendation. He’d known Kenny Schoenborn for more than fifteen years and was probably his closest friend. Their wives were—
had been
, he reminded himself—best friends.
He finished stirring the sugar into the coffee and carried the foam cup into Kenny’s office. “Here you go.” He set the cup on the desk.
Kenny was poring over the piles of reports laid out in front of him. “Any more news on the Stanley girl?”
George took a seat in front of his friend’s desk. “No, not yet. They’re still working on it, trying to research her history. They went through her apartment, and, as we expected, nothing to help us out. Romeo didn’t know her, either.”
“No, he doesn’t know his victims. He probably doesn’t even stalk them for a day or two. He’s got a need, but not an overpowering one. When the right person and opportunity arises, he kills. He’s too careful, too methodical. He knows we have nothing to go on right now and he’s so cocky he doesn’t think we can catch him. That’s why he’s let himself kill more than one in the same area.”
“That’s presuming those others are his work as well.”
“Exactly. And it’s a presumption I have to make at this point. It just feels like him.”
George studied his friend’s face. “Kenny, you want to talk about this?”
Kenny looked up. “What do you mean?”
“How bad are the dreams?” George carefully watched his friend’s face, trying to gauge if he was telling him the entire story or not.
Kenny leaned back in his chair. He sat silent for many minutes. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded low and full of emotion. “I see her every night, George. I knew I would hurt for a long time after she was gone, but it’s been six years now, and she’s back as strong as ever.”
“She” was Jenny Schoenborn, Kenny’s wife. Kenny had been in charge of the investigation into murder charges against Roberto Campenello’s youngest son, Tom. Roberto Campenello, at the time, was the largest drug importer in south Florida. After finding that he couldn’t bribe Kenny into hiding evidence, he ordered Jenny’s murder.