“Water gonna be a problem, Dean?” Petitpas said. “Thing got soaked.”

Hogue was fifty, a laconic ex-Texan who wore cowboy boots, hand-tooled belts, and Western-style shirts under his lab jacket. Like me, he spent a lot of time outdoors either in a kayak or with a fishing rod in his hands, and his long and angular face was tan in the dead of winter. His gray eyes studied the hammer and I knew he was making calculations.

“Water shouldn’t be no problem, Martin,” Hogue said. “Problem’s the composite surface of the handle, shitty for holding prints. Plus the handle’s dimpled with holes. I’m thinking we’ll fume with cycrocrylate and use a gelatin lifter. We’ll fluoresce the tool and hope this fucker was too crazy to think about wearin’ gloves.”

“How much time?” I asked.

“I’m cooking long and slow, Carson. Like brisket. It’ll take two hours at least. I’ll set up now.”

There was nothing I could do for Sissy Carol Sparks but hope and pray that a cop saw a white van and the cavalry got there to find the woman alive. “I’ll be in my usual spot,” I said, walking the hall to a storeroom that had a cot. In my two years in Miami I’d bagged out there often enough that the cell-sized enclave had been dubbed “Ryder’s Room”. I reclined on the cot and fell into a doze, burned out by too many days of starting before dawn and ending deep into dark.

I was dreaming of a black fire when I heard my name and sat up to see Vince above me and shaking my shoulder.

“Hogue raised prints,” he said.

I jolted up and glanced at my watch. Almost three hours had passed and it was two in the morning. “When?”

“Fifteen minutes back. I let you sleep while we ran them through the databases. You looked like you could use it.”

I saw the sheets of paper in Vince’s hand. “You got a hit.”

He nodded. “A guy named Frisco Jay Dredd.”

“Dread?” I said, wondering if I was still dreaming.

“One E, two D’s. Thirty-six years old. He’s a mental with a record going back years.”

“Tell me you’ve got an address … anything.”

“That’s the shit. His last-known address was in Alabama at the Institute for Aberrational Behavior. You know the place, right?”

More than Vince realized: After my brother had been sent to prison for life, the ferocity of his supposed crimes and mental acuity drew the attention of the IAB’s then-director, Evangeline Prowse, who managed his transfer, studying him for nearly a decade. I’d also been there on other cases, in particular a madman named Bobby Lee Crayline who I’d tracked several years back.

“I know the Institute,” I said. “They do important work. When was this Dredd there?”

“Five years ago. He beat up a woman after having sex with her, got sent to Holman, but was too freaky for them to handle, ranting religious stuff all hours of the day and night. The IAB took him in for study. When his sentence was up, he was released.”

“What else you got?”

“Petty shit starting in his twenties, but increasing the past few years. Vagrancy. Shoplifting. Drinking and drugging busts. And general weirdness.”

“Like what?”

“Preaching hellfire and brimstone on street corners, drunk and ranting and scaring the bejeezus out of citizens. He once stormed into a church, pushed the minister aside and delivered his own sermon. The last entry is a petty theft rap, eighteen months ago. He stole vegetables from a storefront bin in south Alabama and took them to his digs under a bridge. When the cops arrived he was singing hymns and masturbating.”

“At least we have a name,” I said, trying for glass half-full. “And a description.”

“The bastard’s used to living in the shadows, Carson. Dredd could be anywhere.”

“You, uh, gonna broadcast the news that Dredd’s the killer?”

Vince backed out the door, looked up and down the hall, fearful of ears. “I do that, every cop in this city will want to put a bullet in his center ring. For right now, I’m saying he’s a person of interest. It’ll give us time to get more background, maybe put a net over him. Listen, Carson, I already foresee a problem with this Institute place …”

“Getting into Dredd’s records.”

Vince nodded. “I take it this is a medical facility, doctor-patient privilege and all.”

“I know the current director. I’ll see what I can do when morning hits.”

“Get some sleep, brother,” Vince said “We need you to hit the ground hard come the sun.”

I sat on the cot and leaned back, smelling that I needed a shower. I was too beat to head to the Palace, not with a ready cot under my ass.

“Tell Hogue I need a wake-up call at seven,” I said, and was probably asleep before I was horizontal.

48

Nautilus awoke at eight in the morning and checked his messages. Celeste Owsley needed to go to a Kissimmee hairdresser at one, Rebecca wanting to go to a nearby mall at three, something about shoes.

He took his coffee on the balcony, the cross shining in the east, the fresh sun waking the world as Nautilus pondered his options. I’m Carson’s eyes, he thought, gazing across the empty pasture, the beasts undoubtedly packed within the Ark. Nautilus figured park employees arrived a half-hour beforehand to get into costume and position. The employee lot was toward the rear, definitely not Joshua-level. He knew he could be an intimidating figure, especially for what he wanted to do. It could all fall flat. Unless …

He thought a moment and pulled his cell. “Howdy, Rebecca,” he said when the kid answered.

“Hi, Harry,” Rebecca Owsley said, sounding buoyed.

“Harry? How about Mister Nautilus?”

“You call me Rebecca.”

A sigh. The kid was a trip. “Listen, Rebecca, I’m going back over to the park this morning. Wanna go?”

“With you, Harry? Cool.”

“Best tell your mama.”

“She sleeps until around ten and if she gets up before that she’s like soooo bitchy. She’ll be all happy that we’re going back.” A pause. “And she won’t have me around all day.”

“I gotta shower, eat and get dressed. You in or not?”

The pair were at the park twenty minutes later and pulled into the employee lot, three acres of asphalt surrounded by sand and scrub.

“Why here?” Rebecca asked. “This is where the workers park.”

Nautilus adjusted the air conditioning and turned to Rebecca Owsley, wearing a brief white skirt and a red tank top, pink loafers on her feet. “You know I used to be a cop, right?”

“Sure.”

“I saw something last time. One employee hit another when she didn’t know anyone was watching. It interested me. I’m wondering if the employee who was struck might be frightened of the other, because that’s how she looked. I want to see if I can talk to the employee who was hit.”

“Why?”

“It might be a simple spat, or it might be something worse. It’s the way a cop thinks.”

“You said she, Harry,” Rebecca said. “Was it Tawnya who hit the other girl?”

Nautilus fought to keep his jaw from dropping. He’d left the kid at the restaurant on the far side of the restroom. No way she could have seen the confrontation.

“Why do you think that, Rebecca?” he asked.

“Because Tawnya’s a mean bitch.”

“Uh, pardon me?”

“I can tell by the way she talks to me. She thinks I don’t pick up on it, but I do. Once I saw her looking at me like she’d like to spit in my face. She thinks I think I’m special because I get a Joshua pass and you drive me around.”

“You saw all that?”

“I observed it,” the kid clarified. “But Tawnya didn’t see because I was looking sideways through sunglasses. I don’t think she’s real smart, but I’ll bet she makes up for it in nastiness. Hey … you know she’s got a tramp stamp? That’s a tattoo above her butt. They’re called tramp stamps because sluts get them.”

Nautilus had noted the ink on Tawnya’s arms, but the kid seemed one step ahead of him. Maybe it was the similarity in ages, Rebecca able to spot duplicity where Nautilus saw unctuous politeness.