MIKE STEWART.

DOG ISLAND.

For my parents.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps.

WALT WHITMAN.

On the Beach at Night.

prologue.

The motor stopped. Cool rain glanced off the windshield and side windows in gray needles and disappeared into the dark sheet of water stretched across the parking lot. Inside the car, a sinewy boy with sun-bleached hair leaned across the center console and pushed his mouth against a teenage girl's lips. She put her hand on the back of his head, and the boy began to fondle her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with his left hand. Pulling away, the girl popped open the pa.s.senger door and stepped out onto wet pavement where she spun in a circle, her arms extended, her palms cupped to catch the rain. Even at night, her face glowed from warm days of Florida sun. Thick black hair bounced against her shoulder blades as she danced.

The boy said something from inside the car. The girl stopped and ran across the pavement and onto the sand toward the surf, where she disappeared into the night. The boy muttered something; then he stepped out and followed.

He found her sitting on a scattered path of gray and white sh.e.l.ls at the high-tide mark, kicking at waves with her toes as they lapped against her feet and calves. He sat down on the sand behind her, encircled her hips with his legs, and reached around from behind to hold both of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in sunburned hands. She seemed not to notice. She sat and watched whitecaps roll across the rain-splattered Gulf.

Growing restless for a response, he pulled her over backward and rolled on top of her. His hands met behind her neck, and his legs intertwined with hers. Their mouths worked together while her hands slowly kneaded the sand beside her hips. Without warning or finesse, the boy's clumsy hands shoved her wind-breaker, shirt, and bra up to her neck, and the sun-bleached head moved down to kiss her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The girl lay still for seconds while his mouth moved over her nipples. Her hands squeezed pockets of sand. Tears filled the corners of closed lids and rolled down her cheekbones and temples, mixing with the salt spray and cool raindrops in her hair.

"Stop."

The boy didn't respond, except to press harder against her with his hips and to work more frantically with his tongue.

"Stop, please." She pushed him away and stood up. He watched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s until she had untangled her clothes and pulled her shirtfront over the cotton bra. She looked out again at the whitecaps. Behind her, the boy walked back up the beach and climbed into his Mustang. The girl turned and walked away down the sh.o.r.eline. In the distance, she could hear the car drive away.

She carried her sandals dangling from two fingers and squeezed the sharp, cool sand with her toes as she walked. The rhythms and the scents of the Gulf echoed the rhythms and scents of childhood; they reminded her, in a softer, easier way, of the Atlantic sh.o.r.e. There was still the throb of distant hurt in the waves, but she needed the sound. Maybe she even needed the hurt. She hugged her windbreaker tight. All around her, swirls of fog hugged the beach above rippled shadows in the sand.

She had hoped the boy in the Mustang would walk with her along the sand and softly kiss her and maybe tell her something about the stars, but that wasn't life. She had known that when he asked her out. Now, she had no way to get home.

The girl walked until creosote pilings marking the end of public access beaches materialized out of the night. Turning her back to the water, she moved up the beach and found a lounge chair on the patio of a pastel beach house. There was no car on the oyster-sh.e.l.l driveway and no sign of life inside. She pressed her fist against the flesh between her stomach and chest, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep.

Voices floated out of the beach house, and she sighed. Moving quietly out of the chair, she walked around the corner of the house opposite the driveway and headed for the road. A few paces ahead, a jagged rectangle of light fell from a window onto a tangle of sea gra.s.s, c.o.c.kleburs, and dirty sand. She turned toward the beach, but the sound of something or someone falling brought her back. Crouching to the side of the window, she peered through the slats of a bamboo blind that hung against the inside of the gla.s.s. She saw four men in the room. One lay on the floor and seemed hurt. The others were standing. Two wore tank tops, cutoffs, and caps. One of the two had tattoos on one arm. The fourth man was larger than the othersa"over six feet and bulky, like a weight lifter or an ex-jock going to fat. He wore tan dress pants and a red short-sleeved shirt.

The big one seemed to say something, and the other two picked up the injured man by his armpits. Someone was talkinga"a baritone hum floated into the night. She saw the big man pull a pistol out of the back of his waistband and put it in the hurt man's mouth. A loud thoump bounced against the gla.s.s in the window, and the hurt man's cheeks flashed iridescent blood red like a kid shining a flashlight into his mouth on a summer evening. At the same time, the man's head popped back and he sagged between the two men in cutoffs.

The next instant, all three men swiveled their heads to look at the window. She may have tried to say "no," but what came out was shapeless and gutturala"not something so precise as a word. The big man started out of the room. The other two dropped the dead man and followed. Within seconds, all three were outside searching the beach.

They found nothing to account for the sound.

chapter one.

Spring rains east of Baton Rouge had poured fog across Mobile Bay. A cool breeze, stirred up by warm days and cool nights, swept down the beach and across the second-floor deck where it tugged at my robe. Inside, through French doors, red dots hovered in the dark over the bedside table, showing that it was a little after four in the morning.

Glenfiddich scotch and Umbrto Eco had finally put me under a little after midnighta"about three hours before I woke and wandered out on the deck. I was getting used to it. You can get a lot of thinking done if you aren't able to sleep.

The bedroom phone was ringing. A greenish-white glow pulsed next to the red dots on the clock. The answering machine was off, and I watched the telephone ring for most of a minute before walking into the bedroom. I picked up the handset and cleared my throat. "h.e.l.lo?"

A woman's voice said, "Tom?"

"Yeah, this is Tom."

"Tom, this is Susan Fitzsimmons. I apologize for calling in the middle of the night."

I felt for the switch on the bedside lamp, and yellow light jarred the backs of my eyes. "Are you all right?"

Susan said, "I'm fine. Something bad has happened though."

"What do you mean by 'something bad'?"

"There's someone here with me who needs to talk to you.

We need some legal advice on how to handle a disturbing situation."

I had known Susan for six months. We met in early October when fall was just starting to cool the Gulf Coast. She was smart and graceful and striking, and I had almost gotten her killed. Or, at least, I was one reason among many why Susan found herself limping through the holidays recovering from knife wounds. One set of reasons was that her artist husband had gotten greedy, crossed my little brother, and ended up with his throat sliced open. Another was that I stuck my nose in and figured out what happened and, along the way, managed to bring an impressively dangerous person into Susan's life. Now she had only fading memories of her dead husband and, apparently, a friend in trouble. I had a dead brother and a long line of sleepless nights. And I was not blind to the possibility that, over the past few months, I might have been wallowing in it a bit.

I reached for the pen and pad on the bedside table, I asked, "Where are you?"

"We're at the beach house on St. George. The girl who needs to talk to you is," she paused, "a friend of mine here on the island. She thinks she may have seen someone get killed. You know, murdered. Earlier tonight on the beach."

I thought, d.a.m.n. I said, "I'm a.s.suming she wasn't involved."

"No. Well, only to the extent that she saw it happen."

"Then the advice is easy. Call the cops."

"She wasn't involved, but it's more complicated than that." Susan sounded unsure of what to say. "I think she needs to talk to a lawyer."

"What's complicated about it?"

Susan didn't answer.

"It's okay to talk on the phone. No one's listening."

"You're right. I guess it's silly, but I am uncomfortable talking this way. Part of the problem is, well, you know how it is down here on the coast. Somebody disappears or you see somebody flashing a wad of money or somebody looks like they're up to no good, first thing that pops into your head is it's got something to do with drugs. And you never know whose brother or cousin or friend might be involved, so you don't know who's safe to talk to."

"She thinks she saw some kind of drug hit?"

"Tom, she doesn't know what it was. Just that somebody got killed right in front of her, and she's scared out of her mind. And here's the complicated part. She's a runaway, and she's a minor. She's absolutely terrified that her family's going to find out where she is and come get her. You know, if she goes to the police and they check her out and find out she's a runaway."

"Susan, maybe her father or mother coming to get her is the best thing that could come out of this."

"I don't think so."

"What do you mean, you don't think so? You can't decide something like that on your own."

"In this case, I can."

"I guess there's something you're not telling me."

She didn't answer.

I gave up. "When did it happen?"

"When did what happen?"

"The murder. When did this friend... What's her name?"

"Carli. Carli Monroe."

"When did Carli see this happen?"

"About three hours ago, I think."

"s.h.i.t."

"Yes, I know." Susan hesitated, then said, "She needs to talk to a lawyer, Tom. I hate to ask, but could you come down here?"

"Susan, I know she's scared, but I'm not a criminal attorney. h.e.l.l, I'm not even licensed in Florida. And I'm supposed to be at a meeting in Tuscaloosa this afternoon. My advice is to find a good local attorney, somebody who's down at the courthouse every week drinking coffee with the prosecutors and bailiffs, and work through him or her."

Susan lowered her voice. "Tom, it's taken me two hours to get her to let me make this call." She had cupped her hand over the mouthpiece, and her m.u.f.fled words buzzed around the edges. "Carli doesn't know who to trust down here and neither do I. If you don't help, she's just going to leave here and try to deal with it by herself. And she's not really capable of doing that." I didn't respond. Seconds pa.s.sed as faint static filled the earpiece. Finally, Susan just repeated my name with what sounded like a little shame sprinkled over it.

My mouth tasted bitter and smoky from last night's scotch and three hours sleep. I breathed deeply to clear my head and looked out at the night. Light from the bedside lamp had washed out the view through open French doors, merging sea and sky and clouds into one black sheet. Susan waited some more while I decided to do the right thing. I said, "I'll be there around mid-morning."

"Thanks. I'm sorry to do this to you." "Don't worry about it. I should have said yes right away." Puffs of clean air rolled through the open door and across the bed. I walked into the bathroom and splashed water against my face and neck before going back to the phone and punching in a seven-digit number. A deep voice, wide awake, answered on the second ring.

chapter two.

"We've got to check out something on St.

George Island."

The best investigator on the Gulf, maybe one of the best anywhere, said, "You know what time it is?"

"It's twenty till five."

"I know what time it is." Joey didn't call me a dips.h.i.t, but it was there in his tone. "What's on St. George Island that's worth me hauling my a.s.s out of bed this time of the morning?"

"Somebody's dead."

"Anybody I know?"

"Got no idea. That's what I need you to find out. You got any contacts over around the Apalachicola-St. George area?"

"Nope. Hang on a second." I heard some rustling and a few clicking sounds, and Joey came back on the line. "Okay, go ahead."

"I just got a call from Susan Fitzsimmons."

"She okay?"

"Susan's fine. But she's got some friend on St. George who thinks she saw some guy, or maybe some woman, get killed tonight."

"You're kidding."

"No. I'm not."

"For one h.e.l.l of a good person, Susan's got some bad karma or something junking up her life."

I was thinking the same thing. I said, "Yeah, well, she needs some help. So, I was hoping you could sniff around the cops in Apalachicola and see if anything's been reported. I could do it, but..."

He interrupted. "But they aren't going to tell some lawyer s.h.i.t. You'd just start 'em beating the bushes." Joey paused, then went on. "Yeah, I can do that. Don't know anybody down there in the f.u.c.king boonies, but I got a couple of boys on the Panama City force who'll fish around for me. Cost a couple of bills. That okay?"

"Sure. Fine. Thanks."

"Give me the details."

I looked at the pad on my bedside table. Exactly seven words were written on it: Susan, St. George Island, Carli Monroe, and Murder. I said, "I don't know any."

Joey sighed and hung up.

Before stepping into the shower, I called the office and left voice mail for my secretary, Kelly. I told her to call the prospective client I was supposed to meet that afternoon and make something up.

A few minutes later, as hot water began to sting my chest and shoulders, I thought about the timber tyc.o.o.n in Tuscaloosa whoa"after receiving Kelly's calla"would be seeking legal advice elsewhere. And I realized that it was all part of my grand plan. A year ago, I had bailed from a fat six-figure job to start a solo practice. And now, blowing off wealthy, paying clients was the next logical step in my strategy to avoid worldly distractions like money and success and solving legal problems for people who could actually afford to pay me.

I squirted shampoo into my palm and rubbed my hands together.