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Mars versus Venus, thought Gibson.
Her father finally set Darby down and looked at his daughter, while she stared resolutely back at him.
Rick Rogers was built like a tank, and as a cop he had the rep of being firm but fair. He knew what living paycheck to paycheck was like, and what that sort of stress made people do.
“You got scum everywhere, but you don’t know anybody till you’ve walked in their shoes. And a hungry belly or a sick kid or losing the roof over your head, or being the wrong color and having to live your lifewith that unfairly hanging over your head every damn day, can make bad things happen to good people, Mick. It doesn’t mean the law won’t be enforced. It just means they’re human beings who you know very little about. You ever lose that bit of truth, go do something else for a living.”
And she had never lost that sense of truth. If anything it had been more forcefully thrust upon her, since, at ProEye, she spent most of her time chasing folks with far too much money who not only didn’t want to pay their fair share, they didn’t want to pay anything because they thought they were above it all.
“Well?” he said to his daughter. His wife was now smoothing down Tommy’s cowlicks as the boy gamelyfought back.
“Well what?”
“Youknowwhat. You want to go somewhere and talk about this?”
“No. But when I get back we can talk, if you want.”
“How about I go with you wherever it is you’re going?”
She looked at his waistband that was hidden by his jacket and arched her eyebrows.
“I’m not packing,” he said in a low voice, casting an anxious glance at his wife. She was now trying to corral Tommy, who was clearly done with her attempts to clean up his appearance.
“Then what good are you?” she replied.
“You really are a piece of work,” her father said, but he tacked on a grin.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Call if you need help, okay?” he said, no longer grinning.
“You’re first on my speed dial, Dad, always have been, always will be.”
His smile came back with extra force.
She snagged her keys, hugged her kids, and drove off in her mommy van.
CHAPTER39
STORMFIELD LOOKED AS DREARY ANDintimidating as ever.
Gibson pulled to a stop and got out. No police presence at all. A storm was coming in off the bay. The temperature was already starting to drop, and she tugged her jacket closer around her.
Unlike her father, shewaspacking, the Beretta riding snugly in her belt clip holster.
She bypassed the house for now and headed to the dock. She didn’t know if the cops had searched down here but she assumed they hadn’t.
She walked out onto the dock and ventured to the stern of the boat. She climbed on the rear teak deck pad and managed to duck under the cover and slide in on her belly through the walkway into the boat. It was dark enough under the cover and the cloudy skies that she had to pull a flashlight out and sweep it around in order to see. It smelled musty and her nostrils crinkled. She sat on her haunches next to the telescopic poles holding up the heavy winter cover and looked around. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but that was usually the case when she started on a search.
There were lots of compartments on the boat in which to secrete things, some obvious, others not. She had looked at the plans for dozens of yachts that debtors had tried to hide from their creditors. New names, new flag registrations, new paint colors, but you couldn’t really change the superstructure of the thing. That was like a fingerprint.
She made a careful search from bow to stern. The luxurious interior had pretty much every bell and whistle Formula offered. Gibson didn’t care about that. She focused on the fact that she had found exactly one thing of interest.
It was a note inked on the bottom of a fender in the forward storage hatch.
Look harder. It’s worth it.
Okay, that was something. She thought more about Harry Langhorne. The guy, by all accounts, was an asshole, a bully, spiteful, vindictive, manipulative, and cruel and maybe a pedophile on top. And he was also terminally ill with brain cancer. She could imagine him seeing this as a game, his last chance to screw with the world.
