Dead of Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

knew he lived on a lake twenty-some miles south of Orlando, and slightly southeast of Kissimmee, on a little unincorporated island I’d never heard of, Nightshade Landing, Bartram County.
    Nightshade grew wild on the island, Frieda told me. The bushes were something to see come spring, all those white blooms. Even so, locals had shortened the name to Night’s Landing. Typical. Boat access only, she said, which is why the place had never really flourished—even though real estate values had soared because of Orlando’s theme park boom.
    “Night’s Landing is about a hundred acres, but the population can’t be more than a few dozen people. In the early nineteen hundreds, some New York developer tried to create his own little Cape Cod. But he so sufficiently pissed off the local power structure that they refused to build the bridge he was counting on. Plus, most of the properties have title problems. It’s tough to sell or resell what you can’t prove you own. Which is why he never finished the project.”
    She’d added, “I think the island’s a little creepy. A few sand roads, all Victorian houses. Some abandoned. Lots of gables, turrets, towers, and New England porches. The kind of architecture that a New Yorker would think of as classy. The island’s perfect for Jobe, though. It’s the sort of place that people don’t go to live. They go there to disappear. Or hide.”
    The scrap of paper also contained her brother’s phone number. On my way to Kissimmee, I used my cell phone. Tried three times. Got nothing but his short, shy phone message: “I am not available. Try again. Or leave your name, number and the first four digits of your birth date, zeros included.”
    Birth date, zeros included?
    Weird. Did that suggest an interest in astrology? It didn’t mesh with what I knew about the man—nor any responsible scientist I’ve ever known.
    Another unusual thing was that he spoke with the careful, halting diction that I’ve come to associate with people who have speech impediments, or drunks who are trying their best to convince police that they are not drunk.
    I’d read his papers.
    The man wasn’t a drunk.
     
     
    When I got to Kissimmee, I dialed and listened to his recorder for a fourth time. Wrestled with the decision to launch my boat and go bang on his door, or buy time by having dinner. Maybe he was outside taking a long walk, or just getting back from a research trip, or maybe working in his lab.
    If I could get him to answer the phone and confirm that he was fine, my obligation to Frieda would be fulfilled.
    Never in my life did I ever think I’d own a cellular phone. Now I seemed tied to the damn thing.
    I drove along Kissimmee’s oak-lined and Christmas-bespangled main boulevard, Broadway, finally found a triple-big parking space for my truck and boat trailer in the heart of downtown next to Shore’s Men’s Wear and Joanne’s Diner. A gas station attendant had told me the diner served good country-fried steak, collards, and iced tea. Florida’s restaurant fare proves that the state has become the Midwest’s southernmost possession. I wasn’t going to miss a chance for some authentic Southern cooking.
    But Joanne’s was closed for some reason on this early Sunday eve, so I roamed around town to get the kinks out of my legs, and to give Dr. Jobe more time to materialize. I looked at plastic snowmen and candy cane decorations. I tried to decipher inscriptions on a stonework called “THE MONUMENT OF STATES.” Stood beneath a streetlight and watched an Amtrak passenger train clickety-clack its way through downtown, bells ringing, red lights flashing, on its way to somewhere far, far north of the horizon.
    It was a little after 6:30 P.M. three days past the dark of the moon; the sort of black night that invests city parks, benches, and trees with a glistening, winter incandescence. The air had a hint of cool; tasted of snow.
    Half an hour later, I was sitting at the bar of the Kissimmee