that searching someoneâs house from top to bottom was the biggest intrusion of privacy an investigation demanded, but sifting through a few hard drives had changed his opinion. Computers had gone from being a glorified file cabinet to something approaching a second brain, storing ever larger amounts of information. But it wasnât the amount of information that Horatio found intriguing; it was the quality. Once, something had to be truly important to write it down. Now, a few clicks of a mouse button and you had a permanent link to a vast amount of data on virtually any subject, which meant the most trivial of minutiae or the most ephemeral curiosity could be recorded forever; the whim made concrete.
Timothy Breakwash had been a bookmark junkie, recording the URL of almost any site that caught his fancy. Scuba diving, live theater, sock puppets, horticulture, dog breeding, Scottish history; the manâs interests seemed as broad-ranging and indefinable as the Everglades themselves. There were sites on ballooning, of course, and environmental scienceâbut these were scattered among web pages concerned with treasure hunting or Miami history or sixteenth-century art.
The private files were even more revealing. Breakwash had written up details for over a dozen money-making schemes, ranging from a plan to sell hermit crabs as pets to a grandiose idea involving generating electricity from tiny water wheels installed in every drainpipe and eavestrough in Miami.
That last idea seemed to typify not just Breakwashâs thinking, but the thinking of every get-rich-quick dreamer who found his way to Miami. Seen through the right eyes, it was a place of endless potential; a sunny and fertile ground to plant your magic beans and watch the beanstalk grow. And sometimes, thatâs exactly what happenedâMiami had been built by dreamers like that, had been transformed more than once. It was a city that periodically fell into decay, consumed by its own decadence and popularity, then bloomed again. It was an orchid in a swamp, as dependent on the forces that could destroy it as on the ones that nurtured it; a city of storms and sunlight, of decay and rebirth.
Timothy Breakwash had sought the sun, and found the storm.
And now, Horatio thought, all thatâs left of his aspirations are these files. Sketches of a life dreamed but not lived. Hopes and desires, in PDF format.
It was a profile heâd seen before, a common element in a volatile mix. Con men, thieves, and killers were the other elements, drawn as inevitably toward opportunity as the dreamers. The dreamers thought they could spin straw into gold, and the predators were always there waiting to take it away from them. Thatâs how it looked on the surfaceâbut like any ecosystem, it was far more complex underneath. Predators could become prey. Horatio had seen a picture of a large Burmese python someone had released into the Everglades, where it had become a meal for a medium-size gator. What made the picture memorable was that while the gator was busy eating the snake, the python had managed to swallow half the gator.
Dreams unrealized lead to frustration, desperation, and sometimes violence. The most dangerous man is one with nothing to loseâ¦and when a man loses his dreams, nothing is whatâs usually left.
He wondered about Randilyn Breakwash. It took a special kind of person to stick with a dreamer; most couldnât handle the endless cycle of promise and disappointment, of a life of anticipation that was never rewarded. The couples that made it, Horatio had found, were the ones that had some sort of stability to keep them goingâeither financial, spiritual, or emotional.
Everybody needs an anchor. What was Randilyn Breakwashâs? They didnât seem to have children, she didnât strike me as being especially religious â could it be she simply loved him that much?
He had no ready answer, and her husbandâs
Timothy Breakwash had been a bookmark junkie, recording the URL of almost any site that caught his fancy. Scuba diving, live theater, sock puppets, horticulture, dog breeding, Scottish history; the manâs interests seemed as broad-ranging and indefinable as the Everglades themselves. There were sites on ballooning, of course, and environmental scienceâbut these were scattered among web pages concerned with treasure hunting or Miami history or sixteenth-century art.
The private files were even more revealing. Breakwash had written up details for over a dozen money-making schemes, ranging from a plan to sell hermit crabs as pets to a grandiose idea involving generating electricity from tiny water wheels installed in every drainpipe and eavestrough in Miami.
That last idea seemed to typify not just Breakwashâs thinking, but the thinking of every get-rich-quick dreamer who found his way to Miami. Seen through the right eyes, it was a place of endless potential; a sunny and fertile ground to plant your magic beans and watch the beanstalk grow. And sometimes, thatâs exactly what happenedâMiami had been built by dreamers like that, had been transformed more than once. It was a city that periodically fell into decay, consumed by its own decadence and popularity, then bloomed again. It was an orchid in a swamp, as dependent on the forces that could destroy it as on the ones that nurtured it; a city of storms and sunlight, of decay and rebirth.
Timothy Breakwash had sought the sun, and found the storm.
And now, Horatio thought, all thatâs left of his aspirations are these files. Sketches of a life dreamed but not lived. Hopes and desires, in PDF format.
It was a profile heâd seen before, a common element in a volatile mix. Con men, thieves, and killers were the other elements, drawn as inevitably toward opportunity as the dreamers. The dreamers thought they could spin straw into gold, and the predators were always there waiting to take it away from them. Thatâs how it looked on the surfaceâbut like any ecosystem, it was far more complex underneath. Predators could become prey. Horatio had seen a picture of a large Burmese python someone had released into the Everglades, where it had become a meal for a medium-size gator. What made the picture memorable was that while the gator was busy eating the snake, the python had managed to swallow half the gator.
Dreams unrealized lead to frustration, desperation, and sometimes violence. The most dangerous man is one with nothing to loseâ¦and when a man loses his dreams, nothing is whatâs usually left.
He wondered about Randilyn Breakwash. It took a special kind of person to stick with a dreamer; most couldnât handle the endless cycle of promise and disappointment, of a life of anticipation that was never rewarded. The couples that made it, Horatio had found, were the ones that had some sort of stability to keep them goingâeither financial, spiritual, or emotional.
Everybody needs an anchor. What was Randilyn Breakwashâs? They didnât seem to have children, she didnât strike me as being especially religious â could it be she simply loved him that much?
He had no ready answer, and her husbandâs
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