by Kevin Fox
“Can I go through your house?”
“For what? You got a warrant?” asked the fat man, suddenly suspicious.
“No. I’m gonna climb out that window and jump to the deck.”
“What are you, oobatz?” He asked, looking at me like I’d lost my mind.
“You want to come with me and find a ladder instead?”
The fat man looked at me for a minute, weighing his options.
“Go in the house, see if I care.” He shrugged, probably betting that I’d die before I stumbled across whatever it was that he was afraid I might find. I put out a hand for his keys, knowing a guy like this would have his house locked up against potential looters. He handed them right over.
“Help yourself.”
I went to the car, grabbed my Maglite and extra ammunition, double-checked that my ‘LifeProof’ case was secured around my phone and walked into the waves without looking back. I knew that if I stopped now, I’d freeze and go no further. The other times I’d gotten caught out in storms I’d lost whole days of my memory. If anything was going to cause a relapse – this was it.
By the time I reached the stoop at 502 Holten, I was up to my thighs in water and could feel the riptide trying to pull my feet out from under me. I grabbed the rail and hauled myself up the steps, looking back to see where Medusa and the Fat Man stood, but they were lost in the rain.
I unlocked the front door and pulled, but the wooden frame was cockeyed from the pressure of the waves. I put one foot on the wall and tugged, managing to force it open, then stepped inside. In the light of my Maglite I saw white leather couches, a white rug, and a gaudy, red-tiled gas fireplace that smelled as if it might be leaking.
A fire to go with the flood, that’s all I needed.
I headed upstairs, taking them two at a time as the ocean pounded on the walls, making the house rock in a disconcerting rhythm. I was down the hall in four long strides, getting my sea legs as I moved toward the bedroom whose window faced the ocean and the yacht.
The rest of the house had been neat and organized, but the bedroom was a mess. There were men’s socks and underwear strewn around, and bits of leather and lace I never would have expected those two outside to have. I was almost to the window when the yacht crashed into the house again and I was nearly knocked off my feet, staggering and stumbling against the silk-sheeted bed.
Regaining my balance, I went to the window and pulled it up, looking out to see the yacht’s hulking mass right beneath me. The deck was less than three feet below me, but rocked away each time a wave hit. In constant motion, the deck was slick, and wet, and not an ideal surface to land on. I’d have to time my jump carefully or slide off and get crushed between the yacht and the house.
That might hurt.
I almost said ‘fuck it’ and turned around, but over the waves, the wind, and the grinding thump of fiberglass on wood, I could still hear sporadic and desperate screams. I knew I’d start hearing those panicked shrieks in my dreams if I didn’t try to help.
Goddammit.
I squeezed my head and shoulders through the window and squatted on the sill, bracing myself with my arms as the rain burned against my skin. While working up my nerve to jump, the tide suddenly thrust the yacht up and a wall of shining mahogany came right at me. I reacted instinctively and jumped. I was mid-air before I realized what I’d done – the deck was moving out from under me, floating out to sea. I caught the rail, my shoulder muscles screaming as my weight almost pulled my arm from its socket. My hip slammed into one of the uprights and my ribs compressed as I hit, hard. It was impossible to breathe for a moment, but I had the presence of mind to fall forward, onto the deck, rather than backward and over the rail. My right knee hit the hard mahogany as my left leg gave out, but I was onboard.
The yacht rolled and I almost slid back under the rail. I stopped myself by hooking my left leg around an upright, grabbing it with both hands. Catching my breath, I took stock of my situation – I was on the exposed deck of a grounded yacht in a hurricane, it was slamming up against a house, could break free at any moment, and I had to cross an open deck in the torrential rain. Everything was slick and cold, and the waves and water coated everything with unpredictability.
Basically, I was fucked, and I’d done it to myself.
Chapter Four
The only way off this boat was going to be to find the screamer, get her to dry land, and go home. That was my motivation – a warm dry house where hopefully I’d find a few beers left and Kat relatively sober.
I stood, stiffly moving toward the raised pilothouse where dim lights were still on, powered by an emergency generator. When I reached the hatch, I pulled it open and went down a few steps, noticing the beautiful woodwork that gleamed in the dim light. I took it all in quickly, in case I ever lived to testify about what I saw. The yacht was a Hargrave Custom Capri Series and nicer than any home I’d ever been in. I almost had a chance to appreciate it when the girl screamed again. As it died out, I could hear her trying to catch her breath and muttering in an accent I couldn’t quite identify.
“Oh, God oh God oh God, someone get us out of here… Please,” She begged, and then chanted something that sounded like the rhythm of the Catholic confession I’d grown up hating, in a language I didn’t know. “Bozhe miy, ya shchyro shkoduyu za te, shcho obrazyv Tebe, i ya znevazhuyu vsi svoyi hrikhy cherez spravedlyvi pokarannya Tvoyi…”
She screamed again, and I shuddered. I needed to find that girl just to shut her up. As the yacht rolled, I was knocked off balance and caught myself awkwardly, pitching forward toward a set of narrow stairs. There were no lights on down below, so I put my Maglite between my teeth and brought my Glock up to its ready position.
I was beginning to miss my nightmares.
Moving as fast as I could without falling on my ass, I reached the narrow galley with its granite countertops and stools bolted to the deck. There was food that had been tossed around the room, as if someone’s meal had been interrupted, but there were also boxes and crates. Quickly scanning them, I could see that they had been vacuum-sealed in plastic before they had been roughly torn open. As I shined my light on one of them, something inside reflected the light – clear plastic packages in bricks with a pure white powder inside – heroin.
A lot of it. Hefting one package, I felt the weight and knew it was both pure, uncut, and worth a fortune on the street. Then the boat pitched again, reminding me that I was on a tight clock. I kept moving, but as I passed the next crate, I noticed something in the stainless-steel refrigerator in the galley – a distorted reflection that looked like a face – a horror show face out of my nightmares, with its left temple collapsed, bone shattered and melted into scar tissue, obliterating what had once been an eye socket. I turned quickly, pulling up my gun as I did –
– But there was no one there…
Fuck. My heart was racing so fast I could hear the blood in my ears, crashing like waves. I get like this in the rain. Paranoid. Freaking myself out so much that my night terrors bled out into the false nights of a stormy days as the rain made my mind play tricks on me.
I took a deep breath and went back to work, quickly taking pictures of the drugs with my cell phone – a habit ingrained from gathering evidence at crime scenes. I might have kept snapping photos if the girl’s piercing shriek hadn’t startled me back into action. I headed back down the narrow hall, past the stairs and into the main salon – a room that was bigger than my living room, complete with a wet bar, leather couches, and a table that sat eight.
Somebody was going to be very pissed off if this thing sank.
I started across the salon, but stumbled over something bulky and dark in my path – a body. I fell over it into a warm dark mess on the carpet – blood. Startled, I whipped my Maglite around on the dead guy. He was maybe thirty, with close-cropped hair and the ruddy, rough skin and blocky teeth that marked a certain class of Eastern European criminal. The stab wounds that sliced open his lower abdomen and face
didn’t really help improve my impression of him.
His friends were less than ten feet away, on the other side of the couch – three men in their late twenties or early thirties, none of whom had been stabbed. All three were shot in the face. Their blood had drained all over the expensive carpet. Leading away from the pool of blood were footprints, headed out of the salon, as if someone had lived through this massacre and gotten away.
I kept a firm hold on my gun and headed out the sliding glass doors at the rear of the salon, hearing pieces of the house snap off as the yacht slammed into it. The rain and the sea had wiped out any trace of blood out here on the deck, but there was a hatch cracked open there. It led down into the engine room. Water was pouring in as each wave crashed, but I could see that water was also coming up from below. The hull was compromised somewhere.
This night kept getting better.
The girl was close now, and I could hear her muttering in that sweetly guttural language, working herself up for another good blood-curdler. It never came. Instead, she went absolutely quiet. That could mean a lot of things. She may have passed out, or whoever killed the four men was still on board and could have killed the screamer.
Halfway down the ladder the smell hit me – a rotting, moldy, and fetid smell that had a tinge of rotten meat to it. The odor had a sharp edge, a coppery tang like the taste of blood turned to vinegar. It’s a scent that any cop who’s been on the job long enough will tell you is the smell of death. Even with a memory like mine, it wasn’t something easily forgotten.
I played my Maglite across the darkened space and in its limited glow found pale, floating shapes that looked like thick albino eels. At first my mind refused to recognize them, but after a moment it hit me that they were naked limbs, bloated and bobbing in the dark water. Shining the light on them, I finally found their faces – dead faces, all with the distinctively unhealthy skin tone that’s an indicator of carbon monoxide poisoning.
I counted three girls and four boys, all fair-skinned, Northern European-looking, and in their early teens, clothed in shorts and t-shirts. Each one was handcuffed to a pipe that ran across the engine room. Fighting the urge to bolt, I started doing a visual record, the way I was taught at the Academy, but my eyes started to tear from the foul odor and my stomach tightened, ready to purge itself.
There’s a reason death smells the way it does. It’s wired by evolution to inform every instinct you have to run from whatever killed the people you’re looking at. It makes sense, since whatever killed them has a high probability of killing you as well. The odor also makes you want to puke, just in case whatever killed them has been ingested or inhaled. The fact that death is ugly, has a horrendous stench, and very often oozes out at you is a marvel of evolution, nature’s way of trying to protect each of us by tapping into our most basic instinct for survival.
I didn’t listen. I was too pissed off. Given the age of the victims, I knew this might be a trafficking case – and if I was ever going to catch who did this, I’d need evidence. A few quick pictures – call it thirty seconds – and I’d be gone. Then I heard the girl moan again.
Son of a bitch.
She was losing volume, but managed to emit a low keening wail, holding a bone-chilling note. I was going to have to go all the way down into the hold. Fuck. I hesitated. If I didn’t get off this boat soon, I’d get swept out to sea. The smart thing to do would be to leave. Now.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. My father always told me that stupidity and bravery look identical in the moment, and only the results tell you which is which. I seemed to err on the side of stupid whenever someone was in trouble, which is why I became a cop.
Climbing down into the hold, I landed in dark water that made the pale flesh that floated in it seem luminescent. I scanned the faces of the dead, searching for the source of the moans, finally turning my light toward the darkest corner, where the water was deeper. I expected to find her alone and scared, handcuffed like the others.
She wasn’t either of those.
The screamer was a slight girl with dark auburn hair that contrasted sharply with her translucent skin, and in spite of her size and current condition her attitude made her look both intimidating and dangerous. The girl’s clothes were hanging off her body and scratch marks, most likely defensive wounds, were etched into her arms. She also had a gun pointed right at my face. I had made a slight error in judgment.
The killer of the men in the salon was still on board. She was right in front of me.
“Stay away…” she hissed in the strange accent that was somehow both similar and different than the Russian I heard on the North Shore of the island. It was thicker – as if English was an acquired second language. Whatever it was, it was hard-earned, and there was a toughness about her that could only came from experience. Her eyes reflected the light, shining green, with blue and gold flecks and a healthy dose of crazy and they narrowed as I tried to step closer.
“I said don’t move—”
“Actually, you said ‘stay away,’” I corrected her as I noticed a second girl behind her, her near twin, handcuffed to a pipe. The water was rising quickly around all of us, but I clearly couldn’t rush this girl. She needed to trust me before I got any closer, so I tried to distract her, shining the light on the girl that was still handcuffed. She appeared to be older, since her face was more angular and her body less so.
Sisters. Had to be.
“Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right?” the handcuffed girl muttered, her voice trailing off weakly.
“She’s your sister? Can you tell her to put the gun down?” The older girl nodded, staring me in the eyes, and then finally looked toward the younger girl.
“Put it down, Dariya. Can’t you see he’s not one of them?”
“All I see is a man with a gun.”
“Dariya? I’m a policeman. You’ve got to get off this boat.”
“And what was your first clue, genius?”
“You can’t get off without my help. I can get her handcuffs off.”
I saw Dariya’s eyes shift to her sister, her weak point. If I could establish a connection, I might have a chance to talk her down.
“What’s your name?”
“Alina,” she said, shivering. She pronounced it with a stress on the ‘i’ and a lengthened ‘n’, with an inflection that I couldn’t quite imitate.
“Dariya, Alina’s going to drown if I don’t help her. Soon. Put down the gun.” I started moving forward again and her grip on the pistol tightened. “…Or, shoot me and drown. Brilliant plan. Who’s the genius now?”
It was a standoff, and I could see Dariya’s finger go white on the trigger. It crossed my mind as the storm battered the yacht and the water continued to rise that it might be a quicker death to have her shoot me –
Chapter Five
“Dariya. If he doesn’t help, shoot him later,” Alina ordered. Dariya grudgingly complied, lowering the gun and stepping back behind Alina so that I could get to Alina’s handcuffs. It was a start, but Dariya could still shoot me if she decided to.
I was impressed. These girls were beautiful and practical. Somehow they’d killed four Eastern European Mafia-types, possibly wounded another, and had me dead to rights if I wasn’t careful. Carefully avoiding the stressed-out, traumatized, and hormonal teen girl with a gun, I holstered my own weapon and reached for my keys.
The first order of business were the handcuffs. I was lucky on that account. Whoever had cuffed them had used generic handcuffs and my keys opened them easily. As they slid off, Alina stumbled forward and I caught her, feeling her slick, wet, and very cold skin. She was close to hypothermic, but there wasn’t much I could do about it as I saw Dariya behind her, the pistol now raised to my face.
“Don’t touch her!” I took my hands off of Alina slowly, making sure she didn’t fall, and then held them up so Dariya could see them.
“Can you walk on your own?” She nodded. I stepped aside, giving her room
to pass. She trudged through the water and I motioned for Dariya to follow – and as she did I tore the pistol from her grip.
I almost regretted it as her knee glanced off my thigh, barely missing its target. Before I could pull away, her teeth managed to take a piece of my forearm out. Thankfully her fatigue worked in my favor and I was able to take her legs out from under her, pushing her down in the water, close to her sister.
“I told you. I’m on your side – but I don’t want to get shot in the face by accident. Understood?”
“You mess with us, I’ll kill you,” she promised, her stare pure venom.
“I have no doubt, but you’ll kill us all if you don’t get moving. Go.” She didn’t, not until Alina took her arm, gently, pulling her toward the ladder. I tossed the pistol in the rising water and followed them, hoping Dariya didn’t decide to slam the hatch in my face. I kept a close eye on her hands and feet as she scrambled up the ladder, almost expecting a kick to the face, but she was in too much of a rush to get out onto the deck.
The weather had gotten worse while we were below. The wind was howling, and it carried lawn chairs and patio umbrellas through the air, discarding them in the waves. I thought about trying to get off the boat through the house again, but when I looked, I noticed that the peak of the Fat Man’s roof was four feet off center and the whole place was leaning landward. It was going to collapse at any moment, and Dariya wasn’t waiting for any man to save her. She was at the stern, untying a life raft that had already been inflated – as if someone had tried to leave earlier.
“We could use a hand,” Alina called out.
“Just get in,” I told them, putting the muzzle of my gun to the rope. It’s a stupid way to cut a rope, especially when it means you’re putting a hole in a yacht, but it’s efficient. The shot snapped the rope and sent it lashing out, whipping across my arm and slicing open the taut, cold skin. It hurt like a motherfucker, but the raft was free. I was pushing the raft off the deck and into the water when Alina suddenly yelled, looking past me at something with wide, terrified eyes –