Rolling Thunder

by Matt Lincoln

  I held back a smirk. Commitment issues were practically Holm’s middle name, and not just when it came to boats. “Like I keep telling you, you can always borrow mine.”

  “Ethan, you live on your boat,” he countered. “I’m not going to sail your house out just to go fishing.”

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  Maybe I should’ve told him that I owned an actual house too. I just preferred living on the boat, since it was closer to work and convenient for other things that I enjoyed.

  I didn’t want to take away his fun, though. No matter how much he complained, Holm was definitely a boat-of-the-week kind of guy.

  The elevator dinged open on the lower level, where both the morgue and the lab resided. Usually, when we were getting started on a case, we’d check in with the medical examiner first, but she wasn’t here yet. Ethel Dumas didn’t work weekends unless she absolutely had to. However, Bonnie and Clyde would have something for us.

  Our full-time lab team, Rosa Bonci and Joe Clime, practically lived in the basement of the office building. The onsite techs who’d been out to collect the body were usually dispatched on-call, but they were also technically supposed to handle processing evidence during the off-hours. Bonnie and Clyde would never allow that, though. Not in their lab.

  When Holm and I walked into the lab, Clyde was on the main computer, his mop of curly brown hair in Einstein-like disarray. The twenty-something tech was dressed in stiff new jeans and a well-worn tee shirt beneath his pale green lab coat, studying something on the monitor. Bonnie was nowhere in evidence.

  “Where’s your partner?” Holm called out by way of greeting.

  Clyde flashed a grin over his shoulder and pointed at the closed glass door leading to the back half of the lab. “Running a DNA test on your boat. We’ve got something for you, by the way.”

  “I hope it’s something about the dead guy who has the killer we can still catch,” I told him. “The other evidence is secondary.”

  “Of course it is, but you know Bonnie is obsessed with pirates, and she thought she recognized something in that mess of wood they brought in.”

  The spark of excitement I’d felt earlier grew slightly. Still, I had a job to do before I could focus on my little hobby. “Okay. Show us what you’ve got.”

  Clyde typed away and pulled something up on the screen, a grainy looking photo of a young black male. “Fingerprint match to your victim. Name’s Chad Sweeting. He’s got a record with the RBPF for assault, possession, and disturbing the public, and he’s definitely a Black Mamba.”

  I nodded. Nothing I hadn’t expected to hear, but it was good to have a name. “Have an address for this guy?”

  “Not on record. He did have a phone, but I doubt it’s registered. Looks like a disposable. Plus, it’s a bit damp.” Clyde jerked his chin toward the far counter, where a small, older-style brick phone lay disassembled and drying under a fan. “So what are we thinking? Mambas versus Kings and the snakes are down by one?”

  “Maybe,” I said slowly.

  It sure as hell looked like a gang hit, but I didn’t like the fact that the victim had been killed on American soil. I needed to know what Chad Sweeting had been doing here, and why his killer had taken him out and left him. That wasn’t the Congo Kings way. When they made an example, they wanted everyone in their turf to see it, and a remote cave on a Florida beach wasn’t their turf.

  Plus, there was that thing with the director to consider, the way she didn’t tell me our clearance wasn’t high enough for this.

  I was about to suggest that we head over to the Bahamas for a chat with the Bahamas police force when the glass door at the back slid open and Bonnie rushed in, all smiles and excitement. The short Hispanic woman was quite a contrast to her tall, slim partner in crime, all rounded curves and floral prints under her gleaming white lab coat.

  “Marston! Oh, good, you’re still here. You are going to love me,” she said as she strode toward us.

  “You know I already do,” I said with a smirk.

  “Yeah, but this is big. Huge.” She came up next to Clyde and bumped him out of the way, and he stepped back laughing with his hands up. “Okay, first, I can definitely date the pinnace to the late 1600s,” she said as her hands went to the keyboard. “I’ll have a more exact time period soon.”

  Holm furrowed his brow. “What the hell’s a pinnace?”

  “Ship-to-shore boat,” I said, a faint smile tugging at my lips. “Typically used by merchants… and pirates.”

  Bonnie tossed a grin. “Exactly, but even better than the date, I found this.” She tapped a few more keys and brought up an image on the monitor, a close photo of one of the larger sections of planks from the cave that looked to have been part of the hull. She zoomed the image in toward a black mark, showing that it was made up of distinct lines that were trying to form part of a picture.

  “It’s a wood etching,” she explained. “It wasn’t unknown for galleons in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to have their flag symbols branded into the hulls of the pinnaces to avoid ownership disputes. This is only a partial, and it’s really worn down, but I managed to clean it up a little and extrapolate what the rest of the design would’ve looked like.”

  With a few clicks of the mouse, a rough sketch of an image was superimposed on the photo: a winged skull with a snake threading itself into the jaw and out the left eye socket.

  The Dragon’s Rogue.

  “Holy shit,” Holm said as he elbowed me and grinned. “That’s the one, isn’t it? Your white whale.”

  “Yeah. That’s the one.” Even though I was seeing it, I couldn’t quite believe it, though I didn’t doubt Bonnie’s skills.

  My grandfather had spent most of his life searching for the pirate ship Dragon’s Rogue, convinced it’d gone down somewhere between the south Florida coast and the Bahamas. I’d joined him in the search when I was six years old, after I lost my father, and had kept it up even after my grandfather passed away four years ago.

  But for all that time, we’d never found a shred of physical evidence. The whole thing had been running on wishes, faith, and a big dose of sentimentality on my part. I’d pretty much given up on actually finding anything.

  Until now.

  “So, what do you want to do?” Holm said.

  I pushed away my childhood dreams for the moment and focused on the task at hand. There was a time for treasure hunting but now wasn’t it. “We’re still waiting on Ethel and the rest of the evidence, so we’ve got time. Let’s go shake a few branches at the RBPF and see what falls out.”

  Holm nodded. “Works for me.”

  We left Bonnie and Clyde to their science and headed out.

  Chapter 6

  The sea was calm, and because our Defender Class boat made good time we reached Nassau in under an hour. We docked at the RBPF marine unit and encountered no trouble commandeering a couple of motor scooters to head for Central, where I was sure we’d find a lot more resistance.

  The Central Police Station was a few blocks in from the waterfront, a two-story building painted tropical teal with white trim. It looked clean and breezy enough from the outside, but inside waited a mixed bag of Bahamas cops who may or may not be on the payroll of one gang or another and may or may not be in favor of cooperating with U.S. law enforcement no matter where their loyalties lay. I had at least one solid contact on the force, but he wouldn’t be in on Saturday, so I’d have to take my chances.

  Holm and I approached the desk sergeant with our badges out.

  “Afternoon,” I said to the uniformed man behind the desk, who watched our approach with a mixture of boredom and mistrust. He was an older guy, salt-and-pepper brush cut with a squared jaw and a thick pink scar across the back of one hand that was already reaching for the desk phone. “We need some information about a Bahamian citizen for a case we’re working.”

  The desk sergeant grunted. “You want Captain Laury, yeah,” he said in a gruff, chopped ton
e as he snagged the phone’s handset and punched numbers with a blunt index finger. “I get him. You wait there.” He jerked his head to the side.

  “Actually, I don’t want Captain Laury,” I said flatly, resisting the urge to reach across the desk and hang his damned phone up. I’d dealt with Kosmo Laury on a handful of previous cases over the years, and he was probably the most unhelpful son of a bitch on the entire Bahamas force. Not to mention I strongly suspected he was in bed with Cobra Jon and would, therefore, taint my investigation.

  “Too bad. You get him,” the desk sergeant said. “Wait there.”

  I exchanged a glance with Holm, and we moved off to the side, away from the path of the front doors. It was relatively quiet in here on a hot Saturday afternoon with just a handful of civvies waiting on wooden benches beyond the front desk and three officers standing around, two of them chatting and one on his phone.

  We didn’t have to wait long before a door at the back of the boxy waiting room opened and a man in a white uniform stepped partway out, waving an arm at us. Light-skinned and long-limbed with a gleaming shaved head and a full goatee, he looked like he might start villainously twirling his mustache at any second.

  “Agents, welcome,” he called in a false friendly voice with a hint of musical Islander accent. “Please, come on through.”

  I snorted and moved across the room with Holmes trailing me. When we reached Captain Laury, he grinned widely and stepped back to let us past. “We can talk in my office. Right this way.”

  “You know, Laury, this doesn’t have to be a long conversation,” I said to his back once he closed the door behind us and started through the clutter of the bullpen that lay behind the entrance. As we followed after him, I noticed that few of the desks were occupied, and no one looked up at the captain and his visitors. “All we want from you is an address.”

  “I’m happy to help the American police in any way I can,” he said half over his shoulder, still striding fast, “but of course, there is protocol to consider. Please, come in, and we’ll talk.”

  He stopped in front of a plain wooden door and opened it onto a relatively spacious office. Inside, the window was open and two large, oscillating stand fans took sentry positions in the back corners and blew a cross-breeze through the stale room.

  “Fine,” I grunted as I stepped into the office.

  Even though I hadn’t dealt directly with the captain too often, I figured he wanted to throw a bunch of rules and procedures around so he could say that he was so sorry, but they just couldn’t cooperate, and why not turn the investigation over to him. That way, he could sweep it under the rug with the rest of the gang activity.

  That wasn’t going to happen, but it looked like I’d have to let him try.

  Once we were all inside, Holm and I took the wooden folding chairs while Laury circled around the desk and plopped into the cushioned seat behind it, long limbs sprawling and white teeth flashing.

  “Now, what can I do for you agents? My sergeant failed to mention exactly which agency you’re with?”

  We performed another synchronized badge flash.

  “MBLIS. Special Agent Marston,” I said and jerked a thumb at myself before gesturing to my partner. “Special Agent Holm. Like I said, we just need an address for one Chad Sweeting.”

  “Chad Sweeting?” Laury repeated. “That name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “It doesn’t? I’m shocked,” Holm said as he feigned a look of surprise at me. “He doesn’t know the name.”

  I managed not to laugh. “And here I thought a police captain would know every single soul on the island personally. Come on, Laury. I’m not here with veiled threats, and I’m not trying to piss on your turf. I want an address, you’ve got records. Look it up.”

  A look flashed in the captain’s eyes. “I’ll need to know why you’re looking for this information, Agent Marston.”

  “Because he’s dead, and I’m trying to find out who killed him.”

  “Dead?” Captain Laury threw his head back and laughed. “So you think you can come into my station and investigate the murder of my citizen, under my nose? I could have saved you the trip if you’d called. Clearly, this is my investigation now.”

  “The hell it is,” I said. “Sweeting was murdered on American soil. My victim, my case.”

  Laury’s eyes narrowed. “If this Sweeting is a Bahamian citizen—”

  “With all due respect, Captain, but it doesn’t matter,” I cut in, my annoyance barely restrained. Something in the look he’d just given me suggested that he did recognize the name after all, and he was about to dig in that much harder. “I’m investigating this case. Period, full stop.”

  “No, you are not,” Laury argued. “My department is taking over, and if you want us to cooperate with you in any way, you’ll stop this pointless interference or you won’t get so much as a phone call when we find the killer.”

  Holm cleared his throat. “You really don’t want to go this way, Captain.”

  “Is that a threat, Agent Holm?”

  “A threat? Nah.” He laughed. “Maybe a strenuous suggestion.”

  Laury glowered at him and then at me. “I want all the evidence you have on this investigation delivered to my people, today, and I want you agents off the case.”

  “Why’s that, Captain?” I said as I leaned forward casually, an unfriendly smile on my face. “Is there something you don’t want us to find?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “This is my business, not yours.”

  “Yeah? Because I’ve gotta tell you, so far it seems like Black Mambas business.” I smiled inwardly as the mention of the name made him flinch. “So is your business to find out who killed my victim, or is it to save your own ass when Cobra Jon comes looking to take a bite out of somebody?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Laury sputtered.

  I was on my feet in an instant and lunged toward the sweating captain. “Address,” I growled as I slammed a hand on the desktop. “Now.”

  With slow, sullen movements, the captain rolled his chair toward the bulky computer on his desk and typed laboriously for a minute.

  “We have no address on file for Chad Sweeting,” he said tightly.

  “Yeah, no shit. If you did, I’d be there instead of here,” I shot back. “Why don’t you try your off-book records, Captain? You know… the ones you can’t keep on a computer without implicating yourself for all the dirty crap you’re into.”

  He glared at me for a moment, then opened a bottom drawer of his desk and took out a battered notebook. After he flipped through several pages, he grunted without looking up.

  “All I have is a last-known address,” he said before rattling off a number and street name. “It’s from two years ago.”

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll try not to mention your name when I get around to interviewing Cobra Jon.”

  Captain Laury dropped the notebook in his desk, slammed the drawer shut, and gave a bitter laugh. “And for a moment I thought I should be worried. I doubt you’ll live long enough to drop anyone’s name if you plan to involve him. In fact, I almost feel sorry for you.”

  “Yeah? I was going to say the same about you,” I said. “I probably shouldn’t, but I’ll do you the courtesy of warning you now. When I wrap up this investigation, you and that little book of yours are next on my list.”

  The captain watched us with glittering eyes as we left his office.

  Chapter 7

  The address Laury gave us was in The Grove, about twenty minutes out of downtown Nassau. The neighborhood could be generously described as ‘not great,’ if you were trying to avoid calling it a slum. Like most of Nassau, The Grove was a dense mix of high-end stone showplace homes and close-set, brightly painted wooden houses that ranged from cheerful and well-maintained to shabby and falling apart. Around here, there was less stone and more wood, less cheer and more desperation shading into resigned brokenness.

  When we fou
nd the place, it was about what I expected, little more than a shack with haphazardly boarded windows behind a rotting, graffiti-tagged stockade fence. Clearly, the place hadn’t been occupied in a long time, but that didn’t mean no one had been here. Evidence of a fairly recent party littered the overgrown, postage-stamp of a front yard: crushed beer cans, cigarette butts, a battered canvas shoe with half the sole torn away, the blackened remains of a small campfire.

  “Are we even going to bother?” Holm said as we eased the scooters onto the dirt walkway that led to the entrance of the leaning structure. The house had been coral pink once, but weather and neglect had faded it to a dingy pale shade that resembled diseased gums.

  I shrugged and dismounted the bike. “We’re here. Might as well look around.”

  My partner followed me to the door, both of us with hands on our weapons as I reached out and rapped on the peeling surface.

  “Anybody home?” I called out, knowing damned well there wasn’t, though I couldn’t discount the possibility that some junkie or drunk had wandered inside and passed out. There was no response, either in the form of an answering voice or the sounds of scrambling to escape from my unfamiliar, unaccented greeting that the majority of residents in The Grove would recognize as law enforcement.

  With one hand still on my gun, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. It wasn’t a surprise to find the place unlocked. The surprise was finding it still semi-furnished and relatively free of clutter, despite evidence that the house had been used as a neighborhood party pad after the previous occupant had abandoned it.

  Or maybe Chad Sweeting had been here more recently than we’d been led to believe.

  I walked in slowly with Holm right behind me. The front room held a faded green sofa and a small end table, with a stand across from the sofa that had probably held a television at some point. There was a fine layer of dust on everything, but it wasn’t as thick or grimy as it would’ve been if the place had been deserted for two years.