DEAD OR ALIVE a totally addictive thriller with a breathtaking twist

by T. J. Brearton

  Tom said, “It was for assault and possession of a controlled substance. This was — you know . . . it was up in Yonkers. But I was cleared of the charges and the whole thing got sealed away in my juvenile file. I just . . . I should’ve been up front about it. And I wasn’t.”

  “But it came out somehow.”

  “It came out, yeah. Someone tried to use it against me. I’d already confessed to Blythe about it by then. Anyway, they’ve been trying to figure out what to do with me since. Then this thing with the Balfour burglary fast-tracked me and I’m back in. Sort of back in.”

  Vance was quiet a long time, watching the traffic go by on 41. “It’s not a problem for me, if that’s what you’re worried about. I know you who are.”

  Their food came and the smell ignited Tom’s appetite, but he waited, watching the older man closely. Vance’s color wasn’t great and he looked to be in some pain.

  “Can I ask you something?” Tom ventured.

  “Shoot.” Vance took a bite of his eggs.

  “You doing okay? Everything — you know — good?”

  “I’m fine, Tommy.”

  Tom gave it a moment. “You know these people? Who work for the Hollisters? The little girl’s father is Miguel Madras. Mother is Sasha Madras. I understand he landscapes and she’s their housekeeper.”

  “I’ve seen them, yeah. You know . . . hard working, never miss a day, that kind of thing. The Ingrams use a different crew for landscaping.”

  “Ever meet the Hollisters themselves?”

  “No.”

  “What about the Balfours. Run into them? Anything like that?”

  Vance’s eyes came up. “You interviewing me?”

  Tom smiled, dropped his gaze and took a bite of his food.

  “You can always tell a state cop,” Vance said. “They’re always interviewing you. You can see it in their eyes.”

  And that was it.

  * * *

  He headed for Tampa with the sun high overhead. He pushed the pickup truck to ninety, knowing Vance had lied about his health.

  It had been a while since Tom had made these runs up the Gulf. On his first case, a woman who worked in a Tampa strip club had been found dead in an estuary near Naples. Back then, he’d gone back and forth to Tampa so many times he’d lost count, but he hadn’t returned since her killer’s trial.

  He stopped at the Regional Operations Center in Fort Myers and got information on the missing girl and her picture. Her name, Lemon Madras, sounded like a drink. She looked adorable, smiling in her third-grade school picture, two front teeth only halfway loaded in.

  Both of her parents worked for the Hollisters, though Miguel Madras’s landscaping company had various other clients, including the city of Naples. Sasha was a housekeeper for almost twenty customers. Tom wanted to speak to them, but Blythe had warned him off. Miguel was out looking for his daughter, along with the FBI, state police, and county deputies. Pictures were going around. Lemon was in MEPIC, the statewide missing persons’ database. The parents had already been questioned multiple times and were sticking to their stories.

  People like the Madras family didn’t evacuate for a hurricane. For one thing, they had nowhere to go. For another, they couldn’t afford the time off.

  Lemon had been at day care while her parents were at work. Due to a misunderstanding, a woman who carpooled some of the kids home after day care closed dropped Lemon off at the Hollisters’, thinking her mother was inside working. The woman, also questioned, was beside herself with worry and guilt. In the rush of getting children back to their families, she’d forgotten that Sasha Madras didn’t work in the Hollister home that day of the week.

  Skokie was right: Tom had been flirting with the idea of becoming a private investigator, working for himself or even going into business with Vance — the two of them running their own show. Waiting for his fate to be handed down was hell, and he’d been pondering whether he really belonged in a starchy outfit like the FDLE. They called them the state bureau for a reason: they were like a mini-FBI. But a Class-C Private Investigator license required two years conducting investigations and he didn’t have that yet. He was still two months shy.

  He called Katie on the way.

  “What a day,” she said.

  “How’s it going?”

  “I’m still in Orangetree. The DB has been here for four days. The family called 911 and they said they’d put it on their ‘to-do’ list. Which is . . . you know . . . there’s no list. Not really. Not in the middle of a hurricane with everything down.”

  “So it just sat there?”

  “Just sat there. The whole family still in this house with this dead woman. Can you imagine? Anyway, we’ve been going through it all. It still looks like natural causes. Her heart gave out right in the middle of the storm. But we’ve got to be thorough. The usual. So how did it go with Blythe? Are you still a cop or what?”

  “I’m on the job, yeah. On my way to Tampa.”

  “Good for you, babe. Tampa?”

  “Going to a rim shop. A tire place there.”

  “Ah — okay . . .”

  He told her about the Balfour break-in, because that would be on the news eventually, and about the possibility of the abducted girl.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So . . . this rim shop?”

  “An informant works there who was inside with some people who might be behind the burglary. If he knows who did the break-in, where they are . . .”

  He didn’t tell her about the death threat against Stephanie Balfour or that the FDLE seemed more concerned about that than the missing girl.

  “You be careful, Tom — do you hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Tommy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I love you.”

  “All right.” He still had trouble hearing that, but he’d been working on himself. He rubbed a hand over his jaw as the butterflies cavorted in his stomach. “I love you, too.”

  * * *

  He sat looking at a giant decal of Dora the Explorer. The rim shop was located in West Tampa and he’d parked across the street in the small lot of a place called The Betty Jean Learning Academy, colored pink with the seven-foot image of Dora beside the front door.

  It was four in the afternoon and the shop closed at five, a little place tucked into a Sunoco gas station. It hadn’t been burned down, so that was one thing. Tom got out his camera, set it on the seat, and opened his laptop to check out the reviews on Yelp.

  Not so hot. The shop was cash-only. One irate customer warned against buying tires or rims from Theodore Alfonso, aka Tireman Teddy. He’d take your cash, the customer said, but never deliver on the deal. “Fucker texts you that he’s checking with his distributor, but once he has your money — forget it.”

  There was no website for the business, just a Facebook page with some low-res photos of cars and tires, and the business logo done in a font meant to look like graffiti.

  Vehicles came and went from the Sunoco pumps, but the shop door stayed closed. The western sky turned gold and still nothing was happening. Tom smoked a cigarette and thought about the fact that Everglades County vice narcotics already had a moving truck of files on Vasquez’s whole operation. Presumably they knew all the players and had shared every piece of intel with FDLE. Yet no one had any idea who might have burgled the Balfours and killed the Hollisters — who might have killed or kidnapped Lemon Madras — because everything had gotten scattered during the hurricane when surveillance had gone dark.

  At 4:55, two guys walked out the front of the shop, lit cigarettes, and stood talking. Tom reached for the camera. One guy was Latino, the other white. Both of them were wearing navy blue mechanic suits. Tom had a good telephoto lens on the Nikon. He took a few shots. He recognized the white guy as Wilbur Beck, the civilian informant from Jerome Correctional. The Latino guy laughed and clapped Beck on the back. Then the Latino guy went back inside and Beck moved toward
the street.

  Tom put the camera down and hunched in his seat as Beck pitched his cigarette into the gutter and got into a battered Honda. A moment later he was on the road. Tom turned the truck around and followed.

  The Honda drove straight through a set of lights into a residential area, single-story homes with pillared porches, middle-to-low income. Beck turned right on Macdill Avenue, headed north. The clear sky was dimming as they passed MacFarland Park, Tom hanging back to give the Honda room. He wrote down the license plate number on a notepad sitting beside him.

  More homes along Macdill: wide, pyramidal roofs; chain-link fences around the yards. Tampa just spread out and spread out some more, like most of Florida.

  Beck made a left then a right, and Tom checked the GPS as the streets began to narrow. Beck pulled into a plaza on West Columbus called La Teresita Supermercado and parked. Tom kept on driving, pulled into the next place, a pharmacy, and then doubled slowly back. He parked a few spaces away from the Honda. There was a grocery store, a coffee shop, a jeweler’s and a pawnshop with a Western Union sign in the window. Tom spotted Beck inside the coffee shop and waited.

  His phone vibrated and he dug it out.

  Skokie asked, “How’s it going?”

  “I’ve got eyes-on.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yup.”

  “He was at Tireman’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Just went in somewhere for a cup of coffee — I don’t know.”

  “What’s around?”

  Tom described the surroundings. A couple of dudes in baggy jeans stood outside the pawnshop, giving him looks.

  “A pawnshop?” Skokie asked. “You sure he didn’t go in there?”

  “Yeah, he’s getting a cup — listen, I’m drawing a bit of attention sitting here. My truck is new, I’m a white guy in West Tampa — I look like a cop.”

  “You’re fine, you’re fine. Listen, you got a picture?”

  “I do.”

  “Send it to me for verification.”

  “It’s in my camera. I gotta get it on my laptop and I need a Wi-Fi connection. It’s Beck. You showed him to me before I left Naples — I didn’t forget his face.”

  Skokie jostled the phone on his end and said something Tom couldn’t hear, like he was talking to another person. Then the distortion cleared. “Listen — what are you carrying?”

  Tom gave the loiterers a sidelong look. They started moving casually toward the truck.

  “Hang on, Ed., I gotta roll.” He set the phone down and put the truck in gear and watched the faces of the approaching men blur past as he drove to the edge of the plaza. He waited for a break in traffic and goosed the gas, picked up the phone again. “All right.”

  “You turned in your service weapon during the IAB investigation,” Skokie said. “Blythe said you didn’t pick up a new one at the ROC. I figure a guy like you is always moving with the spirit. Am I right?”

  He drove down the street a ways and turned into another plaza, maneuvered the truck around and sat nose-out, looking back at the first plaza. Not only had he turned in his department-issued firearm, he’d gotten rid of the shoulder holster, too. Too uncomfortable, too dangerous — guys could grab it from you if they got close. Sometimes it was a struggle to pull out the gun and misfires happened. “I figured you wanted me off the radar and that would include ballistics. I’ve got my own personal piece with me, yeah.”

  “Good.”

  The group of guys were watching him from the opposite street corner. The coffee shop was tucked out of view.

  “You there, Lange?”

  “I lost visual — let me just call you back, okay?” He hung up and tossed the phone aside. He’d been sitting there too long; Beck could’ve left the plaza unseen. He put the truck in gear, waited again for a gap in traffic and rolled out onto the street. He cruised slowly past La Teresita Supermercado, the guys on the corner eyeballing him as he went. Tom waved. They didn’t like that and broke up, starting for a low-riding black car in the lot.

  No Honda. Beck must have slipped out via the side street. Tom nailed the gas, left the plaza behind and got up to the next light. He made a left, followed by another left at the next intersection and then reconnected with the side street and made a right.

  His phone vibrated. Skokie again.

  “Yeah?”

  “You still with Beck?”

  “I lost him.”

  “Lange, listen, you got a license plate?”

  “Hang on.” Tom read the number off the notepad.

  “All right. Give me a second.”

  Tom checked his mirrors and saw the black car rolling along behind him.

  “Hey, boys.” He dropped the phone and cranked a hard left. He pulsed the gas, shot down a narrow street, then made another left and headed north again. He followed the GPS, keeping an eye on the mirrors. He heard Skokie’s faint, tinny voice and picked up the phone.

  “Lange?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, the Honda is registered to a woman named Maria Lucia. I got the address here.” Skokie relayed it and Tom plugged the information into the GPS, pinching the cell phone with his shoulder. He needed to get over to the interstate and head south. He made a couple of quick turns and squealed the tires, but he thought he’d lost the black car.

  “What are you doing, Lange?”

  Tom wondered if Ed Skokie had ever stepped outside of the office. “Just a little territorial dispute.”

  “So listen, I’m talking to Hillsborough on the other line and this is what they’re saying . . . Beck is staying at this address . . . Maria Lucia lives with some hard guys — ex-cons, gang members. Okay? You don’t make a move without calling me or calling Hillsborough for backup.”

  “You’re talking with Hillsborough right now?”

  “I’m texting with a sergeant over there. He says to watch your ass. And, anyway, you stick your head out they’re going to wonder why you’re there. And the only reason you’re there is because Beck is a snitch. They sniff out that fact and they’re liable to kill him. I want you to watch the house, see who comes and goes. Send it all back to me.”

  “All right.”

  Tom tossed the phone onto the seat again, hit the interstate and got cruising. The sun continued to slip toward the Gulf, turning the horizon violet, a dark blue overhead.

  “What the fuck . . .?” Skokie was asking him to spend the night watching a bunch of maniacs is what it sounded like. But maybe Lemon Madras was there, and that would be major.

  The address was in Gibsonton. He thought about it as he sped along, then picked up the phone. He called Tampa PD and asked for Detective Gomez. A minute later a guy was on the line sounding like he was eating potato chips.

  “Lange? They still let you have a gun?”

  “Gomez, you still with SIB?”

  “What — no foreplay?”

  “You wouldn’t know what foreplay was.”

  “True, okay, I guess that’s true.”

  “You were narcotic and gang enforcement when we worked the Gallo case.”

  “Still am. Living the dream.”

  “So what have you got in the Gibsonton area?”

  Gomez crunched some chips. “That’s not me. I don’t play down there. That’s Hillsborough.”

  “Yeah but you’re the guy who knows things.”

  “I do. I do know a few things.”

  “What about a woman named Maria Lucia?”

  “Oh, Maria. Ave Maria. She’s a champion, man. She’s the old lady of Alejandro Colon. Why, pray tell, do you want to go poking with Maria Lucia?”

  “Just want to get an idea what I’m headed into. Somebody told me she kicked it with some hard guys, but everything’s relative. For you, hard guys might be over on the east coast, wearing neon spandex in South Beach.”

  “I’ll tell you what, man. You want somebody to make a grown man cry, you call up her old man, Alejandro Colon.�
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  “I could use a good cry. My therapist says it’s good for you. Supposed to clear the sinuses.”

  “I always liked you, Lange. Don’t listen to what they say.”

  CHAPTER FIVE: GIBSONTON

  Gibsonton was rural and quiet with lots of mobile homes, palms and shrubs, and streets even narrower than West Tampa. With no sidewalks, they were mostly dirt tracks. Tom followed the GPS directions to a little yellow house buried in tropical trees and bushes. The house was thumping, though, with music vibrating and a dozen cars parked around in the fading light. There was no way he could sit out front unnoticed, so he rolled past and spotted a cluster of figures alongside the house, passing around the ember of a cigarette or joint. He turned onto a street called Spivey and slammed the brakes hard as a group of kids tumbled into the street, chasing a ball. They barely noticed him and ran off. He kept moving, but slower.

  He drove to the end of Spivey until he ran out of road and stuffed the truck so deep into the vegetation it blocked the doors. He slid back the window behind the cab and shimmied out in the dark. He took out his Beretta, checked the magazine and put it back in. He chambered a round and stuck the gun back in its waistband holster. Sweat was starting to run down his spine.

  He leaned back into the cab, took his camera and laptop, and stuffed them behind the seat. Then he covered everything up with plastic shopping bags. He withdrew from the truck cab and closed the window.

  Mosquitos whined against his ears and he swiped the air. A creek babbled somewhere in close proximity. Kids called to one another in the night. The music from the yellow house was faint from where he was — he barely registered it.

  If Skokie was expecting pictures, he’d be disappointed. No fucking way was Tom going to be caught sitting there, snapping shots of some house filled with criminals. But then he thought about the little girl and opened the window again to retrieve the camera with its telephoto lens. Fine . . . if there was any trouble or anyone noticed him, he’d just stash the thing away. Anyway, a white guy hanging out watching some house was already suspicious and the camera wouldn’t make a difference.

  He knew a little about photography from Nick. Renaissance man Nick, jack of all trades. He spent a minute looking at the LCD screen and scrolling through the menu to get to the low-light settings. Then he deactivated the LCD screen, dug out his phone and dimmed that down to its lowest setting. He slid his arm and head through the camera strap.