DEAD OR ALIVE a totally addictive thriller with a breathtaking twist

by T. J. Brearton

  “And I lost a tooth.”

  “You didn’t need to put yourself through that.” Blythe pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves.

  “I’ve heard that, ah, an experienced investigator keeps an open mind. Doesn’t let intuitive hunches override clues and evidence.”

  “Is that what you heard?” She held out her gloved hand. Tom knew what she wanted. He gave her Mick Lupton’s wallet and phone. “We’ll go through them,” she said. After she dropped the items in an evidence bag, her eyes came up. “Not that we can use anything directly. Not the way you obtained it.”

  “He confirmed the girl is alive.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  “You need to call Katie, Tom.”

  “Maybe Pedro Vasquez is desperate. Legal expenses, bail bonds — he’s down to his last few assets and no cash flow. And the hurricane couldn’t have helped. I get that. But he robs Balfour? The one person that’s going to link back to him? It’s a big risk for what he ended up getting.”

  Blythe looked at him for a long time then spoke in a low voice. “He threatened Balfour. Wilbur Beck was deposed and confirmed it. Thanks to you.”

  “You know what it is? What if there’s more? What if he was after something else, too? Or, she was — Valentina. Setting this up. I talked to Jarvis about a correctional officer at Jerome who . . . why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Because — well, for one thing, I’m not really in charge of you anymore. Skokie is. But he’s given me the authority here. We brought you in to assess the threat, nose out the burglars.”

  “Skokie doesn’t like Lupton for it. But the guy Lupton talked about—”

  “After beating you senseless.”

  “It wasn’t senseless. And — come on! Why do I get the sense that no one gives a shit about this girl?”

  They were attracting attention from the hallway. A nurse leaned in. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine, thank you.” Blythe rose from her chair and spoke to Tom in a measured tone. “Of course we care. We care so much we’ve had agents round the clock checking in with the girl’s parents, asking the same questions. You can imagine . . . you lose your daughter and your head isn’t on straight. But the mother recalled something . . . the little girl had a stuffed animal. We’re checking with the girl’s day care and going through the Hollister house again. Everybody is working hard on this, Tom. But I know you . . . I know what you’re like. The pain is in your face, your voice.”

  “How long is it going to take?”

  “Getting into those properties? We’ve got your information. We’re pursuing it.”

  He watched her, waiting for more.

  “I spoke to Judge Fane. All right? He’s aware of your recording. I’ll take that with me, and your camera, and we’ll be looking for properties by morning — any we haven’t seen yet. Isabella’s and Emilio’s.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  She crossed the room and paused in the doorway. “Nothing is easy.”

  “So we get a look at properties and we like the look of one . . . how about a search warrant?”

  Her eyes went up and down, looking at him. “You need to call Katie. And I don’t want to see you again for forty-eight hours. Nobody would, Lange. You should look at yourself in a mirror.”

  CHAPTER TEN: JUST HAVING A LOOK

  Hospital policy required that he be escorted off the grounds in a wheelchair. In addition to the bruised ribs, he had twelve stitches in his jaw where a ring on Lupton’s finger had unseamed him. He’d given Katie a later pick-up time in the hope of beating her to the curb. No such luck. She stepped out of the bright day into the shade of the entrance as an orderly rolled him to a halt.

  Katie watched the orderly set aside the footrests for him to stand and the color drained from her face. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Yeah, but you should see the other guy.”

  They drove home without speaking. Her jaw was set and she only glanced at him occasionally. When she did, the sight of him made her touch her forehead with her fingertips, a real Katie move. He focused on not passing out and that kept him occupied.

  She helped him into the condo and up the stairs, ran a bath and guided him into it, keeping his torso above the water so he could sponge-wash the rest of himself. He was chewing painkillers like candy but had to force himself to stop. Addiction ran in the family.

  He sat in the tub thinking about the people buying their coke and heroin from the Vasquez people, strung out, lives ruined. He continued to speculate about Lupton’s nameless accomplice . . . a guy back from the Middle East, perhaps, who turns to selling drugs. Inadvertently or not, he encroaches on established territory. Lupton hadn’t said it, but it’s Vasquez territory. Had to be. So Pedro sends someone around to scare the guy and recruit him. He puts him on the Balfour job, probably with Lupton as his partner. Okay, definitely with Lupton as his partner. That guy was all killer.

  What was Pedro really after? Or Valentina? It had to cut one way or the other. Was Pedro serious about killing the statewide attorney or was he just running his mouth? Had two guys burgled her husband’s fancy house on the Gulf to steal T-bonds and jewels from the safe? Had Valentina organized it to settle a family score? And it seemed like there was some truth that Skokie, even Blythe, wanted to avoid coming out.

  Best to keep it simple. Think like a man pissed-off and broke. A prosecutor gets cute and recommends a raise in bail and the judge goes for it. You want to get back at her, so you steal from her. That was as plain as it got. And as dumb, for that matter . . .

  Katie stepped into the doorway.

  “Here’s what I know about T-bonds,” he said. “You can buy them electronically — up to ten grand a year — or you can buy paper bonds, up to five.”

  “We need to talk.”

  She sat down on the toilet lid and put her hands between her legs.

  He looked at her. “A T-bond has to mature, right? Otherwise, you know, you sell it prematurely, you get a fraction of the face value. And the maturity is usually something like a twenty- or thirty-year term. David Balfour is — I know we need to talk, I just . . . Let’s say David Balfour started at twenty years old, bought T-bonds for twenty years, paper bonds for five thousand each year, and he’s got a hundred grand’s worth that have now matured. But he’s received interest on them. Every year, right? Or every six months?”

  She sighed, put her elbow on the sink and leaned on her hand, looking at him.

  “So, the burglars steal the bonds and get them fenced. But the fence is going to have to sell them off at an auction or on the secondary market because that’s where their price is actually determined. Even if it’s a thirty-year bond with a 2.75 percent coupon, the fence is going to take his or her cut, too. It just seems like a lot of work for little reward.”

  “Well, maybe they know what they’re doing.”

  “And how would they even know about the interest? I doubt they did. I don’t think they had any plan for the T-bonds.”

  “Tom, I’m just going to say this. We’ve been here before. We don’t have to go through it again.”

  “I had to get information.”

  “No.”

  “There’s a little girl, Katie.”

  “I know there is. I know it. But it doesn’t matter. She matters, yeah, that’s not . . . of course she does. But this is a pattern for you. Tom? This is a pattern. You get into this — you just get back into this — and then within a couple days this happens. Look at you. You look like you got hit by a truck.”

  She wiped a tear from her eye and sat back and sighed again and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t want to be this person. I can’t. I know that sounds selfish. But I’m being honest with you. I don’t want to be the woman you come home to who gives you sponge baths and nurses you back to health.”

  “You won’t be. This is different.”

  “It’s not.” She stood up and moved to the sink. She ran the w
ater, splashed some on her face and toweled off. He felt stung by the pity in her eyes. She said, “Sometimes you see someone . . . they’re addicted to bad relationships . . . they’re addicted to painkillers . . . they’re addicted to food. For you, it’s this. You taking the beatings you thought you should’ve gotten instead of your mother. Or Nick.”

  Her words made his stomach twist. He suddenly needed to be somewhere else and struggled to climb out of the tub. The pain bit into his ribs, radiating up his spine to the base of his neck as he sloshed around in the water. Katie didn’t move to help him.

  Dripping, he stepped carefully out of the tub and took a towel from the rack. He started to dry off, every movement stiff and jagged. “It’s not that bad. I’m just—”

  “Oh, this physical beating or that physical beating . . . This isn’t the first time, you know? Seems like only yesterday you let Mario Palumbo’s men work you over. But those are just details. Someone’s fists . . . your own mind . . . putting yourself in purgatory — it’s all the same.”

  “Hey. I mean . . . all right . . .”

  “I’m not a therapist.”

  “I don’t want you to be.”

  “We’re two people trying to . . . you know what it is, right? The therapy . . . going to see your shrink at work or whatever you tell yourself, however you justify it. Tom, it won’t stop—”

  “Yeah, it’ll . . . I don’t know what . . . I mean, I know what you—”

  “It won’t stop until you forgive yourself.”

  He started to shake as he wrapped the towel around his waist. The tremors wouldn’t stop. He tried to make his way to the bathroom door, but his legs were poured lead.

  She spoke softly. “You know what my dad says?” Katie’s dad had been a cop. Everglades County Sherriff’s Office. Her parents were retired and lived across the state in Jupiter. Tom had met them once, nice people. He hadn’t known what to say to them. “My dad told me that what you can’t forgive you end up becoming.”

  He cut a sideways look at her, feeling his lips twitching. “I’ve never touched you. I never would.”

  “You do it to yourself instead.”

  He wanted to say something to make her see it differently, but she was already moving away. “I’ve got to go to work. I’ll be back late. We’ve got another dead body that turned up.”

  And she left without looking back.

  * * *

  Early the next morning, he sat on the lanai as the rising sun hit the bug screen at an angle, the light diffusing and forming geometric patterns of shadows along the lower railing. The sprinkler system kicked on but didn’t bother the woodpecker climbing up the trunk of the southern live oak. It was a Thursday. Lemon Madras had been missing for five days.

  Tom studied the oak, which split off into numerous trunk-like branches winding their way up to form a canopy of countless tiny leaves, all of them catching the sunlight and shining.

  Katie came out and set a cup of coffee in front of him. She sat beside him and he looked at her, the high freckles on her cheeks, her hazel eyes with flecks of green in them. From the first day he’d met her on the Carrie Gallo case, he’d been taken with her. Her girlish looks belied the experience she carried. She was used to being underestimated and patronized and it had left her a little jaded, but so what? He’d always enjoyed when women adored him — there was no question about that — but Katie was aloof. She’d been with CSB for seven years as a forensic technician but aspired to be an investigator. He was sure she was going to get the spot over the next couple of months. She didn’t need him.

  He spoke first. “How did it go?”

  “Not good. It was a homeless man living in the woods, got swept away in a flash flood. We still don’t have an ID on him. I’m going to bed.”

  “Hey.” He reached for her and she stopped, but didn’t move any closer, just raised her eyebrows at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Oh yeah? Okay.”

  “What’s gonna do it?”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment as she looked off into the vegetation. “Tom, when I met you, you were swimming laps in the morning and taking the skin off chicken. I’m not judging you, okay? People change. We should. We should change. When you’re not being a smart ass, when you’re not putting yourself through the wringer, you’re an intelligent man.”

  “Can you put that on my gravestone?”

  “You can figure this out. I know you can. Or . . . okay, I hope you can. I care about you and you know that. I’m tired, Tom. I’m just so tired.”

  “It’s been a lot for you these past couple of days.”

  She shot him a look that stung him with regret. It wasn’t just the past couple of days. She was tired from the job, but she was also tired from him. They’d been on again, off again, but this last chapter had lasted a while.

  “It’s because I was sitting behind a desk.”

  “You think that matters? I gotta go clean up. I’m back on in a few hours.”

  She walked away and left him there. He picked up his phone and fiddled with it, thinking about how he’d been when he was working in administration during his suspension from active cases. Like a caged animal. Even back in school, he’d never been able to sit still. He’d built up an idea of himself, that he had his shit together. A kid from the street who’d made good.

  He thought about calling Vance. That would be selfish, though — he just wanted to hear a friendly voice. Vance was like his corner man. But Vance had looked worse for the wear the other morning at breakfast, and he had his own life, like Katie. He didn’t need Tom calling for an ego boost.

  What it is — you need to grow up.

  Nick’s voice. His brother, of all people. Mr. Mature? Hardly. Nick had had Peter Pan syndrome all his life. Even if he’d gone into real estate and made a little coin, managed to buy a few fancy things, he’d never really gotten serious. Tom was always the serious one. In Nick’s absence, it was like he was becoming his brother. What sense did that make?

  Katie needed someone stable. At first, he’d been obsessed with finding Nick’s murderer and putting him away. When Palumbo was picked up by the feds on racketeering charges, he’d told himself that was good enough. But he had been lying to himself, lying to everyone else. He had to let it go. All of it.

  * * *

  Blythe called at six thirty that night.

  “How you feeling?”

  He stood looking at Katie’s empty side of the bed — she was pulling another night shift. Either that or she just wanted to be gone from the house. “Has it been two days?”

  “I’m pulling you in a little sooner, rescinding my own order — no choice. Believe me I . . . Just get up here so you can look at a few things with us. Are you okay? Can you do it?”

  He got out of bed, wincing with the effort. “On my way.”

  * * *

  Twenty agents and analysts stood around the room at the Regional Operations Center in Fort Myers. Stephanie Balfour was not among the law enforcers present, but Tom knew she wasn’t far away. Having returned from the northeast, she was now tucked away at a secure location in the same city. Skokie was with her.

  After a federal judge in Tennessee had signed off on the court order, the FDLE had contacted and begun working with the FBI and the IRS.

  Three large screens dominated the darkened room. One displayed federal documents listing the assets of Pedro Vasquez, his daughters Valentina and Isabella, and his son Emilio. The assets included properties claimed by the individuals with property taxes and, in some cases, mortgages listed as business expenses, which the family had sought to write off as tax deductions. The thinking was that, with luck, members of the Vasquez family would include on their statements properties they otherwise sought to keep secret, stash houses where Lemon Madras could be hidden away. The whole thing had been Kitteridge’s idea — the guy from the DEA.

  Two other screens showed satellite images of the Earth. As Blythe went through the properties, tec
hnicians located their respective placements on the map and framed them in red boxes. One property was Evvy’s, the stone-crabbing operation on Plantation Island where Tom had met with her personally. One was the house of Pedro Vasquez, located in Everglades City and currently occupied by Pedro’s ex-wife. These were already known to law enforcement and had been under surveillance for months. In the days since Hector had ravaged southwest Florida, Everglades County vice narcotics had been rebuilding their ears and eyes. Pedro’s ex-wife was currently back under surveillance, but the stone-crabbing business was still operating in the blind.

  Executing a warrant on Evvy’s was on the table, Blythe said. The state could take it apart piece by piece, but as a place to keep a kidnap victim it felt too exposed, too known to the cops, whether surveillance was down or not.

  “Our question is . . . how about this one?” Blythe stood next to a computer and pointed at the screen. The technician sitting down beside her tapped at the keys. On the big screen, the image zoomed in on a red-framed section of the Everglades National Park. “This place is owned by Emilio Vasquez.”

  “This is a preserve,” someone said. He was clad in a dark suit and stood with his arms crossed.

  “There are about a hundred private landowners inside Big Cypress,” Blythe said.

  “So, it comes with some sort of conservation easement? A less-than-fee type of deal?”

  Blythe gave the man a sidelong look. “Within Big Cypress you have property that was in private ownership when the preserve was formed in 1972. The owners can retain three acres and the unimproved property.” She turned to the technician. “Move around. Show the . . . yes, show that area right there.”

  Tom watched as the satellite image glided over the terrain in high-resolution detail.

  “These are mostly backwoods cabins and a few grass airstrips,” Blythe said. “A few have been reconstructed, done under the radar. That one there, the group of buildings, those have been illegally improved. Otherwise, the properties have the same rights to privacy and ownership as any in the state of Florida.”