“Well, I sure hope that’s the case here,” she says. “And if it is . . . that can only mean one thing . . . you’re working on a . . . Is it something I can help with? Staying here puts me in a great position to see and hear things.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate that and I’ll certainly let you know if anything comes up that we could use your help with.”
“That’s all I want to do, John,” she says. “I’d just really like to contribute to making the world a better place. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do. I hope you can see that. Or at least that you eventually will. I really am one of the good guys.”
Merrick, Tim, and Bucky walk out of the bar and over toward me.
“Well, I’ll say good night,” she says. “I know how much Merrick hates being around me.”
With that she disappears up the stairs.
“Get what you needed?” Merrick asks. “’Cause . . . we’re exhausted and need to crash.”
He’s even more unsteady now, his words though not slurred coming out stiltedly and a little too loud.
I nod and hand him the key. “Thanks for the loan of the room,” I say.
“No problem . . . just don’t forget . . . we get a story out of it.”
“I thought you were staying with Reggie tonight?”
“Change of . . . plans.”
“His change of plans,” Tim says, “means ol’ Bucky and I have to bunk together again.”
“I can give you a ride,” I say. “If you’re too . . .”
“I’ve had a little too much to . . .” he says. “I go over there like this . . . and we’ll wind up sleeping together for sure and that . . . would just complicate . . . things . . . The kids . . . have gone to Orlando to stay with their aunt for a bit so . . . I’ll just . . . hang here with . . . the boys.”
“Hey, do me a favor and take a little more precaution,” I say. “Be sure to lock your door and look out for each other. Okay?”
They nod.
“We will,” Tim says.
Bucky says, “Just here at the hotel or when we’re out and about too?”
“Both.”
“Is this to do with what you’re going to be giving us an exclusive on eventually?” Tim asks, sniffing at the air. “I can smell a story.”
“Things around here are just more perilous these days,” I say. “In many ways and for many reasons. Just mind how you go and keep an eye on each other.”
“We will,” Merrick says. “But we want that story.”
As Tim and Bucky help Merrick up the stairs, I drift back into the bar and over to Lucas Burke. Though still crowded for its size, the bar has thinned out a good deal, but across the way at a table near the front corner Arnie Ward is still here—and now he has been joined by Darlene Weatherly. Which, with me, means that all three Gulf County sheriff’s investigators are in this one bar—something that can’t be a coincidence. I try to catch their eye to wave to them but they carefully avoid looking this way.
“Hey man, how are you?” I ask Lucas when I reach him.
He nods slowly. “I’m okay. I’m . . . doing all right.”
Lucas Burke is a twenty-something young man with intense brown eyes and thick brown hair. He’s thin and deceptively muscular, the features of his clean-shaven face razor sharp—like the jawline above his long, narrow neck.
“It’s good to see you,” I say. “Just surprised to see you here.”
“I EOSed about six months ago,” he says.
EOS stands for an incarcerated individual’s end of sentence.
“No, I meant here in the area. Were you here during the hurricane?”
He nods. “That’s actually something I need to talk to you about,” he says. “Got a minute?”
21
Luc and I make our way over to a table in the far corner and sit down.
“You want a drink?” he asks.
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
“I’ve been meaning to come see you,” he says. “But . . . things are so crazy here right now, and . . . the truth is . . . I was trying to talk myself out of it, but seeing you here tonight . . . I knew I had to.”
“What is it? Are you okay?”
“You’re the chaplain at Gulf CI now, right?”
“There is no Gulf CI now,” I say, “but before it was wiped out by the storm I was a part-time chaplain there.”
“And you’re a detective for the sheriff’s department?”
I nod. “We don’t have detectives, but yeah, I’m an investigator.”
“I had heard that.”
“What is it, Luc?” I say. “Does this have something to do with your sister or—”
“You remember that?” he asks.
“Of course.”
“That’s . . . wow. I can’t believe you— Well, I guess I can. You’re a standup guy. You gave me water during my time in hell and I’ll never forget that.”
“I’m glad I was able to help in some small way.”
“Thing is . . . I need to tell you something but . . . I really don’t want to get myself jammed up over it. I can’t. I’ve got to be free to find McKenzie, but I owe you and there’re some things you need to know.”
“Okay.”
“Things I need to tell you—partly because you’re a cop, but they’re not the kinds of things I want to be telling a cop. Let me ask you this . . . If I didn’t commit a crime—at least not any serious ones—but I was crime adjacent . . . would you have to . . .”
“Tell you what,” I say. “Since I can’t make any promises without knowing what we’re talking about here . . . Why don’t you tell me a story—a story with fictional characters, even if they’re based on actual people, and hypothetical events?”
He nods. “That I can do.”
“So,” I say, “once upon a time . . .”
“There was this guy. And he had real shitty parents and he was taken in by this foster family and they were good people—the best—and they became his family. He’s raised in this loving environment by these amazing people and they really love and accept him—the dad, the mom, the older sister and brother. And in time he learns to love them back. Now, this kid he still has all sorts of anger issues and such but he deeply loves these people, his family. And later after all the kids are grown, the sister goes missing. And this angry young man who she loved like her actual blood brother and who was as good to him as anyone has ever been, he can’t live with that, can’t just let her go, can’t say the police are looking, doing everything they can, can’t say that as tragic as it is some people just vanish and are never seen again. He has to do whatever he can to find her. No matter what it takes. No matter what it costs him.”
I nod. “That story sounds very familiar,” I say.
He’s talking about himself and the Burke family who took him in and eventually adopted him, and his older sister, McKenzie, who went missing several years ago and has never been seen again.
“Yeah, I knew you’d probably remember that part. Well, anyway, after a stretch in state prison this lost and angry young man continues his search for his sister. It’s probably what would bring him to a place like this on a night like this and cause him to run into a man who was genuinely good to him in an environment and situation where he didn’t have to be, where not many others were. But this isn’t the only time he’s seen that good man recently. The good man doesn’t know it, but this lost and angry young man saw him the day of the hurricane. I mean right in the middle of the storm when the world was being blown apart around them.”
I think back to the storm and where he might have seen me.
“Everything this guy does, he does to try to find his sister. Everything. Some things aren’t the best things, but he’ll do anything—anything that might help him find her.”
“She’s lucky to have him looking for her,” I say.
His eyes glisten for a moment and he blinks and looks away.
“So this guy hears that this bad dude, I mean truly bad d
ude, may have had something to do with what happened to his sister or at least know something about it. And he hears that this bad man has built this fortress of a mansion right on the beach and that he plans to ride out the hurricane as if what his safe house really is is a courtside seat to the event of the century. And he hears about these other guys—also bad guys, not on the level with the safe house bad guy, but bad dudes nonetheless—who plan to break into the dude’s house during the storm and rob him while there is no one else around and no cops to respond even if an alarm goes off or a 911 call gets placed. So this lost and angry young man gets cut in on the ah . . . home invasion—not to steal, not to even help anyone do anything, but only to get his hands on this big bad guy while he’s got some backup and can ask him in a less than polite way, a way that might involve some power tools, where his sister is. And though there are many more complications and bad shit that happens, I’ll skip ahead to the part where . . . as all this is going down, the angry guy not there to steal to his shock sees this good man who helped him while he was in hell . . . walking out of the storm toward the house with what must be his two small daughters.”
Suddenly I’m back in the storm with my girls.
Clinging to Taylor in the front with one hand and to Johanna who is strapped to my back with a belt with the other, I wade through the water slowly and carefully because going any faster would risk tripping and falling and injuring the girls.
Not that I could go much faster anyway. Not with the weight of the girls and the force of the storm.
Because I have the girls, the assault of the rain and the wallop of the wind feels even more brutal and personal.
I can feel Johanna’s little face pressed hard against my back, and I’m glad it is, though I wish there was a way to protect her ears from the noise and her head and body from the pelting rain and debris.
I’m not sure how far we’ve walked or in which direction, but I nearly step into a swimming pool that already has a white Honda Accord and a red moped in it.
As I change direction to walk around it and blink the rain out of my eyes, I see a large house on stilts—the only one in the area still standing.
All around it, the flattened landscape is covered with the remnants of other houses, but it looks nearly untouched, which can only mean one thing—someone exceeded code and built a hurricane house.
I begin to make my way toward it, allowing myself a faint sense of relief and a modicum of hope as I do.
As I get closer, I see lights and movement inside. Not the overhead lights and lamps that would indicate their generator is still working, but the glow of lanterns and the play of flashlight beams that let us know help is inside.
In my hope and excitement I begin to walk too fast and trip and nearly fall, but even as I try to slow down some I find it difficult to return to my earlier more cautious pace.
“Johanna,” I yell, “I found a safe place for us to go into to get out of the wind and rain.”
Without moving her face away from my back, she nods to let me know she’s heard me, a moment later pumping her little arms in celebration.
Taylor beings to stir, and though I’m sure she’s going to be frightened and disoriented waking in the middle of the pummel and pounding of the storm, I’ll be very glad to have her conscious again.
I continue to move toward the lone structure as if I’m a ship lost at sea and it’s a lighthouse leading me home.
For a moment it disappears and I think maybe I’ve imagined it, that it is the storm equivalent of a desert mirage, but then the wind slashes in a different direction and my rain-impaired vision clears enough to see it again.
“We’re almost there,” I yell. “Just a little bit—”
I stop abruptly—speaking and moving.
Not far from the house now, I have a better view, and can see through the large bay window in the front.
A man with a hood over his head is bound and bleeding. Tied to a wooden kitchen chair, he is being worked over by one man while another one holds a shotgun to his head.
I recognize the two men inflicting the torture from the suspicious group at Ace the other day with the stolen van that I had seen the burned body in this morning.
Ordinarily I would feel compelled to intervene, to sneak up into the house and attempt to rescue the man being tortured, but my first and only priority right now is the care and protection of my girls. That is all that matters. They are all that matter.
Rousing now, Taylor begins to cry.
I can barely hear her over the cacophony of the storm, so I’m reasonably sure the men in the house can’t hear her, but I need to get her and Johanna as far away from the house and the men in it as fast as I can.
I begin to slowly back away, keeping an eye on the window to make sure they don’t see us, though how they could through the wind and rain I can’t imagine.
As I continue to back up, I not only keep an eye on them, but search the area for somewhere safe for us to hide and ride out the rest of the storm.
“He can’t believe it. I mean . . .” Luc is saying, “talk about stunned. You just can’t fathom how gobsmacked this angry young dude was. And he had to think fast because if the others see the good man and his little girls, they are dead. I mean there is no chance they see what’s going on in that house and get even one more breath. So the angry young guy creates a loud distraction in hopes that the good man will see what’s going on and the bad guys won’t see him.”
“And he did,” I say. “And he was able to get away with his daughters and he had no idea he had a young man he met in hell to thank for it.”
He nods and looks away again.
I actually tear up thinking about what might have happened to Johanna and Taylor if he hadn’t done what he did.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice breaking a little. “Thank you for what you did to save my daughters.”
“It was the least I could do for you,” he says. “And I hope to God if there is one, that someone somewhere along the way will do or have done something like that to save my sister.”
“I do too, Luc.”
“So, from what this hypothetical angry young man has heard, the good man who is a cop isn’t working the so-called hurricane house case because it is located on the Bay County side of Mexico Beach, but the hypothetical angry young man wonders if the good Gulf County cop would like to give his Bay County brothers in blue some info on the whereabouts of these bad guys who robbed and killed the even badder guy in his so-called safe house during the storm. And if there might be a way to leave the angry young man out of it.”
“Absolutely to both,” I say, “but . . . what about the bad guys. Will they try to roll over on the good young man who saved the Gulf County cop’s daughters?”
“They might,” he says. “They probably will. Though . . . they have no idea who he is and he may have even been wearing a disguise, so . . .”
“So this hypothetical young man is not only good and heroic but smart,” I say.
“Smart might be a stretch but he might be careful.”
“So he can complete his mission,” I say.
He nods. “It’s the only thing that matters to him.”
“I hope maybe one day I’ll get to help him with his mission.”
“You’ve got your hands full at the moment,” he says. “But maybe one day.”
“Did the big bad guy in the not so safe house have any information about the young man’s sister?”
“Not that he divulged before taking his leave of this world.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
22
By the time I finish with Luc, Reggie is with Arnie and Darlene at their table and I walk over to join them.
“Who’s the young man you were talking to?” Reggie asks.
She looks beyond tired and stressed. The deep, dark half circles beneath her bloodshot eyes look like bruises and her dull face resembles a damaged drumhead, its fine lines severely etched into her paper-thin skin.<
br />
Reggie has more on her than most, but everyone in this storm-ravaged region, coming off over a week of no electricity, no running water, and complete isolation from the outside world, is raw-bone weary and frayed to the point of breaking.
“Someone I used to work with at PCI,” I say.
“We need to talk to you, John,” Darlene says.
“And we wanted to do it in front of Reggie.”
“Okay.”
“They actually got me out of bed to do it,” Reggie says.
The bar is mostly empty now, the storm-weary workers upstairs in their rooms attempting to rest and sleep before having to get up and do it all over again.
“We like you, John,” Darlene says.
“Oh no,” I say. “It’s one of those kinds of we need to talk to yous.”
“You’re a very good investigator,” Arnie says.
“A great one,” Darlene says. “And I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you.”
“But . . .” I say.
“But we’re good too,” she says. “And we . . . we both feel like we don’t get the respect or opportunities we deserve, we have earned.”
“Reggie, you’re our boss,” Arnie says, “and John, you’re our coworker, and we consider both of you friends, but . . .”
“We think John gets all the good cases,” Darlene says. “And we get what’s left, what he doesn’t want.”
“And you guys are so close, so . . .” Arnie says. “It’s like there’s no room for us, no way for us to be in the middle of you two.”
“And it’s not just us saying this,” Darlene says. “Some of the visiting cops from other agencies have noticed it too.”
“Some of?” I ask. “Or one?”
“Well . . . it doesn’t matter how many, does—”
“It was Ray, wasn’t it?” I say.
“Well, you know it wasn’t Phillip,” Reggie says.
“Ray’s been very generous with a lot of his helpful opinions.”
“And he’s the last person you should be listening to,” Reggie says. “He means well, but all he’s done since he’s been here is stir up discord and get in the way. If you’re going to listen to anyone, listen to Phillip.”
The Blood-Dimmed Tide (John Joran Mysteries Book 22) Page 10