OFF THE GRID

by Alex Kava

  Didn’t help that he was exhausted. It had taken him most of the day to get here. All flights to Pensacola had been canceled because of Hurricane Isaac, which meant the closest Glen could get from Denver, was Atlanta. He’d spent the last six hours in a rent-a-car, a compact, the only thing left on such short notice. Not quite his style, nor his body’s.

  But he couldn’t blame the Ford Escort for all the tension in the small of his back. A good deal of it had been there before he began this journey, one that he hoped wouldn’t be a wild goose chase. As a veteran detective Glen Karst had come to rely on his hunches, his gut instinct, as much as he did his expertise. But coming this far on such short notice and with a hurricane coming, he figured he had maybe twenty-four hours.

  Hurricane glasses, Glen noticed, shook his head and smiled.

  Sure didn’t look like a hurricane was anywhere near. The beach’s restaurants and bars were full of tourists and residents, some spilling out onto the shore and into the parking lots. He’d also noticed quite a few pickups and moving vans packed and stacked full of belongings, ready to roll.

  It was Florida. Glen figured the residents knew the drill. They’d been through it enough times in the last several years. But if they were still out eating and drinking then he knew he still had time.

  He pulled a brochure from his shirt pocket, laid it on the bar next to his glass and smoothed out the crease. The man in the photo had added a good thirty pounds to his hefty frame. His blond hair had been cut short, dyed dark brown and peppered with gray at the temples. The goatee was new and attempted to hide the beginning of a double chin. At a glimpse, the man looked nothing like Dr. Thomas Gruber, but Glen recognized the eyes, deep-set and ice blue. In his arrogance the good doctor had failed to disguise the one trait that betrayed him most.

  “They canceled,” said a young man three bar stools over, pointing at Glen’s brochure.

  “What’s that?”

  “The conference. It’s been canceled because of the hurricane.”

  “Damn, are you sure?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look like a doctor.”

  “That’s good, cause I don’t like doctors.”

  The guy stood up, his drink in one hand and nodded at the stool next to Glen, “You mind?”

  “I’m not expecting anyone.”

  Glen sipped his bourbon, not giving the guy much attention. But in the time it took for the man to sidle up next to him, Glen had noted the man’s short cropped hair – military – would have been Glen’s first guess except for the Rolex, Sperry deck shoes and Ralph Lauren polo that he left untucked over khaki cargo shorts. Expensive wares for a guy, who according to Glen’s estimate, was probably thirty at the most.

  “Name’s Joe Black,” he tipped his glass at Glen instead of offering his hand. The glass was a rocks glass like his own. Scotch or bourbon, neat.

  “Glen.” From the corner of his eyes he could see Joe Black assessing him, too. He was cool, calm, and took only a casual glimpse at the brochure on the bar between them. “So you go to these conferences?”

  “You might say I’m a regular.”

  Glen gave him a sidelong look. “Hell, you don’t look like a doctor either.”

  Joe laughed, but he didn’t bother to answer, nor did he look like he was going to. However, his eyes darted to the brochure again before he shifted on the bar stool and reached for his glass.

  “You know this doctor?” Glen tapped the photo looking down at it, pretending he needed to look in order to remember the name, “This Dr. Eric Foster?”

  But in fact, he had memorized every detail about Dr. Foster alias Dr. Gruber. The only thing he couldn’t figure out is why Gruber would risk coming back to the states.

  Just over a year ago Gruber had fled Colorado after being the main suspect in a triple homicide. Gruber had abandoned his surgical practice, skipped out on a million dollar mortgage and left his wife penniless. He had escaped to South America. Somewhere in Brazil, according to Glen’s last effort in tracking him. Rumor was that the good doctor might be trafficking body parts, even going as far as buying kidneys from poor struggling schmucks who had nothing else to sell.

  Ironically, the conference that had Gruber scheduled as a featured speaker bragged about having human specimens for surgeons to perfect their skills. Nothing illegal. Glen had checked it out. These conferences took place all over the country though usually at some beachfront resort as an added incentive. Medical device companies planned and arranged them, offering surgeons all-expense paid trips in exchange for them to come try out the company’s newest gadgets and hopefully put in several orders before they returned home.

  The fact was the triple homicide in Colorado remained open. No other suspects. All evidence pointed to Gruber and the bastard had slipped away during the investigation. Glen was more than anxious to finally nail the guy.

  “Yeah, I know Foster. You might say he’s my competition.” Joe Black finally said without offering anything more. He waved down the bartender and pointed to his glass. “Another Johnnie Walker, Black Label.” Then to Glen he said, “How bout you? Another Buffalo Trace?”

  Glen hid his surprise. He simply nodded at the bartender. Joe Black knew what he was drinking. Why the hell had this guy been watching him?

  “So what do you want with Dr. Foster?” Joe asked.

  “Just want to have a friendly chat.”

  “You a cop?”

  “I don’t look like a doctor, but I look like a cop, huh?”

  Joe shrugged and went quiet while the bartender placed fresh drinks in front of them.

  “If not a cop, maybe a jealous husband?” This time he looked at Glen, waiting to see his reaction.

  Glen fidgeted with his glass but didn’t say a word. Sometimes people filled in the silence if you waited long enough.

  It seemed to work.

  Satisfied with Glen’s response – or rather his non-response – Joe continued, “I told him it’d catch up with him one of these days. So the blond with all the expensive jewelry? She must be yours?”

  This was easier than Glen expected. “Is she with him now?”

  Joe nodded and tipped back the rest of his Scotch. “Finish your drink,” he told Glen. “I’ll take you up to his room.”

  Glen could hardly believe it. He looked the guy over, this time allowing his suspicions to show. “Why would you do me any favors?”

  “Maybe because I don’t much like the bastard myself.”

  HILTON HOTEL GUEST ROOM

  AS SOON AS MAGGIE walked into the room she knew that the big man sprawled on his back in the king-size bed had not died of natural causes. His bloodshot eyes stared at the ceiling. His mouth twisted into a sardonic grin. Trousers lay crumpled in a pile on the floor, a belt half pulled from the loops. Shoes peeked out from under.

  “Who found him?” Maggie glanced back at Evans.

  The night manager had grown pale before they reached the room. Now he stayed in the open doorway, unwilling to move any farther into the room.

  “Someone from housekeeping. There was a request for more towels.”

  Evans couldn’t see the body from his post inside the doorwell and Maggie realized he couldn’t see her either. Without stepping on or touching anything, she ventured closer. The dead man wore bright blue boxers and a button-down shirt, half unbuttoned. His skin looked like it was on fire – bright red, but not from sunburn.

  “He probably had a heart attack, right?” Evans sounded hopeful.

  “Was he alone?” Maggie asked, noticing an empty wine bottle with one glass on the nightstand.

  “No one else is listed under his registration.”

  “But he wasn’t alone,” another voice said from outside in the hallway.

  Maggie came around the bed, back into the entrance just in time to see two men standing over the night manager’s bony shoulder.

  “Are you from the sheriff’s department?” she asked.

  “I didn’t cal
l the sheriff’s department,” Evans said, bracing his hand on the doorway and making a barrier with his skinny arm.

  “911?” Maggie tried again.

  “I didn’t call anyone,” Evans said. Then with wide eyes and an attempted whisper, he leaned toward her and added, “My boss said to get you. Only you.”

  “I’m Detective Glen Karst,” the man in the hallway poked his arm over Evans, offering a badge and ID.

  Maggie reached out and took the ID but instead of turning on the light in the entrance for the men to see in, she leaned into the bathroom using its light.

  “You’re a long way from home, Detective Karst.” She handed him back his ID and stood with hands on her hips, waiting for his explanation while Evans kept up his pathetic barrier.

  “I have reason to believe the man inside is a suspect in a triple homicide. I just want to ask him a few questions. Mr. Black told me –” Karst stopped, turned then looked around the hallway as though he’d lost something or someone. The man who had accompanied him was gone.

  Maggie glanced at her watch. It was late and she was exhausted. She’d been on the road for half the day and dangling over the Gulf in a helicopter for the other half. Her forty-minute nap had been invaded by nightmares. This dead guy wasn’t even her jurisdiction.

  “Mr. Evans, I think you should go call the sheriff’s department.” She put a gentle hand on his shoulder, waiting for him to drop his arm from the doorjamb.

  “The sheriff’s department?” He said it like it still hadn’t even occurred to him to do so.

  “Yes.” She kept eye contact, hoping to transfer her calm and cool composure over to him. “Detective Karst and I will secure the room until someone from the sheriff’s department gets here.”

  Both Maggie and Karst watched Evans leave, his lanky frame wobbled like a drunk attempting to walk on tiptoes. He missed the turn for the elevators, stopped and backtracked, giving them an embarrassed wave then straightened up like a sleepwalker suddenly coming awake. Maggie waited until she heard the ping of the elevator before she turned back to the room.

  “Don’t touch anything,” she told Detective Karst as she gestured for him to follow her inside.

  “Don’t worry about me. I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Maggie O’Dell.”

  “You’re not local law enforcement.”

  It wasn’t a question. He said it with such certainty Maggie stopped in the entrance and looked back at him. She wanted to ask how he knew then decided it wasn’t important.

  “FBI. I’m down here on another assignment. The night manager thought it would be more convenient to wake me up rather than call the sheriff.”

  “Son of a bitch, don’t tell me Foster’s dead?” Karst asked as he came into view of the bed.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  He didn’t need to come any closer. “Yeah, I do. He goes by Eric Foster, but his real name is Thomas Gruber. What’s your guess? Suicide?”

  “No.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  This time she smiled at him. “I do this for a living, Detective Karst.”

  “I’m not questioning your qualifications, just asking how you reached that conclusion.”

  Maggie pointed at the dead man’s eyes. “Petechial hemorrhages.”

  Karst leaned closer. “His neck doesn’t show any signs of strangulation.”

  “The ruptures probably occurred during convulsions, maybe seizures. He strangled but from the inside out.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for more.

  “I recognize that twist of the mouth and the bright red skin, almost cherry red. I’ve only seen this sort of skin discoloration once before but it’s something I’ll never forget. The tissue can’t get any oxygen. It happens quickly. Ten to fifteen minutes.”

  “You think he was poisoned?”

  Maggie nodded, impressed. The detective from Colorado was sharp.

  Karst noticed her look and it was his turn to smile. “I do this for a living, too.”

  Then he started looking at the bedding, careful not to touch but bending over and searching the pillows.

  “Usually there’s vomit,” he said and started sniffing the linens, now leaning even closer over the dead man. Then Karst’s body stiffened and he stood up straight. “Cyanide.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can smell it,” he said. “Like bitter almonds.”

  Maggie came up beside Karst and he stepped back while she bent over the dead man’s face. Only forty to fifty percent of people could smell the aftereffects of cyanide. It was a genetic ability. The scent was faint but she could smell it, too.

  “I thought it might be something like that,” she said. “Cyanide stops cells from using oxygen. He would have felt like he was suffocating – a shortness of breath followed by dizziness. Then comes the confusion and possible seizures, bursting the capillaries in the eyes. Last would be cardiac arrest. All in a matter of minutes.”

  “Potassium cyanide is a crystal compound.” Karst looked around the room and pointed to the wine bottle. “May have slipped it into the wine. Where does someone get cyanide these days?”

  Maggie had to stop and think, retrieve the information from her memory bank. The case she had worked on had happened too many years ago – six young men in a cabin in the woods had chosen to obey their leader and take cyanide capsules rather than be taken into custody. She’d lost a friend that day – a fellow FBI agent – so the memory didn’t come easily.

  “Potassium cyanide is still used in several industries. Certain kinds of photography,” she finally said. “Some processing of plastics, electroplating and gold plating in jewelry making. If a person buys it on a regular basis for their business it usually doesn’t draw any attention.”

  Now she wanted to dismantle the memory and started looking over the room again. She plucked a tissue from its container on the nightstand and gently pressed her covered fingertip against the dead man’s jaw then his neck. “No rigor.”

  “So he’s been dead less than twelve hours.”

  “Maybe less than six. Rigor sets in more quickly with cyanide poisoning. You said he wasn’t alone?” She turned to see Karst had moved to the desk and was lifting open a folded wallet using the tip of a pen. “What makes you think that someone was with him?”

  “Guy I met at the bar downstairs told me he saw Gruber leave with a blond.”

  “The guy who took off as soon as he saw your badge?”

  He glanced up at Maggie. “Coincidence?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Me either. I’ll bet he gave me a bogus name. Hell, he probably lied about the blond, too.”

  Maggie used the tissue again as she tipped a wastebasket out from under the nightstand. The only thing inside was another tissue, this one crumpled with a blotted stain of bright pink lipstick. She gently lifted it by a corner, pulling it up high enough to show Karst.

  “Unless there’s something a little freaky about Dr. Foster, I think your friend might have been telling the truth about the blond.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  Maggie took a good look at the stain under the light then gently placed it back where she had found it. Later she’d point it out to the sheriff’s investigator.

  “What did he do?” she asked.

  Karst folded his arms and stared at the dead man. “His nurse was two-timing him with a rich ex-patient. He murdered her then took out the ex-patient even killing the guy’s wife. Gruber set their house on fire, hoping to hide all the evidence. He cleaned out his medical practice’s bank account along with his personal ones and hightailed it to South America before we could even question him. Left his business partner and his wife with a load of bills and no cash.”

  “So there might be a few others beside you, looking for him.”

  “Not to mention some new enemies. The guy from the bar mentioned something about Gruber being his competition.”

  Ma
ggie watched Karst’s face. He was still grinding out the case in his mind. She checked her watch again.

  “I’d say you no longer have a case, Detective Karst.”

  There was knock at the door followed by, “Sheriff’s department.”

  GLEN KARST FOUND HIMSELF back down at the hotel’s tiki bar. This time he and Maggie shared one of the high-top tables. He’d asked to buy her a drink and was surprised when the tough, no nonsense FBI agent ordered a Diet Pepsi. He ordered another Buffalo Trace, glancing around to see if Joe Black was somewhere close by, watching again.

  The waves had kicked up and the moon had slid over a bit. A breeze almost made the hot, humid air feel good. The beach restaurants and bars were still full but not quite as crowded and noisy as earlier.

  “I can’t believe I came all the way down here and the son of a bitch cheated me out of dragging his sorry ass back to Denver. It’s hard to let it go.”

  “Sheriff Clayton will do a good job,” Maggie told him. “Anything you can tell him about Gruber will help his investigation.”

  Glen rubbed at his eyes, only now remembering how exhausted he was. “I suppose the bastard got what was coming to him.”

  “A wise medical examiner once told me, we die as we live.”

  “Is that the equivalent of what goes around comes around?”

  She smiled and tipped her glass at him, “Touché.”

  He raised his glass and was about to take a sip when he saw a woman approach the bar. She looked familiar but he couldn’t place her. Then he realized who she was. Her hair was shorter. She looked much thinner than when he’d met her over a year ago. But he recognized her walk, the way she handled herself.

  “Someone you know,” Maggie asked. “Or someone you’d like to know?”

  “What? Oh, sorry. No, I think I know her.” He sipped his bourbon and continued to watch out of the corner of his eyes. She was at the bar, ordering drinks and laughing with her friends, three women at a table near the bar.

  “She’s not a blond,” Maggie said as if reading his mind. She sat back and took another look. “But even from this distance I’d say the lipstick’s a match.”