Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19)

by Wayne Stinnett

  I could see the hatred seething in his eyes.

  The woman stepped forward, as if she were going to come between us. Savannah grabbed her arm and the woman wheeled, aiming a fist at Savannah’s face.

  Savannah raised an arm, trapping the woman’s forearm in an arm bar, exerting backward pressure on the elbow joint as she stepped in and delivered two vicious elbow strikes to the woman’s face.

  It happened so quickly, I’d barely registered it when the woman dropped to the deck in a very undignified position, skirt askew and blood staining the front of her crisp, white blouse.

  The senator stepped back, shouting vehemently at Savannah. When he took a step toward her, Finn and Woden suddenly blocked his path, teeth bared, ears back, and hackles up.

  I raised a hand to the dogs. “Bleibe,” I commanded. They stood their ground but were ready for anything.

  I turned my attention back to Blanc. “I think you’d better take your girlfriend and get out of here while you still can, Senator.”

  The woman slowly struggled to her feet, glaring at Savannah.

  “This isn’t over,” Blanc said, taking the woman’s arm and helping her to her feet. “Are you all right, Chloe?”

  As they started toward the door, Tank stepped in front of him. “Yes, it is over,” he boomed. “I don’t care who or what you are, Mister. If you show your ass around here again, you’ll join that scumbag brother-in-law of yours. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

  Blanc looked at him with an incredulous expression. “Are you threatening a public official?”

  When Tank leaned in closer, the woman moved to intervene again.

  Once more, Savannah spun her around. “Bless your heart, sweetie,” she said, gripping the woman’s blouse with one hand, while the other was poised to strike. “You don’t want to do this again.”

  “Mister,” Tank sneered, “I have less than a year to live. So, I’m disinclined to waste time by repeating myself. Take your public official ass back to where you belong and forget you ever came down to these islands.”

  Just then, the door opened. Tony and Andrew were returning from parking the car, and they had Rusty, Sid, Jimmy, and Naomi with them.

  The two former special operators reacted instantly to what they correctly interpreted as a tense situation. Rusty and Sid did as well. The three men separated, forming a semi-circle around Tank as Sid moved instantly to Savannah and helped restrain the Chloe woman.

  “You knew!” I said vehemently, finally figuring out why Blanc was there.

  He’d said Quick was wanted for the murder of his sister—which one, I didn’t know—but nothing had been mentioned on the news, or Chyrel would have let us know instantly. The senator must have gone to the shack after finding his sister dead and the Blanc gold missing. That was why he’d shown no surprise when I’d called Quick his “late brother-in-law.” He must have known Quick was taking off with the family gold. So, the stories Billy had told about them hoarding money were true.

  I spun Blanc around. “You knew about the girls Willy Quick had chained up out there in the Glades. You went there tonight, didn’t you? And it wasn’t the first time you’d been to that shack, was it?”

  I turned my head and looked at the door Cobie and Donna had gone through. Turning back to him, I pointed at the door. “There’s a girl in there who is going to identify you, Senator.”

  The man’s face drained of color and his eyes instinctively followed my pointing finger. “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Save it,” I said, stepping closer to him. “I killed that big swamp ape with my bare hands,” I hissed, barely able to control the anger boiling in my veins. “I could have done it from a distance, but I wanted him to see it coming and know who it was. People like you and him disgust me. Pure evil with no place in human society. Roaches to be squashed under my foot. Watch your back, Senator. I’m coming for you next.”

  “He forced—”

  “I said save it,” I warned. “Look around. You’re complicit in holding a girl from this community captive, and you took part in her torture and rape. Do you think anyone in this room gives a rat’s ass about you or your family?”

  Finn barked, as if accentuating my words. Woden just snarled.

  Blanc looked around, then took off out the door.

  The woman struggled against Savannah and Sid. With a glance in my direction, they released her, and she bolted through the door after her master like an obedient lapdog.

  “How did you know?” Tank asked, as the door closed.

  “Paul told me something,” I replied. “While he was driving Michelle to the hospital, he and Andrew coaxed some information out of her and Cobie.”

  Andrew nodded. “Cobie told me it was Ty Sampson and a Cuban man who’d abducted her,” he added. “She learned through another woman, who was killed just before we arrived, that his name was Benito Moreno and the man holding them was Willy Quick.”

  “The most recent captive got loose,” I said, “but was killed by an alligator just minutes before we arrived. It was the girl we saw with Moreno and Quick, Vanessa Ramos.”

  “Cobie also told me,” Andrew began, “that there were at least two others before her, and they’d talked of others before them. She also said that Quick sometimes brought an older man with him.”

  The security door on the other side of the room opened and a doctor appeared. He looked around nervously. “Is anyone here with Cobie Murphy?” he asked.

  “Yes, Doctor,” Savannah said, stepping toward him. “We all are. How is she?”

  He looked around again. “She’s going to be fine. She can have one more visitor. Are you Flo Richmond?”

  Flo had been sitting there the whole time, quietly taking everything in from the moment they wheeled Cobie through the door.

  “I’m Flo,” she said, standing up. “But I hardly know her.”

  “Miss Murphy said she saw you when she was brought in and has asked if she could talk to you.”

  Flo looked at me and Savannah.

  “Go see her,” Savannah said. “She asked for you.”

  Cobie was released from the hospital after four days. I was at the Anchor and had just finished meeting with a friend from the local bank and was in the midst of a discussion with Tank when Donna called, looking for me. She wanted to thank me again and to tell me that Cobie was physically okay, but the doctor had referred her to a psychologist. She’d lost a good bit of weight, and the scar over her eye would be permanent, but she was otherwise healing well.

  “The scar doesn’t have to be permanent,” I told her. “And I agree, she needs help dealing with the mental trauma she’s been through.”

  “Be that as it may—”

  “Do you know Pam, over at Keys Bank?” I asked, cutting her off.

  “First State? Yeah, everyone knows Pam.”

  “Good,” I said. “Give her a call. She’s waiting to hear from you.”

  I ended the call and looked over at Tank, shaking my head. “You’re out of your mind, Master Guns.”

  “How many years are between you and your intended?”

  “Less than ten,” I replied.

  “There you go,” he said. Tank paused. “Look,” he said. “She likes me and I like her. It won’t be long before I won’t be able to do a lot of the things that I take for granted now.”

  “So…hire a nurse.”

  He drained his coffee and signaled Amy for a refill.

  “What do you think Donna’s going to do when your friend at the bank gives her the news? She strikes me as a prideful woman.”

  With the agreement of everyone involved, two of the gold bars from Willy Quick’s SUV had been converted to cash and deposited in a trust fund for Cobie. A third bar was liquidated for Michelle Tate. Over the next few years, the rest of the gold would be quietly sold off and the money split into three funds, two of which I’d had set up for years—one to help kids of local watermen and another to help kids of fallen or disabled service mem
bers from the area. Tank had suggested the third fund. He’d even added half of the ten million he’d set aside. A trust fund to help women and children of abuse.

  “The girl needs help Donna can’t provide,” I replied. “She’ll use the money for that and to further her education. She’s prideful, but she strikes me as a practical woman, too.”

  The door opened and Chyrel came into the bar, pausing to take her sunglasses off and look around. She spotted us and came toward the table, smiling.

  “Hey, Jesse,” she said with a wave. Then she hugged Tank. “How you doing, old man?”

  He laughed and returned the hug. “I’ll show you old one of these days.”

  She plopped down on the bench next to Tank. “So, what was so important you had me drive all the way down here?”

  “I decided I’m staying here in the Keys,” Tank said. “My pension can go a long way here.”

  “That’s great news!” Chyrel said, as Amy brought the coffee pot over with another mug.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I talked to a real estate agent. She’s meeting me here any minute. Want to help me look for a house?”

  The door swung open and an attractive, well-dressed woman came in. She held a thick notebook in her arm. If there was a “look” for a real estate agent, she had it.

  Since we were the only ones in the place, she came toward us. “Is one of you Mister Tankersley?”

  Tank rose and offered his hand. “You must be Connie. Have a seat.”

  Connie sat next to me and introduced herself, shaking hands.

  “So, you’re looking to retire here?” Connie asked. “It’s a great location. What kind of home would you consider?”

  “Nothing big,” he replied. “Three bedrooms, a couple thousand square feet. With a pool. Oh, and it has to be on deep water.”

  Connie’s eyebrow arched slightly, whether in doubt of Tank’s ability to afford such a house or at the prospect of a huge commission, I couldn’t tell.

  “Okay,” she said, opening her notebook and flipping to a tabbed spot. “What’s your price range?”

  “Four million,” he replied. “It will be a cash deal, but we have to close right away.”

  Connie gulped and the pupils in her eyes constricted a little as she digested the information.

  Then she closed her notebook. “I know the perfect house,” she announced. “It just came on the market, so I don’t even have the listing in my book. In fact, I just came from closing the deal. The homeowner is anxious to sell.”

  “Let’s go look at it,” Tank said, then grinned at me. “But let me finish my coffee, while you call my friend Pam at First State Bank of the Florida Keys—the branch here in Marathon. I told her you might be calling. She can verify the availability of the funds.”

  Connie smiled. “Then I’ll meet you outside, and you can follow me over there.”

  “I don’t have a car,” Tank said.

  “You don’t—”

  “I’ll drive you,” Chyrel said.

  With that, Connie went outside.

  I shook my head. “You’re going to buy a four-million-dollar house and you don’t even own a car?”

  “I have a couple of cars,” he retorted. “Up in Jacksonville. I didn’t drive down for the same reason I’m in a hurry to buy a house. There just isn’t a lot of time left.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I’ve done my duty for most of my life. Now it’s time to indulge myself.”

  He rose and offered his hand to Chyrel, and they disappeared through the door after Connie.

  “What was that all about?” Rusty asked, coming over and taking a seat across from me.

  “Tank wants to settle down.”

  “Good for him,” Rusty said. “There are worse places to spend your last days.”

  “He wants to marry Chyrel.”

  “He what?” Rusty spluttered. “He just met her, fer cryin’ out loud!”

  “You heard me,” I said. “They went house hunting.”

  “She said yes?”

  “He hasn’t asked her yet.”

  “Wait,” Rusty said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “She knows he’s dying of cancer, right?”

  I nodded. “He wants someone he likes to look after him when the time comes.”

  “He don’t have to get married for that,” Rusty said, shaking his head.

  “If he’s married,” I explained, using Tank’s own reasoning, “his wife would receive a survivor’s pension. He figures since he’s only going to collect his veteran’s pension for a year or two at best, he should leave it to someone much younger, and Chyrel has no desire to get married.”

  “So, she’ll tell him no.”

  “He made it sound more like a business deal,” I said. “If the survivor of a retired veteran remarries, the pension is ended. Tank figures it’s the best way to keep funding his endowment. Plus, she gets the house.”

  “The house she’s going to help him pick out, not knowing any of this?”

  I shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “What’s Savannah think of all this?”

  “She’s all for it,” I said. “She even urged him.”

  “Where’s she at now? Tomorrow’s the big day.”

  “Over on Sea Biscuit. Flo and Sid are helping her try on her dress. They just picked it up from the seamstress.”

  “And y’all are staying on different boats tonight?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied, less than enthusiastic about the idea. “We won’t see each other again until the ceremony.”

  “Hey,” Amy called over. “There’s something on the news about that senator up in Marco.”

  Rusty and I walked over closer to the bar as she turned up the TV.

  “An anonymous source close to the senator said he was despondent over two recent deaths in his family and allegations of their wrongdoing. He was found early this morning at his residence, with a single gunshot wound to the head. We’ll have more on this breaking story this evening. This is Sonia Morris, Action 6 News, reporting.”

  “Whatta ya think of that?” Rusty asked, as the mid-morning news cut to a commercial.

  “Coward’s way out,” I replied. “But it saves the taxpayers’ money. I bet the anonymous source was his aide. What’d you say her name was?”

  “Chloe Devlin,” Rusty replied. “I heard she killed a man up in Miami some years back.”

  I placed my mug on the bar. “Well, I have some chores to do on the boat.”

  The truth was, I just hadn’t been in much of a talkative mood since getting Cobie out of that shack. I left the bar and walked along the dock toward Salty Dog, thinking.

  Peter Tate, Michelle’s husband, had called Paul two days after the rescue and invited him to lunch and to help convince his wife to see a psychologist.

  For an hour over lunch, Michelle had recounted her ordeal to Paul in a detached, analytical manner. She’d told her husband and he’d suggested going to the police. But Michelle had been reticent to do that, because of what Paul had told them to say.

  Paul had openly explained to them that the man who’d held them, along with the two men who’d kidnapped Cobie, were dead and there was nothing to go to the police about.

  Climbing aboard Salty Dog, I went below, then down to the engine room. I needed to busy my hands. I closed the valve to the air conditioner’s raw water intake and removed the strainer, cleaning it in a small bucket of water.

  Paul had related to me the story Michelle told him of the violence and depravity of Willy Quick’s visits to the shack.

  “A classic psychopath, I’d guess,” he’d told me over the phone. “And given the man’s size, what he did to those women was no different than what he likely did to small animals as a child. He treated his captives as things—toys to be played with when it suited him—and when one was used up or broken, he raped and beat them one last time, then dumped them through the hole in the floor to the waiting alligators.”

  I knew I shouldn’t feel remorse about killing t
he three men, but I did. Willy Quick probably didn’t feel an ounce of remorse, but I wasn’t him. I had a conscience, a soul.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d struggled with these thoughts. In the heat of the moment, I didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on them. But afterward, I did. I knew I’d get past it. I knew I did what was right, even if it wasn’t legal. Andersen had called me an executioner, but that wasn’t quite right. I’d simply put down three rabid animals.

  That was pretty much what Cobie had told Flo that night in the ER, when she’d asked to see her. Flo told Savannah the next day but had remained mostly distant from me throughout the day.

  She’d finally come to me and apologized for the thoughts she’d had about me. She said that Cobie had told her not to think bad of me for doing what I did the way I did it. Then she’d warned me, as Charity had, to never do anything so foolish again.

  I worked for several hours, changing the oil and filters, cleaning and scrubbing the engine, generator, water maker, and deck. Soon I noticed there was no light coming through the overhead hatch.

  It was dark out.

  I finished up and went to my cabin to get a shower. Ten minutes later, I was stretched out on the bunk, alone. Through an open hatch, I could hear the sounds of the Rusty Anchor.

  Small waves lapped at the shoreline and rock jetty. In the trees across the canal, a whippoorwill sang its mournful tune. Music and laughter from the bar at the far end of the dock reached my ears. I occasionally heard people along the dock talking and caught Savannah’s laugh from just across the canal.

  Then, though the night was still young, I drifted off to sleep.

  The nightmare came. I hadn’t had it in some time. The darkness, the swirling vortex of specters trying to grab me. The images of people I’d killed began to appear before me, one at a time, then vanish in a puff of dust.

  Suddenly, Savannah’s face appeared.

  I shrieked in horror, sitting up quickly and banging my head.

  It took a moment to get my breathing under control as I rubbed my forehead.

  What did it mean? Why would Savannah appear in my dream?

  I’d dreamed of her many times over the years, but not that dream. Was it my subconscious somehow telling me that marrying me put her in danger?