Ike screamed and swiped at the poisonous snakes with the backs of his deformed hands and kicked at them with the shoeless gnarled stumps below his ankles, but his motions only served to aggravate the bad-tempered serpents. The hissing snakes struck him repeatedly, sinking their venomous fangs into his pallid flesh.
Bo retreated and observed the gruesome proceedings from the doorway, and chuckled as Ike’s face swelled to a purple balloon. His mottled arms and legs gradually turned a deep shade of bluish purple, too, and after a few wheezing breaths, the old man slumped forward in his wheelchair. Dead.
Dex swore and made a U-turn on the narrow road. He left his damn reading glasses at Ike’s, but fortunately he remembered exactly where he’d left them for a change – on the kitchen table. Fifty and forgetful. God, he hated that age. Give him forty again, or even his airhead twenties, but skip fifty.
Dex parked in front and splashed toward the side door. It was wide open, and a water moccasin was coiled on the top concrete step, its triangular head watching him approach the doublewide.
Wary, Dex stopped. “Ike, you in there?”
No answer. Maybe he was in the can and couldn’t hear the shout.
“Ike!” he yelled louder.
Still no answer.
Dex drew his revolver and sloshed closer in the ankle deep water toward the door. The moccasin raised its ominous head, opened it mouth wide enough to display its intimidating white cotton-looking lining, and prepared to strike. Dex leveled his gun barrel at the inviting target and squeezed the trigger. The head burst into bloody threads that splattered the inside wall of the doublewide, and its decapitated body wriggled and squirmed wildly before slipping into the water and floating belly-up.
Dex stepped over the gore on the threshold and stopped abruptly. There were several more moccasins inside. Beyond them, he glimpsed the horribly swollen and discolored corpse of Sergeant Ike Noonan in his wheelchair.
Dex grabbed his cell phone and called the Broward County Sheriff’s office. The operator placed him on hold. As he stared down the stationary snakes, it seemed an eternity before Sheriff James Stark answered.
“What can I do for you, Dex? I’ve got a pretty full calendar today,” he announced, sounding frazzled as always.
“Got a dead body in your jurisdiction,” Dex replied. “Ike Noonan.”
“Jesus, Dex. He was a friend and supporter. Heart attack?”
“Try snake attack, and it looks to me like murder.”
“You’re kidding, right? Who’d want to murder that harmless old guy?”
Suddenly Dex heard a loud whoosh out back, and he turned and sprinted for all he was worth out of the house toward his car. He barely reached it before Ike’s place detonated into a raging fiery mushroom. Dex jumped into the Impala and sped away to escape the raining debris. Some of it banged, clanged, and thumped onto his roof, hood, and trunk as he raced along the flooded street, kicking up waves that would delight an east coast surfer.
“What the hell was that?” Stark yelled.
Dex had almost forgotten his cell was still connected. He plucked the phone off the bench seat.
“Somebody just blew up Ike’s house, James.”
“What!”
Dex hastily described the crime scene when he’d first arrived.
“Snakes! Now who the hell would sic them on that old man? And why, for godsake? Hold on a second.” Stark put Dex on hold again, but this time the sheriff returned quickly. “The fire department’s on the way, Dex. Mind sticking around till I get there?”
“Not a bit.”
After the firemen extinguished the last smoking embers, James Stark, the fire marshal, and Dex walked the perimeter of the blackened lump that had once been Ike Noonan’s home. Stark was a black man in his late forties who had attended many law enforcement seminars, political dinners, and county commission meetings with his longtime friend, Dex Lowe. James Stark was tall, slender with a slight paunch, and handsome. Stress strained his face as he stared at the destruction.
Dex knelt and examined several depressions in the mud behind Ike’s former residence. Jerry Lawton, the fire marshal, and Stark peered over his shoulders.
Dex traced the outline with his fore finger. “The same tread,” he said absently.
“Mind filling us in?” Stark pressed.
“These are the same tire marks that I found behind Cohen’s Deli after Elaine Brewster’s kidnappin’,” he explained.
“You’re positive?” Lawton inquired.
“Absolutely. The FBI’s got the Brewster molds, but I reckon they’ll let us compare these marks to theirs.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.” Stark straightened. “When my crime scene people are finished, we’ll see just how sharing the FBI really is.”
“Bring the tire molds over to the station. That’s where they’re holed up for the duration of this investigation.”
Stark laughed grimly and slapped Dex on the back. “Lucky you. I saw that cocky son-of-a-bitch Wilkerson on the tube yesterday, and I didn’t like his smug bullshit one damn bit.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Mind signing my incident form?” Lawton asked Dex, extending a clipboard with several sheets of paperwork attached.
Dex’s hand went for the reading glasses in his shirt pocket, but came up empty.
“Missing something?” Stark asked.
“Yeah. My readin’ glasses.” He nodded toward the burnt hulk beside them. “I left them inside.” He squinted and signed the three spaces reserved for law enforcement signatures.
Stark frowned. “And what were your glasses doing inside Ike’s place?”
“I’ll fill you in when you stop by with the tire molds,” Dex replied, and ambled down the flooded street to his parked car. He knew the FBI wouldn’t cooperate, and so there was little chance that he’d have to reveal what he’d found at Ike’s place.
Jerry Lawton stared hard at Dex’s retreating form, but Stark merely shook his head.
“Give it a rest, Jerry. Dex is cool,” Stark said, and waded out front to greet his arriving crime scene team.
Chapter 15
Big Man, Bo, gazed out the living room window toward the cemetery knoll three hundred feet behind his Demon Key home. A murky ground mist shrouded the grave markers; only the mausoleum at the top of the hill was fully visible. He sipped his coffee and pondered his next move.
Dex Lowe was a nice enough guy. Bo had known him his entire life, but if Dex’s prying through Ike’s old newspaper collection would threaten his mission, then Sheriff Nice Guy would have to be eliminated. It wouldn’t be an easy chore with those FBI agents camped in the Gator Creek police station, though. No, he would have to knock-off Dex when he was at home, where he rarely was these days.
Bo took another sip. Hot and Black. Just the way he loved his coffee. It settled his nerves. Stimulated his thinking.
He gritted his teeth. This whole damn business was getting too frigging complicated. Much more complicated than in the past. Too many FBI agents snooping around with modern equipment. A fairly smart police chief with good instincts. He would have to exercise extreme caution at every abduction site. A carelessly dropped hair, a flake of skin, or drop of blood could spell the end to his anonymity.
He drained the last swallow from the cup. The swamp waters were still rising, and the television news folks predicted that the flooded Sawgrass Expressway would be closed from the Florida Turnpike to I-75 by tonight, dumping the outer belt rush hour traffic onto the already soggy surface streets. What a mess. Another thorn in his side. He had to cross the Sawgrass Expressway every time he visited the mainland. Now it would be a pain in the ass to travel unseen to and from his mainland dock and town.
Bo tipped the coffee pot and refilled his cup. Reviewing the facts helped him bury the sadness of having to off old Ike. Unfortunately, it had to be done. The cripple knew too much, even though the painkillers had likely erased most of his memories of the 1856 abductions. Ike’s father, J
eremy, had never stopped chattering about the abductions, even though he hadn’t even been around back then. According to his own father, Jeremy Noonan loved telling stories of the Miccosukee monster when he was snockered, and Ike reciting that legend to Dex would definitely spell trouble for Bo.
As long as there was a chance of that happening, there was also a chance Dex could land on Bo’s doorstep with an arrest warrant. That wouldn’t do. No, not at all. There was too much at stake. Like Ike, Dex had to go. End of rationalization.
Bo absently fingered the ancient flute dangling at his neck. Soon, he’d have to search for another chunky chick. A nice meaty meal. Maybe as soon as tomorrow night. It would be getting hungry again.
But tonight was Dex’s night. Bo would silence the cop for good. That would dump the investigation on the obtuse Sheriff Stark and his deputies. He had nothing to fear from Stark or that grandstanding FBI creep, Wilkerson. That moron was in over his head and incapable of connecting the dots to solve the crime. Now that spunky little blonde babe who’d preceded Wilkerson was one sharp cookie; she’d worried him. But now that she was apparently out of the picture, he breathed a little easier.
Bo grimaced. Still, he hated the thought of killing Dex. The lawman was one of the last local yokels left in this neck of the woods, and Bo felt a natural kinship with him. If only he’d been born into a normal family, then he and Dex might have been best friends. But the key cursed his life, like it had his entire family from the beginning.
There was a sharp rap at the front door. Startled, Bo grabbed his long knife from the kitchen table and placed an ear to the door.
“Who’s there?” he growled.
“Me,” replied a familiar male voice.
Bo opened the door. “What the hell are you doing here? I told you I never wanted to lay eyes on you again!”
The visitor laid his palm over Bo’s hand, and the big man jumped from an electric-like shock. Before Bo could react, his visitor vanished. He staggered to the kitchen table and sat heavily. He felt dizzy. Thickheaded. His eyes refused to blink.
Then suddenly, like a zombie, he rose again and walked stiffly into the living room. What was wrong with him?
Bo unlocked his oak and glass gun cabinet and chose his late-father’s .35 caliber hunting rifle for his mission. He then meticulously cleaned and oiled all the moving parts before selecting a scope from a cabinet drawer. He casually polished the lenses until they sparkled, and then attached it to the rifle with small brass screws.
The trance’s numbing sensation eventually passed, but the spell remained. Bo’s mind was unable to recall even having a visitor, but it obediently complied with the visitor’s embedded commands.
He retrieved a box of hollow-point cartridges and stuffed it into his rain jacket pocket. Tonight, one of those savage babies would find a new home inside Dex’s corpse.
But that was only the first part of his devious new plan . . . and it even rattled his own chain a bit.
Chapter 16
Teddi’s angst escalated after Cole’s warning. She stepped hesitantly from the airboat onto the dock and glanced again at Cole’s grave expression. He wasn’t joking. She gulped and strode along the stone path into the dense bayou jungle.
Unseen birds called and cawed in the oppressive late-morning air. Her damp clothes clung to her body and restrained her movements enough to become irritating. Teddi tugged her shirt from her shorts waistband and tied the bottom into a knot, exposing her midriff. Next, she rolled up her sleeves and proceeded deeper into Jackson LaFevre’s ominous estate.
Despite the blazing sun, it was night beneath the tangled canopy of tree limbs and silver Spanish moss. She recalled Cole’s warning and shouted her name and identification.
“Teddi McCoy! FBI!”
She repeated the shouts every fifty feet or so as Cole had instructed her, but there was no answer. No Jackson LaFevre popping out from behind a tree to shoot her from point blank range. The air and her anxiety became more stifling the deeper into the bayou she went. Her uneasiness wasn’t just caused from the prospect that the Cajun psychic wasn’t home. It was precipitated from her mounting dread of actually meeting this strange volatile person.
Shrubs cracked and rustled ten feet to her right. Teddi drew her gun and targeted the general area.
“Is that you, LaFevre? If it is, call out or I might accidentally shoot you.”
The rustling continued, only closer to her this time. Her thumb disabled the safety. Perspiration painted her face and burned her eyes. Her attempts to blink the sweat away only seemed to pump more of the stinging liquid into her sockets. God, what a nightmare.
The path narrowed and the foliage scraped her exposed arms. The realization that she would have no warning if someone or something jumped out and attacked her only enhanced her trepidation. Her breathing became fast and labored. The heavy rustling was now a mere foot away. And still moving closer.
Her heart leaped to her throat when a menacing growl rose from behind the tangle of bushes. Merely inches away, and yet she couldn’t she it. Dammit! She aimed blindly toward the sound. Was the menacing animal actually there, or someplace else? Sounds could be tricky in close quarters like this.
Deep harsh breaths followed each violent growl. Teddi tightened her grip on the gun. The animal sounded big! Instinctively, she retreated as far as she could to give herself room to squeeze off a shot when the creature charged. Sharp branches bordering the opposite side of the path poked sharply into her skin. Three feet was all she was going to get. Not much room to fire off a quick, clean shot. She prayed it was enough.
Then Teddi revised her strategy. The odds were in her attacker’s favor at the moment, but she was about to change that. Her finger squeezed the trigger, but her shot went high and wide – someone had shoved her in the back. Suddenly there were two adversaries!
Before she recovered, a hand reached out of the foliage and quickly ripped the gun from her grasp. She leaped and spun in the air across the confining path toward the growls and prepared to defend herself against her surprise attacker.
“Teddi McCoy from the FBI, is it?” a man’s voice asked.
“So what if it is? It’s against the law to disarm an FBI agent,” she gasped. “You’re under arrest.”
The man stepped onto the slim path, and they were nearly nose-to-nose. “Really? It seems that the balance of this situation has shifted to your gun and me. You’re hardly in a position to enforce your arrest, I’m afraid.”
“Give me the gun,” she demanded.
“Then the balance would shift in your favor, and for the moment I can’t let that happen.”
“And why not?”
He held out his empty hand. “I need some identification to prove you’re FBI.”
“You’ve got a lot of balls asking for identification when you’ve got me covered with my own gun.”
“Let’s not get personal, madam.” He snapped his fingers. “ID please.”
Teddi fished for her ID in her back shorts pocket as she studied her attacker. The man was tall, about six-three, and dressed in an immaculate white safari outfit. His shoulder-length white-blonde hair was pulled back and tied in a ponytail. His clean-shaven face was expressionless at the moment, but his cat green eyes smothered her like a heavy blanket. Despite his exasperating attitude and her simmering anger, she found him ruggedly handsome – though she didn’t want to dwell on it at the moment.
Teddi handed him her FBI badge.
“Now you have my gun and my badge. Think you could impersonate me now?” she snapped sarcastically.
He perused the badge and gave it back to her. “Promise to behave like the guest you are, and I’ll return your gun.” He appraised her weapon. “A short-barreled Beretta 92 Centurion, if I’m not mistaken.”
Teddi made a grab for her gun, but he was too quick for her and raised it out of her reach.
“Cute,” she said, planting her hands on her hips.
“This little 9mm weapon could
immobilize someone rather effectively,” he continued.
Like you, she wanted to say. Instead, she asked, “May I have it back?”
He bowed slightly. “You are going to forget that arrest nonsense, aren’t you?”
Teddi suddenly remembered the menacing growls beside the path. “Just what didn’t you want me to shoot over there?” she asked, pointing at the dense shrubbery.
“Why my guard dog, Zeus. C’mon out, boy.”
A large black and tan Rottweiler plowed through the greenery and bared its enormous teeth at Teddi.
“Easy boy. Go back home,” the man ordered. The two hundred pound Rottweiler bounded away down the path. The man returned the Beretta to Teddi, who was tempted to shoot him right then and there, but she merely holstered it.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Thought you’d never ask.” He bowed again. “Jackson LaFevre at your service.”
Teddi regarded him quizzically. Could this courteous man actually be Charlie’s volatile psychic? If LaFevre wasn’t really a two-legged power keg, then Charlie was a real shithead for portraying him that way. And the same went for Cole and his warning.
“You look like something’s puzzling you,” he remarked.
“It’s nothing.”
“I doubt that. Could it be that I’m not the man you expected?”
“You’re Mr. LaFevre, aren’t you?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Okay. Charlie Simmons and Cole LeBlanc gave me the impression that you were . . . unfriendly. Hostile.”
He laughed. “That’s what I pay Cole to say to discourage visitors. As far as Charlie goes, I think he was putting you on. Did he send you out here?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm, that’s interesting.”
“Why?”
He dodged her question. “So why are you here?”
She bristled at his evasiveness. “We need to talk,” she informed him.
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