Demon Key

by David Brookover

  “Our shooter’s about thirty feet away and perched in a tree about ten feet off the ground,” she whispered to Jackson.

  He nodded and motioned with his hand for her to stay put while he crept to the other broken window.

  “On my signal, fire at the tree where you spotted him, and I’ll follow your shot to the target. Between the two of us, maybe we can pin him down long enough for Dex to make a break for the bathroom to get some first aid,” he whispered.

  “Dex?” Teddi called softly.

  “Yeah, I’m still alive, but I ain’t doin’ much kickin’,” he grumbled.

  “Can you move?”

  “I’m not bleedin’ to death here!” he sputtered.

  “When we start shooting, hightail it into the bathroom and tend to that wound,” Teddi instructed.

  “No problemo.”

  Jackson waved to her in the winking storm light. Teddi took a few deep breaths, held them, and released each slowly. She steadied her hands and targeted the shooter’s position.

  One . . . two . . . stand . . .fire!

  Teddi hit her mark with her first shots, and Jackson’s shots also hit home. She gawked at him, not expecting a psychic to be such an expert marksman. He was full of surprises, and she’d known him for less than a day!

  The lens was history, and hopefully the shooter. She caught sight of Dex’s dash to the bathroom, and from his quick movements, she deduced that he wasn’t badly hurt. She pocketed her empty clip and inserted another.

  “You see anything now?” Jackson shouted, scanning the outside for movement.

  Teddi stood and checked the area, her gun raised and ready to fire. “Nothing,” she replied. Her nerves were settled, and she was all business again.

  “Maybe we hit him.”

  Her gut refused to accept his hasty assessment. “Stay frosty, Jackson,” she advised him. “He might’ve moved to a new spot.”

  There was a sudden lull in the storm as it moved westward. The gully washer was merely a drizzle now. The incessant drumming on the roof had dulled her hearing, and now the silence was deafening. It would take her ears a minute to recover.

  Soft, sharp melodic notes drifted in through the windows. It was difficult to accurately judge the direction of the strange sounds mixed in the strong wind, but she guessed they came from around back. Suddenly, a crisp cracking of wood sent chills scurrying up Teddi’s spine. She exchanged puzzled glances with Jackson. The mysterious splintering and snapping were closing in on the house.

  Jackson raced to the sliding glass door that opened onto the screened porch in back. “What . . .”

  A siren blared in the driveway, mingling with the crunching of gravel. Car doors slammed, and alternating blue and white lights cast revolving shadows inside the house. Shouted orders, compliances, and squawking radiophones masked the cracking wood.

  Jackson holstered his Colt and rushed to the wall where one of the bullets was lodged. He snapped open the blade of his pocketknife and furiously dug into the drywall.

  The front door flew open, and a familiar stocky silhouette filled the open space.

  “Teddi?” he called.

  “Ryan,” Teddi responded, thankful for his presence. For once.

  Ryan brandished his flashlight beam around the room. “Everybody okay?”

  “Dex needs some doctoring, but I can drive him to the hospital later. How did you know we were in trouble?”

  “The neighbors jammed the police station phone lines with reports of gunfire. I put two and two together and here we are. Did you get a look at the shooter?”

  She gestured toward the closest broken window. “No. He hid in a tree out there across the driveway, but I figure he was our kidnapper.”

  “Really?” Ryan directed the beam to the bathroom doorway.

  “Me too,” Dex said, holding a bloodstained compress to his left shoulder.

  “Why are you two so sure?” Ryan asked, with a skeptical scowl.

  Dex gave his head a rueful shake. “‘Cause the bastard murdered Ike Noonan earlier today after I left his house,” he said. “Our perp must have it in his head that Ike told me somethin’ important, but he’s dead wrong.”

  “Maybe our perp was afraid that he might tell you something.”

  “Could be, but then, why come after me tonight?”

  Ryan shrugged and retreated outside to investigate the shooter’s tree.

  Teddi perked up. “So you found the 1856 articles. Anything interesting in them?”

  Dex grimaced from his throbbing wound. “Oh yeah. Tell you later.” He glanced down at Jackson. “Who’s he, and why the hell is he trashin’ my wall?”

  She holstered her Beretta and managed a small grin. “That’s our new partner, Jackson LaFevre, and I have no idea why he’s digging a hole in your wall. But I’m sure he has a good reason.”

  Dex gritted his teeth against the pain. “He’d damned better!”

  Chapter 22

  Agent Wilkerson’s radio squawked, and he lifted it to his ear. “Yeah?”

  “This is Young. The area’s clear. No sign of the perp.”

  “Dammit!” Ryan swore. “Well, keep looking. Check the neighboring yards.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Ryan’s radio squawked again. “Yeah?”

  “You’d better come to the back of the house,” Adams reported. “You’ve got to see this.”

  “Okay, hold on to your knickers, Adams.” Ryan trekked along the driveway after finding nothing but a shattered riflescope tied to the shooter’s tree. It was blown to hell. But no shooter.

  Inside, Teddi directed her flashlight on Jackson and watched him dig a bullet out of the wall. “That’s our crime scene investigators’ job,” she reproved him. “They’ll be pissed off that you messed with their evidence.”

  “Let them piss and moan all they want.” Jackson pulled a handkerchief out of his slack’s pocket, tucked the flattened slug into it, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

  “That’s official evidence,” Teddi reminded him, irritated at his disregard for official procedure.

  “There are other slugs in the house that they can examine to their heart’s content,” Jackson replied dryly. “We need this one.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s head around back. I want to see what Agent Adams turned up in the backyard,” he said, brushing her inquiry aside.

  Teddi wondered why he was so interested in Adams’s discovery; then it hit her. Jackson saw something out back and seemed rattled for a second, before he hurried to the wall to dig out the slug. What did he see? She remembered the cracking wood. Whatever he saw, it must have been big!

  Curious, Teddi followed him through the porch and onto Dex’s soggy lawn. Dex followed, too, and joined the circle of FBI agents.

  “You saw something out there, didn’t you, Jackson?” she speculated.

  “Just shapes.”

  “That’s a cop-out. I thought we were partners on this case. You know, share and share alike.”

  Jackson paused several feet from the agents. “Look, I didn’t see anything, per se.”

  “Clearly, you mean? You didn’t see anything clearly.”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Was it bigger than a bread box?”

  He stepped away from her and pointed at the ground. “Take a look for yourself.”

  Teddi watched the agents’ flashlight beams roam the dark grass. Teddi wrinkled her nose. An acrid odor tickled her nose and burned her eyes. She blinked several times before flicking on her flashlight.

  “What kinda smell is that?” Teddi complained.

  Ryan swiveled his beam on her face. “Smells like the Everglades to me.”

  “Aw, what do you know?” she retorted.

  “Smells like a musty animal of some kind,” Jackson volunteered.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Dex agreed. “Not quite as bad as a skunk, but pretty damned close.”

  “You’ve lived here all your life — you ought t
o know what animal that is,” Ryan pressed, reacting with his customary ridicule.

  “Well, I don’t. There’s lots of new critters out here, thanks to the dumb asses who buy exotic pets and then let ‘em go free where they don’t have any natural enemies.”

  Ryan laughed and wandered deeper into the yard.

  Teddi stared at Jackson, who stood out like a sore thumb in his all-white attire. The psychic knows what was out there earlier, or at least has a damn good idea. That was a given. But why did he need that slug? That still puzzled her.

  The others drifted toward the Everglades.

  “Jesus , Mary, and Joseph!” Ryan cried out. “What the hell did that?”

  All the beams fell upon the wooden walkway; it was crushed into the soft watery lawn.

  Dex whistled. “Looks like our shooter rode an elephant through here.” He turned to Teddi. “That’s the loud cracking we heard before the FBI showed up.”

  Teddi nodded. “I’m going to check out the garage and driveway.”

  Ryan wrinkled his face. “Why?”

  “Officer Fuentes’s car is parked there, and there’s no sign of him,” she replied sharply.

  Dex groaned. “Don’t bother. He’s not around anymore.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ryan demanded.

  “It means that I searched the entire area when I got home, and there was no sign of him . . . except for that.” Dex walked to the garage side window, reached under a low shrub, and held up a plastic-covered police cap. “I tracked him as far as the walkway, and that’s when the shootin’ started.”

  “So Fuentes might be out there,” Jackson reasoned, directing his flashlight toward the break in the mist-shrouded vegetation.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Dex concurred. “But I don’t think we’ll find him alive.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Jackson said to lift the sheriff’s spirits, but he knew Dex was right. Carlos Fuentes would never be seen again. “Let’s take a look. What’s out there?”

  “First off, we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Dex Lowe.”

  They shook hands.

  “Jackson LaFevre.”

  “Good to know ya,” he said, and gestured toward the scrub break. “My dock and fishin’ boat are past that break a hundred feet or so.”

  Jackson turned to Ryan. “Care to join us?”

  The FBI agents exchanged dismayed glances.

  “Maybe we ought to wait for morning light, Ryan,” the agent called Adams suggested.

  Even Special Agent Ryan Wilkerson appeared leery of the swamp. “Good point,” he told Adams, then spoke to Jackson. “You take care that you don’t trample any evidence out there, you hear?”

  “That’s the least of your worries,” Jackson shot back.

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  “I’d be concerned about finding whatever destroyed this wooden walk. Obviously, it’s quite large, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for even you to find,” Jackson ragged Ryan.

  Teddi and Dex chuckled quietly, and Ryan walked away in a huff.

  “Let’s get moving before the trail’s any colder,” Jackson told Teddi.

  She regarded Jackson as if he were crazy, but she finally consented to accompany him. Dex insisted on coming, too.

  “Sure your shoulder can take it?” Jackson asked him. “If not, you can keep Wilkerson and his men company.”

  “The shoulder’ll do just fine, thank you. I’d rather keep the company of rattlesnakes than those folks,” Dex joked.

  Ryan heard Dex and scowled at his disrespect. “Hey, hold on now . . .”

  “Just watch our backs,” Teddi warned her ex-husband, “or there’ll be hell to pay when we get back to Washington.”

  Ryan muttered something unintelligible, as Jackson’s white-clad form and bobbing flashlight beam suddenly disappeared into the swirling mist beyond the break. Teddi and Dex questioned their sanity, but then followed their new partner.

  Teddi carefully walked along the broken walkway and fervently hoped they didn’t run into the smelly creature that had caused the mess in Dex’s backyard.

  Chapter 23

  A blurry shadow with spiked ears nimbly bounded over the broken walkway ahead of Dex and Teddi like a ghost, and then blended into the gray mist. Teddi started.

  “What was that?” she asked breathlessly, holding her Beretta firmly in front of her.

  “Just a bobcat,” Dex replied. “Real graceful, huh?”

  “Yeah . . . if you like graceful predators,” she said, a nervous quiver in her voice.

  The drizzle lightened, but that repulsive malodor thickened as they approached the black outlines of vegetation where Jackson had vanished moments ago. Strange birdcalls and an occasional roar echoed through the eerie blackness, but Jackson’s splashing footfalls were strangely muted.

  “No frogs out tonight?” she whispered, noting the absence of the usual croaking chorus.

  “I noticed that, too. Weird.”

  Dex and Teddi were ankle deep in water as they reached the vegetation line of demarcation. Dex directed his flashlight along the walkway ahead of them and frowned when he saw that it lay collapsed in the green bracken water. He tested the damaged underwater planks, and the substructure seemed sturdy enough to hold the both of them. The dock was built in deeper water and he hoped that it was intact. There was no way he was going swimming out there.

  “Watch your step,” he warned Teddi. “We’re walkin’ on the same water level as the gators and snakes.”

  Teddi’s eyes widened as she panned her beam from side to side across the algae-covered water, searching for wriggling shapes and beady red lumps on the surface. Black mosquitoes bombarded them and buzzed around their ears as the pair slowly followed the sunken walkway. Teddi’s rain jacket protected her arms, but Dex wasn’t as fortunate. His bloody gauze and exposed arms attracted the little black demons.

  The planks were slime-slick, and Dex nearly slid sideways into the saw grass on two occasions, but he quickly righted himself with outstretched arms like a tightrope walker. He extended a hand to Teddi to help her navigate those sections. After he released her hand, Teddi rapidly retrained her light on the rippling surface, praying that a gator hadn’t taken advantage of her brief lull in surveillance to creep within striking distance.

  Where was Jackson? Did he locate Fuentes? Was he still alive? She wanted to scream his name to see if he was okay, but that would only give away their position to the shooter if he was still hanging around. She swatted at an especially obnoxious mosquito and trudged forward.

  Somewhere ahead, a powerful engine sputtered to life, and its sound moved rapidly away from shore. Dex paused.

  “Bastard’s getting away,” he growled.

  “He sure took his time,” Teddi observed. “If I were him, I would’ve left a long time ago.”

  “Probably holed up on the dock waitin’ to get a good shot at yours truly,” Dex theorized.

  “And when he saw Jackson out there, he took off,” Teddi added.

  “Let’s get a move on, and see if my dock’s still standin’.”

  Neither expressed their trepidations about Jackson falling prey to the shooter’s ambush.

  They recklessly advanced with a greater sense of urgency until they reached the dock tucked in a thick stand of saw grass. They were both relieved to find Jackson on one knee, digging at a plank with his pocketknife.

  Dex and Teddi stepped up onto the dock.

  “You’re pretty handy with that knife,” she commented, glad to be above the alligator- and snake-infested water.

  Jackson kept working and didn’t respond. Teddi glanced down at the broken edge of the dock illuminated by his flashlight. The wood was speckled with dark splotches.

  “Bloodstains?” Dex asked Jackson.

  “A bit diluted from the rain, but maybe your lab boys can make an identification, Teddi.”

  She monitored his motions as he dug out a long screw that held the p
lank to a two-by-six support. A dark, stringy mass clung to the screw head.

  “Any sign of Carlos?” Dex asked.

  Jackson nodded at the stained plank. “I’m sorry, Dex, but I think this may be his blood.”

  Dex wiped his moist eyes with the back of his hand and ambled toward the end of the dock.

  “What’s that on the head of the screw?” Teddi asked Jackson.

  “I don’t know, but hopefully your lab boys can identify this, too.”

  Teddi was exasperated with his feigned ignorance. “You must have some idea,” she persisted.

  He looked up. “Might belong to Carlos or his killer. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Is it human?”

  “Can’t tell. It’s fleshy tissue, but if you force me to guess, I’d wager that it’s not human.”

  Teddi thought for a minute. “Maybe a gator got him.”

  “Hmm hmm,” he said. “Got an evidence bag on you?”

  Teddi checked her jacket pockets and found a couple of small clear plastic pouches. She handed one to him. “That’s all I have.”

  “Good enough.” He painstakingly lifted the exposed screw from its setting, dropped it into the pouch, and sealed its zip-top. He stood and handed it to her.

  “We need to ID this as soon as possible.” Jackson bent and delicately peeled the plank’s stained veneer away with his pocketknife. “Hand me that other bag.” He balanced the curled strip on the knife blade so he wouldn’t contaminate it with his fingers, and slipped it inside the pouch.

  Teddi took it and tucked it inside her raincoat.

  “You know, Ryan’s going to throw a fit because you disturbed his evidence,” she said cheerfully.

  Jackson frowned. “He had his chance to come out here with us and declined the invitation. We’re up against a deadline here — one that only Mother Nature can control — so we need to get these analyzed ASAP.”

  “Did you see anyone out here?” Dex called from the end of the dock. He was barely visible in the coagulating mist.

  “Didn’t see the guy, but I sensed someone was out there watching us, most likely waiting for you to show up,” Jackson replied.