Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries)

by James W. Hall

  After darkness settled, a solid wave of mosquitoes moved in, a mass so thick even Thorn was driven inside the tent. On a cot across the way, Flynn was immersed in a paperback novel. Wally was at his laptop, tapping the keys in staccato bursts. Cameron did some biceps curls with fifty pounds in each hand, while Leslie lay on her cot and stared up at the fabric of the tent. At the mesh window, Pauly stood and gazed out into the darkness.

  One by one they got beneath their sheets. Cameron turned off the single lightbulb hanging from a crossbeam. There was no talk, no good-nights, no camaraderie. Just darkness, except for the blue glow of Wally’s computer as he continued to click the keys in rapid bursts.

  Hours later when Thorn came awake in the middle of the night, Wally’s computer was shut down. The electric fan churned and men were snoring, one louder than the others with a wet catch in his throat, and damp, fluttering lips.

  Thorn turned his head to the side.

  Sitting on the edge of the adjacent cot was Pauly Chee. Pauly’s naked chest gleamed with sweat and moonlight; his eyes were black sapphires glowing from deep within. They were fixed on Thorn.

  Pauly was chewing something slowly, something thick and gummy that flexed his jaws. Watching Thorn without pause. Draped across his shoulders, a python glimmered like black jelly as it oozed between his arms and wrapped its slippery, undulating length around his torso, once, twice. Pauly uncoiled the snake and guided it onto the floor, and the python slid away into the darkness.

  Thorn lay still and listened to the man’s soft chewing like a dog working deliberately through his rawhide treat. On the sweetening breeze he smelled the scent of tarnished copper rising from the mangroves, and he could sense the swelling barometric pressure of an approaching storm and hear its faint cannon fire from out at sea.

  He glanced over at his son sleeping peacefully two cots away, then lay back and shut his eyes, and as he drifted down a long slope back into sleep, he had a dreamy vision of Pauly’s python cruising out of the tent and into the tall grasses—that giant snake heading off to track the last of the island’s raccoons and mice and nesting birds, then Thorn was watching the knobby back of a monster croc sink beneath a black satin sea, sink and sink into the cold depths that were darker than any grave.

  NINETEEN

  AT SUNRISE FRANK ROLLED OUT of bed, pulled on his gym shorts, laced up his Brooks running shoes, stretched for a few minutes to get his blood moving, watching the morning TV news.

  All the anchors were hyped about the tropical storms lined up, five of them starting off the coast of Africa and stretching into the Gulf, where Ivan was growing into a Category 4 hurricane. Juanita was next in line. Miami was in her cone, and all the storm guys were revving up their 3-D maps. Kurt was next, then two others farther out that hadn’t earned names yet.

  Sheffield switched off the TV. He got much better hurricane info from Matthew White’s e-mail updates. Matt farmed lychee nuts down in Homestead, and as a hobby he forecast hurricanes. Though he had no formal training, Matt’s tracking predictions had a much higher success rate than did those of the TV guys with all their degrees and cool devices, plus Matt did it without a bit of hype.

  Sheffield walked to the beach and trotted off. Four miles on the hard-packed sand, thinking of Nicole the whole way, her line about his huffing. This was a woman worth getting in shape for.

  Afterward, dripping sweat, he went over to his dresser, got his cell, flipped it open. The Recent Calls screen was up. A screen he rarely used. Frank stared at it, thinking of last night, Nicole’s groping around on the dresser, going into the bathroom, staying for a while. He scrolled through the recent calls, incoming and outgoing, finding nothing of note. Maybe she was checking for old girlfriends. Or maybe Frank was having a paranoia flash. She was probably just gathering her own stuff off the dresser, or any number of other perfectly innocent possibilities.

  Sheffield let it go. He stood in the open doorway of 106, the efficiency apartment he called home, and dialed the office. In early as always, Marta Gonzalez, his secretary for the last fifteen years, picked up on the first ring.

  “Not coming in? What is it now? New drain field? Roof leak?”

  For the last few years Sheffield had been remodeling the Silver Sands, the wreck of a place he’d inherited from his old man. Twenty rooms, two stories, a rectangular mom-and-pop motel from the forties with a subdued art deco style. Two hundred feet off the white-sugar sands on Key Biscayne, wedged between massive condo towers on three sides. The place hadn’t been remodeled in all the years his parents owned it. It went broke, then the old man died, and suddenly it was Frank’s, a run-down building sitting on primo land. In the current market the land was worth 4 to 5 million, or so the Realtors told him.

  But once he picked up his hammer, hung his first sheet of drywall, started plastering, a lot of happy memories began firing off, the sweet old days when his granddad and grandmom ran the place and he’d played there every summer day while his parents were off at work, back when the key was a slow, empty island with an expansive view of the city of Miami across Biscayne Bay, back when the tallest downtown buildings were no higher than six stories.

  “No, it’s not the motel,” Frank told Marta. “First, call Metro homicide, see who’s heading up the Marcus Bendell death. Happened yesterday morning. Marcus Bendell, spelled like it sounds.”

  “Got it.”

  “I want anything they’ve got. Crime-scene photos, the whole deal.”

  “And what do I tell him it’s about?”

  “An FBI investigation into a possible terrorist cell.”

  Marta was quiet for a moment before asking if there was more, her voice more businesslike now.

  “Who’s our best cybersleuth?”

  “Angie Stevens.”

  “Yeah, Angie. I want to meet her this afternoon, two, three o’clock. And I want background checks on four people.”

  “My pencil’s poised.”

  He gave her the names. Pauly Chee, Wally Chee, Claude Sellers, and Cameron Prince. Told her to call the Bureau’s liaison at the Department of Defense, see what kind of soldier Pauly was, service record, special training, medical history, medals, date of discharge. And the civilian side, too. High school, college, traffic tickets, all of it. Run the full background check on the others. Criminal, financial, work history.

  “Later this morning I’ll be at Metro PD watching a video. Anything comes up that might endanger all mankind without my immediate intervention, I’ll have my cell with me.”

  “Try turning it on. Much better reception.”

  “Another thing,” Sheffield said. “We need to put together a team for a force-on-force drill. Five from SWAT.” Frank gave her the names of the four he wanted, including a fifth as an alternate. “See if we can get all five together later this afternoon. I should be back by one. Anytime after that.”

  “Oh, Nicole McIvey called. Seemed to know you.”

  “Called this early?”

  “Said she’s an early riser.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Oh, yeah, we had a nice chat.”

  Frank was quiet, not happy with where this was going. “She’s with the grid police, NIPC. What kind of chat?”

  “Just some girl talk.”

  Marta was in her early sixties. Three grown daughters, seven grandkids, thirty years on the job. More friend than subordinate.

  “Girl talk?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. Being a man and all.”

  “Try five words or less.”

  “Is he seeing anyone?”

  Frank looked out at the parking lot. A building-code inspector had arrived in his white Jeep to check the installation of the new hurricane windows. Juan Medira, a Cuban guy who appreciated Frank’s stubborn refusal to sell out and as a result didn’t bust his balls on the trivial stuff.

  “Well, what’d you say? Am I seeing anyone?”

  “Not for more than a month at a time.”

  “That’s what
you told her?”

  “This is important to you, this Nicole woman?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  “Well, I did tell her you’d be one hell of a catch.”

  Juan was walking over with his clipboard, talking on his cell. He waved at Frank, and Frank gave him an almost-done wave back.

  “Good answer, Marta.”

  “No, it’s not. Moby-Dick would be one hell of a catch. Doesn’t mean anybody’s going to land that big old whale.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You want my opinion of her?”

  “After one phone call?”

  “The lady is muy ambitious.”

  “Everyone we work with is ambitious. I’d be worried if she wasn’t.”

  “I mean muy. Like, I don’t know the right word. She’s nice enough, polite, not pushy or anything, but there’s something about her.”

  “Oh, come on, Marta.”

  “Not pushy, but intense. A lady with a plan. Eyes on a prize.”

  “The prize being me?”

  “My guess is, you’re part of it. That’s for sure. But, hey, I don’t want to get involved in your personal life. Too messy. Unprofessional.”

  “I think we’re a little past that.”

  Over the last few years, they’d grown close. Even helped each other through bouts of cancer. Prostate for him, breast for her. Camping out in the hospital pre-op, post-op, Frank bringing Marta takeout black beans and rice from La Lechonera, her favorite Cuban joint, and badgering her nurses to quit yakking and do their damn jobs. Marta doing the same when he was laid up.

  Juan took a seat at the concrete picnic table, snapped his phone shut, and gazed out at the parade of yummy mommies speed-walking on the shore.

  “And before I forget,” Sheffield said. “We need eyes in the sky, aerial imagery. Call our friend at NSA, see if he’s willing to give us some satellite time. If he refuses, try Miami-Dade PD, see if we can rent one of their drones for a few hours.”

  “They’ve never been very cooperative.”

  “Ask nice.”

  “Can I tell them what we want a peek of?”

  “Prince Key. Small island in southern Biscayne Bay, three, four miles due east of Turkey Point. I want real-time feeds, close-ups, what’s going on down there. How many citizens are walking around, what they’re doing, if they’re armed. If county won’t cooperate, hell, we’ll hire a small plane, do flyovers with telescopic lens. Agent Sanford’s a pilot, right? See if he’s available.”

  “You’re worked up. Haven’t heard you like this lately.”

  Frank raised a finger to Juan—one more second.

  “And we need a boat. Border Patrol, Fish and Wildlife, Park Service, somebody cruising around out there to watch for comings and goings. The kind of boat that would blend in.”

  “I’ll call around.”

  “Last thing. Any updates from our guy? Phone or text?”

  “Your confidential informant?”

  “You heard something?”

  “Not a word.”

  Frank was silent, staring through the palms at the white sands.

  “Wouldn’t he contact you directly, Frank, on your cell?”

  “Yeah, probably he would. I was just double-checking.”

  “But it worries you, him not calling. It’s been four days.”

  “Five,” Frank said. “Going on six.”

  “So why not call him?”

  Frank waved Juan over. “Can’t take the chance. Where he is, his phone rings, it could blow the whole thing all to hell.”

  TWENTY

  AFTER JUAN SIGNED OFF ON the hurricane windows, Sheffield showered, dressed, and drove his old Chevy Impala, his personal car, off the key, took back streets north through Brickell and Little Havana, jumped on the Palmetto Expressway, and went west out to Doral.

  The Midwest District Station of the Miami-Dade Police Department was a hodgepodge of building styles, combining about five clashing architectural ideas into one sprawling complex. Part industrial park, part smoked-glass office tower, with a quirky sculpted concrete wall out front that sported whimsical cutout designs you’d expect at a modern-art museum. Like a committee slapped the place together, half of them believing law enforcement was serious business, the other half trying to attract the latest TV cop show to use the place as a trendy backdrop.

  In the lobby he stopped at a kiosk, bought some heavily buttered Cuban toast and a paper thimble full of ninety-proof espresso, and by the time he was upstairs at Killibrew’s office he’d finished both and was ready to put on his flying cape and soar out the third-story window and explore the heavens.

  But the crocodile video calmed him down.

  Killibrew sat through the first screening, answering Frank’s questions, but adding nothing. Clearly put out to be wasting her time on something she’d already filed away.

  She was a big woman. Fifty pounds overweight. Heavy makeup, lots of lipstick, either angry she had to explain herself to a federal agent, or else born angry. But Sheffield, still coasting on his night in the sack, didn’t let her crabby impatience rile him. He had his pace, his own way of working, polite but taking his sweet time no matter whom it annoyed.

  After the initial viewing, he said, “First thing I’d like to know, why are these two biologists making a video at all? Is this routine? They do it every time they go out, or is this a special occasion?”

  She didn’t know.

  “You didn’t ask Cameron Prince?”

  “Didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “You ask his supervisor?”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant, I still don’t.”

  “Seems odd.”

  “Not to me.” Arms crossed below her breasts, staring over his head. Enduring this.

  “What happened to Levine’s severed arm?”

  Killibrew’s eyes refocused on Frank.

  “The arm Prince carried back to the boat. Levine’s arm.”

  “The arm was lost in transit.”

  “Lost?”

  It was all in the file if he cared to read it. Every last detail, so he could save them both some time if he just read the file.

  “How the hell did the arm get lost?”

  “On the airboat ride back to the biology lab, Prince set the arm down on the deck, and in his haste to return, it bounced overboard. The water was choppy, the airboat was traveling at a high rate of speed.”

  “Why’d he go back to the base? How come he didn’t try to find her? He had a radio, or a phone, right? He could’ve called for help, stayed out there. She could’ve still been alive.”

  “He said he panicked and wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Sheffield asked if her techs examined the deck for traces of blood from the severed arm.

  “By the time we got out to Turkey Point there’d been a downpour. If there’d been blood, it was washed away.”

  “You double-check with the Weather Service about this rain?”

  “I did not.”

  “So Prince tells you there’s a downpour, and you don’t have any other verification of that? You ask anyone else on the scene?”

  “Why would he lie about rain?”

  “You’re a homicide detective. Why do people lie to you?”

  Her frown deepened. “There was no blood.”

  “They luminoled it and found no trace of blood?”

  “It rained.”

  “The question I’m asking, did you or the technicians check?”

  She shut her mouth, twisted her wedding ring around and around on her finger. Sheffield pitied the man who’d picked out that ring.

  “So you didn’t check?”

  “The ID techs saw no sign of blood. It rained. And the airboat was splashed with seawater from the ride back to the docks. Prince ran the video for us, walked us through the event. We questioned him for an hour. He was distraught, found it hard to focus, he was shivering. We returned to the scene, Prince guided us, and we searched for the bod
y, spent all night, all morning, and into the afternoon searching that canal and the ones adjoining it, and we found nothing. There are carnivores in those canals, lots of them. It’s in the report.”

  He and the detective watched the video a second time. When it was done, Killibrew went to powder her nose and Sheffield read the file. Minimal. Three pages long. A dashed-off, half-assed account.

  Clearly she’d made up her mind early on, probably pissed she had to spend so much time on an airboat out in the sun, blowing up her hairdo, mosquitoes biting, Sheffield could only guess. But Killibrew’s first impression was that the death was an accident, and she wrote it up that way, start to finish. Croc versus human. Croc won. Video verification, trustworthy first-person eyewitness report.

  The half dozen photos were of the airboat and the berms alongside the canal where the incident took place. Some broken brush close to the waterline where Prince claimed the croc dragged Levine into the cooling canal. Footprints in the mud, drag marks. Case closed. Twelve hours after the croc attack occurred, Killibrew pulled up stakes and released the scene. Once you release a scene, you never get it back.

  When Killibrew returned, Sheffield was halfway through the video for the third time, at the point where Prince was slogging through the water and lifted up the arm. His face was strained. Maybe he was terrified or in shock. Maybe he had acting skills.

  Sheffield clicked the remote and froze it. The arm.

  “I don’t see any tool marks,” Sheffield said.

  “The image is poor quality.”

  “The wound is so neat it’s like the arm was chopped off with a cleaver, not bit off by a crocodile. You ever seen crocodile teeth? They’re all over the place, snaggly. There’d be tool marks.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What about that rubber bracelet?”

  “What about it?”

  “Camouflage. What does that stand for? Bracelets like that represent causes of one kind or another. Did you check out what camouflage means?”