Midnight Guardians

by Jonathon King

  Billy folded the phone and looked out at the tree line, thinking.

  “The dog?” I said.

  “Did you m-miss that gang of flies buzzing the corner of the fence line? That’s unlike you,” Billy said.

  I shrugged, and looked stupidly back toward the fire scene, even though it was impossible to see it from here.

  “Can you imagine that p-pit bull letting someone crawl in and uncouple a gas line and set a fuse or light a candle or whatever under that trailer w-without taking a bite out of said someone?”

  “No,” I said, remembering the eyes of the beast. “No, I can’t.”

  — 18 —

  I DON’T DO sympathy well. I know this.

  As a cop, I was useless at consolation when family would arrive at a shooting scene. I could not watch relatives wail at fatal accident scenes. “I’m sorry for your loss” seems rudely inadequate in the face of death.

  I know I made improvements in this lack of empathy after Sherry’s surgery when I spent hours at her bedside, mostly just watching her sleep, watching helplessly as every twitch and mild groan worked at my insides. I was at fault for her pain, and helpless.

  I was sure she saw through my reassuring smiles when she awakened. My inane, happy talk ramblings sounded insincere even to my own ears. My kisses hello and good-bye seemed dry and perfunctory. One day when her strength was up, Sherry finally told me to get lost. She said she’d call me when they released her to go home. But I was in the bedside chair the next morning when she awoke.

  “I am sorry for your loss,” I said to Luz Carmen as I stood uncomfortably before her in the living room of Billy’s seaside hideaway in Deerfield Beach. She did not look up. One of her woman friends, whom Billy had brought to comfort her, had an arm around Carmen’s shoulders, and looked up into my eyes as she subtly shook her head.

  I went back outside and stared at the breaking waves on the ocean, silently thanking this woman for my dismissal.

  At the fire scene, Billy said he would wait for his man to come and collect the remains of the pit bull. He also wanted to get on his cell to badger the federal authorities to take steps to protect Luz Carmen as a criminal enterprise whistle-blower.

  In the meantime, he dispatched me to his seaside getaway to watch over her. Early this morning, Billy had convinced Luz Carmen to avoid the fire scene until authorities determined when she could see her brother’s body. After witnessing the molten ash of the trailer, I doubted that event was ever going to take place. There would not be much left of Andrés Carmen, and certainly there could be no comfort in viewing his charred remains.

  For the entire drive from the fire, I’d been rolling the facts of what we knew around in my head, grinding away at what didn’t fit, the coincidences that left gouges in any known pattern. I sat down on a retaining wall just outside the villa, put my feet on the beach sand, and watched nature do the same thing, the in and out of the tide smoothing each piece of shell, coral, and stone down to a grain.

  Like a good investigator, Billy had put himself inside the head of the killer, if there indeed was a killer. While I was foolishly tossing around thoughts of how a group of gangbangers would throw a Molotov cocktail into the trailer, he was thinking how a quiet assassin would sneak onto the lot, crack the gas line, and then set some sort of fuse that would grant him clear distance before the place exploded. In that scenario, the guy would have had to get past the dog. How did he silence the beast?

  While I chastised myself, I sensed movement behind me and turned to see Luz Carmen’s friend slip out the door of the villa. She approached me across the patio. “Perdóname,” she said, then caught herself and reworked her statement in broken English.

  “Ms. Luz should try to eat, sir. It is no good to lose strength.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. The friend was older than Carmen and had a more distinctly Latin look. She was small, her hair was shot with gray, and her hands were those of a workwoman, coarse and wrinkled.

  “There is a restaurant called the Bru’s Room down the way,” I said, fishing my car keys and some twenties out of my wallet. “Ask for Patti and tell her it is for Mr. Freeman. She knows me. Get whatever you think is best.”

  The woman took the money, looking hesitant, but repeating the name of both the restaurant and Patti.

  “I would go myself,” I said, feeling a need to explain. “But I can’t leave Ms. Carmen again.”

  The woman nodded and moved off, again repeating the restaurant name and that of the bartender I knew there. After she’d gone, I pulled a patio chair closer to the door of the bungalow. Within a few minutes, Billy called me on the cell phone.

  “Are you with Luz Carmen?” he said without any preamble, unusual for the almost painfully well-mannered Billy.

  “Yeah, she’s right here. Her friend went for lunch,” I said, matching his curtness. “What’d you find out?”

  “The dog was shot, Max, once in the head with a 147-grain round. My man who did the necropsy says the shooter put the muzzle of the gun right up to the animal’s head and fired.”

  The cop at the fire scene hadn’t said anything about neighbors hearing a gunshot in the night, or anything other than the explosion that rocked them out of their beds.

  “Silencer?” I said, thinking out loud.

  “No way to know for sure,” Billy said. “He’s a veterinarian, not a ballistics guy. It was lucky he had a scale to weigh the slug.”

  “It still ought to put the accidental fire theory on the shelf,” I said.

  “Someone came after Andrés and tried to make it look like an accident. Whoever it was didn’t know about the dog. It surprised him at some point, and he had to kill it so he could set the fire.”

  “However it happened, it makes me even more concerned for Luz’s safety,” Billy said, showing a bit more emotion now. “The fed’s bureaucratic response is going to be slow, Max.”

  “I’ll take her out to the shack. We should have done that to begin with,” I said, thinking of the brother. The only saving grace was that it a gas flash fire. They may have died quickly, maybe without ever awakening from their sleep. It was something, but not much.

  “It’s not going to be a request this time,” I said. “I’m heading for the Glades now, Billy.”

  “Let me know when you get settled. I’m taking the Carmen’s cause to a higher authority,” Billy said. “Maybe I can get some judicial pressure going.”

  “Good luck,” I said, and punched off the cell.

  I knocked lightly at the door of the bungalow and opened the door. Luz Carmen was on the couch, curled up like a child, her face in a pillow, her knees folded up, her feet tucked under her.

  “Ms. Carmen, when your friend gets back, we’re going to have to move again,” I said, trying to keep my tone even, no urgency, but still strong enough for her to know there was no choice. “We’re going to a place where you’ll be safe. I’ll take you by your home to collect some things.”

  The woman did not move and it scared me at first. I took a step closer.

  “Ms. Carmen. Did you hear me?”

  This time, I could see her dark head move slightly, nodding in assent.

  “You’ll be OK,” I said. “Mr. Manchester will make sure you’ll be safe.”

  “It does not matter,” she said, her voice muffled and scratchy from pain and from crying, but level in its acceptance. “I have killed my own brother.”

  I took two more steps across the small tiled floor and sat only on the edge of the couch. I had no intention of touching her or trying to console. Hell, I wasn’t even sure of my motivation. She had to know I was there, but did not move.

  “Every one of us is responsible for our own actions,” I said out into the empty room. I didn’t tack her name onto the end of the statement. Maybe I wasn’t speaking only to her; maybe she wasn’t the only one who needed to hear the words out loud. “Your brother made his choices; you couldn’t be his keeper forever.”

  Piety usually brings sil
ence, and this was no exception. The room was still quiet when the door opened and Carmen’s friend came in hold ing a large plastic bag. Her eyes went from me to Carmen, a quick assessment, and then back.

  “Is she good?”

  I only nodded and stood.

  “Try to get her to eat, and then we’ll have to go.”

  The woman looked confused.

  “It’s not safe here. I’m taking her somewhere else. She and I will go in my car. You stay here for a few minutes after we leave, and then go home,” I said. “Did you notice anyone outside, anyone who looked suspicious? Someone watching you? Someone by my car?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “No,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “A black man, walking,” she said. “He was alone. Another man, old, with a dog.”

  I could tell I was scaring her into seeing danger in everyone.

  “It’s OK. Eat,” I said, standing and crossing to the door. “I’ll be right out here.”

  I figured I’d give them half an hour. It was already 1:00 P.M., and if we were going to get to Luz Carmen’s house so she could pack a few things, and then get out to the boat ramp at the park on my river, we’d be losing light fast. I didn’t mind canoeing out to the shack in the dark, but I didn’t want to freak out Carmen. The darkness and secluded wildness of the place can do that to the most adventurous soul, and I didn’t think the woman’s head was anywhere near that state.

  Maybe she was still in shock over the loss of her brother. Maybe she was internalizing her remorse over bringing him into her decision to blow the whistle on the Medicare scam. But if I could quietly reassure her that I could keep her safe until the ring was broken, or until the feds took over by giving her protection, I’d be ahead of the game.

  To that end, I decided not to tell her about Billy’s and my theory that the person who killed her brother was not part of the gangbanger crew who fired at us to scare her off, or the ones who tried to kill Andrés on the road. We weren’t giving up on a connection; there were too many coincidences. But a guy who does a drive-by or a high-speed chase doesn’t go to the trouble of using a silenced kill shot on a dog, and then jury-rig a gas explosion to look like an accident. We were dealing with two completely different styles. I was more wary of the sneaky one, the planner. It was always harder to see his kind coming.

  As I walked down the slate stone path to check out the parking lot hard on A1A, I kept the front of the bungalow in sight. On the street, a middle-aged woman jogged by. A tight group of bicyclists, all dressed in the same colors, went whizzing by. A family with a mom wearing a big straw hat and the kids wielding sand pails, were unloading from the van next to my Gran Fury. The father was lugging the beach chairs and the coolers—way too domestically harassed to be an assassin.

  When I went back to the bungalow, the door came open a crack as I walked up.

  “OK, she is ready,” Carmen’s friend said.

  “Did she eat?”

  “A little. I put the rest in the bag for you.”

  Luz was standing with her head down, as if she were only moving at the direction of her friend, with no motivation or decision-making power of her own. Draped over her head was a shawl I had not seen before, which gave her the appearance of a villager or bag lady, the opposite of the confident, order-giving semi-professional I’d met a few days ago.

  “OK,” I said, handing the friend another couple of twenties. “Wait at least fifteen minutes after we go, and then take a cab home. I don’t want you to be seen with us. You’re out of it, ma’am. Thank you for helping.”

  The woman still seemed a bit mystified as I took Luz by the elbow and led her down the path. It would have been a long shot for someone to find this place. But even if someone was watching us, looking for an opportunity, I hoped their focus would be on my car, not on the bungalow.

  At the Gran Fury, I guided Luz into the passenger seat and put the package of food in the back, the odor of black beans and rice and homemade meat loaf rising out of the bag. Patti had done them right, giving the woman the best comfort food in the place. I was starving, but I could wait.

  I checked again for anyone unusual in the area, and then backed out into traffic and checked the rearview. I was confident I could pick up a trail if there was one. But just in case, while I had the opportunity, I timed the lights and burned the green ones deep yellow before punching it through the intersection. I got a few appropriate horns, but no one followed us. I had to believe that the shack would be the safest place on Earth.

  — 19 —

  AT HER HOUSE, it took Luz Carmen twenty minutes to pack. As dazed as she was, she probably would have taken more if she’d been her typical, businesslike, responsible self. But where we were going did not require the right clothes, the right toiletries, or any makeup whatsoever. I told her to bring three days’ worth and to put everything in one fabric bag, waterproof if possible.

  When I said it, she didn’t even look twice at me. A woman in any other circumstance would have called the cops. She hadn’t said a word during the drive, her eyes hooded and looking out the passenger-side window; what she was actually seeing was not mine to know.

  While she packed, I searched the inside of the townhouse. When we’d first arrived, I made her stay in the car while I scoured the outside, inspecting the door locks both front and back, the windows to make sure they were secure, and the fuse box and power cables to make sure they hadn’t been tampered with. Still I made her give me the key and I entered first, searched each room, and checked the stove, which fortunately was electric. Only then, did I allow her to come into her own home.

  While Luz was packing, I called Sherry on my cell.

  “It was them, right?” she said when she picked up.

  “Yeah, like I figured—the son, his girlfriend, and her boy.”

  Sherry let the silence fill the earpiece for a few seconds. She was a career cop, too; three dead, she’d been there before.

  “What about the sister? Is she with anyone?”

  “Me,” I said. “I’m taking her to the shack where she’ll be safe.”

  Until the words were out of my mouth, I didn’t think about how that would sound to Sherry. The last time she’d been to the shack, she’d ended up losing her leg.

  I told her about the fire, how the investigators were leaning toward an accidental gas explosion; but that Billy had called in one of his connections, who discovered that the family pit bull had been killed with a shot to the head before the fire.

  “So is Palm Beach putting their homicide people on it?” she said.

  “They probably are now. And we may all be getting a bit paranoid, but Billy didn’t think his place in Deerfield was safe enough for Luz. I’m taking her to the shack until he can convince the feds to get a whistle-blower protection clearance for her.”

  “So you’re going to stay there until that’s done,” Sherry said.

  “Yeah, I’ll stop on the way to the river and get enough supplies for a couple of days and see how it goes. The woman’s pretty messed up, but she’s not freaking out or anything.”

  “Does she have family? Do they know what’s happened?”

  “Her friend said she and the brother left all their family in Bolivia and Carmen rarely talked about them. She’s got a cell phone with her. I’m trying not to push her,” I said, realizing that Sherry was thinking all of the personal things you do after a death in the family that I’d just glossed over in a rush to keep the woman safe.

  “She’s going to need help, Max. Counseling help,” Sherry said. “You know that, right?”

  There it was again, the stubborn one who couldn’t see herself in the mirror.

  “Yeah, I know. If the feds get her into a safe house someplace, maybe they can set that up, but right now I…” Right now I didn’t know what the hell to do other than what we were doing.

  “Well, that might not be long,” Sherry said. The lead-in was obvious in the tone of her voice.


  “Why? What’s happening?” I said.

  “The sheriff wasn’t as slow on the uptake as we figured he’d be on that warehouse, Max,” she said. “They put a team together and raided the place this morning, thinking they’d find the computer boys hard at work.”

  “And?”

  “The bad guys were ahead of us. When the team blew into the place, it had already been cleared out. There was a loading dock out the backside, and they must have trucked everything away in the middle of the night. There were a few computer cables, some empty boxes of printout paper, some generic office supplies, and a few empty desks.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “But there was enough left behind to convince our guys to start a bigger pursuit. There’s plenty on the record of other operations in Dade and Palm Beach Counties, so they’re going to compare notes and do some interagency sharing. If they get a task force together, you know they’re going to want to talk to your friend Ms. Carmen.”

  Good news—very good news. But I could tell from Sherry’s voice that there was more. Sometimes when she’s in an investigative mode, she holds back when she’s sharing her work with me, like a storyteller who is saving the punch line.

  “What else?” I said, doing my part as audience.

  “Well, maybe the guys clearing out the warehouse were only interested in the medical fraud and didn’t give a shit about the drugs, but they were sloppy,” Sherry said. “No one left drugs, but they did leave behind the boxes that Andrés described to you.”

  We’d done this a lot in the old days, before the accident, try to outguess each other on investigations others were running—speculating on what they would find, or how they should have worked their cases. It was classic one-upmanship. It was a bit of a game for us, one I realized I’d been missing for the last several months.

  “Ahhh, OK,” I said, thinking. “Packaging, right?”

  “Serial numbers, you big dope,” she said. “Lot numbers for the drugs. The task force might be able to use them to track where the drugs came from: the hospitals, pharmacies, doctors’ offices that originally purchased them.”