Lowe, Tom - Sean O'Brien 08

by A Murder of Crows

  O’Brien drove the speed limit. He was in no mood to be pulled over by the highway patrol and asked to explain why the window in the back of his Jeep was shot out.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  The unexpected stop, the murder attempt on his own life, had taken more than a half hour out of O’Brien’s drive back to Ponce Marina. He pulled into the lot at 12:37 a.m. He parked under the brightest streetlamp and locked his Jeep, shoving his Glock under his open shirt. O’Brien looked at the far entrance to the lot, glancing down at his shattered back window. He turned and walked toward the Tiki Bar en route to L dock.

  More than a dozen customers were still in the bar. A bearded singer, wearing shorts, T-shirt and white Panama hat, sat on a stool in the far left corner, strumming a guitar and crooning songs somewhere in the neighborhood of Margaritaville. O’Brien walked across the beer-stained, wooden floor toward the double screened doors leading three steps down to the docks. A retired charter boat captain, white whiskers growing around a pink scar on his left cheek, sat on the closest stool to the exit and nodded at O’Brien. “Hey, Sean, just in time for last call. It’s on me, bubba.”

  “Thanks, Capt’n Al, but I’ve got a long drive at the crack of dawn. I’ll catch you next time.”

  “Man, you say that ever’ time.”

  O’Brien smiled. “That’s because you’re usually sitting here on that stool, your stool, most of the time.”

  He grinned, a lower tooth missing “That’s the damn truth. But you know what, I’ve earned it. More than six thousand charters, a dozen treatments for skin cancer. And now I’m like the fella in the Otis Redding song.” Captain Al leaned back on the barstool and started singing, “Sittin’ on the dock of the baaaay … watching the tide ride roll awaaay…” He chuckled and sipped his Budweiser, his pale eyes now distant, locked on a memory.

  O’Brien pushed open the screen doors and walked across the main pier to L dock. He was looking forward to a hot shower before crawling into Jupiter’s master berth. As he approached Dave’s boat, Gibraltar, he could hear Nick talking from the cockpit. O’Brien walked down the auxiliary dock to the stern.

  Max saw him first. She was curled in a canvas director’s chair. She flew off the chair, barking twice and turning around in a complete circle when O’Brien boarded.

  Nick grinned, pushing back his Greek fisherman’s cap. “That’s her happy dance. Just when I think Hot Dawg is my little lover, she sees you and her heart goes KAPOW! Sean, with all due respect, you can’t be more charming than ol’ Nicky. But Maxie’s only got hound dog eyes for you.”

  O’Brien smiled. “She’s small, but she has a big heart. More than enough affection for all of us and everyone on L dock.”

  Nick’s mustache dropped with a quick frown. “We can’t include the ol’ retired fart from the Coast Guard in slip L-seven. He called the Marine Patrol because he thought I was hiding cocaine in my crab traps.”

  Dave sipped vodka over ice. “Welcome back to the neighborhood, Sean. You look like you’ve had better nights. How’d you get blood on the back of your shirt?”

  “It happened when they shot out the rear window on my Jeep.”

  Nick leaned forward in his deck chair. “Who shot out your window?”

  “Don’t know for sure. I suspect it was a couple of hit men attached to the mob.”

  “Hit men? The mob?” Nick looked down the dock, his eyes searching shadows, the moored boats gently swaying in the incoming tide, the breeze causing a sailboat halyard to clink against the mast. “You think they followed you here?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Nick grinned. “You outran them? And you drive a Jeep.”

  “No. I outgunned them.”

  Nick leaned back in his deck chair. “Gunned? Oh, shit.”

  Dave stood and poured a Belvedere over ice and handed the glass to O’Brien. “Looks like you could use a drink. What happened?”

  O’Brien sat, Max jumping into his lap. He told them what had happened the last few days and how that led to O’Brien crashing the dinner Dino Scarpa set up with Charlie Tiger. “So I poked the bear and got a reaction out of Scarpa. He sent his posse. Joe Billie knows that his brother-in-law, Charlie Tiger, is in bed with the mob. There’s some sort of quid pro quo going on, and I think Joe knows why. What he might not know is some of the mob family members would take out their own mothers for a piece of the casino gambling profits.

  Nick took off his Greek fisherman’s cap, setting it on the table, his face flushed. “Man, what a damn mess. Well, maybe you took out at least one of ‘em.”

  Dave folded his arms. “They’re like cockroaches. You can never exterminate them all. It’s a bad seed that’s genetically handed down in the loins and dark hearts of these lowlifes.”

  “It’s one thing to kill in self-defense, but these guys who murder for a living—to put food on the table, they got to be some cold dudes.”

  Dave said, “They’re often your reclusive neighborhood psychopaths. They’re on call. When things get a little messy for the mafia, the assassins are dispatched. The prerequisites include absolute ruthlessness, aggression, an underlying anger never hurts, and they all have an icy sense of utter emotional detachment.”

  Nick cut his eyes across the table to O’Brien. “You tracked those dudes. Looks like they tracked you from the restaurant. If you took one of ‘em out, the others have to be mad as hornets. What if they come back … come to the marina tonight?”

  “Then I’ll have to deal with it.”

  “Sean, don’t take this the wrong way … but do you want Max to stay on my boat tonight?”

  EIGHTY

  O’Brien felt his phone vibrate. He took it out of his pocket and read a text from Wynona. Did you arrive back at your boat okay? Please let me know, and then I can go to sleep. O’Brien glanced up at Dave and Nick. “Got a text from the contact in the PD on the Seminole reservation. We’re working together trying to get Joe Billie out of jail.”

  Dave nodded. “Looks like he or she’s burning the midnight oil. Would this be Wynona Osceola?”

  “Yes, and she’s good at what she does.”

  Nick grinned, roguish. “So, what does she do?”

  “She’s a detective with the reservation’s police department. Before that, she worked as a special agent for the FBI.”

  Dave looked up from stirring his drink. “Why go from a federal agent to a detective on an Indian reservation? Seems like stepping back in her career.”

  “It’s her home. It’s a place she wanted to come back to after one too many crime scenes that tend to pile up on the soul.” O’Brien returned the text: I’m home. Hope you get some rest. Talk to you tomorrow.

  Dave sipped his drink. “According to the background check I ran for Sean, she’s related to the famous Seminole warrior, Osceola.”

  Nick made a soft whistle. “Sean, I was gonna ask you if she had a cute sister, but on second thought, maybe not. I’m not into warrior women.”

  “She understands conflict because her job put her in the center of some brutal situations. Circumstances that even the academy training can’t really prepare you for.”

  Nick leaned forward, eyebrows arching “What’s that?”

  “A father butchering his daughter.”

  Dave shook his head. “Wynona was a field agent with the FBI when it went down.”

  “What happened?” Nick asked.

  O’Brien gave him a brief rundown. “Soon after it happened, her field agent partner was shot—a vendetta killing. Wynona feels guilty that her colleague was later murdered. I think she wonders if she’s next. So, after being offered a reassignment within the Bureau, she declined and went back home.”

  Nick grunted. “Sounds like some form of PTSD to me.”

  “Everyone has a breaking point. Wynona might have reached hers when this went down. She’s strong willed, tenacious, smart. She’s a woman who’s comfortable in her own skin, but fallible, like anyone.”

  Dave laced his fingers over h
is stomach. “I sense that you’re attracted to her.”

  “I think the beauty of her beauty ... is that she’s not aware of it. There’s no pretense. Her courage and sense of justice give her a humble allure, too. But there’s something going on inside her head. One moment she can hold the universe together with her smile … and the next second there’s a clash of Titans battling in her spirit or maybe for her spirit.”

  Dave chuckled. “We’re all mere mortals. Even a highly trained FBI agent can, as you surmised, reach his or her limits. Cumulative stress weakens the pillars of the spirit. Perhaps that was the case when she’d unloaded those rounds on the perp. Now that she’s back home on the reservation—between a possible vendetta from radical jihadists to the presence of the good old American mafia, she may have gone from the pan to the fire.”

  O’Brien rubbed Max’s small shoulders. “Wynona’s courage, I think, is fueled in part by being fearful. She knows how to prioritize. But the bodies keep piling up. And she may be dealing with a weak link within the police department.”

  “Has the mob extended its influence there?” Dave asked.

  “Possibly. Dino Scarpa has been given the biggest challenge of his criminal career. It’s one that, if he can pull it off, might result in tens of millions for the family annually. The mob would kill—and are killing in their attempt to gain traction in the Seminole’s gambling empire. And at least one person, Joe Billie, knows something that could very much jeopardize the efforts of the mob family to gain a footing into the tribe’s action.”

  Nick’s thick eyebrows arched, he lifted his shoulders. “What the hell does Joe know that is keepin’ him in the slammer and keepin’ his mouth shut, too?”

  “Maybe tomorrow he’ll tell me.”

  Dave looked over his bifocals at O’Brien. “What’s changed? If he’s known all along, what would make him tell you tomorrow?”

  “Because I believe I know something about his niece Kimi that will help Joe understand he has options.”

  “What about her?” Nick asked

  “I think she was sexually abused. There’s no police record, and she won’t confirm it, but all of the signs are there for that teenage girl. I believe at least one of the missing men on the reservation is responsible. I’m coming to the conclusion that someone had both of them killed ... and Joe knows who it is.”

  Nick leaned back and made a quick whistle. “And, somehow, you think all of that resulted in the guy gettin’ killed and scalped out there in the boonies?”

  O’Brien nodded. “Yes.”

  Dave looked across the marina, watching the Ponce Lighthouse in the distance above the treetops, the breeze carrying the scent of mangroves and a rising tide. He turned to O’Brien. “You’ve given us a rundown of the dynamics—the peculiar relationships between Charlie Tiger, Joe Billie, Tiger’s family and his willingness to fraternize with known members of the mafia. So what does Charlie Tiger want? He probably makes enough money, so more of it would seem less of a factor. Does he want vengeance for his daughter’s assumed, but unconfirmed, abuse? The mob is all about vengeance and dominance … or is there something else? It looks to me like Joe’s protecting his niece from something going public. What would be so private, so personal that he’d want to keep it buried?”

  O’Brien said, “I think, somewhere in the beginning of this thing, Joe tried to report something. But in went nowhere, resulted in Lawrence Barton’s death and Kimi Tiger’s further regression into a self-imposed seclusion.”

  Nick drained his beer. “Joe seems like the kinda guy who wouldn’t take a lot of crap from anybody. Maybe he’ll change his tune and end the silence-is-golden position, be a cool uncle, and let the chips fall where they will. You think he’s gonna make bond?”

  “Because of all the publicity around the case, bond will probably be so high it’ll be difficult to make.”

  Nick shrugged. “The Seminoles seem to be makin’ lots of dough. They’re good for the bond.”

  “They’ve made the offer. We’ll see if Joe takes it.”

  Dave said, “Let’s hope he buries his pride and accepts some help. I think he’s at great physical risk being held in county jail.”

  “I do too. I’ll see him tomorrow and his hearing is in a couple of days. After I speak with Joe, I’m heading back to the Hawkins’ ranch where they found Barton’s body.”

  Nick reached across the table to feed an oyster cracker to Max. “Why go back there? Thought you been there and done that.”

  “Joe told me he’d spotted a trail camera—a hunter’s camera attached to a tree not too far from the old mound. It’s a long shot, but maybe there’s something on it.”

  Dave squeezed a slice of ripe lime into his drink. “You think you can find it in those woods?”

  “Joe gave me detailed directions. Maybe the camera will tell me what he hasn’t.”

  EIGHTY-ONE

  The fly bridge on Jupiter was a good place to spot intruders. O’Brien thought about that as he and Max stepped onto Jupiter’s cockpit, the time approaching 2:00 a.m., the marina quiet. Nick and Dave probably asleep. Nick had knocked back a shot of tequila on Gibraltar, hummed a tune from Zorba the Greek, and shuffled back to St. Michael. Dave almost nodded off at the table before catching himself and calling it a night. O’Brien’s body was tired, but his mind raced.

  He stood in Jupiter’s cockpit, looking down the long pier toward the marina office and the Tiki Bar. Clouds drifted through the moonlight causing shadows to crawl across the boats and the dock. The bowlines on Jupiter tightened, the boat gently swaying in a rising tide, an occasional creak coming from the rubber bumper guards trapped between the bow and the dock. O’Brien checked the innocuous hidden silent alarms he’d set around Jupiter, tiny security measures that would indicate whether someone had entered the boat while he’d been away. Everything looked the way he’d left it.

  He unlocked the salon doors and went inside, Max following. O’Brien surveyed the salon, galley, head and berths—looking for anything out of place. Max shadowing him, sniffing the nooks and crannies of Jupiter. O’Brien removed a 12-guage pump shotgun from the master berth’s closet, loaded shells into the chamber and turned to Max. “You want to sleep topside tonight?”

  She snorted and cocked her head, trotting off.

  “Wait for me. You still have a challenge climbing up to the bridge.”

  Back on the transom, O’Brien lifted Max with one hand, carrying the shotgun with the other, climbing the steps to the fly bridge. He set her on the passenger bench near the captain’s chair and then looked back toward the entrance to L dock and the Tiki Bar almost one hundred yards away. A breeze came across the marina from the ocean, the salty air just beginning to cool. Toward the mangroves near the river, he heard a shrill call from a night heron.

  There was no sign of human movement. The tide had crested, most of the boats motionless in their slips. He listened for noise, car engines in the parking lot. He could hear the distant roll of breakers against the beach, the sound like the echo of surf forever trapped in spires and canals of a conch seashell. He watched the beam from Ponce Lighthouse sweeping high over the sand dunes and across the face of the dark Atlantic.

  O’Brien removed his Glock and sat down on the bench, Max curling up next to him. He rubbed her head. “Sleepy, kiddo?” She closed her eyes. He leaned back, propping his feet on the captain’s chair, his mind replaying the events of the last week. He thought about Joe locked in the cell—the dead body in the glades—the boots—Kimi Tiger’s wounded eyes. The arrogant look on Dino Scarpa’s face when he’d challenged him. “You couldn’t bet the hand or control the game, so you had him set up for a very nasty fall.”

  “Prove it.”

  O’Brien stared across the marina and mumbled, “I will, Dino. I will.” He closed his eyes, allowing his thoughts to drift, disjointed. Somewhere on the cusp of his subconscious, O’Brien watched the crow leap from the top of the ancient cypress tree near Sam Otter’s property. The crow f
lew though bursts of lightning, dark clouds all around, thunder booming—the bird’s eyes blood red. The crow soared through a cloud and came out the other side as a winged creature with the appearance of a mythological griffin—the face of a bird and the body of a lion with wings.

  And then there was a bright flash from the ground.

  From high above the earth, O’Brien felt as if he was shot. Falling fast. The ground spiraling up to meet him. Wind rushing by. He tried stretching his wings, flying. He was paralyzed. Unable to stop the fall. Powerless to catch a draft and soar. The closer he came to earth, the more he could make out a hunter. A man standing. Holding a shotgun in both hands. Staring up, expecting his prey to fall near him. He could make out a second man sitting on a red 4-wheel ATV, the man wearing a helmet.

  There was a hard impact and the world faded to black.

  O’Brien heard Max sniffing, the excited whine of a dog’s discovery in the field. He saw the dead crow in the grass near the old mound. He stared into the open and flat eyes of the lifeless crow and saw the unbroken eyes of the teddy bear peering out from under the charred logs and ashes. O’Brien knelt down, scraping the debris off the bear’s face, the ashes changing to tears on a girl’s face.

  He saw Joe Billie using his thumb to wipe a tear off the cheek of Kimi Tiger, the soft cries, the rapid sound of a heartbeat, like waves thrashing against a hidden beach beyond sand dunes. Then there was the distant white noise of life gone from the depth of the stranded conch shell on the seashore, the animal that once lived there long dead. The hollow shell remaining, the songs of the ocean—gulls shrieking, surf breaking, blending into a steady whisper of wind and sea, the withered remains of the marooned conch tumbling like flotsam on a deserted shore.

  O’Brien saw a freckle-faced girl walking with her mother on the sand, splashing in the shallow breakers, pointing to a seashell beached on a section of shore beyond the fingers of a high tide. The girl ran to the shell, lifting it with both hands, holding the shell to her ear, looking up at her mother, the child smiling a toothy grin.