Yokche:The Nature of Murder

by P. J. Erickson

  The other man stood in sullen silence for a moment then replied. “O’Shaugnessy. Michael O’Shaugnessy.”

  “Call me.” Dominick turned and raced for the elevator.

 

 

  Five

  Chase pulled up outside a grubby looking Quonset hut in the warehouse district in Jupiter. He’d seen the homeless in better-looking shelters, Chase mused as he sauntered toward the door. He pulled up his collar, adjusted his dark glasses and slouched. He took long drags of his cigarette and deliberately kept turning around, looking furtive. From past experience, he knew full well that a camera had tracked him from across the street and he took puckish delight in looking as criminal as possible, totally subverting the abandoned air of the hut and doing a magnificent job of drawing attention to himself. Annie would be pissed, even if no one noticed. He located the minuscule buzzer and cartooned impatience for the camera with his best James Dean broodiness, until he heard the door click and nimbly slipped inside.

  The effect was always the same for Chase. He thought Alice must have felt like this when she fell through the rabbit hole. It was a rabbit hole, wasn’t it? He stood in another century. Expensive antiques mingled with and camouflaged high-tech office equipment. The place reminded him of a nineteenth century study in an English manor house, complete with polished dark wood paneling, real gaslight fixtures and heavy leather chairs. Bookcases ran floor to ceiling with a librarian’s ladder alongside. The only thing missing was a roaring fire. It was a very comfortable and very male room.

  In contrast, the figure behind the massive partner’s desk at the end of the room was very female. She lounged back in her chair, her feet propped up on the desk, red toenails peeping from impossibly high-heeled black sandals. She wore skintight black pedal pushers and a black camisole three sizes too small emblazoned with the words “Rocky slept here” across her somewhat skinny chest. Completing her ensemble were black, fingerless gloves, black leather studded wristbands and a dog collar. Ever the biker chick, Annie hadn’t changed.

  They were old friends. He had helped her out once, years ago, when she was in the wrong company, in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was nothing attractive about Annie, not even her personality. She had had a terrible life and as far as he knew she had no family and fewer friends. She did have a lot of money though, and after one man and one Daytona too many she had disappeared for a while to re-emerge as a well-respected private eye. They had kept in touch over the years. Annie’s business had become her life and she had done very well. She was the best. Even the cops, who wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of private investigators, spoke well of and occasionally even recommended her.

  Annie put her feet down, none too elegantly, and stalked toward him, scrutinizing him with a laser like intensity from head to foot. “Nice performance, Chase.” Seemingly about to read him the riot act, she apparently changed her mind. “You look like hell. Worse than my cat after she got spayed. That must be some hangover. I need your full attention, buddy boy, so don’t pull any grief-stricken brother shit with me. Here, drink this.” She shoved a large, French crystal snifter at him. It was half full of brandy. Unexpectedly, her face softened and she took his arm, drawing him toward the sofa. “You know me, Chase, the queen of hard-hearted bitches, but I loved Sophie too. I’ve already started working and there’ll be no tab for this one.”

  Chase was not taken in by Annie’s tough act. She’d been doing it all her life. “Thanks Annie. I’m grateful for what you’ve done so far, but anything here on out I pay for. Mostly I just need somewhere to start. I’ve been away so long that I don’t know what Sophie’s life was about.”

  Annie knew better than to argue. She became all business. There would be time for catch up later. “Okay, you’re the boss. Here’s what I’ve got. I sweet-talked a copy of the incident report out of the deputy who responded to the call and I also managed to get the autopsy report from the ME’s office. By the way, the dick assigned to Sophie’s case is a total asshole, you’ll get nothing out of him and you can’t go around him either. He’s the sheriff’s son-in-law, a rookie who advanced giant leaps in the ranks in short order. The case is closed as accidental death and that’s the way it stays. You know how the good ol’ boys work.”

  Chase did know. It didn’t matter. This was his job not theirs. Sophie was his sister. “So, was it lightning?”

  “It looks that way but there are a few oddities. Sophie did die of cardiac arrest – are you sure you want to go through this?” Chase nodded.

  Annie watched him guardedly as she continued, keeping all emotion out of her voice. “She took a direct hit. She had superficial burns, cerebral damage, corneal lesions, ruptured ear drums and skull fracture.”

  Chase winced and lowered his head, trying to shut out the image of his sister damaged in this way.

  “She also had these fernlike burns which are caused by vaporized sweat or rainwater.” Annie passed over a picture of Sophie as she was found, not looking at the pain on Chase’s face. The picture showed a head shot of Sophie as she lay on the grass, her long blond hair fanned around her in wild disarray. Her skin pale, with strange feathery burn marks on it, she looked like a beautiful alien from another planet, perhaps a mermaid.

  Chase forced himself to pay attention. “I thought she would be burnt to a crisp, disfigured.”

  Annie shook her head. “I was surprised too, so I did some checking. It seems that most victims of lightning survive. Only a direct strike that causes cardiac arrest usually kills, and most fatalities also suffer blunt trauma, as Sophie did, from the force of the strike. Victims can be thrown quite a distance by the expansion and contraction of air near the strike, or they can suffer blunt trauma through muscular contractions. The lightning hits at a temperature of about eight thousand degrees, but only for a fraction of a second, not long enough to cause deep burns. Luckily her clothes didn’t catch fire or it would have been worse but you can see here, where her necklace melted and burnt her.”

  Annie shot another quick glance at Chase. Chase knew she wasn’t too sure how much of this he could take. He remembered she had once told him he was, at the same time, the toughest and most sensitive guy she had ever met. Apparently decided, she refilled his brandy glass. The shock of this was keeping him sober. No stranger to violence, and usually emotionally controlled, this was the first time it had touched someone he loved.

  Gently Annie touched Chase on the arm. “She didn’t suffer any, Chase. Her heart stopped instantly.” As if angry with herself for her show of sympathy, Annie rummaged around and came up with another photograph, the same shot but taken at a greater distance. “This is weird, you see anything unusual about this?”

  Chase studied the shot for several seconds trying to figure it out. “The grass and shrubbery are dry. There are no branches or storm debris. Chase frowned, perplexed. “But I thought she was found shortly after her death?”

  “She was. I checked with the weather station. There was a violent storm that night. It covered a very small area and didn’t reach the golf course, but the weather people told me that lightning can strike as far as ten miles in front of a storm. The cops bought that theory, of course.” She shrugged eloquently.

  “You’re not buying it? You think she was moved?”

  “I think it’s a definite possibility.” Annie squirmed in her seat. She always did that when she was going to get intense. “Chase, I can’t for the life of me think why anyone would want to kill Sophie. Between you and her husband she lived such a sheltered life her world was like a golden bubble surrounding her, where death, disease and pestilence were incompre¬hensible.”

  “But-”

  “But I knew Sophie almost as well as you did. She wouldn’t have been outdoors in a storm, not ever. She would have been hiding in a closet with Jake, and as far as golfing goes, she hated everything about golf. No. Something stinks here. Every instinct I have screams ‘Wrong’.”

  Chase s
miled at the picture Annie conjured up. Sophie was indeed terrified of thunderstorms and if her passions could be described as running to anything so dark as hate, then yuppies and golfing would be high on the list. Sophie had little time for the ‘me’ generation.

  Chase watched Annie’s rubbery face screw up in concentration as an idea hit her. She was like a terrier with a rat. He could see the wheels turning and knew she would dig in and never let go. That’s why she was the best in her business. Chase was grateful for her help but he didn’t want Annie working on this. He was even glad the police had ruled it accidental. Revenge and justice were his to deal out as he saw fit.

  The phone rang and Chase realized he was taking up Annie’s expensive time and he should be on his way. He stood up. “Keep working on the police end will you Annie?” He gave her a brief hug. “I’ll be in touch, and you know where to find me.” He gave her a wan smile and headed for the door.

  Annie called after him. “Be careful, Chase. I know that Norse impetuosity of yours.” Annie didn’t have to add that she’d also seen those cobalt eyes turn cold and flat as the North Sea and the berserker inside him take over. That capacity had given Chase, a man of medium stature, a fearsome reputation among the world of bikers, and had kept him alive on more than one occasion against much bigger and tougher looking adversaries. In those instances, Chase really did evoke nothing less than the stereotype picture of a Viking in battle. He was a man of many sides.

  The phone was ringing insistently and Chase watched as Annie put on the cloak of her old obnoxious self as she strutted over and picked up the phone. On his way out, Chase exchanged shrugs with Rose, Annie’s secretary, as Annie’s strident tones carried, cussing out some poor unfortunate on the other end of the line.

  It was time to find out what Sophie had been doing with her life. She had been a volunteer at the Marine Rescue Center teaching kids and tourists about turtles. Sophie’s husband had left a small insurance policy enabling her to give up work for a while and do what she wanted. She had written to Chase, bubbling over with enthusiasm about living in sandals and sundresses, working with wildlife and discovering a whole new world of health foods and herbals. The pictures she sent showed a slimmer, tanner, happier Sophie. Indeed she looked like she’d dropped ten years along with her makeup and her shoes.

  One thing he remembered about his baby sister though. Annie was right, she was terrified of thunderstorms. South Florida was about top of the list worldwide for thunderstorm activity and Sophie had been terrified since she was a baby. There was no way in the world she would have been under a tree on a golf course in a thunderstorm and no way she would have been alone. A freak storm may have killed his sister, but somebody abandoned her there. He knew it, just as he knew that can rolling back to his feet was no accident.

  Chase felt a little more alive now. Perhaps some sunshine would be in order, maybe a short run to the turtle center.

  Six

  The park was jammed with people. The center was evidently having some kind of turtle fest. Chase could park only because he had ridden over on the pan. Cars were all over the park, people too. It was hotter than hell with no breeze and tourists crushed in the center's little gift shop were edgy. Part of the beachfront had been closed off and merchants were hawking their wares from little white tents lining each side of the roadway.

  Chase strolled through, reacclimatizing himself from the colorless browns of Jordan to his steamy tropical home. He was horrified at the prices charged by the vendors and realized, looking around, that most of the visitors appeared to be rich snowbirds. The place had changed.

  Chase stopped at the turtle tanks last, searching for a familiar face. One of Sophie's photos had shown her in front of one of the tanks with a coworker. Chase, ever the big brother, thought they had been spending more than working time together.

  Annie had told him the man’s name was Myles Hickman and that he was a brilliant scientist. Well known in environmental circles for his research papers, Myles had married a wealthy socialite and retired from the scientific community. According to Annie, Myles’ wife had given him the privately run turtle center to keep him amused and close at hand.

  It didn't take too long to spot him. Chase watched for a while. Expensively dressed and seemingly contemptuous of the lesser beings around him, Myles stuck out like a water lily in a desert. The man's photograph didn't do him justice. He was about six two, very slim through the hips, but muscular through the shoulders. His build would be deceptive in clothes, Chase thought, the clotheshorse type, almost on the edge of effeminate, but in shorts and T-shirt he displayed an imposing physique. Hickman had a long aquiline nose, pale blue almond shaped eyes and straight, light brown hair, worn longish.

  Chase supposed that all added up to a total package that would be appealing to a lot of women. Judging by the women crowded around him hanging on his every turtle word, the man was a master charmer too. Chase's dislike was instantaneous and his instincts were very rarely wrong (that gift again). He hoped Sophie had had more sense.

  Chase was hot. He rarely wore shorts because of the scars on his leg and he had forgotten to put on his lightweight jeans. He retreated to the shade of a nearby umbrella for a smoke, waiting for a break in the crowd. He didn't have to wait long. He was on his second cigarette when Hickman broke away from his adoring fans, striding purposefully toward him. Irrelevantly, Chase wished he'd brought Jake. Jake would pee on the yuppie-like leg and maybe get his expensive sandals. Chase straightened up and went to meet him. "Myles Hickman, right?"

  "Yes, and you're Chase, Sophie's brother?” Myles made no attempt to shake hands. “I’m so glad you've come. I couldn’t get away from here for the service and Sophie told me so much about you. What a terrible tragedy. Sophie was so vibrant, so full of life. We all miss her here at the center."

  The voice was as superficially attractive as the man, the words flowing easily like warm silk, though they grated on Chase. The man could have been discussing lunch instead of the sudden loss of someone close to him. Was this all this clotheshorse could say?

  Chase was starting to get hostile. This asshole hadn't even bothered to go the memorial service. Chase knew that he was starting to exaggerate his biker image in the middle of this tourist crowd and he couldn’t afford to alienate this man until he knew more about what was going on. He made a conscious effort to relax his attitude. "Thanks. It's been rough. I was hoping you could tell me a little more than the police did, which wasn't much."

  Myles was busy watching the crowd. Evidently he was not impressed with Chase and didn’t wish to waste any further time with him. “I'm afraid not. Sophie and I occasionally had lunch or dinner together but I was out of town the weekend she died. The police questioned me, of course, but I hadn't seen or spoken to Sophie since Thursday afternoon. I'm afraid I really don't know much at all about how she spent her own time." Myles followed this last statement with a patronizing smile and deprecating gesture of his hands as if everyone else was dirty and he didn’t want to get sullied by admitting his knowledge of their goings on.

  Chase wanted to punch him. Instead he blew smoke in his face. "Sophie didn't like storms, they terrified her. She would not have been in one alone. Especially that one. I understand it was a doozy. Folks tell me there’s been unusually heavy weather this season.”

  Surprisingly, Myles ignored the smoke. “Yes. We’ve had more than our share of hurricanes this year and a lot of flooding, and you’re right, she wouldn’t have been out or alone in that weather, but I’m afraid I don’t know any of her friends outside of the center and from what she told me, you were her only relative.” Myles looked directly at Chase for the first time. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  Like hell, Chase thought. He hoped Sophie had had better taste than to fall for this one. Chase thought fleetingly that Myles Hickman would fit the profile of a lot of serial killers. You could see dark things behind this man’s eyes. Yes, a latent sociopath would not be a great
surprise.

  Chase ground out his cigarette underfoot, much to Myle’s obvious annoyance, and pulled out his wallet. “Well, if you think of anything, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.” Chase wrote down his phone number on an unwanted business card and handed it to Myles who excused himself to get back to work. Chase watched him go, knowing that he would need more information before he could confront Myles with anything at all.

  Chase was at a loss. There didn’t seem to be any other workers around who were not young teenagers. He was mortified that he knew so little of his sister’s life that he could think of nowhere else to go for information. The happy, noisy atmosphere around him turned instantly depressing and Chase hurried back to the bike.

  He’d passed a place down the road called Florida Jack’s. He’d ride down there for a beer. That ought to take care of the remnants of his hangover and he’d had enough of the tourists for a while.

  Seven

  On the outside deck of Florida Jack’s, more tourists were stuffing on burgers and fries while they roasted their own pink skins in the glare of the sun, but inside the bar was dark and quiet, the beer cold, the people friendly. They were obviously regulars. On an impulse Chase pulled out a photo of Sophie and showed it to the bartender who was not surprised. He told Chase a lot of people went missing in South Florida and in the bartending business it was depressingly often he was asked to look at photos, mostly by frantic relatives, occasionally by the cops.

  “Yes,” the bartender said, “she came in quite often. Worked at the turtle center. Usually came in with one of her coworkers.”

  “You mean Myles Hickman?”

  “Yeah, but once in a while she had a different fella with her, Indian looking type.”

  Chase took a sip of his beer. “What, you mean Indian from India?”

  “No. Native American. Maybe a local. I don’t know. Even when we were busy they were noticed. They made a striking couple. He was big for an Indian and she was a looker. Run out on you did she?”