by P J Parrish
He trotted on, dodging the luggage carts and the women pushing strollers. Alitalia. KLM. Martinair. Copa. Edelweiss Air.
He caught a glimpse of a clock as he ran past the El Al counter. It was nine-fifty-five.
Aeromar. Copa. TACA. Cayman Airways. Mexicana.
Damn it! Where the hell was Qantas?
He spotted a guy wearing a badge on a string around his neck and ran to him.
“Which way to the Qantas counter?” Louis asked.
The man just stared at him.
“Qantas! Where is it?” Louis demanded.
The man muttered something in Spanish and walked away.
Louis looked around. The human river eddied around him and there wasn’t an official-looking person in sight. Then he spotted another guy in what looked like a porter’s vest. He was running some weird giant turntable that spun Saran Wrap cocoons around luggage.
“Hey,” Louis said, raising his voice. “Where's Qantas, man?”
The sweating man did not look up as he jerked a giant piece of Samsonite onto the turntable. He pointed left.
Louis had raced right by the Qantas counter. He ran up to it, pulling out the photo of Benjamin. There was one agent, an older woman tapping away at her computer.
“Excuse me,” Louis said.
“One moment, young man.”
He slapped the photo of Benjamin down on the counter. “This boy might have been abducted. I need to know if he is on one of your flights.”
She looked up. “Abducted?”
“He was with a man, a black man about six foot. His name is Austin Outlaw. He has a ticket for your flight to Sydney tonight. Could you check, please?”
The woman’s blue eyes blinked and she punched a few buttons on her computer. “Yes, here he is. Austin Outlaw.” She looked up at Louis. “There are also reservations for a woman and a child.”
Louis could see what the old woman was thinking —- mom, dad, and son. Sounded like a vacation, not an abduction.
Louis glanced at his watch. The flight had left. “Did they get on the flight?”
“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t tell you —-”
“This is official police business.”
The woman’s blue eyes narrowed. “You don’t look like a policeman. Show me your badge.”
Louis stared at the woman. She didn’t blink.
“Look,” he said quietly, “I’m a private investigator and the boy’s mother is back in Fort Myers worried sick.” He paused. “You got any kids?”
Now the woman blinked. “Four grandkids,” she said. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know the three of them didn’t all just go off together?”
Louis pointed at her computer screen. “Look and see if Susan Outlaw got on that plane. You don’t have to tell me anything. Just look.”
She hesitated then punched a couple buttons. Louis watched her expression carefully. Her brows knitted slightly and she looked up.
“She didn’t check in, did she?” Louis said.
The woman still said nothing.
“That should tell you I’m not lying,” Louis said. “Just tell me, please. Did the boy get on that plane?”
Louis waited but the woman wasn’t going to say anything more. He started away from the counter.
“Young man?”
Louis looked back.
“Neither of them did. The man or the boy,” the woman said.
Louis hurried away. He realized he had left the beeper in the car. For all he knew, Austin had dropped Benjamin off back home and gone on his merry way. He had to call Susan.
He found a pay phone. Susan picked up on the first ring. “Did you find them?” she asked.
That wasn’t good. “No.”
“Louis, oh God.” Her voice was trembling. “Are they —-”
“Austin never got on the plane.”
Louis heard her let out a long breath.
“He hasn’t called?” Louis asked.
“No, no, nothing! I swear if I see him again I’ll kill him for this!”
“Susan, calm down.”
“No, I won’t calm down! How can you even tell me that?”
Louis rubbed the bridge of his nose. There was a long silence on Susan’s end.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “It’s just...I’m going crazy sitting here, Louis.”
“I know.” His eyes swept over the crowd, almost like he expected to see Austin and Benjamin emerge from it. But he knew they weren’t here. He wondered now if Austin had even left Fort Myers. What the hell kind of game was Austin playing?
“I’m heading back, Susan. There’s nothing to do here.”
“What if he changed his ticket? What if he took Ben somewhere else because he couldn’t get a passport?” she asked.
Louis could almost imagine what sort of scenarios were running through her head now.
“There’s no way I can find him if he did, Susan,” Louis said. “I got lucky at Qantas. No one’s going to tell me anything. I’m not a cop. There’s nothing else I can do here.”
Susan said nothing.
“I’ll see you in a couple hours,” Louis said. “We’ll figure out something then.”
A long pause. He could tell she was crying but trying to not let him hear it. Then she said softly, “All right,” and hung up.
With a final scan of the crowd, Louis headed for the exit. Outside, he paused, shocked by the cold night air. The temperature had dropped a good ten degrees. The newly arrived people standing in the taxi lines were shivering in shorts and bare arms, expressions of mild shock on their faces. No one ever expected cold weather in Miami. No one ever planned on it.
In the Mustang, he quickly started the engine and flipped on the heater. He sat with his hands pressed between his knees for warmth. A musty burning smell filled the car, signaling the old heater kicking on.
Damn, what now? What the hell could he possibly do to help Susan, other than turn this over to Wainwright and then sit there and hold her hand? His anger was heating up with the car, anger at Austin Outlaw and at his own sense of impotence.
You don't look like a policeman. Show me your badge.
Three years since he had worn one. He had learned to live with it, even finding some sense of satisfaction in hanging his P.I. license on the wall. But Benjamin was missing and Susan needed his help. Help he had no power to give her.
He reached down and slammed the gear shift into reverse. His eye caught a spot of white on the floor of the passenger side. Austin’s business card. He had tossed it there the first night out of disgust
He picked it up and pressed it open. AUSTIN OUTLAW, PACIFIC IMPORTS. And a Miami address on Southwest Eighth Street. His eyes went to the beeper on the seat.
If Austin was still in Miami, there was a chance he might have gone to his office. But there was no sense in giving Susan false hope or more reason to be upset. He would go check out the office first and then call her back. He popped open the glove box and rooted around for a map. All he had was the beat-up state map he used when he had a case outside of the Fort Myers area, which wasn’t very often. In the three years he had lived in Florida, he hadn’t even been to the East Coast.
He turned the map over. There was a small inset of Greater Miami-Dade that showed the airport. From there he was able to trace a rough route to Southwest Eighth Street. Louis tossed the map aside, stuck the business card up in the visor, and headed out of the parking lot.
As he turned off Le Jeune Road onto Eighth Street Louis caught sight of a blinking sign on a bank. It was ten-thirty-two. And fifty-two degrees. It had been a balmy seventy degrees at noon. He wondered if Benjamin had a jacket.
Louis strained to see the street numbers in the dark. A feeling of dread was starting to pit in his stomach and he didn’t even try to ignore it. He had learned to trust his instincts, especially when he was in the dark. And right now, his instincts were telling him that something had gone wrong.
All the signs were in Spanish,
which only increased his growing anxiety. Dentista. Paradise International Envios a Cuba. Carga Immigracion. He was heading into unknown territory in more ways than one.
The cars ahead had stopped. Nothing was moving; the street was blocked. And now the guy in the Volkswagen ahead was getting out of his car. Louis laid on the horn. Then he saw it —- the sweep of blue and red lights ahead. Something tightened in his stomach. He was only a block away from the address on Austin’s card. He pulled into a parking lot, got out, and started sprinting toward the lights.
He pushed through the crowd and came to a stop at the yellow tape. It was stretched across the parking lot of a plain two-story stucco building. Downstairs held a unisex hair salon, a restaurant, and an income tax place. And upstairs, a clot of Miami-Dade cops standing at an open door. The sign painted on the window said PACIFIC IMPORTS.
There was an ambulance in the lot with its back door open, but there was no one inside. Louis looked back at the building, his eyes scanning the scene for a uniform close enough to talk to.
Then a man emerged backward from the doorway of Pacific Imports. He was pulling a gurney with a body on it, but the body was in a black bag, zipped closed. Louis moved closer and saw the back of a black uniform. He edged down the tape and tapped the cop on the shoulder.
“What’s happened here?” Louis asked.
The officer glanced back at him then looked away.
Louis tapped the cop again. The cop ignored him.
“Hey, listen,” Louis said, “I need some answers here.”
The cop spun around. “Back off.”
Louis ripped his ID badge from his pocket and held it out “I’m looking for a missing kid. He might be in that building. Just tell me who’s in that body bag and if there’s a kid upstairs.”
The cop’s eyes dropped to the ID card, then rose to Louis’s face.
“Please,” Louis said.
The cop hesitated. The gurney was being wheeled to a van labeled Dade County Morgue.
“All I know is that the dead guy is a black dude, about thirty-five or forty. He was sliced up pretty good. Someone said he owned the joint.”
Louis felt his chest draw tight as his eyes shot to the window of Pacific Imports. “I need to talk to a detective,” he said.
The cop shook his head. “They’re busy.”
The cop turned away. The van was pulling out of the lot. Louis watched it head up Eighth Street. He spotted a man in dark pants and a plaid sports coat. On his belt was a gun, cuffs, and a gold shield.
Louis ducked under the crime scene tape and walked toward him. He saw a uniform heading toward him and sped up, drawing out his ID card again as he walked.
The detective saw him coming.
“Detective,” Louis said quickly, reaching him. “I’m a P.I. pursuing an ex who might have kidnaped his own son from the mother. I —-”
The uniformed officer’s hand clamped down on Louis’s arm. Louis jerked away. The officer reached for him again.
“The man I’m chasing, that’s his office —-” Louis said, pointing toward Pacific Imports as the uniform pulled at him. “And he had the kid with him.”
The officer gave Louis a jerk backward and Louis broke free again, planting himself in front of the detective.
“The kid is only eleven,” Louis said.
This time when the uniformed cop came back at him the detective held up a hand to hold him off.
“What’s the name of the guy you’re chasing?” the detective asked.
“Outlaw. Austin Outlaw.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Black male, six-foot, about one-seventy, dark skinned, wavy hair. Wears expensive clothes...Rolex.”
“Sounds like our victim.”
Jesus.
“Was there a kid upstairs?” Louis asked.
Someone came up behind them. “Tom, we probably got another body.”
Louis strained to hear what they were saying but they dropped their voices and turned away.
Louis looked up at the open door of Pacific Imports, his chest so tight he couldn’t breathe. The uniform had gone back to crowd control and Louis just stood there, his eyes locked on the office.
“Hey, P.I” the detective called from the bottom of the steps.
Louis hurried to him.
“You can identify the kid, right?”
Louis nodded.
“Come on then. Walk on the paper and don’t touch the walls.”
Louis followed him up the stairs. He could hear the dull slap of his shoes on the concrete steps, but everything else seemed muted. Everything was dark, cold, and close and for a moment he felt like he was blacking out. But he knew he wasn't. He had just turned it all off —- the fear, the dread and the images. Something had kicked back in, a coolness he had learned a long time ago.
He followed the two men into a reception area, down a hall, and to a small room -— more like a closet —- off the main office. Two men were standing over a carved wood chest that looked like a cheap import people put at the foot of their bed. It was no more than three feet long and two feet wide and sat about five inches off the ground on short wooden legs.
There was a small padlock on the front that one of the men was working on getting unlocked. Under the chest, dripping from the bottom, was a widening pool of blood.
The detective glanced at Louis. “You sure you want to see this?”
Louis nodded.
The lock gave way and the cop on his knees looked up at them. The detective with Louis reached down and opened the trunk.
Bloody white skin. Blond hair, matted with blood.
Jesus. Jesus.
It wasn’t Benjamin. It was a woman. A tiny woman, her body crammed inside the chest, her face, hair, arms covered in so much blood she looked as if she were floating in it.
Louis felt his chest shudder with a long breath and he stepped back.
“You know this woman?” someone asked.
“What?”
Louder. “Do you know this woman?”
“No, no.”
“All right, thanks. You can go.”
Louis drew his eyes off the woman and looked around the room. “Was there a kid? A small boy about eleven? Did anyone see a boy?”
The cops shook their heads.
“Go wait outside,” someone said.
Louis turned, trying to clear his head. Benjamin must have been here. He had to have been. But what the hell had happened?
“Take a hike, P.I. You’re done here,” the detective hollered.
Louis left, pausing in the outer office.
His eyes swept over the room. He had seen none of this on the way in. He’d been too focused on what they were going to find in the back, but now...
There were papers scattered everywhere and the desk chair was overturned on the floor. The headrest and surrounding carpet were stained black with blood. The beige file cabinets were streaked with bloody prints and spatter. Louis stared at the white wall over the desk. There was a long arc of blood, the tail splaying high on the wall.
He recognized the pattern. He had seen it once before. He knew Austin’s throat had been cut and the long red arc was spray from the artery.
“You done looking, sport?” the detective asked.
Louis didn’t answer him, heading out into the night. He could feel the cold air rush against his sweating face as he hurried down the steps. For a minute, he thought he might be sick.
He stopped at the bottom, drawing in a breath, the neon of nearby stores a bright blur against the red and blue lights. He heard the detective come up behind him.
“Hey, P.I., in case you were wondering,” the detective said. “We just ID’d the victim. His name was Wallace Sorrell.”
“Sorrell?”
“Yeah.” The detective pulled out a notebook and started writing something. “What’s your name?”
“Louis Kincaid.”
“Where’s your office?”
Louis was staring up a
t the open door of Pacific Imports. It wasn’t Austin. He wasn’t dead. Then where the hell was he? And where was Ben?
“Hey, I asked you a question, P.I.”
Louis looked back at the detective. “What?”
“Where’s your office?”
“Captiva. It’s near Fort Myers.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know where Captiva is. They got enough over there on that little island to keep you busy?”
Louis ignored the question. He was looking back up at the office windows.
“What’s the kid’s name?” the detective asked.
“Benjamin Outlaw. He’s eleven. They left Fort Myers about three or four hours ago. Maybe longer.”
“Description?”
Louis gave him one, but his mind was already kicking back into gear, eager to ask his own questions.
The detective took down Susan’s name and address, and the description of Austin’s car, then slapped his notebook shut
“Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”
“Hey,” Louis said. “This Sorrell guy, who is he?”
“He and your runaway Ex Outlaw were partners in that import business. The woman in the chest was probably the secretary.”
“What did they import?”
The detective started to answer him, but stopped. “Uh-uh. No way. You need to take that crappy little P.I. license back to paradise and do your investigating over there. It ain’t no good here.”
“It’s good all over Florida,” Louis snapped.
The detective snickered. “Miami ain’t Florida.”
Louis didn’t move.
“Go home, P.I.,” the detective said. He walked away.
CHAPTER 7
Louis stared at the phone, unable to bring himself to pick up the receiver. He didn’t want to tell Susan that he hadn’t found Benjamin. He didn’t want to tell her what he had seen at Pacific Imports.
He glanced at the television. The first thing he had done after he checked into a room at the Airport Days Inn was to switch on the TV and scan the channels for news of the Pacific Import murders. But there had been nothing so far. Apparently, two slashed bodies wasn’t big news in Miami.
He looked at his watch. The eleven o’clock news was coming on. With a sigh, he picked up the phone to call Susan.