“He knows you were talking about Pio Nono, too?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Two possibilities,” said Theo. “Either he’s been spying on you, too. Or he was spying on Chang.”
“You mean they have spyware that can pick up from Chang the information that he picked up while spying on me.”
“How do you think spies get caught?”
“Good point,” said Jack. He went to the cooler, grabbed a handful of ice, and placed it on his forehead. “I wish my head didn’t hurt too much to think about who might be spying on Chang.”
“Probably the person who stands to lose the most if word gets out about a black site in Prague.”
“That question is not as easy to answer as it sounds.”
“The CIA comes to mind,” said Theo.
“Or a security firm that works for the CIA. Or the Czech government. Or someone who works for any of the above and has a personal interest to protect. And those are just the possibilities that come to mind with my head splitting like . . . like I don’t know what.”
“Like a nation split over Gitmo?”
“Dude, that was unusually deep.”
“I have sex while the Colbert Report is on, just like the next guy.”
A fifty-foot Cigarette boat roared past them in the no-wake zone. Probably a drug runner late for church. The rumble of the triple racing engines faded, and even though the black fiberglass streak knifed through the water at more than fifty yards off starboard, its long wake rocked Jack’s boat.
“How is your grandfather doing, anyway?” Theo asked as the waves gently slapped the hull.
“That’s the joke of it. He slept through my entire visit last night. Last time we talked, he was pretty confused. He thinks he’s Jewish.”
“Is he?”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Did you check it out?”
“I called my dad. I spoke to Grandpa’s girlfriend, Ruth. Neither one of them knew anything about it.”
“You need to dig deeper.”
Jack was unable to hide his surprise, which Theo noticed.
“What?” asked Theo.
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I guess I always gave you credit for being much more shallow than that.”
Jack expected another smart-ass reply, but Theo simply gazed toward the horizon, his expression unusually pensive.
“You know what I know about my ancestry?” said Theo. “Nothin’. Don’t even know who my father was. My mother’s been dead since I was thirteen. Even if I had them around to help me, I’m sure I’d hit a brick wall at slavery. You’ve got a chance to find out who you really are, maybe. Having a couple of conversations and calling it a day is pretty lame.”
Jack was speechless. To be called out by Theo on matters of family was almost beyond his comprehension. Most confusing of all, Jack realized that he was right.
“It’s not that I’m not interested,” said Jack. “I’ve just been busy. Maybe I’ll spend some time on the Internet this afternoon.”
Theo scoffed. “People always think the answer is online. Get serious, dude. Where was your grandfather born?”
“Czech Republic.”
“Well, there you have it. An obvious opportunity to overcome the Internet and the Joe Cocker factor.”
“The what?”
“You know—Joe Cocker. The rock star.”
“I know who Joe Cocker is—‘You are so beautiful, to me.’ What does he have to do with the Internet?”
Theo sang his answer, adding the trademark affectations to another Cocker hit: “ ‘Lonely days are gone. My baby, she sent me an e-mail.’ ”
“ ‘Sent me the letter.’ ”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. The Joe Cocker factor. Sometimes the Internet is just all wrong.”
“So your point is what? I should go to Prague?”
“ ‘Yeah she sent me an e-mail, said she couldn’t—’ ”
“Okay, okay. I get it.”
Jack’s cell rang—more of the curse of technology. Andie had reset his ringtone before saying good-bye to Jack in Washington and returning to her undercover assignment. Carrie Underwood and “I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights” on the quiet shores of Biscayne Bay on a peaceful Sunday morning.
Talk about “all wrong.”
Jack checked the display. It was Neil, who wouldn’t have called so early if it weren’t important.
“What’s up?” Jack said into the phone.
“We got a big problem with Jamal,” he said.
Jack caught his breath, fearing the worst. “Don’t tell me he skipped.”
Neil paused, as if not sure how to put it. “He’s missing.”
“Damn him. He has to know he won’t get far wearing an ankle bracelet.”
“Actually, he borrowed his mother’s rental car to hit the clubs on South Beach last night. They found the bracelet in the car.”
“What? The Omnilink is supposed to be tamper proof. The alarm signals if you just stretch the band. How’d he get it off?”
“He didn’t exactly remove it.”
“What does that mean?”
“The bracelet is still attached to his ankle.”
The image flashed in Jack’s mind. “Oh boy,” he said.
“You can say that again,” said Neil.
“Where’s the rest of him?”
“Not sure. His mother says he never came back to their hotel last night. The rental car was parked all night on Washington at about Seventeenth near Club Inversion. I’m pulling up now. Plenty of cops here. Crime scene is roped off. Maybe someone has an answer.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” said Jack, and he ended the call. He glanced at Theo, who seemed to have caught the drift of the conversation.
“No fishing again today, huh?” said Theo.
Jack shook his head. “It’s getting to be a bad habit, I know.”
“Pity. I got a feeling even the amateurs are catching fish this morning.”
Jack glanced toward Miami Beach—toward Club Inversion. Then his gaze drifted toward the bay, which seemed to yield at least one dismembered body a year.
“I can only imagine what they’re using as bait,” said Jack.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Jack could smell the rain approaching. He was standing outside Club Inversion on the onlookers’ side of the yellow line of police tape. A breeze kicked up and blew Neil’s hat off. Jack picked it up.
“Investigators better hurry,” said Neil. “Gonna rain.”
The downpour in Coconut Grove was definitely headed their way. Maybe it was all the cops around, but Jack was reminded of the time Vince Paulo had shown him how the smells that warned of rain in Miami were as poignant as the sight of thunderclouds over the Everglades. Jack closed his eyes, breathing in the hint of rain—and trying to comprehend the turn of events. But when he opened his eyes, the Miami-Dade Police and Miami Beach Police perimeter control were still on the scene. Investigators were still combing over the vehicle that had given up Jamal’s foot and ankle bracelet. A media van was even pulling up. It was all real.
It wasn’t a dream.
Neil got the attention of a Miami-Dade officer on the other side of the tape, a woman in uniform. “Hey, can you find Detective Burton?”
Burton was the homicide detective handling the Lincoln Road Mall investigation. Obviously Miami-Dade PD had picked up on a possible connection between the two deaths and called out Burton.
“I’m sure the detective is busy,” said the cop.
“I spoke to him on the phone,” said Neil. “He told me that he would meet us here.”
“Who are you?” she said.
Neil told her, and the words made Jack feel as if the world had been turned upside down: “We’re the lawyers for the victim.”
The victim.
He and Neil exchanged glances, as if they were feeling the same sense of flip-flop and disconnect.
“I’ll see if he’s here,” the cop told them.
Jack’s gaze swung back toward the rental car. It was parked at the curb on the other side of the four-lane street. Traffic was light at this hour on a Sunday, but perimeter control wouldn’t let Jack close enough to see exactly what the investigators were doing. Blood samples were definitely being collected from the trunk.
“What do you think happened?” asked Neil.
“I sure as hell don’t think he ran,” said Jack.
“Trapped animals do it,” said Neil. “They’ll chew off their own feet to get free.”
“He’s not a mink.”
Jack felt the first raindrop. He looked up to the sky, which was growing darker by the minute. The investigators moved faster, kicking into another gear to beat the weather.
“Do you think he’s alive?” asked Neil.
“Not if he didn’t get medical attention.”
“That was one of the first things I asked Detective Burton. Unfortunately, not a single emergency room in the county treated that kind of injury last night.”
“The loss of blood has to be tremendous.”
“But not necessarily fatal,” said Neil.
“Are you a doctor, or do you just play one on TV?”
“A few years ago I took my daughter hiking in New Mexico to a place called Sky City. It’s what the Spaniards thought was the Seven Cities of Gold. Our guide told us that when they enslaved the local Indians, each adult male had a foot severed to keep him from running. I can’t imagine they rushed to the emergency room in the sixteenth century.”
It was an interesting story, but Jack was staying with his gut instinct. “Somebody killed him.”
“Why?” asked Neil.
“Clearly, it was someone who didn’t want the body to be recovered. Otherwise, they would have just put a bullet in his head and let the police find him still attached to the ankle bracelet.”
“That makes no sense,” said Neil. “Why leave a foot behind that allows for a positive identification, but take the body?”
Jack thought about it. “It only makes sense if they needed to keep him alive for a while. If you cut these Omnilink bracelets, an alarm goes off. Cops would have immediately come looking. Whoever did this needed to take him someplace alive and took extreme measures to make sure the police wouldn’t track them down.”
“Take him why?”
“So that they could get something out of him.”
Neil seemed to catch his drift. “Torture and interrogate?”
“You got it,” said Jack. “Maybe pick up where they left off in that secret detention facility in Prague. Get the information they couldn’t get out of him three years ago.”
“And then what?”
“This time they kill him,” said Jack. “Just like they killed McKenna.”
“Shit,” said Neil. “With that kind of follow-up interrogation, it’s no wonder the CIA doesn’t want to talk about that secret site.”
“Be careful with that,” said Jack. “We’re pretty sure it’s not a CIA site.”
“Okay, a secret site operated by a private security firm that was hired by the Department of Defense.”
“I’m even having my doubts about that. A severed foot. What does that remind you of?”
It took a few moments, but Neil had a thought. “That serial killer in Canada. Remember all those severed feet in sneakers that kept washing up on the beaches of the Georgia Straits in British Columbia?”
Jack hadn’t even thought about that, but Neil had defended several serial killers over the years, so it was no wonder that his mind had gone there.
“I was thinking more along the lines of organized crime,” said Jack.
“That was a severed horse head in The Godfather, not a foot.”
“I’m talking real life. It was the discovery of a severed foot in a vacant lot that finally unraveled the mystery of how Joseph Massino got rid of three captains in one night to become the undisputed boss of the Bonanno crime family.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s one of the FBI’s proudest moments. You keep forgetting I’m engaged to an undercover agent.”
“Mr. Goderich?” the Miami-Dade detective said.
Detective Burton surprised them, having approached from behind. Jack felt a few more raindrops as they shook hands, and it was now falling steadily enough for droplets to bead on Burton’s clean-shaven head.
“Any news?” asked Neil.
“Only bad, I’m afraid,” said Burton. “We found the body.”
Jack knew it was coming, but the news still hit him like a punch to the gut. “Where?”
“Everglades National Park. Near a canoe launch.”
It was like another body blow, but Jack kept his reaction to himself.
“I’m headed there now,” said Burton. “I’ll keep you posted.”
Jack watched as the detective ducked under the yellow tape and walked toward his car. The rain was coming hard enough to trigger a few umbrellas. Investigators were scrambling to protect the scene with sheets of plastic.
“We should go, too,” said Neil.
“Didn’t you hear the location of the body?” said Jack.
“Of course. I was standing right here.”
“Everglades National Park near a canoe launch. That’s the same place they found Shada Mays’ car after she disappeared.”
“Wow, that’s interesting.”
“It’s more than interesting,” said Jack, and he was speaking his thoughts as quickly as they came to him. “Police suspected that Shada was tracking her daughter’s killer when she vanished. Supposedly, Shada had some e-mail or other communications with him over the Internet. The cops’ theory was that the killer was Jamal, and when Shada pushed too hard to get him to turn himself in, Jamal killed her, dumped her body in the Everglades, and tried to made it look like a suicide.”
Neil had a pained expression, as if he wanted to follow Jack’s reasoning, but wasn’t quite with him. “So somebody cuts off Jamal’s foot and dumps his body where McKenna’s mother disappeared. Why?”
“Not just somebody,” said Jack. “I think we’re talking about McKenna’s killer. The same guy who killed Shada when she started closing in on him. The same guy who killed Jamal as soon as he got out of jail and—maybe—picked up on the trail Shada was following.”
“Could be,” said Neil. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a client anymore. So I’m not sure what we can do about it.”
“I know what I want to do,” said Jack.
“What?”
“I’m going to have another talk with Chuck Mays.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
It was Monday evening when Jack returned to the Mays estate on Tahiti Beach in CocoPlum.
For nearly two days, his phone calls to Chuck Mays had gone unanswered, and an unannounced visit seemed too confrontational. Finally, a secretary called from MLFC headquarters late Monday afternoon to say that Mr. May’s would be jet-lagged but expecting Jack at his house around nine P.M.
Jack rang the doorbell and waited.
“In the backyard,” said Mays, his voice crackling over the intercom speaker at the entrance. “I’m making s’mores.”
S’mores? Jack didn’t verbalize his thoughts, but his expression was caught on a security camera, and Mays’ voice crackled again on the speaker.
“Don’t act like you don’t fucking like them, Swyteck.”
An Eagle Scout couldn’t have said it better.
The door unlocked with an automated click, which Jack took as his invitation to enter unescorted. The rear of the house was a wall of windows, and from the foyer Jack could see all the way through to the backyard. Beyond the patio, on a finger of land that protruded into the moonlit waterway, a campfire glowed in the darkness. The sliding-glass door was unlocked, and Jack followed the path of stepping-stones around the pool and through the garden to find Chuck Mays seated on a log before a crackling fire. It was a cool night for M
iami, but it was still south Florida, which meant that Mays was wearing hiking shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt that said, 1f u c4n r34d th1s, u r34lly n33d 2 g3t l41d.
If you can read this, you really need to get laid. The speed with which he’d decoded it troubled Jack. Damn, I miss Andie.
Mays handed him a skewered marshmallow, seeming to sense that Jack had solved the riddle. “S’mores are the next best thing,” he said.
A light breeze was blowing in from the water, but it was still too warm for a jacket. As Jack removed his, the wind shifted and the smoke overcame him, sending Jack scrambling to the other side of the campfire, where he could breathe.
“S’mores were McKenna’s favorite when she was a little girl,” said Mays. He stuffed the toasted marshmallow between two graham crackers and waited for the chocolate to melt. Jack found a hot spot above some glowing embers and held his marshmallow over it. Mays stuffed the gooey treat into his mouth, chewing roundly.
“So tell me what’s on your mind, Jack.”
It seemed absurd to discuss Jamal under these circumstances. More precisely, it would have seemed absurd, if it hadn’t felt so choreographed. This was all staged, of course—Mays taking the steam out of a potential confrontation by holding a fireside chat with his mouth full of McKenna’s favorite childhood snack.
“Jamal is on my mind,” said Jack. “I’m trying to figure out who cut off his foot, tortured him to death, and then dumped his body less than two hundred yards from where your wife disappeared in the Everglades.”
“You’re on fire,” said Mays.
“What?”
“Your marshmallow is burning.”
Jack yanked it out of the fire, and the flaming mess dropped like red-hot lava onto his foot, just above the shoe leather. Jack jumped up and let out a yelp, then smothered the flame with his jacket. It had burned through his sock, and he was sure the skin would blister. Mays roared with laughter, and Jack decided not to say what he was thinking.
Mays looked at him and said, “No, I’m not.”
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