DEAD GONE a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by T. J. Brearton

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  When Tom entered the waiting room, things got worse. Blythe was there, along with a couple plain-clothes cops Tom didn’t recognize and several Hillsborough County deputies. Blythe was on a walkie-talkie. She addressed the group gathered around her.

  “He’s in the parking lot.”

  When Tom neared, Blythe made eye contact. Tom felt his throat close up. He couldn’t swallow, his fingertips tingled. Blythe turned and jogged for the door, the rest of the cops following.

  “What is it?” Tom called.

  Blythe held the door as the cops rushed out into the bright day. “He’s running,” Blythe said. “Nick is running.”

  Tom sprinted after her. Outside, the sun glared off the vehicles, the heat was a weight. The cops scattered to their cars. Tom followed Blythe to her Crown Vic, feeling like he was hallucinating. She dropped into the driver’s seat as he tried the passenger door, found it locked. He pounded on the glass.

  She just looked at him, blankness in her eyes, then she unlocked the door. With Tom in the seat beside her, Blythe hit the gas and screeched out of the parking lot.

  They had to sit and wait in the queue at the guarded entrance. Blythe was craning her neck to see ahead in the line of cars. “He’s already through. He saw us coming.”

  Tom continued to feel out-of-body. He tried to gather himself, to make sense of things. “What is happening?”

  “Your brother, Lange. Coby has been running a case on Mario Palumbo, the owner of Hush, for months. Nick is involved. He’s been dealing, working with George Parsons.”

  “No way. Nick’s clean. He never dealt any drugs.”

  She cut him a severe look. “Oh no? Not to try to pay down his enormous gambling debt?”

  “He didn’t owe that much. He sold his Escalade. Well, he turned it over . . .”

  “Uh-huh,” said Blythe, watching the line of vehicles again. Just three cars ahead of them at the gate now. The guards were basically just waving the cops through now that they understood the situation. Up ahead, a deputy cruiser switched on the light bar as it tore away from the gate. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Why would I be allowed to work on a case connected to my own brother?”

  But he already knew. It was that invisible wall surrounding what vice narcotics worked on. The state bureau hadn’t known.

  “I only read the affidavit last night,” Blythe said.

  “Where is Coburn now?”

  Blythe glanced in the mirror. “Two cars back. Those are his guys in the black truck.”

  Tom turned to look, his muscles in mutiny. The big truck behind them, jet black, looked just like the truck outside Nick’s house earlier that week. Tom tried to speak, but the words eluded him.

  “Nick owed all over the city,” Blythe said. “Over two hundred thousand dollars, according to the intel. Maybe more we don’t know about. He was in deep, Lange. Sorry.”

  She stopped at the gate. A guard with a rifle slung over his shoulder gave them a look and then waved them through. Blythe hit the gas and caught up to the convoy of deputy cruisers with their emergency lights flashing.

  Blythe’s Crown Vic was rigged with its own lights. She flipped a silver toggle on the dashboard and the headlights and brake lights went crazy. The walkie-talkie burst with static, then a voice said, “Suspect seen headed south on 75.”

  He was running home.

  Oh Nick.

  Tom still couldn’t accept it. He only had pieces. How could Nick be involved with people in the Carrie Hobson murder case? The areas — Naples, Tampa — were just too big, the odds too great. But it couldn’t be coincidence. Coincidence did not occur.

  The big V-6 engine of the Crown Vic thrummed as they sped along the service road, preparing to merge onto 75 at the next ramp. Tom saw the traffic light coming, and the deputy cruisers blew right through the red, civilian vehicles hitting the brakes, pulling over. Blythe piloted the Crown Vic through the intersection and they blasted up the ramp. The city skyline came into view, the scattered sunlight bright as diamonds.

  “You think Nick killed Sasha,” Tom said.

  “Nick is how Coby’s team got George Parsons. They had Parsons, they knew his moves, but his stop in Naples was known because Parsons contacted Nick. It may be a big world, but the drug scene is tight. You and Carrie Hobson, well, you guys got trapped in the net.”

  “Bullshit, Blythe. Nick wasn’t dealing!”

  “How would you know? You see your brother, what, once every couple of weeks? Time goes by, right? A month or two?” She had a fierce grip on the steering wheel. “Coby has him contacting you last Monday, the day we found Carrie’s body. I’ve heard the conversation. The anniversary of your parents’ death — that’s what you talked about.”

  Tom was furious, feeling invaded, blindsided. They were doing ninety miles an hour, approaching a hundred. The whole thing felt like a dream. Like he was going to wake up in the hospital. He couldn’t see Nick up ahead, just the lights of the Hillsborough County deputies, the traffic slowing in the right lane, pushed off nearly onto the shoulder as the cops threaded their way through. He thought at his brother, hoping somehow, by some miracle, Nick would get the message: Stop, Nick. Slow down. Pull over. Whatever it is we can work it out.

  “Parsons got knocked out of the game by Coby,” Blythe said. “Bosco sent Sasha Clay down to pick up something directly from Nick.”

  “Nick didn’t kill her.”

  “We don’t know what happened. But you’ve heard the autopsy results — she ODed on the same shit Nick was peddling.”

  “That shit is everywhere . . .” He tried to stay vigilant, to defend his brother. But Nick was running. Innocent people didn’t run.

  Nick wasn’t the only one on the lam. “We should be going after Ward.”

  “I admit my oversight.” Blythe calmed her voice a little, though she was still tearing along the highway in full pursuit. “I spoke to you about patience, and then I got greedy. I didn’t see Ward for what he was. You did.” She gave him a look. “But while you saw Ward, you didn’t see your own brother.”

  “I still don’t,” Tom said, feeling stubborn and scared as hell for Nick. Whatever was going on, this wasn’t going to end well. You didn’t run from the cops and not pay for it, even if there was misinformation somewhere along the line.

  “Coby’s phone tap — and we’re talking about a stingray, here, Lange, and the stingray surveillance doesn’t miss — shows Nick then tried to call you several times on Tuesday. And his phone was pinging off of Tampa towers. He was at Sasha Clay’s house.”

  Tom gripped the door handle with one hand, braced himself against the dashboard with his other palm. Blythe was really going hell for leather, the needle now pinned to a hundred miles an hour. Top speed for a pursuit. Any faster and they’d be in excess of safety regulations.

  “Hobson’s murder happened to be smack in the middle of one of the bigger Southwest Florida drug ops,” Blythe said. “Ward didn’t know that. He chose his victim because of Raymond Bosco. You’ve shown that, Lange. The drug op, the Naples end of it, it goes through a crime family involved with the dog track. Guess who? Mario Palumbo. Maybe that’s why Nick got involved — he owed the lion’s share to Palumbo. That’s who Coby is after. That’s why he’s working with us on it.”

  Tom felt like he was growing heavier, pinned to the seat by the G-force of Blythe’s driving, weighed down by the truth.

  “We didn’t know who the body in the bay was,” Blythe said. “But Coby took an immediate interest. The Sheriff knew. The Sheriff and Turnbull spoke. We felt right away there was a chance it was drug-related. We were wrong in one way, right in another.”

  Tom filled in the rest on his own, giving over to it at last: Nick owed money to Palumbo, ultimately. Nick entered into the chain of drug distribution to pay off his debt. He worked with George Parsons, who brought coke smuggled in from Columbia up out of Everglades City into Naples, Fort Myers, and finally to Tampa
where Palumbo owned his strip clubs. Sometimes the strippers sold coke to customers.

  Nick made his own choices. But he’d needed Tom, and Tom hadn’t been there for him. Tom hadn’t really listened. He’d ignored Nick’s phone calls.

  Because he had a case. Because Alan Ward had murdered one of the strippers from Hush in a bid to show the police the error of their ways. Or maybe just because Ward, despite all of his accolades, felt like a nobody with something to prove. If Ward hadn’t murdered Carrie Hobson, Tom was sure he wouldn’t be here right now. He would’ve had more time for Nick, he could’ve helped, and prevented this. This was all because of Alan fucking Ward, a sexual reject with no respect for the living.

  “Oh shit,” Blythe said.

  Tom saw it, too. A plume of smoke on the horizon. The smoke was followed by a thunderous boom and a terrible shriek of metal. Blythe slammed on the brakes and Tom jerked forward. He kept his eyes on the road. He saw a car — a little compact vehicle — go skidding off into the grass. There were more sounds of cars cracking bumpers, and the four lanes were red with taillights and smoking brakes as vehicles careened to a frantic stop.

  Someone had gotten into an accident, and it was causing a chain reaction.

  Another car hit the Crown Vic from behind and Tom and Blythe were thrown forward. But Blythe maintained control and kept going, veering off the road and into the grass, where the car came to a halt. Then they both got out and ran.

  Tom ran so hard his already punished lungs burned in his chest. He sprinted along the edge of the blacktop toward two unmoving vehicles.

  Nick’s rental car had come to rest on its side, half on the road shoulder, half off. It looked like he’d collided with a minivan that was a few yards away, the driver standing outside the dented car door, looking dazed but okay.

  Tom reached Nick’s rental, slamming into it to slow himself down, and rounded to the front so he could see in through the glass. Nick was inside. He was conscious, his face contorted with pain, trying to undo the seatbelt. Blood ran down the side of his head.

  A tractor-trailer blew its horn. Tom watched as the monstrous vehicle jackknifed in the road, slamming into other vehicles, people screaming and scattering. Unable to stop, the tractor-trailer swept the vehicles along the highway, everything shrieking and smoking. It was headed for Nick and Tom.

  The brothers locked eyes through the glass. There was no time. Nick just stared out at Tom, as if he knew, as if he understood.

  And then he closed his eyes.

  Tom leapt away. He ran and rolled into the grass as the tractor-trailer plowed into the rental, crumpling the front of it, pushing it along. Tom watched from the shoulder as the whole mess came to a shuddering stop.

  Suddenly Blythe was there, and she had her arms around Tom. She held him tight as he tried to return to the vehicle. Gas was leaking, there was an electrical fire. Her grip was strong, her words loud in his ear. “The whole thing could blow, we have to get out of here!”

  A few stunned motorists stumbled from the road and into the grass with blind desperation. Tom kept walking, pulling Blythe along with him. So close now, he was so close to the vehicle, to Nick . . .

  Blythe took him down.

  Lying face-first in the grass, Tom felt nothing. He rejected everything that had happened. He was just a boy, and Nick was his big brother. He was just a boy, and Nick was there for him. Nick, God, I love you so much.

  Nick.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  MONDAY

  An early storm broke, and rain hammered the cars in the parking lot. Tom watched out the window.

  People he barely knew came up and offered condolences, eyes shining. Their lips were moving, but Tom barely heard the words.

  They touched him on the arm, or the shoulder, and their voices were muffled, and he didn’t know where he was.

  Tom blinked, took in his surroundings. This was the ROC in Fort Myers. He understood that Turnbull was taking him into a secluded area in the compound. Tom was shown his seat and Blythe and Coburn joined them. They talked about Nick. They talked about Ward. They said that Ward had been picked up by the Coast Guard. In addition to the Lexus, they said, Ward had a sailboat. He’d been trying to leave the country, but they’d caught him.

  The Everglades County crime scene bureau had ripped Ward’s house apart. They’d found further evidence of his involvement with Carrie Hobson — her phone was in a box in Ward’s bedroom.

  The box, Tom thought distantly. It was one of the few things he really registered. Everyone has a box. It was what he’d told Gomez in Carrie’s apartment — everyone had a place where they kept their precious things.

  But he’d never checked Nick’s house for such a place. He’d known his brother was a user, a troubled soul, but kept him at a distance. Now other cops would pour over Nick’s life, dig into his past and confirm his connections. Tom would never be looked at the same. He’d gone from the new guy to the brother of a dead criminal. He’d lost his parents as a child and now his brother.

  The ATM company had come back quickly with their records, showing that Ward did in fact take out cash on two occasions outside Hush. Tom listened with half an ear. Carrie Hobson’s data had come through as well. Carrie hadn’t stolen any of Palumbo’s money hidden in the wall at her apartment where Bosco was keeping it. The large deposits in Eileen Gallo’s bank were Carrie’s own earnings, along with money from Ward himself, who’d been buttering Carrie up with big tips at the club.

  Carrie Hobson didn’t necessarily have a heart of gold, but she was a hard-working woman, a good daughter who looked after her mother when her other sisters couldn’t be bothered. Carrie’s body was going to be shipped back home to Idaho later that day.

  At some point Tom realized the room had grown quiet. The others were waiting for him to say something, to make some move, but Tom was done. When he sensed the debriefing was over, he simply got up and walked out. Blythe followed him outside and offered to drive him — she’d brought him to the ROC in the first place that morning, though he barely remembered it.

  Nick was dead. His body was at the morgue in Hillsborough County. Blythe took Tom there and stood by as he identified the remains. Tom didn’t cry. He looked at Nick, his face serene, his body covered in an evidence sheet, and felt nothing.

  Back in his condo, the sun was getting low. There was a soft knock on the door and Tom answered, still dressed in his suit. He’d just been sitting on the couch, staring at the door to the garage.

  Charlene was on his front stoop, her face wrenched with sorrow. Her husband stood behind her, hunched over with his illness. Tom let them in. Charlene had a grocery bag and put food into Tom’s fridge. He stood in the kitchen, watching, not really seeing.

  When Charlene had finished putting the groceries away, she turned to Tom. At last, without even knowing he was going to do it, he stepped into Charlene’s embrace, and he cried.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  TUESDAY

  The alarm clock went off but Tom was already awake. He stared up at the ceiling fan, lost in thought.

  He began his day with a pot of coffee, reluctantly forgoing his swim. He didn’t want to run into any neighbors, and he was dodging the press. Alone in his condo, he fielded calls from eager reporters, telling them “no comment.” Blythe and Turnbull both phoned. Even Coburn called. Coburn was surprisingly gentle and sympathetic. He apologized for the secrecy about Nick. But he assured Tom that Nick’s death would have a silver lining — they had more evidence than ever against Mario Palumbo. “You know,” Coburn finished, “you ever think about switching to County, there would be a spot for you in vice narcotics.”

  The County crime scene bureau had been and gone from his condo, but Tom’s blood still stained the floor from McDermott dragging him through the shattered glass.

  He was staring at it when there was a knock at the door. Tom figured it was Charlene again, but it was Detective Machado, and behind her was Katie Mills. Mills had taken over the au
topsy on Sasha Clay.

  Tom wasn’t feeling very hospitable, but he showed the women into the living room.

  “We wanted to tell you in person,” Machado said. “We don’t think Nick killed Sasha.”

  “We found her car, as you know,” Katie Mills explained. “Sasha came down from Tampa on her own. In the car was a backpack with a suicide note inside. Her handwriting is all loops and swirls — who writes in cursive anymore? And the spelling . . . well, we got a handwriting expert and it took some time to decipher.” Mills blinked at Tom, her eyes wet with emotion Tom hadn’t expected. “The note mentions you, Agent Lange, and it mentions your brother. It says that she loved him.”

  Machado added, “We believe Sasha chose Naples because of what’s in the note — that she felt close to you and Nick, even though she believed you couldn’t ultimately help her. She went to the bridge near Tin City and committed suicide there because Nick’s office was close, but she also makes a reference to the bridge as having some other significance. Do you know anything about that?”

  It was the first thing to break through Tom’s two-day malaise. He felt his blood flowing again as he straightened up in the chair. “Yeah, maybe. When I first met her, she told me about how she’d been homeless for a time as a kid. She said she’d lived under a bridge in Macon with her mother. Maybe it’s something, maybe not. Maybe it’s just the only bridge around high enough to do something like that.”

  The women exchanged looks. Tom knew they weren’t obligated to come here, and that the information on Sasha’s past, or theorizing about the bridge, was something they could have done without him. They were here to try to make him feel better, to tell him that Nick wasn’t a killer.

  “I wish he hadn’t run,” Tom said.

  “Me too.” Machado lowered her eyes.

  There was a brief silence, then Tom asked, “What about Ward? Where’s he, now?”

  “In County jail, awaiting arraignment,” Machado said. “He’ll do time in federal prison.” Her eyes found him again, and Tom saw a kindness there he appreciated. Machado was good people, no doubt. “I talked to Agent Blythe this morning. She wants to see you herself but she wanted to give you . . . space. For one thing, she wants to help us nail Josh McDermott for what he did. For another, she’s also dealing with her own issues, pertaining to Ward. But, they’re going to need you — Mandi hopes you’re going to be able to work with Ward’s prosecution. When you’re ready.”