Krewe of Hunters Series, Volume 5

by Heather Graham

  “Jill, I can only tell you again, we will find him. This is too big. Too many people are involved, and we have so many officers from so many different agencies working on this that we can put a lot of pressure on the whole enterprise. Whoever’s behind this, he’ll make a mistake, and then we’ll get him.”

  She nodded. “We’ll just have to be very careful, I guess.” She started to walk away, then turned and asked, “You will make sure we know if…if there’s a reason for us to watch out for something or someone in particular, right?”

  “Yes,” he said. He shouldn’t have, of course. But she’d helped them immeasurably, and since he couldn’t personally watch over her and her family, the least he could give her was peace of mind.

  When she left, it was finally time for him and Diego to head out and meet back up with Matt and Meg, and try to put the pieces together.

  “We’re fucked,” Diego said as soon as they were outside.

  “Fucked?”

  “That guy was our best lead. If we’d found him alive…”

  “He wouldn’t have said a word. He would have gone to jail before he ratted out his boss, who in this case might be Barillo or might be someone else entirely. Anyway, we’re meeting with Kinny tomorrow, so let’s see what he has to tell us.”

  “Let’s hope to hell it’s something useful.”

  “No matter what,” Brett said, “I think we’re going to pay a visit to an associate of Acervo’s.”

  “Barillo?” Diego asked.

  Brett nodded grimly.

  “He’s denied everything. He made a point of confronting you face-to-face to deny everything.”

  “But Acervo was a known associate of his. I want to see what he has to say.”

  “You’re worried,” Diego said. “You’re worried about Lara.”

  Brett managed a smile. “Yes—and no. Meg won’t leave her. And I honestly believe that the man pulling the strings will make a mistake, and soon. And then all this will be over.”

  Diego was quiet. “Money’s involved in this somewhere,” he said. “We already knew that, though. After Kinny and Barillo, we’re going to start looking at money.”

  “Who the hell has more money than Barillo?” Brett asked.

  Diego smiled. “Lots of people. Lots of rich people. This is Miami, mi amigo. Lots of people here have money.”

  * * *

  When Sea Life closed at five o’clock, people jumped into action to make everything spick-and-span. Everyone was excited about the next day. The entire staff was set to arrive early to be ready to greet the massive numbers of soldiers and supporters who would be coming.

  As things wound down and staff started leaving, Lara wandered back out to the lagoon to check on Cocoa. There were still people around, and it was daylight, so she wasn’t worried about her own safety. The dolphin swam over to the platform and allowed Lara to stroke her. Then she backed away, chattering, and Lara turned around quickly, her heart suddenly pounding, expecting to see someone coming up behind her.

  The sun was still up but sinking slowly, and at first she saw no one.

  And then she did.

  Miguel Gomez was standing there, watching her and Cocoa, a slight smile on his face.

  “Hello, Miguel.”

  “Hola, senorita.”

  “Join me,” she suggested.

  It didn’t even seem odd to her that she was speaking to a ghost.

  He came and sat with her. “That dolphin is very special, is she not?” he asked.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “She sees me,” he whispered.

  “I think so.”

  “Have you found out…how this happened? To me, I mean,” he asked.

  “No, but we’re making progress.”

  He nodded. She felt his sadness as if it were something in the air that washed over her.

  “I wish I could help,” he said. “I wanted to live the dream, and we did, for a while. But now…I’m here. And Maria… I want so badly to see her, to know that she forgives me…”

  “I’m sure she does,” Lara said.

  He looked at her anxiously, as if desperately hoping she could say something that would prove the truth of her words to him.

  And suddenly she realized that she could.

  “My friend…the FBI agent. You know him, too. Brett Cody. He’s seen Maria. She knows it wasn’t really you.”

  He seemed to brighten. “This is true?”

  “Cross my heart,” she said, smiling.

  He shook his head. “Why can’t I see her?” he whispered.

  “Maybe you will,” she said. “Maybe soon. Maybe when we find out what happened to you.”

  She didn’t know that, of course. But she felt she had to say something to reassure him.

  After a moment he said, “I hope so. For now, I am just…here.”

  She looked at him and said, “Miguel, someone threatened me. They went up to my office and put a broken-up doll there, warning me. Since you’re here, perhaps you could watch and see if anyone does something like that again.”

  He frowned. “People come and go from that building all day.”

  “You see them, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Who?”

  He lifted his hands. “All the people who work here.”

  “Did you see anyone else? People who don’t work here?”

  “I don’t know what happens all the time,” he told her. “I come a lot to the water. To watch the dolphins.” He pointed to Cocoa, who was watching them from the water. Cocoa and the other dolphins often watched people. It made Lara wonder just what they were thinking, if they were as curious about human behavior as humans were about theirs.

  He smiled. “I think she performs for me sometimes. Just for me.”

  “She certainly might,” Lara said.

  He smiled at that, and continued to watch the dolphin for a minute. Then he turned to her. “I will watch for you,” he said. “I will help solve this if I can. I promise you that. I tried to be a man for my family when I lived. I loved my wife, and I was so lucky to have a wife who loved me, too, so dearly and so deeply, for so many years. I will watch for you. And I will know who comes and goes from now on.”

  “Thank you, Miguel,” she told him.

  She smiled, pointing to Cocoa, who had decided to entertain them with a high-flying flip.

  “Look, Miguel,” she said. “I know that was for you.”

  But when she turned back to look at him, he was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  “So this man, Jose Acervo, he’s really dead?” Lara asked.

  Brett nodded, enjoying being out to dinner again, despite the circumstances. They’d chosen another restaurant on the water, though this one offered a certain amount of privacy despite the fact that it was Saturday night and the area was in full swing. They’d headed to South Beach in his Bureau car. He hadn’t used the restaurant’s valet service because he’d learned early in his career to have his car available at all times, but his federal plates allowed him to park in places the average driver couldn’t, unless they were looking to incur a fine.

  As they ate, music spilled from a dozen clubs. Miami’s beautiful people were out, the women in short skirts and ridiculous heels, along with tourists in flip-flops and T-shirts. They’d actually decided on the beach because of the crowds; it was easier to talk in private when the noise around you didn’t allow for anyone outside your intimate circle to hear what you were saying.

  Diego was taking the first watch at Sea Life again while the rest of them escaped for a few hours.

  “We’re getting close—closer anyway,” Matt said. “The fact that Acervo was killed—and left at Diaz-Douglas as a…warning, I suppose—is telling. Someone was afra
id that we would find Acervo and get him to talk about what’s going on. I wonder if the killer thought Geneva Diaz would be so terrified by the arrival of the corpse that she would make sure he was buried quickly to avoid her secret coming out. Any word on whether the crime scene techs found anything useful?”

  “Not yet,” Brett said.

  “Well, I discovered something pretty interesting today,” Matt said. “I pulled up all kinds of information and statistics, and I emailed all of it to you and Diego,” he told Brett. “And based on what I found, I can tell you that I don’t think this began with Miguel Gomez, or Randy Nicholson or Antoine Deveau. About three months ago, the body of a young woman washed up on a beach up in Broward. There had been severe damage to her head.”

  “I remember that, actually,” Brett told him. “The theory was that she’d fallen overboard and been killed by an engine propeller. She was eventually ID’d as an illegal, finally claimed by an uncle after he received his legal status in the country.”

  Matt nodded. “Fishermen out in the Florida Straits brought up a body about four months ago. A man. Same thing. Head bashed in. They never did discover who he was. The assumption is that he was an illegal, trying to make landfall so he’d be allowed to stay in the country. No one ever claimed him, needless to say.”

  “That’s the problem here. So many people take off from Cuba or Haiti in rafts and boats, desperate to make it to land anywhere they can. A lot of them don’t make it, but a lot of others do and then end up part of the criminal underworld, because that’s the only option open to them.”

  “A whole slew of unwilling human subjects for medical experimentation?” Meg asked thoughtfully.

  “Maybe,” Brett said. “But what’s the connection to our zombies?”

  “That’s the interesting thing,” Matt replied. “They’d been struck on the head. Sure, people are murdered often enough by being struck on the head. But with everything that’s going on, I’m thinking we ought to be testing for puffer fish poison. And,” he added with a shrug, “who do you choose, who’s your ideal victim, if you’re doing something criminal? Someone with no name. A forgotten person. People die—they drown—when boats go down at sea. They don’t usually wind up with their heads bashed in.”

  “But I still can’t figure out why someone would do it,” Lara said.

  “Because he can?” Matt asked.

  Brett thought about the question. “I don’t know. Unless we really do have a would-be Papa Doc Duvalier out there, someone who really believes he can create an army of zombies who’ll do anything they’re programmed to do?”

  “Is that really possible?” Lara asked.

  “Possible, maybe, but certainly not feasible here,” Brett said. “I think that local law enforcement is more than capable of stopping an army of what amounts to automatons.”

  Lara sat back, frowning. “You think someone has been actively kidnapping people—starting out with people no would notice were gone, or at least wouldn’t dare report? And then they upped the game when they weren’t caught?”

  “I certainly think it’s possible,” Matt said.

  “I’ll go one step further and say I firmly believe they set out kidnapping the forgotten people and experimenting on them,” Brett said.

  Lara turned to him. “You’ve got me thinking. I went to talk to Nelson Amory today. He was out with three of our high-powered sponsors a few days ago. Meg and I saw him when we went to lunch with Sonia Larson. Their conversation looked…heated. I had the feeling he might be accepting a job offer from one of them. Today I flat-out asked him what was going on. If he was going to work for one of them, I thought he needed to tell Grady. In fact, Ely Taggerly had asked him to leave Sea Life and go to work for a new pharmaceutical company Ely is starting up to look at what Dr. Amory says is a whole new class of drugs. Apparently he used some of his time at Sea Life events trying to gather some funding for his project. So here we are talking about a zombie drug made from puffer fish, and now there’s a Sea Life connection to pharmaceuticals. It might not mean a thing, but it seems worth thinking about, at least.”

  “You think Ely might be looking for something—some magic drug—that’s found in the brains of the dead?” Meg asked. “That’s…gruesome.”

  “Very gruesome,” Matt agreed. He looked at Lara. “I’m not sure how that fits with zombies going around killing people, but who knows? You could be on to something.”

  “A cure,” Brett said. “Someone might be looking for a cure for something. A brain disease. Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s. Any one of the dozens of neuro diseases out there.”

  Lara cleared her throat. “So,” she said, looking at Brett, “let’s say that you’re all right and this started out with someone kidnapping illegal immigrants trying to get into the United States. The forgotten people, as you say. They performed experiments on their brains, which they covered up when disposing of the corpses by smashing in their heads. Then…”

  “Then,” Brett picked up, “they took Antoine Deveau. They knew he was illegal and that Pierre couldn’t raise a stink, because he was illegal, too. And given that we’re talking illegals, there may be more people missing than we’ll ever know. So Antoine ‘dies’ and they have a funeral, and when they bring him back they send him to kill Pierre. Maybe they were trying to see if he still recognized his brother after what they’d done to him. Who knows?”

  “And then,” Meg continued, “they graduated to cruising the hospital to see if they could get away with fooling the doctors with their toxin. At least they had some scruples. They looked for someone who was dying anyway and found Randy Nicholson.”

  “What about Miguel and Maria Gomez?” Lara asked.

  Brett felt his muscles tighten. “Miguel was on purpose. They knew that he’d contacted the FBI. They wanted to torture him before they killed him. And even if he didn’t know what he was doing, they wanted his final torture to be killing his own wife, the woman he loved. I’m hoping tomorrow we’ll find out more about how it was done, how the drug actually works.” He took a drink of his water and went on, “We stopped in to see Dr. Treme, too. We’re pretty sure he wasn’t complicit in any way, and it seems unlikely he had anything to do with a body being found in the bay. He made a mistake, one that’s going to cost him. But we’re pretty sure he wasn’t involved in any criminal way.”

  “So we’re back to the Barillo family?” Meg asked.

  “Or someone with ties to the Barillo family—and money,” Brett said. “Diego and I are going to see Phil Kinny tomorrow. He has some ideas that might add to what we’ve been talking about here. We’re going to pay a visit to Anthony Barillo, too.” He turned to Lara. “After that threat yesterday, I was thinking that maybe you should come with us tomorrow, so we can make sure you stay safe.”

  She smiled at him. “Not tomorrow. It’s Just Say Thanks day. I’ll be running around like a chicken with my head cut off.”

  “Mike the chicken,” Brett said.

  “What?” Meg asked.

  Brett shrugged. “Look it up. Diego told me about it. Back in the 1940s a chicken lived for months with most of its head missing.”

  Meg and Matt stared at him.

  “I’ve heard about Mike the chicken. Our zombies still have their heads, at least,” Meg said.

  “Until they don’t,” Lara added very softly.

  Brett looked over at her and felt his body grow tense. Apparently there was something to chemistry after all.

  He hated knowing that she had to go to work tomorrow, but she wouldn’t be alone. Meg and Matt would be there.

  Not to mention hundreds of retired members of the American military.

  He wanted to argue that she should leave the event to someone else and be with him. It was that primeval need every caveman felt to protect his woman. But he didn’t say anything. It was pure ego to think that he
could be a better protector than Meg and Matt. Not to mention that it was wrong to take something away that meant so much to her—and to so many others, as well.

  He’d actually intended to be there himself, but there was no waiting on this case. He and Diego had to follow these new leads.

  “Tomorrow,” he told her, “you have to be careful. Very, very careful. Please.”

  “Tomorrow,” she assured him, “I’ll be safer than ever. The place will be flooded with people—including the media. I can’t imagine a situation where there could possibly be more help at hand—if help was needed, which I’m sure it won’t be,” she said. “I’ll be surrounded by the military, for heaven’s sake. And of course I’ll have Meg and Matt with me at all times.”

  “I know,” he said.

  She smiled. “And I’ll also have Miguel Gomez.” She paused and touched his arm. “He was there this evening when I went to see Cocoa. She sees him, too. He’s lost and so sad. I really pray that there’s a heaven and that he’ll find Maria there.”

  “I believe that they’re meant to be together forever and that they will meet again,” Brett assured her. And, he realized, he did believe it.

  “Have you seen her again? Maria?” Meg asked him.

  He shook his head. “But I haven’t been home in days except to grab a change of clothes. She only shows up at night, or when I’m just waking up, actually.”

  “Miguel definitely wants to help,” Lara said with a smile, “and he’s going to be watching out for anything strange now, too.”

  After dinner they returned to Sea Life, where Brett and Lara went down to the docks to see Diego.

  Brett caught him up on the conversation they’d had at dinner, and Diego nodded gravely. “Mike the headless chicken,” he said. “And to think you mocked me.”

  “You have to admit, it sounds pretty strange,” Brett admitted.

  “You two better go get your sleep—or whatever,” Diego said. He winked at Lara. “After the ‘whatever,’ you should have plenty of time to rest.”