by Tim Dorsey
The man flipped open a wallet with a gold badge and just as quickly returned it to his jacket. “Agent Mahoney.”
“Fantastic,” said the chief. “The state wants in. That’s at least another news cycle.”
“Listen,” one of the detectives pointedly told Mahoney. “We would appreciate the help, but we don’t. Do yourself a favor and just go back—”
Mahoney brushed past them, leaned down and lifted the sheet. “Just as I thought. Here’s your accident.” He raised the victim’s right arm and twisted it to display the underside of the wrist.
“Ligature?”
Mahoney dropped the arm and stood. “Looks like you got a joker in the deck.” He stuck a wooden matchstick in his mouth and leaned against a post. Except it was the two-by-four in the chest. He crashed over.
“Look what you did!”
Mahoney jumped up and wiggled the board back into the victim. “No harm, no foul.”
A detective grabbed his arm. “Just leave it.”
“I’m here to help.”
“You’ve helped enough.”
“You’ll need my street sense if you want to nail this collar.” Mahoney gave him a business card. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“And you do?”
“Instinct, hunch, gut feeling…”
“Wait, now I know who you are,” said another detective. “Yeah, you’re that cop they sent to the loony bin.”
“I got better.”
“You’re a fruitcake.” He gave Mahoney a two-handed shove in the chest.
Mahoney produced a set of brass knuckles. The detective pulled a drop weapon from his sock. They squared off.
The chief jumped between them. “All right, you two. Cut it out.”
Mahoney stowed the knuckles and eyed his rival. “You’re the one I’m going to bond with. This is how it always starts. Initial suspicion, physical confrontation. Then we’re getting drunk together in an Irish corner bar named O’Malley’s and helping each other through on-and-off relationships with women who genuinely care but don’t understand that being a cop isn’t something you can just leave at the office.”
“Psycho.”
“Buddy.”
A uniform rushed over to the chief. “Sir, university had a burglary. Hurricane-research center.”
“A lot of looting goes on after a storm. Why are you bringing this to me?”
“Might be related to this case.”
“How’s that?”
“The burglary was before the storm. And you’re not going to believe what they took.”
“Which was?”
He told them.
“That can’t be right,” said the chief. “Who’d want one of those?”
Another officer ran up with a small metal box in his hand. “Sir, we located a new witness. One of the students from the restaurant. Just discovered his Hummer H2 was stolen….”
“How rich are these kids?”
“…Happened almost the exact same time of the victim’s death.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The distance the H2’s traveled. It’s got a LoJack transmitter.” He held up the portable monitor. “See? They’re almost to the turnpike.”
The chief summoned a factotum. “Call the Okeechobee sheriff.”
One of the detectives grabbed the device from the patrolman. “Wait a second. I’ve seen this before.”
“What do you mean?” asked the chief.
The detective tossed the monitor back to the officer and ran to an unmarked car. He quickly returned with a sheet of paper.
The chief studied the page: a tracking map with a dotted line jitterbugging diagonally across the state. He compared it to the handheld display. “How’d you get a printout of the stolen car so fast?”
“I didn’t. That’s not the route of the H2. It’s the hurricane. Notice how all the time coordinates match.”
“But how can that be?”
“I don’t know electronics,” said the detective. “The receiver must be picking up transmissions from the National Weather Service or a TV network. Some kind of mistake.”
“It’s no mistake,” said Mahoney.
His nemesis sighed and squared off again. “I’m getting just a little tired of your attitude!”
Mahoney pointed up the street. “There’s this great Brooklyn sports bar. I’m buying the first round. My ex is filling the kids’ heads with crazy ideas about me.” He put a hand on the detective’s shoulder. “What about you? Wife sleeping around? I can do some checking.”
The detective swatted his arm. “Get the fuck off me.”
Another uniformed officer hurried over, finishing a conversation on his walkie-talkie. “Sir…”
The chief smacked himself in the forehead. “Now what!”
“Pinellas has another crime scene on the other side of the bay. By the Skyway.”
“So?”
“So you’re not going to believe this.”
CHAPTER FIVE
LANDFALL PLUS SIX
The police were wrapping it up, but the media was just getting started. The first TV truck arrived behind the Chinese restaurant. EYEWITNESS 5. A reporter jumped out and hit the ground running. The others weren’t far behind. ACTION NEWS 7, EYEWITNESS ACTION 4 and ACTION EYEWITNESS NEWS 12. Then the big network satellite trucks. Telescoping antennas ascended with an electric whir, acquiring magic signals from orbit.
Blood was in the water, literally. The press corps stampeded to the coroner’s wagon, cameras and microphones through the back doors. The medical examiner slammed them shut. “Nothing to see here.”
They drooped momentarily, then brightened. “There’s the chief!”
He saw them coming. “Oh, no.” Thoughts of escape, but it was too late. Surrounded. A bank of lights.
“Why are the police dragging their feet?”
“Who bungled the case?”
“Will there be an internal investigation?”
The chief shielded his eyes. “No comment.”
The reporters noticed four students wrapped in blankets on the receiving dock, talking to cops with open note pads.
“Are those kids under arrest?”
“Why’d they do it?”
“Was it a devil-worship ceremony?”
“I said, ‘No comment.’ This is an open investigation. We’ll give you everything as soon as we’re done.”
The wolf pack raced over to the loading dock. The chief could tell by the students’ excited gestures that it wasn’t going to play well on the evening news. “How can this get any worse?”
This is how:
The next of kin arrived, a multi-generational, overly extended family that lived within two miles of each other near a toxic-waste site of their own making. They consistently defended the innocence of their pedophile brother/uncle/son even after the taped confessions and DNA.
“You killed him! You all killed him!” shouted the family’s self-appointed spokesman, a self-tattooed second cousin whose résumé had been prepared by the Department of Corrections. “You never gave him a chance!” He put an arm around the shoulders of the hysterical family matriarch. “It’s okay, Grandma. Don’t cry. Here, have a cigarette.”
The press ran over. TV lights shone in faces.
“How’s the grieving process?”
The spokesman stepped forward. “We’re not talking to no fucking reporters! Not after all those lies you told!”
“Did he deserve to suffer more?”
The spokesman punched a camera lens. “You’re as guilty as anyone! It’s just like you pulled the trigger yourselves!”
“He wasn’t shot. A two-by-four ripped through his chest, bursting major organs.”
The matriarch wailed. The spokesman lunged. “Why, you son of a bitch! I’ll rip your fucking head off—”
Police jumped in. He continued taking swings over their shoulders. “I’ll kill you! You hear me? Every last stinking reporter!”
A luxury sedan rolled up.
“Look! It’s the mayor!”
“Are you going to resign?”
The chief of police threw back aspirin and crumpled a Dixie cup. The department’s media-liaison officer walked over. They stood together watching the public-relations disaster unfold.
“We need to hold a press conference,” said the liaison.
“That’s the last thing we need,” said the chief.
“No, we have to get out in front of this thing. Otherwise it’s a train wreck.”
More reporters arrived and fed the fray with the relatives.
The chief slowly began nodding. “I guess you’re right.”
“I’ll start courting my contacts.”
“Look.” The chief raised his chin. “It’s quieting down.”
The family spokesman had composed himself and told the officers he was okay now. They released him. He lunged again. Cops jumped back in. Great footage. All the journalists surged forward.
Except one. A lone reporter stood on the far side of the parking lot, losing his breakfast in a storm-water ditch.
The liaison canted his head. “Isn’t that McSwirley?”
On the other side of Tampa Bay: another industrious crime scene with another white-sheet circus tent. This one at the foot of the Sunshine Skyway bridge.
Investigators sipped coffee and milled in small groups. “Talk about your shit luck”—a detective tapped himself in the breastbone—“two-by-four right through the sternum. Just like that photo from Andrew.”
Someone with latex gloves tweezered fibers into Ziploc bags. Someone else from the county CSI unit waited for plaster to dry in a tire track.
A burnt orange ’61 Coupe de Ville pulled off the highway and drove through the wet plaster. Mahoney jumped out and flashed a badge. “Who’s in charge here?”
The Tampa chief of police glanced across the parking lot. “Yeah, that looks like McSwirley.”
“I’ll start with him,” said the liaison. “See if we can’t steer this thing.”
“Good thinking,” said the chief. “He’s one of the few I trust.”
“Know what you mean,” said the liaison. “Most reporters think it’s not a story unless they can embarrass the department. Not McSwirley. He just wants the facts.”
“Actually, what it seems he really wants is to be somewhere else.”
“That’s why he’s so good. This stuff gets to him. The others almost take delight.”
“But it’s the same with cops,” said the chief. “The best are conflicted. The ones who seem a little too happy, you gotta watch.”
“He stopped throwing up. I’ll be right back.”
The liaison strolled over to the ditch and offered a handkerchief. The reporter thanked him. Jeff McSwirley, three years out of journalism school, the cub crime-beat reporter for Tampa Bay Today. His hallmarks were the quick smile, a fierce pacifism, and difficulty dressing himself: unironed shirttail hanging out, belt not threaded through one of the loops, wide brown tie knotted in the yet-to-catch-on style with the thin length in back hanging longer. A blue ink stain had signed a long-term lease for the bottom of his breast pocket. He blended in with the rest of the print media.
McSwirley was the least experienced and most effective crime reporter in the bay area. Green on the law, naïve with sources, grammatically suspect. What set him apart was the interviews. Scooped all the best. It wasn’t technique or trickery. It lay in a single, God-given trait: McSwirley was one of the most likable people you’d ever meet. The other reporters hated his guts.
The toughest interview hands down was surviving relatives, made even more difficult by journalists’ unsanded personalities. At best, they crashed about fragile emotional arenas like drunken orangutans. At worst, they…Well, like several years ago, when a jetliner went down. The first reporters in the terminal were thrilled to have beaten crisis counselors to unaware loved ones still waiting at the arrival gate.
Microphone and lights. “What’s your reaction to the plane crash?”
“The what?”
It was hard to fail against that yardstick, but McSwirley did much more. He excelled. Jeff ’s specialty was the ultrasensitive Barbara Walters sit-down. Except in McSwirley’s interviews, he was the one who cried, and the next of kin had to console him.
Or the job fell to cops, like now. The media liaison placed a hand on McSwirley’s shoulder as the reporter hung back over the ditch.
“Going to be sick again?”
McSwirley stood up. “False alarm.” He wiped his mouth and turned toward the fracas with the victim’s relatives. “I better be getting over to talk to them.”
On the other side of the parking lot, the family spokesman broke free again. “I’ll kill all you motherfuckin’ reporters!”
The liaison felt obliged. “I’m not exactly sure this is the ideal time.”
McSwirley shook his head. “Believe me, there’s nothing I want less. But my editor will have my head if I don’t at least make the effort. He always asks.”
The liaison watched sympathetically as the reporter headed over with ungainly strides.
Moments later, a typical scene: police holding other reporters back while the victim’s family gathered around McSwirley, giving him so many quotes he couldn’t flip notebook pages fast enough. He was also slowed by having to rewrite stuff because his tears made the ink run.
“There, there,” said the family spokesman, arm around Jeff ’s shoulders.
“But it’s just so sad.”
“It’ll be okay. Have a cigarette.”
“Don’t smoke.”
The matriarch clutched his hand earnestly. “Let me make you a nice home-cooked meal.”
Two men watched in the background.
“I’ll be,” said the chief.
“Never ceases to amaze me,” said the liaison.
“How does he do it?”
“Sometimes he cries. Sometimes he gets sick…”
The relatives suddenly jumped back as the reporter jackknifed over.
“Sometimes both.”
A new detective approached the chief with the department’s technology wizard. He held up the LoJack monitor. “Sir, Dipsy checked this thing out thoroughly. Said the receiver isn’t malfunctioning. In fact, it’s working perfectly.”
“So it really is tracking the stolen Hummer?”
“Within three meters,” said Dipsy. “But they’re working on something insane that’ll go under eighteen inches.”
“Is it still following the eye?”
“Straight down the pike.”
“How’s that possible?” asked the chief. “Hurricanes don’t follow highways.”
“The tracker shows he’s been zigzagging like crazy on county roads and others that aren’t on the maps. Has to be someone who knows Florida like his own skin.”
“Even so, it wouldn’t give him enough to stay in the eye. Especially in that remote part of the state.”
“He’s also crossing fields. The Hummer has four-wheel drive.”
The chief reached for the receiver. “Where’s the storm now?”
“Almost to Jackass Crossing,” said Dipsy.
“Jackass Crossing?” asked the liaison.
“Real name’s Yeehaw Junction,” said the chief, studying the display. “Truckers call it the other on the CB.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Great-granddaddy used to drive cattle through there.”
“But you’re black,” said the liaison.
“You’re kidding,” said the chief.
“I mean, the guys who drove the cattle—weren’t they called crackers?”
“That’s right. Sound of the whips as they ran herd.”
“The name doesn’t bother you?”
“Should it?”
“I thought it was an insult. I’m guessing even more so if you’re…you know, not a cracker.”
“That’s Mississippi. Totally different etymology in Florida. Prou
d name. My family’s sixth-generation.”
“Sir, shouldn’t we call some of the departments over there? Let ’em know what’s coming?”
“Definitely. Except it’s not going to do any good for a while. They can’t run out in the middle of this storm, and the roads will be blocked for hours afterward. Have to clear ’em first with chain saws and bulldozers.” The chief looked down at the display again and rubbed his chin. “What on earth are we dealing with?”
“Whatever it is, we need to keep it out of the papers,” said the liaison. “Can you imagine the headlines?”
“Vividly,” said the chief. “Not only do we have a psycho killer on the loose, but he’s tooling around in the middle of a hurricane.”
“That’s the only silver lining,” said the liaison. “Press doesn’t know about the tracking device yet.”
“And we need to keep it that way,” said the chief. His eyes followed the slow-moving green dot cutting across southern Osceola County. “Who are you?”
A TV reporter leaned over the chief ’s shoulder. “What’s that?”
CHAPTER SIX
TWENTY MILES WEST OF
THE FLORIDA TURNPIKE
Wooooooooo-hooooooo!
A late-model H2 bounded across an open field of tall swamp grass. Above: a tight hole of clear, blue sky.
“Look at that eye wall!” said Serge. “Isn’t she beautiful? Perfectly stratified.”
“What are you doing?” yelled Coleman. “We’re heading right for it!”
Serge steered with his elbows so he could shoot video out the windshield. “Coleman, uncover your face. You’re missing the convective chimney and shotgun debris field…”
“We’re on a collision course!” Coleman’s hands shook as he popped a beer.
“…I’ve only seen this in photographs from the hurricane-hunter planes. Check that cloud bank curving miles straight up. It’s even more inspiring than I’d hoped.”
“But you said we’d avoid the eye wall.”
“That was just to get you in the car. Sometimes we have to play chicken with the wall in order to pick up the next road. Then, at the last second, we reach pavement, make a hard turn and pray to outrun.”
“Will we make it?”