Off the Chart

by James W. Hall

  By late afternoon the wind laid down and the body count had reached five. One man, apparently the captain of the yacht, had been knifed in the stomach, while Markham and another man and two women all had been put to death by small-caliber pistols. Dr. Andy and his spiritual day-trippers had journeyed on to the next incarnation full of high hopes.

  Patched in to the VHF, Jeannie Sugarman confirmed that the five bodies they’d found accounted for all the adults on board. Only Janey and the yacht itself were missing.

  They worked till dark and for an hour afterward, using high-power searchlights to sweep the black sea, until finally the commander of operations called off the exercise till daylight. On the ride in, Sugarman went below and used the VHF to hail any of his fishing captain friends who might be listening, sending out the alert that his daughter was lost at sea. Thorn caught snatches of his talk. Calm, restrained, even apologetic about bothering them.

  On the final leg of their journey home, as they came out of Adam’s Cut, heading into Blackwater Sound, the blue strobe of a police car pulsed across the dark water. Thorn tracked the light along the shoreline, north beyond Sundowners restaurant and the Caribbean Club, both brightly lit; a short distance farther north was the dark zone where his stilt house stood and where the flashing blue light originated. Thorn throttled up and made it across the sound in less than two minutes.

  “Monroe County,” Sugar said as they idled up to the dock. “Taft himself.”

  Thorn drew the Heart Pounder alongside the pilings and Sugarman jumped ashore with the bowline.

  Upstairs on his porch there was a bright yellow flare and then another.

  “What the hell!”

  Lawton dropped to his knees, ducked his head.

  “Muzzle flash!” he called out. “Take cover!”

  Up on the porch there were two more explosions of light and this time Thorn caught Alexandra’s profile, her camera poised before her eye.

  Thorn helped the old man to his feet.

  “It’s just Alex. She’s taking pictures.”

  “Oh, lord,” Lawton said. “When that woman takes pictures, it’s never good.”

  Sugarman made the Heart Pounder fast to the dock cleats, then trotted off toward the cop car. Taft stood beside the cruiser talking on his radio.

  Thorn helped Lawton climb over the side. The old man settled the puppy down on the grass, and he wandered off into the shadows.

  While Sugar spoke with the sheriff in the blue throb of light, Thorn hustled over to the house and up the stairs.

  “What’s going on?”

  Alexandra stepped into a wedge of light coming from the house. She dug a MagLite out of her trouser pocket and handed it to him and pointed at the French doors. Thorn flicked it on and swung the beam.

  At eye level a black-handled fillet knife was stuck deep in the door’s wood frame. Fluttering in a light breeze was a yellow Post-it note pinned in place by the point of the blade. Thorn leaned close and read the words scrawled in what looked like purple crayon:

  THREE MILLION DOLLARS FOR THE GIRL. OR ITEMS OF EQUAL VALUE. GO AHEAD CALL THE POLICE IF YOU CAN’T HELP YOURSELF, BUT IT WON’T DO YOU ANY GOOD.

  Thorn leaned closer to the sheet of paper. Focused the light on the blade, sniffed the air but couldn’t pick up the scent.

  “That what I think it is?”

  “Looks a lot like blood to me. But you know not to touch anything.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Stay calm, Thorn. Don’t freak on me.”

  “This is about my land,” he said. “That fucking bastard, Marty Messina. ‘Three million dollars or items of equal value.’”

  “Marty or the man he’s working for.”

  Lawton carried his puppy past them into the house.

  “Going to take a shower,” he said. “Not that it makes any goddamn difference.”

  “What’re you talking about, Dad?”

  “‘Everything we do is futile, but we must do it anyway.’ That’s Gandhi, the guy in the loincloth. Futile, like taking showers. Do it one day, you gotta do it again tomorrow. Roll the rock up the hill, it comes rolling back down.”

  Sugarman and Sheriff Taft moved out of the halo of the blue strobe and headed toward the house. Sugarman’s head was bowed. Taft had his hand on Sugar’s shoulder.

  “You have to tell Taft about Marty,” Alex said.

  “Do I?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “And then what? Stand back and watch the police once again efficiently and swiftly nab the suspects? Bring Janey to safety?”

  “The FBI will come in on this,” Alex said. “This’ll get serious heat.”

  “Yeah, like they’re so much better.”

  “I’m a sworn police officer, Thorn. I can’t let you withhold evidence.”

  He looked at the dark glitter of her eyes.

  “Even though it’s your natural tendency and you’ve had so much practice at it over the years.”

  “You’re right, you’re right.”

  “So you agree you’ll stay out of it. Let the officials take over.”

  “It’s too obvious,” Thorn said. “One week a guy tries to buy my place for three million dollars and I send him packing; the next week, Janey’s ransomed for the same amount. Or items of equal value. Too goddamn easy.”

  “Crooks aren’t usually high-wattage intellects.”

  “I know, I know. But this is way too dumb.”

  “Thorn, the police can handle it. It’s what they’re trained for. They’ve got the tools, the manpower. It’s their goddamn job, not yours.”

  “Okay, okay. Point taken.”

  The sheriff and Sugar were coming up the stairs. Thorn bent forward and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “Don’t patronize me, Thorn.”

  “I kissed you.”

  “Patting me on the head and dismissing me. That’s what it felt like.”

  “Jesus, you’re tough.” Thorn reached out and touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I’m not dismissing you. It’s just that I’ve never developed much confidence in our esteemed law enforcement establishment.”

  “Which includes me.”

  He apologized again, but her jaw was still hard when Taft stepped onto the porch, Sugarman right behind him.

  The sheriff was a compact man in his mid-fifties. He’d been putting in some serious gym time, and his gray uniform shirt was cut tight across his tapered waist to prove it. He wore his black hair in a carefully shaggy John Kennedy style, a look he’d maintained for the two decades he’d been in office. He moved with the mildly bowlegged strut of a lifelong jock who’d just that morning done more work on some obscure muscle group than Thorn had managed in his entire existence. Though he’d had some hostile run-ins with the sheriff and his people over the years, Thorn never considered Taft a bad man. Neither incompetent nor corrupt. Maybe just a fraction over-impressed with his position in the world.

  “Thorn,” Taft said.

  “Hey, Rick. You’re looking good.”

  He nodded his agreement.

  “Forensics are on the way,” he said to Alex. “But thanks for the assist.”

  She said he was quite welcome.

  “You’re coming up in the world, Thorn.” Taft shined his billy-club flashlight on the door and leaned in to inspect the knife. “An ID tech from Miami PD. That’s a major advance for a guy like you.”

  Sugarman kept his distance. Bent forward just enough to read the note.

  When he was finished he stared over Taft’s shoulder at Thorn. His eyes shadowed with something as close to rage as Thorn had ever seen there.

  “This strike anyone as odd?” Taft was still peering at the ransom note.

  “Odd wouldn’t be my word of choice,” Thorn said.

  “Odd how?” Alex said.

  “The whole deal. A girl kidnapped off a boat right before her own daddy’s eyes. It was what, seven, eight o’clock.”

  “Nine,” Sugarman said.

  �
�And the point?” Thorn said.

  “All right, it goes down at nine o’clock. Apparently about the same time as she’s being taken captive, the rest of the passengers are murdered and the boat’s stolen. A major crime. Going to make headlines, no two ways about it, be a big deal, lead stories for days, even around here, might even go national. But still, the guy who’s doing this has the balls to waltz right up to Thorn’s house, not Sugarman’s, mind you, and stick a knife, possibly even a murder weapon, in the front door demanding a quantity of money that I’m fairly sure Thorn and Sugarman together haven’t earned in their entire lives.”

  “Whoever stuck that note in my door knew we weren’t here,” Thorn said. “That we’d gone out on the Heart Pounder.”

  Taft looked out at the dark water, swiveling for a view north, then south along the shore.

  “Well, yeah. It wouldn’t be hard for somebody to keep a watch on your comings and goings from a hundred different locations along the shoreline, even anchored out on a boat. When they saw you leave, they came in, left the message, and got the hell away. Still, I’d call that fairly brazen.”

  “Brazen,” Thorn said. “Or crazy.”

  Taft straightened up and switched off his flashlight.

  “And why your house, not Sugarman’s? And how about the outrageous figure, three million bucks?”

  “Marty Messina,” Thorn said.

  He heard Alexandra’s sigh. All this time waiting for him to do the right thing. She set her camera on the picnic table and took a seat on the bench.

  Taft turned and stared at Thorn.

  “Marty Messina? What’re you talking about?”

  “This is about me, Rick,” Thorn said.

  Taft flicked on the flashlight and brought the blinding beam onto Thorn’s face and held it there. Thorn squinted but kept staring into the brightness.

  “Christ almighty,” Taft said. “It never stops with you, does it? It never fucking stops.”

  Twelve

  They waited at Thorn’s till the crime scene people arrived. Thorn gave the sheriff a quick summary of Messina’s offer on his land. Taft looking dubious until Thorn told him the amount. Three million dollars.

  “Steal a child to get some land?” Taft shook his head. “Never heard of that.”

  “How’s it supposed to work?” Alex said. “I don’t get it.”

  “Maybe we’re supposed to wait for further details,” Thorn said. “Then again maybe this is the one shot we get.”

  “We need to find Messina,” Sugar said. “We’re wasting time.”

  “And do what?” Taft said. “We’ve got no evidence tying him to this.”

  “Enough evidence for me,” Sugarman said.

  After staring out at the dark for a moment, Taft let go of a lungful of air and agreed they could come along. Just this once, though. Don’t get any ideas he was bringing them in on the investigation.

  Fifteen minutes later at Tarpon’s, Taft questioned the bartender, and yeah, the young guy thought he remembered seeing Messina hanging out at the bar a few times lately but told the sheriff that the dishwasher might know Marty a little better, giving them a slimy wink. In the steamy kitchen the Mexican kid running the big silver machine shut off his spray hose, eyed the sheriff anxiously, brushing a glop of food off his chin with a soapy hand.

  “Big guy, black hair, thick fucking neck?”

  “That’s the description we have,” said Taft.

  “I think Mary knows the guy,” he said. “Seen her with him once or twice.”

  “Which Mary?” Sugarman said.

  The sheriff turned a stony look on Sugar but said nothing.

  “Mary Miller?” Thorn said.

  The dishwasher said yeah, that Mary.

  “Never heard of her.” Taft looked at Thorn.

  “She’s a lady of the evening,” Thorn said. “Works out of the Marriott bar. A nice young lady with green hair and a scorpion tattoo on her belly.”

  “What? You got an inventory of all the local tattoos, Thorn?”

  “Everyone knows Mary’s scorpion,” Sugar said. “Even I know about it.”

  “I guess I been staying in the office too much,” Taft said.

  “This time of night, where would we find Mary?” Sugarman asked the dishwasher. His voice was dead. The sheriff clenched his teeth but kept silent. Caught between his normal alpha dog tendencies and grudging deference for Sugar’s grief.

  The dishwasher gave them an address in Tavernier.

  “Oceanside, down by Harry Harris Park. Weird round fucking house.”

  “This what you do, amigo?” Taft said. “You Mary’s pimp?”

  “No, man, it’s not like that,” the Mexican said. “I just know a lot of people, that’s all. Put ’em together if I can.”

  “So you’re a matchmaker.”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever. But I ain’t no pimp. No way, man.”

  “We’re wasting time, Taft,” Sugar said.

  The sheriff swallowed a lump of anger, gave the Mexican kid a last vicious look, then led the way out of the restaurant.

  Everyone was silent in the car. Taft steaming, handling the cruiser with brutish disregard. It took ten minutes to get to Mary’s round house a block from Harry Harris Park. In the driveway, Taft slammed the shifter into park and turned on Sugar, then shot Thorn a look as well.

  “Now look, you shit dicks. I’ll handle this. As a token of respect for Sugarman’s history in law enforcement, I’m letting you come along, but I have my own way of doing things. Sugarman, you’re not on the force anymore. Let’s not forget that, all right?”

  “So handle it,” Sugar said quietly.

  After the second round of knocking, Mary Miller threw open the door. She had on a pair of green bikini panties that matched her hair and wore nothing on top. She was as flat-chested as a ten-year-old boy, her ribs shining in the streetlight. The scorpion was red and yellow and smoldered against her white flesh. Its spiked tail was curled around her navel, its spidery legs disappearing into the brim of her panties.

  “What’re you looking at?” she said to the bunch of them. “You never seen titties before?”

  “Marty Messina,” Sugar said. “You know where he lives?”

  “Jesus Christ, Sugarman,” Taft said. “Go sit in the goddamn car.”

  The sheriff stepped between Sugar and Mary.

  “That goon Messina,” Mary said, talking past the sheriff to Sugarman. “Hell, yes, I know where he lives. That street across from Rowell’s Marina. The one with the dive shop out front.”

  “Largo Lane?” Sugarman said.

  “That’s it, yeah, Largo Lane.”

  From the shadows behind her a tall black man with dreadlocks appeared. He was naked and seemed to shine with a coating of oil. The joint he was smoking was as big as a ballyhoo. He gave the sheriff a lingering appraisal but didn’t seem impressed enough to hide his dope.

  “Anything wrong, Miss Mary?”

  She said no, there wasn’t, and without turning around she reached behind her and patted him twice on the chest. Good dog.

  “Second house on the right, when you come off the highway. Downstairs rental apartment.”

  “Thanks, Mary,” Sugar said, and turned to go.

  “Kick him in the nuts when you see him. Scum-sucking pig had his fun and stiffed me. Fucker needs to go back to jail, learn some manners.”

  It was nearly midnight when they pulled off the highway onto Largo Lane. Thorn’s neighborhood. Taft had said nothing since leaving Mary’s, and Thorn sure as hell wasn’t up for small talk. Sugar sat in the front seat and stared out the side window and rubbed a fingertip back and forth across his forehead as if trying to smooth away a blinding migraine.

  The house was concrete block, painted gray. It rose up to the usual fifteen feet on cement pilings. The downstairs apartment was wedged between the pilings. The windows in the apartment were louvered, most of them either cracked or missing. Anyone living in that dump would hear every eighteen-wheel
er, every shift of gear and burp of exhaust, from thirty yards away on the Overseas Highway.

  Below the croton bushes planted by the front door a white cat was prowling, but otherwise there was no sign of activity.

  No one answered the sheriff’s knock on the door of the downstairs apartment. No cars in the drive. Above them the windows of the main house were shuttered tight—owners gone for hurricane season, already back in Chicago, Toronto, or Trenton. Sugarman stepped past the sheriff and turned the knob and swung open the door and stepped inside.

  “You can’t fucking do that, Sugarman. Get back out here.”

  “He doesn’t need a warrant,” Thorn said. “He’s a friend of Marty’s. So am I. We’re just stopping by for a beer.”

  “You guys go sit in the goddamn car or I’ll put cuffs on the both of you.”

  Thorn edged past the sheriff and followed Sugarman into the dark apartment. Behind him Thorn heard what sounded like the sheriff unholstering his gun, but he continued into the apartment anyway. Even though Taft had his black belt in machismo, Thorn was pretty sure the sheriff wasn’t about to shoot a couple of locals in the back over a failure to obey.

  Marty’s room was bare. From the glow of the highway lights and the flares of passing cars Thorn could see there was nothing but a refrigerator and a single bed stripped to the mattress. No dresser, no knickknacks or family portraits. A cheap plastic phone lay on the floor. Even for a crash pad it was spartan—unless you’d been living in a prison cell for the last ten years.

  “Okay, come on, you two,” the sheriff said. “There’s nothing here. If he was here at all, he’s long gone. I’ll send some people over tomorrow, check for prints, do a shakedown.”

  Sugarman opened the refrigerator. Nothing but a box of baking soda, a jar of pickles, and a moldering pork chop.

  “Goddamn it,” Taft said. “That’s it! Now you’re disturbing evidence. Fucking with a criminal investigation.”

  Sugarman swung around and Thorn stepped out of his way. Sugar marched outside and headed back to the car and opened the passenger door and stood waiting until Taft and Thorn followed. When Taft was behind the wheel clipping on his seat belt and Thorn settled in the back, Sugar turned back and with long strides was inside the apartment before Taft even noticed.