“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “It’s an ugly thing.”
Shirley Woo had a sip of her iced tea and continued to scrutinize Sugarman’s face.
“There’s something else,” Sheffield said. “The way things work, maybe I would’ve heard about Tina’s death eventually, but it could’ve taken a while, a single death like that, no matter how unusual the cause, it’s still a run-of-the-mill local murder, not a federal matter. But when a second victim shows up a few miles away on the same night, killed in the same unique fashion, well, now it’s clear you have a predator working the area or passing through. Either way, it becomes federal, rings the phone in my old office.”
“A second victim?”
“Kid in a burger joint. Choked to death on a mouthful of raw meat, then the place where he worked set on fire.”
“Fast food place right off I-95? On motel row?”
Frank dug a spiral notepad out of his back pocket and flipped the pages.
“Yeah, Hampton Inn, Best Western, a Waffle House, and this burger joint. The usual franchise strip.”
“That’s where Thorn and Cruz were staying, where they cut me loose.”
“Well, well.”
“How the hell does Tina get from Vero to the woods outside of St. Augustine? How’s that happen? It couldn’t be coincidence. Tina didn’t know where we’d be stopping for the night. Someone waylaid her and brought her three hours north and dumped her body near where we were going to stay, which has to mean that that someone is connected to Cruz, knew where she was stopping, or spoke with her on the phone.”
“Back up a minute. ’Cause see, the local law up there, the St. John’s County homicide guy, crime scene people, they’re thinking Tina was killed at the location where the body was found. Tire tracks down a back road, two sets of footprints leading from the rear of the vehicle into the woods, the ground disturbed, signs of a scuffle. All of it consistent with her being held in the trunk of a vehicle.”
Sugarman was silent, trying to picture it and trying not to.
“See, the thing is,” Frank said, “to make matters more of a concern to the bureau, these two cases aren’t isolated. So far they turned up two others with similar MOs. Both in the last eighteen months, all in Florida. Somebody forcibly choked to death on food.”
“Two more?”
“At least two, maybe more. They’re looking through case files, deaths that might have been ruled accidental or went unsolved and got filed. This could be more widespread. Or maybe it’s just these four. Either way, there’s one fucked-up individual at large.”
“May I get started?” Shirley said.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Sheffield. “I didn’t tell you, Shirley’s a sketch artist, best we’ve got. If you can describe it, she can draw it. My replacement, Gracie Rodriguez, new special agent in charge, she asked me to bring Shirley down, see if you’d consent to describing this Cruz person. They’re sending a team up to St. Augustine tomorrow, wanted something to show around. Since Ms. Gathercole was apparently associated with Cruz, and Cruz was impersonating a federal officer, it’s a logical starting point. You game?”
Shirley Woo dragged her purse from the floor, set it in her lap, and withdrew a small laptop.
While the computer was booting up, Sheffield rose.
“You guys have fun. Come get me when you’re done. No hurry.”
It took more than two hours. Sheffield wandered around on the outside deck, sat at the bar, talked to a woman for a while, made her laugh. Sugarman watched him hitting on the ladies and socializing with some old salts while Sugar described Cruz’s face.
Woo worked her software and asked questions and Sugarman tried his best, not just to remember, but to label her features in a clear-eyed way.
“Her mouth,” Woo said. “Lower lip, upper lip.”
“Lower was thin, upper a little thicker.”
“Is it a mouth you would want to kiss?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“It’s my question. My way of doing things. This software, I have written it myself.”
“Okay, okay. Would I want to kiss Cruz’s mouth? No. Not really.”
“Why?”
“It was pretty but cold. Calculating.”
“Any other words of this type?”
“Imperious,” Sugarman said.
“Your vocabulary is notable. You are a wordsmith.”
“Thank you. It’s a hobby, vocabulary building. I know it’s strange.”
“Strange, yes.” Then Woo said, “Lashes? Dense, full, sweeping, stubby?”
And on they went, Sugarman trying for the simplest descriptors, then those out-of-left-field questions throwing him off. Sugarman trying and failing to elicit an extracurricular remark from Woo. At intervals, she turned the laptop around and had him choose from sets of facial shapes, ear shapes, noses, foreheads, chins, cheeks.
“Was there sunlight radiating from her eyes? Or something else?”
“Brown eyes, okay, but with what color undertone?”
“Which of these words describe her eyes: bedroom, bleary, bloodshot, close set, widely spaced, dazed, glassy, placid, stricken, vacant, dancing, piercing, flashing, sparkling, squinting. You can choose more than one.”
“When she smiled could you see her teeth? Upper and lower?”
“Were her teeth white, yellowed, straight, crooked?”
“Cheekbones, angled, soft, none?”
“Did she have crow’s-feet, deep-set eyes, drowsy, heavy-lidded, hooded?”
“On a scale of one to ten, one is icy, ten is scorching, what number was the heat in her eyes?”
Sugarman played along. Not sure if Woo was joking or trying to make him comfortable, or what the hell New Age bullshit she was slinging.
“Could this woman carry a tune or is she tone deaf?”
“Was she pierced anywhere you could not see?”
“Has this woman given birth? Has this woman aborted a child?”
Preposterous questions, which little by little erased the sharply detailed image he started with, turned it into something slippery and uncertain, then gradually awoke memories of Cruz that somehow clarified her face more vividly and with more dimensionality than he’d had at the outset. By the end of the session he was exhausted, but Woo’s oddball method had dredged up elements of Cruz’s character Sugarman had registered only subliminally.
“Now,” Woo said. “I will show you a face, three views.”
She turned her laptop around. Side, full front, head turned at an angle.
“Is this her?”
“Damn,” Sugarman said. “You’re good.”
“Yes,” Woo said. “I get that a lot.”
TWENTY-FOUR
OUTSIDE IN THE SNAPPERS PARKING lot, with Woo waiting in the car, Sheffield thanked him for his help.
“She’s a bit of a wackadoodle, but she gets it done.”
Sugarman nodded. Emotionally bottomed out, unable to speak.
“It pains me to admit it,” Frank said. “But I royally fucked up.”
“What?”
“Should’ve realized yesterday, that story you told me. My mind’s on remodeling the motel, all the little details, I’m walking around in a daze, no more job, no office, no schedule, you know, all my adult life as an FBI agent, now the void’s opening up before me. You were telling me this stuff about Thorn and you, and this Cruz woman, it should’ve clicked, but it didn’t, not till this morning. I woke up and realized who she might be.”
“Talk to me, Frank.”
“That woman, the one you know as Cruz, her real name is Yolanda Obrero.”
“You know her?”
Frank grunted a yes.
“She did a stint in Miami. I thought when you described her yesterday I might know her, but hey, so many good-looking Latina broads in this town, it’s hard to sort out one slim dark-haired beauty from another. But the woman in Woo’s drawing, that’s Obrero. Maybe her maiden name was Cruz, I don’t know. Women do tha
t, lose a husband, take back their father’s name.”
“What do you know about her?”
“More than I’d like to. One thing, she had two daughters, both seriously fucked up. One died a year or two ago, suicide, threw herself off a building, full of dope at the time, heroin, coke. The other one, Pixie, Trixie, one of those, that little girl has a few dozen soliciting arrests. Don’t remember the details.”
“She was FBI, Obrero?”
“That’s right, she was one of ours.”
“For how long?”
“Ten years on the street, then her marriage cracks up, the guy, he worked DEA undercover, wound up drifting over to the dark side, Manny Obrero, hanging with Scarface and his friends too long, snorting the product, got converted. I don’t know where he is now. Some federal facility. But right after he’s taken off the street and sent away, Obrero stopped showing up for work. The girls giving her trouble, acting out and shit. She started flashing a lot of cash, new fancy car, diamonds on her hands. Clearly she’s tapping into some of Manny’s ill-gotten gains.
“Other than that, I can’t remember how it all went, but if you think it’s relevant, I’ll see if I can get you her jacket. I just remember she was one of only two agents in my much-heralded history with the bureau I had to fire. Couldn’t find anyone she’d worked with who trusted her anymore, nobody would stand up for her. Between her girls and her Scarface husband, man, the woman turned into a hot mess.”
Sugarman said, “That’s all I need to know, Frank. Don’t bother digging out her file.”
“No, there’s more.”
Sheffield grunted again as if lifting something heavy.
“Cruz, Obrero, she stopped in my office, I don’t know, a week ago, ten days. I’m packing up everything from my drawers and shelves, thirty years of trinkets, trophies, plaques and shit. She said she’d heard I was retiring and brought me a bottle of rum as a present. Ron Abuelo Centuria, you ever hear of it? From Panama, smooth and rich, best damn rum I’ve ever tasted. So the two of us are sipping rum, she’s hitting on me a little, I kind of lose my focus.”
“What’d she want, Frank?”
“After a couple of drinks she got around to it. Said she was doing something private now, corporate security job, personnel investigations, and Thorn’s name came up at work and did I know anything about the guy?”
“And you told her what?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Like I say, there was amazing rum involved. I’m packing up my office, it’s emotional, looking at my files, photos, emptying my drawers, a catharsis, I wasn’t concentrating. I do recall saying at one point that Thorn was a barnacle, he’s stuck to his rock down in Key Largo.”
“Why’d you say that?”
“’Cause he is.”
“But why’s that come up?”
“She might’ve asked something about his willingness to travel. Is he mobile? I don’t know. It’s fuzzy. But after I heard that story of yours yesterday, I started thinking about Obrero, and I think she was picking my brains about what she’d have to do to get Thorn to accompany her on some kind of trip. Like the one you were describing.”
“So when Obrero was in your office my name came up too.”
“Sure it did, yeah. I told her you and Thorn worked in tandem. Thorn’s the loose cannon, you’re the straight arrow.”
“Starting to make sense,” Sugarman said. “My name leads her to Tina. She gives Tina a story about capturing Flynn Moss, Tina’s gullible. Cruz gets her to play along with this fake sting operation.”
“But this raw meat thing,” Sheffield said. “That’s not Obrero. She’s crazy, but not that way, not crazy violent.”
“Maybe what that is, Frank, that’s a distinction without a difference.”
“I’m sorry, Sugar. I haven’t been thinking straight lately. Too much booze, reorienting my orbit. A lot of shit has been slipping my mind lately.”
“I understand, Frank. Retiring, it’s a big deal.”
“Look, I’d like to help you with this Pine Haven thing. I would. But I’m afraid you’re on your own. I’ve retired for real, and I promised myself no side jaunts, no special favors. I’m strictly out of the biz.”
The rumble of trucks and cars on the Overseas Highway a block away was rolling in, the sound setting up a sympathetic vibration in Sugarman’s chest.
“And if I went up there with you, no way could I do it on the sly. There’d have to be other feds involved. You don’t want a bunch of by-the-book agents around Thorn, the situation he’s in. Minute he found Flynn, my people would be all over him, clap the kid away. Better I stay clear. But you know, just between us, from what I can tell, that kid’s been doing good stuff. Illegal as hell, but nobody’s gotten hurt, so I say more power to him.
“But you understand, Sugar, if I’m questioned about any of this, I’m going to have to give up Flynn. Tell them what I know. I like the kid, what he’s doing, so I’m not going to volunteer anything, but I can’t withhold if they ask directly.”
“I get it, Frank. Do what you have to do. I appreciate you coming down, letting me know face-to-face about Tina.”
“You two were close? Real close?”
“Close enough,” Sugarman said. “But that’s not the point anymore.”
Frank nodded.
Though it didn’t need saying, Sugarman spoke the words anyway: “Nobody should have to die like that. Nobody.”
TWENTY-FIVE
THORN SHOWED THEM TO THE Port-O-Let where he’d hidden the shotguns. Cruz was guiding him like a model airplane with a controller, a falcon and falconer, some invisible thread linking them, Cruz speaking quietly, the whisper of a hypnotist. This trip, everything was heavier, the dose different, the effect different, Thorn moving with a sleepwalker’s sluggish tread, the drug’s dark undertow pulling him forward.
He was obeying, but no X-ray vision this time, no exuberant visions, just this drunken lethargy as they walked around the foundations of the houses that never got built, Dobbins Court, Cruz repeating over and over, now take us to where you hid the ammo, her words coming so slow he could hear each syllable stretching and stretching like a song on a vinyl record, the turntable set at the wrong speed, where did you put the ammo, where’s the ammo, each word drawn out and echoing afterward.
He tried resisting. He knew he’d buried the box of shells near the edge of the woods, but as an exercise, just to see if he could do it, like that meditation trick one of his girlfriends used to do, Monica, Lourdes, or Sarah, Alexandra, Darcy, or Rusty, he couldn’t recall which, he’d learned so much from each of the women he’d loved, but this one knew a yoga thing, a Zen thing, a karate thing, whatever it was, it was simple to describe but hard as hell to do, a way to keep her mind to herself, keep all the trash and chaotic whirlwind at bay, she’d focus on her breath, the breath going in, going deep into the pit of the stomach, down below the navel to a secret place the Buddhists knew about, letting the oxygen stay down there and ignite the secret place, then letting the air loose again, feeling it leave the lungs, every inch of the way in and every inch of the way out. He tried that. Tried to keep his mind under his own control.
Thorn was a stubborn fuck. Sure, his physical skills had declined, his speed, his agility, his strength. He’d lost his edge. He couldn’t go hand to hand with bruisers like X-88 the way he once had. But he’d always been a stubborn fuck and he still had that going for him, and stubborn fucks didn’t like to be bossed or controlled, yeah, okay, it felt good that first time, felt good for a brief while, a foreign sensation, yielding his will, succumbing to the power of another, a release from his own steadfast mission, but they’d given him too much dope this time, or brewed up a bad batch, or he’d developed a quick tolerance to it, or else his own stubborn-fuck brain had kicked in and was beating back the power of the pills.
“I don’t remember where I buried the ammo.”
“He’s fighting it,” X said.
Webb Dobbins was tagging behind Cruz. The other
women hanging back at the car. Pixie and Laurie were lost in conversation, paying no attention to the others. Thorn watched as Laurie reached up and ran a finger down Pixie’s jawline, then touched the finger to Pixie’s lips.
Dobbins said, “Just keep asking, he’ll do what you say. Some hardheads, it takes longer for the drug to get into their system, you got to keep working him.”
“Where’s the ammo? Where’d you hide it?”
Thorn didn’t answer. He was having a crafty thought. His brain was fuzzy, but the stubborn fuck was sputtering to life. That breath thing working. His crafty thought was this: Give them the ammo. Make them think he was under their spell. Make them think they had him where they wanted and then later he could make a break. Later when their guard’s down.
But Thorn wasn’t sure if this was a genuine crafty thought or just his willpower sagging and giving him an excuse to obey their request. He wasn’t sure. But he had to try it, try to fool them, fool the drug. If he was truly in control, maybe if he waited a while, looked for his moment, he could find a better chance to cut loose, escape these assholes, find Flynn, or find Millie the waitress, or Ladarius, or Eddie, or one of the others who seemed trustworthy, people who might keep him hidden until he came down from this tricky shit. Unless they were in league with Dobbins. Could a whole town be corrupt? Could every single person inside the boundaries of Pine Haven be in on this?
Was he saying all this aloud, or only thinking it? It was maddening not to know.
Cruz wore a troubled frown like she might be hearing his thoughts. She measured Thorn with her dark, enigmatic eyes.
Thorn did the breathing thing again, all the way in, all the way out, slow, focus, then cleared his throat and said, “I buried it over there, by the tree line.”
“Show us.”
Thorn led them to the spot. He tapped his toe on the ground.
“Dig it up,” X-88 said.
“Don’t have a shovel.”
“Use your hands. Get down on your fucking knees, dig it up.”
“Relax, X. There’s a shovel in the back of the Taurus.” Cruz waved at the car parked nearby.
The Big Finish Page 19