First Thrills, Volume 4

by Lee Child

  The doors were not doors anymore, just gaping holes where the storm debris was rushing inside. Glass shards littered the Persian rugs.

  Hurricane Damon had been worse than anyone had anticipated. There had been no order to evacuate the Keys, as usually happened when a really powerful hurricane was headed toward the islands. At least no order that Mira, in her fury of activity, had been aware of. When you were orchestrating the murder of your husband, you tended to block out a lot of whatever else was going on around you. Damon must have gained intensity with unexpected rapidity as it approached in the night.

  Mira couldn’t get a signal on her cell phone or even on a landline.

  You’re a bastard, Damon!

  She hurriedly pulled on some jeans and a shirt and got her purse. The gun was still in there; perhaps she should leave it home. But she felt naked without it, as if it were a talisman that could protect her.

  She took the gun. If anyone questioned it, she’d say looters were always a threat.

  The garage, the Jaguar, and Mira’s Mercedes were still dry, thank God.

  She backed the Mercedes out of the driveway, plowing into what seemed like a shallow lake. Highway One was flooded to the north, in the direction of Miami. She headed south, toward what she hoped was higher ground.

  * * *

  Daytime, but the sun hadn’t actually come out and the sky was a mustard-colored burnt haze. Fallen palm fronds, coconuts, and chunks of plywood littered the road. Mira felt like the last survivor on earth.

  Punishment. Retribution. Had she caused all this somehow? The victim mentality, the P.I. had termed it. Everything was all her fault. What she was learning was that it was difficult to know whose fault just about anything really was. Life kept getting more and more confusing. What it came down to was that a person had to take care of his or herself. That was about all the moral compass Mira carried.

  She pulled abruptly to the right into a parking-lot swale. Lorelei’s Bar and Restaurant. Maybe they were open. There were actually a couple of cars in the parking lot. Hurricane Party? Mira had heard about them but had never been to one. She hurried into the bar.

  A decorator had gone berserk and designed the entire interior nautical. Right now, Mira didn’t really want to think about the ocean. The decor made her seasick just looking at all the life preservers and lighthouse paintings. There was even an aquarium full of what looked like baby squid.

  “We’re closed, lady,” said a grizzled man from the corner shadows.

  “No party?” Mira’s teeth wanted to chatter. “Why not? The storm’s over.”

  “Lady, don’t you know what’s going on?”

  Mira shook her head.

  He got off his bar stool and walked over to her. Big mistake. She could smell a week’s worth of sweat, tequila, and tacos. “It’s the eye now. We’re right in the middle of the eye of the storm.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re not from around here. Not a Conch. But I knew that.” He sneered and looked over at her Louis Vuitton purse.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Why don’t you just tell me?” She wanted to actually pull out her gun and give him the second surprise of his day. Shooting people could become a habit, a bad habit. Worse than shopping too much.

  “You see, the storm will seem for a while like it’s stopped. But don’t let it fool you. It’s like a woman who’s in a fury. It can’t stop. It’ll swirl around and around. Lull you into thinking it’s not deadly. Then when you least expect it … One thing I learned is, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, except maybe a hurricane. If you ask me, they should go back to namin’ them all after women.”

  Mira didn’t wait to hear the rest. She hurried back outside and, gunning her Mercedes, broke every speed law in the books in getting back to the house.

  The eerie calm was worse than anything she had ever felt. The waters had risen higher. She wondered when the storm hit again, when the eye passed, would the house withstand the winds? She got out of the car into ankle-deep water.

  The sky had turned a gunmetal gray. Her skin crawled as the barometric pressure began to drop. The eye of the storm was passing, taking with it any false sense of security.

  Off to her left she could see two police cruisers, lights flashing as if they were at the gates of hell. They had tried to approach the house from another direction, where the water was higher, and were stalled or stymied by the depth of the flood. Another police vehicle was approaching cautiously behind one that was stalled. Her rescuers attempting to reach her?

  She knew they didn’t have a chance to get to her before the killing storm, and a chill of fear passed through her. The feeling intensified as she saw that the police were otherwise occupied. They hadn’t come for her. Instead they were looking down at a figure in a wetsuit washed up near the deteriorating shoreline. Was it Rob? Mira squinted, staring. A bushy mustache caught her gaze as they flipped the figure onto its side. Pedro the pool boy?

  As if on cue, the sky continued to darken and a seagull appeared out of nowhere. Dive-bombing, it headed for Mira’s hair as if it were a nest. She’d heard that the seabirds could go crazy when there was a hurricane, especially the gulls. There was a screaming sound and Mira couldn’t tell if it was the bird or herself.

  Then she became aware of another noise, not the screaming of a gull but a strange mechanical beating sound, and all at once a helicopter appeared. It maneuvered until it was directly overhead. The pilot was looking down and pointing at her.

  She’d been seen!

  She was saved!

  She waved at the chopper frantically. The helicopter dipped, steadied, and a cable with a safety hitch was thrust down at her.

  “Any others?” A man barked down to her through a small yellow bullhorn.

  Mira knew when to seize opportunity.

  “My husband,” she yelled. “Oh, God, I warned him not to take the boat out! He’s not a very good swimmer!”

  The man with the bullhorn nodded to let her know he’d understood.

  Jagged lightning rent the sky and the pilot looked away worriedly. The lightning hit again and again. The copter lurched and a female face peered down at Mira.

  The blonde from the surveillance videos!

  Mira remembered L. S. Crum’s report: Grad student … Marine biology … Did a lot of diving together … Coast Guard Reserve …

  Did a lot of diving together!

  Over the beat of the thrashing helicopter blades, she didn’t hear the gull’s scream this time. With its sharp beak, the bird was rushing at her again, right at Mira’s eyes.

  The last thing she saw before she closed them was a familiar face next to the blonde’s in the open ’copter doorway. It was a face that did not regret its owner’s sins of omission nor his sins of commission. It was the face of a most unworthy sinner.

  It was Rob’s face. And if he had been close, she would have seen herself reflected in his eyes.

  * * *

  JOHN LUTZ is the author of more than forty novels and 250 short stories and articles. He is a past president of both Mystery Writers of America and Private Eye Writers of America. Among his awards are the MWA Edgar, the PWA Shamus, The Trophee 813 Award for best mystery short-story collection translated into the French language, the PWA Life Achievement Award, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Golden Derringer Lifetime Achievement Award. His SWF Seeks Same was made into the hit movie Single White Female, and his The Ex was made into the HBO original movie of the same title, for which he coauthored the screenplay. His latest book is the suspense novel Urge To Kill.

  LISE S. BAKER is a licensed private investigator and a member of the World Association of Detectives. She has been nominated nine years in a row for California Investigator of the Year by CALI (California Association of Licensed Investigators). Her award-winning novel The Loser’s Club was inspired by John Lutz’s fictional detective, Fred Carver. Collaborating with Lutz on the short story “Eye of the Storm” is a dream come
true for this writer/detective.

  Currently, Detective Baker is working on a murder case for the Northern California Innocence Project. This is in addition to running her agency, L. S. Baker Investigations, which specializes in fraud investigations.

  Scutwork

  CJ LYONS

  The dead guy was a skinny old fart who didn’t have the good sense to have a Do Not Resuscitate on file. He’d spend his last few years at a nursing home, decaying from a plethora of old-timers diseases. Diabetes, hypertension, strokes, kidney disease, cataracts, pneumonia, broken hip. After surviving all that, Mr. “I’ll live to be a hundred and don’t need a DNR” finally succumbed to food poisoning from the nursing home’s egg salad.

  What a way to go—covered in shit and no family left to give a damn. But the dead guy’s bad luck was just the break Andy needed.

  As an emergency medicine intern, Andy was usually assigned the most boring cases: peri-rectal abscesses, drunks who needed to detox, screaming babies with earaches. He was expected to perform all those piddling tasks that the nurses and techs were too busy for, like art gases and IV sticks and blood draws—scutwork.

  Andy was destined for greater things. Scutwork was for fools, not future chief residents.

  Yet, here he was, performing the ultimate in degrading scutwork: pushing a “death box”—the gurney equipped with a sealed steel box containing the fresh remains of a deceased patient—down to the morgue. And loving it.

  Andy had been waiting for this opportunity all night long. Thanks to the kinky Goth chick he’d met last night at Diggers, the bar across from Angels of Mercy’s cemetery.

  Syrene was her name. “Think gy-rene,” she’d told him while bending forward to rack the pool balls, giving him a glimpse of come-to-papa cleavage. “But instead of gy, you sigh.”

  Yeah, no points for intellect, but when she tilted her head to give him a full wattage glimpse of her baby blues highlighted with contact lenses to an impossibly brilliant shade, he’d found himself sighing.

  Her hair was dyed jet black except for one sapphire streak that matched her eyes. Her eyebrows, ears, nose, and tongue were pierced. Celtic knots and intertwined flowers were tattooed on her lower back, a glimpse of one thorny rose peeked up from the black lace edge of her camisole, and an intricate Hindu pattern extended from her left ring finger across the back of her hand and up under the black leather biker jacket she wore over the peek-a-boo lace camisole. Completing her outfit were a pair of skinny jeans form fitted to her curves along with some heavy-duty shit-kicking Doc Martens.

  And she was all his for the asking. Only he hadn’t had to ask—all he had to do was hint at his profession and suddenly her tongue was in his ear, her hand down his pants, and she was whispering things he’d only dreamed of.

  The rest of the night was spent at her place, time fractured by sweaty groans and moans and shrieks. He hadn’t slept at all; she’d kept at him all night and most of the day until he reported for his shift at seven P.M.

  Now at three A.M., he was wrecked, barely functioning. But it was worth it. The heavy gurney squeaked to a stop as he paused, sighing so hard it emerged as a whistle echoing from the steam pipes overhead. Man oh man, was it worth it.

  He couldn’t wait to see what she’d do for him after tonight. After he brought her the corpse.

  All she’d asked for last night, her black lipsticked mouth pursing into the cutest pout this side of Hollywood, was a glimpse at a “real live dead guy.”

  She’d do anything for that, she’d said, rubbing her body along his. “Anything you want, baby.”

  Andy pushed the gurney faster, its squeaky wheel emitting a soprano wail.

  Oh yeah, this was going to be soooo damn good.

  He turned the final corner leading to the morgue. He’d seen no one the entire journey through the tunnels—no surprise, at three A.M., security would be busy in the ER with the after-hours bar crowd. Besides, there was nothing of value to bring anyone down here.

  He punched in the code to unlock the main door to the morgue and the lights came on. Behind him, Syrene stepped forward from the shadows, wrapping her arms around his waist, her fingers greedily kneading the flesh below his bellybutton. He’d called her before he left the ER and told her how to get to the morgue. She’d made good time.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked, her breath hot against his neck.

  He shoved the flat-topped gurney into the cavernous room with a single push that sent it ricocheting off an empty autopsy table. Then he turned to Syrene.

  She was all in black again, except for white eye shadow that made her look more like a corpse than the dead guy. Before he could say anything, she wrapped one leg around him and snagged his hair in her black-taloned fingers, pulling him into a kiss. The smooth roundness of her tongue stud danced along the inside of his mouth, in and out, mimicking the motion of her hips pulsing against his.

  Syrene rocked back and forth, pushing him into the room and spinning him until he had his back against the wall behind the open door. She released his hair, her fingernails biting into his flesh as they scraped down his body, until she finally untied his scrub pants and slipped her hand inside to tease him.

  She tightened her grip. Andy closed his eyes, his head banging against the door as he arched back. Just as he was about to come, right there in her palm, he smelled a curious mix of stale beer and cigars. Cold steel nudged the side of his neck.

  “Time to get to work, bi-itch,” a man’s voice sang out, accompanied by a cackle of laughter from Syrene.

  “Who the hell are you?” Andy grabbed his pants, fumbling them closed. “You can’t be down here.”

  “Oh no?” The stranger smiled, revealing gold-capped teeth with skulls chiseled into the metal. “You gonna tell me what I can and can’t do?”

  He stood a head taller than Andy’s five-ten, with muscles that screamed steroids, and was either a light-skinned black man or a dark-skinned Hispanic, Andy wasn’t sure. What he was sure about was the big, black gun in the man’s hand. Pointed at him.

  Syrene stood on her tiptoes and gave the man a languorous kiss. The man locked eyes with Andy over her head, one hand caressing her butt, his aim never wavering. Andy was trapped in the corner behind the door, nowhere to go, no choice but to watch.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded, using the sharp tone that usually worked on nurses in the ER. “I have to get back to work.”

  Syrene broke away from the man, melding her body into his side and watching with a Cheshire grin, one black-taloned finger tapping her lips. The man shoved the gun under Andy’s chin, leveraging his head up, the gun barrel pressing against his larynx with bruising force.

  “You ain’t going nowhere, honeybear.” The man’s dark eyes dilated as he watched Andy squirm, trying to relieve the pressure on his throat.

  “Don’t hurt him, Dutch,” Syrene crooned. “We need him.”

  Dutch? The guy sure as hell didn’t look Dutch, but who was Andy to argue. Hell, Andy could only hope it wasn’t the guy’s real name—he didn’t want anyone worried about him remembering little details like that. Worrying about the gun jabbed into his throat was more than enough.

  Dutch released the pressure a microfraction. Enough for Andy to breathe and find his voice. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing you’ll miss. Just a body.”

  Andy yanked the drawstring on his scrub pants tighter and tied it into a knot. Christ, he was going to get killed by a couple of freaks who wanted to screw a corpse. “So take one, what do I care? I’m going back to work.”

  He stepped forward, trying to brush Dutch’s hand aside. No go. The arm was as rigid as a steel I-beam, not going anywhere. Just like Andy.

  “Did you bring my stuff?” Syrene asked, ignoring the standoff between the men. Ignoring Andy like he wasn’t even there, like they hadn’t spent the night and most of the day together. Guess since he wasn’t cold and dead, he hadn’t really turned her on.

  Dutch shr
ugged his shoulder, releasing a black messenger bag. Syrene hauled it to an autopsy table and dumped the contents. Large colorful dart shaped objects spilled out. Then she removed something shiny and dangerous looking with ribbons of steel glistening in the overhead fluorescent lights. She slid it onto her hand. It looked like a medieval gauntlet turned into a torture device.

  “I’ll need juice.” She dangled an electrical cord from her fingers.

  “Let’s get the body first.” Dutch grabbed onto Andy’s lab coat lapels and dragged him out of the corner. Andy didn’t even try to resist; it was obvious the other man could easily out-muscle him. Better to wait for an opening to escape. “Check the one he brought us.”

  Syrene laid her steel torture implement onto the table and trotted over to the gurney Andy had transported down from the ER. She seemed giddy. Probably high on something. Like this was a fricking party. Whisking the sheet off as if she was Vanna White, she tried to unlatch the body box. “I can’t open it.”

  Dutch shoved Andy forward. “You do it, Goldilocks.”

  Andy straightened and turned to face Dutch. “Stop calling me those names.”

  “I’ll call you whatever I damn well please, bitch.” Dutch didn’t bother to use the gun to bolster his menacing tone. The scowl on his face and gleam of the gold skulls flashing from his teeth were enough. That and the ripples of muscle extending down from his hunched shoulders.

  Andy didn’t answer, but instead moved to the gurney housing the corpse, wheeled it alongside an autopsy table, and undid the latch that held the top shut. Opening the lid, he swung the side of the metal box against the tabletop, where it acted as a ramp.

  Before he could reach for the body, Syrene leaned over the table and yanked the old man wrapped in sheets across to her. As she eagerly tore at the swaddled corpse, Andy swung the side of the box back into place, leaving the top of the gurney open, the large hollow box waiting its next occupant.