Tropic of Stupid

by Tim Dorsey

  A Ford Cobra barreled its way back across the Everglades toward the west coast. Serge pressed buttons on his phone.

  “Who are you calling?” asked Coleman.

  “The underground network of shady favors. This time a retired fire chief who attended the state’s arson investigation school in Ocala.” He put the phone to his head. “Hank, it’s me, Serge. I need another favor.”

  “Last time it took me a year to get my Falcon back.”

  “And last time I saw your son, he had two black eyes,” said Serge. “Is he still being bullied?”

  Sheepishly, “No.”

  “Wasn’t he the homecoming king?”

  “Yes,” said Hank. “But whenever he walks down the hall at school now, everyone clears out of the way and presses themselves against the lockers, especially the football players.”

  “You know my motto,” said Serge. “If in doubt, always over-engineer the project.”

  “Okay, all right,” said Hank. “I know I’ll regret this, but what’s the favor?”

  “Remember back in the seventies when they had some problems and needed to replace all those underground electrical lines?”

  “Yeah, if you were with a fire department, how could you forget? It was a nightmare.”

  “And they were supposed to dispose of all the old lines.”

  “Supposed to,” said Hank.

  “I’m guessing it became too costly and they cut corners.”

  “No kidding. Like when they should dig up abandoned gas station tanks and don’t, and now we have to deal with them. They just capped off a bunch of those old electrical lines and left them.”

  “Here’s the favor,” said Serge. “I need a list of a few locations of those remaining lines. Preferably in the Sarasota area. Foreclosed or vacant homes. And they need to have crawl spaces.”

  “Man, when you ask a favor,” said Hank. “What do you want it for?”

  “Better you don’t know,” said Serge.

  “That I’m sure of,” said Hank. “But how am I supposed to come up with such a list? It was decades ago.”

  “A-hem,” said Serge.

  “Dammit! . . . Okay, I’ll make some inquiries.”

  “That’s the Hank I know.”

  “But I haven’t forgotten about the Falcon.”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call.” Click. Serge glanced at Coleman and rolled his eyes. “The cars again.”

  Chapter 31

  Miami

  The doughnuts were gone. The clock ticked toward the end of the day.

  A last notecard went up on a board, and Heather hoisted a leather attaché case.

  “Heading home?” asked Arch.

  She shook her head. “Still have to get to a courthouse before they close. Want to come?”

  “Sure.” Arch grabbed his stuff, and they went outside to the Crown Vic. “Mind if I ask you something? How did you decide on this particular cold case? It doesn’t seem like you just randomly grabbed one.”

  “I didn’t,” said Heather. “It’s personal. I have a cousin on my mother’s side. He was just a boy at the time.”

  “Oh my God!” said Arch. “Something happen to him?”

  “Not like you’re thinking,” said Heather. “But he did have an experience no kid should at that age. He told me a story . . .”

  1997

  A white plumbing contractor’s van headed down a dirt road. On one side, a drop-off into a deep canal without guardrails. On the other, the snarl of an abandoned orange grove. The day was gray. The magnetic sign on the side of the van displayed the company’s motto: We Show Up.

  It was the west side of Vero Beach, the country side. Cattle grazed and signs advertised three hundred acres for sale. The driver was rugged, like the Marlboro man, mustache and all. The passenger was a slight eleven-year-old boy named Darryl. For some reason they called him Cubby.

  They had just left a convenience store.

  “Thanks for the baseball cards, Dad!” Cubby opened the pack and peeled through them one by one. “Cool, a Cal Ripken. Got that one. Got that one. Already got that.” He held a card toward the driver. “A Ken Griffey Jr.!”

  “That’s nice, son.”

  The father was on a mission. To man up the boy a bit. The van continued down the remote road, kicking up a dust plume. The father was a firefighter, and his schedule was typical: week on, week off. Everyone at the firehouse had a side gig for the open seven days, hence the plumbing truck. The dirt road led out to a vast spread where they all hunted. The owner didn’t hunt. But he was on the city council, and giving all the local first responders recreational access was good for business.

  Cubby looked down at the console between their seats. Something he had seen many times before but never asked about.

  “Dad, what kind of gun is that?”

  “Double-barrel shotgun, twelve-gauge, breech load.” And right now the breech was open with nothing inside. For a teachable reason. “Always make sure a gun is unloaded. And even when it’s unloaded, always assume that it’s loaded. When you’re carrying it, never let the aim of the barrel cross anything you’d be sorry for shooting. And whenever you hunt, always eat what you kill.”

  Cubby recalled many great dinners of venison and wild bird. He picked up one of the scattered shotgun shells rolling around the console’s tray. He felt the red, ridged plastic and rubbed the brass end. The hunting land was coming up. It was against the law to bait the field, and it was often baited anyway. But the father’s plan wasn’t to hunt. He would throw empty beer cans in the air for target practice and get his son used to that mule kick in the shoulder.

  “Dad, you’re really going to let me shoot it this time?”

  “That’s right, son . . .” The father became distracted as he let off the gas.

  “Dad, what is it?”

  There was no answer. He had spotted something down in the canal. What happened next would stay with the boy the rest of his life. It all happened in seconds, through one single fluid motion. In this order: The father hit the brakes, flushing the ducks from the canal, then he threw the van in park, grabbed two shells off the console, slammed them home in the breech of the shotgun, flipped the barrel to snap it shut as he jumped out the door and unloaded both those barrels into the sky.

  Cubby’s jaw hung open as one of the ducks was hit. He couldn’t believe his father had been able to do all that before the birds were able to fly out of range. He was his hero.

  But the duck was only winged. It came down like a helicopter in the orange grove. Flying was out of the question. But not running.

  “Son, go get him!”

  “Run after him?”

  “Yes! Hurry! Before he gets into the woods!”

  The boy scampered through the field after the injured bird, which began running in circles around the orange trees. Definitely the stuff of a great Florida childhood. The father folded his arms and leaned against the side of the truck and began laughing.

  Cubby finally caught the duck by the neck, but didn’t know what to do with it. He held it up toward his father, all flapping and feathers. “Dad?”

  “Put it out of its misery.”

  The boy pointed at the duck’s head with his free hand, and made it into the shape of a gun. “You got a pistol?”

  “No, son.” Another big laugh. “Not a coup de grace. Wring its neck.”

  “How do I do that?” asked Cubby, all manner of calamity flailing in his hand. “Like a washcloth?”

  “No, son, just keep gripping it like you are and spin it in a circle. You’ll know when you’re done.”

  Cubby extended his arm as far away from him as he could. He cringed and squinted as he began twirling, slowly at first, then getting the hang of it. His T-shirt started collecting a horizontal stripe of red flecks. Finally, the boy grimaced harder as his hand felt the unmistakable sensation of the completed job. He opened his eyes full again.

  “What’s this?” He reached toward the ground where part of a faux
-leather strap was sticking out of the dirt. He grabbed it and pulled, unearthing the rest. Cubby walked back to his father holding the duck in one hand and a filthy purse in the other.

  “Cubby, where’d you get that?”

  The boy glanced over his shoulder. “It was buried by that tree.”

  The father took it and looked inside. He opened the wallet, and found the driver’s license missing. But there was a library card. He recognized the name. He pulled out his cell phone. “Son, go wait in the truck . . .”

  A half hour later, the boy watched out the window as no less than forty police, firefighters, paramedics and even civilians huddled before fanning out. The team had been assembled ahead of time, hoping against hope that they would never have to answer the call.

  It started two years ago. Odd reports of garments going missing from clotheslines. Underwear. Women’s. At first all they knew was that they had a pervert on their hands. Then the first body turned up in Sebastian, near the inlet. And another at New Smyrna. Purses found then, too. But no driver’s licenses. Someone was keeping souvenirs.

  Cubby watched from the truck as the team worked their way through the grove and then woods, walking slowly through the grid at precise intervals so they wouldn’t miss anything. Cubby’s father ignored the sickness in his stomach. He had been here before, one of the first on the scene to discover partial remains of Adam Walsh, the infamous abduction that launched America’s Most Wanted. He had seen the strongest men cry.

  Another time, a decade back, Cubby’s father had discovered another body. It was hidden off a trail, and something nobody needed to see. They didn’t announce the location or even the discovery. They just told the search party to go home. Cubby’s father had stood by the side of the trail with a police sergeant. And as the volunteers filed by, one of the civilians stopped and peered in the direction of the unseen body. Cubby’s dad and the sergeant looked at each other with spine chills. They handcuffed him back at the rallying point and that was that.

  But the dark side of humanity always has reinforcements, and now here the father was again on the most reluctant assignment. Some things you just had to block out and do for the greater community.

  The commanding officers were waiting back by the cars when three firefighters returned from the trees. Their faces said it all.

  The FBI and FDLE were called in. It began to rain, and a large open-sided tent was erected over a shallow grave in the palmettos.

  After the first two bodies had been discovered, there were suspicions, but nobody was sure until now. They had gotten DNA from the second victim, and forensics found some here as well.

  It was a match.

  The state assembled an inter-agency task force, which connected two additional previously found bodies in other parts of Florida. Then a fresh find. This guy wasn’t quitting.

  The headquarters was in Orlando, and it was noisy. Dozens of phones rang nonstop, thousands of tips catalogued. People in starched shirts moved urgently. They went on TV for the public’s help, and put up billboards. The phones rang even more.

  “Where did you see this suspicious truck? . . .”

  “Why do you think your neighbor did it? . . .”

  “No, I didn’t watch that episode of Law & Order . . .”

  With all the calls and new genetic samples, it looked promising. Until it didn’t.

  A year went by with no further victims. News coverage dried up, and the task force shrank to five investigators, then three, then another year lapsed. It almost never happened this way, but the guy had just stopped, and the command structure had to accept the inevitable.

  The investigation was disbanded, and all the documents and evidence were filed accordingly.

  A cold case.

  Chapter 32

  Sarasota

  Night fell as Serge and Coleman crawled on their bellies through the dirt. They were wearing coal miners’ head lamps.

  Coleman bumped his nose on a wooden pier. “Ow! I can’t see where I’m going.”

  “You idiot! You’ve got that thing on backwards.” Serge twisted it around on his pal’s head.

  “That’s much better.”

  Crawling continued.

  Serge raised his head, and his light hit some plumbing coming down through the floor above them. “That’s the drain line from the tub. We’re under the bathroom.” He pulled out a camping trench tool and began digging.

  “So your fire chief friend came through?” asked Coleman.

  “In a big way.” Dirt flew.

  “How far down do we have to go?”

  “Twenty-four inches was the minimum requirement back then.” The spade dug into the ground again.

  “How do you know where to dig?”

  “Hank said they capped the old electric lines at the meter. He told me to just follow the abandoned junction boxes in the crawl space.”

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with anything.”

  Serge sighed and turned. “If you’re not going to dig, can you give me a break with the questions while I do the heavy lifting?”

  “Ah! Your light’s in my eyes. Now I see spots.”

  “How is that any different?”

  “These are green.”

  Serge thrust with the tool again. “Okay, here’s the deal. Years ago they used copper and aluminum for underground electricity lines. It did a decent job, but there was still resistance in the metals, measured in ohms if you’re keeping score.”

  “Now dirt’s flying in my face.”

  “That would be a good clue to move.” Serge was a foot down and still going. “Anyway, it used up extra power to push the electricity through those lines, plus those metals aren’t cheap. Then someone stumbled onto sodium nitrate.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A white powder that conducts electricity surprisingly well. Much cheaper than the other stuff. They saved money on power, the cost of metal, as well as insulation because the lines only needed to be half as thick. It became the best thing since sliced bread, especially in southwest Florida because of the period’s construction boom.”

  “So why’d they have to dig it up?”

  “DDT also used to be sliced bread, until the pesticide started working its way up the food chain,” said Serge. “All was going smoothly until they noticed a series of unusual house fires.”

  “The electric lines caused them?”

  “No, what happened is the fires started from regular causes: short circuits, faulty toasters, smoking in bed, candles too close to curtains. And when the fire department came out to fight the blazes, there were a number of unexplained explosions. I mean freaking huge blasts as if there was undetonated ordnance under the houses from an old bombing range.”

  “What caused it?”

  “Nobody knew at first, but finally after enough incidents and investigations, they figured it out: If a house burned hot enough during the original fire, it melted the insulation off the nitrate. Then the water from the fire hoses seeped down. Turned out that sodium nitrate doesn’t like water.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll leave it at electron shells and save you a headache.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It all probably would have stopped there because the government doesn’t give a flip about the physical welfare of working folk. Just ask the lead-poisoned people up in Flint. On the other hand, powerful insurance companies started having to pay out a lot of big claims, and the politicians said that was a tragedy. The lines had to come out.”

  “I never heard of this.”

  “Most other people haven’t, either,” said Serge. “The fire chief told me that for a while the people had a bit of fun with the removed lines, chopping them up into pieces the size of beanie weenies, then throwing them in lakes and ponds and watching the explosions. The fish weren’t happy.”

  Coleman leaned to look into the hole. “How much farther?”

  “I think I’ve arrived . . .” The tool was set aside a
nd Serge excavated with his fingers. “Yep, I got it. Here’s the line.”

  From there, the work became exceedingly tedious. First Serge cleared a long trough around the line. Then he flicked open a pocketknife and began stripping the thick insulation. Inside, more lines, a pair of 110-volts that also needed to be stripped, plus a stream of uninsulated white powder for the grounding circuit.

  Finally he was done. “Let’s meet our next contestant!”

  Coal miner lamps led them out, and they entered the side door of a foreclosed house that didn’t have power. Two beams of light swung back and forth as they worked their way through the residence until arriving at the bathroom. The beams hit a man in the face, who squinted as his eyes adjusted. He tried to scream, but there was that pesky duct tape, and he tried to move, but there was, well, rope again.

  Serge knelt down and patted him on the head. “Comfy in that tub?”

  “Mmmm! Mmmm! Mmmm!”

  “Fantastic!” Serge pulled out a portable drill and fired it up.

  Even louder: “Mmmm! Mmmm! Mmmm!”

  “Relax,” said Serge. “I’m not going to use this on you. What kind of a sicko do you think I am?”

  The bathroom floor was the kind of vintage avocado tile that Serge loved. “I hate to do this, but . . .”

  A thick bit drilled down through the tile and the wooden sub-floor under it. Again and again. A half-dozen inch-wide holes in all. Serge flicked the drill off.

  “That about does it on my end,” he told Donovan. “The rest is up to you. I know how you love vacation homes, and this is yours. Isn’t she a peach? And is this going to be the vacation of a lifetime!”

  “Bonus round?” asked Coleman.

  “Of course,” said Serge, swinging his light toward the captive. “Donovan, want to hear your bonus round?”

  “Mmmm! Mmmm! Mmmm!”

  “Great! I love a contestant with spunk! Always helps the ratings!” Serge plugged up the tub’s drain and capped it with waterproof silicone tape. “I poured my imagination into the main attraction, so the bonus round is on the inelegant side. But my loss is your gain! Here’s the deal . . .”