by Matt Lincoln
“I hear that,” I chuckled. “The Keys do sound nice, though, I’ll give you that, Holm. Just not right now. Some other time, maybe. Hopefully, the FBI will figure out where Beck got the ship, anyway.”
“Birn and Muñoz are down there right now, though,” Holm pointed out. “Couldn’t hurt to give them a call, pass along the information, could it? Even if they don’t have time to look into it, they can at least keep an eye and an ear out for anything about it. They are doing a drug bust down there, so it’s not out of the question that they could run into some people who worked with Beck.”
“You know, that’s not a bad point,” I said as I wiped the last bit of salsa off my plate. “We should do that. That’ll make me feel better, to at least get something done about the ship instead of sitting around wondering about it. Plus, it’s not like I can make any progress on the Dragon’s Rogue right now, so this is something I can do.”
“We should go talk to Diane about it, see if she can tell us what that call was about this morning,” Holm said, hopping down from his barstool and waving goodbye to Mike.
“Thanks for everything, as usual, Mike,” I called back to the bar owner as we stepped out. “We’ll let you know if we learn anything.”
5
Ethan
When Holm and I got back to the office, we were greeted by Diane pacing about the room in a frenzy, her brows furrowed together and uncharacteristic worry lines stretching across her forehead. I felt a kernel of concern appear in my stomach when I saw her like this.
She whipped up her head when she saw us come through the door and heaved a sigh, stopping her pacing.
“Ethan, Robbie,” she said. “Good, you’re back.”
“What’s going on, Diane?” I asked with some concern as Holm and I crossed back over to our desks and took our seats.
Diane sat down at an empty desk nearby, crossing her legs. Her brow was still lined with worry.
“I’m afraid there’s been an incident with Agent Birn and Agent Muñoz down in the Keys,” she said, pursing her lips.
“Told you it would be great to see the Keys,” Holm said, flashing me a grin. “Man, did I call it.”
A stern look from Diane wiped the smile off his face, replaced by an expression of concern.
“All right, Diane, what’s going on?” I asked, leaning forward on my desk with apprehension. She didn’t often look this concerned.
“I’m afraid that Birn’s… uh, disappeared,” she explained, clearly choosing her words carefully, though she didn’t look quite happy with the phrase she’d landed on.
“Disappeared?” I repeated, the kernel of worry in my stomach expanding in an instant. “What does that mean?”
“I’m afraid that’s the best I can do,” Diane said after a moment of thought, shaking her head slightly. “We don’t have much information, only that late last night Birn went to check out a potential crime scene on the Little Torch Key where he and Muñoz were on assignment, and no one’s seen or heard from him since.”
“Why wasn’t Muñoz with him?” Holm asked quickly, no trace of his former grin to be found on his face now.
Holm himself had been kidnapped once himself, and I knew he remembered it to this day. That hadn’t been a fun time for any of us at MBLIS, and a similar fear and paranoia began to grip me now, though not as pronounced since it wasn’t my own partner’s life on the line this time, thank God.
“They had to split up,” Diane said, shaking her head as if disapproving of this. “They had just caught a suspect in their case when word came in about the crime scene, and Muñoz stayed back at the police station there to interrogate him while Birn went to check it out. They weren’t expecting much anything to happen, obviously. Otherwise, they would’ve stuck together.”
“What was the crime scene?” I asked, the wheels in my head already turning, trying to work the case even though it technically hadn’t been assigned to us yet.
“That’s the strangest thing,” Diane said, scrunching up her face in concern. “Muñoz—who’s a bit panicked, understandably—said that a bunch of cocaine washed up on the shorefront there. A local sailor who takes tourists out on the water noticed a pelican of all things running off with a bag of coke, and she called Muñoz since she had her number from an earlier questioning.”
“They were questioning her?” I asked. “Why? Do they think she has anything to do with this?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Diane said. “Muñoz said the woman has a military background. I think they were just canvassing for witnesses. You’ll have to ask Muñoz about the rest.”
“There’s no evidence of any foul play?” Holm asked, shaking his head. “He’s just gone?”
“Muñoz and the police there canvassed the scene this morning and sent some stuff over to the lab techs downstairs,” Diane said, referencing Bonnie and Clyde, MBLIS’s trusty lab techs. “I haven’t spoken to them about it yet, though.”
“You’re sending us down there, right?” Holm asked, almost jumping out of his chair already. “You have to send us down there.”
“Yes, I am,” Diane confirmed with a nod to both of us. “We need as many hands on deck with this as we can muster. We don’t want to lose an agent, and we’ve had enough close calls in that department already in recent months.”
She shot both Holm and me a disapproving look at this.
“Hey, I’ve never been captured,” I said defensively, holding my hands up in protest and flashing Holm a half-grin.
“Har, har, har,” he shot back, shaking his head and pursing his lips at me.
“You did, however, nearly get yourself blown up a few weeks back,” Diane pointed out, arching an eyebrow in my direction.
“So, it’s not just me,” Holm grinned.
“It was both of you if I recall,” Diane said, turning the same scathing expression on him, and regardless of my concern for Birn, I couldn’t help but laugh. “It was only luck that you were able to jump off-board that ship before being burnt to a crisp yourselves.”
“I think it was a little more than luck,” I pointed out. “Not everyone would’ve managed to get out of there so quickly and dragging a zombie man along with us no less.”
I’d almost forgotten about James, the poor cargo lifter who got saddled with ‘testing out’ the Haitian zombie drug as punishment for talking to Holm and me about the gang’s activities. We’d somehow managed to save him as well as ourselves, though, with the help of a helicopter full of men from the Dominican military coming to our rescue in the middle of the ocean.
“Don’t forget that I’m the one who made the call to get you rescued,” Diane added with a small laugh. “I had a feeling something had gone wrong. Anyway, my point stands about trying to take care of our agents a bit better in the field.”
“Well, we won’t be expecting any crazy drug lords blowing up their own drug supply with us on board this time,” I chuckled. “Though, to be fair, we didn’t expect as much the last time.”
“Solomon’s dead, anyway,” Holm said with a shrug, referencing the oddball Haitian drug lord in question. “I don’t think there’s anyone out there quite as off the wall as him.”
“Don’t press your luck,” Diane warned. “There are all kinds of people in the world.”
“So we find out over, and over, and over again,” I agreed with a small laugh of my own. “Sometimes I could do someone a little less interesting, to be honest.”
“Amen to that,” Holm chuckled. “Though I did kind of like that Madame Rosaline character who was shacking up with Solomon over in New Orleans. She was interesting. Didn’t like me at all, though.”
“Whatever happened to her?” I asked, turning back to Diane. “Do we know?”
Madame Rosaline had ultimately helped me take down Solomon and Clifton Beck, and though I wasn’t able to promise her a plea deal or anything, I hoped she would see the light of day again sometime. She had saved me, after all, doing the right thing in the end.
“Th
e voodoo priestess?” Diane asked, and I nodded. “I think she took a deal. She’ll serve a few years as an accessory, less on good behavior.”
“Good, that’s good,” I said, nodding slowly.
“So what’s this mission in the Keys about?” Holm asked, shifting the conversation back to the task at hand. “I thought you said before that it was just a routine drug bust.”
“That’s what we thought,” Diane said, furrowing her brow again. “But things have obviously taken a darker turn. I’ll let Muñoz fill you in on most of the details, but she and Birn were down there on the Little Torch Key looking into a recent uptick in drug activity in the area. It’s normally one of the more peaceful keys.”
“Little Torch Key,” I repeated, wracking my brain for any memories on this topic. “That’s one of the more touristy ones, right?”
“Well, they’re all touristy, in a way,” Diane shrugged. “But yes, the Little Torch Key is a more secluded resort island for those looking for a more private getaway. There are some locals, but it’s mostly people from up here wanting a less busy vacation spot than, say, Key West.”
“Nothing wrong with Key West,” Holm chuckled. “I remember more than one pleasant Spring Break spent down there myself.”
“Of course you do,” Diane said, rolling her eyes. “More importantly, Key West is home to a naval base. If you need any more help while you’re down there, we can call in some favors with them. But we’d like to keep this one in house for now. We already lost one case to the FBI this month.”
Unfortunately, the FBI did end up being on the record as the handlers for our New Orleans case, since Nina Gosse had been undercover on the scene long before Holm and I showed up. We didn’t mind sharing credit, though, as long as no more kids got killed ingesting that drug.
“So, what went wrong?” I asked, shaking my head. “No ideas at all?”
“Well, not yet,” Diane confirmed. “That’s why I’m sending you two down there. I don’t want Muñoz working this alone, especially after Birn disappeared on us. As for the case itself, it seemed like there was an increase in gang activity preying on the tourists. Not unusual for the area, there’s always stuff from the Caribbean and other nearby islands flowing into the Keys. It’s just a matter of degrees.”
“What about this cocaine that washed ashore?” Holm asked. “What’s that all about? Sounds strange.”
“Must’ve been from some kind of shipwreck,” I reasoned. “What else would cause that?”
“Maybe,” Diane said. “But no one’s found anything yet. If anyone can find a long lost ship, it’s you, though, Ethan.”
“Fair enough,” I chuckled, thinking back to the ships I’d found over the years. The Searcher’s Chance, Solomon’s ghost ship, Lafitte’s long lost pirate ship. Everything except the Dragon’s Rogue, which was the one I was actually looking for.
“Seems odd to just leave a bunch of expensive product floating in the ocean like that,” Holm mused, furrowing up his brow as he thought this over. “You’d think someone would go looking for it, come back for it.”
“Maybe they did, and they found Birn instead,” I suggested. “Or maybe whoever brought the drugs to the island died when the ship crashed, and someone else found Birn. Only one way to find out: go down there and take a look around.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Holm said, though less cheerfully than he might under better circumstances. “The Florida Keys it is, then.”
“You can drive down, can’t you?” Diane asked. “I checked flights, and it will be faster if you just head down there yourselves.”
“Yeah, I don’t mind driving,” I said, shaking my head. “Then we’ll have our own car there, anyway. Won’t have to bother with a rental. Almost got bullet holes in the last one.”
“That’s the last thing we need to factor into our budget,” Diane sighed. “But very well, head down there and have Muñoz brief you on the situation better. Stop by the lab first, though, and see if Bonnie and Clyde have anything for us yet on the crime scene.”
“Sure, we’ll head straight down there,” I assured her, getting up from my chair and motioning for Holm to do the same. “Oh, one more thing, Diane…”
“Hm?” she asked, barely looking back at us as she made her way back to her own private office.
“I was wondering if you’d heard anything about what’s going to happen to Lafitte’s ship and everything we found in it?” I asked.
“We’ve been over this, Ethan,” she sighed, swiveling back to us with her hands on her hips. “It’s still a crime scene.”
“Right, I know that,” I said, a little impatiently. “I mean after that.”
“After that, I couldn’t tell you,” she said predictably. “But I promise when I hear anything, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Alright, thanks,” I said, knowing better than to press the issue further. She knew I wanted to know and wanted her to keep asking the FBI about it. It may not have been a priority for her, and I couldn’t really blame her for that, but she would get around to finding out and let me know. There was no reason to antagonize my boss in the meantime.
“C’mon,” Holm said, holding the door open for me, and we made our way to the elevators to go meet with the lab techs downstairs.
6
Ethan
Bonnie and Clyde were our trusty lab techs at MBLIS, though those weren’t their real names. Honestly, it had gotten to the point where it was hard for me to even remember their real ones since we were so used to calling them by their nicknames.
They were both waiting for us downstairs in the lab, donning their usual white coats as they sat at a table away from the main lab area and eating sandwiches.
“Hey, we thought you might be headed this way,” Clyde said when the elevator dinged open, waving us over to him and Bonnie.
We took our seats across from them at the long gray table to the right-hand side of the elevator.
“Hear about Birn?” Bonnie asked with a glum expression on her face and a tone to match it.
“Yeah,” Holm said, staring down at the table. “Diane said you might have something to help us.”
“I don’t know,” Clyde said, shaking his head. “Muñoz sent over all kinds of stuff from the police investigation. We went through all of it the past couple of hours, though we weren’t sure what it was about at first because Diane hadn’t told us yet.”
“I think she wanted to keep things under wraps until she had the go-ahead to send you guys down there,” Bonnie added. “Prevent panic.”
“Panic,” Holm scoffed. “Us? No way.” But I could tell that beneath his resolute exterior, he was just as concerned for Birn as I was. Having one of our own practically disappear into thin air was not something to take lightly.
“So, what did they send you?” I asked the lab techs, more than eager to hear anything they had to say, and get on with our drive down to the Little Torch Key. The faster we got there, the faster we could find Birn.
“Just a bunch of random stuff the police and Muñoz found at the crime scene… or what we think might be the crime scene, I guess,” Clyde explained as he finished up his sandwich. “They made grafts and swabs all over the area. We were able to come up with some hair follicles and even a bit of blood.”
“Blood?” I repeated, my own blood running cold in my veins. “Was it Birn’s?”
“No,” Bonnie said quickly, shaking her head. “It wasn’t Birn’s. We didn’t get a hit at all, actually.”
“Was it old, then?” Holm asked. “Or fresh? Can you tell the difference? Where did you find it?”
“Whoa, slow down,” Clyde said, holding up his hands for emphasis. “One thing at a time, okay?”
Holm and I both nodded, though I could practically feel my partner’s nervous energy emanating off of him, and I was sure that it was the same for me. The lab techs cared about finding Birn. There was no question about that. But they weren’t in the field. It was different for them. They weren’t
putting their lives on the line every day out there like us, Birn, and the other agents were.
“Right, so we can determine a rough age of the blood, though with the water, that makes it more difficult,” Bonnie said, her face scrunched up in distaste as if this frustrated her greatly.
“The water?” I repeated. “Where was the blood found?”
“On the very edge of the dock leading out into the harbor, or so we’re told,” Bonnie continued. “We didn’t collect the samples ourselves, obviously.”
“Would’ve done a better job if we had,” Clyde said bitterly.
“They aren’t good samples?” I asked, trying not to look too crestfallen at this news.
“They’re… not great,” Bonnie confirmed, and the pained expression on her face revealed more than her words did alone. “But they’re a very small department. There’s not even a single police department for the island. They have to share with the other nearby islands. Little Torch Key isn’t exactly Key West.”
“No, I suppose not,” I said, grimacing at the thought of what such a small department probably had to deal with out in the open sea, surrounded by foreign islands like Cuba and the Caribbean.
“So, were you able to get anything from the samples?” Holm asked hopefully, and Clyde nodded.
“We were able to get some DNA, a small sample,” he said. “But again, no hits. We know it’s not Birn’s, though.”
“The blood was up on the front of the dock, so it got splashed with a lot of water,” Bonnie explained. “I don’t know if we even could’ve gotten a good enough sample with what they were working with. There was just a small bit that wasn’t already eroded. They had a good eye finding it in the first place.”
“Which is the biggest part of what makes us think it’s fresh,” Clyde added, balling up his sandwich wrapper and taking Bonnie’s for her with a nod of thanks from her. “If it was there longer than a day, it would’ve all been gone, and they never would’ve found it.”