Dead Last (13 page)

“Talking with you is a contact sport.”

“Your friends must coddle you, Thorn. We’re just having an honest back-and-forth. So that’s what the fire was about. Self-flagellation. One hurt to distract from another hurt.”

He slowed for the thickening traffic in the commercial district of Key Biscayne, saw the side street he was looking for and made the left turn, heading out to the small oceanside motel along the Atlantic side of the island, the place Frank Sheffield had lived for years. Sheffield was Sugarman’s buddy. They’d worked together a few years back on a couple of cases, then on one special operation to help rescue one of Sugar’s little girls. Though his contact with Sheffield had been minimal, Thorn’s recollection was positive. Sheffield was cut from the same cloth as Sugar. Solid, no bullshit, not one to play games. He wasn’t wound as tight as other FBI guys Thorn had met. But even with his light and loose approach, the man got things done.

The two-story motel was still there, shaded by coconut palms and some renegade pines. Those Australian pines had been banned from the county after the last hurricane. The big trees were nonnatives and could grow a hundred feet tall, their trunks five feet thick and heavy with sap, but they had practically no root system. An ordinary squall with forty-mile-an-hour winds could push them over. Somehow the ones around the Silver Sands Motel had survived the ban and the last few tropical storms. Maybe it was because they were sheltered by massive condos built on either side of the motel.

Thorn parked, got out, waited for Buddha to finish up with her gadget.

The sea breeze moaning through the pines had a spooky, harmonic undertone. Thorn had always liked that noise and been partial to those trees for producing it, but still, he wouldn’t live in the shadow of one, no matter how appealing their sound effects.

Things looked desperate at the Silver Sands. Out in the sandy parking lot to the north of the pink and turquoise concrete building five bulldozers were stationed alongside a dump truck and some industrial-size trash containers.

With Buddha trailing, Thorn circled the building, peeking in the windows. The place was deserted, every room empty, except for one where a tidy occupant kept his shoes lined up and the queen-size bed was made with hospital corners.

In a tiny block building behind the motel he found Frank Sheffield bent over a lawnmower, tightening down the carburetor. The workshop was full of landscaping equipment and smelled like gasoline and rotten fish.

Frank looked up, saw Thorn, then saw Buddha behind him. His gaze lingered on Buddha for a second or two, then he looked at Thorn and smiled.

“Oh, boy,” Frank said. “And I thought it was going to be just another dull day at the office.”

Thorn introduced Buddha, using her title.

“Little young to be a sheriff.”

“Thought so too, but she is.”

Frank got up, wiping his oily hands on a rag. He had on a ragged Miami Dolphins T-shirt and cutoff jeans. No shoes. His hair had gotten scruffy and he had a two-day beard.

Buddha dug her wallet from her purse and flipped it open, and Frank leaned in for a close inspection.

“Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain.”

“And the waving wheat can sure smell sweet,” Buddha said.

“Long way from the plains.” Frank led them out of the shop into the breezy shade of coconut palms. Down on the beach, the tourists were walking to and fro. Thorn doubted they were speaking of Michelangelo.

Thorn explained the situation. Rusty’s death, the subsequent murder of her aunt, the obituary on the bedside table, the TV show with the same storyline.

“You think you got an active serial?”

“Maybe just getting started,” Buddha said. “Maybe a one-timer. Too early to tell. But it’s a copycat of that TV show. I’m sure of that.”

“Life imitating shit,” Frank said. “Happens more than you think.”

“You’ve seen that before? Bad guys getting their ideas from TV?” Buddha sounded deferential, a side of her Thorn hadn’t heard. In the presence of one of her own, she was picking up on Frank’s true-blue vibe.

Frank shrugged.

“Majority of the turdballs I run into never had what you’d call a bright idea. That would require they first have a functioning brain. Mainly they’re monkey see, monkey do. Steal a gimmick from a cop show or comic book, then reenact it step for step. You ask them later how they thought of something so amazing, they think they came up with it on their own because they were too stoned to remember where they ripped it off from.”

“You’re not with the Bureau anymore?” Thorn said.

“Technically yes. Last official day is coming September one. But I’ve cleared out my desk, briefed my replacement. I’m done. Just coasting a couple of months on stored-up sick leave. I’m not going into the office, which is fine by my colleagues.”

“What’s going on with this place?”

“The Silver Sands is my Alamo. Sheffield’s last stand. Instead of Mexican troops climbing the walls, I got fucking bulldozers trying to knock them down.”

Frank led them over to a concrete picnic table with matching benches, all of it inlaid with broken bits of terrazzo.

“Got some Red Stripe. Care for a cold beverage, Ms. Hilton?”

She declined. Thorn surrendered to temptation.

Frank pulled two bottles of the Jamaican beer from the cooler full of slushy ice and handed one to Thorn. He twisted off the cap, had a long pull, and set it on the table.

“Sorry to hear about Rusty. That’s tough. Not even fifty.”

Thorn nodded.

“You ask what’s going on here,” Frank said. “Well, I own this old motor lodge and the three acres we’re standing on. I been trying to pull permits to restore the old girl to her former idyllic charm. Problem is, the city fathers don’t think my humble plans for this prime beachfront will produce sufficient tax revenues, so they’re trying to steal it in a court of law. Been harassing me with red-tag code violations and ticky-tack bullshit. Now they say it’s in the public’s interest it be demolished and replaced by a condo tower. We’ll know in a month if the judge agrees. Meanwhile, I whack the weeds, relax in my hammock. Crash in room 104.”

“You’re living here?”

“Got to make sure those bulldozers don’t fire up some night and accidentally knock the old place down.”

“Somebody would do that?” Buddha asked.

“It’s Miami,” Sheffield said. “Whatever you want done, there’s somebody happy to oblige.”

Thorn sipped his beer and watched the beach people soaking up the late afternoon rays.

“Who’s the new SAC?”

“Name’s Lisa Mankowski.”

Sheffield looked out at the afternoon blaze on the white sands.

“Way you say her name, I take it you two aren’t warm and fuzzy.”

“Mankowski is about as fuzzy as a steel ball bearing.”

Buddha smiled and Frank smiled at her. He didn’t seem to notice her tats. There was no curiosity in his eyes. A live-and-let-live guy to the core.

“It’s the end of an era at the Bureau. New generation taking over. New rules, new objectives; they call it
retasking
. Centralized management structure, intel-driven investigations. Number-one priority is homeland security, prevention of attacks. Counterintelligence, counterespionage. Everybody wants to play spy. It’s not your father’s FBI. These days some kid with a view of the Potomac calls the shots. So if you happen to have a crazy-ass killer who may or may not be imitating a TV show running around murdering your citizens, shit, let me see, is that an urgent national security threat? Not really, unless he’s using a dirty bomb or a suitcase nuke. Like I say, end of an era.”

Thorn finished his beer and rode the buzz a while, listening to the pines hum their ghostly melody.

“Sheriff Hilton here, she’s got some issues with the FBI in her area too.”

“Is it the end of an era out in Oklahoma?”

“There’s some good agents,” she said. “So I hear.”

“Oh, sure, there’s still crime solvers around. Old-school flatfoots. The last of the shoe leather boys.” Sheffield had a pull on his beer, then pressed the bottle to his temple. “Just none I met lately.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, then Frank set down his empty and dug two more beers from the ice and passed one to Thorn.

“Sheriff Hilton,” Frank said. “Did you know your associate here is famous for going off the rails at warp speed?”

“I’m aware of Mr. Thorn’s reputation, yes, sir.”

They listened to the pines and sipped their beer. Buddha looked at Thorn and made a we-should-go shrug.

“So, Frank,” Thorn said. “The thing is, Sheriff Hilton is a wee bit beyond her jurisdiction. And you know me, I’m always outside mine. But despite that, it looks like the two of us, for various personal reasons, are going ahead with this quest for truth. So I was wondering, maybe along the way if something came up where we needed local assistance, you know, access to case files, official muscle—”

Frank raised his hand and cut Thorn off.

“It’s a felony to attempt to defile a federal official.”

“Defile?”

“Corrupt, bribe. You know what I mean.”

He gave Thorn a hard stare, then shifted it to Buddha. In a few seconds his face relaxed into a smile, and he looked at the bulldozers aimed at his quaint motel.

“You got a cell phone?” Frank kept his eyes on the earth movers.

Buddha pulled her phone from her bag.

“My private number, emergencies only. Dire emergencies.”

“Understood,” Buddha said.

He gave her his number, and she put it into her phone. She dug a business card from her purse and slid it over to Frank. It had a gold official seal on it from the metropolis of Starkville.

“You know Poblanos?” Thorn said. “Somewhere downtown.”

“Classy joint,” Frank said. “Where cops and their snitches liquor up. Down the block from Tobacco Road. You know where that is, right?”

Thorn said he knew.

“In your travels you ever run into April Moss?”

Sheffield looked out at the soothing roll of the Atlantic.

“I have indeed. I see she’s slinging obits now, but she used to be one of their hotshot investigative types. Tore new assholes for more than one dirtbag in her day. She’s solid, got good street cred. I’d trust what she gave me.”

He and Buddha rose while Frank guzzled the last swallow.

“I’ve caught that show a couple of times,
Miami Ops,
” Frank said.

“Pretty crappy,” said Buddha.

“Crappy, yeah. But that girl, one of the actors, Dee Dee Dollimore, she might be worth some face time. Her and her old man, Gus.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re dirty.”

“How so?”

“Probably not related to the situation you’re looking at, but I heard some unsavory shit about that pair. Goes way back, never made it in front of a jury. Somebody’s lawyer was better than somebody else’s lawyer.”

“What version of unsavory?”

“Short films. Daddy, daughter, and a lollipop. That kind of thing.”

Buddha gave Thorn a questioning look.

“I’ll tell you in the car,” Thorn said.

“Probably unrelated,” said Frank.

TEN

“CHILD PORN?”

“That’s what he was saying.”

“Father and daughter together?”

“Apparently.”

“That’s the guy from this afternoon, bossy guy running the show.”

“The director,” Thorn said. “Couldn’t sit still. That was him.”

Thorn pulled out onto Crandon Boulevard.

“She’s still working with her father. How’s that happen?”

“Abused wives stay with their husbands. It happens.”

“I couldn’t work alongside my dad even if he was on one side of the bars and I was on the other.”

“Maybe they both had therapy and got cured,” Thorn said.

“Is that another joke?”

“It’s a new thing they’re calling irony.”

“There’s things people do I’ll never understand,” Buddha said. “Things I don’t really care to understand.”

In silence she looked out her window. They passed the Seaquarium, the Maritime Science and Technology high school.

“So how does that fit in?” Buddha said. “Incest porn.”

“Like Sheffield said, it probably doesn’t. Make a note of it, set it aside, when we know more we’ll see if it fits or not.”

“Hard to set aside something like that.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Hell, even my father wasn’t that twisted. Well, as far as I know. I mean, I think I’d remember something like that.”

“You remembered him putting on the tats, you’d remember the other.”

Buddha was silent, looking out at the windsurfers and the sailboats and the charter boats coming in from the far reaches of the bay.

“This TV show,” he said. “Does the guy in the bodysuit use the same weapon every time?”

“Each show it’s different. He picks it after reading the obit.”

“So if the real killer is doing that, switching weapons, searching for that Zulu spear on ViCAP, that won’t work.”

“I put it in just in case. It’s all I had.”

They crossed the causeway in the opposite direction and Buddha surveyed the view again, but this time she didn’t seem as awed. Miami had that effect. Teased you for a while with its gorgeous panoramas, its exotic scents, its sensual drumbeat, then left you hungry for something you couldn’t name.

She pulled the Ziploc evidence bag from her purse, took Rusty’s obituary out, and spent a few minutes musing on it. When he looked over again she was touching her fingertip lightly to the pointy edges, holding the paper up to the light.

He saw his name shine through the flimsy page. Rusty on one side, him on the other. Rusty with the angels, Thorn with the society fucks.

He took Brickell Avenue north, passing the wall of condos where the young professionals who worked downtown spent their nights, living among the snowbirds from Germany and Canada and Brazil.

Going against rush hour, making decent time, Thorn tried his right hand on the steering wheel but the fingers wouldn’t close. It was going to be a while before he was using chopsticks.

“Do you sew, Thorn?”