Florida Heatwave (25 page)

“Excuse me?”

“I can smell it,” he said. “Like bitter almonds.”

Maggie came up beside Karst and he stepped back while she bent over the dead man’s face. Only forty to fifty percent of people could smell the aftereffects of cyanide. It was a genetic ability. The scent was faint but she could smell it, too.

“I thought it might be something like that,” she said. “Cyanide stops cells from using oxygen. He would have felt like he was suffocating—a shortness of breath followed by dizziness. Then comes the confusion and possible seizures, bursting the capillaries in the eyes. Last would be cardiac arrest. All in a matter of minutes.”

“Potassium cyanide is a crystal compound.” Karst looked around the room and pointed to the wine bottle. “May have slipped it into the wine. Where does someone get cyanide these days?”

Maggie had to stop and think, retrieve the information from her memory bank. The case she had worked on had happened too many years ago—six young men in a cabin in the woods had chosen to obey their leader and take cyanide capsules rather than be taken into custody. She’d lost a friend that day—a fellow FBI agent—so the memory didn’t come easily. “Potassium cyanide is still used in several industries. Certain kinds of photography,” she finally said. “Some processing of plastics, electroplating and gold plating in jewelry making. If a person buys it on a regular basis for their business it usually doesn’t draw any attention.”

Now she wanted to dismantle the memory and started looking over the room again. She plucked a tissue from its container on the nightstand and gently pressed her covered fingertip against the dead man’s jaw, then his neck. “No rigor.”

“So he’s been dead less than twelve hours.”

“Maybe less than six. Rigor sets in more quickly with cyanide poisoning. You said he wasn’t alone?” She turned to see Karst had moved to the desk and was lifting open a folded wallet using the tip of a pen.

“Guy I met at the bar downstairs told me he saw Gruber leave with a blond.”

“The guy who took off as soon as he saw your badge?”

He glanced up at Maggie. “Coincidence?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Me either. I’ll bet he gave me a bogus name. Hell, he probably lied about the blond, too.”

Maggie used the tissue again as she tipped a wastebasket out from under the nightstand. The only thing inside was another tissue, this one crumpled with a blotted stain of bright pink lipstick. She gently lifted it by a corner, pulling it up high enough to show Karst.

“Unless there’s something a little freaky about Dr. Foster, I think your friend might have been telling the truth about the blond.”

“I’ll be damned.”

Maggie took a good look at the stain under the light, then gently placed it back where she had found it. Later she’d point it out to the sheriff’s investigator.

“What did he do?” she asked.

Karst folded his arms and stared at the dead man. “His nurse was two-timing him with a rich ex-patient. He murdered her plus the patient and his wife. Then Gruber set the nurse’s house on fire, hoping to hide all the evidence. He high-tailed it to South America before we could even question him.”

“So there were a few others beside you, looking for him.”

“Not to mention some new enemies. The guy from the bar mentioned something about Gruber being his competition.”

Maggie watched Karst’s face. He was still grinding out the case in his mind. She checked her watch again.

“I’d say you no longer have a case, Detective Karst.”

There was knock at the door followed by, “Sheriff’s department.”

Glen Karst found himself back down at the hotel’s tiki bar. This time he and Maggie shared one of the high-top tables. He’d asked to buy her a drink and was surprised when the tough, no nonsense FBI agent ordered a Diet Pepsi. He ordered another Buffalo Trace, glancing around to see if Joe Black was somewhere close by, watching again.

The waves had kicked up and the moon had slid over a bit. A breeze almost made the hot, humid air feel good. The beach restaurants and bars were still full but not quite as crowded and noisy as earlier.

“I can’t believe I came all the way down here and the son of a bitch cheated me out of dragging his ass back to Denver. It’s hard to let it go.”

“Sheriff Clayton will do a good job,” Maggie told him. “Anything you can tell him about Gruber will help his investigation.”

Glen rubbed at his eyes, only now remembering how exhausted he was. “I suppose the bastard got what was coming to him.”

“A wise medical examiner once told me, we die as we live.”

“Is that the equivalent of what goes around comes around?”

She smiled and tipped her glass at him, “Touché.”

He raised his glass and was about to take a sip when he saw a woman sidle up to the bar. She looked familiar but he couldn’t place her. Then he realized: Her hair was shorter. She looked much thinner than when he’d met her over a year ago. But he recognized her walk, the way she handled herself.

“Someone you know,” Maggie asked. “Or someone you’d like to know?”

“What? Oh, sorry. No, I think I know her.” He sipped his bourbon and continued to watch out of the corner of his eye. She was at the bar, ordering drinks and laughing with her friends, three women at a table near the bar.

“Not a blond,” Maggie said as if reading his mind. She sat back and took another look. “Even from this distance I’d say the lipstick’s a match.”

His eyes met Maggie’s. She was thinking exactly what he was thinking.

“No such thing as coincidences, right?” he said.

“It’s no longer your case,” Maggie reminded him. “She wore a wig, probably stole her wineglass, and the bottle was wiped down. I checked. They’ll never pull DNA off that tissue.”

“The least I can do is say hello.”

The woman’s back was to Glen when he walked up and leaned on the bar. He ordered another round of drinks and watched, waiting for her to notice him. The glance was subtle at first, almost flirtatious. Then he saw the realization.

“Hello, Mrs. Gruber.”

“Detective.” She kept her body turned away from him and looked for the bartender. “I’m sorry I don’t remember your name.”

But he knew she did remember. He told her anyway, “Glen. Glen Karst. Are you here on vacation?”

“We are. Yes, actually we were until the hurricane.”

“No other reason you chose Pensacola?” His eyes waited for hers. She met his stare and didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. In a split second he thought he could see her confirmation, her admission that she knew exactly what he was talking about, that she knew he was there and what he had found.

Without a blink she said, “Just having some fun and my friends can vouch for that.”

The bartender interrupted with a tray of colorful drinks ready and hovering. Before Mrs. Gruber took them she pulled out a business card from her pocket, hesitated then handed it to Glen.

“I have my own business now,” she told him, taking the tray and handing the bartender a fifty dollar bill. “Keep the change, sweetie,” she told the young man, and without giving Glen another look she returned to her table and friends.

Glen returned to the high-top with fresh drinks and scooted his chair closer. He placed the business card on the table without looking at it or at Maggie.

“You got lucky. She gave you her number?”

“No, I already have it. What she gave me was a cold shoulder.” Glen said. “That’s Gruber’s ex-wife.”

“I think she may have given you more than that,” Maggie told him, and he looked up to see her reading the business card. She handed it to him and immediately Glen knew.

Elaine Gruber had her own business all right. Making fine jewelry and specializing in gold-plating.

BY MICHAEL KORYTA
AN EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL

They’d been on the train
for five hours before Arlen Wagner saw the first of the dead men.

To that point it had been a hell of a nice ride. Hot, sure, and progressively more humid as they passed out of Alabama and through southern Georgia and into Florida, but nice enough all the same. There were thirty-four onboard the train who were bound for the camps in the Keys, all of them veterans with the exception of the nineteen-year-old who rode at Arlen’s side, a boy from Jersey by name of Paul Brickhill.

They’d all made a bit of conversation at the outset, exchanges of names and casual barbs and jabs thrown around in that way men had when they were getting used to one another, all of them figuring they’d be together for several months to come, and then things quieted down. Some men had slept, a few started card games, others just sat and watched the countryside roll by, fields going misty with late-summer twilight and then shapeless and dark as the moon rose like a watchful specter. Arlen, though, Arlen just listened. Wasn’t anything else to do, because Paul Brickhill had an outboard motor where his mouth belonged.

As the miles and minutes passed, Brickhill alternated between explaining things to Arlen and asking him questions. Nine times out of ten, he answered his own questions before Arlen could so much as part his lips with a response. Brickhill had been a quiet kid when the two of them first met in Alabama, and back then Arlen took him for shy. What he hadn’t counted on was the way the boy took to talk once he felt comfortable with someone. Evidently, he’d grown damn comfortable with Arlen.

As the wheels hammered along the rails of northern Florida, Paul Brickhill was busy telling Arlen all of the reasons this was going to be a hell of a good hitch. Not only was there the bridge waiting to be built, but all that sunshine and blue water and boats that cost more than most homes. Florida was where rich folks went for winter, see, and here Paul and Arlen were doing the same thing, and wasn’t that something? They could do some fishing, maybe catch a tarpon. Paul’d seen pictures of tarpon that were near long as the boats that landed them. And there were famous people in the Keys, celebrities of every sort, and who was to say they wouldn’t run into a few and …

Around them the men talked and laughed, some scratching out letters to loved ones back home. Wasn’t anyone waiting on a letter from Arlen, so he just settled for a few nips on his flask and tried to find some sleep despite the cloaking warmth and the stink of sweating men. It was too damn hot.

Brickhill was still going, this time expounding on the realization that he’d never seen a true palm tree before and in a few more hours they’d be as good as surrounded by them. Arlen heard one of the men behind them let out a chuckle, amused by the kid and, no doubt, by Arlen having to put up with him.

Damned good Samaritan is what I am, Arlen thought, allowing a small grin with his eyes still closed. Always trying to help, and look where it gets me?

Brickhill finally fell silent, as if he’d just noticed that Arlen was sitting with his eyes closed and had stopped responding to the conversation. Arlen let out a sigh, grateful for the respite. Paul was a nice enough kid, but Arlen had never been one for a lot of words where a few would do.

The train clattered on, and though night had settled the heat didn’t break. Sweat still trickled along the small of Arlen’s back and held his hair to his forehead. He wished he could fall asleep; these hot miles would pass faster then. Maybe another pull on the flask would aid him along.

He opened his eyes, tugged the lids up sleepily, and saw himself staring at a hand of bone.

He blinked and sat up and stared. Nothing changed. The hand held five playing cards and was attached to a man named Wallace O’Connell, a veteran from Georgia who was far and away the loudest man in this company. He had his back turned, engaged in his game, so Arlen couldn’t see his face. Just that hand of bone.

No, Arlen thought, no, damn it, not another one.

The sight chilled him, but didn’t shock him. It was far from the first time.

He’s going to die unless I can find a way to stop it, Arlen thought with the sad, sick resignation of a man experienced with such things. Once we get down to the Keys, old Wallace O’Connell will have a slip and bash his head in on something. Or maybe the poor bastard can’t swim, will fall into those waves and sink beneath them and I’ll be left with this memory same as I’ve been left with so many others. I’d warn him if I could, but men don’t heed such warnings. They won’t let themselves.

It was then that he looked up, away from Wallace under the flickering lights of the train car, and saw skeletons all around him.

They filled the shadows of the car, some laughing, some grinning, some lost to sleep. All with bone where flesh belonged. The few who sat directly under a light still wore their skin, but their eyes were gone, replaced by whirls of gray smoke.

For a moment, Arlen Wagner forgot to breathe. Went cold and dizzy and then sucked in a gasp of air and straightened in the seat.

They were going to have a wreck. It was the only thing that made a bit of sense. This train was going to derail and they were all going to die. Every last one of them. Because Arlen had seen this before, and knew damn well what it meant, and knew that –

Paul Brickhill said, “Arlen?”

Arlen turned to him. The overhead light was full on the boy’s face, keeping him in a circle of brightness, the taut, tanned skin of a young man who spent his days under the sun. Arlen looked into his eyes and saw swirling wisps of smoke. The smoke rose in tendrils and fanned out and framed the boy’s head while filling Arlen’s with terrible memories.

“Arlen, you all right?” Paul Brickhill asked.

He wanted to scream. Wanted to scream and grab the boy’s arm but was afraid it would be cold slick bone under his touch.

We’re going to die. We’re going to come off these rails at full speed and pile into those swamp woods, with hot metal tearing and shattering all around us.

The whistle blew out shrill in the dark night and the train began to slow.

“We got another stop,” Paul said. “You look kind of sickly. Maybe you should pour that flask out …”

The boy distrusted liquor. Arlen wet his lips and said, “Maybe,” and looked around the car at the skeleton crew and felt the train shudder as it slowed. The force of that big locomotive was dropping fast, and now he could see light glimmering outside the windows, a station just ahead. They were arriving in some backwater stop where the train could take on coal and the men would have a chance to get out, stretch their legs, and piss. Then they’d be aboard again and winging south at full speed, death ahead of them.