The Night Monster (5 page)

I drove behind the motel, tasting the salty ocean breeze. Coming around the corner, a pair of shiny animal eyes flashed back at me from the swamp behind the motel.

The team bus was parked in back. I parked behind it and got out.

Peels of laughter and loud dance music floated through the air. My daughter’s team was celebrating their hard-earned win over Ole Miss. Everything looked fine, but looks could be deceiving. I decided to find Jessie and make sure she was okay.

I started to cross the lot, and stopped in my tracks. A vehicle was parked in the grass between the team bus and the swamp. It looked like a Ford Minivan, and I approached for a closer look.

It
was
a Ford Minivan, the rear window covered in duct tape. It was the same vehicle from the Bank Atlantic Center. I drew my Colt.

I approached the driver’s door. Through the tinted side window glowed the orange ember of a cigarette. Grabbing the handle, I jerked the door open.

Behind the wheel sat the stalker. Headbanger music blared out of his car radio, his fingers tapping out the beat on the wheel. He shot me a startled look.

“Remember me?” I asked.

The stalker nodded stiffly, his eyes never leaving my Colt.

“Get out, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

He hopped out of the minivan, tossing his butt to the ground. Enough light was coming from the motel for me to get a good look at him. Small of build, with rotting teeth and a crooked nose, his darting eyes made him look feral.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Mouse,” he mumbled.

“Is that your first or last name?”

“Just Mouse.”

“Okay, Mouse, put your hands in the air.”

Mouse lifted his arms into the air. There was something childlike about the way he acted that made me think he was not all there. But that didn’t make him any less dangerous. I stuck my head into the open door and peered inside the minivan. The interior had been stripped and reeked of paint remover. I pulled my head back out.

“Where’s your partner?” I asked.

“I don’t have a partner,” Mouse replied.

“Stop lying. Which girl on the basketball team are you after?”

Mouse’s mouth opened, but no words came out.
Guilty as charged
.

I decided to frisk him, but I didn’t do it the old-fashioned way. Instead, I made Mouse turn his pockets inside-out, and when I saw that he wasn’t carrying a weapon, I had him unbutton his shorts, and drop them to his knees. Then I made him do a slow three-sixty spin. It was a great way to humiliate a person, and often led to a suspect opening up. Seeing that he was clean, I let him pull his pants back up.

“Where’s your partner?” I asked again.

Mouse hesitated, then pointed at the row of rooms where the Lady Seminoles were staying. “There.”

“Show me,” I said.

Mouse started toward the motel. When asked, criminals often led
people of authority to places where they’d committed crimes. I’d never fully understood the reason, and guessed the answer was rooted in the subconscious.

Mouse stopped at the last room in the row. The door was closed, the shades on the window tightly drawn.

“Is your partner in there?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said.

I ripped the baseball cap from his head, and used it to slap him in the face. I couldn’t do that as a cop, but I wasn’t a cop anymore.

“Stop hitting me,” Mouse protested.

“Is he in there or not?”

“He’s in there.”

“Knock on the door. When he answers, tell him everything is okay, that you were just checking up on him.”

“Okay.”

Mouse rapped loudly on the door, then took a step back. I should have taken that as a warning that something bad was about to happen, but my adrenaline was pumping and I felt in control of the situation. From the other side of the door came a woman’s muffled scream. A smile crossed Mouse’s lips.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“You’ll see,” he replied.

The door banged open, and I found myself staring at a huge man dressed in a black sweatshirt and black pants, his face covered by a ski mask. He was so big, he had to duck beneath the door frame as he came out. Even though I was holding a gun, his presence scared the daylights out of me, and I stepped back.

“Stop right there,” I said.

The giant stopped. Slung over his shoulder was a young woman wearing gray sweats. She lifted her head, and I saw that it was Sara Long, the top scorer on Jessie’s team. Sara’s mouth was taped shut, her wrists hog-tied with rope. Seeing me, she let out a muffled scream.

“Put her down,” I said.

The giant grunted something unintelligible under his breath.

“I mean business,” I said.

“She’s mine,” the giant said.

The giant patted the bottom of Sara’s behind. It was a strange gesture, almost affectionate, and I knew that he wasn’t going to comply.

Mouse shot his arm out, and grabbed my wrist. Considering his size, he was unusually strong. He twisted the Colt’s barrel so it pointed at the ground.

“Got him,” Mouse said.

The giant struck me in the head with his free hand. The blow felt like a baseball bat. My knees buckled, and the Colt fell from my hand.

Still holding Sara, the giant lifted me off the ground by my shirt, carried me across the lot, and slammed my head into the side of the team bus. The smart thing would have been to not fight back, but it wasn’t in my genes to quit.

I punched the giant in the face. The blow snapped his head, and his ski mask slipped off. He snarled at me like a dog.

“That was a no-no,” the giant said.

His face was round and childlike. It was the same crazy bastard who’d abducted Naomi Dunn from her apartment. After eighteen years of looking, I’d finally found him, and now he was about to abduct another young woman right out from under me.

It was my last thought just before I passed out.

wo hospital visits on the same day was a record, even for me.

I awoke in a private room with uneven plaster walls and a window facing a parking lot filled with cars. It was starting to get light. I’d been unconscious all night.

I squeezed my fingers, and moved my arms and legs. Nothing felt broken, and I wasn’t wearing any casts, nor were there pulleys hanging from the ceiling above my bed. I just had a splitting headache, and my mouth tasted like dried blood.

“Hi, Daddy.”

Jessie sat beside my bed playing with my cell phone. Her cheeks were red and puffy. If I’d accomplished anything as a cop, it was shielding my family from my work, and it killed me to see her upset like this. She rose and kissed my cheek.

“How are you feeling?” she asked. “I got your cell phone to work.”

“I’ll live. What happened?”

“Someone threw you into the swamp behind the motel. You were lucky you didn’t drown. Coach Daniels pulled you out and gave you CPR.”

“Coach Daniels is kind of cute, isn’t she?”

“Daddy!”

“I need some water. My throat is killing me.”

Jessie filled a plastic cup from a jug sitting on the nightstand. I took it away from her and sucked it down.

“You were in pain, so the doctor gave you a sedative,” she said. “He said the only reason your skull wasn’t broken is because you have a thick head.”

I found the strength to laugh.

“Have you talked to your mother?” I asked.

“I called Mom’s cell, but she didn’t pick up. Then I tried her at the hospital, and the receptionist told me there was a huge pile-up on the interstate, and all the nurses and doctors were working the emergency room.”

“So your mother doesn’t know.”

“No, Daddy.”

My wife had left me and moved away to Tampa after I’d gotten kicked off the force. I’d tried every trick in the book to get her to come back. So far, none of them had worked. I needed to tell her what had happened, not Jessie.

“Let me call your mother,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“There are two detectives in the hall who want to talk to you.” Jessie fished their business cards out of the pocket of her jeans and read their names aloud. “Detectives Boone and Weaver. Sounds like a comedy team.”

“First tell me what’s going on,” I said.

“You mean about Sara?”

“Yes.”

My daughter rested her elbows on the arm of my bed. A tear fell from her eye, and ran down the side of her face. “Sara’s gone. The police are conducting a manhunt across south Florida. I was watching it on TV earlier. They’ve closed down all the highways and are looking for the kidnappers’ minivan with helicopters.”

“I need to see this.”

Jessie switched on the TV that hung over my bed. Sara Long’s abduction
was the lead story on the local news channel. While a smiling newscaster explained what had happened, photographs of a bikini-clad Sara from a college edition of
Sports Illustrated
flashed across the screen. The segment ended, and Jessie killed the picture.

“Who else saw Sara’s abductors at the motel?” I asked.

“The desk clerk saw them drive away, but didn’t see their faces. That’s why the detectives want to talk to you. They’re hoping you saw what the men looked like.
Did
you see them, Daddy?”

Jessie’s voice was filled with pleading. Although I loved my daughter more than anything in the world, telling her what had happened would only compromise the police investigation, and I wasn’t about to do that.

“They were bad men,” I said.

Jessie waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, she let out a sigh.

“Should I get the detectives now?” she asked.

“That would be a good idea.”

Detectives Boone and Weaver actually did look like a comedy team. Larry Boone was as round as a beach ball and prematurely balding, while Rob Weaver was built like a toothpick and had a thick mane of black hair. I wasn’t sure which was the straight man and which was the comic, but that would become apparent once they started grilling me. Both were homicide detectives, and were on loan to help with the investigation. They sat with their knees pressed against my bed and opened spiral notebooks in their laps.

“Start from the beginning, and tell us what happened,” Boone said.

I explained how I’d chased Mouse at Jessie’s basketball game, and ended with me describing the giant who’d tried to crush my skull. Boone and Weaver traded glances and put their pens down.

“How big was this guy?” Boone asked.

“Scary big,” I said.

“Be specific.”

“Six-ten, three hundred pounds. And strong. He picked me up
with one arm and carried me across the parking lot while holding Sara. I punched him in the face, and it didn’t faze him.”

“You make him sound like Superman,” Weaver said.

“I’ve never encountered someone that strong.”

Both detectives loosened the knots in their ties. The gesture was not lost on me. They didn’t believe me.

“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened,” I said.

“How much did you have to drink at the game?” Boone asked.

“A couple of beers.”

“Just a couple?”

“I drank a Budweiser during the first half, got a refill during half-time, and didn’t finish it. I wasn’t drunk, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Boone looked down at his notebook and read from it. “The cashier at the concession stand said you purchased a half dozen sixteen-ounce Bud drafts during halftime. That’s a lot of beer.”

“I bought those for the other dads,” I explained. “We were sitting together in the stands, and I offered to get the beer.”

“What other dads?”

“The fathers of the girls on the team. We sit together during the games and root for our daughters. I’m guessing you didn’t bother talking to them.”

Boone shook his head and flipped his notebook closed. He had rings beneath his eyes and his clothes stank of cigarettes. His body language told me that he didn’t want to hear any more of what I had to say. I folded my hands and waited him out.

“Here’s the skinny, Jack,” Boone said. “We have a suspect named Tyrone Biggs cooling his heels down at the county lockup. Biggs is Sara Long’s ex-boyfriend. He also plays basketball at Florida State, and is a really big dude. My partner and I think you saw
him
in the parking lot at the Day’s Inn.”

I followed college basketball, and knew Tyrone Biggs. He was the Florida State center, and was headed for a pro career in the NBA if his knees held up. He
was
big, but he wasn’t the monster I’d seen stealing Sara Long out of her motel room.

“It wasn’t Tyrone Biggs,” I said.

“The evidence says it was,” Boone said.

“What evidence is that?”

“Sara Long’s abductor didn’t break into her motel room. She opened the door, and let him in. Chances are, she wouldn’t let in the guy you just described.”

“Did the room have a peephole in the door?”

“Yes. We talked to Sara’s teammates, and they said that she’s extremely cautious, and wouldn’t have opened her door without first looking outside.”

“You’re sure she let him in?”

“Positive.”

That didn’t make sense, but it still didn’t change what I’d seen.