Blood of Cain (Sean O'Brien (Mystery/Thrillers)) (32 page)

He squatted down, a toothpick wedged in the corner of his mouth. Dan Grant removed his sunglasses and said, “Okay. You wanna tell me what the hell happened? Neighbors said it sounded like a shootout at the OK Corral.”

“Dan, the paramedics need to get in there. We’re the victims, and she’s injured.”

“Soon as my men give the all clear, the EMT guys can have at it.”

“See those drops of blood near the tip of your shoes?”

“I do.”

“There’s your DNA sample. More in the foyer. I hit one of the perps as they were trying to splatter my brains all over one wall. The woman inside, is Kim Davis. Employed at the marina. Runs the Tiki Bar Restaurant. Extractors—men used to get information from people, were sent here.”

“Why would someone do that? What does this woman have or know that’s worth this … this mess?”

One of the SWAT members stepped from the door. “Sir, it’s clear. Vic needs medical attention.”

Detective Grant said looked at the ambulance crew. “It’s all yours, gentlemen.” The paramedics hustled across the walkway, moving a gurney and medical cases inside the house. Grant signaled to an officer. “Help Mr. O’Brien up, please. And take the bracelets off.”

The officer nodded. He removed the cuffs and I stood. Dan glanced at me and motioned with his head for me to follow him. He stepped in the shade of the banyan tree. “Okay, Sean, start at the top. What went down?”

I told him most of what I knew, but not everything I suspected. He tossed the toothpick into the hedges and said, “Do you think this goes all the way up to Senator Logan?”

“Yes. Maybe not every strategic move, but his handlers aren’t doing this without his knowledge, and they probably have his blessing.”

“And none of this would be happening if you and his current wife hadn’t hooked up twenty years ago. I wouldn’t be looking for a suspected serial killer, and Senator Logan could run a clean campaign, assuming that’s even possible. Funny how life works out.”

“Courtney is a victim, Dan—like Kim is … they just haven’t found Courtney yet.”

“Sorry, I’m a little fuckin’ dumbfounded over all this happening in my county. I’ll speak with Miss Davis. Get her description of the perps. We’ll get a DNA sample from the blood and check CODIS for a possible match. We’ll notify all area hospitals to be on the lookout for a gunshot victim.”

“His DNA won’t show up in any national database. You won’t find their prints in there, and you won’t find him being treated at a local hospital. You’re not going to discover evidence or an ID—just like Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office couldn’t find with the two bodies they pulled out of the burning trailer in Gibtown.”

“So you’re saying these soldiers don’t officially exist in any government records system.”

“Not under their real names.”

Dan loosened his tie and crossed his arms. I glanced at the dozen or so neighbors milling around behind the crime scene tape and said, “She’s going to need police protection until I can direct the focus off her. Can you spare the manpower?”

“It’ll be easier to do if she’s hospitalized.”

“That may be a given.”

“I’ll speak with her inside the house or at the hospital.” He turned to go in Kim’s home, then looked back at me. “Oh, Sean. You might want to return phone calls. The reason I’d called was to tell you that the guy you wanted me to interview, Smitty. We finally located him.”

“Where?”

“County morgue. Two teenagers found his body in the woods where they were riding dirt bikes. He’d been shot twice in the head. Bandini may not have found Courtney, but I’d say he sure found this guy.” He turned and walked inside. The air was filled with the staccato of clipped language coming from police radios juxtaposed with the hum of honeybees darting in and out of the pink trumpet flowers.

The paramedics rolled Kim from her home, the wheels on the gurney vibrating along the sidewalk. I followed them to the back of the ambulance. Kim looked up at me and said, “Thank you for getting here when you did.” She reached for my hand. “How did you know—how did you know I needed help?”

“I put some pieces together. They’d planted a bug on
Jupiter
.”

A wide-shouldered paramedic said, “We have to go, sir.”

Kim moaned. “Be careful, Sean. I’m more afraid for you and Courtney than I am for myself.”

I nodded and released her hand. They lowered the gurney, lifted it, and slid Kim effortlessly into the ambulance. Two paramedics climbed in with her. Right before they closed the door, she looked at me and tried to give a heartfelt smile, the kind that always came so naturally to her. But it was a fearful smile. She lifted her trembling hand to wave goodbye, her fingers like the wings of a young bird that had fallen from the nest, struggling to catch the wind, but lacking the physical and inner strength to get off the ground.

I thought about that, watching the ambulance growing smaller in the distance, thought about the bottomless abuse of power by the bottom feeders gorging on the feedbag of greed while plowing scars into the souls of others, justified for the purported good of the masses, when it was really all about them.

I walked back to my Jeep, passing the banyan tree, a strangler fig encircled around the tree with vines thick as a broomstick. I paused for a second, the feeling was like walking by an old portrait in an art museum, the eyes in the painting giving the illusion of movement, following the viewer. There appeared to be an image formed against the tree trunk by the pattern of the vines. They’d grown and molded into a symmetrical but aged shape of a face—the face of a very old woman alive in the sap of the vines, her hair like snakes twisted and sprouting from the head of Medusa.

On the way back to the Marina, I stopped in the Tiki Bar and let Big John know what happened to Kim. He picked up the phone and ordered flowers to be sent to her in Halifax Hospital. As I walked down L-Dock, I thought about what I had to do and the options for doing it. I didn’t know if Courtney Burke was dead or alive. To keep her alive, I had to know her real identity. My key, I felt, was lying in the brief conversation I had with the mystery woman on the phone.
Who was she? Where was she?

I had to find out. To protect Courtney and Kim, I had to try to reach Andrea Logan. I knew that either her phone, mine—or both of them, were monitored. I stood near the palm frond thatched roof of a fish-cleaning station and made the call. After five rings, I thought it was going to voice-mail, and then she said, “Hello, Sean. I can’t talk now.”

“Andrea, don’t hang up, please. Even if you can’t talk, you can listen for thirty seconds. The life of a close friend of mine was threatened. She’s an innocent victim in this, just as Courtney—a girl who might be our daughter—is an innocent victim.”

“Sean, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“Before you do, tell him to back off. All this can be worked out, but if Courtney’s harmed … there’s no turning around. Tell him, Andrea.”

“I’m so sorry.” She disconnected. I stared down at the phone in the palm of my hand, resisting the urge to throw it into the bay. I started toward
Jupiter
.

“Sean, wait up.”

I turned around to see Dave walking down the dock with two large plastic bags of ice. He said, “I caught the news bulletin on Channel Nine. They’re saying a shooting just happened on Sailfish Street. Please tell me Kim’s not hurt.”

“She’s hurt, but she’ll live.” I told him what happened.

He looked across the marina, his eyes troubled. He watched a charter fishing boat, four customers in the cockpit, the crew already serving the men drinks. Dave said, “They’d better keep security posted right outside her door. The only way that this roller coaster will come to a screeching halt is to find Courtney.”

“That’s all I’ve been thinking about the last few days.

“Well, apparently, she’s not in Florida anymore?”

“What do you mean?”

“She was spotted in New Orleans. A street artist, a guy who used to be a police sketch artist, said he spoke with her near the French Quarter. He said she ran away, and then he sketched her face from memory, from the brief time he talked to her. Let me put this ice away, one bag’s for Nick, and I’ll show you the sketch on my tablet. I downloaded it from CNN.”

As we walked by
St. Michael
, Dave yelled, “Nick, get your ice before it melts.”

“Where’s Max?” I asked.

“After playing an intense game of tag with Ol’ Joe the cat, she hit my sofa for a power nap.”

Nick came out of his boat, hair tousled, eyes puffy. Dave handed him a bag of ice over the transom. He grinned and said, “A boat without ice is like a car without tires. You get nothing done. Any luck on finding the girl?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Nick, Kim’s been hurt.” I gave him a brief explanation. He listened without interruption, the condensation from the ice dripping on top of his brown bare feet.

He shook his head, glanced at a pelican soaring over the water, and said, “Sean, I’m in good shape now. Let me join you hunting for these guys. Kim’s like a sister to me. I’m coming with you.”

“You’re still not fully healed. Sit tight. I’m trying to come up with a plan that will remove Kim from any of this.”

“How fast can you pull that off?”

“Not fast enough.”

Dave said, “It’s believed Courtney Burke was spotted in New Orleans. Toss your ice in the freezer and come aboard
Gibraltar
. I was about to show Sean an image of what looks a lot like Courtney.”

Nick nodded, walked back inside
St. Michael
, and reappeared with a six-pack of Coronas in his hand. He followed us to
Gibraltar
, sitting on a stool at Dave’s bar, popping the top off a beer. “Want one?”

I shook my head. “Not now.”

Dave said, “I’ll be mixing a batch of Grey Goose martinis after five-thirty.”

I picked Max up and set her on my lap, scratching behind her hound dog ears. Her brown eyes began to close.

Dave picked up his tablet and found the image. He enlarged it on screen and said, “The sketch artist was interviewed. He said he’d spotted the girl eating alone on a park bench near Jackson Square close to the French Quarter. He said, even with her dark glasses and hat, he could tell she was beautiful. He told a reporter that the girl had a face of an angel—a face he had to draw, if he’s to be believed.”

Nick sipped his Corona and said, “To me, it sounds like a way to pick up women.”

I studied the image. “It’s hard to say, but from the sketch, it could be Courtney. There’s a resemblance … but it could be a million other young women, too. We can’t be certain it’s her.”

Dave nodded. “But we can be certain of one thing: whoever sent those two bounty hunters to Gibsonton, whoever intimidated and hurt Kim … you can bet they’ve sent their troops to New Orleans, or they may already have someone in the city.”

Nick said, “Maybe that’ll take the heat off Kim.”

I said, “If they find Courtney in New Orleans, yes. But they still believe Kim knows the name of the woman who lent her mobile phone to Courtney. Dave, do you have anyone at your old place of employment who you can unconditionally trust?”

“There are a couple at the agency who haven’t retired. I’d trust them in any situation.”

“Good.” I wrote down the number and handed it to him. “Here’s the number to the woman I told you about—the one Courtney called. I believe it’s connected to somewhere in South Carolina or across the state line near Augusta, Georgia.”

Dave looked through his bifocals. “Okay, what do you need?”

“The physical location of the person who has that number. It may be a landline or a mobile phone. I need the address. Home or apartment. If it’s a mobile, and the GPS is on, I’ll need her location as I’m tracking her.”

“That’ll take minutes to find out.”

“Good. It’s urgent. Did any of the news stories say whether Courtney’s been spotted by anyone else in New Orleans?”

“No one has come forth, but with Carlos Bandini adding money to the Crime Stoppers reward, it’s now at two-hundred grand. That’ll bring out the sentinels and ghost hunters.”

Nick chuckled. “The Big Easy has its share of ghost hunters.”

I said, “The question is—if the girl in that sketch is Courtney, why did she go to New Orleans? What’s there or who’s there? Will she stay hidden in the city? Now that she’s been seen, probably not. Where will she go next?”

“Good questions,” Nick said. “It’s too damn bad that all this is happening with your ex-girlfriend, at least with her politician husband, because if Andrea Logan gave a damn about the girl who might be her daughter, she could be in a position to help find her. But you can’t even tell Andrea because it places Courtney in the cross-hairs of an assassin. Screw it, Sean. I’m worried about Kim now. Call Andrea and tell her to tell her husband to back off or you’ll kick his sanctimonious ass the length of the Washington Monument.”

“I did call her a half hour ago.”

Nick’s dark eyebrows arched. “What’d she say?”

“She listened, mostly. For half a minute. Without mentioning Senator Logan by name, I urged her to tell him to leave it alone … or there will be consequences.”

Dave exhaled, set his tablet on the table and said, “You walk a fine and very dangerous line, Sean. Logan has the full protection of the Secret Service. If you even utter a threat specifically against Logan, they’ll arrest you so fast your head will spin. It’s a hell of an unfair advantage. He’s could have access to the NSA’s resources to monitor calls, emails, and any electronic communications through its PRISM program and Patriot Act. Is Logan privy to it? I don’t know. Regardless, he can be in his jet or luxury bus on the campaign stops, whisper treacherous directives for his subordinates to follow, and stay beyond reproach in the eye of the law and the public. But you, Sean, have to play by the rules.”

“Maybe,” I said standing. “Maybe not.”

“What do you mean?” Nick asked.

“I might not be able to threaten Logan, personally. But I can send a sincere message through someone else.”

Nick leaned forward on the barstool. “Sincere? Through who?”