Fatal Decree (11 page)

Jeff found a sad old prostitute whom no one would miss. She worked the street in this bleak part of the world, selling herself to the farm workers, most of whom were illegals, and would not go to the law even if they knew that a crime had been committed. He offered her twenty dollars for
a quick trick in the backseat. She willingly got in the car, took the bill from the man’s hand, and asked what he wanted.

Jeff pulled a twenty-two pistol from under his seat, hiding it down by his left leg. “I think just a little loving will do me fine,” he said. “Uh-oh, is that the law?” He was pointing out the right side of the car with his right hand. The doomed whore turned to look, and Jeff brought the gun up in his left hand and shot her in the back of the head.

He let the body sag onto the floorboard. He threw a blanket over the dead woman and drove to Leffis Key. He pulled into the parking lot and stopped at the entrance path that ran back into the mangroves. He removed the woman’s body and placed it near the path, hidden by the undergrowth. He drove across the street and parked in the Coquina Beach parking lot. If the police saw the car, they’d probably find out that it was stolen, but by then Jeff would be long gone.

He used a towel to wipe down the car, cleaning every surface he’d touched. He wasn’t worried about cleaning up any blood. The cops could match DNA and determine that the whore had been killed in this car, but there was no way to connect him to the car. He pulled his backpack from the backseat, shrugged it onto his shoulders, and walked across the street and back to the body. He lifted it over his shoulder and walked down the path. He leaned her against the tree at the apex of the fork and placed her hands in her lap. He pulled a large cork and a small plastic case from the backpack. He opened the case and retrieved a large gauge needle attached to a syringe. He put the cork behind the left earlobe of the dead woman and pushed the needle through the flesh. He pulled another small case from the backpack and pulled out a silver whale tail earring and placed it in the hole he’d made in the earlobe. He bent her over at the waist, lifted her hair and used a small knife to carve three initials in the flesh of the back of her neck. He stripped her clothes off and propped her against the tree again, tied her there with rope from the backpack. He stood and surveyed his handiwork. It looked good. He rummaged around in the backpack until he found a high-resolution digital camera.

He was sweating now, but he was about done. He took several pictures of the woman, taking the chance that there was no one about to see the flash. He’d use the photographs later in the privacy of his bedroom to
help win the release of the devils that built in him until he’d found another victim. He’d been taught well. He smiled, pulled the phone from his pocket and called Steiffel to come get him. He looked again at the dead woman, smiled, repacked his gear, and walked back to the parking lot that abutted the entrance to Leffis Key.

Steiffel arrived a few minutes later. They drove to the strip mall where Jeff had left his Mercedes. Steiffel followed him back to Longboat Key and to a beachfront condominium complex. Jeff parked his car and the two of them drove to a large house that fronted Anna Maria Sound just south of Palma Sola Bay where a large Fountain go-fast boat perched on a lift. Jeff had watched the place for two days and was pretty sure nobody was home. They parked in the back of the overflow lot of the Seafood Shack, a popular restaurant a few doors south of the house. The car was invisible from the street, hidden in the shadows thrown by the trees that bordered the back of the lot. It was after midnight and the restaurant was closed and dark.

Jeff sat in the car and watched Steiffel walk down the street and around to the back of the house. He powered up the electric lift motor and slowly lowered the boat into the water. When Jeff heard the boat coming toward him, idling, its engines burbling quietly, he walked across the street to the restaurant and out to the dock. The boat eased against the pier and Jeff stepped aboard.

Dawn was two hours away, and they didn’t have to be in place until just before sunup. They motored at idle speed to the middle of the bay and let the boat drift as they drank coffee from a thermos and talked of their days in prison.

They had known each other for years but had formed none of the emotional attachments that friends usually do. They were not friends and if anyone had ever asked either of them about other friends, they would have been stumped. They did not understand the concept. There were just people, some weak, some strong, and they usually figured out their place in the pecking order. The strong ruled and the weak followed orders. Jeff figured he was one of the strong ones.

Just before daybreak, they moved the boat at idle speed to the viewing platform in the little cove. They went in slowly and quietly, not wanting to disturb the boats at anchor and call attention to themselves. They shut
down the engines and sat without talking, waiting for someone to find the body and summon the police. Jeff knew that the detective bitch would be among the first on the scene.

When they heard the first police siren coming from the direction of the little town of Bradenton Beach, they left the boat and moved to the place they had decided would give them the best shot. They hid in the undergrowth and watched the police gather. The woman detective arrived and was talking to a policeman who seemed to be in charge. There was no clear shot. Then two men in civilian clothes arrived and the woman went to talk to them.

Jeff did not plan to show himself, but he carried an Uzi submachine gun, ready to provide covering fire if needed. Steiffel had a rifle with a scope. He was peering into the scope trying to gauge the shot that would take out the detective. “Now,” he whispered and squeezed the trigger. Jeff saw a man in uniform look at them, take a step and yell at the same moment the shot was fired. Then the cop was down. The step he’d taken put him between the detective and the sniper and he’d taken the bullet.

The cops hit the ground and began returning fire. Jeff told Steiffel to get to the boat and then sprayed the crowd with the Uzi. He wasn’t trying to kill anybody, just keep them down. He wasn’t afraid that Steiffel would leave him, because the man knew his life depended on Jeff getting back to make the calls he had to make. The calls that would make Steiffel very rich.

Jeff sprayed the cops twice and then ran for the boat and clambered aboard. Steiffel was at the helm and immediately pulled away from the little viewing platform and headed for the open sea. They ran west through Longboat Pass, staying within the marked channel, and turned southwest, travelling at eighty miles per hour according to the speedometer in the dash. The depth sounder was reading twenty-five feet when Jeff told Steiffel to come down to idle speed.

The boat was rocking in its own wake as Jeff got out of his seat. “Get the guns,” he said. “I want them overboard. Nobody will find them out here.”

Steiffel retrieved the two weapons and stood at the gunwale to drop them overboard. Jeff pulled a nine-millimeter pistol from his pocket and shot Steiffel in the back of the head, grabbing him by the belt before he had
a chance to fall overboard. The spray from the bullet exiting the front of Steiffel’s head went into the Gulf, leaving only a few droplets on the boat.

Jeff let the body fall so that it was half in the boat and half out, the blood from the head wound draining into the water. He’d clean the little that got on the boat as soon as the body was gone. He didn’t plan to leave any DNA evidence to be found by the police when they located the boat.

Jeff stripped and took a set of different clothes from a canvas bag, replacing them with what he had worn that morning. He tied the bag securely to the legs of the body hanging over the gunwale, and then secured an anchor to the body with a length of chain he’d brought for this purpose. He used a towel that had been in the clothes bag to wipe down the boat, clearing all fingerprints and the spots of blood on the gunwale. The towel went into the bag and he closed it tightly with its drawstrings. Finally, Jeff lifted the body by the legs and tumbled it into the sea. The anchor took it out of sight within seconds. Jeff shrugged and wiped his hands. “The wages of failure,” he said, quietly. “So be it. The bitch is still breathing.”

Jeff ran the boat straight toward shore, keeping the speed at about fifty miles per hour, the craft lighter without the dead man. He was pretty far south and did not think the police would have had a chance to get assets in place to find him. He’d only left Leffis Key fifteen minutes before. As he neared the beach, he slowed, used the boat’s hydraulics to lift the engines, and drifted the bow onto the sand. He wiped down the steering wheel and throttle controls with the tail of his shirt. He threw an anchor onto the beach, hopped off the boat and secured it. To a casual observer, he was just some guy in a fancy boat coming onto the beach.

He was now dressed in white shorts, a white golf shirt, and white running shoes. He walked across the beach to the boardwalk that crossed the dunes into the condominium property. The building was built on tall pilings with parking underneath on the ground floor. When he was in the garage and could not be seen from any of the condo units, he walked south until the garage ended, crossed onto another property and into the same first floor garage setup. He went to the Mercedes that he’d parked there four hours before, got in, and drove off.

The emergency room of Blake Hospital was full of officers from Longboat Key, some in uniform and the off-duty ones in civilian clothes, a mixture of jeans, shorts, T-shirts, golf shirts, running shoes, flip-flops, and boat shoes. J.D. and I sat with Jock and Chief Bill Lester. We were all waiting for an update on Steve Carey’s condition.

In the more than fifty years of the existence of the Town of Longboat Key, no police officer had ever been shot. I wondered if we would make another half century without more bloodshed. The world was changing, coarsening, becoming more violent, and it was only natural that some of that would bleed across the bridges onto our island paradise. Technically, Steve had been shot on Anna Maria Island, not Longboat Key, but the difference was only one of degree. Leffis Key was only a few hundred yards north of the bridge leading to Longboat Key, and Steve Carey was certainly one of us, a Longboater.

A woman in blue scrubs came through the doors that led to the treatment rooms and walked toward us. Bill Lester stood. He was in civilian clothes. He intercepted the woman. “I’m Bill Lester,” he said. “Chief of police on Longboat Key. How’s Officer Carey?”

“I’m Dr. Montoya,” she said. “Where is Officer Carey’s family? I need to talk to them.”

“We’re his family,” said Lester. “Talk to me.”

She let out a breath, smiled. “Way too much testosterone in here. He’s in good shape. The bullet went through his upper arm without hitting anything important. I stitched him up and he’ll be sore for a few days, but he’ll ultimately be good as new.”

I could see the relief written on the faces of all the men and women
who had gathered in a tight circle around the chief and the doctor. Steve had been lucky, and each of the officers had spent at least a moment or two contemplating the fact that he or she could have been the one shot. And that the shot might not have missed something vital.

“Can I see him?” asked the chief.

“Sure,” said the doctor. “We’re going to keep him overnight to make sure an infection doesn’t set in. Go on back before we send him upstairs.”

“I need these three with me,” the chief said, gesturing toward J.D., Jock, and me.

The doctor nodded and led us back to a treatment room.

Carey was sitting up in bed, his arm bandaged and in a sling. He was grinning when we walked in. “Chief, you got to start paying me hazardous-duty pay.”

“What did you do to piss off the shooter?” asked Lester.

Steve turned serious. “He wasn’t after me, Chief. That shot was meant for J.D.”

“Why do you think that?” asked J.D., surprise in her voice.

“I had just moved in front of you, between you and the shooter, when he fired. If he hadn’t winged me, I think that round would have gotten you.”

J.D. was quiet for a moment. Then, “Were you trying to protect me, Steve?”

“No. I saw the gunman and started moving toward him. I never thought about him shooting at you. Not until afterward, anyway. The shot came so quick after I took that step that he had to have zeroed in on you. You were the target, J.D., not me.”

J.D. stood for another moment, mulling that over. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “But you saved my butt, Steve, whether you meant to or not. I owe you big-time.”

“Bring me a six-pack of Bud and we’ll call it even,” he said.

That broke the icy tension that had settled over the small room. We laughed for the first time that day. “I’ll see what I can do,” J.D. said. “You get some rest. I’ll check in on you this afternoon.”

• • •

J.D., Jock, and I were in my Explorer headed back to Leffis Key to get J.D.’s car. “Do we know who called this in?” I asked J.D.

“Yeah, a guy named Don Buckler.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“No. I met Don last spring. He’s from Louisville and comes to visit his daughter. He’s an artist and was out birding, planning to sketch some species they don’t have in Kentucky. He parked in the lot and walked right into the body. Called 911 and waited for the law to show up.”

“Was he able to give you any more information than that he found the body?”

“No. The Bradenton Beach lieutenant took a pretty detailed statement. He told me what Don had to say. I’ll get a copy of the recorded statement as soon as it’s transcribed.”

“Is there going to be a turf war over who gets the lead on the case?” asked Jock.

“No. I told the lieutenant about the murders in Miami and the threats to me here, so he’s happy to let Longboat run the show.”

“Threats?” I asked. “As in more than one?”

“Well, there was the phone call on Saturday evening when we were leaving Moore’s, then the attempt to kill me in the parking lot at the Lazy Lobster.”