Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) (18 page)

Plucking two hatchlings out of the nest in her mouth, the mother croc heads back the way she’s come. Leslie follows five yards behind, treading uncertainly across the slippery ground.

“Good-looking woman.”

“How unusual is this?” Frank asked.

“Good-looking women? I find they’re pretty rare.”

“I mean a croc digging up her newborns. These two guys stumble on this, is it a one-in-a-million shot, or is it happening all over the place out there?”

“None of the above,” Greening said.

“Would you care to elaborate?”

“You feds, I love how you talk. Bunch of egghead college boys.”

“Lots of syllables, I know. Part of the training.”

“Well, you’re asking is it common what you’re seeing? Yes and no. This time of year for a few weeks, yeah, it’s the season when mother crocs uncover the eggs to see if their babies hatched, probably happening in the low dozens I’d guess, and it’s mainly happening in those cooling canals. The crocs are squeezed into that one tiny coastal area. Can’t go inland, too many shopping malls. Can’t go north, it’s Miami, all concrete and random gunfire; can’t go south because it’s salt water and the young can’t survive salt water, so this is ground zero for croc nesting. That one little stretch.

“So, yeah, sure, if you knew your way around out there in those canals, which I understand Levine did, and if she’s keeping good records, a running total of what nests have eggs and when they were laid, I assume she could’ve made a good guess where to go on any given night. It’s not foolproof, but it’s neither of the things you said. It’s not happening all over the place and it’s not one in a million.”

“You ever meet Levine?”

“Heard about her, never met her.”

“What’d you hear?”

“Knew her business. Not just crocs either. She was our own Jacques Cousteau, quite the environmental campaigner. Plus she gave the power company a shitload of good PR. Did a lot of TV; whenever they needed an expert on crocs or gators, Leslie got the call. Very media-friendly face.”

“Unlike yours.”

“I’ve always been happy in the shadows.” Greening froze the video with Prince holding the arm up to the camera. “Who’s the steroid freak?”

“Cameron Prince, Prince Key.”

“Oh, so that’s the kid.”

“You know him?”

“Met his granddad once. Back in the day, he was Miami upper crust.”

Both were silent, looking at the frozen image of Cameron Prince.

“And that severed arm? What do you make of it?”

“It’s bullshit.”

“Because there’s no tool marks? No blood?”

“Well, there’s that. Hell, I’m no medical guy, so I can’t say absolutely. To me it doesn’t look real, but, hey, the picture quality is crap. Reason it’s bullshit is because no croc is going after somebody like that. It just flat isn’t going to happen. Even a mother with her hatchlings, she’s protective, yeah, on alert. She might snarl or do a quick face-off. But even then, you could step right on the old girl and ten times out of ten, all she’ll do is bolt. They’re shy as shit, want to be left alone. Now if that was an alligator, hell no, then you’re talking serious damage to the human body.”

Frank said, “In the movies there’s always giant crocs sunning along the riverbank, they see some babe out in the middle of the river paddling her canoe, and all of them go sliding into the water and head after her. So that’s just Hollywood garbage?”

“Those movies, it’s usually the river Nile, someplace like that, darkest Africa. That would be
Crocodylus niloticus,
now there’s your man-eater, the Nile croc. But the
Crocodylus acutus,
that’s the American croc, its habitat is south Biscayne Bay, that’s what we’re looking at here. It’s laid-back. Bashful.”

“What else is out there in the cooling canals? They got sharks?”

“No sharks. Water’s gotten too salty for them. But there’s still some big-ass barracudas and gators back there. Shit, the gators and the crocs get into it sometimes. Got some World War Three territorial battles going on.”

“So a body falls into the water, maybe a gator could’ve scarfed it up?”

“Could happen. Be pretty unlikely. Gators aren’t going to be hanging around croc nesting sites. They’d give mother crocs a wide berth.”

“So, bottom line, these crocs, the Americans, they’re not man-eaters.”

“Until this so-called attack happened, there’d never been a reported lethal encounter between croc and human in Florida. Not one, ever. Which means there’s never been a reported case in all of America, since this is the only place in the damn country these beauties exist, mostly at Turkey Point, a few dozen roaming around Key Largo. Now you go down to Belize, that’s a different story, there’ve been a few attacks by American crocs, but all of those were being fed regularly by humans in nature preserves or zoos or whatever, and the crocs lost their fear. That’s when the fuckers get dangerous. Losing your fear of humans, that can be a serious issue.”

Johnny rose from his pillow, popped the disc, and handed it to Sheffield. “That what you wanted to know?”

Frank stretched his back and groaned. His night with Nicole had strained some muscles. “Never lose your fear of humans. Words to live by.”

“Always glad to help. You stay safe, pal.”

TWENTY-TWO

BACK AT HIS OFFICE, SHEFFIELD
gave Marta a fifth person for background checks. Leslie Levine. The dead biologist. Gone but not eaten.

He looked through the notes Marta had left on his desk, found the lead detective on the Marcus Bendell homicide, and called Detective Pedro Alonzo. After the prelims, Alonzo said, “Looks accidental. Guy was trying to rig up a line to bypass his meter, save himself a buck, he bumps the jumper cables against his ladder.”

“ME agrees? That’s how you’re calling it, accidental?”

“Would be. Except for one thing.”

“Which is?”

“First tell me why the feds are interested in this punk.”

“Bendell was a snitch. He was inside a group we’re interested in.”

“An informant?”

“Low-rent tipster.”

“You’re not going to tell me what this group is?”

“If it becomes relevant, but right now, no. Sorry.”

“Typical. You want what I got, but I don’t get a peek the other way.”

“It’s an ongoing federal investigation, okay? Now what’s the one thing that suggests Bendell’s death was other than accidental?”

Alonzo was quiet for a moment, weighing his options. Then he sighed. “You know what electro gel is?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Detective.”

“Let’s say you were going to climb up a ladder and fuck around with the power line running through your backyard. Before you climbed up that aluminum ladder, would you smear it with an electrical conducting agent?”

“On the ladder?”

“Same stuff they coat a cardiac patient’s chest with before they shock him back to life.”

“No, I don’t think I would,” Frank said.

“Me either. But this Bendell fellow, he apparently thought it was a good idea.”

They talked awhile longer, Frank getting nothing more of substance, then he asked Alonzo to keep him abreast of developments. Alonzo said sure thing and hung up.

Frank tried Nicole’s cell again and got the robot and hung up on the bitch.

At two, he met with the five SWAT guys he’d picked, told them to keep their calendars clear for a week from today, seventeenth through the nineteenth. Explained where they were headed, that the operation plan hadn’t yet been charted out, but as soon as it was, he’d let them know and they’d have a longer sit-down.

All of them had done force-on-force drills before, and none was thrilled at the prospect of doing another. Even super–gung ho Billy Dean Reynolds, the shortest but toughest guy on the team, red hair, green eyes, freckles, the kind of dude if you hit him in the forehead with a sledge, he’d go down, pop back up, and you hit him again and he’d pop up again and after that. The guy you wanted along, the guy who didn’t quit.

Billy Dean stood in Frank’s doorway after the others had drifted back to their cubicles and said, “The power plant, that place is a joke, Frank. My mother and her bridge group could knock that place over.”

“It has to be done,” Sheffield said. “We’re trying to keep them honest.”

“They’re not honest to start with. Game is rigged. We could test them from now till the corn is tall and they’d never improve. Those security guys, I met a couple of them, they couldn’t handle Barney’s job in Mayberry.”

“It’ll be fine. After it’s done, we’ll all go out and have a pizza and down some cold ones, wash it all away. Keep the bounce in your step, Billy Dean.”

Frank, the cheerleader, not believing a word he was saying. He felt himself rising out of his own body, looking down at himself, thinking, Who the hell is that guy conning Billy Dean? Is that me? Really?

Marta was in a blue pants suit today, one from her endless collection. After Billy Dean left she came in with the files for the Chee brothers, Cameron Prince, and Claude Sellers. She set them on the desk, stepped back, and gave him her secret smile.

He should never have told her about Nicole. Now he was going to get that smile all day, every day. Marta wanted him married. Worried it would shorten his life span if he stayed single. There were statistics about that. She’d cut out newspaper articles and left them on his desk. Single guys died early. Worse than smoking. What was he thinking?

Frank picked up the four folders, weighed them one-handed, and dropped them back on the desk. “That’s it?”

“The Chee boys have been playing nice. Pauly’s military record is thin, which to me is suspicious. You don’t spend six years in the navy and have such a flimsy file unless you were doing something covert.”

“You evaluated the files?”

“I evaluate everything,” Marta said. “Does that make me bad?”

“Anything else?”

“NSA rejected the satellite-surveillance request, got too many military uses in play, tracking terrorists in Yemen, same old same old. Miami-Dade said if you wanted to rent one of their drones, you needed to call and discuss.”

“And the boat?”

“Park Service would also like to talk to you, find out what you have in mind and how you plan on paying for it. The number is on the Post-it there.”

“Let me ask you something, Marta. You ever wanted to just vanish, start over as somebody else?”

“Are you kidding? Who doesn’t?”

“How would you do it?”

“Save up till I had forty thousand, enough to last six months, get new ID, new Social, a bus ticket to California, find a job cutting hair.”

“You’ve thought this out.”

“Haven’t you?”

“Not in such detail.”

“So is that helpful?”

“Would you consider staging your own death?”

She grimaced.

“Does that mean you wouldn’t?”

“Well, it would be kinder. So your loved ones didn’t have all those unanswered questions. Your spouse wasn’t out driving around all day and night looking for you. My way would be easier to pull off, less likely to fail, but staging a death, it’s actually the more considerate thing.”

“Yeah,” he said. “More considerate.”

“That’s all?”

Frank’s eyes strayed to his window, afternoon clouds building over the Everglades. Ivan had moved away into the Gulf. Juanita was heading their way. They were in the cone of probability. “I need that background stuff on Leslie Levine. In particular, any relatives, loved ones, friends she had. The kind of person she might be trying to spare some emotional pain.”

Marta left. Frank read the files. She was right, nothing much on Wally Chee, except some medical issues. A birth defect with his legs, which some pediatrician in New Mexico blamed on contaminated drinking water on the Navajo res where his people had lived for generations.

He and his brother had been raised by a single mom. As Marta had said, Pauly’s military history was too light to be real. Heavily blue-penciled. Something worth checking.

Claude Sellers, now that shithead was intriguing.

Sellers had been with the power company all his working life. Started as a lineman, worked his way up to district supervisor of field maintenance, then jumped over to security, an odd zigzag that seemed to have no basis in new training.

Divorced four times. No children. Second marriage only lasted three months with a messy finale. A restraining order from the ex. No abuse charges filed, but there had to be some kind of harassment to get the restraining order. Claude, the bully, probably didn’t take rejection well. Wife three and four survived a year with Claude before they bailed. Cycling through women. Fucking up, then fucking up again.

Sellers had a concealed-weapons permit, a mail-order college degree from some no-name place in Arizona. Never been arrested, rented a starter condo out in Kendall, where the young marrieds and recently divorced lived.

The thing that must’ve caught Marta’s eye was his credit history. His score was so low, Claude couldn’t have bought a toaster on layaway. The guy filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy seven years ago, then filed under Chapter 13 last year. Wiping his debt slate clean twice. Frank double-checked and saw from the court records there was alimony in all four divorces.

Money problems. His salary from the power company was damn good, within a few thousand of what Frank made, the prick. But all that alimony was eating him alive.

Frank got out his legal pad, started jotting down the things that jumped out. Claude’s money issues, the empty military record of Pauly Chee, the gel on the ladder, an informant dead, the video of an unlikely croc attack, Prince Key.

Marta buzzed and told him Angie Stevens was waiting to see him, their top cybersleuth. Nice young woman, blond with a perky smile. Not a single tattoo showing anywhere, zero piercings, normal shoulder-length haircut. Nothing like the movies. More debutante than hacker.

Frank sketched out the situation, gave her the cyber-attack analysis sheet that Sheen had faxed over, and asked Angie if she could find some time this weekend to drive down to Turkey Point and check over the current security status of its computer network.

“If you don’t have some kind of scheduling conflict,” he said.