Vampire Slayer Murdered in Key West - Mick Murphy Short Stories (8 page)

“Are you drunk?” He fought to wake up.

“Listen to me,” and I told him about the Cadillac and the drugs.

“Mick, how do you know this?” he was waking up.

“I stumbled across it by accident, but you need to get them before they cross Cow Key Channel or they belong to the sheriff.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” but it was said in an unfriendly way, and he hung up.

“Show time,” Coco Joe slapped my shoulder. He walked slowly toward Cluny’s, fumbling in his backpack. “Here,” he held out two hand grenades.

“What the hell are those?” We were almost at the gate.

“Equalizers.”

I didn’t take them.

“One is a flash grenade, the other,” he raised his right hand, “is a fragment grenade.”

I shook my head in disbelief and kept walking.

The gate was closed. Coco Joe took something out of his backpack, fooled with the lock on the pedestrian door, and got it to open. He racked his Glock. I racked mine and we crept through the door into a quiet front yard. We froze up against the gate and listened, but heard nothing.

I was about to say that maybe they all left, but he held his finger to his lips and we inched our way along the wall toward the backyard. He stopped at a green plastic Waste Management rubbish bin and opened it. Pieces of women’s clothing were tangled up inside. Coco Joe’s eyes were angry, but he let the top down quietly and just looked at me for a second, nodded and we kept moving. There were two motorcycles and a Jeep Wrangler in the carport.

We could see the marina’s lights as we entered the backyard. A large tree stood in the middle, between the house and back wall, a tipped over stool underneath and uncoiled length of rope spread out on the ground. My stomach knotted, because I knew Coco Joe had been right, this was where they had murdered Gabriela.

He took a hand grenade out of the backpack, indicating
one
with his finger and then handed me another and raised two fingers. He motioned me to stay there and indicated he would go around to the front.

I nodded my understanding.

Using his fingers, he pointed one finger toward the window and made a tossing motion, and then he pointed two fingers.

I nodded.

He held up one finger and mouthed ‘minute.’ I nodded as he headed back toward the front of the house.

I counted to sixty, saying Mississippi between numbers. I guess he figured I knew how these worked, or maybe it was in my
jacket
. After I said ‘sixty Mississippi,’ I pulled the pin out of the first grenade and tossed it through the window. In the quiet morning, the breaking glass seemed to reverberate. The grenade exploded loudly and with a blinding light that lit up a few windows. The window I tossed it through shattered.

I don’t know how long I waited, I was no longer counting, but I pulled the pin in the second grenade and tossed it through another window and when it exploded it was twice as loud and all the windows in back shattered. A neighbor would be calling the police.

Alarms went off inside and the backyard security lights came on. I ran to the tree for cover, almost tripping on the rope. The backdoor opened, smoke came out, followed by a man holding a rifle. He fired wildly into the yard. I fired back and hit the door. He closed it quickly and I heard the pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire out front.

I was positioned in the back to force people out the front, so I stayed put, while the popping continued, with an intermittent sound of Coco Joe’s Glock firing. He must have tossed another flash-bang because I heard it explode and saw the light from the backyard. There was rapid fire from the Glock and then quiet.

The quiet didn’t last long. The pop-pop-pop returned, and I could tell it was more than one weapon firing. In between the popping sound, I heard a motorcycle start and then the explosion of another grenade rocked the house and it was quiet, again. The air burnt with the smell of spent gunpowder.

I heard the motorcycle, again, and knew it was speeding off. I ran along the side yard toward Coco Joe. When I passed the carport both motorcycles were gone. Out front, two men lay dead. There was no sign of Coco Joe. Smoke began to come out of the broken windows and I heard sirens. The front gate was open and I rushed out to my dinghy.

• • •

Richard Dowley stood with a cup of my good coffee in the cockpit of the Fenian Bastard. Padre Thomas was sleeping in the main cabin.

“You wanna run that by me again?” He wanted to pace, but there wasn’t room.

“Padre Thomas had a little too much to drink last night, so I was trying to walk him sober and saw these guys loading drugs into the Cadillac in the Lyons Club parking lot. Simple as that, and I called you.”

“Then you heard all the commotion across the way earlier, right?” he sipped coffee and looked across the bight to the burnt out house.

“It could’ve woke the dead,” I smiled and drank from my coffee mug. “What happened?”

“Not sure,” he frowned. “Two dead outside, one dead inside. Sherlock said it looked like grenades, automatic and small arms fire. Lots of brass on the ground.”

“Well, that would explain the explosions I heard.”

“How many,” he refused to sit down.

“Three, maybe four.”

“He’ll corroborate your story?” Richard pointed down into the cabin.

“I doubt it, I think he’s still drunk. He slept through the whole thing.”

“I meant about the walk.”

“If he remembers.”

Richard finally sat down and I got him a fresh cup of coffee.

“The guy who rents the house,” he pointed across the way, “took off in his small plane just about the time we got calls about the gunfire.”

“He’s gotta land.”

“Yeah, well, he flew below radar, but we think he went to Cuba.”

“That’s illegal,” I said and then laughed.

“It gets better.” He didn’t laugh.

“How’s that possible?”

“About fifteen minutes later, someone stole a small plane and went in the same direction, like they were following him.” He finished his coffee. “You don’t know anything about this, right?”

“I know what I saw and what I heard, but you already know that.”

“The sheriffs caught your drug smugglers and the DEA is coming for them, so this closes the case on the floater too,” he put his cup down and stood up.

“I’m glad it worked out,” I stood and walked with him to the dock.

“I didn’t say that, I said it closes the case. That’s what the Feds told me. I don’t like any of it, but I’m glad they’re gone. If you want lunch, give me a call about one.”

He gave me a tired smile and walked away.

# # #

Footnote

“The Floater” was my first attempt at a long short story. No one bought it, so I edited it some, especially the ending, and included it as a few chapters in another book. Let me know when you figure out which one.

You might remember Joe Bolter from “Finding Picasso,” but he was Joseph then and now he’s just plain Joe. Or should I say Coco Joe.

Murphy’s old nemeses, Neville Cluny, the Brit mercenary is back. Did you read “Revenge,” the first Mick Murphy novel? Neville shows up there.

This story might have been the first forming of the idea for “Free Range Institution.”

It was a fun story to write and I hope you enjoy it, even if you recall reading most of it in one of my books.

D
allas Lucas hadn’t eaten brunch with us earlier, unless you counted the stick of celery in his bloody Mary. Of the people gathered for the breakfast reception for the Key West Songwriters Festival, half those that knew Dallas wish they didn’t. The other half hated him. The handful of songwriters at the reception that didn’t know Dallas didn’t know him on purpose. But that never kept him away from gatherings where drinks were free and there was sure be an up-and-coming songwriter or two eager to meet the legend, especially the pretty ones.

“I’ll be upstairs around ten,” Dallas said to me, as he wandered into the Saloon and went to the bar. “We’ll do the interview there. I’ll give you a half-hour.”

Upstairs was the Saloon’s showroom where some of the festival’s events were to take place. It would be quiet at ten in the morning, since the welcoming party usually continued as an afternoon jam session of alcohol-powered songwriters around the outdoor bandstand.

I excused myself from the bar at ten, grabbed my camera bag, and headed upstairs unaware of what waited for me. The loud mixture of music and chatter followed and I stopped on the top landing to look down at the weathered, outdoor bar, the Saloon’s worn-concrete floor, and the celebrating crowd. Clint Bullard and Bob Pierce were laughing and jamming on the small stage, powered by bloody Marys, screwdrivers, and mimosas. Roosters strutted and crowed atop the bar’s tin roof, having climbed one of the large trees covering the patio to escape the crowds.

As I walked in, Kris Kristofferson’s gruff voice thundered like hurricane

winds from the multiple speakers in the Key West Saloon’s upstairs showroom, his recorded words vibrating off the walls as he sang about love and loss, pilgrims, Sunday mornings, and traveling with Bobby McGee.

Window light dimly illuminated the room. The A/C was on high, and it was chilly. I saw Dallas sitting by the drum set on the shadowy stage about the same time I noticed the CD unit’s remote control on the bar. I put my camera bag down and lowered the volume.

“Dallas, I need to hear myself think.” I attached the flash to the camera bracket as the music softened. “I appreciate your time. I know you’ve got a lot of things to do before tonight’s show.”

Dallas ignored me. I wondered if my turning down the music upset him. He’s a short-tempered man I know because he’s part of the featured events at the annual Songwriters’ Festival and each year I grow to dislike him more. But this interview was a paying gig so I smiled and disregarded his mood.

If he wanted to massage his hangover in the cold dimness it was okay, but I needed light to take notes. I stopped at the theatrical lighting panel by the woman’s room and switched on the soft light above the sound mixer. As soon as I stepped to the front of the stage, I knew why Dallas wasn’t talking and it had nothing to do with being upset with me.

Dallas sat on the drummer’s stool, his back against the wall, with a wooden drumstick stabbed into his throat. Blood stained his western shirt and jeans, and dripped onto the stage, while his alcoholic eyes stared into the netherworld, leaving a puzzled expression frozen on his face.

The Nashville songwriters downstairs were dressed in shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops to celebrate the tropics, but Dallas died wearing faded jeans, a western shirt, and boots. All that was lacking were his hat, chewing tobacco stains on his chin, and he would’ve been a cliché.

“What the hell have you gone and done now, Dallas?” I stepped around a puddle of blood at the base of the stool and checked for a pulse that I knew wasn’t going to be there. It took someone with strength to drive a drummer’s stick into his throat.

This was not the opening-night publicity Charlie Murdock, the event coordinator, wanted for his festival.

I’m Liam Michael Murphy. Years ago, I picked up the moniker Mad Mick Murphy because of stunts I pulled in college and my Boston-Irish heritage, and it stuck. I’m a journalist living in Key West and a weekly newsmagazine hired me to do a feature on Dallas Lucas, a Nashville legend, and a recent winner of his fifth songwriter-of-the-year award.

It was supposed to be an interview about his life, now it would be about his murder.

I expected all hell to break lose before breakfast was digested, when word got out. Most of the people downstairs wouldn’t shed a tear for Dallas, so maybe that made them suspects.

Habit had me shoot a few frames of the body, before I called my friend Key West Police Chief Richard Dowley. Another few minutes wasn’t going to matter to anyone, especially Dallas.

“Jesus, Mick,” Chief moaned after I told him where I was and what I was looking at. “Can’t you go anywhere without bringing trouble?”

“I’m supposed to interview the guy, Chief, not kill him. You want, I’ll walk away and let someone else find him.”

“Lock the door.” I heard him sigh. “Wait there for Sherlock.”

“What about the cops? Should I let them in?” I was being sarcastic.

He disconnected our conversation without a reply. Chief’s call to Sherlock would put the EMTs and cops into the loop quicker than a 911 call.

Sherlock Corcoran is the city’s crime scene investigator and the nickname came with the job. To show his sense of humor, he had a caricature of Sherlock Holmes’ profile painted on the crime scene van. He was not a big fan of journalists and seeing me at a crime scene never made him smile.

Rows of chairs were lined up facing the stage and the well-stocked bar was prepared for the sold-out show that was supposed to feature Dallas this evening. I moved to the back of the room and sat in the corner for the window light. I didn’t bother to lock the door because I expected a cop and ambulance to show up quickly.

I took the flash and lens off my camera and put them away. There was no reason for Chief to know I’d taken the photos. Sherlock would shoot more than enough.

“Yeah,” I said to Dallas, “you didn’t commit suicide.”

After scanning the room, I wrote what I had witnessed in my notebook, and when I looked down to check my observations, I saw a small pile of wood shavings on the carpet.

I picked up a few of the slivers – light colored wood, thin, uneven like someone had whittled a piece of wood. I jumped up, letting the shavings fall. I was sitting where the killer had sat and whittled the drumstick to a sharp point. I knew it.

I had used the remote and light panel, all things the killer must have used. Damn it, Sherlock would find my fingerprints on things the killer had touched.

Wiping everything down was an idea, but I knew it would also remove the killer’s prints. My only defense was to tell Sherlock upfront what I touched and hope someone else’s prints were there too.