Shiver on the Sky

by David Haywood Young

Chapter Eight

  (Monday, Noon—Gordon)

  Detective Phil Gordon inched forward with the rest of the traffic on the Crosstown Expressway. He’d been stuck for over ten minutes, and from what he’d heard on the radio there was a major accident up ahead.

  Gordon’s guts oozed around, sloppily rearranging themselves. His partner, Jon Faulkner, had been having trouble, the last month or so, with what he called “the runs.” So now maybe it was going to be Gordon’s turn—not the happiest thought to have while stuck in traffic.

  He refused to look at the accident scene as he passed the emergency vehicles. First, because he hated all forms of wasted time with a passion and had a cold contempt for rubberneckers who slowed down traffic to satisfy their morbid curiosity. Second, because just last week he had looked.

  It had been on this same stretch of road. Gordon had idly glanced between two stopped cars and seen a man’s body. The guy had been dressed for the office, with dark gray slacks and a white shirt. Gordon had first noticed that both shoes and one sock were missing. The naked foot was smashed and twisted so it looked more like a flipper than anything human. He’d immediately regretted looking at it. But something else was wrong, too….

  It took him a few moments to understand what he saw. The corpse had been decapitated. Well, worse than that, really. Its neck just ended in a bloody smear, with little chunks of meat and bone sprayed out over the asphalt. The shirt’s collar was sort of tucked in on one side, and Gordon had felt an absurd impulse to straighten it out.

  He still couldn’t remember it without wondering whether the guy had been wearing a tie—and if so, where had it gone? Wrapped around a tire, maybe. Or an axle. Could be it was just farther down the road.

  Even without looking this time, his stomach roiled. He hated the idea of death, in which all possibilities were extinguished. Murder was the worst, because in addition to the horror it was disrespectful. But accidents were almost as bad.

  Traffic picked up as he left the flashing lights behind him. To maintain cosmic balance, or so he figured, it began to rain. He flipped the wipers on and scowled at his police radio, though it hadn’t actually done anything to offend him this time. Lieutenant Kleinman had called on Gordon’s cell phone, told him to get his ass over to Malaquite Beach. Said to drive clear out to Little Shell, and don’t ask any questions.

  Great. Gordon had just ordered his lunch at the City Diner, which he was convinced was the best restaurant in town. He’d really had his mouth set for fried mushrooms, and now this. What the hell did he need to go to Little Shell for?

  He turned onto SPID, heading toward Padre Island. He couldn’t figure a connection between the beach and anything he was working on. But it pretty much had to involve a dead body. At least one. The life of a homicide detective was like that.

  Malaquite Beach and the National Seashore were way the hell out on the island. Some of his favorite places for surf fishing were out there. The deep water came in closer to the beach than elsewhere, and occasionally somebody would catch more than he was prepared to handle. You had to drive on the beach, there were no roads, but there were sixty miles of beach. Four-wheel-drive only past a certain point because of deep sand, and you had to watch out for the tide. Every few weeks some fool of a tourist drove out on the flat sand below the high-tide mark and had his car engulfed when the tide returned. One guy Gordon had heard about a couple years ago had actually managed to dig out his little Toyota out and drive it back when the waves receded, but generally it didn’t work out that way. Local entrepreneurs sometimes cruised the beach with their trucks, charging extortionate rates for a tow.

  Little Shell, his destination, and its cousin Big Shell were inexplicably rich in seashells, but otherwise just part of the beach, a few miles past what most people saw. Hurricanes and major storms hit the barrier islands fairly frequently, but Little Shell and Big Shell seemed able to maintain their existence in spite of the episodic reshaping of the coastline—though they did wander up and down the beach a bit, sometimes shifting their locations by up to a mile. Little Shell currently sat about twelve miles from the road. Big Shell, maybe twenty-three.

  As Gordon left the road and passed the first section of the beach, with its semi-permanent residents in barely-mobile trailers and amazingly tattered tents interspersed with tourists in motorhomes the size of football fields, locals in pickups, and more tourists in whatever they happened to bring along, the rain suddenly let up.

  He cracked the window to sniff the salt air, always fresher after a shower. It really was beautiful out here, in spite of everything. And actually all the frenetic activity of the tourists (whose kids, at least, seemed to be enjoying themselves in the water) and surf-fishing devotees combined with the shifting, endless gazes of what Gordon still called bums and the cries of seagulls looking for a handout to create a baroque sort of charm. A flight of pelicans thrummed overhead, and Gordon was glad he’d made the drive.

  He’d worried about taking his Dodge Neon out on the beach, but the rain over the last couple of weeks had apparently tamed the deep sand, making it firm enough that he had no trouble. He drove at a steady fifteen miles per hour, enjoying the play of sunlight on water and sand. He felt almost grateful to whoever had died out here.

  A helicopter launched itself farther down the beach and tore away his pleasant reverie. The chopper circled like a mechanical buzzard—another image for his incipient nausea. Near its launch point were divers, uniformed cops, press, and a group of civilians. His view past the civilians was blocked by an ambulance.

  He parked as close as he could get to the ambulance. Once, he’d parked farther away and somebody had dragged a key all the way around his car, gouging the paint down to the metal. And plastic. Wouldn’t be a modern car without plastic.

  He found Kleinman on the far side of the ambulance, smoking a cigarette and looking sour. With him stood a tall man in a white shirt, blue tie, and gray crew cut. Black pants, with a dark jacket held over his shoulder. Dark glasses. A walking cliché.

  “What the hell is this?” Gordon asked Kleinman, jerking his thumb at the cliché. “Feds? If they’re taking this over, what am I doing here?” He stared at the stranger. “Great outfit, though. Come here often?”

  The stranger smiled thinly. Gordon couldn’t read his expression past the dark glasses, which was of course the point. “Yes, I’m federal. Agent Stanley, FBI. And you’re here because one of your cases is suddenly related to one of mine.” He turned to Kleinman. “Lieutenant?”

  Kleinman grunted and flipped his cigarette in the sand. “Hey, Phil. Captain’s still at that conference in Atlanta, but I called him on this. Junior Bentley washed up on the beach this morning. Or what’s left of him, anyway. Sharks.”

  “Fucking great. Any sign of the McPhee woman?”

  “No.”

  “So I still don’t get it. Why the Feebie?”

  “Agent Stanley is here about Pete Bradshaw’s daughter.”

  “The kid who got snatched from…ah, from Whataburger downtown Saturday night?” Now that had been what you call a media nightmare. Gordon didn’t want any part of it.

  “Yes,” Stanley said. “The kidnapping.” He held up his hands. “I’m not taking your case, Gordon. But we need to work together on this. Will you have a problem with that?”

  “So what’s the connection?” Gordon asked, still looking at Kleinman.

  “The kid’s dress,” Kleinman said. “It washed up with Bentley. Wrapped around his neck.”

  Gordon stared. “Just the dress? Not the kid? And the dress stayed with him? Hell, would his own clothes wash up with him if the sharks were at him?”

  Kleinman jerked a thumb toward the water. “Chopper and divers are still looking for the girl.”

  “The dress matches the description, including the kid’s initials on the tag,” Stanley said.

  “So we don’t know if she’s alive, if McPhee’s alive, or who killed Bentley. Just a connection. Great. And I’d question the wa
shing up on the beach part, because of the dress, but I don’t guess the sharks got to him on land. Cause of death? Head wound from the poker in his house?”

  Kleinman shrugged. “He’s a fucking mess. Coroner’s report will narrow it down. Maybe.”

  “So what else do I need to know here?”

  “First,” Kleinman said, “Stanley’s right. You guys need to get together on this. Share everything you’ve got.”

  “Starting,” Stanley said, “with the reason you let that asshole Tremaine walk.”

  “Judgment call,” Gordon said. “My judgment. My case.”

  Stanley showed no reaction. “Shall we go? To the station? I’d like to see your report so far, and I have things to show you too.”

  Kleinman looked as if he wanted to say something, but threw his hands in the air instead. He stomped off through the sand and started yelling at the divers.

  Gordon glanced at Stanley. If they could get out of here, maybe Kleinman would handle the reporters. Gordon didn’t want to talk to them yet. “Fine. Give me a few minutes to check out the body and wherever it was found. Then we’ll leave them to it, go look at papers. You know the way?”

  Stanley nodded.

  “Right. Follow me. In about fifteen minutes.” Gordon walked to the ambulance, his mouth tasting of vomit. On his way he lit a cigarette, though he knew he shouldn’t smoke it near a crime scene. It was almost an occupational necessity for a cop who encountered badly-preserved dead bodies on a regular basis. Nothing else killed the smell quite like it. A nasal prophylactic, his partner Faulkner had called it once, though he somehow didn’t smoke.

  Gordon shook his head and stubbed out the cigarette on the bumper of the ambulance. Whatever. He had a job to do.