The Snake and the Spider

by Karen Kingsbury

  He instructed his assistants, Mike and Rob, to dress the same way as he had and to pass out flyers while talking to everyone they saw. He would do the same from the other end of the beach and they would meet back around noon. By eight o’clock in the morning he had found his starting point and he began his beach walk.

  “Excuse me.” Bob nudged a teenage boy lounging against the wall that divided the sandy beach from the row of arcades. The boy had tattoos across his caved-in chest and he was smoking a cigarette. A lovely example of American youth, Bob thought. He cleared his voice, appearing hesitant in order to maintain his tourist image. He hoped the teens would think he was a parent.

  “These boys were here a few weeks ago,” he said. “They’re missing now and we’re offering a reward if anyone knows anything.”

  “Reward?” The boy had seemed uninterested but at the mention of money he sat up straighter and took one of the flyers from Bob. He scanned the sheet and looked at Bob with narrow eyes.

  “Anonymous?”

  “Completely anonymous.”

  “Five hundred dollars?”

  “For the right information.”

  “That’s it? Then five hundred dollars?”

  “Right.”

  “Thanks, man!” The teenager took four more flyers and passed them to his friends. “We’ll see what we can do. We’ll call you, okay?”

  “Please do.”

  • • •

  BOB SPOTTED A GROUP OF TEENAGE GIRLS AHEAD AND HE trudged through the sand to where they were sitting. They wore skimpy bikinis and had covered themselves with oil. He had seen these girls talking with some of the locals earlier so he knew they weren’t tourists. He wanted to talk only to locals since a new group of tourists filled the beach each week and those there now would not have been on the beach when Jim and Daryl were in town.

  “I’m looking for a couple of boys,” Bob said, handing flyers to each of the girls. “You live around here?”

  “Yeah,” one girl said and the others nodded. A few of them were smoking cigarettes and Bob thought he could smell marijuana. “You a narc or something?”

  “No,” Bob laughed lightly. “Just looking for my boys, here. Got a reward for anyone who can help me find them.”

  Like the first teens to whom he’d spoken, the girls’ interest was piqued by the mention of cash.

  “Five hundred dollars?” one girl squealed.

  “Gee, they’re pretty cute, too,” added another as she stared at the pictures of the boys.

  Then the first girl spoke for the group. “We’ll work on it, okay? If we hear anything we’ll give you a call.”

  “Anything at all. I gotta find them.”

  “Sure. Sorry they’re missing.” As she spoke, the girl nearest her began to giggle.

  Bob thought he knew why. They were probably runaways and somewhere someone was looking for them, too. Kids who had run away from home stuck together along Daytona Beach. If someone’s parents came looking, no one would give them information. It was sort of an unspoken rule. But rules disappeared very quickly when cash was involved, and Bob believed that the kids he’d talked to so far would call him instantly if they thought they had a chance at earning the reward money.

  As the morning sun grew hotter, Bob talked to several more groups of teens both up and down the beach and along the boardwalk. At noon he met with his assistants and agreed to let them continue the beach coverage. He was going to check the hospitals. If he found nothing there, he would visit the morgue.

  BOB CHANGED INTO A SHIRT AND DRESS PANTS AND headed for the first of Daytona Beach’s two hospitals. Getting information from a hospital could be tricky. Many hospitals have policies against releasing information regarding a patient to anyone other than family members. Although being a private investigator did not entitle a person to any legal advantages, Bob had seen dozens of doors opened because of his title. He went immediately to the business office and showed his identification. The man in the office examined the badge, smiled, and welcomed him in.

  “How can I help you?”

  “I need to know if two boys, Jim Boucher and Daryl Barber, have been patients here at any point since August twelfth.”

  The man hesitated a moment. He was tall and very thin and looked a little like a cartoon character. “Actually, that’s not something we usually share with the public.” He thought a moment and lowered his voice, looking from one side of the room to the other to make sure no one could hear him breaking the rules. “But you are a private investigator, and this is important to your case, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay.” He was nearly whispering. “If you’ll keep quiet about it, I’ll check that out myself, right away.”

  Bob smiled and waited patiently while the man checked. He did not expect that the boys had been in the local hospitals. For one thing, unless they had been completely unconscious and without any identification, someone would have known who they were and contacted their parents. Still, the hospitals had to be checked even if it was only to rule out the possibility that the boys had been in an accident and had been hospitalized.

  “No, no one by that name,” the man replied. He was relieved that he had not been forced to divulge any patient information.

  “You sure?”

  The man nodded quickly. “Positive.”

  “Okay.” Bob shook the man’s hand. “Thanks.”

  Bob drove quickly to the other hospital and received the same information from its business office personnel. That meant it was time to visit the morgue. Although three months had passed since the boys disappeared, it was possible they had been killed more recently. Besides, when morgue officials suspect homicide as the cause of death of an unidentified body, efforts are made to preserve the body as long as possible.

  The first thing one noticed upon entering a morgue was the drastic drop in temperature. It did not take a rocket scientist to understand why those who operate morgues need to keep the building cool. But there was something else, a certain septic smell and a stillness in the air, that Bob never quite got used to. He shuddered involuntarily as he walked up to the front window and identified himself.

  The clerk needed only a few minutes to determine that Jim and Daryl had never been at the morgue. That much did not surprise Bob, because if they had been able to identify the boys’ bodies, they certainly would have contacted their parents. It was the unidentified bodies that contained the greatest potential. If the boys had been robbed of their wallets and then killed, they could very easily be sitting in a morgue awaiting identification.

  “How many John Does do you have?” he asked.

  The young man checked the records again. “Fifteen,” he said. “You want to see them?”

  No, Bob thought. “Yes.”

  “Follow me, then.”

  The bodies were stacked in refrigerated compartments built into a number of walls throughout the morgue. The two passed several autopsy rooms before the clerk stopped at a section marked, “John Doe.”

  “There they are,” he said, handing Bob a key and smiling. “This key fits each of the John Doe compartments. Take your time.”

  Bob looked at the young man and saw that he was serious, almost as if he were a sales clerk urging a customer to take his time in the shoe department. Bob watched him walk away and briefly wondered how long one must work at a morgue before one’s sense of humor began to fade. He read the tag on the outside of the first compartment.

  “John Doe. White male. 5-foot-ll. 175 pounds. Brown Hair. Undt. eye color. 20 years.”

  Great, Bob thought, taking a deep breath. Undetermined eye color meant that probably the body had been partially decomposed when it was found. But he had determined to check every John Doe body that even somewhat resembled the description of either boy. He slid the compartment open and pulled back the cotton covering. Even though the body had rotted away in sections, it was easy to determine that this was neither Jim nor
Daryl. The body was fleshy and overweight and neither boy had carried any excess weight. He moved to the next compartment.

  After nearly an hour of examining bodies, Bob was convinced that the boys were not in the morgue. This puzzled him. He had hoped he might find the boys at the morgue. But now hope surged through him. If Jim and Daryl weren’t in the morgue, there was a chance they were, still alive. Bob knew where he would look next.

  He climbed into his car and headed for the beach-side flophouses.

  SCATTERED THROUGHOUT EVERY RESIDENTIAL BLOCK along the streets that paralleled Daytona Beach were homes recognized by police and locals as flophouses. They were not places one could find by checking the Yellow Pages. But they had a distinct look about them that left little question as to their purpose.

  Most of the flophouses were owned by people who lived no where near Daytona Beach. Through a variety of methods these owners rented each room in their houses to different people. Often, those tenants invited a handful of tenants of their own so that as many as six or seven people might be combining funds for the cost of one bedroom in such a house. After that, it was easy to lose track of who was actually living in these homes, and they became places where people could flop or crash with merely an invitation.

  Bob—and anyone who worked at the Daytona Beach Police Department—knew that the flophouses were often sites for raging parties twenty-four hours a day and in many cases all-out orgies involving young teenagers partaking in illegal drugs and illicit sex. They were sickening places, to be sure. But if anything had seduced Jim and Daryl away from the security of their homes, it quite possibly could have been the flophouses.

  Bob met up with his assistants at the beach and the trio drove to the north side of the strip. There they started with the first flophouse, intent on working their way down the block. They strode up the front walkway, ignoring the assault of marijuana smoke, and knocked on the door. When no one answered, Bob lifted his knee and kicked the door open.

  “Way to show ’em, Bob,” Mike said, grinning. Mike was considerably younger than Bob, with an athlete’s build. He was always surprised at how agile his boss was when they were out in the field.

  As the light invaded the dark, dank interior of the house, several startled couples moved to cover themselves. Others, too drugged to realize they had visitors, continued their sex acts out in the open. Bob waited for his eyes to adjust and then looked around the room in disgust.

  “Productive citizens of the future, I’m sure,” Bob mumbled to Rob and Mike as he moved to the first unconscious body.

  He grabbed a fistful of the teen’s hair and looked at his face. Not Jim. Not Daryl. He dropped the boy’s head and moved to the next body, which was lying atop an unclothed female. He grabbed the boy’s hair and checked his face. Not Jim. Not Daryl.

  “Hey, man!” the teenage boy protested, yelling a handful of profanities and swiping aimlessly at Bob’s hand.

  “Good night,” Bob said as he dropped the boy’s head and moved across the room. The three men continued this until they had checked every teenager in the dwelling, twenty-three in all. Not one was Jim or Daryl.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon and Bob knew they would be checking flophouses into the night. He told his assistants to take a meal break and he went to his car and dialed his office.

  “Get a map of Interstate 10,”he said. “The guys are taking a trip tomorrow.”

  He had decided to finish the flophouses that night. No matter how long they had to work. Then tomorrow he would send Mike and Rob up to Mississippi. They were college students working for Bob for the summer and he knew they would appreciate taking the trip. He would have them stop at every exit, showing pictures of the boys to every gasoline pumper and convenience store cashier. After all, there had been traveler’s checks cashed along that route. Someone had to know something.

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK THEY RESUMED THEIR SEARCH through the flophouses and three hours later Bob thought they had probably examined the faces of hundreds of drugged teenagers. No wonder there were so many missing persons reports stacked on Mikelson’s desk.

  Just after dusk, Bob and his assistants kicked down the door of one of the more infamous flophouses along the strip. Immediately they began checking for Jim and Daryl but before they could finish a man approached them from another room.

  “What the heck you doing?” he shouted. He looked like a professional linebacker with an attitude.

  “Bob Brown, private investigator.” Bob flashed his identification badge and resumed his activity.

  “This is private property! Now get out before I throw you out.”

  Bob, who was probably eight inches shorter than the man and weighed easily one hundred pounds less, stood up and stared the man in the face. “I’m checking for a couple of missing teenagers.” Again, he returned to his work.

  The man was furious now and his face had begun to grow red. “I’m the owner of this place and I said out!” he bellowed. “Get out or I call the cops.”

  Bob stopped what he was doing and looked calmly at the man. “Now there’s a good idea,” he said, sounding as if the owner had just made his job that much easier.

  “What?”

  “Yes, go ahead. Call the police.” Bob looked around the room at the drugs being smoked, the beer bottles, the couples lying naked on top of one another. “I think the police would very much like to visit your home.”

  The man seemed to think about this as he glanced uncomfortably about his home. Then, without saying another word, he turned around and returned to the room he had come from. The police were never called.

  And so it went throughout the night. Bob knew he had probably found dozens of missing persons. Maybe hundreds. But none of them had been Jim and Daryl. This did not discourage Bob, because he knew he had covered an immense amount of territory in one day. He would find the Michigan teenagers. He was certain about it.

  It was just a matter of when.

  CHAPTER 15

  For the first time since their sons’ disappearance, the Bouchers and the Barbers felt as if something productive was being done to find them. They were checking in each day with James Byrd, their private investigator, and knew exactly what progress was being made. Although the boys had not been found, there were many places that the investigator had ruled out. The parents knew that Byrd was hiring people to help him with the investigation. But they had no idea that the entire case was actually being handled by Bob Brown. Technically, Byrd’s role was only that of the middleman.

  “Any news today?” Faye was the one who did most of the calling. Then that evening she and Roy would meet over at the Barbers’ house and share the information. They no longer spent much time discussing the missing boys in front of the younger Boucher children. John was having a hard enough time without discussing the specifics of the private investigation in front of him.

  “Well, looks like we sent a few operatives up Interstate 10 checking with the cashiers and such at every off-ramp,” Byrd said, reading from a report he’d gotten from Bob.

  “Any news, anything at all?” Faye was not ready to give up hope. She could never give up as long as the boys had not been found.

  “Not yet. We’ll find them, Mrs. Boucher. Don’t you worry about it.” He paused a moment. “Uh, by the way. We’re going to need another ten thousand dollars by the end of next week.” Byrd was paying Bob about one-fourth of the money he was taking in from the families so he needed plenty of cash in order to give Bob the flexibility to buy information as needed.

  “Ten thousand dollars?” Faye could not believe the money this investigation was costing. They had already used all their savings and had listed a section of their land with a real estate company.

  “Yes, ma’am. These investigations are very expensive. But they do give you peace of mind. And there’s something to be said for that.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Faye said, tears spilling from her eyes. “Please call us if yo
u hear anything.”

  “Oh, I will. Don’t you worry.”

  FAYE BROKE THE NEWS TO THE BARBERS THAT NIGHT about the added expense. Already the investigation had cost twenty thousand dollars and now another ten thousand. Neither couple could imagine what was costing so much money, but the investigator had said that he was using several operatives to find Jim and Daryl. They would simply have to find the money to keep the investigation alive.

  Had the circumstances been different, the families might have switched investigators or researched exactly how the money was being used. But Byrd was always ready with what seemed to be a logical answer regarding his expenses and the parents were committed to seeing the investigation through. Even if it left them with nothing, at least they could go on being a family again. If they found the boys alive, they could be reunited and all of them would move on from this terrible nightmare. And if the boys were found dead, they could grieve and feel and begin the process of letting go of their sons.

  But this life of not knowing was killing them all. Especially Roy, who had grown even sicker in the past weeks as his blood sugar soared out of control.

  By then, both families had begun to accept the worst possible scenario. Jim and Daryl might be dead. Even though the boys had not been found at the local morgues in central Florida, it was possible they were in a different morgue, out of state somewhere.

  Of course, none of them liked to talk about the possibility that their sons were dead. As long as they hadn’t been found, there was still a hope that they were alive somewhere. But with each day, indeed with each passing hour, that hope grew dimmer.

  BOB BROWN, MEANWHILE, REMAINED COMPLETELY optimistic that eventually he would find the boys. As with all his cases he had prayed about this one and he believed with all his heart that he would solve the case. Over the years Bob had developed the nickname “Investigator of Faith” because he openly discussed at national investigative seminars his strategy of praying about a case before setting out to solve it.