Putting her book aside, the first page now splotched and smeared with the sweat and suntan oil from her stomach, she rose from the hammock and stretched. She thought about pulling on her gorgeous new Trina Turk cover-up pants over her bikini; it was early yet, but the summer heat was starting to creep up in the rusty, red Coca-Cola thermometer hanging on one of the gazebo posts nearby, so she left the pants folded on the hammock.
She looked back upstream and watched as the mysterious—and crazy hot—stranger limped into a beach house a few homes up from her rental. She sat down on the edge of her dock and dipped her feet into the cool water. She pulled her hair out of its ponytail and ran her fingers through it.
She would eventually have to knock on his door, of course, but she needed some excuse, a ruse to explain why she’d come calling.
“Come on, Karah,” she said, and kicked her legs slowly in the water and spoke to her reflection. “What’s it gonna be?” Can I borrow a cup of sugar? No ... that was too obvious. She needed a hook, something he’d remember. So, I see you’re a fisherman. Can you teach me to fish? Ugh, that was awful.
As she pondered this something brushed against her leg. She jerked her feet out of the water, expecting to see a fish or a snake ... maybe even a jellyfish. But no, it was a small lump-shaped thing, dark and purple in color. She leaned over to study it and when she was sure it wasn’t alive, she reached down and picked it out of the water with two fingers.
The object quickly shed the water and she flipped it over. A smile crept onto her face.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said recognizing the LSU logo,” but I found your hat.”
She grabbed her book and her pants and rushed inside grinning with excitement. She felt like she was in a beach novel!
Shower ... gonna need a shower.
5
Hairre Today, Gone Tomorrow
Deputy Chesney Biggins recognized the bloated face of Rick Hairre immediately. The vice-chairman—ex-vice-chairman, to be exact—was puffed up and slightly blue. His hairpiece was missing, but that wasn’t a surprise. Everyone that had known Rick when he was younger knew he’d been wearing a hideous chocolate brown toupee for the last fifteen years or so.
What did take Chesney a few minutes to deal with was the fact that the man’s eyelids and lips were half gone, eaten by various marine creatures. It gave him an odd look of surprise.
“Hey Sarah, I’m gonna need a wagon out here,” he said into his walkie-talkie. “We’re gonna need to call Winchester in on this one too.”
“Winchester?” came the crackled reply at the other end. “What’s up?”
Winchester Boonesborough was the local District Attorney and would surely want to be in on this ... since Rick was an elected official, however trivial his office might be.
“It’s Rick Hairre,” Chesney said.
“Oh.” Sarah seemed at a loss for words. “I’ll make the call.”
“Thanks.”
Rick was wearing a light blue seersucker suit that made him look like Mayor Larry Vaughn from the movie Jaws.
Very Martha’s Vineyard, Chesney thought.
Around the collar of the suit were black-maroon stains that were probably blood. Even in his bloated, chewed-up state, he had the marks from what looked like a severe beating on his head, face and neck. Chesney was no crime scene tech, but he knew Rick had been tortured, and torture requires motivation ... usually motivation to get information.
“Oh my God!” came a shocked voice from behind him. “That poor, poor man!”
Chesney jumped and suddenly felt like a twitchy audience member who had screamed in a horror movie when a black cat jumped onto the screen. He had visions of a Zombiefied Rick Hairre sitting up and strangling him.
The sudden outburst had come from Dianne Smith, the woman who’d discovered Rick’s body with her husband. Chesney stood and quickly regained his composure.
“Ma’am, sir, I have everything I need from both of you.” He ushered them away from the body. “If you will, I’m gonna need you to go down to the station and fill out a statement. Just a formality, of course.”
He handed a business card to Jack Smith and watched as the couple walked back to the beach. Within a few minutes the ambulance pulled up. By then, Chesney had done a full circuit around the body, careful to give it a wide berth but looking for anything unusual that might give him some clue as to the nature of the councilman’s demise. So far, he’d found nothing.
Paul D’Antaglia, the township’s paramedic who also served as the Medical Examiner, nodded as he stepped out of the ambulance. “Yo, Chesney. Got somethin’ big, eh?”
Chesney pointed toward Rick’s prone figure. Paul snapped on his gloves and carefully knelt beside the body as his assistant (and wife) Carol stepped out of the ambulance carrying a medical kit. Paul was a native of Maine who’d married Bostonian Carol during med school, and after successful careers up north they’d semi-retired to Pawleys Island. Both were in their late fifties and had seen hundreds of crime scenes. Chesney had worked with Paul on several cases and thought the man made a great investigator. Not only was he obviously more medically savvy than a cop, but also more legally savvy than most paramedics, and more street-savvy than the actual Coroner. His insight was invaluable.
“Alas, poor Rick. Guess we can forgo checking for a pulse,” Paul said to Carol. “Thermometer.”
She handed him what Chesney thought looked like a meat thermometer with a dial on the top and a long skewer on the end. Without much ceremony, Paul plunged it into Rick’s side. After a minute or so, he looked up at Chesney. “Given his state of rigor and liver temp, I’d say we’re looking at forty-eight hours.”
Chesney scribbled a few notes on his yellow pad. “Ideas on cause of death?”
“Well, he’s got some obvious signs of animal gnawing, but I don’t see any tracks to or from his body. With the bloating, I’m inclined to think he was nibbled on in the water.”
“I’m sure they’ll be able to see more when he’s on the table, but it’s obvious he was beat up pretty badly.” Paul pointed toward Rick’s head. “This one here looks like it could be our culprit.”
At the top of the man’s wispy-haired head was a deep gash. The wound was semi-circular and looked to be severe enough to crush the skull, though there was no blood. Probably washed off in the water, Chesney thought.
“Looks like a pistol-whip,” Chesney mumbled. “Somebody beat the crap out of him, maybe beat him to death.”
“Oh Jeezus, Ches. Who the hell would treat old Ricky like that?” Carol asked in a Kennedy-esque Bostonian twang.
“I have no idea.” Chesney paused upon seeing a van of crime scene techs pull up and start unloading cameras and number cards and q-tips. “Hey, make sure they get everything, clothes, shoes, pocket contents, all that ... might be something there to help us find out who did this.”
“We’ll get you everything you need to get this bastard,” Paul said and slapped Chesney on the shoulder.
For the next hour, more than two hundred HD photographs were taken of Rick’s body and the surrounding area.
As the techs were snapping their last photos and cleaning up their number cards, Winchester Boonesborough pulled up in his black ‘89 Lincoln Towncar. He didn’t get out of his vehicle, but waved Chesney over impatiently. Oh, shit, he thought, not now.
“Deputy Biggins, what have we got here?” Winchester demanded from his partially rolled down window. “Have you got this thing under control?”
He sighed heavily. He knew the D.A. wouldn’t get out of the car, effectively staying as far away from the scene as he could and still be at the scene.
Winchester Boonesborough, the son of a billionaire lawyer from Dallas, Texas, had a reputation for taking all the credit for successful cases and denying responsibility for unsuccessful ones. He was well known for pointing fingers at the shoddy work of those at the crime scene for failures. In short, nobody liked him.
Chesney started toward the Town
car and opened his mouth, but was interrupted before he could speak.
“Hey, Ches,” Paul called, saving him from a run-in with the D.A., “I found something you might want to see.”
Chesney held up a finger indicating wait just a second to Winchester and headed back to where Paul and Carol were finally loading Rick’s body for delivery to the coroner.
Paul reached into the ambulance and held up two Ziploc evidence bags.
“When we picked him up, we found his wallet beneath him. Contents seem intact but spilling out a bit ... and this thing.” He held up a bag with what appeared to be a small black USB drive.
Chesney took the bags. “Thanks, Paul.”
“You betcha,” the paramedic said and shook hands with him. “Letcha know when we’ve got more for ya.”
He closed the back of the ambulance and they drove away, leaving the crime scene in eerie silence.
Chesney was baffled by the USB drive. He’d have someone in the lab get all the data from that and log that into evidence later. He held up the bag with the wallet in it. Protruding out of the wallet’s cash pocket, he saw a piece of paper, waterlogged and almost transparent. The ink was faint, but still legible. He held it up in the sunlight and could read most of what was printed on it.
Lee’s Inlet Kitchen
Clam Chowder Ap-Bowl$5.95
Iced Tea$2.50
Pch Cobbler – A la Mode$6.95
Sub$15.40
Tax$ .93
Amount$16.33
Gratuity$25.00
Total$41.33
Rick had scrawled in what appeared to be a twenty-five-dollar tip and scribbled his name at the bottom. Seems a bit excessive, Chesney thought. Under the signature, it had the restaurant’s address, phone number, date, time and server’s name, a Georgiana S.
Ah, I see. Chesney knew Georgiana Starlington; anyone who had been to Lee’s knew Georgiana. It seemed everyone in town was infatuated with the restaurant’s young waitress. In a town where the female wait staff tended to be transient at best, she’d been there for quite a while now. Not one of the typical “blonde bimbo” types either; more “girl-next-door”, and that was indeed rare around here.
Georgiana did have mildly curly, dirty blonde hair, but usually she had it pulled back in a messy braid or ponytail. Not too flashy, not too plain. She was probably five or six years out of college and had come to Pawleys with some kind of typical university degree that had led to ... yup, you guessed it: bartending. She was definitely a cute girl; Chesney felt his eyebrows rise. Would definitely have to question her about— His thought was interrupted by the sound of an ‘89 Lincoln Towncar door opening.
“Please tell me I haven’t wasted two hours of my life sittin’ in my car out here watchin’ the Pawleys Island C.S.I. poke around,” the D.A. said, his voice contentious at best, snotty at worst. “I’m leavin’ today for a week in the Hamptons and I don’t want to be late.”
“You have anything at all for me, Deputy?” Winchester spread his ill-fitting suit jacket apart and put his hands on his expansive waistline.
Chesney opened the door to his cruiser and without skipping a beat, reached into his shirt pocket and flipped open his sunglasses.
In his best David Caruso voice, he said, “Hairre today ... ” Pausing for effect, he put his sunglasses on. “Gone tomorrow.”
6
Guts for Garters
Darren “The Body” McGlashen slumped down into a crusty, duct-taped recliner in the back of a dark, mostly empty storage unit in a dark, mostly empty parking lot behind a cheesy tourist trap store called Balls—as in beach balls.
He was a scrawny guy; thus, the nickname must’ve been one of those obvious “opposite” nicknames, like calling the biggest guy Tiny or calling a really slow guy Flash. The recliner squalled and creaked under even his emaciated frame and noticeably sagged to one side.
Another man, giant and heavily tattooed, stood by the steel door peering out into the night. He chewed nervously on a McDonald’s drink straw. His arms were sleeves of skulls and flames and tribal markings ... no smiley faces or peace signs anywhere to be seen. In his back pocket, he’d stuffed two knit toboggans with eye and mouth holes roughly cut into them. Under his belt buckle, he’d stuffed a small .38 caliber pistol. The pearl handle had dark gelatinous blood in the grooves.
“Well, that didn’t go well at all now, did it, mate?” Darren asked the nervous man by the door.
“Nah.”
“Boss ain’t gonna like it none.”
“Nah.”
Darren rubbed his thumbs into his temples. “Will ya shut up and lemme think, mate?”
The other man said nothing.
Darren stood up and kicked his boot against the side of the recliner. It cracked and groaned and one leg apparently rocked its last. The heavy chair lurched forward and fell on his right foot.
“Aw, shit!!” he cried.
“Will you bloody well keep it down?” the tattooed man shushed him.
“Christ, the damn things broken my toe!” Darren tugged at his ankle. “Get it off me, mate!”
The tattooed man shrugged, and mumbled, “Stupid as a two-bob watch.”
He reached down and lifted the front of the recliner, and Darren shrieked.
“Shit, shit, shit, stop!”
“What the hell?”
“Put it down!!”
The big man dropped the recliner and Darren screamed again.
“If you don’t shut your trap, mate, I’m gonna shut it for you!”
“Damn, it’s cuttin’ me, it’s cuttin’ me,” Darren whimpered.
“Oh, for shit’s sake.” he spat, and grabbed the front end of the recliner and heaved it backward against the storage unit wall. The metal clang almost drowned out the sound of The Body’s scream.
In what appeared to him as slow motion, Darren saw the chair fly up and off his foot, followed by ripped pieces of shoe and his grossly severed first three toes. Blood spurted from the stubs and he screamed again before fainting.
When he came to, he was back in the recliner and the tattooed man was back at the door. He was relieved to see that the man had apparently removed what was left of his shoe and tied a makeshift tourniquet around the ball of his foot with his own sock and remnants of the duct tape from the recliner.
“Toes?” Darren croaked. “Gotta get to a hospital, mate. They can stitch ‘em up good.”
The huge man nodded out into the night. “Tossed ‘em.”
“Shit.”
Darren could see the blood oozing through the sock and thought he might need to put some Neosporin or antiseptic or something on the ... wounds. He reached down and gently massaged the upper part of his foot above what was left of his toes. It ached like hell and he could feel his pulse throbbing in and out of the arch of his foot.
“They were smashed and useless anyhow.”
“S’truth,” Darren mumbled. “But shit, mate, shoulda at least lemme toss ‘em.”
“Boss ain’t gonna care about them toes, he’s gonna cut the rest off anyhow if we don’t get that check back.” The tattooed man looked back at Darren.
“You dumped him?”
Nod.
“Can’t be found?”
Nod.
“Good. Then we gotta retrace our steps and find that damn check or the boss’ll have our guts for garters.
Nod.
7
Geaux Tigers!
Troy walked into his bungalow, dropped his keys and his knife onto the dining room table, and collapsed on his futon couch. His head ached and his knee was a knot of pain. He took the straw hat off his head and tossed it onto the arm of the futon. Water from his shorts dripped onto the well-worn wooden floor.
“Shit,” he muttered, looking at the growing puddle of saltwater.
He limped into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. His cheekbones were a little red and the sun had given him a raccoon tan line around his Costas. He gingerly touched
the bump on the back of his head, and felt a tiny gash, but no blood came off on his fingertips. So, no stitches necessary. He stripped off the khaki shorts and threw them over the shower rod to dry and wrapped a white towel around his waist.
Beer, he thought, and a nap ... and some ice on this dang knee. As he popped the top off a Corona, a timid knock came at his beachside door.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he muttered, “What now?”
He tossed the cap in the sink and slid the bottle opener onto the counter. He took a long gulp and thought; damn a lime would be terrific right now.
He set the beer down on the dining room table next to his keys and knife and tucked the towel around his waist a little tighter. It was a dollar store towel; white, scratchy and just a bit smaller than it needed to be.
He glanced through the blinds on the door, but the sun was dazzling and he couldn’t really tell who was standing there. He opened the door and suddenly realized his state of undress. Standing on his porch, mouth agape, was a young girl holding a wet LSU baseball cap—his LSU baseball cap.
She was pretty, probably college age, brown hair with a tasteful amount of auburn red highlights, big green eyes, slim, but with an athletic build. She was wearing a two-piece bikini with a coral bottom and a teal ... no, a sea foam top. Her skin was tan and slightly red as if she’d come straight from the beach, but she was dry and clean and smelled like Herbal Essence shampoo ... something with coconut in it. A sheer wrap was draped around her hips.
The girl’s eyes flitted from his chest to his towel and back up to his eyes.
“Yes, can I help you, darlin’?” Troy asked.
“I um ... I ... well ... uh ... ”
The girl was visibly trembling and her pupils were dilated. Dang college girl all hopped up on pills. He’d seen enough of that back in Vegas to know the telltale signs.
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 11
