Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries)

by James W. Hall

  “It’s a bracelet. It’s decoration.”

  Sheffield sighed. He massaged his forehead. Ready to strangle her. “Did you show this video to an animal expert, an outside biologist?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you drag the canals for remains or articles of clothing?”

  “We did an extensive search. It’s in the report.”

  “Before you released the scene, you put your scuba team in the water?”

  “No.”

  “You got a body missing in a canal and no one went in that water?”

  “We felt it was too dangerous. We did an extensive sweep of the area and found nothing.”

  “The scuba guys thought it was too dangerous? That’d be a first.”

  “I deemed it too dangerous.”

  “You found no articles of clothing?”

  “No.”

  “In the video Ms. Levine was wearing a long-sleeve shirt. But the severed arm is bare. What happened to the sleeve? Did you consider that?”

  “Apparently it was lost in the struggle.”

  “That arm could be off a mannequin for all you can tell from the video. It could be a fake. No tool marks, no shirtsleeve, no blood.”

  “Agent Sheffield.” Killibrew stood up. “Are you familiar with clitoridectomies?”

  “Say that again.”

  “Mutilation of a woman’s genitals. The cutting away of the clitoris. In this case with a pair of scissors.”

  “What the hell?”

  “On the night of June the ninth, the crime scene I was working when I was dispatched to Turkey Point power plant was the seventh rape and genital mutilation in the last six months. The rapist’s first two victims died at the crime scene, so as a homicide detective I was assigned the case in January of this year and have been working all the subsequent rapes and mutilations. After the first two died, the other victims have managed to survive the injuries. Though none have been helpful with descriptions. Their attacker wears a mask, and as you can imagine, the trauma is horrendous. They have great difficulty reconstructing the events.”

  “I’ve read about it. You’re the lead on that?”

  “Yes, I am. With all the cutbacks, that’s how shorthanded we are, pulling me off a case of such magnitude, to investigate a crocodile mishap.”

  “I see.”

  “So if you think about it, Agent Sheffield, you might understand why I was not overjoyed to be removed from an active rape scene and sent to work on what was clearly an accidental death of a woman who put herself in harm’s way on a regular basis. If my mind wasn’t fully engaged on the effort of locating body parts, or the specific crocodile that attacked and dragged off Ms. Levine, or the whereabouts of articles of her clothing, then I beg your forgiveness. But my focus was elsewhere.”

  She was almost out the door when Frank said, “Can you get somebody to make me a copy of the file, and a copy of this video, too? I’d like to enhance it, take a closer look.”

  “Of course.”

  “And one last thing.”

  She waited at the door, staring past him at the far wall. Probably seeing those mutilated women wherever she looked. Sheffield sympathized and sure as hell didn’t want to get into a pissing contest, so he kept his voice neutral.

  “You happen to remember the name of the person in charge of the power company’s search team? I didn’t see any mention of it in the report.”

  “The head of Florida Power and Light’s security squad.”

  “That would be Claude Sellers?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Claude Sellers. A very unpleasant man.”

  “Well, at least we agree on that.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  NICOLE WASN’T PICKING UP HER cell. Her message wasn’t recorded in her own voice but was a female robot telling him to leave his name and number. Saying it with that condescending edge female robots were so good at.

  He refused to talk to robots, even Nicole McIvey’s. So he hung up, then a few minutes later called again and hung up again, and ten minutes later did it all again, still got the robot.

  By then he’d arrived in the valet parking lot of the Palace, one of Miami’s more glamorous assisted-living facilities, a block down from Miracle Mile in the Gables.

  Last year Johnny Greening had retired from U.S. Fish and Wildlife after thirty-five years of undercover work, busting biker outlaws for selling endangered snakes and killer pit bulls to other outlaws, and once infiltrating a primate-smuggling operation that supplied orangutans to rock stars and wealthy perverts, and for a decade he’d worked the Everglades beat, which put Johnny up against a handful of hard-core poachers who’d survived a couple of centuries too long, living far away from the rule of law, in the middle of that river of grass, and had the battered faces and the dead-eye aim to prove it.

  Johnny had taken his savings and bought himself a penthouse at the Palace, where he’d become the darling of dozens of well-endowed widows who vied ruthlessly for his attention.

  The valet slipped Sheffield a claim check, frowned at Frank’s humble ride, then drove the Chevy off to a dark corner of the garage where it wouldn’t contaminate the Maseratis and BMWs. Sheffield passed through a lobby drenched in red velvet and gold brocade, walking past the white-marble concierge’s stand, across deep-pile Orientals lit by massive chandeliers that blazed as brightly as the souls of recently departed billionaires.

  He stood at the bank of elevators, nodded hello to a sharp-eyed woman with a complicated stack of silver hair. She wore a skintight red tracksuit and strappy sandals and had impossible breasts.

  “You in the market?” she said.

  “Just visiting.”

  She ducked her hand in her pocket and came out with a business card. “When you’re ready, give me a call. They’re going fast. I can still get you a sunset view for under two million, but that won’t last long.”

  “Nothing ever does.”

  Johnny Greening was waiting for him as the elevator doors opened in the foyer of his penthouse. He’d styled his white hair into a rigid flattop and had put on twenty pounds around the middle, but still looked fit enough to wrestle a ten-foot gator if called upon.

  “Need your expertise, Johnny.”

  “Having trouble with the ladies?”

  “Doing fine with the ladies. It’s this.” Frank held up the DVD. “You got a disc player, right?”

  “Have to eject Debbie Does Dallas, but, sure, let’s have a look.”

  They went into Johnny’s playroom, tricked out with wet bar and blackout curtains. As if he’d been inspired by some Shanghai opium den, the room had no furniture, but the burgundy wall-to-wall carpet was covered with lush pillows of every shape and size. One wall was devoted to electronics. Flatscreen TV and six-foot speakers and a stereo system that had nearly as many dials and gauges and blinking lights as the control panel at the nuke plant.

  Johnny ejected the disc from his DVD player, set it aside, and slid in the croc video. He took the remote over to a pillow the size of a kiddie pool and lounged back on it. Frank stayed on his feet, leaning against the wall.

  “What is this we’re watching?”

  “That’s what you’re going to tell me,” Frank said.

  They viewed the video without comment, then Johnny replayed it. A big croc appears at the edge of the canal and climbs up the steep slope. Cameron Prince calls out a warning to Levine, and Leslie waves him off. It was cool, her wave said, no sweat. The big croc in the spotlight wanders a bit, then spots a hump of earth and climbs atop it, seems to listen for a few seconds, then lifts herself high on her stumpy legs and drops hard on her belly. The croc digs into the hump, discovers the eggs and freshly hatched crocs. Leslie Levine is smiling in the shadows as if she’s stoked by the scene unfolding in front of her.

  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-look
ing 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 w
ho 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.”