Snuff Tag 9 (A Nicholas Colt Thriller Book 3)

by Jude Hardin

  I made it to The Oasis, and a hostess carrying a stack of laminated menus ushered me to a table upstairs. I sat there and pretended to look at the lists of appetizers, soups, salads, and entrees, and when the waitress came I ordered a fried fish on rye and a Heineken draft.

  She brought the beer, and while I was waiting for the sandwich my cell phone pulsed and the caller ID said Brittney. I answered.

  “Hi, sweetheart.”

  “Hey, Daddy. You’ll never guess what just happened.”

  From the sound of her voice I knew it wasn’t bad news. “What?” I said.

  “I won tickets to the Florida-Georgia game in a raffle. Isn’t that just awesome? I’m going to the game!”

  “Wow, that is great. When is it?”

  “October twenty-ninth at three thirty. It’s in Jacksonville, at Everbank Stadium, where the Jags play. You want to go?”

  Truth be known, I didn’t care that much about college football. Even the Florida-Georgia game, the biggest event of the season in this part of the country. But, like the credit card commercial would say: An afternoon with your daughter—priceless.

  “I would love to go,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re asking me instead of one of your friends.”

  “Actually, I have four tickets, so I can invite a couple of friends too. Oh, we’re going to have such a great time. I can’t wait! So where are you?”

  “Just hanging out at the beach.”

  “Where at?”

  “St. Augustine. Want to drive over and have some dinner with me later?”

  “That sounds so good. But I have a calculus test tomorrow, so I better stay here and study. Are you working in St. Augustine or taking a vacation?”

  “A little bit of both. I’m going fishing in the morning, and I’ll probably stay here tomorrow night, but I have a job up near the Georgia border Tuesday.”

  “It’s nothing dangerous, is it?”

  “No. Nothing dangerous.”

  “You should totally get back into music and let someone else spy on cheating husbands and stuff.”

  “I can’t play anymore,” I said. “You know that.”

  “But you can still sing.”

  I didn’t feel like talking about it.

  “Have you ever played a video game called Snuff Tag Nine?” I said.

  “I haven’t, but I know some guys who play it. I’ve watched them. It’s like really graphic ultraviolent stalking kind of stuff. Lots of killing, lots of gore. Why, you getting into video games now, Dad? Thinking about joining the twenty-first century?”

  “No, just curious. If you change your mind about dinner, just give me a call. OK?”

  “OK. I will. Daddy, I’m so excited about going to the game.”

  “I can tell. Me too. Talk to you soon, sweetheart.”

  “Bye, Daddy. Love you.”

  “I love you too,” I said.

  My grouper sandwich came, and I ate it and ordered another beer and then I walked back to the hotel.

  Early Monday morning, before the sun came up, I met Joe Crawford at the Cat’s Paw Marina and we boarded a fifty-foot charter boat called Sea Love III. The boat was licensed to carry thirty-four passengers, but I counted only a dozen people in line ahead of us and four behind us. Slow day. We left the marina and headed for the open sea at six thirty, as scheduled.

  I’d known Joe Crawford since we were twelve, since sixth grade. In a life where friends and acquaintances came and went, Joe was a constant. He was my best friend and I loved him like a brother. Like the brother I never had. He ran the fish camp on Lake Barkley where my Airstream was parked, so he was also my landlord. He gave me a discount for helping with security around the place, and he let me use one of his rental boats whenever I wanted. Joe owned the fish camp, and he also dabbled in international real estate. He was rich, and he’d offered me full-time employment more than once, but full-time employment wasn’t my thing. I also didn’t want the possibility of a working relationship putting a strain on our personal relationship.

  “Beautiful morning,” Joe said.

  We were leaning against the steel railing atop the starboard bulkhead. Cruising at around fifteen knots into a pink and turquoise and gold sunrise over the Atlantic.

  “It is,” I said. “We picked a good day to go out. Perfect. We got lucky.”

  “I’ve been looking at buying a boat myself, maybe even living on it part of the time. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Nothing as big as this, of course, but maybe a thirty-five-foot Jersey or something.”

  “Sure. You could call it the SS Minnow, and I could be your bumbling first mate.”

  He laughed. “Seriously. I could see myself cruising up and down the coast, docking in Puerto Rico for a week or two. Or the Bahamas. I could see myself living like that.”

  “If it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, then do it. It’s not like we’re getting any younger. I was thinking about doing the same thing, back when I had lots of money like you.”

  “Come to work for me,” he said. “I can show you how to make lots of money again.”

  “It’s not me, Joe. You know that. I’ll probably be doing this private eye thing till I drop. I’ll never get rich, but at least I’m living life on my own terms.”

  “I know you’re not married to it, though. You were back to playing music full time before all that crap in Tennessee.”

  I fingered the scars on my left hand. “Yeah.”

  “Just think about it, OK?”

  “OK. I’ll think about it. But really, business has been pretty good lately.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “The usual, mostly. Bogus insurance claims, cheating spouses, a skip-trace here and there. Yesterday a guy hired me because of a letter he got telling him he had to show up at a certain place. The letter said he had to show up and play a video game called Snuff Tag Nine, and if he didn’t The Sexy Bastards were going to kill him.”

  Joe looked at me and we both started laughing.

  “Snuff Tag Nine?” Joe said. “The Sexy Bastards?”

  “Yeah. What a crock of shit. I’m thinking it’s a burglary ring, sending these letters out to get people away from their houses. I’m going to check it out and then probably hand it over to the sheriff’s department.”

  “Why don’t you just hand it over to the sheriff’s department now?”

  “Guy wants to pay me a hundred an hour to check it out, I’ll check it out. I’ll check it out all day every day for a hundred an hour.”

  “Can’t blame you there,” Joe said. He looked at his watch. “I’m going below to get some coffee. You want some?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Be right back.”

  There were two guys standing a few feet aft of us, leaning on the same steel rail on the same starboard bulkhead. One of them followed Joe to the lower deck, and one of them stayed put. The guy who stayed put didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t say anything to him. I’m not much for striking up conversations with strangers, and apparently he wasn’t either. Joe came back with the coffee a few minutes later. He and the guy who’d followed him down were saying something to each other. Joe’s different from me in that way. He can strike up a conversation with anyone, at any time. The guy handed his friend a cup of coffee, and Joe handed me one. The two guys walked farther aft and then out of sight.

  “See,” Joe said. “You never know when the opportunity might arise to make some money. I was in line to get the coffee and a guy started talking fishing with me. Eventually he asked me what I did for a living. I told him, and he asked for a business card, and I gave him one. Turns out he’s an investor, looking to buy some property in Canada.”

  “You’re good at stuff like that,” I said. “Wheeling and dealing off the cuff with someone you just met. Me, not so much.”

  “You’ve hustled guys on the pool table before, haven’t you?”

  “Not as good as you have.”

  “See, looking me in t
he eyes and saying that is a hustle in itself. It’s the same thing in business. You say things that make the other guy feel good about himself. Once you do that, he’s on your side.”

  “But there’s an art to it,” I said. “If you’re obvious, the guy’s going to know you’re a phony and walk away. Some people have a knack for that sort of thing. It’s a talent, like playing guitar. I made a fortune playing guitar, and you made one being full of shit.”

  Joe sipped his coffee. “All right, my friend. Whatever you say. I still think you could be a hell of a salesman if you wanted to.”

  I tried to imagine myself in a suit and tie and shiny black shoes that hurt my feet. I was still trying to imagine all that when the engine slowed and the crew came around with tackle and coolers full of bait. Time to stop thinking and do some fishing.

  Tuesday evening I drove to the destination on the Snuff Tag 9 map, a spot deep inside the Okefenokee Swamp on the Florida side. My 1996 GMC Jimmy had four-wheel drive, but it turned out I didn’t need it. The washboarded dirt road that led to the site happened to be dry on October 11, and anyone with a Honda Civic and a kidney belt could have made it in with no problem.

  I switched off the ignition, opened the windows, and listened. A crow cawed and a hornet buzzed by and a raccoon or squirrel or fox or something rustled some leaves in the nearby woods, but mostly I heard what you would expect to hear out in the middle of nowhere: nothing.

  Nothing bothers me. It bothers my tinnitus, a condition that causes ringing of the ears. I attribute this condition to years of playing the guitar on some of the world’s biggest stages, fifty thousand watts of power blasting through walls of speaker cabinets taller than some houses.

  In the mid to late eighties my southern rock and blues band, Colt .45, consistently sold out sports arenas all over the country. Gold records, mansions on both coasts, garages full of high-end automobiles. All of that came to a screeching halt the day I crawled away from the fiery wreckage of a chartered jet. The crash took the lives of my wife, Susan, and my baby daughter, Harmony, and all the members of my band. I was the sole survivor. Twenty years later, I found out the crash wasn’t an accident. I found out Susan and Harmony died because of their skin color. The white supremacist pieces of shit responsible for the incident called everyone else aboard collateral damage. I was supposed to have died, but I didn’t. I walked away without a scratch. The sound of silence always makes my ears ring and it always makes me think about the people I loved whose lives were wasted.

  I looked at my watch. 7:08. I had gotten to the Okefenokee early so I could take some photographs of the site before dark and send them to Nathan Broadway as promised. I planned to stick around till eight, just to make sure the Snuff Tag 9 letter was indeed a bogus subterfuge. In the highly unlikely event that it was not, I had my favorite carry revolver holstered under the tails of my Hawaiian shirt and a sawed-off twelve-gauge pump strapped to the back of the Jimmy’s front passenger seat.

  I sprayed on some mosquito repellent, took my camera out of its case, and got out to snap a few pictures. The cypress trees surrounding the clearing were heavily draped with Spanish moss, and some of them had purple carnivorous pitcher plants clustered at their bases. The sun was setting and the full moon rising and the area took on an eerie glow I knew the camera wouldn’t capture.

  An owl hooted in the distance. I followed the sound and tried to zoom in on it with my telephoto lens, but the bird was well camouflaged and it took me a while to find it. I scanned the treetops for several minutes and finally saw a big yellow eye peering back at me. I snapped the shot. The eye was huge. You could have served a piece of pie on it.

  I heard some splashes, so I knew there was some water nearby. Probably a gator having dinner, I thought. I didn’t follow the sound and try to zoom in on it with my telephoto lens. Alligators don’t amuse me. I hate them. When I was fourteen, a friend from school named Randy Osborn invited me to stay the night one time. We were goofing around one of the water hazards at the golf course across the street from his house when a gator came from nowhere and bit his right arm off at the elbow. I knew a little first aid, enough to tie a tourniquet and keep him from bleeding to death. Randy didn’t show up for school the next week, or the week after that. Or the week after that. I never saw him at school again, but I saw him in my dreams for a long time. Alligators don’t amuse me. I hate them.

  The owl hooted again. It was getting spooky out there in the swamp. It was creepy as hell, and I started feeling like the guy who always gets slaughtered at the beginning of a horror movie. I climbed back into the car and put the camera away and rolled up the windows.

  Before I’d left civilization, I’d stopped at McDonald’s and bought two Big Macs and a large coffee and a bottle of spring water. I drank the coffee on the drive to the swamp, and I figured the burgers would give me something to do while I waited for eight o’clock. I unrolled the top of the bag and opened one of the Big Mac boxes and took a couple of bites and washed it down with some water.

  When we were still on good terms, Juliet used to fuss at me every time I bought fast food. She’s a nurse and she sees people younger than me admitted to the hospital all the time with heart attacks and strokes and other health issues brought on by lifetimes of bad choices. I knew she had a point, but I had given up cigarettes over three years ago and still attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings over the heroin addiction I’d acquired while imprisoned by the Harvest Angels. I’d always been kind of skinny and my blood pressure and cholesterol stayed within normal limits, so I didn’t think the occasional cheeseburger or scoop of ice cream was going to kill me.

  Thinking about Juliet made me want to call her. I looked at my cell phone, but there was no signal. I was too deep in the wilderness, too far from a tower. I made a mental note to call her on the way home. I opened the second Big Mac box and thought about it and decided one was enough. I stuffed the empty box from the first burger and the empty coffee cup and some dirty napkins into the McDonald’s bag and rolled the top of the bag tight and set it on the passenger’s-side floorboard to throw away later.

  By 7:55 the sun was gone all the way but the moon was bright and I could still see the shapes of the trees and the Spanish moss. At 8:03 I decided nobody was coming. I reached for the ignition switch and something hit the windshield with a thud and then rolled off the hood and fell to the ground. I pulled my flashlight out of the glove box and my revolver out of its holster and opened the door and got out, thinking maybe the owl I’d heard earlier had accidentally smashed into the glass. I walked around the car and pointed the light at the object by the front tire on the passenger’s side.

  It wasn’t an owl.

  It was Nathan Broadway’s head.

  My throat got tight and my chest felt like a bare-knuckle boxer was in there trying to beat his way out. I looked around and didn’t see anybody, but a few seconds later electric lights from high in the trees flooded the clearing with blinding brightness. A male voice from an amplified speaker said, “Drop your weapon, Mr. Colt.”

  “What the fuck?” I said. I wondered how he knew my name.

  “Drop it or die. Last chance.”

  If Nathan Broadway’s lifeless gray eyes hadn’t been staring up at me, I might have made a move for the shotgun. But these guys obviously weren’t screwing around. I tossed the .38 a few feet in front of me and raised my hands.

  “You win,” I said. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “We wanted Mr. Broadway to come here at eight o’clock, alone, like our letter to him unequivocally specified. Apparently he didn’t take us seriously. At least not seriously enough. Too bad.”

  Broadway had taken the note seriously enough, but I had talked him—and myself—into thinking it was a ruse to jack some valuables from his house. I felt somewhat responsible for his untimely demise, and things weren’t looking real rosy for me at the moment either.

  The voice told me to get on the ground and lace my fingers behind my head. I did that,
and a minute or so later someone put a knee on my back and cuffed my hands and blindfolded me. I heard my revolver’s hammer being cocked back, and then I heard the cylinder being rotated. He had picked up my gun and was checking to see how many cartridges were in there. It had a full load of six. I heard him ease the hammer back and stuff the gun somewhere in his pants, either in his pocket or his waistband.

  “Get up.”

  I stood. “Since you know my name,” I said, “it seems only fair that I should know yours.”

  He didn’t say anything. His breath smelled like pipe tobacco. He strapped what felt like a leather dog collar around my neck and started pulling me forward with a leash.

  “You sound like a Greg,” I said. “Is it OK if I call you Greg?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  We walked a few yards and then I heard another set of footsteps fall in behind me. We crunched through the woods and made a series of disorienting turns, and after a few minutes a car door opened and the guy behind me put his sweaty hand on the back of my neck and guided me into the backseat. The interior of the vehicle smelled like leather conditioner and Armor All, with just a hint of the aromatic tobacco I’d smelled on Greg’s breath.

  Something hard went down on the center console.

  “That his gun?” Sweaty Hands said.

  “Yeah. Stick it in the glove box for me.”

  I heard the glove compartment open and then close.

  “You guys mind telling me where we’re going?” I said, just to be saying something. I knew they weren’t going to tell me. I wondered why they hadn’t killed me already. The engine roared to life and the vehicle lurched forward.