Deep Down Dead

by Steph Broadribb

  I had to stay free to remain in the game.

  28

  I turned into the motel parking lot a little before midnight. Parked up at the far end of the car spaces, sandwiched between a yellow Jeep and the uncoupled cab of an eighteen-wheeler. Climbing out of the Mustang, I winced as my feet touched the ground. My soles were sore and blistered, and as I made my way across the lot each stride pressed dirt and grit further into my flesh. I clenched my jaw, and focused on reaching the building.

  I took the concrete steps to the second floor. The sound of rock music played from somewhere up ahead. Despite the lateness of the hour the air was sweaty-warm-unpleasant, like a fur coat in LA.

  Ahead of me, sat on the concrete floor, his naked back pressed up against the wall, was a big man with a small bottle of vodka. He held it out to me, slurring, ‘Fancy some, darlin’?’

  There wasn’t much left. ‘No, sweetie, you keep it.’

  ‘Suit yourself, bitch,’ he muttered, and slugged back the vodka neat.

  As I’d guessed earlier, Motel 68 sure wasn’t a family-friendly place. For a moment I felt relief Dakota wasn’t with me, then straightaway came guilt. Wherever they had her captive, it would be a damn sight worse than here.

  As I strode along the walkway the music grew louder. The door to the next room hung open. Two guys sat inside eating; a pizza box lay open on the floor. ‘Evening pretty lady,’ one called. ‘Want to party?’

  Guys from the paper mill I reckoned, looking for a little fun after their shift. I shook my head. ‘Some other time.’

  ‘Oh, momma, don’t leave—’

  The guy was still talking as I walked away, lengthening my stride to the end of the block. I glanced over my shoulder. Someone could have followed me from Thelma’s. I had to be ready, alert. Perhaps JT was already back at the room, waiting. I hoped so.

  I turned the corner. This block was furthest from the highway. Between the rooms and the start of the woods behind them was a large parking lot with bays way bigger than standard-sized spaces. Lines of massive rigs stood like gleaming metal dominoes beneath the floodlights.

  Beyond the rigs, the trees stood dark and still. There was no moon. No wind. Somehow that made them more creepy, foreboding. Was anyone out there, watching? Cops, Emerson’s men, the Miami Mob? I hugged my arms around me, walked faster.

  I passed room thirty-nine. Mine was just a few doors down.

  Outside room forty sat an older guy. He’d lifted a chair and side table from his room and placed it on the walkway like it was his own personal veranda. He watched me approach, dark eyes fixed on mine. His skin was deep tan and weathered, his black hair pulled back from his face in a long braid. In his right hand a cigarette burnt low against his fingers. From the scent I knew that it wasn’t pure tobacco.

  ‘Beautiful night,’ he said.

  I nodded, kept walking.

  ‘You wish Sal was with you.’

  My breath caught in my throat. I slowed my step. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You’re afraid.’

  I halted but didn’t look back. My fear spiked; my mouth went dry. Who was this man? Did he work for Emerson? Focus, I told myself. I inhaled long and slow. Counted to three. Let the breath go.

  I turned. The old guy squinted up at me. Pushing sixty, I reckoned, from the deep lines etched into his face and the grey peppering his temples. He didn’t look like anyone’s soldier. Not now, anyways. He flicked the ash from his smoke into a takeaway coffee cup. On the table, beside the cup, a small red candle burnt with a yellow flame. Beside it lay a gnarled piece of what looked like a tree root. Next to that, a knife.

  He smiled, held the joint out to me. ‘Fear has clouded your aura.’

  I shook my head, started turning away again. ‘Bullshit.’

  The old man chuckled. He took a long drag on his roll-up, exhaled. The smell of weed grew stronger. ‘No, I see it. Dark purple.’

  Great. An all-seeing pothead, just what I needed. ‘You know what, I’ve had a really long day. I don’t need this shit.’ Turning, I walked towards my room.

  The old man sighed, deep and long. ‘Why not let Sal help you?’

  Despite the heat, a shiver ran up my spine. I spun back to face him. ‘What?’

  He smiled, the lines deepening around the corners of his mouth and eyes. ‘You don’t need to feel alone, just let Sal in.’

  I frowned. I’d had way too much crazy for one day. ‘She’s dead.’

  His smile grew broader. ‘Just because someone has passed, it don’t mean they can’t guide us.’

  I met his stare, held it for a long moment. Shook my head. ‘You’re wrong,’ I said softly. ‘Dead is dead.’

  His expression changed to one of sadness. ‘You believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Suddenly cold, I hugged my arms tighter around me and strode on.

  ‘Just ask; Sal will help,’ the old man called after me.

  Closing the door to room forty-three I shut the world out. Told myself to ignore what the crazy old bastard had said. How could he know about Sal? For all I knew, his name was Sal. I couldn’t let him get to me.

  The room stayed gloomy even with the lights on. It made it seem more depressing than before. I made a quick sweep of the place, rechecking the layout and making sure I was alone. My carryall was still under the desk where I’d left it earlier. I checked the cupboard and behind the shower curtain, just to be certain. I don’t like nasty surprises and there’d been way too many of them recently.

  I locked the door and added the chain. It wouldn’t do much to prevent someone getting in, but the noise of it breaking should at least give me some warning. JT could damn well knock.

  I sank down on to the wooden chair beside the desk. It creaked, seemed a little wobbly, but held up okay. Seemed that was a pretty accurate assessment of how I felt. I stared in the mirror, noted the smudge of dirt above my right eyebrow, the rip in the shoulder of my dress, the guilty expression on my face. I glared at myself, snarled at my reflection, ‘How the hell did you let this happen? What kind of a mother are you?’

  No answer. The silence seemed claustrophobic.

  Sixteen hours had passed since they’d taken Dakota. There’d been no further message after that first warning. We’d done as they asked. Told no one, waited for instructions. Still nothing.

  Right then I felt real alone.

  On the desk, beside the small kettle, was a bottle of water. I reached for it, tried to unscrew the cap. Couldn’t. My hands shook, my fingers unable to grip. I cussed under my breath, threw the bottle on the floor and slammed my fist against the desk. I deserved the pain. But I also knew it wouldn’t ever be enough.

  What if I never got Dakota back?

  Sobs heaved through my body. My breath came in gasps, as if a barbed-wire noose was tightening around my throat, constricting the oxygen. I struggled to breathe. Stumbling forward off the chair, I fell on to the bed, gasping.

  I hugged my arms tight around my knees, shivering. Tears blurred my vision. Darkness closed in. I fought the images seeping into my mind. Couldn’t let it happen again. Couldn’t lose someone I loved.

  Could not be responsible.

  29

  I didn’t know how long I lay on the bed sobbing that way. May have been seconds, may have been hours. In the end it was the memory of a vibration in my purse as I’d raced back to the Mustang that brought me out of it.

  Standing up, I reached for my cell and poked it awake. The battery symbol was red; almost no juice left. I grabbed the charger from my go-bag and plugged it into the power. As I did, I noticed the icon for a new email was showing at the bottom of the screen. My heart thumped harder as I opened it, then slowed again. The email I’d got was from Quinn. In the subject line were five words: This might change your mind. There was no other message, only an attachment – a thirteen-page file.

  On the nightstand, the digital display of the ancient clock radio glowed 00:47. I made myself a strong coffee and started reading.

&
nbsp; The file held four separate documents.

  The first didn’t spook me any. The Face Sheet, the court-certified document that listed a defendant’s crimes, had changed. The first charge listed was assault, just as before. But a count of theft had been added to the tally. I’d done enough jobs to know that wasn’t unusual; oftentimes charges get added to the Face Sheet after bail’s been set and paid. Not usually this long after, sure. But perhaps Quinn hadn’t kept his paperwork as tight as he’d ought to. I recalled our conversation in the office. I’d guessed the rub when I took the job. A high bounty on a simple assault, at an amusement park or no, was always likely to gather more charges.

  The second part of the file seemed to be a chunk of the police file on JT’s arrest: scanned handwritten notes from the arresting officer’s scratchpad; typed file notes on progress from the police log. I wondered how Quinn had gotten a hold of it.

  I paused, took a large mouthful of coffee, and continued reading. Three lines in I got my first surprise.

  Quinn had said the ‘minor incident’ JT was charged with involved no guns.

  Not true.

  The file said JT had been carrying two Colts. Weird. I’d never seen him carry anything other than a Glock, and going tooled up into an amusement park, well that didn’t sound like JT’s style at all.

  Had Quinn deliberately misled me? He was always minded to protect me from the more dangerous jobs, and given he knew I might be taking Dakota, I doubted he’d have sent me if he’d known. Mind you, Quinn would be in a whole heap of trouble if JT wasn’t back for the summary judgement and CF Bonds forfeited the bond. A hundred thousand dollars was one hell of an incentive. Maybe he had lied.

  I flicked through the details of the assault. Three men were involved: two security guards, and the amusement park owner, Randall Emerson. His name was already burnt into my brain. According to the police report, JT had broken Emerson’s arm in three places and threatened to shoot him in the head. But was it true?

  Given his cryptic email, I guessed that Quinn thought so. I scrolled through the document, searching for Emerson’s statement. Short and economical on words, it stated that a man, later named as Robert James Tate, had been seen acting suspiciously in the Reindeer Street shopping area by one of Winter Wonderland’s security advisors. When the security advisor had approached him, Tate had dropped a Percy Penguin premium Christmas bauble, handpainted, with a retail value of a hundred and ninety-two dollars, and run. Suspecting Tate of attempted theft, the security advisor had pursued him, with the assistance of a second member of the security team.

  Tate had taken a narrow passage between two of the park’s attractions and trapped himself in a dead end. The file said that when they caught up with him he’d pulled two firearms. Emerson stated that he had witnessed the altercation while touring the park as part of his regular visit schedule, as owner of DreamWorld Inc. Tate had attacked Emerson and threatened to kill him if the security guards came closer. Emerson said he was terrified. Firearms were not permitted in the amusement park, and there were metal detectors on the arrival gates; he himself was unarmed. Tate hit him, and put a gun to his head.

  That didn’t work for me. JT threatening to shoot an unarmed man over a misdemeanour theft made no kind of sense. The file gave no evidence of any shots being fired, or that the Winter Wonderland staff carried weapons. A copy of the amusement park’s operating policy confirmed what Emerson had said about firearms not being permitted onsite by anyone – employee or visitor.

  Apart from that, JT’s version of events suggested this whole police report was a crock of shit. He’d told me his reason for going to Winter Wonderland was to speak to Emerson. That he’d been looking into something personal. Whatever it was, Emerson didn’t mention it in the witness statement. From what he’d said it seemed nothing had been said between them, that JT had attacked him unprovoked, and then been taken down when more security advisors arrived on the scene and shot him with a tranq dart. I noted that the employee who’d pulled the trigger had initially been taken into custody too, before being released a couple of hours later with no charge.

  That’s where things got even weirder.

  When I’d first taken the case, Quinn told me the reason JT’s bail was high was because the incident had occurred at an amusement park. Florida protects its major tourist attractions by coming down hard on the perpetrators, cleaning up the mess real quiet and keeping it out of the papers. That made sense; nothing bad can ever be reported as happening in the places where dreams come true. But in this case it seemed Randall Emerson didn’t want JT to be charged. A file note detailed how Emerson had initially resisted giving a statement.

  I stared at the screen of my cell. What was I missing here?

  My mind felt sluggish. One question repeated in my mind: why would Emerson not want JT to face charges? I read back through the police file. I didn’t believe the half of it. Someone had finessed the file after the fact, concocted a nice little story to explain away the incident at Winter Wonderland And it was completely plausible, just so long as you didn’t know JT.

  In spite of everything, or perhaps because of it, my money was on JT having truth on his side. Problem was, my beliefs didn’t matter squat. All that would matter was how the jury saw things, and they didn’t know him the way I did. They hadn’t faced their fears with him. They weren’t there the night JT had my back. If they had been, then my life would have played out real different.

  That was when it hit me. The judge and jury, the reporters and the publicity, they were the real reason why Emerson didn’t want to press charges. Had to be. He didn’t want JT to have a platform to tell his version of events and for the truth to come out. JT might not have had proof, but him speaking out about the horrors going on in the parks was too much of a threat. Emerson had wanted JT released so they could eliminate the risk of him talking real fast. But things hadn’t worked out that way.

  Trying not to let myself wonder about this person who’d become so important to JT, I took another gulp of coffee. It’d gotten cold, but the caffeine hit was still good. I needed it. I’d lost track of the hours I’d been awake, but I reckoned I’d be near on my second lap of the clock. Didn’t matter. Not until I had Dakota safe.

  The third document I did not like, but I believed. It looked like a PDF copy of a police database search: a conviction record for Robert James Tate. I stared at the text. It seemed to jump around before my eyes. Shit. This wasn’t JT’s first time being arrested. He’d been up on a previous assault charge: a misdemeanour, for drunken fighting in a bar three years before.

  He had changed. That was something I’d never have reckoned on him doing. I mean fighting, sure; but because he was drunk? Never. Still, it was the next line of detail that shocked me most.

  I held the cell phone closer. Read the details again.

  ‘You’ve gotta be shitting me,’ I said out loud.

  I’d read it right the first time. JT had been arrested at a bar in Winchester, West Virginia. The guy he’d battered was one Merv Dalton. The charge had stood. JT pleaded guilty.

  His bounty-hunting licence had been pulled for twelve months, and he’d done thirty hours’ community service at a children’s home in Savannah. That’d been the end of it. But it didn’t tell me why the fight had happened.

  Still, the why of Quinn sending me the file was clear enough; he wanted me to give JT up and get the hell away from the case. Problem was, he didn’t know the half of what was going on: not about Dakota, or Scott, or Emerson. There was no way that I could back away with my hands up now. I had to follow the trail to Dakota. Whatever it took.

  It was the final document, a one-page lie that convinced me beyond doubt that JT had been set up. Quinn had highlighted the text in yellow. It detailed a new warrant, and four new charges, one aggravated assault and three counts of homicide: Merv Dalton, Gunner, and his two boys. All found at the ranch in Yellow Spring.

  I scanned the details. Felt sicker and sicker. They’d gotten f
orensic evidence that put JT right there at the farmhouse with his fist in Gunner’s face: plenty of DNA, and a whole marathon of fingerprints. Not one mention of me.

  Instead there were three dead bodies and a fugitive’s name in the frame. But, no matter what the file said had happened, I knew it wasn’t right. I’d been there, I knew the truth, and besides, JT would never shoot an unarmed man. My mentor had always been real strict on his eighth rule: Force only as necessity, never for punishment. JT lived that shit. I was the one who failed to obey.

  30

  I woke with a jolt, stiff from falling asleep cramped-up in the chair and nauseous from too little rest. The grey light shining through the gap in the drapes told me it was morning. I scanned the room. The bed hadn’t been slept in. The door was still locked, the security chain connected. JT hadn’t come back. He hadn’t knocked or banged on the door. We’d made a promise: if we got split up then we’d meet back at the motel. He had not kept his word. I didn’t want to think on what that meant.

  My cell was still in my hand. I stared at the cracked, blackened screen and remembered the final page of Quinn’s file, the arrest warrant for multiple homicide. The file was wrong. JT had been set up, no doubt.

  Gunner and his boys had been breathing when we’d left. Merv hadn’t even shown. Whoever killed them did it after we’d gone and made it look like JT was responsible. It had to be Emerson’s boys. Maybe they’d reckoned JT had escaped and framing him would help flush him out, make him easier to find. Maybe they’d not figured on him having been caught by a bounty hunter.

  I stood and stretched, trying to ease the tension in my shoulders. Didn’t help none. I felt weary deep to my bones: teeth aching, body feeble, mind scattered. In energy credits, I was broke. Beat.