Black Horizon

by James Grippando

  “Don’t be afraid to call me or Theo anytime, for any reason.”

  She checked the tray by the sink, where she kept her makeup and phone charger. Her phone wasn’t there. She’d left it on the dresser in the bedroom.

  “Damn it!”

  Tears came, and she suddenly found herself sitting on the bathroom floor, knees drawn up to her chin, arms wrapped tightly around her shins. For five days she’d pretended that a lawsuit could give her a reason to get up in the morning, could help her make sense of what had happened to Rafael. Now, afraid to open the bathroom door, unable to get up off the floor, crying seemed like the only thing to do.

  Get up and get your phone. Now.

  Bianca drew a breath, wiped her tears into her terrycloth sleeve, and pushed herself up from the cold linoleum. Her hand was shaking as she reached for the knob, but she took a deep breath and opened the door.

  It slammed open, knocking her backward, and the rest was a blur. A man wearing a rubber Halloween mask pushed his way on top of her. In a split second she was turned around, facedown on the linoleum. Her attacker was sitting on her kidneys, his huge hand covering her mouth before she could scream.

  “Don’t fight.”

  He was speaking Spanish, but it was thick and slurred. It made her think of the way Jack had described his attacker: Like he had cotton in his mouth.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she said. She was pinned beneath him, unable to move. Fighting was not an option. The hand over her mouth and the crushing weight of his rock-solid body in the small of her back made it difficult just to breathe.

  “I’m going to take my hand away now,” he said, still speaking Spanish. “Scream and you die. Look into my eyes and you die. Understand?”

  A part of her wanted to die, the part that dreaded what was about to happen, but she was too frightened to resist. She nodded.

  His hand slipped away from her mouth. “I have something for you,” he said.

  Bianca cringed, and the sound she uttered was completely involuntary.

  “Quiet!”

  Bianca struggled to get control of her herself. She prayed for her roommate to walk through the front door, home early from work, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She prayed for strength.

  “I thought you’d want these,” the man said.

  Her head was cocked sideways, her right cheek pressed to the linoleum, and a stack of papers suddenly landed just a few inches away from the tip of her nose.

  He grabbed her by the wet hair, lifting her head up from the floor. “Read.”

  The light was still on, but it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Slowly, the handwriting came into focus. She recognized it, and she didn’t have to read beyond the salutation to realize what she was seeing.

  Querida Josefina, it read. Dear Josefina.

  “Your lawyer left these in Cuba,” he said. “I want you to give them to him.”

  It was all too bizarre, and Bianca was barely able to comprehend. She had no doubt that these were the missing letters from Rafael, and she could only assume that this man was the thief Jack had told her about. But she had no idea how or why he had come all the way from Cuba to give the letters to her.

  “Will you do that for me, Bianca?”

  She hesitated—not out of resistance, but because she was trying to make sense of it.

  He jerked her head back harder, yanking on her hair. “Will you?”

  She nodded quickly.

  “Good,” he said, pushing her face into the floor.

  She lay still, hoping it was over. Hope evaporated as she felt him lean forward, felt his breath on the back of her neck.

  “I have something else for you,” he said in a harsh whisper, chilled by the thickness of his words from the cotton or whatever it was in his mouth.

  His hand was suddenly right in front of her face. He cocked his thumb and a six-inch blade popped from his fist. The shiny steel switchblade glistened in the bathroom light. Slowly, it came toward her. Bianca closed her eyes tightly, bracing herself. She felt the pointed tip of the blade on her upper lip. She tried to pull away, but his left hand held her head in place, pressed to the floor. It felt like a needle puncturing her lip, more terrifying than painful. A trickle of blood entered her mouth, warm and salty.

  “Taste it,” he whispered, breathing onto the back of her neck. “Taste the blood of a Cuban whore.”

  Chapter 31

  On Wednesday, Jack went for a morning run along the waterfront. He didn’t get far.

  Oil.

  It was coming ashore. Not in quantities large enough for Jack to see birds floundering and beaches blackened. But to the south, toward Truman Annex, disaster relief was under way. Cleanup crews were moving into position, ready to rake and scrub the shoreline, workers on the frontline wearing protective hazmat suits. Coast Guard vessels and volunteer shrimp boats tended to the offshore booms and skimmers. Helicopters—both media and relief teams—buzzed overhead to assess the impact.

  Jack stopped at the police barricade.

  “Beach is closed,” the cop told him.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Not as bad as it will be. Much worse on Ballast Key.”

  Ballast was privately owned, the real “southernmost point” in the continental United States.

  Onlookers continued to gather at the barricade, some squeezing in beside him, others pushing forward from behind. Oil was the star, and anyone with a smartphone was the paparazzi. An old woman beside Jack was holding back tears. “Never thought I’d live to see this,” she said in a voice that quaked. “And this is what they call a glancing blow.”

  “That’s what I heard, too,” said Jack. “It’s headed more toward the middle keys.”

  “I grew up snorkeling in Marathon. Say good-bye for good to Pickle Reef, Alligator Reef. All of it.”

  The cop urged everyone to go home, but few listened.

  Jack’s cell rang. It was Rick, Bianca’s boss. Jack stepped away from the barricade and found a quiet spot beneath a palm tree.

  “Don’t mean to stick my nose where it don’t belong,” said Rick, “but did everything go okay at the court hearing yesterday?”

  “Fine,” said Jack, seeing no need to say more.

  “I only ask because Bianca didn’t show up for work last night.”

  “She didn’t?”

  “Nope. Didn’t answer her cell, either.”

  Jack was getting concerned. “Have you tried her this morning?”

  “I just did. Still no answer. I was hoping that she was having a meeting with you or something.”

  His concern was turning to worry. He checked his watch. A little after eight. “Actually, we were supposed to meet for breakfast at nine-thirty. Let me call her.”

  Jack hung up and speed-dialed Bianca. No answer. He tucked his iPhone back into the arm clip, thinking. Missed work. Didn’t answer her cell. If not for what had just happened to him in Cuba, Jack might have blown it off as no big deal, just a confused young woman in need of some time to herself. But his own advice to his client was coming back to him: We all need to be a little more careful.

  Jack hurried to the sidewalk and ran two blocks back to his hotel. The taxi stand at the valet was without taxis. Jack asked the attendant to call one, but the guy made a face, as if Jack were visiting from another planet.

  “Streets are closed. Emergency vehicles only.”

  Jack plugged Bianca’s address into his iPhone. Mastic Mobile Home Park was less than a half mile to the north, and the map showed him the way. It was an easy run up mostly residential streets. As Jack drew closer, he ran with a growing sense of urgency, flying past a bank, the Ocean Breeze Inn. His heart was pounding as he reached the entrance to the mobile home park. His GPS wasn’t precise enough to lead him to Bianca’s front door. The lot numbers, hand painted on conch shells and fish-shaped mailboxes, guided him in the right direction. He knocked on her front door.

  No one answered. He dialed her cell again, but it went
to her voice mail. He knocked harder on the metal door.

  It opened. A young woman wiped sleep from her eyes.

  “Are you Bianca’s roommate?”

  “Yeah,” she said, grumbling. “Who are you?”

  “Jack, her lawyer. Is she here?”

  “No idea. I assume she is. I got home at three and went straight to sleep, until you woke me up.”

  “Can you check?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to trouble you, but it’s important that I talk to her, and she’s not answering her phone.”

  She breathed a heavy sigh, as if Jack had just asked her to singlehandedly clean up the oil spill. “Okay, I’ll check.”

  Jack waited outside the open door—until he heard the scream.

  Jack raced inside and through the trailer’s tiny living room. Bianca’s roommate was standing in the narrow hallway outside Bianca’s bathroom. One hand covered her mouth. With the other, she pointed. Jack stopped in the doorway and looked inside the bathroom.

  No Bianca, but something was smeared across the mirror over the sink.

  “Is that blood?” she asked.

  Jack ran to Bianca’s bedroom. “Bianca!”

  He checked inside the closet, beneath the covers, under the bed. Still no Bianca. He rushed back to the bathroom. Bianca’s roommate was still in the hallway, but as far away from the bathroom as she could stand, her back pressed to the wall, her whole body shaking.

  “Please don’t tell me that’s blood.”

  Cautiously, Jack entered the bathroom and stepped closer to the mirror. It wasn’t a splatter or random smear. It was a message—written in blood. Just two words:

  DROP IT.

  “Drop what?” she asked.

  Jack dialed 911. “The case,” he said.

  Chapter 32

  Jack knocked on one trailer door after another.

  Not a single one of Bianca’s neighbors had seen or heard anything. By the time the first responder arrived from the sheriff’s department, Jack had hit every mobile home in the entire park, and he’d rounded up a dozen volunteers to help search for clues of any nature. The most important thing, he kept telling himself, was to move fast and remain determined to find Bianca alive.

  “Are you the person who called nine-one-one?” the deputy asked.

  Jack confirmed that he was. Two more squad cars pulled up. The first responder debriefed Jack quickly, and two deputies went inside. A ring of yellow police tape encircled the lot, and a third deputy escorted Jack outside the perimeter, where he took Jack’s formal statement. In five minutes, Bianca’s trailer and the area around it was an active crime scene. The main gravel road through the park was blocked off by squad cars from the Monroe County Sherriff’s Department, orange and yellow beacons swirling. Uniformed deputies, crime-scene investigators, and a pair of seasoned detectives were entering and leaving at the direction of the deputy posted at the perimeter.

  Jack spotted Bianca’s boss rushing toward him. He had a stack of papers with him. Rick’s Key West Café kept photo IDs on file for all its employees, and Jack had asked Rick to print flyers with Bianca’s picture.

  “How’s this?” asked Rick, breathing heavily from the run.

  “Perfect,” said Jack. “Keep making color copies all morning. Get as many people as you can to pass them out all over town.”

  “You got it.”

  “And let’s get it going viral on Facebook and whatever social media we can. Bianca’s roommate should be able to help with that.”

  “I know some Facebook junkies, too,” said Rick.

  A media van pulled up, and Jack seized the opportunity. He took a flyer from Rick and went straight to the reporter and her cameraman.

  “Her name is Bianca Lopez and she’s gone missing,” said Jack. “We need help getting her photo on the air as quickly as possible.”

  Two more media vans pulled up, and Jack was on a roll. He hit all three—wham, bam, wham. He had people all over town distributing flyers and getting the word out. He had Bianca’s roommate working social media. He had the FBI on alert for a possible kidnapping. He felt real positive energy—for about forty-five minutes.

  And then it started to fade.

  He was still waiting on an update from the FBI. One by one, squad cars were leaving the trailer park, and Jack was close enough to hear the radio calls. Their redeployment was all about the oil spill; they weren’t going out to look for Bianca. It was the same with the media. Based on the conversations Jack had overheard on the grounds, most of the reporters were pretty annoyed about being pulled from the spill to cover a missing cocktail waitress. Neighbors watched the crime scene with some interest, but they, too, seemed distracted by the helicopters in the air and other trappings of the bigger story around them.

  Jack ducked under the police tape and went to the lead detective, Sam Holiday.

  “Excuse me,” said Jack, “but exactly what is being done to find Bianca Lopez?”

  Holiday was tapping out an e-mail on his smartphone, never looking at Jack. “Everything possible.”

  “Look, I know there’s an oil spill, and I understand you’re busy. But a young woman has gone missing.”

  “We’re on it,” said Holiday.

  “It honestly doesn’t look that way.”

  Finally, Holiday looked up from his phone, peering out over the top of his reading glasses. “We’re on it,” he said coolly. “Now, if you would, sir: please step back. You’re on my crime scene.”

  Jack didn’t move immediately, but finally he turned and walked slowly to a place just outside the perimeter. The detective was in charge, local enforcement was overwhelmed, and Jack didn’t have time to turn Sam Holiday into his best friend in law enforcement. This was a bad situation within a bad situation. Oil-containment buoys on the ocean, barricades along the shoreline, and a crime scene at the mobile-home park. Key West, Swyteck style, was concentric circles of disaster.

  Jack’s iPhone vibrated with an incoming call. He checked the number, raised his eyes to the heavens, and said, “Thank you.” It was Andie.

  “You must have ESP,” said Jack.

  “No, CNN. They broke away from spill coverage to do two minutes on it. I’m so sorry, Jack.”

  Jack gripped the phone, alarmed. “Do you mean ‘sorry’ as in Bianca’s no longer with us? Because the last I heard, she’d gone missing. Nothing more than that.”

  “No, that’s the status I have, too. The CNN piece was all about the active search.”

  “Not sure how active it is. If it’s not about the spill, law enforcement has it on the back burner down here. No one has seen or heard from Bianca in over eighteen hours, and we’re losing precious time.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “Ya think?” he said, facetious.

  “I’ll call the field office right now.”

  “Agent Linton interviewed me at the airport when I got back from Cuba.”

  “He’s a good point person. I’ll make sure he calls you.”

  “You’re the best. Thanks. So when can I see you? We have a honeymoon to finish.”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  A follow-up for something more specific would have been normal, but nothing was normal about marriage and undercover work.

  “I have an ultrasound at eight weeks. We’ll see the little heartbeat.”

  “And his enormous penis.”

  “That’s at sixteen weeks. And anyway, I’m feeling it’s a girl.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “I’ll call you before then. But I’m following up with the field office right now, so Linton or someone else should get back to you about Bianca right away.”

  “Thanks. Love you.”

  “Me, too.”

  Jack hung up, feeling better on a lot of levels.

  “Hey, Swyteck!”

  Detective Holiday was fast coming toward him. Jack wasn’t sure how to read the expression on the detective’s face, but there was p
lenty of urgency in his voice.

  “They found your client,” he said.

  Chapter 33

  For the second time in as many days, Jack was in the emergency room. The good news was that “found your client” meant found alive. Bianca was in the hands of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Crimes Against Persons Unit, and a victim’s advocate pulled Jack aside the moment he arrived.

  “She denies any sexual assault,” said the counselor, “and thankfully the physical examination backs her up on that. Only physical injury appears to be a cut lip. Just one stitch required.”

  Charlene Simmons worked out of Marathon, serving victims of violent crimes from Key West to Key Largo. She’d seen it all—rape, abuse, stalking, domestic violence, sex trafficking, adults, adolescents, children, straight, gay, male, female. Two decades of experience didn’t make it routine. Jack could see the compassion in her eyes.

  “That’s good news.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But the fear and threat of sexual assault can be almost as traumatizing as the real thing.”

  “I understand.”

  “Bianca asked to see you alone. But you need to be very sensitive. Be a good listener. Don’t ask questions that might bring on shame or embarrassment, but don’t shut her down if she needs to open up. I’ll be right outside the door if you need me.”

  “Okay, got it.”

  Jack took a deep breath. He wasn’t without experience in talking to victims, but this was going to be a tough one. Guilt was kicking in. The FBI had convinced him that, even under the new travel rules for Cuban nationals, the violence against him in Havana was unlikely to follow him back to the states. But his instincts were rarely wrong.

  Should have hired a bodyguard.

  Jack opened the door and went inside. Bianca was seated on the edge of an examination table, shoulders slumped. The room was noticeably colder than the hallway, and Bianca was wrapped in a hospital blanket. Jack closed the door quietly and walked toward the table. There was a chair in the room, but he stood facing her, waiting for her to look up. She didn’t.

  “Hi,” she said softly.