Where is Casey?
I search through the rest of the condo wondering where Casey could be and who killed the two men.
I haven’t gotten far when Rashard rushes in, gun drawn.
—What the fuck have you done? he says.
—They were like that when I got here. Swear. But I am wondering who saved us the trouble.
—Casey?
—Not here.
—No, I mean, could she have...
I shake my head.
—Can’t imagine.
—Where is she? he asks.
—She wasn’t on the truck. God, I hope we don’t find her... If I don’t get to her in time...
—Let’s finish searching the place, then we’ll get crime scene in here and see what they can tell us.
Time passes.
Then some more.
Then some more.
I pull my phone out to see what time it is, but it’s dead.
I’m sitting on the floor in the hallway outside of the condo trying to figure out what I missed when Frank Clemmons comes out.
—I recognize that look, he says.
—Yeah? I say, pushing myself up.
—Don’t do it. You did everything you could — far more than anybody else. These things never have a happy ending.
I nod.
Crime scene techs in white suits, shoe covers, and latex gloves come in and out of the unit carrying various instruments and evidence bags.
I’m so tired, so spent, I find it difficult to hold my head up — and it’s not just fatigue, but defeat, all the tension I’ve been carrying around now dissipated, the adrenaline levels plummeted.
—Any evidence she was here? I ask.
—Somebody else was — female, blonde, probably her. Won’t know for sure until... for a while.
—Any idea what happened in there?
He shakes his head.
—Somebody shot them with a small caliber handgun, probably a .38, but beyond that...
When the techs had first arrived, they had, with Clemmons’ apologies, examined my gun and tested my hands for GSR.
—How long they been dead? I ask.
—Not long. Don’t know for sure, but —
—Could it’ve been the guy from Jade Gardens?
—He’s still in custody.
I nod and think about it some more.
—Why don’t you go home? he says. Get some rest. I’ll let you know if we turn up anything. I swear I will.
I walk to my car in a hard, slanting rain.
My clothes and hair are soaked through in seconds, but I hardly notice and don’t care.
Lightning pops all around me, thunder rumbling angrily in the dark night sky, the long-awaited storm finally unleashing its fury on Front Beach.
The same questions keep rolling around my mind — Where is Casey? What happened to her? Who killed Grantham and the other man? If not the man from Jade’s, then —
As lightning strikes a nearby transformer and the lights for several blocks go out, I realize who it is — who it has to be.
Vic Dyson.
Has to be.
Wonder if his plan all along was to put them on to her so they’d snatch her and he could take her from them. Or maybe the deal was he’d get her once Grantham was done.
Dodging drenched motorcyclists, I run to my car, and am about to get in, when I see his van parked in the back of Alvin’s, where it had been earlier in the week.
I run over and look inside.
No one’s up front, and I can’t see in the back.
With the butt of Rashard’s gun, I break the passenger side window and unlock the door.
Among the paint and supplies in the back, there are certain tools and materials that could be part of a rape kit, but no Casey, no Vic.
Running around the dark, mostly empty lot looking for them, the intermittent lightning illuminating the wet world below, I wipe raindrops from my eyes in an attempt to see.
Where can he be? Why is he out here again?
As I run back toward my car, lightning flashes across the way, exposing the old, abandoned buildings of Miracle Strip, and I think he could be hiding there.
When, between the strikes, I see the beam of a flashlight from within the park, I know it.
In the time it takes for the thought to form and finish, I’m racing across the street in a dead run.
Growing up in the area, coming to Miracle Strip Amusement Park was a huge part of my childhood summers. I’d come several times a season — with parents, grandparents, friends, youth groups — and have far more fun than at any of the much larger theme parks in Central Florida.
I was here on its final weekend, to mourn its loss, when, after forty-one years of continuous operation and over twenty million visitors, Miracle Strip was no more, and like other locals, the only thing that bothers me more than its closing is the way what’s left of it has sat languishing as the planned condos meant to go up in its place were abandoned just like the park is now.
Jumping over a fallen sawhorse roadblock, I run through the overgrown parking lot toward the giant oblong, red and yellow ENTRANCE sign with the empty blue flag poles behind it, lightning strikes exposing the weeds, bushes, and debris littering the wet asphalt.
Overhead, palm trees lining the entrance path sway in the strong wind, its force turning the raindrops into pellets.
The property is protected by a chain link fence, which won’t be difficult to climb, but not wanting to do it in the open, I veer to the left, past what’s left of the bumper cars — a square platform with a rusting sheet metal floor — and over behind the building where live musical shows were performed.
Making my way further down, I climb over a double gate near the old Log Flume, tearing my jeans and cutting a gash in my leg on a piece of rusted barbed wire.
The ride is now gone, but the cement riverbed and foundation supports are still in place. Too wide to jump, I have to wade across twelve feet of water that comes up about halfway on my shin. Now my tennis shoes are soaked through, sloshing as I make my way to the wooden structure that served as the entrance and exit of the ride.
The structure is so overgrown it looks like I’ve just discovered it in the middle of the deep woods. Jumping over the metal crowd dividers, I pass beneath where the giant paddlewheel used to be, and tromp through the spot where the cars from Route 63, the train, and the Log Flume would, at certain magical moments, intersect.
The water here is wider, and as I navigate through it, I trip over a fallen plank, landing face first in the shallow water.
Climbing up the sloping concrete, I pass overgrown gazebos and random stacks of discarded lumber, pausing for a moment next to the small Mexican Cantina building to look for the flashlight beam again. Vandals have broken all the windows of the tile and mason concession stand, and in purple spray paint written SATAN EATS HERE.
All rides removed, all that remains of the once thriving amusement park is a dozen or so mostly empty buildings. Some of the rides appear to be present because their buildings, so identified with them, still stand — the old spooky structure of The Haunted Castle, the green monster of The Abominable Snowman, the red devil of Dante’s Inferno — but they are just shells, gutted of the amusement they used to house. Colorful facades, grave markers of the bygone era of my youth.
I don’t see the flashlight beam, but in the darkness and driving rain it’s hard to see anything, and in the over-illumination of the lightning flashes there’s too much to take in.
Deciding to make a sweep of the park, I continue past a vine covered bathroom building with a huge pile of boards and blocks and large chunks of asphalt in front of it.
Beyond a broken bench and severely leaning oak tree, I come up between the entrances to Route 63, the small track car ride, and the giant igloo fronted by the monster of the Abominable Snowman.
Cars and track gone, the open red, white, and blue structure of Route 63 is graffiti-covered, its galvanized crowd dividers l
eaning and in some cases fallen, all that’s left of its sign part of an American flag and the word ROUTE.
To my right, the entrance to the igloo that is the building of the Abominable Snowman ride is in between the legs of an enormous green gorilla-looking creature that stands some thirty feet in the air. The ride long since removed, the igloo is a large, round all black room with a high ceiling.
Pulling out Rashard’s gun, I enter slowly, my back to the left wall, scraping my shoulder on a piece of exposed rebar as I do.
Darkness.
The blacker-than-black building is like a cave. I can’t see anything. He could be right next to me and I —
Lightning flashes and he’s there.
Standing across the room, pointing a gun at me.
Without hesitation, I squeeze the trigger of my gun, the explosion deafening as it bounces around the echo chamber of the enclosure.
Dropping and rolling away, I wait.
There is only the sound of rain, the rumble of thunder.
When the lightning flashes again, I can see what I thought was Vic — my reflection in a funhouse type wall mirror across the way.
I had shot myself — or my reflection — not something to bolster confidence.
I’m shocked at how easily I fired the gun, and more than a little disturbed, but don’t have time to think about it now.
Ears ringing, I run back out into the rain, realizing firing the round so foolishly had alerted him to my presence. If it’s even him. It could be a vandal, a graffiti artist, or a homeless person.
So stupid. I could’ve killed Casey or some kid here to explore what’s left of the park. Get it together. Take a breath. Slow down. Be careful.
On the chance it’s him, on the slightest possibility that he has Casey here, I could use some help searching the place. Pulling out my phone to call Rashard, I turn it back on, hoping it has enough charge left for one call, but it doesn’t even power up.
I regretted stowing Kevin and Casey’s phones away in the console of my car for safe keeping. I couldn’t have carried three phones, and I needed the numbers programmed in mine, but I now wish I had checked to see which had the most charge. Of course, I couldn’t have predicted my current predicament.
Ducking out of the rain into the open Boardwalk Fries and musical show building, I see an old tractor trailer and the only two remaining rides in the park — the biplanes and hot air balloons, which have been disassembled and are being stored here. One of the biplanes has been pulled up to the front, as if some kids intended to take it, only to discover it was too heavy.
I search the building as fast as I can, and head back out into the park, stumbling over a fire extinguisher as I do. Catching myself, attempting to keep moving without falling, a shot rings out of the storm, a muzzle flash from across the way, as a round whizzes by me and shatters the side of one of the small plastic hot air balloons.
Running toward the flash, hiding behind trees and the corner of buildings as I do, I quickly scan the area every time the lightning strikes, but the shooter isn’t visible.
Climbing through the railing, I cross over the Route 63 entrance, past the depot near the large rusting train wheels, and come out near the service road on the back side of the park beside a dilapidated greenhouse, now mostly a wooden skeleton with strips of opaque plastic flapping in the storm.
Nearby, rusting refrigerators, washing machines, hot water heaters, and lawn mowers spill out of a tin shed way too small to hold the discarded appliances.
The woods, through which the train used to run, are thick back here, and I have to decide if I should search them or head back into the park.
Regardless of where Vic is, it’s more likely he has Casey in one of the buildings of the park — can’t take her home to mother’s trailer — so I run down the service road, coming out beside the wooden tracks of the Starliner rollercoaster, the park’s first and best ride. When it was taken apart and sold to Cypress Gardens, the only thing that couldn’t be reused were the red planks and support joints, and so all that is left of the best ride to ever grace Panama City Beach is a huge stack of wooden track.
Passing it, I actually hear echoes of screaming riders, the click and clack of chain and track, and the roar and screech of wheels on rails.
Running into the large square opening where the ride was removed from Dante’s Inferno, I scan the round, black shell. Tiny lights still hang from the ceiling, air conditioning duct still runs along the back wall, part of a plywood platform for stepping up onto and off of the ride remains, but there’s nothing else.
Racing down the stairs, out of the throat, through the mouth and onto the tongue of the red devil, I pause on the wet pavement and look around.
Lightning flashes and the thirty-foot high devil head with triangular pupils, arched eyebrows, pointed ears, and a thin black, pencil mustache glows brightly behind me.
The sound of the shot is lost in the thunder, but I hear the thwack of the bullet as it splinters one of Dante’s teeth hanging above me.
Vic fires again, and this time I see the muzzle flash from the porch of The Haunted Castle.
I fire a round back and run toward him.
The Haunted Castle was an old-fashioned, two-seater car ride that bumped around a track as Day-Glo horrors appeared, then whipping the next corner would use flashing lights and loud noises to reveal automated monsters in chicken wire cages.
In the darkness, the huge, snarling skull with the oozing black sockets still glows spookily beneath the porch of the abandoned castle.
As I pass the eerie green glow of the rotating tunnel, Vic fires a round from inside and it hits me in the upper arm.
Dropping the revolver, I fall to the ground, searing pain shooting out of my shoulder.
I can’t see him, but I hear his footsteps running toward me from inside the tunnel, shooting at me as he comes.
Rounds splinter the wood floor near me as I reach for the gun. Pain explodes in my thigh.
He’s gotten me again.
And then I hear it.
It’s one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Dry fires as he continues to pull the trigger of an empty revolver. Grabbing the gun with my left hand, I roll over in excruciating pain and fire the rest of the rounds at him.
I have no idea how many times I hit him, but it’s enough to knock him down.
He falls just a few feet away from me.
I crawl over to him, grab his shoulders and shake him.
—Where is she?
He doesn’t respond.
There’s a lot of blood. Some of it’s mine, but much more of it is his.
I notice for the first time, three holes in his midsection, one of them very close to his heart.
—Where’s Casey?
He mumbles something, but I can’t make it out.
—What?
He tries to say something, but this time nothing comes out.
—Tell me, I yell. Where is she? Don’t die with this on your conscience. Don’t. Tell me now. Where is she?
He lifts his hand and I think he’s going to try to hit me, but he points toward the small, flattop green building of the original offices that used to be beneath the Starliner.
I run the length of the arcade building, the far end still bearing the purple letters of the RISING STAR STUDIO sign.
The little office building, like every other one left in the abandoned property, is overgrown and in disrepair — glass broken, walls filled with graffiti.
Only a jagged piece of hanging glass is left in the front door. I duck beneath it, as lightning illuminates Casey’s vulnerable little body on a dirty quilt spread out on the floor.
— Casey?
I say her name gently, my voice low and soft.
She is bound and gagged and semiconscious.
When she opens her eyes and attempts a weak smile up at me, I begin to weep, and I can’t remember ev
er being as happy or relieved in my entire life.
As carefully as I can, I remove her gag and begin to untie her.
—Are you okay? I ask.
She shakes her head.
—But, she says, I will be.
—Yes, you will, I say. You most certainly will. But, sorry, that was a stupid question. I meant are you hurt.
—Not too bad. Where’s — she begins, looking around, searching the darkness for monsters.
—Dead. They’re all dead. Grantham. Vic. Everyone who hurt you is dead or in custody.
—You’re bleeding, she says. Are you okay?
—I’ve never been better. Not ever.
The storm over, we limp out of what’s left of Miracle Strip in the breaking day, leaning on each other.
The morning is clean and calm, the air fresh, and I know it’s going to be a good day.
From the parking lot, I flag down a cop coming from Grantham’s crime scene at the Sterling Reef, and in moments both Rashard and Clemmons are helping us into an ambulance.
They send two, but we insist on riding together.
—Missy, Frank says to Casey, it’s no exaggeration to say that this man saved your life. He’s been ahead of everyone every step of the way.
She nods.
—I knew he’d come for me.
—He came like a son of a bitch, Rashard says.
—No dad would do any less for his daughter, I say.
She lays her head on my good shoulder and I rest my head on hers.
Two days later, I receive a two word text from Regan that reads: I’m sorry. I think a long time about what to say, not wanting to repeat the same cycle with her again.
I’m hurt and trying to work through it. I don’t want to respond in anger. If possible, I’d like to end things amicably, but for a long while I don’t know exactly how to reply.
Though there is something almost pathological about her backand-forth behavior, I honestly don’t think there’s anything malicious in her. Her attraction and desire for me, her every kindness — all seemed authentic. Still do. Even her telling me she loved me — I truly believe she meant it at the time.
Eventually, I realize what I must do and then I know what I should say.
To her two words, I reply with three of my own — the final three I ever communicate to her.
MICHAEL LISTER'S FIRST THREE SERIES NOVELS: POWER IN THE BLOOD, THE BIG GOODBYE, THUNDER BEACH Page 48
