Florida Son

by W. J. Costello

  Yet most of the time they use what members of the law-enforcement community refer to as “snitches, bitches, phones, and riches.”

  Snitches are often helpful in locating fugitives. Ex-girlfriends and ex-wives make the best snitches. Especially if they were spurned and abused. Informing on their former lovers enables them to get even.

  Fugitives need ways to communicate. So they use phones. When they do that they show up on the grid and it becomes possible to find them.

  Fugitives also need money. So they make transactions. They may use a credit card. They may take cash out of an ATM. These transactions leave a money trail. Finding fugitives is often a matter of following the money trail.

  “Take a guess,” Marsha said to me.

  “You want me to guess which guy you located?”

  “Yeah. Take a guess.”

  “Julie’s brother?”

  “Nope. The other guy.”

  “Julie’s ex-husband.”

  “That’s the one.”

  CHAPTER 23

  I DIDN’T WANT to involve anybody from the Tampa Police Department. Including Detective Woods. Not yet at least. First I wanted to check out the lead for myself.

  The Tampa Police Department had had five years in which to find Julie’s ex-husband. It could embarrass them if I found him in only a matter of days. Especially since the address I had for him was only six blocks from police headquarters.

  I pulled up to the address and parked under a streetlight. I was armed and ready.

  My gun of choice is the forty-caliber Glock. I own two of them. One is a Glock Twenty-two and I carry it in a belt holster. The other is a Glock Twenty-seven and I carry it in an ankle holster.

  I make time to keep my shooting skills sharp. It is an investment that always pays off when the moment of truth arrives.

  “I hope that bastard is in there,” Julie said, and got off the motorcycle. “His ass is going to jail.”

  “You sure you don’t want to wait out here?” I said. “Could be dangerous.”

  “What—and miss the show? I don’t think so.”

  The apartment building soared at least thirty stories into the Tampa skyline. Entrance required a stop at the reception desk. The guard was friendlier and livelier than most guards, but that didn’t mean he was friendly and lively.

  Julie’s eyes glittered as she watched the elevator lights.

  The view from the twenty-sixth floor would probably be spectacular. I could picture it. In my mind’s eye I saw the panoramic view of shrimp boats tied up beside restaurants, skyscrapers jammed on top of each other, pedestrians scuttling along antlike.

  Julie followed me into a hallway with plush burgundy carpeting and we walked halfway down it.

  “Okay, Julie. Here’s Heath’s door. I need you to go stand over there so that you’re out of the line of fire. Soon as I get the cuffs on him you can come on in. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  There are many ways to force open a door.

  You can pry it open. Prying tools include crowbars, Halligan tools, Hux bars, pry bars. But my favorite is the hydraulic-powered rabbit tool. A rabbit tool weights only eleven pounds but it can apply eight thousand pounds of spreading power. You wedge it into the space between door and frame and then you pump it until the door opens.

  You can cut open a door. Cutting tools include axes, bolt cutters, cutting torches, power saws.

  You can use brute force to open a door. Striking tools include battering rams, flat-head axes, hammers, sledgehammers.

  All of these tools come in handy when you want to force open a door. But I didn’t need any of them. I had a better tool:

  My fist.

  I knocked on the door.

  Then I reached into my duffel bag and took out a firefighter’s helmet and a firefighter’s coat. I put them on.

  I decided to leave the rubber boots in the duffel bag. I didn’t need them and I didn’t want to wear them. Why? Two reasons: One, my feet wouldn’t be visible through the peephole in the door. Two, rubber boots make my feet blister.

  My fist pounded the door.

  “Fire Marshal! Open up!”

  I stepped back to where I could be seen through the peephole.

  A few moments passed.

  The peephole got dark.

  “Whattaya want?” a voice yelled from the other side of the door.

  “You need to get out. We’re clearing the building. There’s a three-alarm fire upstairs. We need to get you out right now. Let’s go.”

  A pause.

  “I don’t hear no fire alarm.”

  “Alarm system’s broken. That’s why we’re knocking on doors.”

  Another pause.

  “All right, I’m comin out. Gimme a minute to get dressed.”

  “Better make it snappy.”

  “All right all right all right. Lemme get my freakin pants on, willya. You want me to come out buck naked? How’m I gonna look runnin down the steps with just my socks on?”

  “Let’s go.”

  I was a convincing fire marshal. My act was good. I liked it.

  I stepped out of sight of the peephole and stood waiting.

  The hook was set. The guy had taken the bait. Now all I had to do was reel him in. Until you get the fish in the boat you never really know what you have.

  Halfway down the hallway Julie peered around a corner. I could imagine how she felt. Her ex-husband had been off the grid for over five years. He had disappeared at the same time as their son. Logic would dictate that he was the abductor. Julie must have wanted him dead.

  There were sounds behind the door.

  A bolt clicked.

  I pulled my Glock, pointed it at the door.

  The door opened a few inches.

  A chain kept it from opening any farther.

  I stepped back and raised my foot and kicked the door. My foot struck with enough force to tear the chain loose from the wood.

  In a matter of seconds I had him tackled and cuffed.

  “The hell you doing?” he shouted. “What is this? For Christ sake take it easy. What the hell kind of fire marshal are you anyway?”

  “Shut up.”

  I rolled him over onto his back.

  Julie stormed into the apartment and took one look at the guy.

  “That’s not Heath,” she said.

  CHAPTER 24

  HIS WALLET CONTAINED three forms of identification: a credit card, a Florida driver’s license, a Social Security card. All three had Heath’s full name on them. But the photo on the driver’s license wasn’t of Heath. It was of the cuffed guy on the floor.

  “Julie, come take a look at these IDs. Look at the date of birth and the Social Security number on them. Let me know if they’re the same as Heath’s.”

  “They are the same,” she said, and handed the IDs back to me.

  I stared down at the guy.

  “These IDs don’t belong to you. So who the hell are you?”

  “Well if you’re the fire marshal, then I’m the chief of police.”

  He wore the smile of a hyena.

  “Wipe that smile off your face.”

  “What’re you, a cop?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Show me your credentials.”

  I waggled my gun at him.

  “Yeah, you’re a cop all right. Only a cop would pull some bullshit like that. I knew I smelled bacon when you came in here.”

  “The rat’s acute sense of smell.”

  “Okay, let’s save it for the Improv, please.”

  I sat him up.

  “These IDs I found in your wallet? They belong to her ex-husband. Cops have been trying to find him for years.”

  “So what?”

  “So that could be a problem for you down the road.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “You want to tell me where you got the IDs?”

  “I don’t have to tell you nothin.”

  “I agree.”


  “You do?”

  “Sure. You can tell the cops instead.”

  “Cops? I thought you were a cop.”

  “Think again.”

  “What’m I supposed to tell the cops?”

  “Identity theft’s a crime. You don’t tell me what I want to know, I phone the cops and they come get you. Your choice.”

  “You blackmailin me?”

  “I’m using leverage.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Not much.”

  He made a face.

  I took out my phone and began to dial a number.

  “All right all right all right,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ll tell you what you wanna know. Okay? Satisfied?”

  “Where’d you get these IDs?”

  I watched his face. His first reaction would tell me everything.

  I had learned how to read body language when I worked for the U.S. Marshals Service. My training had taught me how to detect a lie.

  The key is to watch for small facial gestures. A small smile. A small frown. A small whatever.

  You look for these small facial gestures during the first microseconds of a person’s reaction to either a question or a statement. This initial response reveals a person’s true feelings.

  You have to be alert to spot the small facial gesture. You can easily miss it. It will last for only a fraction of a second before the person’s conscious mind seizes control and instructs the subconscious mind to project a more appropriate facial gesture.

  My eyes studied the guy as I waited for his answer.

  “I bought the IDs from a place in New York City.”

  His initial response showed honesty. He was telling the truth.

  “You got an address for this place?”

  He gave it to me. I wrote it down.

  “What kind of place is it?”

  “They provide IDs for all kinds of people. People on the run. Illegal immigrants. You name it. And we ain’t talkin bout no fake IDs. No way. They provide real IDs from real people. What they do, they find desperate people. You know, people with money problems. And they give em some money in exchange for their Social Security numbers.”

  “These people don’t need their own Social Security numbers?” Julie said.

  “Not really. Usually they’re crackheads, junkies, bums, winos, hookers. People like that. They got no use for Social Security numbers. In fact some of em got no use for any ID at all. So they sell em. Use the money to buy dope or whatever.”

  “Maybe Heath did that,” Julie said. “Maybe he sold his Social Security number and bought a new one. And maybe he did the same thing for Max. I bet he did.”

  “Or maybe your ex-husband’s dead,” the guy said. “They buy the Social Security numbers of dead people too.”

  “How can dead people sell their own Social Security numbers? They’re dead. They can’t sell anything.”

  “But their relatives can.”

  “You think my ex-husband is dead?”

  “I got no idea, lady. I’m just tellin you how the business works.”

  “When’d you buy the IDs?” I said.

  “Three or four months ago. Somethin like that.”

  I uncuffed him and helped him to his feet.

  He stood rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had chafed.

  “Guess that means we’re done here, huh? You ain’t gonna call the cops on me, are you? That was the deal, right?”

  “Let’s go, Julie,” I said.

  We started for the door.

  “Hey,” the guy said from behind us. “You forget somethin?”

  I turned and looked at him.

  “Like what?”

  “You forgot to gimme back my IDs.”

  “They’re not your IDs,” I said, and we left.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE TWO FAMILIES were at it again. Their constant feuding reminded me of the Hatfields and the McCoys.

  I stepped out of my RV to hear what the argument was about this time. They paid no attention to me at all. They stood eyeing each other like mongoose and snake. I felt as if I were watching the Discovery Channel.

  “I got a summons to appear in court,” Mr. Neat said.

  “I know,” Mr. Messy said.

  Mrs. Neat stood beside her husband with her arms folded and Mrs. Messy stood beside her husband with a scowl on her face. Junior Messy peered out the window of the ratty-looking Montana fifth-wheel trailer.

  “This some kind of joke?” Mr. Neat said.

  “No joke,” Mr. Messy said.

  “You filed a lawsuit against me and my wife?”

  “Told you I would.”

  “Well we’ll file a countersuit.”

  “For what?”

  “On account of your boy trespassin on our property and attackin our dog.”

  “That’s crazy. Nobody attacked your dog. My son has medical injuries and your dog doesn’t even have a scratch on him. Who’s going to believe he attacked your dog?”

  “The judge will.”

  I had heard enough. I climbed back into my RV and shut the door and turned up the volume on the radio until the music of Erroll Garner drowned out the arguing voices.

  I sank into the sofa.

  “Rip, come here. I want you to see something on my laptop.”

  “What is it, Julie?”

  “Just get up and come here.”

  I frowned and grunted to my feet.

  She spun her laptop around on the dinette table. I sat down beside her and looked at the screen. It showed the Facebook profile page of Kirsten Love.

  “Something new on there?”

  “There is,” Julie said. “It’s a link to a website.”

  “Click it.”

  “I’m afraid to.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “What if it’s another creepy video? I’m not so sure I could stand to watch another one. The last one gave me nightmares.”

  “If you don’t check it out, you’ll be up all night wondering.”

  She clicked the link.

  A newspaper article came up. An old article from the Tampa Bay Times. The headline said SURVIVOR STRUGGLES FOR NORMALCY IN AFTERMATH OF CROWLEY HOUSE HORROR.

  Two photos accompanied the article.

  One photo showed the single-family house where Toddler Town Day Care was now located. It was an old photo. It had been taken maybe twenty or thirty years before. The Crowley family had been living there at the time. The caption under the photo said THE CROWLEY HOUSE OF HORRORS.

  The house looked the same then as it did now. It used to look like a happy and peaceful house and it still looked like a happy and peaceful house. But back then it had been anything but that.

  The other photo showed a thirty-something woman with a black bar over her eyes. The caption under the photo identified the woman as Christine Crowley and said that she and her brother had spent a decade of their lives chained to a pole in the basement of their family home.

  “It’s an article about the Crowleys,” Julie said. “What does this have to do with Max?”

  “Maybe nothing.”

  “Kirsten Love put a link to this article on her Facebook profile page. I think she wanted me to see it. But why?”

  “Let’s read the article and find out.”

  The first thing I noticed was that the article had been published three months before. The date of publication was significant: It had been the twentieth anniversary of the day when the Crowley children had escaped from the home of their abusive parents.

  Hmm. I thought about that. Two things on Kirsten Love’s Facebook profile page were connected to anniversaries: one, the video of a boy’s hands communicating in sign language, and two, the link to the article in the Tampa Bay Times.

  Two different anniversaries. Were they connected somehow?

  Maybe it was just a coincidence. Another coincidence? They were beginning to stack up like pancakes.

  There had to be a logical explanation.<
br />
  Like what? What possible explanation could there be?

  I frowned. I rubbed my head.

  Okay, Rip, just read the article.

  I read some more.

  According to the article the two children were now in their early thirties. Christine Crowley currently worked as a psychiatrist in Orlando. She told the Times reporter she had no idea how to locate her own brother. She hadn’t seen him in over a decade. She had heard rumors he had a wife and a son.

  “Are you finished reading the article, Rip?”

  “I am.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m wondering if there’s a connection between Max and the Crowleys. I mean other than the obvious one.”

  “Which is?”

  “The fact that Max went to day care in the same house where the Crowleys used to live.”

  “You know what’s odd? We were there just yesterday. Then today Kirsten Love puts a link to this article on her Facebook profile page. It seems as if she somehow knew we went there.”

  Whoa.

  That was something to think about. Why hadn’t I thought of it? It should have been the first thing that popped into my mind.

  “Don’t you think that’s odd, Rip?”

  “You could say that.”

  I had a hunch.

  “Let’s compare faces,” I said. “Let’s see if Christine Crowley bears any resemblance to Kirsten Love.”

  “You think they may be the same person?”

  I shrugged.

  Julie moved her cursor and brought up both photos. She positioned them beside each other. Then her index finger touched the screen where the black bar covered Christine Crowley’s eyes.

  “This bar makes it impossible to compare their eyes.”

  “Their noses are different. So’s the shape of their mouths. Different jawlines too. I don’t see any resemblance between the two women. I doubt they’re the same person.”

  “I have to agree, Rip.”

  I stared at the screen some more.

  “Julie, there’s a new message in your Facebook inbox.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t noticed it.”

  She moved her cursor over the message and clicked to open it.

  The message was from Kirsten Love.