Suffer Not Evil: A Florida Action Adventure Novel

by Scott Cook

  Otter swallowed hard. He was beginning to shiver, and he didn’t know if it was from fear or blood loss or what. He stared up at the man and knew that he’d underestimated him. Badly.

  The doctor reappeared with some bandages and other supplies. Otter watched the big man watch as Campbell wrapped the two wounds, gave Otter a shot and then a glass of water and a couple of pills.

  “No,” the big man said. “No drugs. Let him suffer.”

  Felix looked like he was going to protest and then stopped. He only shrugged. Otter had been about to kill him, after all.

  “Shall I call the police?” Felix asked.

  The big man laughed softly. Like the smile, it held no amusement, “Oh no, Doc. That’s the last thing we want. I’ll deal with him… and then you’re coming with me.”

  The man in black then reached out with something that looked like a magic marker and pressed it to Otter’s neck. There was a hiss, and all went dark for him.

  Campbell, although he couldn’t quite explain why, suddenly felt as if he’d gone from the frying pan and into the fire. Yes, Otter had been about to shoot him… but this man frightened him in ways he couldn’t put into words. What was he capable of?

  “Time to go,” the big man said after he had carried Otter’s limp body downstairs and returned.

  “Where?” Felix asked in a whisper.

  “Our destination is the truth,” the man in black said, “and how comfortable or painful the journey to reach it… is entirely up to you, Felix.”

  22

  Lisa’s journal entry 2

  I woke up around six-thirty and couldn’t go back to sleep. That was unusual for me. It was Scott who rose at the ass crack of dawn. I liked to stay in bed until the sun was nice and warm.

  But with all the shit that’s been happening… I guess I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t any surprise when I exited the corridor into the galley to find a pot of coffee already brewing and Jackie sitting on one of the sofas fiddling with her phone.

  “Wow,” she said, grinning at me. “Gonna start waking up early like a big girl now?”

  I flipped her off and poured a cup of coffee. I might be up, but I wasn’t happy about it.

  “A grumpy Gert in the morning, eh?” Jackie asked.

  “It’s hardly light out yet,” I complained.

  “Yeah, we’d already be under attack if this were a military operation,” Jackie explained. “So what’s the plan, Colonel?”

  I scoffed, “Fucked if I know. I guess maybe we should at least take a ride to Orlando. The boys are hanging out with Sharon and Juan, but I should really go get them. Otherwise… I don’t know what to do. Our client is dead… my boyfriend has pulled a vanishing act… Gee Willikers…”

  “Gee Willikers?” Jackie poked.

  “Well what would you say?”

  “Probably fuck my life, or ain’t this a rusty mop handle up the turd launcher.”

  “Jesus, Jackie…”

  “I am a Marine.”

  We took our coffees on deck and headed aft to sit on the wrap-around cushioned bench on the poop deck. The sun was just about to peek over the eastern horizon over Apollo beach. It was pretty nice.

  I’d have made a joke about the poop deck, but I was simply too distraught.

  “When are you guys gonna get a dink?” Jackie asked casually as she sat and nodded her head at the davits.

  I looked at them and it took a second to realize why she’d asked, “We do… that Maverick Rick gave to Scott… but it’s gone!”

  “Stolen?” Jackie asked.

  I frowned, “I don’t think so… be pretty hard to get past the security system, and the keys are kept below on the big boat…”

  Jackie met my eyes, “Scott.”

  We walked up the dock and then up the ramp onto the breakwater walkway. Just to play a hunch, I led Jackie to the southeast entrance and out onto the corner of Thirteenth and First. Across from the marina was what looked like a small refinery. A series of two-story tanks sat in a yard behind a chain link fence. Scott told me they used to store fuel, and that the fuel delivery barge would pull up along Harborage’s breakwater near the small restroom facility and pump-out station near the gate.

  “What are we looking for?” Jackie asked. “Forget something in your car?”

  “No… I’m parked out front,” I explained, walking down First.

  “Hey, isn’t that Scott’s Jeep?”

  “Yup,” I said, stepping up to the Rubicon and peering inside. “Everything looks normal in there…”

  I pulled out my keys and used the spare to open the Jeep. Everything was as it should be. No sign of trouble or that anything had been disturbed.

  “Okay, this is weird…” Jackie said, looking in with me. “He leaves his car but takes his boat?”

  “Harder to trace maybe,” I said. Locking and closing the doors. “I think we should take a ride. A couple of places I want to check out before we head up to O-town.”

  “You’re worried about him,” Jackie said as we were walking up J-dock toward the front of the marina.

  I sighed, “I’m worried about his… mental state more than anything. Not physically worried for him. I can’t explain it, Jackie… but you should’ve seen the look on his face. It really like… creeped me out.”

  Jackie reached out and squeezed my hand, “He’ll be okay, Lis. He’s Scott Motherfuckin’ Jarvis, remember?”

  I managed a small smile, “Yeah… I hope so.”

  We drove out to Tierra Verde, hitting the Dunkin Donuts near the marina on Fourth Street for some vital supplies. More coffee, a couple of chocolate frosteds and breakfast sammies.

  “The food of champions,” Jackie said, holding up a bowtie donut.

  “Private investigator fuel,” I commented. “Sorry I ain’t got none of them MREs you Army guys like so much.”

  She flipped me off.

  There weren’t any cops at Veronica’s house when we arrived. Someone had placed police caution tape up, taping it to the garage and to one of the uprights of the house. I stopped in front of this impenetrable barrier and stared for a long moment. We were parked in front of the garage, and everything looked fine.

  “Lisa…” Jackie said hesitantly.

  “What?” I asked, noticing the hush in her voice.

  “I don’t… don’t know,” Jackie said, pulling her Sig from her purse and doing a bump check to make sure there was a round in the chamber. “Something’s weird near the back of the carport area…”

  I couldn’t see it from the driver’s side, but the tone in her voice gave me a little shiver. I got out my Glock, and we exited the GLC. We both walked cautiously side by side, ducking beneath the tape and then around the side of the garage toward the stairs… that’s when we saw it.

  “Oh my God!” Jackie all but yelped, pointing.

  Two men hung by ropes that had been tied somewhere up above. Their feet were just a few inches above the ground. I didn’t recognize either one. One was a tall white man and the other a tall black man.

  “Jesus Christ…” I breathed.

  “No wonder you’re worried about him,” Jackie almost whispered. “God all fuckin’ mighty… he hung them!”

  I noticed several things then, but not all at once. First, there was a piece of notepaper pinned to the white man’s shirt. In Sharpie was written: These men killed Veronica Bradford.

  “Holy crap…” Jackie said and then frowned. “Why are their mouths taped?”

  That did seem odd. If Scott had captured them and had hung them, then why tape their mouths? Then I noticed that the ropes that suspended them weren’t wrapped around their necks but were tied into two bowlines that had been placed under their armpits to support their weight.

  I stepped closer to examine the bodies and try and figure out what the hell was going on. When I reached up to place a finger to the white man’s neck, his eyes flew open, and he emitted a muffled half-groan and half-shout through the tape.

  I, on the oth
er hand, screeched like a Turkish woman. I jumped back and nearly bowled Jackie over, who by now was bent double and roaring with laughter.

  “It’s not funny, Goddammit!” I cranked, placing a hand to my chest and breathing hard.

  “Oh… the hell it ain’t!” Jackie wheezed. “You should’ve seen the look on your face! Hee-hee heeeee… oh my God! That was some scary, funny shit! I can’t believe you didn’t piss yourself.”

  In fact, I did a little. I glared at her and then started to laugh, too. I think we were both more than a little relieved that Scott hadn’t simply executed these two men outright. Even if they deserved it.

  Jackie wiped her eyes and sighed, “Goddamn… that was maybe the funniest damned thing I’ve seen this year… okay, should we take the tape off their mouths and see what these fine young men have to say?”

  “Pfft!” I glared at the men, both of whom now looked back at us, “Nah. I’m going to call Alex. I’m sure these two fuck sticks have a lot to say, but let’s let them say it to the cops.”

  After talking with Alex and thankfully not with Captain Cutler or that dickhead Maglashan, Jackie and I got on the road to Orlando. Once Alex had ripped the tape off the two men, they at first tried to protest their innocence. Unfortunately, Scott had sent Alex a text containing an audio file. The file was a conversation between the white man, Lawrence P. Otter and Doctor Campbell in which Otter admitted his guilt in Veronica’s and Whittaker’s murder.

  What was odd, though, was that Doctor Campbell was missing. I was going to go over to his house after Veronica’s, but Alex said that they already had when he’d received the file. No one was there. The housekeeper said she’d been sent home earlier in the previous day before Otter had shown up.

  “So does that wrap up the case?” Jackie asked as we merged onto I-4 from I-275. “I mean Scott caught the murderers, and the third guy, that little fireplug guy Big Top, is dead. So is that it?”

  I shook my head, “I don’t think so. Scott got the tool, but not the wielder, if that makes any sense.”

  Jackie bit her lip, “So the Bradfords or whoever hired the guys are who he’s really after. And that Cuban drug lord guy?”

  I shrugged, “He’s involved, somehow, but only in a peripheral way. Cardoza did send men to the boat and to Veronica’s the next night… but I don’t have a clue if Cardoza was asked to do so by the real killers or if it’s someone else. Like the doctor, maybe?”

  “Why him?”

  I sighed, “So this Campbell guy has been sued several times over the past twenty years or so for losing babies in the delivery room. It happens, I guess… but there are a few odd occurrences that Scott and I can’t figure out.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well… so when Cardoza’s first kid was born, Campbell was the attending OBGYN,” I explained. “That same day, another woman, a Hispanic woman… I forget her name… lost her baby. That’s happened more than once. Again, probably a coinky dink. And there’s something else weird, too… the day Sarah Beth Bradford was born, Veronica was in for appendicitis. She was in college then. I don’t know… but it’s just like… sticking in my craw. Scott’s too. Because Campbell attended the mother.”

  Jackie frowned, “Same hospital, right?”

  I nodded and handed over my phone, “Then Scott finds this poem in Veronica’s house in Wyoming. But neither one of us has been able to match it to any known poet.”

  Jackie read the short poem that Scott had taken a picture of. She scowled and handed the phone back, “A mother who lost a baby, that’s what I’d say it’s about.”

  “Yeah…” I said. “But why would Veronica have it? She never had children.”

  Jackie shrugged and then stared at me, “What if this Campbell guy has been stealing or even like… selling babies?”

  I almost ran off the road. Jackie had to remind me to watch where we were going because I was staring at her with an open mouth.

  “You never thought of that?” Jackie asked.

  “Well… no…” I said. “Holy crap-goblins… suppose that the Hispanic woman who lost her baby didn’t lose him… suppose the infant was taken and given to Mrs. Cardoza… my God…”

  “Was it only one kid?” Jackie asked.

  “No… the Cardoza’s had two sons. The next was two years later.”

  “And who delivered that one?” Jackie asked.

  I jerked a thumb to the back seat, “It’s in that little briefcase back there… but I think Campbell.”

  Jackie snatched the slim valise and opened it, rifling the papers I’d printed. After a few minutes, she found what she was looking for, “Yeah, sure enough… nice Doc Campbell again. And guess what? Another woman lost her baby that same day… this guy’s a fuckin’ baby snatcher!”

  “How could that never have been proved?” I asked. “Wouldn’t somebody have known?”

  Jackie sighed, “I don’t know… but if this Cardoza guy is as powerful as you think… then maybe he’s been helping the doc out.”

  Cars streamed by in the westbound lanes across the median, and I was passing a long line of them in the cruising and granny lanes. It seemed like minutes passed, but it was only seconds before a thought struck home.

  “Okay… so hang on…” I began, trying to marshal my confused thoughts. “So this doctor has been stealing kids and giving them to rich and powerful drug dealers… Veronica was getting her appendix out on the same day as Julius Bradford’s youngest child was born… and doc Campbell attended her… and he’s a baby snatcher…”

  “And Veronica has a hand-written poem about a lost child…” Jackie muttered.

  “Oh my God…” I barely whispered. “Could Sarah Beth be Veronica’s daughter… only Veronica didn’t know it?”

  “Well… did she know this Julius guy way back then?”

  I felt shaky, “Yeah… Veronica said she met him. He was speaking in one of her classes… so here’s this nineteen-year-old college girl who meets a thirty-ish businessman. He’s young, attractive, and successful and charming… she’s young and very pretty…”

  “Good God…” Jackie muttered. “So they have an affair, and she gets pregnant.”

  “Yeah, and then she goes in for ‘appendicitis’ and has a miscarriage or whatever Campbell tells her,” I struggled to formulate. “Then Campbell takes the baby and replaces the one that maybe Mrs. Bradford did lose…”

  “Or maybe Campbell sold that one, too,” Jackie said. “What the fuck…”

  “But wouldn’t somebody know?” I asked rhetorically. “I mean… if not Mrs. Bradford, then her husband, right?”

  Jackie shrugged, “Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Or maybe somebody else knows the truth, and that’s what’s behind Veronica’s hit.”

  I drummed my fingers on the wheel, “Well, if it was one of the Bradfords, then they got their way. She’s dead now and the CEO position is open. No doubt the uncle, Marcus, will get it.”

  “Anybody else in the running?”

  I sighed, “There’s the CFO, a man named Wilfred Franklin. He’s advocating taking the company public and Veronica wasn’t about it.”

  “God, my head hurts…” Jackie said. “How the hell do you two do this shit like… all the time?”

  “It’s rewarding when you solve the puzzle,” I stated.

  “You think Scott knows any of this?”

  I chuffed, “I have no doubt that Scott is way ahead of us… wherever he is.”

  I pulled into Sharon’s driveway around two, and we were bull-rushed by Rocky and Morgan. The two dogs came out of the front door barking and wagging their tails. They greeted Jackie and me with snuffles, licks and the occasional jump. Sharon and Juan came out after them and were slightly more reserved.

  “So the wayward traveler’s return,” Sharon said. She hugged me and then Jackie. “Where’s Himself?”

  “Uhm…” I said and hugged Juan. “We don’t know. Scott sort of…”

  “Went UA,” Jackie said. “And he’s leaving a tra
il of bodies behind him.”

  Juan cocked an eyebrow at that.

  “Seriously?” Sharon asked.

  “Let’s go inside and I’ll explain,” I said. “Things are a mess.”

  “What happened?” Juan asked.

  I sighed, “That woman that we were protecting and that hired us to find out who tried to kill her… she was murdered last night. Probably raped before that, too.”

  “Ay dios mio…” Juan muttered.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Sharon said softly. “Scott must be going nuts… and you have no idea where he is?”

  Jackie and I shook our heads no. We went in and sat on the sofas, and I explained what’s been going on. I also told them that Scott had left the actual killers tied to Veronica’s house and that his Maverick was missing.

  Sharon frowned, “He’s running around in a boat… Uncle Rick’s old one… hmmm…”

  “What?” I asked.

  Sharon pulled out her phone and sent off a text, “I’ve let Uncle Rick know very briefly what’s going on. He might be of some help… if he’s not already in touch with Scott.”

  “Why?” Jackie asked.

  “Call it a hunch,” Sharon said, “based on what I know of both men.”

  Strangely, it was my phone that rang. I didn’t recognize the number, “Hello?”

  “Hello Lisa, it's Rick Eagle Feather.”

  “Hi…” I said, putting the phone on speaker.

  “I got Sharon’s message about your beau. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my eye out for him.”

  “Rick…” Sharon said. “Has he gotten in touch with you?”

  “Not yet… but he might.”

  “Will you let us know if he does?” I asked.

  There was a long and strange pause. Finally Rick said: “If that’s what Scott wants.”

  Sharon groaned. Rick chuckled and said that everything would be all right. We said goodbye, and I hung up.

  “Maybe I should make a call,” Jackie said.

  “Yeah,” I replied, “or I should. There are some more medical records I’d like to see.”