DEAD GONE a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by T. J. Brearton

  “Tom, what happened?”

  “Need your phone . . .”

  Tom didn’t like what he saw in the old man’s eyes. Vance looked worried, and Tom knew not much worried Jack Vance. “I’ll call it in,” Vance said. “You want me to call it in?”

  What Tom wanted was Blythe. Something about the way Ward had been acting, something stirring in Tom’s gut . . . Even if Bosco was arrested, he could be released after they cleared things up, and who gave a shit about Bosco anyhow. He was a drug-dealing asshole who was going to go down for distribution anyway. It wasn’t that.

  But it would have to wait. Tom nodded at Vance.

  “Tell them it was Josh McDermott who did this.”

  Vance was already on the phone. He paced the room as he spoke to the police, and Tom realized he was trampling evidence.

  “He’s banged up pretty bad,” Vance said. “Multiple cuts and bruises, head wound . . .”

  Tom thought about the head wound. He’d been bashed upside the skull when he’d walked into the room, but it hadn’t killed him. You had to know right where to do it. Right where to strike.

  Two small lacerations have been identified where the parietal and occipital bones meet . . . Ward had said so himself when he performed the external examination on Carrie’s body. He’d been reluctant to classify Carrie’s death as blunt force trauma. And yet he’d known. He’d been grandstanding, showing how skeptical a pathologist had to be. He’d taken a victim to prove what a challenging prospect a cause of death diagnosis was. That was part of it, anyway, Tom guessed.

  His eyelids fluttered closed and his thoughts swam away for a moment.

  He envisioned himself in the bay, moving slow along the surface through the endless mangrove canals, the buzzards circling overhead, the brambles of mangrove closing around him, tightening into a narrower tunnel, thatching together, blocking the sun.

  Something floating there, in the silvery water, just up ahead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  SUNDAY

  “Tom? Tom . . .”

  He opened his eyes. Detective Machado was standing beside the hospital bed. He could see Jack Vance outside the room, talking with a deputy.

  “Tom, you with me? There you are. Hey pal. You look like shit.”

  He coughed, and his lungs felt like they tore open. He clutched his chest and groped at Machado, wanting to sit up, get some water.

  She helped him elevate the bed and handed him a cup with a straw. As he drank he looked down at himself. A blanket covered his legs but his upper body was bare, fixed with more bandages than he could count. He set the empty cup on the edge of the bedside table and it fell off and hit the ground.

  Vance looked around at the sound and came into the room. “Hey, there he is.”

  “Blythe . . .” Tom said to Machado. He realized he had no voice, just a croaky whisper.

  She leaned down to better listen. “What’s that, hon?”

  “Get Blythe. The killer is not Bosco.”

  Machado must’ve understood because she got that look on her face again, like she’d gotten at the field office when he’d shown her the video of the strip club and the Lexus. Like she either didn’t believe him or didn’t want to. Vance was looking between them, forehead lined with concern.

  The talking irritated Tom’s throat and he coughed some more. Vance picked up the cup and refilled it in the bathroom while Machado just looked uncomfortable. Tom drank greedily and handed Vance back the empty. He cleared his throat and found he could talk a little better.

  “I went to Ward’s place. He has a second home. Lexus was there beneath a tarp. Kayaks on the property. We need people there, and at his place in Central Naples, on Malaga Way. Bring him in. He’s the killer.”

  “Carrie Hobson’s killer?”

  “Maybe Sasha Clay, too. Just put out the call, okay? Or get me Blythe. Please. Can you do that?”

  Machado looked Tom over and nodded. “I’ll be right back.” She started to leave the room, pulling out her phone.

  “What about McDermott?”

  She stopped by the door, and glanced at Jack Vance. Tom looked at Vance, too, hovering beside the bed.

  “They found him.”

  “Where?” Tom’s heart was already sinking.

  “With your friend. Alicia Strong.”

  “She was at his house?” Tom tried to sit up straighter and the bandages pulled. He felt something tear. “Is she alright?”

  “At her house. Yes, she’s fine. Tom, Alicia says McDermott was with her all night.”

  “Bullshit!” It was loud enough that the deputy leaned into the room. Vance held up a hand toward the deputy.

  Machado left to place her call.

  “It was McDermott,” Tom said in a quieter voice. He implored Jack Vance with his eyes. “What did the cops find at my house? Those papers? Anything?” He looked at the clock on the wall and it was going on one in the morning. “Did they find my gun?”

  “I haven’t heard yet about your place. But County is all over it. If there’s anything there, they’ll find it. Detective Machado will take care of it.”

  Tom glimpsed her in the hall, on the phone. She looked in and winked at him.

  He eased back and stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t believe Alicia was lying about McDermott, giving him an alibi. But, then, he understood it, too. People wondered why the abused stayed with their abusers, but it was always easy to judge from the outside. It was a far different thing to be in it. His mother knew that, Nick knew that.

  The doctor came into the room and picked up Tom’s medical chart.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Lange?”

  “I’m alright.”

  “Well. Just over a hundred stitches. In your head, your back, and arm. But we’re not out of the woods yet. I want to run further tests to determine the extent of the damage to your lungs from breathing in the fumes.”

  Tom wanted to get the hell out of there, but he stayed quiet.

  “I’m going to write you a prescription for Vicodin for the pain. And I’ll be back.” She smiled at him and left.

  Jack Vance sat down in the chair in the corner.

  Tom looked over at his neighbor. “Now you can tell me what you did for the Air Force.”

  Vance smiled lightly. “Classified.”

  “Come on, Jack. You heard the doctor. After all I’ve been through . . .”

  “Ha. Sorry, no can do. Besides, maybe all I did was clean the aircraft. Maybe I pushed a mop.”

  Tom was exhausted, but couldn’t stop thinking about Ward. When Machado returned, it was 2:30 a.m. Agent Blythe was right behind her.

  Blythe looked concerned by Tom’s condition, but, as ever, she got right to the point.

  “We went to Ward’s place — both of them. No car, no Lexus at the house on Price Street. Saw the kayaks though.”

  “It was there, I saw the car . . .”

  “I talked to Gomez. We lit a fire under the DMV and they came back with the vehicle search. You were right. The Lexus is registered to Alan Ward. But both Ward and the vehicle are gone.”

  “You didn’t find him?”

  “He’s gone, Lange. He’s in the wind. We’re looking.”

  They stared at each other. Despite everything, Blythe was poised. Tom wanted to ask her about the lawsuit filed by Ward. Why she hadn’t mentioned her history with him. What she and Turnbull were up to when they wrested the Carrie Hobson murder from the hands of Everglades County, pushing their state jurisdiction.

  Instead his mind swung to a related concern. “What about Sasha Clay? Ward was doing the autopsy on her. He could’ve killed her, too. Maybe she knew about him. What was she doing down here?”

  Blythe lifted her hand in the air, putting the brakes on him. “We don’t know that Ward killed anyone.” Her voice was very low, almost a whisper.

  “Are you kidding me? He ran.”

  “We have Raymond Bosco’s blood, his DNA, on Carrie Hobson’s clothes. He had a key to her
apartment. They worked together. They argued. They—”

  “Blythe, fucking quit it. This is exactly what Ward wanted. You’re falling right into it. This is all about that case you rammed through with the low copy number DNA profiling as your evidence. I think this is Ward trying to prove how LCN typing can lead to a wrongful conviction.”

  She spoke at him through gritted teeth. “I thought this was about ‘lust of the eyes,’ Lange. Moral rectitude. Wasn’t that your theory? A killer with a compass out of whack?”

  “Yeah. Bent on revenge. I spoke to the pathologist from his fellowship who’d trained him. Ward is an obsessed loner. He took what happened in Tampa way hard. Who were you trying to take down? Someone was exonerated because of Ward, weren’t they? Who was it?”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “It’s irrelevant?”

  She turned to Machado and Vance. “I’m sorry, would you two mind excusing us for a moment?”

  Machado raised her eyebrows but said nothing, and left. Vance shuffled across the room. The poor old hardass was finally showing fatigue. “Time for a coffee,” he said cheerily enough, and followed Machado out.

  Blythe closed the door and locked it. She crossed the room, her shoes making those crisp sounds on the hard floor, and took the seat by the window. Outside, dark palm trees stirred in the Gulf breeze.

  “Alright, Lange. Here you go. There’s an auto wreck involving two cars. This is several years ago. State police investigate. I’m one of them. We find drugs scattered on the highway. Suitcase open, packets of coke broken and fanned out like snow. Six people involved. Three people in one car, three in the other. And all three people in one of the cars are dead.”

  She paused, perhaps to let this sink in, and Tom remembered Blythe’s story about the high speed chase which had also resulted in a death. How she had played the long game, how she never forgot, and then got her man.

  Unless she got desperate, Tom thought, and then she sought to prosecute on questionable evidence. Or ram through apartment searches without a warrant.

  “In the other car, one person died. All three had records and were known drug offenders. Small timers, though. The suspects denied the drugs had anything to do with them. We drug-tested, found them clean. But then forensics searched for DNA on some intact packets of cocaine, a suitcase, and an unregistered handgun recovered from the scene.”

  Blythe glanced out the window, as if finding herself back in the memory.

  “DNA was scarce, but they used low copy number profiling and matched the samples to the two living suspects.”

  Her head swiveled back, slowly, and she glared at him.

  “Ward balked, saying it was an unreliable method. He was deposed for the defense. He testified.”

  “Shit,” Tom mumbled.

  “The court convicted only one man, who got fifteen years, the other was charged with reckless endangerment and released on probation. That was Raymond Bosco.”

  And there it was, Tom thought. Blythe had had Bosco in her sights for years. She burned to take him down. Despite her otherwise cool demeanor, that was where the desperation came from.

  “The case was closed. Ward was accosted and urged to resign. After the trial, I switched from the state troopers to the FDLE. Ward eventually took a new job in Everglades County. About a year ago, Coby launched a drug operation that included Bosco in the network. And a few weeks ago, Coby was getting ready to move on George Parsons, who was operating in that same network out of Naples and believed to be supplying, among other places, several Tampa strip clubs with cocaine that strippers sold to customers.”

  Parsons — the guy with all the coke in his pickup. Tom could guess the rest. When the body turned up in the bay, and Turnbull wanted it for the FDLE, Blythe made sure that trace evidence went to the state crime lab. The same DNA profiling was used again. She’d had Bosco’s DNA in the system already.

  When Tom finally spoke, he tried to be empathetic. “Blythe, can’t you see it? Ward figured you’d use LCN typing again. And you’ve burned to take Bosco down all these years. Ward knew you’d make it work, even if the DNA profiling was questionable, and the wrong man would go to jail. You can see that, can’t you?”

  She stared, unblinking. God, she was tough.

  “Ward didn’t choose Hush at random,” Tom said. “He picked it because Bosco was the bouncer. Ward patronized Hush intermittently, not enough to be noticed. And then Bosco cut himself, sliced his hand. I believe that gave Ward his inspiration, or maybe the last bit of courage. It’s my best theory anyway — Bosco gets some blood on Carrie’s clothes, just a tiny bit, and Ward sees it happen, there at the bar. He follows Carrie when she leaves. My guess is he’d seen her on Match.com. Maybe they even corresponded. We’ll know soon enough. She included kayaking as one of her interests. And, you said it yourself, Blythe — you think she was a pro. So, he solicits her in the parking lot. He takes her to his place. Keeps her in the same clothes — hey, guys are into all sorts of kinky shit, right? They go kayaking together, at just the right time. He knows the tide schedule — he was a volunteer for the reserve. And he hits her, hard, in just the right spot, probably with one of his paddles, and dumps her in the creek. Her body drifts into the bay.”

  Tom finished, and had to catch his breath. He couldn’t tell if he’d convinced her or not.

  There was an excited knock on the door. Blythe didn’t object when Tom said, “Come in!”

  Nick looked harried and wild. His suit was rumpled, his hair messed up, tattoos showing, and Tom had never been happier to see someone.

  Nick charged the bed and looked Tom over like a worried mother. “Jesus, Tommy. It was that McDermott dude? That’s what the old guy said. What’s his name, Vance? Shit man, you look like you’ve been chewed up and spat out.”

  Nick was doing that thing, talking faster than an auctioneer. Tom hoped he wasn’t drugged up. Christ, not in front of Blythe.

  Nick realized someone else was there and offered his hand to Blythe. “Hi. Nicky Lange, Tom’s brother. I’m an artist and I sell a little real estate. You must be Blythe?”

  She shook his hand, unsmiling. Nick lingered a moment — Tom figured he was either evaluating Blythe’s cold demeanor or checking out her legs — then spun on his heel, waving his arms. “Tom, I woulda been here sooner. Man, I’m sorry. But, don’t kill me, alright? Don’t kill me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He made a move for his briefcase. “Just don’t kill me, man.”

  “Nick . . .”

  Nick popped it open and pulled out a sheet of paper. He held the paper against his chest, whatever was on it facing in. The gesture gave Tom a flashback of McDermott standing with his own sheets of paper. But Nick was grinning, his eyes shining.

  “I went up. To Tampa. I went up to Tampa, Tommy, I hated to see you that way . . .”

  Blythe moved to the edge of her chair, looking interested, if unhappy.

  Nick rambled on. “I mean, I thought I was going to have to really work this Jimmy guy, you know? You watch these cop shows and everyone has something to hide. I figured, he was going to take some convincing, but he was like, man, he was all ready to tell me about this guy, what he looked like—”

  “What guy?” There was a sharp edge to Blythe’s tone.

  “Ward,” Tom said without looking at her. He realized now what the hell Nick was talking about and he felt better.

  Maybe it was the Vicodin.

  “He wanted me to pay him, but I said no way. But we got to talking about Yonkers, Jersey, how both our dads liked to beat the shit out of us—”

  “Nicky, show me.”

  Nick flipped the page around. Tom stared at the image. The likeness wasn’t perfect, but it was damn close.

  “Huh? Yeah?” Nick was hoping for praise. He looked from Tom to Blythe, more excited by the quality of his artwork than anything else. “What do you think? Is that fucking banging or what?”

  Blythe was out of the chair. She cr
ossed the room in a lick and snatched the page from Nick’s hands, studied it. “This was from a description the bouncer gave you?”

  Nick nodded, his grin so big it almost made Tom laugh. Fucking Nick. He wasn’t high at all, he was manic with excitement.

  Blythe drove into Nick with her molten stare. “Do you know who this is?”

  Nick was temporarily flummoxed. “Huh? You mean the dude there?”

  “Yes, I mean ‘the dude’ there. You know who it is? Anyone show you a picture?”

  Nick understood, shook his head with emphasis. “No. No, ma’am.” He glanced at Tom, then back to Blythe. “Does that look like someone? A suspect or whatever?”

  Blythe had nothing to say. Tom could sense she wanted to deny it, but couldn’t. She could barely look at him, but when she did, he saw it register in her eyes. Someone who didn’t know Ward, had never seen him before, had rendered a picture of the guy based on a description offered by some bouncer at a strip club. A strip club Ward had been to.

  Blythe left the hospital room without another word. Nick watched her go. He flinched when the door slammed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Turnbull called several hours later. The sun was up and streaming through the windows. Tom was dopey from the pain meds and lack of sleep as he listened to Turnbull’s trite praise.

  “That’s the kind of initiative I knew you had, Lange . . . That’s the Boy Scout I saw in you . . .”

  Tom wished he was at home, slipping into the pool. The swimming set him straight for the day. Well, straight as could be said for him, lately. He’d been all over the place. During the night, half dreaming, half awake, just the beep of the machines keeping him company, Tom had come to some decisions about his life.

  “I had my thoughts about Ward,” Turnbull continued, “after the debacle in Tampa. I didn’t know if I wanted Blythe and Ward on the same death investigation. But Blythe seemed to have ideas from the get-go.”

  I’m sure she did, Tom thought. She’d had a bone to pick with Ward, and that was why she had Tom witness the autopsies, she didn’t want to be around the pathologist. Tom recalled the way they seemed like divorced parents, avoiding eye contact or speaking.