by Tom Lowe
“Thank you,” Miles said. Agent Helmer seemed as warm as a little league coach who’d just lost three in a row.
I said, “Before we get cozy, where’d you put the transmitter?”
“It’s inside the right front bumper,” Miles said, looking at the Jeep.
“Then let’s have Special Agent Helmer get it out of the special hiding place.”
“Find it yourself,” he said.
Miles said, “Mark, get it, okay?”
GI Joe’s nose wrinkled like a spanked puppy.
“Please,” Miles said, “just get the damn thing.”
Helmer pulled out a small penknife, worked the GPS tracker from under the Jeep’s bumper, and sat the bug on the hood.
I said, “All right, what’s on your mind. I’ll assume a least one of you is wired.”
“We’re not,” she said. “We know you’re investigating the murder of the girl found not far from your home. We believe her death and others involving farm workers is related.”
“Now that’s damn good police work.”
“Please, Mr. O’Brien. Give us a few minutes to explain. These deaths are part of a bigger picture.”
“Let me guess, you thought I was part of that big picture. Maybe doing a little international export business out of my old home city of Miami. Probably tipped off by a trusted detective with Volusia County SO. You followed me via satellite to see if my path crosses paths with the vic’s. Even for you guys, it’d be easy to calculate location and time of deaths. Then, bingo!”
“You’re a first-class asshole,” the Little Leaguer yelled.
“Orwellian tactics before old-fashioned communications happen to rub me the wrong way.”
“It’s not surveillance,” Miles said.
“Maybe that’s not what the FBI calls it.”
She stepped forward, sighed deeply, crossed her arms over her breasts, and said, “Mr. O’Brien, I knew of you from Miami homicide. I also know you had one of the best conviction records, actually the best in your department. We were hoping you could lead us to the perp or perps doing these serial killings. It’s that simple.”
“Either that’s the worse compliment I’ve ever received or the FBI is just plain lazy. You’re looking for an ex-cop to help you do your jobs? What’s the real reason?”
Little Leaguer shoved his hands in his pockets and said to Miles, “Let’s just get the hell out of here. Last thing we need is a burned-out cop with a bad attitude.”
“And the last thing I need is two wannabes using me to help them do their jobs. Go back to Miami and put your transmitters on ships. Catch some terrorists.”
I turned to leave, and she said, “Now you wait just a minute, Mr. O’Brien!”
“Or you’ll do what, bug my bedroom this time?”
“We’re short staffed. The Miami office is in charge of keeping all the South American sleaze in check. We do have more ports and open coastline to secure than any state. There are more drugs, international gangs and criminals filtering through Miami than any city in the nation.”
“I served my time in Miami.”
“We’re aware you took early retirement after the death of your wife. We know you’ve moved on but wound up in the middle of this. Can we work together?”
“Not interested in government work.”
“We’re not offering you a job. We’re asking for some cooperation.”
“Why? Why and how has this evolved to get you guys out of your offices?”
She was hesitant, choosing her words carefully. “You’re involved because you care about innocent people. We don’t have the means or manpower to keep check with the tidal flow of human trafficking into America. We know there’s sexual abuse, sexual slavery, beatings, and murders. No one will talk because they’re scared to death. It makes it very easy for a serial killer to penetrate because these people are afraid of the government, afraid they’ll be deported, and they’re afraid of the contractors who they work for. In the last few months, the prostitution ring escalated from serial murder to the sale of human organs.”
“So it takes the sale of hearts to get to the heart of the FBI? Is that when you finally send in your troops? Or is it because there are six months to the primaries, and this wouldn’t look good to the incumbent. Unsolved serial killings, human trafficking, sexual slavery. So not politically correct.”
Her nostrils flared, pupils at pinpoints, carotid artery pounding in her neck. “What is your problem? Why won’t you cooperate?”
“Problem? The problem is it takes the media, the reports of human organs cut out of victims, to get the FBI moving. It’s not enough for these people to be held as sex slaves, beaten and killed. They’ve got to be sold like a side of beef to raise some red federal flags.”
She started to speak then abruptly stopped. I said, “A friend of mine was just murdered. It’s because of what’s happening in these sex slavery circles that she was killed. For me, it started when I found a young women dying near my home. Now a woman I cared about was shot in her home as she was coming to have dinner with me. This is personal.”
“I’m sorry this has happened to these people. The point is we’re trying to do something, to find the person or persons responsible. You’ve made inroads in this case. You’ve penetrated the inner circles. We know a lot of the abuse is coming from contractors working for SunState Farms, but we don’t know who their upscale clients are and who’s killing these women.”
I said, “In other words, you don’t know, as my best buddy in Special Forces used to say, you don’t know shit.”
Junior said, “That’s enough—”
“Mark! Please! Mr. O’Brien’s right. We don’t know shit. But we will, and we’ll do it with or without you, Mr. O’Brien. If you become a problem, it’s obstruction of justice. If you work with us—”
“It’s what? Cooperation? Save your threats for someone you can scare. They mean nothing to me. What does mean something is catching a man who’ll look you in the eye, Special Agent Miles, while he’s shutting off the air to your lungs, while he’s raping you. Right before you pass out, he’ll place his lips on yours and blow the kiss of life into your lungs…just to do it again. The second time he won’t bring you back. He’ll literally suck the life out of you. And after your heart stops, he’ll remove it.”
She lowered her arms, stepping closer to me, her hazel eyes exploring mine. “Will you partner with us?”
“Under one condition,” I said.
“What?”
“Never do I find one hint of bugging or surveillance of any kind from you. That includes my boat, my car, or any of my or my friends’ property. If and when I do find who’s doing this, you’ll arrest and prosecute vigorously. No politics. No bullshit.”
“A deal,” she said.
“I’ll call you. Don’t call me. And I’ll work only with you, Special Agent Miles. Send Junior back to the farm.”
She nodded. Agent Little League’s face turned crimson with anger. He cocked his hands on his hips and watched me walk to my Jeep. I picked up the GPS transmitter, and tossed it to him. “You can stick that where the sun doesn’t shine.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
It was after midnight when I parked my Jeep about a half mile away from the migrant camp. I left the Jeep on the side of a dirt farm road, sprayed on mosquito repellent, and began hiking through the palmettos and Australian pines, dodging an occasional car headlight and gaining ground. It was a long shot but one worth taking.
Moving stealthily, I could hear the sound of Latin music and cursing coming from one trailer. A chained dog howled. A man swore at another in Spanish. The odor of burning garbage lingered in the night air. Two pickup trucks were parked in front of the last trailer at the end of the dirt road. A man came out of the trailer, turned, and said something to a woman. He swore, shook his head, and drove off in one of the trucks.
I almost didn’t see it. To the far left of the last trailer was a dark-colored van. I crouched down near the fr
ont of the van. I could smell human urine, a sickly smell that was produced from cheap wine passing through a diseased bladder.
I stepped to the rear of the van, turned over on my back and wedged beneath the undercarriage. Using the small flashlight I brought, I started searching. I looked up into the wheel area and around the straps used to secure the exhaust system. There was nothing but mud. I crawled over to the other rear tire and began the same examination. Just as I was about to chalk it up to a good effort, I saw it.
Wedged in fresh mud, was a small piece of green. I used my penknife to scrape the mud away and removed the leaf from the undercarriage. The tire had tossed mud over the leaf and sealed most of it like a caterpillar in a cocoon. The leaf looked identical to the leaves I’d found at the bottom of the rut in the national forest. I cradled it in my hand like a tiny broken wing of a butterfly.
I slipped a Ziploc bag from my shirt pocket and placed the leaf inside. After I closed the seal, I started to shimmy out from underneath the van.
The van rocked.
The door opened and slammed too fast. Someone had seen me. The driver knew I was under the van when he started the motor. I had maybe five seconds. I lay as flat on the ground as possible. I turned my head and body away from the transmission gearbox. The driver gunned the engine. Tires spun and the van lurched forward. Part of the undercarriage raked across my chest and tore through the skin.
As soon as the van cleared over me, I rolled to one side, grabbing the Glock and springing to my feet. I leveled the pistol at Juan Gomez’ face just as he was pulling a gun from his belt.
“Drop it!” I yelled. Gomez held onto the pistol and slowly lowered it to his side.
He said, “You’re one dumb asshole!”
“Toss the gun! Now!”
Gomez grinned and threw the gun a few feet away from him. “You’re trespassing again, ex-cop. Thought someone was stealin’ the van. Lucky we just didn’t shoot you.”
I pointed the Glock straight at his head. “It’s over! Murder. Black-market sales of human organs. You’ve got a date with a lethal injection.”
The driver in the van turned around and hit his high beams. Gomez was between the van and me. He was a silhouette, the high beams blinding. I yelled, “You move, you die!” The driver fired a shot from the van. The round hit a tree directly behind me.
The van gunned toward me. The instant I saw the muzzle flash I heard the bullet whirr less than an inch from my left ear. I fired one round into the van’s front windshield. I rolled out of the way, scooping up Gomez’s pistol as the van came straight for me. It missed my leg by inches and crashed hard into the tree.
When I jumped up, Gomez had vanished. In the red glare from the van’s taillights there was no one. The engine raced, throttle stuck. A loud hiss coming from under the hood. I could smell coolant, oil, and raw gasoline.
I pointed the Glock at the driver’s window, approaching the van. The driver slumped over the wheel. I opened the door and held two fingers against Silas Davis’ wrist. He was bleeding from his mouth, but his heart was still beating. I put the pistol under my belt and pulled Davis from the van, sliding him at least fifty feet though the dirt. The smell of gasoline was strong. I turned and started jogging toward the county road as the van’s engine exploded. I looked over my shoulder to see flames half as high as the pine tree.
Through the roar of flames, I could hear the chained dog howling like a lone wolf in the night.
FIFTY-NINE
The next morning, Dan Gant met me at the Boston Coffeehouse in DeLand. I said, “Davis was still breathing when I left and called 911. Gomez and his cousin, Hector Ortega, weren’t anywhere to be seen. I don’t know if the fire did any damage to the interior cargo area of the van.”
“I checked with the ER. Davis is alive. Bullet grazed his shoulder. The force of the crash knocked him out cold. You saved his sorry-ass life.”
I reached in my pocket and handed him the leaf in the Ziploc bag. “This, most likely, will be an exact genetic match with the other leaves I gave you. Match the plant DNA and you’ll place their van at the crime scene where the last body was dumped. Use liminol inside the van. If the fire didn’t engulf the cargo floor, you’ll probably find traces of blood there. And I’ll bet you that it matches the blood from the last victim.”
“We’ll test the van for a blood match,” he said, sipping the coffee.
“Speaking of blood, I’ll give you directions to a place. A cinderblock building, about 1200 square feet that sits close to the St. Johns River.”
“Now why would I want to go there?”
“You wouldn’t. Meet me there. Bring some of your best forensics guys. Keep it from Slater.” I sipped my coffee.
“Okay, why am I going there?”
“The place has been used for years as a tanning house. It’s got a cooler, running water and drains. A licensed gator hunter, guy by the name of Floyd Powell, told me he sold it. He sold it and six adjoining acres for top dollar to a consortium, a group of fishermen, to use as a retreat. Floyd kept gators he killed in there until he had time to skin and dress them. Leslie said the ME found alligator blood on the last vic’s hair. The property isn’t that far from the wildlife refuge.”
“You think these freaks are using a former gator processing shop to remove the organs from these women?”
“It might not be only women victims, and that’s exactly what I think.” I drew on the back of a napkin. “Here’s a rough map to the place. When can you get there?”
Dan looked at his watch. “Give me a few hours to pull everyone together. Let’s meet at 2:30. I can’t imagine what we’ll find.”
“I can.”
SIXTY
I drove down State Road 40, south of the bridge near Astor, and looked for the high-tension power lines. I turned off the road and onto a dirt drive almost hidden by scrub oaks. I stopped the Jeep, shoved the Glock in my pants, got out, and walked a few yards down the dirt drive. There were fresh tire tracks. Wide tires. Probably from an SUV or something like a Mercedes.
There, in a clearing, was the concrete block building. It was about the size of a small home. The cinder blocks were painted white and baked to a dull yellow under the Florida sun. There was a detached awning that would shade a car. A fishing cast net hung from one of the four wooden posts that supported the awning.
I parked the Jeep under the cover of a cabbage palm strand and then approached the building, circling around the rear before going to the front. There was a low droning noise coming from inside. It sounded like a refrigerator or freezer motor.
A rustling sound came from behind me. I raised the Glock toward the noise. A long blacksnake scurried through the dried palmettos and slid through a hole beneath the cinder-block foundation in the building.
I holstered the gun in my belt, put on plastic gloves, and tried to turn the handle on the rear door. Locked. I walked to the front door and picked the lock in less than a minute. I held the Glock, took a deep breath, and jerked the door open.
The hinges squeaked and a two-inch cockroach ran from between the joints towards my shoes. I stepped over the roach and entered the room. The light switch was to my immediate left. Fluorescents flickered and than illuminated the room. It was solid concrete. A stainless tree table stood near the center of the room. There was a single light on a large gooseneck stand in the corner. On one wall was a double stainless steel sink. A pair of rubber gloves were folded and hanging on the faucet. The concrete floor was sloped to a large drain in the center. The air in the room smelled musty, like a biology lab with a mixture of bleach, formaldehyde, and gas.
I turned the handle on another door, and it opened to an office that seemed to be a storage shipping area. There were two folding chairs next to a long table. On the shelves were dozens of small Styrofoam coolers. A dry-ice machine sat in the back of the room, the motor barely audible.
I walked back out into the concrete processing room and approached a large stainless steel door in the rea
r. I pulled the handle and the door opened toward me, the blast of cold air hitting my face. The air was stale and had the odor of death. I turned on the light and stepped in the cooler. There was a clear, icy liquid in a large stainless steel vat, a frostlike effervesce on the outer rim.
A pool of blood, the color of dark plums, coagulated on the floor in a near frozen state. I didn’t want to breathe the air into my lungs. I stepped out of the cooler.
A gun barrel was shoved between my eyes.
“You’re next,” Juan Gomez said.
SIXTY-ONE
I could smell stale beer and decaying beef jerky between his teeth. Gomez pressed the barrel against my forehead and said, “Drop the gun!”
Silas Davis, fresh stitches across his forehead, stood behind him, a pistol in hand, his lips parting in a grin. I dropped the Glock.
“Step out of the cooler, asshole,” Gomez ordered. “You’ll be in there soon enough. Silo, bring a chair.”
Gomez backed up, and I stepped out of the cooler. Davis returned with one of the folding chairs from the other room. Gomez said, “Sit, asshole cop. Sit right there next to the drain. It’ll make cleanup a lot faster.” He pushed me toward the chair.
Both men had their guns pointed at my head as I sat. Gomez said, “Tie him up. There’s some rope next to the storage shelves.”
“Why waste time?” Davis asked.
“`Cause we got to call Santana. He has to make the arrangements. Everything has to be timed perfectly.”
Santana, I thought. Now I knew that the phone call Gomez made wasn’t to Santa Ana. It was Santana. Maybe Dave Collins was prophetic. Santana, as a serial killer, would be the ultimate hit man.
The Bagman had a name, and it was a name that I might carry to my grave. I looked at Gomez and Davis and said, “Why do you do it?”
“Shut up!” Davis said.
