Terminal Justice: Mystery and Suspense Crime Thriller

by Lyle Howard

  “Stimulants should be given such as caffeine, ammonia or atrophine. If the pulse falls below 50 beats per minute, morphine is introduced. Wow…”

  “Yeah,” Gabe agreed. “I’ve got to remember to send those young doctors a thank you card when this is all over.”

  “‘All over?’” Waxman griped. “What do you mean ‘all over?’ They tried to kill me once, and you twice! What makes you think the end to all of this is suddenly in sight?”

  “So you’re becoming a believer?” Chase asked, slamming the encyclopedia shut.

  Waxman laid his hands flat on the table. “I’ll concede that Gabe’s account and these files seem to correlate, but I’m still not convinced that Leon Williams, one of the city’s most decorated police officials, is in cahoots with August Bock. We may have worked for two different cities, but I’ve attended many a charitable function with the man, and, as far as I know, his reputation is beyond reproach.”

  Gabe turned to the stove and put on another kettle of water to boil. “I wonder if the Chief of Staff at Jackson Memorial would have had the same high praise for Kenneth Sanborn if he had seen those files…”

  Waxman slumped back in his chair. “Okay, so what about this card?” he asked. “What do you think it has to do with all of this?”

  Bennett Chase reached across the table and took the card. “Worldwide Dispatch Incorporated … sounds like some kind of freight company. You know, I’ve still got some friends who work at the air freight terminal at Miami International Airport. Do you want me to make some calls to see what they can dig up?”

  Gabe nodded gratefully. “Thanks Bennett; that would be a tremendous help.”

  The old man touched the card to his brow like he was doffing his cap and hurried out of the kitchen to make the phone call. It wasn’t long before he returned with good news.

  “Well, like I was saying,” Chase said, walking over and handing back Gabe the business card. “I have an old buddy at Emery Air Freight who’s going to check into this Worldwide Dispatch Incorporated for us.”

  “So he’s heard of the company?” Waxman asked.

  “He sees so many damned freight companies come and go, he’s not really sure.”

  “So, how much longer am I going to have to stay dead?” Waxman asked, as the teapot began to whistle again.

  “It shouldn’t be much longer,” Gabe assured him, as he tended to the kettle. “The proverbial shit’s about to hit the fan.”

  “Why do you say that?” Chase intervened, before the ex-Mayor could ask the same question.

  “Because August Bock has finally made a very stupid mistake.”

  “What mistake was that?” Waxman asked.

  Gabe dipped half a dozen small tea bags into the pitcher of steaming water. “You both saw it before I did. He had Leon Williams go on television and say that he killed me in that shootout.”

  “So?” Chase said.

  Gabe poured half a cup of bottled lemon juice into the darkening brew. “By tomorrow morning, his forensics people are going to match my fingerprints to the letter opener they’ll remove from Doctor Sanborn’s abdomen, and just about every other stick of furniture in that office.”

  Waxman nodded knowingly. “So, Williams is going to know you weren’t killed aboard Mystique!”

  Gabe stirred the tea bags around in the pitcher. “And I’m willing to bet that, about three seconds after that, so will August Bock. They’re going to have a real mess on their hands since they’ve supposedly roasted me in that bonfire they staged.”

  “Which they did in front of a national audience,” Chase emphasized.

  “You’ve got that right,” Gabe said.

  Waxman pounded his fist on the table. “So, why don’t we just end this whole thing right here and now by going to one of the local television stations, or the Miami Herald, and showing them that we’re both still alive?”

  Gabe shook his head. “If I honestly thought that talking to the media could stop August Bock, I would’ve gone to them instead of Leon Williams. You and I rising from the ashes might get the captain put away for a while, but it won’t get rid of August Bock. He’ll just dig himself a hole and disappear until it’s safe to surface somewhere else. Trust me: this guy’s got the connections and the means to vanish like smoke … and, believe me, he will.”

  “So what now?” Chase asked.

  Gabe yawned. “Now? Now, we go to sleep. It’s been a long night.”

  “Sleep?” Waxman bristled. “How can you possibly think about falling asleep at a time like this? What about Bock? What’s he going to do when he learns you’re still alive?”

  “Probably the same thing I would do if I was in his place,” Gabe said nonchalantly as he dumped the used tea bags into the garbage under the sink. “I’d send out my best man … or woman in this case, and hunt me down and kill me. Only this time … I’d make sure I stayed dead!”

  47

  The morning sun rose slowly over the Miami Beach skyline as if it were riding some unseen escalator. Still dressed in his plush maroon bathrobe, August Bock watched it ascend into the cloudless sky. Sitting at his glass breakfast table, he gazed misty-eyed over the waters of Biscayne Bay. The wind was blowing out of the north this morning, causing the sea to churn with a light chop. It wasn’t an ideal day for sailing, but the windsurfers were out in force—their multi-colored sails tacking back and forth across the shimmering water. In the distance to the south, tall geysers of white steam bellowed from the funnels of the cruise ships lined up in the Port of Miami, their boilers being stoked in preparation for their weekly voyages.

  It was in calm moments such as this that August Bock liked to contemplate what could have been. He envisioned himself jogging around the deck of one of those wonderful ships, his wife stretched out on a chaise lounge beside the pool, sipping a piña colada, without a care in the world. But just as quickly, with the shifting of the sun on a pane of window glass, a pitiable reflection became intelligible enough to shatter his daydream. Bock’s transparent image was a cruel reminder to him that life was what happened to people while they were making other plans.

  “Mimosa?” the dark-haired Asian woman asked.

  Bock turned to look at the kimono-clad beauty, but his real focus was still on the nonexistent woman lying on the imaginary chaise lounge. “No thanks, Desiree, plain orange juice will be fine.”

  “You seem so distracted,” she said, moving behind him with the pitcher of juice and making sure her breasts brushed against the back of his head. “You’ve hardly touched your eggs. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Yes, pour,” he said, holding up his empty glass.

  “That’s not what I had in…”

  “Well, August,” interrupted a familiar female voice. “I see you still have an eye for the tall, dark, slutty types.”

  Bock pressed the wand on the arm of his wheelchair and motored back from the table. “Shayla, I didn’t hear you come in. Welcome back from California. Would you care to join me for some breakfast?”

  Shayla Rand stood like a goddess across the adjoining living room. Between her long, nimble fingers, she twirled one of only three plastic keycards in existence which allowed access into Bock’s private residence. She was dressed completely in white, with high heels, skin-tight leather pants, white turtleneck, and a matching leather overcoat. All this neutrality was set ablaze by her flaming red hair. She still sported a bandage to cover the stitches on her cheek, but this one was made of skin-toned plastic and was far less conspicuous.

  “I already ate on the plane,” she said in her soft Irish accent, as she sauntered with her stiletto heels clicking into the breakfast room, “but I’d kill for a cup of Earl Grey.”

  “Desiree, fix Shayla a cup of tea, please.”

  The woman in the kimono glared at Shayla like a cat who had just discovered another feline invading her territory. Desiree’s expression was filled with venom, but Shayla’s cold, merciless eyes were much more intimidating—like two
jade stones behind her unblinking eyelids. “Anything for you, August.”

  “So, that’s the flavor of the month?” Shayla huffed, as she walked over to the window and stared out at the water. “She’s a bit broad in the beam compared to the others, August. You paying for them by the pound nowadays?”

  Bock maneuvered his chair back to the table and started to butter himself a piece of raisin toast. “Don’t take out your jet-lag on the hired help, Shayla. It doesn’t become you.”

  Shayla slipped the keycard into the pocket of her vest and took a seat at the breakfast table. “I don’t know why you continue to pay for something, August, that I would gladly supply you with for free.”

  “For free?” Bock’s laugh boomed inside the cavernous glass walls. “Shayla, you’ve got to be the most expensive piece of ass in the world. Haven’t you ever heard that mixing business with pleasure is a no-no?”

  Shayla arched her eyebrows seductively. “Well, your flight engineer didn’t think so. It didn’t take much convincing on my part to make him an honorary member of the mile-high club.”

  Bock took a bite out of his toast. “I must leave myself a note to have the plane disinfected.”

  “I considered it a small bonus for a job well done,” she said, stealing a piece of toast from Bock’s platter.

  “I thought you said you had already eaten on the plane?”

  Shayla winked. “That was strictly a liquid diet.”

  “There are some things that an employee just shouldn’t share with her boss,” Bock said, shaking his head.

  “What? I’m not allowed to unwind after a full day’s work?”

  “Of course not, especially when your work is successful.”

  Shayla looked up at the ceiling and laughed. “I should say so. They’ll be picking bits of him out of the bunkers for months.”

  “Yes, I heard. Well done.”

  Desiree returned with Shayla’s tea and set it down on the table. “Is there anything else I can get for you?” she asked, contemptuously.

  “Don’t take that tone, Desiree,” Bock pleaded as he reached over and pulled out the chair beside him. “Please, sit down and have something to eat with us.”

  Desiree’s resentful gaze never wavered from Shayla Rand. “No thank you, August. I’ve lost my appetite.” She pointed to the bedroom. “I’m just going to get dressed, and I’ll find my own way out.”

  “Not without leaving breadcrumbs,” Shayla said, sarcastically, as she watched the curvaceous prostitute disappear into the bedroom.

  Bock glared across the table at Shayla.

  “What did I do?” she asked, pouring a few drops of milk into her tea. “I can’t help it if that cow chooses this morning to try and shed some of those unwanted pounds. I wouldn’t worry about her anyway; she looks like she could live off the land for quite a few days without much of a problem.”

  “Good God, Shayla,” Bock said.

  Shayla grabbed him by the arm. “Do you want me to apologize to her, love? I will if you ask me to.”

  “I don’t think so, Shayla,” Bock said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I think you’ve done enough damage for one morning, thank you. Let me handle it.”

  He was just about to back away from the table, when the telephone rang. He pointed to the portable phone lying on the kitchen counter, which Shayla retrieved for him. “Yes?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was frantic. “You’re not going to believe what I have to tell you.”

  “You know, Captain,” Bock lamented, “I don’t give out my private number to just anyone, so why all of a sudden are you making me regret having ever given it to you?”

  “This is important.”

  “Twice in one day? It had better be.”

  “After the discussion we had last night, I thought it best that I have my forensics team expedite their analysis of the crime scene … you know, to get a lead on the real perp.”

  Bock put his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver and whispered to Shayla. “If he wasn’t so damned indispensable, I believe I’d have you make a house call.”

  “Just say the word,” Shayla whispered back over the rim of her teacup.

  “Are you listening to me, August?”

  Bock took a sip of his orange juice. “I’m still here, Captain.”

  “They came up with a positive identification from the prints on the letter opener, and a matching set on the doorknob to the office, and a third on a table lamp.”

  Through the panoramic window, Bock tracked a 747 jumbo jet as it soared across the horizon. How a plane that large could stay airborne had always been a mystery to him. The physics of flight were something that would never cease to amaze him. “And I suppose that these fingerprints should be significant to me because…?”

  “Significant enough that I had to double-check them myself.”

  “Okay,” Bock said, swallowing the last sip of his juice, “tell me what you found before you have a stroke.”

  Williams said the name with the same cowering expectancy of a child experiencing the audible concussion of fireworks for the first time. “Gabe Mitchell.”

  The glass paused on August Bock’s lips as though it were suddenly glued there.

  “…Come again?”

  “You heard me right, August. The prints we lifted from the crime scene match those in Gabe Mitchell’s official police files. It took the computer all of 30 seconds to come up with the match.”

  Bock set the glass down on the table with an ominous clank. “I know you’ve been up all night, Captain. Perhaps you need some rest.”

  “Rest my ass!” Williams growled. “You fucked up, August. Gabe Mitchell was at the hospital last night!”

  Bock cupped his hand over the receiver and pointed to a telephone jack on an inside wall. “Shayla, get me another phone; there’s one in the next room with a speaker. You need to hear this.”

  Shayla Rand looked quizzically at her employer and reluctantly did as she was told. When she returned to the breakfast area, she plugged the second phone into the socket and set it down on the glass table.

  “Captain Williams, Shayla Rand is here with me. I’m putting you on the speaker. I want her to hear what you’ve just told me.”

  Bock pressed a button on the speaker phone and hung up his portable unit. Williams’ heavy breathing made the phone sound almost alive. “What I told August was, that the prints we found in Kenneth Sanborn’s office belong to Gabe Mitchell.”

  His words hung in the air like a storm cloud. Shayla’s finger involuntarily moved up to her face, tracing the scar down the length of her cheek. “What you’re saying is impossible! I saw him blown to pieces with my very own eyes.”

  “Fingerprints don’t lie, bitch. I’d recommend an eye test too.”

  She looked over at Bock, who was looking at her skeptically. “Ask Damon, August … he saw it too! No one could have survived that explosion!”

  Bock toyed with his empty glass. “And there’s no other way those finger prints could have gotten there, Captain? Say, on one of Gabe’s previous visits?”

  Shayla stared at the phone in disbelief, like she was seeing fire for the first time.

  “The prints were all bloody. Sanborn’s blood. There’s no mistaking it. Gabe Mitchell is still alive.”

  Shayla slammed her fist down so hard on the glass table, Bock thought for sure it would shatter. “I told you, I should have killed that son-of-a-bitch back at the motel room when I had the chance. I don’t know how he managed to survive that explosion, but if that bastard’s still breathing, I swear I’ll find him,” she seethed, putting her fingers to her disfigured face, “and I’ll kill him with my bare hands!”

  Bock depressed the button on the phone.

  “What the hell was all that about?” Williams demanded.

  “Just a bit of steam being let off, Captain. Everything’s under control.”

  There was a long pause on the line.

  “It’s easy for yo
u to say that things are under control, August. You’re sitting up there in your glass tower, while I’m the one who put his head in the noose by going on national television telling everyone that we killed Gabe Mitchell! By the way: what a brilliant idea that was! Now what happens if he decides to play Lazarus and tell his story to the press? What’ll we do then? I’ll promise you this, August: if I go down, I’m not going down alone … and I’ll guarantee you it’s a long fall from where you’re sitting.”

  Bock covered the microphone on the receiver with his finger. “The man’s got all the qualities of a dog,” he whispered to Shayla, “except loyalty.”

  “Don’t worry, Captain,” Bock assured, as he removed his finger. “If Gabe Mitchell is still alive, and he were planning on going to the press, he would have done it already. No, I think he has something else in mind.”

  “His medical records were missing from Sanborn’s filing cabinet.”

  Shayla slammed her hands down on the table again as Bock tried futilely to mask his disappointment upon hearing the additional information. “Okay, this just means that he’s probably already figured out that his future is not as bleak as we have led him to believe.”

  “How can you stay so damned relaxed about all this?” Williams cursed. “Can’t you read the writing on the wall? We’re all going be spending the rest of our lives in prison!”

  Bock turned his chair to face the window. The streets below were coming to life as vendors unlocked and pushed back the iron gates that protected their shops at night. “As much as I appreciate your evaluation of our situation Captain,” Bock said, “your pessimistic attitude disturbs me very much. I can assure you that nothing was ever accomplished by someone working in panic mode. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, ‘cooler heads always prevail?’”

  “Well there’s cool, and then there’s inept. What happened out there on the water, anyway? I thought that bitch of yours was supposed to have been so thorough? Did she miss Gabe as he flew past her?”

  “No one could have survived that explosion,” Shayla snapped. “Gabe was on the yacht when it blew … I saw him there.”