by Mark Stone
“Is that part of being in the Naples PD, Detective, Storm?” The mayor’s voice boomed all around me. “Are you led to believe that you know everything? There’s more at play here than you know, sir. And I’m not about the shoot you like a dog on the deck of a ship. Now, unless you want all of this to be for nothing, then I suggest you get your self-righteous ass below deck. Otherwise, my men will have to force it.”
“We do love to force things,” one of the men said from beside me.
I glared at him. He might have been as big as a shrimp boat, but I had little doubt I could lay him flat on his ass if it came to it. Of course, that wouldn’t be the end of it though. There was a second man, and I had little doubt there were more of the mayor’s henchmen waiting in the wings to take me out.
“I’m a fan that myself, usually,” I said, not blinking at the man. “And, if you want to dance, we can do that, my man. But I get the feeling listening to your boss would be a better use of my time. So, you can stand aside.” I arched my eyebrows at him. “Unless, of course, you’d like me to force things.”
The man stared at me for a long second before he stepped aside.
I huffed, walking past him and shaking my head. “I hope he pays you enough to make up for the prison sentence your about to get,” I muttered.
I opened the door to find a set of steps descending. It would, of course, take me below deck. My heart lurched as I looked down at it. I had been in a lot of sticky situations in my day but this one might have been the stickiest.
The door closed behind me, and I began to walk down, gathering my courage and steadying myself.
“That was a peculiar comment you just made to my man, Detective Storm,” the mayor’s voice, as loud as it had been outside, boomed again. “Do you really think I’d be foolish enough to allow any of my people to go to prison?”
“I don’t see where you can get around it?” I said, still marching downstairs. “You just kidnapped me in front of a boat full of people, the chief of police among them.”
“Is that what I did?” he asked as I reached a door. “Open the door, Detective Storm.”
I took another breath and pushed the door open. Inside the room I found myself facing a long couch, a table, and a huge television screen. On that screen, was the mayor.
“You’re not actually here,” I said, realizing what was going on. “You’re not on the boat.”
“No, I’m not,” he answered. “I’m in the back room of my house at the moment. In case you can’t hear the music playing, there’s a social function going on at this very moment. Most of Naples’ society is here, including your friend the District Attorney. I just popped back here for a moment and, in a few minutes, I’ll be back out there, mixing, mingling and, most importantly, showing my face to a room filled with people.”
“Seems like a pretty airtight alibi,” I said, letting him know I understood exactly what he was getting at.
“It is,” he answered, his face not breaking at all. There was no enjoyment in this for him, not really. “When your lawyer gets back to that boat and tells the chief of police and the rest of your friends that I’ve taken you, I’ll point to the congressmen and judges sitting in my living room right now. He never saw me. He only heard a voice; a voice that could have been artificially modified.”
“So, you’ll never take the fall for my murder,” I said, nodding firmly, keeping my voice steady. “Hell, you probably won’t even take a hit to your approval rating.”
“My son was just killed, Detective Storm,” the mayor said, his face hardening. “The social function happening in my living room right now is a memorial service to him. Do you really think I care about my approval ratings?”
“Given the fact that you’re back here, trying to murder me while that very memorial service is going on tells me that I have no idea what you would or wouldn’t care about.”
“I don’t want to do this, Storm,” he said gruffly. “I know what’s going on here. Obviously, I do. I was attacked a few weeks ago, Detective. My people were able to make sure I was safe, but it didn’t stop there. Someone broke into my house the day before yesterday. Security beat them back but then I received a message on my phone. It told me about the damn game. It gave me your name, told me it was the only way to keep myself safe. I had no idea Dennis was part of this, too. I had no idea I was going to lose him.” He lowered his head but continued. “I don’t want to kill you, Detective Storm. I want to help you. I want to help all of us.”
“How?” I asked. To say I was skeptical would be a horrible understatement.
“By getting you someone who can help you unravel this mess,” he said. “Come on out.”
The door in front of me opened and, from it, walked a young man with wavy brown hair and a beard. It took me all of an instant to recognize his face. I had seen it in my dreams for the better part of a year.
“Joel?” I asked, swallowing hard. “Joel Mayberry?”
Chapter 28
“You are alive,” I said, looking the man over and trying to steady myself. Even after all the evidence pointing to it, actually seeing a man who was supposed to be dead standing in front of me, alive and well, was an insane thing. What’s more, seeing a face that had haunted so many of my dreams this last year was like bearing witness to an apparition. My own personal ghost was right there before my very eyes and knowing that he wasn’t dead did a lot to lift the weight I had been carrying for the last year.
“Look at that. You are a good detective,” Joel said sarcastically, throwing himself onto the couch and looking up at me. “No wonder my mother came calling on you.”
“Your mother’s been through a lot since your dea- since your disappearance, Joel,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. “Though I assume you know that, seeing as how I’m sure you were the person who saved her life a while back.”
Joel blinked at me, his eyes hardening. “I didn’t go through all of this just so she could die. That’s not what all of it was ever about.”
“All of what?” I asked. “Why don’t you tell me what’s actually going on here? You faked your own death? You had your own pacemaker cut out?”
“I did what I had to,” he answered, huffing at me. “You think I wanted to go through that? You think I wanted to watch my entire family dissolve into despair? They already lost one son, for God’s sake. You really think I’m the kind of monster who would want to put them through that all over again?”
“I think you’re the kind of monster who did put them through that, Joel,” I said. “What you wanted to do is irrelevant.”
“It was the only way!” he shouted loudly, standing up to meet me. “He was involved in that damn game. Dennis was deep in it. There was nothing he could do. They tried to kill him twice and then they sent him after me.”
“You knew?” I asked narrowing my eyes at Joel. “You knew your best friend was trying to kill you?”
“We didn’t have any secrets, Dennis and me,” Joel said. “We were practically brothers. Of course, he told me what was going on. He said that, if he didn’t kill me, then they’d kill him. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let whatever was going on here rob me of my best friend. I had already lost one brother. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing another one.”
As he spoke, my heart went out to him. I understood what he must have been feeling. While I’d never really had any semblance of a decent relationship with my own brother, the idea of losing Boomer or Justin would have been enough to get me to considering doing some awful things. Of course, there was something that didn’t make sense about all of this.
“But you killed him, Joel,” I said, remembering the bullet that took the kid’s life right in front of me. “You murdered Dennis yourself.”
“I did no such thing!” he said, pointing a finger directly into my chest. “I would never hurt him. Whoever killed him-”
“He told me it was you,” I said. “He told me you weren’t dead and that you wouldn’t stop coming afte
r him until it was finished.”
“There’s no way he said that,” Joel answered. “Dennis knew everything and not just with me. He knew what was happening with everyone in the family. He knew full well that I was alive. He was there when my damn pacemaker was replaced. I would never-”
“Enough!” The mayor’s voice boomed throughout the cabin. In all that had happened, I had almost forgotten that he was still there, still watching us. “I didn’t bring the both of you together so you could fight about semantics. My son is dead and, if we don’t get to the bottom of who is actually behind this, then I’ll be joining him soon.” His eyes darted over to me. “Or you will, Detective Storm. Don’t forget, you’re my mark.”
“So, you don’t think Joel is responsible for killing your son?” I asked.
“I think my son was very likely in shock and wanted to tell you something that probably didn’t come out the way he intended it to in his last moments. The truth is Dennis and Joel were very close. Dennis was close to both Mayberry boys, and the bond between them only strengthened after Sam died.” The mayor took a deep breath. “He never mourned Joel, not really, not the way he mourned Sam, and certainly not the way I expected him to. I thought that was because he had cut himself off, but, now, I know the truth. He didn’t mourn Joel because he knew he wasn’t dead. What’s more, I’ve looked into my son’s finances and found the accounts where he had funneled money to Joel to keep him on his feet. He knew Joel was alive, Detective Storm. I have no doubt about that.”
“Then what exactly was he trying to tell me before he died?” I asked pensively.
“That’s something you’re going to have to find out on your own,” the mayor said. “Assuming you make it off of here, of course.”
“What?” I asked confused, looking from the mayor on the screen, to Joel, and back again.
“Whoever is running the game thought I was dead,” Joel said. “Right up until I got weak about it.”
“When you saved your mother?” I asked.
Joel nodded. “Whoever is behind this has eyes everywhere in town,” the man continued. “I had made an art of being unseen. I had even taken to watching my parents, as splintered as their lives had become. I never interacted with them though, not until I saw my mother try to end it all.”
“That was when things went to hell,” the mayor said. “And when I heard the report you’d made, the one suggesting Joel was still alive, I decided to bait both of you out with my little press conference.”
“What your son said to me was withheld from my report,” I answered.
“For everyone but the mayor,” he scoffed. “Whatever the case, I needed you here, I needed you both here. And now that I have you, I need the world to think you’re dead again.”
“Dead?” I asked.
“You’re my mark,” he answered. “My life is in danger so long as you’re still breathing, Detective Storm. I’m not a murderer though and, more than that, I don’t like the idea of someone telling me what to do. So, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. Or, more accurately, I’m going to let the two of you do it. In order to do that though, I need to buy you both some time.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” I said wearily.
“You shouldn’t,” the mayor said. “But we are where we are. While you were down here, the crew has exited the ship, taking all lifeboats with them. The ship is, at this moment, on a collision course with some abandoned docks on the far side of Marco Island. It will not stop until it crashes into them and, thanks to the petroleum tanks placed in the bottom, the entire thing is going to go up in flames like so much kindling. When it’s finished, they won’t be able to tell what’s debris and what’s the charred remains of a couple of corpses.”
“My, God,” I said, my entire body tensing. “You’re telling me we’re about to explode on this damn thing?”
“I’m saying the world has to assume you died if you want to free yourself from this,” the mayor said. “Including whoever is behind it. To do that, I’m sacrificing this boat. There’s an inflatable raft under the cushions of the couch Joel was sitting on. My guess is, given the way you’ve been talking, you’ve got about two minutes to save yourselves before this entire thing goes up in flames.” He shook his head. “Good luck,” he added as the screen went dead.
Chapter 29
Joel upended the couch immediately, revealing an inflatable raft underneath just as the mayor said would be there. In the time since his disappearance, I had learned more than my fair share of information about the child of Lilith Mayberry. He had been the phantom haunting both my dreams and my waking hours. As such, it occurred to me that discovering what kind of man Joel had been would do much to make me feel better. It didn’t make sense and, in practice, it did nothing more than to salt the wound I’d dug into myself. Still, it was all I could think to do.
I learned that Joel Mayberry had been an Arts major. I learned he painted in his spare time. He had had only one girlfriend in his life, a woman he’d broken up with right after his sophomore year, and he hated tomato on his salad.
That was it. It seemed sparse, even for a life that had been cut as short as I thought Joel’s had been. He was a quiet soul, a ‘still waters run deep’ kind of guy. He certainly didn’t seem like the type of man who would end up here, ready to throw himself off a moving boat in an attempt to investigate the craziest game I had ever encountered.
I thought about that fact as I watched him grab the inflatable raft and turn to me, fire in his eyes. He must be so different now. His ‘death’ and the year that had passed must have done much to change the sweet, quiet boy Lilith loved so much. He was very obviously something else now, something harder, and something dangerous.
I wondered what sort of changes this would employ in me. I would not be gone a year. I knew that as well as I knew my own name. I was supposed to get married tomorrow. Even allowing Rebecca to live through our wedding day thinking I was dead, was too much to bear. This would end tonight, or it wouldn’t end at all. I wasn’t going to break the woman I loved to save myself. It wouldn’t be worth it to me. Better I take my chances with the mayor and his attempts to kill me.
“Let’s do this,” Joel said, nodding at me and rushing to the door that would lead us up above deck.
I took a deep breath and turned to follow. Even though the idea of faking my death on the eve of my wedding was enough to turn my stomach, the mayor had made things clear. The boat wasn’t going to stop, not before it crashed into Marco Island. So, all things considered, actually dying beat faking my death every day of the week.
I followed Joel up above deck. The boat was racing as we walked out onto the hull. I couldn’t believe how fast the damn thing was going, skidding atop the water the way a boat half its size might. I thought about Boomer and Justin, about my grandfather back on the other ship. Soon, they would see an explosion in the distance. Soon, they would think I was dead. They would rush over here, hoping against hope to find me floating among the wreckage of a boat I never should have been on.
They wouldn’t, of course. By the time they got to the boat, Joel and I would hopefully be well on our way to getting to the bottom of this thing.
Of course, we’d have to get off the boat first.
As the mayor had said, all of his people on the boat had left, taking the life vessels with them. All that was left for us was the yellow inflatable in Joel’s hands.
“This is insane,” I said under my breath, mostly talking to myself.
Somehow, even with all the surface noise, Joel still managed to hear me.
“Dude, you have no idea,” he said, looking to the right. Marco Island was coming up fast. We were going to have to move immediately if we were going to get off in time to save ourselves the blowback of this explosion.
Joel pulled at the inflation string, bracing himself for the raft to start its expansion and fill up. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
“Damnit,” Joel said, looking at me with pa
nic in his eyes. “It’s a dud. It’s not- it’s not going to-”
“We can’t worry about that,” I said, swallowing hard and looking to the right myself. We had seconds, maybe less. If we waited longer than that, it would be the last thing we ever did.
“We have to,” Joel said. “Jumping out of this boat going this fast, it’ll kill us.”
“Maybe,” I said, turning and looking down off the side of the boat. “But not doing it will definitely kill us, and we don’t have time for me to let you question this.”
“What?” Joel asked, glaring at me.
“I let you die once, because I didn’t do what my gut was telling me,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’m not going to let that happen again.”
I grabbed the man. Wrapping my arms around him, I leapt to the side, throwing us both off the side of the ship and into the water below.
My body hit the water hard, slamming into the black iciness like I was falling against brick or concrete. Still, pain wasn’t the first thing I felt. In fact, I didn’t feel pain at all really; at least not the pain of impact. Even this time of year, even down here, the water was so damn cold.
My body jerked with discomfort as the Gulf enveloped it, taking me into her frosty hands. I plunged under the surface, my arms still wrapped around Joel as every hint of light we’d had was ripped away from us. That’s the thing about dark water; it’s black and it’s cold. It’s like plunging into an endless tomb, one that covers three quarters of the entire globe.
Steeling myself, I gathered by bearings. The jolt of hitting the water was so intense that it stripped everything away from me for a second. I didn’t remember where I was. I didn’t remember what I was doing. Hell, I barely remembered who I was the seconds after I lost myself to the Gulf. All that existed was that very instant, and the pain, cold, and darkness that ruled over it.
Still, I was a cop. I was trained for intense situations, and the Gulf was my home. It always had been. I wasn’t going to let it become a foreign place to me now, not when I needed so much to keep it together.
