A Killing Night mf-4

by Jonathon King

  I started my truck, figuring his pattern would be the same and he would exit the center through the road in front of me just like he had the night his headlights had caught me on the stakeout.

  "Headin' your way, Freeman," O'Shea said. "I'll fall in behind."

  I pressed my head against the driver's side window, using the frame strut to partially hide behind and watched as the cruiser swung around the corner and onto the street. Morrison pulled a rolling stop through the first stop sign and I had to come out fast to stay within a reasonable distance. Either he was so focused he wasn't paying attention, or he was just arrogant. Both were good things. He wouldn't be thinking of a tail.

  We were heading west through a residential area, then he took a right back toward Sunrise Boulevard to catch a light. It was the same way I would have gone to get on the main strip west toward the expressway.

  "O'Shea, head up the back way to the park so you can get in behind him," I said into the Nextel. "I'm going to have to stop at the light with him and he's going to get a good look at my truck and I'll have to fall back to keep him from getting familiar."

  "Roger that, big man."

  "If he keeps westbound to I-95 you'll fit in with the rest of the traffic heading that way. I'll stay back a couple of blocks."

  "We got this one, Max. Not a problem."

  Christ, I thought. I'm partnered with Colin O'Shea. I could only hope he wouldn't hold to form and somehow screw this one up.

  Morrison stopped at the light. It was difficult to see his silhouette through the dark glass of his back window in the daylight. The advantage to police cars in Florida was that they almost all had tinted windows so they were obscured from the outside. The treatments used to scare the shit out of us as patrol officers, pulling over some van or tricked out ghetto cruiser when you couldn't see if some banger inside was sighting up a shotgun at the window. Now law enforcement had followed the trend themselves. I again leaned into my driver's door behind the strut, hung my elbow out of the open window like I was a tired worker going home for the evening. I didn't think Morrison could have gotten much of a look at me when he slipped out of Kim's that first time I glimpsed him, but I was trying not to underestimate the guy.

  He took a left at the light change as I expected and I followed but fell back. We were heading into a setting sun, the flare of orange spraying strong up into the clouds, and there was enough white light left to cause everyone to drop their visors a couple of inches. It was past commuter time, but South Florida traffic never seemed to ease. It was good for cover, bad if Morrison got nervous and made any quick moves.

  "I'm in behind him coming up on the Sears curve," O'Shea reported over the Nextel.

  "I'm three blocks back," I answered.

  I had to think that Morrison would believe most of what Marci had reported to him. I wasn't exactly going out on a limb with this but maybe we could get lucky. If he wasn't our guy, he'd go home, or to the station, or to some poker game for all I knew. But if he was our guy, I was betting the mention of somehow finding a woman's body in the Glades would spook him. He wouldn't believe it, but the thought of it would get into his head and twist it. If he was as careful as we made him out to be, he would have to confirm it. I was betting on the Glades. Marci had just added to it with her description of someplace off Alligator Alley. Dumping bodies in the Everglades was a tradition in South Florida. The Indians had done it to early explorers, the ruthless farm bosses to slave labor. The mob had done it with their enemies in the twenties and the myriad criminals from dope runners to child abductors had done it in the modern era. Two and a half million acres of open land, shifting water, canals and sawgrass and plenty of reptiles to eliminate all traces: a perfect disposal site. I figured he'd head straight for the Alley and use the failing daylight to his advantage.

  But maybe I thought wrong.

  "Freeman, I'm losing him up here," O'Shea snapped into the Nextel. "Some asshole is trying to make a left over two lanes and I'm trapped and your boy just put his blue lights on and went up around everybody in the right lane."

  I immediately pushed up my speed and moved to the right, passing through a crosswalk, forcing a hulking black man with a shopping cart to yank his load back and spit a string of tobacco at my pickup. I was sitting high enough in my cab to see the flashes of blue from Morrison's light bar and kept pushing. I cut off another driver moving too slow over the railroad tracks and gained another half a block. I saw O'Shea twisting his wheel and cursing out to my left as I went by and gave him a hand sign that I was chasing now.

  I blew a red light at Ninth Avenue by barely a second and picked up Morrison's cruiser a block and a half in front. I sped up to get in the same traffic herd so we wouldn't get separated by another light, and exhaled. No big deal. This was why you did two-mans. It was the old way before every metro P.D. had helicopters and the undercover guys hid locators in their cell phones.

  I was watching Morrison's light bar and was anticipating his shift into the left lane when he suddenly went right without a signal onto Thirteenth heading north. Shit. Where the hell was he going? An SUV and a sedan made the same turn and I swung behind them and watched the squad car making distance on me and I punched up O'Shea.

  "Our guy just took a north route on Thirteenth. If he makes a couple more turns he's going to make me," I said.

  "I'll cut up on Twelfth and try to catch him parallel," O'Shea answered.

  I was trying to keep my speed but the sun was now on the left side of my face, glancing off my hood, and before I could adjust my focus I realized Morrison had slowed, and when the fat SUV between us swerved around him into the left lane, only the small car was a buffer. The squad car kept its speed and rolled on and I was too far back to see if Morrison was checking his side mirrors. We were on our way up to Oakland Park and I started thinking about what we could do if he simply went home. I was prepared to just sit on him. But tailing him out to some spot in the Glades would be even tougher at night. Out there in the flat expanse you could see headlights for more than a mile. I was grinding and watching the next traffic light burn green when Morrison's car slowed a little more than normal and then suddenly cut over to the far left and took a hard turn into the sun. I had to make a decision: O'Shea was still east, he wouldn't be able to tag on and Morrison was heading west, the direction I'd wanted him to go. Should I call it off or take a chance?

  "He's going west on Twenty-eighth," I barked into the Nextel and I went left, caught a horn from an oncoming taxi driver, cussed under my breath and was then partially blinded by the streaming light of sunset.

  I caught a glimpse of the police lettering on Morrison's back bumper as he cut another left turn and when I hooked onto the same street I slammed on the brakes. There were two patrol cars parked nose-to-nose blocking the street and Morrison's brake lights beyond them. When I stopped I took a futile look into my rearview and another cruiser was crossing the T behind me. The Nextel tweeted.

  "Sorry brother, you know I can't take a chance gettin' into that beehive," O'Shea said from somewhere back there. "Call me when you can. Out."

  I tossed the cell under the seat like you might roll an empty beer bottle after getting pulled over. If they wanted to find it bad enough, they would. The three officers in front seemed to climb out of their cars at the same time, like it was choreographed. The fourth, behind me, stayed behind the wheel. Classic drug stop. Don't ever try to tail a cop without installing a police scanner, I thought. You miss that call for backup, you're screwed.

  CHAPTER 26

  When she called him, he didn't know for sure whether she'd learned her lesson, or she was fucking with him somehow. All he knew for sure was that he didn't feel right. Maybe he should have just done her when he had the chance and moved on.

  "Hi, Kyle. Hey, I'm at work, baby, and you know that big tall guy who came in the other day with the blonde cop? He was back in here today, asking me questions and it scared me, you know, what you said, about you getting into trouble by hang
ing out here?"

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Marci," he'd said, trying to calm her, though there was something in her voice that sounded more like she was acting spooked instead of being afraid. And he knew her well enough now to know she didn't scare easily. Hell, she wasn't even scared the other night. She might have been pissed. She might have even known that if she hadn't done what he wanted he would have killed her right there like the rest of them. But she didn't come off scared. He liked that in a woman.

  "OK, listen. What the hell did the guy say?" he asked.

  "He was talking about missing bartenders," she said. "Girls that had worked at a bunch of places, up on OPB and down off Seventeenth Street and even here that that blonde cop thinks were kidnapped."

  Kidnapped, he thought. Christ, Marci, you're such a child.

  "Yeah, well, those are a bunch of rumors, Marci. They're like urban legends that assholes like to sit around at the bar and yak about like it's all intriguing when it isn't anything more than girls walking away from their job, gone down to Key West or someplace. Don't tell me you never wanted to just walk away and get the hell out of there?"

  That fucking Richards, he thought. Still pushing that shit and now she's got some goddamn P.I. into it because nobody in real law enforcement will believe her.

  "But this guy says that he found some kind of evidence. Some kind of body part or blood or something that's going to prove who did it and all they had to do was find out when certain people were in the bar when Suzy disappeared," she'd said.

  "Body parts? That's what he said? Body parts?"

  Christ, he thought, don't lose it. Just get it out of her.

  "He said a bunch of stuff but I don't want to talk about it over the phone, Kyle, you know. Can't you come over? I'm scared."

  And this time when she said it, she did sound scared and he didn't want to hear the rest of it over the phone, anyway, he wanted to look into her eyes and hear it.

  "I'll be over in an hour," he told her. "Just be calm, baby. I'm coming over." These goddamn women can get so emotional.

  On the drive over there he'd let his own head start cranking. Body parts. That's bullshit. There's no way Richards or some P.I. went out in the middle of the goddamn Glades and found body parts. Shit, the gators out there would have taken care of that long ago. Sure, somebody might have found a corpse or part of one out there. Fucking mopes were dumping dopers or bad business partners out there all the time. Shit, that asshole who beat up his old lady and killed his own kid went and dumped the body in one of the canals at a boat ramp out there just last summer and a fisherman came up with part of the body. But that was stupid, in close, where people hang out.

  So they might have found something, but why come and ask Marci about it? Marci didn't know shit unless they were trying to manufacture a case and were going to use her to set somebody up just to clear the case. That would be so typical of the detective bureau, use some poor innocent girl to make a case for them.

  He'd parked at the shopping center on the other side and then walked over to Kim's. Don't be in such a hurry, he told himself. You draw attention to yourself. Why the hell did you bring the squad, anyway? That wasn't too bright, somebody sees you coming into the place in broad daylight. Jesus, Kyle. What happened to careful?

  Inside there was that group of magazine smart-asses at one end of the bar and the Schnapps guy in the middle. He went to the end and then around the corner, under the TV, instead of in his usual spot. Marci waited a minute or so before she came down and pulled a beer out of the cooler for him on her way.

  There was something very tense about her. Maybe this guy really had shaken her up.

  "OK, Marci. Tell me about it again, the whole thing, babe. Right from the point that the guy walks in here, OK? Nothing left out."

  She pretty much repeated herself and he let her until she got to the mention of the so-called body parts and hesitated.

  "Slow down now, Marci," he said. "You're sure he said 'body parts'?"

  "Well, I uh, it was something that he said was DNA evidence. He might not have said 'body parts' exactly but where the hell else do you get DNA for Christ's sake?"

  Jesus, he thought.

  "Baby, it could be anything, hair from a comb, a goddamn toothbrush, a fucking Band-Aid tossed in the trash," he told her. "Did he say where he found it?"

  "No. Just that he had it and they were trying to get some kind of verification."

  "Did they ask you for any kind of sample? Blood or a swab of the inside of your mouth?"

  "No. Why would they want something from me?"

  That flash of tenseness was back in her eyes, he could see it in there, her fighting it.

  "Exactly," he said to her. "He's fishing for stuff, baby. He's probably done this to every goddamn girl in town who serves drinks."

  He took a pull on his beer, didn't like the taste and put it down. He tried to make himself relax, get her to match him. She excused herself and went down to the other end and made up some pansy- ass Shirley Temples or whatever the hell it was the alternative boys were drinking.

  He tried to get a picture of the big, lanky guy who'd walked in that night before Richards. He'd sat at the other end and acted like he was friendly with Laurie. Tanned guy, he remembered. Not an office man. He looked more like a boat captain or construction foreman. All he'd noted was that the guy was drinking his brand of beer and then that bitch had come in and he had to bolt.

  Marci came back down to him, exhaled, was more relaxed.

  "No big deal, baby," he said. "Nothing for you to worry about. I'll find out from the inside what the rumor is and let you know, OK?"

  She nodded her head.

  "This guy didn't say anything about me, did he? I mean, he didn't ask if any other cops had been in here or drank regular here?"

  "No," she said. "But I wouldn't have told him anyway."

  "Atta girl," he said and she had an odd look on her face when he said it, one that held some kind of inside smile, like she'd accomplished something. He ignored it, thanked her in his customer voice and walked out into the late sunlight and back to his patrol car.

  He was running a plan through his head while he sat at the first traffic light on Sunrise. Should he ignore the whole damn thing? If they had anything to connect him to the dead girls, wouldn't they be on his ass already? They'd have called him into his sergeant's office for a little face time to at least warn him that the Richards bitch was coming down on him.

  But what if this P.I. was teamed up with Richards and they were trying to show she was right and prove everyone else wrong? Then why come to Marci? Showing up twice meant they didn't get enough from Laurie to keep them away, and that wasn't good. When the light changed he went west on Sunrise and pulled his visor down to block the glaring sun.

  The P.I. said "DNA evidence"-he kept tumbling Marci's words in his head. Of course she didn't get the conversation exact. Body parts. DNA evidence. What the fuck did the guy have, if anything? Shit. He'd just ended it with Suzy. Her body would still be pretty fresh, even if the gators did get to it. He ought to just go out to the spot now, see if there was any sign that anyone had been out there. Answer the goddamn question so he'd at least know what he was dealing with. It'd be better than most of the mopes that he arrested who just sat there waiting for shit to come through the door and then it was too late, then you were already playing their game.

  He was watching half a block ahead like he usually did and saw the traffic starting to jam up on the left and he knew some dipshit was trying to make a left against the light like they always did and he slid over to the right lane. He would have gotten snared up, too, but he used his lights and a couple of hits on the siren and skirted by the on the right.

  "Fucking lemmings," he said aloud and then looked up into his rearview to watch the mess and registered in his head the midnight blue pickup truck that had just run a red light half a block back. He kept driving. Maybe he ought to wait. But shit, he'd be back on shift tomorrow and that would onl
y give him the daylight hours to get out to the Glades site and back in time, and he was even more wary about doing anything in the daylight. Only bad shit happened in the light, he thought. Right now he could stop out there and check for fresh tire tracks or signs of disturbance with a flashlight and be a hell of a lot less conspicuous.

  He went through the intersection at Ninth Avenue and glanced at the old bagman starting across the street. Christ, I just busted that guy for carrying dope two weeks ago and he's already back on the street, he thought and looked back to see for sure if it was the same guy pushing the same old grocery cart. That's when he saw it again, the blue pickup, charging through the intersection, but then easing back. Following.

  At the next light he made a hard right and watched his mirror. He saw the pickup hesitate and then make the same turn.

  "Son of a bitch," he said and slowed down, watching his mirrors, trying to see the single driver, his image behind the windshield high up over the one car between them. A minute later he snatched up his radio.

  "Two-fourteen. Two-eighteen. This is two-oh-four in need of assistance. Switch over to tack channel three," he said into the microphone.

  CHAPTER 27

  I sat with both hands on the steering wheel at ten and two o'clock. I didn't know what Morrison might have called in, but I wasn't taking any chances. Make no quick moves and keep your hands in full view. I watched the three cops in front of me huddle at Morrison's trunk, talking and cutting their eyes to me. It was Morrison's meeting and I watched him, trying to match him up with the figure I'd seen briefly at the bar. He hooked his thumbs into his polished leather belt, turned his face to me a couple of times for emphasis. It was the same face as in the photo. They talked for a full two minutes and I did not move my hands, not even to turn off the engine.

  Finally, the two other officers nodded and started toward me, one moving to the left, the other to the right of my truck. Morrison leaned back against his trunk and crossed his arms and stared into my face. His eyes felt much closer than they physically were.