Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3)

by James W. Hall

  "I'm ready to go," she said. "You coming?"

  Sylvie got up and walked across the parking lot to the red '83 Oldsmobile and got inside it. And though it was in the mid-nineties, with the humidity about there too, she left the windows rolled up. She didn't mind sweating. It felt purifying, her body distilling away the unessential fluids.

  Maybe if her father took a very long time getting back to the car, she might even sweat away entirely, like a Popsicle held up to the sun. Maybe that was possible. Death from sweating. Harden comes to the car and Sylvie isn't there. No sign of her. Only a small oily puddle on the floor mat. Hell, when she thought about it, considered the other options, it didn't seem that bad a way to die. Just melt and evaporate. Turn into a cloud.

  Now, there was a good idea. A cloud. Every few seconds Sylvie could assume a new shape. And all around the world people would be lying out in meadows looking up at the sky as Sylvie rolled by, all of them seeing a new thing every few seconds. Now look, it's an alligator, now it's a moose, now it's Santa Claus, now a rocket ship.

  Yeah, that was good. Sylvie the cloud.

  Sylvie the cumulus.

  CHAPTER 4

  "You should eat something, Thorn. Get some grease in there, soak up some of that tequila."

  Sugarman slid the plate of conch fritters in front of him.

  Thorn looked down at the plate for a second, the eight round doughy balls gleaming with oil, the small paper cup of cocktail sauce, another of mustard, all of it arranged neatly on a bed of lettuce. Thorn slowly raised his hand, caught the lady bartender's attention and twirled his pointing finger in the air. She came over. A young woman, late twenties, black hair to the middle of her back.

  "Another, please, ma'am."

  When the bartender left, Thorn let his head loll to the side and pressed his nose to his shoulder and took a long sniff. He choked out a cough and felt his stomach begin to empty. He sat up abruptly, took hold of the bar, straightened his spine, and will it back down.

  "You okay?"

  Thorn swallowed, looked at Sugarman.

  "I don't smell like myself."

  "Or look like yourself, or act like yourself."

  Thorn pressed his nose again to his shoulder.

  "I stink," he said, "therefore I am."

  Sugarman patted him on the shoulder.

  "Shake it off, Thorn. Come on, let's get out of here."

  "Hey, look, Sugar. When you lose the one goddamn thing in your life you care about, then maybe you can tell me something. Okay? But not till then. Till then, leave me the hell alone."

  It was Sunday afternoon. Thorn had been drinking steadily since two o'clock yesterday, right after Darcy had been pronounced dead at Mariner's Hospital. Drinking at the Lorelei in Islamorada, drinking through the afternoon, through the evening, drinking, falling asleep with his head on the bar. Nobody bothering him. Waking up that morning at sunup, two other guys passed out at a picnic table nearby. Maybe the loves of their lives drowned as well.

  The bar opened again at eight, Thorn washing his mouth out with a draft beer, then starting back with Cuervo Gold. In no hurry to go home, where Darcy's clothes hung in his closet, where her things mingled with his.

  Sugarman was staring down into his draft beer, shaking his head sadly. He was dressed this morning in a peppermint-striped seersucker shirt, short-sleeved; tan pants; sandals. No longer wearing the uniform of the Monroe County Sheriffs Department, Sugar was out on his own, making clothing choices for the first time in a long time. Not real good at it yet either.

  He was a handsome man. Sometimes, from the right angle, the guy was almost pretty. His father was Jamaican and his mother Norwegian. Thorn never met the father, but he clearly remembered Sugar's mother, a thin woman with wispy blond hair, pale, almost translucent skin. She'd given Sugarman her delicate face and long lashes. And he'd split the difference between mother and father in skin color. A golden toffee. In open sunlight, arm against arm, Thorn's tan was darker than Sugar's.

  So there he was, Thorn's friend, that sleek, exotic, simple man, drinking beer at the Lorelei Bar in his seersucker shirt, middle of the day, middle of August. Trying to console his inconsolable friend. His friend of more than thirty years. And at that moment, Thorn was fighting off the urge to push his old pal backward off his bar stool. To throw him to the ground, jump on his chest and pound his fists on Sugar's body, force his old friend, his great good buddy, to retaliate, to hit him till the blood came, batter and slam him till bones broke, flesh tore, till Thorn's body began to feel again.

  A couple of teenaged girls passed by in scanty bathing suits. Thorn turned and watched them pass. One of them with red hair almost Darcy's shade, worn in a ponytail, bangs cut close to her eyes. Thorn wanting to shout out a warning to her, stay close to the shore, don't swim alone, don't stick your arm inside crevices of any kind. You can get your arm caught in there, you can drown. Wanting to follow her, dedicate himself to her protection. Man, oh, man, catching himself just in time.

  Sugarman's hand was on his shoulder.

  "Okay, Thorn. Come on, now, let's take it on home, buddy. All right? You ready? Here we go."

  Sugarman stood up, tried to nudge Thorn off the stool.

  The bartender set another drink in front of him, gave Sugarman a what-can-I-do look, and walked away. Thorn shrugged off Sugar's hand, lifted the drink to his lips and had another sip, wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve, and set the glass carefully back onto the bar.

  "I was fishing." Thorn closed his eyes, seeing it all again, the tarpon running, the graceful, silver launch. "I was jerking myself off with my fly rod, playing that fish while Darcy was down there going through who knows what kind of holy terror."

  "Come on, man. You've had yourself a good wallow. Let's just give that the checkered flag."

  "One day? That's all the time I get to wallow? One fucking day?"

  Thorn threw back the rest of the tequila and slapped the glass down.

  Sugarman looked away and took a good pull on his beer, set it down, and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He swiveled around and faced Thorn.

  "I didn't want to tell you this now. Not here."

  Thorn banged the glass on the bar a couple of times and looked for the bartender.

  "Something's not right about her hand."

  Thorn hesitated for a moment, replaying the words, then he set the shot glass down and thrust his hand out and grabbed hold of Sugarman's shirt and dragged him forward. He sputtered something, not sure himself what he was trying to say. And Sugarman gripped Thorn's wrist, used one of those cop tricks he had, twisting it hard. Thorn's hand came loose and his eyes watered with the pain.

  Sugarman looked down at the front of his seersucker shirt and brushed the wrinkles out of it. Took a long, exasperated breath and released it.

  "The damage to Darcy's hand," Sugarman said. "It isn't consistent with her being caught. It doesn't seem right."

  Thorn stared at him, tried to focus, but got a double image. He blinked but saw only a bleary version of Sugarman.

  "Not consistent? Not consistent with what?"

  "Well, it wasn't just scrapes. There were also bruises on her wrist and fingers. Knife wounds too. And two fractures."

  "Don't do this, Sugar. Don't make this any harder."

  "I'm just telling you what I saw."

  "Look, she was lobstering," Thorn said. "She got her hand caught in a crevice. A fucking lobster hole. It happens. Hell, she panicked, she was struggling for her life. There'd be bruises and cuts all over the place."

  "Maybe," Sugarman said. "But more likely what you'd get, a hand pinched like that between rocks, you'd get a glove avulsion. At least a partial."

  "What!"

  "Glove avulsion. You see it when somebody gets their hand caught in the gears of a machine, something like that. They're pulling so hard, the flesh tears. It comes off in one piece, like a glove, leaves the skeleton of the hand, that's all, some tendons dangling or something."

  Thorn sa
id nothing. He swallowed and kept his eyes on Sugarman's.

  "Same with wedding rings. You see it all the time, somebody jumping from the dock to their boat, their ring gets caught on a nail on the piling. Their body is on the boat, their finger is back there on the dock. Skins the flesh right off. Leaves the bone sticking out. It's why you don't see many paramedics wearing wedding rings."

  "What the fuck, Sugar?"

  "I'm saying, if her hand was caught between two pieces of rock, caught so bad she drowned because of it, you'd get different trauma than what we saw. These injuries looked like something else. Something that when you're in law enforcement you see on a fairly regular basis."

  "Say it straight out, man."

  "Like the hands of some of the dirtbags I used to bring in. Ones I had to forcibly restrain. A hand lock, a grip on their fingers, bending them back. Same kind of injuries. Broken fingers, in two places. Not at all what you'd expect if someone caught their hand in a crevice."

  Thorn shook his head, trying to clear his eyes.

  "Let's walk around," he said. "I need some air."

  They meandered past the restaurant and marina, Thorn leading with his head down, feeling the slump of his shoulders, the weight of hours of drinking settling there. He led them out to the small, pathetic beach. A few tons of dirty sand that had to be replaced after every serious blow.

  There were a couple of Jet Skis tearing up the calm water just beyond a roped-off swimming area. A few teenagers splashing around in the shallow water.

  "Hate those fucking things," Thorn said, staring out at the Jet Skis.

  "Asshole machines, I call them," Sugarman said. "Either you're an asshole already and that's why you want to ride one, or else as soon as you set your butt on one you become an asshole."

  Thorn stepped into the shade of a sabal palm, put his back against it and slid down till he was sitting in the sand. Sugarman crouched down beside him. He scooped up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers.

  "You're telling me," he said, "somebody had hold of her? Someone drowned Darcy?"

  "Were there other boats out there? Did you notice?"

  Thorn thought about it, trying to picture it again.

  "One," he said. "A few hundred yards away. I didn't get a great look at it. A Grady White. Twenty footer, twenty-two maybe. Open fisherman."

  Sugarman nodded.

  "Now listen, Thorn. I may be way off base here. I don't know. But I'm just telling you how it looks to me. Her hand, that's all I'm basing this on. And I could be mistaken."

  Thorn closed his eyes, listening to the blare of the Jet Skis, to the reggae coming from the tiki hut, to somebody's radio playing an old Beatles song down the beach. Someone screamed out in the water, a healthy libidinous scream. Someone thrilled by someone else. Someone tossing someone into the water. The kind of scream that was going to make Thorn hurt for a long time to come.

  Before Darcy, Thorn had never known any kind of contentment with a woman. If it hadn't been for her he might never have discovered that delicate, tricky feeling where every body part, every bone and muscle and internal organ, was relaxed and poised at once. An intimacy with no games, no maneuverings, everything exposed. A sweet, sexy nirvana.

  That's what she'd done for him. Two perfect years of her. The no-bullshit honesty, the luxurious ease in bed, the heat, a faultless fit of body and timing. Their mutual love of fish and sea. Their long conversations at night on the upstairs porch, wineglasses in their hands. The comfortable silences. A touch on the neck, mussing of hair. All that. Everything he had missed before her, he was now going to miss again.

  "We gotta get you sobered up a little and over to the funeral home," Sugarman said. "Supposed to meet Ralph Mellon at two."

  "Ralph who?"

  "Dr. Ralph Mellon. Guy's with the M.E.'s office in Broward County. He and his family happened to be down in Big Pine vacationing this month. Old pal of Sheriff Rinks, apparently. So when I called Rinks this morning, told him what I suspected, he thought about it a second or two, then he said he'd call somebody he knew. Ten minutes later he phoned me back, said this Mellon guy was intrigued by the situation and agreed to help. According to Rinks, Mellon's one of the top pathologists in the state. Seen it all. He said if there's anybody who can give us an expert read on that hand, it's Dr. Ralph Mellon."

  "Let's go."

  "You sure you're up to it?"

  "I'm a little drunk, is all."

  "Well, hang on, Thorn, this isn't going to be easy."

  "Sugar," he said, "I don't think any goddamn thing's going to be easy. Not for a long, long time."

  CHAPTER 5

  Dr. Ralph Mellon was six feet seven inches tall and weighed over three hundred pounds. Somewhere just past fifty, he had only a little of his curly blond hair left, but his beard was still prosperous. A tangled Mr. Natural growth, worn long enough to cover the knot in his tie, if he'd been wearing a tie and not the shiny flowered shirt opened to his gut. Garish pink hibiscus blooms covered the green shirt and the matching shorts. And when he waded into that dim mortuary vestibule, his big wife following in an identical outfit, the room suddenly seemed to be aglow in cheap neon.

  Sugarman made the introductions. Sally Spencer, the longtime owner of the funeral home, was tall, blond, her face shadowy and sunken. Today in a white summer dress, pink Keds. When it came Thorn's turn, he put out his hand and Ralph Mellon swallowed it up in his big, soft catcher's mitt.

  "I'm so glad I could be of help," he said in a grand and lazy Mississippi drawl. He stepped back, and one at a time, he made careful eye contact with Sally, Thorn, and Sugarman, as if he were taking their measure, cataloging each of them on some private rating system. "So," he said when he was finished. "Sandy Rinks tells me somebody has suspicions of foul play here."

  "The victim's hand isn't right," Sugarman said.

  "Oh, her hand's not right." The doctor smiled at his wife. A condescending grin for this layman's sloppy vocabulary. The two of them stood there beaming in their ridiculous flowered outfits, things she must've whipped up on her Singer for their summer holiday.

  "So. Let's take a look, shall we?" the doctor said, and reached up and took a deep grip on his beard.

  Sally led them down the somber hallway and pushed open the door at the end of it. Thorn had been there before. The small operating room lit to a painful brightness with fluorescent bulbs. The glossy white walls, the impeccable shelves lined with the materials of embalming, the stifling odor of antiseptic and exotic fluids. A chemical sting in the very cool air. And of course, the chrome surgical table, the body beneath the sheet.

  As the group moved to the table, Thorn stayed behind the doctor's broad back and kept his eyes on Sugarman. Sugar's mouth was gritted hard, eyes blurred, looking down at Darcy as the doctor raised the sheet.

  There was a difficult pause, then the doctor said, "Handsome woman."

  "Ralph," his wife said, prompting him. And the doctor cleared his throat in a halfhearted apology.

  He lifted Darcy Richards's right hand to the light, tipped his head at different angles, brought his eyes close. He flexed her fingers, mumbling to himself. Thorn kept out of range, shielding himself from Darcy's face with the big man's back. But he glimpsed her hand. The back of it was scuffed and bruised a bright yellowish purple. Five or six white puckers marked her wrist. Bloodless gashes where apparently she'd tried to hack herself free.

  He felt his stomach turn.

  "Well," the doctor said. "Well, well."

  "What?" Thorn stepped around beside the man and got a sudden look at Darcy's face. It was bland and rubbery white, as though her skin had been scrubbed so hard it was cleansed of all traces of personality.

  The doctor manipulated her hand for a moment or two longer, massaging it thoughtfully, feeling the structures below the flesh. Then he laid it down again, covered her over with the sheet, turned his back on the group and started for the door.

  "Where the hell you going?" Thorn hustled over and
put a hand on the man's beefy shoulder.

  The doctor turned on him, looked down into his eyes. Despite the coolness of the room, the doctor's face was sweaty. A damp blond ringlet was glued against his forehead.

  "I believe I'll make my report to Sheriff Rinks."

  "What'd you see, Doc?" Thorn said quietly.

  Maybe it was the hush he got into his voice, the lazy, feigned indifference of the dangerous lunatic. Or maybe the good doctor saw something in Thorn's eyes, some spike of lightning that was aimed his way. Whatever it was, it gave the big man a moment's uncertainty.

  "What'd you see?" Thorn said again, almost whispering this time.

  "Sir," he said, a thin mustache of perspiration growing on his upper lip. "There is fracturing in the condyloid joints and the phalanges of her two middle fingers. Multiple fractures, with what looks to me like severe socket damage. Does that mean anything to you?"

  "She could do that to herself? Her hand caught in a narrow hole?"

  The doctor studied Thorn for a moment as if looking for the faintest signs of intelligence, then raised his hand in the air and waved for them to follow. The group walked behind him down the narrow corridor into the foyer. When they had gathered there, Sally Spencer suggested they sit down in her office.

  "Do you mind, ladies," the doctor said, "leaving us menfolk alone for a moment or two?"

  When the men had shut the door behind them, the doctor settled on the big leather couch across from Sally's desk and motioned Thorn and Sugarman to nearby chairs, but neither of them moved. The doctor continued to sweat. His color was different. Whatever he'd seen in there was putting a kink in his bloodstream. His eyes were a pale blue, and seemed to have gotten vague and empty during the walk down the hallway.

  Mellon combed his fingers through his beard and laid his vacant blue eyes on Thorn.

  "You two boys vets? Spend time in the Asian jungles, did you?"