Black Coral

by Andrew Mayne

  Byron and Renata Kloof had a security camera that faced the street and had sufficient resolution to record license plates as cars drove by—provided Byron didn’t park his car in the way. Something he did often, to our frustration.

  Watching the various suspects come and go has become a mini reality television show for Hughes and me. We see the paper-delivery couple drive by in the morning. We watch early-morning people shamble out to their cars with cups of coffee and sleepy expressions. We see moms and dads chase their kids out the door for school. During the day, we see package-delivery people knock on doors, throw boxes, and scratch themselves. Then comes a procession of kids returning home, playing in the street, and being called to dinner.

  Of all that, the most interesting character is Mr. White. We watch him sneak out and pay visits to several of the other houses. He’s a cat—a highly promiscuous cat, from what we observe. After he returns home at night, a parade of raccoons roams the neighborhood, looking for trash and sometimes succeeding.

  All aspects of human and animal life are represented on these videos, except the one we’ve been looking for: a creep in a murder van rolling through and leering in the direction of Lara Chadwick’s home. It’s simply not there.

  What’s even more frustrating is that the night they went missing is like any other night.

  We see Lara and then Eric drive past the Kloofs’ camera, and that’s the end of it. There are no other cars that night except for the neighbors’.

  I press fast-forward and watch a video I’ve seen twice already, this time with the speed increased. “He’s here,” I murmur.

  “I know. But who?” Hughes drops the binder full of suspects on the table. “They checked everyone. They even tracked down the people they couldn’t get license plates for. They were thorough.”

  I grab the binder and flip through the pages. It contains times, names, and plate numbers for hundreds of people. The entries number in the thousands.

  I wave to my screen. “We’ve seen him. He came in through the back door to kill them, but he’s been by the house.”

  “Maybe not within the time period of the camera footage?”

  “Nah, he’s careful. He’d check the place out close to the date.” I keep flipping through the pages. “Any word on George?”

  “He’s still digging under rocks. Shaking trees.”

  While Hughes and I are here, George has been interviewing some of the persons of interest, including Smokey Joe Ray. If anyone could get him to talk, it would be George. The fact that he hasn’t texted us tells me that nothing has come of that.

  Cope’s truck speeds past on the screen, and I mentally flip him off. He’d be the perfect suspect if it weren’t for the fact that we have him on hospital security camera footage at the time of the murders. He’s an asshole, but he can’t be in two places at once.

  I even watched that footage to make sure the same guy checking in was the jerk I encountered.

  Yep. Same douche.

  I also checked to see if he had a twin brother. Nope. He’s a one-of-a-kind asshole. Man, that would have made it so much easier.

  “Why did they like Cope for this?” I ask Hughes.

  “Because he’s an asshole?”

  “Besides that.”

  “Because he lurks a lot. He takes three days to fix an AC unit? They should charge him with fraud.”

  I scroll back the video of his truck driving by. The windows are too tinted to see inside. The truck passes. Same dumb sign affixed to the door. Same dent in the bumper I saw in the driveway at his house. You can barely make it out here, but it’s there. The guy’s been driving around with it for years.

  “That window tint has to be illegal,” says Hughes.

  “You’re looking at him too?” I get up and stretch my legs as I walk over to his side of the table.

  Hughes has a freeze frame of the truck as it’s driving away from the camera. The tailgate is down, so you can’t see the license plate from this angle, but the sign on the door is the same. Everything is there . . .

  Except . . .

  “Go back a couple frames,” I tell Hughes.

  “What?”

  “Just go back.”

  He scrubs the footage a second back. “Okay?”

  “The bumper.”

  “What?”

  “The damn bumper! There’s no dent! Scroll all the way back and let’s see it.” The truck rolls by, giving us multiple views.

  No dent.

  “That’s not Cope’s truck! It’s a different truck!”

  “It has his sign,” replies Hughes. “He never denied it was him.”

  “But it’s not. Not this time. Check the other clips. Look for other times he drove by. I bet the last time we see the truck, there’s no dent.”

  Hughes pulls up the other footage, and we spend several minutes confirming it. Cope makes two visits to the neighborhood. Mystery Man with the undented truck makes four. Four trips.

  “What does this mean?” Hughes asks, trying to piece it all together. “Is this other dude pretending to be Cope? That seems like a lot of work.”

  “Yes. No. There are a million Ford pickup trucks in South Florida like that one. We only think it’s Cope’s because of the magnetic sign. They can make those for you in an hour down the street.”

  “Okay. But he’s shadowing Cope? Pretending to be him?”

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t think that’s it. I think they’re working together.”

  “Killing together?”

  “I don’t think so.” I grab a binder and flip through Cope’s hospital visitation times. “I think he had someone cover his jobs while he was out of commission.”

  “But why didn’t he tell us? Assuming they’re not partners in crime?”

  “Because Mystery Man doesn’t have a license. Damn. What if Cope was using several unlicensed electricians?”

  Hughes’s eyes go wide.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Multiple license violations are a third-degree felony. If Cope admitted he was having an unlicensed guy handle his jobs, it could mean five years in jail per incident. He may not have known that his guy was the killer, but that doesn’t mean he wants the truth to get out now.”

  “He had to suspect.”

  I shrug. “Maybe. Certainly, after the murders. But Cope doesn’t strike me as the guilt-ridden type.”

  “Okay, how do we catch this guy? Bring Cope in?” asks Hughes.

  “I don’t know if that’ll work. He’s lawyered up and has no reason to talk to us at the moment. We need to run it by George. Maybe there’s a better way.”

  Hughes bursts from his seat, scaring the hell out of me, and rushes over to a box filled with folders. He starts digging them out like a madman until he finds what he’s looking for and drops it on the table in front of me.

  A small label marks the contents: Darren Cope Cell Phone Records.

  “They got a warrant for his phone bill,” says Hughes. “How they got a judge to do that is beyond me. But they did it.”

  I flip through the folder. “It’s just a list of numbers. No names.”

  “Yeah, but one of these is Sleazy Steve’s.” He digs into the box and pulls out a thumb drive. “Let’s check ’em out.”

  Hughes accesses the USB drive and pulls up a spreadsheet of phone numbers and call times. One by one, he plugs the phone numbers into Google and searches for them. After about twenty numbers, I start to get bored and decide that we need George to put the thumbscrews on Cope.

  “McPherson!” shouts the usually unexcitable Hughes. He’s pointing to an old web listing for general handyman repair: Stephen Dunn Handyman & Boat Repair.

  “It’s a Stephen,” he says expectantly. He types the name into a police search engine. No results. “Huh.”

  “The Dunn part is probably an alias,” I explain. “The real question is whether he still answers that number.” I pick up my phone.

  “Wait,” says Hughes.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

>   THE SCENT

  My body’s a ball of nervous energy. Three hours ago, Hughes called the number for Stephen Dunn Handyman & Boat Repair and left a message asking him to fix the pool pump at the house next door to the one I’m in right now.

  The houses are at a dead end of a street and used by the FBI and DEA to conduct sting operations. They’re isolated in case of gunfire—which makes the one I’m in the ideal target for Sleazy Steve.

  What helps me relax somewhat is that Hughes and George will be watching security camera feeds of me. George is watching from a panic room hidden in my house; Hughes is watching from next door. Both stand ready in case there’s a problem.

  There shouldn’t be. All we’re hoping to do is get the man behind the phone number to show up, then track him back to where he lives and find out his actual identity. In the event that he seems like our suspect and takes an unusual interest in me, we plan to use the house for a few more days to see if he drives by or tries to stalk me.

  I consider this unlikely. I suspect that even with Shulme in jail and the news out that the Swamp Killer has been apprehended, Steve will be cautious. That said, catching him driving by the house a little too often might be enough to convince a judge to issue a search warrant for his home and a collection of forensic evidence.

  Hughes called him for a pool repair at the other house so that Dunn would assume that anything he does in my house will be harder to connect to his work next door. It’s flimsy but feels less like an obvious sting operation. Steve is smart. He has to know an obvious trap when he sees one.

  “His truck is driving past my driveway,” Hughes says over the phone.

  I’m listening via my AirPods, pretending it’s music.

  I’m stretched out on a deck chair by the pool behind my house, pretending to get some sun. It feels a little obvious, but this is also the best way to watch Hughes’s backyard.

  “Okay, it’s pulling in.”

  I hear the sound of the pool repairman and Hughes talking as they make their way between the houses. Hughes sounds convincing as he explains the problem he’s been having.

  I casually glance at them as they walk to the back wall of the house, where the pump is located by a hedge. The plan is for Hughes not to acknowledge me and vice versa. If Dunn asks, Hughes will explain that I’m watching the house for my mother while she’s in the hospital, but that he doesn’t know me personally.

  Dunn is tall. He’s got a strong build with a bit of middle-aged weight, but he’s no slob. Gray hair sticks out from behind his hat. His face is tanned and slightly rugged. He looks like a movie cowboy villain. I use the word villain because even from here, his eyes are penetrating but cold.

  I hear Hughes tell him that he’s got to go run an errand. We figure that if Dunn thinks his interactions with me won’t be observed, he’ll be more likely to strike up a conversation.

  Hughes walks away, leaving Dunn to his work. At the moment he’s kneeling by the pump, using a hose to spray off all the dirt. I go back to pretending to listen to music, waiting for the right moment.

  “Hughes is down the street,” says George in my ear.

  George is watching footage from tiny cameras we have hidden around the houses. We made a point of not having any visible security cameras and no dogs. If we want to see Dunn act naturally, we can’t have him feel observed.

  “He’s got the cover off the pool,” says George.

  My foot starts to shake. In a minute I have to get up and walk over to a potential serial killer, wearing only a bikini and a forced smile.

  George and Hughes argued that we didn’t need to do it that way, but I insisted. I’m in good shape. I clean up well, and I definitely don’t look like a cop and nothing like any photo or video of me in the news that I can find. And most importantly, I know that Dunn will only let his guard down if he sees my vulnerability.

  “You ready?” asks George. “I can be out there in five seconds if there’s a problem.”

  “I’m good,” I whisper nervously. I get up, grab my towel, throw it over my shoulder, and walk over to Hughes’s house.

  The moment the door to my house’s pool enclosure shuts behind me, Dunn’s eyes dart toward the sound, and he sees me. Or at least visibly acknowledges me.

  I sensed that he was watching me the moment he entered the backyard with Hughes. It could all be in my mind, but I had the same feeling a mouse must have after she realizes the owl has spotted her.

  Dunn is using a wrench to take apart the pump. I could tell him it’s a fried motor because I watched George short it out with 220 current earlier that morning, but better to let him find that out himself.

  When I get within conversation distance near the small fence that separates the yards, I take the AirPods out and, trying not to sound nervous, speak. “Hey, sorry to bother you. But do you fix things?”

  Dunn sets down his wrench. I notice the other tools in his toolbox: box cutters, a small saw, a rusty hammer, and other implements that could have been used to kill the victims we found in the swamp.

  His eyes linger over my body before stopping on my face. Lots of guys do that, but there’s something about how slowly he does it that sends a chill down my spine.

  “Yeah. Most things,” he replies. “What’s broken?”

  Oh jeez. This already sounds like the dialogue to a bad porno movie. The realization makes me grin inwardly. Keep it together, Sloan.

  I suck at undercover.

  I gesture back to the house. “My mom’s air-conditioning. I want to get it fixed before she gets back next week. I’d like to get it fixed today, if I can. It’s murder in there.”

  Why did I use that word? God, I’m bad at this!

  Dunn stands up, and I almost jump back but manage to not freak out visibly.

  He’s tall, all right. Taller than I realized.

  He wipes his hands on a red rag. “Let’s take a look.”

  I wasn’t expecting that quick of a response. I glance down at the dissected pool pump.

  “What about that?”

  “It’ll be here when I get back.”

  The phrase I get back creeps me out, because it sounds like only one person will be returning . . . which should be obvious, because I don’t need to come back and fix the pump. But still, it weirds me out.

  As I walk toward my house’s AC unit, he’s a few steps behind. I get the sense that he’s looking at my butt, visible just below the towel over my shoulders.

  This is the special bikini, Run’s favorite. It’s not skimpy—it simply accentuates the curves I like to have accentuated. It also has what my friends call “ass magic,” as in it makes your butt look magical.

  We come to a stop by the large metal box containing the AC unit. Dunn stands there and makes a small nod. “Okay. I can see you have an air handler, but I need to check out the control panel and see what happens when I turn it on.”

  I smack my forehead. Maybe a little too cutesy. “Oh, of course.”

  This means I have to take him inside the house. George is in the panic room, but since I took the AirPods out, I haven’t heard his voice. Knowing but not having proof that he’s watching me makes me nervous.

  Dunn follows me onto the patio and through the open glass doors. I glance back and see that he’s no longer checking me out—he’s looking all around the house. Not in an obvious way, but his eyes are probing.

  I’ve seen this behavior before with sharks.

  When you’re in the water with a big shark like a tiger or a bull, they’ll circle around you, assessing you, observing what you’re doing. They can quickly decide you’re not food, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t food near you. Some sharks can pick up the sound of a spear gun and will swim toward it, not away, because they know that means the awkwardly swimming fish that’s not worth eating—that’s you or me—just caught something that is worth eating. They’ll try to take it from you on the spot.

  I lead Dunn over to the thermostat in the living room. He goes up to the contr
ols and starts to make adjustments.

  “How long has it been broken?” Dunn asks.

  “A few days. It only blows warm air now.”

  He nods, then takes the cover off. As he scrutinizes the circuitry, looking at absolutely nothing that has anything to do with the problem, he asks, “Did your husband take a look?”

  “No husband,” I reply. Oops. I’m afraid that sounded too vulnerable. He’s used to women being on guard when they’re alone in their homes with him. I quickly add, “My boyfriend’s no good at these things.”

  “Oh, what’s he do?” Dunn asks, pretending to make small talk while probing me for information about my imaginary boyfriend.

  I’m about to answer the way I’d expect a single girl to answer in this situation—by describing her last boyfriend—but I stop, because if I described Run, it would be pretty clear that he’s capable of fixing this. Instead, I draw upon Hughes. “He was in the military. Now he’s looking for a job.”

  “I see,” says Dunn.

  What do you see?

  “Mind if I use your bathroom?” he asks.

  I point him toward the guest bathroom down the hall. It’s right next to the room where my stuff is. Under the pretext of me watching my mother’s house, we decided that we’d leave the master bedroom as is, full of an older woman’s belongings, with me staying in a guest room.

  Dunn walks away, his eyes gliding over the picture frames on the walls—photos of me and my mother—then disappears down the hallway.

  I take a deep breath, put an AirPod back in my ear, and go into the kitchen and grab two water bottles.

  “You’re doing good, kid,” says George, whispering because his safe room is only a few feet away from where Dunn is right now. “Just stay relaxed. When you’re not looking, he’s really checking you out. I’d punch him if I weren’t stuck in here.”

  I nod, afraid to speak. I have to maintain my act even when Dunn’s not around. Otherwise I may slip up and ruin everything.

  “Just keep calm,” says George. “Most guys would do that. To be honest, it’s probably not him. I’m not getting the vibe.”

  Really? I’m creeped out like I’ve never been in my life. Of course, I’m expecting to meet a serial killer. As desperately as I want to catch Sleazy Steve, George’s hunch relaxes me. George is rarely wrong.