1 Death Warmed Over

by Kent Holloway

  She looked at her other officer, then nodded over to her suspect, silently directing the second cop to handcuff him again. “Sorry, pal. Protocol says you need to be cuffed, so cuffed you’re going to be.”

  The man sighed, resigned to allow them the indignity of shackling him like a common hooligan.

  Once he was secure, Becca Cole told the officer to take him back to the station to await booking. As they walked past Larry and the chief, the man leaned in.

  “Be mindful of the blood, Chief Cole,” he whispered conspiratorially. “I believe you’ll find that the blood will tell you a great deal about this murder.”

  With that, he allowed himself to be escorted off the beach and driven to the little police station at the edge of town.

  2

  SUMMER HAVEN POLICE DEPARTMENT

  WEDNESDAY, 7:23 AM

  It had taken about six hours to process the scene. As usual, the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office’s Crime Scene Unit, or CSU, had come in to assist, lending their expertise to the investigation. Becca’s officers had canvassed the beach houses in the vicinity, waking their occupants up in the dead of night to find out if anyone had seen or heard anything that might help in the investigation. The medical examiner’s investigator had arrived near the end of it all and the body was removed from the beach.

  Now that she was pulling into the police station parking lot, she sighed. She really didn’t have time for this. The town was already in an uproar about a big archaeological discovery some history nerd had found a few miles off the coast. A sunken pirate ship of reported legend. They were in the national spotlight right now with crews from CNN, FOX, and a string of other cable networks coming and going to cover the big story. She hoped a small time murder like this one would creep below their radar. At least until she could solve it.

  Of course, so far, they weren’t off to the best start. There wasn’t much to find at the scene since the body appeared to have been dumped where she was found and they were still looking for the primary murder scene. Thanks to the Florida Highway Patrol and their handy little electronic fingerprint scanners, they knew who their victim was, at least—Andrea Alvarez, who’d migrated to Florida from Bogota, Colombia when she was still in high school. She’d apparently been a local ever since, but Becca had never met her before. Never had any run-ins with law enforcement until two nights ago when she was seen in Jacksonville, the big city in the next county north of Summer Haven, in an altered mental status. She’d apparently caused quite a ruckus in a restaurant there and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had picked her up under a Baker Act before transporting her to the hospital for evaluation. She’d already sent an officer to subpoena the medical records. With any luck—and having dealt with them before, she knew it would take a leprechaun’s pot full of the stuff—the JSO’s incident report should already be on her desk.

  She pulled into her parking spot, turned off the ignition, and leaned back in the seat. She couldn’t stop thinking about the blood. Like her suspect had told her, there’d been something off about it. Crime Scene had tested it and discovered it wasn’t human. Looks like the killer had poured the stuff all over her back himself. The M.E. investigator had told her there didn’t appear to be any hemorrhaging in the knife wound—telling her that she had most likely already been dead when the blade was plunged into her.

  So, if that dagger didn’t kill her, what did?

  There’d been only a few bruises found on her at the scene, but they appeared to be a few days old. They’d been consistent with many alcoholics she’d seen in the past—but Becca guessed they had more to do with injuries she sustained during her psychotic fit. There’d been no marks on her neck or petechial hemorrhages in her eyes to indicate strangulation or suffocation. The autopsy would reveal more, but at least at the scene, they hadn’t even seen a needle mark to indicate a drug overdose or anything like that.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, took a deep breath, and got out of her patrol car. A few seconds later, she was in the station and making a beeline for the coffee maker. It had been a long night and, from the looks of things, it was going to be an even longer day.

  Despite the early morning hour, the station was already abuzz with activity. They were a small department—only fifteen sworn officers, three reserve officers, and a handful of office personnel. But when things like the murder of Andrea Alvarez happened, her team pulled together and helped where they could. Not only was her office manager, Linda White, already at her desk typing up affidavits and warrants, but a few off-duty officers were also busying themselves with the investigation in various ways.

  “I hear we got a crazy one,” Sergeant Jeremy Tanner, her second-in-command, said when she walked into the bullpen. “Voodoo ritual or somethin’?”

  “Or something,” she replied, filling her mug with fresh coffee. “Our suspect?”

  “In holding. He’s as calm as a cucumber, as far as suspects go.”

  She nodded. “Eerily calm at the scene too. Downright smug, if you ask me.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s refused to give us his name. Says he’ll only speak with you.” The sergeant shrugged. “Had no ID on him either.”

  She looked in the direction of the holding cells. “Have you run prints on him yet?”

  “Just waiting for the results to come back from AFIS. Then I’ll run a background check on him and get back to you."

  She smiled at him with a nod. She was thankful she had such a seasoned veteran among all the rookies she’d hired upon accepting the chief’s position a year ago.

  Suddenly she remembered something the suspect had told her. “Did he have a cell phone on him?”

  Tanner nodded. “A burner phone. Untraceable.”

  “That’s fine. Just do me a favor and document the incoming and outgoing calls from it, okay? Oh, and bring him to the interrogation room. I want to talk with him in a few.”

  Jeremy nodded and went to fetch their mystery man.

  “Linda, did we get the police report on Alvarez’s little breakdown from a few days ago?” Becca asked her office manager.

  “Just came in over the fax.” She held up a few sheets of paper. “Haven’t had a chance to put it on your desk, but it’s a weird read.”

  The chief took the report and started skimming it. “Care to give me the Cliff’s Notes version?”

  The auburn-haired Linda looked up from her computer screen. “Well, basically, it says Ms. Alvarez just went nuts. Ranting and raving along Market Street and Main, near the Landing, downtown. She was babbling incoherently. Terrified out of her gourd. Then ran into the Kwan Su Chinese Bistro and started screaming that Death was stalking her.”

  “I categorically deny that accusation,” someone said near the entrance of the police station. “I’ve never laid eyes on that lady until this morning.”

  Becca and everyone else in the station looked over at the entrance to see their suspect standing there with a large box of donuts in one hand and a carrier of several coffees in the other. In unison, every cop within the bullpen drew their weapons on the man.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he said with a white-toothed smile. “I just went out to get everyone some breakfast. You guys have had a rough night.”

  “Chief, he’s gone! The door’s still secured, but he’s not in…” Jeremy ran around the corner from the holding cell area and came to an abrupt halt when he eyed the suspect at the door. “How the…?”

  “Apparently our perp and locks don’t get along, Jeremy,” Becca said, pointing her own weapon at the strange man. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “May I set the donuts and coffee down now?” the suspect asked. “I promise to put my hands up in the air as soon as I do.”

  Becca rolled her eyes. He was definitely a cool customer. Slippery, too. There was something about him that chilled her every time he was within sight of her. Good looking, yes. Refined with a difficult to identify accent. Perhaps British with a touch of eastern Europe thrown in. He had a dark comp
lexion—maybe a slight olive skin-tone that garnered notions of Italian or Mediterranean in his DNA—and had a well-groomed mane of jet black hair and the darkest set of eyes beneath deep set brows. His pronounced square jaw was clean shaven without the slightest hint of stubble. And, then of course, there was his attire. He was dressed in what she could only assume was a very expensive Italian three-piece suit—all black from jacket to shirt to tie—which gave him the appearance of an overpriced undertaker.

  Or a hit man.

  Becca motioned with the barrel of her weapon to indicate he could lower the breakfast to the front desk. When he’d complied, he was good to his word and raised both well-manicured hands in the air.

  “Jeremy, take him to the interrogation room now,” she said to her senior officer. “And keep a close eye on him until I get there.”

  The suspect kept his hands up as the older officer walked over, cuffed him yet again, and escorted him to the interrogation room on the other side of the building. When they were out of sight, Becca blew out a breath and returned her attention to the office manager.

  “You were saying?”

  Linda stared up at her. “That’s it? Don’t you want to know how he got out of his cell?”

  The chief shrugged. “I’ll figure that out in interrogation. Right now, I want to know more about our victim.” She flipped through the pages of the police report but was too preoccupied with their Houdini-esque suspect to read them. “So, Andrea Alvarez was having some sort of mental breakdown?”

  “Looks that way. Paranoid delusions are what the E.R. doctor said when she was taken to the hospital. She was admitted for overnight observation, but after medicating her, she calmed down and returned to what they call her ‘base line’.”

  “Why didn’t they keep her longer than that? She was in obvious distress. Seems like they should have kept her at least a few more days.”

  Linda shook her head and pointed to the report in Becca’s hand. “They couldn’t force her to stay. She’d been loud and disruptive, but she’d done no damage to the restaurant property. No one had been hurt. And Ms. Alvarez wasn’t suicidal, so they couldn’t legally detain her without a court order.”

  “She thinks Death is stalking her and the doctors didn’t think she was suicidal?”

  “Hey, I’m just reading what the report says. Hopefully, we’ll know more when the medical records department opens up at the hospital and we can get the doctor’s notes.”

  Becca took a sip from her coffee, but instantly spit it back into the mug. It hadn’t been that good to begin with, but now it was cold. She eyed the large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups their suspect brought in but thought better of it.

  “Okay, I’m going in to interrogate Mr. Mysterio,” she said. “Do me a favor and make sure Jeremy goes to the autopsy. Oh, and have him take Larry while he’s at it. The newbie needs to get his first taste sooner or later.”

  Linda gave her a knowing smile and returned to her work. Becca then made her way toward the interrogation room.

  Okay. Time to talk to our well-dressed escape artist and finally get some answers to this crazy case.

  3

  “So, the first thing I’d like to know is why you killed Andrea Alvarez,” Becca said as she stepped into the room and closed the door. The man was sitting back in the bolted down metal chair, his feet up on the table, as if he owned the place. He didn’t appear to have a care in the world.

  She strode across the room, dropped a manila file on the table, and took the chair opposite him before swatting his feet. He pulled them off the table and sat up straight with that same infuriating grin that always seemed to grace his perfectly sculpted face.

  “First, you’re assuming that I did kill her.” He leaned forward and placed his hands flat on the table. When he moved them, the handcuffs that were supposed to be around his wrists were left behind. “The assumption, of course, is erroneous. I didn’t kill her. If I did, I wouldn’t need you, now would I?”

  His comment caught her off guard. Of course, almost every suspect she ever brought into interrogation denied having done the crime for which they were accused. That wasn’t anything new. It was more in the way he had said it. Like, killing someone was within his nature, but not their current victim. No, that was definitely a new one on her.

  “And why should I believe you?”

  “Like I said, I’m the one who called the police. The moment I found the body, in fact,” he said. “Surely, you’ve checked the 911 records by now.”

  “Yeah, let’s talk about that.” She opened the file in front of her and withdrew a sheet of paper. “The call reporting the body came from an untraceable cell phone. There’s no way to know it was you who made the call.”

  “But it was my phone.”

  “Which you could have easily stolen. Or found. Or taken off the victim’s own body for all we know.”

  He nodded, acquiescing to her logic.

  “We’ll get back to that later,” she said. “For now, let’s start simple. What’s your name?”

  “Silas Mot.”

  There was no hesitation when he told her, which was another surprise. She would have bet the man would have played every dirty game in the book to keep her from getting that information. Of course, it could have been a disposable alias, but the speed in which he’d said it made her think he was telling the truth.

  “Okay.” If he was so easy with his name, maybe he’d be as forthcoming about some other incidentals. “Occupation?”

  “Death.”

  Her eyes snapped up at him.

  “Excuse me?”

  His grin seemed to shimmer underneath the glaring fluorescent lights.

  “I said, Death. The Big Sleep. The Dust Biter, Farm Seller, and the Daisy Pusher. The Grim Reaper. It’s what I do.” He leaned forward, looking at her from behind his deep-set, predatory eyes. “It’s who I am.”

  Okay, that’s pretty ominous. Of course, the dude is trying to mess with me or he’s just plain nuts without the salt.

  “Interesting.” She was determined not to show how unnerving his answer had been. “That’s quite a job title. Do you get dental with that?”

  He shrugged. “Nah, but it has its perks.”

  This guy is serious. He’s not just being flippant with me.

  “So, you’re the Grim Reaper,” she said. “And you found Andrea Alvarez on the beach. Already dead.”

  He nodded.

  “And you’re saying you had nothing to do with it.”

  “That’s precisely why I’m here, Chief Cole. I most certainly had nothing to do with it. That’s what troubles me. It wasn’t Ms. Alvarez’s Time.”

  “Her Time? What do you mean by that?”

  He leaned back in the chair, placing his hands behind his head to relax. “Just that. Everyone has a ticking clock, Chief Cole. Everyone has a Time in which their number is up. That’s when I, or one of my cohorts, show up.” He closed his eyes as if remembering a better time in his life. “However, Ms. Alvarez died without my knowledge. I neither know how or who killed her.” He opened his eyes again and looked across the table at her. His expression suddenly serious. “And recently, there have been others.”

  “Others?”

  He nodded. “In Summer Haven alone, in the last six months, there have been five unscheduled and unsanctioned deaths. Five deaths that took me completely by surprise. And that’s not supposed to be possible.”

  For the moment, she decided to ignore how insane the man sounded.

  “Five deaths? Are you talking about a serial killer?”

  “No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing so pedestrian as that. It started with Ruth Silvers, an eighty-three-year-old retiree.”

  “Yeah, I remember her. She slipped in the bathtub, struck her head, and died from a subdural hematoma.”

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  She blinked at him, trying to understand what the man was saying. “But accidents happen all the time. Elderly
people slip. She was on Coumadin, a blood thinner. Easy to create a bleed in the brain when you’re on that stuff.” Something similar had happened to her grandmother a few years ago. She knew all too well the risks involved with blood thinners.

  “Shouldn’t have happened,” he repeated, matter of fact. “She wasn’t scheduled to depart the mortal plane for another two and a half years. A stroke, I believe.”

  She shook her head to clear it. “Okay, even if you’re right, what does Ruth’s death have to do with Ms. Alvarez?”

  “Four weeks ago, Adam Patenga. A dump truck operator who happened to lift his truck’s bed into a high voltage line while he was still clutching the control levers. Electrocuted to death on the spot.”

  Becca remembered that case as well, though it had been investigated by the sheriff’s office. Where was he going with all these stories?

  “Then, two days ago…Elliot Newman. Did you know him?”

  She shook her head. “Knew of him. Never met him personally. He was the archaeologist who worked for the city of St. Augustine.” She looked at her suspect. “What about him?”

  “Oh, nothing. He isn’t one of the unscheduled deaths actually. It was, indeed, his sanctioned Time. But Elliot was here in Summer Haven, tracking down a lead on an old pirate treasure rumored to have been buried here a few centuries before.”

  And there it is. Becca rolled her eyes. Ever since the story broke about this crazy sunken pirate ship and its missing treasure, every wacko treasure hunter in the area had crawled out from their rocks in hopes of finding it for themselves. So, is this guy playing some game with me in hopes of finding that crazy treasure?

  “Yeah, he was. Until he was hit by a charter bus on its way to Daytona. I still don’t see why he’s important. Especially if he’s not one of your so-called unscheduled deaths.”

  Silas Mot looked up at the ceiling as if in thought. “Yes,” he said to no one in particular, “It’s rather brilliant really. I think we might need Mr. Newman’s assistance on this case, now that I think about it.”