by Jason Briggs
I’ve always been a light sleeper. Years of overseas deployments will do that to a person. But being suddenly awakened after a romantic dream about your dead wife takes a few additional seconds to recover from.
I woke staring at the ceiling, trying to push back an enormous wave of sadness that came over me once I realized that my most recent experiences had not been in the realm of reality. Another knock at the door brought me fully back into the present. I grabbed my Glock off the nightstand and swung my legs out of bed and onto the floor. The red digital display on the clock read 2:37 AM.
I figured some drunk had partied too late and had the wrong door. Still, with the line of work I was in I didn’t have the luxury of being assuming too much. I stepped back and gripped my gun in both hands.
“Who is it?” I called out, mostly irritated that I’d been woken up.
“Ryan, it’s Brad. Dude, open up.”
Brad? What was he doing here?
I would know his voice among a million, but I checked through the peephole just to be sure. It was him all right: hefty frame and blonde hair trimmed in a high-and-tight, strong nose that hooked slightly to the left, piercing green eyes.
Lisa was standing behind him. The image was distorted through the small piece of glass but she looked as though she’d been crying. Lisa was a waitress at our favorite watering hole in Key Largo. Every time Brad asked her out she seemed to come up with a reason why she couldn't do it. I was somewhat surprised to see her with him.
Flipping back the latch lock I opened the door and squinted into the light of the hallway.
“What’s going on?” I said. “What are you doing in Miami?” They both looked like they had just come off a date. Brad was wearing dark slacks with a blue button-down shirt; Lisa, a short green dress that clung to her like plastic wrap.
“I brought her into the city for a date tonight,” he said. “Listen, I’ve got some bad news.”
Behind him, Lisa smeared her mascara as she wiped away a tear.
“Your friend, the Colonel. Colonel McCleary. He’s dead.”
Chapter Five
I blinked hard. “What?”
Brad lowered his voice. “Can we just come in?”
I turned and walked back into my room, holding the door open behind me until I felt Brad take up the slack. I went in and sat on the edge of the bed. I was still in my boxers but failed to make the connection that a lady was present. “What do you mean, he’s dead?”
“We were just coming out of the club across the street when we saw all the commotion. I finally found a police officer who would tell me what happened. I remember you saying you were staying here at the Dominion, so when you didn’t answer your phone I flashed my badge at the front desk and they gave me your room number. They’re saying that Colonel McCleary fell from his balcony.”
I stood up and walked to the window, yanked back the curtains, and peered down into the street thirteen stories below. The street was bathed in red and blue lights, pulsating to a rhythmic frequency. A small crowd had gathered on the northern edge of the chaos, huddled against a line of crime scene tape that served to form a cautionary perimeter.
“What happened?” I said, still looking down.
“No one has reported anything unusual,” Brad said. “The investigators are in his room now but from what I was told it was either an accident or suicide.”
Each day, people end their own lives for a multitude of different reasons. Many times they don’t show clear signals before going through with it. But I had seen the Colonel just a handful of hours ago, looked right in his eyes. What I saw were the eyes of a man enlivened about his future and the new start that his company would provide for him and his daughter. He had been full of optimism.
My career in the military had trained me to read people—McCleary himself had personally helped me to refine those skills—and I was good at reading people; their tones, inflections, and body language. There had been nothing in William McCleary that indicated he was on the brink of taking his own life.
As for an apparent accident, the idea was almost laughable. Annual deaths from guests falling from hotel balconies could be counted on one hand. Nearly all of them were drunken college students or wayward toddlers.
Behind me, Lisa was blowing her nose into a tissue. I turned around. “Let me get dressed,” I said. “I’m going down there.”
The elevators opened, and we stepped out into the lobby. The lights from the emergency vehicles pulsed through the large panel windows facing the street. Curious guests were huddled in small groups along the marble floor. A couple of the women were blotting away tears, testaments to a well-planned night gone wrong.
A cocktail lounge was positioned in the corner past the checkout counter. The bar was closed for the night and the lights were dimmed, but the plush leather chairs and the seating along the bar remained accessible. Brad offered for Lisa to wait there until we came back, promising we’d return soon. She nodded, entered the lounge, and selected a seat. We exited out the front door into the high-ceilinged expanse of the porte-cochère and then out onto the sidewalk. Onlookers were gathered everywhere; across the street, along the sidewalks, and up against the crime scene tape. I led the way around the first group of fire trucks and police cars and stopped at the perimeter. Ten yards in front of me lay a body covered in a white sheet. It was laying in the street, just off the sidewalk. Blood from the impact had slung onto the curb.
It was all that was left of Lieutenant Colonel William McCleary.
“Do you know what floor his room was on?” I asked Brad.
“Twentieth.”
I craned my neck and looked up. I finally picked out which one I thought it was. The light in the room was on, and the balcony door was open, but there was no one out there. The investigators were probably in the room. Brad followed my gaze. “Yeah, I think that’s the one,” he said. “This young guy was within a couple of feet of McCleary landing on him. He had just finished his shift as a bartender down the street.” He nodded toward the back of an ambulance. “He was over there earlier debriefing with a badge. They must have sent him on home.”
“How long ago?”
“A little before two o’clock. So, maybe forty-five minutes.”
I doubted that any cameras caught what happened up on McCleary’s balcony. For one, it was too high up for street levels camera to grab it. Second, there weren’t many people out at two o’clock in the morning. The odds of getting any kind of cell phone footage of what happened on the balcony were pretty slim.
There was nothing else to see here. “Let’s go,” I said. We traced our steps back to the lobby and Brad caught Lisa’s attention. He waved her over. “I guess we’ll head back to Key Largo,” he said to me. “What are you going to do?”
I shrugged. “Nothing I can do. This isn’t my investigation.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ryan. I really am.”
“Thanks, man.” I said goodbye to him and Lisa and then returned to my room deep in thought.
When I was growing up, my grandmother had a neighbor who used to stop by and visit at regular intervals. Barnabas Jones had been a decorated investigator with the LAPD for over thirty years before retiring to the rural mountains of Colorado. We lived far away from any city—the bus drive alone was nearly half an hour—and I spent the better part of my childhood roaming the foothills, wading through streams, and camping under the stars. The nearest kid to my age lived over five miles away so I learned to keep busy with shooting my .22, making traps to catch squirrels and coons, and fishing. My grandmother didn’t allow for much TV time, so Barnabas stopping by was often the highlight of my week.
I would sit for hours on the front porch, listening to Barnabas recount case after case from the old days. My grandmother would shoot him a warning glare when his facts started to venture into gruesome territory. The gritty details, of course, were my favorite, and Barnabas would usually fill me in on them when my grandmother wasn’t
around.
It was the old man’s singular influence that developed my mind to see connections or threads that often seemed invisible to others. Had it not been for him and his stories I would have never considered becoming a military police investigator.
Now, as I lay on a hotel bed in the dark, Barnabas’s words came flooding back into my mind. “Go with your gut, Ryan. A good investigator will always go with his gut.”
I had seen those words keep me straight and true in every case I’d ever worked. Sometimes things were cut and dry. But sometimes even the cut and dry cases seemed to be telling you a little harder, that you might find something below the surface if you just took the time to look.
And that’s exactly what the small voice in the back of my mind was telling me as I stared at the red dot in the ceiling’s fire alarm
Something just didn’t add up.
Chapter Six
My eyes opened to a shaft of sunlight coming through the curtains. I looked over at the bedside clock: 7:04. I’d last glanced at it just after 5:30. Some sleep was better than nothing. I went into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and stepped in. My skin and muscles tingled as they imbibed the cold. I placed a hand on the tiled wall and leaned in, letting the water run across my back.
The events from early this morning didn’t seem real. It all felt eerily like the week I had lost my wife; it seemed like a dream.
But it wasn’t. McCleary was dead, and by my personal accounting, it wasn’t an accident. He must have poked his nose a little too far into the wasp’s nest. Someone wanted him dead because they wanted him quiet.
I thought of the two men who McCleary had engaged in hushed conversation at the party. One of the two looked like he had dressed for the occasion. The other seemed like he had thrown something on so he wouldn't stand out. Like they had come to the party not to congratulate the Colonel on his retirement, but to talk shop.
I turned the water off and grabbed a towel from the rack on the wall. I stepped out, dried off, and changed into khaki shorts and a blue polo. Then I pocketed my wallet and went downstairs to get some breakfast.
The Dominion wasn’t the kind of hotel that offered a complimentary continental breakfast. This was a long way from a La Quinta or Best Western. They had three different restaurants to choose from for breakfast. I hadn’t been in a hotel this nice since I went to Vegas last year for a weekend of gambling with Brad.
After stepping off the elevator I entered the first restaurant I came to—The Palazzo. It looked as good as any. I approached the attendant and lifted a finger when he asked how many were in my party. I followed him farther into the restaurant and he placed me at a table near the window.
Picking up the menu I decided on the eggs Benedict and waited for my coffee. I watched as outside, a megayacht left its moorings and headed for open waters. Palm branches swayed in a gentle breeze just outside the window and the sun gleamed off the water. I wasn’t the biggest fan of cities, but this view right here, I could get used to it.
Two tables over, a young blonde-haired lady blew her nose into her napkin. She was wearing jeans, a green blouse, and wraparound sunglasses. She set the napkin aside, took her fork up, and mindlessly picked at her eggs.
“Charlotte,” I said, and she looked toward me. It took a couple of seconds for recognition to set into her face.
“Ryan.” She leaned back in her chair and tossed her hands out. “I don’t even know why I’m here. I can’t eat anything.”
She looked miserable sitting there alone. “You want to join me?” I asked.
She looked back to her plate, took a moment to consider, and then nodded. “Sure.” She stood up and grabbed her purse, then settled into a chair across from me.
“I’m so sorry, Charlotte. I can’t believe this.”
“I can’t either,” she said softly. “Dad...he walked me to my room after the party was over. We were the last to leave. The next thing I know the cops are knocking on my door.” She still had the sunglasses on and she snuck the edge of a napkin beneath the frames and blotted another tear.
A waiter appeared and placed an empty cup in front of me. He filled it with coffee from a pitcher and took my order. Charlotte said she was done with her food at the other table and instructed him to deliver her check here.
I took a sip of my coffee and set the cup down. “Have you spoken with the investigator this morning?”
“No,” she said. “He told me they probably won’t know anything for a couple of days. He did say they didn’t see anything on the surface that indicated that something was amiss.” She pursed her lips and shook her head. “He didn’t kill himself, Ryan. And I can tell you this too, he wasn’t drunk. He probably had four drinks over six hours. Dad was perfectly lucid when he escorted me back to my room.”
“What do you think happened?”
She looked away. “I’m not sure.”
“I saw two men speaking with your father last night. It didn’t seem to be light-hearted party conversation.” I let the inference hang.
She bit down on her bottom lip but offered nothing in response.
“Charlotte, we only spoke for a few minutes last night. What you won’t know is that I’m a lead investigator with a lesser-known division within Homeland Security.”
She perked up a little. “You are?”
“If what happened to your father was no accident, if he really was murdered, then I won’t stop until I find out who did it, and why.”
“You would do that?”
“Charlotte, your father had an enormous influence in my life, both as a man and an investigator.”
She seemed to relax a little and fidgeted with a spoon resting on the table. “We just got this new case a few weeks ago,” she said. “I think Dad’s death might have to do with that.”
“The Pentagon case?” I said.
“Yes. But how—”
“Your father mentioned it to me in passing last night. He offered me a chance to come work with him.”
“That was you he asked? He spoke about you after the party was over. Just not by name.”
“What is this case with the Pentagon?”
“I honestly don’t know. He kept that one close to the chest. He went to Sarasota about a week ago and when he came back his entire disposition had changed. It was nice to see him finally lighten up at the party last night. Our secretary booked his travel but he wouldn’t say what he was doing in Sarasota. Now I’m thinking it was to protect me.”
“Those two men he was speaking with, do you know them?”
“No,” she said. “I put the guest list together and emailed out all the invitations. I don’t know who they were.”
Charlotte’s phone rang from inside her purse. She took it out, glanced at the screen, and answered the call. “Hello?” I watched her lips tightened into a fine line. Over the next minute, she listened as the caller did all the speaking. “Thank you. I’ll be there soon.” She hung up and then removed her sunglasses and wiped at her eyes. They were red and puffy, the clear result of a night spent grieving over a horrible tragedy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’m a mess.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me,” I said.
“That was the detective. No witnesses have come forward claiming to have seen anything. There was nothing in his hotel room that testified to a break-in and nothing to indicate a skirmish. They want me to come down to the station to answer a few more questions.” She grabbed her wallet, unzipped it, and withdrew a couple of bills. She placed them on the table. “Please make sure the waiter gets this.”
“I will.” I stood as she returned her sunglasses to her face and stepped away from the table. I extended my hand, but she surprised me by stepping up to me and giving me a hug. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. “You’ll get through this,” I promised.
She stepped back. “Thank you, Ryan. I’d better go.”
I watched her walk across the restaurant and turn out toward the lobby. When my fo
od arrived, I found that I wasn’t all that hungry either. I had a couple of bites and a second cup of coffee before I started feeling restless and decided to leave.
It was after nine o’clock when I checked out of my room and the valet brought my truck around. I shot a glance down the street as I pulled out. The immediate area where McCleary’s body had landed was still cordoned off and a police officer stood by to keep curious passersby continuing on their way. My heart was heavy as I took the Dolphin Expressway across the city and turned south, where I finally joined up with US-1. I still couldn’t believe that my former commander was dead. That his daughter and my instincts failed to see it as an accident didn’t help matters. I wanted to stick around and start asking questions. But it was too early for that. At the very least I needed to wait and see what the detective came up with before starting up an investigation of my own.
I was listening to Tom Petty sing “Runnin’ Down a Dream” when he was interrupted by my phone ringing. It was my boss, calling on a Saturday. She typically kept long hours that often included working weekends. I answered the call, and it connected through my truck’s Bluetooth.
“Hey, Kathleen. How’s your vacation going?”
“When I get one, I’ll let you know. How far are you from the office?”
“I’ve just left Miami. A little more than an hour?”
“I hate to ruin any plans you may have had, but I need you to come in. Pronto.”
“Okay. I’ll come straight there. Want to clue me in?”
“Not over the phone.”
She hung up, and I glanced at a passing speed limit sign before nudging the accelerator a little closer to the floor.
Chapter Seven
The FID offices were located on the south end of Key Largo, perched along the Gulf and looking out over Sunset Cove. The two-story building sat in the center of a vibrant green lawn hedged in by royal palms.
