by Matt Lincoln
“It’s hard to tell just from the sample itself, though, because of the water,” Bonnie added. “It’s technically possible it could’ve been there for a while, but highly unlikely.”
“So we know whoever it belonged to wasn’t in the system?” Holm asked for clarification.
“Well, we know the blood isn’t Birn’s because we have his on file here and can study it closely,” Clyde explained as he tossed the sandwich wrappers into a trash can off to the side of the table. “It’s unlikely the guy’s in the system since the sample came back with no hits, but not impossible. It’s a small sample, so we weren’t able to create a whole DNA profile from it.”
“Interesting,” I said, thinking this over. “So if we get a better sample of someone’s blood, we might be able to test it?”
“Maybe,” Bonnie said, her mouth pressed into a firm line. “But I wouldn’t count on it. We have years of Birn’s records on file, so we have a lot to work with here. That makes it easier to get a read on a partial DNA profile like this.”
“Got it,” I said, a little disappointed. “What about the drugs? Did they send you any of that?”
“One packet,” Clyde said with a shrug. “I talked to Muñoz about it briefly on the phone. They wanted to preserve the scene, especially if someone comes back for the drugs. I tested what they gave us, and it’s just garden variety cocaine.”
“I guess I was expecting something more after our last couple of cases,” Holm chuckled, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms.
“Yeah, me too,” I said, giving a hollow laugh. “Garden variety cocaine, as you call it, isn’t nearly as exciting as twenty-first-century Haitian zombie powder.”
“Birn’s definitely exciting, though,” Holm added, his eyes wide. “Or at least that’s one way to put it.”
“It’s not quite how I’d put it,” I said dryly, shaking my head. “Muñoz must be going nuts. I know when Holm was kidnapped, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself.”
“So you do care,” Holm sneered, grinning at me, and I just rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, she didn’t sound so great,” Clyde admitted, pursing his lips. “Not so great at all, actually. She’d said she’d been up all night even before all of this happened, and she was going to try to get some sleep before you two got down there, but she didn’t sound too optimistic about being able to do that.”
“No, I imagine not,” I murmured as I grew lost in thoughts of worry about where Birn was and what could be happening to him. Then, shaking my head to clear it, “You said something before about strands of hair, right? Was any of it Birn’s?”
“Birn’s bald, remember?” Holm asked, flashing me another grin.
“Oh, right,” I said, shaking my head again. “How could I forget?”
“Yeah, we found a few hairs,” Bonnie said with a chuckle. “None of them are Birn’s, not that we would want to imagine where they came from if they were. Anyway, most of them belonged to that woman who works down there, the one who called in the whole thing in the first place.”
“We’re still sure she’s not involved?” Holm asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “She seems to be turning up a lot.”
“Diane said she has a military background,” I said. “I think it makes sense that she would turn up, then. She’d know what to do in a crisis. Anyway, if she works right there, it’s no wonder her hair’s all over the place.”
“What about the other ones?” Holm asked the lab techs, who were both slurping on sodas by then. “You said that most of them were the sailor woman’s, but what about the others?”
“Uh, that’s the part that’s a bit weird,” Clyde said, furrowing his brows together. “They were Key deer hairs.”
“Key deer hairs?” I repeated, shaking my head in confusion. “You’re going to need to explain that more.”
“It’s a species of white-tailed deer that’s native to the Keys,” Bonnie explained, and her eyes were wide and her tone intense as she prepared to launch into one of her monologues about the animals. The lab techs loved to talk endlessly about this kind of stuff.
“I think that’s all we need,” I said, holding up a hand to stop her. “Why is it weird that they found those hairs there if they’re from the Keys?”
“Well, they were right by the beach,” Clyde said with a shrug as if this should be obvious. “Deer don’t tend to go dancing around the waterfront. They tend to stick to more wooded areas like the ones on other Keys, not beach resorts like the Little Torch Key. I mean, I guess it’s possible that one of them made its way over there and down to the water in time to leave some hairs on the dock on the same night Birn was taken, but I don’t know, that seems like a bit of a stretch to me.”
“Yeah, I guess that is kind of weird,” I said, mulling this over. “I guess it could’ve come off of someone’s clothes.”
“That’s what we were thinking,” Bonnie said quickly. “I’m sure there are tourists down there all the time who have hopped over from the other Keys, including more wooded ones. There’re a lot of camping spots down there. So it could’ve come from one of them. But either way, it’s something to keep in mind once you’re down there.”
“We will keep it in mind,” I assured her. “Who knows, whoever took Birn could’ve been camping out with some deer somewhere.”
“You really think someone just took him?” Clyde asked hopefully. “Not… well, you know.”
He didn’t need to say it out loud since we were all thinking it, anyway. We were all wondering if Birn was just dead somewhere, stashed in a corner or on the floor of the ocean. It didn’t help to think like that, though.
“Yes,” I said with a curt nod. “Until proven otherwise, that’s the assumption I’m going off of. Anything else… well, let’s just say I don’t even want to think about that right now.”
7
Ethan
From the lab techs’ office, Holm and I went upstairs to debrief Diane on what they’d told us.
“Key deer fur?” she asked, giving a small laugh from where she sat in her office opposite where Holm and I were standing in the doorway. “Alright, then, I guess that’s better than nothing. And a blood sample, though no matches. At least we know it’s not Birn’s.”
“Yeah, at least there’s that,” Holm said, his expression suddenly dark.
“Okay, go get our guy,” she ordered, meeting each of our eyes in turn. “And bring him back in one piece while you’re at it.”
“We will,” I promised her as Holm and I turned to leave. “We’ll be back with him soon.”
From there, Holm and I just got in my car and started driving. No reason to waste any more time, and I already had a full stomach and an even fuller tank of gas. We had a job to do, and potentially not a lot of time to do it depending on who had Birn and what they were planning on doing with him.
As we drove down the long highway leading from south Florida to the Florida Keys, I thought a lot about Grendel’s journal. I was already anxious about it before getting this terrible news about Birn, and now I was adding all that anxiety about a fellow agent into the mix as well. Plus, the more distance I seemed to put between myself and the journal out on this highway, the more anxious about it that I seemed to get. It was as if with each mile I put between myself and my houseboat, the more I regretted my decision to leave the journal behind.
Fake or not, bringing an artifact like that on a mission wasn’t the best call. I’d only brought it to New Orleans because I knew I would probably be meeting with Percy, the old book repairmen who had confirmed the journal was a fake, while I was over there. There was no reason to subject a possession like that to such a perilous journey for no reason, no matter how much it pained me to leave it behind on that little kitchen table where I’d left it that morning.
I still didn’t know why I was obsessing so much. Probably because it felt like I couldn’t do anything else, and now that Birn was missing, I needed to fixate my nervous energy on something even more than I al
ready had. It was killing me, both the journal and the situation with Birn.
It was probably a good thing that we caught a case and that I was leaving the journal behind, even though I wished we had caught a case pretty much any other way. This was Birn’s case, and he should be working it with Muñoz, not two random other agents taking his place.
Yes, it was definitely a good thing, I decided as we left the coast of the continental United States and rolled up onto the Overseas Highway leading from south Florida to the Keys, the ocean now surrounding us on all sides. I needed some distance between myself and that journal. Obsessing over the fake one wasn’t going to make the real one appear any faster, and it definitely wasn’t going to help us find Birn.
“You know,” Holm murmured as he stared out the left side window at the ocean beyond the Florida coast, breaking the silence that had overcast the car since we left Miami. “When I said I wanted to be sent down to help out Birn and Muñoz so we could get some sun in the Keys, this isn’t what I meant. You get that, right?”
“Of course I do,” I said, a bit surprised at him. “What, do you think we all think you wanted this to happen?”
“No, of course not,” Holm said, shaking his head. “It’s just that I feel like I jinxed Birn or something, saying I wanted us to have to go down there. I can’t shake the feeling.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I chuckled. “Don’t start getting all superstitious on me now, Holm. We won’t catch the bad guys that way.”
He just turned and arched an eyebrow at me for a moment before continuing.
“Really?” he asked, his tone deadpan. “You’re going to say that after we just closed the books on not one but two zombie cases?”
“I guess that’s a fair point,” I chuckled. “Though Bonnie and Clyde would explain to you exactly how that drug was made to seem kind of like what we see in those stupid zombie movies, but not exactly like it. It’s still all explainable, as they would say.”
“Whatever, man, we saw zombies,” Holm said, shaking his head and laughing as the first island appeared on the horizon up in front of us.
It really was beautiful, the Overseas Highway. I’d driven on it more than a few times in my life, and every time it seemed like the view grew more spectacular. It really felt like we were just driving across the middle of the ocean because, in a way, that was what we were doing. The green of the Keys gave the surrounding water an earthy quality to it that was unlike other places in the ocean, too.
“After we find Birn, maybe we should take a vacation,” I mused as I shifted my left elbow to rest on the windowsill, keeping one hand on the wheel as I continued to take in the magnificent view. “It really is nice out here. It would be relaxing, too, if I wasn’t so worried about Birn.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Holm agreed, staring up at the island looming on the right-hand side of our horizon. “But, hey, do you even know how to relax, Marston?”
He flashed me a grin.
“Good question,” I chuckled, returning the expression as my thoughts drifted back yet again to that journal sitting on my kitchen table. “I guess we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”
“I guess we’ll have to,” Holm chuckled, his disposition sunnier than it had been when we were silent. “Hey, did you bring that fake journal thing with you?”
“No,” I said curtly, not really wanting any more excuses for my thoughts to linger on my search for the Dragon’s Rogue when we had so many other things to worry about. “I haven’t been back to my houseboat since this morning, remember? You’ve been with me all day.”
“Oh, right,” Holm said, sounding a little disappointed.
“What?” I asked, glancing over at him. “You wanted me to drag that old thing along with us again or something?”
“Not necessarily,” he shrugged. “It’s just after finding all that treasure—I don’t know, I feel a little more invested in the whole thing, I guess.”
“Hoping you’ll get rich quick off of me?” I laughed, knowing that this wouldn’t be the first time that the thought had crossed Holm’s mind since I found the Searcher’s Chance, another old ship full of treasure. “Because I wouldn’t hold your breath if I were you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get that,” Holm said, shaking his head and grinning at me again as we came upon the second island off to our left. “It’s just exciting, is all. You get that.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “That much should be obvious, considering how much I’m obsessing over the damn thing. But to tell you the truth, it will be good to get away from it for a little while. Tessa’s off the grid in the Yukon, and I can’t take time off to go to Virginia, so it’s not like I can really make any progress on the whole thing anyway right now.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Holm said, still sounding a little disappointed. “I just wish the FBI would get back to us about that loot on Lafitte’s ship. Who knows? With your track record, maybe something on there will help you find the Dragon’s Rogue.”
“Maybe,” I said carefully, not wanting to give voice to this hope and jinx the issue. “But I’m not holding my breath about that either. The most important thing for me next is figuring out who sent me the fake journal and why.”
Holm nodded but stared wistfully out of his window at the great sea-green ocean alongside us.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said again. “But man, did that treasure look nice. Wish ‘finders keepers’ was still in play.”
“You and me both,” I chuckled as my phone buzzed in the cupholder next to me. “Can you check that?”
Holm picked up the phone and narrowed his eyes at it, trying to read the message over the sun beaming in through the window above him.
“It’s just Muñoz wanting an ETA on us,” he said as he messaged her back.
“Still no word on Birn?” I asked, my brow furrowing with worry as my thoughts drifted back to our missing colleague.
“No,” Holm said, shaking his head as he continued to converse with Muñoz using my phone. “She’s very nervous about it. Anxious for us to get down there.”
“You know it’s bad when Muñoz is shaken,” I sighed. “Did she get any sleep?”
“I doubt it,” Holm said, sending one last message and then setting the phone back down in the cupholder. “She says she’s been interviewing people all day, asking around about Birn. No one’s seen or heard anything, though.”
“I wonder what could’ve happened?” I wondered aloud, pursing my lips. “It’s weird that he would just vanish like that, without much sign of a struggle or any witnesses or anything, even if it was in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, there was that blood, though,” Holm pointed out with a shrug. “And the deer hairs, whatever that means.” He chuckled on this last part.
“Yeah, deer hairs,” I echoed with a laugh of my own. “I’m more interested in the blood. Bonnie and Clyde seemed more inclined to think that had something to do with Birn than the fur, though they did think it was strange, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but the Keys aren’t huge,” Holm said, shaking his head. “It’s not inconceivable that an animal made its way to the beach, now, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed. “Though it is weird. Anyway, at least we know the blood isn’t Birn’s. If whoever took him killed him on the spot, we would know it.”
“If they used a gun,” Holm said darkly.
“What else would they use?” I asked before I could stop myself, not really wanting to hear the answer. The possibilities were already drifting around my own head enough without Holm giving voice to them for me. He did anyway, though.
“They could’ve beaten him, given him internal bleeding, or some kind of poison,” Holm said, wincing as the words came out of his own mouth. “They also could’ve taken him and killed him elsewhere to avoid us finding them.”
“Yeah,” I breathed softly. “I guess so. But that wouldn’t make sense. They wouldn’t kill a federal officer without having a re
ally good reason to, and we have to stay positive, anyway. Especially in front of Muñoz.”
“I’m with you there,” Holm relented with a curt nod and a glance back in my direction. “We’ll stay positive from now on. Birn’s probably fine. I was when I got kidnapped, in the end. He might’ve even just wandered off and gotten lost. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
We both laughed, but I knew that neither of us thought that this was true. As Holm had said earlier, the Keys weren’t exactly large swaths of land, and the Little Torch Key especially wasn’t.
No, someone had taken Birn for some unknown reason. And we had to keep hoping that he was still out there somewhere, waiting for us to find him.
8
Ethan
At long last, we arrived on the Little Torch Key, taking the exit from the Overseas Highway to be greeted by a small, curvy island covered in white sand and palm trees on all sides.
“Now this is what I’m talking about,” Holm grinned, crossing his arms behind his head and leaning back in his seat to take in the view.
There were colorful little two-story condo buildings all over the place, no doubt vacation rentals. Many of the streets were made of clean cobblestone, and there were resort hotels and sailboats lining all the shores.
Finally, we turned into the parking lot of the luxurious resort where Muñoz was apparently staying, and where we were meant to join her.
“Man, our funding problems must really be clearing up for Diane to be able to afford this place,” Holm mused with a low whistle as we settled into a parking lot near the front doors.
He wasn’t wrong. The place was enormous and right on the waterfront, with its own private dock for ships and boat tours.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said as I undid my seatbelt. “Though Diane did say that this is where a lot of the drug activity is supposedly going on, so it would make sense that she’d set us up here.”
