A FALSE DAWN Read online

  As Leslie and I walked past the bar, Kim was filling crushed ice into a stainless steel bin. Big John was the only customer, sitting at the bar, sipping black coffee, nursing his head, and cursing events of the previous night.

  “Good morning Kim, morning John,” I said. “Have either of you seen Nick?”

  Big John looked over the lip of the coffee cup, his eyes red and soggy, a patch of white chest hair sticking though a black tee shirt that read SLOPPY JOES -- KEY WEST. His voice sounded like he spoke with gravel stuck somewhere in his larynx. “Nick pulled outta here last night. A few hours after they toted you off.” He cut his bloodshot eyes over to Leslie and spoke out of one side of his mouth, Popeye like. “What did you do?”

  “It was a little misunderstanding, that’s all.”

  Kim dried her hands on a bar towel. “You okay, Sean?”

  “I’m fine. If you see Nick, please tell him to stop by my boat.”

  Kim smiled, “I’ll tell him. Would you two like some coffee?”

  Leslie shook her head. I said, “No thanks. We might be back for lunch.”

  “Do that.” Kim smiled and folded her arms across her breasts.

  Turning to leave, I heard Big John cough up something deep in his throat. His gravely voice sounded as if it was it was fighting a hairball. He managed to say; “Sean O’Brien escorted outta here in handcuffs with three cops…back in the morning with a hot chick.”

  #

  ON JUPITER, I put on a pot of coffee and hunted for some half-and-half that wasn’t too far beyond its expiration date. “How do you like your coffee?” I asked.

  “Fresh, brewed with cold water and black.”

  “Then we’re in luck. I have all those things.”

  “I like your boat.”

  “It’s sort of my second home. Well, recently it’s been more like my first home.”

  “I feel privileged. How many women get to see your bricks and mortar home and your boat home? Not many, I’d be willing to wager.”

  “My river home isn’t bricks and mortar. All wood, except the fireplace, and that’s river stone, not brick. Damn—”

  “What?

  “I forgot Max! My poor neighbors have inherited Max. I’ll call them after I bring you up to speed.”

  “She’s adorable. I can’t imagine her being much of a challenge.”

  “Oh, stick around a while, you’ll see.”

  She smiled a radiant smile, eyes happy in the sunlight coming through the salon window and into the galley. I poured coffee into two large cups and led Leslie onto the cockpit and topside to the fly bridge.

  “What a view!” she said, looking out over the marina. She held the mug with two hands and watched a sailboat head out to the channel. “This is really nice.”

  “I like it.”

  “What else do you like?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sipped her coffee. “I think I know Sean O’Brien the detective—”

  “Former detective.”

  “Yes, but now you’re back in investigator mode, and I can tell you’re good at it. What I don’t know is anything about you. You know, what foods you like. Your tastes in music. Hobbies. Family. What do you enjoy doing?”

  “Okay. I enjoy a good piece of fish. A steak cooked medium with a glass of dry cabernet. I appreciate good jazz. Blues when it’s felt. I like a traditional Irish tune. I like fishing, boating. Used to like to sail, but I did that with Sherri. After her death, I sold our sailboat. As far as the rest of my family, my father was murdered when I was fifteen. My mother, a woman I learned was manic-depressive most of her life, committed suicide six months after my father’s death. I lived with my Uncle Bill for two years. In 1991, I spent a lifetime in the Gulf War and parts of Afghanistan. Sorry you asked?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, pausing to choose her words. “No, I’m not sorry. I am sorry those things happened to you. You’re a good person, Sean. There are good people like you out there. I like to think I’ve helped a few on a professional level. Brought closure for a few folks. Put others in jail for a long time.”

  “But the system is a stacked deck with the wealthy turning the cards. The homicides that were the most satisfying to solve were the ones involving the people who thought they were untouchables. The rich who killed a spouse or a partner because they somehow got in the way. No matter how many layers of lawyers they hired, there was usually a chink in the armor somewhere. I’d try to find it.”

  Her eyes followed a charter boat leaving the marina. “Is that how you burned out? Dedicating whatever it took, maybe the quality time with your wife, to beat the stacked decks and to put these people in prison?”

  “You pretty much summed it up.”

  “Now, by a twist of fate, you’re back in the game.”

  “But things have changed.”

  “If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

  “Thanks, Leslie, but my immediate concern is catching the killer. I believe the person we’re chasing may be beyond bad.”

  “What do you mean beyond bad?”

  “He has no conscious. He’s a predator. He’s fearless. He thinks he’s smarter than us. And he’ll kill until he’s caught. One of the most prolific known serial killers was a guy named Dennis Neilson. He was charged with a dozen murders. He once said, ‘A mind can be evil without being abnormal.’ In other words, the serial killer can’t be identified like you’d easily spot a homeless person. To most people, this kind of psychopath is never obvious.”

  She was quiet a beat. “What’s your instinct tell you?”

  “I’m betting the killer is within the inner circle of the Brennens, knows them, or works on their ranch, or is somehow connected to them. The perp could be Richard or Josh. The old man wears a horseshoe-shaped diamond ring on his right hand. The first vic had a cut in the shape of a U on her face, her left side.” I spent the next ten minutes telling Leslie everything that had occurred. Then I added, “I have the victim’s other shoe here, hidden in the tiki bar. And I have a chewed toothpick that’s oozing in DNA material. Let’s see if anything matches what we have on the first vic. Do you have something new on the second victim?”

  “No one has come forward to claim or even ID the body. We didn’t find any foreign DNA on her. Everything clean. Under the nails, too.”

  I looked across the bay for a moment. A half dozen pelicans sailed over the mangroves. “As a detective, I always arrived at a crime scene after the body was cold, usually in rigor or beyond. And I always took death, at least murders, personal. The dead have no one left to speak for them unless we do it. I never had a victim die while I tried to help her. She looked me in the eye as I promised to save her, and she seemed to know that I couldn’t. Her heart may have stopped beating at the hospital, but I believe she accepted death while I held her. That kind of death stays with you. Justice for them is your own lifejacket.”

  I drained the remains of my coffee and started to back down the ladder leading to the cockpit. Leslie watched me for a moment. She pushed a loose stand of hair behind her left ear. “Any coffee left?”

  “You bet. I’ll bring up the pot.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll come down.”

  In the galley, I refilled our cups. “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Do you cook, too? Now I find that intriguing in a man.”

  “I’ve managed to turn out a few edible meals. Nick, next door, is an excellent cook, at least when it comes to anything seafood. But right now, he’s MIA.”

  “I can have an APB issued.”

  “It may come to that if I can’t find him. Do you like omelets?

  “I love omelets, lots of cheese. Can I help?”

  “Sure, reach down behind you and get that iron skillet out. It’s the only one in there. Last time I made anything in that pan I tried to blacken some fish Nick gave me. The damn smoke set off the alarm.”

  When I glanced up at the smoke detector, my eyes locked on one small spot. A slight qua
rter circle of headliner was lighter than the surrounding area. The smoke detector had been moved. Just a quarter of an inch, but moved. Someone had taken it down and not placed it exactly flush with the headliner.

  I tapped Leslie on her shoulder, held one finger to my lips, pointed toward the smoke detector and said, “I like a little onions and pepper in my omelet. Sound good?”

  “Sure,” she said, playing along, looking at the detector and then at me.

  “I like music, too, when I cook, helps with the rhythm.” I turned on a radio and tuned in a station playing rock. I held a finger to my lips. Leslie nodded and followed me to the smoke detector. I gently twisted it out of the socket. Someone had replaced the battery with a bug, a small listening device that looked very sophisticated. I set the detector down on the wet bar and signaled Leslie to follow me outside. In the cockpit, I said, “I don’t think they heard anything of consequence. Everything I told you, about what happened, I told you topside. I’ll sweep up there for another bug. Before you leave, I’ll give you the shoe and the toothpick. You think Slater planted the bug when he searched my boat?”

  “I wish I could say yes. I’m familiar with the bugs our department uses. I’ve never seen one like that. Somebody wants to know what you know, Sean. And I think whoever it is doesn’t work for the county sheriff’s department. It’s someone else.”

  “The question is who?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  After Leslie left, it took me less than a half hour to sweep Jupiter for other bugs. Nothing. I sat in the helm and called my neighbor to check on Max. I was told she had made herself quite at home and displayed no signs of missing me.

  I saw Dave Collins pop his head out of Gibraltar’s hatch and climb onto the cockpit. It looked like he’d spent the night on his boat. I caught his attention and signaled for him to walk over to Jupiter.

  I climbed down from the bridge and stood next to Nick’s boat while Dave approached. He said, “You either escaped or Nick made your bond. I’d say you have become one pain-in-the ass for Detective Slater. In that e-mail you sent, Slater looked like he was suffering from a stroke. He’s adapt at profanity.”

  “Thanks for helping Nick with the edit. He didn’t make it to bail me out.”

  Dave seemed astounded. “After Nick sent the e-mail and copied me, I burned it to a DVD for safekeeping, and he left to make bond. Odd. What charges did the detective throw at you to justify an arrest?”

  “Trumped up charges. I twisted a guy’s wrist trying to keep my head from becoming a punching bag. He filed assault charges, or was told to file charges.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I explained the course of events to Dave while he sipped from a large coffee mug. When I was finished, he nodded and said, “Hope your attorney’s good. You’re going against some big money. Tectonic plates are shifting, and you’re on the fault line.”

  “You could say that. I feel like I’m in the middle of an earthquake. Come look at the bug I found on Jupiter.”

  “Did you call an exterminator?” he asked, grinning.

  “It’s a small one. Found it in my smoke detector. Thought you might have seen something like it before, maybe you’d know who might use it.”

  “Let me take a look. It’s been a while.”

  “I always heard you guys never really retire.”

  He took his sunglasses off, stepping into Jupiter’s salon. The music from the radio filled the room. I pointed to the bug sitting in the spot where the smoke detector’s battery used to be. Dave fished in his shirt pocket for a pair of bifocals. He studied the bug for a half minute before motioning for me to follow him to the cockpit.

  He said, “It’s new. Sensitive. Powerful. It’ll pick up a fart.”

  “Would the sheriff’s office have something like that?”

  “Doubt it. Or they could be teaming up with the feds, using the fed’s gear while trying to find whatever it is they think you can tell them.”

  “Could be. As rumors of a possible serial killer swirl, Kim says two agents from the FBI were asking questions about yours truly. It’s all horseshit, Dave. I have a power-hungry detective who wants to become the next sheriff, and he knows I didn’t kill the girl. Yet, I think he’s taking great pains to protect whoever did kill her.”

  Dave tossed the remains of his coffee over the side of Jupiter. “Let’s take a walk.”

  I nodded and we stepped out of the cockpit and started slowly down the dock.

  “We need to put things in some kind of perspective,” he said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “The juggernaut in all of this is simply timing. You were in the right place at the right time to start a cataclysmic fall of the dominoes. A psychic told you the name of the woman you found, Angela. It could be accurate or not. We have no last name. We do have Joe Billie who was in the immediate proximity of where you discovered the victim before you found her. You have the father and son symbiosis of Josh and Richard Brennen. Anyone else?”

  “After I ruffled feathers last time in the migrant camp, when I stuck the vic’s shoe in the faces of Juan Gomez and Silas Davis as I was leaving, I overheard Gomez call someone. The name that sounded like Santa Ana. It could be a place or their attorney.”

  “Or a hit man.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “The reality, Sean, is that you’re shaking up the comfort level of a very powerful group and the businesses that group represents. It doesn’t mean that they are directly responsible for the deaths, but the killings are possibly linked to their business mode, their brand, agriculture. Some labor contractors are running modern-day indentured servant camps, profiting from human trafficking and forced prostitution. So a few of the girls run. They’re getting caught and killed. Rather than take them back and beat them into submission, someone is killing them, which doesn’t make sense because the women would be worth more alive than dead.” He stopped walking and turned toward me. “The question is why are they dying?”

  “Because the perp knows they become numbers, not people, when they’re killed. He’s sadistic, and he’s a chameleon. He can blend in anywhere, but when he’s alone with his victim, the evil drips like hot candle wax. John Wayne Gacy used to ask his victims, ‘How does it feel knowing you’re going to die?’”

  Dave scratched a three-day growth on his face. “We might have somebody intimately connected in this wheel that finds sadistic sex, rape, and killing a sport. We have two recent bodies, no ID’s, and no hard evidence to connect the spokes.” Dave paused to watch a sailboat motoring opur of the marina. “So what are we missing?”

  “The thread that ties us to the killer. A strong clue is the DNA found in the hair stuck to the duct tape. I’ll ask Leslie to get a DNA sample from the person who, at this point, might fit this pattern killer’s profile.”

  “Who’s that?” Dave asked.

  “Richard Brennen.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  When I got back to Jupiter, I could hear my cell phone ringing as I stepped in the cockpit. I entered the salon, walked down to the galley, and saw it was Leslie’s number.

  “Hold a second,” I said into the phone. I carried if fifty feet down the dock before I spoke. “I’m here, Leslie.”

  “There is a definite match with the victim’s shoe. We photographed everything. It’s the same size, color, style, fabric, and brand.”

  “What’s the word on the toothpick?”

  “That will take a few more hours. I’ve got a rush on it.”

  “Run a DNA test on Richard Brennen. Maybe his DNA will match the hair found on the duct tape.”

  She was silent for a moment. “That’s going to make the six ‘o clock news if the media get wind. I may have to go around Slater for that one. I’ll see if I can get Dan Grant working the legal end and logistics with some excuse so he doesn’t tip off Slater. We’ll catch Brennen with a court order for the DNA, otherwise, only time we’ll see him open his mouth is at one of his fund-raisers. I’
m lovin’ it. Have you found Nick?”

  “Not yet. He hasn’t returned to his boat.”

  “I’ll do a search. Maybe we picked him up for something.”

  “Can’t imagine that.”

  There was a long silence. She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “Are you doing anything tonight?”

  “You never know. My plans have been rather interrupted lately. I want to do two things: find Nick and keep out of the county jail.”

  “I’ll do what I can to help on both counts. Somewhere in there you have to eat. I make a pretty good steak. I probably can’t compete with Nick’s cooking talents when it comes to fish, but Dad did teach met me how to grill a good steak.”

  “What time?”

  “Around sevenish?”

  “Okay,” I heard myself say.

  “I’ll call you later today with directions, bye.”

  After she hung up, I looked at my cell phone for a few seconds. I don’t know why, but for some reason the phone seemed like an alien device in my hand. Beam me up, Scottie, I have no idea where the hell I am on this planet at the moment. I did know what I was going to say to whatever alien life forms were listening in through the bug. I went back aboard Jupiter, lifted the bug off the table, picked up one of my deep-sea rods, walked to the bow, and stepped out on the long bowsprit.

  A breeze came across the lagoon and tidal flats, bringing with it the smell of oyster bars and fish. I looked at the brackish water below me. The tide was incoming, traveling with the wind. A pelican sailed effortlessly by, cocking its head toward me. The bird seemed to know that I wasn’t using shrimp or minnows for bait. It flapped its wings and flew over the mangroves.

  I held the bug close to my mouth and whispered. “Listen closely, assholes. You’re out of control and I’m going to stop you. If you have Nick, let him go. You touch him and I’ll come for you. I’ll track you down. Then I’ll hook you and reel you in. Remember this sound. It’s what you’ll hear in your head when I find you.”