Authors: James W. Hall
This was exactly how it was done.
TWENTY-THREE
SUGARMAN WAS STUDYING A BONG
Tina had covered with peace symbols and white smudges that were her attempt at peace doves. There was a row of them at eye level on a shelf in the back of Island Treasures, her shop in the Tradewinds Shopping Plaza in Key Largo. Open seven days a week, ten to six. Behind the counter was Julia Jackson, the purple-haired librarian, texting someone, her thumbs a blur.
Sugarman killed a few more minutes in the bong aisle while the overweight couple in matching
I
♥
KEY LARGO
T-shirts finished pawing through a bin of plaques with off-color one-liners and finally wandered out the door.
Julia didn’t look up when Sugarman edged up to the counter.
“Must not be easy,” he said. “Going from books to bongs.”
Julia finished with her text, whooshed it away, and looked up at him.
“Sorry? You said?”
“Books to bongs,” he said. “Must be a jarring adjustment.”
“Not really,” she said. “I get high from reading. Don’t you?”
She flashed him a flirty smile.
“Tina’s not here,” she said. “She went off … oh, she went off with you.”
“We got separated,” he said.
“Separated?”
“Complicated story. I thought she might’ve checked in with you.”
“Nope, haven’t heard a word. Something happen?” She was keeping her eyes from him; lying wasn’t one of her talents.
Sugarman looked at the shelves behind Julia, filled with cigarette papers and water pipes and glass figurines in the shapes of mushrooms and dwarfs and unicorns.
“She probably took the long way home. Nothing to worry about. The other thing is, I wanted to ask you about Thorn.”
“Thorn?”
“Yeah, Thorn and his son Flynn. The postcards you saw him looking at in the library.”
She cut her eyes down to her phone.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Tina told me you’d mentioned the postcards.”
“She did?”
She looked up, rubbed an eye with her knuckle, smeared her mascara. For all her coquetry Julia seemed at that moment childlike and unsure, as if her coy act was a cover for deeper insecurities.
“I was curious if you ever saw Tina talking to anyone, somebody she might’ve been discussing Thorn with. And the postcards.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do, Julia. A stranger, maybe someone who came in the store, or who Tina told you about. Thorn’s name came up.”
She shook her head, but her gritted teeth said otherwise.
“I know what’s going on,” Julia said. “Tina’s gone missing, you’re worried about her, trying to track her down.”
Sugarman sighed.
“Am I that transparent?”
She nodded. “Pretty much.”
“Well, okay. Yeah, I’m a bit concerned about her whereabouts.”
“I’d say you’re a lot concerned, you wouldn’t be in here asking stuff.”
“So help me, Julia. You remember Tina talking to anyone about Thorn?”
She looked out the window of Island Treasures at a gang of tourists in madras shorts and sun hats trooping by.
“What’ll happen to Island Treasures if Tina doesn’t come back?”
“Don’t worry about the store.”
“Tina told me to keep it to myself. The woman, I mean. Madeline, I think was her name.”
Sugarman felt his heart sag. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he’d been hoping this whole episode was an elaborate case of mistaken identity, or that Sheffield was right and Tina was just hiding out somewhere, ashamed to show her face for a few days till things cooled down.
Julia straightened a tray full of key chains on the countertop. She flicked a piece of lint away. Her cell phone buzzed and she checked the screen but didn’t answer.
“You met Madeline?”
“First time she came in the store was on a weekend, so yeah, I was here. It was busy, but I overheard a few things.”
“When was this?”
“A week ago, around there, more or less.”
“What did she look like, this Madeline?”
“Pretty, I guess, in that Latin way, sultry and cold at the same time. Long black hair, thinnish, a little thingy on her nose. A crimp or something.”
“You get her last name?”
“I heard it, but I don’t remember.”
“Cruz?”
“Maybe. Yeah, that sounds right.”
“And the stuff you overheard?”
“I shouldn’t be talking about this. I don’t like to gossip.”
“This is to help Tina. You want to help me find her, don’t you?”
She took a huge breath and held it with her cheeks puffed up as if she were about to submerge.
Julia only remembered snatches of that conversation in the store. Cruz introduced herself as a federal agent, working on an investigation that involved Thorn. Could Tina be of help? Tina stiffened, freaking out that this was a drug bust in the making. That’s what Julia thought too. Weed.
But Cruz wanted to know if Tina was aware of any contact between Thorn and his fugitive son. That’s when Tina glanced over at Julia, and Cruz noticed the look they were sharing and invited Julia to participate.
“So you told Cruz about the postcards?”
“A federal agent,” Julia said. “I’m not going to lie. That’s serious shit.”
“You said earlier ‘first time,’ so there were other times?”
“Next couple of days at Tina’s house,” Julia said. “Tina told me before she left on that trip with you, not the exact details or anything, trying to shield me I guess, but Cruz wanted her to work on some kind of sting operation, go undercover, you know, top secret, hush-hush. It got thrown together very fast, a whirlwind. Cruz stayed at her place, they were huddled up together, cooking up this plan to capture Thorn’s kid. I mean, he’s a criminal, right? He attacks people and things, burns stuff down. Tina was just doing her civic duty.”
“Yeah, her civic duty.”
“That’s what Tina said.”
“Ever hear Tina mention automatic weapons, anything like that?”
“Whoa.” Julia raised her hands to her shoulders, showed her palms. “No way. Guns, no guns. Nothing whatsoever about guns ever came up. Tina hates guns. You should know that, her boyfriend and all.”
Sugarman asked her several more questions but Julia cycled through the same narrative without any variation. When two elderly ladies came in and started to cruise the store, Sugarman took the opportunity to thank Julia for her help and leave.
He stood by his car door, trying to absorb Julia’s story. Cruz had been in Key Largo for several days, planning something with Tina, some kind of scheme to nab Flynn. Sugarman was wrestling with that when someone hailed him by name.
A red Chrysler convertible had rolled up behind his car, top down. The driver leaned over the door edge and called out his name again. There was an Asian woman in the passenger seat wearing a colorful scarf over her hair.
The man removed his baseball cap and sunglasses. Frank Sheffield.
He gestured at his passenger.
“This is Shirley Woo. Sugarman, meet Shirley. Shirley, Sugarman. Shirley’s an artist, Sugarman’s a private cop.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“A sunny Sunday, felt like a drive, see how you Keys characters shake, rattle, and roll.”
“And you just bumped into me?”
“Hey, I may be retired but I still have skills. The FBI, this is what we do. We track people down. Now get in, let’s go someplace with a view, get a fish sandwich. I got something I need to tell you. Not good news.”
They went to Snappers on the Atlantic side. A busy Sunday afternoon, a live band playing Jimmy Buffett medleys. Tables outside around the basin were full, so they got seats inside by a window.
“Been here before,” Frank said to Shirley. “Fish is very fresh. Get anything you like, I’m buying.”
Shirley Woo took off her scarf and her glasses and appraised Sugarman with a frankness bordering on rude.
“Eat first, talk later?” Frank said. “Or vice versa?”
“What’s the bad news?”
Frank scrubbed his hands together and blew out a breath.
“You and Tina Gathercole close? Engaged, going steady, like that.”
“What is it, Frank?”
“Yes, well, I put Tina’s data into the system, and last night late, a former colleague called me with a hit. Tina’s prints were on file, a couple of drug busts back in the seventies, so the ID was quick and easy.”
“Come on, Frank. I’m a grown-up.”
“Very dark stuff. A vagrant found her body in the woods just outside St. Augustine. Murdered.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It gets worse.”
“Tina was murdered. How much worse can it be?”
“Murdered, yes. But it’s the method that’s rough.”
When Frank described the cause of death, then described the ligature marks on her ankles and wrists, adhesive residue on her lips, Sugarman turned his eyes away and looked out the big windows. The water seemed as flat and lifeless as a chintzy oil painting, the sky a long stretch of blue desolation. All that harsh winter light began to burn his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “It’s an ugly thing.”
Shirley Woo had a sip of her iced tea and continued to scrutinize Sugarman’s face.
“There’s something else,” Sheffield said. “The way things work, maybe I would’ve heard about Tina’s death eventually, but it could’ve taken a while, a single death like that, no matter how unusual the cause, it’s still a run-of-the-mill local murder, not a federal matter. But when a second victim shows up a few miles away on the same night, killed in the same unique fashion, well, now it’s clear you have a predator working the area or passing through. Either way, it becomes federal, rings the phone in my old office.”
“A second victim?”
“Kid in a burger joint. Choked to death on a mouthful of raw meat, then the place where he worked set on fire.”
“Fast food place right off I-95? On motel row?”
Frank dug a spiral notepad out of his back pocket and flipped the pages.
“Yeah, Hampton Inn, Best Western, a Waffle House, and this burger joint. The usual franchise strip.”
“That’s where Thorn and Cruz were staying, where they cut me loose.”
“Well, well.”
“How the hell does Tina get from Vero to the woods outside of St. Augustine? How’s that happen? It couldn’t be coincidence. Tina didn’t know where we’d be stopping for the night. Someone waylaid her and brought her three hours north and dumped her body near where we were going to stay, which has to mean that someone is connected to Cruz, knew where she was stopping, or spoke with her on the phone.”
“Back up a minute. ’Cause see, the local law up there, the St. John’s County homicide guy, crime scene people, they’re thinking Tina was killed at the location where the body was found. Tire tracks down a back road, two sets of footprints leading from the rear of the vehicle into the woods, the ground disturbed, signs of a scuffle. All of it consistent with her being held in the trunk of a vehicle.”
Sugarman was silent, trying to picture it and trying not to.
“See, the thing is,” Frank said, “to make matters more of a concern to the bureau, these two cases aren’t isolated. So far they turned up two others with similar MOs. Both in the last eighteen months, all in Florida. Somebody forcibly choked to death on food.”
“Two more?”
“At least two, maybe more. They’re looking through case files, deaths that might have been ruled accidental or went unsolved and got filed. This could be more widespread. Or maybe it’s just these four. Either way, there’s one fucked-up individual at large.”
“May I get started?” Shirley said.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Sheffield. “I didn’t tell you, Shirley’s a sketch artist, best we’ve got. If you can describe it, she can draw it. My replacement, Gracie Rodriguez, new special agent in charge, she asked me to bring Shirley down, see if you’d consent to describing this Cruz person. They’re sending a team up to St. Augustine tomorrow, wanted something to show around. Since Ms. Gathercole was apparently associated with Cruz, and Cruz was impersonating a federal officer, it’s a logical starting point. You game?”
Shirley Woo dragged her purse from the floor, set it in her lap, and withdraw a small laptop.
While the computer was booting up, Sheffield rose.
“You guys have fun. Come get me when you’re done. No hurry.”
It took more than two hours. Sheffield wandered around on the outside deck, sat at the bar, talked to a woman for a while, made her laugh. Sugarman watched him hitting on the ladies and socializing with some old salts while Sugar described Cruz’s face.
Woo worked her software and asked questions and Sugarman tried his best, not just to remember, but to label her features in a clear-eyed way.
“Her mouth,” Woo said. “Lower lip, upper lip.”
“Lower was thin, upper a little thicker.”
“Is it a mouth you would want to kiss?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“It’s my question. My way of doing things. This software, I have written it myself.”
“Okay, okay. Would I want to kiss Cruz’s mouth? No. Not really.”
“Why?”
“It was pretty but cold. Calculating.”
“Any other words of this type?”
“Imperious,” Sugarman said.
“Your vocabulary is notable. You are a wordsmith.”
“Thank you. It’s a hobby, vocabulary building. I know it’s strange.”
“Strange, yes.” Then Woo said, “Lashes? Dense, full, sweeping, stubby?”
And on they went, Sugarman trying for the simplest descriptors, then those out-of-left-field questions throwing him off. Sugarman trying and failing to elicit an extracurricular remark from Woo. At intervals, she turned the laptop around and had him choose from sets of facial shapes, ear shapes, noses, foreheads, chins, cheeks.
“Was there sunlight radiating from her eyes? Or something else?”
“Brown eyes, okay, but with what color undertone?”
“Which of these words describe her eyes: bedroom, bleary, bloodshot, close set, widely spaced, dazed, glassy, placid, stricken, vacant, dancing, piercing, flashing, sparkling, squinting. You can choose more than one.”
“When she smiled could you see her teeth? Upper and lower?”
“Were her teeth white, yellowed, straight, crooked?”