Slip F-18
Little Palm Island, Florida
Monday, November 17, 6:17 A.M.
Matt Payne was in the galley of the Viking Sport Fisherman, sipping coffee while standing before his laptop computer that was on the black granite countertop. Within reach were the coffeepot and a large bowl of fresh fruit. The peels of two bananas were beside the computer. From his digital music player, he had the sound system speakers overhead cranking out island tunes from his Pirate Playlist.
He yawned, then rubbed his eyes.
Almost two hours earlier, in Cabana Two, the spacious palm-thatched seaside room Amanda had chosen, Matt had suddenly awakened from a sound sleep. He stared at the ceiling fan, his mind spinning faster than the fan blades as he tried to make a complete list of everything he had to do before they were to board Chad Nesbitt’s Learjet at Key West International around noon.
He had yawned then, and when he checked his watch, he was not surprised that it showed it was four-thirty.
I’m lucky I got that much sleep.
It had been right at midnight, after he and Amanda and Chad finally had had dinner, that Matt had stripped to his boxer shorts and crawled into the king-sized bed.
Amanda was taking her time in the bath. Considering how the evening had played out, especially with Amanda being upset, Matt decided that there was absolutely no chance in hell of there being anything resembling romance—not to mention carnal intimacy. He told himself that he would not be surprised if Amanda came to bed wearing worn-out sweatpants, a baggy wife-beater T-shirt, a towel wrapped around her hair, and her face, neck, and upper chest smeared with a thick therapeutic coating of eucalyptus-scented cream—plus maybe thick slices of cucumber to soothe her puffy eyelids.
Accordingly, he had set the alarm on his cell phone for five-thirty, then turned onto his side at the edge of the bed and, yawning deeply as he closed his eyes, buried his head in the soft goose-down pillow.
When some minutes later he felt behind him the bedsheet being raised, and then the weight of Amanda and her twenty gallons of face cream sinking in, he was surprised that she continued sliding across the big bed toward him, her gentle, wonderful fragrance torturing him.
And then he was even more surprised when he felt on his back not only the warmth of her body as she began spooning with him—he always grinned when she said she liked to sometimes be the “big spoon”—but also the warm soft touch of her completely bare skin.
Then, nuzzling her nose into his neck, she kissed him.
What she began next had not stopped for a solid hour.
—
It was amazingly passionate, he had thought, sitting up and admiring her peaceful form beside him beneath the sheet, as if she was afraid it might be the last time it ever happened.
I should stick around and see what happens later.
Should—but my mind won’t stop racing.
Then, on the bedside table, his cell phone vibrated once but did not light up, which told him he had received an e-mail message.
He knew it would be futile trying to drift back to sleep. Not wanting to awaken Amanda by lying there tossing and turning, he’d decided to go to the boat and bang out on his laptop the list of things to do, then start knocking them out, with catching up on e-mails at the top.
He pulled on khaki shorts and a new T-shirt—an orange one that had stenciled in black: CONCH REPUBLIC CLUB FED, A GATED COMMUNITY, YOU MUST BE INDICTED TO BE INVITED—grabbed his phone and pistol, then, barefoot, slipped out of the cabana.
The sixty-one-foot Viking was essentially a floating mobile condominium, self-contained and self-supporting. It had four large staterooms, each with a queen-sized bed and its own private head that included a stand-up shower. Its heavy-duty generators ran everything from the vast array of electronics (TVs, microwave oven, communications equipment) to the hot water heaters and washer/dryer, the air conditioners, even the desalination machine that daily could turn a hundred gallons of raw salt water into drinkable charcoal-filtered freshwater.
Matt had been impressed that the Viking also had its own Internet system, including Wi-Fi. Like the television signal, the Internet signal was provided by a satellite antenna. It was a separate, portable antenna about the size of one of the Travis McGee hardback novels he’d found onboard.
But more like a science fiction novel, considering what all it does.
Connected to a computer, the antenna hooked up from almost anywhere in the world with one of a dozen space-age birds that Inmarsat—for International Maritime Satellite—had in geostationary orbit twenty-two thousand miles above earth. Connection to the Internet usually took about three minutes. It was remarkably fast, though depending on various factors, such as weather, it could deteriorate to, at best, half the speed of a normal land-based connection.
But when at sea or sitting at anchor in some remote island cove, Matt knew that it was a helluva lot better than nothing.
Now tied up at the dock, the vessel had everything provided by shore lines. There were ones for electricity and for freshwater and for cable television and the Internet and more, leaving nothing to want.
I think I really could live on this boat, Matt thought. Maybe take up salvage work like Travis, which would be an interesting twist to what I’m already doing.
Wish I’d given the boat the really good shakedown cruise I wanted.
But the sooner we find Maggie McCain, the sooner I can . . .
As the pot of coffee brewed, the first e-mail Payne read was the one that had come in right after he’d bolted awake. It was from Corporal Kerry Rapier, a twenty-five-year-old blue shirt in the department’s Science & Technology section, which included Information Systems, Forensic Sciences, and Communications divisions. While Rapier was small in physical stature—some said impossibly so, causing doubt that he was actually old enough to be an officer, let alone a four-year veteran—Rapier was a genuine wizard with high tech. Which explained why he had been given the reins of the multi-million-dollar war room—the Executive Command Center—on the third floor of the Roundhouse.
The ECC could hold nearly a hundred law enforcement officers representing—depending on what quantity of proverbial fecal matter was hitting the fan at the time—the PPD, the State Police, the FBI and DHS and Secret Service, and Interpol. Its walls of large flat-screen TVs were linked to computer servers that accessed the department’s vast databases as well as tying into endless layers of real-time communication equipment, from the closed-circuit surveillance cameras mounted citywide to any digital device worldwide that could produce and send a video or audio signal.
The pop-up window filling Matt’s laptop screen showed:
From: <rapier.k@ppd.philadelphia.gov>
Date: 17NOV 0434
To: SGT M.M. Payne <payne.m@ppd.philadelphia.gov>
Subject: MCCAIN, Margaret
Attachments: 4
Good morning, Marshal . . .
I got the amended e-mail from Lieutenant Washington on who to patch in for the video conference call at 0700. Glad to see your name added to the list. Was wondering where you were.
Am sending you some backgrounder information on the case.
There’s more, but it’s really just more of the same, and I can’t send it right now because there are technical problems with the ECC.
Had to get here early – trying to make sure the bugs I’m working out stay out. I’ve learned the hard way that electronics do not like budget cuts.
Anyway, be sure to link in via the department’s encrypted VPN Tier-1AA gateway. Maybe there’s enough money for the department to make the rent on that.
Also, I got from Tony Harris that DOT non-driver ID you wanted run. The Cusick girl only had two hits, both fines for personal possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana. She paid $200 for the first bust last year, and $300 for the second a couple months ago.
The Hazzard address in Kensington blew up with all kinds of hits, though. Mostly drug-related. So I drove past it on the way home last night, and then the hits made sense. It’s a flophouse called New Hope. It was locked down for the night – the roll-up steel doors over the windows and front door closed so tight that a couple crackheads who’d shown up too late were sleeping on the stoop.
I hate to think why a good-looking girl like that would have to be at a place like that.
Anyway, I was going to go back by there today and look around, then let you know.
KR
Payne sipped at his coffee as he thought, Because, sad to say, she was probably a hooker.
He then went to the attachments. He scrolled through them quickly at first, then went back and read them more carefully, hoping to find what he thought he had missed by scanning them.
He didn’t.
Mostly dead damn ends.
And Kerry saying there’s just more of the same isn’t exactly encouraging.
The crime-scene report was there. It detailed what he’d already learned, adding little. When he read Dr. Mitchell’s report on the autopsy of the Gonzalez girl, he was surprised to learn something new: that the medical examiner had determined the cause of death to be from two .22 rounds fired into her brain from behind her ear.
That certainly means something—something beyond that she got whacked—but what exactly?
There’s a rock under that rock to look under . . . just hope under it isn’t another dead end. Have to see what, if anything, ballistics comes up with.
And the files on the two missing female case workers at West Philadelphia Sanctuary were as thorough as possible—though the investigations offered no clear clue as to what could have possibly caused their disappearance.
Short of the obvious: “I’m sick of dealing with a frustrating, thankless job—I’m never coming back.”
They were just hardworking people putting in their time, hoping at the end of the day they made a difference in some kid’s life.
And there really was no information on Maggie McCain, except for the blind text she sent saying she was fine. She really had left no trail to follow.
These could easily turn into cold cases. . . .
Shaking his head in frustration, he created a folder on his desktop, named it McCAIN.CASE, then dragged all the files into it. Then he transferred from his phone to his laptop the images that Jim Byrth had sent him, created another folder that he named BYRTH.LIQUID.MURDERS, and dragged them into it.
He looked back at Kerry’s e-mail, copied the paragraph about what he had found out on the ID, then went to his personal e-mail and created a new e-mail:
From: MP <w.earp.45@pa.blueline.net>
Date: 17NOV 0434
To: Tex <jim@tx.secure.net>
Subject: Update on CUSICK, Elizabeth
Jim . . .
Below is what I got from Kerry Rapier on your mystery girl. Will send more when I get it.
Matt then pasted in the e-mail the short text, put it in italics, then clicked on the button that was an icon of a carrier pigeon.
Okay, on to what’s next on the to-do list: arranging for what happens with this boat and my new toy.
As Matt was pouring more coffee not two minutes later, his cell phone rang.
When he saw the caller ID, he wasn’t surprised.
He muted the music from the overhead speakers and answered the phone: “And how are things this morning in the Wild West?”
“Bigger in Texas and better than everywhere else,” Jim Byrth answered. “I was going to say something about how impressed I was that you were getting such an early start, but it just occurred to me that your time zone is an hour ahead.”
“I’ve been up for two hours.”
“Okay. Then that makes us even. I can’t speak for you, but first thing I did this morning was map out that Cusick girl’s address. It’s a shithole row house, almost identical to that condemned one we found El Gato holed up in—”
With Amanda tied up . . . but being a decent guy he’s not going to pick off that scab.
“—which is not far away, the only apparent difference being this place on Hazzard is actually habitable.”
“Depends on how you define ‘habitable.’ There’s easily sixty, seventy flophouses like that in Kensington alone. They’re moving up from Fishtown and NoLibs, pretty much following the outpatient drug clinics. ‘The Bottom’—Frankford, in the Fifteenth District—is getting hammered. Twenty-fourth District is overrun. Just hundreds of them.”
“No shit? Tell me what a flophouse is in Philadelphia. I know what one is in Texas—an old hotel packed with vagrants.”
“Sort of the same thing here. If someone running a flophouse could find a hotel in Philly to turn it into one, they’d probably fill, too. They are cash cows.”
“How so? Vagrants tend to be broke.”
“Simple. There’s a serious shortage of places for the really poor to live. The so-called luckier ones can get in with the Philadelphia Housing Authority. But there’s easily fifty thousand people on the PHA waitlist. And you’d better be a married couple—or at least a single mom or grandmother—without so much as a parking ticket if you expect to be anywhere near the front of the line. For those who can’t and are in Al-Anon and Nar-Anon, the city’s Office of Addiction Services throws money at some licensed drug recovery houses. But those are few, and overflowing, too, leaving independent flophouses to fill the void.”
“These flophouses actually offer Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings?”
“They pretend to—so they can draw the addicts in with their welfare checks. The worst ones are basically no more than old row houses with a bunch of makeshift bunks—just nasty mattresses on frames of two-by-fours. They’re supposed to get boardinghouse permits from L&I—the city’s Licenses and Inspections Department—but most thumb their nose at that. They don’t want to be on L&I’s radar because they’re shady operators to start with. So at four, five hundred bucks a month, it’s a place to crash for those fighting a futile battle . . . and to eventually crash and burn.”
“What about hookers?”
“Oh yeah. Ones who, if they’re not trying to kick their habit then they’re probably hiding from their pimps. Or all of the above. Hate to say it, but that’s what this Cusick girl is looking like. Not the first, and not the last.”
Byrth grunted. “Lots of pretty girls out there making poor choices.”
After a long moment, Payne said, in a lighter tone of voice, “Well, the silver lining to pretty girls making poor choices is you’ve got a chance at a date. I suggest you not be too picky.”
“Great,” Byrth said, drawing out the word, his tone sharply sarcastic. “Girls are being boiled down in drums of acid and you’re a damn comedian.” He paused, then exhaled audibly. “But, you know, you’re right. All we can do is hunt down the bad guys, and try to find some humor somewhere.” He paused again, then added, “Tell you what, Marshal . . .”
“What?”
“I think I’m going to make you my sexual adviser.”
“Wait. Your what? That’s BS—”
“No, really. You can be my sexual adviser—as in, when I want your fucking advice, I’ll ask for it.”
Payne laughed out loud. “Deal.”
“Anyway, how long are you going to be in the Keys?”
“Unfortunately, we’re headed back to Philadelphia today. In a few hours. One of the main reasons I was up early was to work on the missing person case that I mentioned to you last night. Maggie McCain is her name.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“It’s not looking like there’s going to be a happy ending. Maggie runs a place for kids in Child Protective Services. I just found out two other women from another CPS place went missing last week. Anyway, if I can, I’ll go with Kerry this afternoon and check out the flophouse.”
Byrth was quiet for a moment, then said, “I haven’t had one of those cheesesteak sandwiches in a while. I’ll meet you there.”
Over the Leeward Islands, Lesser Antilles
Monday, November 17, 6:50 A.M.
“Then Ricky, he showed up at the Sanctuary,” Krystal Gonzalez was saying as Maggie McCain watched her pacing the living room of Maggie’s Society Hill town house.
She stopped and began crying again.
“And then he grabbed Brandi, said she still owed him money, so that meant he owned her. Ms. Quan yelled for Ms. Spencer to call the cops. And Ricky, he said that that would be their last mistake ever.”
The curvy, petite nineteen-year-old anxiously ran her fingers through her black hair. A very slender doe-eyed twenty-six-year-old woman of Asian descent, who stood about as tall as Krystal, appeared. She stroked Krystal’s head and said meekly, “Brandi begged us not to call.”
A tall, sad-faced twenty-seven-year-old black woman walked up, nodding. “Said he’d kill us all. Burn down the Sanctuary.”
“Lizzi and Brandi were afraid of the cops, that they’d arrest them, too,” Krystal said. She pointed across the room. “All they wanted was out.”
Maggie looked to where Krystal pointed. The two attractive twenty-year-old blondes were standing there.
“That’s why Lizzi said they went along with leaving town. She and Brandi thought they could get away on the road. But that didn’t work. And then Lizzi and Brandi told Ricky again that they wanted out, that if he didn’t let them out, they’d go to the cops. Tell them how he started giving them drugs and working them when they were underage. But then I never heard from them again”—she glanced across the room, and when Maggie looked, too, the blondes were gone—“so I told Ms. Quan and Ms. Spencer all that. And I told them about the notebooks he kept in the office and what was in them. They didn’t believe me. ‘All you girls do is lie.’ So I stole two when Ricky passed out drunk in the office.”
She held up the thick, well-worn spiral notebooks.
Maggie looked at them, then looked back at Krystal.
Now Quan and Spencer were no longer in the living room.
“I texted Ricky, said I was done doing that shit. Told him to leave me alone or he’d never get his books back.”
Krystal, motioning with the books for Maggie to take them, said, “It’s here. Now we can be safe.”
Then she softly repeated it, “Now we can be safe.”
Then Krystal was gone, and the notebooks sat in a pool of blood in Maggie’s burning kitchen. . . .
—
“Excuse me,” an insistent female voice said, causing Maggie McCain to slowly open her eyes. She felt someone shaking her, then realized that it was her seatback being pushed and that the nasal voice was that of a flight attendant, who added, “You’re going to need to put this upright for landing.”
As American Airlines flight 504 banked over the Caribbean Sea on final to land at Cyril E. King International, Maggie wiped tears from her cheek.
So, how long are the bad dreams going to go on?
She slid open the window shade and stared out.
Monsters like Ricky can’t get away with this.
The sun was coming up, casting dramatic light across the verdant hills of the islands rising from the vast blue ocean. Bright colorful houses dotted the hillsides down to where the larger resort hotels spread out along the white sand beaches.
Normally, the beauty stirred a sense of excitement and adventure in Maggie. Now she felt neither, only a surreal numbness.
First thing I am going to do, she thought, is get that bastard where it matters most to him—in the wallet. Let him worry and squirm.
I know what money he’s making, and the outrageous, disgusting way he’s making it.
And I can use his books to get him, too.
He’s going to learn you don’t fuck with a McCain.
She watched out the window as the airliner settled toward the sea, coming so close to the surface that it looked like it might land on the water. Then at the last minute its tires finally chirped as they touched down on the runway, the threshold of which began right at the water’s edge of the small island.
“Welcome to the tropical paradise of Saint Thomas, United States Virgin Islands,” the flight attendant’s nasal voice came across the intercom, her tone attempting to be perky.
—
Backpack slung over one shoulder and wearing sunglasses and the Georgetown Hoyas cap, Maggie deplaned and made her way through the concourse to Baggage Claim Two. She passed plenty of police. There were uniformed local cops, as well as federal agents, ones with their shirts lettered ICE or DEA. She kept telling herself that she had nothing to worry about from the Drug Enforcement Administration or Immigration and Customs Enforcement—or any other cop. And none seemed to pay another young American woman any particular attention, which she thought more or less supported that.
Then again, she realized, she really didn’t know who might be looking for her.
She saw, not surprisingly, that a lot of women were talking on their cell phones, and wondered if she should pull hers from her backpack in order to blend in. She immediately decided against that, because the last thing she wanted to do was turn on the phone. If a cop noticed her pretending to converse over a darkened phone, one clearly dead, it would raise more flags than simply not having a phone out in the first place.
Near Baggage Claim Two, she found the man holding a clipboard so that it showed the YELLOWROSE logotype and TRADEWINDS ESTATE. He was a short, brown-skinned, potbellied, gray-haired islander with a friendly face. She walked toward him, and as she approached she saw that his name tag read MANUEL. Pleasantly addressing him by name, she introduced herself as Alexis Stewart, and after he had turned over the clipboard and confirmed she was indeed on his shuttle bus list, she went to the baggage carousel to locate her luggage.
It was there within minutes, and another twenty after that Manuel had all five of the newly arrived guests of the Tradewinds Estate aboard the turquoise open-air safari bus, an older Ford F-250 flatbed pickup converted with a thatch roof over passenger benches that could seat fifteen. He’d used up at least half of that time squeezing their luggage into a rear compartment.
Maggie decided the other four guests, judging by their rings, were married couples. They had found their seats in the first and second rows of the safari bus. They talked among themselves, their conversation animated and covering the usual small talk, beginning with, “The islands are just so amazingly beautiful.” “Is this your first time to visit?”
Maggie, having seen the dynamic happen time and again, knew the odds were high that during their stay the women would become fast friends, with the men dutifully following suit.
Which was one reason Maggie discreetly had taken her seat on the second-to-last row, and proceeded to pretend she was reading a paperback. She was grateful the shuttle wasn’t an enclosed van, which would have put her in closer proximity to the others and they likely would have attempted to draw her into the conversation. While she was prepared with stories of what she was doing there—starting with “a birthday vacation”—she really didn’t want to lie if it could be avoided. And not talking was simply a way of doing exactly that.
The turquoise safari bus, merging with the traffic flow on the left side of the street, turned off the airport property and followed Veterans Drive along the coast. The rising sun was quickly warming the cool morning, the temperature, according to the flashing WELCOME TO SAINT THOMAS sign they just passed at the airport, already approaching eighty.
As the humid salty air blew through the open bus, Maggie breathed in deeply and thought that it felt good.
Or maybe it’s that I’m out of Philly . . . and in a place that’s far away . . . and feels far safer.
I’ve always felt safest in the islands.
Over the top of the paperback, Maggie watched as they passed the familiar sights of Frenchtown—Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, at the foot of Frenchman’s Hill, caught her eye, and the busy ferries at Blyden terminal—then the shops and restaurants lining the narrow, congested streets of downtown Charlotte Amalie.
It will be easy to blend in.
She looked across Veterans Drive. In the bay were fifty or more sailboats tied to mooring buoys. A couple of the big fifty-foot-plus catamarans were already under way, people moving about purposefully on deck as sails were hoisted.
On the far side of Charlotte Amalie, where two cruise ships towered over the docks, the safari bus turned off the main road. It made a series of sharp turns, Manuel grinding an occasional gear as he downshifted and followed the serpentine two-lane up a steep incline. After topping the tall hill, he left the bus in a low gear and it chugged down the other side.
The truck’s engine then backfired—and the two wives shrieked, then a moment later laughed at themselves.
Maggie was surprised she hadn’t jumped out of her skin.
Shortly thereafter, the brakes squealed as the bus approached on the right an eight-foot-high natural stone wall covered with thick flowering vines. There was an enormous gate that blocked any view of what was behind the wall. The only clue was on the gate—a wooden sign with hand-chiseled lettering: TRADEWINDS ESTATE, AN EXCLUSIVE YELLOWROSE ESCAPE.
The breeze carried the fragrance of the vine flowers, filling her head.
The gate slowly swung open, and Manuel ground the transmission into gear, then rolled the safari bus through.
Maggie caught herself sighing with relief.
—
“As you requested, we have you in our most secluded cottage,” the young black hostess said, as she and Maggie stepped from the brightly painted electric golf cart. A bellman in a battered black cart that carried Maggie’s luggage was pulling up behind them.
Maggie guessed that the hostess—her name tag read BEATRIX—was no more than eighteen. She had somewhat hard features but a pleasant, reserved personality. She spoke with a hint of a British accent.
“Being the farthest from the main house,” Beatrix went on, “it also commands the best private view on the property.”
They had just come from the “main house,” a four-story mansion of quarried stone once owned by a rum maker. Five years earlier it had been converted into a quaint boutique hotel with twenty rooms. There was a large open reception area on the first floor, which led outdoors to the grand restaurant overlooking the sea. It had tables to seat sixty, and except for a thatched roof was completely open to the elements. Nearby, a large swimming pool with a waterfall had been sculpted into the hillside.
With the main house’s conversion, a dozen cottages had been added throughout the property, as had the one-lane paths winding among them through the hills.
Maggie saw that her cottage, out on a point of the hillside three hundred feet above the small bay below, was built in a hexagon shape. Its walls were mostly large windows that could be slid together, completely opening three-quarters of the building to the cool, steady winds blowing ashore. A level down, tall palm trees framed the stone decking that contained a small swimming pool, an infinity style that appeared to flow into the ocean itself.
Maggie, slipping her backpack from her shoulder and placing it on a low couch, found herself admiring the elegant, comfortable furnishings and how everything seamlessly blended in with the natural surroundings.
“It really is quite lovely,” she said, trying to sound more excited than simply relieved to finally be there.
“Your welcome package is over there,” Beatrix said, motioning toward a low wooden table beside the pool. “We deliver a continental breakfast of fresh baked goods daily, or anything more at your request. There is a pot of our rich local coffee, as well as a pot of hot water if you should prefer tea. And fresh fruit.”
“Perfect.”
The bellman, having delivered Maggie’s bags, stepped out of the cottage and slipped away without a word, disappearing behind the tall thick hedge of sea grape trees that shielded the cottage.
“Finally,” Beatrix said, “I spoke with our marina manager, and he asked me to tell you that the dockmaster is seeing to your charter boat. You’re welcome to call him or”—she gestured toward the section of hedge to the right—“just beyond there are steps leading to the marina, as well as the beach. It’s a lovely walk down. Coming up, however, you may wish to take one of the golf carts. Even I find the hills to be a workout.”
Maggie smiled. “Good advice. Thank you. Did you grow up here?”
“I recently came here to attend school. I grew up in Virgin Gorda.” She pointed. “That’s about ten miles away, in the British Virgin Islands.”
Maggie was nodding as an image of the giant volcanic boulders on the beach at the Baths of Virgin Gorda came to mind.
“Do you know it?” Beatrix said.
“Actually I was just . . . I mean, just wondering if it was worth the effort.”
“Oh yes. It’s much quieter than here, fewer people. I shouldn’t say that, but it’s true. I take the ferry back and forth, but you could easily sail there. Just be sure to bring your passport.”
“Not this trip. But that’s good to know.”
“Well, then. Anything else you need is simply a phone call away,” Beatrix said, handing Maggie her business card. “Please contact me directly, or of course any of our staff.”
—
Five minutes after Beatrix left, Maggie had made herself a cup of tea—denying herself a splash in it from the liter bottle of local Cruzan gold rum she found on the welcome tray. She took the tea into the bedroom of the cottage and began digging through her suitcase. She had bought the luggage and most of the clothes in it at the giant outlet mall just south of Baltimore the previous day.
At the bottom she found a pair of linen shorts and changed into them, then tried to flatten out the wrinkles as she carefully hung her blue jeans in the closet.
Then, back in the suitcase, under her canvas sailing bag, she found the hard plastic case and pulled it out. She worked the combination of the lock, then took out her Baby Glock. With a practiced hand, she loaded the pistol in between sips of tea.
She knew that having the pistol was illegal in the Virgin Islands.
God help me!
First it was coming up with fast lies. Then traveling on false IDs. Then bringing a gun, which I’ve never done.
Is there no end to what I’ll do going down this rabbit hole?
But . . . at least I am still alive.
She dug again in the suitcase and pulled out the heavy canvas sailing bag. She made it a little heavier by slipping the Glock in it, then grabbed her tea and went out to the pool deck.
Beside the table holding the food and drink was a chaise longue in the shade of an umbrella. She put the bag on the chaise’s thick blue cushion, then looked back to the cottage, shook her head, and retrieved her backpack from the low couch inside.
Finally, sitting cross-legged on the cushion of the chaise longue, she pulled her laptop from her backpack. She looked at the canvas sail bag and saw its neat stitching that read YELLOWROSE SPRING BAY RESORT & SPA, VIRGIN GORDA BVI.
Glad Beatrix didn’t see that.
But then I could have just said it was Mother’s, or anyone’s, for that matter.
There I go again. Ready with the easy lie.
And, really, why does that bother me?
Because the girls always do it?
But to them, it must be a survival skill.
Which is what I’ve made it . . .
She reached in the sail bag and removed a square gray plastic-encased device that was about half the size of her laptop. It had a small face panel with a power on/off button, a battery-power gauge, three jacks, and two light bars, one vertical and one horizontal. It also had an adjustable folding leg that allowed the device to sit at varied angles. She placed the device at the foot of the blue cushion and plugged one end of a cable into one of the jacks and the other end into the laptop.
Okay, let’s power on everything.
With the laptop booted up, she clicked on an icon shaped like a globe.
She leaned toward the foot of the cushion. Both light bars on the device’s panel blinked yellow. Then the vertical one turned half yellow and half green. She slowly rotated the device left and the horizontal light bar blinked red. She reversed, rotating the device to the right. The red went out, then the yellow that returned was replaced with half green. She continued turning it right—and then both bars became a solid green.
She looked at her laptop screen, and in one window there was: INMARSAT ACQUIRED. ANTENNA STRENGTH 98%.
Well, good. The subscription’s not expired from last time.
No way I could renew it without a hit on my credit card.
Would have to rent one. Or steal one . . .
Then she opened a new window on her Internet browser and clicked on the icon that would take her to a secure server.
After she signed in, an icon that looked like a mailing envelope automatically popped up. On it was a small red circle with “109” on it.
Her throat constricted.
And fifty of those e-mails are probably from Mother.
She must be going bonkers. I feel awful.
But this has been my first chance to send anything since yesterday.
She opened a new e-mail message, typed “I’m fine!!!” in the subject field, then wrote in the body: “Hi!! I’m in a good place but on the move. More shortly. Promise! Love you!! Mag.”
She then sent it to her mother, father, and cousin Emma.
Hang in there . . . so far so good.
She clicked again on the globe icon, and a moment later the screen read DISCONNECTED FROM INMARSAT. Then she powered off the antenna.
She poured herself some more tea.
Sipping it, she looked over the edge of her cup out at the Caribbean Sea, then thought of the dream she had on the airplane. She shook her head as she felt her eyes tear. She put down the cup.
Okay, you bastard . . .
She reached in the canvas sail bag, removed a thick spiral notebook, and flipped back its well-worn cover. She began to carefully study the first page—then suddenly began sobbing, and curled up in the fetal position on the cushion.
Little Palm Island, Florida
Monday, November 17, 7:10 A.M.
“Okay, it looks like we’re finally all here again in one piece,” Matt Payne said, looking at the laptop screen and everyone’s images that were no longer pixelated.
Payne’s screen was divided into quarters, four big boxes with individual images, all live feeds, of Jason Washington, Tony Harris, Kerry Rapier, and Matt.
“Sorry for that electronic burp, gentlemen,” Corporal Kerry Rapier said, from his bottom left corner box.
Matt’s image was in the bottom right box. He carefully had adjusted the laptop so that the pinhole camera centered in the upper lip of the screen captured him from the chest—just above the CONCH REPUBLIC CLUB FED stencil—up over his head. Behind him was nothing but black.
Twenty minutes earlier, right after getting off the telephone with Jim Byrth, Matt had had what he considered one of his better ideas of the already long morning.
He had gone down to the master stateroom and grabbed one of the black pillowcases off the big bed. He hung it from the ceiling of the galley so that it would mask anything behind him. That way there would be no distractions in the background—sunrise causing glare, for example, or someone walking past on the dock—to interrupt their videoconference.
Perhaps more importantly, it would also have the added benefit of saving Matt from getting his chops busted about what a tough life it must be yachting in paradise.
What they don’t know, or see, won’t hurt them . . . or me.
—
The top left box with the image of Jason Washington showed him wearing a crisp white dress shirt with a nice blue necktie. Behind him on the wall were framed photographs of Washington with his wife and ones with other police officers, clearly indicating to everyone that he was sitting at his desk in his office in Homicide.
Tony Harris also had on a shirt and tie and navy blazer—all somewhat rumpled. He, too, was in his Homicide office, and holding a heavy china coffee mug just to the side of his head.
Matt had immediately recognized the mug. After tiring of trying to find who was swiping his personal plain coffee mugs in the office, he recently had had a dozen cheap ones custom printed with a representation of his Philadelphia Police Department Badge 471 on one side and, opposite that, also in gold, the words STOLEN FROM THE DESK OF HOMICIDE SGT M.M. PAYNE.
He had been convinced that that would stop his cup from disappearing.
He had been wrong.
Kerry Rapier, wearing his police uniform blue shirt with its three blue chevrons on the sleeves, was at the command console in the Executive Command Center. He also held what he called “a Wyatt Earp of the Main Line Collectible,” which when word of that got around only had served to accelerate the cups’ disappearance.
And they’re holding them up now to quietly taunt me.
“Jason,” Payne said, mock-serious, “when we’re finished here, be aware that I intend to be filing charges of petty theft.”
Washington, who of course had the same images of everyone on his screen, in his sonorous voice intoned, “To what might you be referring, Matthew?”
Then he raised to his lips a “collectible” and took a sip.
Tony and Kerry chuckled.
Matt shook his head and snorted. But he was smiling.
Washington then said, his tone unmistakably serious, “I understand that Kerry had the foresight earlier to send you the files?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve gone over them. A couple times.”
“That then makes you our set of fresh eyes. Anything in them jump out at you?”
Matt shook his head.
“Only that it’s remarkable how little there is. Except for the Gonzalez girl being executed in an unusual fashion, there’s next to nothing right now to go on.”
“Unfortunately that appears to be the case,” Washington said, nodding. “Tony, would you share what else we have?”
Harris grunted. “There’s not a helluva lot to add, Matt. We were able to trace the anonymous text that Maggie sent back to the IP address of the computer she used. It was in an Internet café outside of Washington, D.C.”
“So, assuming she sent it, she’s no longer in Philadelphia,” Payne said.
“It seemed a hot lead,” Tony went on, “but when I interviewed the manager he said I was describing half the women who came in there. He did say he never noticed any female customer being there with someone who may have been holding her against her will.”
“And there’s no sense in hunting prints on the computer,” Payne said.
Matt saw Jason nodding as Tony said, “Right. Even if we were able to find hers among—what? dozens? hundreds?—of others who used the keyboard, we’re not going to find Maggie herself.”
Matt watched Tony take a sip of coffee from his cup as Tony glanced at a notepad.
“I’m just going to rattle these off,” Harris said. “Stop me if you want.”
“Rattle away,” Matt said, making a sweeping hand gesture at his laptop camera.
“One, we did get some prints lifted,” Tony went on, “partials taken off the one Molotov cocktail bottle that did not break. Not great, but they’re being run now. Two, Maggie has a current permit for concealed carry of a pistol. Three, the residue on that dollar bill rolled up in the Gonzalez girl’s pocket tested positive for coke. Four, the Gonzalez go-phone went live again last night—”
“Stop,” Payne interrupted. “When and where? At Westpark?”
Tony looked up from the paper. “No, not the apartments in West Philly. It was in the area of NoLibs and Fishtown. Just after midnight last night. Whoever had the phone redialed the last number—”
“Maggie’s work cell phone,” Payne said, remembering the report stating that. “Which was found broken in the alley. And the go-phone then dialed it three times in a row at noon yesterday.”
Washington sat stone-faced, quietly impressed again with Matt’s natural ability to absorb vast amounts of information and effortlessly produce it on the spot. But Washington wasn’t at all surprised. That was more or less expected of those who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude and those who finished first on the department’s exam for promotion—both of which Payne had done, the latter earning him the right to his choice of assignment, the Homicide Unit.
“Right,” Harris said, “and then, for the first time since Maggie went missing, it dialed her personal cell phone, which was, and is, still turned off. Then the go-phone signal went dark again.”
Payne sighed. “Well, that’s something. At least we know the go-phone’s still in play. We just need to find it.”
“Yeah, and with luck, by the time you get here we should have more forensics on the data we took off her work phone.”
“What about the other two dozen phone numbers and texts that her go-phone made between the time of the murder and when it went dark after you tried to trick whoever had it at Westpark?”
“Not a single one answered when we called. Not even out of curiosity. Which is odd.”
“Maybe they were told to ditch their phones and get new ones?” Payne said, and thought, They buy the damn things like they do drugs, in bulk.
“That is entirely possible,” Washington said. “Disposable cell phones being a cost of doing business. We’re now waiting for the phone company to trace ownership of those numbers. I have a feeling Matt’s right about the ditch-your-phones order, though, and that’s likely to become a cold trail, too.”
Payne nodded thoughtfully. “Makes you wonder why hers hasn’t been ditched.” He paused, then said, “What else you got on your list, Tony?”
“Just one last thing. All the neighbors I spoke with last night couldn’t say enough nice things about Maggie. Said she was an extraordinary neighbor, nice and friendly, always taking care of her place. If she saw litter on the sidewalk, she picked it up. They were sick about the home invasion.”
Matt looked away from the screen in thought.
“I can smell the gears burning all the way from here,” Washington said. “What are you thinking, Matthew?”
Payne, rubbing his chin with his thumb and index finger, turned back to the screen.
“Nothing really. It’s just that the go-phone went live in the NoLibs–Fishtown area.”
“And?” Harris said.
“And that’s where the casinos are.”
“So?”
“I’m afraid that I’m not following you either, Matthew.”
Matt shrugged and made a face. “That’s because there’s nothing to follow. Nick Antonov’s name came up at dinner last night. Some SoBe ABC—”
“Now you’re talking in tongues, buddy,” Harris said.
“South Beach American-born Cuban, Tony. A guy named Jorge Perez. He was running Antonov’s boat, the casino’s boat, and entertaining a couple of middle-aged goombahs who looked like they could’ve just fallen off the pasta truck in South Philly or South Orange. Or, considering Perez, maybe closer to Havana on the Hudson. Just didn’t smell right. And apparently it’s still bugging my subconscious.”
“You’ve really lost me, Matt. How does Union, New Jersey . . . ?”
“Like I said, Tony, there’s nothing to follow. That go-phone could have been anywhere. Including the Hops Haus condo high-rise. And I’m not about to implicate Amanda any more than anyone else.”
“All right, then,” Harris said. “That’s all we have for now. We should have more details in by the time you come back this afternoon.”
Payne nodded, then said, “Speaking of this afternoon, Jim Byrth is headed to Philly, too.”
That caused Washington to change his facial expression.
His eyebrows went up as he said: “Jim’s always welcome, as I told him. What’s the purpose of his visit this time?”
Matt repeated the description of the camp by the lake in northeast Texas and all that was found there.
When he had finished, Jason Washington said, “I’ve heard about those sulfuric acid baths. But the cartels aren’t the first to liquefy their enemies. The head of the Sicilian mob, Filippo Marchese, used lye and called it Lupara bianca. White shotgun.”
Matt clicked on a file, and the photograph of him in the right bottom corner was replaced with the Cusick ID.
“This is the ID that the sheriff found in the RV trailer.”
“Pretty girl,” Harris said.
Matt went to click it to close the image but instead managed to open the file next to it. The image of the girl in the blue barrel popped up in its place.
In the upper right window of his screen, Matt watched as Tony Harris’s eyes went wide and coffee sloshed from his cup. He slowly said, “Damn!”
“Sorry. Hope everyone’s had their breakfast,” Payne said, and clicked to make it go away.
“As horrific as that is—and it genuinely is—your priority is the McCain case, Matthew.”
“Understood. Trust me, I have Amanda reminding me of that by the minute.”
And I’m well aware that the sooner Maggie comes home, the sooner I can come back down here.
The three images of Washington, Harris, and Rapier started to become pixelated again. Then that snow of tiny multicolored dots turned completely black.
All that was left on Matt’s screen was his own live image.
“Are you still there, Matthew?” Washington’s deep voice came through Payne’s laptop speaker. “We lost your picture again.”
“And I lost all of yours,” Matt said. “Damn it! Why won’t this work?”
“It’s the ECC’s fault, Marshal,” Kerry’s voice then announced. “It’s why, I think, it took so long for you to get patched in, then that other pixelated burp. I really thought I had the bugs out.”
“Well, we’re finished for now anyway,” Harris’s voice said.
Matt glanced at the corner of his screen, saw it read MON 8:01 AM, and said, “Okay. If there’s nothing else, time for me to go pack up.”
“Kerry, log us out,” Washington said, from the darkness of his box.
Payne stood, felt the black pillowcase brush his head, then yanked it from the ceiling.
“Yes, sir,” Rapier’s voice said, then added, “Hey, here’s an error message.”
Payne looked back at the screen. The images of all three men had returned.
“Nice boat, Marshal!” Rapier blurted.
Jason and Tony grinned as Kerry placed his head close to the camera. His eyeball now filled his on-screen box, and he rolled it around, pretending to be looking around the Viking.
Jason chuckled deeply as Tony said, “So you’re doing hard time at Club Fed? Looks rough, buddy.”
Suite 2400, Two Yellowrose Place, Uptown Dallas
Monday, November 17, 9:30 A.M. Texas Standard Time
“Hey, Rapp, come on in!” Mike Santos said. “Me and Bobby here were just talking about what a fine time we had getting to know you last night.”
The office of the chief executive officer of OneWorld Private Equity Partners was penthouse level, twenty-three floors above the Southwest Chop House and the other street-level businesses.
Bobby Garcia stood looking over Santos’s shoulder at the two side-by-side large flat-screen computer monitors on Santos’s desk. The desk was an eight-foot-long slab of thick, perfectly polished petrified wood with two wide stainless steel cylinders for legs. Santos followed Garcia out from behind it.
“Good morning,” Rapp Badde said, forcing a smile, and shook Bobby Garcia’s hand, then that of Santos.
Badde glanced around the office. An impressive space, it was expensively decorated. The walls were filled with large photographs, ones that looked like fine art, of buildings and various commercial developments. And there were artist conceptions of future projects. There had to be more than a hundred. The walls of floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over downtown in one direction and out west in the other direction.
“Can we get you something? Coffee?” Santos said. “Maybe something to kick-start your day? A little hair of the dog?”
“Tempting, but no, thank you,” Badde said. “That was one helluva nice time last night. Exhausting, though. It was tough getting up this morning, and I slept hard all night.”
Well, not exactly all night, Bobby Garcia thought, then noticed Badde absently rubbing his wrists.
“It was a good night,” Santos said. “Glad to hear you got rest, too.”
“I can get used to that nice scenery last night. What business were those women in? Hospitality?”
Is he serious? Garcia thought.
“Right. The service industry,” Santos said. “They come here to train at our hotel across the street—it’s sort of a finishing school—then travel from property to property. It keeps them”—he glanced at Garcia knowingly, clearly enjoying himself—“what’s the word I’m looking for, Bobby? ‘Nimble’?”
Garcia, literally biting his lip, raised his eyebrows, then nodded.
Santos went on: “Now that we’re providing the initial hundred million for your little hotel in Philly, and maybe more, I’m sure we’ll be able to have them there—say, for the grand opening?”
Garcia, watching Badde nod agreeably, thought: The sonofabitch really doesn’t remember a damn thing.
—
Santos and Garcia had spent the previous fifteen minutes reviewing parts of H. Rapp Badde, Jr.’s first night in Dallas.
“Here’s the footage we got from the chophouse security cameras,” Santos said. “Shows us at the table, having drinks as the girls arrive.”
Garcia watched the image on the left flat-screen that showed Santos and Garcia and Badde getting to their feet. Introductions were made, and then the group walked out of the lounge.
The next image picked up their party a moment later stepping out to the outside bar of the chophouse. In a corner of the softly lit area was a stone fire pit, natural-gas-fed and flickering with orange flames, that was surrounded by plush couches with oversized cushions and pillows.
As soon as they sat, Badde with a blonde on one side and a brunette on the other, a waitress arrived with a bottle of champagne and three crystal stems and another round of the men’s drinks.
“He really was giddy over those girls,” Garcia said. “I almost feel bad about all this.”
Santos chuckled.
He fast-forwarded the image. The girls fawned over Badde, laughing and touching his hand. After a short time, Badde glanced over his shoulder, looking around the bar area, then stood, put his drink on the table, and with the now empty hand motioned to excuse himself. The brunette grabbed his hand and playfully tugged him back. He grinned broadly, then broke free and went out of camera view.
Bobby Garcia watched himself on the video take a sip of what then was his fifth club soda and lime.
“I should have been the one going to take a piss,” he said, and laughed.
The young women emptied the champagne bottle and talked among themselves.
Garcia put his drink beside Badde’s. Both glasses looked identical with the flickering orange flames reflecting on them. Garcia then discreetly pulled from his coat pocket a glass vial the size of a cough drop. It contained a double dose—two ten-milligram tablets—of zolpidem dissolved in water. After a long moment, he reached for Badde’s drink. He popped the vial’s plastic top, emptied the clear liquid into the drink, then stirred it. He then returned the cocktail to the table, tossing the vial into the fire pit. The heat almost immediately caused it to shatter and disappear.
When Badde reappeared five minutes later, Garcia retrieved his club soda as Badde sat back down between the girls.
Badde grabbed his drink, took a healthy swallow, then leaned over and whispered in the brunette’s ear. She tilted her head back and laughed. Badde grinned broadly as she touched her champagne stem to his glass.
“He really fell all over himself. And them. Literally. Check out later.”
He clicked to another box that was on the right flat-screen. This video showed the interior of a luxuriously furnished condominium. The camera angle was from a high corner of the living room. The blondes and brunette now wore only panties. Badde was trying to get his pants off, but was having difficulty because he still had on his shoes. He was wobbling on his right leg, tugging at his left, and falling toward the brunette as she tried to help him keep his balance.
Santos clicked on the FAST FORWARD button, and the image blurred as more and more clothes came off.
Then no one wore anything.
Santo clicked FAST FORWARD again, blurring the image a bit more.
There next came some enthusiastic kissing and petting. Then Badde paired off with the brunette while the blondes turned to one another. The brunette lay on the leather couch, then reached for a wooden box on the coffee table. She pulled from the box a small packet, emptying its contents on her breast.
Shortly after snorting the cocaine, Badde lost all inhibition. The women were more than compliant to his wishes. Even with the video moving fast, the various acts left little to the imagination.
“I really would rather you not slow that down, Mike. I don’t want to see any detail.”
Santos clicked on the STOP button, and the screen became a black box.
“Thank you.”
“But here’s the coup de grâce,” Santos said.
Santos clicked a PLAY button that was in another box on the left screen.
“What the hell?” Garcia said, then sighed. “You know, Mike, some might suggest that this is borderline over the edge.”
Santos looked up at Garcia. He looked serious.
“It’s always good to have insurance, Bobby. Always. Yuri said Badde could be damn difficult, and to be careful with him. But until we met Badde in person, I didn’t know if Yuri said that because Yuri can be a pain in the ass. Now, since Yuri is connected to him with Diamond Development, we have something on both of them.” He looked back at the screen. “I got the idea for this from pictures I saw on the wall of that gayborhood bar we foreclosed on.”
“That’s a little comforting, I guess. I seriously was beginning to worry. I don’t think I could handle you coming up with this all by yourself. I mean, a piñata?”
Badde was lying on his belly on the white comforter of the bed, trussed up with his wrists and pudgy ankles tied above his buttocks with the soft fabric belt of a dressing robe. He was naked except for being wrapped in lengths of bright yellow and blue and green papier-mâché. There was a small sombrero on his head.
“Hey,” Santos said, “I bet your sorry half-gringo ass didn’t know that the Chinese had their own piñata first.”
“They didn’t call it that.”
“I forget what it was called. Probably couldn’t pronounce it if I did. Anyway, a version of whatever it was called made its way to Mexico in the 1500s, when the Catholics started making them with seven points for the seven sins. Beating one with a stick till it broke represented man’s struggle—good versus evil—and the treats inside were the reward for keeping the faith.” He glanced at Garcia, then back at the screen. “He looks pretty festive, don’t you think?”
As Badde squirmed on the bed, a short, effeminate Hispanic male wearing a ridiculously small white cowboy hat strode into view. The camera angle was such that only his backside was visible—but it was a great deal of backside, as he wore only a pair of leather chaps with a holstered revolver hanging from each hip. He had a very well-defined and muscled body.
Then he turned and placed his groin in close proximity to what in role-playing would be considered the piñata’s face.
“Damn! He’s hung like a horse, an angry one!”
The camera then captured the “cowboy” removing the sombrero and performing on the “piñata” a sexual act that Garcia thought could never be described in polite company.
Garcia shook his head.
“You are one sick sonofabitch, mi amigo.”
“Thanks to that zolpidem, Bobby, he’ll never know that this ever happened—as long as he does what he’s supposed to. I haven’t decided if I’ll get a snipped version of it to Yuri or not. But we’ll have the whole thing here for safekeeping.”
—
Garcia studied Badde, who looked severely hungover. He knew that it was from all the alcohol and cocaine—and there had been a lot of it—because the zolpidem left no side effects. Garcia also found it interesting that one of the results of Badde being so badly bent was that he didn’t exhibit his usual flashes of arrogance.
Still, no matter how hard he tried, Garcia simply could not look at Badde and shake the vision of him trussed up in the video.
Maybe he’s lucky he doesn’t remember a thing about it. . . .
“I’m going to run down to my office, Rapp, and get the papers for you to take back to Philly for your people to review and for signature,” Garcia said, and moved toward the door. “Sooner we get the paperwork in motion, the sooner we can get preapproval of your project for the EB-5 funding. I’ll be right back.”
After Garcia went out the door, Badde turned to Santos.
“You know, Mike,” he said agreeably, “you could have just overnighted those papers to me. You really shouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of bringing me here to Dallas.”
Santos grinned.
“It just wouldn’t have been the same, Rapp. And it was no trouble at all.”
“Well, I am glad you did.”
“And I’m glad we did, too.”