Bitter Legacy: A Matt Royal Mystery (Matt Royal Mysteries) (17 page)

The call had come in mid-afternoon. To the throwaway cell phone he used for this operation. The Hacker had bad news. Both the men he’d sent to Royal’s house that morning had been taken out. The one at the hospital had been killed by a lucky shot from a cop with a Kevlar vest. Shit happens. Sometimes bad luck intervenes. He’d try again. Other men, better men, more focused men. He’d get the job done.

The old man wanted to burn the Hacker’s ass, but he didn’t know who he was or where to find him. All he had was a telephone number, and he was sure that number was as temporary as his own. He’d found the Hacker through an intermediary, a private detective who had on occasion worked for the old man, one who was not afraid to get his hands dirty. He’d always been paid well. When the old man outlined the plan to the detective, an outline that was as vague as a shapeless puff of smoke on a windy day, he’d only told him he needed someone who could find out things and had the resources to get other things done.

“Are we talking wet work?” the detective had asked.

“Maybe,” the old man replied. “Does that bother you?”

“Not in the least. It’s just that it’ll cost more.”

Cost was not the old man’s problem. He had more money than
almost anyone in the world. He made Forbes’s list year after year. He didn’t care very much if he got caught. The fun was in the game, and if he lost it at this point in his life, well, so what. He’d be dead before anybody could build a case against him. What did he care? He wanted to win, and damn the consequences.

So the detective had given him a number to call. He was told that the number had been given to him by a man in Tallahassee whose name he didn’t know. The detective had called a colleague in Jacksonville, told him what he was looking for. The man in Jacksonville gave him a number in Tallahassee, probably another throwaway number. The guy in Tallahassee gave the detective a number that he then gave to the old man.

The old man knew his helper only as the Hacker. He was told to wire money to an account in the Cayman Islands. That money was probably wired to other banks in other countries with bank secrecy laws. The old man didn’t know and didn’t care. He wanted results. As it happened, he wasn’t getting any. Not good ones, anyway.

Royal and Hamilton were still alive. He didn’t know if either of them had the document, but he knew it wasn’t in Osceola’s possession. At least not in that fleabag motel he’d stayed in. And it wasn’t in Royal’s house, either. He’d ordered the Hacker to get somebody into Hamilton’s apartment and search the place. He didn’t hold out much hope of finding anything. The fact that the papers weren’t in any of their residences didn’t mean much. The only way to ensure that the documents never saw light was to kill the people who knew about them.

He couldn’t understand how Royal and Hamilton kept avoiding their killers. When he’d first heard about the documents and that blasted black man who called himself a Seminole, he knew that Osceola would come to Longboat Key to contact Royal. That’s what Oceola had told Blakemoore. But Royal was on vacation away from the island.

Two of the Hacker’s people had gone looking for him and were redirected to Hamilton. They had waited until late in the evening, intending to simply knock on Hamilton’s door and ask him how to contact Royal. They had arrived just as the cops were questioning a black man near the front of the building. He heard him say that his name was Osceola and that he’d come looking for Royal. The cops took him away. Then the
Hacker’s men were confronted by that idiot security guard. Some days nothing seems to work out.

He sighed, moved a little in his chair, relieved the pressure on his thin buttocks. Maybe the Indian would die, he thought. There’d been another fuck up earlier that day at the hospital and another of the Hacker’s idiots was dead. Maybe it’s time for me to get lucky. That would be a sign, the Indian’s death from the head wound. The end for the other two would be the final acts of a dying but resolute old bastard. He chuckled to himself and closed his eyes.

I was getting ready for bed. I’d brushed my teeth and undressed when I saw a red light blinking on my bedside table. It was my answering machine. I didn’t use the house phone much, relying mostly on my cell. However, old habits die hard, and I’d been reluctant to give up the land line. I decided to leave it to morning, but curiosity got the better of me. I pushed the button and listened to the message.

“Mr. Royal, this is Lieutenant Charlie Foreman with the Collier County Sheriff’s Department. Your name has come up in a murder I’m investigating. You’re not a suspect or anything, but I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call. I think you may have known the victim.” He left his phone number.

I checked the time on the digital readout. The call had come in at a little after three that afternoon. My watch told me that it was almost ten, too late to be returning the call. I’d get in touch in the morning.

Marie had called Logan to say that she’d arrived at her sister’s house and was still unhappy about being so far away. She said she understood the danger and would stay in Orlando until we told her to come home.

I went to the safe in my closet and retrieved my Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistol. I inserted the seventeen-round clip and placed the gun on the bedside table. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but strangers were trying to kill my friend and me. It never hurt to add a little safety factor to the situation. The Sig was just that.

I crawled into bed and turned out the light. The morning had started off with somebody trying to blow me up. It hadn’t gotten a whole lot better during the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow would be better. I drifted off to sleep thinking about James Baggett, the biker gang honcho. And Detective J.D. Duncan.

I awoke from a sound sleep, instantly alert. A noise of some sort. Without thinking about it, I had slipped into the sleep of the soldier, a guarded slumber, a part of the sleeping brain alert for danger, for sounds in the night, ready to spring into action with the first perception of threat. I couldn’t identify the sound at first, but it had been enough to fire up those old responses, kick in the adrenal glands, sharpen the senses.

I glanced at the clock by the phone. Three a.m. The deepest part of the night, the time when predators pounce. I lay completely still. My Sig Sauer was on the bedside table, loaded, a round in the chamber. The .38 was still in its holster on a chair across the room. I closed my eyes, trying to sharpen my hearing, straining for the sound again, trying to place what I’d heard, dredge it up from the memory banks. It came again, a small sound in the night, a slight gurgle, a swish of an oar biting into the surface. The almost silent push of a boat through water. Somebody was on the bay, close to my house, coming quietly, stealthily.

I slipped out of bed, picked up my pistol, eased myself next to the window overlooking the bay, peeked out. The dark was intense, no moon, no stars. There must be a cloud cover, I thought. I couldn’t see anything. I tried to let my eyes adjust, but they were as dilated as they were going to get. My night vision was at its peak. The sound came again. Sibilant, quiet, barely audible, closer.

Then, quiet, stillness. I listened intently, my ears attuned to the slightest nuance of sound. There was nothing. I decided I’d been hearing ghost sounds in the night, sounds that weren’t there. I went back to bed, but lay awake, listening. No other sound came and I drifted off to sleep.

I awoke with a start, the sound of voices, a loud angry crash penetrating my sleeping brain. “Son of a bitch,” screamed Jock from the front of the house. I flinched, grabbed the Sig and ran toward the noise. I heard sounds of struggle, grunts, loud exhalations, a cry of pain.

I threw open the door to my room, hit the hall light switch, pistol in front of me, ready to shoot. Jock was standing in the middle of the short hallway wearing only his undershorts. He was breathing quickly, panting, letting the panic drain from his system. A man lay on the floor, still, his head at a strange angle. He was wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and black sneakers. A black watch cap covered his head. A large hunting knife lay on the floor near his outstretched hand.

“He’s dead,” said Jock.

“Where’s Logan?”

“In his room, I guess.”

I heard glass break and a shot rang out from Logan’s room. The door was only five feet from Jock’s. We moved fast, taking up a position on either side of the door.

“Logan,” I called.

“It’s clear, Matt,” replied Logan. “Come on in.”

I pushed the door open, carefully. Logan was still in bed, his Beretta in his hand. A windowpane was shattered and another had a neat hole in it.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Somebody was trying to get in.”

I went to the window, looked outside. Nothing. “Are you sure, Logan?”

“I’m sure.”

There was a pounding on the front door. Steve Carey was calling my name. I went to open it. Steve had his pistol out. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked.

“Logan took a shot at somebody trying to break in. Jock killed a guy in the hallway.”

“Oh shit. I’d better call the chief.”

“Let’s check the back first,” I said. “I think somebody was coming in by boat.”

We moved toward the patio door. Three of us wearing just under-shorts, all carrying pistols. Logan was bringing up the rear. I turned on the outside floods. I could see my boat rocking gently in her slip as the breeze buffeted her. A kayak was floating just off my dock, no one in it. That was the noise I’d heard earlier. I looked at my watch, twenty minutes had passed since the boat sounds had awakened me. The sliding glass door leading to the patio was open. I knew I’d closed and locked it before we went to bed.

“I heard them coming in, I think,” I said. “I couldn’t see anything and didn’t hear anymore, so I went back to sleep. There’s a kayak out there that probably brought the guy in.”

“I’m telling you, somebody was outside my window,” Logan said. “He woke me up trying to get in.”

“Let’s go see,” said Steve.

I flicked off the floods. Got a flashlight. “We’re not going out there as targets,” I said.

We waited for a few minutes to let our eyes adjust to the dark. We went out the front door, fast, hunkered down, pistols ready. We weren’t sure if there were other men with nasty intent out there. It was quiet.

We turned the corner of the house on the side where the bedroom windows were. I saw something crumpled in the hedge that ran along the side of the house. I put the light on it. A body.

“Call the chief,” said Logan.

“Let me check him first,” said Steve. He went to the body, leaned over, put his fingers to the man’s neck, shook his head. “Good shot Logan. He’s dead.”

The first cruiser to arrive rolled down the street, slowing as he reached my house. No siren or blue lights. A Longboat Key Police captain parked and unwound from the car. He walked over to where we were standing at the corner of the house.

“What’s up, Steve?” the captain asked.

“Somebody tried to take these guys out. Both intruders are dead. Chief’s on his way.”

“The dispatcher said you had a couple of dead bodies.”

“One out here and one in the hall by the bedrooms.”

“Show me.”

We walked to where the body lay on the grass beside the house. I shined my flashlight on him. Steve did the same. The other cop knelt down, looking closely at the dead man. “I don’t know him. You guys recognize him?”

“Never saw him before,” I said.

“Looks like a biker,” said Steve. “Got those boots, lots of tattoos on his arms. Doesn’t look like he’s had a haircut in a couple of years.”

“The guy in the house looks about the same,” said Jock.

“What happened to this one?” asked the captain.

Logan spoke up. “A noise at the window woke me up. The guy was standing there with a gun. I don’t think he’d noticed that I was in the bed. Then I heard Jock scream and the one outside broke the glass with his gun butt. I figured he was coming in, so I shot him.”

“Good shot,” said Steve. “We’ve had more dead people at this house in the past two days than we’ve had on the whole island in years.”

Another cruiser rolled up and stopped. The cop got out, came over to us. “Can I do anything Steve?” he asked.

“No. The CSI guy’s on his way and I called the chief. They should be along pretty quickly. I think the excitement’s over. You go on.”

Both cops left and we went into the house to the hall outside Jock’s room. The light was still on. Steve bent down to look more closely at the body. “You’re right Jock. This guy looks a lot like the other one. What happened?”

“I heard the door to the patio and when I went to look this guy was coming at me with a knife. I broke his neck.”

“Where’d you learn that stuff?

“Here and there,” said Jock. “I work for the government.”

Steve grinned. “Well, that explains it.”

The weak light of dawn seeped over our island, illuminating the crime-scene tape that surrounded my house. A neighbor wearing shorts and a T-shirt came out his front door to retrieve his newspaper, a cup of coffee in his hand. He glanced at the tape, the three police cars parked in front of my house, the coroner’s meat wagon, the chief and I in conversation at the edge of the property. “You okay, Matt?” he called.

“Yeah, Robbie. I’m fine. Sorry for the disturbance.”

“Carol thought she heard a firecracker early this morning. Woke me up to tell me about it. Was it more than that?”

“Afraid so. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Glad you’re okay.”

Lester grinned. “I think your new neighbors are getting used to living with you.”

“Who knows? They’ll be coming after me with pitchforks soon if we don’t get this mess cleaned up and stopped.”

I’d gone over the whole thing with the chief and given J. D. Duncan a statement. Jock and Logan were in the living room giving their statements. The CSI guy had finished in the house and waited for daylight to begin his assessment of the dead man in the yard. He was meticulous in his examination of the body. He took a number of photographs, his camera
flashing. When he finished, he patted my shoulder. “They came in from the patio. Busted the lock on your sliding glass door, Matt. You better get somebody to take care of that.”