Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) (7 page)

He was breathing hard, but he also knew the snake was hurt. Saw a pale, oily liquid coiling to the surface like wisps of cigarette smoke, and bits and strands of membrane swirling up through the tannic-stained water.

Again he struck at the meat and this time nailed it good. Aiming at the section that was compressing his diaphragm, knowing that an errant blow could skid into his own flesh and might seriously wound him. But he was out of choices. He gouged at the greenish hide, gouged again, until finally the python reached its threshold.

It happened fast. In seconds the water in front of Thorn wrinkled, several small whirlpools gathered and disappeared, and the creature unleashed him and was gone.

Thorn staggered backward. He took a breath and another and the light rose around him. He hadn’t realized how deeply he’d drifted into shadowland, how close to the end he’d come. He sank one foot into the muck, then sank the other foot and tore loose the back foot and moved it into the lead.

He waded ahead through the gummy sludge, peering up at the dense mangroves and viney tangle of woods but seeing no sign of any living thing, or any movement or sound. Just the glop and slop of each step, the sucking bottom that was urging him to stay put and rest.

At last he stumbled up the slope of the beach, stood for a moment surveying the basin, then turned halfway round, collapsed, and lay back panting. He stared up at the empty sky, feeling his heart sprinting for some distant finish line. He set the pry bar aside and after a moment more of rest forced himself to sit up and held that position for several minutes, his shirt dripping, his legs weak, shoes full of mire, and he looked out at the basin and tried to recall why he’d come to this forsaken place, why he’d been in such a goddamn hurry and so distracted that he’d run afoul of someone’s primitive booby trap, ruined his engine in his reckless haste.

For a moment he had no clear memory of his mission. No memory of anything. Mind blank, drowsing in the shivery afterglow of adrenaline.

As he drifted through layers of fog toward the bright surface of wakefulness, struggling to breathe the summertime air, his skin sticky and fitting too tight to his bones, Thorn looked out at the cove, at this secret beach at the terminus of a labyrinth of twisty canals and creeks and backwaters that had no names and did not appear on any sane person’s nautical charts.

EIGHT

“HIS NAME WAS BENDELL, MARCUS
Bendell.”

With one hand on the wheel of the black government-issue Taurus, Nicole McIvey cut through the traffic on Florida’s Turnpike, heading south. She held out her phone and Frank Sheffield looked at the image on her screen.

A scrawny young man, midtwenties with a prison pallor and dull eyes and stringy hair, stood before a police department’s height chart. Five-eleven.

“That’s before.” She withdrew the phone, thumbed through screens, and held it out again. “And this is after.”

Frank stared for a few seconds, then looked out his window, a sphincter tensing in his bowels. For over thirty years he’d been with the FBI, the last dozen as special agent in charge of the Miami field office, so he’d seen a shitload of postmortem photos, but nothing this grisly.

“Jesus, he walk into a flamethrower?”

The naked body lay on a stainless-steel table. Chunks of the torso were missing. There was a blackened cavity in his right rib cage as if he’d been blowtorched open; the face was a charred mess, unidentifiable.

“Electrocution,” Nicole said. “Happened early this morning. Bendell’s girlfriend discovered the body. Came to his house, found him out back. Metro PD sent me the JPEG a few hours ago. They knew I had an interest in him.”

She set the phone in a cup holder, gripped the wheel, and sliced in front of a slow-moving landscape truck. The lady was a serious lane-warrior.

“What kind of interest?”

“Marcus Bendell was my snitch.”

“Say that again?”

“A valuable asset.”

“You people were running a covert operation?”

“I was running it. Me alone.”

“Did I miss something? Your mission change when I wasn’t looking?”

“It’s not outside our parameters,” Nicole said.

“You let Metro PD know but forget to inform the Bureau?”

“The terms of his parole required me to inform local law enforcement.”

“It would have been collegial of you to notify us.”

“My agency’s mandate is to collect intelligence. Once it goes up the chain, my superiors decide who’s in the loop. If the FBI wasn’t included, Frank, it wasn’t my decision.”

“And here I thought we were all partners, trying to gel into one happy federal family.”

“That’s why I called you. I’m ready to gel.”

Sheffield managed a smile. His bureaucratic side was irritated, but these days that was a small slice of his emotional pie.

“So here’s the story. It started thirteen months ago. I heard about Bendell when he went up for a ten-year stretch at Raiford. An animal rights activist, he and six others burned down a product-testing plant outside Orlando that was using cats for experiments—mascara, eyeliner. He was caught in the act.”

“Mascara,” Sheffield said. “That’s what we’re doing now. Wasting our time on idiots like that.”

“Part of my job, I follow up on these guys, find out who’s visiting them in prison, monitor their correspondence, see what dots we can connect. So I get word Bendell isn’t handling his incarceration well. He fits a profile we look for. With save-the-planet softies like these, it happens a lot, prison life freaks them out. A month or two they’re ready to give up their mamas.

“I went to Raiford, sat down with Bendell. He seemed pliable. So I spent a couple of weeks working on him till he flipped. Homeland Security put together a package, got Justice to sign off, and Bendell took it. We put him in a house in Miami; next few months he goes to political rallies, land-use meetings, anything with an environmental edge. He holds up signs, taunts the cops, lets the local activist groups get to know him, see who tries to buddy up. Just trolling for whoever might be out there. It doesn’t usually work. This time it did.”

“Why didn’t you just pick up the phone, let me know?”

“Didn’t want to bother you. One foot in retirement, you’re preoccupied phasing into civilian life.”

Frank watched her weave through the heavy traffic. Behind the wheel this laid-back woman was a cutthroat. Something to factor in.

“Bendell was doing good work,” she said, shooting Frank a solemn look. “He could talk the talk, had the right cred, knew people who knew people. So one day he gets a call from Cameron Prince. And, bingo, he’s invited inside.”

“So now Marcus is a carcass, you’re in mourning.”

“Jesus, Frank.”

“Sorry. It sounded funnier in my head.”

She was silent for a moment, trapped at the speed limit behind a plumbing truck.

“I’m not saying Bendell was an angel, but he was a decent guy. So, yeah. I’m not happy about this. We were getting close to something.”

“You going to tell me what?”

“I’m working up to it.”

“Okay, let me tell you what I’m hearing. You were fine sitting on this until your guy is offed, but because a federal informant is killed in suspicious circumstances, you need us. So this isn’t courtesy.”

“It’s true, Frank. I could use your help.” She cut right, swerved past the plumbing truck.

“Hey, are we in some kind of hurry? ’Cause if we are, maybe you should turn on your blue light.”

“Don’t have one. Why? Do women drivers scare you?”

“Nothing so global as that.” Frank tugged his shoulder harness tighter.

She glanced over at him, at his shirt, and gave him that half smile. As if she was embarrassed for him and wanted to say something, but was holding fire. Fifth or sixth time she’d shown that smile, starting when she’d shown up at the Silver Sands Motel, where he lived on Key Biscayne.

Nine thirty that morning, he was waiting for her at the concrete picnic table, dressed in his best Hawaiian shirt, the yellow one with blue hula girls, and faded jeans and loafers. Showered, hair combed, ready. His brown hair going sandy and thinning in back, but his body holding up, still trim. His face showed he was nearing sixty, weathered from years in the South Florida sun, with blue, honest eyes, an easy smile, a single shiny scar on the bridge of his nose from a sucker punch thrown by a meth freak, but otherwise relatively unbattered, considering his profession.

When she’d arrived, she’d given him that teaser smile and asked if it was his day off, and Frank said, yeah, as a matter of fact. Well, she wanted him to meet someone and she was in a hurry, so there wasn’t time for him to change, and he’d said fine, he hadn’t been planning to.

Nicole McIvey stood there in her crisp gray slacks and silky purple top, not formfitting, but tight enough to give away her figure. Not a flashy lady, but in nearly every way he could think of, Nicole was dead center in Sheffield’s hormonal sweet spot. Trim body with a hardy edge. Pale blond hair that she wore loose to her shoulders, clear blue eyes with a sharpshooter’s glint. Eyebrows so light they were barely there.

She carried herself smoothly, as airy on her feet as a yoga guru. She had a take-no-prisoners sense of humor, like a woman who’d learned her first life lessons horsing around with older brothers.

First time he saw her at a Homeland Security briefing up in Lauderdale, he’d felt a twinge. She picked up on it, glancing his way more than necessary, a couple of subtle smiles. Flirting, but discreet. Second occasion, a Christmas party for some top-tier feds in South Florida, at a mansion out on the beach along the Intracoastal with a view of the Miami downtown skyline lit up in reds and greens, Biscayne Bay gleaming, soft winter breeze. Open bar. McIvey was drinking mango champagne cocktails. Sheffield was on his third Bud when she came over, started talking. Asked him if he was staring at her. He apologized, said she reminded him of somebody.

Dare I ask?

First wife, he said, but she’s long gone.

An amicable divorce, I hope?

What’s the opposite of amicable? he said.

She looked back at the party as if considering rejoining the crowd. Took a minute, but finally turned back to him. Never married again?

Not even close.

She hurt you that much, Frank? You’ll never love again?

You’re mighty quick on the draw.

You like going slow, Frank? You’d be the first man I met.

I used to think I’d never get over her. But not anymore. Twenty years, I believe I’m all healed up.

They wound up leaning against the boathouse, chatting, getting around to the weather, the cool tropical winter night, the scattering of stars, Nicole saying it looked like silver mistletoe twinkling up there, a bit of come-on poetry.

They discussed work, people they knew, the music filtering down from the big house, people laughing quietly on the other side of the lawn, then they both went silent, looking at each other, and with a tilt of her head, she offered him a kiss and he took it. He wasn’t sure how drunk she was, or how drunk he was. But that kiss lasted about as long as any Frank could remember, and then came her hands, not hurried or rough, but sure, aware, the slow sensuous sound of his own zipper, her long fingers unbuckling him, you’re sure about this, he managed to whisper, oh, yes, she said, then her skirt going up, panties tugged down, her sleek inner thighs, the athletic maneuvers she managed while they consummated it in the shadows of the boathouse.

After they were done, she split for the bathroom and didn’t return.

Next day he tracked down her number and called her.

She didn’t let him get past hello before saying it was a mistake. She never did stuff like that. What? You’re a nun, a virgin? I mean the zipless thing, she said. Never? Never, she said. And it’s not a good idea for either of them. Her so junior, him so senior.

Sheffield did his best to minimize all that, joking around, trying to get his silver tongue going. But when he ran out of words, she was quiet and stayed that way until he gave up and that was that, no further contact all winter, spring, and summer until this morning when she’d rung his room at the Silver Sands.

For his entire career with the Bureau, Sheffield had never once hit on a coworker, even one a step removed from the FBI. It was one of Sheffield’s unbendable rules. Never dally with cops, ’cause if it came back to bite you in the ass, it would clamp hard. But as Nicole had said, Sheffield had a foot in retirement. And he could still hear that silky zipper. Still feel her sure-handed way with his belt.

On the phone at 8:00 a.m. today, Frank asked her what this was all about.

She said this had to be face-to-face. She’d fill him in on the way down to the power plant. Which power plant? You mean Turkey Point? I’ll fill you in, she repeated.

“I’ve seen electrocutions before. Nothing like this.”

“He caught fire. From the inside out, his major organs, that’s what the ME told me. It’s rare, but it happens.”

“Jesus.”

“There was a half-assed attempt to make it look accidental. But it was clear what went down. They hooked Marcus up to the electrical grid. Like a message. Power to the people. Something cute like that. That’s how they think. They found out he was spying on them, they fried him.”

“That’s a message?”

“They’re big into messaging,” she said.

“Who we talking about?”

She plucked her phone from the cup holder, fiddled with it one-handed, cutting her eyes back and forth from the phone to the insane traffic heading south, everybody in a hurry to get to the Keys and relax.

She held out the phone again.

It was an image of a cartoon elf, chubby and stern-faced and wearing a green frock and a beret. His leggings were also olive drab and the toes of his boots curled up like those of the fairy-tale elves from Grimm. He was holding an oversize flintlock rifle at port arms and an ammo belt was slung over one shoulder. He was winking, but it wasn’t merry. More warlock than pixie.

“Earth Liberation Front,” Frank said. “Your guy infiltrated an ELF cell?”

“A month ago, there was a cyber incursion at Turkey Point. They left this image behind on all the computer screens in the power plant, and it stayed there for a couple of days until Homeland’s tech guys managed to remove it.”