Brigands Key Page 12

He set the coffees down and opened the bag and inhaled the warm aroma of the biscuits. “Boss? You coming?”

  He went to Randy’s office, rapped lightly on the battered wooden door and pushed it open.

  Randy was nowhere in sight.

  “More for me,” Greenwood mumbled. He slumped into his chair and reached for a biscuit.

  * * *

  Sanborn parked his Jeep at his house, slipped inside, and changed into blue jeans, baseball cap, aviator shades, and a work shirt. His cat, Theodore, watched imperially and made a half-hearted effort of rubbing his leg before wandering off. Sanborn slipped out the back door and down the narrow alley onto the side street and down the road.

  A half-hour’s brisk walk brought him to Lee Street and Roscoe Nobles’s place. Without slowing, resisting the urge to glance about, he turned up the walk and stepped onto the front porch. Act like you own the place, he told himself. Roscoe was missing and wasn’t showing up. The guy's folks had passed away fifteen years ago and he had no extended family elsewhere. The only place he ever went was Tampa to hang out in bars with other guys, and they hadn’t seen him. Sanborn knocked, waited, knocked again, waited again. He sniffed the air, half expecting to catch a whiff of death. The air was thick and hot and muggy, but clean. If anything had died in this heat, even this morning, even a lizard, you’d smell it. There were no large corpses to be found. The stench would knock you over from a hundred feet.

  He dug in his shirt pocket, withdrew a pair of latex gloves, pulled them on, and tested the doorknob. He withdrew a thin steel wire and wriggled it into the lock. The lock clicked and the door swung slightly ajar.

  A turning point, he told himself. You go in, you break the law. You become the cop you swore you wouldn’t.

  Yet people were dying. There was no time to play by the book. He slipped inside and eased the door shut behind him.

  The place was not exactly Spartan. A traditional Victorian hallway stretched ahead, wood floors, a couple of rugs, a coatrack in the corner by a gorgeous antique washstand topped by a vase of dead roses. A copy of Southern Living lay next to it. Across the hallway stood a half-dozen fishing rods and a couple of tackle boxes and the grimiest pair of boots that ever existed. Sanborn wasn’t quite sure what he expected, but this wasn’t it. Nobles continued to defy easy classification.

  Sanborn opened a drawer of the washstand and peeked in. Rule Book Sanborn, he thought. Go ahead, stick your hands in, root about. You’ve already crossed a threshold that’s habit-forming and career-ending. No search warrant. He didn’t even inquire about getting one. Judge Ron Bettia was on the circuit this week and he’d throw Sanborn out on his ear. You what? You want a warrant to search this guy’s house because he’s gone a couple days? And he’s never even gotten a traffic ticket? And he’s suspected of nothing?

  No chance of a warrant. Something terrible stalked Brigands Key. Bodies were piling up. And some way, somehow, Roscoe Nobles was the key.

  Screw process.

  He rummaged through the drawers of the washstand, and moved down the hallway.

  All the rooms were open. Nothing seemed out-of-place, at least not in a sinister way. Out-of-place in a bachelor way.

  Sanborn checked the bedrooms, or at least what were designed as bedrooms. One was more or less a junk room, stuffed with moldy, broken-down antique furniture, boxes of dishes, stacks of fishing and sports magazines, tools piled in a corner. The next room was completely empty. Nothing but a coat of dust. Without footprints.

  The master bedroom lay on the right. It looked lived in. The bed wasn’t made, dirty dishes covered the nightstand. Sanborn crossed the room, the pine floorboards creaking with his steps. Sanborn picked a coffee mug from the stack of dishes, sniffed it, set it down again. A cockroach scurried away.

  He opened the closet and rustled the clothes hanging there. He stooped, checked the flooring, not exactly sure why. A hunch. Finding nothing, he pulled the bed apart, came up empty.

  One bedroom left.

  It was set up as an office. A pigsty office. Coffee-stained papers covered a scratched oak desk and books were stacked on the floor all about. Maps of Florida, the county, the Big Bend, were pinned haphazardly on the walls.

  A computer monitor and keyboard occupied the center of the desk. Only the peripherals. The computer itself was missing. He sifted through the desk drawers, searching for file discs, removable drives, memory sticks.

  Nothing. He rummaged through the litter of papers. Bills, canceled checks, junk mail. Ledgers for the fishing boat, receipts, schedules. The tide tables, a list of fishing spots, and notes about the competition.

  A footlocker in a corner below the wall map caught his attention. He tried it, found it unlocked. Piled inside were books and notebooks. He picked up a pair. Florida Shipwrecks. Pirates of Old Florida. He set them aside and fished out more titles and lurid covers. Gaspar’s Treasure. Lost Treasures of Florida. Tales of the Spanish Main.

  A patina of dust covered the edges and corners of the room, but was nonexistent about the desk and in front of the footlocker. Typical bachelor pad, periodically swept at best. He slid the footlocker out a bit. Sure enough, it left a shadow in the dust. Hadn’t been moved in a long time, although the lid was free of dust. Obviously got opened a lot, just not moved.

  A couple of feet away a rectangle of clean floor lay etched in the dust.

  Sanborn lifted the footlocker and set it upon the clean rectangle. It failed to match the dust-free area.

  There had been a second footlocker and it was missing.

  His radio crackled. “Randy?” It was Jackie. Something in her voice scared him.

  “This is Sanborn.”

  “Randy, we need you back right away.”

  “Be right there. I’m ten minutes from the office.”

  “Not the office, Randy. At Doc Hammond’s. Hurry.”

  Sanborn lugged the heavy footlocker out to the porch and set it behind the porch swing, covering it with a potted plant. He got his cell phone out and dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “Charley, this is Chief Sanborn. I’ve got a little job for you.” And he told the kid where to find the footlocker.

  * * *

  Patients crowded the waiting room, the first time Sanborn could ever remember seeing it full. And no receptionist. Seven people sat about, ashen-faced, unspeaking. Nicole Porter, high-school prom queen two years ago, sat in a corner, terror in her eyes. The door clattered as Sanborn let it shut behind him.

  Hammond, his face drawn and creased, appeared from behind the far door. He motioned Sanborn inside.

  Officer Don Flowers lay on the examining room table, his hospital gown soiled by vomit. He turned slowly and looked glassy-eyed at Sanborn, without recognition. The white light of the overhead fluorescents bathed the room, giving all color a razor’s-edge brilliance. Sanborn prayed it was the light that was making Flowers look so deathly pale.

  “Don—” Sanborn began.

  Flowers doubled over in a spasm, clutching his stomach. His bladder released and urine soaked his gown. His hand went slowly to his head, the fingers brushing through his thin gray hair. The hand suddenly clenched and tore a fistful of hair out by the roots, his nails digging into his scalp.

  “Don!”

  Flowers’s other hand shot toward his scalp. Sanborn seized the hand and pinned it against his body. Flowers struggled weakly, silently, and relaxed with a slow rasping escape of air. He opened his palm, stared at the blood under his nails, shuddered, and lay still.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ON the EDGE, with Charley Eff

  Funny Things: A couple cars came to town today and spilled their contents onto the mean streets of Hooterville Sur La Mer. Pasty Goths, down from Milwaukee, dressed head to toe in black.

  They’re my age. They’re not from here. I’m drawn to them. A moth to flame. A fly to shit.

  I want to be them, but I don’t get them. It’s a hundred degrees out. No breeze. Dressed in black? The summer air here sti
cks to you like flypaper soaked in shit. The Milwaukee Goths are teetering, close to heat stroke. They melt. But they’d die before they put on shorts.

  I got a few words out of them. What brings them here?

  “Vampires,” the first Goth says. His name is Billy but he goes by Splint. Or Stint. Or Skint. I don’t remember.

  “Vampires?”

  “Vampires. It’s on the Internet.”

  Holy crap.

  “You’re here for the vampires?”

  “We are vampires.”

  Holy crap. “Why are you out in the sun?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s hot.”

  “Where are they?” This is Girl Goth. Her skin is white as paper, reddening by the minute. Her hair is black as ink. She wears black eye shadow, black lipstick. She’s skin and bones. She’s really cute.

  “Where are who?”

  “The undead. It’s all on the Internet.”

  “Here’s the scoop. People are dying here. The head vampire’s on a slab in the morgue. Dude’s eighty years old. Doesn’t look a day over twenty-one.”

  “We gotta see that.”

  “Dudes.”

  “What?”

  “He’s not like you.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s real. Don’t go there after dark. Don’t go out after dark at all.” I turned to Girl Goth. “Where you staying?” I can’t believe the words actually came out of me.

  “Morrison Motel.”

  “I wouldn’t stay there.”

  “Why not?”

  “There was a murder there. Night before last.”

  “A blood-sucking?”

  “No, the conventional, non-vampire kind. Death by ice pick.”

  “Not all that conventional.”

  “It is in these parts. What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. It’s Steele.”

  “No. Your real name.”

  “Steele.”

  “Cool.”

  I want her to stay. A lot. I think she likes me. Gotta figure out a way to pry her away from Splint.

  Did I really just say that???

  Anyway.

  The Hooterville police chief’s got a little task for me. Gotta go fight crime now.

  * * *

  The footlocker lay right where Chief Sanborn said. Charley wondered why the guy couldn’t or wouldn’t bring it back by himself. Just load it up and go. Maybe he hadn’t parked nearby. Maybe Sanborn couldn’t remove it because he wasn’t supposed to be here. Aha. No warrant. Illegal search and seizure. This just kept getting better. The Chief wanted him to root through it and report back.

  Charley had borrowed the Old Man’s Chevy without asking. No worry. The Old Man curled up sick in bed again, hung over, puking up last night’s supper. He wouldn’t notice his baby, his car, missing for the ten minutes Charley needed it.

  Charley hefted the locker and hauled it to the car and slid it into the trunk. He eased shut the lid, feeling conspicuous, and glanced about. What if this was a trick by Sanborn to get him on a charge of theft? He really didn’t know Sanborn at all. The guy s seemed okay, but hell, small-town cops, everybody knows they’ll screw you. His mind raced with possibilities. Crime wasn’t his calling.

  He drove home with excessive care and lugged the locker to his bedroom. A low groan emanated from the Old Man’s room. Charley eased his door shut and locked it.

  He thought for a thousandth of a second about calling Sanborn first, and opened the locker. Inside were dozens of books about pirates, shipwrecks, and treasure. Clippings about Oak Island, off Nova Scotia. Something about Confederate Navy blockade runners. Something about the great lost fleet of galleons of 1715. Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge.

  And maps. Lots of maps. USGS quad sheets, coastal depth charts, copies of hundred-year-old surveys. Almost all the maps focused on the Big Bend area, all within a fifty-mile radius of Brigands Key. A guy could get lost in this.

  A few of the books and maps Charley recognized. Roscoe sometimes thumbed through them in idle moments on the boat, when the fish weren’t cooperating or it was lunchtime, skimming a page with the grimy index finger of his left hand while shoving a ham sandwich into his face with his right. At times, his eyes would light up with sudden inspiration and he’d drop both book and sandwich and grab a pencil and one of his little orange notebooks and start scribbling furiously. His orange books were his prizes. They were rugged things, hardbound and durable, not too big to fit into a shirt pocket. The kind survey crews use.

  Roscoe wouldn’t say a word until he’d gotten whatever little nugget was ricocheting around in his brain down on paper.

  Charley looked through the pile of documents again. So where were the little orange notebooks? Roscoe must have filled a dozen of them, each with a capital letter handwritten on the cover in black marker, in alphabetical sequence beginning with A.

  Charley picked up the books and looked at a few of them again. One caught his attention: Lost Trails, Lost Cities. The title jarred his memory, sent it reeling back to the last day he’d seen Roscoe, their last day out on the water. To what Roscoe had said, with that peculiar look in his eyes.

  When Old Roscoe kicks the bucket, you keep looking for them lost trails.

  This book. Roscoe had pointed him to this book. It made perfect sense. Charley knew the book well. It was the only one of Roscoe’s pile that had captured Charley’s imagination earlier in the year when they were idle on the water. What had intrigued him was the author’s name. Colonel P.H. Fawcett. Another Fawcett, one that might actually be interesting. When Charley asked what it was about, Roscoe pursed his lips and looked at Charley. “Here, read it,” he said, tossing Charley the book. “Ain’t got time to explore Brazil anyway.”

  Charley finished the book that night. Colonel Percy Fawcett, a restless and reckless adventurer, had gone searching for lost cities in the Mato Grosso of Brazil in 1925 and was never seen or heard from again. His letters, notes, and maps were published by his son in 1953.

  Charley had returned the book to Roscoe the next morning, and they spent the day arguing the theories about the doomed expedition and Fawcett’s folly.

  Charley picked up the old worn book and felt the rough canvas cover with satisfaction. He read the first page and riffled through the remaining pages.

  A leaflet fell from the pages and floated to the floor.

  Charley retrieved it and read it. It was a ruled-line page, five by eight inches, torn from a book. Heavy, durable paper.

  A page torn from one of Roscoe’s orange notebooks.

  On one side was a single, penciled note.

  CF Sacré Bleu Remark 43.

  What was that all about? Code words? With Roscoe, they almost had to be.

  The note looked recent.

  CF. Colonel Fawcett?

  No. Charley Fawcett.

  Sacré bleu? French, right? Seemed like he’d heard that in old cartoons, Warner Brothers, maybe Pepé Le Pew or Blacque Jacque Shellacque. Ah, the memories.

  He typed the phrase into his computer and got an immediate search response. French, all right. “Sacred blue.” A common curse way back that the French apparently no longer used. Had something to do with the corruption of dieu to bleu. Only Americans used it to mock the French.

  It was an omen of bad things.

  Charley settled back onto his bed, propped against the wall, and opened the book and began reading. Every couple of pages, he circled a sentence or paragraph with a pencil. He didn’t eat, didn’t get up to take a leak, until he’d read it straight through that night.

  When at last he finished, he began at the first page again, skimming through and reading all the passages he’d highlighted. Nothing in the book had anything he could pin down about Colonel Fawcett finding some damned sacred remark.

  He spent the next hour doing Internet searches. CF Sacré bleu remark. Colonel Fawcett remark. Colonel Fawcett sacred blue. Remark 43.
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  Nothing to connect the words.

  Maybe the note had nothing to do with the lost explorer. Maybe the note was placed in that book because it was the one book of all of them that Charley had read. It was a note from Roscoe to Charley.

  Cryptic as all get out.

  There had to be more to this. If Roscoe had clued him in by mentioning “lost trails,” maybe he’d hinted at something more. What else had he said that last day on the boat? Charley plumbed his memory, trying to recall the details of the conversation.

  Read your Shakespeare.

  Charley remembered thinking that was peculiar advice, and had shrugged it off as Roscoe being Roscoe. Roscoe was peculiar, just not very abstract. At least, that had been Charley’s opinion at one time.

  Read your Shakespeare.

  Charley had never mentioned Shakespeare nor any interest in it. His own house sure didn’t have Shakespeare on the shelves.

  It was a clue. And it wouldn’t be here with this stuff. Roscoe was careful to spread things around, make paper trails harder. Lost trails. It was all part of his logic.

  Charley pushed all the materials back into the locker, slipped a small lock on it, pushed it into a corner, and piled dirty clothes on it.

  He grabbed his empty backpack, bounded out of the house without a goodbye, and sped off on his bike. He pedaled past Roscoe’s house twice, slowing, glancing this way and that, and whipped his bike into the driveway and behind the house. He dismounted and dragged the bike into a dying row of red oleanders.

  Roscoe’s backyard was hidden, due to lack of maintenance. Years of untrimmed growth had overwhelmed it. Charley had chalked it up to laziness, but now wondered if the overgrowth had been intentional, keeping prying eyes out. Whatever the case, Charley was invisible from the street. He climbed the three steps of the back stoop and tested the door. Locked, as expected.

  A pile of bricks intended for a never-started pathway lay near the stoop. His heart began racing with the excitement of intrigue and lawlessness. He selected a brick, hefted it, returned to the door and smashed it against the doorknob. The doorknob snapped off. Charley tossed the brick aside, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.