Brigands Key Read online

  “This is nuts,” she murmured, and pulled the car down the block to park under a magnolia. She killed the engine and lights and sat in the dark, tapping on the wheel.

  She had a sinking feeling. Pierce had gone off on her when she broke the news about Roscoe’s sudden absence, as if it were her fault. He’d reminded her of certain delicate information Roscoe might still possess. Pierce would be the one to land on his feet, not her. He’d stack the deck against her.

  She studied the house. Roscoe hadn’t been seen in a couple of days and the place was clearly empty. She could slip along the side hedge and easily reach the porch unseen. Ten minutes. She could allot herself that much. Get inside, find his papers, grab them all if need be. Just get rid of any Goddamned incriminating slips of paper. Then she’d be back to her car, again in the impenetrable shadows of the hedge. She could pull it off. Ten minutes.

  She rested her hand on the door latch, took a breath, and slipped out into the rain, easing the door shut. She glanced about and moved into the shadows off the street and hurried along the hedge toward the house.

  She ducked in beside the porch, mercifully sheltered under the eaves, and dry. She listened. Hearing nothing, she crept up the steps and onto the porch. A floorboard creaked ever so gently underfoot and she froze, her heart quickening.

  The rain fell harder, drumming on the tin roof, drowning out the sounds of the world. It was unlikely—impossible, really—that anyone would hear or see her in the rainfall. Her confidence grew and she eased close to a window and peered in.

  Blackness inside.

  She moved to the next window. Nothing. In the third window, she again found only darkness, but the quality of the darkness stayed her. Something about it was different.

  It shifted ever so slightly.

  She caught her breath. Light and dark are simply that. Light and dark. One was the absence of the other. A matter of degree. Darkness only shifts in response to light.

  Someone was inside.

  The dark shifted again, and Susan realized that a dim light was coming down the stairs inside. It flickered and went out. The interior was plunged into blackness.

  She moved back a few inches from the glass, suddenly aware that although the interior may be invisible to her, she might not be invisible from it. As she leaned away, lightning flashed in the distance behind her, illuminating the porch for a half-second in ghost light. Her breath had condensed into a tiny cloud on the window pane. She fought the urge to reach out and wipe it away.

  The rain beat down, harder now. The darkness inside was complete. She began to doubt her own eyes. Lightning flashes, the shimmering reflections of the rain, the claustrophobic quality of the island night, all had tricked her senses. She was a city girl. City nights were simply darker versions of the day. Not like this.

  There really was nothing—no one—in the house. She exhaled deeply.

  The Fawcett kid had been spouting his nonsense about Brigands Key. Charley’s last blog had taken a paranoid turn, something about the mysterious sickness sweeping Brigands Key, about the ageless unidentified corpse from the sea. About the undead walking around.

  A shiver went through her. Get a grip, girl, she forced herself to think. There was no stupidity like that of the gullible, and there was no such thing as vampires.

  Yet the night had a feeling all its own here. Spooks be damned; it was stupid to be prowling around like Nancy Drew. She backed away from the window, careful not to step on the floorboard that had creaked before. She should go.

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t leave those damning letters unaccounted for. They were the loose ends that would send her to jail.

  Behind her, the floor creaked.

  She wheeled about as lightning lit the night. An arm’s length away, a dark silhouette stood, wet and dripping. Her heart leaped and fear engulfed her. She screamed. A powerful hand clamped against her mouth and shoved her against the wall. Her attacker pressed hard against her, pinning her.

  “Should have stayed in tonight, Susan,” a voice whispered.

  Lightning flashed and flickered. Something thin and metallic and malevolent glinted in the instant of light, something drawn. It suddenly struck deep inside her. Searing white pain beneath her ribs blinded her thoughts, threatening her consciousness.

  She lashed out blindly. The point that had buried into her was torn free, then struck her again.

  The pain bit deep inside. She could feel the needle-like blade working, exploring, damaging.

  Darkness fell like a shroud across her eyes, her mind shutting down to fight the pain. She slumped, vaguely aware of the blade still twisting and turning deep inside her.

  The world dimmed and fell apart.

  Chapter Nine

  Kyoko Nakamura left Atlanta the night Susan Walsh died. She sped south on I-75, not stopping until Valdosta. A restless night’s sleep, a quick, greasy breakfast, and back on the road by eight a.m.

  She’d planned on leaving Tuesday as Greer had instructed, when the only urgency had been his artificial timetable. She scrapped that idea and packed her things and left on Sunday night, a hell of an odd time to start a vacation.

  Plans can change in a hurry.

  Her departure was sudden and precipitous. Reviewing the news leaking out of Brigands Key, reading that kid’s blog, a sense of dread had come over her.

  She thought about Taos, and the seven people that had died before CDC reacted. By then the contagion was out of control.

  Taos would not happen again. Three confirmed dead in Florida. That was enough for her. She’d called Greer that night, interrupted his dinner with his wife, and informed him that she was headed south to investigate, officially or unofficially.

  Unofficially, was Greer’s angry response. And on her own dime and her own time. Three deaths, all among the elderly? That was weak and somewhat alarmist. So she had hurriedly packed and left by nine p.m, swinging first by the office to gather equipment. Without authorization, of course.

  The eye of the news had yet to zero in on the island, but something was seriously wrong on the Florida coast.

  Two hours from the island, she tried to call the town’s mayor. He was out. An hour later, he was still out. No, she couldn’t have the mayor’s cell number. She called the local medical examiner, a Dr. Hammond. No answer. She left him a message. It was the third message she’d left over the last two days and she didn’t expect a response to this one either.

  She would simply have to drop in unannounced.

  With good luck and good weather, she’d be in Brigands Key by noon. Good weather. The radio eagerly reported that Tropical Storm Celeste would likely reach hurricane status by the afternoon, drifting west into the Gulf of Mexico, heading for Brownsville, maybe even Galveston. At most, Brigands Key would get choppy surf.

  She crossed her fingers. Vacations on barrier islands during hurricane season were an iffy proposition at best.

  * * *

  Kyoko drove slowly through town a couple of times, drinking in the sights, enjoying the smallness. A complete pass through, one end to the other, took all of five minutes. Compare that to Atlanta—well, you couldn’t. You couldn’t even guess where Atlanta began and ended.

  This was easy. She could get used to this.

  The island didn’t match her notion of a Florida island. No coconut palms, no condos, no broad, sandy beaches. She’d be leaving her bathing suit in her bags. But it wasn’t a bad look. Mammoth live oaks and magnolias spread muscular, moss-draped limbs, shading the island from the blistering sun far better than palms would. Instead of beaches, there were marsh grasses swaying with the breeze, in water that shifted in color from green to cobalt with each passing cloud, and tangles of mangrove, dark and thick and mysterious.

  Paint-peeling fishing boats and trawlers lined the waterfront. Nets hung in the sun, wet and drying, men and boys going about their work, scrubbing, scraping, mending. The smell of fish throughout.

  Brigands Key was not a resort island. It was
a working town of broad shoulders and weathered tans, a fishing town, its pace slow and purposeful.

  She parked at Brigands Key City Hall and got out. Hot, sticky air struck her and she instantly felt flushed. She slammed the car door and hurried inside. The slow pace, so quaint a minute ago, found urgency with the heat. Atlanta suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

  Inside, cool air greeted her, thank heavens. She wondered if she’d held her breath from the car to the building.

  The receptionist, Kay (her nameplate read), greeted her with a look more surprised than gracious. “Help you, ma’am?”

  “I’m Dr. Kyoko Nakamura, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta.” She handed a card to the woman. “Homeland Security,” she added, feeling it might add a little gravity. “I’m a few minutes early. Mayor Johnson is expecting me.”

  “Homeland Security? We don’t get many terrorists here in Brigands Key, miss.”

  Miss. Small-towners were certainly presumptuous. “Doctor,” she replied. “The mayor, please?”

  Kay pointed to the clock. “You’re more than a few minutes early. The mayor’s at lunch.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Maybe an hour. Maybe not.”

  Kyoko sighed, exasperated. “Will you please tell me where I might find him?”

  “I tell you where to bother him on his lunch hour, he’ll have my hide.”

  “Thank you so much for all your valuable help. I’ll find him myself.” Kyoko turned and left, aware that Kay had snatched up a cell phone and was tapping it furiously.

  She went out to the street and looked up one side and down the other. The downtown stretched a few blocks at most and wouldn’t have more than three or four places to eat. The first stood directly across from City Hall. She marched out into traffic, jaywalking defiantly, raising a hand to ward off oncoming cars.

  Carla’s Café was a down-home kind of place, and Carla had evidently been talked into making that a cute theme, and had cluttered the restaurant with overdone country kitsch, on sale and collecting dust, and no doubt fabricated in the countryside surrounding Beijing. But the place smelled good, like just-right meatloaf and cornbread. And it was blessedly cool inside.

  Locals crowded the place, occupying each of the twenty-odd tables. All heads turned and looked at her on cue. She guessed they didn’t see a lot of Asians in Brigands Key.

  Kyoko headed for a large table in the back, occupied by four men. The largest of them snapped shut his cell phone, watching her with a look-what-we-got-here smile. She recognized him from the City’s website. It was slathered over with pictures of the mayor, talking to townsfolk, kissing babies, breaking ground, being mayorly.

  “Mayor Johnson,” she said. “So good to meet you.”

  “Dr. Nakamura, I presume,” the mayor replied, chuckling. “Kay tells me you’re CDC.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Homeland Security.”

  Kyoko said nothing.

  “That’s a good line and it worked on Kay. CDC is under Health and Human Services, not Homeland Security.”

  Kyoko said nothing.

  “Don’t think we’re all hicks, Doctor. It won’t fly.”

  “My apologies, Mayor. May we start over?”

  “Maybe.” Johnson motioned to his companions. “Proper introductions. This is our city manager, Clay Abbott; Chief Randy Sanborn; and Dr. Hammond, our medical examiner. A colleague, eh?”

  “Pleased to meet each of you. Dr. Hammond, I assume you’ve shared my concerns with everyone here?”

  Hammond nodded.

  “Body language tells me you’re unhappy.”

  Before Hammond could respond, Johnson interrupted, his voice hushed. “Dr. Nakamura, this is not the best time and place to discuss sensitive issues.”

  “It is absolutely the time; you have a crisis on your hands. But if you want to find a more private place, please feel free.”

  Johnson picked up the check, glanced at it, and dropped fifty dollars on the table. “Follow me,” he said. “I’d like you to meet my mistress.”

  * * *

  Vivian Schuster, making her late-morning rounds, rapped on the door of Room 14 at Morrison Motel. No answer came and she unlocked and pushed the door open.

  A groan emanated from the bed in the dark room. The college guy, Grant, wasn’t even out of bed yet. “What is it?” he grumbled.

  She glanced at her watch disapprovingly. It was almost noon! Lazy city-slickers. “Cleanup, sir. I got to change the bed and tidy up.”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  “Mister, you said that yesterday.”

  “I meant it yesterday and I mean it today. Come back tomorrow.”

  Vivian commented with an audible hmmph. “I’ll just leave some clean towels, then.”

  “You do that.” Grant stirred and turned to face her.

  Vivian ignored him and replaced the towels in the bathroom. A faint odor of vomit lingered in the small room.

  Despite Dr. Grant’s rudeness, Vivian felt compelled to wipe down the bathroom quickly. “Lovely, guv’nor,” she said, affecting a Cockney accent. She imagined it sounded like the real thing and it amused her to slip into a different foreign accent in each room. She should have gone to Hollywood, become an actress. She might still.

  She let herself out and continued down the motel landing, pushing her cleaning cart that overflowed with brooms, mops, and towels. The next room was vacant and the one next to that she changed and cleaned, giggling and remarking aloud, even though she was alone inside, in her favorite voice, the French Maid.

  The next room belonged to the Tampa girl, Susan Whats-Her-Name. Susan hadn’t been overly friendly. Downright sullen, in fact. When she wasn’t barking orders about.

  Vivian knocked. “Iss maid,” she said in a gruff Boris-and-Natasha cartoon accent. “Iss time for clean.”

  There was no answer. She rapped again, a bit louder. “Maid service.” Still no answer. She unlocked the door and pushed it gently inward. Shadow filled the room still, due to the army-grade curtains on the windows. “Iss Moose and Squirrel?” she inquired.

  She flipped on the light switch and pulled the cart through the door behind her, humming the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” theme.

  She reached to strip the bed and froze. Susan was still in it. “Mees? Iss time for clean.”

  The woman didn’t stir. Vivian began to feel sheepish and tried to back quietly away. Let the dead tired sleep in. After all, it was their nickel.

  She paused in the doorway, switched the lights off, and negotiated the cart back out onto the sidewalk. She began to ease the door shut.

  In the street behind her, some punk kid blew his car horn at her, making her jump. Small-town friendliness, you bet. She’d lived in Brigands Key her whole life, but these kids didn’t care if you recognized them or not. The horn blasted, loud enough to wake the dead.

  Susan What’s-Her-Name hadn’t stirred, not one inch.

  Enough to wake the dead.

  Vivian leaned back in. “Miss? You okay?”

  No answer. Vivian jiggled the cart, hoping for a response. Even an angry one.

  She stepped inside. “Miss Susan?” She crept to the bed. The woman lay on her side, facing the far wall. Vivian reached out slowly, her hand trembling, and hesitated. There was something going around the island, people getting sick. Dying, even. A couple of her friends had decided to up and leave, go on an extended vacation, not sure where, maybe Disney World. Away from Brigands Key, any way, anywhere.

  If there was something going around, it wasn’t too smart to be rousting them that’d got sick. She couldn’t help herself. She shook the woman.

  The woman lay cold and unmoving.

  Motel maid wasn’t such a bad job, but job loyalty had its limits. Vivian burst out of the room, hurried down the landing, and pounded on College Guy’s door.

  * * *

  Ellie June was the mayor’s boat, a muscular thirty-one-foot cabin cruiser, outfitted for serious offsho
re fishing. It wasn’t the biggest boat in Brigands Key Marina—some of the commercial fishing boats dwarfed it—but it easily outshined them all, sleek and beautiful and expensive. Small-town politics must pay well, Kyoko thought. She wondered if it was a Guy Thing, the dominant male displaying his plumage.

  The mayor lumbered aboard first, carrying his great bulk with surprising nimbleness, and held his hand out for Kyoko. She took it and he helped her aboard, the very picture of Southern chivalry. Maybe he had a good side after all. Abbott began to step onto the gunwale, but Johnson motioned him to stop. “Not you,” Johnson said curtly. “Cast us off, then go run the government for a while.” Abbott skulked away unhappily and began undoing the mooring lines. Sanborn and Hammond climbed aboard, sharing a smirk. Kyoko settled into a plush seat. Johnson pressed a CD into the stereo and Bach drifted from speakers all around. He pressed the starter button. With a puff of white smoke and a sudden prismatic sheen of gasoline on the water’s surface, the mammoth twin engines of Ellie June grumbled to life. The big boat eased away from its mooring and out into the channel. The mayor guided the boat slowly through the channel. “You get the nickel tour for free, Dr. Nakamura,” he said. “Now we can talk in private and honestly say that we didn’t meet behind closed doors. Jerry, I believe you had a bone you were about to pick back at Carla’s.”

  “That I do.” Hammond looked at Kyoko. “We’ve got a handle on things here, Doctor. You pulled rank. Why, I don’t know.”

  “No one’s pulled rank yet. This is still your show, but there’s a real cause for alarm and this isn’t the time to get provincial. That’s why CDC’s involved.”

  “Granted, we’ve got an outbreak of something, but still only three deaths.”

  “I count four.”

  “No, the John Doe was a murder victim. No signs of disease at all.”

  “How many cases of illness have been reported?”

  “Thirty-one. Still only three deaths, and all three victims were elderly and in failing health.”

  “Thirty-one that have come to you. I’ve made a few calls. I called the high school. Today was the first day of classes, yet they had a twenty-two percent absence rate this morning. I even called City Hall, Mayor. Care to guess how many called in sick this morning?”