Blood of Cain

80

The thunderstorm followed me on the drive back from South Carolina to Florida and Ponce Marina. Once in Florida, I made a call to Miami-Dade PD. When I got Detective Mike Roberts on the line he said, “Sean O’Brien, it’s been a long time. I’d ask how the hell you are, but I know your ass is in deep shit. You’re a household name. What’s all this stuff about you and Senator Logan’s wife and a daughter? Is that suspect, Courtney Burke, really your daughter?”

“No, Mike, and I wish I had more time to explain. I spoke with Dan Grant, Volusia County S.O., and he told me how you ran the prints on the carny worker and you found one that matched the latent pulled from the ice pick on the carnival homicide in Volusia.”

“Yeah, the homicide that’s causing this political train to become a run-away-train. You don’t think the girl did it, huh?”

“No, the question is do you believe the perp you’re holding did the killing and maybe the other two?”

“Could be. He says he can’t remember doing it, although he was working at that carnival when the homicide happened. I can’t sniff out bullshit from him. My deception meter isn’t reading crap coming outta the perp’s mouth. It’s damn weird, Sean. This guy is telling me he doesn’t remember doing it … but he sort of remembers some guy telling him to do it.”

“Dan Grant said the perp admitted he’d been hypnotized to deal with his fear of riding a motorcycle in the Cage of Death.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said.”

“Did he say who hypnotized him?”

“Says he can’t really remember. He said it was someone who’d worked the carny circuit. A guy who supposedly could mass hypnotize an entire audience. The perp said the rest of it is like bits and pieces of a dream that he can’t remember the whole picture. It might not be enough to get your girl off the meat hook, but it does establish that at some time and some place the perp had his hands on that ice pick. Right now we can’t prove when and where.”

“How long can you hold him?”

“Bond’s been set at a half mill. The guy’s a habitual criminal, flight risk, plus we got him on enough stuff to send his ass to Raiford for a long damn time. Gotta go, Sean. Late for a depo.”

Two hours later I arrived back at Ponce Marina, skirted around the news media in the parking lot, and made my way down L-dock. I sat in the cool salon on Dave’s trawler, Gibraltar, the air-condition humming, Max half asleep on my lap, Dave in his canvas director’s chair nursing a cocktail, and Nick sitting at the three-stool bar. They listened intently as I shared with them the events I’d gone through the last four days.

When I finished, Nick looked at me, his black eyes wet, absorbed in the story. He was speechless, which was saying a lot for Nick. Then, like coming out of a trace, he sipped from his bottle of Corona and said, “Man, I’m so damned sorry to hear about your mother.”

Dave said, “That goes for all of us, your marina family.”

Nick blew air out of his cheeks, his face flush. “Sean, what happened to you is so unfair. You met your mother, and you had to bury her. You find out you have or had a sister who was murdered, and the guy who did it is your freakin’ brother, the brother you never even knew you had. Heavy shit, my friend. A heavy load to tote.”

Dave said, “Based on what you told us your brother said, it’s apparent he’s as mercenary as the guy who shot through the window of your Jeep … maybe even more so because an assassin-for-hire is playing by his employer’s rules. If your brother has some God complex, and he’s a full blown sociopath, he believes the rules, the laws of a civil society, don’t apply to him. A man like that shares many of the same mental traits associated with Hitler, and, in his own sphere of influence, can be just as deadly. The allusion to Cain and Abel isn’t a stretch.”

Nick drained what was left of his Corona and said, “From the day that the girl Courtney first walked on this dock … the girl we now know is your niece … I told you shit was gonna happen. I just didn’t know how deep it was gonna get.”

Dave grunted. “That’s not exactly what you said, Nick. The Forrest Gump suggestion is well-founded, though. Sean, to say how sorry we are for your loss doesn’t scratch the surface of what you just experienced — you find your mother and give her a funeral all in the same week.” He shook his head and sipped his drink, gesturing toward the book on the table, and he cut his eyes back up to me. “I’m reading Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Joseph Campbell was influenced by some of what Mann had to say. Campbell, of course, distilled it down to the hero’s journey. And a lot of it is exactly what you went through — what you’re going through. But when that journey takes you into the bowels of a dysfunctional family you never knew existed, I’m not sure how you return from a quest so intimate, so personal, without experiencing profound change akin to surviving a war.”

“I haven’t returned. I’ve made a detour to regroup. A lot of my next direction depends on the ID of the girl they pulled out of the Louisiana swamp.”

Dave nodded. “Unfortunately, there are too many missing young women. Police say she’s a Jane Doe until a family comes forth to connect her to a missing persons report or some kind of DNA evidence. In the case of Courtney Burke, without DNA from Courtney, there’s nothing to match to the dead girl. One news commentator is calling for Andrea Logan to give a DNA sample to see if a dotted line can connect to the corpse. Hell, Sean, Logan’s Democratic opponents might be coming after you for a DNA sample. With the election coming very soon, it’s gone from mudslinging to throwing feces like hardballs.”

Nick got up from his barstool, stepped to the port side of Gibraltar, and stared out the window toward the marina office and the Tiki Bar. “Looks like a few more TV news trucks have set up camp. Maybe something’s breaking. Sean, maybe they’re linking you to blowin’ up the cigarette boat in South Carolina.”

“I don’t think so. The closest eyewitness was a train engineer, and he saw my back as I was running for my life.”

Dave said, “So you believe the sniper who shot your windows out, who came within an inch of taking your head off, was the same guy you got on camera saying Timothy Goldberg and presumably Senator Lloyd Logan had issued orders to take Courtney out?”

“I recognized the boot tread, down to a cut on the sole of his left boot.”

“But yet somebody sends you a text message threat, saying that the rifle bullet through your Jeep windows was a warning shot, along with the demand about the video. Maybe the shooter just missed and they made it seem like a warning because you were still alive.”

Nick said, “Just from those glass cuts on your face, you’re damn lucky you didn’t lose an eye.”

Dave stirred the ice in his drink. “The irony is you pull this assassin out of the St. Johns River, literally, as a big gator is closing in, and then you take him out, or vaporize him, in the Savannah River. You’re going to release that video, aren’t you?”

“It was an insurance policy to keep Courtney safe. If they killed her … I’ll release it and let Logan’s handlers handle that.”

Nick glanced up at the TV screen behind Dave’s bar. The sound was muted, but the picture was on, images of a reporter near a wetland in New Orleans. “What’s this?” Nick asked, reaching for the remote control. He turned up the sound.

I wasn’t ready to hear it.