First Thrills

Eye of the Storm by John Lutz and Lise S. Baker

In the dimness of the depths, Rob McKenzie felt a tug at his air hose. Turning, he couldn’t believe his eyes. A giant hundred-pound squid was doing the dance of death with him at sixty feet below. Then, as if in ghostly display, another fifty squid circled behind their comrade.

Red Devils. Rob recalled reading about this phenomenon. But he had never seen anything like this, right off the coral reef of Key Largo. It had something to do with global warming, climate imbalance, and the increasing number of tropical storms and hurricanes.

Well, this is sure proof, he thought. He wouldn’t have to write his local politician, since he was the Keys’ congressman.

The squid nudged him again, this time tapping on his face mask. Rob felt a thrill course through his body. It was a will-I-survive moment and possibly the diving experience of a lifetime.

Maybe the end of a lifetime. For a split second he thought about the good times with Mira, and the bad times. The better times with-

A ripple of bubbles, one final push, and the entire school of squid was gone.

Rob shook his head in disbelief, the adrenaline still pumping. This was going to be a great story to tell at work next week. He didn’t want to head for the surface yet, but knew he should. Mira, his wife, had been increasingly irritated with his ocean forays lately. Had she clued into the fact that his midnight swims had become something more?

Engrossed in thought, Rob failed to notice he now had another visitor. This time it was in human form. Another diver, armed with a razor-sharp fish- gutting knife, was swimming up behind him. And yet another form swam behind that diver.

Mira McKenzie had just driven in from the deserted boat house out on Shell Road. Sometimes she went there to think, other times for assignations with her pool boy. Fighting fire with fire regarding her failed marriage hadn’t worked. It had only served to make her feel bitter and cheap. Now she climbed the stairs to the third floor of a faded pink-stucco office building a block off Highway One. She was wearing spike heels. She tried to tell herself it was a good workout for her calves and not for her vanity.

The frosted glass door was exactly as she had pictured it, like something out of a tawdry detective novel.

L. S. CRUM

PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

The office smelled faintly of mildew and rot, an odor redolent of the Keys. On a corner of the ancient wood desk was a seashell ashtray full of bent and broken cigarette butts that made Mira think of maggots. A stout woman sat behind the desk, sorting through file folders. Mira’s eyes caught one with her name on it. A word careened through her mind: Evidence.

“I need to see Mr. Crum,” she said. “I’m a client.”

The woman put the folders down, clasped her hands in front of her, and checked Mira out up and down. Her expression suggested she was confirming what she’d already figured out. It made Mira uncomfortable for a few seconds, then she decided what the hell did it matter?

“There is no ‘Mister,’ ” the stout woman said.

“I spoke to a man on the phone when I first hired your agency,” Mira insisted. A framed certificate on the wall caught her jumpy gaze. Florida Highway Patrol, it read. Lucy S. Crum. It was dated ten years previously.

“That was my ex. He keeps the books and signs up the cases. I’m the detective.” The woman puffed out her massive chest like a strutting peacock.

“I’m Mira. Mira McKenzie.” Mira had one hand in her purse. “I wanted to thank you for the job you did.”

“Ah, the wayward spouse case.” Crum got up from behind the desk. She was a good six feet tall and three feet wide.

Mira shuddered, but she’d be damned if she’d let this mountain of a woman make her feel small. “You got me the proof I needed. I don’t know why, but I had felt it was my imagination.”

“Nope, it was all too real, Mrs. McKenzie. Sorry. They did a lot of diving together, and more than that.”

“It’s a funny thing, but somehow I felt like everything that had happened was my fault.”

“Lots of women in your position feel that way. A victim mentality, we call it.”

This was Rob’s fault, all of it, thought Mira. She had divorced herself from emotion, instead of actually divorcing him. It would be cheaper that way, she reasoned. “I came to give you a bonus.” Mira pulled out her nine millimeter Glock handgun with a silencer.

Crum was quick as well. She hadn’t spent a lifetime on the Florida Keys roads without developing an intuition for people. Trouble was, she’d seen too often the aftermath of bad decisions. This time, she was a second too slow as Mira shot her three times as if she was target practice.

I’ll show you victim mentality, Mira thought. You’re the victim. She shoved the file into her purse and set out to look for the cabinet where Crum kept her DVD master copies. And don’t forget the computer backup file, the hard little voice inside her that she was coming to know so well told her.

Once she destroyed the file, the only link between her and her husband’s death would be gone. The pool boy she’d hired to kill Rob had been paid off in untraceable cash, left for him to pick up where it was hidden in the deserted boat house. By this evening he’d be California-bound. They would never see each other again. That was the deal, and he’d stick to it because he had no choice. He was the actual killer.

Mira’s BlackBerry rang just as she was turning her Mercedes convertible into the red paving stone driveway.

The house on Key Largo’s Millionaires Row was picture perfect. The manicured St. Augustine’s grass, the sheltering oleander hedges, the hibiscus trailing in front of the white shutters. There was also the massive party barbecue area out back where scores of famous people had been wined and dined. And of course there was the requisite yacht, a forty-foot Sea Ray, Second Chance, tied up at the private dock. Rob’s Jaguar was still in the garage. A nice reminder of the fact he hadn’t surfaced for air since yesterday. Mira silenced the ring tone: Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough.” She smiled.

You got enough, Rob.

“Is Dad home?” Mira winced at her stepdaughter Trisha’s voice on the cell phone. Then she steeled herself. It was time to make life go on as if everything was normal. The only difference was she’d be twice as rich and Rob was swimming with the fishes.

“Your dad didn’t make it home last night, sweetie,” Mira said innocently.

“Where is he?” There was a plaintive note in Trisha’s voice that Mira had heard all too often. Trisha was obviously upset. Mira was unconcerned.

“Have you tried calling him?”

“I did. I left two messages. I failed the GMAT.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” Mira unlocked the front door and got the burglar alarm shut off all in one practiced movement.

“I really need to talk to Dad.”

“Well, as soon as I see him or hear from him, I’ll make sure he calls you.”

There was a silence on the other end. Trisha knew all was not right with her father. He had a definite eye for the ladies. Mira was his fourth wife. And his last.

The shamus’s videos depicted Rob in a dark, shadowy Key West dive bar having cocktails with a healthy looking blonde young enough to be another daughter. She’d been identified as a grad student majoring in marine biology, and she was a member of the Coast Guard Reserve.

Trisha was speaking… “I need to see this in a different light.”

“See what?” Mira tried to pay attention. “Sorry, the connection went dead for a minute.”

“Yeah, the storm will be coming through there soon.”

“Storm?”

“Mom, you need to keep up and watch the news. Hurricane Damon. You need to follow the storm warnings. You’re in the Florida Keys, for Chri’sakes.”

Mira gave a little laugh.”We’ll batten down the hatches like we always do. And I’ll keep a lookout for your dad. Maybe he’s in poker game with his cronies.”

“I think I’m going to switch to law. Maybe the GMAT was an aptitude test.”

“Like in that movie with Melanie Griffith,” said Mira. “A mind for business, but a body for sin.” Mira felt she was blabbing, but Trisha actually laughed before she cut the connection.

She called me Mom, thought Mira. For the first time she felt the beginning of doubt about her actions. She had always hoped for a relationship with Trisha. She had always wanted a daughter.

The thought was quickly followed by another: No going back now.

The storm hit at four in the morning. It woke Mira from a troubled dream in which half-decayed humans chased her down an alley. In the nightmare, she had frantically scratched at her arm. When she rolled up the sleeve of her nightgown, she found an oozing bloody tattoo of zombies.

Still a dream…

Awake completely now, she lay on the sweat-dampened sheets with her eyes open wide, staring at walls alive with the wild shadows of palm fronds dancing in the storm outside the window.

She put her sleep mask on, but it didn’t help. It was as if she could still see the shadows. As if they were inside the mask.

Drenched in perspiration, she listened to the wind howl like banshees and the rain pound at the storm shutters. There was no going back to sleep without help. She climbed out of bed, plodded barefoot into the kitchen, and washed down an Ambien with two fingers of gin.

The last thing she was conscious of before sleep finally claimed her was the constant roar of the wind.

When she awoke again at daybreak, she looked outside. She blinked and looked again. The yacht was gone from its moorings!

The wind was still roaring and Mira felt like going back to bed. Maybe she could go back to sleep and when she woke again it would all be a bad dream. Maybe that was what life really was-dreaming, waking, dreaming, waking. Maybe none of it was real.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could choose which dream was real?

She slipped back into the satin sheets and put her sleep mask back on. For good measure, she slathered on some neck cream. Possibly the storm would serve some type of purpose. She was getting her beauty sleep. And the boat, as she called it, was insured, after all

At one in the afternoon, utter silence awakened her. Yes, this was more like it. But when Mira looked outside for the second time that day, a worse sight greeted her. The yacht was still MIA. But now flood waters ›had crawled over the pilings and were at the back glass French doors. She pulled on a robe and hurried to check it out more closely.

The doors were not doors anymore, just gaping holes where the storm debris was rushing inside. Glass shards littered the Persian rugs.

Hurricane Damon had been worse than anyone had anticipated. There had been no order to evacuate the Keys, as usually happened when a really powerful hurricane was headed toward the islands. At least no order that Mira, in her fury of activity, had been aware of. When you were orchestrating the murder of your husband, you tended to block out a lot of what ever else was going on around you. Damon must have gained intensity with unexpected rapidity as it approached in the night.

Mira couldn’t get a signal on her cell phone or even on a landline.

You’re a bastard, Damon!

She hurriedly pulled on some jeans and a shirt and got her purse. The gun was still in there; perhaps she should leave it home. But she felt naked without it, as if it were a talisman that could protect her.

She took the gun. If anyone questioned it, she’d say looters were always a threat.

The garage, the Jaguar, and Mira’s Mercedes were still dry, thank God.

She backed the Mercedes out of the driveway, plowing into what seemed like a shallow lake. Highway One was flooded to the north, in the direction of Miami. She headed south, toward what she hoped was higher ground.

Daytime, but the sun hadn’t actually come out and the sky was a mustard-colored burnt haze. Fallen palm fronds, coconuts, and chunks of plywood littered the road. Mira felt like the last survivor on earth.

Punishment. Retribution. Had she caused all this somehow? The victim mentality, the P.I. had termed it. Everything was all her fault. What she was learning was that it was difficult to know whose fault just about anything really was. Life kept getting more and more confusing. What it came down to was that a person had to take care of his or herself. That was about all the moral compass Mira carried.

She pulled abruptly to the right into a parking-lot swale. Lorelei’s Bar and Restaurant. Maybe they were open. There were actually a couple of cars in the parking lot. Hurricane Party? Mira had heard about them but had never been to one. She hurried into the bar.

A decorator had gone berserk and designed the entire interior nautical. Right now, Mira didn’t really want to think about the ocean. The decor made her seasick just looking at all the life preservers and light house paintings. There was even an aquarium full of what looked like baby squid.

“We’re closed, lady,” said a grizzled man from the corner shadows.

“No party?” Mira’s teeth wanted to chatter. “Why not? The storm’s over.”

“Lady, don’t you know what’s going on?”

Mira shook her head.

He got off his bar stool and walked over to her. Big mistake. She could smell a week’s worth of sweat, tequila, and tacos. “It’s the eye now. We’re right in the middle of the eye of the storm.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not from around here. Not a Conch. But I knew that.” He sneered and looked over at her Louis Vuitton purse.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why don’t you just tell me?” She wanted to actually pull out her gun and give him the second surprise of his day. Shooting people could become a habit, a bad habit. Worse than shopping too much.

“You see, the storm will seem for a while like it’s stopped. But don’t let it fool you. It’s like a woman who’s in a fury. It can’t stop. It’ll swirl around and around. Lull you into thinking it’s not deadly. Then when you least expect it… One thing I learned is, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, except maybe a hurricane. If you ask me, they should go back to namin’ them all after women.”

Mira didn’t wait to hear the rest. She hurried back outside and, gunning her Mercedes, broke every speed law in the books in getting back to the house.

The eerie calm was worse than anything she had ever felt. The waters had risen higher. She wondered when the storm hit again, when the eye passed, would the house withstand the winds? She got out of the car into ankle-deep water.

The sky had turned a gunmetal gray. Her skin crawled as the barometric pressure began to drop. The eye of the storm was passing, taking with it any false sense of security.

Off to her left she could see two police cruisers, lights flashing as if they were at the gates of hell. They had tried to approach the house from another direction, where the water was higher, and were stalled or stymied by the depth of the flood. Another police vehicle was approaching cautiously behind one that was stalled. Her rescuers attempting to reach her?

She knew they didn’t have a chance to get to her before the killing storm, and a chill of fear passed through her. The feeling intensified as she saw that the police were otherwise occupied. They hadn’t come for her. Instead they were looking down at a figure in a wetsuit washed up near the deteriorating shoreline. Was it Rob? Mira squinted, staring. A bushy mustache caught her gaze as they flipped the figure onto its side. Pedro the pool boy?

As if on cue, the sky continued to darken and a seagull appeared out of nowhere. Dive-bombing, it headed for Mira’s hair as if it were a nest. She’d heard that the seabirds could go crazy when there was a hurricane, especially the gulls. There was a screaming sound and Mira couldn’t tell if it was the bird or herself.

Then she became aware of another noise, not the screaming of a gull but a strange mechanical beating sound, and all at once a helicopter appeared. It maneuvered until it was directly overhead. The pilot was looking down and pointing at her.

She’d been seen!

She was saved!

She waved at the chopper frantically. The helicopter dipped, steadied, and a cable with a safety hitch was thrust down at her.

“Any others?” A man barked down to her through a small yellow bullhorn.

Mira knew when to seize opportunity.

“My husband,” she yelled. “Oh, God, I warned him not to take the boat out! He’s not a very good swimmer!”

The man with the bullhorn nodded to let her know he’d understood.

Jagged lightning rent the sky and the pilot looked away worriedly. The lightning hit again and again. The copter lurched and a female face peered down at Mira.

The blonde from the surveillance videos!

Mira remembered L. S. Crum’s report: Grad student… Marine biology… Did a lot of diving together… Coast Guard Reserve…

Did a lot of diving together!

Over the beat of the thrashing helicopter blades, she didn’t hear the gull’s scream this time. With its sharp beak, the bird was rushing at her again, right at Mira’s eyes.

The last thing she saw before she closed them was a familiar face next to the blonde’s in the open ’copter doorway. It was a face that did not regret its own er’s sins of omission nor his sins of commission. It was the face of a most unworthy sinner.

It was Rob’s face. And if he had been close, she would have seen herself reflected in his eyes.

JOHN LUTZ is the author of more than forty novels and 250 short stories and articles. He is a past president of both Mystery Writers of America and Private Eye Writers of America. Among his awards are the MWA Edgar, the PWA Shamus, The Trophee 813 Award for best mystery short-story collection translated into the French language, the PWA Life Achievement Award, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Golden Derringer Lifetime Achievement Award. His SWF Seeks Same was made into the hit movie Single White Female, and his The Ex was made into the HBO original movie of the same title, for which he co-authored the screenplay. His latest book is the suspense novel Urge To Kill.

LISE S. BAKER is a licensed private investigator and a member of the World Association of Detectives. She has been nominated nine years in a row for California Investigator of the Year by CALI (California Association of Licensed Investigators). Her award-winning novel The Loser’s Club was inspired by John Lutz’s fictional detective, Fred Carver. Collaborating with Lutz on the short story “Eye of the Storm” is a dream come true for this writer/detective.

Currently, Detective Baker is working on a murder case for the Northern California Innocence Project. This is in addition to running her agency, L.S. Baker Investigations, which specializes in fraud investigations.