Dying in Detroit (A Bright & Fletcher Mystery) Page 21

  “This is amazing,” she said.

  “It is,” he agreed. “Though I’d bet a fair amount that none of those mansions are owned by anyone actually born on this island.”

  That wasn’t a bet Issabella was willing to take. When she and Darren and Theresa had landed at the island’s little airport, representatives of the Seashell Resort had swarmed them at the gate, insisting that they take the company’s “courtesy shuttle.” They had been oddly stern about it, offering all manner of amenities and comforts for the travel weary. When Darren had explained he’d rented a car and that the three of them would be making the scenic drive to the other side of the island where the resort stood, the representatives had seemed almost angry.

  It hadn’t remained a mystery for long. The interior of Saint Lucia was mired in the kind of crushing poverty that can only exist in truly third world locales. The majority of the population lived in huts of corrugated metal. What stores existed that far away from the resort spots were shacks themselves, with random wares sitting out on wooden planks or stacked on the dirt. Local men and women wandered about in old, threadbare clothes and the entire scene had the feel of a people who simply had nothing to do. From one end of the island to the other, there was no sign of industry whatsoever. Only the resorts and the rental mansions and the boat rentals.

  The reality of Saint Lucia was not something the Seashell Resort was interested in its paying customers experiencing.

  “Well,” she said, as they stood there on the dock looking at the wealthy foreign-owned mansions and the cute-by-design tourist town. “Let’s just promise not to do the resort thing in the future. If we ever find ourselves in a place like this again, all our money has to be spent on the locals. Right?”

  “Amen, sister,” he nodded. “Okay, you’ve got two hours. You do your touristy shopping spree. I’ll be sharing stories and spirits with the disreputable. Then we meet back here.”

  They shared a final kiss, and headed down the dock to their separate destinations.

  * * *

  When Howard Bright walked into the living room of his modest five-room house perched high above the bay, Darren was standing in the center of it—tanned, half-naked and leveling a handgun at Howard’s stomach.

  “Sit down, Howie.”

  Howard looked around, as if expecting someone else to appear from around a corner.

  “Don’t worry,” Darren said through a sneer. “She doesn’t know I’m here. You won’t have to explain to your daughter how you can sleep at night after what you put her through. It’s just me, Howie. I’m all you have to worry about. Now sit down, or I’ll sit you down.”

  Howard moved on legs that looked to have suddenly grown shaky, slowly crossing to the couch. He sat and folded his hands in his lap.

  Darren peered down at him. Howard Bright was even tanner than when he’d strolled into Darren’s office. He was dressed in cargo shorts and a flowery short-sleeved shirt. There was no sign of his very bright smile.

  “How’d you get a gun through the airport?”

  “You’d be amazed what you can buy from the locals on the beach down here. The default order is weed and cocaine, but the twelve-year-old I got this from didn’t even blink when I asked for it.”

  Outside, the sound of a metal gate clinking shut. Howard put his head in his hands and let out a low groan. Darren stared at the door Howard had come through.

  “The deadly Miss Ortiz? Good. I need her here, too.”

  Howard’s head shot back up and the desperation on his face twisted his handsome features, turning them ugly and bug-eyed.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he whispered. “Promise me, Darren—”

  “Shut up, Howie. You don’t get any promises.”

  Samantha Ortiz appeared in the doorway, her hands filled with plastic grocery bags. She was wearing a lavender skirt and a loose blouse that left a lot of skin on view. The tropical wind was rambling through the open windows of the bungalow, sending the cotton drapes dancing. It carried the rich scent of her perfume to Darren.

  “Sit down next to your boyfriend. Drop the bags where they are. If you scream or run, it won’t take me two shots, sweetheart.”

  She did exactly as he said, and came to sit next to Howard with her hands folded in her lap. Her big almond eyes fixed on Darren, as implacable as a cat’s.

  “I guess you think you’re going to be the big hero all of a sudden,” she said in an acid tone. “Is that what this is? How did you know we were here?”

  “I made one phone call.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Darren grinned crookedly and looked at the deflated man next to her.

  “You sent a psychopath to terrorize your own daughter,” he said mildly.

  “That’s not how it was supposed to be,” Howard was quick to protest, shaking his head vehemently. “I didn’t know how he was. Nobody...nobody...was supposed to get hurt. Jesus, Darren, she’s my little girl...”

  “Don’t tell him anything,” Samantha whispered.

  “Your little girl? Are you serious?”

  “He was locked up for a freaking burglary when I met him,” Howard exclaimed, as if it was a crystal clear premise that should be obvious to anyone. It sounded like something he had been trying to convince himself of. “He was a thief! Not a...not a monster. I thought he’d color inside the lines, you know?”

  “Howard, stop talking,” Samantha insisted, but he kept on and Darren had the feeling that Howard Bright was a man who always had to try and sell whatever story he had at hand.

  “He was just to take that photo and come around you and your friend. Nothing more. Just be scary. Just scary enough to get you to pay. That was the plan, put a little scare into you and get you to turn over some money. No killings, for the love of God! No kidnappings or insanity. Darren, if I’d been in that place with you, I’d have shot him myself.”

  “And the poisoning?” Darren insisted. “A sham?”

  Howie shook his head emphatically.

  “I had to get out of that jail, Darren. You can see that. Samantha came and told me that Solomon was starting to talk crazy. She had concerns about him. She said she thought maybe he wasn’t right for the job. He was...dangerous. So I got my hands on one of the bottles on a cleaning cart when an orderly wasn’t looking and I just...chugged it. I hoped like hell they’d have to transport me somewhere I might be able to slip out of once I started showing signs of being sick.”

  “But then I came to see you,” Darren said.

  “Yeah. As soon as I put the bottle back, here comes the guard telling me it’s time to see my lawyer. So I just kind of made up the idea that the woman who visited earlier had poisoned me. I mean, it fit. It fit.”

  Beside him, Samantha Ortiz thrust her chin in the air and shot Darren a challenging stare.

  “What exactly do you think you can do here?” she snarled, and her growing fury didn’t lesson her beauty. Darren wished it had. He wished she was as ugly on the exterior as she was in her core.

  “I’m going to keep you reptiles from ever hurting Izzy again.”

  Darren shot Howard Bright in the right knee. The gunshot snapped like a whip through the little bungalow, drowning out Howard’s gape-mouthed howling.

  Howard rolled to the floor, his hands pressing with white-knuckled pressure against the red ruin of his knee. Samantha’s own scream of alarm died away and she was on the floor quickly, bending over him. She stared up at Darren with hatred fighting for room in her suddenly tear-filled eyes.

  “You son of a bitch!” she shrieked. “You’re not getting away with this!”

  Darren bent down and scooped his tote bag off the floor. He put the handgun back inside it and slung the bag over his shoulder.

  “I think I will,” he said. “You were careful to buy a spot far away from other h
omes. I’m guessing your being a couple of fugitives from justice had something to do with that decision. As far as we are up here above the bay, that gunshot’s going to get lost in all this jungle. It doesn’t matter, though. If police come asking questions, you aren’t saying anything. Because if they come looking for me, you two are getting fingered in the murder of a parking lot attendant in Detroit. Get it?”

  Neither of them responded. Howie was sobbing in agony, incoherent, his eyes rolling wildly with pain. Samantha remained silent above him, her hate-filled stare unwavering.

  “I’d demand my money back,” Darren mused, glancing around the sparsely appointed room and patting the bulging tote bag, “if I hadn’t already found what was left of it while I was waiting for you two. So, you gather up your boyfriend. Get him down to your car and get him to the hospital. I’m going to leave. And neither of you are ever going to come back to the States. You can let that limp Howie just acquired be a permanent reminder of what I’ll do to you if Izzy or I ever so much as hear your names again.”

  Her fury waned, replaced with confusion.

  “You’re letting us go? You...you’re not going to hurt me?”

  “I’m not a murderer. And you did save my life. So you get to be poor and stranded in paradise, sweetheart. Go on. Get him rolling. It’s an hour by road to the hospital. I don’t know if you can bleed to death from a shot to the knee, but I don’t think you should wait to find out.”

  She wasted no time in scrambling to get an arm under Howie’s shoulders. His skin had gone ashy and pale and he seemed half conscious. He used his good leg weakly, scraping his heel against the floor several times before finding purchase and getting it under him. Together, the two of them lurched and stumbled slowly toward the door.

  Howard’s head bobbed around, as if he were going make some last plea for Darren to understand that he hadn’t meant things to turn out like they had. But then he made a gagging noise, winced, and his head bobbed back down until his chin was touching his chest.

  Darren watched them make their slow, awkward trek to the SUV parked at the end of a little cobblestone path. Samantha poured Howie into the passenger seat and slammed the door on the man’s accompanying cry of pain at having his leg bent to fit inside.

  Then they were driving away, disappearing around a bend of heavy-hanging tree limbs. The noise of the engine dwindled quickly as the SUV descended down the winding slope of road.

  Darren found himself staring down at the little white roofs of the touristy town far below. The water of the bay was a vibrant blue.

  Darren’s phone rang.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he answered.

  “I am shopped out. I am literally gorged on knick-knacks and souvenirs.”

  “Then you did your duty.”

  “How about you? Are you too drunk to sail?”

  Darren turned and looked at the white-walled house behind him. A line of blood spatters extended from the door, down the cobblestone path. Just off the path, there was a small wooden shed. Darren walked the few steps and peeked inside. It contained a push mower, trimmers and other landscaping equipment. Bags of fertilizer sagged in one corner and a red metal gas can sat beside the push mower.

  “Drunk? Not me. Actually, I was just sight-seeing. This is one heck of a beautiful place, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t think I could live here. It’s got a rotten underbelly.”

  “For sure,” he said. “Give me a little while to walk back down there. I went pretty far.”

  * * *

  They were out on the water, the little boat’s sail whipping and snapping above them. Issabella sat cross-legged on the deck with her collected knickknacks spread out in front of her. She would pluck a key chain or a coffee mug from the pile and, smiling, tell him who its intended beneficiary was.

  Darren smiled along with her. The tote bag was still slung over his shoulder and wouldn’t leave him until they were back in their rooms. The gun had gone in the ocean when Issabella was below deck grabbing wine coolers.

  She sipped at hers and squinted up at him against the glare of the sun.

  “You look more self-satisfied than usual,” she said. “I guess the Caribbean agrees with you.”

  Darren looked past her. Over her shoulder and in the distance, the bay and its tourist town were dwindling from view. But there, high up on the lush slope of land just beyond the big mansions, a column of black smoke was churning up into the sky, climbing and climbing.

  “Yeah, I guess it does, kid. It really does.”

  * * * * *

  To purchase and read more books by Jonathan Watkins, please visit his website here or at http://brightandfletcher.blogspot.com/

  Turn the page for a sneak preview of ISOLATED JUDGMENT, the next book in the BRIGHT & FLETCHER MYSTERIES, coming from Jonathan Watkins and Carina Press in January 2016

  Coming soon from Carina Press and Jonathan Watkins

  What if the accused murderer they’re hounding is the one person who genuinely needs their help?

  Read on for a sneak preview of ISOLATED JUDGMENT, the next book in Jonathan Watkins’s BRIGHT & FLETCHER MYSTERIES

  Chapter One

  Deputy Dan Finch fixed his gunslinger’s implacable stare on the inmate he’d come to collect.

  “Fletcher,” he barked through the bars.

  The wrinkled mass that was poured over the narrow cell’s cot shifted, groaned, then fell still again. Finch’s scowl deepened and his gray eyes narrowed.

  “Fletcher!”

  “G’way...”

  “On your feet.”

  The inmate rolled over, and Finch could see Darren Fletcher’s raw, red-rimmed eyes peeking open. One long-fingered hand appeared from under the wrinkled suit coat Darren was using as a blanket. He ran that hand over his face and scrubbed at his whiskers. A gargantuan yawn shuddered up out of him.

  “Finch? Jesus, what time is it?”

  “Just shy of three in the morning. Get on your feet.”

  Darren moved with a sluggish, shaky-limbed lethargy. His long legs swung down and he managed to get himself in a sitting position. He pulled the sorry-looking suit coat around him like an old woman securing her shawl, and peeked up from beneath a tangled mop of dark curls.

  “Three in the morning? That’s a material breach of our agreement.”

  Finch shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He was a lean, compact man with thick, muscled forearms. Every one of his sixty years showed in the lines of his face, but he had the limber, easy grace of a man much younger.

  “We don’t have no agreement,” he growled.

  Darren yawned again and shook his head.

  “Not explicitly, no. An implied contract. ’’Course of business. Custom of trade. Follow?”

  “I figure you like the sound of your own voice. We don’t got time for that. Get up. You’re coming with me.”

  Darren stood and stretched, arching his back and extending his arms up above him. The much-abused suit coat fell to the floor, revealing a shirt and tie that were no less wrinkled. His white dress shirt was untucked and hanging loose. His bright blue tie had been tugged down to allow him room to unbutton his collar, and it hung limply across his flat torso.

  As far as Deputy Finch was concerned, that tie was a noose in need of tightening.

  “Look,” Darren continued, and now Finch could smell the sharp odor of alcohol wafting after the man’s words. “The deal is, if I get pinched in mid celebration then you all agree to lodge me for the night. If you’re going to go to all this trouble to get me in here, what’s the point of sending me packing without a good night’
s sleep?”

  “We ain’t got no deal, boozehound,” Finch snarled, and leaned back from the bars to shout down the corridor. “Open it up!”

  The cell door clanged, lurched, and retracted. Finch found himself staring at Darren’s impish grin as the man shrugged into his suit coat.

  “Turn around and put ’em together,” Finch ordered.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Do it.”

  “Finch—”

  The deputy took a step forward, one of his big hands grabbing hold of Darren by the shoulder and spinning him around in an expert, well-practiced shove.

  “You’re in custody ’til I say you ain’t,” he growled, and pulled his handcuffs from their pouch on his belt. He clasped them around Darren’s wrists. Darren’s crooked grin was still in place when Finch turned him around.

  “You know she’ll make you take them off. What’s the point?”

  “Point is, maybe she’s soft for you. I ain’t. Until she says otherwise, you’re just another jailbird. That’s enough chitchat. You just keep walking, we’ll get along fine, counselor.”

  Deputy Finch took hold of Darren’s shoulder and walked the man ahead of him, out of the cell and down the corridor. Finch lead him up three flights of stairs and through the sally port, bypassing the out-processing station altogether.

  “I’ll need my wallet and keys, you know.”

  “I got ’em already. Keep moving.”

  And they were outside, in the dark Detroit streets. The jail was a concrete monolith at their backs as Finch guided them past the fenced lot where the county cars were parked. They continued on down the deserted block, Finch’s left hand held firmly on Darren’s shoulder, his right poised just above his holstered sidearm. His gunslinger’s stare scanned as they advanced, lingering on the dark doorways and yawning alleys along the street.

  The Wayne County Jail was situated in the thriving area of downtown that everyone referred to as Greektown, though there was very little left of the ethnic presence that had originally earned that area its name. Now, Greektown was mostly a hub of restaurants, bars and other small businesses that collectively fed the Greektown Casino. As late as it was, the neon signs were not lit and the locals who thronged the streets by day in hope of selling their wares to out-of-towners had retired. The clap of the two men’s footfalls was all the sound in the world.