DEAD GONE a gripping crime thriller full of twists Read online

  “Sure thing. We might go over to the pool.”

  “Great . . . wait, is she going to go back home for bathing suits?”

  “Charlene,” Vance explained, and Tom understood. He’d almost forgotten that Charlene and Alicia were friends — or at least acquaintances. Tom forgot how, precisely, they knew each another. “She called me this morning, crack of dawn. Wanted to know what had happened. I gave her the rundown. She felt terrible she walked away last night. So we can expect the full Charlene regatta today. Probably be cake and ice cream involved.”

  Tom laughed but was cut short when another call came in. He quickly thanked Vance again and took the new call, from Blythe.

  “Lange, we got an early start. Where are you?”

  “On my way. There in thirty minutes.”

  “Okay. Looks like the scotch pads picked up some trace evidence on the clothing. I’ll see you in a half hour.”

  * * *

  Tom hurried through the building to the crime lab and wriggled into the protective gear — hairnet, mask, booties, gloves. Blythe was in the lab with two of the IFS chemists. They brought him into a walk-in freezer where a long table was covered with envelopes, baggies, and jars containing collected evidence from the victim. In the center of the table was the white T-shirt, blue shorts, and a pair of underpants resembling grubby tissue paper.

  Tom already knew the chemists, so introductions were unnecessary. The first, a plump, humorless woman named Veronica Morley, identified the collected materials for Tom. Her breath smoked up around her mask.

  “These are the exemplars here. The divers brought them in last night. Mangrove bits, some water, soil sample. Nothing there. Over here are the control samples.”

  She moved on. “These envelopes have the hair and fingernails in waxed paper. DNA processing is underway. As is the biological sample processing from the Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit.”

  She stepped to another section. “This is from the head hair brushing and pubic brushing.”

  Tom recalled the painstaking process from the previous afternoon — Ward carefully brushing out the hair, holding butcher paper under each area as he combed through.

  Tom waited for the news Blythe had sounded excited about.

  Veronica pointed at the clothing. “We used both scotch pads and lint rollers for the clothing. Honestly, we didn’t expect much due to the submersion.”

  Tom looked around, sensing the tour was over. So what was the big revelation? “You said the scotch pads picked something up . . .?”

  “It looks like blood. Just a microscopic portion of it on the shirt.”

  “No shit. So you did ABO typing? Is it the victim’s blood or someone else’s?”

  Veronica shook her head. “It’s microscopic. I almost didn’t see it. Dried blood is one thing, this is blood that’s been submerged for days. A bloodstain contains antigens and polymorphic enzymes which are virtually destroyed after almost a week in the water. The testability is very poor.”

  Tom looked between the three of them. “So, I don’t get it. What do we do?”

  “We go molecular.”

  “DNA,” Tom said.

  “And not just typical STR typing. Low copy number. Low copy number profiling is an enhanced technique. Cutting edge. But we have to take every precaution against co-contamination. We may be able to pull DNA even though the victim was in the water because LCN typing allows us to use a smaller sample, just a few cells.”

  Tom felt like his head was spinning. They’d gone over DNA in training, but these people loved spitting out acronyms. Plus, he’d been awake for more than twenty-four hours.

  “Walk me through it,” he said.

  “There are several basic steps performed during DNA testing, regardless of the type of test being done. The general procedure includes, first, isolation of the DNA from an evidence sample containing DNA of unknown origin, which we’ve done. Next, we isolate DNA from a sample taken from the victim. We then process the DNA, determine the test results — or types — from specific regions of the DNA and then compare and interpret the test results from the unknown and known samples.”

  “Right. To determine whether the victim is the source of the DNA from the blood.

  “Or is included as a possible source of the DNA.”

  “Okay . . . and that’s it? You’ll find whether or not this is the blood of the victim.”

  Morley exchanged looks with the other tech, Kurt Bronson, and then with Blythe. “Correct.”

  Tom opened his mouth but Blythe headed him off.

  “Thank you, Veronica.” Blythe turned to the other tech. “Thank you, Kurt.”

  She came around the table and took Tom by the arm, led him out of the freezer. It was a relief to be back in normal room temperature. They stood next to one of the large X-ray machines and Blythe speared him with her gray eyes again.

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it. But what did you get from the scene?”

  “We’re still going through the estuary.” She folded her arms. “Jesus, you are a go-getter, huh? You’re hoping to solve this thing by dinner, I take it.”

  “I went to Tampa last night.” Tom avoided her sharp eyes.

  “Oh?”

  “I got a hit on NamUs. Tried to call you.”

  “I was sleeping. You should try it. What was the hit?”

  “A stripper from a club called Hush. So I checked it out. I spoke to her. She took me by Carrie’s apartment. Place is locked up, her car is there, everything.”

  “Carrie?”

  “Carrie Hobson. That’s our Jane Doe.”

  Blythe took a step away, glaring at him. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  Tom was taken aback. “I said I tried to call you, I wanted to confirm it.”

  They left the lab for the bullpen, a large room filled with cubicles where the agents labored over their paperwork, something he’d already fallen behind on. Blythe stalked through the room, Tom trailing. People were looking at Tom like he was a dead man walking. They went into Blythe’s private office and she shut the door, pulled the blinds.

  “I want every detail.”

  Tom did his best to summarize the events of the previous night while being thorough. Blythe looked ready to blow.

  He asked, “Do we have Tampa pick up Bosco for questioning?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. We’ll have them go into the club, pull employee records, talk to everyone, then take it from there. You said this stripper thinks the family is in the Midwest? We need to find them. Otherwise we have the ex-husband do the formal identification if we have to. We want to talk to him anyway, obviously. And I want you looking at the apartment.”

  “We’ll need a warrant to search it.”

  It was Blythe’s turn to be caught off guard. She blinked at him. “We don’t need a warrant. The only person with Fourth Amendment standing in this case is deceased.”

  “But the landlord is still protected.”

  “Exigent circumstances.”

  “The emergency exception doesn’t apply.”

  “Brown v. Jones. A federal district court said, ‘Obtaining a search warrant is pointless when the authorities would have no idea what they’re looking for. It would be a sham, since the object of the search is so broad it’s meaningless.’”

  “With respect, that’s for a homicide scene, Agent Blythe. We don’t know if this is that scene. This is just the victim’s apartment, and it’s protected by constitutional law. We need a warrant.”

  Blythe surprised him by slapping her hands down on the table. “Which is it, Lange? One minute you’re rushing off into the night, the next minute you want to bury us up to our necks in paperwork when we could be out catching a killer.”

  Her eyes were locked on him as she continued to let him have it. “You spent the past several years sitting at a desk in school. Think you can bring your criminal law bullshit in here? Next time something like this happens —
you get a major break like last night — you call me until I answer, you come by my house.” She stabbed a finger at him. “And don’t question my authority again.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Tom located his designated cubicle in the bullpen and sat down with the murder book. The cubicle featured a desktop computer, a jar of pens, a pad of paper, nothing personal. It was his first time that he’d sat at his desk at the ROC.

  Blythe’s words rang in his head as he printed out the picture of Carrie and her stripper co-workers and slipped it into a plastic sheet. He added the artist sketch and snapped them all into the binder.

  Where did Blythe get off? Maybe he’d been impulsive, he could admit that. But Blythe seemed to want to do an end-run around procedure. Maybe she just knew things he didn’t.

  He let it go and started a SpyFly web-crawl for Carrie Hobson. There were all sorts of hits, none of them pertinent. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, there were many people with the same name, and none were his girl.

  But, Carrie Hobson was her married name. Tom needed Carrie’s Department of Motor Vehicles info, which would have her maiden name, and he delegated this to Machado in a text message. Her reply came back seconds later: I’m on it.

  He called the State Government Office in Tampa and talked to a clerk for a state judge, the Honorable Emily Tapper, who requested he send over all the pertinent paperwork on the case. The clerk promised that Judge Tapper would be back in the office that afternoon. Everything looked good, the clerk assured, and the search warrant for Carrie’s apartment should be a cinch. Forensics would scour the place the following day and process the vehicle.

  After two hours of filling out forms and making calls Tom felt the fatigue closing in.

  His phone rang, bringing him back around.

  “Nicky? What’s up? I’m kind of—”

  “Tom . . .” Nick didn’t sound too hot. “Tommy . . . can you swing by my place?”

  “Nick, I really . . . what is it? What’s the matter?” Tom glanced at the clock: it was past noon.

  “It’s better if you just come.”

  Christ. On top of everything else. But he couldn’t say no to Nick. He’d never been able to. “Alright, give me a minute. I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  Tom drove to Port Royal, the waterway neighborhood where Nick lived — rivers and creeks ran alongside expensive homes, shored up by concrete retaining walls. Galleon Drive was lush with landscaped palms and orange bird-of-paradise planters. Breezes from the Gulf typically kept the temperature pleasantly warm.

  He saw his brother’s brand-new Escalade in the half-circle driveway and turned in behind it. Nick’s place wasn’t as upscale as some, but still impressive, and mortgaged to the hilt. Nick was in worse debt than Tom.

  Tom’s phone rang.

  “Director Turnbull. What can I do for you?”

  “How you doing, Lange?”

  “I’m good, sir.” Tom already had a feeling he knew what this was about. Turnbull had been away on business until the afternoon — he’d been expecting to see Tom at the ROC.

  “Listen,” Turnbull said, “I know you’re busy on this case . . .”

  Tom waited for it.

  “. . . I called Special Agent Blythe to check in this morning. She was unhappy.”

  “I understand, sir. I’m sorry that I was—”

  “Let me talk, please. I know that you’re a field agent, and we give you guys sort of free range. But Blythe is calling the shots. Once you prove your mettle, you might just get to run your own ranch. But for now . . . okay?”

  “Yes, sir.” Tom watched Nick’s house, seeing no movement through the windows. He noticed a big black truck with dark windows parked on the street a few houses down. He was about to say goodbye to Turnbull when the man continued.

  “Now that I’ve said my piece, I want to tell you: Blythe doesn’t like many people. She’s, you know . . . she’s very loyal to a select few.”

  Tom rubbed his forehead, feeling more tired. He knew he had this coming.

  “But she likes you,” Turnbull said. “Do you hear me, Lange?”

  “Yes, I hear you, sir.”

  “I’ve never seen her . . . I don’t know. She won’t come out and say it directly, but she likes you. I can tell. Just . . . you’ve got to give her her due. Okay? Easy on the Boy Scout stuff.”

  “Absolutely, sir. Thank you.”

  “Alright.”

  They ended the call and Tom walked up to his brother’s front door, finding it unlocked. He gave the black truck down the street a final glance, then entered.

  “Nick? Hey, it’s Tom.”

  Nick had eclectic taste. The ridiculous statue of armor in the foyer, for instance. The giant framed photograph of a guy kissing a girl while sitting on his Triumph motorcycle was nice, but hanging near a bust of Albert Einstein, just weird. Tom thought he noticed a few things missing, but hadn’t visited in so long it was tough to say for sure. Nick had some of his own artwork up, too — seeing it Tom felt a pang of sadness, thinking Nick had squandered his talent, like a lot of other things.

  The rest of the place was dark and cool. Some boxes on the floor overflowed with stuff Nick was getting ready to store or sell. Maybe he was moving. With Nick, who knew? Doing a little liquidating, perhaps.

  “Nick? Where are you?”

  In the backyard was a dock and a boat shed on Haldeman Creek. The water was the color of pewter, the creek fifty yards wide. On the other side were the greens of the Windstar Golf and Country Club. Tom and Nick had sat on the dock and shared beers on muggy nights, swatting at the no-see-ums and watching the mullet jump.

  He thought about the waterways around Naples, and Blythe’s concession that Carrie could’ve floated from somewhere, but it had to be somewhere close by. Nick’s place was at least five miles from Stopper Creek. Not that he thought Nick had anything to do with it, but Tom realized it was about time he learned the full geography of the waterways.

  He went back inside and called out for Nick again. Finally he heard his brother answer, “Up here!”

  Tom went up to the master bedroom.

  The blinds were drawn and Nick sat in a chair in the corner, his face dark with shadow.

  “Nicky,” Tom said, stopping in the doorway, “what the hell is going on?”

  “Hey, Tom. Come on in! Sit down.”

  Tom stayed in the doorway. Nick sounded on the verge of mania. It was hard to make out his face, but it looked like he was grinning.

  “I’m fine right here,” Tom said. “What are you doing? You’re freaking me out, man. I’m in the middle of a case.”

  “I know, I know.” Nick patted the air with his hands as if to say Enough, I get it. “Sit down, wouldja?”

  Like many other people in Southwest Florida, Tom and Nick originated from the nation’s northeast, and their New York accents often came out, especially when they were together.

  Tom took a seat on the corner of the bed. He could see Nick was in bad shape. It looked like he hadn’t slept either, and his posture was strange. Why hadn’t he risen from the chair? Nick was usually a live wire, unable to sit still. Unless he was depressed. Then he might spend the whole day in bed. But this was neither.

  “I’m in some trouble, Tommy.”

  “Okay. Well, I can’t do anything for you unless you talk to me.”

  “It’s best you don’t know too much, alright? Plausible deniability. You’re a cop now, for chrissakes.”

  “Nick . . .”

  “I need some money. That’s all. I just need a little help.”

  And there it was. Tom should’ve figured. Not that Nick was always asking, but it was one of those things Tom just expected would come up sooner or later. Nick was fast and loose with just about everything in his life. Tom might be a bit impulsive at times, but compared to Nick he was pretty square. “For what? Money for what?”

  “Let me worry about that. I need ten grand. Have you got it, or what?”

  “Jesus,
Nick. Ten grand? You think I just got that lying around? What about you? Sell something. Sell that friggin’ suit of armor.”

  “I got that at a flea market for seventy bucks.”

  Nick fell silent. Tom really didn’t like the way his brother was just sitting there.

  “What’s with you? Get up outta that chair, Nicky. What the fuck? I got school loans, I’ve got a mortgage . . .”

  “The state is helping you pay off your loans. And I got you that place. You were gonna rent some crappy little apartment. You’da been pissing away your money.”

  “I know, Nick. I’m grateful you found me my place.”

  Nick grunted as he rose, using the chair to hoist himself upright. He clenched his teeth as he gained his feet, then stepped into the light.

  Tom saw the pain on his brother’s face. Nick hobbled a few steps and sat down on the bed. He had been a good-looking guy. A square jaw and one of those perfect noses. But his lifestyle had aged him. There were pouches beneath his eyes, which were ice blue and bloodshot.

  “I got into it at the dog track.”

  “The dog track?” Tom was relieved that it wasn’t something worse, but at the same time, utterly disappointed. “Oh Nick, man. What’re you doing?”

  “Hey,” Nick snapped. “Spare me the lecture, okay?”

  Tom pointed at Nick. “So this? This way you’re walking? What’ve you got, a cracked rib? This is from owing money? On dogs?”

  “They tuned me up a little bit, yeah. Not dogs. Jesus, give me a little credit. Poker. Caught me cheating, they said.”

  Tom rubbed a hand over his face. First Alicia, now Nick. He had his first case, a dead woman, and all these other people kept popping up with more problems. When it rained, it poured. He stood up, angry, and walked to the doorway. “I can’t help you, Nick. I’m sorry.”

  “They hit me with a baseball bat, Tommy. My knees are swollen to like, fucking grapefruits, couple ribs are bruised. Nothing broken, I don’t think.” Nick grunted some more and pushed himself off the bed. He lifted his T-shirt with one hand, holding the bed for balance.

  Nick’s torso was covered in tattoos, most of his own design. He didn’t have any on his face or forearms, but all over his back — a pair of wings there — and on his chest a Christian sacred heart. There were bruises, purple and yellow. Like he’d been kicked a few times. Probably while on the ground after having his knees busted.