Jonathon King - A Killing Night

I was watching Morrison's light bar and was anticipating his shift into the left lane when he suddenly went right without a signal onto Thirteenth heading north. Shit. Where the hell was he going? An SUV and a sedan made the same turn and I swung behind them and watched the squad car making distance on me and I punched up O'Shea.

"Our guy just took a north route on Thirteenth. If he makes a couple more turns he's going to make me," I said.

"I'll cut up on Twelfth and try to catch him parallel," O'Shea answered.

I was trying to keep my speed but the sun was now on the left side of my face, glancing off my hood, and before I could adjust my focus I realized Morrison had slowed, and when the fat SUV between us swerved around him into the left lane, only the small car was a buffer. The squad car kept its speed and rolled on and I was too far back to see if Morrison was checking his side mirrors. We were on our way up to Oakland Park and I started thinking about what we could do if he simply went home. I was prepared to just sit on him. But tailing him out to some spot in the Glades would be even tougher at night. Out there in the flat expanse you could see headlights for more than a mile. I was grinding and watching the next traffic light burn green when Morrison's car slowed a little more than normal and then suddenly cut over to the far left and took a hard turn into the sun. I had to make a decision: O'Shea was still east, he wouldn't be able to tag on and Morrison was heading west, the direction I'd wanted him to go. Should I call it off or take a chance?

"He's going west on Twenty-eighth," I barked into the Nextel and I went left, caught a horn from an oncoming taxi driver, cussed under my breath and was then partially blinded by the streaming light of sunset.

I caught a glimpse of the police lettering on Morrison's back bumper as he cut another left turn and when I hooked onto the same street I slammed on the brakes. There were two patrol cars parked nose-to-nose blocking the street and Morrison's brake lights beyond them. When I stopped I took a futile look into my rearview and another cruiser was crossing the T behind me. The Nextel tweeted.

"Sorry brother, you know I can't take a chance gettin' into that beehive," O'Shea said from somewhere back there. "Call me when you can. Out."

I tossed the cell under the seat like you might roll an empty beer bottle after getting pulled over. If they wanted to find it bad enough, they would. The three officers in front seemed to climb out of their cars at the same time, like it was choreographed. The fourth, behind me, stayed behind the wheel. Classic drug stop. Don't ever try to tail a cop without installing a police scanner, I thought. You miss that call for backup, you're screwed.

When she called him, he didn't know for sure whether she'd learned her lesson, or she was fucking with him somehow. All he knew for sure was that he didn't feel right. Maybe he should have just done her when he had the chance and moved on.

"Hi, Kyle. Hey, I'm at work, baby, and you know that big tall guy who came in the other day with the blonde cop? He was back in here today, asking me questions and it scared me, you know, what you said, about you getting into trouble by hanging out here?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Marci," he'd said, trying to calm her, though there was something in her voice that sounded more like she was acting spooked instead of being afraid. And he knew her well enough now to know she didn't scare easily. Hell, she wasn't even scared the other night. She might have been pissed. She might have even known that if she hadn't done what he wanted he would have killed her right there like the rest of them. But she didn't come off scared. He liked that in a woman.

"OK, listen. What the hell did the guy say?" he asked.

"He was talking about missing bartenders," she said. "Girls that had worked at a bunch of places, up on OPB and down off Seventeenth Street and even here that that blonde cop thinks were kidnapped."

Kidnapped, he thought. Christ, Marci, you're such a child.

"Yeah, well, those are a bunch of rumors, Marci. They're like urban legends that assholes like to sit around at the bar and yak about like it's all intriguing when it isn't anything more than girls walking away from their job, gone down to Key West or someplace. Don't tell me you never wanted to just walk away and get the hell out of there?"

That fucking Richards, he thought. Still pushing that shit and now she's got some goddamn P.I. into it because nobody in real law enforcement will believe her.

"But this guy says that he found some kind of evidence. Some kind of body part or blood or something that's going to prove who did it and all they had to do was find out when certain people were in the bar when Suzy disappeared," she'd said.

"Body parts? That's what he said? Body parts?"

Christ, he thought, don't lose it. Just get it out of her.

"He said a bunch of stuff but I don't want to talk about it over the phone, Kyle, you know. Can't you come over? I'm scared."

And this time when she said it, she did sound scared and he didn't want to hear the rest of it over the phone, anyway, he wanted to look into her eyes and hear it.

"I'll be over in an hour," he told her. "Just be calm, baby. I'm coming over." These goddamn women can get so emotional.

On the drive over there he'd let his own head start cranking. Body parts. That's bullshit. There's no way Richards or some P.I. went out in the middle of the goddamn Glades and found body parts. Shit, the gators out there would have taken care of that long ago. Sure, somebody might have found a corpse or part of one out there. Fucking mopes were dumping dopers or bad business partners out there all the time. Shit, that asshole who beat up his old lady and killed his own kid went and dumped the body in one of the canals at a boat ramp out there just last summer and a fisherman came up with part of the body. But that was stupid, in close, where people hang out.

So they might have found something, but why come and ask Marci about it? Marci didn't know shit unless they were trying to manufacture a case and were going to use her to set somebody up just to clear the case. That would be so typical of the detective bureau, use some poor innocent girl to make a case for them.

He'd parked at the shopping center on the other side and then walked over to Kim's. Don't be in such a hurry, he told himself. You draw attention to yourself. Why the hell did you bring the squad, anyway? That wasn't too bright, somebody sees you coming into the place in broad daylight. Jesus, Kyle. What happened to careful?

Inside there was that group of magazine smart-asses at one end of the bar and the Schnapps guy in the middle. He went to the end and then around the corner, under the TV, instead of in his usual spot. Marci waited a minute or so before she came down and pulled a beer out of the cooler for him on her way.

There was something very tense about her. Maybe this guy really had shaken her up.

"OK, Marci. Tell me about it again, the whole thing, babe. Right from the point that the guy walks in here, OK? Nothing left out."

She pretty much repeated herself and he let her until she got to the mention of the so-called body parts and hesitated.

"Slow down now, Marci," he said. "You're sure he said 'body parts'?"

"Well, I uh, it was something that he said was DNA evidence. He might not have said 'body parts' exactly but where the hell else do you get DNA for Christ's sake?"

Jesus, he thought.

"Baby, it could be anything, hair from a comb, a goddamn toothbrush, a fucking Band-Aid tossed in the trash," he told her. "Did he say where he found it?"

"No. Just that he had it and they were trying to get some kind of verification."