Mortal Dilemma (2 page)

The victim was a forty-year-old woman from Atlanta named Rachel Fortson who was visiting her brother's Gulf-side house on the north end of Longboat Key. She was alone, and had only been in residence for two days when she was killed. The forensic technicians had gone over the crime scene with meticulous care. They found nothing, and searched again, disappointed and puzzled at the total lack of evidence.

J.D. left for Franklin County the morning after the phone call from the sheriff.

T
HURSDAY
, O
CTOBER
30

I
REACHED MY
turnaround point, a beachfront condo two miles from where I started. I reversed course, slowed my pace, and churned north, my mind racing ahead to my best friend, Jock Algren, who was ensconced in my cottage, drinking himself into oblivion. He'd been there for five days, seemingly intent on exhausting the supply of bourbon I'd stocked when he called me from Beirut, Lebanon.

“Podna,” he'd said when I answered the phone. “I'm on my way to the key. It's bad. Very bad. The worst it's ever been. Get the booze laid in. I might be there awhile.”

“You okay, Jock?”

“No.”

“Jock?”

“I'll see you tomorrow.” He hung up.

I'd met Jock Algren on the first day of the seventh grade. I was the new kid in the little town in the middle of the Florida peninsula and I guess he felt it was his duty to challenge me. My family had just moved down from Georgia, and I didn't know anybody in the school. Jock was the most popular kid there and that knowledge gave a kind of swagger to his gait that I, at first, took to be a small birth defect. His popularity seemed to imbue him with certain obligations to the pre-teen society that so admired his athletic prowess and his good
looks. Apparently, his duties included intimidation of the new guy.

“Where're you from?” he asked me on that first day of school.

“Georgia.”

“Georgia? Nothing but a bunch of fools in Georgia. Why did you move here?”

“My daddy says that when people move from Georgia to Florida, it improves the intellectual level of both states.”

That comment would have gone over the head of most twelve-year-old bullies, but Jock's mind was among the best I'd ever met. He immediately understood the insult. “Now I'm going to have to kick your ass,” he said.

He swung at me, his fist catching me in the middle of the chest. I staggered backward, regained my footing, and charged, taking him to the ground. I got two strikes into his abdominal area before a teacher pulled me off him.

“What the hell do you think you're doing, Matthew?” the teacher asked, his voice restrained, his anger controlled.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing? You just beat up Jock and you say you were doing nothing? You report to detention at the end of class.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and walked toward the aging schoolhouse.

When the bell rang to signal the end of detention, I walked into the hallway to find Jock leaning against the wall. He stuck out his hand and said, “You're a stand-up guy. You didn't rat me out.”

I shook his outstretched hand. “Didn't need to,” I said. “I'd already kicked your ass.”

He grinned. “That you did.”

And that was the day we formed a friendship that had lasted until now, and would continue until one of us shuffled off this mortal coil we call life. It turned out that we were both the sons of truck drivers who spent way too much of their time lost in a haze of cheap whiskey.
We were both poor and lived in houses that many of the other kids would never deign to enter. I think it was the adversity of our teen years, that hormone-wracked period when young men struggle with coming-of-age issues, that turned us into brothers. It was a time when we clung to our friendship in order to survive personal worlds that were becoming meaner and more restrictive each year. That time of travail and teenage angst cemented a bond that was stronger than blood.

It turned out that Jock wasn't a bully. He was just a guy showing off for a girl on the day he accosted me. He took his defeat at my hands with good nature and never bragged that he could have taken me. Privately, he always told me he was about to roll me off him and give me a good ass-whipping.

Jock used his brilliance to win scholarships to college and upon graduation joined the most secretive agency of the U.S. government, an intelligence group that was so buried in the bureaucracy that it didn't have a name. He became a top agent, a gatherer of information, and when the situation demanded, an assassin.

Jock always kept in touch, but sometimes he would disappear from our lives for weeks at a time. When whatever mission had pulled him away was completed, he would come to Longboat Key to decompress. For a few days, he, J.D., and I would hang out on the beach or the boat and in the bars and restaurants where we were sure to see our friends. He and I would fish and talk and reminisce, and he and my island friend Logan Hamilton would play golf and embarrass themselves with their ineptness. I finally decided that they didn't know enough about the game to be embarrassed, so they were happy as duffers.

On occasion, Jock was called on to do things for the protection of his country that disgusted him, and once in a while, when he did things that were so terrible, so deeply wrenching that he sickened of the death and destruction that he wreaked in the name of national
security, he needed what he called
the healing time
. It was those times, when he was almost overwhelmed by remorse, that he would come to my house and drink himself into oblivion. He'd tell me about his latest mission and what he'd done that had seared his soul, and on the fifth day, he'd start sobering up, running the beach, sweating the alcohol out of his system, eating great fatty meals, and visiting with his other friends on the island. By the eighth day, he'd hug J.D. and me, wave good-bye, and head back to his home in Houston to await the summons to the next battle in the terrorist war that had no end.

This time, it was different. We were in our seventh day, and Jock had cracked open another bottle of Maker's Mark before I left for my morning jog. So far, he'd refused to talk about what had sent him into his special hell. This was the worst I'd ever seen him.

Every time I asked if he were ready to talk, he'd say, “Not yet. But soon. I promise.” And he would disappear into another bottle of good bourbon. I was concerned, but not yet worried. He'd always pulled out of it before, but I had long harbored the fear that there would come a time when he could not walk back from the abyss. Maybe we were approaching that time, but I had decided to give him another day or two before calling his boss at the agency.

J.D. understood Jock's need to find some solace, and my need to help him maintain, or possibly regain, his sanity, to be the friend who stood close, listened to the horror he had experienced, and let him know that at least someone understood his pain and did not judge him for his actions. J.D. would leave us to work through the healing time, and she, in turn, stood nearby to prop me up as I slogged through the miasma of Jock's life.

I was nearing the North Shore Drive crossover that spanned the dunes, hoping that Jock would be a little better when I got home. I had slowed to a walk when my phone rang.

“Good morning, studmuffin,” J.D. said.

“Wow. ‘Studmuffin?' Are you a bit randy?”

“Not at the moment, but I'll be thinking about you all the way home. Might help.”

“We'll see,” I said, my voice surely dripping with hope. “Are you on your way?”

“As soon as I finish up with the sheriff. It'll probably be close to noon. I'll grab a Big Mac and eat in the car. I should be home by six. What are you doing?”

“Just finishing my run. I'm going to check on Jock and then go to The Pub for a grouper sandwich and a beer.”

“How's Jock doing?”

“About the same. I'm a little worried about him. He's usually coming out of it by now.”

“Has he told you what's bothering him?”

“Not yet, but he keeps telling me we'll talk soon.”

“Hang in there. I'll be home by dark.”

“Drive safe.”

“Bye, sweetie. I love you.” She was gone.

T
HURSDAY
, O
CTOBER
30

T
HE RUN DOWN
from Carrabelle in Florida's panhandle had been rough. The sea was unseasonably agitated, large swells rolling off the starboard quarter, the boat yawing, her bow dipping into the waves as she tried to climb the walls of water the stiff wind flung at her. She was constantly pushed toward the shallows that guarded the big bend area of Florida, that desolate part of the state that the tourists and snowbirds never see. The captain had furled his sails early in the trip, and relied on his sturdy little Yanmar diesel engine to push him through the Gulf of Mexico.

The man was a seasoned sailor, knew his boat and trusted her. Still, there were moments during the trip to Cortez when he'd questioned his sanity in heading out into a sea that was so uninviting. But he was under orders, orders that superseded his wants or even his safety. So he sailed on.

On Wednesday morning, just at daybreak, he'd received a phone call from his principal, a shady private investigator from Tallahassee, telling him to go to Cortez and tie up at the Seafood Shack. He would be contacted and given further instructions in the next day or two. He knew the trip involved killing somebody, because that's what he did for a living. He killed people. The name of the doomed person would be part of his instructions. That was it, a milk run, easy as pie, and a
lot of money for his effort. The man from Tallahassee had hinted that he would be killing a police officer, a detective on the Longboat Key police department. He would be paid a premium for killing a cop. The sailor knew that a detective from Longboat, a woman, had been in Franklin County investigating a murder and was trying to tie it to a murder that had occurred on Longboat Key three years before. His source in the Franklin County sheriff's office told him she would be finishing up and returning home on Thursday.

He had set sail immediately from Carrabelle, running into the teeth of the storm moving northeast across the Gulf from southern Mexico, beating his way south through Wednesday and Wednesday night. He stayed well offshore, fighting the vicious sea, intent on not being observed. When his GPS system told him he was off Longboat Pass, he turned eastward, hoisted the Mexican courtesy flag, and sailed into the sunrise and under the Longboat Pass Bridge. His boat bore the evidence of a rough crossing, and the flag would indicate that he'd come from Mexico, not the panhandle.

Early Thursday morning, he moored at the Seafood Shack Marina at the mainland end of the Cortez Bridge about two miles north of Longboat Pass. He checked in with the dockmaster, set his alarm clock for three hours, and fell exhausted into the bunk in the boat's bow. He'd rest up and stay ready to complete his mission. He'd been told that he would be there no more than a couple of days, three at the most. Easy money. Make the kill and get out. No sweat.

T
HURSDAY
, O
CTOBER
30

I
WALKED OVER
the dunes and up Broadway to my home. Jock was in his bedroom, asleep and snoring. I didn't know if he was sleeping it off, or just catching his breath before digging into the next bottle. I found the one he'd been sipping from when I left for my run, sitting on the kitchen counter. It was three-quarters full. I thought that was a good sign.

I spent the rest of the morning tidying up my cottage, getting rid of the detritus accumulated by a week of bachelor living. J.D. and I did not live together. She had her own condo a mile or so from my house, but we spent more nights together than apart, and I tried diligently to hide from her the fact that I was an inveterate slob.

When I finished with the house, I washed my boat. She was a twenty-eight foot Grady-White named
Recess
, and was waiting patiently at her dock behind my house. I wiped her down, showered and changed, checked on Jock, and walked the two blocks to the old restaurant squatting on one of the choicest pieces of real estate on the key.

It was nearing one o'clock when I walked into the Mar Vista, known to the locals as The Pub. The place was empty except for Anthony, the manager, standing behind the bar, and my buddy Cracker Dix on his usual stool. The tables on the outside deck were full, diners finishing lunch and lingering over their drinks, enjoying the pleasant weather and the view of the bay.

“Hey, Matt,” Anthony and Cracker said simultaneously.

“Hey, guys,” I said. “Did you get demoted to bartender, Anthony?”

He laughed. “Not yet. Deke called in sick. Sheila should be in soon. You want a drink?”

“Got a Miller Lite and a grouper sandwich?”

“On its way,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Somebody was just here looking for you,” Cracker said.

“Who?”

“Don't know. He just asked if I knew Matt Royal. I told him I did, and he asked where you lived. I didn't tell him.”

“You didn't get a name?”

“No. I asked, but he didn't answer. He didn't have much of a personality and what I saw was plain nasty.”

“How so?”

“Hard to say, but you wouldn't call him friendly.”

“Can you describe him?”

“About six foot two or three, rangy, ropey muscles, gray scraggly beard, deep water tan, wearing one of those sleeveless t-shirts, the kind they call wife-beaters, very dirty jeans, and boat shoes that were falling apart. The t-shirt had the logo of a bar in Panama City on the back.”

“You're very observant,” I said.

“It's early yet, and I think Anthony is watering down the wine.”

Cracker was an expatriate Englishman who'd lived in Longbeach Village on the north end of the key for thirty years. The locals knew the area simply as “the village,” and it was the neighborhood that included my home and Mar Vista. Cracker was in his late fifties and, because of his vast network of friends, he knew everything that happened on our island. He was an extremely intelligent man who'd never lost his distinctive English accent, and often regaled us with outrageous stories of his youthful travels around the world seeking hippie nirvana.