Vampire Slayer Murdered in Key West - Mick Murphy Short Stories (14 page)

“Do you think
you
can kill me?” He laughed contemptuously. “Take this body, it can’t serve me any longer.” He walked around the gurney. “Smell that?”

“I don’t smell anything. Stay still,” I warned him. “I
will
shoot.”

“No doubt.” He smirked. “You and the others will burn to death.”

He kept coming. I shot past him as a warning, but he kept coming.

“You’ll need to shoot better than that,” he snorted and showed his fangs.

I shot him in the heart twice. He smiled.

“I will see you soon,” he said clearly and then fell to the floor, dead.

I opened the door to see if anyone was coming and I smelled the smoke and heard the panic cries from the salon. I pulled the heart monitor wrap off kid’s arm, lifted him over my shoulder and rushed upstairs, the Glock in my hand. If the goons were there I would shoot them too. Kids were coming down the stairs and I forced some of them back with the gun.

“They’ve locked us in, Mick,” Alex said as he headed toward the stairway. “I figured you were below.” His voice wasn’t panicked. “Burt out there?”

“Yeah and the Coast Guard’s on its way,” I told him. The kid was getting heavy. “Where are his people?”

“Don’t know,” he said as young men and women trampled over each other and banged on the glass doors looking for escape. “Figure they did this?”

I grabbed a kid, about six foot and stopped him. “Look for a fire extinguisher,” I yelled.

He pushed away and went to the door. Flames jumped on the aft deck and smoke began to come into the salon from the bow section.

“Take him,” I said to Alex and gave him the unconscious boy.

Alex carried him as I did. I pushed my way to the doors, shot at the glass and it shattered offering an escape from the salon. Heat forced its way in and pushed us back.

“Get out,” I yelled and shot into the air. “Overboard, quickly.” I pushed people through the opening.

Flames swiftly spread along the deck as the kids ran. Alex came up and looked at the flames that almost engulfed the whole aft.

“Burt’s gotta be out there, run and jump,” I told him.

“When you do,” he said.

“Save him.” I slapped the kid on Alex’s shoulder. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Alex looked at me and I could see his doubt, but he pulled the sheet over the kid’s head and ran toward the right side of the boat and through the flames. I willed the deck to hold him and looked back inside.

Smoke filled the salon and I heard frightened kids crying for help, but couldn’t see them. Heat came in with a boiling force that kept the thick smoke building up inside. I was on my knees listening to those calling out. My eyes watered and it was difficult to breathe. Reluctantly, I crawled away from the smoky salon and toward the flames, knowing the safety of water was close.

The yacht was no longer the gates to hell, it was hell.

My whole body was heated to where I wanted to cry out and tear away my clothing. I stood in the last small spot on the deck that wasn’t burning and found myself surrounded by an inferno. Flames rushed across the top deck and the bridge was nothing but a sparkling blaze. The storage lockers were an unseen hazard in front of me, hidden behind the dancing flames. I had either side to run to but in the crackling sound of the flames, I heard sections of deck collapse inward too. I took short breaths because there was no air to draw from, only burning heat. I couldn’t wait, I ran left through the fire, the way I’d come in, and stumbled over the side rail and new I’d singed my beard as I tumbled into the water trying not to hear the cries from the salon.

“Took you long enough,” Burt yelled as he and Alex pulled me onto the skiff that was already overloaded with frightened kids.

The fire department’s boat poured water on the smoldering yacht and other boats slowly cruised the surrounding water looking for survivors.

• • •

A few days letter I stood smoking a cigar on the boardwalk outside Schooner Wharf and looked toward Christmas Tree Island. The smoldering shell of the yacht had been towed to the Coast Guard base. Chief Richard Dowley and Padre Thomas were with me. Six kids had died in the salon and two drowned. Counting
The Master
, nine died because of the fire. Of course,
The Master
was dead before the fire.

“No idea who he was,” Richard said slowly. “No return on the finger prints. But we got records off his computer. The FBI is investigating the Everglades clinic.”

“What about the two goons and the babes?” I swallowed beer from the bottle I held and wondered if the sheriff would keep me in the loop, like he promised. “Did they start the fire and leave?”

“We’re not sure, but the go-fast was gone when the fire department arrived,” he sighed. “We assume they got away in a boat because all the bodies have been identified, they were students. He didn’t start it because he was with you, then his people did. Why wouldn’t they wait for him?”

“What’s on the computer?” I finished the beer and didn’t tell Richard
The Master
seemed to know I was going to kill him. It was too early in the day for the beer and cigar, but I enjoyed them anyway.

“Nothing we could have used against him,” Richard laughed at the irony. “He had no reason to panic.”

“What was on it?” I asked again. There had to be something if the FBI was interested in the clinic.

“He was using the kid’s blood to check their compatibility for body part donations, filing away their blood types and other information for later,” Richard said. He held an empty coffee cup. “Nothing illegal about it. You can donate your kidney.”

“It was more than that,” I said.

“I believe you, but we can’t prove it, yet.”

“What about the boy I found?”

“He remembers nothing. He was upstairs with your babes and then he woke up naked in the water,” Richard grunted. “He’s gone home.”

I finished my beer, Padre Thomas finished his and took our empties into the bar.

“Mick, you saved lives,” Richard said without Thomas around. “We know it, you know it, even if the kids don’t. You did good.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled unhappily. “Wish I could see those files, compare them with Tracy’s notes.”

“Coast Guard is leading the investigation, right now,” he said. “Fitton and

Pearlman, you need to talk to them. They’ll want to talk to you soon enough to find out more about the shooting. Clear you.”

He gave me his coffee cup, slapped me on the shoulder, and walked away.

Padre Thomas handed me a cold beer. He looked concerned and I had thought he’d be glad this was over.

“Why so glum, Padre?” The cold beer tasted too good for the hour. I dragged on the cigar.

“The devil said he’d see you soon,” he answered me. “That scares me.”

“I killed him, he won’t be seeing anyone this side of hell.”

“You can’t kill the devil, Mick,” he said with a sour look. “He should just move on, be annoyed at you, and become someone else’s problem, but he said he’d see you soon.”

“And you believe him?” I took another drag on the cigar, rolled the cold beer bottle in my hand, and didn’t want him to answer.

###

Footnote

I finished the proof for “Free Range Institution” while visiting my daughters and, as I usually do after finishing a novel, I wanted to write a short story. Vampires were big on TV and with my daughters. As you know now, there are no vampires involved!

I began this story at my daughter Seanan’s house in Suffern, NY, worked on it a little more at my daughter Chela’s house in Pompton Lakes, NJ and finished it at home in Key West.

Originally, I wanted to write a novel around stolen body parts, but after talking with Dr. Bruce Boros and Dr. Jack Norris about the surgical procedure and they briefly explained some of the facts involved, I changed my mind. I didn’t have the time or the ability for the research necessary to do a believable novel.

To my total surprise, Janet Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, emailed me a few months back to say the Private Eye Writers of America had nominated the story for a Shamus Award. The story being nominated out of the hundreds of short stories eligible for the award was unexpected. The award went to another EQMM short story, but I am still honored to have been nominated and to realize that other writers think well of my work.

Michael Haskins lives in Key West, where he writes for Reuters News Service when called upon, as well as Key West arts and entertainment copy for
The Weekly
newspaper. He has published six books in his Mick Murphy series, four of them set in Key West. He is currently working on his seventh book and hopes to have it available in December 2012 or January 2013. He blames the uncertainty of the publican on the editor. The editor, it should be noted, blames it on the author.