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  April opened her mouth, then caught herself and shut it. Thorn would not have believed it possible, but April Moss’s face was even whiter than it was a moment earlier.

  She sidestepped Buddha and hurried for the exit, Buddha trailing, Thorn bringing up the rear.

  A few feet before the door, Jeff, the guy with the shaved head and ratty jeans, stepped away from the bar and blocked their path.

  “Is there a problem, Ms. Moss?”

  With a cold, dry hand the lanky guy took hold of Thorn’s forearm, a pincer grip. Thorn’s hand tingled. The guy smiled at Thorn without malice, his body relaxed like one who’d handled much tougher badasses than Thorn.

  “There’s no problem, Jeff.”

  The man nodded respectfully and with the airy grace of a kung fu master ceasing combat, he released Thorn’s arm and drew his hand away.

  April slipped past and fled Poblanos with Thorn and Buddha trying to keep pace. She didn’t say another word, just crossed the street, got into her blue Mini Cooper, and squealed away.

  TWELVE

  AT SEVEN THORN AND THE young sheriff had dinner at Perricone’s restaurant, a rustic Italian bistro with lots of outdoor seating. A little pricey, but it was a short drive from their riverside bungalow at the Waterway Lodge, and Thorn had pleasant memories of the place. A few years back he and Rusty had eaten a celebratory meal there after a day at the Miami boat show. Rusty had been aglow with Christmas morning excitement after placing an order for a Hewes Redfisher—the first brand-new boat she’d ever bought.

  It was on that same skiff, Happy Daze II, two weeks ago, that Rusty took her final voyage.

  Thorn ordered a bowl of mixed greens. Oil and balsamic vinaigrette, doing penance for his lard intake. Buddha had a Caesar salad with the veal parmigiana, which she claimed several times was the best meal she’d ever tasted.

  After fumbling his fork a couple of times, he switched to his left hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Buddha said. “Your fingers are blue.”

  “I’ll live. But next time, try aiming an inch higher.”

  “Were you going to shoot me?”

  “I was trying to get your attention.”

  “You know the rule. Never aim a gun unless you mean to fire.”

  “You were right, Buddha, I was wrong. I got what I deserved.”

  “I’m sorry. This time yesterday I didn’t know you. I had a different idea in my head. Somebody a little gaga.”

  “Don’t be so quick to revise that view.”

  Between courses she got out her electronic tablet and showed him the Monday obituary of Joe Camarillo, the baseball star from Miami. And she was right. The bat was in the ninth paragraph but the other crucial words were ‘the’ and ‘of.’ The closest nouns were “book” and “history” and “blue collar.” If the killer was being guided to his victim by the third word in every third paragraph, neither Buddha or Thorn could guess how he would decide where to go and whom to kill.

  “We must’ve read the code wrong. Or maybe it changes week to week.”

  She shook her head in frustration.

  “It was too damn easy. I was worried about that.”

  “We’ll find out tomorrow,” he said. “When the victim turns up.”

  “That’s cold, Thorn. Somebody’s going to die. Some innocent person.”

  “First, we’re not absolutely sure of that. And second, we’ve spent an hour noodling over this and don’t have a clue. You could call Sheffield, give him a chance at cracking it. Have him hand it off to a cryptologist.”

  “I feel helpless,” Buddha said. “Somebody’s marked for death. Somebody’s going to get bludgeoned with a baseball bat.”

  The waiter was standing there with the check.

  “Bludgeoned with a baseball bat?” the young man said.

  “We were joking,” said Thorn.

  “That’s a relief. I thought you didn’t like your dinner.”

  The young waiter wasn’t smiling as he set the check down warily and backed away. Thorn raised his empty hands to show the kid he was unarmed.

  Working on the front lines of commerce in Miami could be risky. The truce that kept chance encounters from erupting into bloodshed was fragile. You didn’t joke about violence in public places, just as you didn’t kid about bombs at airport security checkpoints. The new gun-friendly law was called Stand Your Ground. Florida’s citizens had the state’s permission to use deadly force against anyone they considered a threat to their safety. With so many people standing their ground, Miami had become a hair-trigger society. Determining which threats qualified as worthy of lethal response was the new survival skill. The rule was “Be nice or die.” In fact, be very nice, or very quick on the draw.

  By 10:15 they were back at the Waterway Lodge.

  Their bungalow was a separate building set off a hundred paces from the main inn. It backed up to the river and had a small patio, tile roof, and Bahama shutters, and maybe twenty years earlier it had been charming. Now it was flaking paint, the shrubbery was withered, and broken lawn furniture and palm fronds lay at the bottom of the empty swimming pool.

  The Miami River was no longer a real river, and hadn’t been for over a century. It was nothing but a dredged trench with a few doglegs, but mainly it was carved straight as a ruler out of the limestone; the ancient overhanging oaks had been stripped away, the rocky rapids dynamited to help drain the Everglades, and to allow the big ships deeper penetration into the city. Its stagnant waters had a sour industrial smell, like solvents blended with kitchen garbage and engine oil. There’d been talk for years about cleaning the river, but such talk always seemed to die out for fear that disturbing the toxins that coated the bottom might send them downriver and wind up poisoning a chunk of Biscayne Bay.

  Split into a duplex, their bungalow had a common wall separating the two bedrooms, but there was no connecting door. Buddha made absolutely sure of that when they were checking in. The innkeeper, an elderly gentleman, kept smirking at Thorn as though he knew the lack of an adjoining door wouldn’t keep these lovebirds apart.

  Their rooms were small and stuffed with marble-topped dressing tables and four-poster beds and lacy curtains with framed needlepoint on the walls. Not exactly Thorn’s style, but Buddha seemed pleased.

  She said she needed to write up her notes, edit her questions for tomorrow’s interviews, and she was going to puzzle on the baseball player’s obituary some more. Thorn had spotted a riverside bar a few blocks east and told her he was going to have a nightcap. He wanted to stretch his legs. They’d rendezvous at seven A.M., track down breakfast somewhere.

  At the East Coast Fish House he took a table outside with a view of several Haitian freighters docked nearby. The rusty boats were stacked high with bicycles and mattresses, washing machines, bathtubs, and cargo containers that no doubt held an assortment of American castoffs. A short voyage from Miami, all that second-hand junk would soon become somebody else’s luxuries.

  Inside the bar an overhead television was playing a Marlins game and the pool table was busy. There were a few suits and ties mingling with the dockhands and off-duty patrolmen and late-shift workers who just couldn’t bear to drive home yet. The bar had a nautical theme. Hawsers and portholes and posters advertizing tropical cruises were mounted on the walls. The place reminded Thorn that there were, in fact, still vestiges of the old, funky Miami hanging on. Relics of that carefree tourist town that once survived off snow globes, toy alligators, and goofy wish-you-were-here postcards, a place he remembered fondly. Somehow a few spots like this bar had retained the screwy charm of a half-century earlier, before waves of refugees turned the city into an overheated international stew of factions and cultures and militant exiles, many of whom liked to claim credit for turning that sleepy town into the dynamic city Miami was today.

  Thorn would gladly have the snow globes back.

  It was after eleven when he finished his nightcap, and he was waiting to pay his bill at the register while the bartend
er served two matriarchs at the far end when a black man in a bus driver’s uniform came huffing through the door.

  “You see it?” he called down to the bartender.

  “See what?”

  “Where’s the channel changer?”

  “Where it always is,” the bartender said, popping open two more beers.

  The bus driver went halfway down the bar, leaned across and snatched the remote, and aimed it at the set.

  April Moss was standing in front of a two-story coral rock house, looking grim but composed under harsh TV lights. A tall, agitated male reporter was jabbing a microphone inches from her lips.

  “It’s a police matter,” April was saying. “You’ll need to speak to them.”

  “Is it true the killer contacted you? You spoke to him directly?”

  “No, it’s not. He called the paper, not me. And that’s all I’m saying at this time. No more questions.”

  “Sources tell us your obituaries in the Herald are provoking this madman to murder. How does that feel, being a killer’s inspiration?”

  April slowly turned her face to the man and gave him a withering glare.

  Some of the bar patrons whooped at the reporter’s chastened face.

  “Bite his nuts off, April,” one of the cops called out.

  After April turned and walked away, the reporter repeated the highlights of his interview, then tossed it back to the anchors.

  “What’s going on?” the bartender asked the bus driver.

  “Some guy in a suit—you know, like Spider-Man only it’s all black, that kind of suit, stretchy, all-over thing—he’s running around murdering people. He says he’s done four already and he’s just getting warmed up.”

  A few of the drinkers inched closer to the bus driver.

  “He reads the death notices in the paper, the ones that broad writes, and they tell him who to whack next. Fucker called the Herald, said the lady was the oracle of death, he was just following her commands.”

  “Oracle of death?” one of the cops said. “Aw, shit, here we go.”

  A couple of guys playing pool wanted the Marlins game back on.

  “Somebody’s ripping off a goddamn TV show,” the bartender said. “Nottoli, that moron from sanitation, he’s in here watching it every Thursday night. Same storyline, guy in a catsuit killing people, leaving obituaries behind. Stupid-ass show.”

  “You got a phone?” Thorn asked the bartender.

  The guy pulled a handset from his back pocket and gave it to Thorn.

  “Waterway Lodge, you know the number?”

  “Fuck no, what am I, four-one-one?”

  “Try the bulletin board,” the bus driver said, and went back to the TV where the anchors were taking turns titillating each other with this horrifying turn of events.

  The news ghouls hadn’t yet assigned the murderer a nickname, but that was coming. At that moment there was probably a conference room full of brainy folks running through the possibilities.

  Among the hundreds of business cards tacked to the bulletin board, Thorn finally found one for the inn. He punched in the number, got the leering desk clerk, and asked for Ms. Hilton’s room.

  Buddha picked up on the first ring.

  “Turn on your TV. The eleven o’clock news.”

  “What is it?”

  “Turn it on.”

  “There’s no TV in my quaint and charming room. What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure. A news crew was at April’s house, interviewing her. The reporter said her obituaries were inspiring a killer.”

  “She spilled it,” Buddha said. “She promised not to, but she spilled it.”

  “I don’t think so. She looked blindsided. Sounds like the killer called the paper, and I bet that phone call she got at Poblanos was her boss calling her afterward.”

  “He called the paper?”

  “Sounds that way. They know he wears a black suit. He claims he’s killed four already and he’s just getting started.”

  “Where are you?”

  “That bar we passed on the river. Four blocks east.”

  “I’ll get dressed and come over.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can watch TV, talk it through.”

  Thorn watched the two anchors, finished with the boogey man story, yukking it up with the weather guy.

  “There’s nothing we can do tonight.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “Thorn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We set him off.”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t a coincidence. A few hours after we come to town and start asking questions, the guy pops up, changes the rules.”

  Thorn was silent for a moment, running it through.

  He said, “You didn’t mention the Zentai suit to Frank, or April, or anybody else.”

  “Just you.”

  “Which means nobody we talked to could’ve leaked that. Had to be the killer. The guy tells them he wears a black suit. Why’s he do that?”

  “He’s feeling it.”

  “Feeling what?”

  “Invincible.”

  The Marlins game was back on. They were down by five runs in the eighth. Losing in front of a couple of dozen fans in a luxurious new stadium.

  “Okay, what does it mean, we show up, sniff around, a few hours later the guy breaks radio silence? What’s the thought process?”

  “I’m not a profiler, Thorn. I’m a small-town sheriff.”

  “Bullshit. You’re more than that, Buddha. A lot more than that.”

  She was silent for several moments. A woman unfamiliar with praise.

  “You still there?”

  “The guy outs himself,” she said. “To me that says he’s ready for the limelight. But he wants it on his own terms. A control freak. Wants to manage the message.”

  “I’m coming back,” he said. “Keep your door locked.”

  “Don’t get all spooky, Thorn.”

  “If this character wants to manage the message, then you and me, we’re a problem. We’re wild cards. He knows about us. We lit his fuse. Keep your door locked. I’ll be there in five.”

  * * *

  You are carrying an aluminum baseball bat down a Miami street in the dark. Your body is out of body. You are walking on the street and you are floating above all this. It is eerie and wonderful and scary as shit.

  You never liked aluminum bats. They’re lighter, yes, move quicker through the air. But you dislike the noise they make when they smack a baseball, that hollow boink. They sound like something you’d hear inside a factory, rivets pounded into steel, some assembly line noise.

  The old ones, the wood ones, impacting the leather ball, there was a satisfying thump, two real objects made from living things, clashing against each other. The sturdy wood crushing the hard leather sphere. Sending it flying.

  Like you are flying now. Taking this risk. Thrust into action.

  But it’s okay. You’re ready for a change. It’s time. The killings were starting to feel ordinary. This is different, a wild, dangerous swing into the uncharted. You have no blueprint. You’ve not planned this step by step like the others, but thrown it together. It is the last-minuteness of it that thrills you. The spontaneity. Riffing, riding the wave of the hurtling moment. Going someplace, you don’t know where. Feeling your way, relying on instinct.

  You knew this day was coming. It was time for this phase. So it’s okay. Today is as good as any day. Today, you have decided, is perfect.

  You are holding the bat in one hand beside your leg, concealing it as you walk. You are a shadow in your black suit, in the suit that merges with the shadows. You feel tremors in your gut, stronger than any you felt before.

  You see the inn where they are staying. Their red car parked outside a separate bungalow that stands beneath a giant oak. No streetlights here. Only dim lights from across the river, the freighters and the warehouses on the other bank. The tremor in your gut is taking root.
You are bathed in sweat, the suit clinging to you, growing heavy.

  You have been thinking of this moment for years. Planning it without ever picturing the specific way it would unfold, but priming yourself, waiting for the catalyst. Wondering if you would have the courage, the moral strength. And now you know. You are more than anyone imagines, more than you yourself thought possible.

  At the bungalow there are two doors side by side. You are not sure which is hers, which is his. You stand a few feet away in a pool of darkness and choose the left. First one, then the other, that’s all the plan you have.

  Before you move, you listen for voices or the sound of footsteps, but there is only the incessant rumble of traffic on the adjacent streets and a radio blasting reggae on one of the freighters. The rank scent of the river in the air.

  You step forward and the shudder is still with you. You wonder if it’s possible to sustain this mad exhilaration, to nurture it, to endlessly ride this wave of dark rapture as if you have leapt from a cliff edge and will fall and fall but never reach the earth.

  You knock on the left door. Five hard raps. Then five more.

  “Thorn?” A woman’s voice.

  You do not speak. There are no peepholes in the doors. You stand out of view of the single window.

  “Thorn, is that you?”

  The door opens a few inches and her face appears in the crack.

  Her face is covered with black lettering. Weird woman. No security chain. She squints at you in your black suit and tries to shut the door.

  But you’re quicker. You ram the tip of the aluminum bat through the opening and it thuds into flesh. Her face or throat.

  You pry the door open, thump her in the chest, and then hit her flush in the face. She falls backward into the room, nose pouring blood, and you are inside.

  You shut the door.

  She backs away. She’s wearing a robe that falls open. Naked beneath. A shapely woman, heavy breasts. While she’s reeling, you rip her bathrobe off, pull it free of her arms. Now she’s fully exposed, perfectly vulnerable.

  She shoots a look toward her suitcase on a stand and you follow her glance and see the butt of her service revolver peeking out. You step between her and the luggage. She has no escape. You are bigger, stronger, armed with your primitive instrument.