She was tentatively identified as Jenna Marie Wiley. Her father flew down to Tampa to confirm it. Cause of death, as determined by the District Six medical examiner, was asphyxiation from the victim aerating vomitus into her lungs. Toxicity reports came back indicating high doses of Rohypnol in her blood. She was probably conscious as she died but with motor functions reduced to the point where she could not help herself. She just lay there and drowned. These details were not shared with the girl’s father who didn’t appear to have full control of motor functions himself.
State CID found enough DNA evidence at the home of one Dean Collins to establish it as the place where the Wiley girl died. Collins was three drawers down from Wiley in the cold room at the Hillsborough County morgue. His death was under investigation but appeared to be a part of some kind of gangland retribution. Two John Does lay in drawers near him, both found dead on the State Fairgrounds by Tampa cops responding to a shots fired call. A third shooter was being sought.
The two broken bikers had rock solid alibis.
It was a month later when a bolt action rifle with scope mounted atop it was found on the roof of a Holiday Inn off I-4. Two window-washers, Haitian illegals, discovered it when they were rigging their cage platform to one of the gantries along the roof line. They argued over what to do with it until one accepted forty bucks from the other for the right to keep it. The Model 70, rusted from exposure to heavy winter rains, was stuck in the back of a closet and forgotten after Patrice Saint-Felix’s wife refused to let him hang it on their bedroom wall.
Barely mentioned in Tampa newspapers and websites was the apparent suicide of a local area businessman. Simon Kharchenko was apparently despondent over the recent death of his sons in a tragic single car accident near Ybor.
59
* * *
Spring comes slow to upstate Maine. Snow lays in hollows in the woods until late May most years. The low sunlight takes its time reaching back into the piney deeps. The winds at night make one think that summer is a hope as far away as heaven.
In the warm confines of William King Elementary it was career day. It was a small school with less than a hundred students and many of them siblings. Mom or dad or both were invited in to explain what they did for a living and answer questions from the kids. Doctors, veterinarians, car mechanics, truck drivers, skid operators, store owners, and web entrepreneurs were joining the classes, giving talks or demonstrations the whole day long.
Mrs. Balfour was concerned for Mary Tallmadge, a new student who’d arrived mid-year to join her fifth grade class. She was the only student whose parent had not shown up today.
The little girl was by herself taking some cookies from the refreshment table set up in the gym.
“Is anyone coming from your house to give us a talk? Your mommy or daddy?” Mrs. Balfour asked.
“My mom’s dead,” Mary said. She did not turn from making her careful selections from the heaped cookie trays.
“I’m sorry.” Mrs. Balfour blanched behind her smile. Damn it, she should have remembered that. Where was her head this morning?
“It’s okay,” Mary said and plucked a sugar cookie with rainbow sprinkles from atop a stack.
“What about your father? Didn’t he want to come in and tell us all about his work?”
“He’s retired.”
“Well, he could come into the class and tell us about the work he retired from. What did your daddy used to do?”
“Do you really need to know that?” Mary said casually, without malice or discourtesy.
“I suppose not,” Mrs. Balfour said, taken back by the little girl’s level gaze. She was relieved to see the principal gesturing her over to speak to a clutch of parents on the other side of the gym.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“What goes around, comes around. Bet your ass on that.”
60
* * *
Dr. Jordan Roth, former master neurosurgeon of Huntsville, Alabama, was now Dr. Julian Hernandez running a pill mill in Plantation, Florida.
His identity, license and practice were all legitimate on paper. By all appearances he ran a clinic at the back end of a professional park that had seen better days. The park contained weight loss places and cosmetic dentists for the most part. His new practice catered to Hispanics, mostly Cuban. It was all bilingual and the doctor had become quite fluent himself.
But Cubans do not like to visit doctors and resist taking any drugs prescribed to them. Consequently, Cubans tend to live longer.
The doctor’s main clientele were shills sent to him with complaints of constant aches and chronic pains that required Schedule Three narcotics for relief. Jordan no longer exercised the invisible organ of his mind these days. Only his writing hand saw any action. The talented hand that once probed and repaired diseased and damaged brains now wrote prescriptions for a parade of deadbeats. These human debris resold these legal drugs for money to be used for the purchase of cheaper street drugs.
The outfit that kept Dr. Roth in his practice bought these drugs back from his patients. The outfit, some Jamaicans out of Miami, then retailed the prescription grade drugs at many times their value to users who liked their dope pure.
Just as these primo drugs were sold on, so was Jordan sold by the two men who held him. The two Russians from Tampa, the brute and the pop star, exchanged Dr. Roth for a truckload of stolen laptops. The Jamaican posse set him up here in the clinic. They owned him now. And they did indeed own him in every sense of the word.
The doctor was suspect number one in the murder of Marcia Roth. The case was a head scratcher for the Alabama state CID who took over the case. Mrs. Roth was found dead in the basement of their torched home with gunshot wounds to the head. The home was set ablaze, they theorized, to hide evidence of the crime. Following that, her husband, a renowned surgeon and local celebrity among the Huntsville elite, had disappeared from the face of the earth.
A further mystery was the whereabouts of the doctor’s granddaughter who had been living with them at the time of the murder and fire. The little girl’s father had also disappeared but was cleared of the arson and murder charges. Levon Cade was seen on security video from a Wendy’s drive-through in Muscle Shoals, an hour’s drive west, at the time of Marcia Roth’s death.
A pet theory among the detectives was that Cade abducted his daughter and took off for parts unknown. He and the Roths had been in a bitter custody battle for months. The educated guess was that Cade picked his kid up at school and headed west with her.
Extrapolating on that, maybe the good doctor lost his shit over his son-in-law’s actions. The book on Roth was that he could be a real stiff prick if he didn’t get his way. One OR nurse had summed it up.
“Surgeons.” Accompanied by an epic eye roll.
So, the doc and his wife got in a fight over it and the doc blew her brains out.
As a motive it stunk up the place. It was all they had. The doctor had not touched their bank accounts or retirement portfolios. He didn’t even take the family car. Just shot the missus, set the house on fire, and walked away into the ether. Maybe he wandered into the woods and blew his own brains out. Maybe some hunters or hikers would find his bones one fine day.
These theories were all nonsense, of course. But Jordan Roth could never prove that. Who would believe a crazy story about Russian hitmen who killed his wife but let him live? Certainly not a bunch of cops looking to hang a murder around the neck of a famous surgeon.
He really thought he’d sold himself into a life of criminal adventure with Karp and Nestor. It was only another chapter for his life. A dull one at that.
Now he wrote scrips four days a week and read mystery novels on the beach the rest of the days. He had a condo in Pompano and a girlfriend who was a waitress at the Ebb Tide. He drank more than he should. He was having frequent headaches. He didn’t sleep nights. Not well anyway.
When he did sleep he had a dream. It was of the weekend he drove Arlene to college for her freshman
year. In the dream he is driving along a scenic road lined with green under blue skies. Arlene is as young in the dream as she was on that day. But in the dream she wears a stained print hospital gown as she had the last time he saw her alive. She looks out the window and does not speak.
He tries to talk to her but she does not turn her head. He can never remember what he says to her, only that he feels increasingly frustrated. Finally he is shouting at her. She turns from the window to look at him without expression, without recognition. Arlene opens her mouth as if to say something. She reaches out to turn up the volume on the radio.
The music fills the car and drowns out his pleas for her to forgive him.
She turns away and looks out the window at the trees and clouds going by.
—End—
About the Author
Chuck Dixon is the prolific author of thousands of comic book scripts for Batman and Robin, the Punisher, Nightwing, Conan the Barbarian, Airboy, the Simpsons, Alien Legion and countless other titles.
Together with Graham Nolan, Chuck created the now iconic Batman villain Bane. He also wrote the international bestselling graphic novel adaptation of J.R.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
His first foray into prose, the SEAL Team 6 novels from Dynamite Entertainment, have become an ebook sensation. He currently scripts GI Joe Special Missions for IDW publishing as well as the Pellucidar weekly comic strip for ERB Inc.
He calls Florida home these days.
Visit the Dixonverse!
* * *
Other Works by Chuck Dixon
Bad Times: 1
Cannibal Gold
Bad Times: 2
Blood Red Tide
Bad Times: 3
Avenging Angels
Seal Team Six: The Novel
(#1 in ongoing hit series)
Seal Team Six 2
(#2 in ongoing hit series)
Seal Team Six 3
(#3 in ongoing hit series)
Seal Team Six 4
(#4 in ongoing hit series)
Winterworld
Batgirl/Robin Year One
Batman Versus Bane
Chuck Dixon, Levon's Trade
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