Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
There were no sirens until he reached the Range Rover. By itself, gunfire alone, even inside the city limits, was not a cause for an immediate police response in Florida. He hooked a left off the lot and passed a pair of Tampa police cars whirling lights as he drove to the on-ramp for I-4 East.
He didn’t stop until he saw the first signs for Disneyworld. That meant traffic and delays ahead. He pulled off and passed a few fast food joints and convenience stores until he found a gas station with an exterior men’s room. He washed the blood from his hands and face in the sink and changed from his flannel shirt into a hoodie from a Kohl’s bag. He took the flannel shirt with him in the bag.
Isaac ate breakfast at a Waffle House where he was advised that the Disney traffic usually died down a little after eleven. He grabbed a coffee to go and waited in the Range Rover until the eastbound lanes lightened up.
At long range parking at Orlando International he took the Florida plates from a car without a layer of dust on it. He waited until he was past the city of Orlando and had hooked back west toward Apopka before switching the plates.
He listened to a news and talk station on the radio the whole way. No mention of a triple homicide in Tampa. Three dead white guys wasn’t worthy of breaking news these days.
It was evening by the time he turned the Rover onto 10 West for Huntsville.
Joe Bob Wiley looked twenty years older than the last time Isaac had seen him. The man sat on the edge of the great room sofa he’d been sleeping on. Slept in his clothes. For days maybe. The house smelled of fried food and stale beer.
“Wife left me. I told her to but I think she wanted to go. She won’t be back now, that’s for sure,” he said, rubbing the bristles on his face.
“You understand, this is the kind of news I had to tell you face to face,” Isaac said.
“I know. I know that. Thank you.”
The men listened to the sounds of geese flying over the house for the lake. Joe Bob sat forward studying the carpet. Isaac sipped the beer that the boss had insisted he help himself to.
“Is there any chance?” Joe Bob looked up, eyes red and tired.
Isaac shook his head.
“Can’t even have a funeral,” Joe Bob said.
“I’d give that time. The police are still putting it all together.”
They listened to the quiet a while. Isaac set down the half empty bottle on a counter and stepped away from it.
“I owe you some money,” Joe Bob said standing.
“No you don’t. I didn’t deliver.”
“To hell with that. I pay my bills.”
Joe Bob left the room and came back with a checkbook, one of those big corporate books. He leaned on the counter and wrote it out in a shaking hand. Isaac stood watching him tear the check from the book ever so carefully. He handed the check to Isaac. Fifty thousand.
“Shit, you had expenses, right?” Joe Bob said. He tried to tug the check from Isaac’s hand. Isaac yanked it back, folded it, stuck it in his shirt pocket.
“I covered them. Consider this my severance. We’re even.”
“You’re not coming back to work for me?” Joe Bob said. He looked relieved when Isaac shook his head.
“I can’t stay here. I kicked something over down there. They won’t let it rest.”
“What about me? They said they’d come back.”
“That’s just talk. They have their own problems. You can even put that away,” Isaac said. He nodded toward the shotgun leaning on the sofa.
“Well, okay then,” Joe Bob said. His right hand fluttered at his side. Isaac did not extend his own.
Isaac walked alone to the Range Rover past the empty dog run. He drove for the interstate and Mississippi.
He stopped twice for gas and once for Wendy’s drive-through. He got off the highway in Florence to pull up to a Walmart just long enough to stuff the endorsed check from Joe Bob into a Salvation Army pot.
An anonymous call led Florida state police to Trevor Lee Manklin (AKA ‘Dutch’) and Douglas Raymond Ziemba (AKA ‘Dougie’) who were both in traction at Haley Veterans. Manklin suffered from multiple fractures to his legs and a split pelvic bone. Ziemba had several crushed vertebrae and broken ribs.
Blame the sweet, sweet painkillers or just being too damned tired and pissed off, the two bikers cooperated.
The next day cadaver dogs discovered the body of a Caucasian female aged eighteen to twenty-five in a grave dug for her in the scrub pines around Cotton Lake. She was packed in quicklime to hide her scent. No coyotes had dug her up.
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.
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.