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2nd Edition

Dedicated To The Preservation Of Human Life

Prologue

One

The bright angry mansion glowed in its corner spotlights. Oh, how it burned just to look at it.

The killer forced a smile.

Time to put all that to rest.

There was an important decision to be made. In the Big Cheeze’s case, there were far too many options. His people had used knives, poison, guns, of course — all shapes and sizes. Burning, garrotting — two of his more creative bad girls had even used a snake — a sneaky snake to poison their sleazy, scuzzy victims with its venom.

Sneaky snake! Sneaky snake!

The killer loved it! The right choice was so very important. It had to be appropriate. To fit perfectly.

By the time the lights finally went out, the killer had been waiting three and a half hours. It wasn’t a problem. Hiding in the thick oleanders, watching the big corner bedroom with its magnificent ocean view. Listening to waves crash on the Cheeze’s semi-private beach. The killer had waited a long time to get here, to this exact spot. A lot of prep had gone into the Plan, and more — sometimes just convincing oneself can be the most difficult task of all. The killer gave them another thirty minutes to get comfy.

That was long enough.

Let the good times roll! Woo-hoo!

The killer opened a backpack and pulled out a pair of night-vision goggles, and a dry-twill climbing rope tied to something that looked like three giant fish hooks welded together. Their weight swung easily in the killer’s hand.

One, two,THREE skidoo!

Up the hooks sailed. Up, up, and over. The tiniest of sounds when they caught the stone balcony. The hooks were made of graphite composite. Silence was important too.

Softly, “Woo-hoo!”

The killer climbed. A little walk in the dark park. Leg over. Ups-a-daisy! In silently through the guest bedroom’s open French doors. Nothing like a little cross-ventilation.

The killer stopped. Awed at some of the rare documents hanging in the author’s hallway.

A Hofmann! A goddamned Hofmann!

The killer remembered hearing about this — one of the Cheeze’s favorites, some of Mark Hofmann’s best work, the forgery of an Emily Dickinson poem.

Oh-my-God!

On the wall next to it was a framed Manson. One of the famous California killer’s written instructions to Leslie Van Houten!

Then came a gold-framed page of drivel by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, a letter from Sirhan Sirhan, and alongside that, the Big Cheeze had an Oswald! A framed original photo, it looked like, of the supposed JFK killer posing with his rifle on one hip.

The killer moved silently to the end of the hall and stood in the bedroom doorway.

There he is! Asleep in bed with his beautiful dark-haired wife! Mr. Big Cheeze himself! Woo-hoo!

The killer nodded. It was time to give the world-famous Cheeze exactly what he deserved.

Two

“John, wake up!”

One of the world’s most famous authors was having a fantastic dream, a nightmare, really.

What a great story! As soon as I get up, I’ll write it down!

He tried to get the dream to continue.

Get little Toonie screaming! See how the killer would use the knife . . .

“John!” the Cheeze’s wife whispered, shaking him. “Honey, wake up!”

But her husband’s eyes stayed closed, and now he was smiling!

Amy was well aware of her own active imagination. Reading her husband’s first drafts for so many years had fired it and fed it oxygen until it burned bright enough for a shadow to become a serial killer, a monster — anything! She guarded against it. But she was absolutely certain of one thing: there was someone silhouetted in the middle of their bedroom doorway.

A quick flash of movement. A light in her eyes. A gasp — and then she did scream. A long piercing soprano that went on and on. Then stopped! Cut off, as if by a knife.

*

Twenty minutes later, the big house was silent. Ocean waves continued their indefatigable shhh-whoosh against the beach. Balcony curtains danced in the gentle offshore breeze.

The killer reached inside a snug leather jacket and pulled out something long and gold and exquisite.

Two maybe? Yes!

A final touch.

The killer put them where they were supposed to go . . . and then disappeared.

Three

Five Years Earlier — Colorado

Release!

Thhhk!

I pushed through the whippit gate with every pound of force available to my quads, an absolute full-range expansion of my thighs.

Clock on!

The mountain snow was hard up here. Choppy, icy, I didn’t care. At the moment I wasn’t even aware I was skiing in a major competition. The only thing that mattered was speed!

Yeah, speed baby.

The snow was mighty fast today.

Click—ffffft.

I hit the first gate exactly where I wanted, tagging the pole with my hip, making it wobble.

Click — fwww.

The second gate —

Uh, a shoulder! Okay, okay — it was that last mogul.

But I’ve got the rhythm now.

Click — fww, click — fww.

My edges catching it just right. And I’m flying —

*

“Ladies and gentlemen, Naomi Spider Soul is down to the last third of the course,” said the bald-headed announcer, a former Olympian. “She’s not only far ahead of leader Dani Johnson’s last run, but it looks like she’s about to set a new course record here at Aspen’s beautiful Ajax Mountain. She’s really moving, slicing through those gates perfectly. If she keeps this up she’ll have the gold. With the aid of our Computer-Graphics Analyzer behind me, you can see that Naomi’s knees are tracking straight down the mountain’s fall line. Cheryl?”

“I’m glad you said that, Bob,” his blonde Sports Illustrated swimsuit co-anchor cut in. The camera zoomed in on Naomi’s boots. “The camera shot we’re looking at does highlight one of the more controversial and contentious issues in this year’s Winter Olympics. Three weeks ago Spider Soul won the right to modify her standard team uniform — limited, as our viewers may have heard, to the area below her knees. I personally think it’s very daring of her. I love that purple, black, and yellow webbing spreading upward from her ski boots. And other Olympians have followed, personalizing their outfits too. Take Lori Tynsmacher — Ahhh!”

“Look’s like she’s caught an edge, Cheryl!”

“Yes,” Cheryl gasped. “Her left boot has come halfway out of her binding, yet she’s somehow managing to stay on her skis! How is she doing that?” Cheryl shook her head, “She’s through the next gate!”

A digital display flashed fluctuating red numbers directly over Bob and Cheryl’s heads. “It’s too bad, Bob. At that speed, she’s got to go down.”

“Cher-Cheryl — she-she’s — look at that! She’s back in her binding! She somehow managed to stay up and step back in! Naomi Spider Soul truly does have eight legs. The woman is amazing! She’s still on her skis!”

“It’s — incredible!” the female commentator agreed. “Her time is exceptional, Bob! She’s ahead of the course record by two full seconds.”

“Oh no!” Bob shouted. “Her — left binding has — it’s disintegrating! Look, there at the corner shot. The screws are ripping out. That ski — is — gone!”

Cheryl cringed, gasped, “Somehow — I don’t know how — she’s still up! She’s skiing on one ski! Look, in the closeup there. She’s got her left boot resting on the edge of her right ski as she made that last gate. And she’s only got four more gates to go!”

“Ohh!” Bob said. “Down to three — look-at-her-fly! Two gates! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

*

And that’s when a little three-by-five, rock-studded patch of ice caught my remaining ski, ending my life as I knew it.

They say when you die, your life passes before your eyes. That didn’t happen to me. All I remember is a lot of snow coming right at my face. And for one excruciatingly long, drawn-out moment, my right leg in a helluva lot of pain.

Five Years Later

Florida

1

The thin angry scar that wandered down my right knee to my shin always burned first, a red line against my tanning skin. I don’t like it, but it’s a good warning as to how much UV the rest of me can take. Funny thing about life, and sunburns, you never know for sure how much time you’ve got left.

It was hot that Autumn day, five years after my little “accident,” as the sports magazines liked to call it, just two years before The Big One would hit New York. My wing-girl Xue Sang and I were in a beautiful place: salty air, sandy beach, the southeast Florida coast. Traditionally, Xue is pronounced “Shoe,” but she prefers the way I say it: “Shooee.”

“This is so great,” Xue laughed, turning the page of the latest Professor Of Weird thriller she was reading.

“Good one?”

Xue loves novels. She reads a lot of them.

“Yup.”

“How about dinner at the Parrot tonight?” I asked.

“Good call, Stretch.”

I laughed. Such a silly nickname Xue thought up for me. No one else uses it. At five-seven I’m only an inch taller than she is.

We were relaxed, at peace with the world, being slathered with plenty of lotion all over our reasonably decent bodies by some of the best-looking male slatherers we’d ever seen. Bagging a few rays, me in my new red, white and blue one-piece; Xue in her bright green bikini which looked just great against her mid-length dark Asian hair.

They don’t call me Spider Soul any more, and I don’t ski professionally. A lot of pain, physical therapy, and study later, I work for the government.

What the heck is an Olympic skier doing with the Feebees? Well, my accident made me kind of a poster-girl for courage. It put my face on a lot of magazine covers (with a picture of me in a wheelchair). But I wasn’t about to sign up to do underwear ads like Nancy Hogshead or David Beckham. I needed something I could get my head into, as much as my body. So I went back to school — online at George Washington University, at first; when I could move around on crutches — on campus. The Bureau was right down the street.

It used to be the only way into the FBI was by first becoming a lawyer or an accountant. That’s no longer true. An undergrad degree in psychology followed by a masters in criminology got me in. It was a lot of work but worth it.

When you join the Bureau, they change your name from Ms. to Agent. Mine is FBI Special Agent Naomi Soul, the psychological profiler half of one of the all-female multi-cultural teams the DC Field Office hired under the previous president’s EE Mandate — Efforting Equality. Hiring enough women of various ethnicities to balance out the Bureau’s male Catholic-Protestant majority. My best bud Xue never cared how we got in, only that we got in. It would have bothered me, but I knew how good our test scores were.

“Ahhhh —” Xue sighed pleasantly, as we flipped onto our fronts. I ran a hand back behind me, pulling my short brown hair from my face, while someone poured a nice dollop of cool lotion across my shoulders.

Five days ago we’d broken a fantastically vicious bi-coastal carjacking ring out of Mexico that used explosive devices to coerce people from their luxury cars. One of the attacks had resulted in a kidnapping — a mother and her baby daughter. We got them back unharmed, and now forty-seven perps were in the slammer and thirteen more were dead. The paperwork was in, the case was closed. And we had this last glorious vacation day in the sun.

Big Kahuna Bruce and Tiny Tim (completely misnamed) spread more lotion across our backs.

Fantastic!

I was wondering if these big beautiful boys would have been treating us so well if they knew we were federal cops, when my phone rang. Barked actually. Whenever I’m away from home, I like to switch my ring over to a recording of my English bulldog Winston. It helps deal with missing him so much.

Ten seconds after I answered, I knew our vacation was over. But the voice on the phone gave me no warning this was to be the start of such a personal tragedy, the most disheartening of my career.

2

“Here?” Xue asked. “This one?” peering at a stone mailbox inside a tall hedgerow along Ocean Boulevard.

She slowed our little rented Ford Fiesta, as I checked the address I had in my cell phone.

“I — I think so —”

But as soon as we pulled in view of the drive, I knew we were in the right place.

It was a white castle, and not the hamburger variety. A huge oceanfront mansion set way back on a couple of acres of sloping green perfectly manicured lawn. Three stuccoed stories fronted by a circular palm-lined drive already filled with police cars — marked and unmarked, two ambulances, and cops stringing yellow police tape across the bushes and trees. Forensic techs were walking the grounds.

We held our FBI wallets out the windows for the two Jupiter Police uniforms who were protecting the scene, then pulled around to the right by the massive ten car garage.

We’d been ordered here by our boss Madeline Wu, who’d been commanded by FBI Director Charles Line to get some Washington eyes on site. Madeline had told us the victim was an exceptionally famous author known in the book business as the Big Cheeze.

The entire mainstream media spelled it like that: Cheeze. Some blog writer had first used a Z in the author’s name, claiming she liked the way it dragged out the eeeze, and it stuck.

The Cheeze was everywhere — young adult books, kids books, mysteries, and especially thrillers — according to Forbes online — to the tune of more than 400 million dollars a year. He sold more novels than any ten best-selling authors put together. If there was one author clogging the arteries of the New York Times best-seller lists it was the Cheeze.

The Director had acted as a consultant on two of his novels. Director Line and the Cheeze were friends. Now the Cheeze was dead. He and his wife killed by persons unknown, sometime before the maid had discovered them at eight this morning. No one had yet determined the cause of death.

Which was odd.

Xue and I would have to tread softly. No federal laws had been broken, no state lines had been crossed. As far as anyone could tell, the crime had nothing to do with kidnapping or terrorism or national security. With only a pair of murders at a single location, the FBI wouldn’t consider it our jurisdiction. Xue and I were here only as observers.

3

The FBI had this really great system for acquiring and organizing crime data we called LINKS. Latent Investigatory National Knowledge System. Each case had its own name, and its own numerical ID.

Before we got out of the car, I turned to Xue. “What should we call this one?”

We were initiating the system through my phone.

“Hmm,” she thought a moment. “Big Cheeze?”

“Works for me.”

I chose, “LEVEL 2 — ASSESSMENT,” verbally, from the drop-down menu, “INITIATOR: Madeline Wu,” and pressed START.

The system paused a moment, then assigned our reference ID. I showed Xue: LINKS DATA SOURCES. ENTER CODE: 14732.

Xue spoke the code into her phone, hit ENTER, and the computer began uploading our video and audio streams.

“Photo,” I said as we made our way through the police chaos.

Nowadays we agents have it pretty easy. We used to have to make movies and take still shots because movie camera resolution wasn’t good enough. I’ve seen those old crime scene pencil drawings, too. Some of them were pretty rough. Our phones have precise built-in laser measurement, so the computer puts together enough 3D that sketching is a thing of the past.

As Xue and I climbed the grand staircase, the sound of a heavy zipper cut through the chemical-laden air. We were late. We hurried down the hall past a rogues gallery of crime memorabilia.

“Photo,” I said to my phone as we stepped past another Jupiter uniform at the door to the master suite, and the famous face that had graced the backs of so many millions of novels disappeared into black rubberized plastic.

Just before the body disappeared I’d seen a word, written in red across the Cheeze’s stomach:

I checked the wife’s belly. Except for the trailing number, it was the same:

“Does the killer see himself as an artist?” I wondered aloud.

“Michelangelo was more than a sculptor and a painter,” Xue said, “he was a poet.”

“I didn’t know that,” said one of the detectives standing back from the big bed.

We showed our credentials to a stocky Jupiter Detective in a Hawaiian shirt who introduced himself as O’Malley, and his Latino partner Detective Ray.

A two-man paramedic team lifted the wife’s feet and shoulders, and a third, a woman, pushed a second body bag beneath the female corpse’s hips.

Right then, something gold flashed in the afternoon sun. From between her legs.

“What’s that?” I leaned in close to O’Malley and pointed.

“Hold it!” O’Malley said, squinting, following my finger.

“There’s something, uh — Ehnt-eh,” he cleared his throat, “— up there. See what that is.”

The taller paramedic, a bruising fireman type, lowered the female corpse’s feet back onto the bed and stepped away, a squeamish look on his face.

The female paramedic pushed past him. Grabbed the body’s right foot and pulled the wife’s legs apart.

It was bright gold, gleaming in the overhead lights. The object, whatever it was, was slowly growing larger, longer, being forced out of her, working its way out of her anus.

The female paramedic, with a gloved hand, reached between the woman’s legs and gingerly slid it out. Held it up to the light, turning it this way and that.

“A gold fountain pen?” Xue said.

“An expensive gold fountain pen.” To my unfamiliar eye.

“Very expensive,” O’Malley agreed.

“Do you think it still writes?” Xue asked.

“You try it,” O’Malley coughed.

Xue’s head snapped back to the corpse’s nether regions.

“What’s that stuff?”

Contrasting against the black rubber bag beneath her, a white fluid was flowing out of the female corpse, from the same orifice the pen had plugged up.

“I don’t know,” said the ME, “but it doesn’t look like anything organic to the human body.”

Organic?

“What do you think, Doc?” O’Malley asked. “Open the other bag back up?”

The ME nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

He stepped against the bed and pulled the heavy-duty zipper down. Spread the bag. Fished out a foot, pulling the Big Cheeze’s bony leg to one side. When he scooped the Cheeze’s genitals out of the way, barely visible, up between the Cheeze’s cheeks, was what had to be the tail of another gold pen.

The ME nodded to himself. Duplicating the female paramedic’s delicate maneuver, he wiggled another expensive pen out of the Big Cheeze’s butt. More white fluid followed.

“Do you think the perp’s trying to make a statement?” O’Malley asked.

Xue cleared her throat.

I grimaced. Xue can be a little — okay, a lot — irreverent at times.

But this time she was right on the money.

She shrugged. “Live by the pen . . . die by it too?”

“Yeeeaahh!” screeched the female paramedic who’d handled the woman’s feet.

The male paramedics were backing up. They were out of the way. O’Malley, Xue, and I already had our sidearms out, pointing between the female corpse’s legs.

4

A wedge-shaped head was exiting the woman’s anus, licking at the white fluid. The moment the snake had removed itself fully from the woman’s body, it became clear what kind it was. I’m no snake expert but it sure looked like a rattlesnake to me. The moment it cleared the woman’s butt, it coiled on the bed between her knees. Its tail lifted and began the familiar high-speed rattle.

We’d all managed to back up far enough to clear the snake’s striking range — except the female paramedic who seemed frozen in place, a deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes, less than two feet from the coiling snake. The rattler was looking right at her.

That’s when things really got out of control. A second snake’s head appeared, this one from the Big Cheeze’s butt, and proceeded to glide out onto the bed between the Cheeze’s legs. But it wasn’t content to stay with the Cheeze. It slithered over the author’s kneecap and joined its friend between the female corpse’s legs.

The female paramedic began to scream. The two snakes curled around each other. The other paramedics were yelling. The ME was backing away. Detective Ray, the local cop at the bedroom door, and another uniformed officer drew their weapons.

“Just back up slowly,” I said in a gentle voice to the screaming paramedic, trying to calm her down. “Stop screaming at the snakes.”

She wasn’t listening. Instead of slowly moving away, she began a kind of jog in place, arms wrapped around her eyes, screaming louder than ever.

The snakes had had enough. They struck at exactly the same time.

Six sidearms fired in unison. BAM! . . . not just once either . . . bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam! I don’t know who got what, but the two anvil-shaped heads exploded, and the snake bodies dropped in mid-air.

Smoke drifted upward. A lot of smoke.

The female paramedic kept screaming.

The ME went over and gently slapped her face.

She stopped.

He put an arm around her and pulled her to his shoulder. “There-there. Snakes all gone.”

We officers of the law grinned at each other. We let out long breaths. With all the PC correctness of movie snakes, environmentalism, notices that No Animals Were Harmed In The Making Of This Film, it’s not every day you get to shoot a couple of snakes in a bedroom and feel good about it. Heroic, even.

“Okay,” O’Malley said. “Who wants to check and see if there are any more in there?”

5

We’d made a mess of the crime scene. Plaster on the floor, bullets in the walls, through the walls. What were we supposed to do? We had to save the woman’s life.

O’Malley and Ray agreed to copy us with anything else they found. The ME agreed to email us a copy of the autopsy report.

Xue and I began a walking video of the whole mansion. I got a close-up shot of some tiny wear marks on the guest bedroom balcony rail.

“Possible ingress,” I recorded.

Xue shrugged, then pointed them out to O’Malley.

We walked back to the beach. The main trail was bordered on either side by a jungle of sea grapes and ficuses, agaves and Boston ferns. Ocean waves were slamming into the shore. The surf was picking up. There were white caps on the wave tops.

“Think the killer came this way?” I asked.

“Maybe, but it looks like any tracks in the sand would have been blown away.”

Halfway back to the house we stopped.

“Pool area,” Xue said into her phone, tagging three photos.

“What do you think?” I asked.

She shook her head, pulled in her lips. “Not much to go on. The snakes maybe. The chemical analysis of the victims at autopsy.”

“What do you think those numbers on the bodies mean?” I asked. “And why Michelangelo?”

Xue pulled up the images she’d shot on her phone, zoomed in on the numbers: 62:4, 9:6. “I don’t know.”

A battalion of media people were congregating outside the property.

We were on our way back to the car, when the uniforms let through a very upset-looking man in a dark-gray business suit. He was met halfway back to the house by Detective Ray. Xue and I joined them.

The man handed us business cards:

There was a phone number printed on the back, as if handwritten.

Curtis May was slim, with a fringe of curly dark hair circling a shiny bald pate, and a nose like a Roman emperor.

“What happened? What happened?” he asked.

Ray and O’Malley sat May down on a short wall circling one of the queen palms. While Xue and I listened in, O’Malley told May the Cheeze and his wife were dead.

“Dammit! Amy and John were my friends,” May said, eyes tearing up. My very good friends. We had dinner together just two weeks ago.” Tears rolled down May’s face. “How-how did they die?”

“We don’t know exactly, Mr. May,” O’Malley said. “We’re working on it. Did you handle business for the, er — uh, John and Amy?”

“No — that’s okay — we-we all called him the Cheeze. Yes, there was a big movie deal in the works for him — and a bidding war. What a loss to the literary world!”

I caught O’Malley’s eye. He nodded.

“How did you hear about the murder, Mr. May?” I asked.

“On the radio they said there were unconfirmed reports that a well-known author had been found dead in his Jupiter beach home. It’s on every station. They weren’t giving out details. I came over to see, hoping I was wrong.”

“Your office is in Miami?” Ray asked.

“We’re in New York City.” May wiped the back of a hand across his eyes.

“What are you doing in Florida?” Xue asked.

“I came down to discuss the movie deal with John. We had a meeting scheduled for this afternoon.”

“Where were you last night, Mr. May, after midnight?”

“Me? In my hotel room.”

We all stared at him, four cops giving him the dead-eye, just waiting.

“I didn’t kill them!” May shouted. “I-I would never — call the damn front desk at the Breakers if you don’t believe me! I ordered a-a late dinner in my room.”

Curtis May was a repeater. The stuttering didn’t quite fit how upset he was, though. It was just a little off. It felt forced to me.

“You’ll be in town for a couple of days?” O’Malley asked.

“I w-would have been. I don’t know, now.”

“I’d prefer that you stick around for a day or two. Please contact me before you leave the state.”

May nodded grimly.

O’Malley handed May his card. A few minutes later Xue and I drove away.

6

There’s a nice little place just up Ocean Boulevard from our hotel called the Hungry Parrot, with good seafood and a dance floor. We called ahead and, when we arrived at seven, they got us a good table. We ordered drinks and dinner. All Xue and I could talk about were the murders. By now our boss Madeline had seen our LINKS data in Washington, and probably Director Line had too.

I took a sip of my Coke.

“I wonder who had it in for the Cheeze and his wife. I mean, who would want to kill an author, even a famous one?”

Xue took a sip of Heineken, one of her favorites, and held up a coconut encrusted shrimp, dripping with sweet-and-sour sauce, shook her head.

“No telling. Not until the locals interview their friends and family.”

She bit the shrimp in half.

“It’s always the ones you love.”

“I hate that statistic,” I said. “I felt bad for that literary agent, Curtis May. He seemed pretty broken up. But by the end of our conversation, didn’t something feel just a little bit off to you?”

“You’d be a bit off if your multimillion dollar account just got killed. Unless, of course, he was involved with their deaths. But, yeah, he was a little off. I know what you mean.”

What an ending to our vacation.

As we finished our dinners, Big Kahuna Bruce and Tiny Tim arrived. The Parrot had a live band. We hit the dance floor.

Tim was flirting pretty hard with Xue, doing the chicken walk around her, rubbing her back with his as he went by.

She was having a great time, getting a lot of looks from other guys on the floor in her summery green dress cut to mid thigh. Xue looks good in green.

Bruce moved pretty well for a big guy; he had his eye on me.

A dance or two was okay, a couple of drinks. I wasn’t interested in any more than that.

While the band took a break. I made a call and took a couple of minutes to check on my main man.

“Hello, sweetie!” said my mom’s voice.

“Just calling to see how Winnie is.”

“Oh, Winnie’s fine, but he misses you. Hold on. Winston?”

I heard a snuffling sound, then a couple of seconds later, a muffled kind of slobber in my ear.

“Winnie? Is that you buddy?”

“Mruff!”

“Are you being good for Mom?”

Slobber.

“Good boy. Let me talk to Mom.”

“Are you having fun?” Mom asked.

“It’s been great. We got called in on a local case this afternoon, but —”

“On your vacation? What is wrong with those people?”

“It’s okay, it’s something for the Director. We’re coming home tomorrow just like we planned.”

“Was it bad?”

“They always are. I’ll tell you about it when I get back.”

“What’s that noise? It sounds like guitars.”

“Xue and I are at a restaurant. It’s one of the guys in the band, tuning up, but we’re making an early night of it.”

I caught Tim and Bruce’s frowning faces. Xue didn’t look all that thrilled either. I had more than enough men in my life — three amazing men, though I didn’t see them much and didn’t have enough time for any of them. The Bureau kept me far too busy.

“Okay, darling. See you tomorrow,” Mom said.

“Love you,” I said. “Good night.”

About an hour later, against the vociferous protests of our male companions, Xue and I headed back to our hotel, alone. We had an early flight in the morning.

7

The killer known as Michelangelo came in dead quiet — idling. The wheels coasted to a stop on the damp sand. The beach was absolutely deserted. It was that time of night. Overhead, palm fronds waved in the offshore breeze.

“Cut the lights, cut the engine. Here we go!” whispered Michelangelo and stepped out of the vehicle, making footprints that would wash away by morning in the rising tide.

From the back seat, the killer pulled out the tools required to execute the next step in the very ingenious plan.

“Time to get a little ca-razy! Duct tape, a little uniquely compounded aerosol, and . . .” with a little struggle, “. . .  something ver-r-r-ry special!”

A two-wheeled appliance cart, complete with straps.

“Time to go to work! Woo-hoo!”

*

Fifteen minutes later the Prince slid in sloppily through the open door.

He doesn’t look this heavy, the killer thought.

The Prince let out a solid “Oof,” as he flopped back into the passenger seat.

“There, there,” the killer said, fastening the Prince’s seatbelt. “It’ll all be over in another moment or two.”

Slamming the door, the killer ran eagerly around to the other side.

“Just one more little thing; it’ll take only a second —”

The killer removed something from an inside pocket and made a little jab, sucked up a little ink.

“Ow!” the Prince muttered.

The pain seemed to have brought him slightly out of his stupor.

“Just lay your head back and relax,” the killer said softly, holding the Prince’s head in place. “Signatures are so very important! Woo-hoo!”

Then, when everything looked just right, the killer drove off the beach.

As soon as they were up to a nice steady cruising speed right down the middle of the highway, the killer reached over, clipped something gold and shiny to the Prince’s front pocket, popped the seatbelt and popped the door.

Wind whooshed as the Prince’s weight forced the door wider. The cool breeze seemed to bring the best-selling author around. His eyes cracked open.

“Wha?”

“Nothing to worry about Princie-poo, just a little fresh air — one little step now . . . there we go,” giving the literary genius a shove toward the night beyond.

But with surprising strength the Prince suddenly fought back, flailing wildly against the door frame.

He was too drugged out and weak, the killer too strong.

“There we go . . . Princie!”

And with a nice solid shove (a SCREAM on the part of the Prince), he fell outward into the night. The vehicle wobbled dangerously, but the killer straightened it out. The door closed on its own.

The killer couldn’t see exactly where on the road the Prince hit, but at this speed, who cared? Things were moving along. Right on schedule.

8

“Interesting vacation,” Xue said.

Our plane pushed back from the gate, sat a moment, then turned and made its way for the takeoff area. We were on our way home, buckled into our seats on a soon-to-be-northbound Delta 747.

“I had a great time,” I agreed.

Xue had dark circles under her eyes.

“Are you sure you didn’t let Tiny Tim sneak back to your room last night? You look a little beat.”

Xue laughed. “Nope. Just couldn’t sleep after that whole snake thing. I was up half the night, reading the end of that Prince of Darkness thriller.”

“That whole snake thing was pretty disgusting,” I said.

“No pun intended.” Xue laughed.

“What? Ewwww, gross!”

“The Cheeze murders are a strange and bewildering case,” Xue said. “But not for us. For the Jupiter Police.”

“Never a dull moment, though . . .” I said, as we grinned at each other and bumped fists, then in unison, “. . . in the F - B - I!”

It was our little thing. We’d been doing it since we first became roomies, during our training at Quantico. Working for the FBI was a really great job, often fascinating, and sometimes, like yesterday, horrifying, sad, and exciting.

The engines revved. The plane accelerated down the runway, then suddenly the breaks squealed. The plane slowed, and stopped.

“Mechanical problems?” Xue asked.

I shrugged, leaning down to see through the window what was going on.

One of the older flight attendants, a woman with short dark hair rushed down the aisle looking at us.

She leaned over and whispered, “Are you women with the FBI?”

We nodded. “Yes ma’am,” I said.

“Please come with me.”

We followed her to the front galley where a second flight attendant handed me a telephone.

“Hello?” I said.

“Agent Soul?”

“Yes, ma’am?” I felt my eyebrows arch up my forehead. “Madeline,” I mouthed silently to Xue.

Madeline Wu, our boss.

“You’re getting off that plane, right now,” Madeline said. “We’ve got another murder the Director wants you to look into.”

“Here in Miami, ma’am?”

“No, this one is on the other side of Florida, the West Coast. Another famous author has been killed.”

“Another author,” I mouthed at Xue.

Her eyebrows rose to match mine.

“Assume it’s related,” Madeline said. “We may end up sharing jurisdiction with the locals, but for now this will remain a level two assessment. You’re still to observe only.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’ll be met in a couple of minutes at the plane.”

The call went dead.

“Another author’s been murdered?” Xue asked.

“I guess so.”

A flight attendant popped the door. A portable staircase was pushed against the plane.

We ran down the steps. If things hadn’t been so serious, I would have felt a bit like the Queen, tempted to raise a hand and give the royal wave. But a Bureau town car screeched to a halt at the bottom of the stairs, spoiling my fantasy.

Fifteen minutes later we were in a state police chopper, headed west across the Florida Everglades.


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