Matt Royal Mystery - 03 - Blood Island (34 page)

I stood beside jock in the bell house atop the steeple of the Lakeside
Methodist Church. A German made Heckler-Koch PSG-1 sniper rifle
rested on a tripod placed on the edge of the half wall that surrounded the
small space. The bells weren't used anymore, and loudspeakers placed
around the room played a recording of somebody else's bells clanging the
faithful to worship. The din made normal conversation impossible.

We had rearranged our forces to cover the big downtown churches.
Orlando had once been called the City of Churches, and almost every corner along Rosalind and Magnolia avenues boasted a house of worship.

It all made sense. If Simmermon was going to blow up a church, why
not take out his spiritual nemesis in the bargain? He and Tarlington had
struggled against each other for the allegiance of the faithful. In Simmermon's crazed mind, Tarlington was the anti-Christ and had to be killed
for the good of the faith.

So we had climbed the stairs to the steeple to do a job I had no stomach for. Yet, here I was, ready to kill a boy who had been taken in by a
crazed charlatan.

I held a pair of high-powered Zeiss binoculars to my eyes, scanning
the crowd below. Other sniper pairs, a shooter and a spotter, were scattered about the area. The first one to catch sight of the bomber was to take
him out. I hoped none of the snipers would mistakenly take out an innocent person, but these guys were well trained, among the best in the world,
and I thought we'd be okay.

The church was large, and had been built when Orlando was a much
smaller city. Office buildings and retail outlets now crowded in on either
side, but the large square in front of the church was intact. It was a gath ering place for the faithful and the hangers-on, a place to see and be seen
on Sunday mornings.

The only entrance the church used for Sunday services was the front
door. This was a tradition dating back many decades. It forced the members to mingle on their way to church. It also meant that the bomber would
have to come across the square.

If Fats had given us the wrong information, a lot ofpeople were going
to die in the next few minutes, including Jock and me. We had volunteered
for the bell tower, since it was our decision to place our resources here. If
we were wrong, another church would die this day, and if we were right
and let the bomber get by, we would die with this church.

It was nearing the nine o'clock hour. The sun was hot, shining from
an almost cloudless sky. The water of the nearby lake was flat, and the tall
buildings surrounding it reflected off its surface. The crowd in the square
was getting bigger as people stopped to chat with one another.

The radio receiver plugged into my ear buzzed with static. I mentally tuned it out, but then I heard Logan's voice. "Matt, I saw somebody
who could be our target," he said. "He's standing almost in the middle of
the square. He's alone, wearing a beige suit. Can you see him?"

Logan was moving about the crowd, a roving spotter on the lookout
for the bomber. We were all wired into a tactical radio network, so that
when one of us spoke, all the members of our team could hear.

I scanned the crowd with the binoculars. Jock put his eye to the
Hendsoldt scope fastened to the top of the rifle. He had it set for 100
meters, a distance that was a little longer than a football field.

I saw the figure Logan was talking about. I looked closely, and I knew
Jock's scope gave him a closer look than I could get. I wasn't sure if this
was our guy.

Jock removed his eye from the scope and said into my ear, "Not him.
This guy is in his thirties."

"You sure?"

"Yes. I'm about to kill somebody's son. I've got to be sure."

"Whoever he is, jock," I said, "he's not the son his parents knew.
He's been brainwashed. He's a robot."

Jock nodded, but I knew he didn't believe me. He was going to do
what he had to do, but it didn't sit well with him.

I spoke into the mic. "It's not him, Logan. Keep a sharp lookout."

"Ten-four," came the reply.

Jock was scanning die square with his eye to the scope. "There," he
said. "On the edge of the crowd, over by the lake. Take a look."

I turned the binoculars to where Jock was pointing. This could be the
guy. He was in a beige suit, blue tie, and he was about the right age. His
coat was unbuttoned. If I gave jock the word, this was a dead man. What
if I was wrong?

"Steady," I said. "Let's be sure."

"He's moving," said Jock.

The man was striding across the square, not looking to either side,
headed for the front door of the sanctuary. A gust of wind came off the
lake. For just a second, it lifted his coat. I saw the vest. "Do it," I said.

The rifle recoiled at the instant I heard the shot. I held the binoculars to my eyes, watching the boy in the beige suit. Time slowed to a crawl,
like in a movie run in slow motion. The back of his head blew out from the
force of the bullet entering his brain. Bone and tissue splattered the sunwashed bricks of the square. He dropped with no effort to catch himself.
He was dead before he hit the ground. Jock had drilled him through the
forehead with a 7.62-millimeter round.

The sound of the rifle caused panic in the square. People were looking around for the origin of the blast. Some dropped to their stomachs,
others simply began running. Several people closest to our target were
standing over the body, frozen, looks of horror straining their facial features. I saw Logan, moving at a dead run, cross the square. He reached
the body, squatted beside it, pulled the coat back, looked up at us and
pumped his arm in a victory gesture. His voice came over my earpiece.
"Got the bastard, Jock. You got the crazy bastard."

Longboat Key is a place to heal the soul. The summer brings a quiet time
for the year-round islanders. The snowbirds are back in the north, the
tourists are gone, and the key slows to a pace that could be considered
glacial.

A month had gone by since the death of a young man on a sun-swept
church square in the beautiful city of Orlando. The headlines told of a
plot to assassinate the mayor of Orlando, who attended the church, and of
a police sniper who killed the would-be assassin. There was nothing about
bombers or crazed religious freaks or, for that matter, whores.

The Heaven Can't Wait Spas in several cities were quietly closed
down, and the working girls told to leave town. The Reverend Robert
William Simmermon was locked in a small cell in a mental institution, and
would probably spend the rest of his life there.

Michelle Browne was cooperating with law enforcement, helping
them piece together the empire and find the girls who wanted to go home.
Most didn't. They liked being whores, and were looking for other highclass venues in which to ply their trade.

Michelle's goons, Charlie Calhoun and Martin Holcomb, were being
held on assault and battery charges and would spend some time as guests
of the state of Florida.

The girls taken by the Army from Blood Island were drying out in
treatment centers in South Florida and would be given the opportunity to
rejoin their families. Paul Galls told me that most of the families were so
dysfunctional that the girls didn't want anything to do with them. Social
Service agencies were being brought in to help the young women.

The Key West bomber would probably spend the next twenty or so years in a federal penitentiary. He had been brainwashed, but he wasn't
crazy. Hopefully, by the time he got out of prison, he would have shed his
demons.

Fats was going to be in jail for the rest of his life. His wounds had
been treated, and he was spending some quality time in the Seminole
County jail, a federal prisoner awaiting trial. He kept trying to tell anyone
who would listen that a crazed lawyer from Longboat Key had stabbed
him, but the FBI assured the reporters that Fats had been hurt in an altercation with a drug dealer.

Jock Algren was back in Houston, playing golf and trying to convince
his agency that he really was retired. He reported that the bosses kept nodding in understanding, but he was sure he'd get another call in the future.

Me? Aw, hell, I was doing okay. Peggy Timmons was visiting, with
her dad's blessing. She had adopted me as a kind of uncle, and I liked the
role.

She was a tough gal, and wouldn't let her ordeal on Blood Island ruin
her life. She had arranged to reenter the University of Georgia in the fall,
and had plans to follow her dad to medical school. She missed Laura, as
did I. It was good to have someone I could talk to about her. I was learning a lot about the life Laura had as a Timmons, and I was glad to know
that it had been a good one.

My boat was still in Key West, watched over by the Coast Guard.
Logan and I were going to get it the following week. We'd take our time getting back to Longboat Key. The tarpon were running in Boca Grande Pass,
and we meant to bag our share. We planned to stay over a few days on
Sanibel Island and find out what those people did for fun. I'd heard there
was a new restaurant there, named for a fictional character conjured up by
one of the local islanders. The food was reportedly outstanding.

So, on a tropical evening in early June, Logan and Peggy and I sat on
the patio of Cafe on the Bay, enjoying a dinner of fresh seafood and white
wine. Debbie was tending bar at Moore's and hadn't been able to join us.
We'd stop by for a nightcap later. Peggy had become quite fond of her, and
we all appreciated Debbie's help in rooting out what we had come to think
of as pure evil.

A freshening breeze blew off the Gulf, bringing the smell of the sea, and rustling the branches of the banyan trees under which we sat. The
lights on the patio were subdued, and Peggy's face was in shadow. She was
beautiful, and, I knew, tough as nails.

"What I don't understand, Peggy," said Logan, "is how you got tied
up with that bunch of nuts in the first place."

"I'm not sure either, Logan," said Peggy. "I wasn't ready for the freedom I found when I went off to college. My mother died when I was five,
and Laura married my dad and raised me from the time I was eight. She
was a wonderful mother, but she and Dad were pretty strict about what I
could and couldn't do. When I got to Athens, all the restraints came off,
and I went a little crazy."

"How did you get hooked up with Simmermon?" Logan asked.

"My boyfriend and I and a couple we lived with in Athens came here
for spring break. We had all dropped out of school and were doing drugs
and hanging out in Athens. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even if
we didn't have any money. We met Jake Yardley on our first day here, and
he seemed like a godsend. He took us in and paid for everything for several days. We lived on the beach and ate and drank well. He even had some
weed for us. We couldn't believe our good luck."

I'd heard the story before. Peggy had spent part of our week together
trying to explain to me, and probably to herself, the disconnect from reality that led her to Blood Island. "Tell Logan about meeting the Rev," I
said.

"Yardley kept telling us about this man of God who had a place in his
organization for people like us; people who didn't have any other place to
go. I was the only one of us with any kind of family, and the other three
thought we ought to meet Simmermon.

"Yardley took us to the Rev's motor home over at Robarts. He was a
smooth talker; offered us sanctuary," she said, using her hands and fingers
to indicate quote marks. "He said we could go with him to a tropical island
and live a life of ease. Said God would bless us with everything we needed
or wanted. I didn't realize then that the punch he served us was laced with
some kind of drug. We were all floating on the Rev's benevolence.

"The next thing I knew, I was on Blood Island, and my friends were
gone. The Rev told me they had abandoned me, but that he was going to save me. That all sounded good, until I got sick and got the drugs out of
my system. Everything's a little fuzzy about that time, but I must've been
on the island for a couple of weeks before they tried to take me to the
whorehouse."

We sat quietly, sipping our wine, savoring the evening. Peggy was
pensive on this, our last evening together. After a while, she said, "Matt, I
don't really understand why you came for me. You hadn't seen Laura in
years, and you'd never met me."

"I came because I loved Laura," I said, "and I would've done anything she asked of me."

"Why then, did Logan come? He'd never met Laura. And Jock?"

"They came," I said, "because they're my friends."