Cari Mora Read online

  The drawings went downhill from there. She looked at all of them, stacked them back into a sheaf and pushed them across the table to Robles.

  “You could help us catch Hans-Peter,” he said.

  “How?”

  “He’s obsessed with you. I want him, and Interpol wants him. We need to put his sick and rich customers in prison or an asylum, where they belong. I want Hans-Peter to stop tearing up women for them. You can attract him.”

  “Do you know where Hans-Peter Schneider is?”

  “His credit cards have been used in Bogotá, Colombia, and in Barranquilla in the last two days, and his telephone has made some calls from Bogotá. But he’ll be back. If he doesn’t come back, we have to go proactive and travel with Interpol. An informant has identified some of his customers. One has a villa in Sardinia. I can fix your absence for you at school and at your job. Would you do that? Would you go with me to nail him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And next I want to put in prison the men who rented out the guns,” Robles said.

  Robles had made arrests in the case of the gun rentals, but he needed to show a jury that those same guns were in the hands of the felons.

  “One of those guns shot my wife,” he said. “And shot me, and shot up my house, which looks a lot like this one. I like my house the same way you like your house—I mean the way you like your cousin’s brother-in-law’s house. Did Hans-Peter Schneider have guns that you saw?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you see? Could you describe the guns?”

  “Describe the guns?”

  “I read your application to extend the TPS. I know your background. Could you say for sure they were not prop movie guns?”

  “They had two AKs, selective fire with suppressors, and a couple of AR-15s, one with a bump stock. They had thirty-round banana clips for everything and a drum for one of the AKs. Hans-Peter Schneider, the tall one, carried a Glock nine-millimeter in a Jackass rig behind his back. Do you take lemon?”

  “I won’t have tea. Ms. Mora, I can’t get a twenty-four seven security detail for you at your home, but I can offer you a couple of witness protection facilities where you could stay and nobody can find you. You could stay there just until—”

  “No. This is where I live.”

  “Would you do me a favor and just look at the safe houses?”

  “No, Detective, I’ve seen the ones at Krome.”

  “Do you carry a cell phone all the time where I can reach you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to ask the North Miami Beach PD to pass by here a lot.”

  “All right.”

  Detective Terry Robles found Cari to be a very pleasant sight on this golden afternoon, even though she did not like him. He had been alone a lot. He thought of his wife at Palmyra with the sun on her hair. He needed to leave this place.

  “There’s a BOLO out on Hans-Peter,” he said. “When we spot him I’ll be on the phone to you. Lock up,” he said.

  “Merry Christmas to you, Detective Robles.”

  “Feliz Navidad,” Robles said.

  Well, maybe she doesn’t HATE me—not that it makes any difference in the job or anything, Terry Robles thought, walking to his car.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Hans-Peter Schneider had everything he needed for the moment: He had half the $200,000 fee he would charge for delivering Cari to Mr. Gnis and supervising her modification. He had the use of his headquarters here in Miami, which was nowhere listed in his name, and his boat, registered to a company in Delaware.

  He had Paloma in Colombia working his credit cards and telephone.

  He had a note from the imprisoned tattoo artist Karen Keefe agreeing to come to Mauritania upon completion of her sentence to decorate Cari—Hans-Peter had provided the tattoo artist with a drawing of Mother Gnis’s face with which to practice.

  He equipped himself with a JM Standard CO2 injection rifle with darts containing enough azaperone to immobilize a 125-pound mammal. He had a nine-millimeter pistol in the back of his waistband.

  Hans-Peter had found that it is easier to move a person who is bound if the subject is in a ventilated body bag with carrying straps. Generally, odor- and fluid-proof body bags are airtight and the occupant, if not already dead, will smother. The bag in Hans-Peter’s kit was well ventilated and single-layer canvas.

  He had heavy-duty zip-tie strips, chloroform and face pads. He had diet supplements for gavage on the boat, and his obsidian scalpels in case they wanted to do a little something on the galley table in Mr. Gnis’s boat going across the sea to Mauritania.

  In the late afternoon Hans-Peter straightened up his rooms and poured Karla down the toilet.

  He had rented a minivan using a false ID, and discarded the middle seat to make room for Cari on the floor. He pulled the fuse on the inside lights in the van so he could keep the side door open in the dark.

  Night was coming. Flocks of starlings settled into the hedges around Pelican Harbor Seabird Station. Two families of parrots in a bedtime dispute were louder than the music from the boats in the marina. The smell of supper on the grill and a skein of blue smoke drifted over the water.

  In the parking lot beside the Seabird Station, Benito waited in his old pickup to drive Cari to the house of her cousin, where she would sleep. The A/C in the truck had not worked for years, so he had his windows down and was grateful for a breeze off the bay.

  The lot was overgrown with trees and darker than the twilight.

  Cari finished up in the treatment room, sterilized the instruments and took a thawed rat out to the owl.

  She closed her eyes and felt the rush of wind over her as the big bird came down to seize the prize.

  Benito did not want to smoke with Cari in the truck, so he rolled a cigarette in the dark to smoke now, before she came. In the dark he tapped the Bugler can with his banana fingers. He rolled the cigarette, licked it and twisted the end. He struck a kitchen match.

  The match flared orange in the cab of the truck and the dart struck him in the side of the neck. He grabbed at it, the cigarette falling into his lap in a spray of sparks. He reached under the bib of his overalls for his pistol, got his hand on the pistol grip as the steering wheel swelled and wobbled in his vision and he got his hand on the handle of the door but he was hit in the neck and the dark came down fast.

  Hans-Peter was conflicted as he reloaded the dart rifle. He would have loved to dissolve Benito alive in front of Cari, an orientation so to speak—WOULD THAT BE FUNNY OR WHAT?!

  But time was short. He had to follow Mr. Gnis’s big yacht out Government Cut to the sea and deliver Cari outside U.S. territorial waters. Better to just cut Benito’s throat. Hans-Peter opened his knife. He had started across the lot to Benito’s truck when the last lights went out in the Seabird Station and he heard a door shut firmly and the jingle of keys. Never mind Benito.

  Cari was coming.

  She was singing Shakira’s part from “Mi Verdad” as she approached the truck. Benito sat behind the wheel, slumped, his chin down on his chest. Cari had a cold tamarind cola for him. Benito insisted on driving her home and often he was asleep when she came out of the station.

  “Hola, mi señor.”

  She saw the dart in Benito’s neck at the same instant she heard a crack behind her, like a palm branch breaking and felt a sting in her buttock. She reached in the truck window and got hold of Benito’s gun, spun, raised the pistol, but the asphalt rose up and slammed her and the asphalt tried to wrap around her and smother her and the dark came down.

  Darkness. The smell of diesel fuel and sweat and shoes. A pulse, a vibration in the metal floor, faster than a human pulse, a buzzing.

  Starters whined. Two turbo diesels starting up, a rough idle, then the boat began to move. The engines settled into a low rumble, secondary vibrations going in and out of phase. Whum whum.

  Cari opened her eyes just a little, saw the metal deck. Eyes open a little wider.

&nb
sp; She was alone inside a cabin in the bow of a boat, lying on the floor. Above her in the center of the overhead was a clear hatch of Plexiglas, it was both a hatch and a skylight. A little light coming in the hatch and the sound changing as the boat moved out of a boathouse into the night.

  A face appeared in the skylight, someone on deck looking down at her. Hans-Peter Schneider. He was wearing Antonio’s earring, the Gothic cross.

  Cari closed her eyes, waited a moment and opened her eyes again. A V-berth was above her as she lay on the floor. A torn and bloody fingernail, not hers, was in the seam where the footboard of the berth met the rails. Her arms and her shoulder hurt, pressed against the metal deck. Her wrists were tied behind her and her ankles bound. She could see her ankles. Four heavy-duty zip ties bound them.

  She had no idea how long she had been on the boat. It was not moving very fast. She could hear the water rushing on the hull. She had been taught that the quicker after capture you escape, the better chance you have to live.

  On the bridge of the long black boat with Mateo at the wheel, Hans-Peter phoned Mr. Imran aboard the two-hundred-foot yacht of Mr. Gnis, casting off for the rendezvous at sea.

  “I’m on the way,” Hans-Peter said. Hans-Peter could hear someone squealing near Mr. Imran.

  “I’ll draw a bath,” Mr. Imran said.

  “Good idea,” Hans-Peter said. “She’ll probably shit herself.” The two men shared a collegial chuckle.

  Down in the bow cabin Cari gingerly moved everything she could move. She did not think any bones were broken but her brow was swollen and sticky.

  She warmed up her muscles, moving as well as she could, lying on her side on the deck.

  Watching the skylight above her, she rolled into a sitting position, her back against the berth. It took some stretching, five tries and she was able to get her bound wrists under her buttocks and up behind her knees. She drew her knees up to her chest and with a tremendous effort got her wrists under her feet and clear. Now her hands were in front of her. She could see that the four heavy-duty zip ties on her wrists were the same type as those binding her ankles. Big ones too. The free ends stuck far out from her wrists.

  The children bound in the water. The tie strips stuck far out from their wrists. They pressed the sides of their heads together. Bam!

  Remembering, Cari felt a hot surge inside her and some of it was energy.

  How do you get loose from tie strips? Very hard. You might break one or even two normal zip ties with leverage from a hip thrust, but not these big ones, and not four. Shim them. She could not reach the zip ties on her wrists, but she might shim the ones on her legs if she had a shim. Her cross of St. Peter with the push dagger inside was gone from her neck. She looked around the deck: any tool, a hairpin, anything.

  She squirmed to see into the head, maybe there was a hairpin on the floor. Nothing. A marine toilet, a mirror, a shelf, a shower. A bathroom scale. She looked under the bunks, feeling the deck. Nothing but a smelly pair of boat shoes. What did she have that was flat and metal to use as a shim? Her push dagger was gone. Her pockets were wrong side out. She had been well frisked. She felt a scraped place on the skin of her breast, a whisker burn. Ugh. What is flat and metal and IS THE TAB ON THE ZIPPER OF MY JEANS.

  Cari unzipped her jeans. It was slow, working the pants down her legs, working the top down over the bunched legs with her wrists tied together.

  For a moment she tried to get the zipper tab into the ratchet locks on her wrists but she could not control the zipper tab without using her fingers. It just flapped back and forth. She went to work on her ankles. Two zip ties were locked in the front. She worked the tab into the ratchet lock of the top zip tie. No. No. The tongue of the ratchet kept slipping off. No. No. No. Yes. The ratchet let go, the long extra length of the zip tie sliding through the lock and it was off. She pushed the loose zip tie under a bunk so it could not be seen from above.

  She rubbed the red groove in her leg and started on the next tie. It was stubborn and took twelve tries before it gave way. The next two were locked behind her legs and she had to do one of them by feel. It took ten minutes, water and distance passing under the hull. The other was loose enough to move around to the front of her leg and she got it in three tries.

  But not her wrists. She could not manipulate the tab without her fingers. It just flopped against the ratchet latch.

  She rested her head back against the bunk, sitting on the floor. She heard footsteps on the companionway.

  She could fight with her legs free, her two hands still tied together. Hide her feet under the bunk, play possum and fake it, get a little time? No, fight now.

  She got the heavy scale from the bathroom.

  She got to her feet, steady steady, she raised the scale high above her head in her bound hands. The cabin door opened and she kicked Mateo in the balls so hard he was almost lifted off the floor. One more kick in the solar plexus kept him from yelling, he doubled over and she brought the scale down on the back of his head with all her strength. He went down on his face on the metal floor and she turned the scale sideways and came down on the back of his skull with the edge of it twice. The second time the thud sounded softer. The strong smell of urine came off him, a puddle spreading from under him.

  There had been only a few thumps and grunts, hardly louder than the engine noise and the small impacts of the waves on the hull. Maybe Hans-Peter at the wheel had not heard. But he would definitely miss Mateo in minutes.

  Hands, hands, she could not swim without hands free unless she had a float, a life jacket. None in the cabin. She frisked Mateo, hoping for a knife, a gun. Hans-Peter was too smart to send a jailer in with a weapon. Nothing useful in his pockets but some damn Chiclets.

  How else can you open a zip tie? She could not swim far without her hands free. Her heaving breath brought the smells of the boat. Smells of stale sheets and old blood. Smell of urine from the dead man beside her. Foot smells of the old boat shoes with their LEATHER LACES FRICTION SAW.

  How long did she have? Not long.

  Hans-Peter yelled down the companionway. “Check her bindings and get back up here, Mateo. If you fuck her, Mateo, I will kill you. We are selling fresh meat.”

  Cari found the boat shoes and with her fingers and teeth took off their leather laces. She tied the laces together to make one long thong. She passed the thong over the bindings on her wrists and tied a loop in each free end.

  She put her feet into the loops like stirrups and began to pump her legs in a bicycling motion, the leather thong hissing back and forth over the top zip tie on her arms as her legs pumped, smoke rising off the moving thong and the ties, heat she could feel on her arms.

  Hans-Peter was yelling “Mateo, get up here you son of a bitch. I shouldn’t have let you lick her tits!”

  Pumping pumping, the leather thong hissing over the plastic tie. Smoke and heat and POP, the top zip tie parted, the thong stretched over the next one, hissing and smoking, POP, the second zip tie broke, and a loop slipped off her foot. It took a maddening second to get it back in place and PUMP PUMP she was driving, PUMP PUMP PUMP and POP.

  PUMP PUMP PUMP PUMP PUMP PUMP POP. Her hands were free, a little numb, tingling as the blood returned to them.

  She put her head up into the domed glass hatch in time to see light passing overhead, a strip of light, lavender like the inside of a hawk’s mouth, it was the underside of the causeway. Aircraft warning lights in the sky like a red star and a white one! The lights were on the tall antennas beside the Seabird Station, where her schoolbooks were, where her bag of tree fertilizer was. As the boat moved south she saw the lights of the cars on the causeway moving fast, strings of lights like tracer fire from a heavy machine gun.

  Standing on the bunk she could open the skylight hatch. But the hatch was in the foredeck. Hans-Peter at the wheel would see it open. They were south of the causeway now, moving at a steady pace. She could not wait.

  The engines slowed and stopped. She locked the fli
msy hook on the cabin door. Hans-Peter was yelling down the companionway.

  Footsteps coming down.

  She pushed open the hatch and pulled herself out onto the foredeck, Hans-Peter below her kicking in the cabin door.

  He had the tranquilizer rifle.

  He saw the hatch was open, and he ran back up the ladder to the deck as Cari went in a clean dive off the boat and swam toward the black and fuzzy outline of Bird Key.

  Hans-Peter back on deck now with the rifle, looking, looking. He swung the big spotlight on the boat, picked her up in its beam, lifted the rifle.

  When the light was on her, Cari dived, finding the bottom very quickly, the water shallow enough for her to see her shadow on the sand beneath her in the spotlight beam.

  She had to breathe, blow out underwater, up and gulp air, down as the flat blat of the rifle sent a dart through her hair wafting above her as she swam.

  His last dart. He would have to go below for more.

  Hans threw down the rifle and went back to the wheel. He could control the spotlight from the helm and the beam skipped over the water, finding Cari again. Hans-Peter gunned the boat, pursuing her. He would hit her with the fucking boat even if it killed her.

  Cari could swim fast. She had never swum faster. Two big diesels churning behind her closer and closer, Bird Key closer, fifty yards.

  The sound of the boat seemed to be directly over her, drawing her, the spotlight would not depress enough to keep her in its beam as the boat loomed over her. The boat struck bottom. A long crunch and scrape as it came to a stop on the sandbar off Bird Key, Hans-Peter flying into the wheel and falling to the deck. Hans-Peter up fast, on his feet.

  Cari swimming, finding bottom with her hands, up and running in the water toward the black and lightless Bird Key. Running, running. Would it be better to fight him in the water? Turn and fight him now. No, I can’t kick in the water and he’s got a pistol.