The Death Box. J. Kerley A.
land around my rented home a subtropical explosion of wide-frond palms strung with vines, gnarly trees dense with leaves and all interspersed with towering stands of bamboo. It resembled a miniature Eden, complete with lime trees, lemons, mangoes and Barbados cherries. After a rain, the moist and scented air seemed like an intoxicant.
At water’s edge I kicked off my moccasins and stepped into the Gulf, bathtub-warm in August. The sand felt delicious against my soles, conforming to my steps, familiar and assuring. I seemed to smell cigar smoke and scanned the dawn-brightening shoreline, spying only two cakewalking herons pecking for baitfish. Neither was puffing a cigar. I put my hands in the pockets of my cargo shorts and splashed through knee-deep water toward the reeded point marking one horn of the crescent cove, revisiting the conversation that had led me so swiftly and surprisingly to Florida.
“Hello, Carson? This is Roy McDermott. Last time we talked, I mentioned changes in the Florida Center for Law Enforcement. We’re creating a team of consulting specialists.”
“Good for you, Roy.”
“Why I’m calling, Carson … We want you on the team.”
“I don’t have a specialty, Roy. I’m just a standard-issue detective.”
“Really? How about that PSIT team you started … specializing in psychopaths and sociopaths and general melt-downs? And all them freaky goddamn cases you guys solved?”
I smelled cigar smoke again. Looking to my right I saw a black man walking toward the shore with a stogie in his lips, five-seven or thereabouts, slender, his face ovoid, with a strong, straight nose beneath heavy eyebrows. His mouth was wide, garnished with a pencil mustache, and suggested how Tupac Shakur would have looked in his mid-sixties, though I doubt Shakur would have gone for a pink guayabera shirt and lime-green shorts. A crisp straw fedora with bright red band floated on the man’s head and languid eyes studied me as if I were a novel form of waterfowl.
“You the one just moved in that yonder house?” he asked.
“Guilty as charged.”
“The realtor tell you two people got killed in there? That the place was owned by a drug dealer, a Nicaraguan with metal teeth?”
The law allowed the confiscation of property employed in criminal enterprises and the place had indeed been the site of two killings, rivals to the drug dealer who had owned the house. The dealer went to prison and the house almost went on the market, but the FCLE was advised to hold it in anticipation of rising home values. And it wouldn’t hurt for time to lapse between the killings and the showings. When I told Roy I was thinking of looking at places in or near the Keys, he’d said, “Gotta great place you can crib while you’re looking, bud. Just don’t get too used to it.”
I nodded at my impromptu morning companion. “I heard about the murders. Didn’t hear about the teeth.”
“Like goddamn fangs. Heard one had a diamond set in it, but I never got close enough to check. You buyin’ the place from the guv’mint? Nasty history, but the house ain’t bad – kinda small for the neighborhood – but a good, big chunk of land. As wild as it was when Poncy Deleon showed up.”
The house itself – on ten-foot pilings to protect against storm surges – wasn’t overwhelming: single story, three bedrooms. But it had broad skylights and a vaulted ceiling in the main room, so it was bright and open. Outside features included a hot tub and decks on two sides. Mr Cigar was right about the land: four untamed acres, like the house was in a tropical park. Plus the property abutted a wildlife sanctuary, a couple hundred swampy acres of flora gone amok. I figured the dealer had picked the place for the wild buffer zone, privacy for all sorts of bad things.
“Afraid I’m just renting,” I said. “It’s too pricy for me.”
A raised eyebrow. “Kinda work you do, mister?”
“In two weeks I start work for the Florida Center for Law Enforcement. I came from Mobile, where I was a cop, a homicide detective.”
A moment of reflection behind the cigar. “So I guess we both made a living from dead bodies.”
“Pardon me?”
“I used to own funeral parlors in Atlanta, started with one, ended up with six. Retired here last year when my wife passed away.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? I like it here.”
“I mean about your wife. Was she ill?”
“Healthy as a damn horse. But she was twenny-five years younger’n me an’ only died cuz one a her boyfriends shot her.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I walked his way, splashing up to shore with my hand outstretched. “Guess we’ll be neighbors, then. At least for a while. Name’s Carson Ryder.”
His palm was mortician-soft but his grip was hard. “Dubois B. Burnside.” He pronounced it Du-boys.
“The B for Burghardt?” I asked, a shot in the dark. William Edward Burghardt DuBois was an American civil-rights leader, author, educator and about a dozen other things who lived from the late 1800s to the sixties. The intellectual influence of W.E.B. DuBois was, and still is, felt widely.
“That would be right,” he said, giving me a closer look.
“You live close by, Mr Burnside?”
He nodded at a line of black mangroves. “Other side of the trees. Daybreak used to find me heading to the mortuary to get working. Now I head out here and watch the birds.” He took another draw, letting blue smoke dribble from pursed lips. “I like this better.”
“Dubois!” bayed a woman’s voice from a distance, sending a half-dozen crows fleeing from a nearby tree. “Du-bois! Where you at? Duuuuuuuu-bois!”
My neighbor winced, pulled low the brim of the hat and started to turn away. “Stop by for a drink some night, Mister Ryder. We can talk about dead bodies. I may even have one you can look at.”
I splashed away, the sun sending shadows of my temporary home out into the water to guide me ashore. I slipped wet feet into my moccasins and jogged the boardwalk to the porch, moving faster when I heard my cell phone chirping from the deck. The call was from Roy McDermott, my new boss.
“Looks like we got a regular Sunshine State welcome for you, Carson. I’m looking at the weirdest damn thing I ever saw. Scariest, too. I know you don’t officially get on the clock for a couple weeks, but I’m pretty sure this can’t wait.”
“What is it you’re looking at, Roy?”
“No one truly knows. Procurement gave you a decent car, I expect?”
“I signed some papers. Haven’t seen a car.”
A sigh. “I’m gonna kick some bureaucratic ass. Whatever you’re driving, how about you pretend it’s the Batmobile and kick on the afterburners. Come help me make sense of what I’m seeing.”
I hurled myself through the shower and pulled on a pair of khakis and a blue oxford shirt, stepping into desert boots and tossing on a blue blazer. My accessorizing was minimal, the Smith & Wesson Airweight in a clip-on holster. On my way out I grabbed a couple Clif Bars for sustenance and headed down the stairs.
The elevated house was its own carport, with room for a dozen vehicles underneath, and my ancient gray pickup looked lonely on all that concrete. I’d bought it years ago, second-hand, the previous owner a science-fiction fan who’d had Darth Vader air-brushed on the hood. After a bit too much bourbon one night, I’d taken a roller and a can of marine-grade paint and painted everything a sedate, if patchy, gray.
The grounds hadn’t been groomed since the dope dealer had ownership, overgrown brush and palmetto fronds grazing the doors as I snaked down the long crushed-shell drive to the electronic gate, eight feet of white steel grate between brick