Shimmer
Recent Titles by Hilary Norman
The Sam Becket Mysteries
MIND GAMES
LAST RUN *
SHIMMER *
BLIND FEAR
CHATEAU ELLA
COMPULSION
DEADLY GAMES
FASCINATION
GUILT
IN LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
LAURA
NO ESCAPE
THE PACT
RALPH’S CHILDREN *
SHATTERED STARS
SPELLBOUND
SUSANNA
TOO CLOSE
TWISTED MINDS
IF I SHOULD DIE (written as Alexandra Henry)
* available from Severn House
SHIMMER
Hilary Norman
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published 2009
in Great Britain and in the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
Copyright © 2009 by Hilary Norman.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Norman, Hilary
Shimmer
1. Becket, Sam (Fictitious character) – Fiction
2. Police – Florida – Miami – Fiction. 3. Detective and
mystery stories
I. Title
823.9'14-dc22
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-089-0 (ePub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6784-1 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-149-2 (trade paper)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
For Anita Kern
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My gratitude goes to the following: Howard Barmad; Jennifer Bloch; Batya Brykman; Sara Fisher, whose help and support I will sorely miss; Isaac and Evelyne Hasson; huge thanks yet again to Special Agent Paul Marcus and to Julie Marcus (the almost real Sam and Grace); Bella Patel; Helmut Pesch; Sebastian Ritscher; Helen Rose (for so very much, always); Rainer Schumacher; Dr Jonathan Tarlow, for seafaring expertise again, as well as medical. And, as always, for being a technical wiz, helping with research, and for just about everything else, Jonathan.
The Epistle of Cal the Hater
‘Lie down,’ Jewel tells me.
I tell her I don’t want to lie down.
‘Do it,’ Jewel says, her voice real hard, like her name.
So I do.
Because the alternative is worse.
Because she’ll find other ways to hurt me.
And she won’t love me any more.
It’s been happening for such a long time.
I’ve learned a lot over time. I’ve learned that I can shut down my mind to bad things, and that I can survive, no matter what. But I’ve also learned that when you lock away bad stuff in your mind, worse stuff happens. Because all the pain and humiliation and hate you’ve ground down and buried starts festering like pus on the root of a tooth, or even maggots on a corpse. And sometimes it comes oozing out one tiny worm at a time, but other times it just stays in there, expanding and building up inside you until you blow.
Cause and effect, which I’ve read about. Stands to reason.
But that effect is real bad, and I know it.
Bad enough to make me hate myself.
Which may, I think, be worse than anything.
Cal liked to write, always had. And to read. He chose the word ‘epistle’ for his private writing, even though he’d looked it up in his Merriam-Webster Dictionary and seen it was a word for a letter, and this was not a letter as such because he wasn’t writing it to anyone, but on the other hand it wasn’t a journal either, it was just his writing. The first definition in the dictionary said it was a letter in the New Testament, but he already knew that because he knew the Bible pretty well, knew that the word was repeated over and over – the Epistles of the Apostles – and Cal liked the way that sounded, and even now it clicked regularly into his mind and he found hi
mself saying it out loud like a tongue twister –
‘The Epistles of the Apostles, The Epistles of the Apostles . . .’
Sometimes he’d even sing it and do a kind of little tap dance to the rhythm, which used to worry him in case he was maybe being sacrilegious, because he did respect the Bible and going to church, but on the other hand he’d learned by now that there wasn’t any point in worrying about playing around with a word, because Lord knew he’d done things far worse.
‘I am sacrilegious,’ he’d written in his Epistle, ‘and I know it, and it scares the crap out of me because I know it means that hell’s waiting for me at the end of my time, but there’s nothing I can think of to change that, and I reckon it’s not really my fault, is it?
‘None of it.’
1
June 6
South Beach, like a thousand other beaches around dawn, felt and looked almost born again, a whole new world creeping out of the dark, eons away from its strident, semi-pagan late-night self.
Even with the din of music shut off, Ocean Drive was never silent, never seemed entirely at rest. The restaurants and bars were closed, the last Thursday night into Friday morning revellers had gone to their groggy beds, takings had been locked away, waiters and bartenders had soaked their aching feet and crashed; yet even now there were early morning drivers moving slowly up and down the street, a lone jogger down on the beach, his long hair swinging with each bounce, two roller bladers skimming along the promenade, a middle-aged woman walking her dog on the grass, a sleeper stirring nearby, disturbed for a few moments by the growl of the sanitation truck cleaning the gutters and moving slowly onwards.
The morning was warm and humid, no freshness to it, the remnants of last night’s thunderstorm still grumbling to the east somewhere in the greyish violet-to-pink-tinted sky, but the beach itself was serene, all primal innocence. The shallow Atlantic waters moved gently, peaceably, the smooth sands, shifted overnight by birds and breezes and rain and other, unseen forces, seemed almost to be posing for the moment in soft beige and pastel hues, taking its rest before people returned again to tread and soil and taint.
Like all beaches in Miami-Dade County, South Beach had rules imposed upon it, a list of prohibitions posted along the promenade and beach. No alcoholic beverages permitted, no glass containers, no walking on the dunes. No animals, no firearms or fireworks and more besides.
No ‘rough and injurious activities’.
Which rule scarcely began to cover what Joe Myerson had happened upon in the midst of his Friday sunrise swim.
A regular dawn swimmer, Joe cherished this time.
‘If I ever drown or have a heart attack or just get eaten by a goddamned fish while I’m out there,’ he once told his brother, ‘you’ll know I went happy.’
Finished now, his almost private ocean-Eden mornings.
Never again.
It had seemed, at first glance, nothing more interesting than a stray rowboat, pink-painted but shabby, bobbing on the calm morning waters.
Joe had noticed it from a hundred or so yards off and felt an instant tug of curiosity; not just because it looked out of place on South Beach, but because even crumby old rowboats were generally kept tied up or beached, and for some reason it occurred to him that it might not be empty after all, that there might be someone inside the boat, someone he couldn’t see, someone sick, maybe, lying down.
Lying down, for sure, but way past sick.
Which was more than could be said for Joe.
Worst thing he’d ever seen in his life.
Ever hoped not to see again.
‘Mr Myerson dragged it ashore himself,’ Neal Peterson – one of the Miami Beach Police Department patrol officers first on the scene – told Detectives Sam Becket and Alejandro Martinez when they arrived a few minutes after eight.
On the beach, right across from Ocean Drive and 10th Street, less than a handful of blocks from their own office on Washington Avenue.
Fruits of evil just around the corner.
The crime scene team had beaten them to it, were already busy around the rowboat inside the cordoned off area.
Peterson had known these two detectives for a long while, knew how tight the bond was between Becket, the tall, rangy African-American and Martinez, the shorter, much slighter but, on occasions, tougher Cuban-American.
‘There was a length of tow rope tied to the bow which looks hacked off,’ the patrolman went on. ‘Mr Myerson said soon as he saw the victim, he wanted to get the hell away, but he knew he’d never forgive himself if the boat drifted out too far or maybe capsized.’
‘Poor guy.’ Sam looked towards the rowboat, then out to sea.
‘More guts than most,’ said Peterson.
‘A prince,’ said Martinez, who seldom took anything or anyone at face value. ‘Where is he?’
Peterson turned and indicated his partner, presently standing over a figure hunched on the sand about thirty yards away. ‘He has some scrapes on his arms from dragging the boat.’
‘Are we sure that’s what caused them?’ asked Sam.
‘Doc Sanders seems to think so,’ the officer said. ‘He took some swabs, dressed the scrapes. No stitches needed.’ He paused. ‘Nothing that looks like he might have been in a fight, nothing like that.’
‘He knows he’s going to have to talk to us?’ Sam checked.
It was a kind of lottery in the Violent Crimes department as to who got named lead investigator in any new case, and Sam had been handed this one by Sergeant Alvarez, which mostly meant that back in the office he’d be the one burdened with the report writing and lion’s share of the paperwork. With so many years of informal partnership between them, neither Sam nor Martinez made any big leadership distinctions while they were out in the field.
‘Yes, sir,’ Peterson answered Sam’s question. ‘He said he didn’t mind waiting, said he can’t see himself getting down to work any time soon.’
Another figure in shirtsleeves, familiar, overweight but not lumbering, was moving over the sand towards the detectives, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape. Dr Elliot Sanders, the medical examiner, slipping a surgical mask down from his nose and mouth, lighting up a cigarette as he came close.
Nicotine – and good whisky, off-duty – always a priority with Sanders.
‘Bad one,’ he said right away, his round, expressive face and keen eyes displaying grim distaste.
‘Is there any other kind?’ Sam said.
The ME shrugged. ‘Asian male,’ he said. ‘Indian, maybe. Early twenties, though it’s a little hard to be sure of much.’ He glanced at Sam, who covered well on the whole, but tended towards a queasy response to the remains of violent death. ‘The guy was strangled, but he’s a real mess.’ He fished in his pocket, brought out two more masks, handed them over. ‘Just in case.’
‘Of what?’ asked Sam.
‘Some kind of chemical involved.’ Sanders took a pull on his cigarette, stubbed it out on the sand, then picked up the butt and dropped it in his trouser pocket. ‘Body’s almost certainly been washed, maybe hosed down or sluiced off in the ocean, but there’s still quite an odour, so as I said, just in case.’
They donned gloves and shoe covers and walked together, all stepping carefully over the sand, even though they already knew that this area of beach was unlikely to have been the scene of the actual killing.
‘Holy fuck,’ Martinez said, catching first sight of the victim.
‘What the hell happened to him?’ Sam had to force himself to keep looking.
The victim was naked, all the visible skin from his face down to his feet striated in raw, bloody, almost burned-looking lines, some diagonal, others vertical, a few criss-crossing. Anything that might have helped ID him was gone; he wore no watch, no rings – a band of paler skin around his wrist spoke of a medium-size round-faced watch, but there was no such mark on his wedding band finger or any other, so he was perhaps unmarried, and though his hands, like the rest of him, were wounded,
his nails were well kept.
The detectives could smell it too. Not intense, but evident nevertheless, like a mix of salt water and the chemical that Sanders had mentioned.
‘Smells like Clorox,’ Martinez said.
‘Could be,’ Sanders agreed. ‘But it might be something more corrosive.’
Sam was crouching now, the mask over his nose and mouth, staring down at the strange lines of wounds, observing that while some looked straight and almost systematic, others were more jagged, more random looking, more crazed.
‘They use some kind of rake?’ he asked.
‘Possibly,’ the ME said. ‘Though my first guess would be something more like a scrubbing brush, heavy duty, maybe even wire. More later.’
‘But this didn’t happen here,’ Sam said.
‘Certainly not here,’ Sanders confirmed, ‘nor in the boat, I’d say.’
‘And I guess you can’t say when,’ Sam said.
These were things he wished he’d never learned. About the many complications involved in the estimating of time of death, about the variables that influenced rigor mortis and body cooling, and Sam, to his regret, did not need the ME to tell him that he would not be using a thermometer until he’d been able to examine the victim for evidence of sexual interference; and that in any case, body temperature was likely to mislead in a case like this, where the body had been moved after death, possibly dunked in the ocean before being placed in a new location – namely the rowboat – then left for an unknown length of time to the mercy of the elements.
‘You guess right,’ Sanders said. ‘It’ll be a while.’
‘You believe Myerson’s story, Doc?’ Martinez asked.
‘Innocent bystander, if I’m any judge,’ Sanders said. ‘Shocked, a little excited, maybe. Not a suspect.’
Sam and Martinez both figured the ME for a pretty good judge.
The interior of the boat was grimy, with no visible traces of blood or bleach or any other chemical, which was bad news on one hand, indicating an absence of evidence, but at least it also meant no spillage or contamination problems – at least not here on South Beach, so no apparent reason to keep the beach closed once the crime scene team were through.
Sam was eyeing the victim’s neck. ‘Some kind of ligature?’