“You think he sent us a bomb?” asked the governor.
“Can’t be,” Kimmell answered. “If he was going to blow you up, he would have done it two years ago. Open it.”
Jack carefully removed the string and cut the tape with the care of a surgeon. He lifted the lid. Inside the bubble wrap was a cellular phone. Across the top lay a business-sized envelope with a handwritten message on the outside. “Switch on the phone at midnight,” it read.
“At least we know your kidnapper hasn’t lost his nerve,” said Kimmell. “He’s still in the game. Which means there’s still hope.”
“What’s in the envelope?” asked the governor.
Kimmell opened it and unfolded its contents. “It’s a certificate of death,” he said.
“Not Cindy?” the governor asked with sudden fear.
“’Raul Francisco Fernandez,’” he read from the first line. “It’s from the County Health Department. An exact duplicate, except for Box thirty-the cause of death. You can still make out the original, typewritten entry. ‘Cardiac arrest,’” he read aloud, “’as a consequence of electrocution.’ But someone has crossed out the coroner’s entry and penciled in a different cause of death.” He handed it to the governor.
“’Jack Swyteck,’” Harry read aloud, his voice cracking.
A heavy silence permeated the room. Then Kimmell took a closer look at the certificate. “Why’d he do this?” he asked.
“That’s been his message all along,” Jack said. “He’s blamed me from the beginning.”
“I’m talking about something different,” said Kimmell. “There’s another message here-one that’s a little less obvious. Maybe even unintended. Box seven,” he said as he pointed to it, “is the space for the ‘informant.’ That’s the person who provides personal data for completion of the certificate. The named informant here is Alfonso Perez.”
“Who’s that?” asked Jack.
“There are lots of men named Alfonso Perez. But from my days in law enforcement I know that at one time it was also one of the aliases used by a guy known as Esteban. Every federal agent based in Miami in the eighties knew about this character. Brilliant guy. Speaks English as well as he does Spanish. Every so often he changes his name and identity. The feds can’t keep up. I heard they almost nabbed him two years ago, but he took off to somewhere in the Caribbean. Anyway, he’s a suspect in at least five murder-kidnappings in this country alone.”
“He’s wanted in other countries, too?” asked Jack.
“Came here from Cuba. He was a thug in Castro’s army, years ago. Trained with the Russians during the war in Angola, then distinguished himself by torturing political prisoners-a merciless bastard. Earned himself a nice promotion to the Batallon Especial de Seguridad, Castro’s elite military force. But when they cut off his daily routine of driving nails into molars and bashing heads with bayonets, they say he snapped. He craved the violence. Went on a killing spree. Raped and murdered about a dozen women in Havana-all prostitutes. The Cubans threw him in a booby hatch for a couple years. Then Castro sent him over to Miami in 1980, when he opened the jails and asylums and turned the Mariel boat lift into a Trojan horse. Esteban just snuck in with the hundred and fifty thousand other Marielito refugees. FBI and Immigration have been looking for him ever since.”
“Raul Fernandez came to Miami in the Mariel boat lift too,” said Jack.
“Probably not a coincidence,” Kimmell speculated. “That doesn’t mean Fernandez was a criminal, though. Only a small number of the Marielitos were.”
Jack and his father sat in silence. “You think it could be him?” Jack asked.
Kimmell sighed heavily. “I really can’t say for sure. But for your sake,” he added, “I sure as hell hope not.”
Jack rose and stepped toward the window, pulling back the drapes just enough to peer out at the vast ocean. “It’s not me who I’m worried about,” he said with more than a touch of fear.
Chapter 49
On the other side of Key West, near the tourist landmark designated “The Southernmost Point in the Continental United States,” beneath the rotting pine floorboards of an abandoned white frame house, Cindy Paige blinked her eyes open. She wasn’t sure if she was awake. Although her eyes were open, her world was total blackness. She tried to touch her eyes to make sure she wasn’t blind, but her hands wouldn’t move. They were bound. She struggled to get loose, but her feet were bound too. She screamed, but it didn’t sound like her. She screamed again. It was muffled, as if a hand were covering her mouth. Was someone there? Was someone with her? Suddenly it came back to her-the last two things she could remember: a sack being thrown over her head and then a jab in her arm.
She heard a pounding above her. Her heart raced. More pounding, and then a blinding light was in her eyes. A wave of fresh air hit her face, making her painfully aware of how stifling hot her hell really was. Her blurry vision focused, and then her eyes widened with fear. The image had returned-the man in the cap and wraparound sunglasses who’d attacked her in the car.
“Quiet, angel,” Esteban said softly. He was seated on the floor and speaking down into the hole. “No one is going to hurt you.”
She’d never been so frightened in her life. Her teeth clenched the gag in her mouth. Her chest heaved with quick, panicky breaths. Please, she cried out with her eyes, don’t hurt me!
“If you’ll promise not to scream,” he said, “I’ll take off your gag. If you’ll promise not to run, I’ll take you out of your hole. Do you promise?”
She nodded eagerly.
Esteban’s mouth curled into a sinister smirk. “I don’t believe you.”
Cindy whimpered pathetically.
“Don’t blame me,” he said. “Your boyfriend is to blame. Swyteck forced me to do this. I didn’t want it to be this way. So many times I could have hurt you, had I wanted to. But I never did. And I won’t hurt you. . so long as Jack Swyteck does what I tell him to do. You do believe me, don’t you?”
Cindy’s eyes were still wide with horror. But she nodded.
“Good,” he replied. “Now, I can’t let you out of your little hiding place. But I’ll make a deal with you.” He displayed a syringe. “This is secobarbital sodium. It’s what made you sleep so deeply. I must have gotten the dosage right. But now I’ve got a problem. You see, I don’t know how much of it is still in your system. Which means that I don’t know how much to give you. If I give you too much, you’re not gonna wake up. So promise me you’ll lie real quiet, and we can skip the injection. Deal?”
Cindy nodded once.
“Smart girl.” He stood up and put one of the loose floorboards back in place. At the sound of Cindy’s muffled cry, he stopped and wagged his finger at her. “Not another peep,” he reminded her, like a loving parent telling a four-year-old she can’t sleep with Mommy and Daddy tonight.
Cindy swallowed hard. Somehow she managed to stop crying.
“Good girl. Now, don’t you worry, I’ve already found better accommodations for us. You’ll be out of there before long.”
She quivered as she lay in the hole, hoping for a miracle as he reached for the other floorboard. Her world went dark as he laid it in place.
“Night, angel,” she heard him say through the wooden barrier.
Esteban got up off his knees and pulled off his cap and sunglasses. The humidity in the boarded-up house was nearly as sweltering above the floor as it was below. He was in a living room of bare wooden floors and water-stained walls. A few trespassing transients had left behind their aluminum cans, cardboard blankets, and cigarette butts. Esteban had brought only what he absolutely needed: a couple of lounge chairs, a fully stocked ice chest, his ham radio, and three battery-operated fans that pushed stale air around the room. He didn’t dare open the boarded-up windows, for fear of being detected. But the chances of that were slim. The old house was so overgrown with tropical foliage that he’d practically needed a machete to reach the front door. And so far as he could tell from the police band on his radio, no one was searching for him.