Bullet River (The Garbage Collector 2) Read online

  Bullet River

  (The Garbage Collector 2)

  A Short Story

  by Dani Amore

  BULLET RIVER is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author.

  Copyright ©2012 by Dani Amore

  High Praise for Dani Amore

  Winner of the 2011 Independent Book Award For Crime Fiction

  "Dani Amore is a sensation among Kindle owners who love fast-paced thrillers."

  --Mystery Tribune

  “As gritty as the Detroit streets where it’s set, DEAD WOOD grabs you early on and doesn’t let go. As fine a debut as you’ll come across this year, maybe any year.”

  —Tom Schreck, author of Out Cold

  This is the first private eye novel in a long time that swept me along for the ride. Amore is one to watch.”

  —Craig McDonald, Edgar-nominated author

  “Dead Wood is a fast-paced, unpredictable mystery with an engaging narrator and a rich cast of original supporting characters.”

  —Thomas Perry, Edgar-winning author of The Butcher’s Boy

  “Packed to the gills with hard-hitting action and a non-stop plot.”

  —Savannah Morning News

  "Move over James Patterson, Dani Amore has arrived.

  -R.Mullens for Amazon.com

  "Dani Amore writes fast-paced, gripping tales that capture you from Page One and hold you enthralled till the last word. This lady is one hell of a storyteller. Watch for her."

  --J.D. Rhoades, best-selling author of Gallows Pole

  "Dani Amore's writing reminds me of the great thriller writers -- lean, mean, no nonsense prose that gets straight to the point and keeps you turning those pages."

  --author Robert Gregory Browne

  Bullet River

  (The Garbage Collector 2)

  by Dani Amore

  ~~~

  For life and death are one,

  even as the river and the sea are one.

  -Khalil Gibran

  ~~~

  1.

  Just before I found the dead girl in the river, I had been thinking about how strange it was to get a sunburn just a few days after Christmas. Ordinarily, back home in Michigan I’d be dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a thick sweater. And I would be fairly pale, with that washed out, pensive expression people in the Midwest get when they know the worst of winter is yet to come.

  But right now I wasn’t wearing a sweater. In fact, I wasn’t even wearing pants.

  Instead, I was floating on an inflatable lounge chair, a beer in my hand, my pale skin turning bright red. The best part was, the beer was by no means my first. Which meant the pain of the sunburn had yet to actually register. I figured it would hit me tomorrow morning along with any after effects of a half-dozen Heinekens.

  I’d been in Florida for a week now, ever since I’d helped a young woman escape from the clutches of one of my former clients: a dangerous and vindictive law firm in Detroit.

  They had sent me after her, claiming she was a lawyer at the firm who had stolen highly sensitive information and was now blackmailing the partners. Turned out not to be the case. The woman was an honest lawyer who the partners had invited to take part in their money-laundering operations. She declined and went to the Feds, but the firm tried to kill her, so she ran.

  Once I figured everything out, I took her away from a couple of bad guys and got her to Arizona. A buddy of mine who lived there was an expert at helping people disappear. The last time I saw her, she was happy.

  The guys back in Detroit, though? They hated the Garbage Collector. That’s my nickname, by the way. At first, I didn’t really care for the name all that much, but after a while, it kind of grew on me.

  So now I’m known in Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles as the Garbage Collector. Which means I retrieve people and things that are usually tainted, illegal, or just downright dangerous.

  I have a real name but I keep that to myself, thank you very much.

  So not wanting to head back to Michigan and find out what those nasty lawyers might have planned for my homecoming, I got in touch with a friend here in Estero, Florida, who put me in touch with an old Italian couple, also from Michigan, who were heading to Italy for the winter. It hadn’t been a part of their plan—most come to Florida in the winter and go somewhere else during the uncomfortable, blazing heat of summer. But according to my friend, apparently something had happened back in Italy that required their attention, and they wanted some security for their house.

  That’s where I came in.

  The house was very nice. It consisted of three floors. The top was the master suite. The middle level was the living space, which consisted of a great room, kitchen, dining room, and two bedrooms with two bathrooms. There was also two-story, screened-in lanai with an outdoor sitting area that overlooked the pool below. Just down from the pool was a dock and the Estero River.

  The lower level was the pool, the garage, and a small apartment. I’d agreed to stay in the apartment and provide security for the main house. Apparently, someone had broken in last year. They had vandalized a few rooms, stolen very little, and then helped themselves to the swimming pool for a few days. They had apparently also brought along their dog and let it swim in the pool. The homeowners figured that out when the pump and pool heater stopped working and they traced the problem to about three pounds of dog hair stuck in the filter.

  So this time, the couple refused to leave their place unattended. What my friend had told them about me, I wasn’t sure. Probably that I was a security professional with an impeccable background. Which was half true.

  The long and short of it? I agreed to spend a few months in Florida, stay in the apartment for free, and receive a monthly stipend for my security services.

  I figured no one back in Michigan would miss the Garbage Collector. It might also be enough time to let the lawyers cool down and reconsider arranging any payback for yours truly. Cooler heads would realize just how bad an idea that could turn out to be.

  I was honest with the old Italian folks, though. Even though there was a private investigator’s license in my wallet with my real name, I didn’t show it to them. I also didn’t tell them I was known as the Garbage Collector and that my specialty was collecting undesirables: people who skipped bail, blackmailers, runaways, thieves, and miscreants in general.

  Not to sound egotistical, but the folks liked me.

  Hey, first time for everything.

  •

  My Heineken was empty, so I paddled to the shallow end of the pool with my free hand, slid off the lounge chair, and used the steps to climb out of the pool.

  The reflection in the apartment’s sliding glass doors caught my eye. Not bad. You couldn’t make out the slight gray at the edge of my temples, and the silhouette of my body was good enough—broad shoulders, narrow waist, dimmed scar on my shoulder, and the old bullet wound in my leg.

  A beauty contest trophy would never be in my future, but I didn’t have a problem with that. I had once rescued a former beauty queen who’d gotten hooked on crack and was being abused by her drug-dealing boyfriend. Her family hired me to bring her back, which I did. She went into rehab and is doing fine now. But in my opinion, that whole beauty-contest industry can really fuck people up.

  The bi
g towel with the University of Florida logo went around my waist, and I padded into the apartment. It was a simple set up: a single great room broken up into a small living room with a couch and television set, and a dining room with a blue dining table and four chairs. The kitchen was next to the dining area. It was small: a fridge, a stove, a dishwasher, and sink. A few cupboards. There was a hallway off the kitchen that led to a small bathroom with a shower, and further on, two bedrooms—one a bit bigger than the other. The smaller bedroom had two twin beds, and the bigger bedroom had a Queen.

  I was sleeping in the big bedroom.

  The empty beer bottle went into an empty six-pack case. I pulled two more beers from the fridge, changed out my swim trunks for a pair of cargo shorts, and walked down to the small dock.

  There was a boat hoist but no boat. Just a kayak locked to the dock’s support posts. I worked the combination, sprang the lock, and freed the kayak along with its carbon fiber paddle.

  I lowered the kayak into the water, sat on the edge of the dock, and held the vessel steady with my feet. I lowered the beers into the little hatch behind the seat, then lowered my ass into the kayak.

  I pushed away from the dock and paddled out into the middle of the Estero River.

  The river had become quite a surprise for me. In Michigan I’d spent most of my time in powerboats roaring across vast stretches of lake, usually for a destination, never just to enjoy the water itself.

  Now the tide was going out, so I was naturally pulled away from the dock toward a large, sweeping bend in the river.

  I glanced over my shoulder; the large house was still visible over the top of the mangroves lining the bank. It looked especially impressive from the river.

  Wind ruffled the surface of the water and bent the tall reeds back toward the river bank.

  I popped off the cap of a beer and drank half of it in one long pull, set it between my legs, grabbed the paddle, and leaned forward.

  The kayak shot ahead with a smooth, balanced power. I paddled all the way down to where the river opened up onto the Gulf of Mexico. The trip took me twenty minutes. I celebrated by draining the rest of my first beer and opening the second.

  I took a more leisurely paddle on the way back, upstream, aided by the fact that the tide had stopped going out and the water was in a relatively neutral state.

  My second beer was only half-finished when I came around the bend in the river. The house I was watching still loomed high above the mangrove plants.

  I steered the kayak into a little area of backwater surrounded by tall grass to finish the rest of my beer before I loaded the kayak back onto the dock.

  There wasn’t a stitch of breeze in this little protected spot.

  I rested the paddle across my thighs, casually checked for alligators. (I’d been told there really weren’t any around this area anymore, but I refused to take anyone’s word for it.)

  The beer came to my lips, and I saw a glow of white off to my right. I emptied the beer and put it back into place on the floor of the kayak.

  I put the paddle back in the water and gently stroked the still water, sending the kayak toward the glow of white.

  There was the possibility it was a turtle shell; I’d heard they show up from time to time and are valuable.

  As I got closer, I realized it wasn’t the shell of a turtle.

  It was a woman.

  Or at least, what was left of her.

  I stopped the kayak from getting any closer, but a small wave I had created pushed up against the corpse, and she lolled slightly toward me.

  A ravaged face turned toward me.

  The sight froze me, sent a shaft of ice through my insides.

  Not because of the horrors of death. And not because of the ravages inflicted by death, time, and the river.

  The face shocked me for a very simple reason.

  It was a face I knew.

  2.

  I had no choice but to leave her there.

  Like anyone associated on some level with crime, cops, lawyers, and all of the bullshit that goes with it, I knew from experience that irrational decisions could lead to some pretty horrible results.

  The fact was I desperately wanted to free her from her soggy grave, even though I knew it was a terrible idea. But in my business, you have to be able to shut off emotions like you’re blowing out a candle.

  So that’s what I did.

  I didn’t feel good about it. In fact, I felt like a piece of shit. But she was already dead. Her dignity . . . well, not much left of that either.

  Instead, I paddled back to the dock, got out, tied the kayak to its mooring rack, carried my empty bottles inside the apartment, and put them in recycling.

  Next, I left the apartment and did a perimeter walk of the property. It was my job now, after all. But I really did it because it gave me time to think. And because I also couldn’t help but wonder if there were any other surprises nearby.

  The stairs from the pool led up to the second-floor lanai. I checked all of the sliding doors and the little pass-through to the kitchen. Everything was locked up tight.

  Back down the stairs, I used the screen door off one end of the pool area and stepped into the yard. I walked the property from the river all the way down the long, rectangular lot to the street. Then I returned on the other side of the property.

  Nothing was amiss.

  I let myself back in via the screen door on the other side of the pool, then sat in the white plastic chair outside the sliding door to the apartment.

  The girl’s face, I had instantly recognized. No doubt about it.

  I knew her.

  In fact, I had known her quite well.

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and held it in my hand.

  The screen was clear, just a hint of reflection from the water in the pool.

  I took a deep breath.

  Then called the cops.

  3.

  There wasn’t a whole lot to Estero, Florida. It didn’t have an actual “downtown.” Or a Main Street. It was essentially a stretch of road along, and just off, Highway 41.

  Because it was unincorporated, the law enforcement agency responsible for Estero was the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.

  One of their cars pulled up the driveway.

  “Afternoon,” the cop said. “Nice place.”

  There was a look of not-so-subtle skepticism on his face. He knew instinctively that I didn’t own the house or the property.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You live here?” he asked.

  “I’m staying in the apartment,” I said, nodding my head toward the back of the house.

  He nodded back.

  “Did you call about a body?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, paramedics in a Lee County vehicle roared down the driveway.

  “Yeah, I called 911,” I said.

  The paramedics screeched to a halt.

  “You’re not going to need them,” I said.

  “Show me what you saw,” the cop said.

  “You’re going to need a boat.”

  “Got one coming,” he said.

  “All right, this way,” I said, and turned back toward the house. I skirted the main building, cut through the grass, and walked around the pool to the dock.

  I walked out onto the dock, went to the far right corner that looked out over the river.

  The little backwater area was barely visible. I pointed toward it.

  “See that little offshoot of the river over there? Looks like it goes back into a lagoon or something?” I said.

  The cop looked along the direction of my finger.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “That’s where I saw a body, looked like a woman, about twenty minutes ago,” I said. “I was kayaking.”

  On cue, a Lee County sheriff’s boat putted around the bend in the river. The cop thumbed the little mike on his shoulder.

  “Adam, stop, go into that little backwater right there. That’s
where the body supposedly is.” The cop shot a little sideways glance at me letting me know he assumed there was a fairly good chance I would turn out to be full of shit.

  Not a bad assumption, actually.