SANDSTORM (RICK SANDS SUSPENSE NOVELS Book 2) Read online

  Sands glanced at his father. He was dozing, and appeared to be at peace. But Sands could also see that his mother was simply not prepared to face life alone at this point. Despite the past eight years of decline, she had not yet accepted that the man she had been married to for over fifty years was nearing the end of his life.

  "What do the doctors say?"

  "His heart is failing and there's nothing they can do for him. They won't even come to see him anymore. I found a nice young resident who comes in and checks him. But he does that more for my sake than your father's."

  "What about the hospital?"

  "They tell me they'll let him into rehab. But only because he's a retired physician. Otherwise, they wouldn't even let him into the program. No point to it, they say."

  "But Dad doesn't want to do it."

  "No. We should have ten more years, but he's given up."

  Esther's shoulders slumped and she covered her face with her sun-freckled hands and sobbed. Sands put his arm around her. He couldn't bring himself to tell his mother that it should be Sam's decision. She hadn't asked him to intervene, but she clearly wanted him to help convince his father to struggle through rehab - involving exercises and other activities that would push him to the limit with no hope of making his heart function any better.

  "What does Sara think?"

  His younger sister, Sara, lived in New York where she was a working actor, appearing in television commercials and the occasional movie role. She visited them on Siesta Key, and they visited her in New York, but she had not returned to Daytona since graduating from high school. Too many bad memories.

  "You know your sister . . . her mantra is leave everyone alone. She wants me to leave him be. It's his choice, she says. Am I wrong, Rick? To expect him to at least try to fight this?"

  Yes, Sands thought, but he couldn't say that to his mother. Not here, not now. It would crush her spirit.

  "I'll talk to the hospital people."

  "But it's your father that needs convincing. He'll listen to you."

  "I know. But I need to talk to them before I discuss it with Dad."

  The hospital social worker was a woman named Molly Reagan. In her mid-forties, she was one of the few people Sands had ever met in Florida who looked as though she never went out into the sun. Her manner was that of a school principal used to telling parents the truth about their children. She greeted him in her office, located near the cafeteria, her manner direct, her voice firm. He liked that she skipped the usual expressions of concern over his father's condition and got to the point.

  "As I told your mother, Mr. Sands -"

  "Call me Rick."

  "Rick. Your father would be more comfortable at home. We can arrange for hospice care there."

  "So, the idea of him going into rehab . . ."

  Reagan shook her head. "Your father is not going to get better, Rick. I'm sure you know this from your conversations with his cardiologist, who also told this to your mother. Rehab will be difficult for someone in your father's condition. Very grueling. Without any hope of improvement."

  "But if there's even the slightest chance it will give him more time, why not try it?"

  "That's up to your father. But I wish you would talk to your mother. She does not want to accept the fact that your father is nearing the end of his life."

  My thoughts exactly, Sands told himself.

  He left Reagan's office and went to the cafeteria. He couldn't go back to his father's room, not yet. He forced himself to drink a cup of watery coffee. He was not accustomed to being personally confronted with a situation that presented no good alternatives. There was no exit.

  He walked slowly back to his father's room, preparing himself to break his mother's heart. But when she turned and looked up at him, her expression one of vulnerability and hope, his resolution slipped away.

  "How did it go?"

  "I'll try to talk him into going to rehab."

  "Thank God!"

  She raised her arms and gestured for him to come to her. He let her arms encircle him and he patted her on the back as though he were comforting a child. Sands knew that he was only postponing the inevitable. Nothing short of a miracle could stop his father from dying. And he felt sure that Esther, a nurse, knew the truth. She just wasn't able to face it - yet. And he saw nothing to be gained by forcing her to confront reality today.

  Chapter Four

  It was after midnight when Sands arrived at his oceanfront condo near the Ormond Pier. He felt like he had committed a crime, having persuaded his father to undertake the ordeal of cardio-rehab. Sam had given in to spare Esther any more grief and Sands could not remember another occasion in his adult life when he had felt so rotten. There were lines that you could not cross without being damaged and knowing that it would be agony for Sam to endure rehab, he felt like he had crossed one of those lines today.

  He parked in the underground garage and took the elevator up to the penthouse. His apartment was a floor-through, accessible only by a card key. He stopped at the lobby to check his mail and found a folder with his name typed on the outside taped to his box. Great, he thought. Plessy.

  He went directly onto the terrace. Enclosed by a white parapet, it wrapped around the eastern side of the building and overlooked the ocean. He had built and furnished a raised deck so that he and his guests could see the ocean without standing. He sprawled on a couch facing the water. No matter how much turbulence there was in his life, looking at the sea never failed to calm him. And a lifetime of exploring Atlantic beaches had convinced him that the ocean's appearance had a unique local flavor. He had yet to see a painting by a local artist that captured the flow of light and color across its surface particular to this section of the coast. He had tried many times to photograph it, but his attempts never captured its essence. The mystery would be there forever, rendering moot the temporal problems of his life.

  When he felt centered, he opened the folder. King had left him a voice mail on his cell phone that he had delivered Plessy's letter to the Attorney General's office. Their reaction had been to dismiss it as a typical extortion attempt that too often came in the wake of big money verdicts on civil cases. We'll see what they say about this one, Sands thought, pulling out a few typed sheets and checking the name at the end: PLESSY.

  He read the letter to himself:

  SECOND DEMAND LETTER

  I AM VERY UPSET WITH YOU, RICK. I THOUGHT YOU WOULD HANDLE THIS IN A MORE PROFESSIONAL MANNER.

  I COULD BLOW YOU UP. AFTER ALL, YOU HAVE INSULTED ME IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING BY IGNORING ME. BUT I HAVE SOMETHING ELSE IN MIND.

  I HAVE A TASK FOR YOU. IF YOU DO WHAT I ASK, NO HARM WILL COME TO ANYONE EXCEPT FOR THOSE WHO MUST PAY FOR THEIR CRIME.

  FIRST, A BIT OF HISTORY. I KNOW THAT YOUR PARENTS MOVED HERE FROM CANADA IN 1954 WHEN YOU WERE JUST FOUR YEARS OLD. NO DOUBT YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD COME TO PARADISE, LIVING AS YOU DID NEAR THE BEACH IN THAT PRE-DISNEY ERA WHEN SAND DUNES LINED THE OCEAN FROM DAYTONA NORTH TO ST. AUGUSTINE INSTEAD OF CONDOS AND HOTELS.

  WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW, AND WHAT THEY NO DOUBT FAILED TO TEACH YOU IN SCHOOL WAS THAT JUST FOUR YEARS EARLIER, YES, 1950, A BLACK MAN NAMED JOHN HARRISON WAS LYNCHED IN MARBURY COUNTY, WHICH, AS YOU WELL KNOW, IS IN THE SAME JUDICIAL DISTRICT AS VOLUSIA. THE EXACT DATE WAS OCTOBER 4, 1950. THE CULPRITS BEAT MR. HARRISON, PUT A NOOSE AROUND HIS NECK, CASTRATED HIM AND THEN HANGED HIM. NO ONE WAS EVER ARRESTED FOR THE CRIME. THE THEN SHERIFF OF MARBURY COUNTY CONDUCTED A PATHETIC INVESTIGATION AND DID NOT EVEN FIND ANY SUSPECTS. THE STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL LIKEWISE FAILED TO FIND ANY BASIS FOR INTERVENTION STATING THAT IT WAS A LOCAL MATTER. THE FBI CONDUCTED A PHONY INVESTIGATION AND WENT BACK TO D.C. WITH NOTHING BUT SUNBURNS TO SHOW FOR THEIR EFFORT.

  RICK, I NEED YOU TO SOLVE THE MURDER OF MR. HARRISON. YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE CRIME SCENE. THE LYNCHING TOOK PLACE IN JACKSON STATE PARK. I'M SURE YOU'VE BEEN THERE MANY TIMES.

  ONCE YOU HAVE IDENTIFIED THE KILLERS, YOU CAN TRY TO HAVE THEM ARRESTED. I DON'T BELIEVE ANYTH
ING WILL BE DONE BY THE STATE OF FLORIDA. AFTER ALL, THERE WERE, DURING THE JIM CROW ERA, MORE THAN 60 LYNCHINGS IN FLORIDA, AND NOT A SINGLE PERSON HAS EVER BEEN CHARGED WITH ANY CRIME IN THOSE CASES.

  I WOULD FIND IT AN ACCEPTABLE RESOLUTION IF THE STATE OF FLORIDA ARRESTED MR. HARRISON'S KILLERS. BUT THAT WON'T HAPPEN. SO, I INSIST THAT YOU DISCLOSE TO ME THE NAMES OF THE KILLERS ALONG WITH THE EVIDENCE THAT YOU UNCOVER TO PROVE THEIR GUILT. PART OF YOUR JOB, RICK, IS TO PUT TOGETHER A CASE THAT WILL STAND UP IN COURT. SO, YOU WILL BE THE PROSECUTOR AND I WILL BE THE JUDGE. THE CULPRITS WILL GET A FAIR TRIAL BEFORE ME, AND I WILL IMPOSE AND CARRY OUT THEIR SENTENCE. ALL ASSUMING THE STATE OF FLORIDA DOES NOTHING.

  HERE'S A TIP TO GET YOU STARTED: THE VICTIM'S SISTER, KAREN SMITH, LIVES IN QUEENS, NEW YORK ON 131ST STREET. TALK TO HER FIRST.

  GOOD LUCK, RICK. YOU WILL DELIVER A PROGRESS REPORT IN NO MORE THAN SEVEN DAYS. I WILL CONTACT YOU WITH DELIVERY INSTRUCTIONS.

  I ASSUME YOU WILL TURN THIS OVER TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE. FINE BY ME. LET THEM SOLVE THE HOMICIDE OF MR. HARRISON.

  IF YOU IGNORE YOUR ASSIGNMENT, OR WORSE, UNDERTAKE IT AND GIVE UP BEFORE YOU IDENTIFY THE KILLERS, I'LL TAKE ACTION TO SPUR YOU ON. SORRY, NO POINTS FOR TRYING.

  PLESSY

  Sands re-read the letter, then put it aside. Inside the folder he found several black and white photographs. They depicted a lynching. The body of a naked black man hanged from a pole with a noose around his neck. The pole had been driven into the ground in a small clearing surrounded by dense scrub on what looked to be an island in a marshland. The photographs were taken from different angles. The man's face was not visible, nor was the front of his body below the waist. Each of the photographs was stamped FBI and dated. On the back of each photo was another FBI stamp. Under the stamp, in block printing, Sands read: John Harrison, October 4, 1950, Jackson State Park.

  Sands had seen photographs of lynchings in books about the South. But the victims had never been identified. This was different. Much different. John Harrison had been lynched the year Sands had been born, just four years before his parents had moved to Florida. In his career as a prosecutor, particularly during the years when he headed the homicide bureau, he had seen many victims of homicides, and had introduced into evidence numerous photographs of their bodies. Often, jurors had reacted by gasping when confronted with those photographs. Sands now felt like one of those jurors. He put the photos back into the folder and got up and leaned against the parapet. His heart was pounding and he felt like he was going to throw up.

  He had no doubt that Plessy meant what he said. Sands had never heard of the lynching of John Harrison. No surprise there. From first grade until the day he graduated from Seabreeze High School, not one word was ever mentioned about Florida's Jim Crow history. And the public schools he had attended had been segregated, first by law, and then by practice, until his sophomore year in high school, more than a decade after Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that supposedly ended school segregation.

  Questions surged into his head: How did Plessy have access to the original evidence? How did he discover the name of the victim's sister, and her location? Why me? How does Plessy know me? And why did he choose me to do this?

  Chapter Five

  Ty King left the terminal and walked through the icy wind to the taxi stand. He had a small suitcase on wheels and a briefcase and wore a fedora that he had bought years ago on a trip to Manhattan and took out only when flying north during the fall or winter months. He had hoped for one of those spectacular October days in New York, sunny but crisp; but instead it was more like late November and the taxi line was long and slow moving.

  Plessy's second letter had forced them to take action. Now he and Sands were facing a seven day deadline and a command that they do something tangible. The plan was for King to visit Karen Smith, the woman Plessy had said was John Harrison's sister. King had given Michelle the task of obtaining Smith's unlisted phone number and she had come through with it. King was impressed. Michelle never complained or asked for help.

  When King called Smith she had not sounded surprised, just resigned. She had refused to talk to him about anything related to Harrison over the phone, but had agreed to meet him at her lawyer's office in Kew Gardens, Queens. She assured him that it was close to both JFK and LaGuardia.

  When his turn finally came, he climbed into the back of the yellow taxi, his long legs scrunched together by the protective barrier that separated the driver from his passengers. King had one of those sudden memory flashes of riding in checker cabs on visits to Manhattan during college and law school, sprawling on the back seat, legs stretched out in front of him. Once upon a time, he thought.

  Smith had told him the truth - the driver pulled up at the address a little over fifteen minutes later. It was on a six lane commercial street, Queens Boulevard, directly across from a large courthouse complex. Since he was twenty minutes early, King walked to the nearest donut shop, a couple blocks down, and took refuge from the cold inside. After calling the lawyer's office and letting them know he would be on time, he got a cinnamon donut and coffee and took a seat at a small table near the window.

  He felt right at home. Courthouse areas were all the same - diners and coffee shops, liquor stores mixed in with large drug chains, copy places along with the ever-present law offices and bail bondsmen. As he enjoyed his coffee and donut, he studied the steady stream of people walking by or entering the donut shop. Even the types of people looked familiar to the courthouse setting: court officers in uniform, cops, secretaries, jurors, and lawyers in suits. What was different was the incredible ethnic mix - it looked like the United Nations had convened on Queens Boulevard, except these were ordinary folks, not diplomats. Walt Whitman would have felt right at home here, he thought.

  Back on the sidewalk, rolling his suitcase behind him, still tasting the sweetness of cinnamon and coffee, he was struck by the difference a sidewalk culture made in the life of a community. Here, unlike in most of Florida, there was an entire dimension of life that played out on the sidewalk - food vendors, tables piled high with goods for sale, hawkers handing out flyers, couples hugging or fighting - and surrounding it all the cacophony of voices speaking a dozen languages.

  Smith's lawyer's office was in a residential apartment building with a smaller commercial wing that fronted Queens Boulevard. Ironically, he observed, Jane Bard's blown-up project would have had a similar mix of condos, offices, and stores. He took the elevator to the second floor. Entering off the Boulevard, he walked down a narrow but brightly lighted hallway, found the lawyer's office and was buzzed in after identifying himself over the intercom. The receptionist took his suitcase, and offered coffee, which he declined and then directed him into an empty conference room.

  Within minutes a tall black man in his forties came in. He wore a dark suit, soft leather shoes and a tie that melded perfectly with his ice blue shirt. The man perused King's clothes, and King could tell he found them acceptable. Probably expected me to show up in a seersucker suit and bow tie, King observed.

  "Chris Green," the man said, extending his hand. "Karen's lawyer."

  "Tyrone King."

  They sat down at the table.

  "So, what's this about?" Green said, the words sounding to Ty like a jack hammer.

  By contrast King knew his voice sounded to Green like syrup as he explained who he was and why he was there.

  "What kind of involvement do you have in mind for Karen?"

  "None. I'm just looking for a place to start. I won't take any notes and I'll never disclose anything she tells me."

  "Do the authorities know you're here?"

  "Unavoidable. But as I said, I'll never reveal anything she doesn't want revealed."

  "Give me a few minutes. I'll see what I can do. But I have to tell you, Karen is scared to death of this."

  King had no idea how to respond to Green's statement. He did not want to belittle Karen Smith's fear, but the chances of the perpetrat
ors still being alive and capable of doing her harm after fifty years seemed remote.

  Twenty minutes later, Green returned, accompanied by a black woman in her fifties. She was dressed conservatively, as if for church. Her hair was nicely styled and she wore a thin gold chain on one wrist and a very large diamond ring on her right hand. She attempted a warm smile, but King could feel her tension as she reached out to take his hand.

  "Karen Smith."

  "Tyrone King."

  She studied him, her face a blank; but fear was evident in her eyes.

  "How did you find me, Mr. King?" she asked after taking a seat across the table from him.

  "I'm a trained investigator."

  "Which means that they can also find me."

  "They?"

  "The men who lynched my brother almost fifty years ago."

  "Nowadays, we can all be found, even by those who would do us harm. But, you must have been a child when your brother was murdered. I doubt anyone would think you know anything that could bring them down."

  But even as he spoke, King heard Rick's question in his mind: How did Plessy learn about Karen? How had he had obtained access to non-public records either in the Florida Attorney General's office or the FBI.

  "Then why are you here, Mr. King?"

  "Background. I don't know anything about your brother, your family, or his murder."

  Smith shook her head. "Why would you? Florida's the sunshine state not the lynching state." She studied King's face. "First tell me about yourself, Mr. King."

  "I was born in Daytona in 1957. Grew up in colored town with my aunt. Attended colored schools. We were forbidden to go to the beach, except for the colored beach. Separate water fountains, bathrooms, back of the bus - all that stuff. De-segregation didn't start to happen until 64, and it was by inches. Then, when I was ten, I got out. I attended prep school in Massachusetts, then college in New Hampshire, then law school in Boston."