Key Raiders Page 17

  The Jamaican man scowled over at me, his whole body hunched over around his hands, strapped to the chair and the corner of the table. He was wearing a thin, well-worn t-shirt with a pocket on the front, and his hair was sticking out in several directions and looked like it was well overdue for a cut. My best guess was that he was somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, maybe a little older than that since he had a boyish look about him that could serve to age him down at first glance.

  “Yes,” he said simply, though even with that one word, I could detect a heavy Jamaican accent.

  “And how about you tell us your name,” Muñoz said, shooting him what I imagined she thought of as a warm smile, but really just came off as forced. “It’ll be easier for us to get to know each other that way.”

  I could almost feel her nervous energy from my seat to her left. She was more anxious than ever to get Birn back and to be honest, so was I. If I had to admit it, I would say that I was hoping we would find him in that house, too. But Holm had cased the third floor soundly, and all four of us had looked through the first and second. Birn was nowhere to be found.

  “Get to know each other?” the man repeated, staring open-mouthed at Muñoz. “You cannot be serious, woman.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him.

  “You will show everyone in this room respect as long as you’re here,” I said coolly. “Do you understand that?”

  He met my eyes, and despite his surly demeanor, I detected more than a hint of the fear he displayed when he surrendered back at the house in there somewhere.

  “Okay, okay,” he said after a moment of holding my gaze, averting his eyes from mine as he realized that I meant business. “I am sorry.”

  He shot a glance up at Muñoz as he apologized, but looked away quickly when he saw her icy glare piercing its way back at him.

  “Your name?” she asked again, and that iciness in her eyes was making its way to her tone of voice with ease.

  “Ajani,” he muttered, still staring wide-eyed down at his handcuffs, avoiding looking at us at all. “Ajani Campbell.”

  “It’s good to meet you, Ajani,” Holm said in a tone of false joviality, shooting a look over at Muñoz and me as if to say that we needed to try to be nice to this guy, too. “Thank you for doing the right thing back there and standing down. We know that must’ve been difficult, given that your friends were intent on making the wrong choices. You were brave to do that in front of them, and smart, too. Who knows how much worse that could’ve been if you didn’t stand down when you did.”

  “Thank you,” he murmured, stealing a glance up at Holm. “I… I didn’t want to die today.”

  He looked back down at the table as if he was ashamed of having said or even felt this.

  “As I said, you’re smart,” Holm reiterated, not unkindly. “Those guys back there, they weren’t smart. Not even a little. That one friend of yours jumped out of a window, broke his leg, and started running across the damn sand! You would never be that stupid, would you, Ajani?”

  “No,” the Jamaican man said, smiling slightly. “No, I would never be quite that stupid, I hope. And he was not my friend, just so you know.”

  “Oh, really?” Holm asked, raising his eyebrows. “I can’t say that surprises me, given how they acted.”

  “Who were they to you, then?” I asked gently, trying to adopt some of Holm’s calm and friendly demeanor for the time being. “What were the three of you doing alone in that house?”

  Ajani just glanced up at us, surveyed each one of our faces, and then returned his attention to his handcuffs, blinking the entire time furiously. I could see his hands shaking almost uncontrollably at his side, making the handcuffs jangle a bit from the movement.

  “You’re safe now, Ajani,” Muñoz said, and I was glad to hear that she was able to sound kind and caring now. “None of them can get you here.”

  “Yeah?” he asked with a tiny, guttural laugh. “Have you seen this place?”

  He looked up at us and blinked again, then shrugged as he turned his attention to the door leading to the rest of the station.

  “Yes, we’ve seen it,” I said, sighing despite myself. “But you’ll be transferred to Key West soon. They have much larger facilities there. And these are good officers. There just aren’t all that many of them. You’ll never be left alone, though. There will always be someone on duty to watch your back for as long as you’re here.”

  “Plus, it’s not like taking out a police station would be a smart move for whoever you’re working for, no matter how small,” Holm added with a shrug of his own. “That would draw a lot of unnecessary attention to them, wouldn’t it? And all just for one guy. No offense, my friend, but you can’t be that important. And they can’t be that stupid. Unless they’re all like those other two guys that you were with back there, which I doubt.”

  “Yeah,” Ajani said with a low chuckle, still staring down at his handcuffs. “You are right, Agent. I’m not that important, and they are not that stupid.”

  “Stupid enough to kidnap a federal agent like us, though,” I said, leaning back in my chair and studying the Jamaican man’s reaction closely. “That drew some attention to them, didn’t it now? That’s why we’re all here, after all, isn’t it? To find our guy?”

  Ajani froze. He stopped shaking, and his handcuffs stopped jangling. I’m not even sure he continued to blink at all as he continued to stare down at his hands.

  “You know about that, right?” Muñoz asked quickly, unable to contain her excitement. “You know who took my partner?”

  There was a long period of silence as the Jamaican man continued to sit there, frozen like a statue, as each one of us stared at him.

  “If you know where Agent Birn is, you need to tell us,” I said gently. “It’s very, very important, for your own safety and future as well as for his. If you don’t tell us everything that you know, there will be even more serious consequences for you than the ones you’re already facing. And there’s nothing we’ll be able to do to help you out then.”

  “Help… help me out?” the guy stammered, stealing a glance at me again as if he wasn’t sure that he heard me correctly.

  “That’s right,” I said, nodding to him. “You didn’t fight back at the house like the others, and you didn’t run. You surrendered yourself to us even as the other two guys refused to give in and do the right thing. We can’t let you off scot-free, given that you were with them and you no doubt were involved in this whole operation in some way, but we can make sure you get a decent deal. That is to say if you cooperate with us and tell us everything that you know.”

  “And if you have some really good information,” Holm added, leaning forward on the table for emphasis, “that can only help you even more. You see, guys like us get really upset when someone messes with one of our own, and that’s what’s happened here. So we’ll do just about anything, within reason and the law, to get him back. We’re really motivated here, and if you help us out, we can help you out.”

  “Look, Ajani, we know that you probably weren’t involved with what happened to Agent Birn,” I reasoned. It was true enough that he didn’t look like some big bad guy, just one of the underlings the big bads ordered around all the time.

  “No, it wasn’t me!” he said quickly and predictably. He made as if to hold his hands up in the air for emphasis, but then was jerked back into his original position by the handcuffs. “I didn’t have anything to do with that!”

  He shook his head vigorously, and his eyes bored into mine, wide and panicked, but no doubt truthful. This guy was full of nervous energy, and every time he felt even a little guilty, he was sure to look away from the other MBLIS agents and me. But he stared straight at me now, unabashed in his defense of himself.

  As far as I was concerned, this was proof enough that my initial instinct had been correct. Ajani didn’t take Birn, and he wasn’t any part of the decision to take him. But he damn well knew enough about it to defend himself like thi
s.

  “I thought as much,” I said, giving him a small smile and staring right back at him. “But you know about what happened to our friend, don’t you? You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Predictably, the Jamaican man tore his eyes away from mine and went back to staring down at his hands, which looked red and sore from when he tried to jerk them away from the handcuffs, having momentarily forgotten that they were there. His shoulders trembled, and I was afraid that he might cry.

  I exchanged a look with Muñoz. I could see the anxiety and the anticipation in her eyes. She knew what I knew: that Ajani knew something about what had happened to Birn. And she was even more intent than I was to find out what it was.

  She opened her mouth as if to say something to our prisoner, but I put a hand gently on her forearm to stop her, and she shut her mouth reluctantly, knowing as well as I that she might be a little too eager to get to the bottom of this herself. It was probably best to let Holm and me take the lead on this one.

  Thinking as much herself, Muñoz gave me a curt nod of understanding.

  “Ajani, it’s important that you tell us everything you know,” I reminded the man. “Otherwise, we can’t help you very much, can we?”

  “Are you threatening me?” he asked quietly, and I blinked at him, taken aback.

  “No, of course not,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief, wondering where he got this idea from. “What would make you think that?”

  “I just… you say before that you are going to help me not be killed by the gang,” he said, stealing another glance at me. “And now you say that you cannot help me anymore if I don’t tell you what you wish to know.”

  “No, no, no,” I said quickly, shaking my head again. “Those are two different things. We’re going to keep you safe here no matter what, Ajani. That’s our job. It’s whether we can help you get a deal with a judge that’s in question here.”

  “Oh,” Ajani murmured flatly, looking up and blinking at me again. “Really?”

  Sometimes I wondered about all these misconceptions people had about law enforcement. It really made it harder for us to do our jobs.

  “It’s always our job to protect you, no matter what,” Muñoz said kindly. “But how much we can help you with your case depends on how much you can help us with ours. That’s just the way it is.”

  “And we really need your help, Ajani,” Holm said quietly. “Our guy has been missing for more than two days now. Every minute, it gets less and less likely that we’ll find him. And then it’s not just you that’ll be in trouble. It’s all your friends. And us, for that matter, since we’ll have lost our friend.”

  This seemed to have the desired effect, appealing to the Jamaican man’s better sensibilities. He glanced up at us as if studying each of our faces to make sure we were telling the truth.

  “This man is your friend?” he asked, his voice smaller than it had been before. “He is not just your… how do you say it in English… someone you work with?”

  “A coworker?” I asked, and the man nodded gratefully to confirm that that was the word he had been looking for. “No, he’s far more than just a coworker.”

  “He was my partner, just like these guys are partners,” Muñoz said quietly, giving Ajani a weak smile. “That means that he had my back always, and I had his. Well, until now.”

  Holm squeezed her shoulder gently as Ajani watched her closely.

  “If you know anything,” I implored him again after allowing a moment to pass in silence. “We really need you to tell us. It’s really, really important that we find our friend.”

  I let my voice linger on the word “friend” for emphasis and decided to refer to Birn that way throughout the rest of the conversation. That seemed to appeal to Ajani more than “colleague,” and I wondered if that had anything to do with how readily he dismissed the idea that the other two men back at the house were his friends.

  “Okay,” Ajani said, his voice small as he shifted in his chair so that he was more facing us now than his handcuffs, though his body remained slanted in that direction because of the way he was tied up. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if preparing himself for something.

  “Thank you, Ajani,” Muñoz said, and she really did sound grateful.

  “Yes, thank you,” I murmured in encouragement. “Anything that you can tell us, we would appreciate it very much. Anything you can think of about our friend, or what you were doing here on Little Torch, could help us, even if it doesn’t seem all that important.”

  “I wasn’t there when it happened,” Ajani reiterated. “And I wasn’t involved with that at all. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “We understand that, Ajani,” Holm said, giving the man a smile, and I noticed that he seemed to calm down when we used his name. That wasn’t all that uncommon. People liked it when others addressed them by name. Sometimes, however, it had the opposite effect in these situations, antagonizing the suspects.

  “Okay,” the Jamaican man said, closing his eyes again and taking another breath, though it was shallower this time. “Okay, thank you.”

  “Take however long you need,” I assured him while we waited for him to start. “Anything you can think of to help us. Anything at all, no matter how mundane. Names, sights, sounds, something you overheard that you didn’t think much of at the time. Anything like that.”

  “Why don’t you start with how you came here?” Holm asked, seeing that Ajani was struggling a bit with finding the words. “What brought you to the island in the first place?”

  “Well, I needed to feed my family,” he said, looking at Holm with an almost imploring expression on his face, asking him to understand with his eyes. “The resort I was working at on my island did a lot of layoffs, and I couldn’t find another job.”

  “We understand that you must’ve been in difficult circumstances,” Holm assured him. “We’re not here to judge you right now, just to figure out what happened here.”

  “Thank you,” Ajani murmured, seeming to have gained the strength to continue. “So this guy I knew said he might have some work for me. It started off small, just selling… what do you call it here…?”

  He made a motion as if to smoke with his fingers, dipping his head low so he could do so around his handcuffs.

  “Marijuana,” I told him, and he smiled and nodded.

  “Yes, that,” he said, pointing at me in confirmation through his handcuffs. “That is it. I sell that to American tourists on my island. I think, no big deal at the time. It is legal in many places. And then it got to be legal on my island, and I was out of a job again.”

  He sighed and slumped his shoulders, and I smiled at him.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Ajani,” I said. “That was a few years ago, wasn’t it? Legalization in Jamaica.”

  “Yes,” he confirmed with a nod. “A couple of years. So then they start making me do… how do you say… worse things?”

  “Harder drugs?” I asked, and he nodded again, wincing slightly as he did so, as if he hated to admit it.

  “Yes, that is what I mean,” he said with a shallow sigh. “I sell to the tourists. And it keeps getting… harder if you say that way—worse things. I never shoot anyone, though! I never even shoot the gun they gave me.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said, thinking back to how much the guy had been trembling when it looked like he might have to shoot that gun at us and how easily he had caved at the opportunity to hand it over and give up the fight.

  “When did they give you the gun?” Holm asked. “When you started selling the harder stuff?”

  “Yes,” Ajani said with a small nod and a shrug. “But there was never any chance I was going to have to use it. It’s easy on my island, to know who to sell to and to avoid… how do you say… what do you call yourselves?”

  “Law enforcement? The authorities?” I tried.

  “Yes, authorities, that is the word in English,” he said, nodding to me. “It is easy
to avoid them on my island. No American police there. They do not care much about us. As long as we don’t bother them, they don’t bother us.”

  “I understand,” I said darkly. “That’s not uncommon on some islands around here, outside of the Keys.”

  “Yes,” Ajani sighed, his shoulders slumping a bit as he said this. “I don’t know. Sometimes I wish they would catch us just so I don’t have to do this anymore. But then what would my family do?”

  “Did you ever try to get another job?” Muñoz asked as if she was trying to understand why Ajani would continue to do this even though he didn’t want to. “Something must’ve come up at one of the resorts, or somewhere else, at some point if you were really working for this gang for years.”

  “Yes, there were other… how do you say… opportunities,” Ajani sighed, looking away from us in shame for the first time since we’d gotten him to start opening up some more. “But by then, they make me start selling worse stuff, and they give me the gun. I worry that something might happen to me if I say no. Or worse, something happens to my wife or my daughters. No way out then.”

  I sighed. Too many people got themselves in situations like this. It’s why Holm, Muñoz, and I had jobs. And it seemed like every time we took one criminal organization down, another popped up to take its place. Or two more, even.

  “I understand,” I said quietly. “It must’ve been hard for you. Are your wife and daughters safe now?”

  “I send them to stay with my uncle in America when I come here,” Ajani said, brightening up a bit at this thought, and I breathed a sigh of relief myself that this man’s family wasn’t back in his home country vulnerable to retribution for him talking to us today. “He moved there not too long ago, and then he gets permission for them to come live with him. It took some time to make it work, but it was perfect timing. I was going to go with them, but then… Then I get sent here, and I worry that if I don’t go, they track us down. This way, at least my family is safe.”