No Sunscreen for the Dead Read online

  “Staring at my computer all morning.”

  “I can show you how to get streaming video up in the corner of your screen.”

  “That’s against the rules,” said Benmont.

  “Everyone does it and all the bosses know,” said Sonic. “They never mention it.”

  “Because you work fast.”

  The youth looked back up at the flat screen. “Wait a minute. This isn’t the double murder I was talking about. That was a condo . . .” He paused to read the details. “Another double murder?”

  “It’s a violent state.”

  Network cameras filmed FBI agents arriving at the residence. Flashing red and blue lights filled the screen as the names of the latest victims scrolled across the bottom.

  Benmont squinted at the TV. “Why do those names seem familiar?”

  “What is it?” asked Sonic.

  “Do you have something to write with?”

  Chapter 10

  Sarasota

  A Crown Vic with blackwalls sped north on the Tamiami Trail. It passed the Bahi Hut Lounge and pulled into another unusually crowded parking lot of a decrepit motel. It wasn’t hard identifying the room. The windows were blown out, and glass scattered all the way to the sidewalk. A good-looking hooker had been first on the scene and called in the explosion over her police radio.

  This time the usual forensic vehicles were accompanied by the bomb squad. Detective Gannon went inside.

  He stopped and stood in awe at the thoroughness of the obliteration. The bomb people were going over the room with special instruments and swabs.

  “Gannon!” said a friendly bomb guy named Barrot. “Haven’t seen you since that guy blew up his garage by putting gasoline in his washing machine to get motor oil out of his jeans.”

  “As I remember, the garage door was like a crumpled piece of foil.”

  “This one here’s a first on me,” said Barrot, appraising the charred walls and carpet. “An explosion without a bomb.”

  “What about a gas leak?” asked Gannon.

  Barrot shook his head. “Nothing that flammable.” He watched as one of his team swabbed the windowsill and stuck the cloth into an elegantly calibrated machine. “No traces of nitrates or anything remotely similar in chemical composition to known explosives. No accelerants, no fuel, nothing. Yet there was clearly a devastating blast, not to mention the shock wave that set off car alarms for blocks. It’s like the room spontaneously blew apart all on its own.”

  “The victim?” asked Gannon.

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “Where?”

  “That wall.”

  They both turned toward a victim-shaped charcoal stain.

  “Ewwww!”

  “See the shredded rope and pieces of chair embedded in the plaster? Looks like he was tied up at the time.”

  “I still can’t believe we don’t have a single clue to the blast,” said Gannon.

  “We did find one thing, which has me even more baffled.” Barrot looked down at a tabletop that was missing its legs. “Detected a small spot in the middle that tested positive for pyrotechnic flash powder.”

  “Then there you go,” said Gannon. “You’ve got your answer. Why were you making this out like some big mystery?”

  “No, you’re not getting my meaning,” said Barrot. “When I said small, I’m talking tiny, no more than three grams of a potassium compound.”

  “In English?”

  “A firecracker,” said Barrot. “Maybe a ladyfinger or blackcat—at most a cherry bomb or M-80, but still just a firecracker.” A hand swept across the destruction. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Have to wait on all the final tests,” said Barrot. “For now, we’re totally stumped. The killer must be some kind of scientific genius or a homicidal David Copperfield.”

  Gannon swiveled around to assess the destruction again. “How on earth could someone blow up an entire motel room with just a firecracker? . . .”

  Twelve Hours Earlier

  “How on earth can you blow up an entire motel room with just a firecracker?” asked Coleman.

  “Easier than you’d think,” said Serge, setting the ignition source on the counter next to a bag from a grocery store. “You just need a basic grasp of physics and an impish sense of humor. I got the firecracker idea by thinking about atomic bombs.”

  “They seem different,” said Coleman.

  “A lot of people don’t realize that A-bombs are actually two explosions.” Serge reached into the grocery bag and began setting candles around the room. “The nuclear part of the detonation is the second. The first is a conventional blast that implodes the radioactive material in on itself, triggering the chain reaction that leads to a mushroom cloud and generations of frogs with two heads.”

  “Cool,” said Coleman. “You’ve got some radioactive shit?”

  “No, I’ve got this.” Serge reached again into his supermarket bag and removed a pair of ten-pound sacks, setting them on the dresser.

  Coleman scratched his head. “You’re going to bake a cake?”

  “Shhhhh!” Serge ran to the door and checked the peephole. “He’s here.”

  Another salesman thought he had the wrong address. The van was about to pull out when Serge threw the room’s door open. “Come in! Come in!” An arm waved enthusiastically. “We’re suckers for flashy brochures!”

  “But I’m supposed to meet someone about a kitchen remodeling job.” He looked left and right. “This is a motel.”

  “You’re on the ball! It’s for my grandparents!” said Serge. “Can’t have you showing up at their trailer and ruining my surprise! I saw the fantastic work you did at Boca Shores for the Gotliebs, and they gave you a glowing recommendation! As in atomic!”

  “Oh, I understand now.” The salesman shook Serge’s hand. “The name’s Art. Art Crumb. You do realize that if we decide to go forward, I’ll need a down payment today.”

  “Naturally,” said Serge. “Let’s get to it! There’s nothing to fear!”

  Art entered the room and Serge locked the door behind him.

  “Why are you peeking out the window like that?” asked Art.

  Serge turned and smiled. “Witnesses . . .”

  Thus began an increasingly familiar routine: a polite but persistent request for a refund. Serge getting socked in the mouth. A salesman marched at gunpoint into a bank to empty his retirement account. Swinging by Boca Shores with a hostage in the trunk to deliver the refund. Then back to the motel, the duct tape, another motel chair and science projects to follow.

  Serge held one end of a rope and pulled a cow-hitch knot tight behind Art Crumb’s back. “As you’ve probably deduced by now, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

  Next: redecorating. Serge pushed the beds aside and slid the hostage against the far wall near where the headboards had been. Then he grabbed a square table and pulled it to the middle of the room. “Coleman, I need those bags. Coleman? Coleman!”

  “I’m resting.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Right here.”

  “Keep talking. I’ll follow your voice.”

  “What do I say?”

  “The alphabet and counting might be outside your reach at this point.” Serge searched the room with his eyes. “How about drug slang?”

  “You got it . . . Grass, reefer, blunt, boo-ya, cheeba, colitas, endo, indica, mota, shake, hippie lettuce, fatty boom blatty, acid, blotter, windowpane, microdot, Owsley, electric Kool-Aid, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, coke, bump, yale, eight ball, gutter glitter, booger sugar, meth, crank, ice, crystal, chalk, Scooby Snax, smack, skag, scat, white pony, white lady, white death, Big-H, GHB, Special-K, X, Molly, Sally D . . .”

  Serge slowly walked toward the back of the room as the voice grew louder. He slipped his hands down between a wall and a mattress, sliding one of the beds out, revealing Coleman lying on the floor and sipping a Heineken out the side of his mouth. />
  “Coleman, why did you just lie there while I was pushing a bed over you?”

  “I didn’t feel like moving.”

  “You idiot! I need your help.”

  Coleman struggled to his feet, and Serge pushed the bed back. “Now get those two grocery sacks and meet me at the table.”

  Serge grabbed another chair and sat with a roll of tape, an M-80 firecracker and a lighter.

  Coleman joined him and placed the bags on the table. “I still don’t understand what you’re going to do with regular grocery-store flour.”

  Serge flicked open a pocketknife and carefully cut a circle in the side of one ten-pound bag. He laid the M-80 in the middle of the hole. Then he cut an identical circle in the other bag, and sandwiched the pair together over the firecracker. He peeled the edge of the roll of tape and wrapped the entire package together. Finally, he wiggled his fingers to create a small opening between the bags and jammed in a wad of toilet paper to leave the M-80’s fuse exposed.

  He pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “But you don’t smoke,” said Coleman.

  “I know I don’t, but a cigarette is the perfect fuse extender when you need a running start.” He tore off the filter and fitted the end over the tip of the regular fuse. “And there you have it!”

  “Have what?”

  “It’s all about dust,” said Serge. “That’s why it’s such a mystery to the general public. In the early industrial age there were countless dramatic explosions that initially baffled investigators because there was no explosive material to be found.”

  The hostage continued a shrill whine. He glanced around at all the Catholic saint votive candles with tall, frosted glass to prevent wind from blowing out the flames that the souls in purgatory were counting on.

  Serge walked over and bashed the side of the salesman’s head with a phone book. “Pipe down and pay attention! This concerns you . . . And now you made me lose my train of thought.” Another bash with the phone book.

  “Dust,” said Coleman.

  “Right!” Serge smiled and loped back to the table. “We’re not talking about regular dust, where a shaft of sunlight comes through a window and all these particles are dancing in the air. If you can make out the particles, they’re too big. We’re talking microns, where the dust is so fine that all the naked human eye can detect is a foggy haze, like in a third-world factory where the workers have to wear surgical masks.”

  Coleman grabbed the lighter off the table and blazed a doobie. “I still don’t understand how flour can be an explosive.”

  “Say I’m holding a piece of paper in one hand, and a stick of dynamite in the other.”

  “I’m holding a piece of paper in one—”

  “Shut up.” Serge raised one hand, then the other. “The paper will burn, but the dynamite explodes. So how do you get the paper to detonate like the dynamite?”

  “Wrap it around dynamite?”

  “Physics, I tell you!” Serge lowered his hands. “There’s all kinds of everyday stuff that people would normally consider so non-explosive that they’d be shocked to witness it level a building. But if you know what you’re doing, you can even make powdered milk explode. Heck, barely a decade ago, a sugar explosion in Georgia killed fourteen.”

  Coleman had his trademark glazed look.

  “Picture a burning log.” Serge pushed the cigarette farther onto the fuse. “You wouldn’t consider a log to be explosive because it’s not. It’s just combustible, and it actually takes a lot of work to get one going in a fireplace. And after it’s ignited, it just burns along the top with a gradual release of heated carbon dioxide . . . But imagine if you could make the entire log burn all at once in a tiny fraction of a second. The gas expansion would reach such ferocity that it would blow the house apart, just like a bomb.”

  “But, Serge! How is that possible?”

  “The tipping point.”

  “What’s that?”

  “All physics has a tipping point, and in this case it’s four hundred microns,” said Serge.

  “What’s a micron?”

  “Only the dead know,” said Serge. “When something non-explosive burns, it’s along the surface. The greater the surface area, the faster the burn rate, and scientists have done the math. If you can grind an entire log down to microns, you’ve increased the surface area many thousands of times until the burn velocity is up there with traditional explosives.”

  “Far out.” Coleman exhaled a giant hit and nodded. “You mentioned something about an atomic bomb?”

  “After grinding up a log—or flour in a flour mill—it’s still safe. It’s just a pile of dust. The key is to get it suspended in the air, so that each particle is floating separately. Then just add flame. As one speck burns, the next dozen particles are so close that the fire jumps to them, then those in turn each ignite dozens more and so on until you’ve got an uncontrollable chain reaction. More importantly, it all takes place in a tiny sliver of time . . . So, like an atomic bomb, you need a primary explosion—in this case the M-80—which will effectively disperse a white cloud into the room until it reaches the ignition source.” He pointed at the candles placed along the windowsill and dresser. “If you notice, the tall religious holders will prevent the small, initial blast from blowing them out.”

  “I don’t doubt you,” said Coleman. “It’s just that I’m, uh, I’m . . . what’s the word?”

  “Stoned?”

  “That’s it.”

  There was a little loose flour on the table from where the bags had been cut open. Serge scooped it into his right hand. “Follow me. And grab that mason jar you were drinking Seven and Seven out of.”

  They walked over to the dresser. “Now wipe the inside of that jar until it’s bone dry and give it to me.”

  Coleman did. Serge took the jar and dumped in the flour. Then he covered the top and shook it like the devil. He set it on the dresser, with a milky cloud inside and wisps of white haze wafting out the top. “Stand back.”

  Serge pulled out a book of matches, struck one and tossed it in the jar.

  “Whoa!” said Coleman.

  “Mmmmmmmm!” said the hostage.

  Coleman cautiously stepped forward. “That was some flame!”

  “And that was just a jar,” said Serge. “Imagine a whole room.”

  “But why did you pick flour?”

  “Irony again. This salesman went big with the whole kitchen concept for the Gotliebs, so I’m going bigger. He’s baked goods.”

  “Mmmmmmmm!”

  “Will you shut the fuck up?” More negative reinforcement with the phone book. “You’re pissing in my irony punch bowl.”

  Serge opened his book of matches and struck another one. He held it to the end of the cigarette until he was sure it was going.

  “Mmmmmmmm! . . .”

  “And that about wraps it up here,” said Serge. “Let’s rock!”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Coleman. He whispered in his ear.

  “Glad you reminded me! The bonus round!” He threw up his arms. “Almost forgot with all his whimpering nonsense.”

  “Mmmmmmmm!”

  “Pipe down! This is important!” Serge leaned toward the victim’s face as the Marlboro continued to smolder. “Here’s your bonus round: Come up with your own. I’m tired of doing all the work for your people . . . Just kidding. That would be mean. This bonus round is a physical challenge like those reality shows where people run goofy obstacle courses over water and take hilarious spills into the lake of shame. But more is at stake here than social embarrassment. See that cigarette? If you can shimmy your chair over to the table and figure out how to knock it free before it burns down and ignites the M-80 fuse, you’re our grand-prize winner! But the M-80 fuse burns like a Fourth-of-July sparkler, and once you see that, start shimmying the other way in a hurry. Of course, it will be slow going in either direction because I went a little overboard with all the rope, and you now look like som
e damsel in a silent movie. Give me your honest opinion: Should I see someone about OCD?”

  “Mmmmmmmm!”

  “That’s what I thought. False alarm.”

  The pair left and the door closed.

  “Mmmmmmmm!”

  The legs of the chair began tapping across the wooden floor a fraction of an inch at a time, even though the captive’s thrashing couldn’t have been more desperate. But after a couple of minutes he’d gotten the chair turned around and was now heading backward. He watched over his shoulder as the fingers of the hands tied behind him wiggled toward the cigarette . . . Closer . . . Closerrrrrrr . . .

  Chapter 11

  1970

  Acoustic twangs came from the other side of a closed bedroom door.

  The Byrds, Dylan, Joni Mitchell.

  Theodore Pruitt Jr. was getting almost decent on the guitar, thanks to Tofer’s mentorship. The pair were laughing as they came out of the room and down the hall. They turned the corner and froze.

  Glenda Pruitt sat crying into her hands at the kitchen table, just like that day in 1959 when her son found her on the edge of the bed.

  Tofer came over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Mrs. Pruitt, what’s the matter?”

  She just cried louder. Sitting in front of her was a folded newspaper with a number circled.

  “Mom, what is it?” asked Ted. “What’s wrong?”

  Tofer nudged his new friend. “I know what’s up.” He pointed at the paper. “Your birthday drew number thirty-seven in this year’s lottery.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You’re going to Vietnam.”

  “I am?”

  Tofer sat next to Glenda and held one of her hands. “Mrs. Pruitt, it’s not that bad. I have an idea so he won’t have to go.”

  She shook her head. “We can’t afford college.”

  “Not that,” said Tofer. “And he won’t have to flee to Canada and remain in exile until who knows when.”

  She looked up and wiped tears. “What is it?”