White Crows
WHITE CROWS
A Mira Morales Thriller
By T. J. MacGregor
A Gordian Knot Thriller
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Crossroad Press digital edition 2022
Copyright © 2022 by T. J. MacGregor
ISBN: ePub Digital Edition—978-1-63789-812-3
ISBN: Trade Paperback Edition—978-1-63789-811-6
LICENSE NOTES
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Meet the Author
T. J. MacGregor is the author of 42 novels and in 2003 won the Edgar Allan Poe award for Out of Sight. She was born at Ballantine Books in 1987, when her editor told her that her maiden name, Trish Janeshutz, was too difficult to pronounce and that mysteries by men were outselling mysteries by women. Could she please come up with a name that had initials? By then, she was married to novelist Rob MacGregor, so she became T.J. MacGregor. A few years later, she wrote Tango Key and by then, mysteries by women were outselling mysteries by men and her editor asked her to create a new female name for that book. So, she became Alison Drake.
She lives in South Florida with her husband, novelist Rob MacGregor, their daughter, Megan, two cats and two dogs.
Bibliography
The Quin St. James Mystery Series
Dark Fields
Kill Flash
Death Sweet
On Ice
Kin Dread
Death Flats
Spree
Storm Surge
Blue Pearl
Mistress of the Bones
The Mira Morales Series
Hanged Man
Black Water
Total Silence
Category Five
Cold as Death
White Crows
The Nora McKee & Alex Kincaid Series
Kill Time
Running Time
Standalone Thrillers
The Seventh Sense
Skin Shifters
You Are Mine
Vanished
You Are Mine
The Other Extreme
Out of Sight
In Shadow
Hidden Lake
Lagoon
The Tango Key Mysteries
Tango Key
Fevered
Black Moon
High Strangeness
The Hungry Ghosts Series
Esperanza
Ghost Key
Apparition
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With much love for
Megan, Rob, and my sister Mary
Thanks to my dog park buddies who help keep me sane
during these surreal times:
Arlene Ortner, Estelle Momrow, Paula Bruce, and Lloyd Walton
“If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.”
- William James
Table of Contents
PART 1
1
2
3
4
5
PART 2
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
PART 3
18
19
20
21
22
23
EPILOGUE
PART 1
The Early Arrivals
“Is the boundary between the present and
the past so flimsy that we can, under the right
circumstances, stroll back into the past with the
same ease with which we can stroll into a garden?”
- Michael Talbot
The Holographic Universe
1
The Stone Woman
February
Mira Morales followed Old Post Road north from Tango Key toward the wilderness preserve at the northern end of the island. The ascent from sea level to the highest point usually took ten or fifteen minutes along here. But the snowbird season was in full swing, with at least thirty thousand tourists on the island, and traffic jammed the road.
Once upon a time, Old Post was the only road on Tango, created so that the farmers who lived here could receive mail. It probably had taken the postman days to travel the dirt road on horseback and that was only after getting to the island by ferry from Key West. Now and then when she drove Old Post, she caught glimpses of that past, the spirits of farmers hauling their harvests in horse-drawn wagons to the ferry docks, campesinos whacking away in the sugar cane fields. Farms still existed in these hills, but every year their number diminished. The properties were sold for exorbitant amounts of money to builders who erected new housing communities.
She turned onto one of the unpaved roads that connected the east and west sides of the island and picked up Old Post on the Gulf side of the island. Traffic headed north wasn’t quite as bad on this side. She passed the towering lighthouse, built in 1568, which made the island the second oldest spot in the U.S., after St. Augustine.
The island’s rich history was often the source of its secrets and mysteries. In the past, when Mira had helped her husband, Wayne Sheppard, on FBI investigations, she’d delved into many of those secrets. Among her favorites were the buried pirate’s treasure found in someone’s back yard in Pirate’s Cove, the alleged haunting of a house not unlike Hill House in the Shirley Jackson novel, the discovery of an alien body on the cliff where the lighthouse was built.
Detective Carlos Delgado, Tango’s chief of police, had called her thirty minutes ago and had sounded so hyped up she suspected that whatever had been found would fall into one of those odd island categories. I really need you to get over here, Mira. This is the strangest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
As long as this discovery didn’t involve a crime, she was fine with taking a look. She’d stopped working for cops and feds six years ago and had been superficially happier, but less whole, less complete. The work had taken too much out of her and had nearly destroyed her relationship with Sheppard. Delgado knew this, of course, and she’d heard the hesitation in his voice when he’d called. She
also understood he was desperate for answers, so she’d agreed to meet him at the preserve.
She drove around, looking for a parking spot. But because it was the height of tourist season, every space was taken. Families unloaded kayaks and canoes at the dock, kids ran around with dogs that were off leash, several teachers herded students into the preserve, and cop cars had blocked off the western section.
Mira finally nosed into a spot for employees, and got out of her car, bag slung over her shoulder, cell in hand. If anyone called her on it, she would refer them to Delgado. I’m here, she texted. Where r u?
I’ll come to you.
She waited, watching the people around her, especially the young kids running around, laughing, excited. Mira clearly remembered when her daughter, Annie, was one of these young kids and she was a widowed mother the same age Annie was now—twenty-five. She now worked at the Dolphin Research Center here on the island.
Where the hell had the time gone? Yeah, it sounded like a cliché, but it was exactly how she felt right this second. She was forty-seven, considered herself a reasonably attractive woman, owned a thriving bookstore, loved her husband, and yet… She wasn’t doing enough of what she loved for fear of losing the man she loved. Another stupid cliché.
Delgado came trotting out of the woods and waved. Tall and thin, he reminded her of the ad for the Duracell battery, imbued with endless energy. He shared her Cuban heritage—his grandparents, like hers, had been immigrants—and although he was seven years younger, that bond was strong.
“Hola, Mira. Thanks so much for coming over here.”
“I couldn’t resist that pitch, Carlos.”
He laughed and hugged her hello. Most Cubans she knew were huggers. “True, true. I’m shameless when it comes to getting what I want.”
“At least you’re honest about it.”
He took her hand. “C’mon, this will blow you away.”
They headed into the preserve, a vast area that covered the entire northern end of Tango Key. Within the canopy of trees, everything was green, alive, huge. Birds sang from the branches of ancient banyan trees, a breeze rustled through leaves, the air smelled fresh, vibrant. But as they walked a mile in she wished she hadn’t worn sandals. Weeds scratched at her bare feet, bugs bit her, spiderwebs brushed her face. This was why she hated tent camping.
When they reached a clutch of people on the jogging path, she recognized Ian Rincon, the county coroner, who had already spotted her. He hurried over. “Mira!” He threw his arms around her, hugging her.
Rincon, a black Cuban-American in his early sixties, had been coroner on the island for thirty years. Mira had met him through her grandmother, Nadine, who had known his parents when they all lived in Havana. In those days, he’d had a full head of hair. He was now as bald as a radish, father of three, grandfather of four. When Nadine had died last year at the age of a hundred and one, Rincon had given the eulogy.
“It’s been too long, mi amor,” he said. “Good to see you.”
“You, too, Ian.”
She stepped back, looking at the man standing next to Rincon. Bearded, early thirties, she recognized him. Jon O’Hara, her favorite writer at the Tango Key Gazette. “I love your column.”
“I’ve spent a fortune at your bookstore.”
“Then I love your column even more.”
He laughed and Mira glanced at the young woman in jogging clothes standing nearby. She seemed uneasy. “I don’t know either of you,” she said. “But…”
“Lucia, these are the two people who were mentioned,” Delgado said. “Please tell them what you told Dr. Rincon and me.”
She looked stressed, but started talking as though she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “I’m, like, jogging along, minding my own business, and this woman suddenly leaps out in front of me, blocking my way. She asks where she can find Mira Morales and Jon O’Hara. I’d never heard of either of you, that’s what I told her. I’m a tourist. It’s my first time here. After I said that, she went… berserk. She rushed toward me, shrieking, Tell me or I’ll turn you to stone! I thought she was going to kill me, so I hurled my knife at her. She fell… over there.”
She pointed several yards to their left. Mira and O’Hara exchanged a glance and moved to the area she indicated. A stone statue of a woman lay on its back on the ground, every detail precise. The waves of her hair curved around her jaw. The lines of her clothing were delineated—a long shirt, pants that ended at her shins. A knife stuck out of her right eye, hands reaching for it, tendons protruded, suggesting panic, agonizing pain.
It chilled Mira. “It looks biblical to me. A woman turned to stone. See that grimace on her face?”
O’Hara moved around the statue, snapping photos with his cell. “Awesome. I’ve been writing about anomalies since my teens. I’ve never run up against anything like this. Here’s my next column.”
“Are you going to mention that she asked for you by name?” Mira asked.
His excitement pedaled backward. “I… don’t know. It’s creepy.”
“Yeah. Very.”
“Hey, think about what kind of creepiness this was for me,” Lucia exclaimed. “My knife sank into her eye and she died and turned to stone. But here’s something else. When she first appeared, I got a short videotape of her. You can hear her on the video, asking for Mira and Jon.”
She brought it up on her phone. The woman’s skin was brown, her features looked vaguely Asian. Her body was compact, her arms muscular, and the shirt and pants she wore looked similar to yoga attire, except the pants were looser. Mira had never seen her before. When the woman spoke, she had a slight accent that Mira couldn’t identify. She enunciated her name and Jon’s in a sharp, commanding way, then charged Lucia, screaming how she would turn her to stone.
“Jon, do you recognize her?”
“Nope. Could you text me the video, Lucia?”
“To all of us,” Delgado added.
She entered their cell numbers in her phone and sent a group text. Mira didn’t really want this video on her cell, but what the hell. She would text it later to Sheppard, who was in Miami on an extended FBI investigation.
“Let’s take some X-rays,” Rincon said, and brought over a portable X-ray machine. “Find out if she was human.”
“Hey,” Lucia said. “You just saw the video. Of course she was human. That’s my knife in her eye. It was self-defense. I thought she was going to attack me.”
“We just need to confirm that she looks human inside,” Rincon said.
“Does the machine need a power source?” O’Hara asked.
“Nope. It has a rechargeable lithium-ion polymer battery that’ll last for about three hundred exposures.”
O’Hara helped Rincon set up the machine and Mira kept staring at the stone statue. Then she looked at Lucia. “Did she look crazed?”
“Yeah. Her eyes were kinda wild. Do you remember what you felt when you heard about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center?”
“Uh, yeah,” Mira replied. “Probably the same thing people felt when they heard Kennedy was assassinated. Or RFK. Or MLK.”
“Exactly. Both my parents worked in the WTC. They got out alive. But when my mom talks about it, her eyes are like this woman’s. Unhinged. Haunted.”
“You don’t have to stay, Lucia. I’ve got your contact info and the video,” Delgado told her. “We’re not pressing charges.”
“So she was human and now she’s not,” Mira remarked.
Delgado nodded. “And knives don’t turn people to stone. If I need anything more, Lucia, I’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks. I’ve had enough weird shit for one day.” She looked at Mira and O’Hara. “And if you two have people after you who can turn you to stone, you might consider getting weapons.”
Lucia jogged off toward the parking lot and Mira suddenly wanted to do the same. She had the feeling that if she stuck around, she would get sucked in. It was the sort of impossible weirdness that appealed
to her, that good old twilight zone where she felt at home.
“You own a gun?” O’Hara asked her.
“No. But my husband does. And he made sure I know how to use one. You?”
“Nope. But that’s about to change.”
More X-ray images began appearing on Rincon’s iPad, two dozen that clearly showed the stone woman’s heart, lungs, kidneys, intestines, arteries, bones, muscles, tendons, and brain. And everything looked calcified.
“You can see where the knife penetrated the brain,” Rincon said.
“Christ,” Delgado muttered. “How do I explain this in my report?”
Mira touched the screen of Rincon’s iPad, enlarging one of the images. “What’s this?” She pointed at an object in the stone woman’s shoulder. She figured it was maybe an inch long and looked like a sliver of something that also had turned to stone. Maybe she was imagining it, but she thought she could see a mark etched into the sliver. “Do you have any more images that show it closer up?”
“I think so.” Rincon scrolled through the X-rays. “Here we go. Look at this.”
He passed the iPad to Mira, O’Hara looking on. “Words. There are words etched into this sliver.”
“And numbers,” O’Hara added. “See the numbers, Mira?”
She nodded. Delgado peered over their shoulders. “Damn, you’re right.”
“Could it be some sort of microchip?” Mira asked.
“Too big for any kind of chip we use on patients,” Rincon said. “Or on pets.”
“You microchip people, Ian?” Mira asked.
“Experimentally. On some Alzheimer’s patients. Wanderers.”
“The first letters of the first word look like WH,” Mira said.
O’Hara nodded. “WH… and I think the third letter is I.”
“W-H-I,” Mira said. “And it looks like the last letter is T. WHIT. What the hell does that mean?”
“We need an X-ray that shows that sucker much more clearly.” Rincon moved the machine closer to the stone woman, took X-rays of the top of her left arm. The stone statue was so heavy it took four of them to turn her on her right side. Rincon took several more shots of the underside of her raised arm, her hand straining to reach that knife.