to his riflemen. “Read Mr. Truth Dog his Mirandas and lock him up!”
Moonlight shines down over the island’s clapboard houses. The modest homes are dwarfed by the immensity of the docked cruise ship, Titan Reef. Inside the ship, the sprawling main cocktail lounge is decorated to resemble a big-game African safari camp, its walls crowded with mounted trophy heads of elephants, lions, gazelles, hippos, and rhinos. The amber glass eyes of the dead animals stare down at the carefree passengers sipping exotic cocktails adorned with pink parasol stir-sticks.
The chattering of the passengers stops as the ship’s captain struts in dressed in a crisp white mock admiral’s uniform with gold-braided epaulettes on the shoulders. He glad-hands the passengers as he works the room with a commanding air. He stops in the center of the room next to an oversized African drum of stretched zebra skin. He bangs on the drum with a carved ebony drumstick. The drum’s reverberating bass focuses everyone’s attention on him. “I must interrupt your after-dinner soirée. Something important is on the television news I want you to see. I know you’ve heard reports about some unfortunate murders in Key West, making you have doubts about enjoying a carefree time. This will put your minds at ease while we are berthed here.” He holds up a TV remote control and clicks on a wide-screen television spanning the length of a wall between two stuffed leopard heads.
On the TV screen, the Police Chief stands at a podium addressing a crowd of jostling reporters, photographers, and cameramen. His voice is flat and factual. “A suspected serial killer was taken into custody today. I am not at liberty to discuss details. Be assured, the streets of Key West are safe. The annual Fantasy Parade will go forward next week as planned. Those coming here for the world’s greatest Halloween party have nothing to fear.”
The captain cuts the sound of the Chief’s voice with the remote and steps in front of the television screen. “Everyone, you just heard it. Key West is safe. Let’s celebrate our good fortune!” The jubilant passengers cheer and raise their cocktail glasses. The captain puffs up to a heroic stance and salutes the crowd. A loud recording of the optimistic tropical song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” fills the air with its upbeat lyrics.
A female passenger in a sexy cocktail dress sways seductively to the captain. She slips her arm intimately around his waist. The woman’s laughing husband rapidly fires off the flash of his cell phone in a barrage of photographs of the new couple. The captain dances away with the man’s wife.
The captain enters his luxurious suite. He tosses his mock admiral’s cap onto a velvet chair and kicks off his shoes. He pulls off his watch and checks its time, 3:30 a.m. He pours himself a Scotch and soda at the elaborate mahogany bar backed by a full-length mirror. As he stirs his drink, he sees reflected in the bar’s mirror something approaching from behind. He swings around.
The figure of a black-and-white-rubber-suited skeleton stands before the captain. Clutched in the skeleton’s rubber-gloved hands is a speargun, its taut spear in firing position.
The captain holds out his glass of Scotch and soda to the skeleton. “Have a drink, you deserve one—sure as hell fooled me in that disguise. Great costume, but Halloween isn’t until next week.”
The skeleton remains silent and doesn’t move.
The captain sips on his drink. “Let me see your face behind that mask. Must be you, my very special Mike. You’re the only one who has a key to my suite.”
The skeleton raises the speargun. Its black rubber finger moves to the aluminum trigger. The steel spear fires with a springing whoosh, rams through the captain’s chest, into his heart, out his back, and shatters the glass mirror behind in a spray of blood.
The captain falls to the floor, his mouth agape, gasping for air, the spasms of his feet kicking soundlessly into the thick carpeting.
The skeleton reaches down and pushes a black micro-recorder between the captain’s lips.
In the gray mist of predawn light, Hard Puppy walks along a fishing pier jutting into Key West Harbor. He pulls behind him on a rope a heavy bloodied burlap sack. He stops at the end of the pier and looks around to check if he is being watched. He waits a few minutes, then unties the sack and exposes the dead body of a black pit bull. The dog’s short-haired body is crisscrossed with deep bloody