“Yes.”
“I guess you know you were murdered. My friend Liam Beckett, a police detective, has had some experience with...the dead. He doesn’t see as easily as I do, though—lucky me,” she couldn’t help but add a little bitterly. “But if you tell me who did it, I can tell him.”
A grim smile curved his lips. “If only it were that easy.”
“Your throat was slit. You really don’t know who did it? And you were carrying a knife—a big bowie knife—with blood on it. Of course, it’s gone now. The crime scene techs are still out there looking for it,” Hannah said.
“Yes, I see them. But they won’t find it,” he said.
Hannah realized that the techs in the yard could see her through the back window; they probably thought she was standing there talking to herself.
Maybe she was.
“May I come in?” Rodriguez asked politely.
She nodded. “Oh, of course. Please. Let’s move into the parlor.”
She led the way through to the front, taking an armchair by the fire and curling her legs beneath her. The ghost took a seat across from her on the sofa.
“I’m so sorry,” she said aloud. It seemed lame. He should have had a lifetime ahead of him. She took a breath. “I want to help you. But...how can you not know what happened?”
“Because whoever got me came up behind me. We—I was with a bunch of guys—had just turned the corner from Duval and I heard someone behind us. He grabbed me, and the other guys saw. One of them screamed ‘Run!’ and we all took off. I think the other guys had to be in on it—either that or they’re running scared, thinking they’re about to get the same,” Rodriguez told her. He stared at her for a moment. She thought he was assessing her. Perhaps he was deciding if she could be of any help.
“Anyway, like I said, we all took off,” Jose went on. “I threw the guy off me and crashed through the yard next to yours. That’s when he caught up with me. I didn’t have a gun on me, only my knife. I got a slice of him, but since I couldn’t see anything, I don’t even know where I cut him, but I know he...he got me. Slit my throat. I kept running, and that’s when I scared your guests. But I heard him coming after me. I knew I didn’t have a chance, and I didn’t want him to kill anyone else, so I kept running. I ended up in the alley, tried to write...” He trailed to a stop. “And then I...died. He followed me—must have, if the knife is gone. But he couldn’t leave it. They would have gotten his blood off it.”
Hannah found herself suddenly fighting tears. Even as he was dying, he had thought to save others.
“You’ve heard of Los Lobos?” he asked her.
She nodded. “I think most of the country has heard of them. Every once in a while there’s something in the paper about a body popping up somewhere and they’re suspected of the murder, or a treasure goes missing and they’re the only suspects. They’re like the mafia, or that’s what it sounds like, anyway.”
Rodriguez nodded. “More or less. Every agency from the FBI to the Coast Guard has been trying to turn one of the members. The problem is, they’d rather die or go to prison than take what they’ll get if the organization turns against them. Case in point,” he said, indicating his throat.
Hannah exhaled. “But...this isn’t so much a Key West thing as it is a national one, right?”
“It’s at least partly a Key West thing, because Los Lobos specializes in treasures from the New World.” He paused. “I’m not sure where to begin. Do you remember hearing anything around a year ago about a small research-slash-salvage operation at a recently discovered shipwreck? The crew disappeared in the midst of a storm.”
“Yes. It was on the news and in the paper. The Discovery went out with a captain, a mate and three scientists. They were all lost in the storm,” Hannah said.
“I don’t believe the crew was lost in that storm at all.”
“You think Los Lobos killed them?” Hannah asked, horrified. “The storm wasn’t that bad on land, but a lot of other ships were caught in it, too, and barely made it out. The remains of the Discovery eventually turned up, but none of the crew’s bodies were ever found, although that’s not uncommon when someone is lost at sea. And now you’re telling me that—”
“The storm didn’t kill them.”
“So someone went out in that storm and—and murdered them?” Hannah asked, appalled. The loss of the crew had been a local tragedy. To think that they might have survived Mother Nature only to be murdered made the situation all the more terrible.
“There was a rumor that the treasure chest from the Santa Elinora was aboard the Discovery.”