Chapter 1

I had cashed in every favor that I could recall, hocked myself up to my eye-teeth in credit card debt and taken two full weeks off from doing any real paying work that actually might let me buy some food other than ramen noodles or pop-tarts, but it didn't matter anymore. One way or the other, I hoped it would soon be all over and done with ... for keeps this time.

It had taken those two full weeks of full-time surveillance and spent them following Wally Watters, shadowing his every move day and night until suddenly the lights in my brain came on and I realized that we'd all been taken for suckers. Wally-boy was smart ... smart enough to keep his shit straight while at least three-quarters of the cops in Southern Florida were trying to find something, anything, that they could throw on him that would stick.

So far in over three years, they hadn't found shit. Mostly because the other quarter of law enforcement official had been paid by the Watters family to make sure that nothing would stick. Twice I'd been offered disturbing amounts of cash if I'd just drop my own private investigation and just 'go away'. Fat chance! Then the threats started, mild hints at first, and then lately flat out warnings by high ranking law enforcement officials that I was 'interfering with their official investigation'. Quit ... now, or face certain obstruction of justice charges!

I told the head of the Masher Task Force, Captain Roderick "Hot Rod" Baker that he kiss my nicely tanned ass and that I was staying on the case until at least one of his own investigators got off their fat asses and actually came up with a lead. They never did ... but I was worked much harder than they were and either my labors paid off or else I just got damned lucky.

Or the bastards were just setting me up. To this day I'm still not sure!

Mind you, I'm not exactly accusing a full one-fourth of all of southern Florida's law enforcement officials (and politicians too) of being in the pay of the infamous Watters criminal organization, but an awful lot of very senior officials worked tirelessly with the local news media to make sure that not a word of negative publicity was ever heard about the 'philanthropic pillars of Miami society', the Watters family. Did I mention that the kid's family was filthy stinking rich? Like the rumors of the start of the Kennedy fortune, the Watters had been Florida's most notorious rum-runners back during Prohibition. Even Al Capone when he came to Miami tipped his cap to the Watters family ... and their large private army of criminals and gunsels. Today, the old family enterprises still thrived ... allegedly. Drugs, guns and human trafficking had replaced alcohol smuggling, according to my ears on the streets, but the Watters family was untouchable as always ... and now even more rich and politically powerful.

Wallace Jenson Watters, aka the alleged 'Monroe Masher', was a 'person of interest' in at least eight verified disappearances, and the single mostly likely suspect in an additional two dozen disappearances between Palm Beach and Key West. He liked his girls young and dumb, beach or bleach blonde and more than a bit wild and adventurous, but none suspected that after a night of partying with Wally that they'd never live to see sunrise. Wally-boy allegedly liked his sport rough and had a very strong prohibition against allowing anyone to ever enjoy any of his leftovers.

According to my few casual friends in the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, they figured him to be a collector sort of serial killer, probably with a closet full of bloody panties and lots of sharply focused home movies. The only problem was his house and both cars were all as clean as a whistle, and all were under 24/7 surveillance ... and equally unlikely to ever lead the investigators anywhere.

Only three of the missing girls were from Miami, but Wally had his home there and the Miami-Dade County local police had more or less taken charge of the investigation. That was about three years ago and as far as anyone else could tell they hadn't found or done shit. The big problem, according to rumor of the bottom rung of beat-cops working the case, was that their #1 suspect Wally had a real talent for ditching his tails and just disappearing for a day or two. Off partying with friends, he'd say ... and lots of witnesses to substantiate any sort of alibi he ever wanted to make.

Officially, the case of the Monroe Masher was in serious danger of just being closed up and packed down to the Cold Case department of the Miami PD. There hadn't been any new real evidence turn up in over a year and the pressure from the top floors of various politicos, both state and local, to leave poor Wally-boy alone (or at least to find another prime suspect) was becoming politically irresistible now.

Still, all of the smart money was on Wallace; two girls in two different cities had been last seen leaving beach front bars with him. Both places had relatively hidden security cameras both inside the club and outside covering the parking lot. He'd been a little sloppy or overconfident those two times to get caught on film at all and no one considered this a coincidence ... but it wasn't proof that would hold up to a jury. Both videos were over a year old now and in the eyes of the Watters family defenders, an ever-growing and extremely politically connected faction, they didn't prove a thing ... that is if they even admitted that the images might even vaguely Wallace, or any number of hundred good looking young Florida beach boys in their early twenties.

There were no fingerprints, no fibers and no DNA evidence. Nil. Noda. Notta. Nowhere. Unlike Julius Caesar - the cops came, they saw and they didn't find jack shit!

A lot of good honest cops and assistant district attorneys had already developed ulcers working on this cast but Wally-boy was just too smart and way too fucking rich to ever get caught ... or at least until I decided that I had to put myself full time on the case.

Wallace had money; real money ... and not just the pocket money his millionaire great-uncle Edward Watters gave him every month that made my pathetic earnings look like chump change. The boy had flunked out of two different colleges where he had majored in partying, and returning home he then put his education to good use afterwards, being a bright star of the rich-boy social circuit - and allegedly a powder boy that supplied the recreational drug needs of his peers. There was no proof of that really, as once again he was a bit too smart to ever be caught holding any of the cocaine himself, or be publically seen to partake of his own products in Miami's most exclusive nightclubs. He had a buddy or two to handle the real dirty work, so his hands were always clean.

The smirking fucktard also had damn good lawyers, the best that the Watters could buy and keep on constant retainer. I'd heard that he'd been brought in three times for questioning in the last year or so and each time it was a wasted exercise in futility. He'd smile for the cameras and lawyer up fast and two hours later he'd be on his way home with no charges filed. Supposedly the kid had a long history of trouble with the law since at least his high school days, but not once had any charge ever stuck. Allegedly, these prior offenses as a juvenile involving under-aged drinking usually followed by a bit of assault and battery. In every case afterwards, the witnesses suddenly developed acute amnesia or changed their stories to fit Wally's version of the facts ... and a lot of money changed hands. Word was even then that he was a mean bastard with his girlfriends, and some investigators hinted to me that nothing had changed in that department in the years since.

As long as Edward Watters had a few hundred million, or even as rumored up to a billion dollars of family fortune ... and all the politically connected friends that money could buy, his great-nephew, the alleged rapist and serial killer, would never spend a single night behind bars. There was still more money than a dozen profligate grandsons or nephews could burn, even with a bonfire and a big pitchfork - and blood was blood. The Watters protected their own!

Wally wasn't the only heir to the vast Watters fortune. Edward, the elderly crimelord did have a son, and even a single grandson, Chester who would seem to be the most direct heir, but Wally-boy was a family favorite ... and something special in the evil old fart's eyes and with only very minimal luck might inherit everything, legal and criminal, upon the old bastard's death. Already he was the odds on favorite to be the successor, becoming the next family crimelord upon Edward Watters death.

As for me, I didn't give a shit how well Wally-boy was protected, or by whom. I had absolutely no politically connected friends, but I did have a volcanic temper and an eager willingness to pursue justice well outside the boundaries of the law. So far outside those boundaries actually that you couldn't find them with the Hubble telescope.

If asked, I would be the very first to admit that I have severe anger management issues. I'm working to improve, but ever since I was a kid in school my nickname was Ri (pronounced Ree, like Lee) short for Revenge Incorporated. My real name is Irene, but I hardly ever use it. Ree fits me just fine.

I never took any shit then and I still don't take much shit now ... and I wasn't going to take even the slightest amount of shit from Wally-boy – or anyone else in the payroll of the Watters organized crime family. My inability to take shit from anyone (along with a few other minor issues) has cost me some elite jobs with top money in the past that anyone else would grovel to take. It has turned friends into enemies, and a few enemies into significant career and life-expectancy reducing liabilities, but this isn't the time or place to discuss past history.

Yeah you can say it ... I never did have much if any sense and I'm usually too pissed off to quit (or never start) fights I can't win. Wally's family might be insanely rich mobsters but my father and grandfather grew up on the Baltimore docks and learned to let their fists do most of their thinking for them, and I'm very much their girl in spirit.

The so-called 'Monroe Masher' began his infamous career with a series of fairly high profile kidnappings, assaults and rapes near Homestead, right about the time Wally-boy came home after his second time flunking out of college about four years ago. Daddy's swanky beachfront house in Coral Gables was just barely twenty miles away, and Homestead was a safe enough place to play close to home without quite shitting in your own backyard. The M.O. was fairly consistent; a young attractive blonde on her own in a beachfront dive bar without friends would have her drink spiked, and then she'd be taken off in the night, drugged further and then repeatedly raped and beaten senseless before being dumped naked along the side of a county road, usually near the Everglades. The drug cocktail combination that the victims had been given tended to made most of them useless witnesses, being unable to remember anything at all from the previous night. The rapist and his friends (possibly several young men according to several rather confused witness statements) had all worn condoms, so no DNA evidence there either.

Frankly, the Miami-Dade County Police didn't take this new crime wave particularly seriously even though there was a clear pattern of escalating violence in the assaults and the attacks continued like clockwork every few weeks for nearly a full year. The victims were usually out of town tourists, mostly beach girls, and most of the investigating officers assumed that the perps were just drunk frat boys, fellow tourists or beach bums. It wasn't until these attacks also began occurring in Monroe County, up and down the Keys that a couple of smarter detectives began to realize that the sadistic rapist and his friends were probably in fact locals.

The assaults continued, on average two to three a month for just over nine months until the attacks finally stopped, 'officially' about three years ago.

Already those same smarter detectives were smelling a rat, that despite an increasingly more accurate description of the primary rapist, and a few of his regular partners in crime, there seemed to be little or no executive level interest in solving these cases. It also couldn't be ignored that the local news media continued to find this long violent crime spree of little or no public interest. Even the silly name that the media gave Wally, the 'Monroe Masher', in their irregular stories made him sound like an inept and vaguely humorous rogue, instead of an insanely violent sociopath. Already the whispers started to murmur at street police levels that the 'big bosses' knew who the culprits were, but that they were 'golden boys', too filthy rich and politically hot to touch.

In retrospect, the change in the criminal behavior pattern was obvious. The beatings over time had become increasingly more violent and sadistically brutal during this period until Wally made his first and probably only significant miscalculation. This last known verified victim of the 'Masher' was a beautiful young woman named Tori Alverson, whose battered dead body was found one early morning on a remote section of beach on Sugarloaf Key.

Wally had gone too far this time, killing his victim ... now he had also probably
discovered that the sexual thrill of killing his victim had given him an ever greater rush of excitement than just plain gang rape and then beating the victim senseless. The kid was a seriously sick fuck ... but he was smart. Killing Tori had probably been an accident, as the local medical examiner had told me that he was pretty sure that she wasn't quite dead yet at the time that she had been dumped.

No one in authority had seemed to care much about a couple of dozen raped and beaten tourists. Shit happens, and Watters money (and political connections) had kept the crime spree out of the national news, thus tourism had not been affected. Now however, the murder of this particular girl had suddenly attracted more attention to the Masher case than anyone in authority had seemed to want. Tori's death had now changed everything.

She had been a local Florida girl, from Key West and a Bronze Star decorated Army veteran of the Iraq War who had just recently become engaged to marry her boyfriend, a US Navy SEAL currently assigned for training in the area. In short she was a very popular young lady in her late twenties, well-liked and not without some friends of her own to agitate for her murder to be solved when the powers-that-be started to drag their feet on performing an in-depth investigation.

Since Tori's death three years ago, Wally had been very careful and had now apparently disposed of all of his victims after playtime ... and unfortunately rather successfully. His skill as a predator had perhaps even grown in the quiet years since then, as he knew that he was an 'unofficial' prime suspect for all of the disappearances since. Suspected or not, no one believed for a minute that he'd given up his play, instead he just played smarter.

Very unofficially, as mere rumor heard from one of the few Monroe constables that was still on speaking terms with me, Wally was still the prime, and only suspect for over two dozen disappearances. Even more unofficially, some detectives thought that at least one hundred missing Florida girls over the last couple of years might fit his hunting profile. Allegedly the FBI was keeping a strong interest in the case as well, but with a near complete lack of any material evidence their hands were tied too ... and very likely to stay that way.

In short, the case was dead ... until I woke up in an even worse mood than usual one morning a few weeks ago and decided that Tori, and all of the other unknown and already forgotten victims of the last three years, needed justice ... even if it never took place inside of a courtroom!

I ran a small one-person security company from a small rental house on a side street in Key Largo and live in the small one bedroom flat upstairs. Business wasn't particularly good lately anyway, so I decided that just working for myself for a couple of weeks wouldn't actually hurt the bottom line all that much. I was already too broke to be worried much about not making anything in the way of money for awhile longer.

I don't have an official PI's license, so most of my jobs come from playing security guard for big-wig VIP's in either Key West or Miami. That's the good thing about Key Largo, it's just about mid way between the two cities so the commute to a paying job in either place isn't too annoying. I tend to annoy extremely easily, and when I get angry I tend to explode like volcano! I'd love to blame my mother's Mediterranean heritage for my life-long inability to control my internal rage, but the fault is mine and mine alone.

Did I mention that my childhood nickname was 'Revenge Incorporated'? Well, it bears repeating. Once I've made my mind up about doing something, I'm pretty much implacable.

I'd been tinkering with this case, following the investigation closely for the three years since Tori's death, but this was really the first time I'd dropped everything I was doing to to devote my full one-hundred percent attention to the case.

I spent the first week of my full-time private investigation, investigating the investigators. I cashed in every personal contact or IOU that I had ever collected to track down and corner every single member of the Masher Task Force team in public and in private to pump them for information. Some were helpful, others were not, and others seemed to take a perverse interest in providing me misinformation ... and not so very subtly hinting that the investigation was dead and that it might be professionally (and bodily) harmful if I continued to interfere with police business, or ever made any future libelous comments, accusations or insinuations about certain prominent citizens.

This set up the table fairly nicely. I now knew who the two or three detectives were that were still under the delusion that management would ever permit them to actually solve this case ... and I soon picked out who the paid toadies were that lurked in the shadows waiting to derail the investigation every time anything resembling new evidence reared up its ugly little head.

The 'good guys' kept hinting that their prime suspect, Wallace Watters was just too hot to hold onto, and equally unhealthy for their careers. On the negative side, the weasels now had my name written into their little black books, and with ink rather than pencil. It seemed that every time I showed my face in the Masher Task Force office, which I did daily for the first week, that at least two officers would immediately find the need to make a sudden and urgent phone call, probably to report on my continued interest in the investigation ... and to warn their higher-ups or other paid flunkies that something needed to be done about me!

Now I was pretty sure that my private security business would soon be heading even further south. Bribes and threats had no effect on me and I really doubted they could hurt my financial affairs worse than things already were. Business was already bad enough that I wasn't sure how even the powerful Watters crime family could ruin it any further! Silly me.

Bribes and threats, mostly the latter, had quieted most of the rank and file investigators working the Masher case and their office tended to be as cheerful as a morgue. Still, I'd found a few officers willing (if not quite eager) to talk, and they all grumbled the same name, 'Wally Watters'.