Murder in the Magic City: A Micah Brantley Story

didn’t seem to notice Sheridan’s presence until it was too late.
“You motherfucker!” Sheridan roared as he rushed forward and pummeled the man, lifting the poor sap’s body upward and propelling it, partially, into a nearby wall. The man was scrawny and smelled of a poor strain of cannabis. His body didn’t tense as Sheridan hit him, and the resulting impact was akin to a sack of potatoes slamming into a brick wall courtesy of a Mack truck. The man dropped to the floor and laid motionless as Sheridan hurried over to Madeline. She lay quietly on the mahogany floor, surrounded by a puddle of her own blood. Her right hand clutched a little brown teddy bear wearing a blue shirt. She wasn’t moving, and Sheridan knew there wasn’t much time to make things right with the world. He checked her pulse. Barely there. He leaned down and attempted to resuscitate her.
One… two… three.
Nothing.
One… two… three…
“Come on, sweetheart,” he murmured between tears. “Wake up, for Daddy.” But she didn’t move. She just lay there like a discarded toy. He checked her pulse again. More of the same. He grabbed her lifeless body and brought her face to his own. He sobbed for what felt like hours. His little girl was gone, and he hadn’t been there to protect her. If only he hadn’t…
The other man suddenly moved around behind Sheridan, adrenaline momentarily forcing aside the effects of his mild concussion. Sheridan laid Madeline’s body down carefully and stood up with his pistol drawn on the man who had ripped his heart out and tossed it into the proverbial gutter. Madeline was all he had in the world. The only profoundly good thing he had a hand in, and she had drifted off into an eternal slumber without hearing her daddy whisper his love for her one last time. Fear was all she knew in her last moments. Sheridan strafed slowly to the left, away from her body, in case the man tried something stupid. He watched as the man stood up, supporting himself on one knee with his left arm as he used all his energy to maintain balance.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Fuck you,” the man seethed.
“Fuck me?” Sheridan replied, stunned that the man had the gall to answer like that after what he had done. He aimed at the man’s left knee and pulled the trigger. The nine-millimeter hollow point round escaped the barrel of his gun and made its way into the man’s kneecap, shattering it. The man yelped and fell to the ground. He clutched his knee and writhed about on the floor as blood poured out from the wound. Tears flowed freely, and he whimpered.
“Answer my question, asshole,” Sheridan snarled. “Who… the hell… are you?”
The look on Sheridan’s face told the man that if he didn’t answer the question in the expected manner, there would be much more pain to come. The now hobbled man was out of his element against a foe who wished nothing but death upon him. He would undoubtedly suffer. The man composed himself and said, “you don’t know me. I don’t know you. I was told to come here.”
“Who sent you here?”
“The Hamburgler,” the man responded in what felt like an unintentionally deadpan manner.
Sheridan fired a warning shot that narrowly missed the man’s other leg. “Don’t get cute. I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“Shit! Calm down, dude!”
“Tell me what I want to know,” Sheridan said. His voice had taken on an eerie tone. Anger wasn’t present, not in the traditional sense, at least. In its place was an awkward calm with a hint of thunder.
“Castillo. Ji… Jimmy Castillo,” the man said feebly. “Now and then, when he’s got a job, he needs done that his normal guys don’t have the knowhow, or balls, to take on, he calls me.”
“What the fuck does any of that have to do with me?”
“I told you that already. I don’t know you. Alls I know is Castillo told me there was a lockbox in the master bedroom here that had a few grand in it. He said the guy who lived here owed him and his people some money.”
“That’s impossible,” Sheridan stammered, letting off the throttle a tad. “I don’t know anyone named Castillo.”
“Well, he must know you.”
Sheridan stood with a look of utter confusion on his face. A man he had never heard of had ordered some street punk to come to his house and steal money from a lockbox he didn’t even own for a debt he bore no responsibility for. He nearly missed the man reaching for the knife, grabbing the handle, and turning it slowly to the optimum angle for a quick slice. Sheridan waited for the man to turn and face him before he pulled the trigger and fired the remaining rounds into the smoke-filled chest.

Chapter 3
Detective Dan Osteen was the type of person who had been born past their prime. Despite living in the most technologically advanced time in history, he longed for moments where technology’s grasp failed to take hold of him. He was a sarcastic, yet improbably genial soul who focused on doing the right thing, no matter the cost. There were times others misunderstood his jokes, but he was always cognizant of the way they received each gag and acted instantly if it appeared as though the subject of his verbal blows hadn’t gotten the memo about his antics. This sort of attention to detail had gotten him out of a hairy situation or two, but he relied on sarcasm a bit too much.
He had worked in the Homicide Division of the Miami Metro Police Department long enough that seeing gruesome displays of human emotion was a regular occurrence. So much so that if he went over two days without a mention of a grisly crime scene, he wondered if he had passed in his sleep. He had once come across a young woman in a spread-eagle position with a machete stuck in