Island of Bones (11 page)

Louis could read the tag on the file. It said 87-23445 UMBER,
S.

“I want you to work with Landeta on this,” Horton said.

Louis sat back. “Shit, Al...”

“I’ve got no
one I can put on this right now. You’ve got experience with this kind of case and you’ve got a relationship with this guy’s daughter. If he makes contact, it’ll be with her, right?”

Louis was silent, his eyes on the file. He could hear the phone ringing outside, hear the sharp laugh of two men out in the hall somewhere.

“I don’t like Landeta, Al,” he said.

“
I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to help him find out who killed this girl.”

“He knows I’m going to be working this?”

“Yeah, he was as excited about it as you. I already told Mel he had no choice in this. But you do. So you wanna play cop again or not?”

Louis hesitated.

“I’m not hiring you officially,” Horton said. “I’m not going to pay you. But I want you to work with Mel on this.” He paused, his eyes steady on Louis’s. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

Louis understood exactly. Without a
badge he had fewer legal restraints. He could go anywhere, talk to anyone, and get what he needed by whatever means it took. He could do everything Mel Landeta could not.

Louis picked up the Umber file. “Okay, now what?” he asked.

Horton rose and straightened his tie. “I’m going to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Umber again. And you’re going to go make nice with Mel.”

Louis had been the one to suggest they go over to O’Sullivan’s for a drink. Landeta had just stared at him then started off in the direction of the bar. They had said nothing to each other on the short walk over. Inside, Landeta had taken a table near the door, slipping into the chair nearest the window. Louis was forced to squint into the sun at Landeta’s backlit face. He was sure Landeta had done it on purpose, a power-trip thing, and it pissed him off.

“You’re in the glare. You mind moving your chair?” Louis asked.

“In fact I do,” Landeta said. He reached into his breast pocket for a handkerchief. He slowly and carefully began to clean the yellow aviator glasses.

Louis sat back as the waitress brought their drinks, a beer for Louis and a Diet Coke with lemon for Landeta. Shelly Umber’s case file lay on the table between them.

Louis picked up his beer and took a quick drink. He spotted a couple of cops he knew sitting at the bar. They were staring at him and Landeta, whispering.

“I don’t like fuckups, Kincaid,” Landeta said.

“I don’t like assholes.”

“
I didn’t lose a suspect.”

“I haven’t lost him.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Then you’ve lost him.”

“
Temporarily.”

Landeta rubbed the bridge of his nose and slowly put his glasses on. “How in the hell did you convince the chief to let you in on this?”

Louis was silent. Part of the reason was that Horton was worried that all the talk about Landeta was right, that the guy was, in fact, a burnout who needed help on a high-profile case.

“Frank Woods needs to be brought in alive and the chief thinks he’ll come with me,” Louis said. “His daughter is afraid he’ll cash it in if he’s surrounded and pressured.”

“Would save us a lot of paperwork, I say.”

Louis took another drink of beer. Man, what was with this guy anyway? He was tempted to just get up and leave. But he owed it to Horton to try. And to himself, for that matter. How many chances was he going to get to work a real case?

“I don’t want Frank Woods dead,” Louis said.

“Why not?”

“I want to know.”

“Know what?”

“The answer to the mystery.”

Landeta picked the lemon off the rim of his glass and squeezed the juice into the Diet Coke. “Woods probably killed both those women because he’s a sociopath with a twisted gene or two. No mystery there.”

Louis didn’t say what he was thinking, that the need to know why was what made any cop good. But then, Landeta didn’t seem like the type who had read the Hardy Boys when he was a kid. The man probably didn’t have an imaginative bone in his body.

Landeta was turning the lemon over in his long fingers, staring at it intently. He pushed the rind with his thumbs, exposing the pulp. He began to eat it. Louis drummed his fingers lightly against the beer glass, waiting. But it was clear Landeta wasn’t going to say a thing.

“Al says you’re the best detective he ever worked with,” Louis said finally.

Landeta went on slowly eating the lemon.
Weird

“You need a good imagination to be a detective,” Louis said.

“Who says?”

Louis let out a sigh. “Forget it, man.”

Landeta tossed the rind down. “I suppose you thought you were Detective Rocky King or something when you were a kid.”

“Who?”

Landeta waved a hand. “Never mind.”

“Actually, I read books.”

“You must have been a lonely kid.”

“I read true crime,” Louis said. “I always tried to find the holes in the case or in the investigation. When I finally got good at it, I knew what I wanted to do.”

Landeta finished his Diet Coke in two long gulps and set the glass down hard. “Well, enjoy it while you can, Kincaid. Not a lot of opportunities in this life to do what you want to do.”

“You make your own opportunities,” Louis said.

“And fate takes them away.”

Landeta rose suddenly and went to the bar. Louis watched him, trying to remember what Horton had told him about Landeta. Something about an accident and a lawsuit.

Landeta slid back into the booth with a fresh pack of cigarettes. He lit one quickly, without asking Louis if he cared.

“I heard you had a bad break,” Louis said

“Yeah, I had a bad break.”

“Everyone has them.”

Landeta stared at him. “You don’t know what a bad break is,” he said. “You’re twenty-seven fucking years old with a college degree, and you live in a beachfront cottage on a goddamn island paradise. You’re respected and you’re healthy and you can do anything you want. Don’t tell me about bad breaks, Rocky.”

Louis sat back, as if he’d been hit. How in the hell had Landeta found out that much about him?

Landeta took a hard draw on his cigarette, looking away.

Make nice...

“So talk,” Landeta said, blowing a plume of smoke in Louis’s direction.

“You talk.”

Landeta chuckled and shook his head slowly. “How old are you?”

“You know damn well how old I am. Let’s stick to the case,” Louis said.

More silence.

“So what did the parents say about the ring?” Louis asked.

“They said they had never seen it before. It was not something she’d own. She was into silver. And Dr. Jeremy didn’t give it to her either.”

“Who saw her last?” Louis asked.

“According to the original missing person’s report, Shelly went to a night class on May second. That’s what her professor told the Lauderdale cops. That was the last time we can confirm anyone seeing her alive.”

“So this guy drove 130 miles across the state to abduct her then drove back across Alligator Alley to kill and dump her?” Louis shook his head. “Not your classic profile.”

Landeta’s hand paused over the ashtray. “You know about profiling?”

Louis nodded as he sipped the beer. “I worked with a Miami FBI agent once who was into it. She taught me a lot.”

“Tell me about this Woods guy,” Landeta said.

“He’s not your classic suspect,” Louis said. “Older, intelligent, has a family, a steady job where he’s respected. He’s just not your standard loser.”

“Neither was Ted Bundy.”

“Woods has a whole library in his house.”

“What kind of books?”

“Academic shit on language origins, Roman history
...”

Landeta took a drag on the cigarette. “The guy do anything strange while you were following him?”

Louis shook his head.

“What about the daughter? Why would she have you tailing her old man?”

“I told you. She found the articles and the ring.” But Louis knew that was not what Landeta meant. He was wondering what kind of daughter would suspect her own father. He had been wondering the same thing since the start of all this.

“You can do better than that,” Landeta said.

Louis stared at him. “What?”

“I said you can do better than that. Come on, Rocky boy.” Landeta smiled and started humming The Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon.”

Louis raised his beer, finished it in one gulp, and slammed it down.

“Fuck this, man,” he
said, rising.

“You leaving?” Landeta asked.

Louis didn’t answer. He pulled out his wallet. He only had a twenty. But he’d be damned if he was going to leave without paying for his beer. He went up to the bar and asked for change.

“Hey, hon, bring me a Jack Daniels on the rocks.”

Louis glanced back at Landeta. He was waving to the waitress. He saw Louis staring at him.

“Thought you were leaving, Rocky,” he called out. “Well, go on, get out of here. Just go.”

Louis looked back at Landeta. He was just sitting there, looking off into space. Then, in one sudden liquid movement of his long hand Landeta raised the shot to his lips and sucked it down.

Louis
hesitated, hand on the glass door.

No. I don’t need to be dragged into his shit.

He pushed open the door and went out into the sun.

Louis waited until eight p.m. before hitting the library. It was a Saturday and he figured the place would be fairly empty an hour before closing, giving him more privacy to search through Frank’s work area.

Fort Myers uniforms had already been through the library earlier
. Horton had dispatched his men there and to Frank’s home but nothing had been found.

Including Diane Woods herself, Horton told him. She wasn’t home and her car was gone. Horton said he was putting a cruiser out front to watch for her.

Louis paused inside the library door. He knew this was a long shot. If there was anything worth confiscating here, Horton’s men already had it.

Louis spotted a girl at the front desk.
She was checking out books for a teenage boy with a backpack. Louis walked up, standing a few feet away while she finished.

The girl’s small brown eyes drifted to Louis’s face. She was plump, maybe eighteen, her pretty round face set off
with glossy brown hair. She was chewing gum, working it hard.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Her voice was small and childlike.

Louis gave her a smile. “I’m a private investigator working with the Fort Myers police.” He was hoping she wasn’t smart enough to ask for a badge or something. Horton had told him he wasn’t even going to get a police ID.

“I don’t know where Mr. Woods is,” she whispered
, glancing around as if she were expecting Frank to appear out of the shelves.

“I know you don’t, but I was hoping
I could ask you a few questions about him.”

“
I saw the news tonight.” She made an odd face, as if she smelled something burning. “Did Mr. Woods kill that girl they found?”

“We don’t know anything yet, Miss
—-” Louis tried a smile. “What’s your name?”

“Holly. Holly Russell. Mr. Woods was the one who hired me.
Is he gonna be like arrested or something?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think it will hurt for you to talk to me.”

She shrugged and snapped her gum. “Okay.”

“So what can you tell me about him?”

“Well, he was always looking at my boobs.”

Louis stared at her. “Why would you tell me that?”

She shrugged again. “Isn’t he, you know, like a pervert or something?”

“Not exactly. Did you ever notice Mr. Woods doing anything strange while he worked here?”

“You mean besides looking at my boobs?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, thinking. “He read the newspapers a lot. I mean, like every day, every paper that came in here, page by page.”

“Anything else? Phone calls that seemed odd. Visitors?”

She shook her head, like she was trying hard to remember.

“Did he seem...” Louis couldn’t find the word. If Frank was a guilty man, he would have lived like he was expecting someone to come around the corner any minute. “Did he seem watchful?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like if someone came
in the library, did he keep an eye on them?”

“Like if they were going to steal a book?”

Louis shook his head.

“Wait a minute,” the gi
rl said. “I remember one time when he was nervous.”

“When?”

“It was this charity thing we had, you know, Friends of the Library,” she said. “Mr. Woods came with his daughter and he didn’t seem, you know, very comfortable like.”

“What about his daughter?” Louis asked. “How did she seem to you?”

The girl giggled. “Snotty. Like she had a stick up her butt. And like she didn’t want to be there, you know, like at Christmas when you gotta be with all your creepy relatives and you don’t want to be?”

Louis knew there was nothing else the girl could help him with. “Why don’t you show me his office?” he said.

“No prob.”

Holly got another girl to watch the front desk and she led Louis to the back. The sign on the closed door said F. WOODS, RESEARCH.

“Mr. Woods is the head of our research department here,” Holly said, opening the door.

L
ouis glanced around. Standard-issue file cabinets and bookcases, a plain metal desk. The top of it was bare except for some cords, strewn like small snakes and attached to nothing.

“They took his computer,” Holly said. “I told them the only thing on it was library business, databases and stuff, you know, but they didn’t listen.”

“What else did they take?”

“His personnel file and some stuff from the drawers.”

Louis turned and gave Holly a smile. “You have been very helpful. May I look around in here?”

She smiled back then nodded. “Sure. But we close at nine.”

When she left, Louis pulled on a pair of latex gloves and sat down in the rolling chair. He started on the drawers, but there was nothing important, just routine papers, and in the bottom drawer, a messy assortment of personal items, the kind of stuff anyone might keep at work: Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, a bottle of Tylenol, a clean Tupperware container, a copy of Virgil’s
Aeneid
, a nail clipper.

He pushed the chair over to the file cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. The files in front appeared to be library business files but Louis dug to the back, hoping something had fallen between and been overlooked.

Nothing.

He stood and scanned the small office. If Frank had hidden anything here, he certainly would not have put it in a drawer or cabinet. He
would have put it somewhere that felt safe to him.

He heard a tap on the door and turned. Holly poked her head in. “I’m sorry, but we’re, like, closing now.”

Louis looked around the office again. “Holly, does anything look odd to you in here?”

Her eyes widened. “Odd?”

“Like is there anything missing?”

“I told you, they took all
-— ”

“I know that. But
take a good look. Try hard.”

Holly bit her lip, looking around. Suddenly her eyes stopped
and she pointed. “Well, there’s a book missing from that shelf.”

It was a shelf of reference books, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, the Columbia Encyclopedia. And there was one gap.

Something clicked. The book in the desk drawer. It was the only book in this office that wasn’t for work purposes. He went to the desk and pulled open the drawer, taking out the copy of Virgil's
Aeneid
.

He began to flip through the pages. Finally, he just turned it upside down and shook it. Four white index cards fluttered to the floor.

He heard Holly let out a gasp. Louis quickly gathered up the index cards before she could see them.

“Holly, would you mind waiting outside, please?” he
asked.

She left but hovered outside the door, watching through the glass. Louis turned over the first card.

It was a small photograph of a young woman, cut out of yellowed newsprint and carefully pasted to the index card. Underneath it was printed: ANGELA. 1984.

The three others were the same. Other newsprint photographs, other girls’ names, all written in Frank
Woods’s cramped handwriting. Louis sat down at Frank’s desk and arranged the cards in order of their dates.

The first was a young woman about sixteen, straight blond hair, wearing a dark sweater. Underneath, Frank had printed CINDY, 1964.

The next looked older, maybe eighteen. She was plump with long curly hair, wearing a white blouse and a pearl necklace. The writing underneath said PAULA, 1965.

Next was MARY, 1973, cute in an innocent sort of
way with mousey brown hair, full lips, and large dreamy eyes.

The last was ANGELA, 19
84. Wavy dark hair, slightly exotic looking, maybe Hispanic.

Louis sat back in the chair, staring at the women.

Jesus Christ. What was this?

“It’s almost nine.”

He looked up. Holly was standing at the door, but her eyes were on the index cards.

“What are those?” Holly asked, biting her lip.

“Nothing important.” He stood up. “Can I make some copies?”

“Sure, follow me.”

Louis followed her out to the main part of the library. Holly hovered nearby while Louis copied the cards. When he asked her for an envelope, she produced a manila envelope from under her desk and gave him a smile.

Louis slipped the cards in. “Thank you for your help, Miss Russell.”

“So is Mr. Woods coming back?” she asked, twirling a strand of her long dark hair.

Louis hesitated. “Do you want him to?”

The girl’s smile faded and the twirling stopped. “Well, I mean, I don’t really think he killed anybody but...”

Louis waited.

Holly Russell shrugged. “But he was kinda, I don’t know...weird like. I mean, you know?”

Louis nodded. “Yeah, I know.”