Island of Bones (21 page)

“It’s not up to me,” Louis said.

Landeta paused. “Did Horton ask you to babysit me?”

The question was so unexpected Louis couldn’t think of a quick answer.

“Don’t bullshit me,” Landeta said. “Did he?”

Louis thought of what Horton had said about Landeta when they found Frank’s body.
He can’t seem to get a feel for things and he's missing stuff.

Landeta let out a long slow breath. “Never mind.”

“You have to tell him,” Louis said.

Landeta didn’t answer. He was just sitting there, holding his towel-wrapped hand. Lou
is set the beer down on the coffee table. He rose slowly.

Landeta looked up. “You’re going,” he said.

“To get another beer,” Louis said.

Landeta looked up at him
then concentrated on unwrapping the towel from his hand. The bleeding had stopped. He seemed to notice the blood on his shirt for the first time.

“You need anything?” Louis asked.

“Yeah, for you not to treat me like a fucking blind man.”

“Shit, man. If we’re going to work this case together, you got to stop being a prick.” Louis shook his head. “All I’m asking is can I do anything for you?”

Landeta just stared at him. And in the bright light of the white room, Louis could see his eyes clearly for the first time. They were a cloudy blue and rimmed in red, like someone’s eyes might look if they had been crying for years.

But Landeta was smiling, an odd half smile that was closer to a grimace.

“Can I do anything for you?” Louis repeated.

“Yeah,” Landeta said. “Bring me back a Diet Coke with lemon. Then tell me what the sunset looked like tonight.”

Before Louis had a chance to answer, Landeta pushed himself out of the Eames chair and disappeared into the bedroom. A few minutes later, Louis heard the flush of a toilet and running water.

Louis rose and went to the kitchen, getting a beer and a Diet Coke. When he came back, Landeta was standing there. He had changed into a clean white shirt and there was gauze wrapped around his left hand.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Landeta said.

Louis hesitated. That was it? The guy just says he
’s blind and that’s his excuse for being an asshole?

“Here’s your Diet Coke. I couldn’t find the damn lemon,” Louis said, setting it on the table by the Eames chair.

Louis went back to the sofa and sat down. He took a drink of the beer, pulled out his notebook, and slapped it down on the coffee table.

Landeta heard it and looked over at him. “What’s your problem all of a sudden?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, I get it. You want an apology, right?”

Louis didn’t respond for a moment then he nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I do. You treated me like shit.”

Landeta just stared at him.

“I know things are bad for you right now, but I was trying to help you,” Louis said.

“I told you I don’t need help.”

“With the case, man,” Louis said, “with the fucking case, that’s all. And you did need help with that.”

Landeta turned away. He hit a button on the CD player, popping out the disk and putting it back in its case. “I’m used to working alone,” he said.

Louis waited but Landeta was busy putting a new CD in the player. A second later, the sound of Ray Charles singing “Lonely Avenue” poured out of the speakers. Louis shook his head and started to pack up his notebook and books. He rose and started to the door.

“Maybe it’s time I had a partner,” Landeta said.

Louis turned. “What?”

Landeta turned down the music’s volume. “I said, maybe it’s time I had a partner.”

Louis hesitated then came back to the sofa. He set the books down on the coffee table. “I haven’t eaten all day. Is there a pizza place around here that delivers?” he asked.

“Yeah, Fast Eddie’s down the street.”

“Pepperoni and extra cheese. No anchovies. And you’re buying. Where’s your john?”

Landeta pointed to a door. Louis went to the bathroom. When he came back, Landeta was hanging up the phone.

“I got green peppers,” Landeta said.

“I hate green peppers,” Louis said.

“You can pick them off.”

The music
stopped and for a moment, the room was quiet, just the drone of the air conditioner in the window and a car horn somewhere outside. Ray Charles started into “Them That Got.” Landeta turned the volume down until the music was just a whispering stream.

“Where do you want to start?” Louis asked.

“With the missing girls,” Landeta said. “You never made me copies of your interviews with their families. I’m in the dark, so to speak.”

Louis remembered back to the night Landeta had come to his cottage. Landeta had refused to look at them and wanted to take them with him. “Who do you want to start with?” he asked.

“Emma Fielding,” Landeta said, settling into the Eames chair.

Louis pulled out the reports he had written on each girl. “Emma disappeared in 1953. She was sixteen.”

“So Frank was already with his wife then,” Landeta said. “It was a year after Diane was born, in fact.”

“Serial killers often have wives or girlfriends,” Louis said
. “Some have families and lives that look normal.”

Landeta was staring off at the white wall. “Families,” he said quietly. “What was Emma’s family like?”

“She was sexually abused by her stepfather,” Louis said. “Her mother and older brother both knew about it, and when the older brother finally ran off, Emma wanted to go with him. He kind of abandoned her.”

Landeta nodded thoughtfully and said, “Let’s move on to the others.”

“Cindy Shattuck, 1964.” Louis looked at his notes. “She lived with her mother in Matlacha. The mother kicked her out of the house because she thought she was flirting with her husband. No boyfriend, but Cindy worked in a restaurant in town where she could have met someone.”

“That’s all? You can do better.”

“Well, her mother is a piece of work. Told me if we ever found Cindy to tell her she was dead. And she said Cindy took only one thing with her —- an old sock monkey.”

“Good. Go on,” Landeta said.

“Paula Berkowitz. 1965. High school graduate, honor student, lived with her parents until she left home suddenly at age twenty without telling anyone. She only took one suitcase and they never heard from her again. Her aunt said she was overweight and possibly depressed or suicidal.”

“Job?”

Louis scanned his notes. “Cashier at a Winn-Dixie near her home on Pine Island.”

Landeta looked over at him, as if expecting more.

“She desperately wanted kids.”

“Next”

“Mary Rubio. Vanished in 1973. She was a foster kid who was placed in fifteen homes in two years. The foster mother I talked to only had her a few months but told me the girl was strange. Said Mary used to cut herself.”

“Really?” Landeta said.

“Her foster mother said it was a cry for attention.”

“It is and it isn’t. Kids who do that are looking for a sense that they are
alive, and to prove it they cut their skin.”

“
To see if they bleed?”

“
To see if they can feel. What else?”

“The foster mother told me Mary would never have a real home with her and Mary knew it, so she left.”

Landeta’s eyes closed briefly. “Tell me about Angela.”

Louis picked up the last report “Angela Lopez, disappeared in 1984. Daughter of a Mexican migrant worker in Immokalee,” he read. “She was close to a woman she worked for, a woman named Rosa, who told me Angela made a date to go to Fort Myers and never came back.”

Landeta looked at him and Louis could read the message: You can do better.

“Angela told Rosa once that she never wanted her kids to grow up in Immokalee,” Louis said.

Landeta nodded slowly. “So, what do you see? What do you see in all these girls?”

“They were all running away from something,” he said.

“And they were all desperate to feel connected to someone.” Landeta paused. “That’s a powerful human need.”

“Except Shelly Umber,” Louis said. “She wasn’t running away from anything.”

“But she was not vulnerable like the others.”

“Explain,” Louis said.

“You have to look at the times in each case,” Landeta said. “Emma disappeared in the fifties. Things were different then. Women were usually looking for someone to take care of them.”

Landeta got up from the chair. “But by the sixties, girls were a little different. They weren’t all looking to get
married. They were looking for other things —- excitement, a feeling of belonging to a family so they ran off to communes or Haight-Ashbury.”

Louis was watching Landeta as he paced slowly around the room.

“Take Cindy Shattuck,” Landeta went on. “In need of affection, especially from men, with a stuffed monkey as her favorite possession. She was a baby, put out on the street by her mother. And Paula...fat, unhappy, working in a dead-end job and dreaming of having a baby she could love.”

“And Mary Rubio,” Louis said. “Looking for a family
, any family.”

“But now, times are different. Young women now are more independent,” Landeta said, “which brings us to Shelly Umber. A strong woman who wanted to be a doctor and climb mountains. She
was the only one who didn’t go willingly. She might have been the only one who tried to escape. So Woods had to shoot her.”

A sharp buzz made Landeta pause. “Pizza,” he said, moving to the door.

He left and came back a minute later with the pizza box. He set it on the coffee table in front of Louis, flipping open the lid. The aroma made Louis’s stomach churn with hunger and he eagerly dug out a slice. Landeta did the same, taking it back to the Eames chair. Neither said a word as they devoured their food.

Finally, Louis tossed down a crust and finished off the Heineken. “So except for Umber, you think they all went willingly?” he asked.

“Not exactly. I think Woods seduced them into thinking he could give them what they needed,” Landeta said. “He was Daddy, the white knight, Prince Charming, and Mr. Goodbar, whatever the girls needed him to be.”

Louis was shaking his head. “Okay, I can buy that for Emma Fielding. Frank was young then. But he would have been in his thirties when he met Cindy and Paula. And in his forties for Mary Rubio.”

Landeta nodded. “Yeah, and fifty-five when Angela Lopez disappeared.”

They were both quiet for a moment. Landeta got another slice of pizza and went back to his chair. Louis did the same. When he had finished it, he looked at Landeta. He started to call to him but hesitated
, unsure what to call him. Suddenly “Detective” seemed too formal, yet “Mel” wasn’t quite right either.

“Hey,” Louis said.

Landeta turned.

“The old woman in Immokalee? She told me Angela was meeting a boy, not a man. Angela called him some Spanish name for ‘hunk.’ And she also said the guy was Hispanic.”

“Well, what do you —-?”

“Wait, wait a minute,” Louis said. He sifted through his papers, pulling out his notes on Jim Reardon. “Sophie’s father told me she ran off with Frank but he called Frank Mexican.”

“He’s sure it was Frank?”

Louis unclipped the old photo of Frank and Sophie from the report and held it out. “I showed him this picture. Reardon said this was definitely the guy Sophie ran off with. And he
said Frank spoke a foreign language and had a Spanish-sounding name.”

“Give me the picture,” Landeta said, rising. He held the photo up to his face and stared hard at it. Louis rose and went to the kitchen, tossing his empty beer bottle in the trash can. When he came back, Landeta had moved to a desk in the co
rner and switched on the black drafting lamp. As he pulled it closer, Louis saw it had a large built-in magnifier. Landeta was hunched over, peering at Frank’s picture.

Landeta looked up. “Well, at least we know now why we couldn’t find Frank’s past. He must have changed his name.”

“Do you think Frank could have taken on an accomplice?” Louis asked. “Someone younger who could have lured Angela?”

“Beats the shit out of me.” Landeta took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then looked back at Louis. “When did you talk to Sophie’s father?”

“Earlier today,” Louis said. “He’s a bitter old man and Sophie’s stepmother told me he drove Sophie way. She fits your theory about running off with Prince Charming.”

Louis realized Landeta was looking at the picture again with the magnifier. “What the hell are you looking for now?”

“Trying to see if Sophie is wearing a coral ring in this picture. But her left hand isn’t visible.” Landeta looked up, pushing the lamp away.

“She wore a gold band. Diane wears it now
,” Louis said. He came over to look over Landeta’s shoulder at the photograph. “I don’t think Frank looks Mexican,” Louis said.

“He doesn’t,” Landeta said. “Spanish, maybe, Castillian Spanish.” He looked up at Louis. “Didn’t you say Frank spoke Spanish to you at the restaurant?”

Louis shook his head. “I think it was Latin.”

“You sure it wasn’t Spanish? Latin is the basis for all the Romance languages.”

“Hell, I don’t know. I ran it by Vince, the ME. He said it sounds like Latin.”

“What exactly did Frank say to you? What’d it sound like?”

“Hicks salute something. I tried to find it in these books, but I can’t figure it out.”

“What books?” Landeta asked.

Louis set the pizza box aside, pulling the stack of books closer. “I found these in Frank’s house. He was self-educated, and into all kinds of weird shit.”

“Self-educated? In what areas?”

“Language, for one. Listen to this.” Louis read off the names of the language books. When he got to
Teach Yourself Latin
, Landeta held up a hand.

“Let me see that book.”

Louis handed Landeta the Latin book. Landeta pulled his lamp closer and thumbed through the book. But after a few minutes, he straightened and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes. He rose and headed toward the kitchen.

Louis picked up the Latin book Landeta had been reading and started looking through it again.

A few minutes later, a fresh Heineken appeared by Louis’s elbow. Louis muttered a thanks and watched Landeta settle back at the desk, a different one of Frank’s books in his hand. Louis went back to his own reading, repeating Frank’s expression over and over in his head.