Miami, It's Murder (8 page)

“I catch your drift.” He grinned. “I know the stories you write. Think I'd invite somebody like you for publicity? I don't ever want you to write about me or my business.”

We both laughed, our eyes connecting again with a certain sizzle.

“I just want to see you,” he said.

I didn't notice the Jeep Cherokee pull up and stop on the bridge. Great timing for Kendall McDonald to walk back into my life.

“Britt!” The familiar voice took me by surprise.

“I didn't think lieutenants worked on weekends,” I said inanely, struggling with the sense of confusion his presence always elicited.

“I'm off, but I was in the area, heard it on the air, and came by.” Lean, long-legged, and as attractive as ever, he wore an open-necked shirt and chinos.
Buenísimo
. He studied Curt curiously.

“They found the remains of the driver,” I babbled. “It's apparently been there for years.”

“That's what I hear. You the one who spotted it?” he said to Curt.

They exchanged names and shook hands like old friends. As Curt explained again how he had sighted the car, another police cruiser wheeled off the road to join the scene. “Careful,” he murmured, taking my arm as if I was some breakable china doll. McDonald's eyes flickered, noting the gesture.

“We were just leaving,” Curt told him.

McDonald turned and barked irritably at the heavyset cop who was trying to read the vehicle identification number off the rusted car.

“Valenti, why isn't this scene roped off?”

“Well—uh, we just recovered the vehicle,” the startled cop said. “Appears to be an accident.”

“Cordon it off,” McDonald said brusquely, his electric blue eyes snapping, as though irate at the hopeless incompetence surrounding him. Why this sudden fixation with yellow crime-scene tape? I wondered.

His attention returned to us.

“We appreciate it if witnesses speak to a detective before talking to the press,” he said coolly. He motioned with his hand-held radio, directing Curt over to the marked patrol car.

“What?” I yelped indignantly. “All he did was spot the shadow of a car underwater. He's no witness. It's an old accident.”

“You know better, Britt,” he said, turning to me, “than to talk to the witnesses before we do.”

“No, I don't,” I muttered. I was surprised by his attitude. Our encounters at the station and at crime scenes since our breakup had been all business, but civil and polite.

“We were having a private conversation here,” Curt said. His friendly demeanor was fading. “Come on, Britt, I'll walk you to your car. Then I have to get back to Bayside.”

“I asked you to wait over there,” McDonald said.

Both men seemed to swell, sizing each other up as if in some primal testosterone-fueled territorial dispute.

The tension was obvious and the cops, firemen, divers, and wrecker crew all paused to watch.

“I have all the respect in the world for the police,” Curt said pleasantly. “Help 'em out every chance I get. But I'm due back to work right now. Officer Valenti there has my name and all the information he needs. Call me if you need me, detective.”

“That's lieutenant,” McDonald corrected, whipping out his business card.

Curt studied it blandly. “Here, have one of mine.” He smiled and presented a gold-embossed card to McDonald. “That's captain. Captain Curt Norske.” I bit my lip, admiring the gleam in his eye.

We strolled toward my T-Bird, leaving McDonald scowling at Curt's card. Then he wheeled and began berating Officer Valenti, who didn't deserve it.

We said nothing until I unlocked my car.

“What's wrong with that guy?” Curt muttered under his breath. “Did he forget that cops are supposed to protect and serve, not hassle and pester?”

I laughed. “He's not always that bad.”

“Now, about your phone number…” He paused, expectantly.

I hesitated. I
am
a professional, and I
was
on the job. “You can always reach me at the paper,” I said, digging in my pocket for
my
card.

“Here's my number, any time.”

Taking a gold pen from his breast pocket, he scrawled across his card and watched me read it.

“Sure you can't come cruising this afternoon?”

“I have to go back to the office.” I slid into the car and started the engine. “But I really would like to, one of these days, captain. It's something I've always wanted to do.”

“Deal. I'll be waiting.” He turned and strode back to his car, a white Eldorado convertible.

Kendall McDonald looked my way as I pulled out. I hit the gas a shade too hard, and my tires spit up a cloud of dust and gravel along the side of the road.

For the first time I felt more anger than sense of loss after seeing him. He had dumped me in order to make lieutenant. How dare he act so snotty and officious? I liked the cool way Curt had handled him. I smiled to myself, then settled back into reality: the Downtown Rapist, messages stacking up on my desk, and a long-dead driver in a rusted waterlogged car.

Less than an hour later, one mystery was solved by a phone call from my favorite tipster. “Had a hell of a time getting through, Britt,” Dan said. “Got a hot story for you.”

I love it when somebody says that to me. I know it's crazy, but nothing turns me on more than stories. No wonder my mother despairs of having grandchildren.

“Hear about the car they fished outa the water off the Venetian today?”

“Yes, I already know about it.” I riffled through a stack of messages. “I was there.”

“Yeah, but do you know who that was behind the wheel?”

“Who?” I put down the messages and picked up a pen. “You know who it was?”

“The news on the radio said the driver was still strapped into a Chevy Malibu with 'eighty-seven tags.”

“That's right.”

“Paul Eldridge, an old missing persons case of mine. Disappeared in the spring of 'eighty-seven, driving his '85 blue Malibu from Miami Beach to Miami.”

“Wow!” I said. “Right time, right place. Sure sounds like 'im.”

“There are dental records they can match up, if there's enough left,” he said.

“The entire jaw was there,” I told him.

Eldridge, Dan said, had attended a bachelor party for a buddy that night, a co-worker about to be married. A dozen friends did a little drinking and a lot of joking as they watched a strip show at a club on the Beach. At 2
A
.
M
. Eldridge climbed into his car and drove off into a light rain, evaporating like the mists rising off the city's wet and steamy pavement.

His family—wife, parents, and in-laws—had reported him missing at once. They had hired private detectives, passed out flyers, offered rewards, and called the police every day for months. He reappeared in their fantasies, suffering from amnesia. In reality, he missed his friend's wedding, his baby girl's first tooth, Christmas, his own wedding anniversary. In their hearts his loved ones had come to know they would never see him again. They always insisted that he must have met with an accident or foul play. After years passed without a trace, when his bank accounts and credit cards remained unused, Dan, a bit dubious at first, had tended to agree.

Though police had done a cursory check, the family's private detective had hired divers to search the bay and waterways along the missing man's logical route home. They found nothing.

Sometimes drivers who have been drinking fail to take the logical route home. Sometimes they become confused. Everyone had checked along the MacArthur Causeway, a mile and a half south of the Venetian, Dan said. Now we knew that for some reason that night he had driven the narrower, less-used toll road. A violent thunderstorm six years later and the sharp eyes of a stranger had solved the mystery, forcing the bay waters to yield their well-kept secret. Dan said the distraught wife had never believed her husband would deliberately disappear, abandoning her and their baby daughter. She was right.

“The widow won't be shocked that he's dead,” Dan said. “She's known since day one. Gotta give her credit. Now everybody will see she was right all along. She can bury him now and get on with her life. That little baby must be in school by now.”

I thanked Dan for calling. “Like old times,” I said. “Leave it to you, you never forget a case.”

I told him about my visit to Mary Beth Rafferty's mother, the incriminating fact that the Fieldings had provided her with financial aid, and the little girl who was now Fielding's stepdaughter.

“You oughta write about it,” he urged.

“I don't know,” I said doubtfully, “it would be hard to get it into the newspaper without some concrete proof.”

I was delighted, however, to have the story on Eldridge a full four hours before police released his identity.

A new unsolved mystery had made headlines and an old one had been resolved. That's another thing I love about this job: it's never boring. Stories begin and stories end. Stay long enough and you see the cycles.

I stopped by the office on the way to meet Dan for lunch. It was my day off but I wanted to scan my messages, hoping for news on the Downtown Rapist.

I had a stack of mail as well as phone messages. None from Kendall McDonald, not that I had any reason to expect one. I returned a few calls, but they were long on chitchat and short on substance. I called Harry at the rape squad, opening mail as we talked.

“Nothing concrete, Britt. We've logged upwards of seven hundred calls since your story appeared. People are working overtime checking them out. So far most of it's crap.”

“Like what?” I wanted to know, though I had a pretty good idea from my own experience.

“Oh, shit, Britt, there's so many. One woman was sure the rapist was a guy who sits in a car outside her daughter's school every afternoon eyeballing the young girls. Had school security check him out. He's there every day—picking up his own kid. 'Nother woman said she's sure the guy followed her through every aisle in her neighborhood drugstore, watching her every move. Said she was terrified and convinced that the only reason he didn't attack her was because too many were people around.”

“Could he be inept store security?”

“You got it. You ever wanna join the department, Britt, you can work with me. Apparently he thought she looked suspicious.”

“That's funny,” I said. “He thought she was a shoplifter, she thought he was the rapist.”

“Welcome to Miami,” he said, “home of the handgun and paranoia.”

“What else?”

“The usual cranks. Women trying to throw in their ex-husbands and boyfriends, neighbors with feuds trying to pin it on each other, guys trying to cast suspicion on a boss who fired them or their ex's new flame, and one phony confession.”

“Oh?” I tore open a letter. Handwritten on lined paper:

Dear Madam,

Your poetic license has expired. You'll have to pay more dues.

It was unsigned.

“Yeah.” Harry went on. “Guy had everybody excited for a while. Called the hot-line number from jail, where he was locked up on a burglary charge, says he's who we're looking for. Gave accurate information, details not in your story, stuff that only we and the victims know. He almost had us.”

Damn, I wondered, how much are they holding back?

“How could he know those things? Maybe he is the guy.”

“Nope. We backtracked him. Found out he'd been picked up in the county and was cuffed to a chair outside the burglary office waiting to be interviewed. They share space with the sexual battery unit on the other side of a wall divider. So while he's sitting on one side, a detective on the phone is on the other, talking to a city rape squad detective who is filling him in on the case. The county detective had it on speaker phone for the benefit of the two other investigators in his office. Unaware, of course, that this scumbag on the other side of the divider is taking it all in.

“So later, sitting in jail, a two-bit burglar, busted again and facing career criminal prosecution and hard time, decides his life lacks excitement and attention. He'd rather be the guy sought in a major front-page case than a petty thief.”

“You're sure?”

“This guy was in jail in Palm Beach when one of them happened.”

“Sorry.” I sighed.

“Goes to show,” he grumbled, “the fewer people, even cops, who know anything, the better off we are.”

This was not the moment, I thought, to press him for more details. “Most people who call want to help—”

“Sure, but the sincere ones know nothing, leaving us with crazies, scumbags, and liars.”

“And maybe just one with the real thing.” I ripped open another envelope. This one looked grungy, as though it had fallen on the floor in the mailroom and been stepped on a few times.

“Let's hope so, and let's hope we recognize it, if it comes.”

I said goodbye to Harry as I scanned the letter. Another weirdo.

Say Britt Montero,

Hello, I did got from your newspaper a story. You put a lots of words. You write a good English language but who are you to say? Take good advice. Write about Haitians. Don't make me angry.

The signature was either a scrawled bow and arrows or unintelligible initials.

I crumpled the letter and tossed it, with the others. Then I snatched up my purse and smoothed my navy blue slacks, leaving a powdery smudge on the front. “Don't they ever dust around here?” I muttered, glaring up at the air-conditioning vents, which continually spew out fine black particles of dirt, bacteria, and germs that I was convinced were killing us all. No wonder poor Ryan was always sick.

I stopped in the rest room to wash my hands, then went to meet Dan for lunch at Clifford's, a family restaurant on the Boulevard just north of the city limits. Other establishments come with new styles and trends and go, but Clifford's has been there forever: a large and bustling family dining room out of sight of the bar, which is dimly lit with quiet booths and tables. I stood blinking just inside the door, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. Dan rose, hailing me from a booth in the bar.

His voice, so strong and positive on the telephone, had been that of the old Dan, but his clothes hung loosely and his face looked puffy. His skin looked ashen in the poor light. I kissed his cheek, then slid into the booth across from him. He had a lit cigarette in one hand and a glass of something resembling scotch in the other. There were already two butts in the ashtray, and he couldn't have been waiting long.

“Hey,” I said lightly. “Thought you quit smoking last year. And isn't it a little early for that?” I gestured at his drink.

“Who said you were my mother?” His grin was the old Dan.

“Sorry,” I said. “Been waiting long?”

“Got here a little early,” he said. “Got me a head start.” He raised his glass and I shook my head and clucked in mock disapproval.

He was eager to chat, full of animated small talk about the department, about old cases. Nothing, I noted, about his new life in retirement. We talked about Eldridge and other stories that had been in the news, and we ordered.

I opted for the seafood salad, Dan ordered the prime rib, rare, with French fried onion rings.

“Are you crazy?” I whispered as the waitress left. “You sure that's what you want?” He looked sheepish, called the waitress back—and stubbornly ordered another Johnnie Walker Black. He watched slyly to see my reaction.

“Okay, okay.” I pouted. “I won't say a word, but I thought you were listening to your doctor, who definitely wouldn't approve—”

“I thought you weren't gonna say a word.”

I gave up and unwrapped my silverware.

“Britt, it's all right,” he said gruffly. “Don't worry about me. I handled DOAs every day in homicide. I saw enough to know exactly what's going on inside me.” He jerked a thumb toward his left chest. “Bad habits aren't gonna shorten my life now.”

I smiled into his eyes, wondering how it feels to know you have more yesterdays than tomorrows. It must be terrible, I thought. Get hit by a bus or caught in a crossfire between strangers and there is little time to consider your fate. Knowing you will soon die is something else.

“I just want to keep you around,” I said lightly. “I don't have many real friends. I can't afford to lose any.”

“I'll be around, I promise.” He patted my hand. “Looky here.” He held open his jacket, displaying an array of vials and bottles in his shirt pocket. “I could open a pharmacy.”

A small brown bottle stood out, with a strip of red tape across the twist-off lid. “What's that one?”

“Nitro,” he said, “for chest pains. The tape is my own idea. Makes it easier to spot and hold on to in case I need it in a hurry. The bottle is so damn small.” He held it up, frowning at the fragile bottle dwarfed between his thick fingers. “The doctor said to stash 'em everywhere so they're in easy reach. Keep one in here,” he said, patting his pocket, “one in the car, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. Never know when you might need it in an emergency. See? I'm prepared for anything.” He slipped the bottle back into his shirt pocket with the others. “Now tell me all about this Downtown Rapist.”

I did. “Cranks galore are calling the hot line. I'm getting some of the slopover: calls, letters.”

He looked up from his salad. “Anything?”

“Naw.” I shook my head, laughing self-consciously. “One wacko wrote that my poetic license has been revoked; another told me take his advice and start writing about Haitians instead of Cubans before I make him mad.”

“They sign them?”

“I don't think the first one did. The second one, some scribble. You know how they do.”

“Latino?”

“Seemed to be.”

“Pass them on to the squad, Britt. Let the lab take a look at them.” He launched a new assault on his salad.

“There's enough on their plate already. They hate me for breaking the story, and they'll hate me even more if the publicity doesn't bring in something useful.”

“Yeah, but you can't take chances, Britt. The guy is dangerous.”

“Who said you were my father?”

He laughed. “Okay, okay, you got me. But I know how you work, Britt, and sometimes you navigate a little bit too close to the edge. You always were a wing walker. Remember, I'm not there anymore to watch out for you or catch you if you take a tumble.”

I smiled. Dan gave no impression of impending doom or helpless resignation; in fact, his speech and even his controlled movements exuded a crisper, harder-edged vitality. “You know the secret of being a successful wing walker?” I asked. “I interviewed one once.”

“Don't look down?”

“Nope, the secret is you never let go of anything until you have a firm grip on something else.”

“Always sound advice,” he said.

“You know, you never told me why you became a cop way back a hundred years ago.”

“Same reason you're a reporter. Too lazy to work and too chicken-hearted to steal.” He grinned, baiting me.

“No, seriously.”

“Okay. I couldn't sing, I couldn't dance—”

“Come on,” I coaxed. I parked my chin in my palm and my elbow on the table. “You were the little boy who always wanted to grow up to be a policeman, right? Is that what made you do it?”

“The truth is that in those days they brought truck-loads of country boys down from Georgia. They'd throw 'em all into a rock pit and then lower a ladder. The ones who climbed out became firemen, the rest, cops.”

“I always thought the ones who broke up the ladder and started clubbing each other over the head became cops.”

We were still laughing when the waitress brought our meals. “Looks good enough to eat,” Dan told her.

To me, he said, “You see the candidate's literature and all his commercials?” His eyes burned with old outrage. “They're everywhere: newspapers, radio, TV.” He stared into his glass and shook his head. “Too much.”

He ordered another drink and raised speculative eyes to me. “Think he'll make it?”

“More astute observers of the political scene than I am seem to think so. Chances are the paper will endorse him.”

“How the hell could they?” His voice was sharp.

“He did all right, never stole a freight train or stepped into big trouble on the city commission. The editorial board feels he did a fine job.”

“Christ. That man just can't be governor of this state.”

“You and I are not gonna vote for him. But that probably won't stop him.”

Dan put down his fork and toyed with his drink. “I'll never forget the day we found Mary Beth Rafferty.”

He was slightly slurring his words. I wished he hadn't ordered that other drink and was vaguely concerned about his mixing scotch with all his medication.

“We were searching the whole south end for her, about to call in firemen to help. Then the Fielding kid shows up on his bike, all sweaty and nervous. Says he found a body.” He paused. “It was at what they now call Kennedy Park, at the foot of Kirk where it goes into the water.”

I nodded. “It's a high rise now. The Sea Breeze.”

“It was all landfill then, logs, dirt, the crap you fill a lot with. Near the water the fill was mighty thin. Mangroves all over the place. We found her draped upside down, her back over a mangrove. Her head and her feet were hanging. No clothes on, a rag hanging out of her mouth. She was dead. Eight years old. I felt bad.” He lit another cigarette, taking a deep drag. “I had a daughter.” He looked out across the darkened room. “Mary Beth Rafferty was a very pretty little girl.”

“I know,” I said gently. “The ones involving children are always the hardest.”

He picked up his knife as though it were a weapon. “What really pisses me off is that when he first started into politics, I personally”—he sliced savagely into his prime rib, pink juice oozing—“went to his backers and warned them they would be supporting a homicide suspect as a candidate for public office. You know the only question they asked?”

I shook my head and swallowed a piece of shrimp.

“Not ‘Did he do it?' Not ‘Is he guilty?' No, all they wanted to know was: ‘Think you'll ever have enough to charge him?' I told 'em the truth: ‘Not unless we get real lucky or he has a change of heart and confesses.' They never withdrew their support. Never considered dropping him. The power brokers, the movers and shakers, they didn't give a shit about what the man did, what he's capable of, or that little girl.”

“You know how politicians are.”

“Yeah,” he said, resting the knife on his plate, “full of lust for power, money, sex, ego. I've
arrested
people I could trust more.”