Plea of Insanity (9 page)

‘Hello? Is there someone on the line? Is there anyone there? This is the emergency operator.’

‘Oh, no, no, no …’

… please …

… no, no, no, no …

… he’s back now, he’s back …

The short, labored pants grew more and more shallow in between words, till they sounded like the final, gasping sprays left in a can of whipped cream. The chime of the grandfather clock grandly struck off the hours in the living room.

… is there anyone listening?

… can anyone …

… come?

… oh, no …

… please …

‘No, Daddy!’

The hum of a dead line and then, finally, silence as the tape clicked off.

Julia opened her eyes with a start and stared once again at the Dade County Jail, glowing ghostly gray in the powerful beams of the searchlights.

It was time to go home.

15

‘Julia?’

‘Aunt Nora?’ Julia asked, looking at the cell in her hand and almost missing the entrance ramp onto 836, the Dolphin Expressway. She hadn’t even heard the phone ring.

‘I sure hope so, honey,’ her aunt chuckled. ‘You called me. Unless you meant to call someone else.’

‘No, no. I was calling you,’ she replied, embarrassed. ‘The phone didn’t ring, that’s all. How’d you know it was me?’

‘I had Jimmy go down to Best Buy today. He bought me one of those caller ID phones,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘No more annoying telemarketers ruining my dinnertime.’

‘Alright, then. Well, a hearty welcome to the twenty-first century, Aunt Nora,’ Julia said, wondering how it was Uncle Jimmy had managed to talkher aunt into giving up the Mickey Mouse talking phone with the ninety-foot-long pigtail cord that had sat on her kitchen counter for the past twenty years. The next technological push would be to get her to use the cellphone Julia had bought her two Christmases ago. Or at least to answer it.

Aunt Nora laughed. ‘So to what do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?’ Julia heard the mixer start up in the background.

‘Just wanted to say hi, that’s all. See how Uncle Jimmy’s back was feeling.’

‘He’s fine, don’t worry about him. He’s driving me crazy, though. Over my shoulder all damn day, looking for something to do. Driving the neighbors crazy, too, with all his stories down at the pool, when they’re trying to get some peace and quiet with their sunshine. You should be worrying about
me
, is who you should be worrying about. Why don’t you come on over? I can tell you haven’t eaten yet, little one. I’ll make you a little something.’

She couldn’t help but smile. Her aunt amazed her sometimes. Instincts like a cat. ‘Oh yeah? How do you know I haven’t eaten?

‘I can hear it in your voice.’

‘Only you can hear hunger pangs. I’m just heading home, Aunt Nora. I’m still like, I don’t know, maybe thirty minutes away and it’s already eight thirty.’

‘Heading home from where?’

‘Work.’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I was hoping you were out doing something fun. I was hoping, actually, you had a date. What you doing at workthis late? Aren’t all your criminals locked up safe and sound for the night?’ Nora despised what Julia did for a living and didn’t try very hard to hide it. When she’d sprung the idea of law school on Nora and Jimmy, it was
Julia Valenciano, Esq., Real Estate Lawyer
or
Valenciano & Associates, Practice Limited to Tax Law
they’d envisioned etched across the plate-glass doors.

‘I have a trial in the morning.’ She sighed at the thought. ‘And my victim doesn’t want to cooperate. It’s just a mess.’ There was no need to get into why else her day had gone bad. Or what else was on her mind. She’d really called just to hear her aunt’s familiar, throaty voice. The content of what they said didn’t matter so much.

‘And …?’ demanded Aunt Nora, shutting off the mixer.

‘And what?’

‘And what else is bothering you?’

There went those instincts again. There was the briefest of silences before she answered, ‘Nothing. Honest.’

‘You’re a bad liar, little one. And I know you’re hungry. Now listen and listen carefully. I’ve got your little dog and I’m holding him hostage till you come over and have a bite of decent food. I know you’ve been using that microwave too much. Jimmy said there was butter sauce all over the inside of it. Those rays, they’ll give you cancer, Julia, I’m telling you. They’ll make that pretty hair of yours all fall out and your skin scaly, like a lizard. That’s why the cancer rates are so high, you know. Everyone’s in such a hurry nowadays, that they’re microwaving themselves to death.’

Julia ignored all the clutter in the conversation. ‘What? Why is Moose over your house?’

‘Jimmy went by your apartment this afternoon on the way backfrom the track and figured he’d take Moose out for a walk. You know Jimmy and that dog.’

‘And a walkturned into a sleepover?’ Moose sometimes camped out at Nora and Jimmy’s while Julia was at work. Uncle Jimmy was retired, and besides bugging her aunt all day long or getting lost for a few hours at the track, he liked to come by and take Moose to the dog park or for a walk on the Hollywood Beach boardwalk. Her apartment was about twenty minutes southwest of her aunt and uncle’s condo on Fort Lauderdale beach, and about twenty minutes northwest of Gulfstream Racetrack– right smack-dab in the middle of all the excitement. Aunt Nora swore it was all the attention Moose got from lonely dog-sitters and girls in bikinis that kept Jimmy walking all over Broward county, when he never even liked to take the garbage down the hallway to the incinerator chute at home. On occasion, Jimmy would steal Moose and take him back home with him. Not that Moose minded being stolen – the food was much better uptown, and so was the view of the Atlantic from Uncle Jimmy’s La-Z-Boy.

‘What? What? You don’t feed him,’ whined her aunt. ‘Poor baby.’

‘He’s not allowed to have human food, Aunt Nora. No more lasagne.’

‘I didn’t give him no lasagne.’

‘Good.’

‘I made ravioli. Come have some before your piggy little dog eats it all and turns himself into a Great Dane. He got into my pepperoni, you know.’

Julia grimaced. ‘Oh no, Aunt Nora. Please don’t give Moose pepperoni! It makes his hiney itch.’

‘It’s too late for that. He begged and Jimmy listened, the coward. Now I can’t make chicken pepperoni tonight unless I go to Publix.’

Aunt Nora was a true night owl. Always had been. Her mom had told her that, even as a little kid, Nora would be up reading comic books under the covers with a flashlight, erupting into giggle fits that would wake up their dad and get them both in ‘water hotter than the divil’s piss’. As a teenager in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Nora had taught her mom how to sneak down the fire escape in high heels without it creaking so that they could go out dancing. Now it was n’t comic books or nightclubs pulling her aunt out of bed in the middle of the night anymore – it was her kitchen, which was probably why she looked a little like the food she liked to cook most: gnocchi. Soft and round and short – a 220-pound, five-foot-two little dumpling, topped off with a generous splash of teased red hair on her head, like a spoonful of marinara. Her most creative concoctions were made sometime between the wee hours of midnight and 3 a.m. – trays of eggplant rollatini and home-made manicotti, osso bucco that would melt off the bone. When most people were counting Zs, Aunt Nora was busy measuring cups of ricotta for cheesecake and leavening loaves of bread to twist into sausage and broccoli stromboli. Her aunt was the most ethnic Italian Julia had ever known outside of a
Sopranos
episode, and she was German Irish – although you’d never get her to admit it anymore. It was Uncle Jimmy who had the Neapolitan roots and the family tree you didn’t want to shake too hard.

‘You know, it is late,’ Julia tried. ‘Maybe you should keep Moose tonight, then, and I’ll pickhim up tomorrow after work.’

‘Not on your life. The pepperoni’s already giving him gas. For such a little dog, he can sure fill a room. That’s why I’m in here and he’s in there with Jimmy. The two of them deserve each other.’

‘That’s too much information, Aunt Nora.’

Nora laughed and turned on the mixer again. ‘Come get your piggy, little one. He misses you. And while you’re at it, let me feed you some ravioli. I have some porktenderloin left over from dinner and some semolina. I’ll make you a sandwich. Then you can tell me all about whatever it is that’s got you so damned upset.’

‘Know what I think?’ said Perry. ‘I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did.’

Dick was annoyed. Annoyed as hell. Why the hell couldn’t Perry shut up? Christ Jesus, what damn good did it do, always dragging the goddamn thing up?

‘There’s got to be something wrong with somebody who’d do a thing like that,’ Perry said.

‘Deal me out, baby,’ Dicksaid. ‘I’m a normal.’

Truman Capote,
In Cold Blood

16

John Latarrino rubbed his eyes with a yawn and struggled to focus on the road in front of him. In the dark car, the patter of driving rain and the constant, rhythmic swish-swashing of the windshield wipers were almost hypnotic, and right now he knew he was an easy subject. He slugged down a gulp of cold 7-Eleven coffee, turned up the static on the country music station, and set the AC to just below freezing to try and keep himself from dozing. Next to him, Detective Steve Brill hadn’t even moved. His snoring face was still smashed up against the window, where it had been since they’d pulled out of Miami.

It probably hadn’t been his best idea – driving to Orlando tonight – considering that, save for a quicknap yesterday, he’d been up for almost two days straight. But if fourteen years as a cop had taught Lat anything, it was never trust anyone else to do your job – not if you want it done right. Because it would always be
your
sacrificial ass getting reamed and
your
name on the proverbial serving platter when something inevitably got screwed up. So rather than let the Orlando PD handle his search warrant at the Marriott – like other detectives might have done – or assign another MDPD stiff to drive up in the morning and supervise a search on a case he knew nothing about, Lat knew enough to get his butt in the car tonight, drive up and do it himself. Orlando was the starting point of a night filled with terror and violence. And after Mel Levenson had greeted both him and Brill at Jackson, and told them, with a sad, but slick smile, that while his client would love to cooperate, he wouldn’t be – Lat had decided there was no time like the present.

Although he didn’t necessarily need or want the company on the three-hour ride, he’d invited Steve Brill along for a couple of reasons. To begin with, the first forty-eight hours of a homicide investigation were grueling enough, and a long drive could be a hazard. Another body meant another set of hands on the wheel. Second, and more importantly, this was still a Gables case. Officially, MDPD had been brought in to assist. Since it was unseemly for anyone to be killed in posh Coral Gables, thoughts were that the County would be more equipped to handle a quadruple murder, seeing as it actually had a Homicide Squad, a crime lab and experience with dead bodies. Enter stage right, the Miami-Dade Police Department and Detective John Latarrino to assist. He knew, though, that the reality of the situation was that the County would actually be taking over the investigation, and the responsibility to find answers would ultimately now rest with him. Lat knew it and Brill had accepted it, but out of respect, no one actually said it. Instead, everyone had just quietly slipped into their new roles.

But the truth was, Lat knew from past experiences with other PDs like Homestead and Sunny Isles, who also didn’t have Homicide Squads, that this silent change of command would definitely not help forge the best of bonds between either the two departments or the two cops. It couldn’t. Even if a department was completely inept at investigating homicides, no one really
wanted
somebody else coming in, peeing on their territory and taking charge of their mess. And that no one included Elias Vasquez, the Chief of Coral Gables himself, who’d been the one to call the County in on Sunday morning. Which created a delicate and potentially explosive problem. Because for the next few weeks – and quite possibly a lot longer – whether they liked it or not, John Latarrino and Steve Brill would have to function like partners. Manpower at Metro was not unlimited. In fact, besides an analyst, Crime Scene and the use of the MDPD lab, Lat wasn’t getting any other bodies sent over to help him conduct interviews or run leads. That meant he still needed Brill and he needed the Gables and he needed the two departments to work together. The one thing he didn’t need was to take a power trip to Orlando all by himself. Sharing the ride, he’d figured, would be the best way to befriend his new partner.

But, of course, he had no idea if the guy felt befriended seeing as he’d slept the entire way up. Although he’d never worked with Brill before yesterday, he’d heard all about the detective’s reputation from those who had. ‘Hot-headed’, ‘difficult’ and ‘obnoxious’ were just some of the descriptions. ‘A cheating, motherfucking asshole’ was another, but that came from a female detective at Metro who’d actually dated him, so Lat didn’t count that. God knows what his own ex-wife or ex-girlfriends would say about him behind closed doors. But snoring and abrasive adjectives aside, no one was denying that Brill was competent. Three of his last fifteen years had been spent heading up Persons, and he had a personnel file at the Gables filled with commendations. Before that, he’d put in another ten as a sergeant with the Florida Highway Patrol. Accomplishments not readily achieved by the lazy, Lat thought, then skeptically looked over at the stocky lump with the receding hairline that was still sawing wood on the passenger seat next to him.

Two marked Orlando PD units and a Crime Scene van sat waiting for them under the overhang of the sprawling hotel and conference center, which was still busy with cars and tourists and Disney shuttle buses, even at eleven thirty at night. ‘Time to get up now, Sleeping Beauty,’ Lat said, pulling in behind a cruiser. Then he got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him. That should wake the guy up, he thought with a yawn as he joined up with the Orlando uniforms.

Albert Plante was the night manager on duty. A tall, stringy man with pasty, white skin and big, bulging eyes, Albert looked like an animated character in a Tim Burton movie. He twitched when Lat handed him the warrant, as if it were electric, and his lip curled in distaste. Then he quickly ushered Lat, Brill, the three uniforms and the Crime Scene tech through the towering marble atrium and lobby to the bay of glass elevators, all the while reminding them in a hushed tone that nothing like this had ever happened at this hotel before. When he actually asked with a strained half-smile on the ride up if they could turn off their police radios when in guest areas, Brill, who’d caught up to them, had yawned and told Albert to go fuck himself. That got a chuckle out of the Orlando guys.

Right off the elevators on the twelfth floor was room 1223. A
Pardon Our Appearance! Closed for Renovation!
card hung from the door handle. Lat felt his stomach knot up. It was always that way at a crime scene or when serving a warrant. When you’re the first guy through the door, you never know what you might find. Not that he was worried about his safety tonight, but this was the room where Marquette had stayed right before he’d decided, for some as-yet-unknown reason, to drive 300 miles in the middle of the night and kill his whole family. The missing piece of the puzzle might just be on the other side of the door, like in a bad horror movie – written in bright red lipstick across the mirror.

‘You call this secure?’ Lat asked, looking incredulously around the hallway while Albert slid the keycard in the lock with hands that shook slightly.

‘Crime-scene tape and police officers can make guests very uncomfortable,’ Albert offered in a defensive voice without looking up. ‘Especially in this hotel. Don’t worry, Detective. Only management can gain access to this room. The code was changed as soon as the police contacted us this morning. Housekeeping hadn’t even cleaned, as there was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.’

‘Oh. The code was changed. I feel better now,’ Brill said sarcastically. Then he tapped Albert on the shoulder. ‘You do know this is a quadruple homicide investigation, right, Chief? Homicide, as in murder, and quadruple, as in four people are dead?’

Clearly Albert did not like Brill. He swallowed hard. ‘No,’ he hissed back, ‘I didn’t know that, Detective.’

Clearly Brill did not care. And that was the one thing Lat was actually beginning to like about him. The detective pulled no punches. ‘Yup. Three little kids. And this is where their daddy stayed right before he killed ’em. Holed up right here, in the heart of everything Mickey. Right here in your hotel. Wonder how that’s gonna lookas a headline tomorrow?’

Albert Plante grew pale. He looked like he might drop when the door finally did open, probably fearing, Lat supposed, a dead body swinging from clean sheets in the closet and a confession taped to the mirror.

But unfortunately there was no profession of guilt – bloody or otherwise – to be found. As Lat walked around the unremarkable room, disappointment replaced anxiety. There’d been no maid service, but the bed had not been slept in anyway. Two business suits and a couple of pairs of slacks were still hanging in the closet; a shaving kit and assorted toiletries set out neatly next to the bathroom sink. Literature and brochures from orthopedic equipment companies, drug companies and Med-Net Technologies – some website design firm – were laid out on the desknext to a notepad and a laptop and a pot of in-room coffee, obviously distributed at the trade-show part of the medical conference. But that was it. No drugs. No empty beer or alcohol bottles. No suicide note. No evidence on the surface of a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a hooker. Lat didn’t quite know what he’d expected to find in the room, but especially since Marquette had lawyered-up, he’d hoped it would be something more than this.

The next couple of hours were spent interviewing the hotel staff that had worked the weekend night shift, but unfortunately no one at the front deskcould even identify a photograph of David Marquette, much less remember what time he might have left the hotel Saturday night. Same with housekeeping, concierge and security. The AMA conference that he’d attended and was supposed to speak at on Sunday had officially ended this morning, and most of its 500 attendees had checked out and gone back home, which seemed, unfortunately, to be everywhere across the continental US. That meant that everyone would need to be tracked down and interviewed, at least by phone. That was in addition to running other leads, subpoenaing and reviewing phone, business and medical records, and getting all the lab workback. Then there was the circle of family and friends – as well as all of David Marquette’s business associates – that still had to be identified and interviewed.

Usually the hardest part of a murder investigation for a detective was figuring out who the murderer was. You arrived on scene, looked at a dead body, looked at the clues left behind and started from there. Normally, finding out
why
the victim might have been killed led you to the suspects.
Was he robbed? Was she raped? Was he in a gang? Was she having marital troubles?
But here, things were backwards. Here, they had their suspect – on scene and with what would probably turn out to be the damn murder weapon in the guy’s own gut – but no why. Considering that the government was not legally required to prove motive, it would seem the easier case. But, as that prosecutor, Julia Valenciano, had pointed out, Lat knew that just because it wasn’t legally required, didn’t mean that a jury wasn’t going to
want
to see why the dots all connected backto the smiling father in the Disney photo before they agreed to put a needle in his arm.

‘Well, that was a bust,’ Brill said, as they headed out of the hotel some three hours later, an evidence bag full of parking-lot security tapes in one hand and Marquette’s laptop in the other.

‘What’d you think?’ Latarrino asked.

‘I think we got a problem, bro.’

Lat sighed. ‘Piecing his last hours here is gonna be a bitch.’

‘Maybe he was just heading home in the middle of the night because he missed his wife, and then something went bad,’ Brill said with a shrug.

‘Please,’ Lat said, shaking his head with a wry laugh. ‘No one actually misses his wife. No one who’s had one, anyway. But maybe he thought his wife wasn’t missing him too much. If that semen stain is from someone else, could be Jennifer was getting a little action on the side. Maybe he came down to catch her in the act.’

‘That would complicate things. That would also at least give you motive, something that you’re running a little short on, in my opinion, boss-man.’

Lat nodded. ‘And maybe premeditation.’

‘All we’d have to do is find the Bill Clinton who left behind his little something special.’

‘Let’s wait till the labs come back,’ Lat cautioned.

They stepped out into the parking lot. The rain had stopped and the night air was cool, the sky milky black. The birds had started to chirp; the sun would soon be up. It probably wasn’t the best idea to drive backto Miami now, but the day was already filled with things to do and sleep wasn’t making the list. ‘Hey, don’t call me boss-man,’ Lat said quietly.

‘Well it’s the truth, ain’t it?’ Brill replied.

Lat stopped walking. ‘I ain’t your boss.’

Brill stopped too. ‘And this really ain’t my case no more, now is it?’ he asked back with a smile that didn’t looktoo friendly.

‘That’s not my decision.’

‘Nope,’ Brill said walking again. ‘But that is
the
decision. And that makes you the boss.’ He chewed on the toothpick he’d picked up in the restaurant and neither said anything. ‘So, did you checkup on me?’ Brill asked finally, turning and walking backwards.

‘Yup,’ Lat said without missing a beat.

‘And …?’

Lat stopped again. ‘You want a quote?’

‘Lay it on me, brother.’

‘Hot-headed, difficult, obnoxious and, I quote, “A cheating, mother fucking asshole.” End quote.’

‘That last one was Patti Corderi,’ Brill said. ‘You shouldn’t count her. She’s a whack-job.’

‘I didn’t.’ They started walking again and had almost reached the car. Surprisingly, the conversation felt less tense than Lat thought it would. Brill had all the personality disabilities everyone had said he would. And yet, in spite of himself, he still kind of liked the guy. Unlike Sonny and Tubbs or Starsky and Hutch, Lat didn’t have a regular ‘partner’ in Homicide. No one did. Sometimes you worked with somebody on a case, but more often than not you didn’t. And while you could always run things by guys in the squad, it was actually cool to have someone involved on the same case at the get-go. Someone who was n’t trying to climb the same ladder with the same people you were. ‘No sleeping this time, Rip,’ Lat warned as he passed the driver’s side and headed for the passenger door.