Retribution (11 page)

You just had to know where to look.

He studied The Wall trying to find the missing piece that no one could see. Aerial photos of South Beach and Miami-Dade County, adorned with red and blue pushpins, took up the opposite side of the room. The red dots littered the art deco area known as SoBe, marking the locations where each of the women had disappeared. The blue were scattered everywhere around Miami.

It was now 9:00 at night. Under the glare of the fluorescent light, Dominick reached for his glasses and again read the interview of Shelly Hodges, one of the last
people to have seen her friend Marilyn Siban alive. ‘It was too crowded to get a drink from a waitress. They were all taking too long. Marilyn said she thought she saw some people she knew at the main bar, and so she went to get a martini. That’s the last time I saw her.’

Some people she knew.
Plural. Could there really be more than one killer? Usually serials worked alone, but there were some notable exceptions, such as the Hillside Stranglers, California’s murdering cousins. Assuming for a moment that there was more than one, Marilyn must have known her killers, or trusted them enough to willingly leave the bar with them. It had long been hypothesized that all the victims knew their killer. Why else would they all have voluntarily left their waiting friends in crowded bars?

If that was the case, there should have been a common link of acquaintances between at least a few of the victims. But as far as anyone could tell, none of the victims knew each other and none shared the same circle of friends. None of the girls had modeled at the same job, or worked for the same agency. There was no connection to be found. His thoughts went around and around again, and his eyes returned to the corkboard.

You just had to know where to look.

It was time to go home. There was nothing left to do here tonight and no one left to do it anyway. He gathered the reports off the table and stuffed them into their new accordion file, ejected the videotape of Marilyn Siban’s crime scene from the VCR, and unhooked his laptop. His cell phone rang.

‘Falconetti.’

‘Agent Falconetti, it’s Sergeant Lou Ribero with Miami Beach P.D. Listen, I think I’ve got some good
news for you and your task force buddies. Looks like we found you your Cupid. And he’s brought along his latest victim.’

16

Dominick raced east down the Dolphin Expressway toward Miami Beach with his blue lights on, weaving in and out of the traffic that snarled the highway even at 9:00 at night. South Florida drivers had to be the worst. The absolute worst. They beat New Yorkers hands down. They either drove twenty miles over the speed limit, or twenty miles below. There was no in between. That was until, of course, the hares caught up with the turtles and jammed on their brakes, thus causing a procession of red brake lights and accidents that would go on for miles.

Just past the 395 ramp to the MacArthur Causeway all traffic stopped dead. Up ahead in the westbound lanes he could see the mass of flashing blue and red lights. The causeway split into a divided long bridge over the waters of the Intercoastal and, but for swimming, there was no way to cross over from the eastbound lanes. He cursed the idiot cop who had chosen the MacArthur Causeway of all places to pull someone over. He pulled to the far right-hand service side of the eastbound lanes and drove on the half mile past the stalled lanes of gawkers and rubberneckers; the turtles and the hares now united in one cause, their heads and necks craned out their windows for a better look at whatever grisly traffic accident they believed lay ahead. Dominick could now see that to his left, a glut of fifteen to twenty police cars had converged on the westbound lanes of the causeway and a
City of Miami police helicopter was lifting off from the westbound lanes. Florida Highway Patrol troopers had stopped traffic in both directions, and in the front rows of cars both east and westbound, the morbidly curious sat on the roofs and hoods of their cars watching the scene unfold. The frustrated just honked.

Once past the barricade of Florida Highway Patrol cars, he raced again to the end of the causeway. He exited eastbound, only to reenter westbound, which was virtually impossible because all traffic had stopped and backed up on the ramp. He had to radio for an FHP trooper to help clear the ramp just so that he could get back on the causeway.

Finally on the westbound side of the causeway, he flew in the emergency lane past another batch of rubber-neckers and yet another FHP roadblock, parking his undercover Grand Prix behind a row of what must have been at least ten marked police cruisers from almost every law-enforcement agency in Miami-Dade County. The two right westbound lanes had been cordoned off with flares, and a freckle-faced FHP trooper who was probably all of nineteen was now motioning for the rubberneckers to move it along in the reopened left lane.

An ambulance and a fire truck were parked ahead of the lines of police cars, white and red lights flashing intermittently with the blue of the police cars. A white van with the words
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER
written in black across the side sat by itself just up ahead. It had no flashing lights. If Dominick did not know what it was he was about to witness, he would have sworn it was a horrible multicar crash with multiple fatalities.

He walked past the line of empty cop cars, their blue
lights flashing. Sitting in the emergency lane, he spotted the lone black Jaguar XJ8 next to the concrete guardrail, surrounded by still more empty police cars.
Shit. The whole world was out here. Another circus for the media moguls.

In the immediate background sat the
Miami Herald
building, butting up against the waters of the Intercoastal, its tenth-floor windows reaching out and practically touching the causeway.
Great. Some reporter won’t even need to leave the comfort of his office to get this picture on the front page.
He looked up at the building, its windows now spotted with lights and dark figures. An intern with a telephoto lens was probably catching the hair up his nose on film at this very moment.

The Jaguar sat empty, its trunk wide open. Inside the trunk, Dominick could see the white sheet gently stirring in the light tropical breeze coming off the Intercoastal. Fifteen feet back from the Jag, a small cache of law-enforcement officers in various uniforms stood talking, their bodies unconsciously forming a protective circle in front of the trunk. Two-way police radios crackled and squawked, each dispatcher communicating something different in garbled, incoherent police jargon.

At one end of the causeway, just to the west, was the beautifully lit skyline of Miami, aglow in neon colors of hot pinks, iridescent blues, and citrus yellows from the People Mover that wrapped around the city. At the other end of the causeway, the twinkling white lights from the high-rises that lined Miami Beach greeted the east.

Directly behind the shiny new Jag sat a marked Miami Beach Police cruiser. In its backseat, behind the protective metal grid that separated driver from passenger, Dominick could see the dark outline of a sole figure.

He approached the cluster of cops and flashed his
badge. ‘Anyone know where I can find Sergeant Ribero with the Beach?’

Another nineteen-year-old in a Miami Beach P.D. uniform nodded and pointed toward a small circle of cops that stood behind an MDPD Crime Scene van. Dominick looked over and saw three uniforms talking with two Blues Brothers stand-ins,
sans
the sunglasses, in dark suits. The dark suits were listening intently and taking notes. He recognized one from the Bureau and automatically felt his jaw clench.

The circle in front of the Jag parted and he passed through, making his way to the trunk. The trunk light illuminated the sheet, and he could see red stains beginning to seep through the heavy material. He pulled his rubber gloves out of the pocket of his khakis, just as a large hand fell heavy on his shoulder.

‘Hope you haven’t eaten dinner yet, pal. It’s pretty bad.’

Manny Alvarez, a City of Miami detective assigned to the task force for the past year, stood behind him puffing on a cigarette, the sleeves of his tired white dress shirt rolled up over black hairy arms and too many gold bracelets, the armpits circled with sweat. The collar on his size-eighteen-inch neck was half buttoned and loosely looped with an orange-and-blue Miami Dolphins tie, from which a black-and-white imprint of Dan Marino’s face grinned at Dominick. ‘Where the fuck have you been, anyway?’

‘Stuck on that stupid causeway, that’s where I’ve been.’ Dominick shook his head and looked around him. ‘Obviously this whole thing has not been kept under wraps, Manny. What a fucking circus.’

At an intimidating six five and 250 pounds, Manny the
Bear towered over Dominick Falconetti, who stood more realistically at five eleven and 190. Mops of thick black hair covered Bear’s beefy frame, and wiry black curls ran down his arms on to the backs of his hands and fingers. He wore a thick black mustache and a five-o’clock shadow so thick that it would have been someone else’s full beard. Tufts of hair even sprouted from underneath his collar. In fact, hair was everywhere on Manny. All except for his head, which he kept shaved as bald and smooth as an eight ball. He looked like a mean Cuban Mr Clean.

‘What can I say? When you get invited to a party, you better show up before the cake is gone. Besides, have you waved to our new friends at the
Herald
yet?’ Manny gestured to the building behind them and raised his arm in an exaggerated wave. It would probably make tomorrow’s front page.

‘Alright, alright. I’m over it. What have we got?’

Manny Alvarez puffed on his Marlboro and leaned against the concrete guardrail, with the waters of the Intercoastal lapping gently forty feet below him. ‘About eight-fifteen tonight, Chavez, a rookie with the Beach, spots a black Jag speeding down Washington Avenue toward the MacArthur. Doing maybe forty in a thirty. He follows him on to 395 and sees he’s also got a broken taillight. So he pulls him over. Only one guy in the car. So he asks for his license, registration, the whole drill.

‘Chavez says the guy is Mr Smooth, cool as a cucumber, no sweat, no tics, nothing. Guy gives him a Florida DL with the name Bantling. William Bantling. Lives on LaGorce Avenue on the beach. Chavez heads back to his car to write the mope a ticket when he smells this funky odor that he thinks is coming from the trunk. So he
asks Bantling for consent to search the trunk. The guy says no.

‘There’s something wrong here, Chavez thinks. You know, why doesn’t the guy want me looking in his trunk? So he calls for backup and a K-9 unit. He takes him out of the car and holds him till the cavalry arrives. K-9 shows up twenty minutes later and alerts right away on the trunk – you know, scratching, barking, the whole nine yards. They’re thinking coke, right? Papa’s packing some nose candy in that trunk. They pop it open and… surprise, surprise! Our friend has a dead girl in there. And she’s been cracked wide open and is missing a heart.

‘Well, everyone freaks. And the radios start rolling. Before you know it, we’ve got every jurisdiction down here, and everyone’s sergeant. It’s a circus. They even flew in my chief on the copter to take a peek. You just missed him. He was at some fancy-shmancy fund-raiser for the governor or something. Soon as he heard about it, he claimed he just had to be here, so rather than
drive
the twenty minutes from the Biltmore Hotel, he had the boys fly him and the governor in. We had to clear both sides of the causeway just so the chopper could land and he could waddle his fat ass over for a sneak preview and then brownnose about it on the flight back to his steak and potatoes. Can you believe that shit?’ Manny shook his head in disgust and flicked his cigarette into the slow trickle of rubbernecking traffic in the left-hand lane. He hoped it would enter an open window of one of those bloodthirsty gawkers. Right on his lap and maybe burn his balls off.

Dominick nodded in the direction of the Crime Scene van. ‘Who are the suits?’

Manny smiled slyly. ‘Need I say? Why they’re our good, dependable friends from the FBI, here to take all the credit for solving a case they never even worked on.’ He rolled his eyes. It’s Stevens and Carmedy. They’re making nicey-nice with the Beach Boys so all their facts are straight in the news conference they will undoubtedly be giving tomorrow morning.’

‘How did they get word on this before me?’ Dominick looked around and shook his head. ‘Damn it, Manny, the whole fucking world is here.’

‘The Miami SAC from the FBI was at the same dinner. But as far as I know, the feds, always humble, drove themselves here. The rest of the boys, well, as you can see, they just want to be part of this special moment in history.’

Dominick shook his head. The Bureau’s Miami Special Agent in Charge was Mark Gracker. He and Dominick had had go-arounds long before the Cupid case, on an organized-crime murder that Gracker and his federal pals took over – conveniently after Dominick had solved it and identified the suspect. One minute Dominick had whispered the suspect’s name at a closed-door FDLE and FBI powwow and the next he was watching the news dumbfounded as Gracker slapped cuffs on the guy while simultaneously giving an interview to Julia Yarborough of Channel 6. Ten days later, the FBI named Gracker the Miami SAC.

The Bureau was always trying to wiggle their way into something so they could look like the heroes at the end. Good press had been hard to come by since Waco and Ruby Ridge. But now that Marilyn Siban’s body had been found on federal land, thereby throwing the case into federal jurisdiction, he didn’t think he could actually
tell Gracker to fuck off anymore. He looked down at the trunk. ‘Do we have an ID on the girl?’

‘It’s Anna Prado, the little hottie who disappeared from Level. She’s only been missing a couple of weeks. The body’s in pretty good shape, though. Can’t be dead for more than a day or so. It’s a shame, man. What a beauty.’

Dominick slipped on his rubber gloves and lifted the white sheet. Another pair of empty, dead eyes stared helplessly back at him. Hers were baby blue.