A Killing Rain (10 page)

“The old man said he saw their car,” Louis told her. “It was an old blue Cadillac, big, with dark tinted windows.”

Joe nodded in approval. “We’ll put out an APB for it. Good work. It’s hard to get people around here to talk sometimes.”

“I think it was the
Dawg sweatshirt,” Louis said.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Louis was quiet, looking up at the windows of Pacific Imports. The detective in the brown sports coat was standing outside, staring down at them.

“I hope I didn’t cause you any problems here,” Louis said.

“Problems?” Joe asked.

“With that detective,”
Louis said, nodding upward.

“Who? Kemper? Don’t worry about him.”

“Well, I know how cops can be. They don’t like outsiders interfering with their case.”

“Well, it’s not his case now. It’s mine.”

Louis couldn’t hide his surprise. Joe gave him a half-smile.

“I know what you’re thinking
—- how the hell did she get this big juicy case?” she said. She was watching the tech starting in on the Chevy Bel Air. “Things are different here,” she said. “Guys like Kemper don’t care much about Eighth Street or little dead black boys.”

She let out a sigh and then looked back at Louis. “I could use a caffeine fix. Come on, I’ll buy you a
cafecito.”

Louis glanced quickly at his watch. He had managed to ignore the guilt he was feeling about being away from Susan. He had been able to justify staying in Miami by reasoning that maybe Austin and Benjamin were still here. But his gut was telling him that Austin had never left Fort Myers. And that was where he needed to be right now.

“I can’t,” Louis said. “I really need to get back to Fort Myers.”

Joe hesitated
, then nodded. “Yeah, okay, I understand. But I need a favor before you leave.”

“Sure. Anything”

“I need you to come to the office and fill out a statement for me,” Joe said. She paused just a beat. “Come on. You can call the mother from there.”

The City of Miami Police Department was housed in a large modern building in Overtown, a neighborhood of gray municipal buildings and rundown apartments the colors of a heat-bleached sunset.

In the distance, Louis could see the gleaming high rises of Biscayne Boulevard and the steel skeleton of a new basketball arena going up. After the close smells and sights of Little
Havana, this area had an oddly desolate feeling to it. A chain-link fence surrounding a vacant weed-choked lot. Wide streets with no people though it was high noon. And above, a monorail whispering by, its sleek cars empty. It felt like a city in some sci-fi movie where a mutant bug wipes out the population but leaves everything running.

Louis followed Joe into the spacious lobby. All the signs were in English and Spanish. The uniform behind the large circular information desk gave Joe a nod as she led Louis past.

They took the elevator to the second floor, and Louis followed Joe through a door that said CRIMES AGAINST PERSONS UNIT. He had been looking for something that said HOMICIDE.

His first impression was noise: the warbles and rings of phones, the banging of metal file drawers, a hacking cough,
a low laugh. Then sight: gray metal desks, towers of paper, flickering green computer screens under the mean glare of florescent. And finally, smell: cigarettes, greasy take-out chicken, and a faint odor of sweat.

Joe got pulled aside into a discussion with another detective. Louis stood at the door, transfixed.

So this is it.

His eyes focused on a white erasable board that covered
an entire wall. He knew it was the homicide case board. Every station had one. He scanned the headings atop each column: Victim. Date. Location. Investigator. Status. Weapon. Motive. Suspects. ME. It was all there —- in black and red ink.

The board
listed sixty-three open cases. The double-murder on Eighth Street was third to last. Two more since last night.

“Louis! Over here.”

Joe was beckoning from a desk in the corner. He went over to her, aware of the subtle shift of eyes following him. Joe was the only woman and he was the only black man, except for a guy dressed in an orange Dade County jumpsuit sitting at a desk giving a statement.

Her desk was near the windows. Through the streaked glass, he could see the cars whizzing by on
I-95. Joe’s phone was ringing.

“Have a seat,” Joe said, grabbing the phone.

While he waited for her to finish the call, Louis scanned the room again, trying not to look like he was staring.

He had worn a badge before. He had
worn a uniform, and had once, in his rookie year, even assisted a detective on a domestic shooting death. But that had been back in Ann Arbor, a small force in a college town where the four-by-four-foot homicide case board never filled up. After that, he had worked in even smaller departments, places that weren’t big enough to have case boards or make distinctions between plain tin badges and gold ones.

Louis’s eyes swept the room. Four, five, six. He could count six gold badges here right now. Seven...he had forgotten Joe.

Joe hung up the phone. “Okay, come on,” she said, “I want you to meet my boss.”

Louis followed Joe across the office. Some of the men looked up at Joe’s face, their eyes dropping to her ass as she passed. Then they
glanced
up at Louis curiously. He knew they thought he was a boyfriend or something. And he tried to decipher the look. Envious? Protective? Or disapproving?

At a co
rner office with the plate MAJOR ANDERSON on the door, Joe knocked then went in. The man behind the desk looked up. He was built like the bulldog on Louis’s sweatshirt, with a silver-blond brush cut and gray-green eyes in a ruddy, tanned face.

“Major, this is
—-” Joe started.

“Louis Kincaid,” the man said, standing and extending his hand.

Louis shook it. “You know me?”

“I know of you.”

Louis glanced at Joe. She looked confused.

“I’m Major Anderson,” he said. “Kevin Anderson. Have a seat
. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Anderson began to rifle through a stack of magazines on his credenza. “I just read about you a few weeks ago in
Criminal Pursuits Magazine
,” he said. “It was on the Paint It Black killer, the guy you caught a few years back.”

Louis could see Joe out of the
corner of his eye but she was still just standing near the door, her arms crossed.

Anderson looked at her. “
Joette, go grab us some coffee, would you?”

She didn’t move.

“Don’t give me that look. You’re closest.”

She disappeared.

Anderson finally gave up trying to find the magazine and sat down at his desk. “The article said you refused to be interviewed. How come?”

“I don’t like reporters,” Louis said.

“They can make or break your career,” Anderson said. “And making a name for yourself is the only way you’re going to make any money doing what you do. You’re only what? Twenty-five, twenty-six?”

“T
wenty-eight,” Louis said. “And I do okay. I do better than okay.”

Joe came back and handed Louis a Styrofoam cup and some sugar packets. She set Anderson’s cup on his de
sk, then leaned against the door jamb.

Anderson was sitting back in his chair, just looking at Louis over the steeple of his fingers. Louis took a drink of coffee. It was awful but at least it was hot.

“The article said you used to be a cop,” Anderson said.

He needed to nip this
in the bud; he wasn’t about to explain why he had quit and he had a feeling the article had pretty much told the whole story anyway.

“Major, I know how you guys feel about
P.I.s —-”

Anderson stopped him with a raised hand. “Most of the guys. Not all. Not me, that’s for sure. I have no problem with you. I respect what you’ve done, and I hear
the guys on the west coast think you’re okay, too. Hell, anyone who can put a serial killer
and
a goddamn slimy ass lawyer in jail is okay in my book.”

Louis glanced up at Joe. She took the cue and stepped forward. “Louis is here looking for a missing kid. The kid’s father is connected to one of the victims on Eighth Street.”

Anderson never looked at her. “Think your kid’s in Miami?”

“I did, but now I’m not so sure.”

“So you’re heading home?”

Louis nodded.

“Well, I’ll have Joette keep you up on things.” Anderson finally looked at her. “Let me know if you need her to check anything out for you.”

Anderson stood up and stuck out his hand. Louis rose and shook it.

“Tell Mel Landeta I said hello,” Anderson said.

“I will.”

Louis picked up his coffee and followed Joe out. She closed the office door and looked at him, her head cocked.

“
Criminal Pursuits Magazine
?” she asked. “I didn’t know I was in the presence of greatness.”

She wasn’t
smiling, but Louis could see the amusement in her narrow eyes.

“Is
Joette your real name?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’ve told him not to call me that. I think if he ever called me Joe, he’d have to start picturing me having balls instead of boobs.”

Louis smiled.

She looked off toward the window. “Let’s go do the report and get you out of here.”

Louis followed her back to the desk. He glanced at his watch as he sat down. It was almost two p.m. He had been gone twenty hours but it felt like a month. He stared at the form, pen poised, then he looked at the phone.

“Dial nine to get a line out
.”

He looked up at Joe. “Thanks.”

Joe left him alone and he dialed Susan’s number. It rang five times, six. He sat there, hand to his brow, listening to the empty ring. Finally, someone picked up.

“Hello.”

A man’s voice.

“Who’s this?” Louis demanded.

“Who’s this?”

“Louis Kincaid. What the hell
—-?”

“Hold on.” The sound of the phone being muffled and then the man was back. “Sorry, sir. I was just checking. This is Officer Jewell,
Sereno PD.”

“Where’s Susan?”

“I think she’s asleep, sir. She’s right over on the sofa there. Should I go get her?”

“No,
don’t wake her. Just tell her I called and that I’m coming home.”

“Will do, sir.”

Louis hung up and sat there, staring at the phone. Then he pulled the form over and began filling it out. He was signing his name when Joe came back. He rose quickly. “I’ve got to go.”

She nodded. “Yeah, yeah
, of course you do.” She paused. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

“No, that’s not necessary.” Louis hesitated then held out his hand.

Joe stared at it for only a second then took it. Her hand was warm, her grip was firm then it softened. Louis held it for a second longer then let go, taking a step back.

“My phone
number’s there on the form,” Louis said.

“I’ll call you the minute we get anything.”

Louis nodded and started away quickly. He knew Joe Frye was watching him but he didn’t look back.

It was raining, a stinging cold rain by the time he hit the toll booth at Alligator Alley. The sky was low and putty colored over the dull green carpet of the wetlands bordering the road that cut across the state to the west coast. The wipers on the Mustang needed replacing; they made a drone-scrape-drone-scrape sound as they moved across his field of vision.

The road was a straight gray ribbon, barely visible now in the quickening dusk and downpour. He switched on the headlights, then the high beams.

Drone-scrape. Drone-scrape. Drone-scrape.

He was thinking about Ben. Was he out in this rain somewhere? Was he with Austin? Was he still alive?

Drone-scrape. Drone-scrape.

He was thinking of Susan. How in the hell was he going to face her?

He was thinking of Joe Frye and Miami and the homicide department. No, Crimes Against People Unit. Thinking about the electric buzz of that big dirty room and that big white board with life and death spelled out in red and black erasable ink.

Drone-scrape. Drone-scrape.

He was out in the Everglades now, passing into the Corkscrew Swamp. The rain was letting up. Almost home.

The buzz of the beeper on the passenger seat made him start. He snatched it up, keeping one eye on the road. He squinted at the number. It wasn’t Susan’s, and for a second he didn’t
recognize it. Then his heart skipped a beat. It was Sheriff Wainwright’s personal line.

“Shit” he whispered, tossing the beeper aside.

He pushed the Mustang over eighty. He almost didn’t see the sign for the rest stop until it was too late. He braked hard and swerved in. It was a small turnout with picnic tables, but Louis let out a breath when he saw the pay phone.

He left the car running and sprinted to the phone. They patched him through to Wainwright in a squad car.

“Dan. Louis.”

“We found Outlaw’s car,” Wainwright said. “It’s at Lakes Park.”

“Lakes Park? I looked around the park. I didn’t see it there. Benjamin... did you find Benjamin?”

“The car’s in the lake, Louis.”

“What?”

“I just got the call. We’re on our way there now with a retrieval crew. I wanted to get you first.”

Louis closed his eyes, tilting his face up to the cold rain. He pulled in a deep breath. “I’m on my way.”