A Killing Rain (14 page)

Louis was crouched outside the old couple’s house. It had stopped raining, but the ground and bushes were wet and he could feel the chilling dampness seeping into his clothing. It was dark and the streetlights were a dull glow in the misty air.

He heard Jewell breathing softly behind him. “You want the back or front?” Louis whispered.

Jewell pointed to the front door.

“Give me about two minutes,” Louis said.

Jewell nodded, and Louis crept away, staying in the bushes until he reached a wood fence. He pulled up the metal latch. It let out a squeak and he stopped, listening. Nothing.

He went
through
the gate, crouching against the house, easing his way around the corner. He could make out the shape of a lawn chair, a small patio, and a barbeque. He pulled his Glock up in front of him and drew in a breath, holding it.

For a moment, it was quiet. No crickets. No wind. No nothing.

Then he heard it. A soft putter in the distance.

His eyes snapped to the darkness of the backyard. The smell was faint, but he knew what it was
-- gas fumes. And he knew what was back behind the house -- a canal. He stared hard into the blackness. Slowly, the shape of a small dock came into focus.

A boat. That’s what he had heard. A boat moving quietly and quickly away.

Damn it. Damn it.

Louis squinted beyond the dock. He could just make out the ripples in the inky canal water
and beyond that, the black fringe of mangroves. They were gone, hidden now in the narrow twisting channels of the mangroves. It had to be them. No one else would be out on that canal this late in this cold.

He looked back at the house. He knew he still needed to go in. And he knew he needed to go in, gun drawn, in case he was wrong.

Louis retraced his steps to the back door. The door was unlocked and he pushed it open, peering around the door jamb. The house was dark, but he had the sense that he was in the kitchen. He slipped inside, his eyes jumping from corner to corner, his ears alert for the slightest sound.

He took a step, and his shoe skidded and he went down, trying to catch himself on a table. His elbow crashed against a chair and he was on his ass, sitting in something wet.

He grabbed the table edge and scrambled to his feet, jerking the gun back and forth. But he saw no one, nothing. He worked his way forward, to the living room. It was dark, too, and he reached out, hoping to find a light switch. He felt nothing along the wall.

The front door crashed open and Louis swung his gun toward the sound. A blur filled the foyer then vanished into a short hall. He hoped to hell it was Jewell.

“Jewell,” Louis hissed.

Jewell’s voice came back. “The place clear?”

“Can’t find a damn light”

A light went on in the hall. Louis headed toward it, and saw Jewell moving cautiously to the first bedroom. Louis followed him and slipped past to the second bedroom. The light switch was right near the door and he flicked it on.

The bedroom was small, the closet open. It looked un-touched except for a ripple in the chenille bedspread where someone might have sat down. On the bed were a couple of boxes, the contents dumped. But no people, living or dead.

He heard Jewell out in the hall and left the bedroom to follow him. He knew where Jewell was headed. The last place they needed to look was the garage. Louis realized he had probably missed the door coming through the kitchen.

Jewell had a flashlight, and Louis could see it dancing over the kitchen walls as he came up behind him. Jewell found a switch and reached around the corner and turned it on.

“Sweet mother of God,” Jewell whispered.

Louis came up next to him.

The white linoleum was streaked in red. What had been a large thick pool was smeared in all
directions with a trail heading to the garage.

Oh, Jesus
. That’s what he had slipped in. Blood.

The edge of the table and the white doo
r jamb had bright smears of crimson fingerprints.

Louis looked down at his hand. He had wiped the stickiness from the kitchen
floor on his jeans when he had stood up, but he hadn’t gotten it all. His palm was tinted red, the creases and lines like tiny bloody rivers in his skin.

Jewell was moving toward the garage. Louis followed, the bloody dampness in his jeans thickening with every step.

The garage door was closed and Jewell used his shoulder to push it open. They were met with a rush of cold air. Jewell’s flashlight swept over two vehicles.

Louis pulled the string on the light.

Two cars. One was a pristine white Buick. The other was a Toyota with pockets of rust. A red vinyl pizza warmer sat on the hood of the Toyota, empty.

They approached the Toyota on opposite sides. On the front seat was a magnetic rooftop
Pepe’s Pizza sign. The driver’s seat, the front window, and dashboard were smeared with blood.

Someone was huddled on the floor of the front passenger seat. Red and green shirt. Dark hair. Louis knew it was the pizza delivery man.

“Jeeze,” Jewell whispered.

Louis turned. Jewell had popped the trunk of the Buick and was staring inside. Louis went to him.

The old man was on top of the woman. His pasty white skin and thin gray hair were streaked with blood. He lay on his back, his milky eyes open, his head dropping back over the shoulder of his wife. The gash in his neck gaped open, the tissue sliced as clean as fresh butcher meat.

Louis stepped back, running an arm over his face. He drew in a cold breath, let it out,
then drew in another. He forced himself to look again into the trunk. He could see the woman’s bony legs under her husband. He could see the rolled edges of her knee-high stockings. But he couldn’t see under her, to the trunk’s bottom.

“Sir,” Jewell said, “
the back of your jeans are covered in blood. Are you wounded?”

Louis shook his head, his eyes fixed on the bodies
. “We need to see if Benjamin is under these bodies.”

“We shouldn’t touch them.”

“I know that, but I need to make sure.”

Jewell hesitated then looked around. He spotted garden gloves on the wall and grabbed them, holding them out to Louis.

Jewell reached in and carefully lifted the ankles of the old man, placing them gently toward the rear of the trunk, getting most of the weight off the woman.

Louis pulled on the gloves. Then he placed his hands on the old woman, shifting her gently to get a look underneath her. The vinyl was dark and sticky, and Louis gave the body a soft push to see further. Nothing.

Thank God...

Jewell let out a loud breath then tried to cover it by glancing around the garage. “Guess we better check the Toyota trunk,” he said.

They moved back to the rear of the Toyota. Louis was surprised to see the trunk ajar. He used his gun barrel to lift it open.

It was empty, littered with soda cans, old clothing, and a small spare tire. Wires hung disconnected from the tail lights, and there was a small rust hole in the bottom panel.

Jewell came up next to him. “How did they get away without us seeing them?”

“There’s a canal out back,” Louis said. “They took a boat. I heard it when I was coming around the house.”

Jewell clicked on his radio and Louis turned, heading back in the house. He left the garden gloves on and walked back through the kitchen toward the living room. He found the light this time and turned it on. His eyes moved over the room.

Window blinds, slightly crooked, the edge caught against the sill.

A phone on an end table, turned not toward the easy chair but toward the same window.

A pizza box overturned on the beige carpet and a path of bloody footprints, probably his own. Two dirty round imprints in the carpet under the window, like someone with muddy pants had knelt there.

Louis moved carefully to the window and lifted the blind with the tip of his gloved finger. The lights were still out at Susan’s house. He started to turn away, wondering why the hell these guys had taken a chance like this, what had been their plan, when something on the window sill caught his eyes.

It was a tiny plastic cowboy, a gun in his outstretched hand. It looked old, the kind of toy kids played with in the late fifties or early sixties, before Star Wars action figures and cars that turned into robots.

And it was out of place.

Louis
looked around, looked at the blue duck wallpaper in the kitchen, the worn Barcalounger, the collection of framed family photographs clustered around the vase of silk flowers on the crocheted doily. The old couple had been well into their seventies. Their house was immaculate, the picture frames filled with the faces of the couple and their son and grandchildren. But there were no children living here now.

So where did this toy cowboy come from?

Louis turned and went back to the second bedroom, going to the boxes on the bed.

One held baseball cards, old and probably valuable, but left untouched. The other
box contained dozens more of the little plastic figurines -- Indians, cowboys, horses.

What were the killers doing in here? Looking for money or valuables? Louis moved back to the living room and looked again at the small figure on the sill. Had they given it to Ben, thinking he would like
it? Or to stop him from crying? And had Ben left it for them? Was he trying to leave clues?

Louis went into the kitchen and carefully pulled open drawers until he found som
e Ziplocs. He picked up the cowboy and dropped it in a bag.

He
glanced at the garage door, hearing Jewell talking to Chief Wainwright on the radio. Jewell clicked off as he came in from the garage.

“What’s that?” Jewell asked.

Louis put the baggie in his pocket. “I don’t know. Maybe a shred of hope.”

They were gathered back in Susan’s living room. It was cramped and close, the overheated room filled with the smells of wet wool, burnt coffee, and fatigue. Chief Wainwright was stationed near the fireplace, flanked by two Sereno Key cops wearing black rain slickers. Jewell had gone back to his usual spot at the door. He hadn’t removed his soaked windbreaker, and his blond hair was plastered to his head.

From his position on the sofa, Louis watched the young cop’s face. Jewell was t
rying hard to look stoic and untouched by the scenes he had seen in the old couple’s house. He wasn’t old enough to quite have the look down yet.

Jewell caught Louis’s eye, held it for a moment. It occurred to Louis that the young cop had been here since this afternoon, probably working the third shift that normally ran until midnight
.

“Jewell,” Louis said softly.

“Yes, sir?”

“You need some rest. Go home.”

“I’d rather stay here, sir.”

There was something in Jewell’s eyes that told Louis not to press it
. Maybe it was just a sense of propriety, but Jewell wanted, needed, to stay. Jewell had been with Susan since this whole thing started, shared her home, seen her at her worst. Louis understood the odd sense of immediate family these sorts of situations created.

Louis gave Jewell a tired half-smile. The young cop went back to looking out the small window in the door.

Wainwright’s voice was a drone in the background and Louis let his head drop back on the sofa. He was dog tired but still alert. The curtains were closed and the spots of red and blue lights moving across them looked almost festive in contrast to the dimness of the living room. Louis had counted ten cop cars outside the last time he looked. There were only five cops on all of the Sereno Key force, so he knew Wainwright had called in help from the sheriff’s office and from Chief Horton over in Fort Myers. For all his FBI experience, Wainwright knew he couldn’t handle this one alone. There were too many bodies now. And Ben was still missing.

Louis could hear other voices coming from the hallway. It was the tech crew, dusting Ben’s room so they had his fingerprints. The clock on the mantel chimed once. Louis looked at it then at Wainwright. Like everyone else, Louis was waiting for him to take the lead.

Wainwright was holding up the Ziploc with the plastic cowboy in it. “Gene Autry,” he said softly. “I had one of these when I was a kid. I don’t think this means anything.”

“It was out of place,” Louis said.

Wainwright’s blue eyes stayed on Louis, and Louis could read the sympathy there. But that’s all there was. The Chief thought Ben was dead. Louis looked at the other faces. They all did.

Wainwright gave the Ziploc to one of his men, said something under his breath, and the cop left
. Louis knew a second tech crew was dusting the old couple's house and that as soon as Gene Autry made it back to the lab, they would dust him, too. And if anything matched what they were lifting from Ben’s room, they would know he was still alive.

If...

Susan came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray. She set the tray down on the coffee table. “I’m sorry,” she said. “All I have is peanut butter and jelly.”

She
moved away, going to stand at the kitchen doorway.

The cops all looked at each other
, then at Wainwright. He gave a small nod. One of the cops picked up a sandwich and began to eat. The others didn’t move. They were new, part of the second team sent to Susan’s house.

There was a light knock on the door. Jewell opened the door. A man in a wet windbreaker came in carrying a black case. He and Wainwright exchanged a few words.

“Ma’am?” Wainwright said.

Susan looked up.

“Is that phone in the kitchen the only one?”

She nodded.

Wainwright nodded to his man and he moved past Susan with his case to set up the tap. Wainwright saw Louis watching him.

“We might get another call,” he said.

“Why?” Susan asked.

“They called once,” Wainwright said. “They might call again.”

Susan didn’t reply, slipping away down the hall. Louis pushed off the sofa and followed her. She was standing at the open door to Ben’s room, watching the techs. He could almost read her mind, understand what she was thinking. Ben was gone, vanished, and now here were these strangers, tapping her phone, moving around her son’s room, leaving black smudges on the windowsills, the furniture, and everything Ben might have handled. It was like being touched by something ugly and dark, and he knew that no matter what the outcome of this, those marks would never really go away.

“Susan.”

She turned but didn’t even look at him. She went across the hall and into her own room. She crawled onto the bed, burying her face in the pillow. Louis came in to sit on the edge of the bed. He touched her hair.

“Susan.”

It took a moment, but she finally turned to look up at him. Her eyes were dry, empty.

“He’s just a little kid,” she said.

“I know.”

“He’s just this little skinny kid.” There was a catch in her voice.

“He’s smart, Susan.”

She shook her head slowly. “No, no, you don’t get it. They pick on him. At school, they tease him.
He isn’t...”

She put her face into the pillow.

“Susan, listen to me. Ben knows how to use his brain. He’s smart in a way most kids his age aren’t.”

She didn’t move.

Louis hesitated, then got up and left the room. He went into Ben’s room. The techs were gone. Louis went to the closet and rummaged through some boxes and clothes in the corner. He found what he was looking for and came back to Susan.

“Susan, look at this.”

She turned to face him, frowning when she saw the title on the book Louis was holding --
In the Presence of Evil: Mass Murderers and Serial Killers.

“Where did you get this?” she asked, sitting up.

“In Ben’s closet.”

She took it from Louis and opened it.

“He showed it to me once,” Louis said. “When I first met you, that night you were working on the Cade case and you asked me to babysit? He showed me this.”

Susan was quiet
, turning the pages, looking at the lurid pictures. Finally she closed the book and looked up at Louis.

“Ben is okay,” Louis said.

Susan’s eyes filled with tears as she clutched the book.

Finally, the tears fell silently down her drawn face. He thought for a moment she was going
to lie back and bury herself in the pillow, but she didn’t. She leaned into him, her forehead on his shoulder.

“Louis.”

Susan’s head came up and Louis turned to see Wainwright in the bedroom doorway.

“Sorry,” Wainwright said. “But we might have their car.”

“What car?” Susan asked.

Wainwright hesitated, like he didn’t have
the time or inclination to explain to her.

“What car?” she repeated.

“It looks like they picked up the pizza guy here on Sereno Key,” Wainwright said. “Then they drove his car to the old folks’ house. But they had to get over to this island somehow. We figured they left a vehicle over here somewhere, so I had the guys look. We think we got it at a Circle K near the causeway.”

Louis started to get up, but suddenly he could feel Susan’s
hand, heavy on his arm. He knew he should stay. He knew he needed to be here and sit with her until she fell asleep or cried herself out.

She took her hand from his arm and placed it on his shoulder, giving him a gent
le push.

“Go,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

The car sat in the shadows behind the Circle K, its dark blue finish glistening in the weak glow of a
n old floodlight. It was a Cadillac El Dorado from the early seventies, long and sleek, with a faded black vinyl top. The thin strip of decorative chrome was gone, and the hood ornament had been snapped off.

Louis walked to the driver’s side and hit the interior with a flashlight. A second light came from Wainwright on the passenger side.

The car was empty. Louis tried the door and it opened with a groan. The dashboard and seats were cracked, brittle from decades of baking under the Florida sun. The floor-boards were covered in dried mud and newspapers.

Louis leaned over the seat and swept his light slowly over the back. He was looking for something that told him Ben had been in this car. It wouldn’t have been hard to scratch some letters in the old vinyl or to leave a
button, or something that would give them a lead. But he saw nothing.

“Louis, is there a trunk switch?”

Louis brought the light back to the front steering wheel. “I don’t see one.”

Louis withdrew from the car and flicked off the flashlight, sticking it under his arm as he walked back to the trunk. He stuck his hands in his pockets and waited while Wainwright dispatched an officer to get a crowbar.

“They tell me the car is registered to a Byron J. Ellis, of Fort Myers,” Wainwright said, coming over to Louis.

“What’
s his history?”

“Sixteen years for manslaughter up at
Raiford, and a couple of GTA’s. He’s been out about eighteen months, last known address was Fort Myers.”

“No Miami connection?”

“Not that we can see off his sheet.”

“Susan ever deal with him?”

“No. He was convicted down in Collier County.”

The officer appeared with the crowbar and Louis and Wainwright stepped aside.

“How far away was the pizza guy’s last delivery?”

“Couple of blocks from the old folks’ place.”

A sharp wind suddenly blew through, shaking loose the raindrops from a palm tree. A drop hit Louis on the back of his neck and trickled under his collar, sending a current of shivers down his back.

“Got it, Chief.”

They turned back to the car and it occurred to Louis that this was yet another place he had to look, another corner, another room, another trunk. Each time something inside him pulled tight, like a steel brace that would somehow keep him upright if he saw what he most feared to see. He had to force himself to walk over to the open trunk this time.

Wainwright turned and looked back at him, his face a pale mask in the dim light.

“It’s empty, Louis.”

Louis felt the relief pass through him like the damp wind, and he quickened his step, flicking on his flashlight. The light danced over the inside, but there was nothing to see except junk. Louis’s flashlight beam paused at the inside of the rear bumper, where the taillight wires came through to the trunk. The tiny wires had been pulled out of their holes, leaving the right
tail light unworkable. The wires of the Toyota’s trunk had been pulled out, too.

“Chief, look.”

Wainwright’s beam stayed on the wires for a moment then disappeared. “You think the kid did that?”

Louis looked at the other taillight. The wires were intact. He stood upright, running an arm across his face.

“The wires on the pizza guy’s car were pulled out. Too big a coincidence. I think Ben did it.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Remember a couple years back, that guy who was held in a trunk and used the wires to get the attention of the cops? It was all over the news.”

“Yeah, I remember. But you’re not going to convince me an eleven-year-old boy would. And even if he had seen it on TV, he’d never think to try it.”

“Ben would.”

Wainwright turned away, gave some instructions to his men, and looked back at Louis.

“I know that Mrs. Outlaw has to have her hope, Louis. People in her situation don’t have anything else. But you should know better. You know what kind of people we’re dealing with here.”

Louis didn’t want to hear this. Wainwright put a hand on his shoulder, but Louis shrugged it off, turning toward Wainwright’s cruiser. He climbed back inside. Wainwright got in and they drove back to Susan’s in silence.

Louis stopped inside the front door to pick up the over-night bag he had brought from his cottage. T
wo new cops were there and they didn’t even look up at him. Jewell, still at his post at the door, gave Louis a slight nod as Louis went down the hall.

In the bathroom, he changed into worn sweats and a pair of old socks. Going to Susan’s room, he paused at the door. Susan was curled on the bed and looked to be asleep, but she was still wearing her clothes.

He went in, leaving the door ajar so he could hear anything outside. He turned off the light. Slowly, carefully, he eased down onto the bed next to Susan, sitting up against the headboard.

The bedroom was
dark but in the slender shaft of light coming in from the hallway, he could see the open door of Ben’s room across the hallway.