A Killing Rain (26 page)

Thursday, January 21

The cold woke him, a slight chill in the air of the bedroom. Louis stirred, pulling the sheet up over his shoulder. He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to.

He had lai
n in her arms, a part of him more content than he had been in a long time. But as he fell asleep, it was Ben’s face he saw. And he couldn’t shake the sickening feeling that Ellis might have been telling the truth.

His arm went out across the bed to the other pillow, but the sheet was cold. She was gone. The aroma of coffee told him she
was still here, somewhere. He slid out of bed and slipped on a pair of sweatpants. He was pulling on a T-shirt as he walked to the living room.

It was empty. The kitchen was empty, too. The porch. She’d be out there.

He paused at the door, hearing her voice. And then, a man’s voice, deep with a slight ironic drawl that he recognized immediately. Mel Landeta. He drew back, listening.

“You lo
ok good,” he said.

“How can you tell?” she said.

“I can hear it in your voice. You’re happy. So I know you look good. You always looked good when you were happy.”

“I don’t think happy is the word for it, considering what’s going on,” she said.

“But you’re happy with him.”

She paused. “I like him, Mel.”

Louis looked at the floor.

“You want some more coffee?” she asked.

Louis heard the creak of the wicker chair as she got up. He stepped into the doorway. Joe and Mel looked up at him. Joe smiled.

“Hey, Rocky,”
Mel said.

His long body was stretched out on the lounge chair. Black loafers, white socks, faded black pants, an open-collar white shirt, black leather jacket, and yellow aviator glasses.

“Mel,” Louis said, giving him a nod.

Louis glanced at Joe. She was in all black: jeans, sweater,
jacket. Ready to go for the day. Maybe ready to go back to Miami. She was holding two mugs.

“Let me get you some coffee,” she said. She went inside the cottage, touching his arm as she passed him.

Louis looked back at Mel, wondering why he was here. On the small table between Joe’s chair and the lounge sat Byron Ellis’s file, Joe’s notebook, a three-ring binder with Miami PD embossed on the front, some crime scene photos of the old people’s house, the drop site, and three or four newspapers. The top paper was quartered, Benjamin’s photo visible.

“Sit down, would you?”
Mel asked.

Louis sat down in the closest chair, leaving the middle one open for Joe. His eyes moved back to the table and Ben’s picture.

“She called me,” Mel said. “Thought maybe I could help.”

Louis looked at
him then out past the screening, through the sea oats, to the water. Something bothered him about Mel being here, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Why did she think he needed any help? And why did he know what she looked like when she was happy?

He felt Joe’s hand on his shoulder. She handed him a coffee mug. He thought she’d sit down but she went back inside the cottage, closing the front door.

For a minute or so, they sat in silence. Mel spoke first.

“Things aren’t very clear right now, are they?”

Louis didn’t answer.

“When a case is personal,”
Mel said, “you lose perspective because you’re operating on emotions instead of logic, anger instead of experience.”

Louis took a drink of coffee. Now he knew why
Mel was here. To tell him to calm down. Take it easy. Don’t let it become personal.

“Mel, I’m okay,” Louis said. “I can handle this.”

“You get involved. You can’t help it.”

Louis closed his eyes.

“The boy’s not dead,” Mel said. “You didn’t kill him that night you tried to deliver the money.”

Louis looked up. “How do you know that?”

Mel sat forward, planting his feet on opposite sides of the lounge chair. “Ask yourself one question,” he said. “Why did that guy take the chance of coming into Susan’s house dressed as a cop?”

“Because he wanted another shot at killing Outlaw,” Louis said.

“According to the TV Outlaw was already dead.”

“Maybe they didn’t believe the TV report.”

“Why wouldn’t they believe it?”

“Because they knew I wasn’t Austin Outlaw.”

“They thought you were Outlaw earlier that night. They thought you were Outlaw at the ransom drop.”

Louis was quiet.

“When did they stop believing you were Outlaw?” Mel asked.

“After the noon newscast the next day,” Louis said.

“Why did they stop believing?”

Louis was quiet for a moment. “Someone told them.”

“Who?”

The answer was obvious. Ben had told them. Ben had seen the newscast and had told them that it wasn’t his father who had been killed.

Mel sipped his coffee. Suddenly Louis didn’t mind him being here at all.

The door opened and Joe came back out, carrying a legal pad.
Mel touched her chair, as if to let her know it was okay to rejoin the conversation. She sat down, flipping the pages of the pad.

“I just got off the phone with the Collier County sheriff’s office and the M.E.,” she said. “First, they’re not finished
processing the trailer, but so far there is no evidence Ben was ever inside. No prints or strange little objects like paper cigar rings.”

“Who owns the trailer?” Louis asked.

“Collier County. Apparently the original owner didn’t pay the property taxes and the land and trailer were seized in 1985. The names on the mail box, Rolf and Janice Fletcher, were the last known renters in 1980, but the place sat empty for years after they moved. No one can locate the original owner.”

“The Fletchers have any kids?” Louis asked.

“Yes, but they’d be in their forties now. Our guy is young.”

“Our guy knows that place though,” Louis said. “He didn’t just find that trailer by chance.”

“I agree.”

Louis took a drink of his coffee. “Anything else in the trailer to tell us who this other guy is?”

Joe shook her head. “No. It doesn’t look like they were there very long.”

“What about Ellis’s place in Fort Myers?” Mel asked.

“He’s been gone from that apartment for over a year. It was just his last known address.”

“So we don’t know where Ellis has been living since he got out of prison,” Louis said.

“Why didn’t his parole officer violate him for not reporting?” Mel asked.

“He wasn’t on parole,” Joe said. “He served his full sentence.”

The porch fell quiet. Louis’s eyes drifted to the legal pad in Joe’s lap. “Can I see your notes?”

She handed the pad to him. Her writing was easy to read, sharp little strokes that looked more like printing than script.
He read down the page until he got to the words AUTOPSY FINDINGS.

“Is this on Ellis?” Louis asked.

Joe nodded. “Two gunshot wounds to the chest.”

Louis read on. She had asked about other scars and tattoos and the M.E. had read them off to he
r -- a winged bird looking toward a sun on Ellis’s back, two crosses, one on each biceps, a naked woman on his chest, and the words YOUR MINE on the hand.

“Joe, hand me Ellis’s file,” Louis said
. She did and he flipped it open to the distinguishing marks the department of corrections had listed years ago. A bird, crosses, and a naked woman were all there. But the YOUR MINE was not listed. That meant Ellis had gotten the tattoo after the last notation by the state, whenever that was.

“Joe, did the M.E. describe this last tattoo, the
YOUR MINE one?”

“He said
YOUR was big on the back of the hand and the M-I-N-E was spaced out on individual fingers, above the knuckles.”

“Did the M.E. spell out the word
YOUR for you or did he just say it?” Louis asked reaching for a pencil off the table.

“Just said it.”

Louis flipped to a clean page in the pad and drew two hands. On one hand he printed the letters BE on the fat part of the hand putting M-I-N-E below it on the fingers. On the other hand, he put the letters YR on the fat part, with the same M-I-N-E below it.

He held out his sketch to Joe.

“Yancy Rowen had the same tattoo,” Louis said. “Only his said BE MINE. B-E...or Byron Ellis. Ellis had Y-R for Yancy Rowen.”

Joe was staring at the drawings. “They were lovers,” she said.

Mel looked at her. “More like each other’s property. The tattoo that says B-E Mine means Byron Ellis is mine. Y-R, Yancy Rowen is mine. The fact that it’s on the hand means hands off to everyone else.”

Louis was seeing
Yancy Rowen’s face, the bulging muscles, the agitated jerks of his cuffed wrists when they asked him about Ellis. Rowen had been seething with anger. Or was it something else?

He remembered suddenly something Rowen had said.
I don't know who his new boy is either.

Louis leaned across Joe again and sifted through the papers until he found Jewell’s sketch of the second man. He looked at it
– young, blond and white. This was the new boy.

And
Yancy Rowen knew exactly who he was.

“We’ve got to go back to
Raiford,” Louis said, holding up the sketch. “Yancy Rowen knows who this is.”

Joe stood up. “Let me cut some red tape up there. I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.” She disappeared inside.

Louis was still looking at the sketch when Mel spoke. “Joe tells me you might have a shot at a job in Miami when all this is over.”

Louis nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Mel took off his glasses and started wiping them with a handkerchief. “Lots of nice things in Miami,” he said.

There was something in his voice, a wistfulness, a memory of something he once had but was now gone. And Louis realized that the job he might soon take was the same job
Mel had lost a few years ago because of his declining eyesight. But was there something else he seemed to be remembering? Was that other memory Joe?

“You should go for it. You’re young. Don’t be too...cautious,”
Mel said.

Louis glanced over at him.
Mel was looking straight ahead, out over the low dunes toward the gulf. It was just one big smudge of gray with no distinction between water and sky, and for a moment Louis understood what it was like to see the world as Mel did, with no sharp edges or boundaries.

Joe came back out onto the porch. “Let’s get moving,” she said.

“I need to get dressed,” Louis said, standing.

She gave him a wave and he went inside. As he looked back over his shoulder and through the door, he could see the lower half of
Mel’s body. He saw Joe lean forward and pick up Mel’s cigarette. She took a drag and handed it to him, saying something to Mel that Louis couldn’t hear.

Louis dressed quickly, anxious to get going. Anxious to get back outside. He went to grab his jacket, but it was muddy and still damp from yesterday’s chase with Ellis. He grabbed a hooded sweatshirt, wincing at the pain in his shoulder as he pulled it over his head. He seldom even stopped at the mi
rror unless he was dressing up, but he caught an image of himself and he took a minute to take it in.

The thin gray light from the windows shadowed his face with dark angles and he suspected, close up, he looked like crap. But standing here now, in snug jeans, sneakers, a hooded sweatshirt, and hair longer than he had ever worn it, he looked...young?

Joe came to the bedroom doorway. “Primp too much you’ll have ol’ Yancy putting the moves on you,” she said. “C’mon, let’s go.”

She left before he could reply. He followed her back to the porch.
Mel was still sitting in the lounge.

“You need a lift home?” Louis asked
him.

Mel
shook his head “Nah. If it’s okay with you, I’ll stick around here a while and watch the world go by.”

“How will you get home?” Joe asked
.

“Same way I got here. Cab.”

Louis looked at Joe. She was looking at Mel.

“See you?” she asked.

“You bet, Joette,” Mel nodded.

She turned to Louis, tossing him the keys. “You drive. I’m going to sleep.”

The clang of shackles was the only sound in the small room as
Yancy Rowen shuffled to his place at the table. The guards secured his ankles and wrists to the metal loops then took their positions by the door. Louis took the chair across from Rowen. Joe stood behind him, against the wall, arms crossed.

The
whites of Rowen’s eyes were shot through with tiny red veins and there was an intensity in his stare that made Louis glad Rowen was cuffed to the table.

Louis placed a closed manila folder on the table between them. Rowen’s gaze moved to it.

“I want to talk to the pretty woman,” Rowen said.

“You’re not interested in the woman,
Yancy,” Louis said “You and I both know that.”

Rowen’s gaze jumped to Louis’s face. “What you talking about?”

Louis took out his drawing of Ellis’s hand tattoo from the folder. He slid it across the table, turning it so Rowen could see it. Rowen looked at it and clenched his left hand, the one with the matching tattoo. But there was no way he could hide it.

“You and Ellis were more than cell mates,” Louis said. “More than friends.”

“You’re wrong, man,” Rowen said, slumping back. “I ain’t no homo. That’s a white man’s thing.”

“Then explain that,” Louis said, pointing to Rowen’s B-E MINE tattoo.

“It don’t mean shit. And it had nothing to do with Ellis.”

“How long you been in here,
Yancy?” Louis asked.

Rowen was looking back at the drawing. “Twelve years.”

“And you were how old when you got here?”

“Look it up.”

“I did. You were nineteen.”

Rowen glared at him.

“When did you give yourselves the tattoos?” Louis asked.

“I told you them tats mean nothing, nothing about Ellis. Nothing about nothing.”

“Whose idea was it?” Louis asked. “I bet it was his. He was older, right? Had already been in here a while. It was his game and he really knew how to take care of a young buck like you, right?”

Rowen
’s hands jerked against the cuffs, then he leaned as far over the table as he could. “You’re one stupid --”

“What was it like that first night
, Yancy?” Louis asked. “What was it like to be in a cell, listening to the cries and sounds in the dark, hugging yourself to keep from throwing up, knowing that it was just a matter of time before you became one of their fuck-toys?”

“Shut up. It wasn’t like that
,” Rowen said.

“It was exactly like that
,” Louis said. “You needed protection. You needed —- what do they call it? —- a daddy?”

Rowen was silent his eyes locked on Louis.

“Ellis was your daddy.”

Rowen curled his lips. “El kept me alive.”

“In all the right ways,” Louis said.

“In every way,” Rowen said.

Louis opened the folder again and took out the sketch of the second suspect. He slid it across the table.

“Until he came along.”

Rowen’s eyes dipped to the sketch. His body shifted in the chair.

“You were replaced quicker than yesterday
’s garbage,” Louis said. “By him.”

“It didn’t matter,” Rowen said, his voice tightening. “I didn’t care. Nobody cares in here.”

“No, you cared,” Louis said. “You and Ellis. You had something different. You belonged to each other in a way none of the others would ever understand.”

Rowen’s eyes shot to Joe but he said nothing.

Louis stabbed a finger at the sketch. “He took everything you had.”

“He was nothing!” Rowen spat.

“He was something to Ellis,” Louis said. “He was younger than you and he was prettier than you. And he was something else you could never be. He was white."

“So fucking what?” Rowen yelled.

Louis pulled out a photograph, a full-body color shot of Byron Ellis in the morgue. Ellis had a sheet up to his waist, and the two holes from the bullets Joe had put into his chest were clearly visible.

He slapped it down in front of Rowen. “Byron Ellis is dead.”

Rowen’s eyes widened, but he didn’t move. Louis watched the veins in his neck pulse for a second or two.

“Who killed him? Rowen asked.

Louis pointed to the sketch. “He did. Shot him dead, naked in their bed.”

Rowen looked away, his jaw tight, lips pressed together, his hands rattling the cuffs. Louis thought he might explode into a rage and he
knew if that happened, the guards would end the interview instantly.

“
Yancy,” Louis said, his voice low. “It is what it is. Nobody’s judging you here.”

Rowen just stared at
the table.

Louis’s eyes went to the teardrop tattooed under Rowen’s eye. “
Yancy, you ever kill anybody?” he asked.

Rowen shook his head.

Louis leaned as far over the table as he could and kept his voice very low. “Give us his killer.”

Rowen sat perfectly still for a moment, his eyes on Louis. “Tell the bitch to leave,” he said.

Louis didn’t have to look back. He heard Joe’s footsteps moving to the door. When the door closed behind her, Rowen took a deep breath. “You think I’m some kind of monster. Or freak fairy.”

“No, I don’t.”

“We ain’t no different than you, man,” Rowen said. “We just got different options. You got her, I had El.”

Louis held Rowen’s gaze, silent.

“In this place, you take what you can get when you can get it. Most times, it don’t matter from who.” Rowen shook his head, eyes on the table. “Then sometimes it does matter. Like you said, El is what he is. And he ain’t never been ashamed of it.”

“And you?” Louis asked. He knew the answer, but he also knew Rowen was ready to talk. Wanted to talk.

Rowen was quiet for a long time. “I ain’t so sure what I am,” he said finally. “My first fuck was in here and I ain’t got nothing to compare it to.”

Louis’s eyes flicked up to the guards. To Rowen, the guards must have been invisible. It struck Louis odd that Rowen was more embarrassed to have Joe hear this than the two guys at the door.

“Are they any good?”

“What?” Louis asked, looking back.

“Broads. Are they any good?”

“Yeah, they’re good.”

“I get out in six years.”

“Give them a try.”

Rowen looked down at the sketch. “Can I hold that?” Louis looked at the guards. One shrugged. Louis handed Rowen the sketch.

“The boy you said El kidnapped. You find him yet?”

Louis shook his head.

“The kid yours?” Rowen asked.

Louis almost lied to him, thinking it might make a difference. But he’d lied enough to this guy. If Rowen saw through a new lie, he would clam up.

“No, he’s the son of a friend. His mother is a defense attorney.”

“El won’t hurt him.”

“It’s not up to Ellis anymore,” Louis said, nodding toward the sketch. “It’s up to him.”

Rowen looked back at the sketch, then spit on it. He crumpled it with one of his large hands and tossed it aside. Rowen took a deep, long breath, like he needed strength to say the name.

“His name is Adam Vargas.”

Louis waited a moment then put the photo of Ellis back in the folder. He didn’t want Rowen to ask to keep it “Anything else you can tell me about him?” Louis asked. “Do you know what he was in here for?” He knew he could find out the offense later but he wanted to know now.

“Armed robbery.”

“Anything else you can tell me about him?”

Rowen shrugged. “He had a mean streak.”

Louis looked at him. He wanted to ask, Don't you all?

Rowen saw the look. “This was different than most of the guys,” he said. “It’s like it didn’t fit him. Nothing seemed right about him, even like he didn’t really belong here.”

“He committed an armed robbery,” Louis said.

“With a plastic gun, man,” Rowen said.

A plastic gun?

“Can I ask you something else,
Yancy?”

Rowen nodded.

“How come you never hurt him?” Louis asked. “Or even killed him?”

Rowen shrugged. “I don’t know. I
ain’t no killer. I had a guy offer to do it for me, but I...just couldn’t. In a weird way, it woulda been like killing a kid.”

“Why?”

Rowen shrugged. “It was like the guy never got past thirteen or something.”

Louis stood up. “Thank you,” he said.

Rowen looked up at him, his face a mixture of embarrassment, anger, confusion, and something else close to pain.

Louis walked to the door. The guard let him out and he stepped into the hall. Joe came up to him quickly.

“Adam Vargas,” Louis said.

“Good job. I’ll get what I can from the office and meet you outside.”

They walked out, escorted by a guard, back down the long hall and through the security check-in area. Joe went in another direction. He checked out and stepped into the cold air outside.

The sky was still a slate gray, the clouds low on
the horizon. The wind whipped at his face, the air sharp with the smell of more rain. He leaned against Joe’s Bronco and looked up at the prison. It was a cold, white boxy building, the rows of dark windows set in the stone walls like holes that led to nowhere. The constant bang of metal doors reminding you that you were locked up. The eternal feel of another man’s eyes on you.

Rowen’s face came back to him. That strange final look, the lips drawn painfully over the teeth, the tattooed
teardrop glistening with sweat.

His gaze moved back to the big white building.

Hard cold grown men who’d sooner shoot you than look at you, drawing teardrops on their faces.

Jesus, he couldn’t imagine being in prison. Any kind of prison. Yet, every once in a while, the thought hit him. He could be. Maybe should be.

Major Anderson asked about you. Walk in the door as a detective. Are you interested?

I have some things to work out here first.

Louis knew Joe thought he had meant his relationship, such as it was, with Susan. But he hadn’t meant that at all.

There was a gun buried in the sand under the Gumbo Limbo tree in his front yard. The gun was evidence in another case, evidence he had not turned over to the cops.

A young girl was dead. Her confessed rapist and killer was going to go free and there was
nothing Louis could do about it. Until the man was
accused of another crime. A crime Louis knew he did not commit. And the gun that would prove the man innocent of the second crime had dropped into Louis’s hands.

He had
hidden
the gun, buried it in his front yard. And the rapist went
to prison for another man’s crime.

It
had seemed right at the time, if not legally, then morally. The man needed to be punished one way or another. And the girl needed justice. So he had given it to her.

He had regretted burying the gun almost immediately. But then t
hings got complicated. Time went by. The trial started. Susan had been involved with the case, and he knew she would never forgive him if he told her that he had tampered with evidence and obstructed justice in a case that involved her. She had told him once she knew there were lines he would not cross. He knew she’d be disappointed in him to find out she was wrong.

But as job openings came and went in the Fort Myers police department and Lee County sheriff’s office, he found that it wasn’t Susan’s possible disappointment in him that was the problem. It was his own.

He needed to make it right again before he even considered an interview with Major Anderson.

He looked back up at
the prison. But he didn’t have the faintest idea how.

The red needle on the speedometer was pushing eighty-five as they sped south on I-75. They were heading to East Naples, to an efficiency apartment that the prison records had shown as Vargas’s address after his release. The warden had also given them a thin copy of Vargas’s life story, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. Joe read it to Louis during the drive.

Adam Pe
rnell Vargas had entered prison at eighteen, after robbing a store off Alligator Alley. The Alley cut through the Miccosukee Indian reservation, and it was the tribe’s small store that Vargas had chosen to hold up with his plastic gun. He had been sentenced to two years, but served only eighteen months. His uncle, Leo Ryker, had offered Vargas a job at his sugar cane processing plant near Clewiston to secure the parole.

The armed robbery was Vargas’s first and only charged offense up to now. It struck Louis odd that Vargas had turned so violent after his release
, and even chalking it up to Byron Ellis’s influence didn’t explain it. Ellis’s own manslaughter charge had been a personal beef that ended in a gunshot. Nothing in his background suggested he was capable of the damage they had seen this week. But together, these two losers had gone on a bloody rampage. What had set it off?