Cut and Run (20 page)

Gomez had been waiting longer than any of the others. When Horatio finally walked in the door, Gomez looked more grateful than irritated. “Hey, about time,” said Gomez. He was dressed a little better than the others, wearing a designer basketball shirt with gold chains dangling over the oversize number on the front. “Can we make this fast? I got places to be.”

“No, you don't,” said Horatio. His voice was neutral, his expression the same. He didn't sit, but instead stood beside Gomez and looked down. Horatio opened the folder in his hand and took an eight-by-ten photo out. He held it in his hands, studying it, but didn't show it to Gomez.

“Do you know why you're here, Mister Gomez?”

“Yeah. You want me to confirm that Fredo was with me, Dom, and Kev all night—”

“No. That's incorrect.” Horatio's voice got a little colder. “You're here because Fredo asked you to lie to me.”

“No, man—”

“I don't like being lied to, Michael, but I'm used to it. It takes a certain kind of lie these days to get under my skin…but when one does, it makes me a little crazy. Do I seem a little crazy, Michael?” Horatio's voice was completely calm, but he stared into Gomez's eyes without blinking.

Gomez swallowed. “No.”

“Good. I can't always tell…tell me about that night, Michael. What did you do?”

“We had a few drinks. We listened to some music, watched some movies. We played some pool.”

“How many games?”

“I'm—not sure.”

“Guess.”

“A couple.”

“Two?”

“Yeah.”

“Who won?”

“Uh—I did.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“What? Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I be?”

“So you won both games. Domingo didn't win any?”

“Uh—maybe he did. Yeah, he won one and I won one.”

“Okay. What movies did you watch?”

Gomez coughed into his fist. “I think…some war movie.”

“Which one?”

“I don't remember.”

“But you watched the whole thing.”

“Yeah.”

“Funny how you can watch a whole movie and not remember what it was. Your friend Kevin didn't have that problem—he remembered the movie in detail. He remembered all sorts of things, in fact. Tell me—how long has the hot tub been out of order?”

“How the hell would I know?” Gomez tried to make it sound confrontational, but it came out more like a plea. “It's not my damn hot tub.”

“Did that make you angry? Were you planning on a nice soak in your friend Domingo's Jacuzzi?”

“Hey, I don't give a damn about the Jacuzzi. It was broken, so what. We played some music, watched some movies—”

“—shot some pool. I know.” Horatio still held the photo in his hand, and now he studied it again as he spoke. “But here's the thing, Michael. Your story has more holes in it than a drug dealer after a drive-by. According to Domingo, he played four or five games of pool and never won a single one. According to Kevin, you watched a frat-boy comedy and a horror film. And both Domingo and Kevin enjoyed their dip in the hot tub. So you, my friend, are lying through your teeth.”

Gomez looked rattled but stubborn. “So maybe I'm a little confused on the details, so what—”

“So what? Do you even know why Fredo asked you to lie?”

“I'm—I'm not lying.”

“I'm sure he promised you money—probably a great deal of money—but that's not what I mean. I mean the reason he needed an alibi. The crime he was committing while you and your friends drank and played pool and pretended he was there.”

“I don't—”

Horatio thrust the photo in Gomez's face. It was a close-up of Randilyn Breakwash's upper chest and arms, the burns covering her skin like some hideous exotic disease. “This is what your friend Fredo was up to, Michael. He was torturing an innocent woman. Burning her with a red-hot soldering iron, over and over again. Did he tell you that?”

Gomez's face had paled, and he looked like he was about to throw up. “Get that away from me,” he said weakly.

Horatio kept the picture right where it was. “Look at it, Michael. You helped make this happen. Aren't you proud of yourself? Doesn't this make you feel that you're just like your friends?”

“I'm not like that. I would never do that.”

“But you are, Michael. In the eyes of the law, you're an accessory after the fact. You may as well have been in the same room, with her screams in your ears and the smell of burning skin in your nostrils. And if you feel sick now, how do you think a jury is going to feel when they see this picture? How do you think they're going to look at you when you're up in the witness box, trying to sell them this story while the prosecutor rips it apart?”

Horatio leaned in close. “They're going to look at you like you were a piece of garbage, Michael. And they'll be right.”

Gomez sagged in his chair, and Horatio knew he'd won. Gomez's weak point was his own need for respect, the simple human desire to be seen as worthwhile. That couldn't stand in the face of the evidence Horatio had shown him; it couldn't stand in the face of how Gomez saw himself.

“All right,” Gomez said quietly. “He wasn't there. It was just the three of us. I don't know where he went or what he did, okay? I didn't have anything to do with—with that picture.”

Horatio straightened up, placed the photo back in the folder.

“I know, Michael,” he said. “I know.”

 

“Your alibi is gone, Fredo,” said Horatio. “And soon, you will be, too…”

Fredo Bolivar stared back at him insolently. “How's that?”

“None of your friends can agree on the details of your night together.”

Fredo stared out the honeycomb-gridded window of the interview room, seeming particularly interested in a bird on a tree branch outside. “Yeah? Shouldn't you be asking me those questions?”

“Maybe I should—but I think I already know what you're going to say.”

“Oh, you're a mind reader, too?”

Horatio smiled. “You'd be amazed at what I can find out, Fredo. But I'll indulge you…tell me, what movies did you watch with your friends?”

“I don't remember.”

“What were you drinking?”

“Whatever it was, I must have drank a lot of it—'cause I don't remember that, either.”

“Did you use the hot tub?”

“You know—I don't remember that, either.”

Horatio nodded. “What a surprise. Quite the case of amnesia you have, Fredo. Similar to what happened to an officer I know. It's a terrible sensation, losing something so thoroughly you're not even aware of what it is you've lost. But I'm sure that won't be a problem for you.”

Abruptly, Horatio was inches away from Bolivar's face. “You won't have that problem for a long, long time. You'll be locked up in a cage with nothing to do but think about all the things you've lost: your freedom, your dignity, your ability to choose where to go or what to do. No more women, no more wine, no more sunny beaches or all-night parties. All you're going to have is time, and it's going to steal even the memories of those things from you eventually. And this is what you'll be saying about all those good times, so long ago.” Horatio took a slim piece of paper out of his pocket and tossed it onto the table, then turned around and left the room.

Bolivar stared at it for a moment, then picked it up and unfolded it. The piece of paper had one sentence written on it.

I
DON'T REMEMBER
.

 

“Oh, honey,” said Alexx to Calleigh.

“I know, I know,” said Calleigh. “I'm sorry I have to ask you to do this—but I need the bullet.”

Both of them looked down sadly at the small, still body of the bulldog pup on the autopsy table. “First Delko and Wolfe bring me a two-ton fish,” said Alexx. “Now you show up with a dead puppy. What's the matter, don't
people
die anymore?”

“That's a little harsh, don't you think?”

Alexx sighed. “I'm sorry. It's been a rough week, you know? All those victims from the yacht—young men full of bullet holes instead of dreams. Now this. What was her name?”

“Chiba. The man who killed her also tortured Randilyn Breakwash. Horatio broke his alibi, but we still don't have any evidence to actually charge him with the attack; I'm hoping the bullet might do that.”

“If it's in there, I'll find it.” Alexx picked up her scalpel.

The necropsy proceeded mostly in silence; Alexx didn't have to perform her usual thorough analysis of the victim. It didn't take long before Alexx pulled a misshapen piece of metal out of the body. “Entered through the skull, traveled the length of the body, and lodged in the base of the spine,” said Alexx. “Poor thing. Didn't suffer, though—the shot would have killed her instantly.”

“Alexx—what are those?” Calleigh pointed to some small, pink, misshapen lumps on the under-side of the tongue. “They look almost like tumors.”

“Yes, they do. That's odd—a dog this young shouldn't have anything like that growing in her. Not unless she was raised in an extremely toxic environment.”

“No,” said Calleigh thoughtfully. “Actually, she was raised in a very controlled environment—Randilyn told Horatio the dog was never allowed out of the house.”

“Then unless this is some kind of genetic defect, this dog was exposed to something in that house she shouldn't have. Something nasty.”

“Well, Timothy Breakwash was an environmental consultant—he had a lab set up in his garage. I suppose the dog could have gotten into something carcinogenic.”

“Tell you what—I'll take a closer look at those tumors, do a cellular analysis. I might be able to tell what caused them.”

“Thanks, Alexx.”

“Hope it helps. Whoever did this,” said Alexx, “gives our whole species a bad name.”

 

“This is a warrant to search your premises, Mister Bolivar,” said Calleigh. She handed the man the paper. “I'll have to ask you to wait outside with this officer.”

Bolivar's place wasn't much; just a single-wide trailer in a park outside of Hialeah, with a weed-threaded gravel patch for a lawn. His hound was tied up with a thick rope to the front porch, but all Calleigh saw of him was his snout; he was lying in the dirt beneath the trailer, trying to beat the heat.

Bolivar took the paper from her with a grin. “Go ahead, beautiful.
Mi casa es su casa
.”

“Thank you,” said Calleigh coldly, and stepped past him.

The interior matched the outside: Dingy walls, dirty windows, and thrift-store furniture that didn't match. Posters of rap artists and sports cars were apparently Bolivar's idea of art.

At least that's what Calleigh thought—until she saw the thick book on the coffee table.
“Treasures of Cuban Art,”
she murmured. She picked the book up and leafed through it; certain pages were bookmarked with yellow Post-it notes.

She put it down and moved on to the bedroom. The bed was messy and unmade, the air dank and stale. A box of condoms sat on the bedside table beside an empty bottle of gin, and dirty clothes lay heaped on the floor.

Calleigh got to work. Her warrant specifically listed one thing she was looking for, and it didn't take her long to find it: a loaded .22 caliber pistol in the drawer of the bedside table.

She slipped it into an evidence bag and smiled. “Well, Mister Bolivar,” she said to herself, “it looks like your
pistolero
is also
mi pistolero
.”

 

Horatio found Calleigh in the ballistics lab. “Is that the new Bullettrax 3D unit?”

“Yes it is,” said Calleigh. She was fitting a spent bullet into an adjustable vise beneath the confocal sensor. “It'll give us a three-dimensional image down to the nanometer level. Every striation, perfectly captured and digitized.” She turned the machine on and the bullet slowly rotated. A graphic came up on the screen set up beside the optical unit. “I've already input the bullet Alexx pulled out of Breakwash's dog. This is one I just test-fired from the gun I found at Fredo Bolivar's trailer.”

When the scan finished, Calleigh called up the file on the first bullet. Both three-dimensional images rotated slowly, side by side, then merged into a single overlapping image.
NO MATCH
flashed on the screen beneath them.

“Not fired from the same gun.” Calleigh sighed. “So maybe Fredo isn't our shooter.”

“Or he's smart enough not to use his own gun,” said Horatio. “Run the bullet through IBIS, see if we get any hits on previous cases.”