Cut and Run (23 page)

Natalia nodded. “So you know about the turpentine camps?”

“Sure. It's part of Florida's history, honey—and a couple of other states, too. I'm always amazed by all the people who
don't
know about them.”

Natalia shook her head. “It's just—this was going on in the forties? It sounds like something out of the Civil War.”

“Nothing civil about it,” said Alexx. She picked up her cup of tea and took a sip. “They may have changed the rules and called it something else, but it was still slavery. Right down to runaways being dragged back in chains. Who's your suspect?”

“Guy named Joshua St. George. I don't think he's a suspect anymore, though—what you just told me clears him.”

“How so?”

“The victim's digital recorder picked up the sound of the killer breathing. No way it could have been St. George.”

“Glad I could help. If he spent time in one of those camps and he's still alive, he must be one tough old bird.”

“Yeah, it sounds like he's had quite the life. Marched beside Martin Luther King in Chicago, saw the Liberty City riots. A real survivor.”

Alexx's eyes saddened. “Yeah. No offense, Natalia—but every time I hear that phrase, it just about breaks my heart.”

“What? I'm sorry—what did I say?”

Alexx finished her tea and stood up. “It's not your fault. But an entire life lived—
anyone's
life—deserves more than just the description
survivor
. All that really means is that their life was hard, and they managed to hang on. And in the end, even that definition isn't true. We're
all
survivors, Natalia…until someone or something takes that title away.”

 

While there were always certain crimes that provoked a universal response from police officers—cop killers, for instance, or child molesters—many cops also had that one class of criminal they despised above all others. For Frank Tripp, that meant con artists.

He hated even using the term—as far as he was concerned, calling it an art was like calling assassination a sport. He didn't care how much skill was involved, or how clever the con was; what it all boiled down to for him was that someone had taken that most fragile of human emotions—trust—and turned it into a knife he could stick in someone's back. Practitioners of the con often claimed the victim's own greed was to blame, that “you can't con an honest man.”

“Right,” Tripp would growl. “Guess you can't rape a virgin either, huh?”

Any further discussion would usually end badly.

Most people assumed that Tripp's attitude on the subject was because of personal experience, that either he or someone close to him had been taken by a grifter. That wasn't exactly the case; while Tripp had investigated many cases of fraud, he didn't know any of the victims involved himself.

It didn't matter. It wasn't a personal grudge for Tripp, it was something closer to patriotism. Florida seemed to attract scammers the way rotting meat attracted gators, and it was their sheer number and variety that provoked Tripp's disgust. Real estate swindlers, lotto ticket telemarketer cons, phony psychics, door-to-door collectors for nonexistent charities, identity thieves; every time he picked up the paper or talked to another cop there was something else. Sometimes, it seemed that the entire state was doomed to be remembered for a grand total of three things: hurricanes, orange juice, and people who tried to sell you swampland.

Tripp wasn't that crazy about orange juice, either.

So he took a special pride in taking down a con man, regarding it as not just in the public interest but good for Miami's public image, too. And Gordon Dettweiler—which was his actual name, strangely enough—had been taking advantage of just about everyone he met for a long, long time.

The On a Roll Bowl bowling alley seemed to be a genuine business, of which Dettweiler was the registered owner—but Tripp wasn't convinced. The tournament's cash prize smelled like bait to him, and he was sure there was a hook hidden inside the lure.

The first thing he checked out were the sponsors, the neighborhood businesses that were supposedly putting up the money. He tore a handbill advertising the tournament off a lamppost around the corner from the bowling alley; the sponsors were all listed at the bottom. Then he went door to door, asking each and every owner to verify that they were contributing and exactly how much.

He started to notice a trend almost immediately. He'd visit a small business—a dry cleaner or a corner store—and the owner would be reluctant to name an actual figure. When pressed, the dollar amount then named would seem much higher than the business could afford to donate.

Tripp took a break in a tiny restaurant, a hole in the wall selling Cuban sandwiches and slices of pizza. He studied the middle-aged Asian woman behind the lunch counter over his cup of coffee, and had an idea. The restaurant wasn't on Dettweiler's list of sponsors, but it was between two businesses that were.

“'Scuse me,” said Tripp. He fished the handbill out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Was there a guy in here a while back, trying to get you to make a donation to this tournament's prize money?”

The woman glanced at the poster. “Yes, I remember him,” she said. “Told him I wasn't interested.”

“How much did he ask you for?”

She named a number a quarter of what the other businesses had quoted. “But he told me that because it was for charity, I could write it off on my income taxes—and he'd give me a receipt for four times as much as I paid. I told him to get lost.”

“Good for you,” said Tripp. “You did the right thing.”

He tossed a twenty down on the counter, got up, and headed for the door.

“Don't you want your change?” she called after him.

“Keep it,” Tripp said over his shoulder. “Honesty shouldn't always be its own reward.”

 

When Adano Bermudez was arrested, his lawyer had ordered a medical evaluation as part of his defense. While Natalia couldn't get access to Bermudez's medical records, she could take a look at the evaluation.

What she found was that of the four most common symptoms of narcolepsy, Adano displayed only two. He didn't suffer hypnagogic hallucinations—nightmarish visions narcoleptics sometimes had when falling asleep or waking up—or automatic behavior, which was what most people called sleepwalking but which could in fact entail activities that ranged from eating to driving a car. What he did manifest was sleep paralysis and a condition called cataplexy. Sleep paralysis meant exactly that: When waking up, Adano would be unable to move or speak for several moments, even though fully conscious. Cataplexy was a condition that caused momentary muscle weakness, with a specific set of triggers for each individual. When tested, Adano had shown total muscle collapse when either anger or fear had been induced. Not only that, he'd reacted poorly to every kind of CNS stimulant or anti-depressant tried, meaning that the normal chemical methods of controlling the disease weren't an option for him.

It wasn't the burst of laughter that made him fall asleep during the robbery,
she thought.
It was fear. And according to this report, he reacts just as strongly to becoming angry
—
which means there's no way he could have killed Hiram Davey. That kind of violent outburst would have left him slumped on the floor, either asleep or paralyzed.

She decided to pay a visit to Valera. “Hey, Maxine,” she said, strolling into the DNA lab. “Got the bloodwork from the Davey case done yet?”

“Hours ago,” Valera said, picking up a sheet of paper from beside the printer and handing it over. “I thought you'd have been by before now.”

Natalia studied the sheet. “Haven't had a chance—been riding around with Frank, talking to suspects.”

“Tripp? Lucky you.” Valera sounded more envious than sarcastic.

“You're kidding. Frank?”

“I am most definitely not kidding. That build, that jaw, that gruff voice? He can be
my
daddy anytime.”

“Okaaay…I see you isolated two different donors from the blood samples I sent you.”

“Yeah. One matches the vic, the other's an unknown female.”

“So the killer must have nicked herself—and that narrows my suspect list down to one. Thanks, Maxine.”

“You're welcome. Now go back out into the big, sunny world and try not to forget us poor techs stuck in the lab while you get chauffeured around by a tall, rugged detective.”

“I'll do my best,” Natalia said with a grin.

 

“What?” said Tripp. “I got something stuck in my teeth?”

Natalia looked away and shook her head. “Never mind. Just thinking about something someone said…” She checked the Hummer's rearview mirror and changed lanes. She and Tripp were on their way back to Frog World to serve Sheila Smithwick with a warrant. “You uncover anything on Dettweiler yet?”

“Yeah. He's been taking in a lot less money from local merchants than he claimed, handing out inflated receipts they can use to get big deductions on their income tax returns. Almost impossible to prove, though.”

“So if he isn't getting the money from donations, where's it coming from?”

Tripp scratched the side of his chin. “Well, the entry fee's pretty stiff, but there's no way to tell how many people have entered without getting a look at Dettweiler's books—and even then, I wouldn't trust what I read.”

“You think he's planning on collecting the money and then disappearing?”

“Cut and run? No, I don't think so. He's the registered owner of the business, which gives him a lot less leeway to just pull up stakes and vanish. Something else is going on—I just haven't figured out what, yet.”

“Well, unless he had a female accomplice, I don't think he was involved in Davey's murder. And Adano Bermudez and Joshua St. George are both excluded for medical reasons.”

“We'll see,” said Tripp.

This time, the front door was locked. Tripp pounded on it, to no effect. “Let's try around back,” he said.

They found an emergency exit propped open with a two-by-four on the other side of the building. “Hello?” Natalia called out. “Ms. Smithwick? Are you here?”

They found her in the middle of the central pond. She was crouched naked on a lily pad-shaped island made of green concrete, and she had painted herself green. She had a large Tupperware container in one hand.

“Hi,” she said cheerfully. “I heard you knocking, but I was in the middle of lunch.” She dipped one hand into the container and came up with a handful of live crickets. She crammed them into her mouth and chewed, the occasional twitching leg sticking out between her lips.

“We…we have a warrant,” said Natalia. “For a sample of your—blood?”

Smithwick finished her mouthful. “Did you know that when most frogs swallow, their
eyeballs
sink deeper into their
skulls
? It helps push the food down. Talk about having eyes bigger than your stomach, huh?” Her own eyes were wide and bright.

“Think she's faking?” Tripp whispered.

“If so, I admire her commitment,” Natalia whispered back. “Ms. Smithwick? If you wouldn't mind coming over here—”

“Not just yet. After lunch, I always go swimming—I don't care
what
the doctors say.” She dropped the container and launched herself into the shallow water. “Ribbet! Ribbet!” she cried. “I don't care what the doctors say! I don't! I don't!”

“You will,” said Natalia with a sigh.

“You know we gotta catch her, right?” asked Tripp.

“You go left. I'll go right.”

 

Wolfe stared at the big, dead fish in front of him. The lab didn't have the space to store it, so they'd put it in a refrigerated truck in the parking lot. Wolfe's breath puffed out in from of him, swirled around and up like lazy smoke. The truck was cold, but it was refreshing after the heat of the parking lot; Wolfe had broken into a sweat just walking from the building to the vehicle.

“What's your secret, Moby Dick?” he muttered to himself.
When I pushed Dragoslav, he hinted that there was something being smuggled, and we just weren't smart enough to find it. How did he put it?
“You can't see beyond your own prejudices.”
Meaning it's our own thinking tripping us up, our own assumptions. So to solve the case, I have to think outside the box.

Wolfe was an intelligent guy, but—like everyone—he had his blind spots. He also had OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, though it was firmly under control. When he'd first become a CSI, Horatio had told him that a touch of OCD made him a perfect candidate for the job; the intense focus and attention to detail the disorder sometimes induced were pluses in his line of work.