Cut and Run (5 page)

Rudolpho blushed. “The stuff takes a long time to wear off, you know?”

“Not this long,” said Natalia. “Are you familiar with a condition called priapism?”

“No. Is—is it serious?”

“I think you better see a doctor,” said Natalia. “Or you might have worse problems than whether or not you can fit into your pants.”

T
HE FIELD
where Timothy Breakwash had begun his last flight was just outside Florida City, abutting a large, sprawling ranch-style house. Horatio pulled in and parked the Hummer behind a station wagon that had seen better days. A hand-painted wooden sign at the head of the driveway had proclaimed
BREAKWASH BALLOONING
, but that was the only indication of the business.

“Not exactly busy,” Calleigh said as they got out.

“Joel Greer told me it was more a sideline than Breakwash's primary source of income,” said Horatio, taking off his sunglasses and slipping them into his breast pocket. “According to him, Timothy Breakwash was an environmental consultant. He was a little unclear on the details, though.”

As they approached the front door, they could hear the barking of a small dog inside. The woman who answered Calleigh's knock was in her early forties, with salt-and-pepper hair in a long braid down her back. She wore a simple blue sundress and sandals, and had a mug of tea in one hand. Her eyes were red.

“Yes?” she said.

“Ma'am,” said Horatio. “My name is Lieutenant Horatio Caine, with the Miami-Dade Police Department. I know this is a difficult time for you, but we need to ask you a few questions about your husband.”

“Of course,” the woman said. Despite the redness of her eyes, she looked quite composed for a brand-new widow—but Horatio knew better than to judge her by a first glance. Grief worked in powerful and unpredictable ways, and it was possible the woman was in shock or even denial.

“I'm Randilyn,” the woman said, ushering them into a large living room that held several over-stuffed chairs and two couches. “Watch out for the newspapers on the floor—we're trying to paper-train a puppy.”

At that moment the puppy in question came charging into the room, barking excitedly. It was a white bulldog, with a squat body and a jowly face.

Horatio went down on one knee, and the puppy tried to climb onto him, licking his hand and wriggling as much as its short, thick body would allow. “Hey, pal,” said Horatio with a smile, scratching behind the dog's ears. “You look like a real people-eater.”

“Oh, she's ferocious,” said Randilyn. “She may lick you to death. She licks everything—people, furniture, stuffed animals, walls. I caught her licking the TV screen once.”

“What's her name?”

“Chiba. She's an Olde English Bulldogge, a breed that was developed in the nineteen-seventies to bring back some of the qualities of the eighteenth-century English bulldog. Oldies are very affectionate, but stubborn.” She sighed. “A lot like Tim—I guess that's why he loved the breed so much. He was very protective of Chiba—wouldn't even let her out of the house, you know?” Randilyn sat down, her gaze suddenly distant. She took a long, slow sip of tea from her mug.

Calleigh and Horatio sat on one of the couches, Chiba happily following Horatio and lying down near his feet. “Mrs. Breakwash,” said Horatio, “were you present this morning when your husband launched the balloon?”

“No,” she said quietly. “Balloon launches are usually very early—around dawn—and I like to sleep late on weekends. He didn't even wake me when he left; the last time I talked to my husband was last night.”

“How did he seem?” asked Calleigh.

“He was…a little down. Tim always had some scheme going to make us money, but he was more of a dreamer than a businessman. That's why we got Chiba—when Tim heard that Olde English Bulldogge pups could go for as much as three thousand dollars, he decided he wanted to breed them.” She shook her head. “He didn't check into why they were so expensive, though. Turns out they suffer from a condition called anasarca. Bulldogs that have it produce fetuses that retain two to three times as much water as they should, meaning the puppies swell up in the womb. It makes delivery extremely difficult and hazardous, so much so that most bulldogs give birth through Caesarian surgery.”

“Which isn't cheap,” said Calleigh.

“No, and neither is ballooning—at least, not when you don't have any paying customers,” said Randilyn. “But Tim loved to fly, especially over the 'Glades. He'd go up even without any other riders to help defray costs.”

Horatio nodded. “I understand that Tim also worked in environmental science?”

“Off and on. He'd get hired to take samples from the 'Glades and measure them for pesticide levels, things like that. He had a degree in environmental science, but what he was doing wasn't very sophisticated—any grad student could have done it.”

Calleigh leaned forward. “You said he was feeling down?”

Randilyn hesitated. “Yes. He'd been depressed for a while, actually. I think the gap between his dreams and his plans was finally starting to sink in. I tried to talk to him about it, but he insisted he was fine.”

“Did his ballooning work have anything to do with the research?” asked Calleigh. “Was he maybe using the balloon to look for something?”

“No. I mean—I don't think so. If he was, he never mentioned it to me.” She put a hand to her forehead and winced. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm not feeling very well. Bit of a headache.”

Calleigh glanced at Horatio, and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod. “We understand,” said Calleigh. “Before we go, we're going to need access to Tim's printer and computer. Actually, we're going to have to take them with us.”

“That's fine,” said Randilyn.

 

Once they were back in the Hummer, the first words out of Calleigh's mouth were, “She's hiding something.”

“I'd say so, too. Her denial that the balloon was connected to her husband's research wasn't terribly convincing.”

“You think maybe Breakwash was killed because of something he found out?”

“Possibly. Which means that whatever
he
found out, we have to find out as well.”

Horatio fell silent as he drove. Calleigh could tell he was thinking, but there was something in the quality of his silence that made her quiet as well.

When Horatio finally spoke, the subject wasn't what Calleigh expected.

“Did you have a dog when you were growing up, Calleigh?”

“No, I was always more of a cat person. But I had an uncle with a pair of prize bloodhounds—they were great dogs. I used to love playing with them when he visited.”

“I haven't had a dog since…since I was very young.” Horatio paused. “I called him Scrappy. Not really sure what breed he was—my mother used to claim he was half Jack Russell and half raccoon.”

“Liked a nice garbage-can buffet?”

“You could say that. It was a habit that eventually…proved fatal.”

“Did he get a chicken bone stuck in his throat or something?”

“No. My father came home from work one day and found that Scrappy had gotten into the trash can in the kitchen, made a real mess.” Horatio paused. “My father kicked him to death.”

“That's horrible. I'm sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. And my father did far worse things…”

Horatio didn't say anything else, and Calleigh didn't ask.

 

“Okay,” said Natalia. She and Frank were grabbing a quick bite to eat—after a protracted negotiation that had Tripp holding out for chili dogs and Natalia favoring someplace that didn't use paper napkins, they had settled on Auntie Bellum's, a diner a short distance from the CSI lab. “I think I've found something interesting.” She had her laptop set up on the table and was picking at the keyboard and a salad at the same time.

“Something in the novel?” asked Tripp. He added some more Piri sauce to his chili.

“No, online. Seems that Marssai Guardon is about to launch her own website.”

“So? Everybody has at least one, these days.”

“Not like this. It's a pay site, and the buzz on the message boards is that it's going to be X-rated.”

“Porn?” Tripp stirred his chili with a spoon. “Seems kinda low-rent for an heiress.”

“Maybe not. With the right promotion and material, it could be worth millions.”

“Might be even more valuable as a tool to embarrass her folks.”

Natalia jabbed a fork full of salad at the screen. “But then why would she kill Davey? A porn site trumps a trashy novel for shock value.”

“Maybe that's it. Spoiled rich girls don't like playing second fiddle.”

Natalia frowned. “She didn't come across as spoiled to me, Frank. A little wild, sure. But anybody with the business savvy to launch a project like this isn't going to fly off the handle and kill someone for creating a fictional version of her—not when she's already trying to play up the sleaze angle herself.”

“Yeah, it doesn't really add up. Except for one thing.”

“What's that?”

Tripp took a big mouthful of chili and swallowed it before answering. “Only one thing beats sex, when it comes to publicity.”

Natalia nodded. “Murder.”

 

Eric Delko was no stranger to working marine crime scenes; usually, though, this involved his putting on a wetsuit and scuba gear to recover a body underwater. Working on a yacht—even one that had run aground—was a change of pace.

He stood in the freezer, considering the sunfish.
It must have taken several strong men and some kind of equipment to wrestle it down here,
he thought. He'd encountered live sunfish before while diving; the immense creature looked like something out of a science-fiction movie, with its huge, flattened body.

Something moved on its skin.

Delko leaned in closer. It was a small, crablike creature, hanging on to the gill slit near the eye. It reminded Delko of something, something he'd heard about moonfish but couldn't quite remember.

“Parasites,” he said aloud.
Moonfish are extremely susceptible to parasites. That's why they float on the surface on their sides
—
so seagulls will land on them and pick the parasites off. But there was something else…

It wouldn't quite come to him. He shook his head in frustration. Whatever it was, it just reinforced his impression that the fish was important to the case. He needed to get it off the ship and onto a necropsy table.

“You know,” said Wolfe, who had walked up quietly behind him, “if this were a movie, this would be the part where the alien bursts out covered in fish guts.”

“This isn't a movie, Wolfe.”

“Exactly my point. It's a crime scene—a very large, messy, and also unstable crime scene. We've got more than a dozen bodies to process, what looks like hundreds of rounds to collect and document, and the ship we're on might just sink at any moment. And you're in here, studying a fish.”

“The ship isn't going to sink. And this fish is important—I'm not sure why, but it is.”

“Aye, aye, Captain Ahab.” Wolfe gave him a sarcastic salute. “And they say I'm compulsive…look, just give me a hand as soon as you can, all right? There's a lot to do out here, that's all I'm saying.”

“Sure.” Delko pulled out his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Miami PD motor pool. We're going to need a refrigerated truck to move this, and I think I saw one in the impound lot the other day.”

Wolfe rolled his eyes. “Right. Let me know when you're available for some genuine CSI work, all right?” He turned around and stalked off.

QD stood for Questioned Documents, and it was the department of the crime lab that examined everything from bad checks to falsified contracts. Calleigh headed there to talk to Cynthia Wells, the technician who was examining Timothy Breakwash's suicide note.

“Hey, Cynthia,” said Calleigh. “Got anything for me?”

Cynthia, a young, attractive brunette, looked up from the piece of paper she'd been studying. “Well, I can tell you it was printed by the printer you brought me.”