Dead River (24 page)

“You fucking bitch.” The back of David’s right hand struck Carla Jean’s cheek. Her head snapped back and pounded into the car window with a dull thud. Her arms quickly covered her face.

“You asshole!” Carla Jean screamed. “You fucking asshole!”

He started his car and pulled it into drive. As he carefully drove down the gravel road that led to Widow’s Bluff, back toward Magee, he looked over at his cowering passenger. “You’re a whore, just like my mother told me. You’re all whores.”

Carla Jean moaned and sobbed, her arms still wrapped around her head.

 53

TUESDAY MARKED Adam’s second day back at work. He struggled both days to keep his mind off the trauma that had besieged his family. There was only partial success on that front.

The haunting image would come from nowhere. It rattled around inside him like bolts in a blender, a vise tightening on his skull, freezing his muscles into knotted bundles. The mental image was becoming more vivid, a slowly-developing picture of a monster, an evil, hell-born animal. It was Gabriel. The man he wanted dead.

Tuesday was Valerie’s first day back in the classroom, and she also had trying times. Twice she called the principal’s office asking for someone, anyone, to watch her students before she rushed to the teacher’s lounge to regain her composure, tucking herself away in a partitioned corner of the room on a tattered, cloth-covered chair. Both times she made it to the chair before bursting into tears.

What caused her two anxiety attacks, with the accompanying hyperventilation, was simple. There was no need for a $185-per-hour psychiatrist with an array of framed certificates on the office wall, glorifying the affiliations, fellow status, and board certifications. The personal wall of fame. It was plain and simple, nothing buried deep in her psyche, nothing that would be teased out in multiple sessions of analysis. The trigger was the Thompson twins in her class, the cute, sweet, adorable Thompson twins with shoulder-length blond hair and crystal blue eyes. In her mind she saw Sara Ann.

The second phone call from De La Rosa came at ten forty-five. Goldman was still going through the cases he’d neglected for the past several days.

“What did you find out?” Goldman asked.

“There were several local calls that showed up on McCarthy’s phone records,” De La Rosa said, “and one long distance call from Port St. John, Florida, received August 9. I already checked. It came from his parent’s house.”

“We need Jack McCarthy to tell us who made that call.”

“Already did that.”

“Who was it?

“His parents. They called to let him know they were going to Boulder, Colorado, to visit Jack’s aunt and uncle.”

“For how long?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“When did they leave?”

“He said Friday, August 17. Apparently they decided to stay a few extra days, so they just got back Monday.”

“You mean yesterday?”

“Right. Do you want their address in Port St. John?”

“Already have it. It’s 504 South Fifth Street.”

“Did you see the other listing for Joe McCarthy?”

“Sure did, it’s his business, an electrical contracting company.”

Goldman hung the phone up and checked the time. It was a little after eleven. The McCarthy’s have to be questioned tonight. He had to set this up the right way, get the right people involved. This whole thing’s going to break loose.

Averly was off duty, and probably feeling no pain about now. Goldman was guessing Averly’s method of attack on his brain cells was Jack Daniel’s, Old No. 7, a popular brand with cops that need to take it down a few notches when not on the clock.

Goldman called Detective Wilkerson at home. They agreed to meet a block down the street from the McCarthy house at twelve-thirty. Goldman had Wilkerson call the Brevard County Sheriff’s Department and request two units to meet them there.

There’d be no sleep tonight. But Goldman was used to that, especially when things were beginning to unfold like this. It’s all about getting the bad guy, the anticipation and adrenaline cranking through his veins was enough to keep him going. No caffeine was necessary.

There was minimal traffic on the 528 Beeline as Goldman raced for the beach side. He only slowed down twice for tollbooths. After paying the last toll, he punched the accelerator and set the cruise control at seventy-five. He was on a long, dark stretch of 528 heading east to U.S. One. Once on U.S. One, he’d head north to Port St. John. He was beginning to feel like he knew the area. He was beginning to like Florida.

Goldman never listened to the car radio when he drove. Shock jocks were out of the question in the morning, he despised rap, and the alternative shit was a close second, as were heavy metal and rock. Blues and jazz he could listen to all day, Billie Holiday, Sara Vaughan, and of course the fervent Nina Simone, but not on the radio. No one played his music. So usually he settled for the drone of the tires on the pavement.

Port St. John is a cozy little town about twenty miles south of Scottsmoor, where Sara Ann Riley’s body was found. Goldman drove slowly down Fifth Street past the McCarthy house; there were no lights on inside. He turned his car around and parked along the side of the road. He was a few minutes early. He leaned back and waited and thought through what he knew and what he suspected.

According to Jack McCarthy, his parents had left just before the abduction of Sara Ann Riley and returned a few days after the murder of Tami Breckenridge. A coincidence? How about Joe McCarthy owning his own electrical contracting business? And his son’s first name and new phone number showing up on the first page of the letter written by Sara Ann Riley? Maybe the McCarthy’s never left town? That would be simple to check out. Goldman couldn’t convince himself Joe McCarthy was Gabriel. Something just didn’t fit.

 54

GOLDMAN, WILKERSON, and two deputy sheriffs approached the McCarthys’ ranch-style house. The four men stood on the porch with their handguns drawn. One of the deputies rang the doorbell. No answer.

“They’re probably asleep,” Goldman whispered. “Or maybe they’re not even here.”

The deputy rang the doorbell again then followed with five violent raps on the wooden door with his knuckles. Still no answer.

Goldman motioned with his hand for Wilkerson to head to the back of the house. The deputy tried a third time, striking the door several times with the butt of his Mag-Lite.

A light finally came on inside the house. They could hear someone approaching the front door. Suddenly the footsteps stopped. The three men moved to the side of the door. The front door creaked open and then stopped—there was a chain latched on the other side.

A man’s voice came from the crack. “Who is it? It’s after midnight.”

“Mr. McCarthy? Joe McCarthy?” asked the deputy that had been beating on the door.

“Yes, I’m Joe McCarthy. Who’re you? What do you want?”

“Brevard County Sheriff’s Department. Open up. I have three other men with me. We want to ask you a few questions.”

“About what?”

“Sir, you need to open the door.”

The door suddenly closed then opened again, slowly.

One, two, three. Goldman counted three rolls of skin tucked under the man’s large chin. He was considerably overweight and appeared to be in his late forties. His short-cropped black hair covered a giant cranium. In spite of his enormous size, his head still seemed out of proportion. He wore a v-neck T-shirt and a pair of light blue boxers. The T-shirt didn’t even cover his whole stomach, which was thatched with dark body hair.

McCarthy turned on the porch light.

“You Joe McCarthy?” Goldman asked.

“Yes. Good God, what’s with the guns?”

“May we come in?”

“I want to see some ID.”

The three men holstered their handguns and flashed their badges. McCarthy stared at Goldman’s the longest. “You’re with the FBI?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“What the hell’s going on here?”

“Is there somewhere we can all sit and talk, Mr. McCarthy?” Goldman asked.

“In the kitchen,” he said rubbing his eyes. “I’d like to know what this is all about.”

“I’ll explain in a minute,” Goldman said.

McCarthy was about to shut the front door when Wilkerson appeared. “Jesus Christ, how many of you are there?” McCarthy asked.

“Four,” Goldman said.

The four men followed McCarthy to the kitchen and sat down at a pine table with an extended leaf. Goldman stood at the head of the table.

“There’s another chair here,” McCarthy offered.

“I’m fine.”

Goldman watched McCarthy nervously shift around on the wooden kitchen chair. “Is your wife home,” Goldman asked.

“Yes, she is. Do you—ah—want to talk to her too?”

“Not right now. She asleep?

“Yeah.”

“I’ll let you know if we need to talk to her.”

“Okay.”

Goldman asked Joe McCarthy about their trip to Colorado, when they left, who they visited, when they returned. Then he shifted gears and jumped into the Gabriel case.

“Why are you telling me this? I had nothing to do with those murders,” McCarthy explained.

“We think you might know something,” Goldman said.

“I don’t know nothing, except what I saw on TV and heard around town.”

Goldman continued to probe and observe, gauging McCarthy’s responses and reactions to the questions, checking his body language. McCarthy squirmed a lot sitting on the wooden chair. Sweat beaded up on his face and streamed down his cheeks.

After a while it was clear McCarthy wasn’t their man. Goldman finally got to the critical issue.

“Mr. McCarthy, I’m puzzled by something.”

“What?”

“Remember I mentioned the will written by the murdered girl, Sara Ann Riley.”

“Yeah.”

“The paper the will was written on had a phone number imprinted on the first page. The phone number of your son, Jack.”

McCarthy reared back in his chair, shocked. “What the hell? You’re not implying that … you don’t think that … you don’t suspect him, do you? This can’t be.”

“No, we don’t,” Goldman assured McCarthy.

McCarthy sunk into the chair. “Thank God.”

“But that’s what doesn’t make any sense. Why did Sara Ann Riley write her letter on a pad of paper that had your son’s name and phone number imprinted on it?”

“Lord almighty, I don’t know.”

“The only conclusion that I can draw, Mr. McCarthy, is that the pad of paper came from either your house or your business. I understand you own an electrical contracting company here in town.”

“Yes, McCarthy Electrical Contracting,” he said proudly.

“I need a list of all your employees, their addresses, and phone numbers.”

“Sure. I’ll get that for you in the morning. Do you suspect one of my employees?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I have to check out every one of them. How many people work for you?”

“Let’s see. I got twenty electricians and three people that work in the office.”

“What time do you open in the morning?”

“My secretary, Judy, is usually there at seven forty-five, and I get in around eight.”

Goldman scribbled a few notes and then looked at McCarthy. “Good.”

“Wait a minute.”

“What?”

“Do you also want the names of the electricians that work part-time?” McCarthy asked.

“I want the name of every person that draws a paycheck from your company.”

“Okay then, there’s two, no, three. Yes, there’s three part-timers. In fact, one of them watched the house while we were in Colorado.”

Goldman’s eyes widened slightly. “You mean he house-sat the entire time you were gone?”

“Yep, that’s exactly what he did. He took us to the airport in Orlando then stayed here until we got back. He also picked us up from the airport.”