Hell (4 page)

Grace looked at her now, thought how peaceful she seemed, her dark eyes alive, her sense of contentment almost palpable.

Almost contagious.

The tranquility remained with Grace for most of the drive home.

Until she stopped at La Tienda Fiesta, a party store in Little Havana where she'd placed a large order for the wedding. She'd hoped to double-check Wednesday's delivery with Luis, the manager, but the place was hectic, and he seemed embroiled with a purposeful woman wielding a clipboard. Spotting Grace, however, Luis gave her a thumbs-up, which she supposed was reassurance enough, but while she was here, she thought she'd check for some party extras for the lanai.

An attractive leather-bound guest book caught her eye, a possible keepsake for Mildred and David.

She stooped to pick it up.

Something brushed the back of her neck.

Startled, she straightened up and turned.

No one there.

Just a couple a few feet away, intent on their own shopping, and an elderly blue rinse lady to her left who looked a little confused.

But it had felt like fingertips. Like a
caress
.

So much so that as she'd turned around, she'd half expected to see Sam standing behind her, laughing.

Thrown, Grace looked left and right again up the aisle.

And saw a figure just disappearing around the corner at the rear exit end.

Male, average height, slim, with silvery-blond hair.

Familiar.

Suspicion hit her hard, like a small, sick punch to her chest.

‘No,' she said out loud, and took off, sprinting to the rear exit, wanting desperately, even as she ran, to be
wrong
.

Out in the parking lot, no men who looked like
him
.

An assortment of cars, all ordinary, anonymous. She scanned the lot through the mist of rain, saw a young couple, laden with bags, clambering into their truck, saw an old red VW Beetle and a motorcycle with a big-bellied guy – no helmet and little hair – heading for the exit.

Just her imagination then.

Like last week in the park opposite their house.

She waited for relief, but instead she felt jolted, nauseated.

Dragged sharply back again to last year – not just her imagination that time, because Sam had thought he'd seen him too . . .

Come on, Grace.

This had been nothing. Just someone accidentally brushing against her. Another customer or a salesperson walking behind her, maybe even a piece of fabric that had felt like fingers on her neck.

Standing here now in the rain, she lifted her right hand and rubbed the spot with her own fingers, the place just below the nape of her neck, exposed today, her hair twisted and pinned up.

The place that Sam often touched that way, kissed.

Come
on
.

No one there. Neither today, nor last week.

No one.

Certainly not
him.

SEVEN

April 20

T
he sun was out again.

And a body had been found.

Washed up on the sand at 53rd Street Beach.

Partially decomposed, partially devoured by marine creatures, though they had not been responsible for the large wound in the center of the individual's chest.

That had been caused – according to the ME's preliminary findings – by the amateur surgeon, the
butcher
, who had carved his or her way into the male victim's body, then cracked and spread open the ribcage, before cutting out the heart.

The victim had been African-American, probably in his mid-twenties, and he had been strangled to death with a ligature, taken from behind.

‘Nothing more for you yet,' Elliot Sanders told Sam and Martinez.

Not the first time they'd all come together to a beach homicide scene, with all its inherent difficulties; constantly shifting sand and who knew how many members of the public having passed by since the body had washed in.

‘How long before we know if either of the hearts are a match?'

Sam asked the question, knowing all too well that such things took a whole lot longer than any of them hoped, including Sanders.

‘It's a priority,' the ME said, grimly.

Though whether a match was, or was not, found, they already knew for sure that another sick killer had come to Miami Beach.

‘Was there anything else?' Grace asked Sam late that night.

‘Such as?'

They were sitting at their big old oak kitchen table, and Sam had already told her about the John Doe while she'd heated up clam sauce and cooked spaghetti, had kept the details sparse, but she had seen the first heart for herself, and he felt it was only right for her to know.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Anything familiar?'

Sam took a long look at her.

It was not like Grace to prevaricate.

Yet he knew damned well what she was asking, not least because he had asked himself the same thing earlier in the day. Because it came to mind, because of the strangulation with a ligature and the victim being taken from behind and being black.

Mainly, of course, because both hearts had been placed in dinghies.

The first tied up to their home mooring.

‘The body wasn't found in a dinghy or rowboat, and the victim's skin was not raked,' he told her, since that was what she wanted to know, because that had been a big part of Jerome Cooper's MO.

‘Could you tell that for sure?' Grace asked, knowing about the condition of the body.

‘Yes,' Sam said. ‘And as to the strangling, you wouldn't like to know how many people are killed that way every year in the US.'

Not too many African-American males in Miami-Dade, Grace would bet, but did not say.

She did, however, share with him yesterday's experience in the party store.

Strictly speaking, her
non
-experience, though it had not felt that way.

‘Just me, I guess, being jumpy,' she said. ‘Again.'

‘Which is not like you,' Sam said. ‘And I wish you'd told me yesterday.'

‘I knew it was nothing.'

‘Still,' he said. ‘I thought we had a deal.'

They did. Anything that significantly worried either of them, they shared.

‘I'm sorry.' Grace paused. ‘The dinghy thing's still bugging me.'

‘Me too,' Sam told her.

‘MO's change, don't they?' she said.

‘Sometimes.'

‘What if it is him?'

‘Then we'll catch him.'

‘You didn't before,' she said.

‘If it is him,' Sam said, ‘this time we will.'

EIGHT

April 21

T
he fact was, Jerome Cooper, aka Cal the Hater, had been back on Miami Beach PD's Most Wanted list since he had sent Sam Becket a handwritten letter last year and ceased being presumed dead. And everyone in their line of work knew that it was hard as hell for some attention-seeking psychos to stay in hiding for too long, and right now, what Sam wanted to be happening most was for every boat in every marina and at every mooring in the whole of Miami-Dade to be searched; every boat big enough, that was, to hold one man and a dead body.

‘Not gonna happen,' Martinez said.

Which Sam already knew.

What he did
not
want one day before his father's big day (and today was his brother Saul's birthday, too, though they'd agreed to celebrate tomorrow) was a homicide investigation laid in his lap, but Beth Riley – promoted to Sergeant when Mike Alvarez had made Lieutenant – knew same as everyone else in the unit that there were some parallels here that had to make it Sam Becket's case.

So here they were in their open-plan office on the third floor at 1100 Washington Avenue, going through their starters' paces, with no real crime scene to focus on and no immediate hopes of a name to put to their John Doe. And the temptation was to go ahead and pin this crime on Cooper, but in so doing they risked letting some other killer continue about his business while they pulled out all the stops on the wrong man.

In other words, Sam knew they had to go by the book.

Detectives Mary Cutter and Joe Sheldon – a recent recruit to Violent Crimes, a young New Yorker married to a Miami Beach doctor – were out on day two of a neighborhood canvass in hopes of finding a witness. Ideally some insomniac with a telescope or binoculars, who'd been scanning the ocean at first light and had seen the victim being dumped from a boat.

‘About as much hope of that as finding icicles under the Venetian Causeway,' Cutter had said as they'd started out the previous afternoon.

‘I heard it snowed this January,' Sheldon said.

‘You believe all the crap you hear?' Cutter had said.

An appeal for witnesses had gone out this morning on Channel 7, and the story of the grisly find had appeared on the Channel 10 website. People were already calling in, as they often did in the early stages, some well-meaning, sharp-eyed folk with information worth imparting; but outweighing those callers were the attention seekers and cranks and sometimes, worst of all, those citizens with nasty minds and little better to do than try to lead the police astray.

Nothing of value yet.

Lieutenant Alvarez had okayed Sam's absence for tomorrow afternoon – the wedding not scheduled till four o'clock – but still, Sam, the
host
, for crying out loud, not to mention the man the bride had asked to give her away – was now going to be working right down to the wire; and Martinez, who'd put in for a day the instant he'd been invited, was going to miss the ceremony for sure, though he still hoped to make it for a little partying before the newly-weds departed on their honeymoon.

‘What's eating you, man?' Martinez asked Sam around noon Wednesday. ‘If it's tomorrow, you know we'll get you there on time.'

‘It's not that,' Sam said.

He'd swung by the party store first thing and spoken to Luis Delgado, the manager, and Delgado had said he wanted to help, but their security camera had been busted for over a week, and the boss hadn't gotten around to having it fixed.

‘What if it was Cooper Grace saw on Monday?' Sam said now.

‘You don't think she was just being jumpy?'

Sam shrugged. ‘You know how I am with coincidences.'

‘Me too,' Martinez said.

‘But if she was right . . .'

Sam stopped, because sweet Jesus, that thought scared him, because there were just too many connections here. As he'd pointed out to Grace last night, Cal the Hater's trademark raking of flesh had been absent in this case, and the whole macabre heart thing was totally new. But the rest could not be so easily ruled out as coincidence, not with the first toy boat so deliberately tied up at their home.

Which put Cooper, at the very least, high on their list of suspects.

List of
one
, in fact, for the time being.

Man, but that scared him.

NINE

April 22

T
he morning of the wedding was sunny and gorgeous, perfect weather forecast for the rest of the day.

Preparations in the Becket house well underway.

And for Sam and Martinez, a missing persons report of interest.

‘Andrew Victor.' Joe Sheldon brought it to them at nine fifty. ‘Twenty-seven, African-American, five-eleven, around a hundred and fifty pounds, reported missing by his housemate – ' he glanced down at his notes – ‘Ms Gail Tewkesbury, who says Mr Victor sometimes goes AWOL for a week or so, but he went out almost two weeks ago and she has a real bad feeling about our John Doe.'

‘Tell her we're on our way,' Sam said.

‘She's going to stay home till you get there.' Sheldon handed Martinez the address. ‘Condo at 50 Biscayne.'

‘Fancy,' Martinez said.

Gail Tewkesbury was diminutive in stature and visibly upset, but with her sharp facial features, intent gray eyes and dressed for work in a well-cut suit, she looked like a force to be reckoned with.

‘I was told you couldn't show me a photograph,' she said right after she'd let them in, and briefly her narrow mouth trembled, as if she might cry. ‘So I've found Andy's comb for you because I know that might help you with the ID.' She had her emotions under control. ‘And his toothbrush is in the bathroom. I'm afraid I'd already touched the comb before I thought of it, but I knew you wouldn't want me to touch the toothbrush.'

‘You were right,' Sam said. ‘That's very helpful.'

‘I haven't touched anything in his bedroom either.' The pitch of her voice rose. ‘And I have the name of his dentist, because I know that might help too.'

‘It will,' Sam said. ‘Thank you.'

‘Do you have any reason to think that something might have happened in his bedroom, ma'am?' Martinez asked.

‘No,' she said. ‘Of course not. But if this . . .' She shut her eyes, took a shaky breath.

‘Hey,' Sam said, gently. ‘Take it easy.'

She opened her eyes, went on. ‘If this were to turn out to be Andy, I just assumed you'd need to see his things.'

‘We would,' Sam said. ‘But let's hope it doesn't come to that. Let's hope he shows up tonight, and you can yell at him.'

‘And call us,' Martinez added.

‘God, yes,' she said. ‘Right away.'

They got her to sit down in her blue and white living room, and she assented gratefully to Martinez going to her kitchen and getting her a small bottle of Evian, from which she sipped while she told them about Andrew Victor.

‘I met him almost three years ago, while we were both working for the same downtown bank. I worked up in investments, and Andy was a teller on the first floor, but we got talking one day and just hit it off, and then last year, when I moved in here and was looking for a housemate, it all worked out beautifully because Andy's just the sweetest guy.'

‘Do you still work together?' Sam asked.