Hell (5 page)

‘Not any more,' Gail Tewkesbury said. ‘They let him go.'

Neither detective took that further, would do so only if the missing man was confirmed as the victim.

‘Which bank do you work at, ma'am?' Martinez asked.

‘The Starr Banking Corporation of Miami on West Flagler Street.'

Martinez made a note.

‘In your call,' Sam said, ‘you said this wasn't the first time Mr Victor's gone missing.'

‘Not missing, exactly,' the young woman said. ‘He just stays out sometimes for a week or more, and I've asked him to call and tell me so I don't worry, but Andy laughs at me and says I'm more like his mom than his real mother, and he's right, of course, except that we're friends, and friends do worry about each other.'

‘Yes, they do,' Martinez said.

This time, she went on, Andrew Victor had gone out on the evening of Saturday the ninth – she had no idea where he'd been going, had just arrived back from work as he was leaving, though she remembered telling him he looked good.

‘“Spiffy,” I think I said. And I told him to be careful, too. I was always doing that. I guess he was right about my sounding like a mom.'

‘Did you have any particular reason to tell him to be careful?' Sam asked.

‘Partly because he was taking his pushbike,' she said.

That jolted both detectives.

Jerome Cooper had owned a tandem that he had named Daisy. He had used it, they knew from what he'd called his
Epistles
– a long stream of writings in a collection of exercise books found in his South Beach hidey-hole two years back – to attract lovers and tricks and victims.

If the John Doe was Andy Victor, therefore, they were looking for a bicycle that might have been dumped near the crime scene. Unless the killer had appropriated it.

‘What kind of a pushbike?' Sam asked.

‘It's red,' Gail Tewkesbury answered. ‘I don't know what make.' She paused. ‘But I took a photo of him once, posing on it, outside the bank.'

‘Could you find the photo, ma'am?' Martinez asked.

‘Sure,' she said. ‘Shall I do that now?'

‘If you don't mind,' Sam said.

She was back with them in less than five minutes, held out the photograph, and Sam took it first, studied it briefly, looked at the young, laughing face, then passed it to Martinez.

‘Can you tell the make?' she asked.

‘I can't,' Sam said.

‘Me neither,' Martinez said. ‘But we got people who can.'

‘Did you have any other reasons for telling Andy to be careful?' Sam asked.

‘He used to ride the pushbike with his iPod in his ears,' she said.

‘Did he take the iPod that evening?' Martinez asked.

‘I think so,' she said. ‘I haven't seen it since.' She paused. ‘Andy takes people at face value,' she went on. ‘He's gay, but he hasn't had a partner for a while, and I know he goes to clubs and parties and he loves talking to strangers, and I think that can be dangerous.'

‘I think you're right,' Sam said.

Gail Tewkesbury's hesitation was palpable.

‘Something else you want to tell us?' Sam asked after a moment.

She shifted uneasily in her chair. ‘I feel so disloyal.'

‘If your friend comes home,' Sam said, ‘and we hope he will, then whatever you tell us today will go no further.'

‘OK,' she said. ‘Andy sometimes went looking for sexual encounters.'

‘Do you know where he went?' Martinez asked.

‘Different places. He didn't tell me much because he knew it upset me.'

‘But he still told you some stuff, didn't he?' Martinez said. ‘Enough for you to get upset.'

‘I guess.' She rubbed her face abruptly with her palms, left pink tracks on both cheeks. ‘I already said he went to clubs.'

‘Which ones?' Martinez asked.

‘I don't know their names,' she said. ‘Except they were in South Beach.' She gave a ragged kind of sigh. ‘He went to the beach, too, at night, looking for new “friends”.' She made air quotes with her right index finger. ‘So dangerous, I couldn't stand to hear about it.'

‘A lot of people do the same thing,' Martinez said gently.

‘Doesn't make it safer,' Gail said, and her eyes filled. ‘Poor Andy.'

‘Any place more specific that you can remember him mentioning?' Sam asked. ‘A particular section of beach, maybe?'

‘He talked about the dunes,' she said.

‘Always in South Beach?' Sam said.

Jerome Cooper's old hunting ground.

‘I don't know,' she said.

‘So do you think this could be him?' she asked, and her voice shook.

‘We don't know,' Sam answered.

The knuckles on Gail Tewkesbury's clasped hands whitened. ‘Is the reason you can't show me a photo because of something that's happened to his face?' Tears sprang suddenly into her eyes. ‘Andy's not vain, but he takes a pride in his appearance, you know?'

‘The body was in the ocean,' Sam told her, gently. ‘That's why.'

She nodded. ‘How long will it take to find out if this is him?'

‘That's hard to say, ma'am,' he said.

‘It can take time,' Martinez told her.

‘But everything you've given us will help,' Sam said.

It was after eleven thirty by the time they came away. Gail Tewkesbury had all but begged them to tape off Andrew Victor's room because she could not bear the thought of potentially vital evidence being lost should it be bad news, but with no positive ID there had been little for the detectives to do but take a swift look at the room.

Nothing of immediate interest or use leapt out at them. There was no computer, and Gail told them that Andy's laptop had crashed and died due to a virus, so after he'd left the bank, he'd sometimes borrowed hers, which they were welcome to inspect at any time. His datebook bore a handful of names, and just a few appointments, on various pages from January through to mid-April, with a few more future plans, sundry birthday reminders and memory joggers set down for the rest of the year.

The names – all set down with no other information, no clues as to who they might be – were mostly male first names; few surnames, one of which Gail said she believed to be the name of a potential employer with whom Andy had interviewed in February.

The room was orderly, but not excessively so, nor did it appear to have been recently cleaned by anyone who might have been trying to conceal evidence. It was the well-cared for room of a man in his twenties whose taste in clothes and accessories seemed to favor Gap, Nike and Timbuk2, with just one photograph of a woman of around thirty – his sister, Ms Tewkesbury said – with her husband and three children; and a wall of movie posters featuring Denzel Washington, James Dean, Richard Gere, Wesley Snipes and Keanu Reeves.

Conventional tastes, it seemed to Sam, as he regarded the posters. None of Andy's possible heroes even remotely resembling the weasel-like Jerome Cooper. Or the David Bowie characters that Cooper aka Cal the Hater had modeled himself on during his last spree.

Getting
way
too far ahead, he told himself as they got back in Martinez's Chevy Impala.

‘So what are you thinking?' Martinez asked.

‘Nothing you're not thinking too,' Sam said. ‘If it's Victor, the gay factor's another check against Cooper.' He paused. ‘And South Beach, of course.'

‘The pushbike, maybe, too,' Martinez said. ‘Or a copycat.'

‘Could be,' Sam said.

The copycat theory had already been raised at the department before the John Doe had washed up, everyone well aware that Joshua's kidnapping a couple of years back had hit the local headlines, publicizing the link between Cooper and the Miami Beach cop and his family.

Which meant that the first dinghy could have been tied up to the Beckets' piling three days after Andrew Victor had gone missing, by the by – by some other crazy crawling out of the rock, sand, marl and muck on which Miami was built. Or, now that the case had become more complex, some other murdering scumbag, not crazy at all, just evil.

‘You're not buying it though,' his partner said.

They were good friends as well as partners, had long shared histories between them, some good, some bad, some sad as hell.

‘I don't know what I'm buying,' Sam said. ‘But copycat or not, coincidences or not, I still want Cooper behind bars.'

Because the fact remained that if it was him out there doing these things, there was no telling what kind of danger his wife and son could be in.

Again.

‘We need to check Lost and Found for a red bike and iPod,' he said.

‘Some hopes,' Martinez said. ‘Where next?'

‘Doc Sanders's office,' Sam said.

The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner's Office on Bob Hope Road. A place they'd both had too many reasons to visit through the years.

Bearing gifts for him today. One toothbrush, one comb and the name and address of Andrew Victor's dentist. Gifts of life and death.

Just a matter of time.

‘And after that,' Martinez said, ‘you're going home.'

A wedding to organize.

On a scale of one to ten, Sam hoped that today ought to score about a seven for security. A family wedding at a cop's home on one of the two Bay Harbor Islands, which sported one of the lowest crime rates in Miami-Dade.

Except this was Cooper they might be talking about: a man who had stolen the same cop's baby son out of his crib while his mom had slept in the next room.

No one was really safe, ever. Sam had too many reasons to know that.

So once he got home, he was going to be keeping his eyes open for the slightest hint of trouble.

The
slightest
.

And once the day was over, he'd made up his mind to request a Bay Harbor Islands PD watch on their house and on his wife and son. And in the past, Grace might have objected to that, but now he was not at all sure that she would.

That made him sad.

And mad as hell.

David Becket's wedding afternoon.

The day still gorgeous, the sky a clear blue, not too hot.

Perfect.

His first wedding was an old, hazy memory now, existing for his two sons only in the silver-framed photographs of the occasion, but if David shut his eyes, he could travel right back to that day, could see Judy standing beside him beneath the chuppah in their temple in her beautiful white dress and veil.

Mildred knew better than anyone that she could never compete with that memory or with all the years of sharing, of everyday
living
together, just as David would never come to replace the short, but ineradicably sweet memories of her life with Donny. Neither of them wanted to compete or to replace; that was one of the things that made their decision to marry so fine.

So right. For both of them.

Not entered into lightly, that was for sure.

Though it was a fact that they had seemed to slip right into place beside each other after Mildred had first agreed to come and live in the shelter of David's home; and care, tenderness and, ultimately, love had come easily and gently after that.

Nothing wrong with easy or gentle.

Nothing wrong about
right
.

There were white roses around the front door and through the hallway, marking out the route for the guests into the lanai, which had become, for one day only, wholly unrecognizable.

No chuppah today, but Saul, his father's best man – a carpenter by profession, his furniture increasingly in local demand – had built an indoor pergola and threaded roses through its trellis roof.

Beneath which he now stood beside his father.

Waiting, as Sam brought Mildred down the short, narrow aisle.

To David, her husband-to-be.

Grace waited, too, to one side, in a dress of pale gray silk, her hair in a chignon, smiling first at the bride, then at Sam – seeing him stoop somewhat, Mildred tiny beside him, but
so
handsome in his dark suit and the new, modern Italian silk cravat she had bought for him; then smiling down with pride at Joshua, standing very straight in his new Diesel polo shirt and pants, clutching her hand, wide-eyed at the goings-on – and then looking over at Cathy, standing on the other side of the pergola, gorgeous in a cornflower-blue halter dress with her new ultra-feminine urchin haircut.

Mildred's own suit was champagne silk, her face wreathed in smiles as her adored son-in-law-to-be guided her to her groom. Handsome too in his hawk-nosed, craggy way, in his new gray suit – not looking rumpled for once – a white rose in his buttonhole, his silver hair elegantly combed, his eyes behind his spectacles intent only on her and filled with warmth.

Her David.

They had exchanged their vows, been declared husband and wife by Judge Helen Dawkins, an old friend of the groom's, had kissed, held hands, signed their names, been congratulated and embraced, had laughed with pleasure, and had both come close to shedding tears of pure joy.

And now, together with their family and close friends, they were partying, eating, drinking and dancing.

Saul was dancing with Mel Ambonetti, a twenty-one-year-old student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Miami, a tall, blue-eyed brunette, with an elegant aquiline nose and long, shining hair that swung as she moved. Three months together, and the first woman who had gotten to Saul for a long time.

The whole Becket clan here today, along with good friends and neighbors, and a fistful of cops, too: Martinez, of course – who'd hurried in just after six – and Beth Riley and Mike Alvarez, too, both having become friends of the groom's over time.

No family there for Mildred. Her parents, still living in Queens, had claimed frailty as their reason for not attending – and David had asked Mildred if she might like to go back to New York City for their honeymoon, but Mildred had said she was determined that nothing and no one would spoil their special time.