Jilliane Hoffman (30 page)

70

There were no hills in South Florida, so the two-hundred-foot mound of green grass rising out of the sawgrass to the west of Interstate 75 stood out like the Statue of Liberty on the Hudson. An inconspicuous and almost impossible-to-find entrance off of US 27 led to a forgotten paved road that wound through the heart of twenty acres of what was once the South Broward County SWT Landfill and Incinerator #8, aka the Dump. A ten-foot-high chain-link fence with a rusted, broken lock surrounded the property. A sign warned that trespassers would be prosecuted.

One wouldn’t think that the dump would get a lot of trespassing, but as the cliché went and as fans of
Antique Road Show
could attest, one man’s trash could very well be another’s treasure. Everyone wanted to discover that diamond ring in the rough, even if it meant wading through twenty stories of garbage with a metal detector to find it.

The dump was completely deserted. Even the scavenger birds that at one time feasted by the hundreds, if not thousands, atop the refuse were gone. Removed from the expressway by more than a mile, and set far back from any community, the parking lot was eerily quiet. And no matter how old it was, or what chemicals the city used, or how much they tried to insulate it with tarp, the air still stunk like garbage.

‘I’m going in with Larry and McCrindle,’ Zo said, as he walked around the back end of his Taurus and over to where Bobby stood with Larry, BSO Detective Don McCrindle, and three uniforms in front of a cement rectangular building that looked like a 1970s double-wide trailer. Boards covered every window. He looked at Bobby. ‘Don’t even try to fucking argue with me. I’m a fool for letting you come here.’

‘The incinerator pit was out in the back,’ Larry said. ‘You had to show the order to the clerk inside, then get your shit inventoried and get a receipt. Somebody would escort you through to a secured area outside where they’d burn it in front of you. If you stood close enough, you’d feel no pain for a week or so.’

Zo looked at the uniforms and nodded toward Bobby. ‘Make sure he stays at the car. You got light?’ he asked Don.

Don nodded and waved his flashlight.

‘All right. Let’s do this.’

Within a minute they were in. Flashlight ribbons sliced like light-sabers through the inky darkness. Bobby stood by the front end of his car, counting down the seconds with the cooling tick of the engine, holding his breath, praying this was another dead end. Praying for good news from the warden, whose footfalls had finally reached his cell …

Moments later, radios crackled to life.

‘I got her,’ Zo said.

Time stopped. Bobby held the radio up to his face with two hands. ‘Zo?’ He could feel the cold fear racing through his body to his heart, threatening to shut it down. ‘Zo?’ he asked again. ‘Dias?’

Zo came back out the door, a handkerchief to his nose. Radios erupted all around him, everyone chattering at once. He heard Don McCrindle call for Crime Scene and the Medical Examiner.

‘Is it her?’ Bobby asked, rushing over to his friend on legs that threatened to betray him.

Zo held his hands up like a stop sign. ‘You’re not going in there.’

‘That wasn’t the deal.’

‘Is it her?’ It was Ciro, calling in on Zo’s radio. Zo didn’t respond.

The fear hit its target. Bobby shut his eyes tight to stop the world from spinning. A weird line from the
Godfather
suddenly popped into his head, from the scene where Vito Corleone goes to the funeral home after his son has been shot.

I want you to use all your powers and all your skills. I don’t want his mother to see him this way. Look how they massacred my boy …

‘Is it her?’ he asked again.

‘It’s bad, Shep, I ain’t gonna lie –’

‘Don’t fucking call me that!’ Bobby shouted. ‘Is it her?’

‘I don’t know!’ Zo shouted back. ‘She’s staged, she’s – it’s bad. You don’t need to fucking see it, is all!’ He grabbed Bobby by the arm. ‘I don’t know what we have. He’s fucking with your head here –’

Bobby pushed past him, running up the cement steps of the double-wide, through the front door and into the murky darkness that reeked of garbage and death.

The warden had finally arrived. And he could tell just by the pained look on his face that the news wasn’t good.

71

LuAnn closed the door and stepped over to the vase. Stuck deep down into the heart of it was a white card clipped tight to a plastic holder.

Was it Jeannie? Would she have sent it?

Her baby sister was well-intentioned, but could be thoughtless. Sometimes LuAnn wondered when she went on and on about her own kids and their piano lessons and school plays if she remembered that Katy was still missing.

The girls from work?

Maybe it’s a belated get-well bouquet. Maybe they didn’t realize the significance of today’s date …

Who the hell would do such a terrible thing?

She reached down into the bouquet and found the card. People always thought they were saying or doing the nicest things during a life-altering event, but sometimes those were the words or deeds that left the deepest cuts.

‘She probably left to get her head clear, Lu. You know? Stretch her wings a little!’

‘Maybe you were too tough on her. I always say I’m not going to be Lauren’s friend, but it’s so hard nowadays to get them to tell you anything … I guess you have to be tough, though.’

‘Being a parent isn’t easy, LuAnn. None of us knows if we’re doing it right. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Did I tell you that Jonathon just got into FSU? He’s so excited!’

Now the same well-intentioned friends were sending her roses on the anniversary of her daughter running away. Then they would go home tonight and talk about their great deed over dinner with their own kids, and everyone at the table would gossip about how it’s been a whole year already, and why it was they supposed Katy left in the first place, and the current suspected state of LuAnn and Bobby’s marriage. The smell of the flowers was beyond nauseating now. All LuAnn wanted to do was throw them out. Shred the petals and throw the fucking things out …

She turned on the hall light and opened the card.

What words of comfort could someone possibly say to her today?

She slid out the small white card with the yellow happy face emblem at the top. A piece of paper fluttered to the ground.

She stared at the words in disbelief.

Happy Anniversary!! Hope it’s memorable!

Then she looked down at the floor. At the small, black-and-white picture of a smiling Ray Coon from his high school yearbook, right there on her floor. His eyes had been blacked out with magic marker. She knelt down and picked it up. It was pasted on to the picture of a tombstone. Taped below the tombstone was a small, two-sentence police blotter cut from the
Palm Beach Post
. It was dated November 14.

BODY FOUND BY BOY SCOUT IN
BELLE GLADE IDENTIFIED

The decomposed body of a young man found shot to death late last week by a boy scout and his father in Belle Glade Marina and Campground has been identified as Reinaldo ‘Ray’ Coon, 19, of Margate, Florida. No suspects in the slaying have been identified.

LuAnn dropped the clipping and watched as it fluttered gently back down to the floor.

It landed face up, still smiling at her.

72

The first thing he saw when he rushed into the small back storage room was the criss-crossing beams of light from Larry and Don McCrindle’s flashlights. It was catching on something shiny and reflective off the floor.

Then Bobby saw the chains.

They were wrapped around the ankles of the slender body that hung from the ceiling, spooling below her into a polished, silvery pile, like the coils of a snake. He turned his own flashlight up. Her back was to him. Long dirty blonde hair was caught in the chains that were wrapped around her neck. More chains tethered her thin arms above her to a pipe in the ceiling. She dangled there, facing a window that looked out on to the long-closed burn pit that Larry had described. Someone had removed the boards from the window so she could face out.

Bobby circled around the body and beamed his flashlight up past the thick necklace of chains.

No one said anything. Nothing moved.

It wasn’t Katy.

The body was fresh, a day or two old at the most. Most likely she had been killed somewhere else. Her eyes, like the others, were missing, and decomposition had started, but she was still recognizable. At least to Bobby.

It wasn’t Katy
.

Zo was behind him. Bobby shook his head and took his first breath in a minute. He felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted from his shoulders. ‘It’s not her,’ he said in a small voice. Then he stumbled back outside to wait for Crime Scene. The tears he’d been holding back, reserving for the worst news, came anyway.

His cell phone rang just as he stepped through the front door. It was LuAnn, calling from the house. He let it go to voicemail. There was no way he could talk to her now. No way he could tell her what had almost happened. No way he could tell her how incredibly relieved he was, without telling her just how scared he’d been. But then it rang again. And again. Which meant it was more than important – it was an emergency. He walked over to his car, wiped his face with the back of his hand and tried his best to sound normal. ‘Lu?’

He heard her crying, trying hard to control her breathing. She was hysterical.

The fear was right back.

‘He’s dead!’ she yelled. ‘Oh my God, Bobby, he’s dead!’

‘What?’

‘He’s dead!’

‘Who’s dead? What the hell are you talking about, LuAnn? Is it your dad –’

Sirens exploded in the background as emergency vehicles made their way up the rotting, winding Florida mountain.

‘Ray!’ she screamed. ‘Ray Coon! He’s dead! Someone shot him!’

Bobby closed his eyes.
How was this happening now?
He’d known it was only a matter of time before the news of Ray’s murder eventually made the rounds back to her. He should have expected this call. He should have told her. ‘Lu –’ he started.

‘And now someone’s sending me his picture!
His picture, Bobby!’

‘What? Who’s sending you Ray’s picture?’

‘On a tombstone!’ LuAnn screamed.

Zo came over. ‘What’s happening?’

‘It came in the flowers,’ LuAnn said between sobs.

‘What flowers? What are you talking about?’

‘I don’t know! Someone just sent me flowers. I thought it was my sister or maybe the girls at the hospital …’

‘Jeannie wouldn’t send you flowers,’ Bobby started. None of this was making sense.

‘Roses. Red and white roses. This enormous bouquet of fucking flowers, Bobby!’

‘Who? Who sent them?’ he demanded. ‘Who the hell would send you flowers today?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘LuAnn, this is making no sense. Help me out here. Someone sent you flowers today, along with a picture of Ray on a headstone – was there a card?’

‘It wasn’t signed. The picture of Ray was in the card with a news article that said he died last week – that he was murdered!’

‘What exactly did the card say? Anything?’

‘It said “Happy Anniversary. Hope it’s memorable.”’ She started to sob again. ‘Who would do this? Who would send this to me?’

Bobby looked at Zo. ‘LuAnn, how long ago did these flowers come?’

‘I don’t know … five minutes ago, maybe.’

‘Where are they from? What store?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t say on here. It doesn’t say anywhere.’

‘What did his truck say? Did you see his truck?’

‘It wasn’t a truck. It was a regular car, I think. I don’t know! I don’t know!’

‘What did he look like, LuAnn? What did the deliveryman look like?’

‘I don’t … um, he was your height, I guess. And I think he was blond. He had a cap on. That’s all I remember! I wasn’t looking at him.’ She paused, for just a second. ‘You knew about Ray, didn’t you? Didn’t you, Bobby?’

‘LuAnn, lock the door. Don’t answer it for anyone. I’m coming home.’

‘Why? Bobby, what is happening? Tell me, goddamn it!’

‘Get a car out to my house!’ he commanded Zo.

‘Tell me!’ LuAnn shouted.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Zo.

He held his hand over the phone so she wouldn’t hear. ‘He was there. Five minutes ago,’ Bobby yelled. ‘At my mother-fucking house!’

Radios erupted again.

It would only be a matter of minutes. Just three minutes for a car to be there. Less, if one was in the area. Please God, let there be a car …

‘Who was it? Who sent them?’ LuAnn screamed.

‘LuAnn, listen carefully. This case, this Picasso case I’m on … I think it’s him. I think he was the one who sent those flowers,’ Bobby said as he climbed into his car.

She was sobbing. ‘Oh my God … Katy …’

He turned the engine on and threw it in reverse. ‘And I think he just hand-delivered them to you.’

Then he raced back down the winding road with his lights and siren on, headed for home at a hundred miles an hour.

73

The man hummed as he sat in the traffic that had pulled over to the side of the road, watching as the police cars whizzed by him, one after the other, lights flashing and sirens blaring, like a scene from an action movie. He knew just where they were headed in such a hurry – if he sat where he was long enough, he could wave at the Super Special Agent as he whizzed by himself. But he would most likely be too busy to wave back. He was, he imagined, in a Super Special Agent rush to get home. Boy, would Ricky have some ’splaining to do when he walked through the door tonight!

Something told him that the Hero Who Walked Among Us hadn’t yet let his wifey in on the recent and very substantial development in the case of their missing daughter. Like the fact that the sleazy, gangsta boyfriend was now officially out of the picture. Whew! Wasn’t that a relief?

Only he wasn’t so sure the little woman was gonna take it that way. Not after her Hero told her exactly what he’d been up to today at the office, in all its graphic, glorious detail. Not after he spilled the beans about the striking, uncanny resemblance to their pretty little missing daughter in Picasso’s latest and greatest masterpiece.

But there was no such thing as coincidence, was there? And the great detective knew that better than anyone. Soon enough his wife would know that, too. No, there was no such thing as coincidence.

SUPER SPECIAL AGENT ROBERT S. DEES
Everyman’s hero The Shepherd

… Nicknamed The Shepherd by his colleagues in law enforcement, SAS Dees has worked over two hundred missing children/abduction cases around the country since his career with FDLE’s Crimes Against Children Squad began nearly a decade ago. Of those, only five remain unsolved (see box). While not every case ends happily, Dees has persisted in ‘bringing home kids who should never, ever have been found’, Marlon Truett, the Assistant Director of the FBI, told
People
. ‘Dead or alive, he brings them back home to their families, which is a great comfort. People want closure. They need it. And Bobby Dees – he won’t ever stop. He’s like a shepherd, and he will see to it that every last one of his flock is found. He’ll never stop looking. That’s just the way he is.’ A recipient of the prestigious Officer of the Year Award for Missing and Exploited Children, and Florida’s Law Enforcement Officer of the Year, Dees says the faces of the missing – the ones he hasn’t yet ‘brought home’ – haunt him every day of his life. ‘I could only imagine, if that were my child, how I would feel.’

The man rolled the worn, chewed magazine up and tossed it on to the seat beside him. Less than a year after that glowing piece had been written – before dust even had a chance to collect on all of those pretty little awards – Super Special Agent’s own daughter had vanished into the dark night.

Pity.

The man smiled.

A good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. He who is a hired hand and who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf catches them and scatters them
.

John 10:11–18. Right out of the gospel …

The real lesson to be learned? Just like
People
magazine so eloquently put it, there’s not always a happy ending to every story. In fact, just like the in the Bible, most stories end tragically. The good shepherd either dies or he runs when he sees the wolf coming. Either way, the poor sheep are doomed.

So as much as he was sure Mr and Mrs Dees wanted to forget this momentous occasion, he knew it was only right to help them celebrate it. He just wished he could be a fly on the wall of their pretty little house tonight. He wished he could hear their screams. Listen in on the anguish. He closed his eyes and imagined for a second just what the little woman’s mouth would look like, open and lush, twisted in pain into an eternal black grin. He thought of how the brush would feel in his hand, heavy with paint, the fragrant smell wafting like a perfume through his secret labyrinth …

His hand fell to his lap.

Are you pure in both thought and deed?

He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his trembling fingers. He felt the beads of perspiration run down the back of his neck and into his shirt, making it stick to his skin. Oh, there were so many fun things to look forward to.

The wolf was on his way. The story was finally coming to an end.

Then he flicked on the radio and waited for the news to come on.