Jilliane Hoffman (31 page)

74

‘It’s a hairpiece,’ Dr Terrence Lynch, the Broward County ME, said with a smile full of oversized teeth. He held up the long blonde wig, stroking it with his stubby gloved fingers, as if it were a cat. Short and stuffed, his pale skin bathed in the reflection of the old mint green tiles that covered the examining room of the Broward County ME’s office, the pathologist looked a lot like Dracula’s assistant, Renfield. A recent import from upstate New York, Bobby hadn’t worked with Lynch before, but for once in his career, he was missing Gunther.

Zo shook his head and looked across the gurney at Bobby. ‘An ME who likes his job – go figure.’

‘Mmmmm …’ Dr Lynch murmured, returning the hairpiece, which was matted in places with dried blood, to the clear evidence bag. ‘It’s not expensive. The fibers are synthetic; the make is cheap. I have a young daughter, and it looks strikingly similar to the Hannah Montana mop she parades around in. Maybe there aren’t too many Miley Cyrus fans in South Florida. We can run it through fibers and see if that’ll narrow down our search.’

‘I think we’ll find out there are more fans than we feared,’ Zo replied.

‘Do you have an ID yet?’ Dr Lynch asked.

‘Her prints aren’t in AFIS,’ Bobby answered with a shake of his head. AFIS was the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. ‘She doesn’t match a description of any of the missing juvis we’ve got on our list. At least, we don’t think she does.’ He tried hard not to look down at the young girl on the metal gurney who just yesterday he thought would turn out to be his daughter. A crisp white sheet covered her torso and legs. Thankfully the autopsy was over.

‘I understand you had quite a scare, Agent Dees,’ Dr Lynch said as he washed up. A tech came over with a large spool of black nylon thread in hand and a large stitching needle. ‘I’m glad it didn’t turn out to be what you had feared.’

Bobby was too, but it seemed wrong to agree while he was standing over the mutilated body of a girl with no name, who had no one waiting outside to even claim her body. So he just nodded and moved over to make room for the tech.

‘Your Picasso was particularly brutal,’ the doctor continued. He dried his hands and turned back to face Bobby and Zo. ‘Besides the obvious missing eyes, she’s also missing her tongue. Both injuries were inflicted pre-mortem.’

Bobby had seen many things in his career. Many horrible things. Too many things. Some cruelty, though, was beyond even his comprehension. ‘How can you tell?’

‘There was bruising in the skin, muscle and surrounding soft tissue,’ Dr Lynch said, gesturing toward Jane Doe’s black sockets. ‘The dead, gentlemen, do not bruise. So the injuries were inflicted while her heart was pumping blood and she was still alive.’

‘This is like Cupid all over again,’ Zo muttered.

‘I’ll screen for anesthetics and analgesics,’ Lynch added. ‘Maybe he showed a little compassion and numbed her up first.’

‘What’s with her fingers?’ Bobby asked, looking down at the slender gray hand that lay on the side of the table, protruding from underneath the sheet. The fingertips were black, the nails broken and jagged, the skin severely abraded.

‘The skin is beginning to slip and decompose, which accounts for some of the discoloration. But the tips – the pads – they are also severely bruised and scraped – almost ground down to the bone. I thought perhaps an animal had gnawed at them postmortem, but the injuries, it appears, were inflicted, like the tongue and eyes, before she died. I X-rayed the fingers – they’re not broken.’

‘In the portrait Picasso sent us, the fingertips were covered in blood, too. What the hell would he do to her fingers and why?’ Zo asked. ‘Is he trying to tell us something?’

Dr Lynch shrugged. ‘I don’t have an answer for you.’

‘Maybe she did it to herself,’ Bobby answered softly, gently taking Jane Doe’s hand in his own gloved palm and carefully looking at it. ‘Maybe she was trying to get out of wherever it was he had her held. Maybe she was
clawing
her way out. She still has nail beds, Dr Lynch. Make sure she’s scraped. Look for rock, clay, dirt, pesticides – anything. Screen whatever it is you find. Maybe we can figure out where he held her.’

Dr Lynch nodded. ‘Done. I took samples of everything. The screens take a while, but I’ll try and get a quick return.’

The problem with multi-jurisdictional serial homicides was consistency. Three bodies in Broward and one body in Dade meant multiple police departments, multiple crime labs, and multiple medical examiners. ‘Can you get with Gunther Trauss in Miami and see what he’s come up with so that we don’t duplicate efforts?’ Bobby asked. ‘Time is of the essence. We need results yesterday, if you could.’

Dr Lynch nodded. The horse-toothed smile was back, which was definitely disconcerting. He slid his hands into his lab-coat pockets. ‘So, how long do you want me to hold her, guys?’

There was no ‘Potter’s Field’ in Broward County – no graveyard for the indigent and unidentified like there was in Miami. The bodies of the destitute and unclaimed were simply bid out to the local funeral homes for disposal. The lowest bidder won the prize, which, for economical reasons, inevitably meant cremation and a scattering in the local dumpster of whatever was left. Unidentified homicide victims were handled a little differently: their bodies were boiled down and the bones kept in a box on a shelf at the ME’s until, barring a screw-up, someone, somewhere came up with a name. The hope was that, along with that name would be a family, someone to claim the bones and give Jane or John Doe a proper burial.

‘Give me time. I’ll get you a name,’ Bobby said quietly as he and Zo headed for the elevator. ‘Whatever happens with this case, she’s not going to auction, Dr Lynch. I’ll take care of it.’ If they couldn’t find a family to go with that name, Bobby would make sure that she was buried proper. No kid should leave this earth unnoticed. Unmissed. He nodded goodbye and the doors closed on the oversized elevator.

‘The blonde wig, the different sweater. Picasso’s fucking with you, Bobby,’ Zo remarked quietly as the car started its creaky, slow ascent out of the basement.

‘It’s working. I’m fucked up,’ Bobby replied, rubbing his eyes.

‘You shouldn’t be here.’

Bobby shot him a look.

‘You shouldn’t. You look like hell. Have you slept at all in the past few days?’

‘I don’t sleep anyway. You think I’m gonna start now?’

‘How’s LuAnn?’

He shook his head. ‘Medicated. Hopefully she won’t have to wake up till after I’ve found this guy. The ballistics report’s back on the bullet that was found in the tree next to Ray Coons’s skull. It’s a .44 caliber Magnum, left-hand twist.’

‘Big gun,’ Zo commented as they stepped out into the hall just past reception. He stuck his head out the back-door entrance and looked down the long driveway, checking for media; they seemed to be everywhere and anywhere now. Besides being the top story on every channel in South Florida, news of the Picasso murders had made its way overseas as well, peeking the interest of the international media. A flamboyant, twisted serial killer with a taste for young runaways had attracted as much attention as the Cupid serial homicides in Miami had a few years ago. And that had been a complete and utter circus. The parking lot was clear, though.

‘It’s a gun that a lot of people like,’ Bobby said with a sigh, slipping on his sunglasses as they headed down the drive and then across the lawn to the lot behind the Broward Sheriff’s Office’s Tactical Services building. ‘Particularly gang-bangers. Autopsy report says he was dead at least a couple of weeks.’

‘We’ve been all over the streets. No one’s seen Ray back in Miami,’ Zo said. ‘At least, no one who’s talking.’

‘What the hell was he doing in Belle Glade?’

‘That’s anybody’s guess right now. Remember, Bobby, this guy is working you. Don’t go crazy thinking Ray’s a Picasso victim. We don’t know that. And we don’t know that Katy is related, either.’

Bobby stopped walking. ‘He came to my house, Zo.
My house
. He talked to my wife. He’s sending these sick portraits for my attention and leaving place cards with my name at crime scenes and he wants me …’ He took a breath. ‘He wants me to believe he has my daughter. Why?’

Zo didn’t have a response, so he said nothing. When they reached their cars, he said, ‘You’re done today. You need to go home and sit with your wife. I don’t want you back at the office. At least for a few days. And when you come back, I don’t want you on this case.’

‘Fuck that,’ replied Bobby. As if on cue, his cell rang. ‘Dees,’ he answered.

‘Bobby, it’s Ciro. I just got off the phone with a buddy who works Computer Crimes up in Palm Beach with the Sheriff’s Office. He’s doing a call-out today that the Sheriff’s Office is working with LEACH – you know, the internet computer kiddie crimes task force? They’re setting up on a perv this afternoon who’s supposed to do a meet-and-greet with a fourteen-year-old girl at a Mickey Ds. One of the PBSO Special Investigations detectives who does decoy caught this fish last week sometime, and they need tactical help to reel him in. Nothing new there, right? Happens every day. Now there’s no guarantee this guy’s even gonna show – he’s a ghost – and the decoy hasn’t heard from him in a few days, so it might be for nothing, but my buddy thought it was real interesting when he found out this morning at briefing the screen name the perv was using. Real interesting, considering he and I were talking about the Emerson case just last week, and this particular info hasn’t been released to the public.’

‘Talk to me,’ Bobby said, looking at Zo and waiting on Ciro’s next words, his body frozen in place, suspended halfway into the car.

‘They’re waiting on The Captain.’

75

It was almost comical that in the day and age of sophisticated law-enforcement computer systems and instant communications available via the internet, email, fax, texting, and cell phones, the left hand still didn’t know what the right was doing. The first thing Bobby had done after seeing the Boganes sisters’ portrait and realizing that Lainey Emerson was probably linked to Picasso, was send out a BOLO (Be On the Look Out for) teletype via FCIC/NCIC, alerting law-enforcement agencies nationwide to contact him if they had a cyberpredator using the screen name Zachary, Cusano, ElCapitan or any combination or modification thereof. Of course, just from the number of BOLOs his own analyst received on a daily basis, chances were his BOLO had been printed out, pinned on to a crowded board in a busy squad bay and promptly ignored.

No department liked their territory pissed on – which was exactly how the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Unit and LEACH task force members viewed the arrival of FDLE special agents at their tactical briefing in the back parking lot of the 45th Street Flea Market, a couple of blocks from the McDonalds where the meet was set to take place. There was no, ‘Thank God the Cavalry is Here!’ open-arms, high-fiving welcome. Then again, Bobby hadn’t expected one. The Feds, and more particularly, the FBI – famous for conveniently stealing thunder and claiming jurisdiction on high-profile cases after all the work was done – had made everyone in law enforcement suspicious. And just like the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, as much as it might burn the locals up, the truth was FDLE trumped County, City and Municipality, and every ranking officer in that parking lot knew it. So there was definitely reason to be nervous about a hostile takeover. But Bobby didn’t want to commandeer a LEACH investigation. He didn’t want the glory or the headlines. What he wanted was to end this nightmare and find the bastard as quickly as possible. And so far, the screen name of ElCapitan was the only thing anyone had that might lead somewhere.

Or not.

Like Ciro had said, and as anyone who worked ICAC cases – Internet Crimes Against Children – could attest, there were no guarantees. You never knew who or what would show up at these illicit meets. Or if anyone would show up at all. Many cyberpredators were well-seasoned; they had multiple victims and a lot of off-line experience before they were finally tagged in a chat room. Most could smell cop a mile away.

Although Bobby tried his best to quash it, tensions between the task forces remained high even as everyone took up positions for the meet. Heightened anxiety, though, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was like realizing that the porcelain vase you were carrying across the tiled floor was a priceless urn from the Ming Dynasty – you were definitely more anxious, but also much more careful, because you knew the devastating consequences if you screwed up and dropped the thing. Picasso had made horrible headlines in every county, and no one wanted to be responsible for letting him make another.

A petite, brunette undercover PBSO narcotics detective named Natalie, who looked all of fifteen, was set up inside the McDonalds. At four p.m. she would come out and wait on a bench in front of the restaurant and next to the check-cashing store for the approach. Undercover eyeballs were set up both in the restaurant and in the parking lot behind the McDonalds, which was shared with a strip mall that included a Winn Dixie supermarket, a Family Dollar and a host of stores, like a Little Caesar’s pizzeria and a laundromat. With all the businesses, the parking lot was constantly jammed, constantly moving. Across Australian was a Sunoco gas station and pawn shop; diagonally opposite to the restaurant was a park. Bobby and a couple of LEACH operatives sat in their undercover cars waiting in the Winn Dixie parking lot; Zo and Ciro were set up on the Sunoco and in the park. An FDLE helicopter was on stand-by at Palm Beach International Airport, just a few miles away.

It was 3:55. Bobby settled down low into his seat and stared out past the traffic on busy 45th. Without binoculars, it was impossible to see inside the restaurant from his vantage point. And it was impossible to use binoculars without calling attention to himself. The strip mall was bustling with activity. Moms, toddlers, seniors, businessmen, teens. Men, women. All makes and models. All shapes and sizes.

That was the problem. He could be anywhere. He could be anyone. And everyone looked suspicious, Bobby thought, watching as a young guy unloaded three grocery bags full of nothing but laundry detergent into the back of his SUV. Three rows up, a greasy, middle-aged man sitting in a Ford F150 sucked down what looked a lot like a beer while talking on his cell phone. And, of course, he thought, turning his attention back to the McDonald’s, they could all be sitting on a dead end. Wasting time while a madman was miles away, painting yet another portrait.

Bobby tapped the steering wheel and looked at his watch again – 3:59. There was nothing left to do but wait.