Jilliane Hoffman (34 page)

81

The fallout from the Palm Beach sting was bad. If the director was looking for a reason to get Bobby out of Crimes Against Children and into pushing paper for the Fraud Squad, he’d found it with a high-speed chase that had ended in a death and three injured. Even though Bobby and everyone else out there on Friday – including Lex Kleiner and the LEACH operatives – knew that Bobby Dees chasing the bad guy an extra mile didn’t cause the accident, it was just the excuse Foxx needed. Call him what you will, Captain or Picasso or John Doe was gonna have that accident whether Bobby was on his tail or not, because he was gunning for I95 and he wasn’t gonna slow down till he made it on the interstate. But a reason was all RD Foxx needed, even if it wasn’t a good one. Bobby had immediately been placed on leave until after January 1. After that, he was probably out of CAC and he was most definitely not going to be a supervisor any more. Most likely he would be transporting governors for a year or two, or chasing down bad checks until Foxx ascended to some throne in Tallahassee and Bobby was released from purgatory by the next RD.

Zo was now heading up the Picasso investigation, assisted by SAS Frank Veso, who was officially
numero uno
in line for Bobby’s job come January 1. But when Foxx found out that Zo had allowed Bobby to stay on Picasso after realizing that Bobby’s missing daughter was a possible Picasso victim, the shit had really hit the fan. Zo’s future status as a Miami ASAC was now in question. Talk was going around that once Picasso was officially closed, he would be demoted to an SAS and sent to Tallahassee for a year or so to do penance. Even though he insisted he didn’t give a shit, Bobby knew he did. And for that he felt bad.

But the worst form of punishment, Bobby quickly realized, was being sent home to do nothing. Nothing at all. The wait for any scrap of information was agonizing, the inability to run leads or interview witnesses beyond frustrating. There had been no further contact from Picasso and the identity of the subject in the car that had tried to pick up the Palm Beach under-cover officer was still unknown. That was all the information he got, and it wasn’t enough. Because Bobby, of all people, was acutely aware that somewhere out there might be the undiscovered victim or victims of a madman, crying out for help and hearing no reply, and there was nothing whatsoever he could do about it. Bobby could now sympathize with how the parents of the victims on his cases had felt all these years – helpless.

Five days of hell later, on Thanksgiving Eve, of all days, the phone call he’d been waiting for finally came.

‘We got a DNA match on our barbequed pervert.’ It was Zo, calling on his cell.

Bobby stepped into the living room and out of earshot of LuAnn, who had just gotten home. She’d bought a turkey from the supermarket for the holiday, but had spent the past ten minutes just staring at it blankly in the kitchen. ‘What? When?’ he asked.

‘Don’t run for the car, Bobby. Ciro, Larry and Veso are already at the guy’s house. Stephanie Gravano walked the warrants through. Kelly, McCrindle, Carrera and Castronovo are picking apart the neighbors and employers. Everyone’s working here. You’re off this. I’m telling you what’s going on as a friend, because I don’t want you sitting around thinking we don’t know nothing. That we’re not working it. Counting the ticks on your kitchen clock like it’s a bomb. So I will keep you informed, because you are a brother and if the roles were reversed I would want to know … I would expect you to tell me.’

‘Who is he?’ Bobby asked.

Zo sighed. ‘Name’s James Roller, a twenty-eight-year-old white male from Royal Palm Beach. He’s got two adult priors: Burglary of a Dwelling in ′99 and an Attempted Sex Bat in ′02, for which he spent about eighteen months in state prison. The victim in that case was fifteen. He claimed consensual, the victim didn’t agree, and the postal worker who pulled him off of her in the deserted alley apparently got there just in the nick of time. The victim had a spotty past, so the state pled him out. He was released from Raiford in early ′04. He gave swabs on both crimes, so he popped up in the database as soon as they put him in.’

‘I want to –’

‘I know what you want to do,’ Zo interrupted. ‘You’re on leave right now, so you’re not gonna do shit. Everyone is working on this. Everyone. We’ll find her if we can. The boys are picking apart his duplex as we speak and interviewing his baby mama. By five we’ll know all there ever was to know about this guy.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘Just like the undercover described: brown hair, brown eyes, five-ten, a hundred and eighty-five pounds.’

‘What did they find at the house? Anything yet?’

‘He lived alone. So far there’s just mayo and beer in the fridge. No computer at either his house or the girlfriend’s, but we think he might’ve surfed the web at the local library – which is around the corner from his crib. Or, the more likely scenario was he used a laptop, and that laptop was in the car with him and it’s now melted into the asphalt.’

‘Paints? Pictures? Was he an art student? Who the hell is this guy? There’s got to be more, Zo.’

‘We pulled up a work history and he worked at a Pearl Paint in Fort Lauderdale back in the late nineties. But give me till five to get you answers. Nothing screams Picasso yet, but nothing eliminates him, either. We’re building it up, one piece at a time. He probably had a whole secret studio someplace. We’ll find it, Bobby. If it’s out there, we’ll find it. And if he has Katy, we’ll find her, too.’

Bobby hung up the phone and punched the wall hard. Unfortunately, the pain in his hand didn’t do anything to ease the pain in his heart. And now he had a hole in his living-room wall. LuAnn stared at him from the doorway that led into the kitchen.

‘They have a name,’ Bobby said quietly, knowing from the look on her face that she’d heard everything. ‘He’s out of Royal Palm Beach, up in Palm Beach County. James Roller. He’s twenty-eight. He’s a sex offender.’

LuAnn sucked in a breath and her body started to shake. The coffee cup she held in her hand spilled large drops on to the wood floor. ‘Are you going in?’ she whispered.

‘I’m on leave. I was told to stay away.’

‘You’re not going to stay away, are you? You’re going to finish this, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

He crossed the room and hugged her. She buried her head in his chest and started to cry, something she’d done an awful lot this past week.

‘I need to know for sure,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want someone to just think it was him. I need to know for sure …’

‘Ssshhh,’ he answered, stroking her hair. ‘I’ll find out, Lu. We’ll know. Either way, we’ll know.’

‘I can’t, I just can’t … I need to get out of here, Bobby.’

‘If it is him, the boys out front will be sent home and you can go out.’ Since the flower delivery, there’d been a BSO uniform assigned to watch their house and LuAnn twenty-four hours a day. Even Foxx in all his vindictiveness had not pulled the detail. ‘You can go back to work, get back to normal.’ The word sounded strange. Nothing would ever be normal again.

‘If they find her … if she’s … dead …’ LuAnn said, swallowing the word. ‘I want to move. I don’t want to be here any more. Here. Around
this.’

Bobby wasn’t quite sure how LuAnn meant that. Six weeks ago, he would’ve thought that ‘here’ definitely included wherever he was. Things had been better between them since LuAnn’s concussion, but now, listening to her, he wasn’t so sure she felt the same way. He looked at her. ‘Don’t go there.’

‘I have to. I … it’s a year she’s been missing. A year. This Picasso has killed four girls. I have to be prepared for what I know is coming. And even if you don’t find her body, I can’t hope any more. I’m through with it. It tears me apart. And I can’t be around,’ she paused and looked around the living room,
‘this
any more.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Does “this” include me?’

She shook her head softly and he held his breath. Everything was collapsing around him. His life was falling apart and there was nothing he could do to stop it. His job, his career, his daughter … It was only fitting that his marriage would end here and now, too.

‘Just you and me,’ she whispered. ‘I want it to be us again. I want it to be the way it was before everything went wrong. I want to start fresh. I can’t look at the pity faces any more – at work, on a jog, at the grocery store. I can’t look at her room any more. All I see are ghosts, Bobby.’

He clutched her to him, feeling her warm breath on his neck. He kissed the top of her head. There was nothing left to keep him here, either. ‘We’ll make it right again, LuAnn. I’ll make it right.’

His cell rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but picked it up anyway. ‘Dees.’ LuAnn walked back into the kitchen, wiping her eyes.

‘Agent Dees, this is Dr Terrence Lynch from the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office. How are you today?’

Loaded question, so he ignored it. ‘Yes, Dr Lynch. What’s up?’

‘I wanted to discuss the findings on the fingernail scrapings of Jane Doe that I just got back. In addition to what was found under the nails, there was also a fair amount of debris embedded in what remained of the fleshy pads of her fingertips. I was intrigued by your suggestion that her injuries were self-inflicted – a result, perhaps, of her digging her way out of something or someplace. You expressed that time is of the essence – that your Picasso may be holding other victims, and that the information from Jane Doe could potentially prove very valuable in finding them – so I walked the tests through myself. As you know, lab and toxicology results can sometimes take months to come back.’

‘I appreciate that,’ Bobby replied.

‘You were correct, Agent Dees, the debris was soil. But that’s not a one-size-fits-all definition. Soil has many different characteristics, as you can imagine, depending on where it’s from. These characteristics, including texture, structure and color, are all examined to determine what classification order the soil falls into. I know this is a bit involved – soil study is, believe it or not, a science unto itself. Suffice to say, a specimen was rushed to the Soil & Water Science Department at the University of Florida, which classified it as a histosol – a soil comprised primarily of organic material. Wabasso fine sand, in fact. A sandy, siliceous, hyperthermic Alfic Alaquod.’

‘You’re losing me.’

‘With a high phosphorus and nitrogen content.’

‘You’re still losing me.’

‘Phosphorus is a fertilizer typically used in sugar-cane production. Sugar cane, as you know, is a big business here in South Florida. US Sugar alone farms some 180,000 acres in Palm Beach, Hendry, and Glades counties. Throughout the state, various sugar companies farm over 400,000 acres. That amount of ground to cover wasn’t going to help you very much. So I thought to look for pesticides. Or I should say, I had Dr Annabelle Woods, our chief toxicologist, look for pesticides that are peculiar to sugar-cane farming. While it did require Dr Woods to bring along a pillow to the office for a couple of late nights, cane is pretty hearty and so there are not too many pesticides that are commonly used. And she found just what I was looking for. Carbofuran and cyfluthrin – two chemicals that remain present in soil for a substantial period of time after application.’

‘How substantial?’

LuAnn came back in the living room with an icepack and a towel and carefully wrapped his hand, which had started to swell.

‘Studies show it can take up to five years for either chemical to break down in histosol. The muck quality of the soil traps the chemicals, not allowing them to flush out.’

‘There you go again with the fancy words.’

‘The good news is, usage of either of these pesticides must be registered with the Environmental Protection Agency. So I checked with the EPA for you. Carbofuran, which is used to control wireworm infestations, was applied to approximately 2,000 acres of sugar-cane crops last year in the state of Florida.’

Dr Lynch just moved to the top slot of favorite MEs. ‘So Jane Doe was being held on a sugar-cane farm?’

‘Or where the run-off was for a sugar-cane plant. Finding out which 2,000 acres were treated was apparently a much more involved process for the assistant at the EPA, so you’ll have to call them yourself for that. But 2,000 acres is far better than 400,000 acres, I think.’

‘Much. You’re quite the detective, Dr Lynch.’

‘Just trying to help out. How’s your investigation going?’

Obviously, either the doctor didn’t read the papers or he was too polite to ask if the headlines bashing FDLE and its handling of the Picasso investigation were true. ‘We’re looking at a suspect in Royal Palm Beach,’ Bobby replied.

On that note, LuAnn quietly disappeared upstairs.

‘Well, you’re in the right area, I suppose. Clewiston is the headquarters of US Sugar, and that’s just west of Royal Palm on the Palm Beach–Hendry county line. I believe there are a lot of farms out there. So, where do you want me to fax this report?’

Bobby gave him his home fax and hung up. Then he called Lynch’s contact at the EPA to try and track down which farms had the chemicals carbofuran and cyfluthrin applied to them in the past five years. The doctor was right. Specific farm information required searching through certain records – some of which were in storage – by hand. Even with a priority rush, it could take days to get that information.

He looked out the window at the BSO cruiser stationed prominently in front of his house.

I can’t look at the pity faces any more – at work, on a jog, at the grocery store. I can’t look at her room any more. All I see are ghosts, Bobby
.

Belle Glade. Sugar-cane crops. US Sugar. Royal Palm Beach – where Zo said the suspect James Roller resided – was only a half-hour east of Belle Glade. It was all beginning to come together as a picture. An ugly, horrible picture.

He grabbed his car keys off the coffee table and headed out the door. Like he had promised LuAnn, he was going to finish this. He was going to bring his little girl home.

And he wasn’t going to do it sitting on his couch.