Jilliane Hoffman (37 page)

88

He tossed the jars of what he hoped were just preserves on the floor and felt his way along the back of the pantry. Bobby was never really a religious man, but he prayed now as his fingers felt for any opening, any crack, any mystery panel. He got down on his knees and felt along the floor. There was no more time. He could hear the faint voice, yelling below him somewhere. Yelling for help.

‘Please God, let me find her!’ he screamed out loud. ‘Don’t let it end this way! It can’t end this way!’

Whether it was Divine Intervention or just plain luck that led his fingers to the dent in the floor, he couldn’t say. But he wasn’t taking anything for granted. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you, God …’ as he pulled up the floorboard. It was a trap door. He looked down into the pitch black. The stink of mildew and decay overwhelmed even the acrid smoke. It smelled like death.

‘Are you still there? Officer? Sir?’

The voice was still a little far off, but it was definitely down there. He slid feet first into the opening, not knowing how deep the drop was or what might be waiting down there in the darkness for him. All he heard were the whimperings of a child and he knew he had to go.

He landed on his feet on hard dirt, rolling off to the side, his shoulder hitting against a wooden piling. He was underneath the house. He looked around. A pull-down staircase was mounted on the ceiling next to the trap-door opening. Small orange light bulbs were strung up on electric wires and tacked sporadically along sheet-rocked walls that wound like a maze off into the darkness. Tunnels. Someone had built tunnels down here. Jesus Christ …

Bobby felt his way along the wall, in the smoky, dimly lit haze, ducking as he moved forward because the ceiling height dropped. There were too many offshoots, too many turns. How many rooms were down here?

Then he heard the scream that made his heart stop and he raced forward into the black claustrophobic maze, praying once again for a miracle to guide him to the right place.

89

Lainey screamed.

‘Can you see me now?’ The Devil asked, his sweaty fingers crawling over her face, pulling it closer to his own. ‘Take a good look now. I am eyes to the blind and feet to the lame …’

Bobby raised the muzzle to the back of Mark Felding’s head. ‘Move away from her,’ he commanded. The ceiling in the cramped, cave-like room was very low. In some places it sloped even lower than six feet, where the first floor above had sunk and settled.

‘Or you’ll do what?’ came the controlled, but excited response.

‘I won’t ask a second time.’

‘Sure you will. Because you want to know what I’ve done with your daughter.’

Bobby moved the muzzle down and fired a single shot into Felding’s shoulder at point-blank range. The reporter yelped in both pain and surprise as bone and muscle exploded. He fell back on to the floor, grabbing his spurting arm, rolling in pain on the dirt.

‘No, I won’t,’ Bobby replied. The small figure on the floor held her arms over her head and screamed. Felding tried to get back up, but Bobby pushed him against a cement wall, placing himself between the reporter and the girl. Metal chains rattled like wind chimes. Felding slammed his head into a low beam with a thud.

‘Stay down,’ Bobby commanded Lainey. ‘And keep your head covered.’ Then he turned his attention back to the animal against the wall. ‘Where is she?’

Felding squealed.

Bobby raised his Glock again and fired another shot into Felding’s other shoulder. ‘I told you, I won’t ask twice.’

The reporter flopped about like a fish out of water, howling in pain, bouncing on and off the wall and back and forth into the beam. ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’ he screamed.

The wail of sirens was fast approaching. The fire department was finally here.

‘Where’s my daughter?’ Bobby demanded.

‘You mean sweet baby Katy?’ Felding cackled, finally collapsing against the wall, his body wrapped in chains. ‘The little girl you never did bring home, did you, Daddy?’

Bobby fired again. This time he took out a knee. ‘I’m running out of body parts. Where is she?’

‘He took her!’ cried Lainey in a small, trembling voice. ‘He took Katy!’

The wood walls above them suddenly creaked with a huge heaving sigh, followed by a thunderous crash. The attic had just collapsed. The single-bulb ceiling fixtures that had dimly lit the maze of tunnels in the crawl-space flickered and went out. It was now pitch-black.

‘Ask me another question,’ Felding croaked in the darkness. Bobby could hear him squirming and writhing on the floor. ‘Anything. Ask me anything. G’head! Ask me!’

‘Come on, up! Let’s go, honey!’ Bobby holstered the Glock, reached down and picked the small girl up in his arms. She wrapped her arms in a death grip around his neck and buried her face in his chest.

‘I’m Lainey,’ she said softly.

‘I know. I’ve been looking for you,’ Bobby replied.

‘Looks like you’re out of time, Super Special Agent Dees,’ Felding mumbled in the dark.

‘Not yet,’ Bobby answered as he felt his way back along the wall. He remembered to duck when he went inside the four-foot-tall tunnel that led back to the trap door and a pulldown staircase. ‘But you are. Welcome to hell,’ he called out behind him. ‘Hope it’s hot enough for you.’

90

He wanted to turn back. He wanted to check every inch of the sprawling, damp, mildewed crawl space that Felding had outfitted into a dungeon. He knew there were more rooms. More secrets. More victims.

But there was no more time.

Where the wall finally ended, he reached up, felt around for the rope, and pulled down the staircase. With Lainey still in his arms, he scrambled up the steps that led back to the pull-out pantry. He could see through the 12 × 12 square floor cut-out above that there was still a kitchen. The second floor had yet to fall on the first. He had only seconds.

He pushed Lainey up and out first. ‘Go to the window! Hurry!’ he yelled. It was impossible to breathe.

‘I can’t see!’ she screamed.

Neither could he. The smoke was black, the heat intense. He climbed out behind her and grabbed her hand in his. He pushed her down. ‘Close to the floor! Follow me!’ On his hands and knees, he worked his way like a soldier to the back of the house, dragging Lainey along behind him. In the breakfast nook area off the kitchen he had seen a bay window. He reached out in front of him into the blackness and felt glass.

‘Jesus!’ a fireman at the window yelled. ‘Back! Get back!’ he commanded, breaking out the window with his axe. Glass rained down on Bobby’s head, followed by a deafening whoosh as more oxygen rushed in and smoke poured out.

‘Get them out!’ yelled another firefighter from somewhere. Bobby saw a figure waving at him to come on. To hurry. The firefighter at the window reached through the shattered glass and plucked Lainey’s limp body from Bobby’s hands. It took everything to just get to his knees. Then hands reached in and pulled him out, too.

Two more firefighters rushed up. One grabbed Bobby, the other Lainey. Slinging their bodies over their shoulders like rag dolls, they carried them through the thick cane fields to the front of the house. Fire trucks were everywhere, it seemed. The evening sky was awash in red and blue lights.

And bright orange flames.

Bobby looked back one more time at the inferno that lit up the night. All around it, rustling rows of sugar cane whispered and gossiped excitedly in the gusty breeze. The storm that Bobby had thought was headed this way was finally here. Lightning bolts crackled, zig-zagging haphazardly in the not-so-far distance.

He took her! He took Katy!

Bobby closed his eyes just as the House of Horrors collapsed in on itself.

91

‘How you feeling there, Shep?’

Zo Dias stood over his hospital bed in a charcoal gray suit and black silk tie, a bouquet of flowers in his oversized hands. It was such a surreal sight, Bobby thought for a second he must have died. He wanted to snap off a witty comeback, but talking would be way too painful – even with all the drugs they had him on. He’d just been taken off the ventilator last night and moved from the Burn Intensive Care Unit. All he could do was nod.

‘Gotta love this, LuAnn.’ Zo laughed. ‘He can’t talk. Isn’t that a wife’s wish come true?’

LuAnn took the flowers and moved to the nightstand to put them in one of the extra plastic pitchers the nurses had brought over. The room was filled with flower baskets, plants, and balloons – more than one of which already had Zo’s name on it. ‘I think that’s a husband’s fantasy, Zo,’ LuAnn returned with a slow, tired smile. ‘We want our men to talk more. Tell us what’s on their mind. You need to watch
Oprah.’

‘Hmmm … so yapping more will make Camilla happy? I always thought she meant it when she told me to shut up.’ He pulled up a chair next to the bed and his face grew serious. ‘You are one lucky son-of-a-bitch, let me tell you. You should be dead, pal.’

LuAnn reached over and clutched his hand. Bobby squeezed it back. ‘Another minute in that place and he would have been,’ LuAnn said, her voice cracking.

‘How long before you can start back jogging?’

‘The doctor says his lungs were pretty bad,’ she answered. ‘He took in a lot of carbon monoxide, too. No marathons for a while, that’s for sure.’

‘Speaking of should be dead but isn’t, so is that little girl you saved. I think she’s getting released from Joe DiMaggio tomorrow.’ Joe DiMaggio was the children’s hospital in Broward County that Lainey had been airlifted to for severe smoke inhalation. ‘I had Larry and Ciro go talk to her yesterday. It’ll take years to get over what she went through. When you’re feeling up to it, she wants to see you again.’

Bobby nodded.

‘Thought you’d want to know her crazy mom says thanks. Don’t get too excited, though. Before you can say “You’re welcome,” she’ll probably follow that up with a loss of consortium lawsuit because her pedophile husband’s going upstate for the next twenty years. LaManna’s taking the plea on Friday, and that doesn’t include any charges that are coming from messing with his stepdaughters.’

‘Bastard,’ LuAnn said.

Bobby nodded. ‘Felding?’ he mouthed.

Zo paused. ‘We pulled two bodies out of the ashes. Felding’s dentals matched the one found in the basement. The other was found in what the Fire Inspector tells us was once the dining or living room. It was a female. ME says the cause of death wasn’t smoke inhalation – it was the buckshot that filled her head. We found the melted remains of a Winchester 12 gauge under her body.’

‘Who?’ Bobby mouthed.

Zo didn’t answer.

‘Who is she?’ Bobby mouthed again.

‘We don’t know yet,’ he said finally.

‘Katy?’ Bobby managed to whisper.

‘Get me her dentals,’ Zo quietly replied.

LuAnn sucked in a sniffle and closed her eyes. ‘I’ll have her orthodontist send them to the Medical Examiner,’ she said with a nod. ‘I’ll do it.’

Painful silence filled the room for too long.

‘What else?’ Bobby mouthed.

‘What else? OK, while you were snoozing the past couple of days, the rest of us have been working. You were right. The house on Sugarland was owned by Felding’s grandmother, Mildred Bolger. She died twenty years ago in a farming accident. The house then went to his mom, Loretta Felding, who lived there before she went nuts and died in a nursing home in 2003. When she passed, it went to Felding, her only child. The last time it was used as a B & B, according to the locals, was in 1990, almost nineteen years ago. Local gossip has it that for the seven years before Mama Felding went into the nursing home, no one actually stayed there, though. Not a single solitary soul. But the signs stayed up. Talk about creepy.

‘Some of what Felding shared about his life was true. We talked to his ex out in LA. She was real. The daughter shit was a lie. They had no kids. Wife knew about the Belle Glade home. She said that years ago Felding’s crazy mom had talked about restoring it to a B & B and hosting murder-mystery parties there. She thought the old lady was nuts then, because she had been to Belle Glade once and, like most visitors, never ever wanted to go back. Then her and psycho divorced and she didn’t talk to him about the house again. In fact she never talked to him about anything again because, lucky for her, he dropped out of her life and out of sight. Felding’s life in a nutshell: Crazy, possessive Mom. Social loner. Met wife working at a Friendly’s in Fresno. Went to some BS broadcasting school in LA. Tried to be a success for a few years out West, both in LA and San Fran, flopping around from network to network mostly bringing coffee to the cameramen. Got a few gigs, but none lasted. Two years ago, he pulled up stakes and showed up here in Miami. We’ve found a string of teenage disappearances that look a lot like ours happening in and around San Fran about the time he was reporting there for CBS5. In fact, turns out he interviewed the moms of two of the missing girls, just like he interviewed Debbie Emerson and Gloria Leto. We’re getting those tapes as we speak.’

‘That’s sick,’ LuAnn said quietly. She clenched Bobby’s hand tighter.

‘Pretty warped, is right. Gets his jollies off on asking the mothers of the kids he’s whacked how they feel. He’s a psychopath – he
was
a psychopath – if ever I’ve seen one. And a narcissist, too. But that is maybe the one thing we have going for us. He did not attempt to contact you when Katy first went missing. Her disappearance made local headlines, even national ones, if you consider an update in
People
national news. Felding could have definitely exploited that, both to move forward in his career and to feed his sick fantasy, but he didn’t. So if the body we found in the dining room isn’t Katy’s …’ Zo shrugged before continuing. ‘Well, maybe he never had her. We’ve got cadaver dogs out working on the Sugarland property. So far, nothing, and I think that’s good, too.’

‘But what about Ray Coon? The picture he sent me?’ LuAnn asked.

‘Well, that’s interesting because we matched the .44 caliber slug found in Ray’s head to the Magnum used in a home invasion in Lake Worth last week. Suspect in that, a Trino Calderon, gave it up yesterday to PBSO robbery detectives. The meeting in the park in Belle Glade in November was a drug buy. Ray tried to stiff him on an ounce of heroin and Calderon wasn’t having it. Calderon claims he never met Felding, didn’t know him from Adam. Looks like Felding maybe spotted the blurb about Ray’s murder in the
Palm Beach Post
, thought about you, Bobby, and decided to take the opportunity to freak you and LuAnn out. For some reason that we will never know, Mark Felding was obsessed with you. Maybe like that profiler said, he felt you were a challenge. But as far as we can tell, the fact that Ray was offed in Belle Glade was a matter of pure coincidence. Some of Ray’s Mafia Boy homeys live up near Glades Correctional. He was probably crashing with them, running his drugs closer to his peeps.’

‘And Katy?’ LuAnn asked bitterly. ‘If Ray was back in town, living with friends in Belle Glade, what happened to her?’

Zo shrugged. ‘No answer for ya, Lu. I wish I did.’

The painful silence was back again.

‘What about that sex offender who you thought was Picasso?’ LuAnn asked finally.

‘Roller? Yeah, he had me all, right,’ Zo replied with a laugh. ‘Perfect background for it, including the young victim and a stint as a teen working in an art store. But coincidences being what they are, it looks like Roller was just eyeing the undercover in the tight clothes ’cause he thought she was cute. He never actually called himself Captain or her Janizz or mentioned their online chat. What he was gonna do with Natalie once he got her in the car is anyone’s guess – maybe he just thought he’d score easy, maybe, given his background, it was more sinister. But we’re thinking that Roller was just in the wrong place doing the wrong thing and running from us at the wrong time. From what Ciro has learned, the guy was selling dope to get by. Might have had some samples in the car and knew that, if he was stopped, he’d be going back to prison on a parole violation. That’s why he ran. We never found nothing else that would link him to either Felding or support the theory that he was The Captain. Felding was Picasso. Felding was The Captain. Felding was ElCapitan, and Felding was Zach Cusano.’

‘Could they have been acting together?’ LuAnn asked.

Zo chuckled. ‘You should’ve been a cop, Lu. Maybe it’s been you whispering how to work cases in Bobby’s ear all these years, and he’s just been taking all the credit. Listen, if Roller and Felding were in it together, then that’s a secret the two of them just took to their graves. Lainey Emerson is saying that, as far as she could tell, there was only one captor, but she couldn’t see who that captor was, so take that for what it’s worth. Now, I’d better go. I still have to get through the third degree with Camilla about my visit with you today, and my throat is already hurting from talking too much.’

Bobby nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

‘Please. Stop. It’s painful. You’re welcome.’ Zo rose to leave. ‘I’m leaving before this becomes a Hallmark and we all cry. Oh, and another thing. Veso still owes me for the group flowers, but he’s headed back up to Pensacola. Your job’s still yours whenever you get back. Even Foxx has had a change of heart – thanks, I’m sure to the barrage of “Save Bobby Dees’ Ass from Forced Early Retirement” phone calls his office has been flooded with. I personally called twice,’ he added with a wink as he kissed LuAnn and headed for the door. ‘So when the docs here say you’re not full of hot air any more, Shep, we’ll all be waiting on you to come back.’