Last to Die (37 page)

The tension on the cord eased. Gerry could breathe again, hear again. The man was saying something.

Poor Gerry Colletti, he said taunting him. Tried to hard-nose negotiate his way to the prize.

Huh? he tried to say, but it was only a grunt.

If only he'd known all the deals had already been cut.

What are - he started to say, but the cord tightened around his neck, and again he was fighting for air. His knees buckled, and he would have fallen to the ground if his attacker hadn't held the cord high like a rope from a tree limb. He could feel his life slipping away as he heard the man say, See you in hell, Gerry. I hear it's one big gold mine.

Chapter
Fifty-One Homicide Detective Rick Larsen arrived at the home of Gerry Colletti just after dinnertime. It had been a comfortably cool autumn day, but temperatures were dropping with the setting sun. White short-sleeve shirts with a loosened necktie were the trademark Larsen attire, but tonight he broke down and pulled on a windbreaker, which was perfectly fine. His old buddies up in Buffalo were already trudging through eighteen inches of Thanksgiving snow.

Two squad cars were parked at the end of the driveway, blocking off traffic. The medical examiner's van was parked just inside the squad cars, and yellow police tape marked off the entire yard as a crime scene.

Larsen was technically off duty, but he'd left word to be called immediately if anything happened to any of the remaining heirs under Sally Fenning's will. With Mason Rudsky and Deirdre Meadows already in the morgue, it didn't take a genius to see a pattern developing. He'd considered putting a tail on Rios, Colletti, and Knight so that the police would be right there if anything happened to one of them. But stakeouts were expensive, and there just wasn't room in the budget for one of them, let alone three, especially when his instincts told him that the killer would probably lie low for a while until the media hoopla settled down, wait a few weeks or possibly even a few months before striking again.

In one of the few lapses in his long career, his instincts had steered him wrong.

Larsen got out of his car and walked over to the uniformed officer in charge of controlling access to the scene.

Is it who we think it is? said Larsen.

No official ID yet. But it's his house, his car, and as best I can tell the face matches the mug shot on his driver's license. If it ain't Geraldo Colletti, it's his twin brother.

Who found him? Someone driving by?

No. Garage door was closed.

Doesn't look closed. There was reproval in his tone, as if to convey his sincere hope that someone on the team wasn't in line for a severe ass kicking for having altered the crime scene.

His secretary opened it. She saw him through the window, thought he might still be alive, so she opened the door.

His secretary?

He missed eleven scheduled appointments for the day, didn't answer his beeper or his cell phone. By late afternoon she was getting pretty worried, drove over. Found him there in the garage.

Larsen looked up the long driveway of Chicago brick. The forensic team was at work in the area around the garage opening, and the assistant medical examiner was tending to the body.

His secretary still here?

In the squad car. I took her statement, but she's too shook up to drive home.

Ask her to stick around, okay? I may want to talk to her. He gave him a wink and a slap on the shoulder, then started up the driveway toward the garage.

A gust of wind stirred up some fallen mango leaves, sent them swirling past the opening. It was a northeast wind, the kind of wind that ushered in those awful cold fronts that could send late November temperatures plummeting all the way down into the fifties or even forties. Larsen actually liked a little nip in the air, though he sympathized with the poor slobs who were spending two months' salary to walk around Miami Beach dressed in winter coats. He was a sympathetic guy, or so people told him. Took every homicide personally, showed real compassion to the families and the victims. Even when the victim was an asshole lawyer.

Gerry Colletti, he said to no one in particular as he stopped at the entrance to the garage.

The cord was still around the victim's neck. His bloody hands were still trapped beneath the hood, his limp body draped over the front of the car like a hapless deer that someone had nailed while barreling down the highway at sixty miles per hour. Larsen focused on the hands and said, Ouch.

No kidding, said the examiner. He was on his knees, taking measurements. Man, I remember when I was twelve, my sister slammed the piano key cover on my fingers.

Has to hurt bad.

Shit yeah. Of course, ligature strangulation with a fifty-pound picture-hanging wire has a way of taking your mind off your fingers.

That our cause of death?

Take a look for yourself. Cord's still around his neck, and I don't think it was planted there to throw us off. We got bleeding sites in the mucosa of the lips, inside the mouth and eyelids. Face and neck congested and dark red. All consistent with strangulation.

I guess we can rule out suicide.

I'd say so. The bruising pattern on the neck is a horizontal straight line, he said, indicating. With a suicidal hanging you find the more vertical, inverted V-shaped bruise. Suicide by straight strangulation is pretty rare.

Especially with your hands trapped beneath a car hood.

Good point, Columbo.

A guy inside the garage climbed down from a ladder. It was Larsen's young partner. Rick, have a look at this.

The ladder was right beside the car by the passenger door. Larsen climbed up to the fourth step, high enough to get his head between the ceiling and the suspended garage door in its rolled-back position. The access panel had been pushed aside, and Larsen shined his penlight through the opening to the attic. Point of entry, he said.

Looks that way, his partner said.

Larsen spoke as he climbed down the ladder, the scene unfolding in his mind. Perp hides in the attic. Hears the garage door opening. Slides the access panel away while the garage door opener is clanging away. Colletti never hears a thing. Can't see a thing either, because the opened garage door hides the hole. Perp climbs out, waits for Colletti to come around to the front of the car, pounces on him.

Why are his hands beneath the hood?

Perp took care of that. Car doesn't start. I'll bet the keys are still in the ignition. Larsen peered through the passenger side window and answered his own question. Yup.

The medical examiner rose from the garage floor and said, Hey, Columbo, look at this.

Larsen grumbled as he walked to the front of the car, wishing he'd stop calling him Columbo. What?

The examiner held a magnifying glass over the victim's left shoulder blade. Looks like we got a dried stain here.

Blood?

Nah. Dried blood on a tan suit would be your basic brown. All we have here that's visible to the naked eye is the outer ring of the stain.

What does that tell you?

It's a silk-blend suit. You ever dropped water on silk, like a tie or something?

Larsen screwed up his face and said, A silk tie? I don't think so. But I did accidentally piss on a pair of polyester pants once.

Be glad it wasn't silk. Water will stain silk. Leaves a ring just like this.

You're saying this is water?

Something with a high water content that dries relatively clear, but not water. He raised an eyebrow to give added weight to his words and said, Semen, maybe.

Larsen's partner chuckled. What? You think he strangled this guy and then whacked off over his work?

Larsen and the examiner were deadpan, as if they'd seen stranger things. Then Larsen took another look at the body, the mangled hands trapped beneath the hood, the bruises around the neck - bruises that reflected the use of far more force than was necessary to choke the life out of the victim. Got a lot of rage here, contempt for the victim.

Which is consistent with a guy who does this to get his rocks off. Literally.

Larsen shook his head and said, I don't think it's semen.

Lab will tell for sure.

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts it's saliva.

Saliva?

Larsen nodded slowly, absorbing the scene, watching more of the crime unfold in his mind's eye. Like I said, we got real contempt here. Something personal. Killing him wasn't enough. He took one last look at this pathetic heap hanging from the front end of his eighty-thousand-dollar BMW, dredged up every ounce of hatred in the back of his throat, and then let it fly.

He spat on him?

Yeah, he said as a dreamy smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Thank our lucky stars. He spat on him.

Chapter
Fifty-Two They want you to submit a DNA specimen for testing, said Jack.

Tatum wiped the beer-foam mustache from his lip, silent, as if his lawyer needed to say more before a response was merited.

A restaurant wasn't Jack's first choice of venue, but Tatum lived in north Miami Beach, and he'd groaned like a sick water buffalo about driving all the way to Coral Gables for a meeting with his lawyer. So Jack had suggested they meet for lunch at Gusto, a Cuban restaurant near the Lincoln Road area. The service was friendly and the food was good, perfect for a first date or a leisurely dinner with friends. But the colorful stories that came with the meal seemed downright goofy when the basic objective was to get your client to give up bodily fluids.

The waiter placed Jack's medium-rare palomilla steak before him, then slid the house specialty in front of Tatum and said, El balsero for you, seA+-or.

What the hell's this? he asked. I thought I ordered regular old shrimp.

Jack said, The special has shrimp in it. El balsero, they call it. It means the rafter,' I think.

SA, sA. The rafter. The waiter smiled proudly, and Jack smiled back, though somewhat bewildered. Jack had clients, friends, and even relatives who had actually come to Miami by raft, so he wasn't quite sure what the politically correct reaction was to a dish called the rafter. But this was a Cuban restaurant, the waiter was more Cuban than he was, and a nostalgic mural of Havana Harbor was painted on the wall, so he just kept smiling.

Tatum was staring at his plate.

El balsero, the waiter explained, was the personal creation of a talented chef with a quirky sense of humor and, arguably, too much time on his hands. The banana-shaped raft was made from the hollowed-out shell of a plantain so lengthy that Freud would have had a psychological feast. The rafters inside were six stuffed shrimp tail-up and held fast by a tomato enchilada sauce. Thin french fries on either side of the raft were, naturally, the paddles.

Looks more like a gondola than a raft, said Tatum.

I was thinking a canoe, said Jack. Say, Lewis and Clark paddling down a river of mojo sauce.

Ah, the waiter said with a wide smile of recognition. Sooper Mahn.

No, no, not Superman. That's Lois and Clark. I'm talking about the nineteenth-century explorers - you know, Lewis, Clark, Sacajawea?

The waiter just shrugged, lost. Jack considered trying to explain it in his stilted Spanish, then decided against it, figuring that although he wasn't exactly ahead, he might as well quit while he wasn't quite so far behind. Never mind. Gracias por la comida, he said, thanking him for the food.

De nada, he replied. You're welcome.

Jack sprinkled chopped onions and parsley on his palomilla steak, poured the black beans over his white rice and added a little hot sauce, just the way he liked it. When he looked up, Tatum's shrimp were gone.

Pretty damn good, Tatum said. Lois was especially tasty.

Lewis, he said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand.

Tatum sat back, seeming to have had his fill of shrimp passengers and small talk. He looked at Jack and said, Tell me why I should give Larsen my DNA.

To get a swarming pack of homicide detectives off your back.

They think I killed Colletti, he said, more a statement than a question.

Of course they do.

I didn't.

I know. Theo told me you two were out on his boat fishing last night. Didn't get home till this morning.

Tatum took another long drink from his tall glass of beer. Did you tell the cops that?

Yes.

And they still want my DNA?

Larsen doesn't put much stock in an alibi that can be corroborated only by your brother. Frankly, I don't blame him.

Tatum leaned into the table and said, Is it that you don't blame him? Or do you think Theo's lying for me, too?

Jack looked away, not sure how to answer. Where are the fish, Tatum?

They weren't biting, he said flatly.

Not a single one all night long, huh?

Fishermen come home empty-handed all the time. Theo even made a joke on the boat ride home, how it's like Jack always says, this is why they call it fishin' and not -

Catchin', I know, I know. Look, the bottom line is, your alibi isn't going to fly all by its lonesome. I talked face-to-face with Larsen this morning. I'm not saying they're going to come out and arrest you tonight, tomorrow, or the next day. But the heat is on. I'm fielding calls from the cops, Miguel's lawyer, lawyers for the dead heirs, the press. I'm starting to feel more like a juggler than a lawyer. Larsen's offering us a scientific way to exonerate yourself before we drop all the balls and he comes to slap the cuffs on your wrists.