Miami, It's Murder (22 page)

I took Fred Douglas up on his offer of a day off and curled up with Bitsy and Billy Boots for another nap. I awoke again at midmorning, refreshed and glad to be alive. I returned calls from Lottie, Onnie, my mother, Aunt Odalys, and several other friends, assured them I was fine, and resisted offers of company. I just wanted to be alone today. I put the leash on Bitsy and took her out.

“You nearly had to find another owner,” I told her, scooping her up and hugging her as we ended our walk.

I mourned Francie, and my heart went out to Dan. The day was so beautiful, the sky so blue. I saw it all with renewed appreciation. How can anyone bear to leave this life? I thought. It touched me that Dan, with all that he faced, had worried about me. I vowed to be a better and more caring friend.

By the time I arrived at the office the next morning I felt almost as good as new. An arrangement of snapdragons and birds of paradise adorned my desk. They were not from McDonald.
Hope you're okay
, the note said.
Don't forget the full moon. Curt
.

Janowitz was still gathering information about Hector Ugalde, who had been denied bond. The man had prior arrests on attempted rape charges in Union City, New Jersey, where he had lived for a time. In fact, he was still wanted there for jumping bond.

His court-ordered psychiatric evaluation by a New Jersey shrink had disclosed that when Ugalde was a toddler, back in Havana, his mother, who made a living before the revolution performing in live sex shows, refused to cut his hair and often dressed him in little girl's clothes as punishment. The mother was promiscuous, the doctor had written in his report, and behaved in a seductive fashion toward her son, whose job as a small boy was to powder her naked body after she had bathed.

I am naturally dubious about psychiatrists. The doctor had to have received all that information from Ugalde himself and had no way of checking it out. But it all made sense in a sick sort of way.

That afternoon I dialed Fielding's Miami law office, asked to speak to his secretary, and lied through my teeth.

“I'm calling about Mr. Fielding's dental appointment.”

“Dental appointment?” he said.

“Yes, the usual routine cleaning and checkup.”

“But he just saw Dr. Wiseman ten days ago, last time he was in Miami. I don't understand. He's campaigning throughout the state, you know.”

“Hummm,” I said. “There must be some mistake in our records.”

There was only one Dr. Wiseman in the book.

“So you're the one responsible for the candidate's beautiful smile,” I gushed, after announcing that I was researching a story on Fielding, which was true. “Or did he inherit it?”

“Let's say his dentist gave him a little help in that department,” Dr. Wiseman said.

Two years ago, he told me, the candidate had had his teeth capped.

Back to square one, back out on the beat, haunted by something not yet over.

I stashed the Mary Beth Rafferty clips in my desk instead of returning them to the library, intending to pore over them one more time, line by line. But Miami and my beat were hectic. Stories were becoming stranger, as they always do in our sizzling summer, the meanest of seasons.

Walking catfish were migrating across suburban roads near the water. Jellyfish that ordinarily invade South Florida in late winter were showing up by the hundred, schools of shimmery blue bubbles riding the surf. Something indefinable and troubling was in the air, as though all was not right with Mother Nature.

A hard-rock radio station promoted a treasure hunt, hiding a thousand-dollar cash jackpot in a telephone booth and tantalizing listeners with clues. The mass hunt reached its height when motorists careened into a three-car pileup near the wrong booth. A mini-riot followed a traffic jam at the right one as fistfights broke out. The most seriously injured was an innocent bystander who merely wanted to use the telephone.

The Rio Theater, a downtown movie house catering to economically deprived teenagers, made news because of its rats. Unfortunately they surfaced during a horror film. Suspense mounted as the movie unfolded. As the audience held its breath, a teenage girl relaxed her grip on her half-eaten sausage hero. As tension heightened to a horrifying climax on the big screen, a huge rat boldly grabbed the sandwich. She hung on, screeching, “It's got me! It's got me!” They engaged in a tug-of-war as five hundred screaming kids stampeded out of the dark theater into the light.

Most of the injuries were minor, but there were many.

Next morning I picked up a couple of salt bagels loaded with cream cheese, went to the office, and took them back to photo, where Lottie plugged in the kettle.

“You are a bad influence on me, Britt,” she complained, biting into her bagel, then sighing in contentment. “Umm,” she said. “You remembered to get the cream cheese with chives.”

Since Hector Ugalde had dominated our conversation lately, I had never really filled her in on my cruise with Curt Norske. I shared with her his fanciful version of Miami history and his invitation to a moonlight cruise.

“You're gonna go, right?”

“I don't know,” I said doubtfully, spooning instant coffee into a mug, then filling it with steamy water.

She rolled her eyes. “That's one I wouldn't miss. A cruise to nowhere with Captain Curt?”

I shrugged. “McDonald says he looks like an icecream salesman.”

“What would you expect him to say? He done you dirt, he's playing kissy face with another cop, but it still spoils his day to see you happy with anybody else. Imagine, cruising the bay alone, under a full moon.”

“I don't know,” I said dispiritedly. “McDonald was super, just wonderful, there when I needed him. And the full moon, that's when my beat is usually the busiest.”

“Britt”—she squinted into my eyes with a searching look—“are you crazy? What good is a man who only shows up when you're more dead than alive? We need to get you a blood test and see if any is getting to your brain.”

A bleating sound came over the intercom from the city desk: Gretchen's voice. She was attempting to transmit a photo to the Broward bureau and needed help. Lottie sighed and stood up. “I swear that woman wouldn't know enough to pour piss out of a boot with a hole in the toe and directions on the heel! Be back in a minute.” She picked up what was left of her bagel and stalked off.

I sat eating and sipping coffee, then casually reached over and pulled two catalogs from a pocket of the outsize camera bag Lottie carries instead of a purse.
Victoria's Secret of London
. I idly thumbed through the slick colorful pages of lacy lingerie and slinky fashions modeled by beautiful long-legged women.

One posed provocatively, lips apart, one hand languidly pushing back her lush mane of sun-streaked hair, the other resting on her hip. The red stretch-lace teddy she wore was whispery soft, with ribbon and faux pearl trim, according to the copy.

I stared at it for a long moment and knew what was wrong, what I'd been denying, even in my dreams. Queasy, I wiped the cream cheese with chives from my mouth and stood up.

Lottie reappeared. “I feel fat enough to kill,” she gloated. “But that was s-o-o-o good.” She saw my face. “What's the matter, Britt? You sick?”

“I'll be back later,” I whispered, and fled to my desk. I dug through the notes and printouts in the bottom drawer of my desk until I found them: Steiner, Creech, Farrington. I read them all, a hollow place in my heart, then dug through other stories, wondering. Could it be?

What had Detective Diaz said? “There are no coincidences in homicide cases.”

Half-formed fears took shape in my mind as I hurried back to Lottie. She was in the darkroom. I stepped into the circular door, grasped the side grips, and revolved onto the dark side.

Working at the far end of a row of enlargers, she was illuminated by the eerie orange glow of the safe-light. Music came from her tape player, plugged in in a corner: “Mean Mistreatin' Momma,” sung by funky blues guitarist Elmore James.

“Lottie, I think something terrible has happened.”

“I know, I know.” She turned to the bank of sinks across the center of the room. “I ate the rest of your bagel. Didn't know when you were coming back and didn't want it to go to waste.”

“I'm serious.” The pungent acid smell of the fixer in one of the three big trays over the sinks churned my stomach. Water ran constantly in the darkroom and the dryer was humming. I stepped closer to where she was working.

“You thinking about Ugalde? He spooking you?”

“Worse,” I said. The Downtown Rapist was scary, but he was a stranger, not someone I knew and trusted. “Do you think it's possible for someone who spent a lifetime on the right side of the law to suddenly become a killer?”

“You talking about Gretchen?”

“Lottie, I'm serious!”

“I am too!” She stamped her foot for emphasis. I moved closer as images emerged on the rosin-coated papers in the tray, slices of Miami rising magically through the developer. Old men playing dominoes in the park, young Cubans at an Alfa 66 training camp in the Everglades, squatters camping in Bayfront Park. She used tongs to transfer prints from the developer to the fixer. “Shit,” she cried, stepping back and examining her turned-up shirt sleeve. “I splashed developer on my good shirt; that Dektol'll never come out.”

“It's Dan,” I said. “A crazy coincidence.”

She turned toward me in the semidarkness.

“You know how he eats, drinks, and sleeps old cases?”

“Like an old pit bull, never turns 'em loose.” She nodded, returning her attention to the prints in the tray.

“Remember Farrington, the old homicide suspect who poured concrete over his wife years ago and now somebody has poured concrete over him?”

“Right, a genuine example of poetic justice.” She slid a print from the fixer into the wash.

“Exactly. Looking through your
Victoria's Secret
catalog reminded me of Creech, the guy in that sexual asphyxia death. His death was supposedly accidental. Sex-related. He was another old suspect—in the murder of his teenage niece. Sex-related.

“Dieter Steiner, Dan's old homicide suspect. Should have been electrocuted but beat it on a technicality and went home—and got electrocuted. Accidentally.”

Lottie stopped what she was doing. “Hell-all-Friday,” she murmured. “Lotta poetic justice going around. Any others?”

“I don't know.”

“You think somebody's offing bad guys like an avenging angel?” Her voice dropped. “Dan?”

“The man's a teddy bear,” I said. “I introduced him to my mom. He's kind to kids and old ladies.” The room seemed cold and dank and I shivered, wishing I had a sweater. “I saw him pull over once on the expressway while he was working, to rescue a box turtle that was crossing in traffic.”

“These people dying ain't innocent kids or helpless animals or old ladies, Britt. He knows they're cold-blooded killers.”

“He's spent a lifetime upholding the law,” I whispered.

“Look what it got him.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “We know about the thin line that separates good guys from bad. Maybe he's crossed.” Her face glowed in the orange light.

“Dan would never … though he
has
changed since he left the department.” I was thinking aloud. “His health is failing, his family gone, yet recently he sounds intense, like somebody with a purpose.”

“He's dying, nothing left to live for except justice, which has failed him. Maybe he's a man on a mission.”

We listened to water run and the dryer hum for a few moments. Elmore James began to sing “I Got a Right to Love My Baby.”

“Who better to make a murder look accidental than somebody who has investigated them for thirty years?” she said.

“It's so crazy.” I fought guilt pangs brought on by my own disloyal thoughts.

“Think anybody else is on to him?”

“I doubt it. We don't even know it's true. It can't be. What the hell should I do?”

“Same thing you always do when you have a hunch or a suspicion. Investigate. Why don't you ask him? You always said he never lied to you.”

“Sure.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “But I never asked if he'd committed a crime. The man's heart has attacked him and he's been through hell. He trusts me. What do I do if he tells me things I don't want to hear?”

Lottie shook her head, as though surprised by the question. “What you always do, Britt. You write the story.”

“Write about Dan?”

“If it's true, somebody will. Better you than some stranger who doesn't know him. At least you care.”

“We're probably wrong, you know.”

“If we are, you'll find out. I've always thought your hunches were pretty good.” She placed a wet print on the dryer belt. Rollers carried it slowly into the heating element and hot air was forced over it. The finished print emerged on the other side seconds later, clean and dry.

Lottie and I often debate who has the more difficult job. Now I know, I thought as I left. Photography is simpler. There are no questions. Pictures don't lie.

I walked out of the newsroom without saying where I was going. I wasn't sure myself. What I wanted to do was simply aim the T-Bird west, straight across the Everglades, to the Gulf of Mexico. Why did Florida's gentler coast suddenly beckon? My last trip there was with Kendall McDonald, when we escaped the escalating tensions of our jobs to flee west together for an idyllic week of white sand beaches and warm waters. That was before our relationship and the city had exploded.

I parked at a secret place where I often go to think or recharge my batteries when truth, crime, and the city overwhelm. Mine was the only car parked at this small Beach playground facing the bay and a western vista of silver water, shimmering skyline, and endless cobalt sky.

I gathered my thoughts. This would be the first time I undertook an investigative piece hoping to be wrong, hoping there was no story.

That would be best. Then Dan would never suspect the friend he trusted was investigating him like he was some money-laundering banker, corrupt public official—or cop gone bad.

I would approach Dan last. Never tip the target until all your ducks are in a row. Build your case, then confront the subject to ask for his side. Journalism 101.

With any luck, I would find nothing and it wouldn't go that far.

A battered green Buick pulled up and parked nearby. The driver was alone and glanced in my direction. He nodded. My Aunt Odalys's “spirits” had warned that I was too trusting. What a laugh, I thought. My response to the stranger was make sure my doors were locked and then turn the key in the ignition.

The truth is that I am too suspicious, excellent for a reporter, a lousy quality in a friend. Oddly, though the danger was past, I was still wearing my beads and the
resguardo.
Habit or security blanket? I wondered.

I drove back to the paper and began building a file. Luckily Tubbs was in the slot and too busy to demand a full explanation when I murmured in passing that I had a lead on something I wanted to dig into.

My first stop was the medical examiner's office. The chief was out but Dr. Duffy was in.

I sat in front of his cluttered desk. “I'm curious about the Farrington case,” I told him.

He shook his head, removed his glasses, and polished the lenses, his expression expectant though slightly wary.

“So is everybody else,” he said, indicating the messages stacked on his desk. “It's captured a lot of attention. But you know, Britt, I must refer you to the homicide detective in any open case.”

“I've already talked to Diaz about the investigation,” I said casually. “What people want to know is how the heck you freed that body. Had to be a huge job.”

“True,” he said. “Murder seems to run in cycles. Ever notice how sometimes we keep finding them in shallow graves? Another time it may be car trunks, or the Bay, or dumped out in the 'Glades. Hope this one doesn't start a trend.”

“I guess it was impossible to find anything in there. Too bad. What if it really was a suicide and the man had a gun and a suicide note? It'll never be found.”

He stood up. “Let me show you something, Britt.” I followed, and we walked down the hall to a locked room in the investigative section.

Duffy deactivated the security buzzer that signals when the door is opened, stepped inside, and removed a cardboard carton from a shelf. He carried it out and placed it on the shiny counter. It contained encrusted empty pop bottles; what looked like a half-eaten sandwich; a Coke can; cigarette, cookie, and chewing gum wrappers; two empty matchbooks; nails; a cigar butt; bits of wood; a broken hammer—all wearing remnants of concrete and mixed with little pieces of rock.

“What is this stuff?”

“Workers at building sites dispose of trash by tossing it into the forms before a pour.” He shrugged. “None of it will ever be seen again. At least not in most cases.” He sighed. “I ruined a perfectly good bone chisel. We had to drill holes to weaken the concrete so it would break away gently when tapped with the little stainless steel hammers used in surgery.”

I studied the junk in the carton. “Think any of it might belong to the killer?”

“Doubtful, but Diaz plans to take it out to the site and see how much of this stuff the crew can account for.”

With the box was a clear self-locking plastic bag sealed with red evidence tape: Farrington's personal effects. “Were the contents of his pockets intact?”

“Mostly. His legs were slightly bent, so his pockets opened a bit at the top. There was some cement, but it was mostly just wet.”

“Wet?”

“The water in the concrete is what makes it flow. We have the pieces that were surrounding his head,” Duffy commented. “In fact I'll be using them in a presentation at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting, in Chicago next spring. It's an excellent teaching case,” he said. “The back is even discolored, blood from the bullet wound.”

“Was it a thirty-two?” I guessed.

“No, a thirty-eight.” He seemed a bit uneasy. “You'll clear everything you use with the homicide detective first?”

“Of course,” I assured him. “Look what it did to his watch.”

The gold Rolex still gleamed on the inside where it had been next to Farrington's skin. The outside was cement coated. “Is it still running?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said.

It was hard to recognize some of the other items in the clear plastic bag. “That's his beeper,” Duffy said. “Was still clipped to his belt, along with the key ring.”

There was a cigarette lighter, a slim leather billfold, a money clip, folded cash still intact, and a pill bottle. “What medication was he on?”

“Tagamet,” Duffy said. “For a stomach condition.”

“Was he otherwise in good health?”

“Seemed to be excellent.”

I still examined the contents, shifting the sealed bag. A crumpled handkerchief—and something that made my heart catch in a painful spasm. A tiny screwtop bottle cap from a bottle of nitro pills prescribed for a heart condition. No way for a cap to tell you what's in a bottle—unless it has a small strip of bright red tape across the top.

“Where's the bottle that goes with this cap?” I asked, more stricken than I had expected to be if this moment came.

I blinked, blinded for a moment, and turned away to conceal eyes that were suddenly watery. Dan lost a daughter. I lost my dad. Now we would lose each other and he would lose everything.

“Let's see here.” Dr. Duffy hadn't noticed my reaction. He was scrutinizing the inventory sheet attached to the bag. “No matching bottle was found. That cap may belong in the box with the other debris from the site, but since it was on his person, we included it here. Apparently that cap was caught in the folds of his shirt, and when the weight of the concrete shifted the body it was trapped between his chin and his shirt.”

“Ever see anybody mark a pill bottle like this?” I said, touching the cap through the plastic, remembering the moment I first saw it, or one like it.

“No,” Duffy said, taking the bag from my hands. “But people do all sorts of things.”

He moved the carton and the plastic bag back into the lockup and returned. My face must have given me away.

“Anything wrong, Britt?”

I looked at my watch. “I'm just running late and have to make another stop before I go back to the office.”

I drove to my next destination like a maniac on a rampage. This was it; it was real, not my imagination. This was now a matter of life and death. I speeded onto the narrow street, wheeled into a space, brakes squealing. Why? I thought. How could he?

She was home as I had hoped, opening the door a crack.

“Hi,” I said, my voice infused with a hearty, overly familiar ring. “Mrs. Creech. Ruby. You remember me, Britt Montero. I was here the day your husband passed away. I need to talk to you.”

“I have a telephone,” she said coldly.

“I just need a minute of your time. It's important to both of us.”

My voice sounded taut as I tried to stay calm.

“What?”

“It's about your husband's death.”

“I am not discussing that,” she said, her tone even chillier.

“It's not what you think. Just one minute.”

The door closed, the safety chain rattled, then it reopened. She stared at me, then stepped back. “I'm probably gonna regret this,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. She wore dark slacks and a T-shirt, much like the first time I had met her, but she had added a few pounds and some bright lipstick. She had had her hair done and her roots touched up. “You look good,” I said, trying to go slow. “How are you doing?”

There were several packed cartons and boxes on the floor.

“You moving?”

She nodded. “Wouldn't you?”

She planned to put the house on the market, she said, and spend some time with a sister in Sarasota. I told her I heard it was wonderful there, she'd enjoy it. Good place for a fresh start, I thought.

“Why'd you come?” she said.

I took a deep breath. “Remember the old murder investigation in the death of your niece?”

She nodded, staring solemnly at the floor as she sat down at the same kitchen table where we had first talked.

“I know you hate to see that come up again.” I took the seat across from her.

“What do you mean, come up again?” she said bitterly, raising her eyes. “It never went
away.
It was with us every day.”

“Do you remember the detective in the case, the man who suspected your husband?”

“Detective Flood was his name. Who could forget him? I was surprised he didn't show up here like the rest of 'em, to gloat, the day I found Emerson … the day you were here.”

“He had retired by then.”

“Since when?” she said disbelievingly.

“He retired last spring.”

“Retired?” she said loudly. “Retired?” Her expression was incredulous. “That old son of a bitch! Then why in hell was he tormenting us by hanging around here if he wasn't even on the goddamned police force anymore? I never knew he retired.”

“You mean you'd seen him lately?” I asked, a sense of dread growing in the pit of my stomach.

She stood up, bony fists clenched. “Used to be just once a year or so, sometimes on the anniversary of the case, sometimes on holidays, Christmas or Easter. Whenever he had nothing better to do, I guess. Emerson would refuse to talk to him and Flood would say he just wanted us to know he still had the case. He always left his card and said if either of us had anything to tell him, we should call. We'd always fight for weeks every time he'd been here.”

“When was the last time he came?”

“It was two days before Emerson died.” She paced the small room, three steps from the stove to the sink, three steps back. “But now he was up to something new. I went out to catch a bus that morning, got on, and as I took a seat and it started to roll, I saw him halfway down the block, parked across the street facing this direction, watching the house.

“I thought he'd come by, but he didn't. I mentioned it to my husband, and we both saw him the next day. We just ignored him, like we didn't know he was out there. Figured he was trying something new, trying to gaslight us, some psychological shit to put pressure on.”

“Was that the last time you saw him?”

“No, he was there the day it happened. I went out that morning and saw him again, slouched down in his car, a dark blue Buick Riviera parked across the street. He was gone when I got back. When I found my husband I thought it had worked. I thought he was finally pushed too far and had killed himself. That was before they explained all that sex stuff.” She looked sheepish. “And you say the son of a bitch was retired and was doing this on his own time? He had no right. Why?” Her voice cooled, trailing off wearily as she sat down again at the table.

“I think I know. Another thing,” I said. “That lacy red teddy. It
was
yours, wasn't it?”

She smiled sadly. “Yes. Don't know why I bought it. We'd been like strangers for so long after everything that happened. It just seemed, if we were going to live out our lives together, that maybe—”

I told her to watch the paper, that I would be writing a story about Dan Flood.

“Somebody should,” she said. “The man is going too far.”

“You have no idea,” I said sadly.

At the door I turned.

“One more thing. Do you think your husband killed Darlene?”

The light faded from her eyes and her voice was flat. “No doubt about it.”

It was time to fill in an editor.

I could go on investigating for weeks, trying to unearth more evidence, but there was no time—and that was a job for the cops anyway. My job was to do what I always do, write the story, like Lottie said. It had always seemed so simple before. An interview with Dan was inevitable now. Would he hate me? Doing nothing was out of the question. He had to be stopped. I had caught on; others would too. Homicide detectives are not stupid. But it had to be before anybody else, including Dan, was hurt.

But he is a sick man, I thought, who gave most of his life to the city. Now that life could end behind bars. He could die in jail.

I swallowed hard and walked into the newsroom. When Fred was free and off the telephone I stepped into his office. “I have reason to think,” I said carefully, “that a dying detective, respected and retired from city homicide, has become a vigilante seeking street justice and has murdered at least three suspects that he believes beat the system.”

Fred whistled and looked impressed. “Helluva story. Can you prove it?”

No turning back. “I'm still reporting, but I have enough to write and let readers draw their own conclusions.”

At the news meeting later it was agreed that if I could produce it, the story would run Sunday—after Mark vetted it, of course.