Paint It Black (25 page)

The street in front of the Fort Myers Police Station was blocked with TV news trucks: WEVU, WBBH, WINK. A crowd of reporters and photographers milled around the entrance: the
News-Press, Naples Daily News, Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times.
Even
USA Today
and the East Coast papers had made the trip this time. Louis pushed his way through and burst through the door.

A burly patrolman stopped him just inside. “You Kincaid?”

Louis nodded and the man pointed down the hall. Al Horton and Wainwright were coming out of Horton's office. They saw Louis approach and pulled the door shut.

“How is she?” Louis asked.

“Good shape overall,” Wainwright said. “She's got a laceration on her left forearm she won't let us fix.”

“Mentally?”

“Cool as ice. I couldn't believe it,” Horton said, shaking his head slowly. “I mean, this bastard had her in a shack of some kind, bound in a chair, a hood over her face. He cut her arm just before he let her go.”

“Jesus,” Louis whispered.

“That isn't all,” Horton said. “She says he killed Heller while she was there.”

“She saw it?” Louis asked.

“No. She heard it.”

Louis ran a hand over his face. “How'd she get away?”

“He left her in the shack and she eventually wiggled her hands from under the rope,” Horton said. “When she got out, she found a phone and called 911.”

“Where was she?” Louis asked.

“About a mile from Fisherman's Wharf, in an abandoned storage shack. It's near where the shrimp boats put in. Our guys are already there.”

Horton shook his head again. “You should've seen her when they brought her in, Louis. She refused to go to the hospital, just kept telling us that she was ‘evidence.' ”

“Evidence?”

Horton nodded. “She asked for a crime scene tech, a change of clothes, and a pad to write down her statement. The CSU guy is in there with her now.”

Louis glanced anxiously at the door.

“We have paramedics on standby,” Wainwright added.

The door opened and the tech man come out, carrying a black case, a plastic bag holding Emily's clothes, and a smaller bag holding a wadded black cloth.

“I've got all I could,” he said.

Horton nodded and the tech left. Louis moved by Wainwright and went into the office.

Emily was seated in an armchair, facing Horton's desk. She was wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt that said
FORT MYERS POLICE
and sweatpants that billowed over her bare feet. Her helmet of red curls was crushed from where the tech had combed for evidence and her face was streaked with a mixture of dried sweat and tears.

Louis stared at her. Something was different. Her glasses. He had never seen her without them. He noticed now that her eyes were brown, underscored with shadows. A two-inch bandage circled her left forearm. Louis could see blood seeping through the gauze.

He slid into the chair across from her.

“How you doing, Farentino?” he asked softly. She looked at him, her eyes slightly dazed, but steady. “Hey, Kincaid,” she said softly. “Have you found my glasses?”

Louis nodded. “Yes, but . . . I'm sorry . . . I didn't think . . .”

She looked away. “That's okay.”

Louis glanced back at Wainwright, standing behind him, then back at Emily. Tentatively, he reached over and took her hand. She didn't seem to notice.

“He came up behind me in the lot at the bar,” she said. She stopped and looked over at Horton.

“You'd better turn on the tape,” she said.

“It's already on,” Horton said.

She nodded woodenly and looked back at Louis. “He threw something over my head and coldcocked me,” she said. “I woke up, tied to a chair, with the cloth still over my head.” She looked at Horton again. “Forensics has it, right?”

Horton nodded.

“Go slow,” Louis said. “Tell us what happened, whatever you can remember.”

She took a deep breath. “I heard him pacing and swearing, like he was talking to himself. Then a dragging sound.” She paused. “I didn't know what it was. It was probably Heller.”

“Did he talk to you?” Louis asked.

She nodded. “He told me to listen, that he wanted to say something. Then he said that he had to change his plan, something like, ‘It's all ruined.' ”

“Then what?”

Tears welled in her eyes and she brushed them roughly away. “I heard him stabbing Heller. It went on for a long time. I started to get sick.”

Emily drew in several slow breaths. Her hand, resting on the arm of the chair, was trembling. “He started beating him after that,” she said, the words pouring out. “I could hear that, too.”

She ran a shaky hand over her brow. “Then it stopped and it was quiet. There was a sound, like a hiss. He was painting him. I could smell it.”

“Did you hear him say anything while he was doing it?”

She nodded. “He said, ‘Motherfucking piece of shit.' ” She hesitated. “And something else . . . ‘Get it right this time, you fucking idiot.' ”

Louis laid his hand over hers. “Then what?”

“He said, ‘No, no,' like he was sorry about something. But then he started yelling, ‘He made me do it.”'

“He said this to you?”

“I'm not sure. Sometimes I couldn't tell if he was talking to himself or me.” She drew in another shaky breath. “Then I heard a door open and I think he dragged Heller out. Then he was back.”

“Then what?”

“He asked me who I was and what I was doing there.”

“At the Dockside?”

She nodded. “I told him I was an FBI agent and went there to take a missing person's report.”

She paused. “Wait . . . wait. He said something strange then. He asked me who was missing.”

“Who?”

“Yes. I told him Tyrone Heller and he asked if Captain Lynch had been the one reporting him missing.” She ran a shaking hand across her forehead. “He sounded angry, not making any sense, and he asked me what Lynch said about Heller.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he wanted to know what Lynch thought of Heller. So I told him Lynch described him as a fine young man.” She paused. “It almost sounded like jealousy.”

Louis glanced up at Wainwright and Horton. Neither man had moved a muscle.

Emily drew in another deep breath. “He started pacing again, saying things like, ‘I didn't want to do this.' And then—”

She closed her eyes. The room was quiet.

“Then he said, ‘I have to finish it.”'

Her fingers wove through Louis's and she squeezed tight. “I . . . I thought he was going to kill me and I lost it.” A tear made its way down her cheek. She withdrew her hand from Louis's and wiped it quickly away.

“I was pleading with him, telling him I wasn't black. Oh, God . . .” She covered her face.

“It's okay, Emily,” Louis said quietly.

She shook her head rapidly, looking at him. “He wanted to know if I had ever slept with a black man.”

Her voice grew tight. “No, no . . . he said, exactly, ‘Have you ever fucked a black man?' And when I said no, he said, ‘Good, all you get from that are monkeys who should've been scraped from their mothers' wombs with a spoon.' ”

Louis glanced back at Wainwright. He was shaking his head.

“That was all,” Emily said softly. She was staring at the floor. “Until he cut me.”

Louis took a deep breath. “Why do you think he cut you?”

She closed her eyes.

“Farentino?” He touched her arm. “Emily . . .”

She looked up at him, tears welling again. “I don't know, Louis. He cut me and then I felt him put his hand over it to stop the bleeding. Then he was gone.”

The room was quiet. Emily was slumped in the chair, her face like chalk. She brought up a hand to shield her eyes and sat motionless for a long time. Horton turned off the tape.

“I think—” Horton began.

“I was so stupid,” Emily whispered.

“What?” Louis said.

She removed her hand, looking at him. “I blew it, Louis. I blew everything.”

“Emily—”

“I was in the same room with him,” she said. “I should've been able to talk to him. I should've been able to get more out of him.”

“Emily, stop.”

She curled her hands into fists and leaned on her knees. “That is what I
do!
It's what I was trained to do and I couldn't get past my fear. I just sat there paralyzed!”

Blood oozed from under the bandage.

Louis leaned forward, hands on her shoulders. “Emily, listen to me. It's not your fault.”

“I should've been smarter,” she said.

“Stop this.”

“I am so sorry . . . so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Her eyes bore into his. “No!” she said. “I should've seen it coming.”

“Listen to me. It doesn't work that way. I know.”

She was shaking her head.

“Something happened to me,” Louis said. “Up in Michigan. Men are dead because of something I missed.”

She was quiet now, looking at the floor.

“We all miss things,” he said. “But you can't keep beating yourself up over it. You go on with your life. You do better next time. You
deal
with it.”

She looked up at him. He couldn't tell if she was hearing him or not. He glanced at her arm. The gauze was soaked through.

“Emily,” he said, “go get yourself stitched up.”

She looked down at her arm and nodded slightly.

Louis heard the door open and looked back to see the paramedic standing there. Louis eased Farentino up from the chair. The paramedic came forward, took her arm, and led her out.

“When you're ready, why don't you guys leave by the back,” Horton said.

Wainwright nodded. A young woman poked her head in the door. It was Karen, the public information officer.

“Chief, it's getting ugly out there,” she said.

Horton glanced at his watch. “I'm not waiting for Mobley,” he said. “Come on, Karen. Let's go throw 'em some meat.”

Louis and Wainwright left Horton's office and went out the back entrance. The morning sun was still low in the sky but the day was already warm. Louis and Wainwright stood just outside the door for a moment, neither saying a word.

Wainwright moved away, going to a nearby bench and sinking down onto it. Louis joined him. Two uniformed patrolmen came up the walk, stared at Wainwright's wrinkled uniform, and went in.

“Think she'll be all right?” Wainwright asked.

“Yes,” Louis said. He leaned his head back against the brick building, closing his eyes.

For several minutes, neither man moved or said a word. Louis knew they were both long past exhaustion.

“Louis,” Wainwright said finally, “what were you talking about back there?”

“When?”

“When you were telling her what happened in Michigan,” Wainwright said. “When you said you should have seen it coming.”

Louis opened his eyes. Wainwright wasn't looking at him. He was staring straight ahead.

“I made a lot of mistakes,” Louis said.

He could feel Wainwright's eyes on him now. He drew in a long breath. “Mistakes I could have prevented if I had seen it coming.”

Wainwright said nothing. Finally, Louis looked at him. Wainwright was staring straight ahead again, but his eyes were unfocused, distant.

“Remember Skeen?” Wainwright asked after a moment.

“The Raisin River killer.”

“Right before the end, right before the last little girl was murdered, my wife Sarah committed suicide,” Wainwright said.

Louis waited.

“She had been depressed for a long time,” Wainwright went on. “I was away all the time then. She was holding everything together with the kids, the house, and she never said anything.”

Louis remembered the photograph on the mantel back at Wainwright's house, the one of the pretty brunette woman.

“The signs were there,” Wainwright said quietly.

“I saw that eventually. But I didn't at the time. I didn't see it coming.”

Louis stared at Wainwright's profile. For a long time, Wainwright just sat there, looking off at the parking lot across the street.

“I've buried it, just buried it, for a lot of years,” Wainwright said. “It's why I came down here, because I didn't want to deal with it. My kids—” He stopped, wiping a hand roughly over his face. “I haven't seen them for a while,” he went on. “After Sarah died, my oldest—Kevin—I think he blamed me. Gina didn't, but Kevin . . . he was the one who found Sarah and . . .” His voice trailed off.

Louis waited. Finally, when he was sure Wainwright was not going to say anything more, he put a hand on Wainwright's shoulder.

“Let's go,” Louis said quietly.

Wainwright shook his head. “I can't sleep.”

“I can't either. Let's go take a look at that shack.”

Wainwright nodded. “Yeah . . . yeah. Good idea. Thanks.”

They stood at the door to the storage shack.

The crime scene techs were almost finished. Louis had watched as they meticulously dusted every inch of the walls, the wooden table, the wooden crab traps, and the chair that still sat in the middle.

Under the chair, they had scraped up blood Louis guessed would turn out to be Emily's. From another area, they took samples of blood that Louis was sure belonged to Tyrone Heller. The techs had also found tiny specks of dried blood, probably from the tread of a shoe.

Bags of evidence had been removed: fish scales and shrimp shells, hairs, fibers, some rusted cans, crumpled pieces of tissue, blue and white buoys, and some cigarette butts. On both arms of the chair, there were several loops of yellow plastic rope.

Louis's eyes swept over the tiny room, trying to get a feel for what had happened. No . . . a feel for the killer's mind, that's what he wanted. He focused for a moment on the chair, then moved to the bloodstain, rimmed with black paint. It was smaller than the bloodstain from Quick up on the overlook. But Mayo had dragged Heller out right after killing him. Louis's eyes went now to the walls. The old gray planks were splattered with blood. There was more on the ceiling.

He realized he was feeling nothing. No vibrations. And worse, no emotion.

“We need something out of this mess to tie Mayo in,” Wainwright said. “We need proof he was here.”

“Mayo's prints are on file,” Louis said. “Maybe we'll get a match from here.”

“He's using gloves. He hasn't left his prints anywhere else.”

Louis was looking at the bloodstain again, noticing something new. There was less blood than at the overlook but more paint.

“He used a lot of paint on Heller,” Louis said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Wainwright said. “Why do you think he went overboard this time?”

“Remember what Farentino said she heard him say? ‘Get it right this time, you fucking idiot.' Maybe she heard it wrong. Maybe he said ‘idiots.' ”

“Plural?” Wainwright asked.

Louis nodded. “Maybe he was talking to us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he saw the press conference. Maybe he's pissed that we didn't mention the paint. It's important to him and he wants us to notice it this time.”

Wainwright nodded. “Farentino said he might react to anything. I guess we found out.”

The techs moved out, taking the table. They told Wainwright they would return for the chair and to tear up the stained floorboards and walls.

Louis's eyes went back to the chair. “Why didn't he kill her?” he asked.

“Maybe your theory about the skin shades is wrong and he's not working toward a white victim,” Wainwright said.

Louis shook his head. “No, I still think there's something to it. Heller is lighter than the others and he killed him.”

“Then why did he even bother to take Farentino in the first place?” Wainwright asked.

“Maybe she was just in the way,” Louis said. “Maybe he was going to kill her but changed his mind.”

“Doesn't make sense. Doesn't fit his profile.” Wainwright paused. “Maybe it's like all the paint this time. Maybe he wants to tell us something and Farentino was just the messenger.”

“What's the message?”

Wainwright let out a weary sigh. “I don't know. We're both so fucking tired we can't think straight.”

They were silent for a moment. “He's not finished,” Louis said. “I still think he's moving toward something.”

Wainwright's eyes were focused on the bloodstain. “The question is, what?”

 

 

Louis woke and immediately looked at the clock. Two-thirty in the afternoon. He had fallen into bed after coming home from the storage shack and gotten a couple hours of fitful sleep. There was still grit behind his eyes but he knew he couldn't sleep any more.

He showered, dressed, and went out to the kitchen. Empty. Issy looked up at him from her bowl of kibbles.

Louis heard country music from the patio and went outside. Margaret was cutting the dead blooms off one of her orchids.

“You're up,” she said, turning.

“Anybody call?” he asked.

Margaret shook her head and slipped her pruning shears into her apron.

“How 'bout I fix you a sandwich?” she said, starting for the kitchen.

“No, Margaret, I'm fine,” he said quickly.

“Didn't we talk about this before?”

Louis sighed. “Whatever you want to fix is fine. Where's Sam?”

“Fishing,” Margaret said with a grimace.

Louis followed her into the kitchen. He picked up the wall phone and dialed Horton's office. Horton picked up immediately.

“Any news?” Louis asked.

“Still no sign of Heller. The other crewman—Woody something—said Heller didn't show for work this morning. We did a welfare check at Heller's trailer. No sign of anything out of the ordinary. No sign of Heller's truck either. We've got a BOLO out on it.”

“Mayo probably followed Heller to the Dockside,” Louis said. “Maybe he used the truck to take Heller to the storage shack and then abandoned it.”

“We thought of that. Got the whole wharf area covered. Nothing.”

Margaret came into the kitchen and began to busy herself at the refrigerator. Louis turned away and lowered his voice. “How's Farentino?”

“Sleeping at her hotel,” Horton said. “I put a uniform outside her door.”

“Anything back from the scene yet?”

“There was a lot of old trash but nothing fresh. The owner says the place used to be a storage shed for the shrimping company nearby, but it's been abandoned for years.”

Louis could hear Horton flipping some papers. “Let's see . . . shrimp shells, rusted cans, fish scales, specifically snapper, spot-tail, king mackerel. Dozens of prints, but the only fresh ones were on the chair and we're running them.”

“What about the blood?”

“AB-negative under the chair. Rare stuff,” Horton said. “It matches Farentino's. The big stain was O-positive, but we don't know what Heller is. The specks of blood on the floor turned out to be from king mackerel.”

Louis sighed. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I'll tell you the same thing I told Dan this morning,” Horton said. “Get some rest. We'll call.”

Louis hung up. When he turned, Margaret was standing there holding a plate.

“Eat this, damn it,” she said.

He thanked her and took the peanut butter and jelly sandwich out to the patio. Margaret came out a moment later and set a Dr Pepper at his side. She went to the small cassette player and turned her tape over. The song “Luckenbach, Texas” started playing.

Louis wolfed down the sandwich and set the plate aside, wishing Margaret had made two sandwiches. He tried to remember the last time he ate.

He laid his head back, closing his eyes, thinking about the events of the last twenty-four hours. What a night.

He had a sudden picture of Farentino's tear-streaked face in his mind. She must be a wreck. Alone, in a strange town, scared to death. He wondered if she'd slept, if she'd be up for a visit.

He got up. Margaret looked over. “Where you going?”

“To visit Farentino,” he said.

Margaret wiped her hands on her apron. “I've got some fudge you can take her.”