Picture Me Dead (11 page)

He'd decided to drive. To show off. His family had been thinking about buying a house at the end of the street. He'd wanted to show it to a girl. He could race his Firebird around a few blocks without any damage being done.

Like hell.

He was supposedly a pretty tough kid. Football, soccer, baseball, a star player on every team. Grades high enough to see that he got into the right college. He usually knew when to play and when to keep himself straight as an arrow. But not that night. That night he was exactly what the cop called him when he reached the accident. A snot-nosed rich kid, thinking he could buy his way out of everything.

Carlos Mendez had been a police officer for nearly twenty-five years the night he had come upon Jake in his folded-up Firebird. He could have taken him in for DUI. But he didn't. He told him off—and when Jake tried to tell him that he wanted to call his father, an attorney, Carlos had said that he'd get his every right, his phone call, his attorney, the whole nine yards—when the time was right. He'd told him what he thought of him—and where he was going to wind up. And that however rich he might be, he was going to spend one night in jail.

He hadn't been mean, hadn't raised his voice. But something about the way he'd spoken, so soft and so sure, had scared the hell out of Jake. He'd realized he could have killed not only himself but his date.

“You know, kid, you're in trouble. But you ought to be on your knees, thanking God. You slaughtered a palm tree. That was it—the only fatality. You could be in a morgue now. Or you could have killed that pretty young girl you were with. So be thankful, accept what you get and try to make it mean something,” Carlos had told him.

Jake had listened. And at some point, he wasn't sure when, Carlos Mendez had realized he'd had a real effect on the snot-nosed rich kid. He hadn't charged him with DUI, only with the lesser charge of failure to have his vehicle under control. His leniency had come with strings—promises Jake made that night to Carlos. Of course, Carlos had no guarantees that Jake would abide by his promises. He later told Jake that he had gone on gut instinct—the most important tool a cop could have, no matter what technology offered.

Jake kept all his promises, grateful not to have had to spend a night in jail. He'd even been sober and somewhat cleaned up before he reached his parents' house, before his mother cried and his father yelled. He'd promised Carlos Mendez an afternoon at the station and fifty hours of community service. He'd put in the hours working for Habitat for Humanity and in downtown Miami at a soup kitchen for the homeless. He'd seen some of the worst the city had to offer there, men and women so strung out on drugs that life had lost all meaning, and the kids who paid the real price for their parents' addictions. Toddlers with no futures because they'd been born with AIDS. He saw, as well, those few whose lives were changed by others. The junkie thief who'd gone straight because of a decent cop and opened a home for abused children. The prostitute who had changed her ways because of a down-to-earth priest. Even the crooked accountant who had gotten out of jail to do tax forms and apply for assistance for the elderly.

And down at the station, with Carlos, he'd seen videos more horrible than anything ever concocted by the minds of filmmakers. Photos taken after traffic fatalities. Most of them accidents caused by alcohol.

In the process of it all, he met others Carlos could have arrested and sent to prison for long years of their lives but hadn't.

He'd gambled.

And his bet had paid off.

Jake had been about to leave, having earned the grades good enough to get him into almost any college in the country. He'd been accepted to his father's alma mater, Harvard.

He hadn't gone.

Once again, his mother had cried and his father had yelled. But he'd loved his parents, and they'd loved him. In the end, they'd accepted his decision to stay home, take criminology at the local college and apply to the force.

He'd never regretted it, not once. And even his father had been proud of him. No one had been more congratulatory when he had been promoted to detective. He'd known he'd wanted to work homicide because of Carlos. Not because Carlos had worked homicide, but because, while still in college, he'd been with Carlos one day when he had suddenly veered over to the side of the road. He'd spotted a body in a field.

“Shouldn't you call it in?” Jake had asked. “You're off duty.”

“I'll be calling it in, as soon as I know what we've got, and as soon as I've secured the scene. And a cop is never really off duty, Jake. You know that.”

Carlos was pretty damned amazing, and that was something Jake
did
know. He wouldn't ever have noticed the prone figure, inert and shielded by long grass and carelessly tossed garbage, soda cans and beer bottles.

Carlos had an eye. He assured Jake that, with a little experience, he would have that eye himself.

That afternoon, Carlos had called in the information as soon as he had determined that the victim was stone cold, beyond help.

The guy had looked like an old itinerant or a drunk. At the time, Jake had seen nothing to suggest foul play. Of course, he'd kept his distance, too, because Carlos hadn't been about to let anyone taint what might be a crime scene.

Later, when the detectives and crime scene people had arrived, Jake and Carlos watched them work. Carlos had remarked quietly then that he'd been certain right away—gut instinct—that the man had met with foul play. He was dead, silenced, no longer able to speak for himself. And yet, always, the dead, in that terrible silence, cried out for justice. Their fellow men owed them that justice. The cops and the medical examiners were all they had left. And even if the victim had been an old drunk, he deserved the same attention as any other human being.

It turned out that he had been a migrant worker and that he had been murdered. The detective on the case had it solved within a matter of weeks—mainly because Carlos had been so careful at the scene of the crime. His yellow tape had preserved footprints that had led to the arrest of a middle-aged thug who had killed the old man for the fifty dollars in his pockets.

Since that day, Jake had wanted to be in homicide. It had seemed like an important role in life—being the champion of the dead.

His decision, and his effort to reach his goal, had drawn him closer than ever to his father, who had always played the devil's advocate, telling him how a good attorney could make mincemeat out of evidence if it wasn't collected properly.

There had been more to the idea of moving into homicide. Not just to weep for the dead, or even to be their spokesman. With every year of experience, he realized that his most important role was to stop a killer before he or she could claim more victims. He and his fellow officers worked many cases that turned out to be domestic—husbands, ex-husbands, wives, lovers, killing in passion. Guns and knives were the prevalent weapons in cases like that. Then, of course, there were the little ones, kids brutalized by their parents or trusted caregivers. Those were hard to deal with. He'd never met a cop who could just blink and call it business when he or she was called to handle the death of a child.

But there were also cases that weren't crimes of passion, anger or jealousy. There were psychopaths in the world who killed because it gave them a rush. And there were also those who killed because they thought themselves superior, who appeared to be totally sane, to whom murder was a calculated risk. There were those who killed for pleasure, for sport and for personal gain.

He had handled many of those, as well. He'd done so professionally, not letting anger, pain, pity or disgust get in the way of his sworn duty.

This particular case, though, was so damned acrid he could taste it on his tongue.

So damned painful and bitter.

He inhaled deeply, gaining control.

He knew damned well that he couldn't let his emotions get out of control, nor could he visibly display them in any way—he would even have to be careful with Marty. He didn't want to be pulled from this case.

“Did you finish up the paperwork on the Trena case?” Marty asked.

“There, on top of the out box.”

“I'll send it on over to the D.A. with my report. Seems Trena's lawyer told him to plea-bargain after he saw the evidence against him.”

Jake looked at Marty, then paused to thank the officer who stopped by with the envelope that contained the information on the girl they were calling Cinderella. There was other business to finish up.

“Trena was smart to plea-bargain,” he said, unwinding the string securing the envelope. “His gun, his fingerprints, bullets charged on his credit card in his wife's head—I think a plea bargain would be a hell of a lot better than a death sentence.”

Marty smiled without humor. “Well, remember the guy who put five bullets into his buddy's stomach? His attorney got the jury to believe his gun just went off
accidentally
—five times.”

“True. I'm still glad to hear Trena is going with a plea bargain. Hopefully he'll be locked up for a while.”

Marty started to collect papers and folders while Jake opened the envelope he'd been given. He scanned the information. Without looking up, he told Marty, “Let's follow up on the rest of Bordon's known followers, find out what they're doing these days, check into their activities. We can work the door-to-door angle, as well, but I don't think we're going to get anywhere. We don't have a lot to work with right now. If we can just get an I.D. on the victim, it will give us more to go on.” He paused, then said softly, “I think I'm going to take a ride up to the middle of the state this week.”

“You want company, or you think I should stay here?”

“I think one of us should be here.”

“You'd be happier if you were the one here, interviewing Bordon's old people. You like to be hands-on, Jake, and you know it. Sure you don't want me to be the one to take the drive up?”

Jake shook his head. “No, but thanks. I want to talk to Bordon myself.”

Marty shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “You've talked to Bordon before.”

He had. And if it hadn't been for Marty, he might have blown his entire career. He had almost gone for the man's throat. Marty and a uniformed officer had pulled him back. Marty knew how deep his feelings ran against Bordon, even if he didn't personally believe that Nancy's death had anything to do with the case. He felt the same pain. On duty with a fellow officer in the area, he had been one of the first people on the scene when Nancy's car had been found.

“I'll be all right.”

“If that kid hadn't been a weight lifter, I might not have kept you from strangling the man.”

“Marty, I was wrong. I was overemotional, but I swear to you, I'm in control now. I can't kill Bordon.”

“What do you mean, you
can't
kill him? I'm willing to bet you can. He isn't short, and he isn't a skinny wimp, but you've got a few pounds on him—all muscle—and the adrenaline rush you had going that day was frightening. You sure as hell
can
kill him, and I'm not so sure you can control your temper.”

“I can and I will.”

“But—”

“I can't kill him, Marty. I really can't. I need him alive.”

“You
need
him alive? We both think he's a killer, even if he never dirties his hands himself. So why is it that you
need
him alive?”

“Because we need to find out what really went on back then, and if it's recurring now. We were missing something—I mean, it seemed obvious that Bordon was calling the shots, and that there were more people involved in the deaths. Hell, maybe Harry Tennant
was
in on the murders, but I don't believe for a second that he committed them alone. Marty, we've got to find out the truth, or we're never going to be free of this case.” He was silent for a minute; then he grimaced and spoke flatly, with an open honesty his partner could well understand. “I need the truth. Or
I'll
never be free of this.”

After a moment, Marty nodded. “Yeah, I understand. But you're sure you'll be all right going up alone? Captain Blake will be setting up a task force again—reinvigorating it, since we never officially closed the inquiry down. There will be other officers down here getting moving on research, questioning, digging, legwork. I can come upstate with you if you want.”

“I want one of
us
here. Paying attention to everything, to little details that might slip by someone else. We need to get every piece of information we've got on file and to keep digging up everything new we can find on Bordon's old followers, everything we've got on his hierarchy—the names of everyone involved in the cult, and a bio on what they've been doing since Bordon went to jail.”

Jake's desk phone rang. He picked up.

It was Captain Blake, head of homicide, on the other end.

“I understand you've been busy this weekend.”