Suitcase City (21 page)

“Yeah, what do you make of it?”

“Some kind of mood, atmosphere thing? The guy did her with a scarf. Maybe it was, you know, one of those sexual-asphyxiation things. Maybe some game they were playing that got out of hand.”

Aimes turned from the bed to the bookshelf. The fact that there was a bookshelf: that was the first thing. The kind of work he did, he saw a lot of shitty houses and apartments. Places that looked like animals lived in them and places that were clean but stupid. People from the bottom of life trying to imitate people at the top. You didn’t see a lot of bookshelves in the apartments of dead hookers, and you didn’t see books like these. Computer manuals, several of them. Some paperback romance novels and a whole rack of best sellers, mostly books about getting ahead in business. How to parlay a small capital investment into a fortune by using so-and-so’s super system. This woman was different.

Aimes leafed though a computer manual, put it back on the shelf, and selected something else, a photo album. He opened it to some pictures of the dead woman and a fat woman who resembled her. A sister maybe.

Delbert was over by the window. He pulled aside the blinds, looked out, turned back to Aimes. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Aimes was trying to think, trying to find something here that made sense, because very little did. The woman had not been shot like the other four. She had not been hauled to a dumpster. She had been strangled with a scarf, one of her own by the look of things. Following the usual procedure, the department had withheld information about the manner of death. Aimes didn’t think she’d been done by the guy who’d killed the other four. And the woman had died smiling.

“That . . . in the book there.”

Aimes looked down at the photo album in his hands. Something, an envelope, had been placed between the pages like a bookmark. He pulled it out, opened it. Smiled.
Oh yes. Oh Lord, yes.
He handed the envelope to Delbert, watched him read, his lips moving.

Delbert smiled. “Teach. James Teach. I’ll be damned.”

Aimes thumbed through the pictures, stopped at the last one. He handed the album to Delbert. “Remember the pictures? Her face?”

Delbert studied the happy picture of James Teach and the dead prostitute in a restaurant somewhere on the beach. “I remember.” Delbert’s eyes going cool, his mouth tightening at the thought of the woman’s face in the crime scene photos.

“What’d you notice about it?”

“You mean the smile?”

Aimes nodded.

Delbert tucked the envelope back into the album and closed it. “Our Mr. Teach with his condoms and his hundred-dollar bill and his credit card. He’s some piece of work, that guy.”

Aimes nodded. “Did you remember it?”

Delbert winced. Aimes knew he didn’t like to be confused as often as he was. It bothered him. Delbert was going to be a good cop someday. Good cops resolved their confusions, got things straightened out.

Aimes said, “What you told me you were going to remember about Mr. Teach. The thing that wasn’t football.”

Delbert shook his head, serious, trying to retrieve that thing right now, whatever was lost back there in the gumbo and ham gravy of his memory. “Not yet,” he said, “but I will. Now I know I will.”

TWENTY-SIX

Dean was up in the bow with a flashlight, poking its long beam down the narrow channel between the slips. Teach had taught her to tie a bowline, and she was proving she could do it under pressure. Docking was always the dicey part of the cruise. Many a marina had rung with the angry words of husbands at the wheel and wives in the bow; marriages had ended with the sound of fiberglass tearing as big boats sailed inches too far in the last seconds of a long day.

Teach and Dean had had a good cruise. They’d trolled for sea trout and caught some. He’d taught her the rudiments of chart reading and some knots and splices. They’d taken the inflatable Zodiac ashore to explore an old Spanish sugar mill that was part of the state park system.

They’d had some good talks, mostly about what Dean wanted to do with her life. To Teach’s surprise, his daughter had said she didn’t want to dance in New York. Maybe, she’d told him, she’d go to law school after college. Teach cringed, and they both laughed. Dean said, “Well, if not a lawyer, maybe a cop. I’m interested in the crazy things people do.” She looked at him, serious, questioning. Was this all right with him?

He smiled, showing her the face of approval while he tried on the idea of his daughter wearing a badge and a gun.

Teach turned the boat in its slow ponderous swing to the slip.

“Watch this!” Dean called. He watched her lean, strong legs run to the pulpit, her golden arms fend the bow away from a piling. Then she jumped to the dock with a mooring line, flipped it into a quick bowline, held the knot up for him. “Ta-
DAH
!” She fed the bight through the loop of the bowline, made a lasso, and slipped it over a cleat.

Teach shifted the auxiliary into reverse, gave the screw a rev that snubbed the line and brought the Hunter to a shuddering stop. He cut the engine.

Dean jumped back aboard, stood in front of him. “Dad, that was great. Let’s do it again soon.” She reached up, and he bent to her quick hard hug.

“Sure, baby,” he said, struggling for more, the right thing. “You’re growing up so fast now, and we won’t . . .”

But she had already turned away to pick up some gear.
What the hell
, Teach thought,
you don’t have to say everything. People know what you mean.
Still, picking up a tackle box and some dirty clothes for the walk to the car, he wished he possessed the skill with words he had with a boat, had once had with a football. And he wished Paige had been here for this, had shared Dean with him these few sunny days. She would have seen that his recent trouble had done nothing to damage Dean’s spirit.

When all the gear was stowed in the car, Teach and Dean stopped in at the Stone Crab, a restaurant and bar across from the marina. On the way in, he bought a copy of the
Tampa Tribune
. Reading the paper was beginning to feel friendly again, now that he wasn’t Marlie Turkel’s daily meat and potatoes.

One headline announced
: Fifth Prostitute Murder Disturbs Black Community
. Teach’s eyes drifted over the article, then lurched back to a name. It took him a second to connect the shock that lit up his nerves to anything that could be called recognition. It was like being stung—the blinding pain, then the realization that a wasp was driving its barb into the back of your neck.
Thalia Speaks
. Thalia Speaks was dead.

“What’s the matter, Dad? You don’t look so good.”

Dean watched him from under a pinched brow, her mouth puckered around the straw that drew iced tea into her mouth.

“Nothing,” Teach said, “I’m just tired, honey.”

He put the paper down, lifted his coffee cup, set it back down, and looked at the bar. The glittering bottles were stacked in rows under an elaborate blue neon facsimile of a school of fish. Teach wanted a bourbon so badly that his throat ached. Someone put a coin in the old jukebox, and Jimmy Buffet started singing, “
It’s been a lovely cruise . . .
” And Teach thought
, Christ, that restaurant in Madeira Beach
. Some German tourist playing that song over and over again. Some Hans or Dieter at the end of a holiday, stretching out the last hours of the cruise. Teach and Thalia raising their eyebrows and laughing. Thalia happy with the gifts he’d given her, a scarf and a pair of pink coral earrings.

That afternoon, Thalia was beautiful and smart, and she was going somewhere because Teach had promised to help her. She had been a ghetto girl with about as much future as a stray cat when she had lucked into the job at Terra Ceia Country Club. Lucked into Teach. That day he had told her, promised her, that he would find a way to hire her at Meador Pharmaceuticals. The more they talked about it, the more Teach believed it could happen. He would be her Henry Higgins. He would reinvent her. Her beauty, brains, energy, and charm were beyond question. All she lacked was education and experience. If he picked her as his intern in the company’s business opportunity program, gave her a shot at selling, who would question it? He would teach her business etiquette, sales strategies, show her how to use her gift for looking people in the eye, talking straight to them. She was a natural, and she’d be grateful to him, and she’d want him to know it.

Dean’s straw gurgled at the bottom of her glass. “Daddy, are you sure you’re okay? We can go now if you like. I’m not that hungry and—”

“Yes, honey, I’m okay. Like I said, just a little tired.”
And thirsty,
Teach thought,
so thirsty
. “Deanie, why don’t you go ahead and order that cheeseburger and another iced tea. I’m just going to have a drink. I’ve been awfully good with the beer and all.”

Teach smiled, knowing the smile was rotten on his face, knowing she’d be disappointed about the whiskey. She knew him better now. But what the hell? Thalia, a prostitute? It couldn’t be true. It was harder to believe than the fact of her death. There must be some mistake.

He waved the waiter over and ordered a double Turkey and a Heineken back. Dean looked away, out the window at the crushed oyster-shell road, the marina beyond. She looked so much like her mother now, Teach thought.

While Dean ate, he reread the newspaper article. Marlie Turkel had written it. He recalled that she’d been assigned to what the paper was calling a string of prostitute murders, but he hadn’t paid much attention to her articles. A detective named Aimes (surely it was the same man) was quoted, giving the usual vague descriptions.

Police had found Thalia Speaks dead after an anonymous caller had alerted them. She had been murdered, but the killer’s method was being withheld. She had been arrested twice for prostitution and possession of narcotics. A grandmother and sister were listed as surviving her. Teach searched his memory. Had Thalia ever mentioned them?

The article said that Thalia Speaks had taken community college courses and that she had worked as a waitress at the Terra Ceia Country Club. It occurred to Teach that right now people all over the city were reading about her death. The same people who had read about James Teach and an altercation in a men’s room. Who could possibly connect the two people, a vice president and a prostitute murdered in Suitcase City? Teach knew with a certainty that hurt like a fishhook in his face, like a swallow of some evil poison, that two people would make the connection: Marlie Turkel was one, and a detective named Aimes was the other.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Aimes hung up the phone and glanced across the desk at Delbert. Delbert looking back at him like a kid about to open his Christmas presents.

“Was Mr. Teach surprised?” Delbert’s eyes glittered.

“Told me he was.”

“He sound scared?”

“He sounded tired.”

“Tired will do for a start.” Delbert got up and went to the bulletin board across the small office from Aimes’s desk. The board was covered with memos and BOLOs and photos of dead prostitutes in dumpsters. Delbert started picking at the thumbtacks clustered in one corner of the board, his fingers jumping with that gerbil energy.

“Relax,” Aimes said in a low, slow voice. “Be patient. We’re just talking to the guy. We don’t have anything that puts him in the woman’s apartment on the night she was killed.”

The hooker killings were big now. Thurman Battles had complained to the chief of police about the lack of progress in the cases. Major Crimes Bureau had put two more teams of detectives on them. Aimes and Delbert had been up and down Thalia Speaks’s street in Suitcase City, talked to everybody who was home the night she died. Nobody had seen or heard anything. One citizen said Thalia Speaks must have known the guy. His Doberman would have barked at any stranger who came around that time of night. Aimes and Delbert had seen the dog, half-dead in a hole in the front yard. “He’s a barker all right,” Delbert had said to the man.

Delbert turned from the bulletin board, lifted his arms over his head, and stretched. That skinny frame shivering. He stared at the file on Aimes’s desk like it was the big one, the major Christmas present. The one Mom and Dad hold back until the end.

Among other things, the file held the abridged version of the love story of James Teach and Thalia Speaks. Maybe Teach had killed the woman to keep the world from knowing that story. If he had, why hadn’t he taken the photo album with him? Maybe he had panicked, left it behind. People did strange things when they killed other people.

After finding the album, Aimes and Delbert had reviewed the list of items from the crime scene that were stored in Evidence Impound. If there was one photo, somewhere there were more. (Who bought a roll of film and took just one picture?) Likely, there were other things too. Gifts, love notes, sweet sentiments a man wouldn’t want other men to see. Women were keepers and savers, and Aimes thought maybe the techs who’d handled the crime scene had bagged and tagged some of the love story along with the condom wrappers and the money. But none of these things was on the list. Drugs were listed: crack, amphetamines, and painkillers. No surprise in that.

If Aimes and Delbert had not been assigned this case, if Aimes had not wanted to go to the woman’s apartment when things were quiet, when he could think, the album with Teach in it would have stayed on the shelf, gone to the woman’s next of kin or to a landfill.

Delbert said, “So, you figure she read about Mr. Teach in the paper and she asked him to come by and talk to her?”

“That’s one way it might have gone. You see it another way?”

Delbert gave a nervous shrug. He went to the window, looked out at the sun-hammered parking lot, turned back, looked at the file on Aimes’s desk. “No, that one suits me all right. The woman is living her shitty life. She’s got her album of memories. She picks up the paper one day and reads about Mr. Teach, how he’s up to his ass in trouble with the black community. Then he’s out of trouble. Thurman Battles decides to drop the case, and—”

“Mysterious, that decision,” Aimes said, “but go on.”