The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb (19 page)

The second victim, a nineteen-year-old girl from a good home, with no boyfriend, attending her local college to study as a beautician, had disappeared at 3:00
PM
. At least, she'd been seen by friends about ten minutes before that, when she'd set off to walk home from a friend's house. When she was found, very early the next morning about forty miles away, her estimated time of death was put at 2:00
PM
on the day of her disappearance. It was a puzzle that consumed the Federales for quite a while, and one that put her friends in the frame as certain liars, if not murderers. The cops had then further ascertained that her body must have been dumped sometime after 6:00
PM
that day, because a police car had driven along the road where she was found at that time and the body hadn't been there yet. The article went so far as to mention that it was this fact that had led the Federales to no longer believe that Miguel Juan-Carlos García Perez, the father of the first victim, Angélica Rosa, was responsible for killing his daughter.
If Miguel hadn't been seen by dozens of people saying a Requiem Mass for his daughter at 7:00
PM
in Puerto Vallarta, he might not have been so lucky.

I moved on to the most recent article, which dealt with all the killings to date. By the time the piece had been written, the coverage simply stated the facts and warned young women that they should not walk alone. Approximately every four weeks a young woman had been found on a remote roadside, swathed in a white sheet, her hands closed as if in prayer, with two red roses clasped between them. It was also clear that each victim, except the second one, had been abducted at night, and that they were all small young women, most no more than five feet and around ninety pounds. Every serial killer has their type, and the Rose Killer was no exception it seemed. Angélica Rosa was the only one who had died of simple alcohol poisoning.
All
the others had been found to have ingested large amounts of diphenhydramine, a strong antihistamine that is a common ingredient in many sleeping pills, which is widely available and, the report helpfully stated, found in about sixty percent of all homes.
Maybe the killer wasn't as patient with his later victims?
There were photographs of families dazed with grief, and snaps of the victims, all of whom smiled from the webpage on the
TV
screen in wide-eyed innocence.
All dead.
Terrible. I haven't done a lot of work on serial killers, but I have studied many of the so-called “classic cases” as a part of my master's program, the deviant psychological factors being of interest to any criminal psychologist.

I closed everything down and once again settled into my little corner of the garden. It seemed odd that this place already felt so familiar. I felt strangely peaceful, given my circumstances, and those of poor Bud. I was acutely aware that all I could do while waiting for Al to call was think. I've spent decades studying people, and, although it would be generally accepted that I have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about why humans do what they do and how they signal their true thoughts rather than their intended ones, I am more than ready to face the fact that I know only a fraction of what I wish I did. Bud? He's a different matter. Until yesterday morning I had
thought
I knew him well.
Stop it, Cait!
I'd made a decision to not dwell on the things he had chosen to keep secret from me, but the hurt was creeping up on me again.

“You're looking thoughtful.” It was Al. A few feet away. I jumped. “I knocked, but you didn't answer. I hope it was okay for me to come in?” He spotted the alarm on my face and looked concerned.
I locked that door, I know I did!

I'd already decided to not mention the break-in to him. What was the point? Nothing had been taken. I hadn't been murdered in my sleep. And, although we were working together, I didn't want him to focus on me.

“You just startled me. I didn't sleep too well. Nor nearly long enough. It was quite a day yesterday.” I waved toward a chair as an invitation for him to sit, but Al preferred to stand.

“If you'd rather not pursue this any further, Cait, we'd all understand . . .” His words hung on the morning air. I sensed something different in his attitude. He seemed to be on edge.
Cross? What had I done?

I stood. “We're on a mission, Al. You and me—we're going to find out who this guy is, and why he killed Margarita. Right?” Al nodded. “Tell me, has he said anything this morning?” I was desperate for an update on Bud's condition.

“He ate his breakfast, drank his water, but not a word. When I got back there last night, he was fast asleep. Like a baby. Not a care in the world. How can that
be
? How can a man kill and not feel remorse?” Al was angry. All I could think about was the fact that,
thank goodness
, Bud seemed fine—for now.

I wanted to get going. “Well, we're not achieving anything by hanging around here. I'm not going to wait for the water boy. Can we go to see Callie now?”

“That's why I came. I thought we could go over together. I haven't been able to get an answer on the phone at the apartment, so she might still be asleep. I don't like the idea that she took pills prescribed for Dorothea—she's a much bigger woman than Callie.”

“I'll just pop to the—you know . . .” I said and did just that. A glance in the bathroom mirror told me that I didn't look too bad. In fact, since I'd packed the clothes I thought I'd be wearing to wander Mexican beaches, holding hands with the man I love, I looked very relaxed, which was not at all how I felt. At least the pale crushed-tomato hue of my lightweight tunic gave me the illusion of having some color, and the bit of sunburn I'd managed to get on my nose while sitting at the airport the day before had, thankfully, turned from red to brown. My white capris were roomy, and summery, and the long white scarf I'd tied in a bow around my ponytail topped off the look—literally.
Bud would be proud to be seen with me.

Finally ready to leave, I shoved my notes, pad, and pen into my purse and shut up the house, then Al and I walked down the little hill to Amigos del Tequila.

I wasn't at all surprised to find that the door to the kitchen was wide open, and there was no one about. It seemed to be the normal state of affairs for the place!

Al sighed. “I'm supposed to get it through to people that crime often happens because of an opportunity presenting itself. Why do people not lock their doors?” He shook his head as we entered.

“Hello?” he called. There was no answer. He turned to me. “Let's check upstairs.” I nodded, and we climbed the steep, narrow staircase with me following Al. At the top we emerged into what was obviously the scene of a disturbance: clothes and decorative items were scattered about the furniture and the floor. The room was in total disarray. I gasped. Al turned and said sharply, “What's the matter?”

“It looks like the place has been ransacked,” I said.

Al grinned. “I've been here before. This is how they live.”

As we stood surrounded by discarded clothes, books, papers, files, soda cans, drink bottles, dirty mugs, and plates, I wondered how anyone could find anything in such a mess. I know that my home's not pristine, but even
I
am tidier than these two. I spotted a laptop and a tablet, so I believed Al's assertion that this was normal, because any thief would have made off with such items. That know­ledge didn't make the mess any prettier to look at.

In front of the tiny kitchen was a breakfast bar, which was completely covered in piles of paperwork. I noticed that at least this seemed to be in an orderly arrangement, and I spotted accounts, receipts, and records for Amigos del Tequila, Serena Spa, and the
FOGTT
. Tony had mentioned that Callie did accountancy work for people—at least it looked as though her work had some order about it.

“Would you check in the bedroom?” asked Al. “The bathroom is silent. Callie might still be asleep.”

I nodded and knocked on what was obviously the bedroom door. There was no response, so I opened it a crack and peered in. There were two mounds in the bed.

“I think they're
both
still in bed,” I whispered to Al over my shoulder. “What do you want me to do?”

Al shrugged.

I knocked again and said, “Hello.” Nothing. I went in, saying loudly, “Come on then, rise and shine. Time to get going.” But neither lump stirred. At all. Panic gripped my sadly empty tummy as I approached. My instincts kicked in and I reached for the pulse point on Callie's neck. I couldn't feel anything, but she wasn't cold.
Good sign!

“Al, come here and check for Tony's pulse,” I called.

There were no obvious signs of a struggle in the surprisingly tidy bedroom, and there were no signs of blood. I pulled Callie's arm free of the bedclothes and held her wrist. Finding a pulse is a lot harder than you might think. It's especially difficult when your own heart is pounding. Luckily, I noticed Callie's eyelids flutter.

“She's alive!” I said triumphantly. “I'm worried that she is so deeply asleep, though. How's Tony?”

“The same,” said a very grim Al. “I know that Callie took Dorothea's pills, but what about Tony? He and I had a few more drinks after you left, but this is no hangover.”

I scanned the room. No sign of pills or a pill bottle. “We don't know if Dorothea brought Callie one or two pills, or a whole bottle.”

Al pulled out his cellphone. “I'm calling an ambulance first. These guys need to be checked out. Then I'll call Dorothea and find out exactly what she gave Callie.”

Al left the room to make his calls. Once again, I turned my attention to the Booths' bedroom. There was a glass on Callie's nightstand. I peered at it. I scrabbled in my purse for my reading-cheats, shoved them onto my nose, and took another look.
White crystals.

Tony's side of the bed didn't have a nightstand. Without touching anything I bent down and peered under the bed. A beer glass lay on its side on the floor. I pulled a pen out of my purse, stuck it into the glass, and rolled it out from under the bed.
White crystals.

Maybe neither of them liked to swallow pills and both had chosen to grind them into a drink?
Unlikely.

Al stuck his head through the doorway, and I told him about finding white crystals in the two glasses. “An ambulance is on its way, and Dorothea says she gave Callie a container of her sleeping pills, which have a Z in their name. She can't remember what they are called. She buys them at a pharmacy in
PV
, where they know what she takes. She thinks there were about forty pills in the bottle.”

“Sleeping pills are all benzodiazepine receptor agonists, often referred to as Z-drugs, so we can at least tell them that.”

As he walked into the bedroom, Al looked puzzled. “You seem to know a lot about sleeping pills. Why's that?”

I sighed. “You'd be surprised how many medicine cabinets I've been through on cases where I've been working for the local cops as a victim profiler. Checking out a person's medications can tell you a great deal about them physically, their lifestyle and sometimes even their psychological makeup. Different sleeping pills are prescribed for different types of sleeping disorders, so I've researched which are which so that I can assess victims more accurately. The Z-drugs are used to treat people who cannot get off to sleep easily, rather than those who wake during the night. They are available under a variety of brand names that differ from country to country, or, sometimes, as a generic—that's because the patents on some of the earlier formulations have expired. If Dorothea was getting her pills here, in Mexico, she might have been getting a generic. Whichever case it is, they are not the sort of pills that should ever be mixed with alcohol, and it's possible to overdose on them quite easily. That said, we can't even be sure that it was Dorothea's pills that they were dosed with. So it really would be best if these guys were shipped off to a place where their vital signs can be monitored.”

“The ambulance shouldn't be long. It helps that it was me who called it in. Sometimes my position here helps in practical ways.” Al looked proud, but I was feeling totally useless.

“Let's go back into the main room,” I suggested. “We can still see and hear the Booths from there, but I won't feel as though I'm intruding so much.”

Al agreed. I was tempted to tidy their living room—
odd for me
—but I resisted. Instead, I stood in the middle of the mess and looked around, carefully noting what I saw. There was a tiny desk against one wall, and upon it sat the base unit for the handset telephone, but no handset, and a jotter. I picked my way across the room and peered through my glasses at the last notes made—by whom, I didn't know. “M. mileage? S. wax?
FOGTT
s barrels vs. bottles?” The “M” and “S” notes had been crossed through. The “
FOGTT
” note hadn't been. Not terribly helpful, as notes went, but they must have meant something, or at least enough, to whoever made them.

I returned to study the only area of order in the room: the piles of accounts arranged relatively neatly on the breakfast bar. I spotted a yellow sticky note poking out of the pile that related to Serena Spa. The word “WAX” had been written in a green highlighting pen with a question mark next to it. I looked at the sheet it was stuck to: lists of expenditures, all for consumable supplies. Someone—presumably Callie Booth—had highlighted the line for wax in green pen, and I could see why. The amount spent on wax supplies at the spa had been pretty steady for five months, then had dipped down to about half the usual cost. Clearly Callie had needed to ask Serena about this fact. That explained one cryptic note on the telephone pad.