A Dark and Lonely Place Page 2

  “You sure it’s no accident?”

  “Looks like bullet wounds to the back of the head.”

  One that exited the Indian’s face had taken his left eye with it. John felt a painful throb in his own eye when he saw it. He never reacted physically to such sights. Too much sun and too little sleep, along with the trouble ahead must have triggered a headache.

  “Oh, Lord.” The captain groaned. “Another media event. Tell me you have a subject in custody.”

  “Nope.”

  “A suspect’s name? Or description?”

  “Nothing.” Trouble clearly lay ahead.

  The victim lived large, and big bucks complicate both life and death. When a man of moderate means is slain, good detectives usually know within hours who did it and why, then have to prove it. But the richer the victim, the more suspects there are. A writer once said the rich are different from you and me. John agreed. So many more people want them dead.

  “The son of a bitch lived fast,” the captain said, envy in his voice, “loved speed, kept the pedal to the metal.”

  “He’s learned a lesson,” John said.

  “Which is?”

  “Nothing’s faster than a speeding bullet.”

  The captain snorted. “Too bad you can only learn that one once. Don’t release his ID. Keep the press at bay till we get a handle on it.” The last thing the department needed during the dog days of summer was a sensational homicide involving sex, scandal, and corruption in high places.

  Eagle was no stranger to headlines and controversy. Winning was his lifestyle and he played as competitively as he worked. A champion powerboat racer, he lived the fast life on blue water with high rollers, grit, glitz, and danger. He raced Italian sports cars, piloted his own jet helicopter. The man had it all—fast boats, fast horses, and faster women. But today, John thought, boom, boom, bye-bye, all gone.

  “I’ll try,” he told the captain, as he stared at the beach below. “But a TV sound truck with a satellite dish is rolling onto the sand right now. Looks like Channel Seven.”

  The captain cursed again. “I’ll send PIO on a three-signal. What else you need?”

  “My partner. Get J. J. out to Eagle’s place, ASAP. On Star Island, I think. See who’s there, who saw him last, where he was headed, and why. And advise the Coast Guard and Marine Patrol to appeal for information on their emergency channel and stop boaters in the general vicinity to find out what they saw.”

  “Any idea how many boats are out on a day like this?” the captain protested.

  “Lots,” John said. “Sound carries over water. On a day like today you can see and hear forever. They’ve all got binoculars, cell phones and cameras. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Have choppers do a search for evidence and more victims in the water. Maybe the Indian wasn’t alone.”

  The captain protested, “You know we’re over budget with a freeze on overtime.”

  “Now or never,” John warned. “Once this hits the headlines, how many witnesses you think will step forward? See if you can get the new recruit class to help.”

  The captain sighed. “Gotcha.”

  John returned to the chaos down on the beach. He had hotel employees use a catering tent and privacy screens to shield the name, Screaming Eagle, and the registration number of the splintered powerboat from the press. The photo crew were loading their trailer, the photographer packing his equipment into a padded, metal-sided suitcase.

  “Finished for the day?” John asked.

  “Just when the light’s nearly perfect, all hell breaks loose,” he griped. “That’s Miami for you.”

  “Catch any of the action?”

  “Not my bag.” He smirked. “I’m high fashion only, no bleeding bodies or burning buildings. Been there, done that. My next shoot’s in Barbados, then on to the Virgin Islands.” He smiled smugly.

  The dark-haired model emerged from the trailer. She’d changed into blue jeans and a T-shirt.

  John caught his breath. The sunlight in her hair made him want to touch her. She looked as though she recognized him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She studied his face with bright blue eyes fringed by thick, dark lashes, as though trying to remember his name. She smiled, until her eyes dropped to the badge clipped to his waistband, then abruptly turned away.

  For many women the badge is power and the gun a phallic symbol; for others, not so much.

  “Wait . . . ,” he said. But she slipped back into the trailer and firmly closed the metal door.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  “Who?” The photographer looked up and frowned.

  “That girl.”

  “Just a model. Forget it.” The photog slammed the lid on a huge case of lighting equipment. “Listen. Girls like her shoot down a dozen guys a day. Even studs like you.”

  “I know her from somewhere.”

  “That’s what they all say,” said the makeup artist, who wore shiny black nail polish.

  “The dark-haired girl. Who is she?” he asked the photographer again.

  The man didn’t even look up.

  “Okay.” John flashed his badge. “You have a city permit for this shoot?”

  “Of course,” the man said indignantly.

  “I’d like to see it now. I doubt it includes permission to park a trailer on county property. You may have a city permit, but this is a county park. When was this vehicle last inspected for illegal emissions? The engine ran all day, polluting a county park. Who is it registered to? What’s with that out-of-state inspection sticker? May I see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance?”

  John paused to sniff the air. “Is that weed I smell? Are you holding? Is that a Baggie in your pocket? Do you mind if I—”

  “Summer,” the photographer said. “Her name’s Summer Smith.”

  That rang no bell.

  Lucy trotted up at the wrong moment, hair tied back, now in jeans, sneakers, and an MPD T-shirt. Fire rescue and lifeguards were treating two apparent heart attacks, she said, a woman in premature labor, and more than a dozen injuries, none life-threatening.

  By the time she filled him in, the photographer’s trailer had lumbered out of the park and merged into congested southbound traffic on Ocean Drive. Summer Smith was gone with it. How will I find her? he wondered.

  Uniforms kept the public and unruly press at bay on the far side of the street. The growing crowd bristled with cameras. News photographers and paparazzi focused through zoom lenses. Tourists clicked away with cell phones, with digital and disposable cameras. Small children rode above the crowd, hoisted high on the shoulders of adults for better views of the carnage. What’s wrong with them? John wondered. Would this become a cherished childhood memory, along with the circus, the carnival, and the county fair? People never used to do that. Or did they? he wondered. His head throbbed. How did he let her get away?

  Miami homicide detective J. J. Rivers trudged unhappily across hot sand an hour later. He looked as pale as a prison inmate or an aging cop who’d worked the midnight shift too long, which he had. “The hell we doing here, John?” he demanded. “What are you? Volunteer of the year? You coulda rolled up your blanket and crept to your car, nobody the wiser. You don’t like the damn beach. You’re no tourist! You hate crowds! What the hell were you doing here and what did you get us into?” He responded to angry cries from the press, confined by crime scene tape across the street, with a sullen stare.

  “Don’t agitate ’em,” John warned. “You know how they get.”

  “They think my attitude stinks, they should smell my underwear,” J. J. said.

  John sighed. “Anything at Eagle’s house?”

  “Ha! Should see it. Gloria Estefan’s a neighbor. Housekeeper speaks a few words of English. The victim entertained several young ladies yesterday. One, two, or more spent the night in his room. The girls were up and out before the housekeeper came downstairs at six a.m. Eagle ate breakfast and left alone, about ten, on the Screaming E
agle.

  “The girls’ll be back if they don’t see the news. Left their luggage. What girl leaves behind her Jimmy Choo four-inch heels and Victoria’s Secret thongs? Left my card so the girls can give me a jingle and impressed the urgency of my request upon the housekeeper, who is minus her green card, by the way. Promised to give us a buzz at the girls’ first sighting.

  “Not that I don’t trust her, but I also left a rookie in an unmarked behind the island’s guard house. He’s watching for ’em.”

  “Good,” John said. “You find next of kin?”

  “A couple ex-wives. No problems with ’em lately, the housekeeper says. Parents deceased. His office manager’ll know. Left a message; Eagle’s law office is closed for the weekend.”

  “That buys a little time,” John said. “If we can’t inform next of kin, we can’t confirm Eagle’s ID to the media.”

  After the body was bagged, tagged, and en route to the morgue, both returned to headquarters.

  John shook the sand out of his shoes. As he wondered where he left his socks and where Summer Smith was staying, Eagle’s housekeeper called. The three young women had returned.

  “Keep ’em there. We’re on the way,” J. J. said, then paused. “What?” He clamped his hand over the mouthpiece. “They just left!” he shouted. “What the hell? Sez they changed clothes and took off!”

  “What about the rookie watching for ’em?”

  “If he ain’t dead in the bushes, he’ll soon wish he was.”

  Two of the women, the housekeeper said, drove off in one of Eagle’s cars, a yellow Lamborghini, a two-seater.

  “No two high-maintenance broads ever got dressed that fast to go out on Saturday night,” J. J. said, grimly. “They know something. They’re running.”

  The third girl left in a Yellow Cab with her luggage.

  They found the rookie staked out to watch for the girls’ return alive, well, and texting a friend. He had missed their return to Eagle’s home but had seen the sunshine yellow Lamborghini depart. Its sleek design so dazzled him that he had failed to notice the occupants.

  “A bright yellow Lamborghini can’t be that tough to find,” John said.

  “Right. We can rule out my driveway for a start,” J. J. said.

  Yellow Cab reported that the fare picked up at Eagle’s place went to the departures level at the United Airlines terminal at Miami International Airport.

  Pressed for descriptions of Eagle’s young female houseguests, the Guatemalan housekeeper suddenly forgot what little English she knew. Questioned by a Spanish-speaking detective, she seemed to have forgotten Spanish as well.

  A BOLO, Be On the LookOut, paid off after midnight. The Lamborghini lit up the night, parked in plain sight on the street outside Sky, a Miami nightspot just south of the Design District.

  The doorman clearly remembered the car and the two women who arrived in it. Clearly unaccustomed to waiting behind velvet ropes for admittance, they brushed by the line and strolled inside, too hot to be challenged.

  But that was hours ago and they no longer seemed to be there.

  The detectives even checked the restrooms, both men’s and women’s.

  John and his partner sat in the manager’s office with the doorman to watch the video surveillance tape.

  “There they are!” The doorman pointed as two shadowy figures entered the frame. “That’s them! They’re hot!”

  John blinked at the grainy tape. “I don’t believe this!” He rocked back in his chair, hungry, thirsty, tired, and elated. His head ached, his eyes stung, but no doubt about it.

  “They’re models! They were working at a photo shoot on South Beach today when it all went down.”

  “Yesterday.” J. J. glumly checked his watch.

  John stared at the tape, and Summer Smith, her familiar walk, the way she tossed her head back and laughed.

  “I know that girl,” he said with certainty, “just can’t remember where we met.”

  “That’s a first,” J. J. said. “You never forget a face.”

  “Her name’s Summer Smith, got it from the photographer. Didn’t ring a bell, must be an AKA. Wonder if she has a rap sheet.” Perplexed, he squinted at the screen. Had he seen that face on a wanted poster?

  Now she has to talk to me, he thought. He looked forward to it. Couldn’t wait, in fact.

  They took the tapes to view back at the station. Hopefully they’d reveal who the girls met at the club, who they’d left with, and when. Why leave an exotic $400,000 car behind? When no one returned for it by four a.m., with rain threatening, the police had it towed for processing.

  An hour before dawn, a call went out: a charred body in a still-smoking Dumpster a mile north of Sky.

  Not their case, but John decided to swing by the scene. J. J. argued against it. “I’m running on empty,” he complained. “Let’s call it a night. I hate it when you do this. I need sleep and something to eat. We can start fresh in the morning.”

  “Just this one stop,” John said, as they waited at a railroad crossing for a passing train. “Let’s see what they’ve got.”

  J. J. bitched, moaned, and complained. But John loved watching the Southeast Railway train roar through the city, gates lowering, lights flashing, the train stopping traffic as it raced through the night like a wild animal. It reminded him of something intimately familiar yet impossible to remember.

  Unmistakable odors—smoke, gasoline, and burned flesh—hung in the air. The rain hadn’t come. A security guard on his way home had spotted the flames and called it in. Firefighters were unaware until they doused the blaze that it had been set to cremate a corpse along with any physical evidence.

  Like most such attempts, it wasn’t successful. Something always remains. Even professional gas-fired cremations need hours of twenty-four-hundred-degree heat to consume a body.

  A woman’s purse, the contents scattered, was found two blocks away. No ID, but car keys with a distinctive emblem lay in the gutter and fit the Lamborghini.

  The victim was burned so badly that only a medical examiner could determine the sex. But a small silver ring fell from a charred finger bone as the remains were carefully removed from the Dumpster. Cleaned up at the morgue, the ring was a woman’s size five with the initials S.L.S. engraved inside.

  John would never see her again. Ever. Why did that hit him so hard? Summer Smith was a stranger. Or was she? Weariness overtook him. He agreed with J. J. They’d quit, catch a few hours sleep, then restart, refreshed, in midmorning.

  Lucy had let herself into his apartment to leave a meal he could reheat in the microwave, and a note to call her if he wanted company, no matter how late. He didn’t. He couldn’t eat or sleep but dozed after daylight. In the recurring dream she was warm, vibrant, and she loved him, despite the danger around them, but this dream was different. He finally saw her face.

  He awoke with a start, realizing he had finally found the girl, the woman who had haunted him both day and night since childhood. But too late. She now slept in the morgue, a charred corpse.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The knock at his door was familiar—three sharp raps. John didn’t want company but Lucy had her own key and wouldn’t hesitate to use it, kick out a window, or smash in a door. A positive trait for an ambitious, aggressive young cop. For one’s sweet young fiancée, not so much.

  “Miami Police! Open up! Now!”

  He surrendered.

  “Hey!” Detective Tracy Luisita Dominguez stepped inside, a spectacular sight in her starched, tailored, sharply creased dark blue uniform. She was so perky it made his head hurt. Her dazzling Latina smile hurt his eyes. But he followed the aroma as she took over his kitchen. She had brought strong Cuban coffee and warm, fresh-baked guava pastries.

  “You look terrible,” she chirped. “Tell me every gruesome detail. You know you should switch to days. Midnights kill our social life.”

  She didn’t understand, never would. Dangerous predators roamed Miami’s wilderness after m
idnight, and he was the hunter. He popped the lid off a steamy-hot coffee, then bit into a pastry. He knew it was sweet and flaky, but it tasted bitter, the way he felt.

  “They posted the date for the next promotional exam,” Lucy said. “Are you taking the lieutenant’s test?”

  They’d discussed it before. “No. Promotion would mean a transfer out of Homicide. I like what I do.” Except today. Except now, he thought. “It’s what I do best.”

  “But”—she straddled a kitchen chair, a supersexy position for a woman, especially one wearing a gun, a uniform, and lots of leather. “You could climb the ladder, fatten your pension, then land a chief’s job in some small town, stay long enough for a second pension, and we retire in style. Chief Ashley. I like it.” She licked her bright red lips suggestively.

  “If I retire, I won’t go into policework somewhere else. It’s too political. You know I don’t play well with others.”

  He didn’t tell her the real reason. How could he, when he didn’t understand it himself? All he knew was that he was never more alive than when on Miami’s darkest streets. The first time he’d felt the city’s pulse beat, he knew it was where his destiny lay. Several times he’d thought the moment had come, but realized later it was not the challenge he was born for, waited for.

  “You need to be a team player. Think about it, querido.”

  She shoved the chair aside, balanced daintily on the steel-tipped toes of her safety shoes, and kissed his mouth. She was hot but not the woman on his mind.

  “We’re working Eagle hard,” he said gruffly. “Gotta go.”

  “You okay?” She rested her palm on his forehead.

  “Just tired. The case . . .”

  “Developments?”

  “Nothing good,” he said. “A second victim.”

  Her dark eyebrows rose. “Who?”

  “Just a girl he knew,” he said bleakly. He hated how that sounded.

  “Probably a hooker,” she said casually, opened his fridge, and gasped. “You didn’t eat the meat loaf? Not even the mac and cheese?” She turned, shocked, hands on her hips. “You didn’t call either! I wanted to hear all about your case.”