Garden of Evil Read online

  “Home to Mama,” I said. “To tell his version of the bad news.”

  “And what happens next?”

  “Mama and the rest of the family rush to the scene to see if it’s true.”

  Our eyes caught. The detective trotted back to the Buick. “Take it, take it, take it! Go, go, go! Geditouta here!” He kicked at a back tire.

  The tow truck operator moved faster than I have ever seen him, glancing over his shoulder as the wails drew closer.

  “Don’t tape those blankets anywhere we could find prints,” Ojeda barked. “Okay, roll it, roll it, roll it! Before we have a major cha-cha here.”

  The truck’s motorized flatbed slid back at a 30-degree angle. The ramp dropped, the cable grew taut, the motor groaned, and up, up, and away, just as the crowd parted for a heavyset middle-aged woman and a younger heavyset clone leading a pack of family members loping toward us, their wails a mournful tremolo as they ran.

  Time to return to the office. I retreated to my T-Bird and drove into the soft and moist early evening as pink clouds drifted in a sapphire sky and the neon of South Beach glowed rosy across the bay. My neck felt stiff and my right eye twitched uncontrollably. This was the third story I had worked on in a long and troubled day, but the first exclusively my own.

  Dead Dominican stowaways, three of them, had been discovered shortly before dawn, their voyage of hope ended in a dark and airless cargo hold deep in the bowels of a freighter off Government Cut. At noon, two customs agents routinely boarded a rickety vessel docked on the Miami River. As they did, more than one hundred and fifty panic-stricken illegal Haitian immigrants burst out and fled in all directions. Some leaped over the side into the water, others pounded through a dockside restaurant, snatching food from the plates of startled diners as they ran, scattering to the four winds. Overwhelmed, caught by surprise, police and customs captured only a few. The city and the river swallowed the rest.

  So many people on the run, risking their lives to reach Miami. What would readers think, I wondered, as they perused their papers over their morning coffee? Would they think at all? Or would they be too busy getting the kids off to school, gearing up for torturous commutes or morning sales conferences?

  The desk had overreacted as usual and overstaffed both stories, with News reporters bumping into each other at the scenes. It’s not that I mind sharing bylines, I just like to work alone. Steeling myself against the arctic blast, I stepped into the News building’s deserted air-conditioned lobby. The effect was as if I had plunged my overheated and sweaty body into a Deepfreeze. This cannot be healthy, I thought, as the elevator rose sluggishly to the fifth floor. My mind raced with all I still had to do. Check the Dominicans’ cause of death. More Haitians captured? Did any drown? Any smuggling arrests? And I wanted more information on Wanda, the driver, his brother, and the dealer. The city directory might help me track witnesses who had seen the Buick’s wild ride or suffered property damage from it.

  “Britt, you weren’t out in that heat all afternoon, were you?” Ryan Battle asked softly, his brown eyes registering shock and concern.

  Ryan has the face and gentle soul of a poet, too kind and compassionate to be a reporter, which he is. He works general assignment and features at the desk behind mine.

  “Yes, I was.” I swept aside the mail and messages on my desk.

  “How come?” He looked and sounded so innocent.

  “What do you mean, how come?” I snapped impatiently. “Covering the news, doing my job. How was your day?”

  “Way too hot to be out there, Britt,” he said seriously. “I’ve been working on stories I could cover by phone.” His snowy white shirt looked immaculate, his grooming perfect. “They released the new tourism statistics today, and the state candidates filed their financial reports.”

  “Silly me.” I slapped a palm to my forehead. “Now why didn’t I think of that? I could have asked everybody to fax me press releases. But, oh, that’s right, I forgot, I’m a journalist.”

  No answer. I resisted the impulse to turn and face the wounded expression in those soft spaniel eyes. In my mind’s eye I saw the scar on his forehead left by a brick hurled through the windshield when we covered the riot.

  Bobby Tubbs, the assistant city editor in the slot, was impatiently waving me in his direction.

  “Where the hell have you been all this time?” His chubby cheeks puckered with annoyance. “Howie’s already gone, and we need new leads on the Haitian and Dominican stories for the state.”

  “I was at that other scene. I called you,” I said.

  “An accident?” He looked exasperated.

  “Yes…involving a headless driver who careened a mile through the city with three live passengers, if you count the guy dangling out the back window.”

  Tubbs frowned. “We’re really right for space. We’ve got Ryan’s tourism piece, and Miriam’s out on a breaking story, a nursing home being evacuated because the air-conditioning died.”

  “People lived in Miami before air-conditioning,” I groused. “Didn’t anybody ever hear of fans?”

  Tubbs scrutinized my sweat-stained visage, wary, as though—maddened by the heat—I might be dangerous. “That was when everybody who could afford it left for the summer, before they paved all the green space and made it hotter.”

  He pulled up the local page layout, studied his computer screen, and shook his head. God forbid that breaking news should interfere with the layout for his plans.

  “Maybe we can fit something in, but keep it tight, tight, tight. There’s no space.”

  I stalked back to my desk, head aching, feeling weary and unappreciated. I finished everything else, then called Ojeda at headquarters.

  Between us we put it together. The love story of Wanda and Bucky began when they met in rehab. Their relationship, short though it was, had obviously outlived any rehabilitative effects of the program. When Wanda borrowed her mother’s new car to drive to a “doctor’s appointment,” she had neglected to mention Bucky, his brother—or the shotgun. Wanda’s mother, a nice lady, Ojeda reported sadly, was raising Wanda’s two toddlers. That was why she worked midnights. And her limited auto insurance covered only immediate family members with valid licenses. Bucky did not qualify on either count; his license had been revoked after his last arrest. The younger heavyset woman who had arrived at the scene with Bucky’s mother was not the dead man’s sister, as I had presumed. She was his wife, mother of his five children, and Wanda’s bitter rival.

  “Shoulda seen ’em go at each other,” Ojeda said. “It was bad.”

  Frankie, Bucky’s brother, had been spotted downtown, on line at the Greyhound bus station. He ran again but cops tackled him on Northwest Second Avenue, though not before he darted through four lanes of traffic, causing a three-car crash.

  I trotted up to the city desk to report the new information. “Okay.” Bobby barely glanced up from his editing screen. “I found a hole for it. But make it brief. Two grafs tops. No more than seven lines.”

  As I stomped off in a snit, he called after me.

  “Britt, there’s a bulletin, a wire story outa Shelby County, upstate. I’m sending it to your mailbox. You might be interested.” I ignored him.

  Trimmed to bare bones, my story still came in at three times his specified length. It’s harder to write short than long, especially with so much information. As he edited it, I peered over Bobby’s shoulder, arguing as he eliminated every human, ironic, or remotely interesting detail.

  I called my friend Lottie Dane, who was back in photo after shooting the nursing home evacuation. “Thanks a lot,” I said. “You and Miriam managed to push my story off local and into the brieflys.”

  “Sorry, Britt, but you shoulda seen all the poor old folks, poor thangs. Hell-all-Friday, they are us someday. I jist saw what we have to look forward to. It ain’t purty.”

  I always count on Lottie, the best friend I have, to cheer me up. Despite all she has covered, wars and famine, earthquakes and vo
lcanoes—even Jonestown—she is indefatigably positive, always up. Tonight she did not sound like her usual high-spirited self.

  “What’s wrong, Lottie? What is it?”

  She sighed. “Jist somethin’ I married.”

  Long divorced, she never discusses her ex. “Look,” I said, “I’m too tired and disgusted to go right home. Let’s go for a drink when you get off.” Something tall and cold with a twist of lime shimmered miragelike in my mind. “We can talk.”

  “Okay,” she said, “but I’ve still gotta soup the film for that Sunday special section.”

  “I’ll go through my mail and messages till you’re ready. Hurry up,” I said.

  I sorted the mail. Why are people with the least legible handwriting the most prone to scribble lengthy letters?

  To be perfectly honest with you, a piece of jail mail began, confirming my theory that this phrase almost always precedes a lie, I was always threatening to kill Charlene—but I never, ever, really seriously meant it.

  I knew the case. Charlene had dialed nine-one-one, screaming that her ex-husband had a gun and was breaking into the house. Shots, screams, and the line went dead. Police arrived and found her rolled up in a rug he was trying to fold into the trunk of his Toyota—more proof that restraining orders are only paper and don’t stop bullets.

  Despite his guilty plea, he now claimed in a spidery hand that he’d been framed. I tossed it aside. A mauve envelope, good vellum stock, was addressed in an attractive and legible feminine hand.

  Please! You have to help me, the letter began. Somebody is trying to kill me. I have nowhere to turn. The police won’t listen. No one will. There have been several attempts. I fear they’ll succeed next time.

  I’m frightened and alone. I don’t want them to get away with my murder.

  She signed it Althea A. Moran.

  Her name had never appeared in the newspaper, according to our library data base. I reread the note. Another paranoid reader? A lonely senior craving attention? The address was Coral Gables, an upscale bedroom community. I reached for the phone, then hesitated. It was after midnight, when calls are usually bad news or emergencies. One’s upcoming murder should qualify, I thought, and punched in the number.

  I hoped the bleat of a busy signal meant she was alive and well.

  The next letter was also brief and to the point.

  I have a friend who is writing, or rewriting, the Bible. You can help him do it. He also needs a wife. You are it. Send me your home address as soon as possible.

  Lottie called to say she was on her way out to the newsroom. “Listen to this,” I said, and read it.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to meet the fella,” she drawled.

  “For Pete’s sake, Lottie, he’s rewriting the Bible!”

  “I know men with hobbies a whole lot worse.”

  I tidied my desk, snatched up my purse, then noticed a nagging signal flashing in the corner of my computer screen, a message, the wire story Tubbs had sent. I hit the key and scrolled through it.

  FLA. LAWMAN KILLED, SUSPECT AT LARGE

  Veteran Sheriff T. Rupert “Buddy” Braacom, 54, top lawman in this rural citrus and farming county for more than 21 years, was shot to death Thursday, apparently by a prisoner who escaped from the sheriff’s office in the small county Jail annex in Live Oak.

  Brascom may have been slain with his own service revolver, according to Deputy S. L. Weech, who discovered the body. The sheriff’s weapon was missing, along with his wallet, badge and his Chevrolet Blazer. In his last communication with a dispatcher, the sheriff had indicated he had a woman in custody and was proceeding to the annex.

  The prisoner has not been identified. A trucker who knew Brascom later reported seeing the sheriff’s white Blazer southbound on I-96, driven by a young woman in her late teens or early twenties. The Florida Bureau of Law Enforcement and deputies set up roadblocks and launched an immediate manhunt.

  Sheriff Brascom is survived by his wife, Lugene, four adult children and two grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are incomplete. He is the fifth Florida police officer killed in the fine of duty this year.

  I read it twice, questions flooding my mind. Was he wearing a vest? Where was he hit, and why was her identity unknown if he had arrested her? Cop killers are rarely female. When they are, they rarely get away. Who are you? I wondered. Where are you? What’s your story?

  Two

  WE FOUND A SMALL TABLE IN THE DARK AND crowded back room at the 1800 Club and ordered drinks.

  “Got a picture?” Lottie’s bright red hair was long, wild, and unruly. She wore blue jeans, hand-tooled leather cowboy boots, and an L. L. Bean cotton shirt.

  “Picture?” I asked.

  “Damn straight, of that Bible-writing bridegroom, the one you’re ’sposed to marry. He a stud muffin?”

  “No picture, but I seriously doubt he’s a stud muffin and don’t plan to find out.” I complained at length about Tubbs’s hacking my story, then asked about Lottie’s ex.

  Her freckled face drew into a frown. “Guess I jist let it git me down.” She jabbed at the ice in her newly arrived drink with a stirrer. “The man never changes. Every coupla years he decides that, doggone, I was the true love of his life! Keeps insistin’ we were meant to be together.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Considering how most men feel about ex-wives, that should be an ego boost. Why are you bummed?”

  She inhaled the first sip of her frozen margarita, closed her eyes, licked her lips, and sighed. “Cuz sometimes I’m afraid he’s right, and if he is, jist shoot me now. With a man like him, you haul ass and don’t look back.”

  “Maybe he’s changed. Some people do, you know.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “He’s the back end of bad luck. Can’t settle down. Always off on some new crusade, some new adventure. Feels like fun at first, but it gits old fast. Ain’t no future in reliving the past. We git together, it always ends the same way, like the battle of the Alamo, with jist as many casualties. He’s wild; a-course that’s his most excitin’ feature. Known each other all our lives but, like Peter Pan, he never grew up. Wasn’t easy, gettin’ over that man,” she said, eyes sad. “I’ll be go-to-helled if I’m gonna do it agin. Speaking of men, when will yours be back in town?”

  “Next week.” I smiled. Miami Homicide Captain Kendall McDonald was attending a ten-week management seminar in Washington, D.C. Our on-and-off romance was on and red hot at the moment.

  “We talk every night; he writes every day, swears he misses me mucho. We’re muy simpatico,” I said wistfully, “when we’re not together. But this time, Lottie, I think it’s really serious.” Sipping my Dubonnet over ice, I recalled the wire story. “Hear about the sheriff up in Shelby County? Shot dead with his own gun, supposedly by a woman. She got away.”

  “Lover’s quarrel?” Lottie was always quick to link sudden death to sex. Most often she was right.

  “Didn’t sound like it. Wire story said he’d apparently arrested her. She’s young, teens or twenties. He’s a grandfather.”

  “Musta got careless,” Lottie said.

  “Yeah. Never let anybody take your gun, that’s the first thing they teach rookie cops. Wonder what the heck happened?”

  “Got a notorious speed trap up there,” she said. “Nailing tourists comin’ off the interstate is a major source-a local revenue.”

  “Maybe she got stopped, had drugs in the car, or was drinking. What on earth could have made her go for his gun, then use it? She must be sorry now,” I said.

  “Maybe not.” Lottie shrugged. “Maybe she’s evil, somebody born bad.”

  “No way,” I said. “Nobody is born bad. All babies start out innocent. Other people shape them, outside influences turn them into something dangerous and violent.”

  “I’ve seen it,” she insisted, shaking her head. “Some are born that way. They do bad things because it’s what they do. They like it. No other reason.”

  No point arguing, I thought, realizing I was h
ungry. “She headed south, according to the story.” I squinted at the menu in the dim light. “Could be on her way here right now. Just what we need, another cop killer.”

  “Shelby County’s a long way off,” Lottie said. “And you know how cops are when one of ’em gits shot. Doubt she makes it this far. More’n likely she’s wearing metal bracelets by now.”

  It was late when I drove home, fortified by a sandwich and a salad. The temperature was stuck at 90, the humidity smothering when I got out of the car. The surf pounded the sandy shoreline just a few blocks away, but no hint of a sea breeze stirred. I took out my key, walked through the quiet courtyard, and paused to gaze up at the Big Dipper hanging in place, its bowl pointed toward Polaris, the North Star.

  Somewhere out there, beneath that star-spangled black velvet stretch of sky, a woman was on the run, hunted-not in handcuffs. Somehow I knew it. Where are you? I wondered. Are you scared and alone? What are you thinking out there? My skin tingled with an odd sensation; perhaps it was the drinks, the heat, or both, but I felt connected, as though sensing her presence. I could almost hear her breathing.

  A sudden movement, a rustling in the dark, startled me. A figure watched from the shadows of the palms bordering the building. “Who is it?” I demanded, instinctively taking a step back.

  “Didn’t mean to frighten you, Britt.”

  I breathed again in relief. My landlady, Mrs. Goldstein, age eighty-one.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, voice hushed. “What on earth are you doing out here at this hour? Where’s Mr. Goldstein?”

  “Sleeping. But I couldn’t.” She lowered her voice. “It’s the water restrictions. The banana trees, you know how they need water. They’re burning up.”

  The stream from the hose she had dropped trickled into the scorched grass. The woman had sneaked out like a thief in the night to douse her little banana grove. “I’m conserving water in every other way,” she said, “but you said yourself, they’re better than supermarket bananas.”