Garden of Evil Read online

  They are. My only reservation was that they exploded into perfect ripeness simultaneously, like bomb blasts at foreign embassies, resulting in an overwhelming fallout of banana bread, cake, shakes, splits, and puddings along with bananas frozen, fried, and chocolate-coated.

  “Here.” I groped for the hose in the wet grass and picked it up. “I’ll finish. Listen,” I whispered, “if you water at dawn, just before daylight, who will know? And if the water police swoop down, I promise to bail you out.”

  I hugged her, sent her inside, soaked the trees, then hung the hose on the side of the building. Inside my apartment, the light winked on my answering machine.

  “Call me when you get in, babe. No matter how late. Miss you.”

  McDonald answered on the first ring.

  I began to fill him in on the heat and Miami’s news stories of the day, but he interrupted with an important question. What was I wearing? Being a basically truthful person, I had to tell him I had cranked up the air conditioner to its coldest setting and stripped down to nothing in front of it. We talked for a long time.

  I forced myself to walk Bitsy early next morning before the fiery sun rose too high and the pavement grew too hot for her little paws.

  A tiny white mop of a poodle, she is delighted to go anywhere, at any time, no matter what the weather. Her original owner, my friend Francie, used to smuggle Bitsy onto the midnight shift, to ride shotgun in the passenger seat of a Miami patrol car.

  Billy Boots, the cat, normally trailed us at a discreet distance, but today he watched from the shade of the frangipani tree outside my door.

  I glared at the pitiless blue sky, willing it to rain. My senses felt numb, my body sluggish, as though the unrelenting heat had shriveled the circuitry in my brain like Mrs. Goldstein’s banana trees.

  Bitsy, at the end of her lead, lunged fiercely at lizards, as I fantasized about McDonald and what our life might be like if we merged. Would Bitsy get along with Hooker, McDonald’s old hound dog? The temperamental Billy Boots might pose more of a problem. I envisioned us all in a house shaded by trees and pink hibiscus, maybe even a pool, and my T-Bird parked next to his Jeep Cherokee. Was I hallucinating, still dazed from phone sex the night before, or had I begun to believe for the first time that it really could happen? The old obstacles remained. I could not give up my job anymore than he could his, but perhaps we were finally ready to resolve the conflicts, or at least hammer out a way to coexist with them.

  I studied the morning paper over Cuban coffee and an intoxicatingly perfumy mango sliced into cold, crisp cereal. The Dominican and Haitian stories, with their group bylines and more staff credits at the bottom, got solid front-page play. My story was buried back inside the local section with no byline. Brieflys don’t warrant them. Still frustrated, I had to admit the headline was an eye-catcher:

  HEADLESS DRIVER CRASHES AFTER WILD MILE RIDE

  By far the best work in the paper were the page-one photos accompanying the story of the nursing home evacuation. They focused in tight on the eyes of bewildered and frail seniors, heat-exhausted and frightened, being spirited into an uncertain night by strangers whisking them away from all that was familiar. The credit line read Lottie Dane/News Staff. Damn, she is good, I thought.

  The story on the slain sheriff ran unchanged on the state page. No late-breaking developments.

  I showered, dressed in cool blue cotton, and sipped my second coffee while making telephone rounds of Miami, the Beach, the county, and Hialeah police. The last had a 10 A.M. press conference scheduled.

  “What’s it about?” I asked Camacho, the public information officer.

  “Just get over here.” His voice dropped to a confidential pitch. “You’re gonna like this one.”

  “Gimme a hint,” I said, “to tell my editors.”

  “The chief told me not to get into it, just tell everybody to be here.”

  I hate guessing games. “Okay,” I said, “is the chief quitting? Is it about demotions? Oh, it must be about that big internal affairs investigation.”

  “What big internal affairs investigation?” He sounded alarmed. “You hear something?”

  “Never mind. They told me not to get into it.”

  “Britt! Goddamn!”

  “Is it about a homicide? Did it happen during the night?”

  “Nope.”

  “An arrest?”

  “You’re getting warm.”

  “In an old case?”

  “Nah.”

  “So it’s something new?”

  “You’re on target.”

  Bigger than a breadbox? Smaller than a semi truck? This game was getting old fast. But maybe it was something major, I thought, interest piqued. “The detectives at the press conference. Will they be from homicide?”

  “Nope.”

  “Robbery?”

  “Nope.”

  “Sexual battery?”

  “Could be.”

  He feigned annoyance, pretending to be far too busy a man for this, but I knew he loved it. “They arrested the Silver-Toothed rapist?”

  “Nope.”

  “The Alysian Lakes Rapist? The Pillowcase Rapist? The I-Ninety-five Rapist?”

  “Nope, nope, nope,” he shot back, rapid-fire.

  “Another rapist?” I suddenly felt queasy to the core at how many predators roam free.

  “Not exactly. But you’ll like this one, Britt.”

  I didn’t. Lottie also attended, crouched near the podium for a good shot. After the usual half-hour delay for TV crews to untangle their wires and set up their lights, the sexual battery commander announced an arrest.

  The “subject,” he said, in the usual stilted policespeak, was accused of impersonating both a medical doctor and his own patient. Lottie stopped shooting as the details unfolded, wrinkled her nose at me, and slowly crossed her eyes.

  The suspect had been calling hospitals and nursing registries, identifying himself as a physician and hiring private-duty nurses for his “patient.” The “doctor” told the nurses he had prescribed sexual gratification as an important part of his patient’s therapy.

  The “patient” asked his nurses to fondle him “for therapeutic purposes,” per doctor’s orders. A new nurse had reported his repeated requests for rectal exams to her supervisor, who found no record of the doctor. A police investigation confirmed that “doctor” and “patient” were one and the same. They sought publicity to bring other victims forward.

  The pale and pudgy suspect smirked through the photo op, peering at the press through thick glasses as he was marched in handcuffs to a police van en route to the county jail.

  “Don’t he make you glad you’re single?” Lottie muttered in the lobby.

  He did, and I met yet another reason at Miami police headquarters: recently reelected City Commissioner Sonny Saladrigas. It was a quiet news day. The entire county seemed drugged into inertia by the heat—except for Saladrigas.

  He paced back and forth across the lobby, glad-handing cops and passersby and ranting at his political enemies. They included the newspaper, reporters, and anybody else who dared question his dubious campaign tactics, his padding the city payroll with relatives and cronies, and his purchase of luxurious furniture for his city hall office while Miami was going broke.

  “I have a story for you!” he announced, eyes probing my breasts. Sonny was slightly overweight, with a receding hairline. He wore too much gold and diamond jewelry and, despite his expensive wardrobe, always managed to look like an unmade bed.

  “Write this, write this down,” he commanded, standing too close as he launched into a tirade accusing his city hall adversaries of stealing his office furniture and forcing him into the lavish new expenditures for which he was being criticized.

  Same old stuff. He had a list of suspects and was insisting on a major investigation, police reports, surveillances, and searches. A waste of taxpayer money, but he would get them, though the cops knew it was all balderdash. The chief serves at the wi
ll of the city commission and Sonny was a commissioner. He had even been vice mayor.

  “Why do I never see you at city hall?” he breathed in my face.

  “Because I cover the police beat.” Truth was, it would make sense if I set up shop at city hall. The crime rate there was probably higher than anyplace else in the city. Miami’s politicians regularly stole more than desperadoes with guns.

  “But you should come to see me,” he said softly. “Why is it we have never had lunch?”

  “I usually don’t eat lunch. Deadlines,” I said.

  “So,” he said slyly, “we don’t need food.”

  “How is Lourdes?” I asked brightly. “She worked so hard in your campaign. She must be exhausted.”

  “My wife.” He shrugged. “She is busy with the children. Call me,” he said meaningfully, “anytime you are free. Anytime.” He gave me his pathetic attempt at a suave and seductive look as he pressed his damp card between my fingers. It lacked the intended effect. Instead, I wanted to go wash my hands. “Anytime,” he whispered again. “Call me.” He stepped onto the elevator on his way up to see the chief. I wondered if anybody had called ahead to warn the poor man.

  Back at the office I passed along the tip on Sonny’s missing office furniture to Barbara, our city hall reporter, who rolled her eyes, and then rang Althea Mason, the woman who wrote that somebody was trying to kill her. Again, no answer. For a woman desperately seeking help, she was annoyingly difficult to reach. I checked the state desk for the latest from Shelby County. A hero’s funeral was being planned. In wire photos, grim deputies wore strips of black mourning tape across their badges. Lawmen from three counties and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were combing north Florida for the killer and the missing Blazer. The mystery woman now had a price on her head. A $25,000 reward had been offered and would probably grow.

  Local stories languished in my tickler file, but curiosity sent me flipping through my Rolodex to find a number for Charlie Webster, long-time reporter for the Shelby County Register, a small daily.

  “Hey, Charlie. This is Britt, from The Miami News.”

  “Britt! Where the hell are ya? Here in town?”

  “No, still down in Miami.”

  “Thought maybe you got them to send you up here to cover the demise of our late great sheriff.”

  “No way. They’re using your stories right off the wire. Enough action here to keep me working twenty-four and seven.”

  “No doubt. How fare you in the never-ending war against crime, criminals, and cops? Most excitement we usually get round here is posting your stories on our newsroom bulletin board. You do that little gem on the headless driver? Sounded like yours. Had a feeling there was more to it.”

  “There was. Space problems,” I said. “Wait till I tell you about the press conference I went to today.” I filled him in. Leaning back in my chair, I focused on the flawless blue sky beyond the newsroom’s big windows. “What’s the four-one-one on your sheriff?”

  “Biggest story here since that rasha UFO sightin’s couple years back. Big in every way. 01’ Rupert weighed in at ’bout two hundred and ninety pounds. Wasn’t a tall man, only about five foot seven or so, but he made up for it in clout. Hell, we got cops coming from all sixty-seven counties, Georgia, and South Carolina for the funeral.”

  “He was that well liked?”

  “Well connected more like it. A long-time power player in the good-ol’-boy network up here.”

  “How come they haven’t caught the killer? Who is she?”

  “Nobody knows. She’s one long-gone lady. Musta hit the freeway and racked up a messa miles ’tween her and here ’fore the body was found. Could be anywhere by now. Haven’t had a sighting since that trucker put her behind the wheel of Buddy’s Blazer. Could be in the Big Apple drinking a beer or down there in Miami sipping a Cuba Libre.”

  “Too damn hot to come here,” I said. “Maybe she stashed his car and is right there under your nose. Think she’s local or some tourist he stopped on the interstate?”

  “No way a-tellin’ yet. Whichever, I don’t wanna be her. They’re hot on her tail. A lot of people want that little gal, and most are packing guns.”

  “Too bad you don’t have her car, that would probably tell you who she is. How come? Wasn’t it a violation of procedure to have a prisoner in custody and not run her ID on the air so the dispatcher could check?”

  “Hell, Britt, police work ain’t as formal up here as in the big city. For one thing, who’s gonna tell the sheriff he’s violating procedure? Procedure was whatever he decided to do.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Okay, long as you didn’t cross him.”

  His voice hinted at a whole lot more.

  “What was the scene like? Where was he shot?”

  “You writing something ’bout it?”

  “Nope. Not unless she shows up here. Just curious.”

  “Hell, Britt,” he drawled, “she makes it to Miami, she’ll get lost in the crowd and nobody’ll ever find her. Nobody’d notice another killer in Miami.”

  “Don’t let the Chamber of Commerce hear you. What was unusual about the murder scene, Charlie?”

  “We-e-ll,” he said reluctantly, “you know, ol’ Rupert, he liked the ladies.”

  “They like him?”

  “Like probably isn’t the right word, but power’s a trip for lotsa ladies. You know how women are, specially ’bout cops. Guns and badges are babe magnets.”

  “So you think sex is involved?” Lottie was right. Sex had something to do with everything lately.

  “Didn’t say that.”

  Ugly thoughts crossed my mind. “You think maybe some of his female prisoners didn’t always stay prisoners, depending on their…attitudes about sex?”

  “Rumors to that effect made the rounds.”

  “What was he wearing when he was shot?” I am often accused of having a dirty mind. It’s probably true.

  “Well, seems ol’ Rupert was bare-assed when he bought it. Had his shirt on, but his britches was down around his ankles.”

  “He’d had sex?”

  “Looked that way.”

  “Where was he shot?”

  “You know.”

  “You mean…?”

  “Politely put, shot in the groin.”

  “Jeez. Sure this isn’t a mob killing? Was he shot anyplace else?”

  “In the head. Musta dropped after the first one. Who wouldn’t? Then the killer put the pistol to his forehead and fired again.”

  “Ouch. A contact wound? The blow-back must have splattered her with blood. Sounds kind of messy and mean-spirited for a woman. You sure she was alone?” Most women don’t like a mess. Those who kill are usually more fastidious.

  “That ain’t the half of it. Coroner won’t say for publication, but they was like mini-shotgun blasts. He got blown away by his own pistol. Always kept it loaded with Black Talon hollow points.”

  “Whoa.” Black Talon ammo is designed to maim. On impact, the slugs peel open, fanning into jagged flower-shaped blades that shred internal organs. Cops favor their stopping power. Targets go down and don’t get up, and the bullets are far less likely to ricochet or pass through a body and hit somebody else. Criminals like Black Talons too. Their use of the deadly ammo generated enough public outcry that the manufacturer voluntarily took it off the market back in 1994. Only cops can legally buy it now.

  “You sure this wasn’t a hit by somebody trying to make it look sex-related?”

  “Some things you can’t fake, Britt.”

  “Killed in his own office, right? What’s the layout like?” Unconsciously, I had picked up a pencil and was scribbling notes.

  “No windows, one door enters off the lobby, another opens into the jail annex where there’s four holding cells. No tenants at the time unfortunately, or we mighta had us an eyewitness. Had his desk in there, four file cabinets, a little fridge, a gun cabinet, an evidence safe, a TV—and a big ol’ leather
couch.”

  “So your impression is he might have interviewed suspects on that couch?” The infamous casting couch in reverse, I thought. Audition, and maybe you don’t have to play the role of defendant.

  “There’d been rumors around for years.”

  “Women he arrested?”

  “Females, period. Prisoners, prisoners’ wives, secretaries, dispatchers, even female deputies who wanted to keep their jobs or git promoted.”

  “Eeewwwwee. You ever write about it?”

  “Britt, I keep telling ya, things are different up here.”

  True. The farther north you go in Florida, the farther south you get.

  “What you putting in your story, Charlie?”

  “You kidding? Our publisher already handed down the word. Brascom’s widow and grown kids live here. Hell, her granddaddy was a pioneer, first preacher in these parts. Buddy’s the victim, he got killed, there’s no proof, who ya gonna get to speak ill of the dead anyhow?”

  “Nobody, probably, unless you ask them. What happens when she gets caught and spills the story at trial?”

  “It’d just get blamed on her sleazy defense lawyer; everybody knows how they operate. But that has to happen first. Chances are, you know, cop killers—especially up in this part of the state—usually don’t get taken alive.”

  He was right.

  “Specially this one. Not only did she take off with his sidearm, she helped herself to a coupla boxes of his ammo.”

  “Black Talons?”

  “Yeah.”

  Three

  “ALTHEA MORAN, PLEASE.”

  “Who’s calling?” the woman’s voice was guarded.

  “Britt Montero, from The Miami News.”

  The silence was so long, I thought she’d hung up, after I’d finally reached her.

  “How do I know you’re who you say you are?”

  I sighed. “Well, if you recall, you wrote to me.’

  “Yes?” Her voice was irritatingly noncommittal.

  “If you’re still interested in speaking to me, you can call me back, the number is—”

  “Thank you anyway, I’ll just call the main number at the paper and ask for you.”