by J. A. Kerley
“Where could you get these plants, Doc?” I asked.
“Jimson weed grows wild across the country. Black locust grows in most states east of the Mississippi.”
I made a pouring motion. “What … someone just dumped twigs and leaves into a blender and made this stuff?”
“The active chemicals were likely extracted from the plant sources and concentrated. That would take a knowledge of chemistry. But probably basic.”
“As basic as jurisdictions?” I said, growing puzzled by Morningstar’s request that I be here. A rape, though horrific, was not reason to call me, the FCLE’s specialist in psychotics, sociopaths and other mental melt-downs.
“Jurisdictions?” she said.
“You said Kemp was found by Miami-Dade cops, was in their Missings file. Why did you call me, Doctor?”
Morningstar walked to the window and gazed down on the parking lot, forlorn in its dawn emptiness. Not only was I uncertain why I was here, I was also puzzled at her involvement. When she had solved the toxicology problem, her work was over, time to return to the dead. She seemed more like an attending physician than a pathologist.
Morningstar turned back to me. “I, uh … it’s not a typical case, is it, Detective? The combination of substances seems so calculated and cold that it feels … evil.”
Another anomaly. Evil was not a word normally used in the clinical halls of Morningstar’s pathology department. Had the bizarre methodology of the case unsettled the usually imperturbable pathologist?
“So you’d prefer the FCLE to investigate? Me in particular?”
“It’s your world, right, Detective? Who else but a psychopath might, uh …”
Words failed and she stared at the body motionless amidst the tubes and wires, his thoughts turned to nightmares and even the nightmares burned away, perhaps forever, by a combination of toxins you might find in your own backyard.
“Who else but a psychopath might turn common plants into Satan’s private date-rape drug?” I said.
Morningstar nodded. “I figured you’d have the right words.”
4
“You want to grab a case from Miami-Dade?” Roy McDermott said from behind his broad desk, patting down the straw-hued cowlick that immediately bounded back in defiance. “What? We don’t have enough cases of our own?” Outside his twenty-third-story window the Miami skyline was a study in muscular architecture. The FCLE was in the downtown Clark Center, and was the state’s top investigative agency, usually summoned when special expertise was needed. We stayed busy.
“Doc Morningstar thinks it’s the way to go.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, partner, but she’s a pathologist, not an investigative professional.”
“We can do it, right? Assert jurisdiction?”
Roy nodded reluctantly. “We’re state, they’re local. But it’s basically a missing-persons case that’ll probably get filed as a sex crime. I don’t see the reason, Carson. It’s not like we’re begging for work.”
My phone rang and I checked the caller: Morningstar. I made notes as she detailed her latest findings.
“That was the good Doc herself,” I said when we’d finished.
Roy clapped his hands in mock delight. “Goodie. Does she have any more cases to add to our list?”
“She has a newly isolated agent in the tox combo. Something called raphides. Given the plant-based nature of the other toxins, Morningstar thinks it came from dieffenbachia.”
“The houseplant? I used to have one in my office until it died. Probably had something to do with stubbing out cigars in the pot.”
“Dieffenbachia is also called dumb cane. Seems the raphides cause paralysis of the vocal cords.”
Roy spun to study the skyline. “So the perp drops this nastiness in a drink. The black locust makes the target head home with cramps and muscle weakness, the datura makes him hallucinate like Timothy Leary squared, and this last stuff …”
“Makes it impossible to call for help,” I said.
Roy turned back to his desk and picked up the phone.
“You’re tight with Vince Delmara, right?”
I nodded. Vince was a senior investigator with the Miami-Dade County Police Department. We’d worked together on my first case in Florida last year, and I’d found Delmara a first-rate detective, old school, the kind to visit a crime scene just to sniff the air. We’d hit it off from the git-go.
“Good,” Roy said. “Let Vince schmooze you through the transfer and it’ll go easy.”
“You think?”
He grinned. “Unless some honcho has a burr under his saddle, they’ll be delighted to pass the potato to us.”
My partner in most operations was Ziggy Gershwin. I gave him a call and was outside his Little Havana apartment minutes later, waiting until a slender man with coal-black hair pushed from the door, jamming a scarlet shirt into tan chinos, his cream jacket hanging across his shoulder, a rolled tortilla in his mouth like a cigar. An ancient woman was walking a tan puff of dog down the sidewalk and Gershwin’s cordovan boat shoes leapt over the bewildered canine, earning an icy glare from the woman. I filled him in as I drove, as much as I knew.
“Oy caramba, Big Ryde,” Gershwin said as he buttoned his cuffs. “That’s some crazy cocktail.”
A few months back Ziggy Gershwin would have been wearing threadbare jeans, a T-shirt advertising a beer brand, and orange skate shoes, but becoming an active agent in the FCLE had upped his fashion game. The product of a Jewish father and Cuban mother, his full name was Ignacio Ruben Manolo Gershwin, and he’d been Iggy as a child. But a teacher had started calling the hyperactive, darting kid Ziggy, and it stuck.
“Morningstar thinks Kemp received repeated and heavy doses of the tox mix, Zigs, maybe starting at a bar.”
“What, we’re doing legwork for Miami-Dade?”
“We’re appropriating the case. The Doc figures it’d take a psycho to sicken and weaken people, turn off their screams, then fill their head with hallucinations while he rapes them.”
“No matter how lovely Señorita Morningstar may be, isn’t she a pathologist and not a—”
“Heard it from Roy,” I said, cutting him off.
I called and found Vince at his desk in MD’s headquarters and said we’d be by in minutes. He had two words: Bring coffee. He meant real brew, not the stuff cooked up at cop houses across the land, desiccated brown crumbles boiled into a bitterness no sugar could blunt. We stopped at a bodega and filled my large Zogirushi with righteous espresso thunder and were at MD in minutes.
Vince Delmara was in a cluttered cubicle in the Homicide unit, his wingtips on his desk as he reviewed jai-alai scores in the Miami Herald. He looked up, saw us approaching, and folded the paper. Vince was medium height and slender and his dark complexion was marred with acne pocks, his black hair brushed straight back. His dark eyes were large and piercing and with his prize-sized proboscis Vince called to mind a thoughtful buzzard. He always dressed in dark suits, white shirts and neon-bright ties, capping the ensemble with a Dick Tracy-style fedora to enter the bright Miami sun, which he regarded with vampiric suspicion.
I poured his ceramic mug full of caffeine and Vince’s toucan-sized beak sniffed. He drank, leaned back his head, moaned, then, as if his day had been re-booted, set his eyes on Gershwin and me. “Jesus … too much Scotch last night. I’m surprised I didn’t wake up wearing a fucking kilt.”
“Your wife still make you stop and get a few pops before you come home?” Gershwin asked.
He nodded. “Says it makes me easier to live with.”
“She must have found you real easy to live with last night,” Gershwin said.
“Beatrice is in Tampa visiting her sister. I had to live with me last night.” He took another blast of java. “What can I do you gents for?”
“We’ve got a guy who was a Missing, Vince. He’d been drugged, kept for a week, then dumped. We’re planning to pull the case into our purview. Doc Morningstar thinks it’s a psycho
at work.”
Vince gave me a raised eyebrow. “Last I noted, Carson, the gorgeous doc was a pathologist and—”
I sighed and raised my hand. Had everyone been handed the same libretto? “I know, Vince. But I figured you might smooth the way, politics-wise.”
He sucked coffee and thought. “Well … given that details are just getting clear, the case will transfer from Missing Persons to Sex Crimes, but I’ll bet it’s still officially in MP. Lemme see what Missing Persons has listed.” He sat at a blank screen, pecked the keys. Nothing happened.
“Works best when you turn it on, Vince,” Gershwin said. “Let me do the honors.”
Gershwin flipped the switch and seconds later we saw a photo of Dale Kemp in the corner of a screen of missing persons. His well-attended blond hair sparkled with highlights above sculpted cheekbones and penetrating gray eyes. His occupation was listed as medical-products salesman, and I figured his good looks created a buzz among the female staff when he entered a physician’s office.
Vince read the investigative report: “Moved here last April from Minneapolis. Liked to hit the beach and bars, but who doesn’t when they’re twenty-seven and in Miami.”
“Gay?” I asked.
“Yep, but you got to read between the lines. Lemme see who owns the case.”
Vince expanded the screen to the full report, tapped a bottom line. “The case is still in Missings, headed by Katey Beltrane, twenty years in the biz, eight in MP, and a pro. She’ll thank you for lightening her case load. Step in and snatch a case from an insecure pissant and you’ll—”
“Wind up in shit-fight corral,” Gershwin finished.
Vince tipped back the fedora and nodded at Gershwin. “For a young buck, you know a couple things. Let’s get it done so I can see how much I lost on jai-alai last night. Here’s a tip, never call your bookie when you’re smashed.”
5
We elevatored down to a wide hall, a sign above the first door saying MISSING PERSONS. Opening the door revealed a thirtyish guy with his feet propped on the desk and reading a Hustler magazine. He stood, six feet plus, heavy in the shoulders, with hair so blond it had to be dyed. He wore it long over his ears and down his neck. His face was oddly lopsided, and his nose slanted off to one side. He slipped the mag into a folder as if filing official business.
“Where’s Lieutenant Beltrane?” Vince asked.
“Getting her ass fixed,” the big guy said.
“What’s wrong with her ass?” Vince said. “I always liked it.”
“Beltrane busted her hip falling off a ladder. She’s got physical therapy for six weeks.”
The guy glanced at the clipped-on temp IDs Gershwin and I had received at the desk. He made no effort to extend a hand, so neither did I.
“I need to speak to whoever’s running the department,” Vince said.
Big boy crossed his arms and leaned the wall. Even with full sleeves I could see the guy had guns. “So start talking.”
“You’re heading the unit?”
The guy looked irritated at Vince’s emphasis. “I came here two months before the loot took the big dive. Smith retired two weeks later, Jalesco transferred to Bunco. I outranked the others, so when Beltrane hit the floor, I was in charge.”
Vince simply stared like the guy was a scotch-generated mirage, the first time I’d seen Vince at a loss for words. I stepped in, glancing at the nameplate: Det. Figueroa.
“Look, Detective Figueroa, given certain insights into the case by the pathologist, the FCLE has decided to put Dale Kemp’s case under our jurisdiction.”
The guy scowled. Delmara’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it, muttered “Got to take this. A snitch who usually pays off.” Vince hustled to the bathroom across the hall, an appropriate venue for talking to a snitch.
I turned back to Figueroa, who was squinting in thought. “Your jurisdiction?” he said.
I tried upbeat. “Look on the bright side, bud: one less hassle to deal with.”
“Fuck your bright side, mister. This is Miami-Dade, not a bunch of county clowns with cowshit on their boots. We can handle it.”
Upbeat wasn’t his preferred métier, so I tried making nice. “I mean no disrespect to your abilities, amigo, but our interest in the case stems from—”
“I read the report,” Figueroa interrupted. “It smells bogus. I’m not even sure it should be here.”
“The victim was drugged, abducted and raped,” I said, puzzled. “How’s that not a crime?”
Figueroa shook his head like I was a moron. “A couple hot boys meet up at a bar, go somewhere to hook up and do drugs. They get all sexed up and time don’t mean jackshit. Then one guy decides he’s tired of it. The other has a hissy fit, gets his butt-buddy all dopey and drops him in the Glades to teach him a lesson. Don’t say you haven’t seen it.”
I had encountered variations of Figueroa’s scenario, and had considered it in this case, but the drug combo wasn’t anything near recreational.
“You didn’t see the tox reports, Detective Figueroa. He’d had some nasty stuff.”
Rod Figueroa smirked, probably his default expression. “I’ve seen these dudes on Ecstasy, heroin, crank, ice, PCP, mushrooms, glue, cough syrup, paint thinner, and mixes of them all … what you got to beat that?”
I thought about explaining the calculated potency and effects of the mixture given Kemp, but it would have been like trying to open a twelve-foot stepladder in a room with an eight-foot ceiling. And anyway, I was tiring of Rod Figueroa.
“If it’s your opinion that this wasn’t a crime, Detective,” I said, ju-jitsuing him with his own words, “then we’ve taken nothing from you. If you could be so kind as to send us any files you have, I’ll be appreciative. Have a nice day.”
I set my card on his desk and backed away. I nodded at Gershwin and we spun and left the office. I heard the sound of tearing paper, but didn’t turn. We retreated down the hall and waited until Delmara appeared.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“Figueroa doesn’t seem cut out for the job, Vince, an obvious bias against gays. Most Missings cops I know are past that.”
“Figueroa’s an asshole. He comes by it naturally – his daddy’s an asshole, too. But a high-ranking asshole in MDPD, which is why junior’s got way too much pull for a guy barely thirty. Little Roddy was in Theft last I saw, but I guess Daddy wanted junior to get some Sex-Crimes cred on his way up.”
“Daddy is?”
“Captain Alphonse Figueroa. A guy who started on a beat in Little Havana and made all the right moves. Knew he was making ’em, too.”
“Political type?” I asked.
“Understudied with the old school macho types who ran the place a couple decades back. They pushed Figueroa upstairs, gave him a cushy desk in Community Relations. Daddy Figueroa’s a piece of work … I think he’s on his fifth wife. Unfortunately, he’s high-profile in the older Cuban community, one of the department’s PR assets. So junior gets a lot of sway.”
“What’s wrong with Figueroa’s face?” Gershwin asked. “Looks like someone scrunched it in a vise.”
Delmara shrugged. “Some kind of accident when he was a kid, running a jet ski while drunk, plowed into a boat. No one’s ever really said.”
“Figueroa’s moving up in the department?” I asked.
“Daddy says, ‘Maybe my sonny boy should get experience in the Missing Persons unit’ and you can hear the yessirs and pens filling out transfer forms.”
“The asshole’ll probably be Chief some day,” Gershwin muttered.
Delmara slapped a hand on my partner’s shoulder.
“You are indeed old beyond your years, Detective.”
Gershwin and I crossed Biscayne to Miami Beach, heading to the Stallion Lounge, the last place Dale Kemp had been seen. I figured it had to open early to air out from previous evenings, the smell of beer and bodies and a gazillion drenchings of cologne thick as fog in the semi-darkness. It was booths and a few t
ables, half of the floor set aside for dancing. The walls were dark wood with sconces for light. A mirrored ball hung from the ceiling.
I saw four guys in a back booth. Two were in full black leather regalia, like they were rehearsing for the Village People, the others resembled prep-school wannabes, clean-cut, white tees tucked into dark jeans. Loafers at the end of long and crossed legs. Except when they turned our way, their eyes looked a thousand years old.
A guy stood behind the long bar rinsing glasses, and I knew he’d made us from the moment our heels slapped the floor. He was inches over six feet and looked carved from a block of chocolate, pneumatic biceps rippling as he toweled the glassware, his chest broad and ripped under a blue denim vest that glittered with studwork.
We walked his way, but his eyes stayed on his drying. “You’re wasting your time,” he said in a sing-song voice that didn’t fit the physique. “We card everyone.”
He meant they asked for proof of age, though I figured a faux driver’s license printed on construction paper would pass muster.
“Good for you,” I said, pulling Kemp’s photo from my jacket. “But that’s not why we’re here. Know this guy?”
The bartender flipped the towel over a cannonball shoulder, took the shot and held it closer to the light. “Dale. He’s in here pretty regular, though I haven’t seen him in a few days.” The eyes got serious. “He all right?”
“We think he may have had his drink spiked. It would have been about ten days ago.”
“That’s just fucking nasty.”
“Dale have any enemies you know about?”
He blew out a breath. “Dale could be cruel sometimes. Especially to ugmos who hit on him.”
“Ugly people?”
“Dale never dispensed charity.”
I took it that meant deigning to frolic with less attractive beings. “Anyone seem particularly interested in Dale that night?” I asked. “Hit on him?”
“Are there bees around honey? People are always scoping Dale out.”
“Anyone buzzing around that particular evening?”
