The Memory Killer (Carson Ryder, Book 11)

by J. A. Kerley

  “Donnie Ocampo,” Rasmussen said. “You’ve got the photo?”

  “Yep. Problem is your boy ain’t real distinctive: six-foot or so, kinda around two hundred pounds, blue eyes if he ain’t wearing color contacts, and a couple tats hidden with a long-sleeve shirt.”

  “That’s why we’re hoping he’ll show up here. To make it easy.”

  “Y’say he’s got a grudge against the guy owns the funny-books store?”

  “What I hear.”

  Bogard shook his head. He stared down the street, smiled. “Hairy still thinks getting flat against things makes him invisible, I see.”

  Longo squinted toward the vagrant frozen to the wall. “Hairy who? Hairy where?”

  Bogard knocked his knuckles against the side of the cruiser. “Well, keep ’em hanging loose, boys. We’re back to the mean streets.”

  The cruiser rolled away and ten minutes passed, with Dirty Hairy peeling from the wall and drifting away, Rasmussen kvetching about coffee’s hijinks, Longo lifting the glasses to spot a mongrel dog working the same containers as Dirty Hairy.

  Pops in the distance.

  “The hell was that?” Rasmussen said. “Firecrackers?”

  The radio crackled on an MDPD band. “Shots fired!” screamed the speakers. “Officer down! Help! Officer down, 223 Garret Street.”

  “Jesus,” Rasmussen said. “It’s just two blocks away.” He looked to Longo. “what’ll we do.”

  “We’re suppose to stay here,” Longo said, jaw clenched.

  “Need help bad, here. Anyone! Officer down!”

  The sound of more shots. Longo nodded toward the comic-book shop. “This’ll keep. We got a cousin on the ropes.”

  The engine roared and Rasmussen smoked a U-turn in the street, racing to the address.

  47

  The next morning I was up with the earliest gulls and herons to swim in the cove. The case had broken my rhythm and I’d missed my pre-work swim and run. I needed them today: they refreshed my head and gave me more room for thinking, and I would need all my gray matter this morning. For better or worse I was going to assume that Jeremy was right and Gary and Donnie had some form of relationship and/or communications.

  Which would mean that Gary Ocampo had been playing me from the git-go.

  I got to downtown Miami at nine and headed to the department. The comic shop didn’t open until ten. I could have gone over early, but I wanted to waltz in like usual, laid back and buddy-buddy.

  Then, when Gary was distracted by bonhomie, I’d try to tear his story apart.

  Roy was back from Tallahassee and standing in front of his desk, a translucent yo-yo tied to his finger as he whipped it up and down.

  “Watch this, Carson … I’m gonna walk the dog.”

  Roy flipped the yo-yo at the floor, but instead of spinning above the carpet, it zinged back up at his head, Roy ducking a split-second before getting bonked. The yo-yo wobbled disconsolately to the end of its little rope.

  “Crap,” Roy said, staring at the toy. “I had it last night.”

  “You’ll get it back,” I assured him. “Listen, Roy, I talked to my consultant.”

  He disentangled the toy from his finger and dropped it in a drawer. “Can he help us nail this mad fucker?”

  “My guy thinks the Ocampo brothers have something going on together.”

  “Whoa … no shit?”

  I held up my hands. “Nothing’s proven. But I’m gonna go beat on Gary Ocampo and see what happens.”

  I was two steps down the hall when Roy yelled, “Hey, Carson! Speaking about Ocampo, you hear about the hoopla near there last night?”

  I spun on my heels. “Hoopla?”

  Roy gave me a twenty-second synopsis about gunshots and an unclaimed call going out over the airwaves. It didn’t make a lot of sense. I stopped him in mid-sentence. “Hold up, Roy. The dispatchers get a call about gunshots and put it over the air to patrol units …”

  He nodded. “They hear the dreaded ‘officer down’. It’s red-zone panic and every unit within miles races to the address. They cordon the house, figuring there’s a shooter inside, maybe a hostage. Everyone’s trying to figure out who’s down, who called it in. MDPD’s got over a dozen patrol units on scene, the tactical team, a command car, two medical squads, a fire truck, and Longo and Rasmussen.”

  “Wait … They left the shop?”

  “They were two blocks away and heard officer down. What would you have done, watch a goddamn building or maybe save a fellow cop?”

  I’d seen this before. What you wanted was a measured response, what you often got was an over-response, too many people running in circles, emotions running high, exactly when mistakes were made.

  “How many MDPD cops were on scene, Roy? Probably a quarter of the street force, right? What did Longo and Rasmussen add?”

  Roy sighed, seeing my point. “Yeah … our boys had a job and they blew it.”

  “Go on, Roy. So …”

  “So everyone’s stacked up waiting for someone to make sense of things. Longo and Rasmussen see they’re excess baggage and book back to the store.”

  “How long were they gone?”

  “They say forty minutes max. Meanwhile, back at the house, it’s a three a.m. cluster fuck. Took two hours to get a tac team inside. They find the homeowner, Elma Aguilla, taped tight in a back bedroom, a string of blown-up M-80s on the living-room floor.”

  “The gunshots.”

  “Someone entered the home, punched Aguilla out, taped her tight, and left a string of M-80s on a long fuse. The perp split and when the fireworks went off neighbors called them in as gunshots. Then someone comes on the police frequency and starts screaming about an officer down.”

  I could envision the scene in my mind. I just couldn’t envision why. “What the hell was happening, Roy?”

  He upended his hands. “Someone thought it might have been a diversion, but no crimes were reported in the area. Weird, huh?”

  I headed to my office, running Roy’s words through my head.

  Someone thought it might have been a diversion, but no crimes were reported …

  “Diversion,” I whispered, grabbing my phone and calling Gary Ocampo, my heart suddenly on full adrenalin.

  He answered on the second ring. “I’m sorry about yesterday, Detective. I’m just … trying to sort things out.”

  I blew out a breath. “You’re fine?”

  “I’m just finishing breakfast.” I heard him take a sip of coffee or water. A pause. “Why?”

  “There was a commotion in your neighborhood last night. You hear it?”

  “I, uh, heard sirens and stuff, like a fire somewhere. I went back to sleep.”

  “OK, just checking, like I said.”

  “Detective Ryder?”

  “Yes?”

  “Donnie’s evil. I didn’t know, you’ve got to believe me. I’m scared.”

  “What do you mean, didn’t know?”

  Silence.

  “Donnie can’t get to you, Gary,” I said. “I’ve got you under constant surveillance.” I didn’t mention last night’s half-hour lapse and heard a long pause on his end.

  He said, “There are other things to be scared about.”

  Gary Ocampo was being cryptic and discordant. One half-hour meeting with my brother and I heard it.

  “Other things like what?”

  He said, “I gotta go.”

  “HANG ON, Gary,” I barked. “I’m coming by in fifteen minutes. There are things we need to talk about.”

  “No, I mean I gotta go. To the bathroom. NOW.”

  I was in front of his store in minutes, starting inside when I looked down the street and saw a bakery truck, its side painted with a loaf of bread. The more I’d thought about the pair leaving their post, the more irritated I’d become. They should have known that every MDPD officer within a three-mile radius would drag race to the address the second the call crackled off.

  I saw anxious eyes watching through
the tinted side window. There was no shoe-tie hydrant beside the vehicle, and anyway I wanted my wishes directly stated. I rolled back the passenger-side door and saw the pair. They gave me sheepish and Rasmussen took the lead.

  “Uh, Detective Ryder, about last night …”

  My hand chopped down: shut up. “I will be in the building for one hour,” I said quietly. “Use it to piss, shit, get food, get coffee, get laid, whatever. Then I want you back here until the Second Coming or I have someone relieve you, whichever comes first. Do you understand?”

  Averted eyes and yessirs in perfect harmony. I strode to the shop where Jonathan was dusting books and DVDs. He looked at me expectantly. “You gonna talk to him about not selling the shop?”

  “If it comes up. He mention anything about feeling crummy?”

  “Haven’t heard a word. At least he’s not ordering a load of pizzas.”

  I went to the elevator, parked upstairs, and pressed the button to bring it down. Nothing. I jabbed at it like flicking bumpers on a pinball machine.

  “The elevator’s not working,” I called to Jonathan. “Gary turn it off?”

  He walked over and looked at the panel beside the Up/Down buttons. “No. There’d be a red light on.”

  I mashed the key a half-dozen more times. The damn thing was dead. I needed some answers to questions sparked by my brother and was going to get them this morning.

  “Is there another way up?”

  Jonathan nodded to the rear. “Back stairs. They’re real tight. And kinda cluttered cuz we use them for storage.”

  He pointed to a door near the back. I walked over and yanked it open, seeing steps jammed with boxes.

  “Gary!” I yelled up the dark staircase. “GARY!”

  No response. I pictured him on the toilet and eating cold pizza, the door closed until I left. His return to fatty foods and huge calories had probably given him diarrhea, food exiting as fast as it entered.

  I was turning for the front door when a thud shook the floor above.

  “What the fuck?” Jonathan said.

  I knew it was five hundred pounds going down. I ran back to the tight staircase, grabbed the handrails and jumped boxes, tripping, kicking them down the steps. Comic books spilled everywhere.

  “Call 911, Jonathan,” I yelled, dread clutching my heart. “Then get up here.”

  I kicked some boxes from my way, jumped over others. I tripped, fell back a few steps, retook them. The door at the top was locked and I stood on the shallow platform and pounded the door with my fist.

  “GARY … TALK TO ME. GARY!”

  Nada. The door was old and wood and solid. I grabbed the stair rails and catapulted my body into it, getting nowhere, the steel lock-pin deep in the casement. I considered shooting out the lock, but had no idea where Gary was in the room. I kicked the door, which only knocked me backward, falling halfway down the steps, cartons tumbling after me.

  Jonathan finished his call and stared wide-mouthed. “Tools?” I said. “Hammer? Axe? I need something heavy.”

  He bolted to the back door, opened it and bent to pick up something in the alley. He came in holding a heavy masonry brick, the veins popping out in his skinny arms.

  “We use it to prop open the door for deliveries,” he panted.

  I grabbed ten pounds of cast concrete and re-climbed the stairs. The knob fell away on the third blow, the lockset broke loose on the fifth. I pushed through the door. There, beside his bed, was Gary Ocampo, sprawled face-down on the carpet, wearing blue pajamas, one slipper on his foot, the other still under the bed, like he’d been trying to get dressed. The buttocks area of the fabric was stained with stool. I felt his neck and thought I detected a faint heartbeat.

  “Gary!” I yelled, slapping his fat cheek. “Wake up, bud. Stay with me.”

  His only response was a quiver of lip and a white froth that fell from his open mouth to the floor. I turned to see Jonathan in the room, eyes wide in terror. “Help me get him turned over,” I said.

  It was like trying to flip a beanbag chair filled with pudding. “Grab his arm,” I said to Jonathan, “Let’s see if we can leverage him over.”

  The kid slipped under Gary’s arm and I wrestled beneath a huge leg, bracing my heels on the floor. “Count of three,” I said. “Lift and push. One … two …”

  On three we threw everything into it, Jonathan grunting with effort, veins protruding on his forehead as I stood with Gary’s leg over my shoulder and simultaneously pushed forward.

  Gary Ocampo rolled over, Jonathan falling across his chest as I tripped and fell across his legs. But Gary was on his back. I checked his pulse again, nothing this time.

  “Come on, Gary,” I said, hearing sirens in the distance. “Think of Carnevale.”

  I told Jonathan to bring the medic up the staircase, then started rescue breathing on Gary Ocampo.

  A minute later the paramedics came through the door, man and woman, cases in hand. The guy was new to me but I knew the woman, Teresa Bardazon, as one of Ziggy’s on-and-off girlfriends.

  I stood and she saw me first. “What you got, Carso—” the eyes fell went to Gary. “Jeee-sus, he’s huge. Heart attack?”

  “No idea. Light, reedy pulse, getting lighter. No breath response.”

  With choreographed precision the pair put an air bag over Gary mouth and nostrils, the guy squeezing air into his lungs. But that needed a pumping heart to move the oxygen to the brain.“We gotta get him to a hospital quick,” Bardazon said, eyeing the elevator. “The four of us can get him in there.”

  “The elevator’s dead,” I said.

  The male medic, a powerful-looking guy named Ted, ran to the elevator and pushed Down a dozen times before realizing I was right. Bardazon tore open Gary’s pajama top and pressed a stethoscope to his pale flesh. “I’m not getting anything.” She balled her fist and slammed his chest, setting the huge breasts and belly into quivering motion.

  “The fat’s like a shock absorber.”

  I knelt and pounded Ocampo’s chest like John Henry throwing his sledge, except Henry’s hammer didn’t sink into the rail. Bardazon leaned in with the scope again. Shook her head, nothing.

  “Last resort,” she said, scrabbling though the med bag, stripping the wrapper from a wicked-looking syringe, the thick needle longer than my index finger. She looked between Gary and the needle.

  “It won’t sink deep enough,” she said, meaning it wouldn’t reach his heart with the jump-start of adrenalin. “It won’t clear the adipose tissue.”

  Ocampo was turning blue, starving for oxygen, cells dying in his brain. I ran a fingernail over Gary’s breast like the point of a knife.

  “What if we …”

  Bardazon understood, grubbing through the bag and coming up with a bottle and a wrapped scalpel. “But we gotta be fast.”

  I poured topical antiseptic over Ocampo’s chest. Bardazon leaned in with the scalpel and made a deep slice in the fat above Gary Ocampo’s stilled heart.

  “Pull it open, Carson,” she said.

  I took a deep breath and opened the wound, seeing the thick cushion of gelatinous yellow fat growing red with blood. “Farther,” Bardazon whispered. “Rip it open if you have to.”

  I put my weight into spreading the inflicted wound, opening it down to the fascia and musculature above the cardiac cavity, giving the needle access. Bardazon lifted the syringe above her head, whispered three-two-one and plunged the needle into Gary Ocampo’s heart.

  I put my hand to his neck. “It’s started!”

  Bardazon leaned in with the scope. “Go baby … tick you MUTHAFUCKA!”

  I retreated to dial the FCLE’s Resources Division, semi-retired agents who could put FCLE agents in touch with any expertise needed, from snake handlers to the electronics pro who’d help me save a young girl last year. We had to get Gary Ocampo to an emergency room and it was either get the lift running or knock down a wall.

  The RD folks said they had their “elevator consultant” on the
way, a guy who’d retired after thirty-six years with Otis. I turned to Bardazon. The former light in her eyes was replaced with resignation as she set the scope back in the bag.

  My eyes gave her a what’s up? look.

  “He’s gone, Carson,” she said. “The heart stopped and that was it.”

  “What?” You always hope you heard it wrong.

  “He’s dead, bud.”

  I felt lightheaded, outside of myself, in a dream. Bardazon rose on stress-weary knees, using Ocampo’s body to push herself standing. “There might have been a chance, Carson. There’s an ER five minutes away at Mercy North. But with the elevator on the fritz and the stairs so tight …”

  “Yeah,” I said, staring into space.

  Bardazon and the other medic, Ted Fuselli, called for a special gurney. Ten minutes later I answered the door to a black guy about the size of Harry Nautilus. His name was Washburn Kincaid, and he was one of the FCLE’s elevator pros. I sat and waited until he summoned me to an open box beside the furnace/AC unit, a grouping of thick cables running to the panel.

  “You know what this is, don’t you?” Kincaid said.

  “Sure, a breaker box.”

  “Controls power to the electrical systems. A short or overload happens, the breaker shuts off the juice and that circuit goes down.”

  I looked at what was simply a larger box than the one in my home: a dozen or so switches all canted to the right. In the case of a short or overload, the breaker closed down the circuit and the switch flicked to the left to indicate a problem. Fix the problem, reset the switch, power continues.

  “They all look fine to me,” I said, seeing an opening at the bottom of the panel, a rectangle half the size of standard brick. “What goes down there?” I asked. “At the bottom?”

  “That’s the space for a larger breaker, two-twenty volts.” Kincaid tapped a switch assembly to the right of the hole. “Like this one, which protects the furnace and AC circuit. But one breaker is missing.”

  “Someone pulled the entire unit?” I said.

  “Not hard, Detective. They pop out for replacement or repair.”