by Rick Murcer
Respect.
There was that word again. It seemed he wasn’t getting any lately. First his daughter, then the cop at the front desk, then the hour waiting in that pigsty of an interrogation room, then the two Feds and the rest of their little crew, whom he knew more than a little about, thanks to his “friends” in the department. Williams had dared to touch him. And not just touch him, but made him bleed.
He squeezed the kerchief and felt his manicured nails dig into the meaty section of his palm.
No one does that to me. No one.
They made the next turn and rolled unhurriedly past the steps of the pale entrance to the SJPD building. He cracked his window, rolled it back up, and waited. Fifteen seconds later, his cell phone rang.
“Did you get what I needed?”
Fogerty’s face contorted into what may have been a smile, though anyone could easily mistake it for a snarl of rage. “Excellent! Please send the rest of the files to Braxton’s laptop and keep me abreast of what I need to know, and I need to know everything, yes?”
He listened for a moment, shifted the phone to his left ear, and began to nod.
“Why thank you for asking. There is one more thing: where are they staying?”
He listened then hung up the phone. Blotting his lip again, he saw the bleeding had stopped and stuffed the kerchief in his front pocket.
“Boss, I’ll tak’ dat one and git you anoder one,” said Braxton, holding out a hand the size of Detroit.
“Thank you Braxton, but no. Let’s just say I’ll keep it as a souvenir for the next time Agent Williams and I talk.”
Braxton smiled.
“Let’s go to the hotel. It’s been a long day, and tomorrow will be busy. Of that, I have no doubt.”
“Yes, boss.”
Turning to the driver, Braxton gave him instructions and turned back to him.
“You know, old friend, come to think of it, there is one more thing we need to do.”
His number one bodyguard’s smile grew wider.
Chapter-37
Alex and Dean entered the fairly modern conference room as Manny leaned on the wall outside the entrance staring at Ruiz who was sitting in his boss’s windowed office, down and across the hall. Alex had called to say he and Dean just typed up the rest of the details on the crime scenes in the morgue and got the pictures transferred to Alex’s computer from the cameras. The team could go over the findings before they went to the hotel.
All of that had been accomplished except for a new complication, and for a change, it didn’t have anything to do with Chloe.
He shifted his gaze, for about the hundredth time, to the office where a distraught Detective Ruiz was still sitting. But there was something else−almost a sense of resigned relief−and Manny wanted to know why.
“We made it, but this fat boy is tired,” said Alex, grinning.
“I think we all need a good night’s sleep. Glad to see you an hour early. It’s only twelve fifty-eight,” answered Manny.
“Dough Boy, not Fat Boy. Dough Boy,” said Sophie as she stepped from the room and stood near Manny. “And Mucus still needs a freaking tailor.”
Dean’s eyes lit up, and a quick smile came and went, mostly aimed at his Asian tormentor and fantasy princess.
“It’s Mikus, Agent, Mikus.”
“Okay, but that outfit needs a firing squad.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a couple more outfits just like it, but different color, so get used to it―please,” he said, lowering his gaze.
“You’re kidding me? Really? I hope not. You’ll blind me, and I’ll have to panhandle to make a living. Not to mention, you’ll be arrested for impersonating a freaking peacock in heat. They might even bring you in to see if you’re assaulting peacocks. You don’t do that kinky stuff, do you, Mucus?” asked Sophie.
“Not birds, princess. But there was this one time—”
“Okay. TMI, even for me,” said Sophie. “Come on in, the gang’s all here.”
Following Sophie into the conference room, Manny caught Josh’s eyes, then Chloe’s. He didn’t know how those two were even able to sit up, let alone be coherent. But adrenaline is a drug—in fact, the drug of choice for workaholics and this BAU world.
Sophie leaned close. “It’s going to get longer, isn’t it? The night, I mean.”
Training his eyes back to the glass office, he answered without looking. “For me and you, yep. We have to talk to Ruiz about his daughter.”
“Why the hell do you want to do that? The rest of his department thinks this is some kind of revenge thing and doesn’t have anything to do with our case. Not to mention, they’ve got half the nightshift out looking for her. I know it’s gotta be tough on him, and the rest of us ain’t too thrilled about seeing his daughter’s mitt whacked off either, and— Damn it, Williams. I know that look.”
“What look?” asked Manny.
“Is it the trance thing? Cause I want to see it,” said Dean, stepping closer.
“No trance this time,” answered Manny, almost absentmindedly. Again, he couldn’t control the need to look in on Detective Ruiz.
“Manny? You paying attention?” asked Josh.
He ran his hand through his hair and moved away from thoughts of Ruiz, as difficult as that was.
“Yeah, I am. Listen. Let’s meet in the morning. It’s one a.m, we’re all beat, and it’s been a hell of a day, especially for you and Chloe. None of us are in a great frame of mind to discuss the evidence, the murders, and you can kiss goodbye any hope of putting a great profile together until we see more of what Alex and Dean have found, plus the reports from the SJPD aren’t totally ready. Especially since Ruiz has other things on his mind.”
Josh was stroking his stubble, then rubbed his face with both hands. “You’re probably right. Besides, these two don’t smell like roses,” he added, tossing a thumb at Alex and Dean.
“Good. Detective Crouse can get you to the hotel. How about we meet in the lobby at nine a.m.?”
“What do you mean ‘you’? What are you going to do?” asked Chloe.
“Well, for starters, I thought I’d go learn the flamenco and show you all how it’s done.”
“Pink dress?” asked Sophie.
“You know me. I like the red dresses with a little lace.”
“As interesting as that sounds . . . what the hell are you really up to?” asked Josh.
“I want to talk to Ruiz, talk with Ruiz, and see what’s going on in his head. His body language doesn’t match the information he’s giving us. I don’t think he’s lying, so much as we aren’t asking the right questions.”
“Maybe he’s just unhappy because they won’t let him go out and join the search. That would make me a little nutty,” said Crouse.
Her eyes did a quick tour of the scarred wood floor when Manny looked her way. That told Manny more than anything else she could have said.
“You think something’s not quite right too. Don’t you?” he asked.
Crouse sighed and locked onto Manny’s face with those striking, brown eyes. He heard Chloe clear her throat.
“I know him better than the rest of you, and yeah, I have some history about his daughter. But that was always off limits, his hija and he, I mean. But I recognize that look too. He’s stressing, and not just about the obvious.”
“He thinks she’s involved in something?” asked Chloe.
“Maybe,” said Julia.
“Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it has to do with who she is. I have a seventeen-year-old and think I know her pretty well, but everyone hides something,” said Manny.
“True enough. I’ll get them to the hotel, the Puerto Rican. It’s down at the Port where the cruise ships come in,” said Julia.
“Deal.”
Manny offered a lingering look to Chloe. She accepted, winked, and then followed Crouse down the hall.
He took Sophie’s elbow and headed to the glass office holding Detective Carlos Ruiz prisoner.
&n
bsp; As he opened the door, Ruiz’s drawn, bloodshot eyes blinked at Manny. He barely acknowledged Sophie, took a puff from the cigarette smoldering in his hand, and then he spoke.
“You’re a profiler, Williams. I know that, but you ain’t no mind reader. Still, you know about her, don’t you? You know about my Anna.”
Chapter-38
Ruiz crossed his legs, then seemingly as an afterthought, crossed himself in the Catholic tradition, as he turned away from Manny and Sophie, staring at everything and nothing in the same fracture of time. There was far more going on than the fact that his daughter’s hand was delivered in a bloodied box. It was torturing this man. Manny had known something was more than amiss, but the closer he got to Ruiz, the more he realized that something had to do with his daughter, not about her. It was completely separate from the fact that she’d been dismembered. He was haunted by something more.
In the interrogation room in Lansing, Manny had seen men and women who’d hidden secrets all of their adult life, maybe longer. Some as disturbing as anyone could imagine, and many times, it had nothing to do with the crime they were being questioned about. It was like the first time, the very first opportunity they’d ever had to share, or confess, that particular secret. The stress, the pressure, and even the relief, at having a captive audience brought courage to their spirit and the words to their lips.
Some had killed the neighbor’s cat, stolen money from sick, old people, cheated on their spouses, and killed another human in another place in time. A drug addiction, a sex addiction, a fetish that would curl your hair had it been confessed in a different setting. You name it, he’d heard it all. Except, looking at Ruiz, he was now sure he hadn’t heard it all, had he?
Ruiz looked up from the floor, dried tears painting the corner of his creased eyes. He smiled a faint, exhausted, humorless smile, put out his cancer stick, and moved to the edge of the black leather sofa, hands folded together. Manny sat in the matching office chair as Sophie leaned against the metal desk.
“Did you know Christina Perez was my partner?”
Surprise registered on Manny’s face as he and Sophie exchanged glances.
“I didn’t. She was a good cop and a good woman.”
He smiled sadly. “And I loved her. I should have been on that ship with her, with you. Maybe I could have saved her.”
“Maybe not,” said Manny softly.
“I’d like to think so, but I’m sorry I wasn’t there, just the same. I’ve not slept a full night since.”
“You loved her as a woman, not as a partner,” said Sophie.
“I did. But it seems everyone I love— Anyway I wanted you to know that I have normal emotions. I love, I feel, for my Anna.”
“Tell me about Anna,” said Manny.
“I’ve already told the rest of the damned department everything I can think of about where she might be, where she hung out, her school address, everything. I’d tell them her best friend’s info too, if I had it,” said Ruiz, doing his best impression of a cooperating witness.
“You mean you don’t know it, or she doesn’t have one?” asked Manny quietly.
“Like I said, I think you know there’s more to this, to her, than just what I’m feeling. You strike me as that kind of cop.”
Manny shrugged. “Maybe, but no close friends isn’t always an indictment of something gone haywire.”
“No, but in this case, I think it is,” said Ruiz. That tired look returned.
“You say I know about your Anna. Truth is, I know about how you’re reacting to this situation, and it’s pretty normal, mostly. What isn’t normal are the flashes of relief I’m seeing, followed by serious guilt, that comes and goes from your face and eyes, your hand gestures, and how fidgety you become when anyone comes near this office. It all means you’re hiding something that could help, doesn’t it?”
Manny waited for him to react, to get pissed. Hell, maybe even throw a punch. Most men would when you accuse them of hiding something that could save their daughter’s life. But none of that happened.
Sighing, Ruiz lit another cigarette and cleared his throat. “She was never normal, not like I expect kids to be. She was fascinated with . . . things. Morbid, sickening things. I remember when she was barely two, and one of those programs came on that show how an operation procedure goes. I think it was like an open heart surgery situation. I never watched that shit, so I don’t know how the TV got there, probably her fruit-for-brains mother. Anyway, they’d nicked an artery. There was screaming, yelling, total chaos, plus all of that blood. It’s the kind of thing that would send most toddlers screaming and crying into their daddy’s arms. But not Anna. She stood fixated, and I swear by the name of Jesus, she had a smile on her face before I finally got the damned television turned off.”
Sophie must have felt the same kind of uneasiness that Manny was feeling, because she crossed her arms, giving him a nervous glance.
Rubbing his face with his hands, Ruiz continued. “I chalked it up to my imagination, but as she grew, she never did the cute little things kids do to show their parents they love them. No real hugs, and there sure wasn’t any intentional kisses, at least from her end. By the time she was eleven, she was still having trouble wetting the bed. So much so, that I took her in for some counseling. I know that most bedwetting is about deep-sleep syndromes, but it was the excuse I needed to get her in to a counselor. Not to mention, my ex and I had divorced, and I’d gotten full custody. I think her mother was relieved by that, especially since she hasn’t seen Anna since the judge said I was free. She knew something wasn’t right, too.”
“The first doctor said she was a little detached, but he didn’t think there was any real issue. But there was. About a year later, she came down the stairs and, in the calmest voice you ever heard, said her room was on fire. She’d been playing with matches, and I’d grounded her for doing that same thing the day before. She just ignored me, or just had no sense that she might get her ass kicked.”
The relief was beginning to flower on Ruiz’s face.
“The day she turned fifteen, I came home from work early to surprise her. She’d seemed to be coming around some. She was smiling more and even told me she loved me before she went to bed most nights. I was going to take her over to Arecibo, the Observatory, and then a nice supper in Old San Juan. A daddy-daughter night. But it didn’t happen. When I walked through the door, she wasn’t there. I checked in her room—still no Anna. I searched the whole house—still no baby girl. I finally went out the back door and then saw her out near the far corner of the garage. It was hidden from the neighbors because of the weird-ass angle the builder had constructed the building. I called to her, and she didn’t respond. So I walked out there and just as I got there, she heard me and tried to cover up what she was doing.”
Ruiz shivered and lit another cigarette. His eyes were dry, but ever so distant. Manny knew that look. He wore it for months after Louise had died.
“Detective, you don’t have to finish…”
“No. I do. Not just to help find her, but . . . I need to.”
“Okay, Carlos, tell us what she was doing,” said Sophie.
“I know you know. My little girl was watching an iguana die. It had been carved to pieces; blood and guts everywhere. The knife was still in her hand. Like I said, at first she tried to hide what was going on, then she sliced it again. It was like she didn’t give a flying frog’s ass for what I thought. She only wanted to watch that lizard bite the big one.”
“After that, I took her to more counseling, lots of it. She seemed to get better, but I’m a cop. A detective. I knew. I read up on the Macdonald Triangle thing. By the time, she went away to live on campus, I was relieved and terrified at the same time. Every murder, every weirdo killing that happened on the island scared me. Because I knew.”
Standing, he stared out the glass facing the conference room. “I spend most of my time thinking about how I could’ve stopped this, but no one seems to know why the switch f
lips like it does, at least not completely. I don’t know. Maybe something happened to her when I wasn’t around . . .”
Looking back to Manny, he was broken. But glad to get his story off his chest. Ruiz was right—one day, the odds were good that she would evolve into something worse. Rare as it was, a woman serial killer, especially a non-Caucasian, wasn’t out of the question. But Ruiz would always live with the guilt that dads harbor when their children didn’t turn out a certain way.
“Detective. I’m sorry you’re going through this. But how can this help us find your daughter? I mean, why would you think that your story could help us?” asked Manny, running his hand through his hair.
“I think she’d try to find this killer. Maybe even try to partner up.”
Manny raised his eyebrows. “Why would you say that?”
“Because the last two serial killers caught in San Juan both had visits from my lovely daughter. She said it was research, but I knew better. The last one, Jorge Munoz, the guy that had stalked and killed four nuns at the school he’d attended, actually sent for me saying he wanted to confess to more killings. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he told me to put Anna down. Imagine that, a serial killer telling me to kill my daughter because she was going to join the clan. My God. It was like she was drawn to them.”
Manny let the silence have its way. It seemed right. He wondered if Anna Ruiz could be the one they sought, but dismissed the thought as fast as it came. Mostly because of the hand in the box, but not entirely. Self-maiming is not an unusual trait for some killers. Most serial killers start small, test their plan, their method, their preferences. They didn’t run like this one was running.
One of the CSU techs knocked on the door, waving a file. Sophie retrieved it and handed it to Manny. He opened Anna’s file and saw that it contained information about the hand, and maybe more important, about the amputation tool. It was a sharper-than-normal blade, and the cut was very precise, a perfect north-to-south slash. There were no jagged edges, and it appeared to be a one-swing cut, consistent with their perp.
