Cane and Abe

by James Grippando

  Doc had a tendency to digress. I brought him back, as I had done several times before on the witness stand. “The blow was to the side of the neck, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes. Sorry. My point is that here we have an anterior blow to the cervical spine, between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. And if I’m correct, the cause of death here may have been a single strike to the back of the neck, which severed the spinal cord.”

  “Like a stalk of sugarcane,” said Santos.

  “Your term, not mine,” said Doc. “The important point is that it’s a single blow.”

  “So death would be instantaneous?” I asked.

  “Not even a guillotine is instantaneous death,” said Doc. “The French Revolution is replete with historical accounts of blinking eyes, gnashing teeth, and blushing cheeks after execution. But certainly there would be instantaneous loss of consciousness and awareness, and death within seconds. Which explains why we see no defensive wounds with this victim, no evidence that she fought back. That’s very different from what we see in the Palm Beach cases.”

  Santos and I exchanged glances, and she said exactly what I was thinking.

  “So, the technique in this instance seems— . . . well, this may not be the right word—but it seems almost merciful, compared to the previous victims.”

  Doc paused, considering his words. “We can hypothesize with some degree of confidence that this victim did not see the blow coming and that she instantly lost all conscious awareness. The same cannot be said with any reasonable degree of medical certainty for Palm Beach. Whether it’s ‘merciful’ is a question for a forensic psychologist.”

  He switched off the spotlight and closed his laptop.

  “But the pathology of the wounds is very different,” said Santos. “Which makes me ask: Are they so different that you think we have two killers?”

  He hesitated.

  “Or one killer,” I said, “who has different feelings toward victims of a different race.”

  Doc glanced at me, then at Santos, as if it were a toss-up. “We need more.”

  I thought of the ongoing search for Cutter’s signature in Shark Valley, the missing body part that may have been lost forever to a hungry alligator.

  “Do we keep looking for the ashes?” I asked.

  “We have to,” said Santos, her gaze drifting back to the cadaver. “But I wouldn’t hold out much hope.”

  Chapter Six

  I met Angelina for lunch at noon. After a night at J.T.’s, I had some serious making up to do.

  Lunch was something we rarely did together. Angelina was a loan officer for a bank downtown, working nine to five on the fourth floor of one of those waterfront skyscrapers that, some predicted, would have three floors submerged in warm water before the end of this century. The state attorney’s office was much farther west, on the other side of the Miami River. Not that far as the crow flies, but when the drawbridges were up, we might as well have been on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. I got lucky with the traffic flow and reached the restaurant on time. Angelina was already seated at an outdoor table, looking like a movie star beneath the shady umbrella, her designer sunglasses up on her head. I took a shot with a kiss hello, and this time I didn’t get a turn of her cheek.

  “I ordered conch fritters,” she said.

  That was a good sign, thoughtful on her part. “My favorite. You remembered.”

  The Big Fish restaurant, right on the river, was in my book the perfect lunch spot. It was nothing fancy, just a relaxing place to eat fresh dolphin, tuna, or shrimp ceviche while soaking up a historic stretch of river, a piece of old Miami where mariners from houseboats at the west end of the river sidled up alongside bankers and lawyers from the office towers to the east.

  “I’m sorry I was such a bitch last night,” she said.

  An apology was unexpected, but it made me smile. “I needed and deserved a good slap upside the head. No worries.”

  “J.T. just scares me sometimes.”

  “I know. But his psychiatrist assures me that he’s perfectly fine living alone, and that he’s not violent.”

  “He hit a bus driver.”

  “No, that’s not what happened. But let’s not go down this road, okay?”

  The waitress brought our fritters. “Something to drink?”

  Angelina smiled at me. “I have an idea. Why don’t we order a pitcher of sangria and call in sick for the afternoon?”

  It was the kind of thing we used to do, before we got married—way back when, in the pre-Samantha phase of our relationship.

  “That’s very tempting,” I said.

  “Really? You want to?”

  I hated to say no, but the Cutter investigation was just a small part of my overall caseload, and the way things were going, I would be lucky to make it home for dinner. “I do. I really want to. But I’m sorry, I just can’t. Not today.”

  “It’s okay. Neither can I. But a girl can dream, can’t she? Iced tea,” she told the waitress.

  “Same,” I said. The waitress left the menus for us and headed inside.

  “It was lonely last night without you,” said Angelina.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was up late, going over so many things in my head. And I was wondering. What do you think about trying to have a baby?”

  I did not see that coming, but that probably wouldn’t have been the right thing to say. “Wow. A baby.”

  “What does that mean?”

  What it meant was that I had no idea what to say. “A baby,” I said, still searching. “Wow.”

  “Wow. A baby. A baby. Wow. Either we’re on TIVO and I accidentally hit rewind, or you’re not very excited about the idea.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s just . . . a baby.”

  “Please don’t say ‘wow.’”

  The waitress brought us two sweaty glasses of iced tea. I quickly opened the menu and ordered Peruvian ceviche. “You want anything?” I asked Angelina.

  “You mean like a baby?”

  The waitress took my menu. “That’s your department, boss. I’ll get the fish.”

  Angelina waited for her to leave. Then she reached across the table to take my hand. “I want to start a family, Abe. Our family.”

  She squeezed my hand for emphasis, and the baby discussion no longer seemed so out of the blue. This was about our family. As opposed to Samantha’s.

  “Do you think I’m ready to be a father?”

  “I think you’d be a great dad.”

  She reached out, pressing my hand between the soft palms of both of hers. I was looking across the table into eyes as big and blue as the ocean.

  “Okay. Let’s make a baby.”

  I heard a shriek of excitement as she hurried to my side of the table and kissed me. Then I heard my cell phone. I let it go to voice mail.

  “I’m so happy,” said Angelina as she returned to her chair.

  “Me too.”

  My cell rang again. It was Agent Santos. I apologized to Angelina and promised to make it quick.

  “Are you near a TV?” asked Santos.

  There was one at the bar inside the restaurant. “I can be.”

  “Turn on Action News now. We have an ID on the victim.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A thirty-four-year-old lawyer from Miami. Her name was Tyla Tomkins.”

  I gripped the phone. “I’m sorry. Say that again.”

  “Tyla Tomkins. Do you know the name?”

  “No, no,” I said. “Just a bad connection. Lost you for a second there.”

  “Turn on the television. It’s important to stay on top of the media reports. Then we should talk. Are you available for a conference call at two?”

  “No, I’m in court from one thirty on.”

  “Call me when you get out,” she said, and we hung up. Angelina looked at me from across the table.

  “What was that about?” she asked.

  I told her quickly, pr
omised to come right back after the news clip, and hurried inside to find the TV set.

  Tyla Tomkins.

  People all over Miami were staring at their TV sets in disbelief and saying it couldn’t be her, it couldn’t possibly be her. But my head wouldn’t go there. I skipped right past that first stage of shock and denial.

  It’s her.

  Chapter Seven

  Agent Victoria Santos was alone in her FBI sedan on the MacArthur Causeway, the Port of Miami a blur in her passenger-side window. The mega ships that made Miami the cruise capital of the world were out to sea, but container vessels aplenty were in port, and tugboats towed several others down the Government Cut shipping lane. Victoria weaved through three lanes of eastbound traffic, doing seventy in a fifty-mile-per-hour zone, eager to reach South Beach.

  Victoria was new to the FBI’s field office in Miami, but not unfamiliar with Miami. Her first year in Quantico, she’d battled minds with a geographically transient serial killer with a half dozen known victims. The only lead was an anonymous newspaper informant who had an uncanny ability to predict each murder, time, place, and victim. Or was he the killer? On the receiving end of the tips was Mike Posten, a crime reporter for the Miami Tribune. The nationwide manhunt had been an unusual coordination between law enforcement and journalism, and there had been many a late-night meeting and deep conversation between Victoria and Mike. She was single, but Mike was married, which had nixed “coordination” on any other level.

  Water under the Tamiami Bridge.

  Victoria passed a slow-moving truck and continued toward South Beach. But Mike was still at the back of her mind. Back then, the Tribune headquarters had buttressed the water’s edge at Biscayne Bay, and the newsroom enjoyed drop-dead views of Miami Beach to the east. She remembered one night, late, when the silence and distance between her and Mike had become ambiguous, until Mike suddenly broke eye contact, nervously walked to the picture window, and started to play tour guide, just to change the subject. “Did you know that Miami Beach is actually a man-made island?” he’d asked. “The Army Corps of Engineers dredged it up, just so there’d be some hurricane protection for the mainland.” She wasn’t sure if Mike had used the words “billion-dollar sand bar,” or if she was recalling those from some other account of how this narrow strip of dredged-up land had drawn millions to work, play, and live.

  Tyla Tomkins had been among them, and her South Beach apartment was officially the newest homicide crime scene in the county.

  Victoria shook off her memories and glanced in the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of downtown Miami and the fifty-five-story office tower where Tyla had practiced corporate law for one of the city’s high-powered firms. Deeper into the mainland, west of the jagged skyline, was where Victoria’s day had begun—at the medical examiner’s office, Tyla’s temporary place of rest.

  Victoria cut through an older residential area several blocks south of the glitz and glamour of legendary Ocean Drive and its party-hearty kid sister, Washington Avenue. Tyla’s condominium had been built in the South Beach revival style of the 1980s, not the classic Art Deco of original Miami Beach, but there was something to be said for breathtaking waterfront views coupled with plumbing and air conditioning that actually worked. Every parking space on both sides of the street was taken, which was normal. The row of double-parked squad cars was a definite aberration, particularly for the middle of the afternoon. Victoria pulled up behind one of the white-and-green cars from the Miami-Dade Police Department, left her beacon on the dashboard, and headed into the building. She flashed her credentials to the uniformed Miami Beach police officer who was posted outside the double-door entrance to the ground-floor lobby.

  “Here to see Lieutenant Riddel,” she said. Riddel was with the homicide squad.

  “Seventh floor,” he said. “You’ll have to use the stairway, which has been cleared. CSI is still processing the elevators.”

  “No problem,” said Victoria.

  The officer turned his attention to a group of complaining residents who weren’t allowed to enter their own building. Victoria ducked beneath the police tape and climbed the stairs.

  It was easy to imagine Tyla Tomkins walking these stairs, opting for the exercise route over the elevator after a long, sedentary day at the office. By all accounts she was a fitness buff, blessed with both a brain and striking good looks. A missed spinning class had been the first red flag. “Tyla never missed the six a.m. class,” her instructor told police, “no matter what she was doing the night before.”

  Victoria found another officer stationed in the stairwell at the seventh-floor landing. He escorted her down the hallway to Tyla’s apartment. The door was open. Inside, a team of crime scene investigators was at work, searching with penlights, combing over every detail, bagging, labeling, and photographing anything that might be important. Victoria was drawn straight to the balcony and the view of the Atlantic, but the CSI team was already immune to it, focusing on the task. She found Detective Riddel in the living room.

  “Pretty clean,” he said. “Not a drop of blood anywhere.”

  Victoria had worked with Riddel before, their paths first having crossed three years earlier, when MDPD had called on Behavioral Analysis Unit 2 for assistance with a kidnapping that, tragically, became a homicide case. She knew him to be thorough and dedicated—so dedicated, rumor had it, that he shaved his head just to avoid possible contamination of a crime scene with one of his stray hairs. It probably didn’t hurt that it made him look like Taye Diggs.

  “That’s consistent with our prior victims,” said Victoria. “Not one of them was attacked where she lived. We have yet to pinpoint an actual murder site.”

  “Having seen the autopsy photos, I would have to say that he did his machete work someplace else. But it’s still possible that the killer was here. Also can’t rule out that the victim died here and was taken somewhere.”

  “Any sign of a struggle?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  Victoria’s gaze swept the room. The furniture was modern, the pricey kind that wasn’t especially comfortable. The chairs were essentially hard leather straps on chrome frames, softened somewhat by small throw pillows. The sofa was not nearly long enough or soft enough to flop on after work, and there was no television to watch anyway. Fear of despoiling the Tibetan silk rug would have been likely to paralyze any guest entrusted with a glass of red wine. The look and feel was straight out of a home-design magazine, the tony apartment of a young professional who lived alone, spent far more time in the office than relaxing at home, and earned more than enough money to hire an established decorator and empty out a Roche Bobois showroom.

  “Let me show you the bedroom,” said Riddel.

  It was a two-bedroom apartment, but the smaller room was a home office. Victoria followed him into the master suite, which wasn’t unusually small for a South Beach condo, but definitely not big enough for the king-size bed that dominated it. There was barely enough space to walk between the foot of the bed and the bureau. The mirror over the bureau, facing the bed, was also oversize for the room.

  “Apparently she liked to watch herself sleep,” said Riddel.

  Victoria understood that cop humor was part of homicide squad survival, but she shot him a look that conveyed zero tolerance for jokes about victims. He caught her drift.

  “Sorry,” said Riddel.

  Victoria walked around the bed. The linens had been stripped, leaving only the bare mattress. “Any sign of blood or body fluid on the sheets?” she asked.

  “Not that we detected. The lab may tell us otherwise, but I doubt it. The bed was neatly made up when we got here. It didn’t appear to have been slept in or otherwise utilized.”

  “So if she was killed Saturday night, which is what the medical examiner thinks, Tyla probably went out and didn’t come home.”

  “That’s my bet,” he said. “I spoke to Mrs. Elias, the seventy-year-old resident busybody who lives down the hall. According to her, T
yla hardly ever slept here on weekends.”

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “We’re checking into that. No one special we’ve identified so far. But here’s something interesting.”

  Riddel led her to the jewelry box on the dresser. The box was open, revealing a top tray lined with maroon velvet. The assortment of earrings and gold chains was pretty, but it was the diamond rings that caught Victoria’s eye. There were two of them, each with a gold band.

  “Bridal sets?” she asked, confused.

  “That’s what they look like to me.”

  Victoria took a closer look but didn’t touch. The diamonds were the classic round cut in a Tiffany-style setting. “The one on the left looks to be about a half karat. The other one is probably close to two.”

  “That’s quite a ring,” said Riddel. “If it’s real.”

  “Tyla was wearing a one-karat diamond ring when her body was found. It was real.”

  “My understanding is that she has never been married. Is that the same info you got?”

  “Right,” said Victoria. “Never married.”

  “So a gorgeous unmarried woman goes out on a Saturday night wearing a wedding band and an engagement ring? And she has two other bridal sets in her jewelry box at home.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “What’s up with that?” asked Riddel. “She strings men along, gets them to buy her a diamond engagement ring, and then dumps them?”

  “Could be,” said Victoria. “Or she buys them for herself.”

  “Either way, this is kind of interesting, don’t you think?”

  Victoria glanced at the ginormous bed, at the oversize mirror, and then back at the rings. “Yeah,” she said. “Kind of interesting.”

  Chapter Eight

  It was almost 10:00 p.m. when my workday ended.

  My court appearance had run into the evening, followed by two hours of witness prep in my office. I would return early in the morning. The official name for the main facility of the Office of the State Attorney for Miami–Dade County was the Graham Building, but I called it the Boomerang. The building had two wings, and the footprint was angled like a boomerang, but the appellation had more to do with the fact that it seemed I could never leave without coming right back.