Cane and Abe

by James Grippando

  “Forget nothin’. Abe’s wife is missing, and you show up at my apartment and start asking trick questions. You think I did something to her, don’t you?”

  “We’re just having a conversation.”

  “Well, how about having a conversation that makes some damn sense? I can’t even leave my own apartment. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m wearing an ankle bracelet.”

  He stuck his foot in the air, and Victoria got more than an eyeful. He wasn’t wearing any underwear. “You can put your leg down now, J.T.”

  He lowered it.

  “What kind of things do Abe and Angelina argue about?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. They argue about everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Not everything. Lots of things.”

  “You’ve heard them raise their voices?”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you ever seen any physicality between them?”

  “You mean do I watch them have sex?”

  She knew he was playing dumb, a clear signal that he would rather avoid the question—which only heightened Victoria’s interest in hearing the answer. “No. I mean ‘physicality,’ as in Abe raising a hand to her.”

  “Abe never hit Angelina.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  She leaned forward, making eye contact with him. “This is important, J.T. If Abe has ever hit Angelina, I need to know about it.”

  He looked right back at her, never breaking eye contact. “Abe never hit her.”

  Victoria let his answer linger. She had stared down many a witness, many a suspect, many a liar. Polygraph examinations had their place, but sometimes there was nothing like two decades of law enforcement experience. J.T. wasn’t lying, at least not in her estimation. Finally he looked away.

  “But . . .”

  She waited a moment, then prompted him. “But what?”

  He didn’t answer, his gaze cast downward.

  “But what, J.T.?”

  He raised his eyes, meeting her stare. “She hits him.”

  Victoria tried not to react, keeping an even keel. “Angelina hits Abe?”

  “Yeah,” he said, matter of fact. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  She nodded slowly. “Now, when you say she hits him, do you mean this has happened on more than one occasion?”

  “Mm-hmm. More than once.”

  Victoria exchanged glances with Detective Reyes beside her on the couch, and then turned her attention back to J.T.

  “Okay,” she said. “I want you to tell us all about this, J.T.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  That’s simply not true,” I said.

  It had taken all my strength to look Agent Santos in the eye and deliver a controlled and level response. I was angry at J.T. for saying that Angelina hit me. I was furious with Agent Santos for bringing it up on this night, under these circumstances, right across the road from the ongoing search for Angelina’s body.

  “Why would J.T. lie about this?” asked Santos.

  J.T. had been psycho calling me for the past thirty minutes, but I just didn’t want to take his call. I wish I had. I would have asked him the same question. And I wouldn’t have been ambushed by Santos and Detective Reyes.

  “Why does J.T. do any of the things he does?” I said. “If the court puts an ankle bracelet on him, he’ll tell you the government is spying on him. If there’s a serial killer named Cutter in south Florida, he’ll tell you he used to cut sugarcane. He says a lot of things to see how people react.”

  “So that’s your answer? He lies for the sake of lying?”

  How to explain J.T. to an outsider? “He’s in his own world. We visited his father in the nursing home Friday, and J.T. denied that he was his father’s son. It’s not lying. He knows he’s not fooling anyone. These are the things he does. Sometimes he’ll say the exact opposite of what he and everyone else knows is true.”

  “So if J.T.’s brother-in-law hits his wife, J.T. might say the wife hits his brother-in-law?”

  I should have seen that coming, but I hadn’t, which only confirmed my level of stress. “I’ve never hit a woman in my life.”

  “There’s an easy way to settle this.”

  “Yeah, you could stop playing the abusive-husband card and find out what really happened to my wife.”

  “I could. Or you could take a polygraph.”

  “No,” I said firmly, no hesitation.

  “Glad you took some time to think about it,” she said, sarcastic.

  “I’m not going to play this game,” I said. “If I allow you to treat me like a suspect, you will continue to treat me like one. If I pass the polygraph, then you’ll want a strip search to see if I have any bruises or scratches. If the strip search shows nothing, you’ll want to take another polygraph. If I pass again, you’ll find another angle. Every minute you spend trying to build a bullshit case against me is a minute wasted. Go find the real killer.”

  I froze, realizing what I’d just said. Santos caught it. Killer. She didn’t have to ask, but I could see the question written all over her face. How do you know she’s dead?

  “Think about that polygraph,” she said.

  “The answer is no.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  She started away, but I stopped her. “Hey, what is going on here?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This started as a hunt for a serial killer. Now it’s a witch hunt, and I’m the guy tied to the stake. I’ve been standing out here for two hours, watching and praying as search and rescue does its work. But I’ve also been wondering—about you. I even made a phone call.”

  “You’re checking up on me?”

  “I Googled you on my iPhone and read about that serial killer investigation you did with help from the Miami Tribune. It occurred to me that you must have known the old crime reporter at the Tribune. He left about five years ago. Twenty-two years on the beat. Pulitzer Prize winner. Really good guy. Covered my first capital trial and lots of others. His name’s Mike Posten.”

  She said nothing, but I could see in her eyes that Mike’s name meant something to her.

  “Anyway, I gave Mike a call,” I said. “You know what he says?”

  “No idea. Haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Well, Mike’s bet is that your gut, heart, and mind aren’t telling you that Abe Beckham is your man. He thinks someone is pushing your buttons. He says that the Victoria Santos he knows is much smarter than this.”

  She took a step closer, looking me in the eye. “The Victoria that Mike knows was a thirty-two-year-old newbie. No one is pushing my buttons.”

  “I’m just telling you what Mike thinks.”

  She seemed to be searching for a response, but then changed her mind. She turned and started away.

  “Hey, Santos,” I said.

  She took two more steps, as if wishing she could drop the whole “Mike” conversation, but something made her stop and listen to what I had to say.

  “What would that thirty-two-year-old newbie think?”

  It was dark in the shadows, away from the portable light trees, and I couldn’t really read Santos’ expression. My sense, however, was that my last punch had landed.

  But Santos did not go down easily. She came right back at me, stopping on the other side of the tape. “That newbie would think exactly what I think,” said Santos, a definite edge to her tone. “It might take her a little longer to get there, because of her inexperience, but her conclusion would be the same.

  “Our serial killer has yet to strike out of Palm Beach County. Cutter didn’t kill Tyla Tomkins. And he didn’t take your wife, either.”

  Before I could even begin to respond, she turned sharply and left. I wanted to duck under the tape and ask the flood of follow-up questions that were suddenly coming to mind, but contamination of a crime scene with my footprints was not something I needed to add to my list of troubles. More to t
he point, I knew she was done talking to me.

  I let it go for now, watching in silence as Santos walked back into the glow of the search and rescue vapor lights.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Victoria felt a chill as she walked across the Tamiami Trail, through stopped traffic, and toward the search and recovery team leader on the bank. It wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been on the morning of Tyla Tomkins’ recovery, but it was only ten p.m., and temperatures drop fast in the Everglades after midnight.

  Victoria had tried not to show it, but Beckham had gotten to her. Mike Posten had been the first low blow, and then he’d hit even lower.

  What would that thirty-two-year-old newbie think?

  It was an interesting question. She would probably think a lot of things. That task force coordinator for the Miami field office was the last thing she would be at this stage of her career. That burnout would never get her. That it had been true back then, and that it would be true forever, at least from the standpoint of homicide statistics: the most dangerous place for a woman to be was in a relationship with a man.

  But those were not excuses for losing her cool. Sparring with Abe Beckham, speaking out of anger, was no way to share her professional opinion that Tyla had been murdered by someone other than Cutter.

  And there was the whole Mike Posten thing. A married man who’d faced temptation and remained true to his wife. Beckham could have learned a thing or two from him.

  Her cell rang. It was from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department. Her task force contact was calling at ten thirty on a Saturday night, which was not a good sign. She braced herself and took the call.

  “What is it, Juan?” she asked.

  “Looks like we have another victim,” he said.

  She swallowed the news bitterly, internalizing it as the price every law enforcement officer paid for moving too slowly to catch a monster. “Where?”

  “Cane field off Route Twenty-Seven. That’s a good ways west of the other recovery sites, but still on Cortinas property.”

  “Do you have an ID yet?”

  “No. The body was found nude, no identification on her. White female, possibly in her thirties, is all I can tell you at this point.”

  “Cutter’s signature?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Signature confirmed.”

  Ash on the face.

  She glanced in Abe’s direction, still on the phone. “Juan, do me a favor. Check the Angelina Beckham BOLO that went out today from Miami-Dade. There’s a photograph with it. Just for comparison.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Juan,” she added.

  “Yeah?”

  “Call me right back on that. I mean right back, as soon as you can.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  Victoria hung up, but she didn’t put her phone away. She held on to it, waiting for the vibration in her hand to signal a callback. A light breeze sent ripples across the illuminated waters of the black Everglades, and it made her heart pound to think that, in a matter of moments, she might officially call off the search. Or not.

  Either way, she would be on her way to Palm Beach soon. It was going to be a long and painful night.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Agent Santos had me worried.

  I watched her take a phone call, then hurry across the highway, jump in her car, and speed away, not toward the Everglades but toward Florida’s Turnpike. Within minutes, I noticed a dramatic change in the search activities. Scuba divers popped to the surface and came to shore. Searchlights no longer swept the saw grass. Cadaver dogs obeyed the “sit” command. A squad car pulled away, then another. Law enforcement had reduced itself to clusters of idle conversation alongside the canal, the sense of urgency dissipating in the darkness. Way too many people standing around, nothing to do. I continued to respect the police perimeter, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stay put on the onlooker side of the Tamiami Trail. I couldn’t spot Rid anywhere in the crowd. I left a voice-mail message.

  “I don’t like what I’m seeing. Call me right back. What is going on?”

  I watched the traffic crawl past me, my heart in my throat. I studied the long line of approaching vehicles, looking for the medical examiner’s van, looking for something I did not want to see. My phone vibrated with Rid’s callback, and he told me about Palm Beach. It was suddenly hard to breathe.

  “Tell me it’s not her,” I said.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Don’t bullshit me!”

  “Abe, I’m telling you what I know.”

  I watched him cross the highway, his cell pressed to his ear, and as he approached we put away our phones. Even though he was standing just on the other side of the yellow tape, it was difficult to see his face. All but one of the light trees along the road had been cut off, and we were standing in the darkness that was the Everglades.

  “They have Angelina’s photograph,” I said. “Can’t somebody make a comparison?”

  Rid looked at the ground. “It was a particularly vicious attack, I’m told. Officers on the scene confirmed traces of ash, but even that wasn’t easy. The face is not really recognizable.”

  “Oh, God.” I tried to hold it together. “What about fingerprints? The investigation team must have pulled a set of prints from Angelina’s hairbrush or blow dryer—some damn thing.”

  “They did,” said Rid. “But, again, given the severity of the wounds, not sure fingerprints will give us an answer.”

  My mind raced to another place I didn’t want to go, and I tried to shake the horrific image of stumps at the wrists, no hands, no fingerprints. “How fast can we get DNA results?”

  “It will be on a rush basis, not just for victim identification but for the killer’s DNA, too. But the lab can’t get started until DNA is collected, which has to be done carefully. It won’t happen till the body is in the medical examiner’s office.”

  The body. I knew it like no one else. Rid was on the same page.

  “Abe, the most helpful thing to do right now is come up with a list of distinctive markings. I’ll pass them along to the Palm Beach ME.”

  The mole on her inner thigh, the freckles on her shoulders, the details that not even Angelina knew about Angelina. Sure, we could make a list. In the car.

  “I need to go,” I said.

  I drove straight up the turnpike. Fast. And alone. Rid had to stay behind. The search along Tamiami Trail was on hold, not shut down. I took that as a good sign; you take what you can get.

  I was dictating into my phone, up to number fourteen on my list of distinctive Angelina body marks, when Ed Brumbel called from Belle Glade.

  “You may know this,” he said, “but the police found a body in the cane fields about a mile from my house.”

  By “house,” I knew he meant the legal aid clinic. “I heard. I’m headed up to the medical examiner’s office now.”

  “Is it—”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he said, no hesitation.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “No one.”

  “Abe, don’t do this alone. I’ll meet you there.”

  I thanked him and kept driving. I finished my Angelina list while crossing the Miami-Dade county line. I was passing one of those too-far-west developments that had sprouted up on the edge of civilization during the building boom, where new residents soon learned the mosquitoes’ indifference to the end of suburbia and the start of the Everglades.

  I e-mailed my list to Rid, then made the call I was dreading: Angelina’s mother. Margaret and I had promised to keep each other informed. Angelina’s father answered her phone.

  “Margaret’s asleep,” he told me. “She was going crazy when I got here. I gave her an Ambien.”

  I told him where I was headed. The silence on the line made me wonder if my phone had dropped the call, but finally he spoke.

  “Should Margaret a
nd I meet you there?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jake.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I struggled to find a positive spin. “We have multiple fronts to cover. If this is not Angelina, the search to find her alive will kick right back up again. We need family in Miami-Dade County.”

  “Right, that makes sense.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I know,” I said.

  We hung up. I drove faster.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I reached the medical examiner’s office just before midnight. Ed was waiting outside the entrance. We walked inside together, through the pneumatic doors and down the hallway.

  I heard crying from the lobby ahead of us. Not little sniffles. Great, racking grief, the kind of wailing that attends only one misery on earth: a mother’s loss of her child.

  I stopped at the end of the hall, unable to enter the brightly lit lobby. A handful of chairs lined the far wall. Seated in one was a man about Jake’s age, consoling the woman next to him. She had the Palm Beach look, a well-dressed and attractive woman who could have easily passed for one of my mother-in-law’s girlfriends. Agent Santos was seated beside her, holding her hand. Santos spotted me, excused herself from the couple, and whispered as she came toward me.

  “It’s not your wife.”

  There was no serious sense of relief. I suddenly felt . . . selfish, self-centered. It hit me between the eyes, the fact that we were dealing with a serial killer, which by definition meant multiple victims and exponential grief. Other families were suffering. The sobbing mother of Cutter’s latest victim leaned on her husband’s shoulder. I wanted to walk over and hold them both up.

  “I wasn’t jerking you around,” said Santos. “We just confirmed the identification. I needed to tell them before I told you.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ve instructed Riddel to resume the search in Miami-Dade. You should go now.”

  “Okay. I’ll let Angelina’s parents know.”

  “Can you make that call outside, please? I don’t want these folks to overhear.”

  “Sure,” I said. Santos went back to the grieving parents. Ed followed me down the hall toward the exit.