Cane and Abe

by James Grippando

  “Let me see the warrant,” I said.

  “This is a Miami-Dade police search,” she said. “Get it from Detective Reyes.”

  MDPD, my ass. I went toward my unit. A team of officers was stacking boxes in the hallway. Some were open. Loose items were scattered across the floor. It felt wrong to see the police rummaging through Samantha’s belongings, her mementos, my memories. Detective Reyes stepped out of the unit and handed me the warrant. I immediately focused on the box that listed the items covered by the search.

  “A cane-cutting machete?” I asked. “Are you kidding me?”

  Santos walked over and joined us. “Your father-in-law told me he still had his old equipment.”

  “Let me count the problems I have with that,” I said, glowering. “One, you should have called me if you wanted to talk to Luther. Two, you said this was a Miami-Dade search, not yours. Three, even if it is technically an MDPD search, what the hell does a machete have to do with Detective Reyes and the domestic violence unit, other than the fact that you two have become Detective Frick and Agent Frack? Four, there’s no machete here.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How do you know it’s not here?”

  I gave it some thought before answering. Because I wanted to know if my brother-in-law was a serial killer? “Why don’t you just look and see for yourself?”

  “We will.”

  The team continued its work in silence, taking inventory, checking off each box searched. I watched for a few minutes, smoldering with anger.

  “Do you have any other warrants?” I asked.

  Reyes ignored the question. Santos didn’t even look in my direction.

  I walked to the stairwell at the end of the hallway, closed the door behind me, and dialed J.T. on my cell.

  “Where you been, Abe? I’m almost out of food again.”

  “J.T., listen to me. This is important.”

  “Food’s important.”

  “Yes, food is definitely important. But this is even more important. Do you remember when the police came to your apartment with a search warrant?”

  “Duh. You’re not talking to Forrest Gump. I hate when people treat me like I’m stupid. I’m a smart man, Abe. Samantha even said I was a genius once.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. What I meant to ask is if you remember how the police wanted to go outside your apartment and search the deck?”

  “Uhm . . .”

  “Forget it. It doesn’t matter if you remember or not. My point is that the first warrant didn’t allow them to search outside. But the police always have the option to come back with another warrant.”

  “Oh, shit! They’re coming back?”

  “Calm down, okay? I don’t know for sure that they’re coming back.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. Why would you call me if they wasn’t?”

  “I just want you to be ready.”

  “Ready?” he shouted. “How do I get ready? I can’t do this again. I can’t, Abe.”

  “J.T., it’s going to be okay. Just—”

  “It’s this bracelet, Abe!”

  “It’s not the bracelet.”

  “All this bad shit happened after I put on this fucking bracelet!”

  “That has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “I gotta get out of here.”

  “J.T., you can’t go anywhere with that bracelet on. That judge will throw you in jail if you do.”

  “I don’t care. They’re coming. You said it. I heard you say it. They’re coming back here!”

  “J.T., I’m on the way. Stay right there.”

  “I gotta get out, Abe!”

  “J.T., just—”

  I stopped myself. He was gone. “Damn, it, J.T.!”

  I tucked my phone away and ran down the stairwell to my car. Gravel flew and a cloud of dust rose over the squad cars as I raced out of the parking lot. With everything else that was going on, the last thing I needed was for J.T. to be arrested and hauled into court for violation of his house arrest. I dialed his number twice from the road but got no answer. Again I was weaving between cars, even passing the ones that were exceeding the speed limit. I was less than a block away when I got behind a pack of cyclists who were dressed for the Tour de France but moving at the speed of a French waltz. The pack leader flipped me the bird as I passed on the right to get around them, half on the shoulder and half on the grassy swale. My car screeched to a halt in the parking space in front of J.T.’s apartment. I ran to the door but it was locked. I knocked hard.

  “J.T., open the door!”

  I gave him a minute. I knocked again and put my ear to the door. I heard nothing from inside the apartment, but if he was gone, having fled out of fear that “they” were coming back, he wouldn’t have taken the time to lock the door on his way out. I ran around the building to the rear entrance to his apartment. A fragrant burst of gardenia hit me as I rounded the corner. The tree I’d planted when Samantha and I moved in was in full bloom. The backyard was just big enough for the deck and one tree, and it was surrounded by a five-foot wood fence. I tried the gate, but it was locked—another sign to me that J.T. had to be inside. I hopped over the fence and caught my shirt on a thorny bougainvillea bush. My sleeve ripped as I fell to the ground and rolled, and when I climbed to my feet I was facing the deck. I froze at the sight. The pressure-treated planks that Samantha and I had laid were covered with blood. Wide, dark pools of blood.

  “J.T.!”

  My heart pounded as I lunged toward the deck. I stumbled, and fell to my knees. Blood soaked through my pant legs, and I saw the crimson trail leading back into the kitchen. I knew that J.T. was in there, but I couldn’t go in yet. It was probably only a split-second hesitation, but the image was searing so deeply into my brain that my delay seemed much longer. My gaze was locked on a deck painted in blood. An old cane cutter’s machete lay in the middle of it. Beside the blade was the ankle bracelet. It was still attached to J.T.’s foot, a white spear of bone protruding from the ankle.

  “Oh, shit, J.T.! Shit, shit!”

  I dialed 911 on my cell as I ran into the apartment through the open doorway. I followed the trail of blood across the kitchen, across the TV room, and all the way to the foyer. That was as far as J.T.’s one-footed escape had carried him. His body was a motionless heap on the floor at the front door. I called his name and went to him. I shouted details to the 911 dispatcher as I slapped J.T.’s face and pried his eyes open, anything to bring him back.

  “His foot is cut off!” I told the dispatcher. “He’s bleeding to death! Just send an ambulance!”

  My shirt was already ripped from the thorns. I tore it into strips for a tourniquet and tied it as tightly as I could around J.T.’s calf. I rolled him on his back and started CPR.

  “Come on, brother! Come on!”

  I went back and forth, three quick chest compressions and then pressure on the leg wound, until the paramedics arrived.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  We held a graveside service for J.T. at Mount Olive Cemetery, where members of the Vine family had been laid to rest beneath the sprawling limbs of giant oak trees for more than half a century.

  My efforts to revive J.T. had been fruitless. The paramedics were too late. The massive blood loss had sent him into cardiac arrest. He was dead before they reached the hospital.

  A simple metal casket rested on pilings above the open grave. A green canopy shaded us from the afternoon sun. It was low-key and private: Luther, me, and the same minister who had presided at Samantha’s service. I couldn’t blame Angelina for not wanting to attend.

  Not after Tyla Tomkins’ blood was found on the machete.

  It was Luther’s cane knife. J.T. had gotten it from Samantha. It was one of the heirlooms that she entrusted him with after she got sick, along with the yellowed 1941 newspapers that the police had found in J.T.’s nightstand, their mother’s watch, and other personal items. J.T. had kept it in a safe place
in the apartment after Samantha’s death. He buried it in the backyard under the deck after using it to kill Tyla. Samantha had made him promise that he’d never lose it and that he would give it away only to a museum, so it was easy to look into J.T.’s mind and understand why he’d kept it even after he’d turned it into a murder weapon.

  The harder thing to understand was why he had wanted Tyla dead.

  “We do not gather here today to dwell on the why or what of sin,” the Reverend Otis Brown said, standing beside the casket. “The Bible teaches that ‘Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.”’”

  I blinked, for he who mentioned murder had been looking right at me when he said “adultery.”

  “It is not the size of the sin but the lack of faith that separates us from God. J.T. was a troubled man, but he was not the face of evil. Let us pray that he has met the face of forgiveness and found eternal life. Can I get an A-men?”

  “Amen,” Luther and I said softly.

  A pair of blue jays cawed in the pine tree behind us. The preacher returned to the folding chair beside Luther and consoled him. I rose and went to the CD player. I’d selected one piece. It was the song that J.T. and I had sung together in his apartment, the one Samantha used to sing to her brother. Be grateful.

  The service ended by three o’clock. Luther and I said good-bye to the minister. We were less than fifty yards from Samantha’s grave, and I suggested that we visit it.

  “You go on,” said Luther. “I want to sit a spell.”

  I let him be and walked down the gravel path to visit Samantha’s grave. It was a quiet and peaceful walk. And lonely. Literally hundreds of mourners had followed me down this same path for Samantha’s burial. I’d heard many of them sobbing and crying behind me. I could still hear them.

  “How you holding up, Abe?”

  I stopped. I wasn’t imagining things. Rid was standing in the shade of the biggest oak tree in the cemetery. We were a dozen or more gravestones away from Samantha’s marker.

  “Okay, I guess. A little worried about Luther. Can’t believe it was his knife, you know, that—”

  “I know.”

  The sun was beating down and forcing me to squint. I moved into the shade, closer to Rid. “You were welcome to join us,” I said. “You didn’t have to watch from a distance.”

  “This is close enough,” he said. “Don’t want to disrespect Tyla’s family.”

  “I understand.”

  He went to the bench beneath the tree and sat. “You know this isn’t over.”

  “Yes, it is. J.T. killed her. End of story.”

  The knife wasn’t the only proof. Until Rid showed me the rental agreement signed on the day of Tyla’s death, I’d been under the outdated impression that all rental car companies required a credit card. The irony was that I had pushed J.T. to get his license and even cosigned for his debit card as part of getting his life together. The debit charge led MDPD to the rental office, and from there they tracked down the car. Traces of Tyla’s blood were still in the trunk.

  “Santos isn’t going to go away,” Rid said. “The motive is a sticking point.”

  Exactly where he had killed Tyla was also unknown. Such a tiny amount of blood in the trunk suggested that the fatal blow had been delivered after the car ride, probably not far from where he’d dumped the body, most of the bloody evidence swallowed by the Everglades. The lack of ligature marks meant that he’d probably knocked her unconscious before taking her there, perhaps hitting her with the flat side of the blade—but as Rid had pointed out earlier that week, a headless corpse offered no way to confirm a skull fracture or contusion. Had J.T. followed her in his rental car and abducted her while she was out jogging? Had he used the fact that he was Abe Beckham’s brother-in-law to trick her into meeting him somewhere?

  Only one question really mattered anymore: Why?

  “Motives can be complicated,” I said. “Especially for someone like J.T.”

  He leaned forward, his expression serious. “Santos doesn’t believe that J.T. wanted Tyla dead. She believes he killed her because someone else wanted her dead.”

  “J.T. the hit man?”

  “You need to take this seriously, Abe. There are lots of possibilities. Santos will consider all of them. And most involve you.”

  I went to the bench and sat beside him. We were facing in the direction of Samantha’s grave, a long row of stone monuments before us.

  “What is she thinking?”

  “That you’re a married man who needed to eliminate one of the world’s oldest problems. One theory has you asking J.T. to kill Tyla. Another has J.T. doing it on his own, thinking he was doing you a favor.”

  “That didn’t happen.”

  “It makes more sense than J.T. killing Tyla for no reason at all.”

  “He had a reason.”

  “You gonna just keep it all to yourself?”

  I stared off into the middle distance. “Yup.”

  He shook his head and rose. “Okay. Hope that works out for you.”

  “Me too. At least as long as Luther is alive.”

  He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Take care of yourself.”

  I nodded and watched him walk away. I remained seated on the bench for a minute longer. Then I got up slowly and started toward Samantha’s grave. It hurt to put one foot in front of the other, but only on the inside. Probably not unlike the hurt that had tormented J.T. after Samantha’s death.

  Tyla had called the apartment where Samantha and I once lived. Maybe she really did want to blow the whistle on Cortinas Sugar for crimes committed in Nicaragua. More likely it was all an excuse to hook up with me again, since a Miami prosecutor was powerless to do anything about crimes in Nicaragua. The first time she’d called, J.T. didn’t answer. She’d left a message for me on our old answering machine, which had never been erased, and which Santos, Rid, and I had listened to. But was that the only call? How was anyone to know that Tyla hadn’t called again?

  And what if J.T. had spoken to her? There would have been no record of it, because J.T. had picked up the landline. He could have spoken to Tyla, and no one but Tyla and J.T. would have known about it. Santos, Rid, and I had focused only on the voice-mail message. But maybe it was their conversation—a conversation we knew nothing about—that had convinced J.T. that Tyla was gunning for me.

  I stopped before Samantha’s grave. The grass was freshly mowed. A recent visitor had left a bouquet of fresh flowers. There was no card. Anonymous. Samantha had so many friends, so many people who loved her.

  “I’m sorry, Samantha.”

  Killing Tyla was J.T.’s redemption. Tyla’s punishment was the price of sin, a sin that J.T. had known about only because he’d been fooling around with my phone one day and seen the explicit evidence of its commission. Tyla was a little younger and a lot more careless in those days, and I could only assume that J.T.’s uncovering of her sexting to me was the reason she would later take the extreme precaution of a prepaid cell phone, no texting. In any event, that dirty old secret was now entirely with me. The other sinner.

  There’s no shame in dyin’. It’s a cryin’ shame to die of a broken heart.

  Samantha didn’t die of a broken heart. She died with a broken heart. I never cheated on Angelina. But I had cheated on my wife.

  I fell to my knees and touched the grass on Samantha’s grave. “So sorry,” I whispered.

  Tyla’s death was an imperfect justice, but it was justice in J.T.’s mind. Right or wrong, J.T. never blamed me for my “mistake” with Tyla, at least not after Samantha told him that she’d forgiven me and that he, too, must forgive me. J.T. blamed Tyla alone for Samantha’s broken heart. He blamed himself for the fact that he couldn’t save his own sister with a bone marrow transplant because he wasn’t a match. He did what he thought he had to do to make things right.

  In a manner of speakin
g, Tyla Tomkins died of a broken heart.

  Samantha’s.

  Epilogue

  Ten months later

  Christmas cane. Some say it is the sweetest sugarcane of all. That’s a lie, of course, just an excuse cooked up to justify Big Sugar’s refusal to stop the harvest and give its workers a day off on Christmas.

  Over time, lies and excuses can become truth.

  Angelina was one of those people who couldn’t wait for Christmas. The Thanksgiving turkey was barely cold before she ran to the firefighters’ lot to buy the perfect Fraser fir.

  Most people had predicted that our marriage would be over by Easter, Memorial Day, or at the latest, the Fourth of July. We’d taken a two-month “break,” our marriage counselor’s euphemism for separation, but we were back together, which was more than could be said for Brian Belter and his soon-to-be ex-wife. They had all but resorted to chemical, nuclear, and other weapons of mass destruction in their very public divorce war. Step two in his personal and professional demise was just around the corner, a criminal indictment on charges of attempted bribery. Happy New Year.

  But speculation about the Beckhams was not unwarranted.

  “Abe, honey, can you run to the store and buy some shallots?”

  Angelina was in the kitchen. I was sitting in front of the television watching two college football teams in a Christmas Eve bowl game that I didn’t care about. “Sure,” I shouted back. What the hell’s a shallot?

  “And some brown sugar?”

  “Yup.”

  “They close at four today, so hurry.”

  I grabbed my car keys and headed out the door.

  Angelina and I had stopped trying to have a baby. Not that we’d ever gotten started. Making love was off the agenda during our separation. At the two-month mark, our counselor suggested a “reunion” to see where we were. The theory was that I’d never given Angelina a shot, that no woman would have stood a chance on the heels of Samantha’s death. Sex wasn’t supposed to be part of the reunion weekend. In fact, the counselor had advised against it. When it happened, I pulled out at climax. “Good call,” she’d whispered in my ear. “I’ll go back on the pill.” End of discussion. It still seemed curious that the first time Angelina had ever mentioned a baby—lunch at the Big Fish restaurant on the Miami River—was the same day the news stations reported that Tyla Tomkins was dead. Strange coincidence. Or not. Whenever I thought of it, Rid’s words came back to me.