One Saturday morning a photograph of Donald Hutton and Marie Weller appeared in both newspapers. Considering the possibility that Virgil might be suffering from amnesia, Marie and Donald had gone downtown and checked the skid row breadline at Camillus House, believing that Virgil, if he were having an amnesia attack, might be sleeping under an overpass at night and getting mission handouts. They had notified the newspapers of their impending trip downtown, and photographers and reporters had been there to check the breadline with them. Virgil had not been among the homeless men, of course, but some excellent human-interest photos of other bums in the line were published in both papers.
Negative PR like this put additional pressure on Hoke Moseley and the Homicide Division.
Because of their partnership agreement, Donald Hutton, in essence, now owned one hundred percent of the business. Marie Weller, naturally, continued to live with her brother-in-law in the big Bayside mansion. Donald Hutton —although he didn’t have to—paid Marie Weller a fair share of the profits from the business, but until Virgil was declared officially dead—not just missing—the business was all his, not Marie Weller’s. If the body was found, Marie Weller would inherit her husband’s half of the firm.
Hoke discovered the body.
Before he found the corpse, Hoke had learned, during routine checks of Donald’s movements in the weeks preceding Virgil’s disappearance, that Donald had purchased three pounds of strychnine at the Falco-Benson Pharmaceutical Company, in Hialeah, ostensibly to get rid of rats at his house. Inasmuch as the Huttons had a live-in cook, a daytime maid, and a gardener who spent two days a week taking care of their yard, why would a busy executive like Donald Hutton decide to kill the rats himself? Wouldn’t he hire an exterminator, or else tell the regular exterminator who visited the house every month, to take care of the rats? It wasn’t much to go on, but the third judge Hoke talked to signed a second search warrant. Hoke discovered the body buried under the garage floor beneath Virgil’s parked 1974 El Dorado. The house had been searched briefly earlier, when a two-man detective team looked about for evidence in the disappearance, but they hadn’t moved the Cadillac during this first, and rather perfunctory, search. Donald Hutton was arrested when the autopsy revealed traces of strychnine in his body. Marie Weller had been in North Carolina attending a furniture convention when Virgil disappeared, so she was not a suspect.
The evidence was largely circumstantial, and perhaps a good criminal lawyer could have obtained a not guilty verdict for Donald Hutton, but Donald had retained Randy Mendoza, and Mendoza, a corporation lawyer without criminal law experience, made the mistake of putting his client on the stand. The prosecutor had managed to make Hutton lie, after accusing him of sleeping with Marie Weller, his brother’s wife, during a long weekend in Key West. After Hutton had denied the allegation, the prosecutor produced a photocopy of the hotel registration card (obtained by Hoke during his investigation). He also put another witness on the stand, a hotel maid, who claimed that the two of them were in bed together on the morning she entered their room (at their request) to clear away their breakfast dishes. Marie Weller was then put on the stand. She admitted sharing the bed in Key West with her brother-in-law but said that she did so only because all the other rooms were booked up. They had slept together, she said, but they “hadn’t done anything.”
The jury found Donald Hutton guilty of first-degree murder but recommended life imprisonment. The magistrate accepted the jury’s recommendation. Life, on a murder one conviction, meant twenty-five mandatory years in prison before Hutton would be eligible for a parole. Technically Donald Hutton should still have fifteen years to serve….
Judge Hathorne was not in his chambers, but his law clerk informed Hoke that Hutton’s case, on a third appeal, had been granted a new trial by the state supreme court. Hutton’s attorney, they concluded, had prepared an inadequate, incompetent defense. Mendoza should not have put Hutton on the stand, and he should have accepted a plea bargain of guilty for the reduction of the charge to second-degree murder. If Hutton had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, he would have been eligible for parole in only eight years. Rather than retry the case (now that Hutton had served ten years), the state attorney had gone along with the recommendation to release Hutton for “time served.” And so Hoke learned that Ellita was right. His Donald Hutton, a man who had promised to “get him” someday, a threat Hoke had considered empty at the time, was back on the street, or, more specifically, living in a house directly across the street from Hoke’s house.
Hutton had money, lots of money, and if he had let it grow at ten percent interest or more in the bank, while he was serving ten years, he was a lot richer now than when he had been sentenced. Of course, the appeals had cost him considerable sums, but Marie Weller had paid him a good price for his half of the paneling business.
As Hoke drove back to the police station, he concluded— as Ellita had—that Donald Hutton’s purchase of the house across the street was not a random coincidence. Perhaps Hutton’s threat to “get him” someday was no longer empty. Hoke was not fearful of Hutton, but the circumstances made him a little uneasy.
When he got back to his cubicle, Hoke called Blackie Wheeler, Hutton’s parole officer and a man he had known for several years, and asked Wheeler about Donald Hutton’s parole status.
“I’ve talked to him only once, Hoke,” Blackie said on the phone. “He has to report to me once a month. He’ll have to come in person for the first two or three months, but after that I’ll probably just let him call in by phone. He’s not exactly a criminal, or wasn’t when he went up to Raiford, and he shouldn’t give me any problems. In fact, I wish I had a few more like him in my load. He has independent means, so I don’t have to see that he has a job and check with his employer, and he has no ex-criminal buddies to associate with. He told me that he intended to start a small business of some kind, once he got settled, just to have something to do.”
“I can tell you where he lives right now,” Hoke said. “He lives across the street from me in Green Lakes.”
“I’ve got his address—”
“When he was found guilty, Blackie, he threatened to kill me someday, after he got out of prison. So I don’t think it’s any coincidence that he moved into that house.”
“He isn’t a professional criminal, Hoke. And he’s entitled to live anywhere in the city he wants. Of course, if you’re afraid of him, we might be able to get a restraining order to keep him off your property. But I’m not so sure a judge’ll even do that much. After all, the threat was made ten years ago, and the guy was understandably sore at the time. But I don’t think Hutton would relish doing any more time. Even with all his dough, it was still rough on him in prison. Keep in touch, though, and if he does anything funny, let me know. Meanwhile, if you want me to ask him why he bought in Green Lakes, I will. It might be that it’s just a nice neighborhood. He’s already forbidden to contact Ms. Weller. She doesn’t want anything to do with him, naturally. I’ve talked with her on the phone, and she’s planning to get married again—to the guy who owns the Cathay Towers over in Miami Beach. I’ve got his name written down here somewhere—”
“That’s okay, Blackie,” Hoke broke in. “I’m not worried about Weller or Hutton, I just wanted to check with you, is all. She’s not dumb enough to take up with him again. It would be bad for her business. But I still don’t think it’s just a coincidence that he moved in across from me.”
“It could be.”
“Not if you saw the house. The previous owner let it go to hell, and it’s been vacant for more than a year. He’s gonna have to spend a lot of dough just to get it back into livable shape.”
“He’s got a lot of dough, Hoke. Look, I’ve got two guys waiting here to see me….”
“Thanks, Blackie. I’ll keep in touch.”
A few minutes later González came into the office. He handed the garage opener to Hoke.
“It opened the door okay,” he said. “But when I
pressed it again, and I was parked right there in front of the driveway, it wouldn’t close again.”
“If it opened the door, it should’ve closed it.”
“What can I tell you?” González shrugged.
“Did anybody see you?”
“Nobody was around. It’s a quiet neighborhood. But I felt bad driving off leaving the door open. Somebody could come along and steal the riding mower that’s parked inside the garage.”
“That’s Robbery’s problem, not ours. Take the opener back down to Property, and turn it in. Bring back the receipt, and I’ll put it in the file.”
Hoke hid his disappointment from González. At least he had been half right.
Until Ellita had phoned him, Hoke had forgotten all about the Donald Hutton case, but there were some interesting parallels between the Hutton case and the Dr. Russell case. When he had more time, maybe he would dig out the old Hutton file and compare the two to see if he could discover anything else that was similar. He needed a fresh idea. But that was the trouble with cold cases. They were cold because everything, or practically everything, had been checked out already before they were abandoned and filed away in pending. That’s why they were called cold cases.
Hoke decided to go out and eat lunch before González came back from Property. He had to work with González, but if he timed it right, he didn’t have to eat with him.
5
AFTER LUNCH HOKE TYPED HIS NOTES ABOUT THE OPENER, his speculations, and put them into the Russell file, together with the receipt González brought back from Property. He slid the accordion file back into his pending drawer. He would let his subconscious mind work on the case for a couple of days before he took the file out and looked at it again.
Hoke and González sat across from each other at a glass-covered double desk in their small two-man cubicle. They shared a phone and a typewriter. A two-drawer file cabinet with a combination lock held the cases they were currently investigating. The other cold case they had been studying for the past week was equally baffling. Instead of two accidental deaths, or suicides, it had turned out to be two homicides, and there were no discernible leads.
Miami has termites, just like every other city, but they breed quickly and eat a lot of wood in the subtropical climate. Once they are discovered in a house, a “tent job” is the only way to get rid of them. It isn’t unusual for a homeowner, once termites have been discovered, to have a new tent job every two or three years. Termite swarms have an uncanny knack for finding their way back to an edible house, and exterminators in South Florida thrive on repeat business. The house is put under canvas, and the tenants must stay away for from thirty-six to seventy-two hours while the Vikane gas kills the termites and other insects inside the house. Food and other perishables are placed in plastic bags during the tenting, and homeowners either stay with friends or put up in a motel until it’s safe to return home. Burglaries of tented houses occur frequently, and three or four times a year, and sometimes more often than that, dead burglars, overcome by the Vikane gas, are discovered together with the dead insects when the owners return home. Vikane is a powerful poison, and it kills people as easily as it does termites. Burglars who specialize in tent job invasions wear gas masks and get in and out quickly with their loot. But amateurs who hold dampened handkerchiefs over their mouths and stay too long looking for valuables can be overcome by the fumes and drop dead to the floor like the roaches and termites. Usually, dead burglars are teenagers, high school dropouts with low IQs, but occasionally they are mature men who should know better. Warning signs are posted on all four sides of the tented house, in English and Spanish, but more than thirty percent of the Miami burglars are illiterate in both languages and cannot read signs. At one time the exterminator used to post a guard in front of the house. But the insurance rates went up considerably. The insurance companies told the exterminators that the fact that they did have guards meant that they could be sued by a dead burglar’s family for failing to keep the man out. While a guard was sitting in his car out front, smoking and listening to a rock station on his radio, a house prowler could sneak under the tent through a back entrance. After this decision exterminators no longer posted guards and merely put up warning signs. Exterminators were not responsible for illiterate burglars because high school principals were not responsible for graduating illiterate students.
No female burglar, teenage girl or mature woman, has ever been found dead from Vikane gas in a tented house. Females, Hoke reflected, taught by their moms about the danger of household cleaners, wouldn’t be caught dead going into a tented house.
Two dead black men, well bloated by the heat, were discovered in the foyer of their home, after a tent job, by Mr. and Mrs. James Magers. The Magerses, during the tenting, had made a holiday out of it and had taken the Friday evening to Monday morning cruise to Nassau on the Emerald Seas. When they cleared customs and drove home, it was almost 11:00 A.M., and the canvas had already been removed by the exterminating company. The windows had been opened, and the Vikane gas had blown away. The exterminator was still there, however, and so were two uniformed policemen, who had been called by the exterminator when he reopened the house. The Magerses couldn’t identify the two dead men, and they had been removed to the morgue. Except for crude tattoos on the backs of their hands—stars, circles, and two inverted V’s— there was no other identification on the two men. It was apparent that nothing in the house had been taken. There were no valuables in their pockets, and the house hadn’t been ransacked. After checking, the Magerses said nothing was missing. Mr. Magers had left his World War II Memorial .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol (a highly pilferable item) in the house, and it was still safe in its glass display case. Mrs. Magers had prudently taken her jewelry with her on the cruise, and the purser had kept it locked in his safe when she went ashore in Nassau.
The two men, or someone, had jimmied the front door open, after slipping under the canvas, and dropped dead in the foyer. Death was caused by the Vikane gas. The medical examiner then discovered bruises on the backs of both skulls, indicating that the men had been sapped and then tossed, still alive but unconscious, into the foyer. Also, the killer(s) knew that the bodies would be safely hidden inside the house for at least seventy-two hours, allowing ample time for a getaway. Hoke’s problem, and González’s, was to discover the identity of the two men. The case was now two years old, and Hoke had no leads. The original investigator, a detective who was no longer on the force, had given up on the case after three fruitless months of checking. The homemade tattoos on the backs of their wrists indicated that they had once been in a Cuban prison or perhaps in some other Latin American prison, and that was all Hoke had to go on. Latin prisoners, in many cases, tattooed the backs of their hands with their crime specialty —burglar, arsonist, holdup man, and so on. But the stars, circles, and V’s were not listed on the tattoo ID sheets Hoke had requested from Atlanta, where a thousand Mariel prisoners awaited shipment back to Cuba someday—if Dr. Castro ever decided to take them back.
If the two men had arrived during the 1980 Mariel boat-lift, they would have been fingerprinted. But there was no record of their fingerprints in Atlanta or in the FBI files in Washington. There were several Mariel prisoners at the Krome Detention Center in Miami. These men had served their sentences for crimes committed in America and were waiting deportation to Cuba, although they would probably remain incarcerated in Krome until Dr. Castro died before they could be returned.
“I’ll tell you what, Teddy,” Hoke said. “Take these Polaroid mug shots and the tattoo photos out to Krome, and talk to some of the Cuban detainees. Even if we can’t get an ID, they might know what the tattoos represent. We haven’t got anything else. They’re black men, but most of the Marielitos were black Cubans.”
“Will they cooperate with me at Krome?” González asked. “The INS, I mean.”
“The INS, yes. But the Cubans may not. They’re bitter, you know. They’ve served their sentences in Atlanta and want
to be released to their families here. But you speak Spanish, and you can talk to them. After all, these poor bastards are in limbo here, with nothing else to do. They might cooperate, just to be doing something, or else think that if they help you, you might help them later by putting a good word in their files.”
“Is it okay to promise them that? That I’ll write a favorable report for their files if they help me?”
“Why not? A promise means nothing. They aren’t going back to Cuba till Castro says they can, no matter what you tell them. See what you can find out about the tattoos.”
“How do I get out to Krome? I’ve never been out there.”
“First, drive west on Calle Ocho until you reach Krome Avenue. Turn left, or south, and look for the sign. Then talk your way in, and see if they’ll let you interrogate some of the black Marielitos. Be sure to wear your jacket. It’ll impress the Marielitos with its sincerity.”
“What’s wrong with this jacket? This is a Perry Ellis jacket.”
“Nothing. It’s perfect for this job, kid. If I had one like it, I’d wear it out to Krome myself. Take your own car, instead of one from the pool, and go on home when you’re finished. I’ll see you Monday morning.”
After González left, Hoke wrote redline memos to Quevedo and Levine, appointing them to his crack committee. He placed the memos in their mailboxes. They both were on the night shift, and he would be gone before they read the memos and cursed him for giving them this opportunity to serve their division and community.
WHEN HOKE PULLED INTO HIS DRIVEWAY AND PARKED BEHIND Ellita’s car, Donald Hutton, wearing a dark blue suit, was still sitting in a dining room chair on his front lawn. Hoke got out of his car without rolling up the windows first, slammed the car door, and crossed the street. He stopped on the sidewalk, not wanting to trespass on the man’s property.
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