by Tom Corcoran
“I knew what I needed to know. I’m not sure how much stayed in my brain after all these years.”
“What type of fire extinguisher goes to what kind of fire, the color codes, the triangles and shit?”
“Right,” I said. “All that. I’d need a brush-up course.”
“Because the guy who died on Caroline, Mr. Engram from Jacksonville, Florida, the cause of death was not the belt around his neck. He suffocated because somebody jammed an extinguisher down his throat, fired it for a while, and corked the chemicals by ramming down three D-cell batteries. They held those in place with a big chunk of raisin pumpernickel and then the duct tape. And you saw the panty liner.”
“Pretty well organized, that murderer,” I said. “Think somebody planned it ahead of time, or did they grab on impulse, whatever was handy?”
“I was going to ask you.”
“Get off it, Dexito. You’re fishing without bait. What’re you going to do, bust everybody on the island who’s ever owned an extinguisher? Collect twenty thousand alibis, distill your list down to two hundred idiots with empty canisters? Use intuition to find the one sick schmuck who did it?”
Hayes wasn’t humored. His expression spoke his instant belief: my glib response suggested a cover-up. I still was holding back.
Which was true.
I tried to think what harm could be done to myself, to Teresa, to anyone else like Wiley Fecko or Marnie or Heidi the silent investor, if I revealed the Engram-Engram tie-in. I took too long to ponder it.
“Here’s the deal,” said Hayes. “Mr. Donovan Cosgrove sashayed in here with a stack of bond guarantees. He also mentioned my boss’s lap-dancing mistress, which most of us thought was a well-kept secret. Ten years ago it might not have been a problem. With a town full of self-righteous newspaper readers, times change. A good boss is hard to find in this profession. I’ve talked to Sheriff Liska. For all I know, you’re in his hip pocket. Anyway, for now, you walk. With ‘for now’ underlined.”
I said, “I hear the sound of a turning table.”
“Let’s put it this way. Cosgrove may have changed my tactics, but not my opinion. I’ve got a strong feeling that you know something I want to know. And the county wants to discuss the car that went in the water, to the best of your knowledge, with two people in it. You didn’t attempt a rescue.”
“They had a gun. My Mustang’s not equipped with flotation devices.”
“That doesn’t mean shit. You had a gun, too.”
“Not true.”
He threw a disbelieving look. “You didn’t check your girlfriend’s purse?”
Teresa had said she’d left her pistol at home. Maybe she’d told Dexter a different story. I couldn’t recall if her job required carrying while off duty, or demanded that she not carry. Time to dodge the topic.
“If you analyzed that camera strap for paint-ball residue, then you also checked my garbage can and found the same residue.”
Dexter let it ride a moment, then nodded.
“And you did it without a warrant.”
He nodded again. He’d taken a risk. He’d been trying to convince himself of my innocence, not my guilt.
“Have you cross-referenced the copycat cases?”
“Inside this building, we call them ‘Liska’s Revenge.’ ”
“Progress?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to chum-up enough to discuss it. “They’re not the same perps. That’s all we know.”
“Mind if I look at some files?”
“Shit,” he said. “Now I’m sure you’re stiffing me.”
“Good. We’re one step closer to negotiation.”
“I guess the dog catcher’ll take you to Stock Island.”
I looked him cold in the eyes. Waited for his move.
He posed a disgusted look on his face, sat back, crossed his arms. “I’m source agnostic. I don’t care who rats out bad guys. This better be golden.”
“What do I get to see?”
“You want the three already copied, or the three other unsolved?”
“The others first,” I said. “Maybe all of them.”
“My office, my presence, outside business hours. No photocopies, no handwritten notes, no press leaks.”
“You get up early?”
“I’m here by seven-fifteen.”
I permitted Hayes’s roust to pay off. I said, “The head belonged to one of Bug Thorsby’s partners. The ones who came at me with a knife and a carpet razor.”
He looked at me without changing his face, but measuring my ability to fight off two- or three-against-one. “Somebody call and tell you this?!’
I explained the blurred photo in the stack he’d returned to me.
“How many in this gang, total?”
“Bug stayed in his truck. Two other starlets tried to play mumblety-peg.”
“Two? You walked from that?”
“Appreciate the compliment, Detective. You want to arm-wrestle, see who’s more of a man here?”
“Ducking blades,” he said, “there’s usually a nick, a little bleeding. All they sliced was your camera strap? What were you holding?”
“My fucking breath.”
“You just amended our negotiation, Rutledge. You’ll be here awhile. Plan on window-shopping computerized mug shots until you hit pay dirt. We need the third man. You find him. After that maybe you can review a few files.”
Hayes delivered me to a part-time, third-floor info tech who knew more about local area networks than law enforcement. Hayes went home to eat dinner. I was on my own. I spent almost two hours in front of a huge monitor before identifying the short one who’d smelled of onions and marijuana, the boy who’d waved a dagger until I’d kicked his balls up to his rib cage. His photograph showed more than the cold, empty eyes I’d viewed in person. Malice and calculated evil, his own revenge for perceived wrongs—probably from birth—radiated from the computer screen.
Robbie Carpona, age twenty-four, had not specialized. He’d committed enough crimes to earn merit badges in multiple categories, though his arrest record did not suggest an ability to avoid arrest. Armed robbery (firearm), battery on a detention-facility officer; aggravated battery; driving while license revoked (habitual); possession of methamphetamine; possession of cocaine; issuing or obtaining property with a worthless check (restitution); grand theft of a motor vehicle; carrying a concealed firearm (adjudication withheld); felony petit theft; resisting a law enforcement officer with violence (sentenced, to time served); violation of probation (three counts); fraudulent use of a credit card; showing obscene material to a minor (community control followed by eighteen months’ probation). The attacker I’d called “Shorty” had served a grand total of twenty-three months in jail. Talk about paying a light price. For the past four years, the police departments of Key West and Hamilton, Ohio, had shared info on Carpona’s activities.
A standard one-liner noted a sealed juvenile record.
I went to the steel cabinets that lined the room’s west wall, helped myself to the crime records files. The first folder I pulled from Carpona’s accordion-style jacket indicated he had been robbing the cradle, too. Three years ago he moved two sixteen-year-old runaway Iowa girls into his mobile home on Big Coppitt Key. He’d run an errand and returned to find his landlord in a three-way sex scene with die jailbait. After he’d beaten the landlord with a halogen lamp stand and trashed the man’s classic Corvair model 700 sedan, he’d swiped a service station’s tow truck and pulled his residence off its slab. The mobile home vanished. It was never seen again. Carpona had stolen his own house.
I returned to the computerized mug shots. It took twenty more minutes to find Freddy Tropici. Long, stringy hair in the photo, a bold notation about the purple birthmark. Tropici was a military brat, a small-timer, a one-time police informant That last notation made clear the liability, explained the beheading.
Hayes strolled in spooning Cherry Garcia out of a pint container. He wore Bermuda shorts and a T-shi
rt that read: LICENSE APPLIED FOR. He leaned over my shoulder, checked Freddy Tropici. “I was coached on this piece of talent The creep sold his own blood and lived by petty thievery until he learned a new trick. He was stealing weapons in Monroe County, selling them at official ‘no-questions-asked’ Miami-Dade County gun buy-backs. Clever guy, Tropici.”
I pointed to the Carpona file.
“We know this doofus, too,” he said. “His eyes look electric, don’t they? Sits around his trailer over here on Simonton pickin’ his nose, pickin’ his ass, pickin’ his Lotto numbers. The jackpot goes over twenty million, he’s out ripping off neighbors to buy lottery tickets. I was still in high school and he was, maybe, eleven. He tried to rape a girl in a stadium rest room. Boy’d steal flowers from his own funeral. Can’t happen soon enough.”
“Ask him if he wants to kill me, okay?”
“I’ll loan him the blade,” he said. “Wait. I take that back. We need you to photograph the head, Rutledge. Ortega’s on vacation in Atlantic City. We tried to hire your pal Kincaid. He told us he’d rather shoot a shark’s tonsils.”
“It takes a certain mental numbness,” I said.
“I saw some of that tonight, downstairs.”
“My cameras are broken. If it’s false arrest, do I get a free ride home?”
“Don’t push when you’re on a ledge. You’ll tip backward and fall.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I’ll save you a trip,” said Dexter. “There’s the unsolved man in drag and the unsolved beheading. Those match Engram and Tropici. Then there was a hanging, a strangulation, a throat slashing, and a bullet to the head.”
“Can you give me one detail per occasion?”
“What do you know about solving crimes?”
“What do I know about any damned thing?” I said. “What do I know about clouds? I look up, I know it’s about to rain. Maybe I can’t name an exact type of cloud, but I can tell you where I’ve put my umbrella. I’m working on common sense. What the Navy called ‘preventive maintenance.’ ”
Dexter thought for a moment. “The hanging, a man named Toth, from a tree in his backyard. If the guy took himself out, somebody came along and stole the stool. The victim with the auxiliary smile, his Adam’s apple hung out like a dog’s tongue—Liska’s own words. It was a Psycho-like thing. Killed in a shower. The woman shot through her head, ear to ear with a twenty-two, lived long enough to call nine-one-one from a pay phone. Told the operator she didn’t feel well.”
“Give me a bonus track,” I said. “Describe the strangulation.”
“A lamp cord around the neck. Found the guy in his car, parked overtime at a Smathers Beach meter. Had a dime-store straw hat tilted down, like he was sleeping. Does that save you a couple hours’ work?”
“The last one does for both of us. Loosely speaking, it copies Bug Thorsby’s demise.”
Hayes inhaled, sat back, closed his eyes. Once more he stroked his upper lip with the knuckle, as if he’d once had an unruly mustache. He hadn’t put it together. But now it was obvious. The pattern was solid. His problems had escalated.
“These killings,” I said. “Were all the details revealed to the press?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”
“Dexter, you’re lucky I didn’t confess to three murders and tack on a few more. Gaps in my time line, inconsistencies, phony motivation, a sprinkling of details only a perp could know. Imagine your workload this weekend. No time for the Super Bowl. No time for Ben and Jerry’s.”
“Up yours, too.” He stood and bolted.
I walked outside to brackish post-rain air. In the municipal garage’s lower level, diesel fumes spit by an outbound Greyhound smelled of freedom. I never thought a wanging moped would sound so good. A taxi blasted a gutter puddle and spoke to my soul of the real world. A palm frond’s flutter, a crime light’s glow, an uneven sidewalk each jerked me from the bureaucratic morass, away from my jailhouse mind-set pulled me back to Key West.
I wondered why I’d considered a trip to Marathon, or hiding in a motel room. Or, yesterday, riding to Epcot or Cedar Key. I began dodging puddles on Southard, in no hurry, paced by deafening drips of moisture from foliage, inspired by fecundity, absorbed by the night
19
My quaint cottage in the picturesque Old Island lane had become, in my mind, a twice-fought battleground. I pictured barbed wire strung from burned stake to broken post, smoke wisps rising from craters under the mango tree. Constant cloud cover, frigid humidity, raw dirt in clumps or thick puddles. Spent weapons, forgotten guns scattered, upturned helmets half-full of rain. Cordite stink, powdery residue on horizontal surfaces. For the second time in two days I slid the perimeter, traversed the croton bush no-man’s-land. I pulled the clip-on flashlight from my bicycle handlebars, scouted sand spur terrain for opposing forces, inspected access portals for signs of intrusion.
No footprints under the windows. No jimmy marks, no screen frames askew.
I doused the light, felt tranquility in the puke-sepia glow from Fleming.
I’d intended to march into the house, damn the dangers, take command. But Robbie Carpona might be stroked out on my couch, his feet on the glass-topped table, meditating in the dark, waiting to expand our new friendship. He could be cleaning his fingernails with his four-inch pigsticker, focusing his criminal brain on my future happiness. Dodging land mines placed by the neighbor’s springer spaniel, I retreated. I crossed the lane to the home of Hector Ayusa. I went for firepower and company.
Hector—Carmen Sosa’s father—had retired after thirty-two years at City Electric. He’d been a dedicated employee. By the utility’s count, Hector had been struck by lightning more often than he’d been caught sleeping on the job. His main assignment in recent years had been his granddaughter, Maria Rolley. Hector also prided himself in personal enforcement of law and order on Dredgers Lane.
Hector came to his front door in threadbare suit trousers, suspenders, bare feet. The tank-top-style undershirt did little to contain his midsection. A museum-quality cowlick sprouted at his thin hair’s peak. He held a .45 in one hand, a bottle of Spanish brandy in the other. Firepower and firewater. I feared for the springer’s life. I changed my mind about needing help. I told Hector that I’d cased the joint. My house was safe for entry. No one waited to cap me, or to bust me for crimes committed, imagined or real. I had no need for an escort.
Hector wanted to come along, just the same. He argued in English, but with pure Cuban mannerisms. When he described his thinking, he pointed to his forehead. When he told me what he’d seen, he pointed to one eye. He’d heard something, he pointed to his ear. If he wanted to clarify meaning, or tell what he’d said, he pointed to his mouth. I wanted to point to his ass, tell him to go sit down.
“I’ll walk you across the lane,” he said.
“I’ll be fine, Hector.”
“Lotta bums in this island. We got to help each other.”
Continuing the conversation could only make it worse. I finally broke away. I crossed the lane, walked onto my porch, reached for my keys. They were still in the police property envelope that I’d jammed into my pocket on my way to freedom. I fished them out, took a chance.
No explosions, no flashing knives. I could tell by the cleanser smells that Carmen Sosa had scrubbed my kitchen sink. I keep an orderly house. She’s a fanatic. She’d left a note on the counter:
If you get home tonight, which Mercer Holloway promises you will, welcome home, you evil man. Someone has watered your parched plants, especially the poor bromeliad which doesn’t need as much in winter months, but it needs some. You haven’t been to your P.O. box since last Thursday, so I pulled this stack of mail. My papa is checking your house once an hour until he goes to bed. If you hear him outside, don’t freak out.
Love,
Britney Spears
I shoved my clothing into the garbage bag I’d toted from Teresa’s place. No telling how many mutant infectious strains m
y pants had collected from the cop cruiser. If I kept up my wandering ways, perhaps I could requisition Superfund monies for laundry soap. I opened the refrigerator, checked the vegetable bin. Two beers. In my state of depletion, one would be too few and two would be more than enough. I took a chance and opened both.
Something bugged me. Having shed the mystery of whether I might be jumped or rearrested on returning home, my mind loosened up, wanted to say something. I pestered myself for the right answer until I finally formed the right question. After all the friction, after busting me with great pride, causing me to get my forehead flattened against the mesh divider in Officer Tisdell’s prowler, why had Hayes suddenly shown a change of heart?
I’d been conned by a cop. I wasn’t the only one holding back info.
The phone rang. How did it know?
Sheriff Liska said, “You just can’t get enough of Stock Island.”
“I’m saving to retire there. To hell with Marco Island and Longboat Key.”
“Why is that, Rutledge?”
“No street-work dust, no loud Harleys. And cheap real estate, unspoiled by zoning restrictions. You get used to the F-18s.”
“We found the crispy critter. Did the rigmarole with your license tag.”
“I figured.”
“Story to go with it?” he said.
“I’m working up a version for my insurance company.”
“We can help you there, if you help us. Get you some cash, next time buy a Blazer.”
“Not funny,” I said.
“Wait’ll you see the towing company’s bill for burned hulk removal.”
“Thanks for cutting me loose.”
“I guess you’ve had a long night.”
“Does Robbie Carpona ride a dirt bike?”
“He told me about Carpona, too. Look, you may be a free man, but parts of your story are still coming up lame.”
“ ‘Bout time I heard a discouraging word. So many people wanted to help me tonight, I felt like Happy Henry in the Barrel. Now I know how a politician feels around lobbyists.”
“We’ll be in touch.” I heard no click. He, was gone.
