The Death Box (Carson Ryder, Book 10)

by J. A. Kerley

  “At this moment.”

  “Tell me of the trouble.”

  “I-I came here on a big ship, in a metal box. I was taken to a bad place and made to do things that sickened me. But if I didn’t I was hurt. Bad people want to hurt my mama in Honduras.”

  Victoree Johnson frowned. Honduras. The detective sent her way by Doctor Morningstar was investigating that terrible case from Honduras. Johnson had agreed with Morningstar’s assessment of Ryder: He seems to have brains.

  “Can you warn her?” Johnson asked. “Your mother?”

  “I did. I told her to run to Tegucigalpa. I pray she is safe.”

  “Good, that’s very good. But you are not safe?”

  “I ran from them. They are looking for me, I know.”

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Lea … Leala.”

  “Can I meet you, Leala?”

  “I-I don’t think I w-want to …”

  Easy, Johnson cautioned herself. Don’t spook her; she’s afraid she’s being drawn into a trap. I would have been.

  “It’s all right, Leala,” Johnson said quickly. “It’s not necessary. You have my number. Keep it safe.”

  Johnson thought about what else she might offer the girl in this initial contact. There was something about the man Ryder, more than the intellect, a depth. They’d spoken after discussing trafficking, his thoughts reflecting knowledge of people, the highest angels and lowest demons. In policemen, such knowledge either made one jaded or driven. Ryder seemed much the latter. That might make him a potent ally to people like her caller.

  “Here’s another phone number,” she said, not quite certain why she was breaking pattern. “A man who might help.”

  “Who is this man?”

  Johnson decided on the truth. “He is a detective in—”

  “NO! Your sign said no policía.”

  “He is not a federale or from inmigración. He cares not of citizenship, only safety. He is a special detective from a special place called FCLE. He represents the state of Florida, not the big government. He is studying people from Honduras, people you know, perhaps. Have any of your friends disap—”

  “NO POLICÍA! NO POLICÍA!”

  “I’m not telling you to call him. I’m giving you a phone number. You should have more than one number. Throw it away if it frightens you.”

  Victoree Johnson recited Ryder’s cell number. The girl had been so heavily indoctrinated against the police that even writing down a number frightened her. “Tell me more about yourself, Leala. Where were you held? And where are you now?”

  “I … I must go.”

  The girl was spooking. The mention of Ryder had been a mistake. “Momentito, Leala!” Johnson said. “Por favor, mi amiga. Can you please at least tell me—”

  The line went dead.

  Once again we pulled past the defunct rental concern, over the tracks, and onto the spreading Redi-flow lot. Kazankis was out his door before we’d exited ours. “Come in, gentlemen. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering lunch.”

  I looked at Gershwin. He’d just been complaining about his empty belly. How could such a beanpole eat like a famished lion?

  “We hadn’t really planned on—”

  “Cuban sandwiches,” Kazankis patted his stomach. “Layers of spicy pork on bread made an hour ago.”

  Gershwin moaned. I said, “Sure. We’ll eat.”

  Kazankis led us to a lunch room, Spartan, like you’d expect in a concrete-supply concern: a long table, plastic chairs, a wall calendar from a truck-transmission company. A big red fire extinguisher hung from the wall beside a stained refrigerator. The bag of chow centered the table and Kazankis distributed paper-wrapped sandwiches and bags of tortilla chips. He opened the fridge to display several types of soda and I opted for Seven-Up, Gershwin for a papaya beverage. Kazankis grabbed himself a Diet Pepsi and sat, saying a quick grace. “You been here long, Mr Kazankis?” I said when he’d finished, making conversation as I gnawed the sandwich, a big, fat pile of delicious. “This location?”

  “My daddy had a crane business, leasing. I started with him when I was eighteen, running the lot while he stayed inside mostly, bum leg from the big war made his walking difficult. Cranes were getting larger and more sophisticated, especially the self-assembling units. Plus you had to rent a lot of acreage to store all that stuff. About the time he retired, a lot of road-building was happening, so I got into concrete. In addition to pouring, we lease portable mixing factories assembled on construction sites.”

  I nodded out the window as one truck left the mixing tower and another took its place. In a far corner of the lot a hoist was loading a huge, convoluted box inset with pipes and valves onto a semi-trailer, part of a mixing plant.

  “Which brings me to your late driver, Carosso. Did he have any close friends here. Or anyone he spent time with?”

  A sigh, like a disappointed parent. “Paul was a lone wolf, not sociable. It was Paul’s soul that concerned me. Some guys here, we form a bond in the Lord, a fellowship. But Paul never seemed to find the Spirit.”

  Gershwin raised an eyebrow. “Any thoughts why?”

  “Some people can’t let go of the past, Detective Gershwin. Or maybe the past isn’t done with them yet, I don’t claim the wisdom to know. But Paul never had the look of a man who truly wanted to break with his past, and it always troubled me.”

  “You’re saying he wanted to return to crime?” I said.

  “I’m saying maybe I misread him in prison. I think the idea of easy money kept calling his name.” He paused, seemed to look inward. “I guess I’m saying yes, I must have failed with Paul.”

  “You mentioned having something interesting for me, Mr Kazankis?”

  It snapped him from his dark moment. “Ah, yes. Some men, even our successes, have a hard time releasing their pasts. Not committing crimes, but the codes of such a life. Not telling about suspicious things they’ve seen.”

  “Ratting,” Gershwin said, taking a sip of liquid papaya. “It’s bad form in the crime crowd.”

  “I was speaking to employees about Paul. One man looked unsettled and I knew he had something to say. We prayed past it and I’ve asked him here.”

  Kazankis went to the door and waved in a fiftyish man, medium height with small brown eyes in a round face made rounder by frontal balding. His hands twitched at his waist and he wore a blue uniform with the company logo on a shirt pocket.

  “Thomas Scaggs, gentlemen. He works in the conveyor tower and has a wide view of the whole yard and out to the road.”

  Kazankis gestured the man to sit. Scaggs looked nervous, boxed into himself. No one offered handshakes. “Now, Mr Kazankis?” Scaggs said, looking at Kazankis as if he needed permission.

  “What you saw, Thomas. Everything.”

  “A-a few times I saw Carosso out front by the gate, looking down the road. Then a big black SUV pulled up, two guys inside. Paul went over and they talked. Each time they handed him something and he jammed it in his pants.”

  “What did you think?” I asked. “Drugs?”

  He looked at me for a split second, then at the floor. “It could have just been a bet that hit.”

  “A bookie that delivers way out here?” Gershwin said.

  Scaggs shrugged.

  “How many times did you see this, Mr Scaggs?” I asked.

  He frowned heavily, like I was requesting the fast solution of a quadratic equation. “Uh … five-six times, maybe. Over a couple years.”

  “That long? You’re sure?”

  “I got a promotion to the tower two years back this month. I saw Paul and the black car my first week.”

  “Could you see into the vehicle, sir?” I continued.

  “It was a black man driving, that I know. The other man was a white guy, big. Wore sunglasses. A suit, too.”

  “You see the license tags?” asked Gershwin.

  “Hunh-up. Way too far.”

  It turned out to be all Scaggs had; not a lot
, but it suggested Carosso was into something before he ran the truck full of bodies to the cistern, which I was ninety-five per cent sure he’d done. And maybe Carosso was more tightly connected to trafficking than we’d figured.

  “Thank you for your help, Mr Scaggs,” I said, but I was speaking to his disappearing back. Kazankis looked my way, his eyes expectant.

  “I hope that helps you in some way. I wish I had more to tell you about Paul’s relationships, but he had no relationships.”

  Gershwin shook his head. “No one has even been to his house?”

  Kazankis gestured to the room around us. “I never once saw Paul eat lunch here with the others. I can’t imagine Paul having guests from Redi-flow. Most workers here couldn’t tell you the color of Paul’s eyes. I know,” he confessed. “I asked.”

  I stood. But before we left, I had one final piece of info to impart.

  “Speaking of guests, Mr Kazankis, we heard Paul Carosso supposedly had a niece living with him last year. He ever mention such a thing?”

  Kazankis frowned. “I don’t recall Paul having a close family. I check because family can be a powerful influence in redemption.”

  “We have an interesting description of the girl: mid teens, probably Hispanic. Sometimes agitated. Almost never out of the house.”

  Kazankis started to speak, but was stopped by a thought that furrowed his brow. “You’re saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “If you’re thinking the worst, then I expect so.”

  All Kazankis could do was stare, his hand clenching at the air, like he was trying to find something to hold on to. “Gracious Lord, no. Not a little girl.” He turned fearful eyes to me. “Paul’s in Hell, isn’t he?”

  “Not my field of expertise.”

  Kazankis walked stiffly to his window and looked out over the yard. The portable concrete factory was pulling away, but Kazankis’s eyes were in the past. “I was Paul’s vehicle from incarceration,” he whispered. “His road to more sin.”

  “The fault was Carosso’s, Mr Kazankis. Your intentions were honorable.”

  Kazankis turned with his broad hands out and searching for ours. “Pray with me, gentlemen. Pray for a sinner and for the innocents who bear the sin.”

  “I’m, uh, more inclined to my own forms of expression, Mr Kazankis.”

  “Of course. Excuse me …” He dropped to his knees with hands clasped. Tears streamed down his cheeks. I had intended to thank him for lunch and tell him we were likely finished with our visits here, but instead I nodded toward the door and Gershwin and I tiptoed away, quietly retreating from Kazankis’s misery.

  When we hit the lot and I switched my phone back on I found two voicemails, Victoree Johnson asking me to call her, the same from Doctor Morningstar. The din on the lot was oppressive, so I drove across the tracks to return the calls, parking beside a battered tank big enough to hold the Rover. Gershwin stepped out to heed the call of nature.

  “I just got a call from a terrified young woman who said her name was Leala,” Johnson said. “She claimed she’d been smuggled here on a ship, then escaped from people holding her against her will. She was from Honduras. Listen, Detective, I uh – I gave the girl your number. I’m not sure why, just in case, I guess.”

  “But I don’t speak—”

  “Leala, if that’s her real name, has quite good English. I doubt she’ll call, but …”

  “If she calls, how should I respond?”

  “She’s been heavily conditioned to fear the police. That’s all I can tell you. You’ll have to be guided by intuition.”

  I watched an empty semi-tractor pull from the Redi-flow lot and angle our way, engine roaring. Didn’t the damn things have mufflers? “Thanks for the heads-up,” I yelled over the din. “It goes without saying that—”

  “Yes. If she calls me again, I will let you know.”

  The truck pulled by and rumbled past the building and down a dirt road cutting through the treeline. I dialed Morningstar.

  “We’re finished,” she said. “Two more bodies pulled from the column.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “You in the area, Ryder? I think you’ll be interested by what we found.”

  30

  “I have seen such a woman not two hours ago. She wore sunglasses, a scarf, and her dress was a blue like the sky.”

  “Where did you behold this woman, friend?”

  “There was talk of money, no?”

  “I can’t yet know if this is the woman we seek. Here is a good faith offer, one hundred dollars. There’s much more to come should your help result in finding this woman. She has … problems. Her family wants her to get assistance.”

  “Sad. She looked in good health, a pretty one, I think.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “Do you know the ice-cream store near the cemetery? With the cell phones – not so many places have phone booths. There is one still there, on the outside of the store. She was on the phone. When her call was done she stepped into the alley and ran in the direction of the cemetery.”

  “Where were you that you could see her?”

  “In the store, eating ice cream.”

  “Now you can get a hundred dollars’ worth of ice cream. Don’t eat it too fast, amigo, you’ll get a headache. Pay the man, Chaku.”

  When we arrived at the site the only vehicles were from the med and forensics labs. The air was as still as stone, and nearly as heavy, a wave of humidity adding to the late summer heat and we booked for the cool atmosphere of the tent.

  My first glance went to the pit. Empty, the column now borne in hundreds of evidence bags. Morningstar stood beside one of the tables on the upper level, conferring with a tech. I waved as we approached. “Good morning, Doctor, I—”

  She snapped her fingers and the tech filled them with several photos. “This is the head of John Doe Middle Stratum. You’ll note that the neck flesh is ossified by the concrete, but you can’t hide a slash like that. The victim was slit ear to ear. It also seems the hands were severed on this victim. They’re on their way to the lab. A severed hand means thievery in the Muslim world, right?”

  “Biblical, too, maybe, given the Old Testament. Any ID on the body?”

  “None. But the clothing was somewhat intact. He wore a suit, silk. We have a label from the jacket, an expensive Italian make. We have shoes as well, also Italian and pricey.”

  “What was that guy doing underneath a cargo of dirt-poor Hondurans?” I mused.

  “Slumming?” Gershwin ventured.

  “Now for JDBS, our bottom victim,” Morningside said. “The first body dumped in the pit and more ossified than the Hondurans. I figure our bottom John Doe was down there for a couple years, so maybe a year before the others.” The tech anticipated the fingersnap by getting there first, handing the doc a dark plastic bag, large. “Glove up, Ryder,” she said and I resisted dropping my mouth in awe: Morningstar was letting me handle evidence. I snapped the latex in place and the doc reached into the bag and handed me its contents.

  “A skull,” I said unnecessarily, turning it in my hands and noting the lower mandible was missing. “Or what’s left of one.”

  “Wait. More to come.”

  The tech took the skull from my hands as Morningstar opened her hand and revealed an object resembling a petrified thumb until I looked closer.

  “Is this what I think it is?” I asked, grimacing.

  “Yep. A penis.”

  “It fell off the body?”

  “We removed it from the oral cavity of the skull. Go ahead, take a look. It won’t bite.”

  I lifted the severed member. I had held but one penis before and felt uncomfortable holding this one, even though it seemed more statue than human. “The preservation is rather remarkable,” Morningstar said. “Don’t you think?”

  The urethra seemed to stare at me and I looked away.

  “I guess.”

  “Check the base. There’s no tearing of the flesh nor
internal tissue. Probably removed by a razor-sharp knife. Zip … and it was gone.”

  The zip did me in. I set the penis on the table.

  “Any idea as to meaning?” Morningstar said. “The oral placement?”

  “In certain circles it means the penis has been places it shouldn’t. The only other time I’ve seen this was when a gang boss discovered his wife fooling around. He had lover-boy brought in and removed his equipment with a kitchen knife, jammed it in the guy’s mouth and put a bullet in his head. The, uh, surgery was not very neat.”

  “Torture, you think in this case?” she asked. “Or an example?”

  “An example would mean a victim was shown around as a warning to others.”

  I recalled my personal encounter. The gangster had assembled friends of the victim at gunpoint, forcing them to behold his work. When the horrendous story hit the streets the boss became one of the most feared monsters around. It was a double-edged sword, because word eventually made its way to the cops. The boss was now doing life in Holman Prison and I hoped it was a short one.

  “So someone might know?” Morningstar asked.

  “Or have heard about it. That’s all it takes to create a street mythology. Mess with my woman, steal from me, this is what happens.”

  Morningstar looked me in the eye. “The bottom victims give no indication of being trafficked. They appear to be separate incidents. Think it’ll change the situation with Homeland Security?”

  I felt a rising excitement. “I’ll let you know,” I said, turning toward the exit. “You should probably expect a call from Roy.”

  I kept my expectations in check as we headed to Miami and didn’t mention my hopes to Gershwin. I didn’t want to call Roy with the information, but convey the news in person. I also expected I’d have to do a sales job, perhaps with Morningstar’s help, but she seemed on my side, finding HomeSec’s investigation lackadaisical and almost inept thus far.

  We parked and headed to Roy’s office, and found the door wide as usual. Roy wasn’t a closed-door kind of guy. “There’s my man,” Roy said as I knocked on his door frame. “I left some real-estate brochures in your office, though you’ve probably already found a—”

  “You should call Morningstar, Roy,” I interrupted, running on hope and adrenalin. “She’s out at the site.”