Trent fixed his eyes on Radcliff. “How does Butler figure into this?”
“When he was a beat patrolman in Athens some minor charges were brought against him. Several young ladies complained that he profiled them; pulled them over onto the same abandoned off-ramp where the murder victim’s car was found. The women claimed he came onto them, wanted things. The review board said the allegations were unfounded; they dismissed the charges.”
“Is Butler capable of murder?”
Radcliff unlocked Trent’s door from his armrest control panel. “Everyone is capable of murder,” he said mysteriously.
Trent wondered again if he should have left town.
Chapter 34
Radcliff opened the car door and nodded toward the apartment. “With all your troubles and all, I better come inside and make sure everything is kosher.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Trent said, following him down a winding brick path to his apartment.
“Better safe than sorry,” said Radcliff. He opened the door cautiously, switched on the light, then walked through the office and into the bedroom. “Come on in,” Radcliff said. “The place is clean.” He dialed the thermometer to a warmer setting. “Got anything to drink?”
“Will vodka do?” Trent asked, walking unhurriedly toward the tiny kitchen.
“Sure,” Radcliff said, settling into a chair in Trent’s bedroom. “Something to warm a guy’s insides on a frigid night.”
Trent retrieved a bottle of Gray Goose from the windowsill behind the drapes and poured hefty amounts into red plastic cups. Then he floated some orange juice on the tops.
Radcliff sniffed the vodka. “This place looks a helluva a lot bigger when all the cops are out of it.” The heater kicked in and warm air blew through the bedroom.
“Nice and cozy. Now what, Radcliff?”
“Relax, old buddy,” he said, rising and removing the overalls.
Trent sat on his bed. “You working tonight?”
He chuckled. “Moonlighting for a friend. When I slip in for a drink before work I slide these grubs on over my uniform.”
“It works.” What the hell, Trent thought as he stretched out on the bed. If you’re going to die, you might as well have your head on your own pillow.
Radcliff reached up and turned down the lights. “My pal at the Miami PD is an ME.”
“Uh-huh,” Trent said, tilting his head back so he could see out from under the blind. Hardface was standing outside the window. Trent thought of his pregnant cat and wondered who would feed her.
“He knows about you. Said a nasty Priest didn’t pick up on.”
“Like?” He frowned at the thought of having someone retell an unpleasant story about him.
“The gangster you beat with the tire iron,” he said. “He ordered your fiancée’s execution.”
Gloom settled over Trent. “Life sucks and then you die,” he said dismissively. His eyes had adjusted to the dark and they settled on the gun lying across Radcliff’s ample thigh. He rested his hands across his stomach; he didn’t much care what happened. He was tired of it all.
Radcliff polished the nails of one meaty hand with the palm of the other. “Who was she?”
“Sylvia,” he said, as a rush of love and longing for her surged through him. “She was from Brazil.”
Radcliff cleared his throat. “Brazil?”
“Yes. I had stakeout detail the night we met; I was hiding in some bushes outside an apartment complex waiting on a doper to show. Well, Sylvia had moved to Miami and was living on the second floor with her aunt. Guess I didn’t see her when I staked my claim; she poured hot water on me. Talk about a wakeup call.”
Radcliff’s voice was thick with alcohol. “Your luck is lousy.”
“No. For six months it was the best.” Trent closed his eyes and started to drowse. He shook his head to wake himself. “Love at first sight. We moved in together a week after she doused me.”
Radcliff sipped his vodka. “What are Brazilian women like?”
“Great lovers, but hot tempers. Sylvia grew up in a slum outside Rio de Janeiro; lived on the streets with her brothers. Christ, the stories she had.”
“Like?”
“Death squads. They’d kill the street kids for kicks. Cut her little brother’s throat while she watched.” Trent turned on his side and supported himself with an elbow. “They laughed about it then gang raped her.”
“Sorry. How old was she?”
Trent sighed. “Her visa said eighteen. Might have been younger.”
He chuckled. “Jesus, Palmer. Robbing the cradle.”
“I know; at times I felt more like a father that a lover or a future husband.” Dogs barked in the park. One started, then all the others did.
“Didn’t that bother you?”
“No. A father is supposed to die first.”
For a brief moment, Trent thought Radcliff was holding back tears. “Sylvia didn’t own a pair of shoes until she was twelve-years-old,” he said. “Should have seen the scars on her feet.”
“That right?”
“Yeah.” Trent was moderately buzzed. “She was weird about shoes. Been living together for three months and she had bought twenty pairs. Wouldn’t wear ’em, but would carry a pair in her purse. Had to remind her to put them on.”
“So they got her,” Radcliff said, his words slurred slightly.
“Beat her within inches of death then hung her in the bathroom with an extension cord.” Suddenly it was as if a cord had tightened around Trent’s neck, and he fought for each breath. His mind filled with images of Sylvia. How she had dipped her little finger into her special cake batter and held it to his lips. The giggling smile on her face as he licked her fingertip. How she would put her head to one side, frown, and twirl a length of hair when she was angry with him. And if he conceded she was right, she would hold his face in her hands and kiss him passionately.
“Did you see her autopsy photos?”
“I didn’t have the stomach for it; I only saw the one of her hanging from the showerhead.” He remembered her bare feet most of all. Ankles crossed, her toes were pointed downward almost touching the tub. Like a ballerina performing a delicate dance move. He felt a deep sense of loss.
Radcliff pulled a legal-size envelope from the pocket of his overalls. “My Miami buddy said you were a damn good cop; and that you should study these.”
“What are they?”
“A few select autopsy photos of Sylvia’s pulped face. He said there’s something new you should see.”
Trent turned on the light by the bed and Radcliff sat next to him. He laid the pictures face up on the night stand and took the top one, which was a close-up bruise pattern of her shattered cheek. “These bruises stop developing when the circulation stops. You understand?”
Trent nodded. He understood.
“You see those oval marks there?”
“Yes.”
“Grab the next photo.”
Trent handed it to Radcliff and he traced a finger over the bruises. “Miami has a new image enhancement computer program that boosts the resolution even further. This is a blowup of the same area. But now you can see overlapping indentations in the skin. The ME says they were made by oval-shaped rings.”
“OK,” Trent said, lifting the next photo.
Radcliff pointed with the swizzle stick Trent had put in his drink. “There’s no mistaking the two overlapping pentacle patterns.”
“It’s the King’s satanic insignia.”
“True,” he said, lifting the next picture. “Here you can make out some letters. That half circle could be a J. Maybe an M or an N next to it. This one is pretty clear; an L followed by an E.”
“I see it.”
“It looks like two thugs got her,” Radcliff said, dropping the photos on the nightstand. He stood and had to plant his feet wide to keep his balance. “It’s a killing floor out there, Palmer,” he said turning toward the front door. “Be careful.”
“I will. And thanks.”
Trent was so unnerved from reliving Sylvia’s death through the photos, that he rooted through his medicine cabinet and found the Percs. He took two and chugged from the bottle of vodka and crawled into bed.
As soon as he closed his eyes, it was if he were back in the closet where Sylvia was hung, living the nightmare all over again in a continuous loop. He could see the killer’s fists pounding into her face and feel the crush of her facial bones. He could hear her tortured screams and see the rose color of her blood that flew outward in all directions with every strike to her face.
Chapter 35
Trent jolted awake, covered in sweat. He looked at the bedside clock. “Seven in the morning,” he moaned, pulling himself unwillingly out of a dreamy half-sleep and into his nightmarish reality of crooked cops, serial killers, and gangsters.
Lying in bed, he lighted a cigarette and switched on the TV. He spent an hour watching the Christmas shows-Rudolph, Frosty, and the Island of Misfit Toys while he decided what to do. Take another Perc and go back to sleep. No. Today I should leave town. Never come back. Good idea. When an image of Chloe’s smiling face flashed in his mind, he pushed the sheets back and crawled out of bed.
He stepped into the hallway and slid open the closet door to select a shirt and pants. Put the Atlanta Public Library to work, he thought, grabbing his heavy coat and scarf. See what I can learn about the FOX News meth lab tape. He checked that the cyber keys were still under the seat of his bike then drove through the concrete canyons of downtown Atlanta.
The tips of his ears felt scaled from the cold as he parked his bike in an open space in front of the glass-and-chrome building. The lobby was large with a domed ceiling, a high-gloss marble floor, and had the acoustics of a concert hall. It was so quiet that the clacking of a word processor could clearly be heard.
Trent was shivering with the cold as he walked to a central island where a receptionist was typing. She looked at him and said, “You have that lost look on your face.”
“That’s for sure. Where can I research back issues of Atlanta newspapers?”
She pointed down the hall. “Take the elevator to the computer room on the fourth floor.”
“Thanks.”
Trent sat at an Internet station and tapped out a Google search for the Midtown Police Plaza, Georgia meth lab busts, and GID deaths. He was grateful for a warm heater that hung from the ceiling in the center of the room. He whistled almost silently as he read the articles. When he had finished, he printed what he needed, then lifted his fingers from the keyboard.
He strolled along Piedmont Avenue, in the heart of the financial district, buying a tall coffee from a vendor while he thought. Nothing to it but to do it. He paused at a phone kiosk. Looked around and saw that no one was paying him any attention. He dialed a number.
“FOX News,” a woman answered. “How can I direct your call?”
“Inspector Brotherhood here,” he lied. “I’m with the Federal Aviation Administration. I need a copy of the meth lab report that aired on TV last night; I also need to speak to the pilot who captured the fire on tape.”
The receptionist paused. “How come?”
“Well, he was flying over a burning structure. Even though the area was sparsely populated, we need to verify that he adhered to the Federal Aviation Regulations and wasn’t flying in a careless or reckless manner.”
“Hang on,” she said reluctantly.
Trent listened to the Beach Boys for a minute.
“Sir, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“I spoke to the flight department receptionist. She said that an Atlanta police officer stopped by first thing this morning and collected the tape as evidence.”
“Any idea what division picked it up?”
“The Midtown Police Plaza.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you still want to talk to the pilot?”
“I’ll call back.”
Trent was discouraged but he went back to the library and stopped in the audiovisual room. He asked the librarian if they archived FOX News programs.
“Which one?” she whispered so delicately that he had to read her lips.
“Meth Lab Dangers in Atlanta.”
“We have it,” she said, giving Trent a sunny smile and motioning him to follow her. She found him an empty cubicle and loaded the CD into a machine.
Trent put on a set of headphones and fast-forwarded to the helicopter video. The date and time ran in a strip at the bottom of the original footage.
He rewound the scene and played it in slow motion. The pilot had not captured the flash, but had glimpsed the column of smoke and turned toward it before switching on the camera.
Trent pulled the GID report from his backpack and turned to the aerial reconnaissance pictures of the meth lab before it had burned. He set them next to the CD player used a magnifying glass to study those images against the ones on the CD.
Breakthrough! Trent had made a startling discovery. The topography didn’t match, and a partially constructed antenna was visible in one of the GID pictures that did not appear on the CD.
Trent replayed the CD and used the remote control to freeze each frame. On the third frame he caught the tail of a brightly painted small aircraft that had passed directly underneath the helicopter.
He rewound, started, and stopped the disk. On the fourth try he captured the entire plane. Amazing, he thought. It appeared in exactly one frame . . .
Using the machine’s focal control and his magnifying glass, Trent was able to read the aircraft’s registration number from atop the wing. Next to it were the words: ‘Atlanta Aerial Survey & Mapping.’
Trent called the survey company under the pretext that he was a Midtown police inspector. He gave the receptionist the particulars.
“Al was piloting that aircraft,” a kind voice said. “He’s in the office; would you like to speak with him?”
“Sure, and thanks.”
“Hello. This is Al.”
“Al, Inspector Brotherhood here with the Atlanta Police Department,” Trent lied. “I’m investigating a meth lab explosion that occurred last August.
“I watched a FOX News video last night and noticed that your aircraft passed directly under our police helicopter. Do you recall seeing any black smoke that day?”
“Yes. I had been crisscrossing that area at two-hundred feet mapping a gas pipeline. I must have been dead center over the flash because there had been no smoke, but when I banked, a column of black smoke was pouring into the sky.”
“Do you remember where it was?”
“Approximately. Now if I had the exact time . . .”
“One-fourteen in the afternoon.”
“That’s easy,” he said. “We keep all the flight logs in the computer.”
“Fantastic.”
“Here it is,” he said. “Now let me look at an aeronautical chart. At one o’clock I switched on the fuselage-mounted camera to map the pipeline starting at a point seventy-five miles northeast of Atlanta on the oh-four-seven degree radial.”
“OK.”
“Then I worked back toward the city, because that pipeline feeds the Atlanta International Airport. I was traveling roughly 1.5 miles per minute, so in fourteen minutes I should have covered twenty-one miles, give or take for the wind. That should have put me right here.”
“Where is here?”
“Do you have access to a fax?”
“Yes.” Trent read the number off a business card he’d picked up from the librarian’s desk.
“I’ll send you a segment of my sectional chart and mark the location; it’s fifty-four miles northeast of Atlanta and right below an abrupt angle in the pipeline. I’ll write the latitude/longitude coordinates in the corner.”
“Thanks, and I owe you.”
“No problem. Hey, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want the photographs as well?”
&
nbsp; “That would be great!” Trent said excitedly.
“Like I say, everything is in the computer. Here they are. Let’s see. Now, that’s odd.”
“What’s odd?”
“Oh, it’s just that two sedans are visible in this picture. What’s odd is that I photographed the same cars next to an identical building the day before the fire you are interested in.”
“How can you be sure?”
“These photos are black-and-white, but the resolution is superb. Each car has three whip antennas attached to the roof.”
“Can you send me the coordinates for the second site and the corresponding photographs?”
“Sure. That site is closer to where I initially started filming the pipeline. Give me your e-mail. I’ll send you a block of images for both locations; you’ll have to sort through several dozen slides.”
“No problem.”
“I just sent the e-mail. Twill only be a moment on the fax.”
“Again, thanks.”
Eager to plot the coordinates, Trent hurried to the librarian’s desk.
“Here is the fax, Mr. Palmer,” she said happily.
“Thanks.”
He referenced a state road atlas and crosschecked the two sites. They were fifteen miles apart from one another, and he quickly plotted routes to both.
Trent raced back to the computer room and signed onto the internet. His fingers and toes were tingling the way they always did when he sensed a break in a case. He forced himself to relax as he opened his e-mail, uploaded the images, and began sifting through the slideshow.
Chapter 36
He started with the first set of high-resolution photographs and found one that showed a small concrete-block shed in the upper corner. Tracing his finger over row after row of pecan trees, he figured the structure contained pumps and equipment for a commercial irrigation system.
The two sedans sat on a dirt road at the bottom of the photo. The car doors were open; three men stood facing the shed.
A fourth man stood away from the group. He had something in his hand and was pointing it at the shed. The photo was angled such that Trent could see into the back window of one of the cars. Someone was sitting in the backseat with their head down. Male or female? He couldn’t tell.
The Midtown Murderer Page 12
