by P J Parrish
Louis sat back, as if he’d been hit. How in the hell had Landeta found out that much about him?
Landeta took a hard draw on his cigarette, looking away.
Make nice...
“So talk,” Landeta said, blowing a plume of smoke in Louis’s direction.
“You talk.”
Landeta chuckled and shook his head slowly. “How old are you?”
“You know damn well how old I am. Let’s stick to the case,” Louis said.
More silence.
“So what did the parents say about the ring?” Louis asked.
“They said they had never seen it before. It was not something she’d own. She was into silver. And Dr. Jeremy didn’t give it to her either.”
“Who saw her last?” Louis asked.
“According to the original missing person’s report, Shelly went to a night class on May second. That’s what her professor told the Lauderdale cops. That was the last time we can confirm anyone seeing her alive.”
“So this guy drove 130 miles across the state to abduct her then drove back across Alligator Alley to kill and dump her?” Louis shook his head. “Not your classic profile.”
Landeta’s hand paused over the ashtray. “You know about profiling?”
Louis nodded as he sipped the beer. “I worked with a Miami FBI agent once who was into it. She taught me a lot.”
“Tell me about this Woods guy,” Landeta said.
“He’s not your classic suspect,” Louis said. “Older, intelligent, has a family, a steady job where he’s respected. He’s just not your standard loser.”
“Neither was Ted Bundy.”
“Woods has a whole library in his house.”
“What kind of books?”
“Academic shit on language origins, Roman history...”
Landeta took a drag on the cigarette. “The guy do anything strange while you were following him?”
Louis shook his head.
“What about the daughter? Why would she have you tailing her old man?”
“I told you. She found the articles and the ring.” But Louis knew that was not what Landeta meant. He was wondering what kind of daughter would suspect her own father. He had been wondering the same thing since the start of all this.
“You can do better than that,” Landeta said.
Louis stared at him. “What?”
“I said you can do better than that. Come on, Rocky boy.” Landeta smiled and started humming The Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon.”
Louis raised his beer, finished it in one gulp, and slammed it down.
“Fuck this, man,” he said, rising.
“You leaving?” Landeta asked.
Louis didn’t answer. He pulled out his wallet. He only had a twenty. But he’d be damned if he was going to leave without paying for his beer. He went up to the bar and asked for change.
“Hey, hon, bring me a Jack Daniels on the rocks.”
Louis glanced back at Landeta. He was waving to the waitress. He saw Louis staring at him.
“Thought you were leaving, Rocky,” he called out. “Well, go on, get out of here. Just go.”
Louis looked back at Landeta. He was just sitting there, looking off into space. Then, in one sudden liquid movement of his long hand Landeta raised the shot to his lips and sucked it down.
Louis hesitated, hand on the glass door.
No. I don’t need to be dragged into his shit.
He pushed open the door and went out into the sun.
CHAPTER 16
Louis waited until eight p.m. before hitting the library. It was a Saturday and he figured the place would be fairly empty an hour before closing, giving him more privacy to search through Frank’s work area.
Fort Myers uniforms had already been through the library earlier. Horton had dispatched his men there and to Frank’s home but nothing had been found.
Including Diane Woods herself, Horton told him. She wasn’t home and her car was gone. Horton said he was putting a cruiser out front to watch for her.
Louis paused inside the library door. He knew this was a long shot. If there was anything worth confiscating here, Horton’s men already had it.
Louis spotted a girl at the front desk. She was checking out books for a teenage boy with a backpack. Louis walked up, standing a few feet away while she finished.
The girl’s small brown eyes drifted to Louis’s face. She was plump, maybe eighteen, her pretty round face set off with glossy brown hair. She was chewing gum, working it hard.
“Can I help you?” she asked. Her voice was small and childlike.
Louis gave her a smile. “I’m a private investigator working with the Fort Myers police.” He was hoping she wasn’t smart enough to ask for a badge or something. Horton had told him he wasn’t even going to get a police ID.
“I don’t know where Mr. Woods is,” she whispered, glancing around as if she were expecting Frank to appear out of the shelves.
“I know you don’t, but I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about him.”
“I saw the news tonight.” She made an odd face, as if she smelled something burning. “Did Mr. Woods kill that girl they found?”
“We don’t know anything yet, Miss —-” Louis tried a smile. “What’s your name?”
“Holly. Holly Russell. Mr. Woods was the one who hired me. Is he gonna be like arrested or something?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think it will hurt for you to talk to me.”
She shrugged and snapped her gum. “Okay.”
“So what can you tell me about him?”
“Well, he was always looking at my boobs.”
Louis stared at her. “Why would you tell me that?”
She shrugged again. “Isn’t he, you know, like a pervert or something?”
“Not exactly. Did you ever notice Mr. Woods doing anything strange while he worked here?”
“You mean besides looking at my boobs?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated, thinking. “He read the newspapers a lot. I mean, like every day, every paper that came in here, page by page.”
“Anything else? Phone calls that seemed odd. Visitors?”
She shook her head, like she was trying hard to remember.
“Did he seem...” Louis couldn’t find the word. If Frank was a guilty man, he would have lived like he was expecting someone to come around the corner any minute. “Did he seem watchful?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, like if someone came in the library, did he keep an eye on them?”
“Like if they were going to steal a book?”
Louis shook his head.
“Wait a minute,” the girl said. “I remember one time when he was nervous.”
“When?”
“It was this charity thing we had, you know, Friends of the Library,” she said. “Mr. Woods came with his daughter and he didn’t seem, you know, very comfortable like.”
“What about his daughter?” Louis asked. “How did she seem to you?”
The girl giggled. “Snotty. Like she had a stick up her butt. And like she didn’t want to be there, you know, like at Christmas when you gotta be with all your creepy relatives and you don’t want to be?”
Louis knew there was nothing else the girl could help him with. “Why don’t you show me his office?” he said.
“No prob.”
Holly got another girl to watch the front desk and she led Louis to the back. The sign on the closed door said F. WOODS, RESEARCH.
“Mr. Woods is the head of our research department here,” Holly said, opening the door.
Louis glanced around. Standard-issue file cabinets and bookcases, a plain metal desk. The top of it was bare except for some cords, strewn like small snakes and attached to nothing.
“They took his computer,” Holly said. “I told them the only thing on it was library business, databases and stuff, you know, but they didn’t listen.”
“What else did they take?”
/>
“His personnel file and some stuff from the drawers.”
Louis turned and gave Holly a smile. “You have been very helpful. May I look around in here?”
She smiled back then nodded. “Sure. But we close at nine.”
When she left, Louis pulled on a pair of latex gloves and sat down in the rolling chair. He started on the drawers, but there was nothing important, just routine papers, and in the bottom drawer, a messy assortment of personal items, the kind of stuff anyone might keep at work: Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, a bottle of Tylenol, a clean Tupperware container, a copy of Virgil’s Aeneid, a nail clipper.
He pushed the chair over to the file cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. The files in front appeared to be library business files but Louis dug to the back, hoping something had fallen between and been overlooked.
Nothing.
He stood and scanned the small office. If Frank had hidden anything here, he certainly would not have put it in a drawer or cabinet. He would have put it somewhere that felt safe to him.
He heard a tap on the door and turned. Holly poked her head in. “I’m sorry, but we’re, like, closing now.”
Louis looked around the office again. “Holly, does anything look odd to you in here?”
Her eyes widened. “Odd?”
“Like is there anything missing?”
“I told you, they took all -— ”
“I know that. But take a good look. Try hard.”
Holly bit her lip, looking around. Suddenly her eyes stopped and she pointed. “Well, there’s a book missing from that shelf.”
It was a shelf of reference books, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, the Columbia Encyclopedia. And there was one gap.
Something clicked. The book in the desk drawer. It was the only book in this office that wasn’t for work purposes. He went to the desk and pulled open the drawer, taking out the copy of Virgil's Aeneid.
He began to flip through the pages. Finally, he just turned it upside down and shook it. Four white index cards fluttered to the floor.
He heard Holly let out a gasp. Louis quickly gathered up the index cards before she could see them.
“Holly, would you mind waiting outside, please?” he asked.
She left but hovered outside the door, watching through the glass. Louis turned over the first card.
It was a small photograph of a young woman, cut out of yellowed newsprint and carefully pasted to the index card. Underneath it was printed: ANGELA. 1984.
The three others were the same. Other newsprint photographs, other girls’ names, all written in Frank Woods’s cramped handwriting. Louis sat down at Frank’s desk and arranged the cards in order of their dates.
The first was a young woman about sixteen, straight blond hair, wearing a dark sweater. Underneath, Frank had printed CINDY, 1964.
The next looked older, maybe eighteen. She was plump with long curly hair, wearing a white blouse and a pearl necklace. The writing underneath said PAULA, 1965.
Next was MARY, 1973, cute in an innocent sort of way with mousey brown hair, full lips, and large dreamy eyes.
The last was ANGELA, 1984. Wavy dark hair, slightly exotic looking, maybe Hispanic.
Louis sat back in the chair, staring at the women.
Jesus Christ. What was this?
“It’s almost nine.”
He looked up. Holly was standing at the door, but her eyes were on the index cards.
“What are those?” Holly asked, biting her lip.
“Nothing important.” He stood up. “Can I make some copies?”
“Sure, follow me.”
Louis followed her out to the main part of the library. Holly hovered nearby while Louis copied the cards. When he asked her for an envelope, she produced a manila envelope from under her desk and gave him a smile.
Louis slipped the cards in. “Thank you for your help, Miss Russell.”
“So is Mr. Woods coming back?” she asked, twirling a strand of her long dark hair.
Louis hesitated. “Do you want him to?”
The girl’s smile faded and the twirling stopped. “Well, I mean, I don’t really think he killed anybody but...”
Louis waited.
Holly Russell shrugged. “But he was kinda, I don’t know...weird like. I mean, you know?”
Louis nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
CHAPTER 17
Louis paused outside the library entrance, watching a Fort Myers police cruiser pass by.
Damn. Mel Landeta. He had almost forgotten that Landeta had called him earlier, asking him to come by the station after seven. He was two hours late.
He drove back to the station on the hunch that Landeta would still be there. Inside, he paused outside Landeta’s closed door. The lights were on. He knocked.
The door swung open quickly. The bright fluorescent lights made Landeta’s head gleam like a cue ball.
“You’re late,” Landeta said. “I have better things to do than sit here waiting for you.”
“I was busy at the library, talking to one of Frank Woods’s employees, a girl named Holly Russell.”
“Our guys already talked to her and went through the whole place,” Landeta said, turning away.
“Well, they missed these,” Louis said, holding out the envelope.
“What’s that?”
“Four more missing girls, I think. From the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Frank cut their pictures out of newspapers and taped them to index cards.”
Landeta took the envelope and slipped the cards out. He looked at each carefully. “Where’d you find these?” he asked.
“In a copy of Virgil’s Aeneid.”
Landeta glanced up at him then back at the cards. “So with the first clipping, the one of...”
“Emma Fielding,” Louis said. “From 1953.”
“That makes five girls in four decades,” Landeta said.
“Right. Shelly Umber makes six.”
Landeta began to carefully stack the index cards together. “Did you get anything new out of the girl you spoke to?”
“Holly,” Louis said. “Yeah, she said Frank Woods was weird.”
“Weird? You can do better than that”
“That’s all she said.”
Landeta turned away, going behind his desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out a small plastic evidence bag and put the index cards in. He sealed it with orange tape and then hesitated, looking up at Louis.
“I guess you should initial and date it,” he said.
Louis stepped forward, snatched a pen out of the holder on Landeta’s desk and filled out the label.
Landeta picked up the evidence bag as soon as Louis finished.
“I’d like to follow up on those girls,” Louis said.
“I’ll do it.”
“I’d really —-”
“I said I’ll do it. I make the assignments here. Not only am I point, I’m a cop. You’re not.”
Louis’s jaw tightened. “Horton asked me to work this with you.”
“Horton’s letting you play Rocky King Detective, just like on TV, that’s all.”
“Playing?”
“And if you want to keep playing, you’ll take the assignments I give you.”
“I don’t need your shit, Landeta,” Louis said, turning to the door. “Work the case by yourself.”
Louis started down the hall.
“Hey, Rocky!”
Louis kept walking, starting down the steps.
“Kincaid, wait.”
Louis turned. Landeta was at the top of the stairs.
“Okay,” Landeta said. “I need you to go down to Naples.”
“What for?”
“That’s where Emma Fielding’s brother lives. Go down there and see what you can get out of him. Here’s his address and a copy of the original police report.” Landeta held out paper.
Louis stood there, hands on his hips. Then he walked slowly up the stairs, grabbed the paper and went back down the stairs.
CHAPTER 18
The next morning, he was up early. He got a coffee from the 7-Eleven and steered the Mustang onto I-75 South. The police report on Emma Fielding was lying on the passenger seat but he had read it all last night.
According to the 1953 report, Emma had run away from home when she was sixteen. Her stepfather, Cliff Parker, had reported her missing to the police, saying Emma might have run off to live with her older brother, Neil. But when police questioned Neil, a construction worker living in a trailer park in East Naples, he said he hadn’t seen his sister in six months.
A year later, a drunken Cliff Parker drove his pickup into a canal along Alligator Alley, drowning himself and his wife. Emma was never heard from again and police shuffled her disappearance to the cold case files.
When Louis exited the freeway onto Golden Gate Parkway, he stopped at a light and rechecked the address he had for Neil Fielding.
It hadn’t been hard finding the brother. He was still living in the same trailer, now surviving on disability after a work accident.
The Lazy Lakes Mobile Home Park looked like it might have seen better days, but there were still signs that not everyone had given up —- a garden gnome here, a plastic picket fence there.
At lot number 35, Louis parked and looked up at the trailer. He wondered what he was going to get from this. How much could a brother tell about a sister who had gone missing more than thirty years ago? Especially since the two apparently weren’t exactly close to begin with.
Louis went up the Astroturf-covered ramp and knocked. The sound of the television, tuned to a game show, came through the door. Louis banged again on the metal door.
It jerked open. A man in a wheelchair squinted out at Louis. His eyes narrowed in fear —- at the sight of a young strange black man, Louis presumed.
“Mr. Fielding? I’m here on behalf of Fort Myers police.”
“What about?”
“Your sister, Emma.”
Neil Fielding’s pasty face screwed into a frown. “Em? Fuck, she’s been dead for thirty-four years, man.”
“Missing,” Louis said.
Neil shrugged. “Missing, dead. What’s the difference?”
“I need to talk to you, Mr. Fielding. Can I come in?”
“Sure, why not? I’m not doing anything.”
