“It’s why we wanted you here as soon as possible,” Harry said. “One other thing. I’d like to keep the mask and the mutilation under wraps.”
“I know. I know. I already listened to Rourke snap and growl about all of it,” Janlow said. “But I’m here, and understand the situation, and I know we can’t afford to screw this one up. So don’t rush me. Just tell me what you already found.”
At eight o’clock the body of Darlene Beckett was being carried down the hiking trail on its way to the morgue wagon, and crime scene techs were in the last stages of their investigation. The sheriff, under arrangements made by Chief Kyle Rothman and Jim Mabrey, the public information officer, had held a press conference at seven to insure getting plenty of face time on the eleven o’clock news. The first news helicopter appeared over the crime scene thirty minutes later, creating a downdraft that dislodged any remaining evidence and diminishing its value in any future prosecution.
Harry walked down the trail, a look of resigned disgust on his face. He let out a long breath and willed himself to get past the self-serving stupidity that seemed to emerge in every major investigation. You just work past it, he told himself. And you hope for the best. You’ve done it before; you’ll do it again now.
When he reached the bottom of the trail he found Jim Morgan, the deputy he had met when he arrived, still guarding the way in. He had been joined by three others.
“Still at it, I see,” Harry said. “Where are the reporters?”
“They’re being held at the main gate.” Morgan grinned. “We’ve had a dozen or so try to sneak in through the brush, but it’s so thick we could hear ’em coming a hundred yards off. Then one of them stepped on a rattler and we ended up calling in the rescue squad. Didn’t stop the others from trying, though.”
“How’s the snake?” Harry asked.
Morgan laughed. “Probably died.”
Harry made his way to the car and headed up to the education center to reconnect with Vicky. He found her in an office with the elderly bird watcher who had discovered the body and the park ranger who had been first on the scene. He introduced himself, thanked them for their help, and then took Vicky out into the hall.
“Anything worthwhile?” he asked.
“I interviewed everybody who was working here today and no one remembers seeing anything unusual,” Vicky began. “The woman who found the body isn’t much help either. All she can remember is seeing the leg sticking out from behind the cypress stump. She may remember something later when she calms down, though right now she’s so shaken she can hardly remember her own name. But the park ranger remembered something interesting.”
“How so?”
“Three or four days ago he noticed that somebody else had driven into the same area, and went all the way back to where the body was found. It’s rained a lot since then, so those tracks are probably gone. But he said it’s really unusual to have somebody drive in on one of the trails. There are signs letting people know they are off limits to vehicles, and getting caught on one gets you a citation. It’s also pretty easy to go too far and get stuck. He checked it out when he saw those earlier tracks, but whoever had driven in there had already left.”
“So it could have been the perp scouting the area,” Harry said.
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Harry paused to consider what Vicky had said. “We need a list of everyone who’s worked here in the past year,” he said at length. “Paid employees, volunteers, everybody. It could have been somebody who knew the patrol routine, knew when he could drive in with the least chance of being seen.”
“And then did a test run to be sure,” Vicky said.
Harry nodded, then paused again. “Damn, I wish we had that second set of tracks to compare to the ones there now.”
“It would be nice,” Vicky said.
“We better tell the CSI techs to look for old tracks, just in case there are traces still there,” Harry said. “Even a partial would help. Then we could be reasonably sure our perp was here earlier getting the lay of the land. And that would increase the chances that somebody saw him.”
“We can stop and talk to them on the way out of here,” Vicky said. “Speaking of which, where do we go from here? Darlene’s home?”
“You got it. We search her place, and we talk to her neighbors; start putting together a list of her friends, relatives, lovers, anybody we can find out about. Then I want to check out that empty book of matches we found on the trail.”
You mean the bar in Tampa?”
Harry nodded.
“The topless bar in Tampa?”
Harry gave a small shrug and fought to hold a deadpan expression. “Sorry, but a good detective has to go where the evidence leads him.”
“Yeah,” Vicky said, her voice turning mildly sarcastic. “And sometimes it’s even fun.” She gave him a long look. “This time it will be more fun for you than for me.”
CHAPTER THREE
Harry knew from newspaper accounts of her trial that Darlene Beckett lived in Tampa, but since no ID was found on her body he called in and asked for a computer check of the sex offender’s registry to get a current home address. A computer technician radioed back five minutes later, and as the information came through the radio’s speaker, Vicky noticed Harry’s hands visibly tighten on the steering wheel. She resisted her natural curiosity and just stored the information away.
The place that Darlene Beckett had called home turned out to be a slightly rundown garden apartment complex in northern Tampa, a mixed neighborhood both racially and economically with a smattering of college students thrown in from the nearby University of South Florida.
The apartment was a half hour drive from the Brooker Creek Preserve and throughout the trip Harry hadn’t spoken a word. Again, Vicky said nothing. She simply concentrated on the passing scenery.
“Darlene wasn’t exactly living high, was she?” Vicky observed as they pulled up in front of the address listed on the registry. It was an end unit in a two-story apartment building, one of four built in a square surrounding a central green. Each apartment had its own entrance, driveway, and garage, making them seem more like town houses. The original intention was a quaint village effect, but the buildings’ white painted bricks were now flaking badly, and the grass front yards of several units had patches of heat-hardened earth showing through. Darlene’s was simply overgrown and dotted with weeds.
They tried the front and rear doors, found them locked, and located the building super, a short Latino about thirty years old with a ragged goatee and cynical eyes. He answered their questions, telling them the little he knew about Darlene. When told she was dead he simply shrugged, and asked when her apartment could be shown to prospective tenants.
“Nobody goes in until the crime scene tape is taken down,” Harry said, nodding to the roll of yellow tape Vicky carried.
The super, who had given his name as Juan Vasquez, sneered at the answer. “Owner’s gonna want it rented. Gonna be all over my ass about it.”
“Anybody goes in before the tape comes down they get busted,” Vicky said. “You tell the owner that goes for him too. In fact, you tell him he sees the tape’s down he better call us anyway. Make sure it was us who took it down.”
The warning produced another sneer. “Doan know why anybody gives a shit. Broad was nothin’. Jus’ a fuckin’ short eyes.”
Harry noted the prison term for a child molester and looked at the man more closely. Detecting something at the bottom edge of his T-shirt sleeve, he reached out and raised it, exposing a crude prison tattoo of a dagger piercing a heart. “Where’d you do your bit?” Harry asked.
Juan stared up at him. He was short and stocky with a swarthy complexion and dark brown eyes. His mouth twisted into a sneer that held a lifetime of hard-earned cynicism. He looked away and shook his head.
“Up north. New York.” He shook his head again. “So now I’m a fuckin’ suspect.”
Vicky took a step forward.
“Hey, Juan, it’s like they say on TV. Everybody’s a suspect.” She gave him an innocent smile, and then let her eyes slowly harden. “So fish out your driver’s license.”
Vicky copied his name, address, and date of birth, then asked for his Social Security number and added that to her notebook. It would all be used later for a computer check at the National Crime Information Center. Finished, she gave him another smile. “Now open the damn door.”
Juan took out a massive ring of keys, found the one to Darlene’s front door, and opened it.
“You can go back to your apartment,” Harry told the super. “When we’re finished somebody will come and get you, so you can lock up.”
“How long?” Juan asked.
“It’ll be a couple of hours.”
Harry watched the man shuffle away, jotted his name in his own notebook with the words New York beside it, then got on his cell and called the CSI team.
“They still at the preserve?” Vicky asked when he had finished.
“They’re just loading up. Be here in half an hour.”
Darlene Beckett’s apartment was immaculate. Not a thing out of place; not a dirty dish in the sink. Even the bath off the master bedroom was scrubbed clean. Except for the full closets it looked like a model apartment; as if no one really lived there. Harry and Vicky donned latex gloves and cloth shoe coverings like those worn in hospital operating rooms and moved slowly through the apartment. They found the ankle monitor on the first pass through her bedroom.
“Somebody had to help her get that off,” Vicky said. “And that somebody is going to have some heavy questions to answer.”
They continued with the walk through.
“You think Darlene was this much of a neat freak?” Harry asked when they had been in every room.
“If she was, she was like no single woman I ever met.” Vicky paused and thought about what she’d said. “Actually, she was like no single woman I ever met.” She turned to Harry. “You think the perp came in here and cleaned up? Like maybe he’d been here before and wanted to make sure there was nothing for us to find?”
“There’s always something,” Harry said.
“Yeah, but maybe the perp doesn’t know that.”
They spent an hour looking through Darlene Beckett’s personal effects— clothing, bills, letters, books and magazines, makeup, food supplies, and prescription drugs—drawing together a picture of what the woman had been like, her personal needs and tastes.
Vicky concentrated on Darlene’s bedroom. Like the rest of the apartment the closets and dressers were neat and carefully arranged. Even so, they were close to overflowing. The woman had owned twice the amount of clothes and shoes as Vicky herself.
In the top drawer of a small bedside table Vicky found a collection of sex toys and a plain white envelope that held what appeared to be five Viagra tablets. She pointed them out to Harry.
“No prescription bottle,” she noted. “Probably bought on the street, either by her boyfriend or maybe she bought them herself. There’s a regular black market on stolen E.D. pills.”
“A boyfriend’s not gonna leave them here, unless he’s a pretty regular boyfriend,” Harry said. “According to Juan there were plenty of guys, but nobody special.”
“So you think she bought them?”
“Just a guess. Maybe she wanted to make sure her lovers could handle seconds or thirds.”
Vicky gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look. “Guys can do that?”
“You’re a regular comic.”
“I try,” Vicky said, turning away to hide an impish grin that had broken through.
“There’s something even more interesting in the kitchen,” Harry said, causing her to turn back.
“What’s that?”
“Come and see.”
Vicky followed him into the small, galley-style kitchen.
Harry opened a drawer next to a battered gas range. Inside Vicky saw a collection of red paper matchbooks, each identical to the one they had found on the Brooker Creek hiking trail, each bearing the name The Peek-a-Boo Lounge.
“Looks like Darlene had a favorite bar,” Vicky said.
“Looks like,” Harry agreed.
Vicky studied the floor, then raised her eyes to Harry. “I told you I never met a single woman like her. You can put a big star next to that line. I guess we better check that place out tonight. And bring some pictures of her with us.”
The CSI team arrived just as Harry and Vicky finished their search and were preparing to hit the streets to interview neighbors. Martin LeBaron, the deputy sergeant who headed up the unit, collected Harry and Vicky’s shoe coverings and bagged them so they could be processed for any trace evidence they had picked up.
“So tell me what you found,” LeBaron said.
Reading from his case notebook, Harry gave him a detailed list.
“Matches from a tits-and-ass bar, huh,” LeBaron said. “I’ve driven by that joint. It’s the pits. That broad, she was a piece of work, wasn’t she?”
Harry ignored the comment and reminded LeBaron that he needed a complete workup on the apartment as quickly as possible.
“I know, I know,” LeBaron said. “I already got that be thorough, be fast crap from your captain, as well as some clown in the chief’s office.” LeBaron was tall and slender and somewhere in his forties, with unruly black hair, a large nose, and eyes that seemed perpetually tired. “You guys seem to think we’ll do a half-assed job if you don’t stay on top of us. I promise you that won’t happen.”
“It’s a big case,” Harry said.
LeBaron grinned at him. “Harry, all your cases are big cases, and every time you have one you tell me the same thing.” He looked at Vicky. “You his new partner?”
“I am,” Vicky said.
“God help you.” LeBaron laughed and waved a hand at them. “So go canvass the neighborhood and let me do my work.”
Like Juan, the building super, most of the neighbors seemed unmoved by news of Darlene’s death. One woman even expressed relief that she was “finally out of the neighborhood,” and several others said they had kept a close eye on who visited Darlene’s apartment. According to the neighbors there had been a steady stream of men, but no one visitor who seemed to come more than the others. There was also an older man and woman, who neighbors had assumed were Darlene’s parents. Several emphasized that none of the visitors had been children, with one woman flatly stating that she would have called the police “if anyone under eighteen had gotten within ten feet of her front door.”
At an apartment directly across the small green from Darlene’s unit, a man in his mid-to late-seventies confessed to keeping an even closer eye on his notorious neighbor.
“I watched her good,” he explained with a clear element of pride in his voice. His name was Joshua Brown and he was short and slender, almost frail, with a white beard masking his chocolate-colored face. He was the kind of witness that Harry both loved and hated—someone with enough time on his hands to watch what was going on very closely, but who also might not live long enough to testify at a trial.
Brown grinned and nodded his head as he spoke. “Whenever she had a visitor I took my dog Junie for a walk,” he explained. “So’s I’d get a better idea of what was goin’ on.”
Harry looked past the man and saw an ancient tan mongrel sleeping on the floor next to a battered leather recliner. The dog had not stirred when they rang the doorbell, or even opened its eyes while he and Vicky interviewed the man. Harry smiled to himself, thinking how the old man must have dragged the dog out the front door every time he felt the need to spy on Darlene Beckett.
“You think you could identify the men who visited Ms. Beckett?” Harry asked.
“Kin do better than that,” Brown said. “I kin give you a list of the license plates on their cars, and the dates I saw them parked in her driveway.”
Harry was seldom shocked by what came out of a neighborhood canvass, but this time he was. “Why did you keep
a list like that?” he asked.
“Figured somebody might need it if they turned out to be a bunch of perverts like she was,” Brown said.
When the door closed, he turned to Vicky and shrugged. “That old man just saved us a day or two of work.”
Vicky nodded absently, and then shook her head.
“What?” Harry asked.
“I just realized what a fishbowl that woman was living in.” She watched Harry’s eyes harden.
“Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for her,” he said. “If she was living in a fishbowl, it was one she made for herself.”
Harry went back to their car with the list of tag numbers and dates that Joshua Brown had given him and called in the plates. Since Darlene’s garage was empty he also asked for information on any vehicle registered to a Darlene Beckett at the north Tampa address. A short time later he had a description and plate number for a green 2004 Ford Taurus registered to Darlene Beckett, along with the names, addresses, and dates of birth of the owners of the vehicles on Joshua Brown’s carefully compiled list. He then placed a second call and ordered a check of wants and warrants on each of those persons, as well as a rundown on any criminal histories. He asked for the same for the building super. With a little luck—meaning the state computers wouldn’t go down—they should have all the information he had requested by the end of their shift.
“Where to now?” Vicky asked. “The strip club?”
“First we check the street for Darlene’s Taurus, then the strip club,” Harry said.
The Dead Detective Page 5
