Last Witness

by Unknown

  ‘The shock has worn off,’ she said. ‘Chavez was not the brightest bulb, that’s for sure, but who would ever imagine…’ her voice trailed off, the private happy moment she had just experienced tackled by disturbing images. As the lead investigator on the Cupid Task Force, Dominick was quite familiar with the cocky antics of Victor Chavez. Most of them, anyway. C.J. quickly pushed those thoughts aside. Instead, she softly said, ‘I miss you. Any chance you can make it out of there tonight?’

  ‘I gotta see what Black has me doing. I miss you, too. Aren’t you hooking up with the caterer this afternoon?’

  In the draining excitement of the past few days, she had completely forgot about the meeting with the catering manager at Turnberry Isles. Forgot, or, as Freud might say if given the chance, purposely failed to remember. Their wedding was a little more than six months off, but as the manager had excitedly told her in a recent conversation, ‘It’s a crunch time!’ C.J. wished it were here already. That it was just the two of them going through life, not one hundred and fifty people going through a wedding. She hated the attention, the fanfare and hoopla that enveloped a prospective bride and groom. In particular, the bright spotlight that shines down and focuses on the bride. She had wanted simple and brilliant, like her engagement ring, but that was quickly drifting off course with the help of well-intentioned family and friends to, in her view, extravagant and overstated. It would be impossible to elope now, just hop on a plane to Vegas and come back enormously happy, with a marriage certificate and a tan, even though that’s what she quietly yearned for.

  ‘I completely forgot. I’ll call him and reschedule so that we can enjoy that meeting together. And you can personally pick just the right shade of red napkin that you want,’ she mused.

  He laughed softly into the phone. ‘Lucky me. Well, misery does love company, so save that dance for me. I’ll call you later. Love you.’

  ‘Love you, too,’ she said and hung up the cellphone. She looked around the elevator bay, watching as other prosecutors hustled with carts and briefcases full of files down the maze of hallways that ran out from the elevators. Joined by them were the cops and defense attorneys, victims and witnesses on their cases. Their days carried on as normal – hurried and tense – a million things to do. She blew out a slow breath, an unseen weight lifted softly from her shoulders, and she slipped the security card through the door lock.

  It certainly was a relief to learn that Victor had kept quite a few secrets from quite a few people. Maybe that was because she still kept a few of her own.

  13

  One look at Victor Chavez’s personnel file at MBPD, and Dominick’s list of individuals to question had instantly doubled. It seemed that Victor got along with no one, and no one got along with Victor. Neither inside the department nor out. He was described by his sergeant as ‘surly and insolent,’ and those were his good points. He had several complaints for excessive use of force, though they’d been dropped because most of the complainants were either homeless and transient and made useless witnesses, or they were tourists, who couldn’t be found when IA finally got around to cracking open the complaint file six weeks later.

  In the weeks since Chavez’s death, Dominick had leafed umpteen times through a file that was suspiciously thick for a four-year rookie. Obviously, Victor had stayed right where he was because he had pissed off all the wrong people, and if he’d lived, he wasn’t gonna get off midnights until the next ice age hit Miami. Or a new administration came and forgave him all his sins.

  It was clear from the countless interviews Dominick had now conducted, that by all accounts, Victor Chavez held onto his job only because he had once pulled over a serial killer by chance on the McArthur. What really amazed Dominick, though, was that, according to his brother, Ernesto, Chavez was going to be offered another one in the very near future with Hialeah. Nepotism aside, was the PD that hard up for good help nowadays, or was it something more sinister? Perhaps the fear of the very large lawsuit that would surely be filed if the City actually fired a civil servant?

  Ernesto Chavez had kept both his apartment and his story squeaky clean when Dominick knocked on his door the day before Victor’s funeral. Of course Dominick could look around. It was bullshit that a dead cop – a fucking hero, no less – had to have his house searched like some fucking criminal. FDLE and the fucking scum that made Victor’s life miserable at Miami Beach had no respect for a dead fucking hero! The tree had apparently sired two bad apples. It went on and on like that for the hour that Dominick and Marlon Dorsett, with three MDPD uniforms in tow, searched the cramped, two-bedroom apartment off the Palmetto Expressway. They didn’t find any drugs.

  For days after the funeral, Ernesto continued to deny any knowledge of his brother’s cocaine use. But he changed his tune when his own tox screen, a surprise visited on him by his lieutenant at Dominick’s suggestion, came back dirty. He’d signed up for the department’s Drug and Alcohol Abuse Early Intervention Program to save himself a visit to the unemployment line, and he’d finally admitted that Victor and he had liked to party on the Beach, and that Victor had gotten in a bit of a pinch with his supplier. The doper went by the name of Lil’ Baby J, a.k.a. LBJ. His given name was Jerome Sylvester Lightner and Victor had gone to high school with him.

  In typical Victor fashion, rather than doing the smart thing and borrowing from one of the twenty or so girls he was screwing, he went to his friend Ricardo Brueto, a captain in the Latin Kings. Ricky gave him the five thousand that he needed to get LBJ and friends off his back. For the time being, anyway. In the gang world, though, payback can be a real bitch and interest is compounded on the hour.

  After Victor had been placed in the ground – a 21 – gun salute and all – the picture had become quite clear. Dominick suspected that once they found LBJ – who had gone into hiding the day after Victor died – they would find that Victor’s tab had simply come due, or perhaps, to save his ass, Victor had even flapped his gums about his buddy in the Kings, and the news had traveled across town. The possibilities were endless and not at all pleasant, because when you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas. If you ever even get up.

  Ricardo had decided early on that it was in his best interest not to speak with detectives, and given his lengthy arrest record, Dominick could understand his apprehension. As there was nothing to bring him in on, the game became a wait and see. Wait until LBJ finally surfaced. Wait and see what he says when he’s facing death row for killing a cop.

  Victor’s death was looking more and more like a gangland execution, rather than the random act of a homeless person, or the calculated brutality of a scorned lover, and that took some of the intense heat and pressure off of the detectives working the investigation. While it was still a number one priority to find the people responsible, it now became a drug death and slipped several notches on the importance list. Unlike other boys in blue killed in the line of duty, Victor had earned his one-way trip to see St Peter.

  The drug information had leaked to the press, and so even they, with their ruthless appetite for blood and scandal, had gotten bored. The daily reportings on the Cop Killer Investigation! had moved off of the front page and into the local section, and were finally shelved together after a week or so. The spinning MBPD badge and knife logo had also disappeared from the Channel Seven News Team lead-in headline stories.

  Poor Victor. Allowed to walk this world for only a short time, he’d accomplished just the bare minimum with his life while he was here, and hadn’t gotten another chance to become something more. The funeral had been packed with uniforms, but Dominick knew their attendance at these functions was out of obligation more than affection or admiration. Most of the five hundred cops in attendance did not even know Victor, and those who did were kind enough not to comment on their real thoughts as to why he left this world the way that he did. The bagpiper played to a packed church, yet to Dominick, who had attended with the FDLE command staff, the cathedral felt empty. The tears of Victor’s
sobbing mother were, sadly enough, the only cries heard that day.

  Dominick dropped the latest investigative report he had just typed out into the squad secretary’s Tending Investigations’ box, and headed for the deserted office’s nearest exit. He tried to shake free the cobwebs of fatigue that clouded his brain, running his hands through his hair, hoping to stay awake long enough to steer the car home.

  He knew the late nights and seven-day workweeks would end soon enough. With an entire police force out looking for Baby Jerome, it looked like simply a matter of time before Victor’s murder would be officially solved and justice could finally be served.

  14

  Hidden behind a small grove of palm trees, the waiting man watched the cop through the driver’s side of the marked cruiser. Miami-Dade Police Officer Bruce Angelillo looked tired and bored. Sporadic, heavy rain had pelted the car throughout the night, and water on the roof of the cruiser still trickled down the windows. Off in the not-so-distant Everglades, jagged purple streaks lit the sky.

  The man who watched breathed in the smell of the rain and the wet cement that surrounded Miami’s newest ultra-mall. To the west of the mall, where the lightning met the earth, was the seemingly ever-expanding Florida’s Turnpike. But past that, pines soared high and deer continued to run. For now. Until they cut the saw grass and chased away the alligators and started building. And build they would: New homes, new condos, new townhouses – all dubbed ‘estates’ in massive marketing campaigns. They’d fit snugly together in rows surrounded by walls and a gatehouse. It was Florida’s answer to modern-day crime.

  The mall developer had put in a small grove of thick and lush tropical plantings to soften the appearance of the four thousand parking spaces’ worth of black asphalt. Two hundred yards away, bright lights illuminated the mall’s anchor stores – Burdines, Bloomingdale’s, Dillard’s – but in this far corner of the parking lot it was dark, with only the moon, barely visible under the thick cloud cover, creating long shadows through the palm trees. From his spot behind a tall and thick California date palm, nestled between two overgrown elephant ear plants, the man watched as the officer typed on his laptop in the dim glow of the cruiser’s interior light, pausing to catch a yawn with the palm of his hand.

  It was almost time. He could practically set his watch by it.

  The wind picked up slightly and a dead palm leaf, brown and decayed, crawled across the deserted parking lot. The dry, scraping sound mixed with the rustle and sway of the palm trees, the wind dancing between their fronds. With a fury, the rain would shortly return.

  It had been three weeks since the man had touched death, felt it pulse, warm and sticky through his fingers. His whole body awash in the lifeblood of another. He remembered Victor’s meaty throat in his hands, the color red as it drained before him, drenching the cheap blue vinyl seats. And Victor’s brown eyes, wide and round, pleading for understanding, his final words just a raspy, garbled choke. And now there was Officer Bruce. Another who wore his badge with a corrupt smile. Another who brought shame upon the jacket just by virtue of wearing it. His existence would certainly be missed, but hardly mourned. Not when the truth about Officer Bruce was discovered.

  Like clockwork, Officer Angelillo opened the cruiser’s door and stepped out into the night, stretching. He pulled out his pack of Marlboro Lights and lit one up. Smoking in the squad car was not an option. Not with a cancer-surviving ex-smoker for a sergeant. If the job don’t kill ya, them death sticks sure as hell will, he preached at nightly roll call.

  The man stepped out of the lush bushes and through the haze of smoke. It was funny, the look of surprise that crossed Officer Bruce’s full face when his indolent brain finally translated the sound of footsteps behind him as a potential problem. Funny, because as a police officer, Bruce should have been more prepared for surprises. But, like Officer Chavez, he could still use some on-the-job training.

  ‘Got a light, Officer?’ the man from the shadows asked. The question seemed rather pointless, for Officer Bruce had already dropped his cigarette when he saw the man. His terrified eyes desperately searched the deserted parking lot. The sound that actually made it out of his throat sounded more like the squeal of a pig than the scream of a man, and his fingers fumbled uselessly to unsnap the Glock 40 at his side.

  But it was too late. The jagged blade took him down, and, with almost inhuman strength, the man began to drag the officer’s useless body back to the cruiser. And Bruce Angelillo’s final thought, strange as it was, was that the sarge was right: Smoking would definitely kill him.

  The cigarette rolled on the pavement, away from the car, shedding orange cinders like tears, before it drowned in a waiting puddle and finally flickered out.

  15

  At 5:00 a.m., the Nextel on the dresser began to chirp.

  ‘Dom, pick up. It’s Fulton.’ Jimmy Fulton was the Special Agent Supervisor of the Violent Crime Squad. Dominick’s squad. His gruff voice, complete with the heavy twang of a southern accent, crackled to life in the dark bedroom. Police sirens sounded in the background through the Nextel speaker.

  Dominick was instantly awake. C.J. sat up next to him in bed. Rain pounded outside, beating violently against the windows.

  He clicked the Nextel. ‘Fulton. Dom here.’ He was already out of the bed, pulling on pants with one hand, holding the phone in the other. Just by the sound of Fulton’s voice, he knew he would be going out. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘We got another one, Dom,’ Fulton said, his voice shaking, tinged with angry disgust. And with unmistakable fright. Fulton had been an agent with FDLE for twenty-eight years, nineteen of which he had spent as an SAS of various squads, including Narcotics, Public Corruption and Organized Crime, and for the past two years, Violent Crime. He was a seasoned veteran, having seen it all and done it all. And in the fifteen years that Dominick had known him he had never heard that sound, that fear in his voice. ‘Another dead fuckin’ cop,’ he said. ‘Right here, Dom, right under our goddamn noses!’

  Dominick stopped putting on his shirt. A raw, sick feeling began to churn the acid in the pit of his stomach. ‘What?’

  ‘Looks like maybe the same bastard that nailed that Beach boy. This one’s Miami-Dade. He’s been tore up bad, Dom. Real bad. I ain’t seen nothing like this shit in all my years. Not to a fuckin’ cop!’ His voice caught and Dominick heard him pull away from the Nextel. ‘Jesus…’

  Another one. Another man down. Polish up the bugle and break out the bagpipes.

  ‘Christ,’ Dominick said, sitting for a moment on the bed. ‘Who, Jimmy? Who is he?’

  ‘Dom, this guy’s fucking face looks like hamburger meat. Tentative is a Bruce Angelillo. You know him?’

  Dominick shook his head, thinking. Trying to place a face. He rose again and crossed the room. ‘No, don’t think I know the name.’ He parted the bedroom’s wood blinds and looked out the window. Sheets of rain whipped against the glass and the Intercoastal churned below. Across the water, the lights of Pompano Beach blurred rather than twinkled. Even though the clock said the sun would soon be up, Dominick doubted he’d see it. A mass of clouds had sat on South Florida for three days, drowning Miami in floods and causing accident after accident on slick highways. ‘I’m on my way, then. Where to, Jimmy?’

  ‘Just get to the office,’ said Fulton. ‘Be sure to take the 12th Street exit on the Turnpike.’

  ‘Aren’t you on scene?’ Sirens still blasted in the background. Louder now, more of them.

  ‘Yep, I am. I’m standing in the parking lot of the Dolphin Mall, Dom. Across the street from MROC, and the goddamn Florida Highway Patrol. Like I said, this one happened in our own friggin’ backyard.’ He let out a frustrated sigh and then finished quietly, ‘Jesus, if I cut down a few pine trees I could tell you if you left the friggin’ light on in your office, Dom.’

  Dominick’s stomach dropped. MROC was the acronym for FDLE’s Miami Regional Operations Center. Headquarters. Just a few years ago, the state had bough
t up a chunk of land as far west in Miami as they could and last year had built a large, technologically advanced complex for all state law enforcement. That included new local headquarters not just for FDLE, but also for the Florida Highway Patrol and the Office of Statewide Prosecution. A communications center for all state radios from Palm Beach to the Keys was also erected, complete with powerful fifty-foot radio towers and a satellite system. A veritable fortress of police officers and troopers and prosecutors, that operated twenty-four hours of every day.

  He shook his head, trying to shake the dizzying feeling. MROC was surrounded by pine tree preserves, but just to the north on the other side of the pines began the enormous parking lot of the Dolphin Mall. Now it was a crime scene for one of their own.

  C.J. still sat on the bed – her head down, her face pale, rubbing her temples with her fingers. Words were not necessary; she had heard the whole tale from Fulton’s mouth, courtesy of the Nextel. Like him, she was trying again to comprehend the incomprehensible.

  ‘Alright. I’m there.’ He clicked out and a deafening silence hung in the room, broken only by the patter of rain on the windows.

  Tonight it was C.J.’s turn. ‘Do you want me to come out with you?’ she asked after a moment.

  ‘No. The on-call will get it. You saw enough last month.’

  ‘I may get called anyway since I handled Chavez.’

  ‘Let’s see if that happens. Sit tight. I’ll call you when I know more.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said quietly.

  He headed for the bedroom door, then stopped and turned back. A wave of emotion came over him all too suddenly and he sat on the edge of the bed, pulling her close to him, feeling her warm breath against his cheek. He kissed the curve of her soft, familiar neck, lightly scented with Gardenia Lily body lotion, and buried his head for a moment in her hair.