The Bal Harbour chief, a heavyset man in his sixties, was both cagey and curious. “Don’t you fellas have enough crime to keep you busy on your own side’a the bay?”
“One of my detectives was up here investigating a city homicide, we can’t raise her on the air and when we heard what you had working we thought she might be involved,” Rick said.
The chief paused for a long moment, then spoke with deliberate slowness. “It is customary to notify the local department when you’re conducting an investigation in our jurisdiction.” He paused again. “I don’t remember any such notification from your detective.” He sighed audibly.
“Detective Dustin was only canvassing,” Rick said. “She was trying to identify a homicide victim by her clothing.”
The chief’s eyes flickered with interest. “You mean the woman who lost her head? That your case?”
“Unfortunately,” Rick said.
The chief looked amused. “Why do you think somebody wanted it?”
“Good question. We’ll know better once we have her identified.”
“You have reason to think she might be one of our local residents?” he said. “We’ve got no missing persons at the moment.”
“Nah, it was just a long shot, that she might have bought her clothes here. You haven’t seen our detective? Tall, good-looking blonde, about thirty.”
Without taking his eyes off the newcomers, the chief called over his shoulder to some of his men in uniform. “Anybody seen a lady detective from the city?”
There was no answer, just expressionless stares from suspicious small-town cops, who obviously considered the crime scene their domain. “If she was here,” the chief drawled, “it looks like she beat feet when the fireworks started. Maybe she didn’t want to get involved.” He guffawed. A few of his men joined in.
“Then I guess she wasn’t here.” Jim’s raspy voice was sandpaper on steel. He hated these petty territorial disputes that arose every time they stepped over the damn city limits. The smoke made his runny eyes smart even more. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to breathe.
“What happened here?” Rick asked, looking around and ignoring the chief’s last remark.
“A robber tried to stick up the armored car courier as he came out a back elevator with the day’s receipts from Farnsworth and Company. Almost pulled it off, but a private security guard who works for the center stumbled onto it. They exchanged some gunfire, a few cars got hit, one of them in the gas tank, and a fire started. A couple of cars burned.”
Rick’s looked intense, his brow furrowed. “Was the courier in plainclothes or uniform?”
“Plainclothes. They just started, how’d you happen to know about that?”
“A countywide bulletin. It was read at roll call recently. Security at some of the more exclusive stores and shops decided it would be safer and more discreet if the armored car personnel who made pickups at their establishments were not in uniform.”
“Guess somebody knew that,” the chief said thoughtfully.
“The subject get away?”
“Yep, but not before dropping the moneybag. The cash is being tallied up now, but it looks like full recovery, about $60,000. Didn’t get a dime.”
“Any description?”
“White, young, windbreaker, blue jeans, baseball cap and shades, dangerous as hell, runs like a rabbit.”
“Car description?”
“Nope.”
“Prints?”
“The moneybag was pawed over by the armored car driver who picked it up and half a dozen security people and store personnel.”
“Too bad,” Rick said. “What kind of gun, what caliber did he use?”
“Revolver. The courier thought it looked like a snub nose, a .38, like a detective special.” His eyes narrowed as he looked first at Rick, then at Jim. “The lab guys are digging slugs out of cars and the elevator panels now. We don’t have much a this here,” the chief said, his face placid. “We run a quiet community, some people with more money than God spend their winters here. We keep an eye on their homes and their yachts for them. They like to keep a low profile, and so do we. This kind of thing is more up your alley, over that side’a the bay. Any ideas?”
“I won’t be surprised if it is one of our bad guys, somebody known to us,” Rick acknowledged, ignoring the inference. “I’ll talk to robbery, see if it sounds like anybody they know, and ask the lab to match ballistics on our open cases, see if we pull a match.”
The chief nodded, his face serious. “This was bad, but it could have been a lot worse. We could’ve had some people dead, including innocent bystanders.” He paused for a moment. “Wonder whatever happened to your lady detective?”
“That is something I’d like to know,” Rick said, “and something I intend to find out. Let us know if we can help, Chief.” The two men shook hands.
“That prick,” Jim muttered as they walked back to their car. “That lardass and his little fiefdom. He couldn’t find his way home if they took down the street signs. Did you hear that crack about Dusty? And a detective special?”
“Hell, what can we expect with more than thirty Miami cops indicted in the past couple of years, one of them still on the FBI most wanted list? The guy doesn’t know us, doesn’t know if he can trust us. And where the hell is Detective Dustin?”
Jim snorted and blew his nose again for a long time. “Good question,” he sniffed. “Here’s a pay phone, why not try her at home?”
Rick shrugged, fed the phone and dialed Dusty’s number. He did not have to look it up. It rang twice, then Dusty’s voice on the line: “I’m not available at the moment,” she said coolly, her tone measured, “but I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t leave a message when you hear the tone.” Rick waited, kept listening, then hung up. He checked his watch.
“She’s there,” he said, relieved.
“Why didn’t you talk to her?”
“The answering machine was on,” Rick said.
“So how do you know she’s there?”
“You know people who use the machine to screen calls but can’t resist sneaking it off the hook to hear who’s on the other end? She’s always been one of them. She picked up. I heard the extra click and a clock chime in the background. It was the correct time.” He was suddenly angry. “Son of a bitch. What is going on with that woman? Why would she go the hell home when she’s working? Why won’t she answer her radio? She had us killing ourselves, running on a three and winding up embarrassed because we thought she might have walked into a situation and got herself hurt.”
“Maybe she’s getting screwed on city time,” Jim said thoughtfully. “Who is she…”
“I wouldn’t know,” Rick said curtly. “To hear her tell it, nobody.”
“Not with that body,” Jim said. “Somebody’s tapping that. We know it ain’t you, right?” He cut questioning eyes at Rick.
“Damn right,” Rick said.
“Then why do you sound just a little bit jealous?”
Rick shrugged impatiently and shook his head. “Some habits are hard to break.”
“You gonna write her up for this?”
“Damn straight. I’m her supervisor. I couldn’t ignore it if I wanted to. But first I want to hear her story, find out what the hell’s going on.”
They got into the car and Jim switched on the ignition.
“This thing that happened up here tonight. It’s weird, Jim. Something’s not right. I’ve got a gut feeling about it.”
When they walked into the station, Dusty was at her desk, prim and proper, manning the telephone. She avoided Rick’s glare.
The first time she cradled the receiver, he jerked a thumb toward a glass cage. “We need to talk, Detective.”
Jim watched from his desk as she reluctantly followed him, like a misbehaving schoolgirl being marched to the principal’s office. He thought a moment, then removed the coconut from Dusty’s desk drawer and
dropped it in the wastepaper basket. He replaced the cardboard box of Kleenex after stuffing a fistful into his jacket pocket. She’ll need it, he told himself. He hated it when women cried. He sighed. The last thing Dusty needed now was a practical joke, much as he would have enjoyed it. He liked to banter with her and tease. She reminded him of Molly, feisty and full of personality. He yearned to be the one to comfort her, but Dusty would never turn to him, he thought. He was no young stud or ladies’ man like Rick.
He shuffled through the phone messages and sighed again as he saw two from Terrance McGee. Fortunately they were for Dusty. One bore the scribbled notation: “He says everything okay now.”
Jim raised an eyebrow. Thank God for small favors, he thought. McGee doesn’t think he’s being poisoned anymore. Dusty’s chats with the man might actually be doing him some good. He hoped Rick would not be rough on her. God knows, he thought, we all have times when we are not where we are officially supposed to be. The job constantly intrudes on your life, so if your life occasionally intrudes on the job and no harm done, what’s the big deal? It was just her bad luck to be caught. Who could foresee that a gun battle would go down in the damn shopping center she was supposed to be canvassing?
He glanced curiously into the glass-enclosed office. Rick had closed the door and assumed the position of authority, behind the desk. Dusty sat in a straight-backed chair in front of him. Jim saw with satisfaction that she was not crying—yet. Hang in there, kid, he thought, silently cheering her on until overcome by a paroxysm of sneezes.
“What the hell is going on with you?” Rick said heatedly. “You’ve always been dependable, reliable. What is this shit?”
“Okay, so I wasn’t at the shopping center. I”—she hesitated, her voice weary—“I’m having a bad day, and I needed a break. I was wrong. Write me up, give me a suspension, do what you have to do.” Her eyes looked past him, focusing on the darkness outside the single window.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
She seemed reluctant to answer. He waited.
“I headed toward Bal Harbour, but I felt down, depressed, turned off the radio and just drove. Stayed on the expressway, picked up the turnpike and drove. At Palm Beach, I turned around and came back.”
“You took the city car outside the county without permission?”
She nodded, with a sigh.
“Oh swell. What then?”
“I stopped at my place, realized I had to get my shit together and so I came back in. On the way I heard about what happened up at the shopping center. If I’d been where I was supposed to be, I might have stopped it. I’m sorry.”
“You seemed fine at the diner.” Rick studied her more closely. Pissed off at Laurel after his close shave that morning, he had found himself comparing her to Dusty. As exciting as all the quirkiness and role playing could be, there was something to be said for constancy. At least he always knew where Dusty was coming from. His concern on the way to the shopping center had made him realize that he did take her for granted. Though he saw her every day, he had not really looked at her lately. And she was worth looking at. She was wearing her hair different, a little longer and more wavy. Her knees were suntanned. She always did have the best knees in the station. She stared back, her eyes soft and sad.
“It’s personal, Sergeant.”
“Hey, cut out the ‘sergeant’ shit. It’s me you’re talking to. Listen,” he gestured casually. “If you were off playing a little kissy-face somewhere, hell, we’ve all been there.”
Her mouth tightened and a flush crept across her cheekbones. She leaned back in the chair, threw one leg over the other and fumed.
“I don’t mind telling you, I envy the new guy.” He was watching her carefully.
“There is no guy,” she said, her foot swinging impatiently, “since you.”
To his surprise, he felt relief. He was jealous. Dusty and he had shared a life he and Laurel never could. Just as he could never picture Dusty as the perfect housewife, bustling around a kitchen, wearing an apron instead of a gun.
“I love it when you get mad. You turn me on,” he teased.
“I don’t believe you,” she chided, her tone exasperated. She glared at the ceiling. “Look. It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this…”
He shifted his chair slightly for a better view of her long legs, his gaze settling on the curved instep and the smooth line of her calf. “There’s something else I need to know. The night I asked you to drop the composites of those Colombian body snatchers on the ERs and the clinics … did you?”
“I papered every clinic in town with them, Sergeant.”
“I thought you’d go to the county ER first. Makes sense. Yet when Jim and I swung by there that night to talk to the wounded store clerk, you hadn’t been there.”
“I figured those guys would go to a Spanish-speaking clinic first. When I heard you and Jim take a signal at the ER, I knew you’d think of it, so I scratched it off my itinerary.”
Satisfied, Rick rubbed his palm across his face. “You want to go talk to Doc Feigleman?”
“The department shrink?” She put both feet on the floor and drew her spine up straight in her chair. Her voice and her expression shared indignance. “Look, I’m having a couple of bad days—everybody’s entitled.”
“I don’t want you to ever think you can take advantage of our past relationship,” he said quietly.
“I’m not taking advantage of it!” she said angrily, her perfect teeth gnawing her rosy lower lip.
“Well then,” he said, “with that settled, you want to get together later … for a drink?”
Silently she searched his face and found the answer. “You’re serious.”
“Never more so.” His eyes were fixed on hers.
She let out her breath, stood up abruptly and strode to the door. Her hand on the knob, she turned, “You would be better than the shrink. Probably do me more good.” Her voice was shaky.
“Guaranteed for what ails you.”
“You are so bad,” she said, “and I love it.”
“Your place okay? Let’s keep it low-profile,” he said quietly. “I don’t even want Jim to know.”
She nodded and glanced out at the detective bureau.
He cleared his throat and looked around sternly. “Well, Detective, I guess that’s enough of a tongue-lashing, so to speak. For now.” He grinned. “We’ll finish this later. I’ll bring the wine.”
“Right, Sergeant,” she said briskly.
She marched out of the office, chin up. Jim admired the fact that there were no tears, though her hands were trembling. Hell of a girl, he thought.
After an hour, Rick told her to take comp time and go home early. Jim caught the look they exchanged. She was glowing. Oh, shit, he thought.
“Cover me, Jimbo,” Rick said thirty minutes later. “Raise me if you really need me. Otherwise I probably won’t be back tonight. There’s something I have to take care of.”
“At Pigeon Plum?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Jim shrugged. “Didja find out what was bugging Dusty?”
“It was nothing major. Dusty’ll be okay,” he said, the sheen in his eyes an admission.
“If Laurel calls?”
“I’m out at a scene.”
Jim sighed, part envy, part concern. These young guys never learn. “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing, pal.”
Rick did not hear. A man in a hurry, he was already on the elevator, punching the down button.
Jim picked up the ringing telephone on Rick’s desk not a quarter of an hour later and wished he hadn’t. “Hi, Laurel.” He tried to sound casual and friendly. “Naw, he’s not here right now. I think he’s out at a scene. Well, I stayed here to finish up some paperwork.”
She asked when Rick would be in the office. “He’s pretty tied up out there. He may not be back tonight. You’ll probably see him before I do. If he checks
in, I’ll tell him you called. Everything all right?”
She said it was and hung up.
A few minutes later, the middle-aged secretary took a call for Dusty. “I think she’s off, let me check.” She put her hand over the receiver and called to Jim. “Is Dusty coming back tonight?”
He shook his head and she told the caller, “No, she’s gone home.”
Jim turned in his chair. “Who was that looking for Dusty?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “Didn’t leave a name.”
“Voice familiar?”
“Maybe.” She looked puzzled.
“Man or woman?”
“It was hard to tell.”
He shook his head in disgust and turned back to his work.
Alex hung up the telephone. Personally, he didn’t give a shit, but it was important to know just exactly what the son of a bitch was up to now. Laurel had been disturbed when Rick was unreachable. Frightened and lonely as usual, she had wanted to hear him reassure her that he would be home soon. When she became agitated, Harriet had surfaced, suspicious and anxious to know where the hell Dusty was and whether this was a threat to their household. Marilyn was furious if there was even a remote possibility that Rick was having sex with anyone else. Jennifer simply sniveled because it frightened her when the others got worked up. Harriet suggested that Alex call headquarters and ask for Dusty. The fact that Dusty and Rick were both gone for the evening and Alex could discern no mention of a homicide scene on the scanner heightened Harriet’s suspicions. Flipping open the leather-covered address book next to the telephone, she found D, for Dustin, and dialed the number.
Dusty answered on the first ring, eager and throaty, not the voice of a woman planning to sleep alone. She said hello twice. Harriet hung up. The address was 1560 Pigeon Plum Circle, in the Grove. Alex agreed to go check it out.
Rick parked discreetly across the street, the rear end of the car in shadow so the official city tag would not stand out like a sore thumb to anyone passing by. He wavered between growing excitement and guilt. It seemed so long since he had been with her. That he was doing this astonished him, yet at this moment he could not image being anywhere else. Despite Laurel’s spontaneous and creative sexuality and all her homemaking skills, he had yielded to something stronger, his powerful need for a woman who shared his fears and frustrations, someone who understood as he did the tragedy and black comedies played out on Miami’s mean streets of night. Wanting her so much created a deeper inner conflict. He had always resisted serious relationships with women who also lived on the cutting edge of pain. Seeing the dark side of life and death somehow damaged people in his eyes. He could not remember when he had first begun to believe that they were no longer whole, that the cruelty of the job made them damaged goods. His mother was a single-minded homemaker whose life revolved around making his father happy. He wanted that too. Young, sheltered and protected, with no career ambitions, Laurel had seemed perfect. He must be crazy, he thought, torn by conflicting emotions. None of it made sense. But he knew that what he wanted and needed right now was waiting for him inside, between a pair of long legs.
Nobody Lives Forever Page 18
