Right to Die

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Always,” Felix said. He stepped back inside, locking the security screen and then closing the heavy front door.

  “You believe him?” Eric asked on the way back to the SUV.

  “Not at all, Eric. But I believe he told us as much as he was going to, which was nothing.”

  “Funny how some guys can give you nothing and make you feel like they’re doing you a big favor.”

  “That’s probably what took him to the top.” Horatio started to open his car door, paused, looked at his companion. “And, Mister Delko—Orishas?”

  “Cuban hip-hop band. They’re good. I can loan you some CDs if you want.”

  “Thanks, Eric. That probably won’t be necessary. But I appreciate the offer.”

  4

  INSTEAD OF HEADING directly back to the crime lab, Horatio drove around the neighborhood awhile longer. The streets looked more or less alike, except that as they got farther away from Granado’s place there had been more turf struggles, indicated by gang graffiti painted atop other gang graffiti. Warfare by spray can.

  He didn’t know why Felix Granado would refuse to identify the victim, but he had some ideas. In spite of the gang leader’s comment, being seen helping the police in any way couldn’t be good for his standing. He would rather obstruct an investigation than aid it, just out of general principle. Then there was the strong possibility that the shooting was gang-related. If the victim had been shot by other Los Danger Boys members, maybe for breaking a gang rule of some kind, Granado wouldn’t want to identify him because he would want to stifle the investigation. If the shooter had been a member of a rival gang, then Los Danger Boys would want to avenge it themselves, without police interference.

  Horatio had hoped to appeal to the human being that Felix Granado was, but the gangster inside had won out.

  A few blocks away from Granado’s little house, they spotted two young men standing on a street corner outside a little bodega. Hand-lettered signs in the windows advertised cerveza, loteria, ice-cold Dr. Pepper, and menudo. The boys were teenagers, one holding a can of Coke and a lit cigarette in the same hand, with his other tucked into a pocket of his baggy black denim pants. The second boy leaned out over the curb and spat into the street as they drove past. Horatio was sure it was an expression of opinion.

  “H, I know that kid,” Eric said.

  “The spitter?”

  “The other one, with the smoke. He’s Los Danger Boys, I’m pretty sure. Let’s talk to him.”

  Horatio turned into the mouth of an alley, backed out, and reversed direction. The two boys had started walking away from the bodega, but he passed them and then pulled onto the sidewalk, blocking their way with the big SUV. When Eric shoved his door open, he was right in front of them.

  “Hold up a second,” he said. Horatio stayed where he was, his hands on the steering wheel, as Eric stepped down to the sidewalk and addressed the kid he had mentioned. “You work at Graciana, right, in Little Havana? Busboy?”

  The kid’s face clouded over, as if he was embarrassed at being revealed as a working stiff in front of his friend. “Yeah. So?”

  “I’ve seen you there. I’m Eric.”

  “Maybe I’ve seen you there, too. What about it?”

  “I’m not looking to jam anybody up, man, but I need some information. You’re Los Danger Boys, right?”

  The kid flicked the cigarette butt to the pavement and stamped it out, transferring the Coke to his left hand. Now his right dove into the deep pocket. “No.”

  “I’ve seen the tattoos on your knuckles,” Eric said. “It’s okay, we’re not with the gang unit or anything. We’re with the crime lab, and we’re trying to identify a body.”

  “Just don’t say nothing, dude,” the other teen said. He refused to meet Eric’s gaze, but kept glancing into the vehicle at Horatio.

  “If you want to help your friend, keep your mouth shut,” Eric warned. Horatio was proud of the way Eric had managed the conversation so far. He released the wheel long enough to hand over the victim’s photograph when Eric reached for it.

  “This is the guy,” Eric said. “You know him?”

  “Dude…”

  Eric kept his gaze locked on the first kid. “Do you know him or not?”

  “Maybe I’ve seen him around,” the kid said.

  “I need a name. His address too, if you know it.”

  The kid was nervous now. He took a long swig from the can, emptying it, then crushed it in his fist. He looked like he wanted to throw it to the ground but had suddenly realized that littering in front of two cops wouldn’t be the wisest course of action. Instead, he held the can awkwardly in his hand and stared at the picture. “Your mom owns Graciana, right?” Eric asked. He sounded like he was just making conversation, but it was really a thinly veiled threat. If you don’t help me, I’ll go to your mother.

  The threat worked. “His name’s Silvio.”

  “Last name.”

  “Castaneda. Silvio Castaneda. That’s him. He get whacked or what?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s weird, dog.” Now that he had spilled the name, he seemed to have gotten past his anxiety about talking to the police. His friend stared at him, as if astonished at his behavior.

  “Why is it weird?” Eric asked.

  “He’s just—he’s nothing, you know? Not an important guy. Not really a player. He hasn’t been LDB for long, never got very far up in the organization.”

  “Has he ever been arrested?”

  “No way. He never done nothing to get arrested for.”

  If you don’t count the possession and sale of cocaine, Horatio thought.

  “We need to inform his family of his death,” Eric said. “You know where he lived?”

  The kid shuffled his feet, switched hands on the crushed soft drink can again, shot a glance at his friend, and gave Eric an address. “I think that’s right,” he said. “Anyway, it’s a gray house there, one down from the corner.”

  “We’ll find it,” Eric said. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “See you at the restaurant.” Eric climbed back up into the Hummer and closed his door.

  “That’s close by,” Horatio said.

  “Yeah, couple blocks.”

  “Good work, Eric.” Horatio started the Hummer again and watched the kids saunter up the block, not hurrying, like they didn’t have a care in the world.

  Joe Castaneda’s eyes filled with tears, and he backed out of the doorway, his legs wobbling. Horatio was afraid he might faint or fall down and braced himself to catch the man if it came to that. “May we come in for a minute?”

  “S-sure,” Castaneda stammered. “Y-yeah.”

  Horatio entered the modest home, with Eric close behind. They had driven over straight from the bodega and found Joe Castaneda at home. The man was heavyset, his gut straining a thin white undershirt. He hadn’t shaved today, and his eyes were puffy with sleep. On his legs were a pair of cotton pajama pants in a red plaid pattern, and his feet were bare. Horatio thought that perhaps he worked nights, and they had interrupted his sleep. A faint smell of tortillas hung in the air, possibly his morning meal.

  Castaneda dropped into a well-worn easy chair. At a sound from an interior doorway, Horatio swiveled, reaching for his weapon.

  “What is it, Papa?” a young girl asked. She looked to be in her midteens, petite, not even five feet tall. She wore a black T-shirt with a heavy metal band’s logo on the front, tight jeans, and yellow sneakers with black checks. The makeup around her eyes was thick and dark, as if she had applied it with a trowel, and her lips were painted fashionably black. “Who the hell are these dudes?”

  “Are you Silvio’s sister?” Horatio asked her. When talking with young people, Horatio liked to get on their level, but this girl was an awkward height—crouching would lower him too much, but standing fully upright made her have to look up at him. He settled for tilting his head to one side, lowering his face a little.


  “Yeah, I’m Faustina.”

  “I’m very sorry, Faustina, but your brother was killed last night. We just now found out who he was so that we could tell you.”

  Joe Castaneda sat in the chair, his face buried in his hands, utterly still. He could have been sleeping for all the noise he made. “My son…” he said quietly, then went silent again.

  “Is your mother at home?” Horatio asked the girl.

  “My mama’s dead,” Faustina said. There was an angry, brittle edge to her voice. “Three years ago. Someone shot her where she worked, at a gas station. No one did jack about it.”

  “I’m very sorry about that, Faustina. I guarantee you, something will be done about Silvio’s death.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “He was shot, Faustina. One of the bullets hit his heart.”

  “Just like my mama.”

  “I wish it wasn’t.”

  Joe Castaneda lowered his hands. Tears traced down his cheeks. “Where…” he began. He didn’t seem to know how to ask his question. “Where is he?”

  “Your son is in our morgue, Mister Castaneda,” Horatio explained. “He’s being well taken care of there while we determine exactly what happened and who killed him. We’ll release him to you as soon as we can, so if you’d like to make arrangements—”

  “My wife, she…”

  “Faustina told us that your wife was also shot, and I’m very sorry. We try to do our best for every crime victim, but some cases aren’t solved immediately. Some take years, and I can’t lie to you, some are never solved.”

  “Because the cops don’t care about our people,” Faustina said. “That’s why our people have to join gangs, so we’ll have someone who will look out for us. Everybody knows the po-po don’t give a damn.”

  “That, young lady, is not true. We care about every victim.” Horatio paused. “I care. And I guarantee you, I will do everything in my power to get at the truth. I will find out who killed your brother.”

  Faustina Castaneda didn’t answer him. Not with words, anyway. But her deep brown eyes locked on his, dry and bitter, and told him everything.

  She didn’t believe him.

  He would just have to prove her wrong.

  5

  “YEAH, HORATIO.”

  “You’re driving, Horatio?” Calleigh asked.

  “I am. Heading back to the lab. We’ve identified the victim from this morning and notified his family.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, and I won’t keep you,” she said. She was riding, with Ryan Wolfe behind the wheel, and she knew that talking on a cell phone distracted a driver just as much as a few drinks did. “Two things I wanted to tell you. One, the fibers Ryan and Eric found at Bicentennial Park are dyed hundred-percent cotton denim. The dye matches a proprietary color used in Wrangler jeans.”

  “So there are only tens of thousands of pair sold worldwide every year,” Horatio said, grasping her point. She liked the fact that her boss rarely required much in the way of elucidation. “If not hundreds of thousands.”

  “It’s safe to say that the fibers don’t help us much, unless we find someone with a pair of jeans we can try to compare. The other thing is that I wanted you to know that Ryan and I are rolling to a new crime scene.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “It’s a homicide,” she said. “Out on Leonard Highway.”

  “That’s off the Tamiami Trail, right?”

  “On the way out to the ’Glades, yes. Here’s the worst part, Horatio. The first patrol officer on the scene identified the victim.”

  “And?”

  “She’s Wendy Greenfield.”

  “As in the wife of Sidney Greenfield?”

  “The pro golfer, right.” You didn’t have to follow golf to recognize his name. She had known it right away, and she didn’t follow golf. But she knew the names of Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. During the past couple of years, Sidney Greenfield’s performance had demonstrated that he would soon be breaking into that exalted company. And he was a local, too, who had started out golfing on Miami’s public courses and graduated from Miami University.

  “We’ll change course and see you there, Calleigh.”

  She ended the call and put away her phone. “He and Eric are on their way over.”

  “We’ll get there first,” Ryan said. “But with a high-profile victim like Wendy Greenfield, I’m glad the LT will be on hand to deal with the media.”

  Calleigh had to agree. Ryan had experienced some rough times at the hands of the press—specifically, being used by WFOR-TV reporter Erica Sikes, of the local CBS affiliate, who he had also dated for a time—and had been instructed not to comment publicly on police matters. This case would have a much higher profile than the young gangbanger they had found in Bicentennial Park this morning, and she sure didn’t want to be the lab’s public face on it.

  Ryan didn’t pay undue attention to speed limit signs, and they made good time. When they reached the Leonard Highway turnoff from the Tamiami Trail, Ryan made a left turn, taking them south. While the road had the name “highway” attached to it, in truth it was more of a byway with very little traffic. Tall trees and thick brush hemmed it in on both sides, masking farm fields beyond that. After a couple of miles, they spotted the flashing lights of the patrol cars and ambulance already on the scene, and Ryan pulled in behind them. The closest car to the scene, so probably the first responder, was a Highway Patrol Camaro, mostly black but with a white roof and trunk. Those were fast, Calleigh knew, and looked like sharks as they cruised the state’s roadways.

  Ryan would no doubt prefer one of those to the lab’s H3.

  “Ryan, how many speeding tickets have you paid since you got your license?” she asked. Needling him had proven to be an amusing pastime. Calleigh was a good Southern girl raised with three brothers in a traditional Southern lawyer’s home (so traditional that the old joke describing a Southern breakfast as a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a steak, and a hound dog—give the steak to the hound dog—unfortunately applied to her father, Kenwall Duquesne), so the streak of dark humor that provided defense against the stresses of the job came naturally to her. Emerging from beneath the veneer of good manners and her fierce intelligence, it often took people by surprise, even after they thought they knew her.

  “All of them.” He took his kit from the backseat.

  “Any more questions?”

  “Not just now, thanks.” She got her own kit and joined him, Ryan walking—almost as fast as he had driven—toward the scene.

  Inside the yellow tape perimeter, sitting on the narrow shoulder just off the road, was a white Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible. In the convertible, Calleigh could see platinum blond hair, even lighter than her own, on a still form occupying the passenger seat. That had to be Wendy Greenfield.

  A Florida Highway Patrol officer she never had met kept an eye on the perimeter. He studied their badges as they approached, and she scanned the name tag on his muscular chest. Briscoe. “Thank you, Officer Briscoe.”

  “Glad to see you guys,” Briscoe said, handing over the security log. A handful of officers and EMTs had already signed it. “The scene’s all yours.”

  “Who was first on the scene?” Calleigh asked as she signed her name. She handed the log to Ryan. Everyone who entered the scene had to document their presence.

  “My partner and I.”

  “Was there a suspect at the scene?”

  “It was just like you see it now. We were patrolling the road and saw her parked there. Thought maybe she’d had a mechanical problem. We pulled over behind her, approached the vehicle, and”—he paused, staring hard at the grassy shoulder of the road—“well, you’ll see what we found. I called in a 187, and we didn’t touch the car, just set up the perimeter. The EMTs took a look, but backed off when they saw her.”

  “How did you identify the victim?” Ryan asked.

  “I follow the pro tour,” Briscoe replied. “Wendy Greenfiel
d is always at the eighteenth when Sidney finishes a round, and she’s a beautiful woman, so the cameras always kind of linger on her. Plus I’ve attended the PGA Ford Championship at Doral and seen her in person. I didn’t check her purse or anything, but I’m sure it’s her.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “The ME’s on the way, and we’ll go ahead and get started processing the scene.”

  Calleigh and Ryan both set their kits down outside the tape and gloved up. Briscoe held the tape for them, and when they were ready they passed beneath it.

  Ryan started by photographing the scene, getting wide shots that encompassed the car and the area around it. After capturing the overall scene, he began moving in for closer shots. While he did that, Calleigh took a sketchbook and pencil from her kit and made a quick sketch of the scene, showing the relative position of the car, the road, and the trees and brush beside it.

  “I’ve got footprints and tire tracks,” Ryan said as he drew closer to the convertible. He took more photos of the tracks he had found. “The tire tracks are not from this car, and the prints aren’t from Wendy Greenfield. Definitely male, maybe size ten or eleven. They look like they head from the convertible to where the other car was waiting.”

  “Easier to get away from here in another vehicle than on foot,” Calleigh observed. “We’re a long way from anything.”

  Her curiosity burned to look inside the car, especially because of the way Briscoe had talked about it. She was a professional, though, and knew that taking things in the right order led to criminals being convicted.

  After this overview, she would get a look at the dead body. Then they would work backward in even more orderly fashion, spiraling away from the car and inspecting every square inch of the ground in case the killer or killers had left evidence behind. They would make castings of the impressions the tires and shoes had made in the soft earth. They would view the area without the blinders of prejudice or initial opinions, and they would find whatever was there to be found.

  After about twenty minutes of studying the scene, she and Ryan converged at the Mitsubishi.