“You’re going to have another talk with him, I take it?”
“Yes, I am. I think I’ll let it wait until tomorrow, though. If he did keep her pregnancy a secret on purpose, then he’s guilty of something, and I want to let him stew in it overnight. If he didn’t, if he just forgot to say anything because of the shock, then I don’t want to bother him a second time today. I don’t think he’s much of a flight risk.”
“Celebrities seldom are,” Alexx agreed. “They have the money, but they’re too easily recognized.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Thank you, Alexx, for the report. That definitely puts a different light on things. That’s good work.”
“I’m going home to my kids, Horatio,” she said.
“You should get out of here too.”
Alexx had two children, a husband, and a nice house in Coral Gables. Horatio didn’t have kids or a wife. But he understood the necessity of having a life away from the lab, even though he sometimes wished he didn’t. “I will, Alexx. Thanks.”
She left his office and he returned to his paperwork, his mind turning over the news she had brought him. A couple of minutes later, he heard the distinct click click of a woman walking in the hall and thought it was Alexx returning for something else.
But it wasn’t. Instead, Calleigh Duquesne poked her head in. “Horatio, you’re burning the midnight oil?”
“No rest for the wicked,” he said with a grin.
“You have anything going on tonight, Calleigh?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Do you remember Nina Cullen?”
“I do indeed.” When Calleigh spoke the name, Horatio pictured a slender thirteen-year-old girl with long brown braids and a shy smile that, when it reached full radiance, could illuminate the darkest Florida night. Nina Cullen had been targeted for death because she had witnessed a double homicide, and when it turned out that one of the people after her was her own estranged father, the case had turned even more personal for Horatio. Calleigh had taken a deep interest in the girl too, and Nina had spent a few nights in protective custody at Calleigh’s condo. Calleigh had eventually been able to identify bolt cutters Nina’s father had used to cut a padlock on the gate to Nina’s backyard, in a final attempt against her life. Horatio had found the bolt cutters locked inside the man’s residence, where no one else had access to them. With her father’s fingerprints all over them, and Calleigh’s definitive tool-mark evidence, they had been able to force a confession from the man. Nina and her mother had moved to the Midwest, but Calleigh and Horatio still heard from her now and again.
“She’s coming into town tonight for a couple of days,” Calleigh said. “I’m going to pick her up at the airport.”
“Just her?” Horatio asked. “Her mother’s not coming with her?”
“Horatio, she’s nineteen now. She’s going to Northwestern. And majoring in forensic science, I’m happy to say.”
“What’s the occasion for this trip?”
Calleigh’s expression softened, the smile fading. “Actually, Nina’s pregnant. Her mom asked if I would spend some time with her, try to impress upon her how difficult it is to be a single workingwoman, even without a child. I told her that I’d be at work most of the time—workingwoman, right?—but that Nina could stay with me and we could be together whenever I wasn’t on duty. Her mom thought that would be fine, that the more I was gone the more it would drive home her point.”
“She doesn’t want Nina to carry the child to term?” Horatio asked.
“Either that, or to put it up for adoption right away. She kind of has a point—nineteen is very young, and Nina’s got years of school ahead of her if she wants to be a criminalist.”
Horatio had long wanted children of his own, most recently with Marisol Delko. Although Marisol’s cancer had been in remission when they married, the disease would have made childbirth difficult and risky. They were both willing to try, but her murder had made it impossible. “That’s true, Calleigh. On the other hand, she might never have another chance. Life is unpredictable, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is. I don’t know that I’m comfortable making her mom’s case for her, but I’m happy to have Nina visit anyway. I just wish she could stay longer.”
“I hope she’ll come around the lab.”
“I’m sure she’ll want to do that first thing. Maybe not first thing tonight—you should go home, after all, and I don’t think she knows anyone on the night shift. But at her first opportunity.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing her,” Horatio said. He meant it—he bonded easily with children, appreciating their unshielded forthrightness and often little-noticed courage. And those bonds, he had found, tended to hold up remarkably well over the years.
Calleigh left, and he returned once again to his paperwork, wanting to get through one more stack before he went home to a late dinner and bed.
Calleigh loved her work, but there were times when it began to feel all-consuming and she had to back away from it. It was too easy to dwell on the job constantly, to wake up thinking about a case from the day before and to drift off to sleep running through the day’s events in her mind. She knew that wasn’t healthy. A person needed other interests, something to occupy her attention besides weapons and blood spatter and tox reports.
In her case, family offered only so much relief. Her parents had divorced more than a decade ago, and she had to make an effort not to be drawn into taking sides, but to provide both her mother and her father with a neutral listener. Her father’s drinking problem exacerbated that situation, and while she loved him dearly, spending time with him was often more draining than satisfying. She could talk to her brothers, and sometimes went to a target range with one or another of them—but there again, she wound up with a firearm in her hands. She had been drawn to law enforcement, and specifically forensic science, because of her long interest in guns, but guns as a hobby had to be kept separate from her working life. She dated—usually men in law enforcement, as it happened—she went out, she read glossy Ocean Drive magazine in addition to professional journals and popular gun magazines, and she had a rarely discussed addiction to Southern writers, from Eudora Welty and Thomas Wolfe to Pat Conroy and Anne Rivers Siddons.
But anything that promised a more complete distraction from the job, like the imminent arrival of Nina Cullen (in spite of the fact that she had met Nina on a case, that had been long ago and years of letters, holiday cards, emails and phone calls had built enough of a bond separate from that first meeting that she didn’t consider Nina a work-related friend), was more than welcome.
Calleigh reached Miami International a little after eight, about twenty-five minutes early for Nina’s flight. She browsed one of the gift shops, bought a paperback novel by the always-delightful Fannie Flagg, then sat down on a bench to read and wait.
When the display board showed that Nina’s flight had landed, she put the receipt into the book as a bookmark, tucked it into her purse, and stood up, waiting with a throng of others for the passengers to make their way from the gate toward baggage claim and ground transportation. She always got a kick out of watching people at airports, and did so now, enjoying a family with young children in pajamas, stifling yawns while they angled for the first glimpse of Grandma, a young man laden with flowers and balloons for an arriving girlfriend, and a pair of proud parents waiting anxiously for a son or daughter in uniform.
Halfway through the flood of passengers from the Chicago flight, Calleigh spotted Nina. She wore a coat far too heavy for Miami weather, but it had been cold in the Midwest for the last several days, the advance of spring notwithstanding. Taller than Calleigh since her fifteenth year, Nina wore jeans, a snug sweater, and sneakers, and she strode down the ramp with a confident spring in her step. Her slender face was framed by brown hair in a pixie cut, and it went from solemn and a little sleepy to vibrant and joyful when she saw Calleigh wave.
Nina broke into a jog, shouldering past other passengers, and threw her arms around C
alleigh. Her canvas messenger bag swung from her shoulder and bumped into Calleigh’s hip, with enough force that it might have been packed full of rocks. A light, vaguely aquatic perfume wafted from her. “Calleigh!” she shrieked. “It’s so great to see you!”
“Welcome back to Miami,” Calleigh said. “You look great, Nina.”
“So do you! Look at you, girlfriend! You are so beautiful!”
Calleigh felt a blush wash over her cheeks. “I love your haircut,” she said. The last time she had seen Nina, the girl’s hair had fallen most of the way down her back, and she’d still been a gangly, awkward high school student. She had, in the interim, become a woman, and the changes in her, from posture to self-confidence, were remarkable. “How was the flight? Are you hungry?”
“I could eat something,” Nina admitted. “Unless Miami rolls up its sidewalks early these days.”
“If that ever happens, it’ll be a sure sign of the apocalypse,” Calleigh said. “Come on. I bet you haven’t had any decent Southern food since the last time you were here.”
“Not unless you count pizza from south Chicago.”
“I don’t. Let’s get your luggage and go.” She hadn’t counted on dinner, but she realized she should have; airplane food was nothing to rave about these days. It would make for a later night than she had anticipated, but she had plenty of late nights. At least this one wouldn’t involve any dead bodies.
There would, she was sure, be plenty of those to deal with tomorrow.
9
THE DAY WAS FINE, the sun a huge golden ball in a blue sky that warmed the earth to perfect picnic temperature, and Horatio and Marisol took advantage of the opportunity to get out of town. They ate on a blanket spread out on a grassy, gentle slope that angled down toward a swiftly flowing river. On the river’s far side, sunlight spiked down through the branches of a dense orange grove, the trees arranged in careful rows.
Their food was Cuban, spicy and rich, and they ate their fill of it before turning their attentions to each other. Marisol tucked plates and utensils and serving containers back into the big picnic basket she had brought, because an unexpected breeze was blowing up out of the east, off the unseen ocean. When everything was put away and the breeze tugged at the edges of the blanket and at their clothing, they undressed and made love where they had so recently eaten, their bodies fitting together perfectly, puzzle pieces that were always meant to be joined as one.
Afterward they lingered, enjoying the sun on their flesh, until Marisol announced that she had to be going. Horatio tried to protest, but she insisted, dressing quickly. She was starting to put on a hat Horatio didn’t remember having seen before, straw with a wide brim and a patterned sash around the crown, when the wind snatched it from her hands and sailed it out over the water.
Horatio was tugging on his own clothes, although they seemed to fight him, his feet catching in his pants, shirt buttons refusing to cooperate, when Marisol waded into the river after the hat. She said something to him that he couldn’t hear, her words snatched away by the increasingly furious wind, and he started toward her, wrestling with the last of his buttons. He was almost to the riverbank when the water suddenly became a whirlpool, raging around her, drawing her down, down…
The ringing of his bedside phone was a relief. Horatio sat upright in his bed, sweat running off him in sheets, and grabbed the receiver. “Horatio Caine,” he said. The digital clock by his bed read 4:11.
“Horatio, it’s Frank.” Frank Tripp. Horatio would have known that accent anywhere. “There’s been an explosion. A doctor’s house in the Grove.”
Horatio was instantly alert, his bad dream fading under the weight of someone else’s real-life tragedy. “Victims?”
“At least a couple, but it’s still hot and we haven’t really been able to get inside yet for any extended searches. Doctor Greggs lives there with his wife and seven-year-old daughter.”
Horatio remembered the FBI agent who Frank had introduced him to. “Frank, does this look like the work of that bomber Special Agent Asher is after? The Baby Boomer?”
“I don’t see how. This doctor has never performed an abortion in his life, and he doesn’t work at a clinic that performs them. He’s a neurologist, with neurosurgical credentials at Dade Memorial. Or he was—I’m pretty sure he’s one of the crispy corpses inside.”
“A brain surgeon? Frank, preserve the scene. I’m on my way.”
Doctor Marc Greggs and his family lived on Devon Road, just a couple of blocks inland from the mission-style, coral-rock Plymouth Congregational Church. Coconut Grove had been the first European settlement in south Florida, and the residents liked to try to preserve elements of that past. The church dated to 1917, which for Miami was ancient. Coconut Grove had tried to remain independent of Miami, but the growing metropolis had annexed it in 1925. Ever since, dwellers in the Grove had subtly—and sometimes not so subtly—resented the big city and worked to maintain the ambiance of their small, historic neighborhood.
The Greggs place had been no different. It had been built of wood and stone and surrounded by a jungle’s worth of native plants.
That was before a massive explosion, and the resulting fire, turned it into charred, twisted wreckage.
Horatio had called his team from the road, hesitant to wake them after a busy day but knowing he would need all hands on deck to process the scene. When he reached Devon Road, it was easy to see where the Greggs house was, marked by bomb squad vans, fire trucks, radio cars, ambulances, press, and other vehicles jamming the street. He parked two blocks from the house, almost in front of the old church, and hustled to the scene. Calleigh and Eric had arrived before him.
Calleigh saw him coming and met him as he approached. “Horatio, it’s pretty bad here.”
“I can see that, Calleigh. Who’s in charge?” No CSIs were allowed onto a bombing scene until it had been cleared by the bomb squad. The officer who ran the scene for that squad was called the bomb-scene manager, a position Horatio had held many times during his years on the squad. Only when the scene manager had determined to his satisfaction that no more explosives were hidden inside would anyone else be let in.
“Jorge Ortiz.”
“He’s a good man.” With a practiced eye, Horatio scanned the perimeter Ortiz had set. Ortiz would have determined where the probable seat of detonation was, measured how far debris was thrown from there, then set the perimeter line to enclose a space half again as large.
In the brilliant glow of floodlights set up on stanchions and powered by noisy generators, Horatio could get a sense of the damage. The front wall of the house was almost completely demolished, including what appeared, from the glass strewn everywhere, to be many large windows. It looked like the wall had been peeled away, as if someone had been making a doll’s house with one wall missing so a child could reach inside. The second floor of the two-story house sagged precariously where a supporting pillar had been blown out from beneath it, and most of the upstairs furnishings, at least from the rooms Horatio could see, had tumbled down onto the ground floor. Timbers and stones had been hurled into the street, and the front yard, with its thick growth, looked like a madman’s storage area for used building materials.
“This was quite a blast, wasn’t it?” he asked, mostly of himself.
“It looks that way.” Calleigh had pulled herself together well for the middle of the night, dressing in typical business attire—a blue suit with a striped, V-neck blouse and high-heeled shoes, but she still looked sleepy. She had probably stayed up late catching up with Nina, not expecting a call-out at four-thirty. “Not that I have anywhere near your experience with such things.”
He ignored the comment. “How’s Nina?”
“She seems good. A little anxious, maybe, but you know.”
“That’s to be expected.” They kept walking, and in a moment reached the tape line, where a uniformed officer handed Horatio a clipboard with the sign-in sheet. He signed it and passed beneath the tape, joinin
g Eric and Frank on the other side. The smells of burned wood and plastic and wire and flesh were everywhere, inescapable.
“Sorry to roust you,” Frank said when he saw Horatio.
“Is there any news on Doctor Greggs and his family, Frank?”
“Not yet. Bomb squad guys say there are bodies inside, but no one’s been able to ID ’em.”
“How much longer?”
“Fire was controlled in a hurry, so that’s not a concern. Last time I talked to Jorge he seemed to think they were almost done. Can’t be too much longer now.”
“All right,” Horatio said. He looked down the street and saw a lone figure approaching the perimeter with a crime scene kit in his hand. “And here comes Mister Wolfe. The gang’s all here.”
By the time Ryan reached the others, Jorge Ortiz had emerged from the wreckage of the house, walking awkwardly in his heavy protective suit. He took off his helmet, wiped sweat from his brow, and showed Horatio a grim smile. He wore a thick handlebar mustache, and his eyes were gray and clear. “Horatio,” he said. “Place is clear.”
“Thank you, Jorge. Anything we should know?”
“Just be careful. Fire didn’t spread far, but it’s hot. Stairs are about gone, and it’s pretty dicey in there.”
“Okay. What about the Greggs family?”
“No one came out of that house after the explosion,” Ortiz said. “I saw some DBs, but I don’t know who’s who.”
“That, Jorge,” Horatio said, “is something that we’ll find out.”
Horatio went in first.
Even though Jorge Ortiz had given the all-clear, he didn’t trust bomb scenes or bombers. His time on the bomb squad had taught him more than he had ever hoped to know about what explosions and fire could do to the human body—not to mention what he had learned about the powerful, twisted forces that drove those who set the bombs. One thing bombers liked to do was to set explosive devices in series, so that the people investigating the first blast would be threatened by another one. Charlie Berringer, a former bomb squad compatriot who had turned bomber and who killed Horatio’s squad mentor Al Humphreys, had used that technique.
Right to Die Page 7
