Dead Cold Mystery Box Set 3

by Blake Banner

  Wayne threw himself back in the seat and shouted. “Oh come on, man! Jesus! Lighten up will ya! I’m just playin’ around! I’m jokin’, man!”

  I snapped, “You see anyone laughing, Wayne?” I waited but he didn’t answer. I went on. “Let me tell you something. I don’t think you can focus on the job in hand when Detective Dehan is around. And I think there is a very particular reason for that. I’m developing a theory. I think you have an unhealthy obsession with Hispanic women. I think you have a tendency to develop unhealthy obsessions about particular Hispanic women. What do you think, Wayne? What would I find if I started to explore into your past? Would I find the cause for that obsession? How about it, Sigmund?”

  He didn’t answer. I watched him a moment in the mirror. His expression was sullen. I pressed him. “You’ve gone awful quiet, Wayne. What’s the matter? You don’t want to play around and joke anymore?”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence and pulled up at the back of the Golden Mango, on Zerega Avenue, at just before eleven. We pulled him out of the car, walked him through the gate onto the scrubland, and Dehan removed the manacles from his ankles. When she stood, she leaned close into his face. “Don’t make me shoot you, Wayne.”

  He smiled. “See? I knew you was one of mine.”

  I said, “OK, we’re on the clock. Where is this purse?”

  He looked at me and there was real contempt in his face. “Give me a minute, dude. It’s been a while. I need to get back to the place, remember it, feel it. Know what I’m sayin’?” He pointed with both hands to where Dehan and I had been previously. “It was down there.”

  I glanced at him. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure!”

  Dehan went ahead of him and I stayed close behind. Pretty soon we had come to the mound where Angela’s body had been found. He stood looking at it and smiling for a while. Then he turned and looked around behind him, searching. Finally he jerked his head toward the place where I had lain. “That’s where I was, chillin’, enjoyin’ a smoke. You ever smoke a joint, Carmen?” He looked at me. “Hey! I’m just making conversation, man. That’s where I was. I heard them comin’ down where we just come. He threw her on the ground right here, went down on top of her and…” He smiled at Dehan, “He just choked the life out of that little girl while he kissed her.”

  I said, “That’s old news, Wayne.”

  He studied me with hooded eyes. “You a real pain in the ass, you know that, Detective Stone Cold?”

  I stepped toward him and shoved him toward the path. “Come on! I’ve had as much of your bullshit as I can take. We’re going back. Come on!” I shoved him again and he stumbled. “Back to the car. You don’t know jack! You think you can play games with me? Get moving!” I shoved him a third time and he almost fell.

  “Wait a minute!” His face was flushed.

  I advanced on him and shoved him again. “Move!”

  “It’s over there for cryin’ out loud!”

  I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled his face close to mine. “Right now the DA is in discussions about your deal, Wayne. If we walk back up that path and get into my car, it’s over! We are done! And we don’t come back! So cut the Hannibal Lecter act and get the damned purse! Do you feel me, dude?”

  He took his time studying my face in careful detail. Then he pulled away from me and started to walk. It was about a hundred yards, maybe a little less, over loose rocks and puddles, and through coarse undergrowth and tall grass, to a steep bank overgrown with dense trees and bushes at the foot of the GVC depot. He stood staring at it for a long while. It was hard to read the expression on his face, until finally he smiled and started moving up, into the undergrowth. He dropped to his knees at the foot of a pin oak and started to dig. After a minute or so, he pulled out a small lady’s handbag. He turned awkwardly, holding it in both hands because of his cuffs, and showed it to Dehan.

  I pulled an evidence bag from my pocket, took the bag from him and slipped it in. I said, “Back up,” and as he came down the slope I said to Dehan, “You want to take a look?”

  She nodded, pulled on some surgical gloves and scrounged around where Wayne had been digging. She turned to me and shook her head. “Nothing I can see, but we better get a team here anyway. Just in case.”

  She called for a CSI team as we made our way back toward the car. Wayne spoke as he stumbled behind her and in front of me. “Hey, I did my part, right? I have proved I was a witness here that night. Now you got to get me that deal, man.”

  Dehan looked back at me. “They’re on their way.”

  I shoved Wayne in the back of the Jag, hunkered down by the open door and looked into his eyes. They were half closed and I could see nothing but contempt in them. I said, “When the Scene of Crime team arrive we’ll take you back to the prison. Then we’ll examine the evidence. If it’s any good then I’ll recommend to my inspector that he recommend to the DA that they go ahead with a deal. Now, before I do any of that, Wayne, let me ask you something.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “Do you know who killed this girl?”

  He nodded. “I will name him for you. And when you check it out you will see I ain’t lyin’.”

  The CSI van arrived ten minutes later. We told them where the site was and took Wayne back to Rikers. All the way there he was quiet, but every time I looked at him in the mirror he was watching Dehan, staring at the back of her head.

  We handed him over and drove slowly back to the station. At our desk Dehan pulled a chair next to mine and we sat and emptied the contents of the purse. There was an ID card, a driver’s license, a set of keys, some eye shadow, an eye pencil, a cell phone and a handkerchief.

  The girl in the photographs on the driver’s license and the ID card was Angela. There was no doubt about it. She had been very pretty, and the smile in the pictures looked easy and natural. Her name was Angela Fernandez, and she was from Berwick, in Pennsylvania. Somewhere in Berwick, Pennsylvania, at that moment, her parents were still waiting for her, hoping.

  I said, “We need to show this to the inspector. It looks like Wayne will be getting his deal.”

  She studied my face a moment. “You’re not happy about that, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  “That comment you made about his obsession with Latinas…”

  “What about it?”

  “Are you sure you’re being objective?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”

  “He was coming on very strong to me. He was being pretty threatening. Maybe you feel I am at risk and that’s clouding your judgment.”

  I shook my head.

  She went on. “Stone, I agree with you, he is a lowlife and I don’t want to see him walk. But he has no priors for rape, sexual assault or violence. And,” she shrugged, “let’s face it, other than the way he was coming on to me, and the fact that I happen to be half Mexican, you have no reason to believe he has an unhealthy obsession with Hispanic women.”

  I nodded. “I have.”

  “What?”

  “The way he reacted when I said it. I was flying a kite, Dehan. I wanted to see his reaction. I touched a nerve. That man is dangerous, and I really don’t want to see him walk.”

  She sighed. “Well, he’s probably going to and there isn’t much we can do about it. Either way, Stone. I think this is as much about your protective dinosaur instincts as it is about anything else. I don’t like him, but I don’t think he’s as dangerous as you say he is. He’s just a dope head and a scumbag.”

  I stared down at the items on the desk in front of me. Then I looked her in the eye. “Just keep an open mind, Dehan, please? Until we have this wrapped up. There is more to this guy than meets the eye.”

  She frowned, but nodded. “Sure. No problem, Stone.”

  “Right,” I took a deep breath. “Let’s go talk to the inspector.”

  NINE

  Inspector John Newman looked depressed. “Poor child…” H
e’d said it a couple of times, now he repeated it. “Poor child. You’ll talk to the family?”

  “Detective Dehan just called her mother, Elisa Fernandez. It’s two and a half hours’ drive. We’ll break the news to her when we get there, then see if we can find out what Angela was doing here, who she was with…” I trailed off and spread my hands.

  Dehan added, “And if she had any connection with Teddy’s Late Night Bar or James Fillmore.”

  The inspector frowned. “I have to say, it is one hell of a coincidence that three such similar girls should have been connected with that bar all within a few days of each other.”

  I sucked my teeth. “We don’t know they were, sir. Sonia Ibarri was staying with her aunt, less than ten minutes’ walk away, but we don’t know that she had any actual connection with the bar. At the moment all we can say is that the connection between the girls appears to be their proximity to the bar. We’ll see if that holds true with Angela.”

  He grunted and nodded.

  Dehan smiled. “Like Stone pointed out to me, sir, there must be an awful lot of good, Catholic, pretty Hispanic girls in that neighborhood. The coincidence is maybe more apparent than real.”

  He shrugged with his eyebrows instead of his shoulders. “I take your point.”

  I said, “However, I am inclined to believe that the killer has some connection with the bar, because that was where Rosario went on the Friday night and, presumably, made an appointment to meet her killer on Saturday.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “And that does rather point to James Fillmore being our man, doesn’t it, John?”

  I had to agree. “Yes, sir, it does.”

  “But?”

  “But there is one man, and at the moment only one man, that we know for sure was at the scene of Angela’s murder, and who knew exactly where her purse was hidden, and that is Wayne Harris.”

  He frowned. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense that he should implicate himself unless he is pretty sure of his information.”

  Dehan looked at me. “You said it yourself, we wouldn’t even know there was a serial killer if he hadn’t contacted us.”

  “I know, but, sir, for the record, I believe we should pull him in and interrogate him, threaten to charge him with all the murders. If he knows who the killer is, he will tell us. If he doesn’t, then we’ll know it’s him.” I shrugged. “How did he know exactly where the purse was?”

  He rubbed his chin and heaved a deep sigh. “I do take your point, Stone, don’t think that I don’t. I’ll discuss it with the DA and I’ll tell her how you feel. The crucial point here is that we have a serial killer on our hands who, as we have said before, may have been operating for a long time, and may still be active. That means he has to be stopped at all costs, as soon as is humanly possible.” He gave me a look that was loaded with meaning. “Meanwhile, you’d better get on your way to see the Fernandez family. Do give them my deepest condolences. I’ll have this stuff sent over to the lab, and I’ll put in a request for Angela’s bank and phone records.”

  We thanked him and stepped out into the bright sunshine. A small breeze was moving the broad leaves of the plane trees on Storey Avenue. We climbed into the Jag in silence and I turned the key in the ignition. As I backed out of the lot, Dehan was watching me, with her glasses sitting on top of her head.

  “What is it, Stone? I’ve never known you to get so personal about a case. What’s eating you?”

  I didn’t answer until I was accelerating onto the Bronx River Parkway. Then I said, “I don’t know exactly, Dehan. Small things.”

  “Like?”

  “OK, for starters, the place where Wayne says he was lying smoking his joint the night Angela was killed.”

  “What about it?”

  “Did you try it out?”

  “What, lie there? You know I didn’t.”

  “I did. It was really uncomfortable. There were sharp rocks embedded in the earth, there were a million small, sharp stones and there were prickly shrubs and nettles. There was no way he was lying there.”

  She made a face. “OK, that’s odd, but it was May, and warm, so maybe he was lying on his jacket.”

  “But why go there at all? The obvious place to lie, which has easy access, is the soft turf where Angela was killed. It is completely invisible from the road. That’s why the killer chose that spot to kill her.”

  She sighed. “OK, you have a point. It is odd, but it is not conclusive.”

  “Another thing. When we took Wayne to the scene, he didn’t follow the track to where he said he’d been lying. He paused, got his bearings, and took us down the track to the spot where Angela was killed. Then, once there, he had to stop and look for the spot where he said he had been lying.”

  She made a face that was skeptical and asked, “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. There was no way he saw the killer hide those things from where he claims he was lying. He needed to get right up close to find the spot. That means he originally memorized the spot from up close. That was the image—the memory—he had in his head.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “Maybe he went up after the killer had gone and found the spot.” She shrugged. “Maybe he hid the stuff himself.”

  I gave a small laugh. “Or maybe he killed her.”

  “We’ve been over this, Stone. He has no record of violence. OK, he looks pretty intimidating, but there isn’t a single assault on his rap sheet. No rapes, no sexual assaults… nothing!”

  “And you can be damn sure, Dehan, that the killer’s rap sheet is the same.” I looked at her. She was frowning and confused. I explained. “This killer is smart enough to have devised a way of raping and killing, and disposing of the bodies, that eliminates all forensic evidence, and any trace that there was a serial killer involved at all. His rap sheet is going to be like Wayne’s: clean of any serious offenses.”

  She shook her head and looked away at the spring skyline slipping past. “Stone, just this once, I have to say I don’t agree with you. You know I admire you as a detective, but this time I think you are letting your personal feelings get in the way.”

  I smiled. “My personal feelings? You mean the way he comes on to you?”

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Of course it does. And it bothers me how close you are to the model of his victim of choice. And it bothers me that you can’t see that.” I glanced at her. “But it doesn’t bother me enough to cloud my judgment. We’ll follow the evidence, Dehan. Wherever it may lead. And if I am wrong, so be it.”

  We didn’t touch on the subject again, though it played on my mind all the way to Berwick, and by the time we had pulled into East 8th Street and parked outside Elisa Fernandez’s house, I was still no clearer in my mind as to the explanation for Wayne’s apparently paradoxical behavior.

  From the front the house looked like a cute, clapboard cottage, with a veranda cluttered with potted flowers and plants, a white, wrought iron table and a couple of rocking chairs. It was set in a broad expanse of lawn, with an uneven paved path that led through it to the house.

  The door opened before we reached it and a woman who was no more than five foot two, with neat, permed silver hair and a face that was still pretty but must once have been beautiful, greeted us with large, smiling brown eyes.

  I returned the smile. “Mrs. Fernandez?”

  “That’s me.” She had no accent. “You the police from New York?”

  We showed her our badges. She glanced at them and said, “Come on in. I made some lemonade for you, but you can have coffee if you’d rather.”

  Lemonade sounded good and we told her so. She had a living room cum diner that was spotlessly clean and neat. Every cushion and every ornament was positioned with precision, and there was not a trace of a crease or dust anywhere. She sat us at the dining table where, I guessed, she thought we’d cause the minimum of disruption to her order, and went to the kitchen. She came back with a large glass jug of lemonade on a tray and thr
ee glasses. When she had poured and mopped up the drips she sat and looked at us. She had a smile fixed in place, but you could see the fear and apprehension in her eyes. It was the expression of a person who has become habituated to being hurt by life, and is just waiting for the next blow to fall.

  I took a deep breath and made eye contact. “Mrs. Fernandez, I’m afraid I have very bad news for you. We have found your daughter Angela, and she is dead.”

  She gave a small gasp and crossed herself. Her eyes went red and spilled tears. She took a handkerchief, dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. “It’s OK,” she said. “She is with the Good Lord. I’ve known for a long time that He had taken her.”

  Dehan frowned. “How did you know that?”

  She shrugged and smiled again, like the answer was obvious. “She would have called, or written. She was such a good girl. She was a saint. She was too good for this world. That is why the Lord took her. When a week went by, I knew it was serious. After two weeks, I knew something real bad had happened. After a month, I knew she was dead.” She reached out and covered Dehan’s hand with her own. “When you called I knew you were coming to tell me you had found her. She is with God, and with the angels, my little Angel.”

  Suddenly she was sobbing violently, with her eyes closed and the handkerchief pressed over her mouth. She didn’t say anything, just made wrenching, visceral noises while she sat, stiff and erect, weeping into her neatly folded handkerchief. Dehan pulled her chair over and sat with her arm around her shoulder, not saying anything, just holding her gently. I wondered for a moment what Mo and the guys at the station would make of it: Carmen Dehan, the cop nobody wanted to work with because she had such a bad attitude.

  After a while, the sobbing subsided and Elisa began to take deep, shaky breaths. She opened her eyes and put her hand over Dehan’s again. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m OK now. The Lord sends these trials to test us, but I know my Angela is with him, in Heaven.” She braced herself and said, “You had better tell me what happened.”