“Thanks, Mikey,” Richards said, his voice soft, unhurried. “We appreciate this info. We’ll see what we can do to get the gun. Maybe run a ballistics on it and see if it was used in any other crime. But a couple things still trouble me.” He paused, thinking about which one to ask about first. “You don’t think TJ’s involved?”
“No.”
“Seems a stretch, though, to say the timing of his disappearance is a coincidence, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I do agree. But I think that’s exactly what it is.”
“You really think,” Joe Vincent said, “that TJ ran off because Elizondo came between him and his boyfriend? Risk those millions of dollars?”
“TJ is a person of deep convictions,” I said. “You’d have to know him.”
“But,” said Richards, “I thought you never met him. How could you know why he ran?”
“I don’t know. But I feel like I know as much about TJ as someone could without meeting him. I’m not pretending to have all the answers here. I’m just telling you my hunches. You can do what you want with ’em.”
Richards nodded. “Please don’t take offense. Nobody’s questioning your abilities. We’re just trying to understand.”
“Was this common knowledge?” Joe said. “About TJ bein’ a queer?”
“No.”
“This couldn’t be a blackmail deal? Go public with the big gay scandal?”
“It’s possible, but I haven’t found any evidence of that yet.”
“And if it is,” Richards said, “money would be the motive, right? You said the guy in the Mustang wanted money. TJ’s money. So why kill Eddie? Send a message?”
“Because Eddie owed the money. TJ had bailed him out before and these guys expect him to do it again. Except nobody could find TJ and Eddie ran outta time. But they still plan to collect.”
“So the million-dollar question is, who’s your friend of a friend?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew, guys. I never met the guy before.”
“Who’s he workin’ for?” Joe demanded.
“I dunno.”
Joe leveled a finger at me. “Don’t you lie to me, Garrity.”
“Fuck you, Joe. I ain’t lyin’.”
“Take it easy,” Richards said.
“You think I haven’t been tryin’ to figure that out?” I said, growing pissed. “A friend?! What does that mean? Someone who sends a decapitated head home with my little girl? You think I don’t wanna have a conversation with that scumbag? I’ve gone through every crazy angle I can come up with. Maybe it’s somebody who knows someone here at Global. God knows, Eli probably has a Rolodex full of enemies. Or some friend of TJ’s I haven’t uncovered yet. Maybe the connection is me somehow. I probably arrested a thousand people in my career, including mob guys when I was with MBI. I bet there are more than a few people out there who did a little happy dance when they heard I had cancer. But what if it’s TJ himself? Finally getting rid of his deadbeat leech cousin and setting up this game to throw us off the trail. With his money, he could afford a scheme like that. I don’t have any goddamn answers. Everything I’ve told you is the truth. If you want me to keep my hunches to myself, fine. But if you’re smart, you’ll take advantage of my seventeen years on the job and listen to whatever the hell I want to say.”
Joe Vincent looked unimpressed, his lips pressed together in a cynical pucker. Gary Richards spread his hands.
“Okay, Mikey,” Richards said. “Is there anything else you want to tell us?”
“No.” Then: “Yes. I want my cup of goddamn hazelnut coffee.”
CHAPTER 23
I drank my coffee and finished up with Joe Vincent and Gary Richards. They’d spend the rest of the afternoon at Global Talent interviewing George, Eli, and anyone else who they thought might know something.
I stepped out of the building onto the humid downtown Orlando sidewalk to find a swarm of cameras buzzing and clicking in my face.
“Mr. Garrity!”
“Mike!”
“What’s your connection to Boyz Klub?”
“Was TJ involved in his cousin’s murder?”
“How did you discover the head?”
The press. Finally. Just doin’ their jobs, I suppose, but it didn’t mean I had to like it. I gave them my best sourpuss and pushed through to the parking garage. They barked more questions at me, two guys with video cameras actually following me down the cement stairs. But they soon got the picture that I wasn’t talking and gave up, turning their attention back to the lobby of the building that housed Global Talent Inc.
I called Cam and she said that she was on her way to pick up Jennifer and take her to work at the mall. Jennifer had been called in. I didn’t like her going out, even to her job, but I hadn’t reached the point where I could really justify keeping her locked up. I promised to see her when her shift was over.
I tried calling TJ again, with no results. Before I knew it, I realized I was heading toward Isleworth. I decided to keep going.
I was still on Arlene Sommerset’s access list, and the security guard passed me through into the wealthy enclave. A few minutes later I was in front of Arlene’s door, ringing the doorbell.
There was no answer, even after two more rings, so I took a stroll around the house. As I came around the back of the house, I heard a soft splash. Through the patio screen I saw Arlene swimming laps in her pool. I knocked on the frame of the screen door. Her head jerked up.
“Hi,” I said.
She said nothing, considering me for a moment before dipping her head back into the water and finishing her lap. She stepped up out of the pool and grabbed a chartreuse beach towel. She was wearing an attractive red-and-white, one-piece bathing suit, which complemented her body. Her skin was tight and smooth and she didn’t appear at all self-conscious about her body, as some women do. I surprised myself by watching with a little too much interest the sparkling droplets of water rolling down her thighs and calves, her wet skin glistening in the sun. I realized that I was on the precipice of creepy and averted my eyes.
She covered herself with the towel and walked over to me. Expressionless, she flipped the lock on the door handle and turned away.
As she walked, she said, “You want an iced tea or something?”
“Yeah,” I said, opening the door and following her to the lanai. She got a couple of drinks and sat at what was probably expensive patio furniture.
“Exercise helps me when I’m stressed,” Arlene said, sipping her tea, leaning forward onto the glass table.
“You’re stressed now?”
“I’m worried about TJ. He hasn’t answered any of my calls or returned any of my messages. I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to him. He’s my whole world.”
“I understand.”
“How did he sound? When you talked to him, how did he sound?”
“Well, I’ve never spoken to him before, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to, but he was upset about Eddie. It was a shock to hear it like that, from me, on Eddie’s phone.”
“Do you still think he might hurt himself?”
“I don’t think so. I was never sure about that. Still not. But it’s not my call. I don’t know him. All I know is, he was upset.” I took a breath. “I’m more worried about the danger from whoever killed Eddie.”
Arlene turned and gazed out over the trimmed grass and at the lake beyond. Without looking at me, she said, “You have the most brilliant green eyes.”
I didn’t reply. I’ve never been good at compliments, which is how I took her statement. I swallowed a mouthful of iced tea.
“I know you’re trying to help,” she said, turning back to me. “I know you just want to protect my son.” She put her hand on top of mine. “I’m sorry this has involved you personally. Your family. Your daughter having to deal with that. It’s awful. Eddie caused a lot of trouble in his life. Even gone, he’s still causing trouble.” She leaned closer to me. “For some reason,
I trust you, Mike Garrity. I want you to keep looking for my boy. I want you to bring him home safely to me.” Her eyes locked on mine for a long beat.
Then she kissed me. Not one of those chaste, grateful-sister kisses on the cheek, but a full-blown face press with no ambiguity in its intention. I kissed her back, tasting the pool-cleansed skin, feeling the delicate, silky texture of her lips against mine.
She leaned back in her chair and drained her iced tea.
“I think you should go now.”
“Yeah,” I said, and finished my own glass.
* * *
“So what’re we lookin’ at here, Igor?” I said, flipping through the medical examiner’s report. The good stuff was in the back, past the size of the gallbladder and the color of the pancreas, where the ME offered his summary of findings and conclusions.
Igor winced at my use of that name. I didn’t mean to, it was just a habit. We stood in a small, colorless, locked office at the Orange/Osceola County Medical Examiner’s building, which also handled the city of Orlando. The lights were low, the only illumination a pale yellow desk lamp. I wasn’t supposed to be able even to see the autopsy report—the DA had asked for it to be sealed fearing a media frenzy. But Igor had palmed a copy for my perusal, which I appreciated.
“Pretty straight up,” Igor said. “Toxicology came back negative. Stomach was empty. Boy hadn’t eaten in a while. Cause of death was the big bullet in his forehead. Scrambled up everything inside his skull. Looks like a thirty-eight did the job, but no slug was recovered, so it’s just an educated guess. GSR was thick on the skin. Point-blank, execution-style. Optic nerves are strained. Pressure in the head almost popped his eyeballs right out. Seen that plenty of times before.” Igor shook his head, recalling the not-so-fond memories.
I skimmed through the medical mumbo jumbo, reading past the Latin, and found the conclusions. They jibed with Igor’s summary.
“So when did they go to work on his neck?” I asked.
“Not sure. Not right away. Couple hours, tops. Lotta blood drained first. There wasn’t very much blood around the neck wound, considering the location and … severity. They used a sharp knife, probably a big one, to cut the tissue, based on the cleanliness of the cut. Maybe some butcher shears severed the spine. Maybe a good set of tree pruners. They didn’t chop off his head to kill him. That was just for fun.”
“And you’re sure the head fits the body?”
“No doubt. The tissue cut lines match up like a puzzle. Plus, we pulled a bunch of grass and vegetation from both the clothes on the body and the hair on the head. They match. Same kind of mud. Same sand. We’ll run a full lab set on the dirt and vegetation, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes. At some point, the head and the body were both lying on the same patch of ground. My take is that they were still attached. Then the bad guys popped him and let him bleed for a while before pulling out the Ginsu. Also, the fingerprints from the kid’s apartment match our headless horseman. That also puts the body with the head, which had a visual ID.”
“Yeah,” I said with full recognition that I was the one to offer the first visual ID. “So who ran the prints?”
“The ones what own the body, OPD. You know him. Joe Vincent. Big asshole. The other guys own the head.”
“Anything else unusual?” I said, flipping some more pages in the report.
“Nada.”
“So whose case is it? Who owns the whole corpse, OPD or the county?”
Igor shrugged. “Eeny meeny miny moe. The boy’s dead. That’s all that matters to me. Gotta get him cleaned up for the funeral. They wanna plant him tomorrow.”
“That’s pretty fast.”
“The autopsy on the body was already done. The ME had already figured some sort of head trauma was the cause of death, based on the lack of any other injuries and no sign of bleeding when the head was severed. Once we got the head, it didn’t take long to finish the report. Besides, the family wants closure. From what I hear, the boy was a handful.”
I nodded and handed the file back to him, thanking him. I made my way out of the maze of cinder-block hallways that smelled of formaldehyde and latex. And death. Outside, I squinted up into the bright afternoon sun and inhaled the clean, unbloodied air. Hot again today. Mid-nineties. Eighty-five percent humidity with the daily afternoon showers on their way. I had been outside all of ten seconds, but the beads of sweat were already budding across my forehead. Summer in Central Florida.
Arlene would have the information on the funeral arrangements. I would definitely attend. The cops, both Orlando Metro and Orange County, would stake out the funeral, hoping that the killer would show. They both had my description of the Mustang and its driver. Teams of undercover guys, cameras with long-range lenses, maybe even a blue-and-white cruiser to spook a reaction, they’d be there in force.
I also thought that there was a better than average shot that TJ would make an appearance. And if both TJ and the killer were there, that was a situation I probably needed to insert myself into.
But why? I asked myself as I walked the frying-pan-hot asphalt to my truck. I didn’t think TJ was coming back to Boyz Klub, so my shot at the big payoff from Global Talent was remote at best. And it was dangerous. I still didn’t understand everything going on here, but I knew enough to realize that whatever it was, it was enough motive to kill Eddie Sommerset and send his head home with my daughter. The smart move was to stay as far away from the whole mess as I could get. Unfortunately, I was never the smartest guy in my class.
I could still taste Arlene Sommerset’s lips on mine. She was counting on me to find her son and keep him safe. She was paying me nothing, but I felt a much stronger obligation to her than to Eli or George. I had also grown to admire and respect TJ. At least, I thought I did. I didn’t really know him, but I cared what happened to him.
Plus, and if I was really being honest with myself, this was probably the strongest reason, if anything happened to TJ, it would break Jennifer’s heart. I couldn’t bear the thought of anything hurting her. Anything.
At some point, when Bob has finally had his way with me and I’m gone, Jennifer will likely have to deal with the emotional baggage of that. But, until that moment came, I would do everything in my power to prevent even the tiniest grain of hurt from touching her. If I had realized anything in the brief time she had been staying with me, it was that I had caused her enough pain in her life with my absence, as well as my apathy. From now until the end, I would do what I could to atone for that by wrapping her in a cocoon of safety.
And if that meant attending Eddie Sommeset’s funeral and protecting TJ’s life, even at the possible risk of my own, that was what I would do.
* * *
When I got to Cam’s place, she and Jennifer were boiling pasta and ripping iceberg lettuce for a salad. Cam lived in an expensive condo in the trendy section of downtown Winter Park, just off the main drag of chic Park Avenue. Wall-to-wall, blond hardwood floors. Track lighting. Surround-sound stereo. Cam’s décor was modern and tasteful: more Restoration Hardware and Williams-Sonoma than Home Depot and Sears.
Dinner was quiet, the events of the previous evening lying like a dark blanket over us.
“Jenn, you alright?” I finally asked, putting down my fork.
“I guess.”
“You may have to give another statement,” I said. “This time to the Orlando city detectives.”
“What?” Jennifer looked stricken. “Why? Why do I have to go through all of that again?”
“It’s complicated. And stupid. For now, they’re gonna work from your statements to the county detectives. But they may want to ask you some more questions.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
“I don’t wanna do it.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll do everything I can.”
The three of us sat in silence for another minute, the only sound our forks clinking on our plates.
“Did you reach Becky?” Cam
asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “I left another message on her cell phone.”
“Mom doesn’t need to come home,” Jennifer said. “I’m not a baby.”
“No,” I said. “You’re not.”
More silence. More clinking.
“Dad?”
I looked up from my twirled pasta.
“What does this have to do with TJ?” Jennifer asked.
I popped the spaghetti into my mouth and chewed, considering her question. I thought about what right she had to the truth. Considering that she was the one who’d toted Eddie Sommerset’s head home from the mall, she was as entitled to the truth as anyone.
So I told her. I told her everything except the part about Miguel. Being gay was TJ’s private life and not mine to share. But Jennifer got everything else.
She listened without interruption, without showing much emotion. When I was done, she sat looking at me, but not seeing me, lost in her thoughts.
Finally, she said, “I want to go to the funeral.”
“No,” I said.
“I’m going.”
“No. It could be dangerous.”
“With or without you, I’m going.”
“Jennifer, it’s not a good idea. I don’t know who’ll be there.”
“I need to go,” she said. “I don’t know why. But I need to go. It’ll help. No matter what you say, I’m going. You’re gonna have to handcuff me to the bed to keep me from going.”
I pursed my lips, squinting at her. I didn’t think she was bluffing. And I didn’t think she wanted to go to satisfy some looky-loo morbid curiosity. I think she was actually sincere. An amazing accomplishment for a fifteen-year-old.
“Okay,” I finally muttered. “But you stay next to me the whole time and do exactly as I say.”
Cam shook her head. “A chip off the ol’ block.”
I snorted and couldn’t help but smile. I resumed eating. When I stole a glance at Jennifer, I could see her suppressing her own grin.
CHAPTER 24
Jennifer had brought her laptop to Cam’s and we spent a little over an hour surfing the chat rooms and looking for Klubhopper1. He was a no-show. I tried TJ’s cell phone again. No luck. He wasn’t answering.
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