by P J Parrish
“I don’t know.”
Louis took a breath. He knew Mobley had no business letting a civilian take evidence, even from a closed case.
Okay. Start lying. You’re getting pretty damn good at it.
“Look,” Louis said, “if you don’t agree to this, Susan will eventually subpoena Sandusky for any copies he has.”
Mobley’s eyes jumped to Louis’s face. His expression took on a whole new look of frustration.
“It’s us against the lawyers, Lance.”
Mobley swung his chair slightly. “All right. But I get to see the results first. If that slide comes back O-positive, it goes back in the box and neither of us ever touched it. Agreed?”
Louis nodded. “What if it doesn’t?”
Mobley picked up the Clot Buster and bounced it lightly against his palm. “Maybe it still goes back in the box,” he said.
Louis sat on the bench outside Vince Carissimi’s office. He could hear Vince inside, talking to someone. Across the hall, through the glass door to the autopsy room, he could see a green bulk moving slowly around. It was Octavius, the diener, finishing up a cadaver. Louis leaned his head back against the cool tile.
He had called ahead, but the receptionist told him Vince was busy. Louis had come over to wait anyway. His eyes drifted up to the wall clock, then to the sign above the autopsy door.
Mortui vivos docent. “The dead teach the living.”
He reached back to the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the picture of Kitty. It was starting to get creased from all the handling and he ran his palm over it, trying to flatten it back in shape. Finally, he reached back again for his wallet, opened it, and carefully slipped the picture in between some bills.
He heard Vince’s door open and jumped to his feet, slipping the wallet back in his pocket.
A strange man came out, followed by Vince, who looked at Louis in surprise. “Hey, Louis, what gives?” he asked.
“Vince, I need your help,” Louis said, picking up a manila envelope from the bench.
“Gotta be quick, man, I am up to my ass in alligators today,” Vince said, starting down the hall with long strides.
Louis was at his side, holding out the envelope. “I got the sample.”
Vince stopped, frowning at the envelope.
“The missing vaginal semen sample,” Louis said.
Vince hesitated, then took the envelope. He dug inside and pulled out the slide, still in its twenty-year-old plastic evidence bag. Vince held it up to the florescent light.
“Can you type it?” Louis asked.
Vince sighed. “Won’t know ’til I get it under the scope.”
“Can I wait?”
Vince gave him a look, then glanced at his watch. “All right, come on.”
In the lab, Louis hovered in the background while Vince slipped the old slide under the microscope. He knew this was a long shot. What were the chances that anything could survive twenty years in some municipal storeroom? His fears were confirmed when Vince turned. He could read it in the M.E.’s face.
“It’s totally disintegrated,” Vince said. “Memoriae, Louis, nothing but a memory now.”
Louis let out a sigh and watched as Vince pulled out the slide and slipped it back in the plastic. He handed it to Louis.
“I’m sorry, man,” Vince said.
“I appreciate you trying, Vince.”
Vince cocked his head. “You okay?”
Louis nodded, looking at the slide in the plastic evidence bag.
“Look, I understand how this can be,” Vince said. “I had a little girl on my table once, an abuse case. I didn’t sleep for weeks until they finally put her stepfather behind bars. A case like the Kitty Jagger thing, it can get under your skin.”
Louis looked up at him. Maybe it was the way Vince had said her name, maybe it was just the look of compassion on Vince’s face. But something pulled inside Louis’s chest.
“I’ve got to get going,” Louis said. “Thanks again, Vince.”
Outside, Louis paused to slip on his sunglasses. His gaze drifted over to Page Field, where a small plane floated down to the runaway and rose again, the pilot practicing touch-and-goes.
Dead end. Like Vince said, there was nothing but memories of Kitty now, memories that the decades had rendered useless. Joyce Novick’s rose-colored reminiscences, Willard’s fading echoes, none of that could help him now.
Bob Ahnert . . .
Louis watched the plane circling. But Bob Ahnert remembered clearly, remembered things he didn’t want to tell. Kitty was still talking to him. And he was still listening.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I figured you’d be calling sooner or later,” Ahnert said.
“We need to talk,” Louis said.
There was a silence on the other end of the line. “All right,” Ahnert said. “I’m on duty. You’ll have to come out to the substation.” He gave directions and hung up without another word.
Louis was an hour’s drive into the wasteland of the Corkscrew Preserve before he saw the radio tower that Ahnert had told him to watch for. It led him to a sun-bleached cinderblock building set in the flat gray-green scrub land, land that looked untouched by the recent hard rains. There were no trees, nothing to give shelter from the sun. The only break in the monotonous landscape was the line of electrical towers marching like skeletons to the horizon.
Louis parked next to the Lee County Sheriff’s Department cruiser in front. As he got out of the Mustang, he saw Bob Ahnert emerge from the building.
Why was Ahnert wearing the standard green uniform? He was a detective, wasn’t he? Louis’s eyes dipped to the name tag on Ahnert’s shirt. SGT. AHNERT. Had the guy been busted in rank? Is that why he was sitting out in a substation in the middle of nowhere?
Ahnert removed his glasses, drew out a handkerchief and started to wipe them.
“You must want something pretty bad to drive all the way out here,” he said, putting his sunglasses back on and resting his hip against his cruiser.
“I know now what was missing from Kitty’s homicide file,” Louis said. “The second lab report. That’s what you were talking about, wasn’t it?”
Ahnert drew a cigar out of his breast pocket and lit it. He didn’t have to cup a hand; there wasn’t one whiff of a breeze out here.
“Did you find it?” Ahnert asked.
“No.”
“So that’s why you’re here. You want me to tell you what it said,” Ahnert said.
“Yes.”
Ahnert drew on the cigar. Louis could see his reflection in Ahnert’s sunglasses.
“Is she talking to you yet?” Ahnert asked.
Louis stiffened slightly. “Yes,” he said.
For a moment, Ahnert didn’t move. Louis could hear the faint hum of the electrical lines above. He could feel the sun on his neck.
Ahnert took the cigar out of his mouth. “The semen inside her was blood type AB-negative,” he said.
“That proves Cade didn’t rape her,” Louis said.
“You’re not going to prove anything on my memory,” Ahnert said. “You’re going to have to find that report. Why haven’t you gone back to Duvall’s old defense records?”
Louis shook his head. “I can’t get access.”
Louis waited for Ahnert to say something, but he just chewed on the cigar, watching Louis through the sunglasses.
“I have reason to believe that Duvall buried the semen report and let an innocent man go to prison,” Louis said.
“Duvall was a winner. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about two killers? You consider that?”
Was Ahnert talking about Cade and Ronnie acting together? It was sickening, the image of Ronnie raping Kitty and then Cade killing her to shut her up. Was that what Cade meant by blood being thicker than water?
“Cade and Ronnie . . . together?” Louis asked.
Ahnert said nothing, just moved the cigar to the othe
r side of his mouth.
“Sergeant,” Louis said, “was that where you were going with this twenty years ago?”
A lone white egret took sudden flight and Ahnert watched it rise and disappear against the bleached sky. “April 9th. That’s the day she was killed. I remember it was hot, like summer was coming early.” He paused. “ ‘April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.’ ”
He looked back at Louis. “It doesn’t matter where I was going twenty years ago.”
“It mattered. It still does,” Louis said. “I think you still want to solve this case. I think you’re the only one who does.”
“Besides you, you mean.”
“Yes.”
Ahnert was silent for a long time, looking out over the desolate landscape.
“It’s over for me,” he said. “She’s yours now.”
Louis was surprised to hear a hint of relief in Ahnert’s voice. What the hell had happened to this man twenty years ago? Had he been so obsessed with finding Kitty’s killer that it had destroyed his career and the rest of his life?
He suddenly heard Mobley talking to him as he leaned over the bar at O’Sullivan’s.
He stole an item that belonged to the victim. A gold necklace. Some kind of heart-shaped locket. Guess Ahnert needed the money.
Ahnert hadn’t needed the money a cheap gold necklace would have brought, and he wasn’t obsessed with finding Kitty’s killer. It was her he was obsessed with.
“Why did you stop investigating?” Louis asked.
“I was told to.”
Louis shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”
Ahnert finally looked back at Louis. “I was hung up on a dead girl.” He looked away. “It’s sick, isn’t it?”
Louis ran a hand over the back of his neck. It wasn’t the sun that was making him sweat.
“I’m just trying to give her justice,” Louis said quietly.
Ahnert didn’t answer. He tossed the cigar into the sand and squashed it out with his boot. Then he picked a bit of wet tobacco off his lips and flicked it away.
“Forget justice,” he said. “Give her some peace.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was on the drive back to Fort Myers that Louis remembered something Ronnie Cade had said the very first time he had gone out to J.C. Landscaping. Ronnie had mentioned that his father had bailed him out of jail when he was a teenager. That meant Ronnie probably had a record. And there was a slim chance that the record could lead to a blood type on file somewhere. But he needed Mobley’s help to get it.
The reception area outside Mobley’s office was empty when Louis got there. He looked at the wall clock. Past five. Mobley’s door was shut, the lights off. He was about to leave when the Amazon came in, carrying a freshly washed coffeepot.
She smiled at him. “What are you doing back here?”
“I needed to see the sheriff.”
“Too late. He cut out early today. He won’t be back ’til Monday.”
“Damn,” Louis said under his breath.
“Can I help?” she asked.
Louis almost told her no, but nodded. “Yeah, maybe you can. Can you check to see if someone has a record?”
“Sure. What’s his name?”
“Ronnie Cade.”
She gave him a look, but went to the computer terminal at the back of the room. Leaning over the chair, she brought the monitor to life and looked back at Louis.
“Got a social or a birthday?”
“Sorry.”
She typed in the name, then looked back at him. “I got two. Ronald John or Ronald Walter?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Do you have birth dates or anything else there?”
“I got one in nineteen-forty-nine and one in nineteen-thirty-two.”
“It’s got to be forty-nine.”
She pecked at the keys, then the printer in the corner started pumping out a piece of paper. She ripped it off and brought it to Louis.
Ronnie Cade had one charge: a DUI from 1976, the result of an accident with injuries. Finally, a break. Any accident victim who had been treated at a hospital was always tested for alcohol. And they were routinely blood-typed.
“Excuse me,” Louis said.
The Amazon had been putting away the coffee filters and she looked back at Louis over her shoulder.
“Is there any way you can check to see if the hospital records for this accident are in his file?” Louis asked.
For the first time, she gave him something other than a smile. “Hey, I’ve clocked out. I gotta go pick up my kid at the baby-sitter.”
“I wouldn’t ask—”
“But you really need this . . . yeah, yeah, yeah.” She heaved a big sigh. “We don’t usually have hospital records.”
“Sometimes they’re put in the files. Can you check?”
She took the computer printout back. Louis paced while she made the call. He was looking up at Dinkle’s portrait when she called his name.
“This must be your lucky day. We’ve got them,” she said.
Louis came toward her quickly. “I just need to know his blood type.”
She spoke into the phone and looked back. “O-positive.”
Louis let out a sigh. He was relieved for the sake of Ronnie and Eric.
The Amazon had hung up the phone and was now stuffing things into her big purse.
“Can you tell me how I can reach the sheriff?” Louis asked.
“No way. He would kill me.”
“I doubt that. Come on, it’s important.”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay, but don’t tell him I told you. He’s a partner in a supper club down in Naples—La Veranda. He’ll be there tonight and tomorrow night. I’ve been there. Fancy place. Men gotta wear ties to get in.” She smiled. “I can drive you down, if you want, after I pick up my kid.”
Louis smiled. “Maybe some other time.”
Outside, he paused on the sidewalk. He knew he needed to call Susan. The fact that neither Cade nor Ronnie had raped Kitty could still be important to her defense. If he could tie Kitty and Duvall’s deaths together. And if she would listen.
But there was something else, and it bothered him when he recognized it. He just plain wanted to talk to her.
He turned and walked a block to a café, ducking inside to a pay phone in the back. He dialed her office number and it rang ten times before she picked it up, breathless.
“Susan, don’t hang up,” he said.
She hesitated. “I wasn’t going to.”
“I want you to listen to me without saying a word.”
There was another pause. “Okay.”
Louis took her through his day, laying everything out for her, from the unreadable slide to Bob Ahnert’s revelation about the AB-negative sample. He finished up with the fact that neither Jack nor Ronnie Cade raped Kitty.
She said nothing.
“Well?” he asked.
“I’m a little stunned,” she said softly. “I’m trying to figure out what I can use.” There was a pause. “Can you bring me this report that says Kitty’s rapist was AB-negative?”
“Not exactly.”
“Can I subpoena it from someone?”
“No.”
A long pause this time. “Where is this report?”
“It’s in Jack Cade’s trial file from 1967, which was on Spencer’s desk when he was shot. The cops picked it up along with everything else.”
There was another pause. Louis could hear papers rustling. He was about to tell her that he was going to see Mobley when she interrupted.
“It’s not here,” she said.
“What?”
“I have the evidence sheet from Duvall’s office right here in front of me. There’s no mention of Jack Cade’s trial file. It’s not here.”
“It has to be. You’re sure?”
“I’m looking at the list, Louis. They took other files, but no
thing about Jack Cade.”
Louis shifted the receiver to his other ear. “Then where the fuck is it?”
“How the hell should—”
“Wait,” Louis said quickly. “Ellie told me that she gave Duvall the file. It was there. So whoever killed Duvall must have taken it.”
They were both silent for a moment.
“Susan, I have to go see Mobley,” Louis said. “Come with me.”
“Why?”
“I need to convince him to reopen Kitty’s homicide.”
“You don’t need me for that.”
“Yes I do. I need him to see you’re with me on this.”
Susan was quiet for a moment. “If I decide to use this in a new defense, I don’t want to tip my hand. Mobley is a cop, Louis, with a cop brain. I can’t trust him.”
“Susan, listen to me. You’re going to have a hard time making this believable. You need Mobley to reopen Kitty’s homicide for credibility. You need the cops on your side this time.”
Susan was quiet.
“Trust him, Susan,” Louis said. “And me.”
He heard her sigh. “Okay. Give me an hour. Pick me up at home.”
Chapter Thirty
Susan jerked open the door and stared at Louis.
“Damn,” she said.
“What?” Louis said.
She waved a hand at his blue blazer and tie. “Why didn’t you tell me this was dressy?”
Louis’s eyes traveled down to Susan’s blue jeans and back up to her face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re meeting Mobley at a restaurant down in Naples.”
Susan let out an impatient snort. “Give me ten minutes,” she said over her shoulder as she disappeared down the hall.
Louis came into the living room. Benjamin was tossing foil icicles on a Christmas tree, helped by a teenaged girl Louis assumed was the dreaded April.
“Hey, Benjamin,” Louis said.
“Hey.” He eyed Louis’s striped tie. “Ricco Tubbs wouldn’t be caught dead in that tie.”
“Well, when I get my Masarati, I’ll upgrade.”
“You taking my mom on a date?”
“Nope. Just work.”
Benjamin went back to throwing wads of icicles. Louis stood there watching him until a flash of red made him turn.