Luc was pale.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
‘Just a matter of time,’ he murmured.
‘Till what?’
‘Till I screw up.’
‘We’re both going to do that, surely.’
‘It’s different for you,’ Luc said. ‘You’re cool under pressure.’
‘Sometimes,’ Cathy said. ‘But you’re actually brilliant.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m going to mess this up. I always do.’
Much later, she’d gone, tired but still excited, to thank Nic, had been about to knock at the door of his office at the back of the building …
‘Bad idea.’ Sadi Guinard stood behind her, wearing a shiny black leather jacket, a tote bag over her shoulder. ‘Did the boss ask for you?’
‘No. I just—’
‘Doesn’t matter what,’ Sadi said. ‘Just a warning. Never enter Nic’s office unless you’ve been invited. He’s a fantastic guy, but he’s crazy about his privacy.’
‘He seems so easy-going,’ Cathy said.
‘He is,’ Sadi agreed. ‘Nic’s great. But I’ve …’ She smiled. ‘Let’s say, I’ve seen his darker side. We all have one, n’est-ce pas?’
And with that, she had gone.
Despite the rotation system used in the appointment of lead investigators, Sergeant Beth Riley was aware that Lieutenant Kovac took every legitimate opportunity to deprive Detectives Becket and Martinez of anything other than routine cases.
As it turned out today, however, neither Riley nor Kovac had any alternative but to get Sam Becket out of bed and to this crime scene stat this very early Monday morning.
Because a personal message had been left there for Sam.
Which had begged the question of whether he was the right man to lead the case.
‘The lieutenant thought not,’ Riley had told Sam.
‘There’s a surprise,’ Sam had said drily.
‘But Captain Kennedy agreed with me,’ Riley said. ‘Your case.’
‘I thank you both.’
‘Don’t thank me too soon,’ Riley said.
The message had been stuck to the outside of the windshield of the BMW like one of those nasties that self-appointed parking attendants liked leaving on cars. The kind that took forever to get off the glass.
This one would be removed very differently once Crime Scene was done here, the whole windshield going with it.
For the Personal Attention of Detective Samuel Becket,
Miami Beach Police Department
It should not be allowed.
Simple as that.
It goes against creation.
I have no quibble with all men being created equal.
But we were created with differences.
If that was good enough for the Almighty, it should be good enough for us.
It should not be allowed.
I can’t stop you all.
But I can say my piece.
Love Virginia
That ‘piece’ – printed in Baskerville font on white US letter-size paper – had been ‘said’ with monstrous clarity, ostensibly by someone naming themselves ‘Virginia’.
Four victims bound, gagged and poisoned to death by carbon monoxide in a BMW 320d four-door sedan inside the sealed one-car garage of a house on Stillwater Drive belonging to Gary and Molly Burton. Two males and one female hogtied, but the fourth victim, another female, apparently having been singled out for maximum torture. A cord tied around her neck and attached to her feet, designed to strangle her if she moved the wrong way.
No right way for her to have moved once the gas had begun working.
And one glaringly possible reason why she had been chosen for an even more terrifying death ordeal than the other three.
Molly Burton had been Chinese-American. Her husband, Gary, Caucasian.
The investigators didn’t have to be geniuses to believe this was a highly organized, singularly cruel and racially motivated homicide, the author of the windshield message plainly stating her or his case against interracial marriage. The ‘I can’t stop you all’ line presumably directed at – or at the very least intended to include – Sam Becket.
The crime having been committed in his jurisdiction.
An African-American police detective married to a white woman.
Sam guessed he knew now what had been keeping him from sleep a handful of hours ago. That improbable sense of something coming.
Here it was.
‘Bedroom safe’s been opened,’ Martinez reported after words with officers first on the scene. ‘Not forced, but empty.’ He paused. ‘The babysitter who called this in—’
‘Babysitter?’ Sam’s stomach clenched.
‘Not here, man,’ Martinez said. ‘The Burtons didn’t have kids. She was sitting for their friends who live a few houses down.’ He checked his notes. ‘Pete and Mary Ann Ventrino, here for a barbecue and didn’t come home, so she came looking. No ID yet.’
‘But probably them,’ Sam said.
Fire Rescue had gone in first to ventilate, and on their arrival the detectives had taken their first look at the victims and been sickened. In time, the BMW would be transported to the medical examiner’s office with the deceased still inside. Crime Scene would continue processing there, but meanwhile they were working in the garage – dusting, photographing, sketching, peeling off and bagging the lengths of tape that had been used to seal up the death trap – and all over the house, especially the bedroom.
Scene of an apparent robbery.
‘Key operated,’ Sam said now, looking at the safe.
‘So either they made husband or wife open it …’ Martinez said.
‘Or they took care of the victims first, then took the keys and helped themselves,’ Sam said. ‘No question we’re talking “they”.’
‘The message said “I”,’ Martinez pointed out. ‘Virginia.’
‘Boss,’ Sam hazarded. ‘Of a killing team. Maybe present, maybe absent.’ He shook his head. ‘Let’s do this.’
They started in the bedroom, taking their own photographs, Sam sketching the scene from different perspectives, making notes, then leaving the work to the techs and going back along the corridor to the hall.
They’d seen armed robberies that had spun way out of control for all kinds of reasons, and they’d seen drug-fueled robberies ending in tragedy.
Nothing unpremeditated about this calculated brutality.
‘Killers from the off,’ Sam said. ‘Not armed robbers.’
‘Depends what was in that safe,’ Martinez said.
‘Maybe.’
No jewelry on the victims, so it was likely that the murderers had stolen even wedding rings, maybe waiting until they were unconscious, then leaving through the house door and sealing that up from the other side.
They made a note to check the Burtons’ insurance policies, since jewelry, at least, might be traceable. Not so, of course, with cash, though who knew what the couple might have kept in the safe: documents relating to property, marriage, birth or other certificates, raising the slight possibility of identity theft. A minimal consideration, given that this case would soon hit the news, and after sunrise the crime scene tape visible from the Intracoastal as well as the road would bring all kinds of rubberneckers and vultures …
‘How many you think we’re looking for?’ Martinez asked quietly.
‘No signs they put up a fight, so armed, for sure.’ Sam paused. ‘One on one, I’m guessing, maybe more.’
‘The empty safe’s maybe a little extra frosting on their cake, or just water-muddying for our benefit.’
‘Much like the signature,’ Sam said.
They returned to the front of the house and found Dr Elliot Sanders, Chief Medical Examiner, his Hawaiian-style shirt vivid in the LED lighting, taking his first look inside the car.
‘I thought, when I got my promotion,’ Sanders said, coming outside, ‘that I’d at least get to spend nights with my wife, but we got two
on-call MEs down with flu, so here I am looking at another piece of depravity.’ He shook his head, took a cigar from his top pocket.
‘Doc?’ Sam reached out to grab it. ‘Flammable situation.’
‘I wasn’t going to smoke it, Sam.’ The ME’s eyes were amused as he took back the Romeo y Julieta. ‘Enough dead people here already.’
‘What do you have?’ Sam asked.
‘Not much till we get the car to my place – pity we can’t move the whole damned garage.’ He paused. ‘Mrs Burton was probably strangled by that cord before she lost consciousness. The others died from CO poisoning – though, like always, that’s subject to confirmation.’
‘So her husband had to watch her being tortured to death,’ Sam said grimly. ‘Part of his “punishment”, maybe.’ He looked at the ME. ‘You saw the letter, Doc?’
Sanders nodded. ‘Nice.’ He chewed on his unlit cigar for a moment. ‘Remember Joseph Franklin? Liked killing mixed race couples.’
‘Sure. Joseph Paul Franklin. Member of the KKK and National Socialist White People’s Party. Changed his first names as a tribute to Goebbels. Didn’t he shoot his victims?’
‘Mostly,’ Sanders said. ‘Though I recall he firebombed a temple and robbed banks.’
‘He still alive?’ Martinez asked.
‘On death row,’ Sam said. ‘In Missouri, I believe.’
‘He escaped one time,’ Sanders said. ‘Was recaptured in Florida.’
‘So if it’s racist, why the other couple?’ Martinez brought them back.
‘Maybe they were just here.’ Sanders rolled the cigar beneath his nostrils.
‘Or maybe they were considered “guilty” too,’ Sam said. ‘Condoning the Burton marriage.’
The ME looked at him. ‘You sure you want to take this case, Sam?’
Sam looked right back at him. ‘Never more sure of anything, Doc.’
Andria Carrasco, the fifteen-year-old babysitter, had sounded terrified during her 911 call, unable to remember the Burtons’ house number – which was where she thought ‘something terrible’ had happened – but had told the dispatcher that if the police came to the Ventrinos’ house, she would show them.
She’d been as good as her word, according to the patrol officers, had pointed them to the house and then, still badly shaken, had been escorted back along the towpath.
She was in the Ventrino house now, in the Florida room with her mother, Mrs Lisa Carrasco. A female officer sitting with Johnny and Mia Ventrino while attempts were made to locate their parents’ adult next of kin.
Andria was still trembling. ‘I keep thinking I should have done something, got that door open, turned off the engine, done something.’
‘There was nothing you or anyone else could have done,’ Martinez told her. ‘It was too late, Andria.’
‘I’ve been telling her that,’ her mother said, ‘but she won’t believe me.’
‘Anyway,’ Sam said, ‘you did the most important thing of all for them. You took care of their children, Miss Carrasco. They’re safe, thanks to you.’
‘I could have gone sooner. They were never late coming home – I should have known something bad …’
Andria stopped talking, buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
Inconsolable, and who could blame her?
It was clear from the off that Andria Carrasco had nothing to offer, that she’d arrived considerably after the crime and had – mercifully for her – not seen the perpetrators. So they’d taken her prints in order that she might be eliminated from the scores of prints at the Burton home, and finally her mother had taken her home.
‘We’ll need you to make a formal statement,’ Sam said, ‘when you’ve had time to rest.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ Lisa Carrasco asked. ‘She’s been through so much, and she doesn’t know anything.’
‘She was the first person on the scene, ma’am,’ Sam said.
‘I just want her to forget it.’
‘I’ll never forget it, Mom,’ Andria said.
Before she’d left, the babysitter had gone through the phone numbers posted on the refrigerator door, enabling Sam to make one of the calls he hated.
Destroying lives was bad enough in the light of day, but somehow, rousing a sleeping person during the night with the worst news in the world seemed even worse. Sam could have asked Chicago PD to knock on Mary Ann Ventrino’s parents’ front door, but even in their initial shock, Rose and Joseph Reardon might have questions, and at least Sam, as lead investigator, could vow to do everything in his power to find out who’d done this monstrous thing.
No details, not over the phone. Maybe not every single detail ever – though that was the ME’s call, and Sam knew that Elliot Sanders would speak personally to whichever member of these families came to see him.
Mary Ann’s father dropped the phone after Sam told him.
Sam heard the clattering, then the first awful, raw sounds of grief, and then the poor man was back on the line, telling him that they would catch the first flight, then adding, distraughtly, that because Mary Ann’s brother, her only sibling, lived in Boston, there was no one in their family to call on for immediate help with the children.
Another voice, in the background, female.
‘My wife, reminding me that Pete’s parents are gone, but he has a sister named Gia.’ Joseph Reardon’s voice weakened. ‘I don’t know her surname. I only heard of her as Aunty Gia.’
Sam thanked him, offered renewed condolences and any help needed.
‘Gia’. Another name and phone number on the refrigerator door – another life to blow apart.
‘Dr Russo.’ The man who picked up sounded sleepy, but put his wife on the line in seconds, and Gia Russo sounded almost under control while Sam was breaking the news, but then, after she’d said she would come right away, just before the call was cut off, Sam heard her first great howl.
The sound was still reverberating in his head when he made his next call.
Gary Burton’s cell phone had been found; an entry for ‘Dad’ in his Contacts.
William Burton sounded frail, but remained coherent enough to tell Sam that his daughter-in-law had neither living parents nor siblings, but was close to her uncle in Miami, a man she had worked with.
‘James Lin,’ Burton said, a note of something – disapproval, maybe – in his tone.
‘Do you have his address, sir?’ Sam asked.
‘I do not.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure it’s them?’
Sam told him that they were certain, though it would still be necessary for someone to make a formal identification.
‘That will be me,’ William Burton said.
The dignity in his voice almost choked Sam.
Gia Russo arrived less than thirty minutes later, a petite, dark-haired woman aged forty, according to her driver’s license, which she’d had the presence of mind to bring with her.
‘I thought you might need ID,’ she said. ‘So you’d let me take the children.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s OK. I know there may be hoops to jump through, but I think—’ Tears shone in her eyes. ‘I was going to say it would be best for Johnny and Mia, but …’
‘Hey,’ Sam said gently. ‘You need to give yourself some time. The children are sleeping, and they’ve been well taken care of.’
‘They don’t know?’ Mrs Russo looked shocked.
‘Of course not,’ Sam said. ‘But Johnny knows something’s wrong.’
She looked up at him. ‘All the way here, I told myself you were wrong, you’d made a mistake, it couldn’t be Pete and Mary Ann. But it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid it looks that way.’ Sam saw her flash of hope, knew he had to douse it instantly, that anything else would be cruel. ‘We’re going to have to ask you to make an identification, Mrs Russo, a little later in the day, but we’ve seen photographs of your brother and sister-in-law. There’s no doubt.’
More dignity.
Another warm June dawn
was breaking when Sam and Martinez made their way over the towpath, heading back to the Burton house, keeping to the edge of the crime scene tape so as not to disturb the flags set wherever, say, a shoe print or other evidence had been found, photographed, then lifted. Though even if any of those prints might have been something, Andria and Johnny’s shoes and the stroller’s wheels had probably spoiled them.
They were avoiding Stillwater Drive, knew that residents had been emerging and were looking on, horrified, because word was spreading and the reality of something so macabre happening in their own street was hideous and, to some perhaps, tantalizing.
The media were already present, news trucks everywhere, reporters there to get the story out, to push lenses and mikes in the faces of anyone who might have seen anything related to what had gone down, anyone who even vaguely knew the Burtons. Soon, boats would gather out on the Intracoastal too, not just those belonging to the big guns but to those who lived to ogle, and, these days, to use their devices to send on-the-spot stories to news websites or simply, ghoulishly, to spread the word and comment on it.
What Sam and Martinez wanted was to get right on this, hit it hard.
Their greatest hope for a result from a surveillance camera hooked up to a house two along from the Burton home, trained on an expensive powerboat moored outside.
The house with the camera belonged to a family named Rosenblatt.
Nobody home, the detectives hoping they’d just left Miami Beach for the weekend.
Sam had watched the camera earlier, watched it move, wanting it to be a top-of-the-range model complete with pan, tilt and wide range and – a cop could dream – maybe face recognition thrown in.
It seemed to be moving sluggishly and Martinez had said: ‘At least it’s not dead.’
‘Surprising, with a crime this organized,’ Sam said. ‘I’d have expected those sons of bitches to take it out.’
‘Maybe they didn’t have time,’ Martinez had said.
‘Maybe they were confident of evading it,’ Sam said.
Now, hours later, search warrant for the camera applied for, they paused again at the same spot.
‘Cutter and Sheldon are going to watch for the Rosenblatts while they canvas the street,’ Martinez said.
Fear and Loathing Page 3