I instantly regretted not asking if we could just go back to her place and almost changed course. “Maybe that taco place down by the water?” We both preferred a good dive bar to a four-star restaurant.
“That’ll work. Want to leave the truck here and ride together?”
I looked at her again and decided I wasn’t letting her out of my sight tonight. Whatever friction had been between us earlier was gone. I’d still better figure it out, but if we were good now, I wasn’t fighting it. “Sure.”
We headed east toward the MacArthur Causeway. “Not much traffic on the 836 tonight,” I observed.
“Dude, we gotta talk about this ‘the’ thing. People can tell you’re a California boy right off, adding ‘the’ to the road names. If they wanted to call it the 836, they would have called it The 836.” She smiled and winked. “Got it?”
“Roger that.” She was right, and the last thing you wanted if you were stationed in Biscayne National Park and dealing with the homegrown Floridians from Miami-Dade was to be labeled a Californian.
Instead of following 836 to South Beach, Justine turned south onto I-95 for two exits and headed toward the Miami River. We drove well inland from the towering hotels and condos downtown by Brickell Ave where the river meets the bay. The buildings here were lower and older. Justine pulled into a strip center with the river running behind it.
Even though the water was all connected and Adams Key was only about fifteen miles away as the seagull flew, it was different here. For starters, the river was darker, even during the day, from the industrial runoff and rain. Water quality was a problem in Miami, but the only way to cure it was to stop development, and that wasn’t happening anytime soon.
We entered the small restaurant and were greeted by the owner. He led us back through a pair of open sliding glass doors to a narrow deck on the water. Margaritas were delivered with a bowl of chips and a green salsa. Our schedules didn’t allow many date nights and these moments were special.
We both ordered the fish tacos and, while we waited, I sipped the top shelf drink and watched Justine. She seemed truly happy and I silently promised her more of this. All work and no play had ruined my marriage; now it looked to be the cause of the friction between us. We sat sipping our drinks.
Before our dinner came, Justine excused herself to use the restroom. I looked over the water, thinking life was pretty good, when I heard her call my name from inside the restaurant.
18
I found Justine by the bar, staring at the TV. “That’s one of those guys you were looking at.”
I asked the bartender to turn up the sound and we stood there watching Dequan Johnson being led off in handcuffs. I immediately recognized the smug look on Dick Tracy’s face as he pressed down on the boy’s bleach-tipped dreadlocks and pushed him into the back seat of the cruiser. I got a little satisfaction when he wiped his greasy hands on his uniform pants. The door closed and the camera panned to the newscaster holding a microphone in front of Grace Herrera. She was giving the typical canned response, essentially revealing nothing other than the arrest was being made in connection with the murder at the club.
“Is this connected to the murder out in Stiltsville?” One of the reporters thrust a microphone in her face.
She hesitated and I wondered how much the media knew. The murder was no secret; it had been broadcast over the VHF and Miami-Dade’s network. Anyone with a scanner could have picked up the call. My question was answered when the several pictures I had taken earlier appeared on the screen.
Grace pushed away the microphone and ducked into the car. Interview over.
“Figures,” I cursed under my breath.
“What?” Justine asked.
“Martinez posted those from my phone.” I already knew everything on my phone was uploaded to the National Park Service’s cloud. Martinez had used the technology to his advantage.
“Why would he do that?” Justine asked.
By now, we had relocated to two seats at the bar. The server had brought our drinks and chips and our fish tacos soon arrived. I pushed my empty drink toward the bartender. “He wants Stiltsville gone. More bad than good happens out there. The maintenance is also a drain on our resources.” I paused thinking I was sounding like my boss. “I have to say after being out there today, I agree. The buildings are in bad shape. I think he’s hoping the exposure of the murder along with the pictures of the trashed house will help his cause.”
“He’s probably right,” she said.
The mood from earlier was broken. We sat in silence, watching the news and eating our tacos. Once again, work had intruded on our relationship. There was only one thing that could make this worse, and when my phone vibrated on the old galvanized metal bar top, I glanced a the sceen. It was Grace Herrera.
Justine saw it, too, and I shrugged at her, stood, and took the phone out to the deck. I wasn’t trying to be secretive; it was just loud in the bar.
“Congrats on the arrest. Saw you got Dequan for the club,” I said, leaning on the railing and looking out over the dark water.
“A witness came forward.”
I wouldn’t put it past one of these kids to throw another under the bus to gain an advantage. They might have been partying together, but they were more rivals than friends. Many had competed against each other in high school and now they were vying for a limited number of scholarships. You get anything on Stiltsville?” With the forensics tech sitting at the bar, I already knew most of the answer.
“We’re still waiting on the forensics.”
I had a feeling they weren’t going to get what she wanted. “Why didn’t you call me?”
The line went silent for a minute. “We got some pressure from upstairs to make an arrest.”
“So, you arrested him for the murder at the club to keep it in your jurisdiction. If he’s good for both murders, you get all the credit.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. It’s not my decision.”
I disconnected without saying goodbye. Looking out at the water, I watched a barge being pushed by a tugboat downriver. It was kind of how I felt, being shoved around by forces working their own agendas in the background.
“Hey,” Justine said, sliding up next to me.
“Hey.” I explained how I got pushed out of the case. “Now that they have him for the strip club murder, it’ll be easy to just add another charge on. Miami-Dade clears their books and gets the credit for both cases.
“Unless it’s not him,” Justine said.
I turned to look at her.
“There’s still a water cooler in the crime lab, it’s just upstairs now. Just because I like my little hole downstairs doesn’t mean I don’t talk to the day shift.”
“And they’ve got nothing on the club?” I knew a single eyewitness was not going to make the DA happy.
“Nada. There’s so much evidence it’ll take forever to sort it out. Those prints are going to get more hits than the girls that were there. I don’t think that room has ever been cleaned.”
“But there’s a ton of forensics out in Stiltsville, including DNA from the rape kit. They’re banking on that showing it’s Dequan; case closed.”
“Exactly. But that’s gonna take a while. Wanna go have a look?”
As badly as I wanted to, I paused to be damned sure I wasn’t going to get her in trouble, or screw up our relationship. “I was kind of looking forward to something else.”
“True that, but the night is young.”
It was just after eleven, maybe early for her, but it was late for me. “Are you going to get in trouble?”
“Sid called earlier. I was going to put him off until tomorrow, but it’s still technically my shift until two. Just doing my job sir.”
I badly wanted revenge on Miami-Dade and agreed. We went back inside, paid the check, and were back on the road. When we passed the turnoff for her apartment, I looked down the road at the palm trees and landscaping illuminated in the dark night, wondering
if we were doing the right thing.
“He said to come by,” Justine said after talking to Sid.
“Did he say what he wants?”
“Nope, things are never that easy with him and it’s on the way.”
She turned off the highway and headed for the Medical Examiner’s offices hidden in the shadows of Jackson Memorial Highway. Parking by the back entrance, next to one of the vans, we left the truck and walked up the loading ramp to the door. Justine pushed the intercom button while I stared through the safety glass at the sterile hallway.
Sid buzzed us in and I followed Justine to his office. He sat behind his desk, looking at something on his computer.
“Whatcha got, old man,” Justine asked as we entered. She went over and pecked him on the cheek.
I hung back slightly. He had asked to see her, not me. “Come in, Detective.”
I let the title go, actually preferring it to Special Agent. “Hey, Sid.”
“How’s the fishing?”
It was his typical greeting. “Got on a couple of snapper and found this one.” He didn’t care much about the fishing; it was more about the dead bodies I had found in the process.
“Come look at this. I think I can save your stomachs and just show you the pictures.”
I silently thanked him for that, and we slid around to see what he was looking at. I almost turned away when I saw the blood, but Justine moved closer.
“Vance ditched me for another case and left me with the autopsy of the body you found this morning.”
“Did you do the rape kit?” I asked.
He peered over his reading glasses at me, telling me without moving his lips the question was unnecessary. “Yes, and yes, she was raped—but you can tell by the bruising that it may have been as long as twenty-four hours prior to the murder.”
I suspected it was the night before when I had found Misty on Adams Key. Those girls were running from something. “Can you tell how much before?”
“Not exactly. They’re pretty close in time, but the bruising is fully developed, something that takes about a day.”
“Want me to run the DNA?” Justine asked.
He handed her a sealed evidence envelope and a clipboard which Justine signed and handed back to him creating the chain of evidence the prosecutors would need if the case went to trial. “I think Miami-Dade got the wrong one,” he said.
He had experience, but I didn’t think he was clairvoyant. “How can you tell?”
His tired brown eyes studied me again, asking how I could be so stupid. I was trying his patience and searched for the answer before he said it. I wasn’t sure if it was the late hour, or the two margaritas, but I was having trouble piecing this together.
With an excuse to go back to the lab, we left his office feeling like the gang of three again. Our little group: a park service agent, an almost retired night-time coroner, and a basement-dwelling forensics tech had done more to solve several other cases than the entire police force. Walking to the elevator, I felt my energy coming back; having a chip on your shoulder had that effect.
Back in Justine’s office, we stared at each other, not really sure where to begin. “The DNA?”
“Yeah that, but gonna take some time to get the results. There’s got to be something else. Let’s take a walk and see what the other half has been up to.”
She led me upstairs to the main lab. I already knew that Justine preferred to use the old lab rather than the newly remodeled one. The cavernous room was filled with gleaming stainless steel. Hundreds of LED indicator lights on the equipment made the room intimidating. “I feel like we shouldn’t be here,” I said, looking around the dark lab.
“Want me to issue you a secret agent badge?” Justine said, moving to the locked evidence cabinet.
Instead of the welded steel grates used in her office, this one had smoked Plexiglas doors. She punched a code into the backlit keypad to the side and the electronic lock buzzed. The doors opened slowly followed by a blast of cool air. I looked around for the telltale stainless-steel drawers, but instead found only cabinets. Justine worked through them, reading the labels until she found what she was looking for and opened it.
The expected alarm bells never sounded. She removed the box and we left the room. “Why the chill in there? I was half expecting dead bodies?”
“They go for the dramatic up here. One of the reasons that I like my cave.” She led me to an empty table and set the box down. “This is the evidence collected from the club. Might as well start here and see if they have anything on DeQuan.
We went through the box full of clear envelopes, careful not to break any seals as we held the contents to the light. Justine had collected these samples and knew what she was looking for. One of the last envelopes had a small stone in it. Under the light I could see it was a diamond. “I found some blood on this. Find the setting it goes in and we’ve got the murderer.”
I took the envelope and held it under the light. The small diamond shimmered back at me, and I had an idea where I might find its owner.
19
“You’re looking at that like you know who it belongs to,” Justine said.
“Can you tell if it’s real?”
“Sure, forensics 101.”
She took the envelope and signed the front before slicing it open. We moved to a microscope sitting next to several large-screen displays, which lit up when she pressed the space bar on the keyboard. “Nice stuff they’ve got up here,” I said, while she positioned the stone on the glass below the lens. The equipment in the lab made what Justine worked with look like toy store seconds.
“I sneak up here sometimes, but generally I prefer the old-school stuff.”
After pressing several keys, two of the monitors went black, leaving a fuzzy image of the stone on the one closest to us. She tapped out another sequence on the keyboard and the diamond came into focus. Even I knew real from fake and this was real. I couldn’t tell the carats, but if my ex had gotten one that size in her engagement ring, we might still be married.
My stomach fluttered at the thought of my past life and the hearing tomorrow. I still needed to transfer the five-figure sum for Daniel J. Viscount’s retainer. “I forgot to tell you that I got a custody hearing tomorrow. That big-shot lawyer came through.”
“That’s awesome.” She leaned into me. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
I smiled back and realized I now had something else to be nervous about. Getting my mind back on the case, I looked at the display, confident when I saw the pits and flaws that they meant the stone was real. “Pretty sure that’s the real thing. Not a prize, but it probably goes for close to a grand.”
“Whose is it? I don’t think those recruits can afford that kind of bling—yet.”
It wasn’t ego that stopped me from speculating on who owned the diamond. We had been on enough cases together that she knew how I thought and that I wasn’t scared to be wrong. “Where’d it come from?” I asked, trying to dodge her question.
“I pulled it out of the gash in the club manager’s neck.”
“It’s too big for the Turnover Chain,” I said, and took a breath before I threw my theory out there. “That dockmaster was wearing earrings. They looked like this could be a match for one of the stones.”
“What’s a dockmaster doing with this kind of bling?”
“Tips are good and he’s been moonlighting for Alex.” I explained what I had learned from his sister, my take after meeting him, and his unusual behavior on the dock last night. “He’s obviously got some issues with these kids getting a free ride. There’s also something between Misty and him. I’d bet he was the one driving the van.“
“High school can be a hard deal. It’s tough watching your peers, some of whom you know are not going to succeed, get all the attention,” Justine said, turning away and resealing the evidence bag.
There was something in the way she said it that led me to believe she had first-hand knowledge. “He’s a smart kid.
There’s some resentment going on here, but I think greed might be the bigger motive.” I followed her back to the high-tech evidence locker. After returning the box to its shelf, we stood outside the doors.
“Check this out,” Justine said, entering the code.
There was a small beep, followed by doors silently moving on their concealed hinges. Just when the doors were about to close, there was a hissing sound like a vacuum seal. “Cool, but not cheap.” I wondered how Miami-Dade was going to pay for this, and thought about giving Martinez a heads up that he might want to pad his budget. I looked at my watch. “It looks like there’s not much we can do until tomorrow.”
“Works for me. Follow me home?”
“I’d follow you anywhere.”
I thought there was a little more sway to her hips as she led me out of the lab; what you might call a bit of swagger if you were a Cane’s fan. After locking the door, we went back downstairs to her lab. Austere would be the only word to describe it after the high-tech equipment in the new lab.
“It’s going to be hard making the move upstairs.”
She must have caught me looking around. I gave her a hug. I was sad, too. We’d had some special time here—just the two of us. I doubted it would be the same working upstairs. She grabbed her bag and we left the old lab. She flicked a switch and looked through the glass window in the hall as if she were looking at it for the last time. We stood there for a minute.
“I’m thinking of asking for a transfer,” she said.
Change was okay, I told myself, hoping it wasn’t going to require relocation. “Where?”
“FDLE. I’m tired of these Miami-Dade pricks.”
I knew she was at least verbally abused by some of the detectives. She had reassured me it didn’t go any further than good-natured ribbing, but I knew it was wearing on her. “Tampa?” This was their closest office and a five-hour drive.
“They’re throwing around some feelers about opening an office in South Florida.”
“That sounds promising,” I said, exhaling the breath I had not realized I was holding. “They’re supposed to be good to work for.”
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