Caged

by Hilary Norman

  Michelle Webster’s prints had been taken for elimination, but no one was holding their breath for anything obvious here – though they did have some hopes that another warrant applied for regarding the recordings of vehicles entering and leaving the gated road might yield something of use.

  Moving carefully around the small, attractive house, wearing gloves and shoe covers, touching only when necessary, Sam and Martinez found nothing unexpected. Nice quality furniture and fixtures, no overt extravagances, a great many books, mostly alphabetized on shelves, either read or well thumbed; law volumes, biographies and memoirs, novels ranging from Austen to Kafka to Grisham. Two books – Donald Woods’ Biko and Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father – on a side table near the couch, and Sue Miller’s The Good Mother on a kitchen counter, leather bookmarks in all three books.

  There were photographs in every room, some that might be family, one beautifully framed shot of Elizabeth and André on a sailboat, both looking radiant, but in general there was minimal clutter and few frills. Two closets filled mostly with woman’s clothing and shoes, much of it conservative, with a section of men’s clothes, presumably André’s. A hamper overflowing with items for washing. No diary in immediate evidence, the only visible notes stuck to the refrigerator door and relating to food shopping. Any number of kitchen knives that might, in theory, have been used for bloody murder, then washed and replaced – though there was no one left to tell if one or more was missing.

  Nothing of particular interest inside the refrigerator: yoghurt, mineral water, a bottle of Sauvignon blanc, a pack of red apples, four eggs and some salad dressing, but no salad.

  ‘I guess shopping was on her weekend schedule,’ Sam said.

  Feeling sad as hell for her.

  And angrier by the second for both of them.

  Elizabeth’s home office, on the first floor, was organized, everything in its place, though it would soon be taken apart by investigators, the MacBook on the desk removed and examined for clues as to what might have turned this young law associate and her boyfriend into murder victims.

  There were no signs anywhere of violence. Everything in the house and on the deck at the rear was well maintained and clean, the king-size bed upstairs neatly made, same as at the Eastermans – and was that the way Elizabeth had always left it, they wondered, or had someone else made it up, someone as skilled as, say, Mayumi Santos?

  ‘My bed never looks like that,’ Martinez remarked.

  ‘Maybe she had a housekeeper too,’ Sam said.

  ‘Maybe Ms Santos was moonlighting,’ Martinez said.

  ‘You’re reaching again,’ Sam said.

  ‘So sue me,’ Martinez said.

  Almost, but not entirely, the same deal at Duprez’s third-floor Juniper Terrace condo. No trace of a break-in or violence or even intrusion, but his bed was rumpled, his pillows dented, and there were indications that the young Canadian had been working in his sitting room some time prior to his abduction or voluntary departure.

  ‘No dirty dishes here either,’ Sam said, in the kitchen, an efficient, basic workspace.

  ‘Not even a coffee cup on the drain board,’ Martinez said.

  Sam used a gloved index finger to open a drawer. ‘Not a lot of sharp knives.’

  ‘How many does a guy need?’ Martinez said. ‘I got one big, one small.’

  Sam’s nose wrinkled. ‘Can you smell something?’

  Martinez sniffed, and his dark eyes sharpened. ‘Moussaka?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Sam was more cautious.

  Martinez opened the refrigerator door. ‘Bingo.’

  Sam looked over his shoulder, saw one shiny eggplant, a half pack of tomatoes and some grated kefalotiri cheese. ‘Left here for us, maybe?’

  ‘You think?’ Martinez scratched his head. ‘Though if Duprez did do the cooking himself, who the fuck added the sedatives?’

  They checked the trash can, found no food remains, shone a flashlight into the waste disposal unit – which the techs would remove later, examining it and the pipes immediately beyond it – but for now it all looked as clean and shiny as the rest of the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t buy all this hygiene,’ Martinez said. ‘The Price house was neat and clean, but this isn’t normal.’

  They headed into the bathroom, found Bayer aspirin, Tylenol and an out-of-date bottle of cough medication.

  ‘No temazepam,’ Martinez said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Sam pointed to a bottle at the back of the top shelf.

  Martinez peered closer. ‘Propanolol. Mean anything?’

  ‘Rings some bells.’ Sam googled it on his cell. ‘It’s a beta-blocker . . .’ He scanned the results. ‘Hypertension . . . anxiety.’ He paused. ‘No mention of health problems for the Eastermans, but we should check if either of them was taking anything for anxiety, maybe even seeing a counsellor.’

  ‘A shrink in common would be good,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Too good to be true,’ Sam said. ‘We’ll get this added to the tox screen.’

  They left the apartment, found the elevator to take them down to the parking garage, had to wait while someone got in on the fourth floor and took it up to the sixth.

  ‘At least at the Eastermans, there was Mayumi who could have kept the place like new – ’ The cleanliness was still bugging Martinez – ‘but a guy, a busy lawyer . . .’

  ‘So what, you think the abduction went down here?’ Sam said.

  ‘Except it makes no sense with Duprez’s car outside Elizabeth’s.’

  Now the elevator was being held up on the sixth. Sam rapped on the door.

  Martinez’s mind was back in the kitchen. ‘So if we’re meant to think he made the moussaka . . .’

  ‘Maybe the killer doesn’t care if we think it or not,’ Sam said. ‘Maybe those ingredients are just a tease and they know we’ll know it.’

  ‘So then we have ourselves a game player, or two,’ Martinez said.

  Sam didn’t answer, remembering the biggest bastard he’d ever encountered, who’d been a player of evil games, responsible by the time of his own passing for the deaths of a number of people.

  Cathy his main target.

  The elevator arrived and he pushed the past away, got inside.

  ‘No camera,’ he said.

  ‘Big fuckin’ help,’ Martinez said.

  And only dummy cameras in the garage, it turned out moments later, perhaps because the residents of Juniper Terrace didn’t want the extra costs of the real thing.

  Or maybe, living in an area like Miami Shores with its low crime stats, they’d never believed they might really need surveillance.

  ‘So still, all we have for now,’ Sam said as they looked at Duprez’s parking spot, marked with a white-painted 3B, ‘are two attractive couples. Young, affluent, career-driven – Suzy Easterman perhaps a little less competitively so, though we can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘But all that goes for a big chunk of the Miami-Dade population,’ Martinez said. ‘So how come these people? Even if they were picked at random, something had to make them the chosen ones.’

  ‘And not just targets,’ Sam said. ‘Exhibits.’

  ‘Which takes us back to the gallery people.’

  ‘Or maybe that’s just another part of the tease,’ Sam said.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Late Sunday evening Martinez was at Jess’s first-floor studio apartment on NE 167th Street in North Miami Beach.

  It was cramped, but all she could afford, and the neighbourhood was nice enough, and she’d made the best of her space, and it had a tiny backyard, which she liked. She grew tomatoes, which she’d screened in because the birds and pests had been helping themselves, and she’d told Martinez she’d had a cat for a time named Violet – because, she’d said, her eyes had looked that colour at twilight, and he’d said he’d never met anyone who used the word ‘twilight’ before. A neighbour had taken care of Violet while Jess was working, but then the cat had disappeared when the neighbour had moved ou
t, and Jess had vowed never to have another animal until she could be around to take proper care of it.

  ‘I never had an animal in my life,’ Martinez had told her, because truth to tell he wasn’t sure how he felt about having a cat or dog in his house.

  ‘But you like them, don’t you?’ Jess had asked. ‘We used to have a mongrel my dad called Bones, and I loved him because he used to sleep on my bed and listen to all my secrets.’

  ‘Sure I like animals,’ he’d said because he didn’t want to disappoint her, and anyway, he liked Woody, the Beckets’ dog, well enough. ‘I guess I prefer dogs to cats, though, no offence to Violet.’

  ‘None taken,’ Jess said. ‘Dogs are more loyal.’

  Martinez felt a little stifled at her place sometimes because it was so small and he greatly preferred his house – especially now that she was there so much – but coming here now and again seemed right, and anyway, there was nothing like seeing someone’s personal stuff to learn more about them, and he wanted to know all he could about Jess.

  Her photographs – and there were plenty of them – had told him more than anything else. All of them of the Kowalski family and of Bones, and one of the cat. George, her dad (real name Jerzy, but Jess said he’d changed it because Americans had trouble pronouncing it), looked like a nice, open kind of a guy, though Monika, her mom, looked a little strained in some of the pictures; and there was one of Jess aged around seven, sitting on her father’s knee with her mother standing awkwardly over to the side, and maybe Monika hadn’t liked the person taking the photograph, or maybe she was just one of those people who didn’t like having her picture taken.

  ‘Did I ever tell you how I got my name?’ Jess asked tonight, as they finished off a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs – about the best he’d ever tasted – and though it wouldn’t have mattered to Martinez if she’d been a lousy cook, it sure didn’t hurt that she wasn’t.

  ‘Because your dad was crazy about Jessica Lange in King Kong.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Jess said. ‘I’m repeating myself, I hate that.’

  ‘I do it all the time,’ Martinez said.

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘It’s a cute story,’ he said. ‘And I guess anything about your dad’s important to you, which is fine by me.’ He leaned in close, kissed her lips, which tasted of spicy tomato. ‘I want to stay here tonight.’

  ‘But you’re so much more comfy at home.’

  ‘Nowhere’s more comfy than your arms,’ Martinez said.

  He woke just before midnight, not long after they’d both fallen asleep after making love, which had come after they’d washed up together and necked their way through an episode of Medium on her lumpy couch.

  Thirsty from the garlic in the spaghetti sauce, he padded barefoot to the bathroom and took a drink from the tap, then went to the garden door and looked up at the moon, thinking of his own late parents, his mom, Alicia, in particular, who’d been the most loving person he’d ever known.

  He looked over at Jessie, at her hair spread on the pillow, lips slightly parted, all innocent and sweet as a goddamned angel – though the fact was she knew better than any woman he’d ever met how to make him crazy during lovemaking – and he moved quietly back to the bed and climbed in.

  The case wormed into his mind, all the sickoes in the world trying to crawl in with them, but quickly he shoved them out of his head and snuggled back up to the woman who was going to be his wife.

  Mrs Alejandro Martinez, for the love of God.

  Even the sick fucks couldn’t stop how great that made him feel.

  THIRTY-NINE

  February 16

  Busy Monday for Sam and Martinez.

  A potentially promising start with their first close scrutiny of the recordings of three vehicles of potential interest that had entered Elizabeth Price’s road late on Wednesday, February eleventh – during the window of time that seemed the most likely for the abduction.

  A silver Lincoln Navigator, a black Hummer pick-up and a Volkswagen van. All three vehicles large enough to carry and conceal two incapacitated or, perhaps, bound and gagged adults – and the VW logged as having passed under the barrier at the gate right behind Elizabeth’s Honda.

  The van was dark, perhaps grey or dark blue, its licence plate clearly distinguishable, but though Ms Price was easily identifiable on the recording of her car passing the camera, the van’s driver was barely visible, which might have been because of some glitch, but might more probably have been because the windshield had been tinted or covered with dark film.

  It hadn’t taken long to learn that the Lincoln belonged to a fellow resident and the Hummer to a legitimate visitor, but the VW’s owner remained unknown and, therefore, highly suspicious.

  Which pointed again to Ms Price’s house being the point of abduction.

  ‘Unless they were apart at the time, and were taken separately,’ Sam said.

  ‘That would mean at least two perps,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Maybe even a whole goddamned team,’ Sam said.

  That was where the progress dried up, however, since there was no record of the van’s departure. Nor, in fact, was there a record of Duprez’s BMW arriving in Elizabeth’s road any time that evening or night, but apparently the surveillance camera had failed repeatedly in the last few months, and had probably done so again on the night in question.

  ‘Unless it was disabled by the killer,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Why let it record the van then?’ Sam said.

  ‘More game playing?’

  Sam shook his head. ‘I don’t buy that. Too tricky.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, if the van was used in the crime, it was probably stolen.’

  ‘Fake plates, too, I’ll bet,’ Martinez said, anything else in such an organized slaying being almost unthinkable.

  Not such a promising start, after all.

  The rest of the day was tightly planned. Edward and Margie Price were at the law firm’s apartment, though the detectives did not plan on meeting with them until early afternoon, soon after which they would speak to Mr Duprez’s relatives.

  In the meantime, the Oates Gallery gardener, Joseph Mulhoon, had been off his ventilator for forty-eight hours, and his doctor had declared him fit for a brief interview.

  In a private room at Miami General, blue-and-white with a print of a South Beach scene facing the bed, the man who might, prior to his heart attack, have been strong and tanned, was pale and gaunt.

  ‘I still see those poor people every time I close my eyes.’ Those eyes were red-rimmed and haunted. ‘What kind of sick monster could do such a thing?’

  ‘We don’t know that yet, sir,’ Sam said. ‘Which is why we need your help.’

  ‘But I don’t know anything.’ Mulhoon looked bewildered.

  ‘We understand that,’ Martinez said. ‘But you were the first person to see them, or at least the first to report it.’

  ‘Which means,’ Sam said, ‘you just might have noticed something that we could have missed.’

  ‘After all, you know that backyard better than anyone,’ Martinez said.

  ‘True enough.’ Mulhoon paused. ‘Except now I can’t seem to remember anything much except those poor people under that thing.’ He shook his grey head. ‘I’m a down-to-earth man, you know, but if you want to know how it seemed to me at first sight, it looked almost like they’d been left by aliens from outer space.’

  ‘That’s one avenue we hadn’t considered,’ Sam said lightly.

  ‘Matter of fact,’ Martinez said, ‘I did think of flying saucers myself, but then I figured we had enough wickedness on earth to deal with.’

  ‘True enough,’ the gardener said. ‘Lord knows.’

  In the next twenty minutes, Mulhoon gave them nothing new. He said that he had not called Allison Moore or anyone at Beatty Management when he’d found the bodies. He said that he’d noticed the wheel tracks when he’d entered through the gate – which had been unlocked on his arrival.

  ‘Which t
old me right off that something wasn’t right. But then I saw them, and it was as much as I could do to call 911 because my hands were shaking so much, and then the pain started . . .’

  They let him rest for a few moments.

  ‘You OK for a few more questions?’ Martinez asked.

  Mulhoon nodded. ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  ‘When you arrived,’ Sam asked, ‘did you see anyone who might have been leaving, or just hanging around?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Any cars or vans parked outside or close by?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘There’s always cars parked everywhere,’ Mulhoon said. ‘But if you’re asking me if I saw anything out of the ordinary, no, sir, I did not.’

  ‘And on any of your previous visits,’ Sam continued, ‘did you ever notice anyone you felt might have been watching you, maybe checking to see when you came and went?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Mulhoon shrugged. ‘But I wouldn’t have been looking. I just park my truck, take out what I need and do my work.’

  Sam had left it as long as possible to show the gardener a photograph of the Eastermans, concerned that the reminder might upset him. Not the Polaroids they’d shown Beatty and Moore, but a happy honeymoon picture.

  ‘Oh, boy.’ The old man took it, hand trembling, but managing a smile. ‘Tell the truth, I’m glad to be able to see these two as they were before. Never know, maybe now I’ll be able to try replacing those other memories with this.’

  ‘That’d be good,’ Sam said, gently.

  ‘But if you’re asking me if I ever saw them before that morning,’ Mulhoon went on, ‘the answer is no. Not ever.’

  FORTY

  Cathy, not due at work until evening, had come to the island to visit with Grace before going for a run.

  Her mom was finishing up with a patient in the den, which doubled as a consulting room, so, without Joshua – who was at David’s house – to play with, Cathy wandered out to the deck and sat down peacefully with Woody.