Caged

by Hilary Norman

  They all sat down again.

  ‘This is it for me, guys,’ Cathy said, frankly. ‘This is for keeps.’

  ‘So long as you don’t stay here too long,’ Dooley told her.

  ‘You want to get rid of me?’

  The words were lightly said, but Grace could see the vulnerbility beneath.

  ‘On the contrary,’ Simone said. ‘But I know what Matt means. If this is going to be your life, Cathy, you need to learn what you can, take what you can, from one restaurant, one teacher at a time.’

  ‘I’m no teacher,’ Dooley pointed out.

  ‘I’d say you’re a great teacher,’ Sam said.

  Dooley’s shrug was modest, but his brown eyes were warm. ‘Simone’s right, though, Cathy. Learn whatever you think you can from us, then when you’re ready, find the next place that’s right for you. We’ll help you, give you great references, whatever you need.’

  ‘There’s no rush,’ Simone added. ‘We love having you here, God knows. And you’ll never know what a difference it’s made to me, with my mother being the way she is.’

  ‘I’d be glad to do more shifts,’ Cathy said, ‘if that might help a little.’

  ‘It might,’ Simone said, ‘when we reach the next stage. But for now, frankly, having the café to come to keeps me sane.’

  ‘I can certainly understand that,’ Grace said.

  ‘This lady – ’ Dooley looked at Simone – ‘is a really special person.’

  ‘Takes one to know one,’ Sam said.

  FIFTY-THREE

  February 18

  A bad feeling of tension and growing frustration intensified through Wednesday morning, with everyone on the squad sharing the grimmest of fears that the very worst might already have happened to Evelyn and Frank Ressler. They still didn’t know the exact timing in the first two cases, but the probability was that the Eastermans had been taken on the evening or night of Thursday the fifth, turning up in the garden of the old gallery on Saturday morning, and the second couple had almost certainly been abducted some time last Wednesday evening – almost a week ago – and dumped in the Christous’ backyard in the early hours of Friday.

  If there was a connection or even a pattern, then that meant the Resslers might be found any time soon, yet all the detectives could do this morning was grind their way through the scanty news that Mary Cutter had located a similar-looking domed plastic cover on one of the websites specializing in servicing exhibitors for conventions and smaller exhibitions.

  ‘It’s not the same,’ Martinez said gloomily.

  ‘I think it is,’ Cutter said. ‘I checked the measurements with Doc Sanders’s office, and he took a look at the website and thought I was right.’

  ‘Do we have a list of purchasers yet?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I should have it by this afternoon,’ Cutter said.

  ‘That’s good,’ Sam said.

  ‘We don’t know that the Eastermans’ perp even bought the damned cover,’ Martinez said. ‘And if they did, they probably bought it second-hand.’

  ‘Or stole it,’ Beth Riley said.

  ‘So you all want me to delete the list when it comes?’ Cutter asked acidly.

  ‘Not even in jest.’ Sergeant Alvarez had just entered the conference room. ‘Nice job, Mary,’ he added. ‘Less of the negativity, guys.’

  Sam waited a second, knowing that his input wasn’t going to do much more to boost the team. ‘They nailed the glue,’ he said. ‘It’s Hero, one of the most common brands on the market.’

  ‘Which makes it about as helpful as a punch in the gut,’ Martinez said.

  ‘What was wrong with you in there?’ Sam asked his partner after the meeting, heading back to their desks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Martinez said. ‘Guilt, maybe.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing, except I arranged to go to this jeweller over on East Flagler at lunchtime, because I figured it might be nice to give Jess the ring on Thursday, maybe before we leave home or actually during the party.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with that?’ Sam asked, reading a yellow Post-it sticker on his phone. ‘Sounds great.’

  ‘Except with the Resslers,’ Martinez said, ‘I don’t exactly have the heart for it, you know?’

  ‘Sure I know,’ Sam said. ‘But you have to do this, for Jess and for you.’ He checked his watch, saw it was almost ten. ‘And maybe we’re wrong about the pattern. The other couples were both found early morning, so maybe the Resslers are going to be OK.’

  ‘From your mouth to God’s ear,’ said Martinez.

  ‘Or maybe they’ve just been dumped someplace less obvious, someplace no one’s going to find them for a while.’ Sam paused, the likelihood of that stoking up more dread. ‘Or ever.’

  ‘Not if they’re the third pair,’ Martinez said. ‘Exhibition being at least half the point, after all.’

  FIFTY-FOUR

  John Hercules liked to drink himself to sleep at night.

  Red wine, mostly, or sometimes Pastis de Marseille, of which he’d consumed rather too much last evening, because Lise, his girlfriend, had gotten mad at him about something he couldn’t even remember now, and he’d told her to take a hike, and she had, after which he thought he’d probably gotten somewhat morose and hit the Ricard.

  He couldn’t recall much of anything that had happened after he’d opened that good old bottle. Nothing until he’d come groggily to a half-hour back, surviving the grisly morning-after parade of symptoms to pour himself a large mug of strong coffee.

  Now he was wandering out into his backyard.

  Heading for his studio, not because he planned on working, but because it often comforted him just being out there.

  Except something was not quite right.

  Something about the kiln.

  Something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

  He moved in a little closer.

  The coffee mug fell from his right hand.

  ‘Holy Mary,’ he said, very quietly.

  It was the first and only time in his life when John Hercules thought he might have preferred to be blind.

  Artists needed to see, of course, but as a sculptor, he could have gotten by.

  Too late now.

  This sight was forever etched into his mind, he knew that already.

  Like a gruesome, painful, sickening scar.

  Forever.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  It was out of their jurisdiction, but Elliot Sanders, having had the misfortune of being on call, had wasted no time getting Sam out of the office and Martinez the hell out the jeweller’s and out to Coconut Grove to a house on Gifford Lane – not far, Sam had jarringly noted, by the by, from where Cathy’s friend, Kez Flanagan, had lived, over on Matilda Street.

  This was one of the smallest properties in the lane, a little blue house with a porch, banyan trees and unkempt grass partially concealing the dilapidated condition of the place. And yet, Sam thought, eyeing the whole, it possessed a certain charm, perhaps because the man who lived there was a sculptor of moderate repute, a guy who’d probably never made big bucks from his work, but who had, according to the search engines he’d swiftly scanned before heading out, managed to sell pieces on a regular basis.

  No acrylic sculptures, so far as he’d been able to ascertain. John Hercules worked with clay and metal.

  He had not, he’d told the officers first on the scene, had cause to use his kiln for more than two weeks, but he was in his studio most days, and to get there from his house he had to walk through his backyard with the kiln in his line of sight.

  In the sitting room-cum-kitchen of the house, Hercules, a shaven-headed, well-muscled, tattoo-armed man of forty-two, looked traumatized.

  ‘I passed a mirror a while back,’ he told Sam and Martinez, ‘and I hardly recognized myself. I look like Dorian Gray after he wrecks his fucking portrait. I wonder if I’ll ever change back.’

  Sam caught Martinez’s look.

  Self-obsessed ind
ividuals not his partner’s favourite thing.

  Still, Sam thought, the poor guy . . .

  If they’d thought the first two scenes bad, now they seemed almost gentle by comparison.

  Same MO, but this somehow the cruellest.

  Throats cut again. Terror and suffering unmistakable on the faces of Evelyn and Frank Ressler, though their eyes were not visible. It was, in fact, impossible to tell, for the moment, whether or not their eyes were even in their sockets, because the elderly couple had been positioned face-to-face, and their spectacles had been glued together – and, from what the ME and Crime Scene techs and City of Miami and Miami Beach detectives could see, their spectacles had been glued to their eyes.

  Their hands had been stuck together, too. Evelyn’s right hand holding her husband’s left.

  Like the other victims, this couple were naked. In their seventies.

  Sam could not remember ever having seen Martinez throw up at a crime scene, but this time he did, and Sam managed to hold back, but he would have liked to have been able to weep, and looking around at the other men and women in the backyard, he saw that he was not alone there.

  And then there was the anger.

  Burning, boiling, rising fury.

  Frustratingly impotent fury for now.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Everything changed.

  This was now a serial situation for sure, and a major one. Time to enter the details into ViCAP, part of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Extra help needed now, every kind available.

  A Major Crime Squad was being formed, a situation room being set up for the duration, and an FDLE special agent named Joe Duval was joining the team to lend support, and in some circumstances the new man’s presence might have pissed off the detectives, but they’d worked with Duval before – a former Violent Crimes cop first in Chicago, then Miami, with experience in profiling – and knew the lean, middle-aged agent to be a good man to have on side, and anyway, they were in no position to gripe.

  Crime Scene had found wheel tracks again – a signature now, it seemed, as well as evidence of the method of transporting the victims – and though the kiln had perhaps been a less open location in which to exhibit the bodies, the art connection was there, loud and clear.

  Which might have led them directly back to Beatty and Moore, except the lab had already prioritized the case and bypassed its backlog, and Ida Lowenstein in the ME’s office had reported no match between either of those people and the blood found in the former gallery.

  ‘Which only means they didn’t spill their own fucking blood,’ Martinez had said, testily.

  Two things, though.

  It seemed even less likely now that they were looking for a killer working alone, because it was almost impossible to conceive that an individual, however strong, could have manoeuvred Evelyn and Frank Ressler’s bodies, maintaining their face-to-face position, into the kiln.

  ‘Unless Doc Sanders was right about them using a hoist,’ Riley said.

  Sand had been found again, too, for the second time. In the tracks and on the grass. The same kind of white, fine sand as the last time.

  ‘I’d like to go back over the garden at the gallery,’ Sam said.

  They were snatching a five o’clock sandwich at Markie’s – a Cubano for Martinez, and a rare roast beef on rye for Sam – and Lord help them, but they were hungry despite the horrors of the afternoon.

  ‘Think the guys could have missed sand there?’ Martinez was dubious.

  ‘Not likely,’ Sam said. ‘But it’s been dry, so it couldn’t hurt to look.’

  Clutching at straws, and they both knew it.

  ‘I’d like to go looking for white sand at Beatty’s and Moore’s homes,’ Martinez said. ‘Think we got enough for warrants?’

  ‘No way,’ Sam said. ‘But I’d love to do the same at Anthony Christou’s place.’

  ‘Not gonna happen,’ Martinez said.

  ‘I know it,’ Sam said. ‘Being obnoxious isn’t enough to cut it with a judge.’

  ‘Not even being obnoxious and having two dead people in his fish tank.’ Martinez picked up his paper napkin and wiped his mouth. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I lost my appetite again.’

  They’d all gone over the Christous ad nauseam, had agreed, yet again, that abducting, killing and dumping two victims in their own backyard before calling the cops, would appear to have been an act way beyond insane.

  Still, there was mutual dislike in that marriage, perhaps even true hate, and neither Sam nor Martinez felt ready to let go completely.

  ‘I’m not saying I think Christou or Karen had anything to do with it,’ Sam said. ‘I’d just be happier if we could rule them both out once and for all.’

  ‘We could go visit him in Boca,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Or at least drop by his office,’ Sam said.

  They’d established that Christou ran his small chain from an office above the first restaurant he’d opened in Aventura six years back, Anthony’s Taste of Ionia.

  ‘Maybe he has a central storage place,’ Martinez mused. ‘Like somewhere big and private enough to stash the victims and do the whole glue thing without anyone noticing.’

  ‘Do you have a hint of a motive for all this?’ Sam asked dryly.

  ‘We don’t have a motive for the Beatty people either.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Sam shrugged. ‘There’s still no reason we can’t talk to Christou again, ask how he and Karen are coping with the shock.’

  ‘Just a few friendly questions,’ Martinez agreed. ‘Like does he take long weekends on the Gulf coast or play golf?’

  ‘Or has their own lousy marriage given him and his wife an obsessive hatred of happy couples?’ Sam said.

  ‘See?’ Martinez stood up. ‘A motive.’

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  A long-anticipated Damoclean sword fell slowly but painfully on the squad in the closing hours of their official working day.

  The media had linked the homicides.

  It had, of course, been inevitable, but first the numbers and intensity of calls from press, TV and radio newshounds seemed suddenly to quadruple – and then the barrage swelled into something resembling an incoming cloud of angry hornets.

  Only good thing, Sam figured as the situation worsened: the Chief was taking charge and senior minds were deciding which details would be passed across to the public, what to give, what to hold back.

  Nothing but negatives to hold back.

  He didn’t envy them.

  A press conference had been called for eight thirty next morning.

  ‘How in hell can I even think of going on a cruise now?’

  Finally, in the men’s room, no one else in there but his partner, Sam let out the question that had been choking him.

  ‘That’s how I felt this morning about the ring, and you told me to go out and buy it anyway, so I did, and God forgive me, I feel I did good.’ Martinez shrugged. ‘Anyway, there’s a week to go before your cruise. Whole lot can happen in a week.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘Like more deaths.’

  ‘Or maybe a breakthrough,’ Martinez said. ‘Maybe even an arrest.’

  ‘I feel no optimism.’ Sam shook his head. ‘After what we saw in the sculptor’s backyard, I feel pure darkness.’

  ‘You think we should call off tomorrow evening?’

  ‘No way,’ Sam said. ‘Grace is already cooking.’

  ‘Not pure darkness then, man, right?’ Martinez said.

  Sam’s smile had no humour in it.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Isabella the Seventh and her unborn pups were dead.

  The keeper was in mourning. Not just for the doe, but for the next generation, and who was to say if there would ever be a Romeo the Sixth or another Isabella?

  The cage was empty now, the cedar shavings and nesting boxes and cans and remnants of food burned.

  Isabella too.

  The rats had been more than a project, so much more than
science.

  An exercise in control, of course, the keeper was well aware of that.

  But more besides. Not just power.

  Love of a kind, too.

  FIFTY-NINE

  February 19

  Thursday morning’s press conference, located outside headquarters on Rocky Pomerantz Plaza because of the sheer numbers of bodies expected, most with cameras and boom mikes and other paraphernalia, was as grim and miserable an event as Sam and the squad had known it would be.

  The City of Miami detectives in whose jurisdiction the Resslers had been found were present as well as the Miami Beach team and Special Agent Duval, but the Chief and Captain Kennedy were kicking things off, and in other circumstances it might have been Sam’s conference to head, but with his leave scheduled so soon, Chief Hernandez felt that if the crimes were not solved prior to that – looking too damned probable – it might backfire on the department if Sam Becket was the focal point today.

  That knowledge making Sam feel infinitely worse than a heel.

  ‘Good morning. I’m Chief Hector Hernandez of the Miami Beach Police Department, and I’m joined today by Captain Tom Kennedy and Sergeant Michael Alvarez, lead investigator Detective Samuel Becket, FDLA Special Agent Joseph Duval and the rest of the squad who have been tackling the homicides that have shocked and saddened our peace-loving citizens over the last two weeks.’

  The speaker system whined, and Sam and Martinez exchanged uneasy glances, while Hernandez waited a second, then forged on.

  ‘We also welcome, from the City of Miami . . .’

  The whine rose to a shrill howl and Sam winced – hell, everybody winced, but he knew that some of the cameras whirring and clicking were focusing on him at that instant, and if he’d had a farm to lose, he’d have bet it that one of those shots of him looking discomfited would be tied to the Chief’s description of him as lead investigator.

  Not important, he told himself harshly, turning his full attention back on the boss, getting set to listen intently to the questions that the Captain and Alvarez would soon enough be fielding.