Frank experienced an unexpected surge of emotion when he shook their hands. He owed them an immense debt. They were unsung members of the far-reaching team that had saved his life, as unaware of him as he had been of them.
“Thanks,” he said simply, “for everything you do.”
The morgue was the next stop, an imposing fortresslike structure, six blocks long, at One Bob Hope Road. Only in Miami, he thought ruefully, would the last stop on the way to the cemetery dominate a short street named for a comedian.
The sunny, carpeted reception area revealed no hint of what lay elsewhere in the building, in its walk-in coolers, surgical suites and laboratories. Cherubic and friendly, with wispy white hair atop a round pink face, Dr. Vernon Duffy was the medical examiner who had handled the case.
“This fellow was probably intoxicated at the time he shothimself.” The doctor perused his own notes. “He still had traces of alcohol in his system when we got him. He’d had plenty of time to metabolize it. Let’s see, he lay there wounded for X hours, perhaps two or three, before being found. Then he lasted for Y hours in the hospital. Let’s see, about fifteen. So X plus Y equals seventeen, eighteen hours.” He calculated rapidly. “His blood alcohol was probably up to about a point three when he shot himself. Not unusual. Suicides will often use alcohol to bolster their courage.”
“There’s been some concern on the part of the family,” Frank lied, again assuming the role of helpful friend, “that perhaps he was not a suicide, or perhaps it wasn’t even Alexander.”
The doctor lifted an eyebrow. “What do they base that on?”
“Physical appearance … Apparently the dead man’s face was extremely distorted and swollen.”
The doctor consulted his file. “Yes. This fellow’s aim was a bit high, which is why death wasn’t instantaneous.” He pushed some photos across the table.
The face in these pictures did not resemble a human being, much less the handsome man he had seen in photographs. Frank closed his eyes and gripped the table edge for a moment to hold himself steady, as something inside him howled in painful recognition. He fought back nausea.
“The bullet angled up from above the right ear toward the front,” the doctor was saying, “involved the frontal lobes and exited the left side of the face. En route it fractured the orbital plates.” He raised his eyes up over the half glasses he used for reading. “Those are the thin bones above the eye sockets. Those fractures caused severe bleeding around the eyes and the eyelids. The swelling of his brain had impaired respiration to the point that he was near death when he wasdiscovered.” The doctor paused, studying him. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Frank averted his eyes from the photos. “I can see that he was unrecognizable.”
“That’s from swelling and edema.”
“But he was positively identified?”
“Let me see here, yes.” He focused on another paper in the file. “Through fingerprints. The state of Florida had them on record. Mister Alexander had a concealed-weapons permit, which requires printing.”
“What about dental records?”
“No,” he said. “We always do fingerprints. But he came in here from the hospital, was taken there from his home. The police had filled out a report and the detectives were satisfied that this was a noncontroversial case. A further check involving dental records wasn’t necessary.”
It was too late in the day to go to police headquarters, he thought, so Frank returned to his office. As he walked down the hall, the door opened and Kathleen stepped out. They were both startled.
“There you are.” She kissed his cheek. “Sue Ann,” she called. “Look who I found out in the hall.”
He asked what she was up to.
“I was shopping in the neighborhood,” Kathleen explained, babbling, “and I thought I’d come by and take you to lunch.”
He checked his watch. “It’s four o’clock.”
“A late lunch,” she said sheepishly. “A very late lunch. Just wanted to spend some time together.”
She left in a hurry, for a woman eager to spend some time with him. He wondered what that had been about, but had little time to dwell on it. He wanted to review his notesand tapes, had calls to make and messages to return before five. He opened his desk drawer and saw his checkbook was missing.
“Sue Ann?” She appeared in the doorway. “Where’s my checkbook?”
“Out here, I was balancing it and putting the numbers together for your quarterly taxes.” She marched in to return the large leather-bound book.
“Thanks.” He watched her leave the room.
He leafed through it page by page. No blank checks missing. What was going on? She normally handled the task on the first and the fifteenth. This was neither.
He pushed the intercom. “Sue Ann, what did Kathleen want?”
There was a pause. “You,” she chirped. “Guess she misses ya.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Frank would be too obvious in the Mercedes, so he asked Kathleen to swap cars for the day. She was groggy, still unaccustomed to his new routine of rising before dawn.
“Why?” she mumbled.
“I’d just like to drive yours.”
“But why? You never wanted to before.” She punched her pillow and rolled over heavily, but did not close her eyes.
“I thought you liked the Mercedes. I’ll leave you the keys.”
“Some other time, Frank.”
“No, I want to take your car today.”
She groaned, then sat up, exasperated. “Okay, but I’ve got to get my stuff out of it.” She padded down the stairs, protesting all the way.
He was at the front door ready to go when she returned, squinting against the rising sun. Birds sang in the gumbo-limbo tree outside and the morning smelled fresh and promising.
She carried a sheaf of papers, an accordion folder and a slim leather briefcase.
“What have you got there?”
“Files from the museum board and the Arts League Council. Some proposals for the Art in Public Places committee.” She turned away and headed upstairs with them.
He stood waiting for a moment. She had made no move to kiss him good-bye. “ ‘Bye,” he said to the back of her blue bathrobe as she reached the head of the stairs, then disappeared down the hall. He wanted to go after her. What was he doing? What has to be done, he told himself.
He wore neutral colors, a different pair of sunglasses, a distinctive style with mirrored lenses, and took along a newspaper, a legal pad on a clipboard and an old Marlins baseball cap. She was not likely to spot him in another car.
He was early. Rory’s station wagon still stood in the driveway. He parked down the street, across from the vacant lot where Air Rescue had landed. He lowered the windows a few inches, yanked his baseball cap down over his face, hunched down in the seat and watched.
Normally the warmth from the sun would have made him drowsy. But he felt alert, on edge. He had never spied on a woman before.
Rory emerged at 7:10 a.m. She wore some sort of oversized T-shirt that skimmed her hips. Her long legs were bare. He held his breath, fighting the voyeuristic pleasure that made him hard as she bent to pick up her morning newspaper. She tossed her hair back, slipped the paper out of its plastic sheath and scanned the headlines on the way back inside.
Twenty minutes later, she and Billy emerged. He was dressed for school. She wore white pants and a striped top. She looked model-slim, too thin. He thought of his mother and wondered if this new widow was eating properly. Mother and son were finally in the car. She backed down the driveway. The brake lights flashed. Some discussion. Billy bounded out again. So did she, leaving her door open. Back into the house. He re-emerged carrying his lunch box. She did too, hurrying him, then stopped, scooped up a kitten that had escaped in the confusion and carried it back into the house.
Finally both were back in the car; it bounced out onto the street and drove right by him. He saw her head turn toward the vacant lot acr
oss the street. She never even glanced his way. He waited five minutes to be sure they wouldn’t be back for some other forgotten item, then climbed out of the car wearing the cap, carrying the clipboard and a pen.
He knocked at the door directly across from Twin Palms, a small, well-shaded house with a circular drive.
“Sorry to bother you so early.” He smiled at the tiny, dark-eyed woman. The couple was elderly. The husband used a cane and sat in his bathrobe watching the Today Show. Invited in, Frank was surprised at how freely strangers speak to anyone carrying a clipboard.
“She’s a nice girl and they had a cute little boy,” the woman said. “Busy all the time. Wish you could bottle that energy. You should see that young fella pedal his bicycle up and down here. Had to tell him once not to speed through our driveway on it.”
“We didn’t know anything happened until Pearl heard the helicopter,” the man said, both hands on the cane between his knees. “Never even heard the rescue truck.”
“It happened in the heat of the summer,” the womanadded. “We had everything closed up, with the air-conditioning and the TV on. Didn’t see or hear a thing until the commotion with the helicopter. Poor girl. Never had anything like that here before.”
“Musta had his reasons,” the old man said.
He heard the same story at every house on the block. Windows closed to the heat, nobody heard the shot, few heard the sirens. All at home heard the chopper. Nobody saw anything unusual prior to that. No one recalled seeing Daniel Alexander that day, until he was rolled down the street, his head bandaged and medics holding his IV bags.
Stubbornly, Frank refused to give up. He thought Rory intended to work at Pelican Harbor after car-pooling the kids. What if she had changed her mind? He called her house from Kathleen’s Catera.
“Pelican Harbor Seabird Station,” someone answered. He hung up. She had forwarded her calls.
He walked around the block to try the house that backed up to Twin Palms. An overweight man in his forties answered in a T-shirt and shorts. Unshaven, he wore a neck brace and an open shoe on one foot.
“One of your neighbors died last summer and I’m just checking out the circumstances.”
The man’s eyes looked knowing behind thick glasses. “Insurance, huh? I’m dealing with that myself. Come on in. What company?”
Frank gave the name of his own insurance company.
“You talking about my backyard neighbor, the fellow lived right behind me?” He sat down and gingerly raised one foot onto a small stool.
“That’s right.”
“The guy had some wife there. She’s really something.”
He smirked. “Was out there just the other night climbing up into her kid’s tree house.”
Frank glanced toward the rear of the house before taking a seat. A wide picture window revealed the yard with just a chain-link fence separating it from Rory’s. The large fixed window was flanked by two smaller ones that cranked open. All provided an excellent view of the back of Rory’s house, her windows and the tree house. A pair of binoculars sat on an end table next to an armchair. Frank was not the only one spying on Rory.
“Her name’s Rory, right?” said the man, as though reading his mind. “I didn’t know it until I saw the story in the newspaper, about her husband killing himself. She’s really something,” he said again.
Frank wondered how much of Rory the man had seen. A stack of girlie magazines sat on the floor beside the armchair.
“Been noticing my neighbors a lot more in the last year and a half. Been outta work since I got into a wreck a year ago last April. Got rear-ended by a semi at the big curve on the Palmetto. Busted my foot, hurt my neck and spine. Lucky to be alive. You don’t know how that feels. It’s been hell trying to get the insurance company to settle for a decent amount. Looks like we might have to take it to trial.”
“So I guess you were home that day, housebound.”
“Yup. Heard the whole thing. Except the newspaper got it all wrong.”
“Oh?”
“Said she was out, came home and found him. She was there when it happened.”
Frank couldn’t breathe for a moment. “How do you know that?” he asked.
“Heard the shot. Didn’t know that’s what it was at thetime, but I heard it. Heard her voice, just before. She was there.”
“It was pretty hot back in July.” He thought his heart would stop beating. “Didn’t you have the windows closed? The AC running?”
“I always keep them two back windows open, even in the summer.” He shrugged sheepishly. “I like to hear what’s going on in the neighborhood.”
Rory, Rory, Rory, Frank thought, a lump forming in his throat. Lucca was right. She had to be the dangerous woman in his dreams. She was what his heart had been trying to warn him about.
“She come out on the back porch a coupla minutes after it happened, went in the garage.”
“You saw her? What was she wearing?”
“Well, I couldn’t tell you that. Had a cast on my foot at the time and I was sitting over there at the dining room table, didn’t have a view. Couldn’t move fast enough to get a decent look. But I heard her voice, she come out the back door, slammed it and went in the garage. Just caught a glimpse.”
“How can you be sure it was her?”
“Can’t miss that red hair. And she’s the only woman lives there. I’ve heard the mother’s voice, the old lady. Raspy, she visits a lot. Must be his mother. Cries every time she comes now. Wasn’t her. The way I figure it, the kid is out, her ol’ man comes on to her, wants some, she ways no. They argue. He can’t take the rejection anymore and boom!”
“They fight a lot?”
“Had a coupla good ones a few years ago. Saw him haul off and smack her once. They been pretty quiet lately, until this.”
“The reports state that she and her son left the houseabout nine-thirty that morning, came back a little after two and found him shot.”
He shook his head. “She was back about noon. I heard their voices. Thought maybe they were fighting again, just before the shot.”
Frank felt sick to his stomach. “You must be mistaken about the time.”
“No way. No doubt about it. Reason I was at the table, I was eating lunch. Put a coupla burgers from McDonald’s in the microwave. I always eat lunch watching the news at noon, Channel Seven. I’m eating lunch, watching the news, hear the voices, hear the bang, then she came out. Don’t know what she did then, can’t see their driveway from here, that’s for sure. Couple hours later I hear her call his name, then her and the kid screaming and hollering, then here comes the sirens, then the whirlybird. That’s how it was.”
“Did you tell that to the police?”
“They didn’t ask. Don’t ask, don’t tell. All it gets you is a lotta trouble. I think maybe she’s got a new boyfriend now. Had something going on the other night, but they stayed pretty much in the front of the house.” He gazed fondly out the window into the green adjoining yards. “I’d been wondering if the widow was lonely these nights. They say them redheads are hot.”
Frank resisted the urge to confront her at the Seabird Station. What would it accomplish? She had lied all along, was good at it and had a reason. She would only continue to lie. He had believed her. The man he had just spoken to had obviously crossed the line between nosy neighbor and Peeping Tom, maybe worse. His glasses were thick, but his hearing was not impaired. His words had the ring of truth.
He had been acting too quickly, without thinking thingsout, letting emotions drive him. What had Kathleen said? Totally out of character, that was it. He had to control whatever drove him and take command, as he had done with Rory the day before. He would follow through, precisely, methodically, the way he had always proceeded in the past, until the pieces fit. The bottom line was waiting, out there somewhere.
Miami police headquarters, a redbrick stronghold, lies in the heart of Overtown, the city’s most violent neighborhood. Frank had been there befor
e, in darkness, in the company of detectives who rolled their steel cocoon unobstructed into their own private steel-gated parking garage at the rear. Their coded key cards provided instant passage through locked security doors. A private back elevator had whisked them up to homicide. Without a cop, the building was an impenetrable fortress. Now he was an outsider, a citizen seeking answers. The public parking lot was full. Frank finally found a spot on the street and walked into the front entrance in broad daylight.
Signs instructed him to place his briefcase on a conveyor belt and remove his keys from his pocket to pass through the metal detector.
He remembered the old station, a squat two-story structure still standing on Eleventh Street, abandoned now except for the ghosts of past pain and anguish in this violent and changing city. He had gone there with his mother, after his father’s death. Hailed as state of the art twenty years ago, this “new” station already appeared run-down and deteriorated. The lobby lighting was poor, the floor scuffed and shabby. Was there a city left, he wondered, in which the most-used public building was still a library or a concert hall? Not in Miami, perhaps not in this country, not in this lifetime.
A disinterested cop at the front desk directed him to the
Public Information Office to fill out interview request forms. The clerk there only half listened, shaking her head. Request forms are issued only to members of the media. Shuffled back to the front desk, he persevered, amid a growing sense of horror that these were the people responsible for protecting him and his neighbors. He eventually learned that to talk to Officer Frank Valdez, to Homicide Detective Joseph Thomas, and to ID Tech Denise Watson, he must first obtain the permission of each of their supervisors. He finally persuaded the front desk officer, who seemed pained at any request, to read him their phone numbers off a reference card he had obviously been issued for that purpose.
Frank stood at the battered public telephone in the lobby, aware that the party who left him on hold was nearby, somewhere within shouting distance, on the far side of a wall or door. How did Lucca always manage to slice through the bureaucratic bullshit? The man was worth every dime. The commander of the ID bureau was out of the building, but through persistence, Frank finally reached the other two.
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