“Good news,” she said. “The reward is up to twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Nice work,” I said. “Thanks for all you’re doing.”
“Oh, it’s not me,” she said, her eyes welling. “It’s all Sloane.”
She hugged me so hard and for so long that it was awkward. I wasn’t sure what had brought it on. Maybe it was the big sister embarrassed by having been so outdone by the best friend. Maybe it was driving her crazy that Angelina, the prettier of the two Miller sisters, was getting all the attention yet again. Maybe I was going to burn in hell for thinking such things. I couldn’t say. Weird shit, whatever it was.
Probably just me, on edge, knowing that I’d failed a polygraph examination.
I spotted Sloane across the room. She was in supervisory mode, iPad in hand and a hands-free wireless headset to facilitate the multitasking. She and Angelina had once cochaired an art festival on the University of Miami campus, and I suddenly had a vision of Sloane busting some hapless artist’s ass for driving his truck on the lawn.
“Facebook ads will start running in a few hours,” she told me. “Local news coverage wouldn’t give me an exact time, but all the networks will be here at some point before the six o’clock broadcast.”
“That’s excellent,” I said.
“I’m working on Angelina’s supervisor to see if the bank will match the existing donations to bring the reward up to a hundred thousand.”
“Terrific. I’ve been getting e-mails all afternoon from people at the state attorney’s office, offering to pitch in, too.”
“Forward those to me, if you want. Let’s shoot for five o’clock to have a firm number. Then we should do a news conference.”
“That sounds like a good plan.”
“You should talk to your in-laws,” she said. “They don’t want to do a news conference, but it’s important that we get their faces out there to appeal to the community.”
“Well, if they don’t want to, I—”
“Abe, no. They need to do it.”
The emphasis was on “they,” not “need.” I got the message. I wasn’t enough.
Did she know I’d failed a lie detector test? “Okay, I’ll talk to them,” I said.
Sloane brought up an image on her iPad and showed it to me. “Right now, we’re going with the reward for information leading to Angelina’s safe return. You and your in-laws will have to decide when we run this one.”
I looked at the screen. The reward for Angelina’s safe return was in big red letters. Below it, in black letters and a slightly smaller font, was a smaller reward “for information leading to the location and recovery of Angelina’s body.”
“I’ll let you know on that,” I said.
She thanked me—for what, I wasn’t sure. Then she closed out her iPad screen, excused herself, and walked over to the ribbon-tying table to step up production. Rid was on his third cupcake at the food table. He grabbed two more and came back to me.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“You need to eat something.”
“Later.”
A few more volunteers arrived. Sloane was right on them.
“That girl is good,” said Rid. “She’s been going around the room telling the volunteers to leave you alone. It was getting so bad that your in-laws had to step out for a while.”
I had been wondering where they were.
Rid swallowed the rest of his cupcake. “It’s better to give you space. A command center doesn’t work for the family if it turns into a constant greeting line of mourners paying their respects. Especially when it’s people you don’t even know.”
My attention shifted toward the entrance. Angelina’s father was back. Margaret wasn’t with him. A few people hadn’t gotten the message about space, and they swarmed around him. He shook hands graciously, then spotted me and came across the room. The expression on his face spelled trouble.
“I just spoke with Agent Santos on the phone,” he said. Then he checked over his shoulder, leaned closer, and said in a low voice, “Why didn’t you tell me you were taking a polygraph?”
This was not a conversation I wanted to have in the middle of the Find Angelina command center. “Can we talk about this outside?”
“Abe, did you take a polygraph?”
“Yes, I did.”
He seemed afraid to ask the follow-up. He was waiting for me to volunteer the information he wanted to hear.
“Let’s step out where we can talk,” I said.
He looked at me, confused. I told Rid we’d be right back, and Jake followed me out of the ballroom. We found a place to talk down the hall, just me, my father-in-law, and the proverbial elephant in the room. He was still asking that follow-up question, but only with his eyes: You passed, right?
I gave him the best answer I could.
“Do you know anything about polygraphs, Jake?”
“Just what I’ve seen on TV.”
“Basically the examiner asks a lot of questions, but only three questions really matter. A lot turns on how the examiner phrases those key questions. In every polygraph examination I’ve ever been involved in at the state attorney’s office, prosecutors and defense lawyers will negotiate for hours, back and forth, about the exact wording of the questions. Then when everyone is in agreement, you sit for the examination. We didn’t have that kind of back-and-forth here. There wasn’t time. I just sat for the exam.”
“What were the three questions they asked you?”
I told him. “It’s the last one that’s . . . problematic,” I said, looking for the right word.
“Problematic?”
“The examiner asked me: ‘Did you have anything to do with Angelina’s disappearance?’ My answer was the same as it was to the other questions: ‘no.’”
“What did the examination say about your answer?”
“I haven’t seen the polygraph examiner’s report,” I said, which was true. “But I could definitely understand how someone might see signs of deception in a straight ‘no’ answer, without any ability to explain.”
Jake was speechless, his eyes burning through me as they never had before. “What are you telling me?”
“It’s a bad question, is what I’m telling you. Did I have anything to do with Angelina’s disappearance? Jake, a serial killer sent photographs to our house. Angelina and I had an argument. I spent the night at J.T.’s apartment. I left Angelina alone in our house. Of course I feel like I had something to do with her disappearance.”
He was silent. I was trying to read his expression, but I couldn’t possibly know what was inside his head. If he didn’t speak soon, he might as well have said it: You killed my daughter.
“I want to see the examiner’s report,” he said.
“I’m not sure I can get it for you.”
“Get it,” he said, his voice a few degrees colder.
“Okay, I’ll make it happen.”
He stepped closer, his nose less than a foot from mine, our eyes even. “I want to believe you, Abe. It was always important to Angelina that her mother and I love you like a son. But if the ‘something’ you had to do with her disappearance turns out to be something more than you just described, I will fucking kill you.”
His glare held me a moment longer. Then he turned and walked back to the ballroom without me.
Chapter Forty-Two
Victoria was working at the Cutter task force command center at the Miami field office, away from volunteers. Angelina was still on her mind, but so were Cutter and the victims he’d left in Palm Beach cane fields. Their photographs were posted on the bulletin board, along with personal data and a brief physical description. Elizabeth, twenty-three years old; Caitlin, twenty-five years old; Holly, twenty-one years old; Amanda, twenty-eight years old. And now his latest: Megan, thirty-one years old. Lives cut short by a monster with a machete. Across south Florida, white women with black husbands or boyfriends were on edge, but relatively lit
tle had been said about the Palm Beach victims since the murder of Tyla Tomkins and the disappearance of Angelina Beckham. For every homicide that became a TV obsession, dozens went unnoticed. Too many went unsolved.
Not you girls. I promise.
Victoria sat alone at the conference table, her laptop in front of her, boxes of files and materials scattered across the table. She was dialing on a secure line for a follow-up with a tech agent when her cell rang. It was Abe Beckham. She hung up the landline and took Abe’s call.
“I need to see a copy of the polygraph examiner’s report,” he said.
“The answer is still no,” she said.
“My father-in-law wants to see it.”
“He can’t have it either.”
“Why did you tell him I took one?”
“Because he asked.”
She could almost feel Beckham’s surprise. “Jake asked you if I had taken a polygraph?”
“Yes.”
“Just to be clear,” he said, his voice tinged with disbelief. “Jake asked if I had taken a polygraph before you said anything about one. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t messing with him. It was true.
“Did you tell him the results?”
“No. I told him to ask you how it went. Mr. Beckham, I need to make another call. I have to go.”
“Wait. I want that report.”
“You don’t want it, and you can’t have it.”
“Oh, I don’t want it? What, are you doing me a favor again?”
“No. I’m doing me a favor. Good-bye.”
She hung up and went to the microwave on the counter to make “dinner.” Some agents couldn’t live without a coffeemaker, but for Victoria, a command center wasn’t officially up and running without microwaved popcorn.
She knew she had probably sounded like a smart-ass, but she was doing herself a favor. And Elizabeth, Caitlin, Holly, Amanda, and Megan. If she shared the examiner’s report with Abe Beckham, his father-in-law, or anyone else, it was sure to leak to the press. Overnight, the Angelina Beckham disappearance would be the media equivalent of Laci and Scott Peterson. Victoria had worked enough cases to know that sensationalism on that level wouldn’t help her catch Cutter.
And it wouldn’t help her find out what had happened to Angelina, either.
The popcorn stopped popping. She opened the bag to let it cool, went back to the phone, and dialed on the secure line. She talked through the “appetizer,” clementine wedges, her other dietary staple.
“Is this a good time, Albert?”
Albert was little more than half Victoria’s age, a talented agent who had worked his way up from general technology matters to a coveted spot in the FBI Cyber Unit in Washington. He was eager to please, the way Victoria had been on her way up, and she exploited his ambition, the way her supervisors had exploited hers. He was more than happy to help on a weekend, even if he was merely double-checking the findings of the Miami tech agents. Victoria wanted to be right about this, and she was sure that the Miami agents were fine. But Albert was someone she knew, and Albert was always right.
“Okay, I got something for you,” said Albert. “First, on those four voice-mail messages that Tyla Tomkins left on Abe Beckham’s cell phone. Your Miami agents got it right: each of them was listened to and deleted on the same day it was received.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Yes. But here’s something interesting that, no offense, the boys in Miami didn’t catch. When it comes to voice-mail messages, there’s deleted, and then there’s permanently deleted. The difference is what the word permanent implies: you can’t ever get it back. It’s gone. Even though each of these messages was received on a different day, all four were permanently deleted on the same day.”
Victoria salted her popcorn. “When?”
“Sunday, January nineteenth.”
“The medical examiner puts Tyla Tomkins’ death on Saturday night or very early that Sunday morning.”
“If that’s the case,” said Albert, “this is an even more interesting finding than I thought.”
“Yeah. It means that whoever deleted those messages knew that Tyla Tomkins was dead at least a day before her body was found in the Everglades, at least two days before it was identified.”
“Well, then, you’re welcome,” said Albert.
“What about Tyla’s prepaid phone?” she asked, shifting gears. “Anything on the number that we couldn’t identify?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you there. Five of the six numbers she dialed were to registered cell phones. That includes Beckham. But this sixth number is to a phone just like Tyla’s. It’s prepaid, disposable, no registered user. There’s no way to know who owned that phone or who Tyla was talking to. Unless you find the physical phone and pull fingerprints from it.”
The Miami tech agent had told her the same thing. But now she was doubly sure. “Okay, we’ll have to work with that. Thanks so much.”
They hung up. Victoria dug into her bag of popcorn, sat back, and thought things through. Sometimes all the pieces to the puzzle were scattered on the table right in front of you. It was just a matter of configuring them the right way. But sometimes a piece was missing. If you were lucky, you knew which piece was missing. Or you at least had a hunch about what piece was missing. Victoria had a hunch.
No way to know who Tyla was talking to. Unless you find the physical phone and pull fingerprints from it.
Victoria picked up the phone again and dialed Detective Reyes, her domestic violence contact at MDPD.
“I need you to do an affidavit in support of an application for a search warrant in state court.”
“What are we searching for?”
“A cell phone.”
“When?”
“Right away.”
“You mean tonight?”
“Yes,” said Victoria. “Definitely tonight.”
Chapter Forty-Three
The phone call surprised me. It was Brian Belter. He wanted to meet me for coffee, without delay.
“It’s beyond important, well worth your time, and not anything I can discuss on the telephone,” he said.
“Can you come to the command center?” I asked. I told him where it was. He suggested a coffee shop two blocks away. We agreed to meet there in twenty minutes.
The urgency in his voice had piqued my interest, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I knew what Ed Brumbel would tell me to do, but I was in no frame of mind to cross-examine Belter until he broke down, cried, and admitted that Big Sugar had enslaved its workers, destroyed the Everglades, and sunk the Titanic. I went alone, and I told no one where I was going.
Belter was waiting in a booth at the back. He was wearing a golf shirt from the Cortinas resort in the Dominican Republic, which reminded me that less than forty-eight hours had passed since the unexpected business travel that had rendered him a no-show at Tyla’s memorial service. It felt more like a month.
He rose to greet me. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
I slid into the booth, and he returned to his seat, facing me. A steaming demitasse of espresso was on the table in front of him.
“Can I order you a coffee?” he asked.
“No. My stomach is churning enough.”
Belter lowered his eyes, stirring his espresso. “I’m sorry you have to go through this. Truly, I am.”
“Thank you. I can’t stay long.”
“I understand. I wanted to tell you that I would like to contribute to the reward fund for your wife.”
That hardly seemed like something that couldn’t be done on the phone. “That’s very kind of you,” I said.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
I was taken aback. “That’s very kind. Thank you.”
“All I ask in return is one small favor. More a show of support, really.”
“Ah,” I said. This had to be the face-to-face component. “Support on what?”
“The truth.
I never slept with Tyla Tomkins.”
My instinct was to leave, but this was the first I’d sat down in hours, and my body refused to get up. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“I’m sure Tyla must have mentioned that to you.”
“Actually, I never—”
“Abe,” he said, stopping me before I could close the door on whatever proposal he had in mind. “I’m sure Tyla must have mentioned it to you.”
Belter pulled his checkbook from his coat pocket, opened his Montblanc fountain pen, but then paused before filling in the number. “How much did I say my contribution would be?”
“Twenty-five thousand.”
“I’m sorry. My mistake. I left off a zero.”
I watched in disbelief as he wrote out a check for a quarter million dollars.
“Is there a fund you’ve established that I should make this payable to?” Then he lifted his eyes, looking at me. “Or should I just make it out to you?”
“To me?”
“Or we could dispense with these silly paper checks altogether, and I could wire the funds. To an account of your choosing, in a country of your liking.”
“Are you actually trying to bribe an assistant state attorney?”
He didn’t even blink. His expression was all business, nothing more, nothing less, as if to remind me who I was dealing with. As if to say, Big Sugar has bribed much bigger fish than you, Abe Beckham.
“Keep your money,” I said, rising.
He grabbed my wrist before I could leave the table, but it was the intensity in his eyes that would not release me. “I know who the unknown caller is,” he said.
“What unknown caller?”
“Tyla dialed six different numbers on her prepaid phone,” he said in a low, even voice, his words flowing in machine-gun cadence. “Five of those numbers have been linked to five married men who cheated on their wives: you, me, and three other schmucks who will have a lot of explaining to do when the Tyla Tomkins murder investigation comes knocking on their door. Please don’t take offense—I’m only being realistic, not cruel—but your wife is probably dead, which takes you off the hook, no explanation owed to her or to anyone else. On the other hand, my wife is very much alive, she is most unforgiving, and our prenuptial agreement expired eighteen months ago on the joyous occasion of our twentieth wedding anniversary.”
Cane and Abe Page 20