“I know. It’s been a long time. But this is important. Is it possible you kept the knife somewhere else. A toolbox, a shed?”
“Possible, I guess.”
“Could it have gotten lost somewhere? Or thrown away? Maybe even someone stole it?”
“When?”
“Anytime.”
“Shit, Abe. We’re talkin’ more than seventy years.”
“I know,” I said, my tone more urgent than I intended. “But I need to know: Is it possible?”
“Abe, of course it’s possible. This goes back before the Second World War. Who knows where that knife ended up? Could be anywhere.”
I sat back and took a breath. It was the best answer he could give me, and it was the reality of the situation, whether I liked it or not.
“You’re right,” I said. “Anywhere.”
Chapter Fifty-One
A predawn fog crept across the darkness of Shadow Wood Park. In silence, Victoria and a SWAT unit of eight rode in the rear compartment of a special-response vehicle.
The tip had come from an alert customer at a self-serve gas station. The tipster, a Vietnam veteran, had been driving all night from Tallahassee. He pulled up behind a sedan, climbed out of his truck, and squeezed between his front bumper and the back of the other vehicle on his way to the pump. “I smelled plenty of dead bodies in ’Nam,” he’d told police. “You don’t forget it. That was what I smelled coming from the trunk of that car.”
The hope was that the body was not Angelina’s, that Angelina was still alive and in the house. Any potential hostage situation called for action far more drastic than a car search. The FBI opted for a tactical response.
Shadow Wood Park was adjacent to the suspect’s house in a quiet subdivision. It was a typical 1970s development in northwest Broward County, where homeowners chose from one of four models, bulldozers came in, good schools were built, and in two years a thousand ranch-style single-family homes stood where the Everglades had once flowed. It was a strategic decision for SWAT to launch before sunrise, and the park offered the added cover of forty-year-old trees and overgrown bushes. It was the designated staging area for the SWAT assault.
The vehicle stopped. Team leader Kyle Crawford ran through the prelaunch checklist.
The SWAT C-33 was a dual-purpose vehicle that delivered tactical support and served as a mobile command platform for response team planning and communications. A night-vision field camera mounted on Crawford’s helmet would provide live video feed to a monitor inside the vehicle. Two other team members—“breachers,” the first to enter—also had cameras. A bone microphone and headset provided audio communication. Victoria would be in constant contact with the team while watching the operation unfold in real time, through their eyes.
Crawford’s checklist was finished. The rear doors opened, and the team filed out. The intensity was palpable, even if they were still in prelaunch mode. A second SWAT unit had followed in a separate vehicle and joined them. Dressed all in black, faces covered with greasepaint, the units were virtually invisible in the darkness. Victoria was armed only with her standard Sig Sauer 9 mm sidearm, but plenty more firepower would go in before her. Team members carried fully automatic M16s. Kevlar vests, helmets, and countless hours of training and experience would protect them from whatever might come in return.
A third vehicle arrived. Victoria’s communications specialist and two forensic agents caught up with the team and went inside the mobile command center.
Crawford gave a hand signal. SWAT 1 deployed in silent unison.
Peering through night-vision goggles, Victoria watched the first wave of SWAT members fan out around the perimeter of the quarter-acre lot as they surrounded the suspect in his house. Mature olive trees partially blocked her view, but she could see the front yard, the walkway, and the front of the house. The windows were black, no sign of any lights burning inside, but a bug light on the porch cast an eerie amber pall.
Crawford adjusted his earpiece. He was getting audio from team one.
“Stand by,” Crawford told his team. “Ten seconds to video.”
Victoria went back inside the vehicle. The communications specialist was seated in front of five separate monitors, each linked to a different field camera. Victoria watched over his shoulder. Crawford and two other SWAT members joined her. The first monitor flickered, then fixed on an image. It was from the surveillance agents, the first to approach the house. Theirs was the all-important job of scoping out the scene in stealth, from outside the walls. They had already pulled the building plans and confirmed the floor plan for this particular model, which the team had reviewed and memorized. Infrared cameras couldn’t see through brick walls or glass, but winter in Florida was the season for open windows. If the agents could find one, heat sensors would tell them if anyone was inside.
“Video confirmed,” Victoria said into her microphone. “Go ahead. Over.”
“Building plans are accurate,” the surveillance agent reported, “no structural alterations detected. Two small bedrooms on south side of the house. Both vacant. Kitchen, dining, and TV room on the east side. Also vacant. Infrared sensor confirms one subject in master bedroom, north side. Large, probably male. Appears to be sleeping. Direct access through sliding glass doors facing rear screened-in patio. Over.”
“Any sign of second subject? Over.”
By “subject,” Victoria meant “victim.” They were looking for a serial killer, and Angelina was still missing.
“Can’t get a visual. Infrared scan shows amorphous glow from master bathroom. Some source of heat.”
Victoria leaned closer to the monitor. The image was weak, but the description had been accurate. Victoria had worked with infrared in many cases before, and she’d seen similar low-level glows from victims found in Dumpsters or hidden in the weeds. A human body would continue to give off detectable levels of warmth at least two or three hours after death.
Crawford went team-wide on his microphone. “Stand by,” he said, not a hint of emotion in his voice. “On three we’re yellow.”
Yellow was the SWAT code for the final position of cover and concealment. Green was the assault, the moment of life and death, literally.
Crawford exited the communications van and joined the rest of Team 2. Victoria could no longer see him, but the image from the camera mounted on Crawford’s helmet flashed on screen two. Images from other field cameras flashed on monitors three, four, and five. Victoria had the total picture. And she had Crawford’s command in her ear.
“Three, two, one.”
The monitors showed SWAT on the move, a silent and well-choreographed wave through the woods, out of the park, and into the yard. Victoria could almost feel their steps—toes first, then heels, knees bent to absorb the recoil in case they were forced to fire. Monitor two captured the approach from the east to cover the back door. Monitor three showed street-side containment, SWAT within striking distance of the front door, but not too close, the approach coming to a stop just beyond the reach of the glowing yellow porch light. Crawford and two others went around to the patio, but his camera feed wasn’t clear. The fog and the patio screens made for a blur on the monitor, which only added to Victoria’s anxiety.
She wondered about that ghostly aura of warmth emanating from the bathroom.
The images froze. Movement had stopped. A round of microphone checks confirmed it: SWAT was in position.
“On three we’re green,” Crawford whispered, his voice breaking the radio squelch in Victoria’s ear. He counted slowly, deliberately, a man with ice water in his veins. At the count of three, the monitors were a blur of motion. Victoria’s headset resounded with the simultaneous crash of the front and rear doors, and the shattering of the sliding glass in the master bedroom. She braced for the crack of gunfire, but she heard only the shouts of Crawford and his team as they swept through the house and into the bedroom.
“Down, down! Get down on the floor!”
Victoria stared at
the night-vision feed on the monitors, all images converging on the man on the mattress, the man going down, the man surrounded.
There was a crackling on the radio, more commands. Monitor one showed a subject under control. The others flashed with the sweep of the house. Camera five was in the bathroom, where the infrared scan had detected warmth.
“Nothing here,” the agent reported.
Victoria looked more closely at the monitor. An empty bathroom.
“All clear,” said Crawford.
Victoria and her forensic specialists sprang into action and ran toward the house. Two tech agents were right behind her. Only the communications specialists remained behind.
Victoria cut across the lawn at full speed. The patch of warmth was still a mystery, but if they had indeed found Cutter, Victoria didn’t want some clever defense lawyer arguing that he had confessed to a crime with an M16 rifle pointed at his head. The front door was barely hanging on its hinges, damaged from the breach. She hurried inside. The tech agents followed SWAT to the subject’s computer. Victoria and the forensic specialists went to the master suite. Crawford and two other agents were standing over a large man who was facedown on the floor beside the bed. He was wearing only pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt. His hands were clasped behind his waist with plastic cuffs.
“Where is Angelina Beckham?” Victoria shouted.
“I don’t know!” he said into the carpet.
“What did you do with her?”
“Nothing. I don’t know who you’re talking about!”
She wasn’t sure he was lying.
“Santos, got something,” the forensic specialist said from the bathroom. Victoria hurried toward the bathroom. The forensic specialist was on the floor.
“Here’s your heat source on the infrared,” he said.
Victoria didn’t see anything but white tile. “What?”
“Chemical cleaner,” he said. “Some concentration of sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid, which increases hydronium ions in a solution and attracts electrons from whatever mess you’re trying to clean up. The hydronium ions react chemically with the material they’re cleaning, which releases heat.”
“Enough heat to be picked up by an infrared scan?”
“If there’s enough acid. And a big enough mess.”
“What kind of mess?”
He took his bottle of Luminol and sprayed one of the ceramic floor tiles. Victoria switched off the light. The blue glow told the story.
“Blood,” he said. “From the amount of heat that showed up on the infrared scan, I’d say he was using one hell of a lot of chemical cleaners, wiping up a lot of blood.”
A SWAT agent entered the suite. “No body in the trunk of the car,” he told Victoria. “But the cadaver dog’s going nuts. Our tipster from the gas station was right on. Definitely was a body in there at some point.”
“Let’s get forensics on it,” said Victoria.
“Something else you need to see.”
Victoria followed him out of the master bedroom, down the hall. Another agent opened the door, and she entered what should have been the garage. Somehow, she knew what she was about to see, but it still took her breath away.
“Oh, my God,” she said, stopping in the doorway.
The rear half of a two-car garage had been built out and converted into a windowless room. The walls and ceiling were painted black. The floor was unfinished concrete. Three spotlights were mounted in the ceiling, their blinding beams targeting the very center of the room, where four sets of metal cuffs—two for the wrists, two for the ankles—were bolted into the concrete. The lighting was so tightly focused that the perimeter remained in the shadows, but there was just enough light to see the workbench against the wall. Slowly, Victoria walked toward it. The tools of a sadist came into view. Leather straps. Bullwhips. Pliers. Scissors. Alligator clips, leashes, handcuffs, pins, and dildos of varying length and thickness, the largest about eighteen inches. They were laid out meticulously across the bench. But it was the tool hanging on the wall, right above the bench, that distinguished this killer from so many other sociopaths who might have fit the criminal profile.
It was a cane cutter’s machete.
Victoria felt a wave of . . . something. Accomplishment perhaps summed it up; the tragedy of so many young victims made it impossible to call it success.
“Got him,” she said quietly.
Chapter Fifty-Two
I was a good half hour ahead of peak rush hour, cruising past the University of Miami campus in the first wave of morning commuters, heading to the Find Angelina command center, no plan in mind, just feeling like I needed to be doing something. The Dadeland Publix opened at seven, and I’d already been there and delivered three bags of groceries to J.T.’s apartment, putting an end to the I-got-no-food mantra. That was when Rid called from his house.
“Cutter is in custody.”
Countless questions clogged my mind, but I whittled the jumble of confusion down to the most important one. “What about Angelina?”
“We don’t know.”
My hands shook on the wheel. I had to pull off US 1 and park at a gas station, but I left the motor running. “You don’t know if he took her,” I asked, “or he took her, and you don’t know what he did with her?”
“The first one. Be glad for that, Abe. If this monster is in any way involved, there’s not much doubt what he did.”
I cranked the AC to max, anything to help me breathe again. “Who is he?”
“His name is Tommy Salvo. He works for Cortinas Sugar.”
My mouth fell open. “He works for the fucking sugar company? How could Santos not zero in on this guy sooner?”
“Keep in mind that the sugar industry has hundreds of thousands of employees and former employees. A computer search ruled him out in the first run through the database. Salvo has a house in Broward County, but he lives and works in Nicaragua during the harvest season, October to May. Apparently they still cut by hand there.”
“He actually is a cane cutter?”
“No. The cutting is done by very low-wage Nicaraguans. Salvo is an American citizen and has a supervisory role in field operations. Anyway, he slipped through the computer search because he has no criminal record, and immigration records showed that he was in Nicaragua at the time of the murders.”
“So he came back illegally.”
“Right. The FBI’s thinking is that he flew Managua–Havana–Nassau on Cuba Jet, then paid someone under the table for a boat ride to the states from the Bahamas. A circuitous route, but if you’re a serial killer who wants law enforcement to think you’re out of the country, it’s worth the effort. No one knew he was here.”
“Except—” I started to say, then stopped.
“Except who?” asked Rid.
“Except maybe Tyla Tomkins. Could that be why she was calling me and leaving me messages on my voice mail?”
Rid didn’t answer me.
“Did Salvo kill Tyla?” I asked.
“That’s not clear.”
“That’s a shitty answer.”
“Abe, my hands are tied as to what I can tell you. Santos is interrogating the suspect now. This is all very confidential.”
“Don’t give me that ‘confidential’ bullshit!” I shouted, my words a bolt of anger. “Knowing what happened to Tyla could mean the difference between finding and not finding my wife. Tell me what you know—good, bad, everything. Fucking tell me, Rid!”
A soccer mom in an SUV pulled into the gas station and maneuvered toward the pump in front of me, a pack of kids in the rear seats. She drove right past the pump and steered back onto the highway. My windows were up, but I must have looked like a lunatic, yelling into my phone and pounding the steering wheel.
“Okay, here’s what I know,” he said. “Salvo had his kill room set up like an amateur movie studio. Black walls, spotlights, soundproofing, the whole bit. The FBI confiscated his computer, but Santos is being tight-lipped about what they
found. It’s a pretty safe bet that this sick son of a bitch liked to film what he did to his victims, but I have no idea if that means five women from Palm Beach County, or if it means more than that. I don’t want to lead you wrong with half-baked information. This could turn out to be good news for you. Or it could be godawful news.”
I practically fell forward, my forehead landing on the steering wheel. It was a struggle to talk. “Where’s the interrogation?”
“FBI field office.”
“I’m going up there.”
“It’s pointless. Santos won’t let you near the interrogation.”
“Rid, I’m going up. Are you in the game or on the sidelines?”
He hesitated, but only for a second. “I’ll let Carmen know your polygraph is off and meet you there.”
I hung up, put the car in drive, and said a prayer as I pulled out of the gas station and onto US 1.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Victoria knew she was going to break him.
Despite having led law enforcement to believe that he was in Nicaragua, Cutter was not a clever one. Victoria had spent the first two hours of the interrogation making him understand that there was no talking his way out of this: she had the goods to fry his ass. Then she and her partner had left the room, let him sit alone at the table and stare at the bare walls for ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour. The two FBI agents watched from the viewing room, behind the one-way mirror. With them were Bert Franklin and his partner, both homicide detectives from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department.
“How much longer are you going to let him stew?” asked Franklin.
“A few more minutes,” she said.
“This is a foolish strategy,” he said. “You let him sit much longer, he’s going to demand a lawyer.”
Franklin was still fuming over the fact that he was strictly an observer. The FBI had asserted jurisdiction based on reams of hard-core child pornography found on Cutter’s computer—a federal offense. It was the hook that allowed Victoria to seize the lead in what otherwise would have been strictly a violation of state law: homicide. Victoria had invited Franklin and his partner as a professional courtesy to the multiagency task force.
Cane and Abe Page 24