by P J Parrish
She answered on the second ring.
“Susan, it’s Louis.”
“Louis? Where are you?”
“I’m still in Miami.”
“Miami? Why?”
Louis rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No word yet? No calls?” he asked.
“No...no. I would have beeped you.” He could hear a breathy exhaustion in her voice, like she had cried hard and had nothing left. “Louis, why are you still in Miami?”
He took a deep breath. “Something’s happened,” he began slowly. “At Austin’s business office.”
“Oh no, oh God...”
“Susan, wait. It’s okay. It’s not Ben. I didn’t find him. Not yet.”
She was gasping softly. He could imagine her, sitting alone in the small dark kitchen at the yellow Formica table. Suddenly, he wanted to be there with her, to hold her.
“Austin’s business partner is dead,” he said. “He was murdered.”
“Murdered? What? How?”
“I don’t know. I was over at the office but the cops won’t talk to me.” He glanced at the television. The weather was on. It was going to get colder. “Susan, I’m going to stay here, see what I can find out --”
“Where are you? I can be there in —-”
“No, you stay there. If Ben comes home, you’ve got to be there.”
She was talking, but not making sense, just a torrent of words coming out in a babble, like a crazy person talking to herself. She was crazy...crazy with fear and worry.
“Susan, stop. Calm down,” Louis said firmly.
Her voice dwindled to a small sob.
“There’s something else.”
“God, what?”
“Whoever killed the partner might be after Austin.”
She was silent but he could hear her heavy breaths.
“They might know about you,” he said. “And they might figure he’ll go back there.”
“Here?”
“I’m calling Dan Wainwright and having him send an officer.”
“To sit at the curb?”
“To sit in the house.”
“In my living room?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want a cop in my house all night.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Susan, if you saw what I saw tonight, you’d want him in your bedroom. Trust me on this, please.”
He heard her choke back a sob then her voice came back in a whisper. “Okay.”
“Try to stay calm. I promise you, I’ll find Benjamin.”
“I know,” she said. “I know you will.”
Louis waited a few seconds until he heard the click of her phone. Then he pushed down the button, waited for a dial tone, and called Wainwright
Louis gave him a quick rundown on what he had seen in Austin’s office. Wainwright agreed to go to Susan’s himself. Louis thanked him and hung up.
Louis glanced at the TV. The newscast had started and Louis saw the letters below the anchors: “Double Murder in Little Havana.” He picked up the remote and turned up the volume. But after a minute, he knew there was nothing in the report that he didn’t already know. The woman in the chest was, in fact, the office secretary and police were estimating the deaths happened sometime earlier in the day.
Louis leaned back against the headboard, the remote slack in his hand as he stared at the screen. The newscast had moved on to a frost report about farmers in west Dade covering tomatoes with netting. But Louis didn’t see it. He was seeing that slash of red on the white walls, seeing that woman’s bloody body bent into a fetal curl of death.
He rubbed his face. His gut was telling him Austin was dead. And Benjamin was, too. Whoever had done this was cold-blooded enough to kill a secretary who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They wouldn’t stop at a boy.
Louis closed his eyes.
Ignore it... ignore your gut feeling for once.
And replace it with what? Hope? Faith? Whatever it was that was keeping Susan going right now?
Louis pushed himself up off the bed and went into the bathroom. He flicked on the light and stared at himself in the cold light of the white-tiled cubicle. He ran the water, splashed some on his face, and went back to the bed.
He switched off the television and sat on the edge of the bed. In the sudden quiet, the outside sounds filtered in to him. The tire-hum of the nearby freeway ramp, the muted screech of a jet taking off overhead, the clatter of the ice machine, and a babble of Spanish out in the hallway.
How in the hell was he going to do this? He didn’t even have a map of Miami, let alone a badge. He stared at the phone. But it was either find a way to investigate or head for home, tail tucked between his legs, just like that detective said.
Louis picked up the receiver and dialed a Fort Myers phone number. It rang eleven times.
“Mel, it’s me, Louis.”
“Louis? Shit, what time is it?”
“Just after eleven.”
“Morning or night?”
“Night. Mel, I need your help.”
“Just a second.”
Louis heard the clunk of the phone and then the click of a lighter. He waited until Mel came back on line.
“Okay, what’s up,” Mel said, exhaling.
“I need your help. I’m in Miami and —-”
“Miami? What the hell you doing over there?”
“I’ll tell you later. You still got any pull with Miami-Dade PD?”
“Why?”
“I’m looking for a lost kid and need help getting information.” Louis filled Mel in on everything that had happened. Mel was quiet for a moment.
“Shit, Louis,” he said “You know I didn’t leave there under the best of circumstances.” He paused. “How do you know the kid isn’t already dead?”
“I don’t,” Louis said.
Mel exhaled again. Louis could almost see him, sitting there in the dark of his apartment, remembering what it was like to work a case.
“You want me to come over there?” Mel asked finally.
Louis tried not to hesitate. “Not yet. Let me try to work it alone.”
Mel coughed. “Okay. I’ll make a call. I got this friend on the force, Joe Frye.”
“I appreciate it Mel.”
Two hours later, the temperature had plunged to forty degrees. Louis shivered as he got out of his car, wrapping his arms across his chest as he looked at the nondescript wooden building facing him. It didn’t look like a restaurant. It was more of a low-slung shack set down among some rundown buildings strung along a poorly lit narrow street. But this is where Mel had told him to meet Joe Frye. The detective was just coming off swing shift and had agreed to meet him.
The restaurant was called Big Fish, but Louis didn’t see any sign. He could certainly smell fish, though, a dank smell that hung in the cold still air, mixing with diesel fumes and river funk. He went up to the door and went in.
A bar on the left with rattan stools and a small dining area to the right. There were French doors that opened out onto a deck, but tonight they were shut against the cold. The place was empty, just a guy behind the bar putting glasses in a dishwasher. He looked up at Louis. “We stopped serving at eleven.”
“I’m looking for Joe Frye. Is he here?” Louis said.
“Joe?” The bartender smiled. He cocked a head to the French doors. “Sure. Outside.”
It was dark out on the deck, the inky Miami River reflecting the gaudy green and purple neon lights of a nearby office building. Louis saw the glow of a cigarette and then a dark form sitting in a chair, long legs propped up on the railing.
“Detective Frye?” he said, going forward. “I’m Louis Kincaid.”
The legs came down and Joe Frye stood up. Louis caught the dull shine of a black leather jacket as the detective stepped into the light coming from inside the restaurant.
Joe Frye was tall, with hair pulled back in a ponytail and a face all angles and lines. Slender, lanky, with just enough curv
es to tell Louis that Joe Frye was a woman.
“So,” Joe Frye said. “How do you know Mel?”
Louis had a sudden flash of Mel, sitting in his apartment laughing his ass off.
“He’s a friend,” Louis said.
She stared at him, the shadows playing across her face like black fog. A flash of a pale eye, and the fine cut of a white cheekbone.
“A good friend?” she asked.
“The best I got,” Louis said.
She came forward, passing by him and moving to a wooden table. She slid her hip onto the edge, looking out at the river.
“How’s he doing?” she asked.
Louis wasn’t sure how much she knew about Mel’s blindness, and he hesitated. She saw it.
“I know he’s got RP,” she said. “He told me before he left here.”
“He gets by. He can still see some.”
She was sitting fully in the yellow light of the restaurant now, her eyes still on Louis’s face. She was looking at him in a way that was oddly familiar but he couldn’t place just who had stared at him like that before.
She looked down, picking a piece of lint off her dark pants. “So, who are you chasing here in Miami and why?” she asked.
Louis pulled the photo of Benjamin from his pocket and came to her, holding it out.
“His father took him. We thought he was heading to Australia but he never got on the plane.”
She took the picture, holding it up to the light before she looked back at Louis. “Mel didn’t tell me this was just a custody case.”
“It’s not,” Louis said. “The boy’s father was partners with the guy who got sliced up in the Little Havana double-homicide today.”
She looked at him with new interest and then down at the photo again. “When’s the last time you heard from the father?”
“This afternoon. He was visiting his ex-wife in Fort Myers, took the kid for ice cream and never came back.” Louis felt the cold wind come up behind them, and he shivered, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
“What kind of business did the father and his partner run?” she asked.
“Imports.”
She almost smiled. “Imports. What, drugs? Exotic animals?”
“The father said it was furniture, chests, lamps, you know.”
“People don’t execute lamp importers.”
“I didn’t see anything in the office that would indicate what they imported.”
“You were there?”
Louis nodded.
“What did the scene look like?”
Louis drew a breath. “Blood everywhere. It looked like they cut the partner’s throat while he was still at his desk. I’m figuring the secretary was cut up but still alive when they put her into a chest, given all the blood on the floor.”
“Was the place ransacked?”
“Yeah, drawers open, papers on the floor.”
“Sounds like drugs to me,” Joe said, handing Benjamin’s photo back.
“The mother’s a lawyer,” Louis said. “I don’t think she had any idea her ex was into anything like this.”
“And you?” Joe asked. “Where do you fit in?”
“I’m a private eye, that’s all,” Louis said. “I was trying to track the father down before he left the country.”
Joe eyed him for a moment and he knew she heard the lie in his answer, just as she had seen the hesitation when she asked about Mel.
She slipped off the table, her long body reminding Louis of how his cat, Issy, moved when she rubbed up against the furniture.
“So, what do you want from me?” Joe asked.
“I need to know where to go from here. I need to know what happened there and what you guys think the killers were looking for.”
She was silent, shaking her head slightly.
He started to say something, then just held up a hand. “Forget it. Sorry to bother you,” he said.
She let him get almost to the restaurant door before she spoke. “I’ll help you.”
He stopped, turning to face her. A second or two passed. The only sound was the lapping of the river against the pilings.
“Where are you staying?” she asked.
“Days Inn near the airport.”
“I’ll do some checking. Get back to you.”
“What do I do?”
“If you don’t hear from me by morning, go canvas the neighborhood around the office. Find out what these guys really imported and who their enemies were. I’ll get what I can from the inside.”
Louis nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
“You thought about the mother? She might be in danger, too.”
“I got a cop there.”
“Good.” Joe said. She glanced at the photo in Louis’s hand. “I’ll check the morgue, too, for unidentified bodies.” The lights from inside the restaurant went out. Louis turned and started to leave.
“Hey,” she said. “I wouldn’t normally say this to a guy, but I’m going to say it to you.”
“What?” Louis asked.
“Be careful. These guys are sick fuckers, Kincaid. As mean as they get.”
“I know,” he said.
She was just sitting there, hands thrust in her leather jacket.
“I appreciate you doing this,” Louis said.
“Hell, I haven’t done anything crazy since Mel left. He almost got me killed once.”
Louis almost smiled. “Yeah, me, too.”
She turned away. Louis just stood there, watching her silhouette in the dark. She had her face tipped toward the cold wind.
“Good night,” he said.
She turned back to him, gave a small nod, and looked away, back out at the black river.
CHAPTER 8
He didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until he heard the jarring ring of the hotel phone. He was on his stomach, still dressed in his shirt and jeans, his shoes still on. He grabbed the phone, struggling to sit up.
“Susan,” he said. “Have they —-”
“It’s me, Joe Frye.”
He pulled himself all the way up, squinting at his watch. Four-thirty A.M.
“Yeah,” Louis said, running a hand over his face. “What’s happened?”
“You need to come down to the morgue.”
“Oh, no,” he whispered.
“I got an unidentified black juvenile, about ten or eleven. He was found in a drainage ditch out near Opalocka.”
Louis couldn’t get a breath.
“I should’ve taken the picture,” Joe said. “I could’ve done this for you. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Give me directions.”
Louis scribbled them on a hotel pad, and pulled himself off the bed. He walked numbly to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face. Grabbing a towel, he wiped his face and leaned on the counter, head down.
He didn’t know if he could do this. But there was no one else. He straightened, drew in a steadying breath, and left the room.
The early morning was cold and dark, filled with sounds he didn’t really hear. His body was tight, every muscle on fire, yet he felt strangely numb inside, like some weird force was at work keeping the fear shoved way down deep where he couldn’t feel it.
It had rained and the streets were slick and dark, the damp night air misty with the eerie orange glow of the street lights.
She was waiting for him outside the morgue. It was a big, ugly building, the concrete sides stained with Spanish graffiti. She was wearing jeans and the leather jacket, this time with a gray wool scarf wrapped around her neck. In the harsh light, he could see her face for the first time —- angular, hooded light gray eyes, with a spray of fine lines that hinted at her age as somewhere in her mid-thirties.
“You look frozen,” she said.
He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
She turned and led him inside.
Their footsteps echoed in the long, sterile hallway. Everything seemed oddly white and clean, so different from the outside. He gl
anced up at a clock on the wall. The numbers were big and black, the face of the clock bright white. Like it was made that way so people didn’t mistake what time it was when they made the long walk down the hall.
They walked. More halls. More lights. More clocks.
Finally, she paused in front of a large window. The vinyl drape behind it was closed. He knew she was waiting for him to tell her he was ready. That’s how it went. They always waited so you could prepare yourself. If that was even possible.
He gave Joe a small nod. She tapped on the glass and the curtain scraped open.
Louis’s eyes moved over the boy in one quick sweep. He saw ragged black hair, full lips, and chubby dark brown arms.
His breath came out in a rush. “It’s not him. It’s not Benjamin.”
Joe motioned to the man and the curtain closed. Louis turned away, leaning on one arm against the cool tile wall. He felt her hand on his back.
“Okay, we’re out of here,” she said.
They walked in silence back out into the hallway. Joe took her car keys out of the pocket of her leather jacket and started away. Louis paused, wiping a hand over his face. It came away wet. He didn’t realize he had been sweating.
Joe turned back. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. He was looking around the hallway, like he didn’t know where to go next. Joe saw it and came back to him.
“I found out a couple of things,” she said.
Louis focused on her. “What?”
“Wallace Sorrell had three broken fingers.”
She was trying to take his mind off the boy back there behind the curtain by talking about the case. He felt a surge of gratitude.
“They wanted something from him before they killed him,” she said.
“Did the office have a safe?” Louis asked.
“Yes, but it was still closed and locked. Had more than two thousand bucks in it.”
“Find any drugs?”
“Not yet. Narcotics is on it.”
“I don’t think Austin Outlaw was a drug dealer. There’s something else going on here,” Louis said, crossing his arms.
“Then what did they want?”
“Information. Something only Sorrell knew.”
“Like what?”