Wilding Nights

by Lee Killough

  “You showed me a sales slip from Rick’s, but I didn’t see any liquor in the car,” Kerr said.

  Nor had she, come to think of it. Surrette might have put it in the trunk, of course, but it would be more natural to set it in the passenger seat or the foot well. With the windows open, it might have fallen out as the car sank. Or the hunter stole Surrette’s liquor as well as his life.

  A pair of extras on the film crew found the body around five o’clock when, finished for the day, they walked down the beach well away from the shooting site for a swim. Surrette lay at the tide mark, naked except for a wedding ring and Rolex watch.

  Kerr frowned. “Handcuffing Surrette, taking him out for a swim... that’s quite a change of MO.”

  “Maybe not.” She pulled out the fax from Coral Gables and read him the case details.

  When she finished, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “How long have you had that information?”

  She heard the sub-text clearly. “I would have mentioned it if it seemed relevant, but except for the description of the blonde, it didn’t until now.”

  He continued drumming on the steering wheel. “So now we won’t know how he’s going to approach his victims and where he’s going to take them. We don’t have any idea where he took Surrette.”

  “I’ll ask Mrs. Surrette if they have a boat.”

  4.

  The Surrette’s Spanish style house lay in the transition area between the condos and apartments of Demry’s neighborhood and the multimillion dollar homes along Laguna Drive. A boy of about ten, hovering behind a locksmith at work on the front door, turned to watch Zane park in the circular drive and the two of them climb out of the car. He scowled when Allison introduced herself. “Why do you have to bother my mother?”

  “They’re just doing their job, Jason,” a woman inside said. “Do please come in.”

  In the high entry hall, she read their ID’s with tear-swollen eyes, then waved at a broad archway. “Let’s go into the library.”

  Despite her eyes, haggard face, and a blouse and slacks that looked as though she slept in them, Morgan Surrette exuded a grace and elegance Zane recognized from his parents’ Country Club friends...bred in by generations of money.

  “You’re changing the locks?” he asked.

  “It seemed a sensible precaution since I don’t know what happened to John’s keys.”

  The narrow section of bookcase on either side of the fireplace no doubt gave the room its designation but the main feature consisted of a desk larger than most dining room tables, with stacks of file folders arranged on it. Another woman, big-boned and horsey looking but with the same unconscious elegance, sat in the executive chair behind the desk, paging through papers in a folder.

  “My friend Ashleigh Brendauer,” Morgan said.

  The woman closed the folder and pushed to her feet. “I expect they want to talk to you alone. My brain needs a rest anyway. I’ll scare us up some coffee.” She left the room trailing the scent of Chanel.

  Morgan sat down in the chair, gazing at the stacked folders. “The worst part of a death is sorting out the household files.” She combed both hands through her hair, settled back in the chair. “How is the police department involved? Has something new happened?”

  Allison said, “We found your husband’s car. It was in the bay, off the ferry landing.”

  Zane wandered over to the bookshelves. He could never resist seeing what other people read. Someone here liked sea stories. They had a shelf of Horatio Hornblower novels, and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey books.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Morgan blink. “The ferry landing? Then...how did he end up on Lacabra?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Allison said. “What made you go looking for your husband?”

  Morgan’s expression hinted that while being too polite to say so, she considered that a stupid question. “He didn’t come back to the yacht club. John is–was always absolutely reliable. Not coming back and not calling me meant something serious had happened. So I went to find out what.”

  “Do you own a boat?” Allison asked.

  Morgan eyed her, wheels visibly turning. “Yes. A twenty-eight foot sloop.”

  “Could your husband have taken it out?”

  “Not without being noticed. We moor at the Yacht Club. Dock E, slip eighteen. Ash and Randy...” She waved the direction her friend had gone. “...are in slip twenty-eight. Even if we missed the Seasong passing us as it left, we were watching the dock for John to come back with the liquor and someone would have seen him boarding. The boat was definitely there when I left the party.”

  Allison wrote in her notebook. “May we go aboard and look it over anyway? And do you have a photograph of your husband we may borrow?”

  “Of course.” She opened a lower desk drawer and pulled out a tin box. After digging through the tagged keys in it, she laid a set on the desk. “One of those is the ignition key and the other unlocks the cabin.” She sighed. “I’d better change that lock, too. Detective, there’s a big accordion file in the cabinet under the bookshelves by you. If you’ll bring it here.”

  Zane found the file...expanded to near full width.

  She pawed through the loose photographs filling it. “John keeps nagging me to sort--” Her voice choked and she abruptly swiveled the chair away from them.

  Her anguish wrenched at Zane. He took over looking through the photos...shuffling through freeze frames from their lives...two boys growing older or younger from photo to photo, family gatherings, holiday parties, shots of people on boats or the dunes and beach of Lacabra, and many of Morgan and a man whose tattoos identified him as Surrette laughing at each other. They looked very happy. Anger at the cruelty of destroying that blazed up in him.

  By the time Morgan faced them again, wiping her eyes and apologizing, he had picked out a photograph. After a glance at it, she nodded. Zane passed it to Allison. Framed from the waist up, Surrette stood shirtless, showing off his tattoos, an arm draped over a boom with a neatly furled sail. In contrast to Demry and Cromer’s good looks, Surrette’s face had to be characterized as rugged. Lincolnesque. But it went well with the muscular body.

  Still, a different kind of face than her other victims’. Did that indicate he was a target of opportunity rather than design, Zane wondered, or did her targets vary as much as her MO?

  “You told the deputy yesterday afternoon that the party accumulated guests. Do you remember if they included a blonde woman about six feet tall, speaking with a British accent?” Allison handed her the Blondie composite.

  After a thoughtful moment, Morgan returned it, shaking her head. “I can’t remember anyone like that. Maybe Ash does.”

  However, when they brought back in the friend and asked her, Ashleigh shook her head, too. “I’m quite sure there wasn’t such a person. My husband has a thing for tall women. Haven’t you noticed how many short men do, Detective?” she asked Allison. “If she were there, Randy’s drooling would have called everyone’s attention to her.”

  Not all of the rich had class, Zane reflected as they left.

  At the Yacht Club they peered over the gunwale of the Surrette’s sailboat and checked the deck before climbing aboard. It looked clean, with no sign of blood. Zane unlocked the hatch and went down to check the cabin. Everything looked tidy...bunks made up, gear stowed, lockers closed...no discarded clothing lying around.

  Allison rapped on the hatch. “Let’s go. Blondie has never been on this boat.”

  “You’re receiving a psychic zero?”

  A smile flickered. “Something like that.”

  He climbed the companionway and locked the hatch. “Where next, then?”

  She sighed heavily. “I guess we’d better break the news to the boss.”

  5.

  “Son of a bitch.” Garroway frowned over his half glasses at Allison. “Are you sure about this Surrette?”

  He sat behind his desk. Allison sat across from him with Kerr on one
side and Carillo on the other. “I’m afraid the bite marks pretty well tie him to Demry’s murder.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Garroway pulled off his glasses and jammed them into his shirt pocket. “And you still don’t have any leads on who this killer might be?”

  Kerr stirred in his chair.

  Allison spoke before he could. “Not yet.”

  Garroway eyed Kerr. “Do you have something different to add?”

  Amazing. Garroway looked and sounded as though that lieutenant’s badge had been his for years and not merely days.

  Allison glanced sideways at Kerr. “I don’t know what that would be.”

  He touched his wristwatch. “It’s past noon.”

  She needed no reminder! Peter...get your sorry butt in here! Don’t make me bury you in the hole you’ve dug!

  Garroway’s eyes shifted between the two of them, narrowing. “What does the time have to do with anything?”

  Now Kerr hesitated. Allison jumped in. “We have a tentative appointment with an informant who may know something helpful. Since we haven’t heard from him to confirm the meet, I believe Detective Kerr is beginning to worry if it will happen. I still have faith, however.” Rather, she clung desperately to a strand of hope.

  “Well, whether your informant turns up or not,” Garroway said, “with three murders, we can’t treat this as just another homicide case. As of now I’m activating a major case squad. I’ll find you four more officers. Meet with them at 1300 and put them to work.”

  And that was an order. No sense wasting time and energy fighting it. She wanted a least a couple of clan officers, though. “See if Singer and Nightingale in Vice are available.”

  Garroway nodded.

  Carillo said, “We need a more proactive strategy. We can’t just wait for the next murder.”

  The only way Allison saw to cover the area thoroughly enough to intercept the rogue was her idea of a volke on every corner. Not a plan to share with Carillo and Garroway.

  Her phone warbled.

  At the other end, Gary said, “I found him.”

  She sighed in relief. “Where?”

  “A mortgage foreclosure house on the beach at the north end of the bay.”

  The keys to which Peter had no doubt acquired in repossessing some of the former owner’s other possessions. “We’ll see you shortly then.”

  “About ten minutes.”

  She disconnected and smiled at Kerr. “Our appointment is confirmed. Ten minutes.”

  “Go make your meet, then,” Garroway said. “And good luck.”

  Amen.

  Allison detoured out to the Ladies room on the way to the office, but instead of using the facility, she called Dorcas Cherry. “I know Honora wants to clear the city as much as possible, but can you still help me?”

  “Of course,” Dorcas replied. “We were organizing to leave. We even pulled Travis out of the hospital over his doctor’s objections. But I’ll send just him and the children now. Everyone else in the household is yours. What do you want us to do?”

  6.

  Would Makepeace really show up, Zane wondered. Or had Allison arranged something else? He glanced around from his desk toward the office door, then back to the report form on his computer monitor. She had been gone a long time for a pit stop, and he had only her word and her end of the conversation to go by on that call.

  The thought surprised him but brought no guilt. No matter what she claimed, she knew more about this killer than she admitted. He could feel it. The fax from Coral Gables was a prime example...held back until she considered it relevant. What other information waited for “relevance”?

  And he kept remembering that moment outside Jorge’s when he felt afraid of her. While she had done nothing to him, just been angry at whoever she was talking to, after wearing a badge for nine years, when his gut told him to be afraid of something, he knew better than to ignore the warning.

  “Excuse me...I’m looking for Allison. I’m her cousin Peter Makepeace.”

  Zane swiveled his chair toward the door. And blinked. The figure slouching in the opening, directing his statements at Carl Ng on the other side of the room, wore faded jeans, battered cowboy boots, a sleeveless t-shirt that said: Repossession is the other tenth of the Law, and a greasy cap emblazoned Peterbilt sitting on the back of his head. Shaggy hair hung to his eyebrows and around jughandle ears. A far cry from the vivacious, stunning blonde of yesterday morning.

  “There’s her partner,” Ng said, and pointed to Zane.

  Makepeace shambled to the guest chair at the end of Zane’s peninsula and dropped into it, where he sat with elbows on his thighs, hands dangling between his knees, and shoulders hunched. The posture seemed familiar. He looked up sideways. “I hope we can straighten this out. I don’t mind telling you it floored me when Gary said I’m suspected of these wilding murders. I don’t understand it.”

  Ng glanced over, eyes bright with interest.

  Zane stood. “Let’s talk across the hall.” He led Makepeace over to an interview room.

  Up by the floor entrance Allison stood talking to Gary Golden. Makepeace noticed them, too, because he halted, but when neither appeared aware of him, he continued across to the door Zane opened.

  Inside, Makepeace slumped into a chair at the table. Again he looked familiar. “It doesn’t make sense.” He half lifted his head. “I wasn’t even in town Monday night when the first guy died. Zack Hansen and I were in Port Lavaca on a repo job. You can ask him or the office. Here.” He shifted enough to dig into a hip pocket for his billfold. Out of the bill compartment he fished a slip of paper and handed up to Zane.

  It was the yellow copy of a credit card receipt for a two-night stay in the Port Lavaca Days Inn, Sunday night and Monday night. The credit card had been run at 9:25 Tuesday morning. It looked genuine.

  Zane handed Makepeace his pen and a page from his notebook. “Sign your name if you would please.”

  Makepeace did so. The signature matched that on the credit card receipt.

  Zane returned the receipt. “What about Tuesday night?”

  If Makepeace did not kill Demry, that eliminated him as Surrette and Cromer’s killer, too. Raising the question of why he claimed to be Blondie. Before asking about that, though, Zane wanted to be certain Makepeace was innocent of murder.

  Makepeace smiled faintly as he tucked the receipt in the billfold and returned the billfold to his hip pocket. “Tuesday’s is pretty good. I joined some family kicking back and having a few beers in the park after their shift...including my uncle Drew.”

  Yes, that probably counted as good. “And last night?”

  Makepeace folded arms across his chest. “I was deeply involved with a very hot lady...with whom I’d hoped to spend the next couple of days. But unless I’m arrested and charged and need her that bad for an alibi, I’m not going to tell you her name because she’s married. If I didn’t kill the guy Monday night, how could I kill anyone else? You’ve got fingerprints and stuff from the crime scenes, right?” He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Fingerprint me, swab my mouth for DNA...whatever.”

  Oh, he intended to. Zane pointed at the door. “Let’s go.”

  They met Allison coming toward the office. Golden had left.

  “We’re off to Ident,” Zane said.

  Down in Ident’s lab, they started with Corinne Yeo having him try on the shoes Blondie left behind in Cromer’s vehicle. His feet were too long for them by an inch. Then while Yeo took fingerprints, footprints, palm prints, and swabbed Makepeace’s mouth, Zane filled Allison in on the interview.

  Her obvious relief prompted him to ask, “Did you have some doubts about him?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “But until the print comparison clears him, it’s good to know he has an alibi.”

  When Yeo brought Makepeace back into the waiting area he stood grimacing at the ink residue remaining on his hands. “I thought fingerprinting was all computers and scanners now.”

>   Now Zane identified the slumped shoulders and bent head, the way of looking sideways at him. James Dean. The son of a bitch! Makepeace was playing another role...trying to separate himself as far a possible from the Blondie act and play Detective Kerr for a sucker again.

  Makepeace rubbed his hands on his jeans. “How long before we know the prints don’t match and I can go?”

  “Comparing the palm prints has to be done by a person so it will take a while,” Allison said, and as Makepeace started to frown, she went on, “You’re not going to complain about the time we’re spending establishing your innocence, are you?”

  Even out of its path, Zane felt that barb. Makepeace stiffened and subsided with a shrug.

  “I have a way to pass the time.” Zane gave Makepeace a thin smile. “We can discuss why you lied to a police officer, gave false evidence, and tried to obstruct a homicide investigation.”

  Makepeace stiffened. His jaw dropped. “I what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  So that was how he intended to play this. Zane made his voice flinty and measured. “I’m talking, Makepeace, about our cup of coffee at Quickie’s yesterday morning, where you handed me a bunch of cock and bull about you picking up Demry in the jazz club, then Demry leaving Benton’s later with a wild-eyed man after him.”