“They hate each other.” Jarold nodded. “I knew that. I just jumped the gun.”
“Don’t kick yourself in the ass over it,” Barrett assured him. “You’ve done good out here, Jarold. Damn good. If it weren’t for you this homicide might never have been discovered—a fact I will note in my report.”
The warden offered his embarrassed chuckle to that compliment.
“Jarold, there’s one other thing. It’s the wrong time to bring this up, but there’s no good time. Something between you and me I want to apologize for. It happened a long time ago, when we were kids.”
“On the bus.” Jarold nodded.
Jesus. Barrett’s heart fluttered. He hasn’t forgotten.
“Well, I don’t know why I joined in with those boys to call you names and generally behave like a jackass, but I am ashamed of it. I was wrong and I want to apologize.”
Jarold stared at the ground a moment.
“Long damn time to wait,” he said.
Barrett swallowed. “Yes, it is.”
Jarold took his eyes off the ground. “Past is past.”
“It isn’t always,” Barrett said. “I know.”
Jarold scuffed his boot across the Jeep’s tire.
“I better go after the sheriff. We don’t wanna be stuck in this place after dark.”
It wasn’t the best of exchanges, but it would have to do.
“Right, then. And thanks for the help, Jarold.”
“Welcome,” the warden replied and swung into his Jeep. Barrett waited for the Willys to clear the pond before he returned to his cell phone. Lou certainly couldn’t keep him from reporting a homicide to his Live Oak office And if one of Bear’s peers at the field office just happened to assume that a mobile unit would be needed, or maybe even call to Tallahassee to get a team ready, why—
There was nothing Lou could do about that.
“FDLE.” Bonny’s voice answered thin and far away.
“Hey, Bonny. Bear here. Has Cricket left yet?”
“No, he’s right here. Flirtin’ with me.”
“Would you put him on, please, ma’am?”
Five
The side-paneled van of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s mobile unit was familiar to Barrett Raines. A team of FDLE investigators methodically gridded off the murder of the now-confirmed female who would be the Jane Doe of the investigation. Sheriff Sessions arrived at the scene in near total darkness to make his professional evaluation by flashlight which, of course, meant that the sheriff only delayed the team’s arrival. Barrett could have had the investigators there that night, working under the halogens, saving precious time.
Even though the corpse’s disintegration told investigators that the homicide was not recent, there still ought to have been every effort made to gather forensics on blood, tissue, and fluids as quickly as possible. The accuracy of many tests related to levels of adrenaline and serotonin that might be accurate within a day or two of death degraded precipitously thereafter. Some toxins that might be detected within five days or a week would fail to register beyond that time.
Forensic pathology was a time-sensitive art. Every man or woman in criminal investigation was drilled to gather fluids, tissue, and visual information as quickly as possible. The sheriff’s sensitivity for turf had delayed the gathering of crucial information a full twenty-four precious hours. What chafed Barrett, Cricket, and the other members of the team even more was that Lou seemed completely unconcerned about the effects of that delay.
You did what you could. The area was secured, first, and gridded off into squares. Every scrap collected in a given square received a coordinate in the grid, a description, and an identifying number. The finding officer signed a receipt for each bagged item of evidence. Chain of custody went straight from the discovering team member to Sheriff Sessions. The work was as painstaking as archeology, and the stakes were a lot higher.
A killer was loose. More than likely a sociopath. Certainly this was no ordinary crime of passion. Barrett and his team did not yet know (might never know, thanks to the sheriff) whether the woman was raped or had had sexual intercourse with her killer. That fact would greatly impact the profile made of Jane Doe’s assailant.
The body, what was left of it, would be violated again, this time for forensic detail. Every hair on her body held a story. Every scrap of skin told a tale. A single fingernail or a sample of blood could point to her killer. Or cement a conviction. Barrett was certain that her killer was a he. And he would bet that this was not the perpetrator’s first homicide. The dog was what bothered him the most. It was Rolly Slade’s. That fact was verified by Rolly himself only that morning. Barrett was almost sure that whoever recruited the dog was a local resident. It was hard to imagine a serial killer drifting through the area who could capture or cajole the animal into captivity, then select a victim and construct the kind of horror show that was being uncovered grid by grid in this suffocating hammock. Whoever did this knew the dog, knew the land. Barrett would be surprised if he did not know the victim as well.
Barrett turned to Cricket.
“Where’s Holloway?”
Midge Holloway was the chief forensics investigator from Jacksonville. Midge had gone much more than the extra mile, leaving that East Coast city to drive all the way to the West Coast for this homicide. The chief did not usually come to the scene. Their work was done in the Jacksonville morgue. Midge’s responsibilities and authority were more fluid. When Barrett explained the elaborately staged scene, Midge had decided that she needed to have a clearer vision of the evidence than what could be gleaned from a grid map and plastic bags.
“I’ll be there at first light,” she had told Barrett.
“She’s inside the shack,” Cricket told Bear.
Midge was a short, slightly built woman. A premature onset of osteoporosis forced her to peer up at you from a nascent hunchback with eyes large and liquid as a lemur’s.
Those eyes, Barrett thought. They don’t miss much.
“Midge. You got any impressions?”
“Most interesting thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
“Interesting” was not the word Barrett would have chosen. But he understood that Midge’s vocabulary was shaped by the imperative need to remain objective. An emotional identification with the victim could be useful at some point in the process. But not here. Not now.
“We have a female. The pelvis, what I can find of it, shows no sign of childbirth. I’d be surprised if she was much older than twenty.”
“Okay.” Barrett was already scribbling in his spiral pad.
“I won’t know for sure ’til I get to the lab, but I’m pretty sure she was not dehydrated at the time of death. Not badly, anyway.”
“How you figure?”
“Body’s been torn apart, which complicates things. And then there are the flies and maggots, not to mention the bacterial assault. But looking at what’s left of her arms and hands, I don’t see the kind of dessication you’d expect in someone who, for instance, died of thirst.”
“How did she die?”
“At this point it could be anything from a shot of pentothal to the obvious.”
“The dog.”
“Right. That’ll have to wait for the lab. If the dog killed the victim, she most likely bled to death or died of shock, but at this point that’s conjecture.”
“I understand.” Barrett nodded. “Though that water bucket and pipe make me think that both the dog and the woman had some kind of access to drinking water.”
“She wouldn’t be sipping on her own,” Midge stated wryly.
“No, my guess is she was kept. For how long and what purpose, I don’t know.”
The problem with looking for a motive early in any investigation was that it led to rabbit trails or, worse, a distortion of the actual facts on the ground. Something no more complicated than revenge might have led to this criminal act. Victims both male and female had been tortured to death in retaliation for an
y number of reasons. But there were some general patterns in cases like these that were hard to ignore.
“You figure the killer was male?” Bear asked.
“Oh, yeah. Male. Late twenties to mid forties. You know the profile. And there is one piece of religious paraphernailia that I find interesting.”
Out of a blue plastic tub, Midge pulled a plastic bag with a cheap crucifix inside.
“Victim was stripped naked, except for this. Now who might allow a crucifix to remain on the naked body of a victim he meant to torment and kill?”
“You’re thinking Catholic?”
“Possibility. Could also be a killer with a religious bent or background. Lot of your Latin workers fit that bill.”
“Lots of Baptists, too,” Barrett countered.
Midge shrugged. “Nevertheless, this crucifix taken with the fact that the victim is Latin American suggests to me that we can’t exclude Latin American males from the set of her possible killers.”
“Would not fit the general profile,” Barrett responded.
Barrett knew, and Midge knew very well, that this sort of crime tended overwhelmingly to be the work of male Caucasians, usually men without strong ties to family or friends, who were somewhere in age from their late twenties to forties. That profile, developed in the need to find serial killers, also conformed remarkably well to most elaborately staged homcides, especially those involving women.
“What would motivate a Latino male to go to this trouble?” Barrett asked.
Midge shrugged. “What made the guy from Texas whack victims along the railroad?”
“Those were targets of opportunity,” Bear pointed out.
“Who’s to say our victim wasn’t?” Midge countered. “Or going the other way, you can look at scenarios for revenge, betrayal. Anything to do with drugs. Folks in the coke business torture people to death routinely. Just on the suspicion of a doublecross. You think every druggie in this district is Caucasian?”
“But this homicide took time,” Bear mused. “It took planning. And resources.”
“What resources?” she countered. “A shack. Some water. A dog.”
“How about the handcuffs?”
“Ordered from a catalog. Or anyplace that caters to sexual fetishes.”
“This is Lafayette County, Midge. Not Jacksonville.”
She smiled. “Just looking at the possibilities.”
“Well, let’s see what we can do to eliminate a few. First thing I’m going to want is an identification for the victim. A name links to people and places. Friends. Family.”
Midge nodded. “I’ll do what I can. But you know as well as I do, Bear, that if this young woman came here with migrant workers she’s more than likely not going to have a fingerprint on file. She’s probably not going to have a green card, either. No social security number. No dental or school records.”
“You got somebody who can reconstruct her appearance?” Bear asked. “Somebody good enough to give us a composite?”
“Nobody in our shop,” Midge shook her head. “And Tallahassee’s crew are swamped. It’d be weeks. But maybe…”
“Come on, Midge.”
“I might be able to find somebody.”
Barrett knew better than to press. “Just see what you can do,” he urged.
“I’ll need the sheriff’s approval.”
Barrett chewed that one over a moment.
“Do it on my authority,” he said finally. “We’ve got to know what Jane looks like if we’re to have a hope in hell of making an ID.”
“What about Lou?”
“Well. As General Powell used to say, it’s a whole lot easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.”
Midge nodded. “I’ll call our guy first thing.”
Barrett was not sure, even with a good reconstruction, how easy it would be to identify this young woman. There would be a great and natural reluctance for any illegally entered Latino to volunteer information for criminal investigators. A code of silence prevailed. And there was another factor, too. Women and girls in migrating communities were, in too many cases, valued only for their labor—for the beets they picked, the straw they raked. Women were abused by men in great numbers across all socioeconomic categories. But Latino women working as migrants from Florida to California were particularly vulnerable.
Would a family member or friend in fear of deportation tell Barrett anything at all about this particular victim? How could he gain their trust? How could he protect them? After all, a man or woman capable of this kind of violence would not hesitate to kill again.
Absent specific information about the victim or her killer, Barrett was left with general trends, general information, generally occuring patterns of behavior. He didn’t like that. Generalities got you in trouble. Generalities were only useful to indicate the broad topography of an investigation.
They could not be used as a compass.
“That’s enough in here.”
Barrett followed his forensic investigator into the fresh and welcome air.
“Hard to believe you’d leave an office in Jacksonville for this mess, Midge.”
She shrugged. “I like dead people.” She sealed a plastic bag. “Tell you one thing. Whoever’s done this has done it before. Or something very much like it.”
Barrett nodded. “Occurred to me as well. I think we ought to fax the Bureau with all the details we can muster, ask them to compare the staging of this scene with others nationwide. Our killer might have a track record someplace else.”
But when suggested to Sheriff Sessions that federal authorities be asked to assist in his investigation, Lou went ballistic.
“The hell! What have I got you people down here for?”
Barrett stiffened. “We’ll support you all we can, Sheriff. But the feds might have seen a case exactly like this that’d help us out. They may have a fingerprint on our Jane Doe. Hell, we might get lucky and get some DNA on the perp that shows up in VCAP’s library.”
“You can run the DNA from right here,” Lou growled. “I can run prints through AFIS. That’s all the FBI I goddamn need. What you need, Bear, is to sift this shit and bag it so I can go interview my suspect.”
“Whoa. Sheriff. Suspect? We don’t even have an ID on the victim yet. We don’t have a face that anybody can recognize. Give Midge some time, she might can get us something we can use.”
“I already got somethin’ I can use. I got tire tracks to a Humvee. And I know who owns it.”
“Set of tracks doesn’t give us much.”
“Puts Gary Loyd on the scene.” Lou bit it off.
“We don’t know that. We don’t even know the time of death for sure,” Barrett disagreed. “And according to Jarold, there’ve been three or four different vehicles coming back here for at least a couple of months. Most of ’em right up to the shack.”
“Good. Find out who they are. I’ll see them, too.”
“Sheriff, I—”
“You what? What the fuck is your problem, Agent?”
The activity that had so methodically proceeded in all grids of the crime scene halted abruptly in medias res. Technicians, forensics, photographers—frozen in their tasks with the sheriff’s bilious challenge.
Barrett took a deep breath.
“I just don’t want to lose a potential suspect, Sheriff. We go in now, we’re just fishing.”
“I can fish.”
“What for?”
“Well, Agent Raines, for starters I’m gonna ask Gary Loyd if he’s ever come out here for some Mexican strange.”
Barrett saw one of the FDLE team snap off her latex gloves; Irene Sanchez marched without a word toward the side-paneled truck. A long pause, then, before Cricket Bonet strolled over.
“Sheriff. Maybe you-all want to keep this conversation private?”
“Not likely.”
Cricket made himself at ease beside the county’s top dog.
“All right. Then what makes you think Gar
y Loyd’s a likely susect?”
“Why else would he be out here?”
“Shoot a deer. Whack off. Only one of which can be construed as a crime in the state of Florida.”
“You’a wiseass, aren’t you, Bonet?”
“Wise enough to know that if you go looking for Gary Loyd you’re better off with a warrant.”
“Judge Blackmond ain’t gonna give me no warrant,” Lou scoffed. “Not off a week-old set of tire tracks.”
“Then let us dig,” Barrett rejoined. “If we get hard evidence that puts Gary in that shack, or anywhere near it, you can search his truck, his house, anything you need.”
“’Course, that would take some little time. Wouldn’t it? To get me all those—those facts?”
Barrett faltered. “Some time. Sure.”
The skin across the craters of the sheriff’s face stretched tight as canvas.
“You’re not bought off here, are you, Bear?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Well, Linton Loyd’s got to be a big part of your future, hasn’t he? Maybe that’s why you’re wantin’ to treat his boy with kid gloves.”
“You—!”
Barrett was moving toward the sheriff with damage on his mind when Cricket stepped in to intervene.
“Gentlemen.” Bonet turned to the county sheriff.
“So you’re determined to interview this Gary Loyd?”
“Soon as I can.”
“Without a warrant?”
“The hell I need a warrant for? I’m just asking the man some questions.”
Cricket nodded. “All right. Mind if we tag along?”
A smile split Lou Session’s cratered face.
“Hell, no. Be my pleasure.”
Six
Rolly Slade barely glanced at his son as Jerry slipped a magazine and a pair of floppy disks into his knapsack.
“Be a little late coming home,” Jerry announced on his way out the door.
Rolly was on the phone, hard in the market for another rottweiler. Jerry heard the talk—how the Slade family would get rich suing the county, state, and justice department for the wrongful death of the dog killed by Barrett Raines and that goddamn, grouper-headed warden. Rolly’s peroration extended to a vaguely libertarian rail against all manner of authority. His son padded out of earshot down the short packed-dirt alley that led past their small machine shop to reach a chinaberry tree, under whose nasty shade the school bus would rumble to a stop.
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