Garden of Evil

by Edna Buchanan

“Did it appear as though she’d already been drinking?”

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t notice, but she was coming home alone, after dark.”

  “I thought she’d been volunteering at the hospital,” I said sweetly. “Did you and your husband ever have a drink at the Masons’ home before, when she was married?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said breezily. “We had cocktails over there or here, many times. What I’m trying to say is that the reputation and property values of an entire neighborhood shouldn’t suffer because of one person’s lack of judgment.”

  “Lack of judgment?”

  “A woman alone, in a big house like that; that’s asking for trouble.”

  “She might have been killed.”

  “Tch-tch. Pshaw. She tell you that? Althea always had a flair for the dramatic. Did some plays, studied drama in college. The woman has too much free time on her hands, if you ask me.”

  Coral Gables Lieutenant James Swanson recognized the name immediately. “She’s called us about her problems,” he said, sounding weary. “A number of times.”

  “Are you concerned about her safety?”

  “We’re concerned about the safety of all our residents, but I can safely say I’m no more concerned for her safety than for any of our other citizens.”

  “You don’t think she’s in danger?”

  “We put a watch order on her house, but we obviously don’t have the manpower to baby-sit her place twenty-four hours a day. Our uniform personnel are aware of the situation and pay particular attention to the address as they routinely patrol the area.” There was a long slow creak as he leaned back in his leather chair.

  “The MO of her intruder is similar to that of the Coconut Grove rapist,” I pointed out. “He wears a black knit mask, breaks in, and waits for women to come home alone. Think there could be a connection?”

  The chair squeaked abruptly as he sat upright. “That’s the first thing we checked into, right at the start. We were right on top of it.”

  “You mention it to her?”

  “No point in alarming her or creating panic among our residents when we’d already eliminated him as a possibility.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t him?”

  “Not for publication, Britt, but that particular individual has never struck in our city. Ms. Moran does not fit the profile of his victims. But more than that, nobody else present saw the mask.”

  “Think she made it up?”

  “I wouldn’t say she fabricated it. She was startled. It was dark. There’s the power of suggestion—”

  “Power of suggestion?”

  “News coverage about that individual mentioned the mask, among other things. If I’m not mistaken, you wrote some of those articles. Say she reads them, lives alone, sees an intruder for a matter of seconds, and decides it’s him. That’s one reason we don’t like releasing that sort of detail. Makes our job harder.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I said. “I doubt she saw those articles.”

  “The subconscious mind is a powerful thing,” he said.

  I sighed. “But what about the other—”

  “The City of Miami incident? The attempted strong-arm outside the supermarket is what alleviated our concerns. She claimed the robber was wearing the same mask. Well, the Grove rapist has never hit that neighborhood either; most serial rapists don’t moonlight as purse snatchers or have a partner driving their getaway car. And the Grove rapist has never tried to drag a victim off the street. Doesn’t fit his profile. That’s what alleviated our concerns and allowed us to place the incident in proper context. I hope you don’t plan to print anything suggesting that the rapist is linked in any way to our city. Here’s a story for you. Our statistics show an overall decrease of twelve percent on class-one crimes last year. That’s something you can write about. We credit our success to the community awareness programs we—”

  “Lieutenant, do you think somebody tried to kill Althea Moran?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “But two incidents? So close together?”

  “You’ve been around long enough, Britt, to know things happen. She could be either overreacting or craving attention. Sometimes, when women reach a certain age and are alone, that happens. I’m not saying that’s definitely the case here,” he added quickly, “but we had a divorcee once, lived over on Sopera, used to dial nine-one-one every damn night. Heard prowlers, noises, thieves, whatever. Just lonesome. She wanted some young good-looking police officers to come by so she could flirt with them.”

  “How’d you handle that?”

  He guffawed. “Had a no-nonsense policewoman respond to every call from that location. Didn’t take long for the calls to quit.”

  “Do you know Althea Moran’s ex-husband?”

  “Dr. Moran? Sure. Excellent surgeon. Operated on my father-in-law, triple bypass. Nice fella. City manager plays golf with him from time to time.”

  Lieutenant Randy Springer, in the city robbery division, recalled Althea Moran clearly once his memory was jogged.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember her,” he said. “Started out real ladylike, but went a little dramatic on us—ripping up her own purse, trying to demonstrate that it couldn’t have held up if a purse snatcher had yanked on it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, the strap snapped right in two, whole thing came apart.”

  “How do you explain that?”

  “They dragged her around by that strap and they weakened it; it was already starting to come apart. Look, Britt, she’s a nice lady from a nice neighborhood. I understand her fears. This city, as we both know, gets a little scary sometimes.”

  “So you patted her on the head like a good little girl, sent her home, and told her not to worry?”

  “That’s not fair, Britt. We did all we could. Even talked to the Gables, just to be sure. Look, we had two thousand strong-arms in the past year. There’s been half a dozen in and around that parking lot since Easter. We’ve been meaning to send in CST, the crime suppression team.”

  “The other muggings there—were they by the same guys?”

  “Hard to say.”

  According to Springer, the getaway car belonged to a college student and was stolen off a South Beach street while he partied there with friends the night before. Other witnesses in the parking lot did confirm that at least one of the muggers was masked.

  “Isn’t that odd?” I asked him.

  “A little out of the ordinary, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call it odd.”

  “Any other recent muggings done by masked men?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “I’m just trying to determine her credibility, Randy. I don’t want to run with it and get burned. What do you think?”

  “Honest opinion? Two unrelated, isolated incidents. It happens. Remember that tourist, got robbed three times in one day? Hey, the mayor’s car has been stolen twice. Remember the married couple, had both their cars stolen the same day? Shit happens. It was her turn.”

  “You don’t believe anybody’s trying to kill her?”

  “Hell, no. She’s not the type, doesn’t live the life, far as we know. I mean, we talked to her. Her divorce was no war. No reason for anybody to kill her or have her killed. And if those jokers were hired hit men, you’d have to admit they were pretty sloppy.”

  “She seems convinced.”

  “Like I said, nice lady. Something did happen. Twice. Maybe she’s just taking herself a little too seriously, a little paranoid. Or she’s looking for sympathy from her ex. Gotta go, staff meeting’s about to start.”

  I read through all my notes, wavering on Althea’s story. My cynical mean-spirited self thought: spoiled society wife gets dumped, is lonely, has a couple of bad experiences, thinks life as she knew it is coming to an end, and wants the world to join her pity party. But then I remembered the look in her eyes. Her desperation was real. What if—? My telephone rang.

  “He’s here!” Lottie hissed
.

  “Who?”

  “O’Rourke!”

  “Who?”

  “Tex O’Rourke, my ex-husband.”

  “In Miami?”

  “Hell-all-Friday, Britt. In the building!”

  I scanned the newsroom for a sinister face. “Where?”

  “The lobby, five minutes ago. Chip from security called. O’Rourke was at the front desk asking to see me. I told ’im not to let him come up, to say I was out.”

  “So he’s probably gone.”

  “Britt, the man called from Fort Worth last night. I said don’t come. Told ’im I was engaged, booked up, knocked up, screwed up, had gained seventy-five pounds, and had chicken pox. He’s here anyway. You think our security kin stop him?”

  She had a point. News security guards routinely demand that I present my ID card to enter the building, but their record of challenging suspicious strangers who could be heavily armed mad bombers was not a distinguished one. I recently saw a violent repeat offender, free on bond and awaiting trial, busily using our newsroom copy machine. A stack of legal documents he needed to copy for his lawyer, he said. When I asked how he slipped by security, he looked puzzled. Security?

  “Where are you?” I asked Lottie.

  “Under a desk in the sports department,” she whispered. “Photo is the first place he’ll go.”

  “Let’s meet for coffee in the cafeteria.”

  “Wish I had a disguise.”

  Lottie’s wild and frizzy mane of flaming red hair was hard to hide. “We’ll go to a table back in the corner where the pressmen sit,” I suggested. “Take the freight elevator. Meet you there in two.”

  I arrived first, poured myself coffee, and got her hot tea in a Styrofoam cup. She appeared as I stocked up on napkins and plastic spoons. I signaled her, then stared. Her hair, brushed and shining, was sleekly pinned back on one side with a silver and turquoise clip. Her lashes were coated with inky black mascara, her lips were creamy coral, and she had discarded her khaki vest, the pockets always crammed with film canisters and camera lenses. She even walked different. Her usual easy long-legged stride had been replaced by smaller, more dainty, almost mincing steps.

  I whistled under my breath, then muttered, “You sure have a peculiar way of scaring this guy out of town. Wouldn’t it be more effective to paint on whiskers?”

  “Jist want ’im to see what he’s missing,” she murmured self-righteously, as we sat down. “Got any blusher on you, Britt?”

  “No, but I think there’s some in my locker upstairs. I don’t believe you,” I said, still staring.

  She watched the doors behind me as we talked.

  “How ’bout this?” She opened the top two buttons of her L. L. Bean blouse, exposing a hint of cleavage.

  “Look okay?”

  “Enough,” I said, as her fingers moved to the third button. “You don’t want to be too obvious.”

  She settled down enough to launch into a diatribe against the mother of the dead baby in the car.

  “Ought to string that woman up,” she muttered. “I’ll do it. Why spend money on a trial? Better yet, they oughta stick her in an oven and turn it up to broil. Animals take better care of their young’uns.”

  She sipped her tea carefully, so as not to smear her lipstick.

  “Hear they identified the second guy shot by the woman who killed the sheriff?”

  “No, where’d you hear that?”

  “Hid out in the wire room awhile, read everything that came across. He wuz driving down to Orlando from Live Oak for a job interview. Never showed up. Got a description on his missing car. Shouldn’t be long now. They’ll git ’er.”

  “Be interesting as hell to find out who she is, what she’s all about. I thought maybe she panicked and shot the first one defending herself, but jeez, another one makes her look like a stone-cold killer.”

  “Maybe some man done her wrong.” Lottie shrugged.

  “’Member that Orange Bowl queen?” I said, and told her all about Althea. “What’s weird,” I mused, “are the masks. Muggers and burglars don’t wear them. Shit, you see convenience store robberies on TV all the time. They walk in, pull guns, knowing there are security cameras, but even they don’t bother to wear masks.”

  “Maybe he wuz trying to look like the Grove rapist,” she said. “So if anybody saw him, the rapist’d git the blame.”

  “But why target her at all? She’s got no money, no insurance, no enemies, no friends—except for that neighbor; with a friend like that she doesn’t need enemies. Why would anybody want to kill her?”

  “Something to do with her being Orange Bowl queen?”

  “Twenty-six years later?”

  “Her picture was in the paper, on TV. She was every man and boy’s fantasy back then. You telling me she didn’t have a stalker?”

  I sighed, shaking my head. “That was way before stalking became the national pastime.”

  “Then it’s gotta be her ex-husband or something she’s not telling you,” Lottie said.

  “The husband got a good deal, must feel lucky he’s not paying through the nose. And why would she hold anything back when she’s the one looking for help?”

  “What does the desk think?”

  “I’m not mentioning it to them until I’m sure she’s not nuts and that there really is a story. For all I know, she’s as phony as Ryan’s Medal of Honor winner.”

  “Do not mention that man to me.” Lottie’s eyes flashed fire. “Saw him panhandling downtown the other day and nearly stopped—and not to pin a medal on ’im.”

  “The guy’s one hell of a storyteller. I sat right there while Ryan interviewed him. Believed it myself. So did the staff at the homeless shelter; they’re the ones who tipped Ryan off about ’im.” I checked the clock. “Looks like your ex isn’t in the building after all. He’s probably on a plane by now.”

  “Think so?” She looked disappointed. “He’s outside, I betcha, watching the exits. Wish I’d lost that ten pounds I’ve been meaning to drop. You kin drive me to my car. I’ll hide in your trunk.”

  “No way, the trunk is not comfy. Why are you so determined to duck him?”

  “Cuz if I see him, I’m a goner,” she said, focusing on the door behind me.

  “The guy’s probably fat and bald by now. What does he look like anyway?”

  “Like that,” she whispered, and licked her lips. “Jist like that.”

  I followed her gaze. A man stood at my elbow, facing her.

  “Carlotta Samantha,” he drawled, in a gravelly baritone. “Make a wish.” Their eyes locked.

  “Why, if it isn’t Austin Jeffrey O’Rourke,” she replied, with an air of total surprise.

  He was tall and lean, his black hair curly and his piercing eyes intense. He wore blue jeans and hand-tooled leather boots and exuded a magnetic energy. So did she.

  How perfect they looked together, I thought. I was clearly in the way.

  “Sit down,” I offered, pushing back my chair. “I was just leaving.”

  He thanked me without taking his eyes off her. She returned his smoldery stare. Neither noticed when I left.

  Two messages from Althea waited in the newsroom. I pushed them aside and read the wire copy on the rest-stop murder. Roland Miller, age thirty-six, had been driving a beige Ford Taurus. When he failed to keep his appointment for the Orlando job interview, the company contacted his home. His worried wife called the highway patrol to ask if he had been in an accident. They matched his description to the dead body in Alachua County.

  Charlie was not at his desk but returned my call minutes later. “We’ve got us a helluva breaking story here.” I heard the excitement in his voice.

  “Did the Shelby County detectives go down there yet?”

  “They were all over it the minute the Blazer turned up. It’s the break they were waiting for. I just caught up with ’em twenty minutes ago.”

  “What’d they say? How many times was the victim shot?”

  �
�Twice.”

  “Where?”

  “You probably already guessed.”

  “The same?”

  “He died a happy man—at least till she pulled the gun on ’im.”

  “Why—”

  “Maybe she’s a man-hater.”

  “I just saw a short wire story. Why aren’t they releasing more?”

  “They’re about to. Britt?”

  “Yeah, Charlie?”

  “She shows up on your turf, you sharing information?”

  “Sure. We’re not competitors. The street runs both ways.”

  “Okay,” he said. “The sex angle’s about to hit the fan. We’re running with it too. But there’s something else. Medical examiner down in Alachua saw something that didn’t look right in the cavity at the front of a hollow-point Black Talon he dug outa that poor bastard.”

  “What?”

  “A pigment that didn’t look right. Not blood or human tissue. He had the detective take it right over to the crime lab and they identified it.”

  “What was it, Charlie?”

  “Lipstick.”

  “Lipstick?”

  “They’re thinking she kissed the bullet, left traces of lipstick on it, ’fore she loaded the gun.”

  “But why?”

  “Send a message, I guess, such as in kiss-your-ass-goodbye. I don’t know. But it was too good to stay a secret. Somebody leaked it, it’s been all over local TV down there. With that and the sex, they’re calling her the Kiss-Me Killer. Ain’t that something?”

  The Kiss-Me Killer. I stared at the map above my desk and at the red pin nestled at the rest stop just off Interstate 75. The highway rolls on south through Ocala and divides near Wildwood. The main branch, I-75, runs west to Tampa, down the Gulf coast, and across Alligator Alley. The other jogs southwest of Winter Garden, cuts through Sebring, and snakes around the great Lake Okeechobee south near Belle Glade. The two roads reunite en route to Miami.

  Five

  SHELL HUNTERS FOUND ROLAND MILLER’S MISSING Ford Taurus the following day, at the end of a no-name road that runs off Canoe Creek, outside of St. Cloud in Osceola County, about a hundred and fifty miles south of Alachua. The powdery-sand road, where local kids like to mud-slide when it’s wet, according to the wire stories, skirts the outer edge of a giant stand of bald cypress. As it winds deep into the swamp, the road is lined with an assortment of discarded appliances, furniture, and the rusting hulks of abandoned cars and trucks. Locals use the area for target practice, taking potshots at squirrels, snakes, and swamp rats. Three teens collecting used cartridge shells to repack and use themselves had seen the vehicle. Thinking it was occupied by lovers, they gave it a wide berth. Hours later, when the car was still there, they grew curious.