The lines leaped off the page as though in bold-faced type.
Althea Albury Moran, an Orange Bowl queen in the early 1970s, has been identified as the victim shot to death in an apparent random robbery after leaving Jackson Memorial Hospital following a day of volunteer work.
I reread it, reaching instinctively for the telephone to redial her number.
It rang, but I knew she wouldn’t be there. Ever.
I called her daughter.
“Jamie, this is Britt, from the News. I just saw the story. What happened?”
“Are you all right?” She sounded bewildered. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t know.” Her voice broke.
“What happened?” I demanded, my voice rising.
“The other reporters were already here,” she said.
“What other reporters?”
“From your paper.” She sobbed.
So did I.
I washed my face in the ladies’ room and looked for Fred. His office was empty.
“I need to talk to him, it’s important,” I told Bobby Tubbs at the city desk. “Where is he?”
“In a meeting with the justice team,” he said. “Looks like somebody murdered a major witness in their bribery case. Glad you’re back, Britt.”
I crashed the meeting. An investigative reporter had called Althea days earlier. She had acknowledged being the last holdout for guilty during deliberations. The foreman’s high-pressure persuasion had changed the guilty votes of several other jurors, and he had finally talked her into making it unanimous. As she and the reporter talked, she had recalled overhearing the foreman’s side of a phone call he had made. He had seemed upset that she did, but she didn’t think it important at the time. Apparently it was.
The reporters arranged to tape an interview at her home. Althea was not there. An FBI agent’s card was in the door, with a note asking her to call him. She did not.
She was already in the morgue, ambushed and shot to death as she left the hospital.
“Looks like she didn’t understand the significance of what she overheard, but the suspect apparently thought she did,” said Joe Bloss, the hefty bearded investigative reporter who led the team. “When he heard the FBI was investigating him, he must have thought she tipped them off. He apparently took out a hit on her with a couple of two-bit lowlifes he met in a bar.
“One is talking, and it looks like there may be murder indictments by the end of the week. Helluva story,” he said. “We’re running with it tomorrow.”
“Britt?” Fred interrupted. “You knew about these other attempts on Althea Moran’s life?”
“Yes. I looked into it, talked to her, went out to her house. I’ve got a whole file I put together—”
“Then the city desk knew about this?” He scowled, perplexed.
“No. I didn’t mention it to the desk. I didn’t know…the cops didn’t believe her and I wasn’t sure. Then the Kiss-Me Killer story broke and I got sidetracked.”
“Too bad,” Fred said gravely. “We’ve had the jury list for weeks. We discussed it at news meetings. Her name would have rung a bell.”
I saw the looks they exchanged.
“You know it’s standard policy for reporters to keep the desk informed of everything they’re working on,” Fred said, his eyes cold.
“Nobody knows that better than I do—now.” I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
I blamed everybody, myself the most, then the police, Althea’s relatives, even the World War II vet with rheumy eyes and a thirst for cheap wine, spinning lies about killing enemy soldiers, self-absorbed and totally unaware of how the threads wound in the skein of our actions can disrupt the fabric of a stranger’s life. Had it not been for him, I would not have been as skeptical. I had been so absorbed with my own image and chasing the bigger story that I had failed her.
Sanford Rutherford DeWitt was found that afternoon, aboard the Playtime’s lifeboat, afloat off Walker’s Cay in the Bahamas. Naked, he had been shot like the others. A predator himself, he’d been no match for Keppie. She, the yacht, and the captain were still missing.
We broke the story, identifying her to the world at last, Keppie Lee Hutton, serial killer, the daughter of one of Death Row’s most infamous inmates. I attended Althea’s funeral that afternoon.
Keppie’s story launched a media frenzy unlike any since the Versace case. Now, along with the police and the FBI, a rabid press trailed her wake.
Searchers found the body of Joey’s dad with the help of dogs. They continued to search for the unidentified remains of the man she called Stanley. Mary Alice and Harland Travis, the aunt and uncle who had raised Keppie, were besieged, their modest upstate home surrounded by microphones, sound trucks, and network correspondents. I opted to remain in Miami, piecing together new developments for the main story each day.
A Navy plane en route to the torpedo testing range in the deep trough just east of Andros Island spotted a burning vessel adrift at sea. The burning boat was later identified as the Playtime. No sign of Keppie or the captain. However, a vacationing schoolteacher from Massachusetts and his fifty-two-foot sloop were reported missing a short time later from a nearby island.
I jumped each time the phone rang. It would never end for me until she was found, I knew that now.
My updated map had red pushpins all the way out into the Bahamas like the twisting path of some killer storm or other freak of nature. I painstakingly reconstructed our interviews and continued to anchor the breaking story.
The missing teacher reappeared, shot dead on the sandy beach of one of the small islands that freckle the Caribbean east of St. Martin, where a wealthy retiree and his forty-one-foot trawler were reported overdue by anxious relatives.
The big story I had wanted was all mine. But it had lost its appeal. Curiously repelled, too emotionally involved, I was loath to face the questions in the eyes and on the lips of other reporters.
When Keppie was finally arrested, using Sandy DeWitt’s American Express Card in Barbados, the press corps descended on its capital city of Bridgetown. I was not among them. The News sent Janowitz.
Eager to escape the islands, where executions are by hanging and the steps to the gallows do not take twelve to fifteen years, she waived extradition. With jurisdictional problems in their cases, island authorities were willing to see her tried first in Florida. Brought back in manacles and leg irons, Keppie looked unperturbed at the airport, smiling flirtatiously and laughing intimately with her armed escorts. I watched her on TV and studied the newspaper photos.
Keppie had noted my absence from the media mob scenes and asked for me, Janowitz said.
Being back on the job was good for me. I turned my files and interview notes with Althea over to the justice team. They did not invite me to join their growing coverage of the crimes that resulted in her murder. I didn’t blame them.
McDonald took me out to dinner after my annual evaluation by Fred. Both Althea’s story and that of the Kiss-Me Killer figured prominently in Fred’s analysis of my job performance at the News.
“I’m surprised he wasn’t even harder on me,” I said, picking at my salad. “I never should have become so involved in the murder investigation. I should have reported the story, not become a part of it; that was my mistake. I didn’t listen to people who knew better.”
“What did he write in the evaluation?” McDonald asked. “How tough was he?”
“He rated me high in initiative and enterprise and good in writing skills,” I said, “but flunked me as a team player. We agreed that I have to work harder to build a closer relationship with the desk, keep them informed, and remember that reporters do not work alone or make their own judgments. I have to check in with the desk several times a day and write memos about everything I’m working on,” I said. “It’s penance, even though, I swear, I’ve learned the lesson: Life is a team effort.”
“Been meaning to talk to you
about that,” he said, his smile sly. I felt the sizzle as our eyes met.
“Don’t try sweeping me off my feet,” I warned, as he poured wine into my glass. “You might succeed. And nobody knows better than me that it’s not always good to get what you wish for.”
“I’ll go slow,” he promised, “and sneak up on you.”
I dream of Joey often and still reel from the more important lesson that has forever changed me. Having seen it myself, I know now that evil is real, that some people are bom with a dark genetic defect, difficult to diagnose and impossible to fix. I believe in the murder gene.
My dreams about Joey are always the same. We are together, struggling to survive in a black sea where the sounds of the waves are screams, the smells are gunpowder and blood, and a battle rages. Dark angels engage in fierce combat against bright angels from the blue water. I awake with a prayer that the angels with wings of light will prevail.
Nearly a month after her return, Keppie’s court-appointed lawyer called.
“Everybody wants to interview her,” he told me, “from Larry King to Geraldo to Barbara Walters. I’ve strongly advised her against it—but she wants to talk to you.”
I am too busy on other stories, I said. Weeks later, working late one night, I picked up my telephone and heard a familiar voice.
“Hey there, Britt. I’ve got a story for ya. When you comin’ to interview me again?”
Her words sent a shudder through me. “I think we did enough interviewing,” I said.
“Look, I’d come out and meetcha somewhere, but we been there, done that, and I’m kinda tied up at the moment.” She chortled. “Why don’cha come on over here? You know you miss me, babe. Said yourself you always have more questions. Come on,” she coaxed. “You’re the only person I know in Miami, ’cept for that little prick of a lawyer they gave me. Dumb little son of a bitch. He’s scared to sit in the same room with me. How the hell am I gonna get a fair trial? When you come,” she added confidently, “bring a coupla packsa Benson and Hedges.”
The jail was noisy, as always. Slams of metal on metal resounded like gunshots as electric locks were opened and closed from an elevated control room. They searched me, took my purse, and led me to a private visitor’s cubicle divided by a wire mesh screen. I sat on a wooden chair, waiting for her to be brought in. Two corrections officers and a supervisor escorted her. Her face lit up when she saw me. She wore a pink jumpsuit, identifying her as a high-risk inmate, unlike the drab attire worn by other prisoners. Pink was a good color for her; it picked up her rosy complexion. She glowed.
“How ya been, babe?” She greeted me casually. “Looking good.” She leaned in close to the screen to peer at me. “Too bad there’s no touchin’,” she murmured, “but we had us some good ol’ times, didn’t we?” She smiled, with a lascivious wink at a corrections officer, a middle-aged woman who remained stoic.
Her restless energy, vivacious edge, and raw sexuality had not been dulled by captivity. Even the jail food she had dreaded seemed to agree with her. Her slim frame had filled out a bit.
“I gave them the cigarettes to give you,” I said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she said cheerfully. “Thought you were dead, but you made it back. Little Joey, too. What’d I tell you? We could be sisters, you and me, we’re so much alike. Survivors, that’s us.”
“If I were you,” I said quietly, “I wouldn’t count on staying a survivor. You’re looking at the death penalty from a dozen different directions.”
“Aww, Britt.” She shook her head at my silliness. “They won’t ’lectrocute me. Who would sentence a pregnant woman, a young mother-to-be, to death?” She leaned back in her chair and fondly patted her stomach.
I stared.
“True fact. Can’t wait to be a mama.”
“Who’s the father?” I whispered.
“Damned if I know.” She gave an exaggerated shrug “Maybe Sonny. Coulda been Joey’s daddy, or that pretty boy, that model on South Beach. Hell, doesn’t matter.”
Another child, I thought, who will grow up without a father, with a mother behind bars.
“Nobody’s gonna send the lovin’ mother of a little baby to the ’lectric chair. And, if they do”—she shrugged again—“at least I’ve left somethin’ behind. A little part of me will still be here. I can feel it,” she drawled. “It’s a mother’s instinct. I know it’s a girl….
“I’ll still be around,” she called as I left. “One way or the other, I’ll be back.”
If You Enjoyed Garden of Evil,
Then Sample the Following Selection from
YOU ONLY DIE TWICE
The new Britt Montero Novel
by Edna Buchanan
Coming Soon in Hardcover from William Morrow
HOT SAND SIZZLED BENEATH MY FEET. AN ENDLESS turquoise sea stretched into infinity. Bright sailboats darted beyond the breakers, their colors etched against a flawless blue sky. Playful ocean breezes kissed my face, lifted my hair off my shoulders and ruffled my skirt around my knees. The day was to die for. Too bad about the corpse bobbing gently in the surf.
Her hair was long and honey colored, streaked by brilliant light as it swirled like something alive just beneath the water’s glinting surface. She seemed serene, a full breasted, narrow waisted mermaid, with long slim legs, an enchanting gift from the deep.
I wondered if she had been caught by the rip current, that fast-moving jet of water racing back to the sea, or did she tumble from a cruise ship or a party boat? Perhaps she was a tourist unaccustomed to the sharp drop off only a few feet from shore. But if so, why was she naked?
She was no rafter drowned in a quest for freedom, a new life, or designer jeans. Her polished fingertips and toenails gleamed with a pearly luster, as though smoothed to perfection by the tides. She looked like a woman who had had a good life. None of the grotesqueries that the sea and its creatures do to dead bodies had happened yet. Obviously, she had not been in the water long.
I had heard the initial radio transmission on the “floater” while at the Miami Beach police public information office, where I had been plodding dutifully through a stack of computer printouts, compiling crime statistics zone by zone. The Miami News art department intended to create a locater map for Sunday’s paper, to accompany my piece on the crime rate. A tiny black dot would pinpoint the scene of each rape, murder, armed robbery and aggravated assault.
I hate projects involving numbers. If words are my strength, decimal points are my weakness. Calculating the number of violent crimes per 100,000 population has always been problematic for me at best. Was it 32 crimes per hundred thousand, 320 or 3.2? A live story on a dead woman was infinitely more interesting. My statistic-loving editors would not agree. But a stranger’s death fueled my imagination.
I identified with her, more than with most victims. We were close in age, and I had planned to body surf and sunbathe along this same sandy stretch today. Instead I had reluctantly agreed to finish this DBI (Dull, But Important) project on my day off. Now fate had brought me to the precise place I had yearned to be, sun on my shoulders, sea breeze in my hair—but this was not the day at the beach I’d had in mind.
I watched, along with a small crowd and two uniformed cops, as a detective trudged toward us across the sand. Emery Rochek was an old-timer, one of the few holdouts who had not opted for guayaberas when dress codes were relaxed. Unlit cigar clenched between his teeth, his white shirt was open at the throat, his tie loose, beneath a shapeless gabardine jacket that flapped in the breeze. Emery handled more than his share of DOAs, mostly routine deaths. Young cops wanted sexier calls, I knew, not reminders of their own mortality. Emery never seemed to mind the unpleasant tasks that came with a corpse.
“So, you beat me here, Britt,” he acknowledged, his voice a gravelly rumble.
“I was at the station working on a story about the crime rate. I heard it go out.”
Emery chewed his cigar. His smelly stogies came in handy to mask the odor of corp
ses gone undiscovered too long, though his colleagues fiercely debated which stench was worse. No need to light up here. This corpse was as fresh as the sea around her.
“Well, lookit what washed up.” He regarded her, his shaggy eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “Whattaya waiting for, the tide to go out and take her with it?” he asked the cops.
“Thought maybe I should leave her the way she was ’til you guys took a look,” one said.
Rochek shook his head in disgust as the two cops left their shoes and socks on the sand, pulled on rubber gloves and waded gingerly into the sun-dappled shallows. They dragged her unceremoniously ashore, water streaming from her hair. Her pale, half open eyes stared at the sky with a hopeful almost prayerful look. Her only adornment, a single gold earring, the delicate outline of a tiny open heart.
An excellent clue, I thought. Distinctive jewelry always helped indentify the dead. But this woman’s youth and beauty assured that she was no lost soul. I was sure her identity would be no mystery. I expected a frantic spouse, relatives, friends, to appear momentarily, frantic with grief, hearts breaking.
“A great body is a terrible thing to waste,” one of the cops muttered.
Emery straddled the naked woman, cigar still clenched between his teeth, tugging her one way, then the other, seeking wounds or identifying marks. I watched, painfully aware that the dead have no privacy.
“Hey, Red.” Emery glanced over my shoulder to ac knowledge a newcomer, elbowing her way through the growing throng of gawkers.
Lottie Dane had arrived, the best news shooter in town, and my best friend. Her red hair whipped wildly in the wind as she strode across the sand in her hand-tooled cowboy boots, twin Canon EOS cameras, wide angle lens on one, a telephoto on the other, slung from a leather strap around her neck.
“Geez, who is she?” Lottie murmured, shutter clicking, camera whirring. “She’s so young.”
The big eyes of a small boy were fixed on the dead woman’s breasts. He was runty and pale, at the forward fringe of the crowd, wearing baggy swim trunks a size too large. Where is his mother? I wondered, as a beach patrolman brought the detective a yellow plastic sheet from his Jeep.
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