Paint It Black

by P J Parrish

  “What do you mean?” Wainwright asked.

  “Farentino’s profile. He doesn’t fit.” Louis pointed to one of the cards. “Mayo knows this kid Heller. He worked with him on the same boat for almost a year. Farentino says this guy only kills strangers.”

  “It’s Tuesday,” Wainwright said flatly. “Gunther knew their routine, knew they went to dinner at the Dockside. He knew exactly where to find Heller.”

  Louis concentrated again on the victims’ photographs. They began to mutate into brown blurs. He rubbed his gritty eyes.

  “Dan, you have the photos of the other cases?” Louis asked.

  Wainwright sifted through a folder and handed the three photos to Louis. They were color copies of autopsy photos. Louis tacked them up next to the others, in the order of their abductions. He took a step back and looked at them.

  Nothing. Nothing was coming.

  His eyes moved from the first—Barnegat Light, New Jersey—to the last—Roscoe Webb. His eyes lingered on the blurry snapshot of Tyrone Heller. Heller was . . . young, younger than the others. That didn’t fit either.

  He went back to the New Jersey and Fort Lauderdale files, snatched them up, and returned to the board. He wrote the victims’ ages on each photo. The man in New Jersey was fifty-five; the two in Fort Lauderdale were fifty and forty-eight. Tatum was forty-five, Quick was forty, Harry Childers was forty-eight, and Tyrone Heller was twenty-five.

  They were getting younger.

  But there was something else, something right there in front of him that he wasn’t seeing.

  Then, suddenly, he saw it.

  The skin colors. The Barnegat Light victim’s skin was ink black. The Coral Springs, Florida, man was maybe a shade lighter. The man from Lauderdale Lakes looked mahogany-toned. Tatum’s skin was the color of maple syrup. Quick was cinnamon-skinned. Harold Childers was tawny. Roscoe Webb was a medium tan. And Heller . . .

  Louis stared at Heller’s picture. He was as light as he himself was.

  “They’re getting lighter,” Louis said quietly.

  “What?” Wainwright said.

  “The victims,” Louis said. “Their skin colors are getting lighter.”

  Wainwright eyed the board over the rim of the cup. “So?”

  “It means something.”

  “What?”

  Louis tried to get his brain in gear. He was tired; it was hard.

  Wainwright came up behind him. “I don’t see what it could mean,” he said, but he was studying the faces carefully.

  “I think I do,” Louis said. “The killer is aware of skin color, of the importance that people put on shades of skin color. The lighter the skin, the more prized it is.”

  Wainwright was looking at Louis now. But Louis was staring at the faces on the bulletin board.

  “Black people with lighter skin get preferential treatment,” Louis said quietly. “The lighter the skin, the less threatening the person is to the white power structure.”

  Louis paused, his eyes locking on Tyrone Heller’s tawny skin. “We do it, too. To ourselves. No darker than a brown paper bag,” he said softly. “That’s the ideal.”

  Louis turned away from the bulletin board. He went to the table, dropping into a chair, rubbing his tired eyes.

  “You think the killer picks these men based on the exact shade their skin is?” Wainwright asked.

  “Yes. It’s too big a coincidence.”

  “But how many white men really notice shit like that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe . . .” The thought was there, on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t make sense of it. “Maybe he’s working toward someone who looks like the real object of his hatred.”

  “A white man?”

  Louis nodded.

  “Then why involve the black guys at all? Why not just kill a white guy?” Wainwright said sharply. “Shit, this makes no sense. This guy is hung up on race one way or the other. It’s what drives him.”

  Louis turned, his own frustration bubbling over. “Then explain the faces getting lighter. I’m telling you he knows exactly who he wants and in what order.”

  Wainwright leaned on his desk and drew in a deep breath. The room was quiet except for the occasional spatter of radio traffic.

  Finally, Wainwright spoke. “So you think his last victim will be white?”

  Louis nodded.

  “I don’t know, Louis. That sounds kind of farfetched.”

  Louis looked at Wainwright tiredly. “Not if that white man is himself.”

  Wainwright blinked. “Suicide?”

  Louis didn’t answer.

  “But what if he’s not on self-destruct?” Wainwright asked. “What if it’s some other white person? What if it’s Farentino?”

  Louis stared at him. Jesus. He hadn’t thought of that.

  Sleep was impossible.

  Around six, Louis took out a squad car and headed to the wharf. He saw other cruisers—Sereno, Lee County, Fort Myers, they were all out, searching. The radio traffic was muted. Too quiet.

  He went across the bridge and turned down Estero Boulevard. The street was almost empty, the tourists still asleep, the honky-tonk neon silent. The radio traffic had deteriorated to the occasional unit just checking in. The stretches of silence had grown longer.

  He pulled into a parking lot and got out of the car. He walked to the beach and stood gazing out at the dark expanse of sand and water. The sky was a murky gray, that soft blanket of half-light that covered the earth just before dawn.

  Quiet. Just the sweet lap of the waves curling gently against the shore and stretching endlessly into the darkness.

  He walked slowly across the sand, stopping at the water’s edge.

  He had grit behind his eyes, his neck and shoulder muscles throbbed. And his head . . . his head pounded, and he couldn’t think, couldn’t even move now, couldn’t do anything that would make any difference.

  His mind was gripped by images of what he might be doing to her. He couldn’t erase them, couldn’t change them.

  It would almost be easier to be in her place, have some measure of control, no matter how small.

  Oh Jesus, he hurt.

  And he knew now what lay behind the emptiness in the eyes of June Childers, Anita Quick, and Roberta Tatum. He knew now what haunted Wainwright.

  Dealing with what the evil leaves behind.

  He tightened, against the sense of impotency and the vivid images that had been building all night in his head. He felt pain, as if his gut had been taken and twisted into a knot. He sank to his knees in the sand.

  He felt a coolness on his knees and opened his eyes to see that the waves had crawled to his knees.

  The waves retreated and came again, and he watched their rhythm numbly, finding a strange comfort in it. For a long time he didn’t move, lost in the cool, bleak grayness of the dawn.

  From somewhere in the distance, he heard a voice. It was Wainwright. The radio in the cruiser. They were calling him.

  He stood and trudged back to the car. He grabbed the portable and responded.

  “Kincaid to Sereno One.”

  Wainwright’s voice sliced through the silence. “They found her, Louis. She’s status four.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  The street in front of the Fort Myers Police Station was blocked with TV news trucks: WEVU, WBBH, WINK. A crowd of reporters and photographers milled around the entrance: the News-Press, Naples Daily News, Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times. Even USA Today and the East Coast papers had made the trip this time. Louis pushed his way through and burst through the door.

  A burly patrolman stopped him just inside. “You Kincaid?”

  Louis nodded and the man pointed down the hall. Al Horton and Wainwright were coming out of Horton’s office. They saw Louis approach and pulled the door shut.

  “How is she?” Louis asked.

  “Good shape overall,” Wainwright said. “She’s got a laceration on her left forearm she won’t let us fix.”


  “Mentally?”

  “Cool as ice. I couldn’t believe it,” Horton said, shaking his head slowly. “I mean, this bastard had her in a shack of some kind, bound in a chair, a hood over her face. He cut her arm just before he let her go.”

  “Jesus,” Louis whispered.

  “That isn’t all,” Horton said. “She says he killed Heller while she was there.”

  “She saw it?” Louis asked.

  “No. She heard it.”

  Louis ran a hand over his face. “How’d she get away?”

  “He left her in the shack and she eventually wiggled her hands from under the rope,” Horton said. “When she got out, she found a phone and called 911.”

  “Where was she?” Louis asked.

  “About a mile from Fisherman’s Wharf, in an abandoned storage shack. It’s near where the shrimp boats put in. Our guys are already there.”

  Horton shook his head again. “You should’ve seen her when they brought her in, Louis. She refused to go to the hospital, just kept telling us that she was ‘evidence.’ ”

  “Evidence?”

  Horton nodded. “She asked for a crime scene tech, a change of clothes, and a pad to write down her statement. The CSU guy is in there with her now.”

  Louis glanced anxiously at the door.

  “We have paramedics on standby,” Wainwright added.

  The door opened and the tech man come out, carrying a black case, a plastic bag holding Emily’s clothes, and a smaller bag holding a wadded black cloth.

  “I’ve got all I could,” he said.

  Horton nodded and the tech left. Louis moved by Wainwright and went into the office.

  Emily was seated in an armchair, facing Horton’s desk. She was wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt that said FORT MYERS POLICE and sweatpants that billowed over her bare feet. Her helmet of red curls was crushed from where the tech had combed for evidence and her face was streaked with a mixture of dried sweat and tears.

  Louis stared at her. Something was different. Her glasses. He had never seen her without them. He noticed now that her eyes were brown, underscored with shadows. A two-inch bandage circled her left forearm. Louis could see blood seeping through the gauze.

  He slid into the chair across from her.

  “How you doing, Farentino?” he asked softly. She looked at him, her eyes slightly dazed, but steady. “Hey, Kincaid,” she said softly. “Have you found my glasses?”

  Louis nodded. “Yes, but . . . I’m sorry . . . I didn’t think . . .”

  She looked away. “That’s okay.”

  Louis glanced back at Wainwright, standing behind him, then back at Emily. Tentatively, he reached over and took her hand. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “He came up behind me in the lot at the bar,” she said. She stopped and looked over at Horton.

  “You’d better turn on the tape,” she said.

  “It’s already on,” Horton said.

  She nodded woodenly and looked back at Louis. “He threw something over my head and coldcocked me,” she said. “I woke up, tied to a chair, with the cloth still over my head.” She looked at Horton again. “Forensics has it, right?”

  Horton nodded.

  “Go slow,” Louis said. “Tell us what happened, whatever you can remember.”

  She took a deep breath. “I heard him pacing and swearing, like he was talking to himself. Then a dragging sound.” She paused. “I didn’t know what it was. It was probably Heller.”

  “Did he talk to you?” Louis asked.

  She nodded. “He told me to listen, that he wanted to say something. Then he said that he had to change his plan, something like, ‘It’s all ruined.’ ”

  “Then what?”

  Tears welled in her eyes and she brushed them roughly away. “I heard him stabbing Heller. It went on for a long time. I started to get sick.”

  Emily drew in several slow breaths. Her hand, resting on the arm of the chair, was trembling. “He started beating him after that,” she said, the words pouring out. “I could hear that, too.”

  She ran a shaky hand over her brow. “Then it stopped and it was quiet. There was a sound, like a hiss. He was painting him. I could smell it.”

  “Did you hear him say anything while he was doing it?”

  She nodded. “He said, ‘Motherfucking piece of shit.’ ” She hesitated. “And something else . . . ‘Get it right this time, you fucking idiot.’ ”

  Louis laid his hand over hers. “Then what?”

  “He said, ‘No, no,’ like he was sorry about something. But then he started yelling, ‘He made me do it.”’

  “He said this to you?”

  “I’m not sure. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if he was talking to himself or me.” She drew in another shaky breath. “Then I heard a door open and I think he dragged Heller out. Then he was back.”

  “Then what?”

  “He asked me who I was and what I was doing there.”

  “At the Dockside?”

  She nodded. “I told him I was an FBI agent and went there to take a missing person’s report.”

  She paused. “Wait . . . wait. He said something strange then. He asked me who was missing.”

  “Who?”

  “Yes. I told him Tyrone Heller and he asked if Captain Lynch had been the one reporting him missing.” She ran a shaking hand across her forehead. “He sounded angry, not making any sense, and he asked me what Lynch said about Heller.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he wanted to know what Lynch thought of Heller. So I told him Lynch described him as a fine young man.” She paused. “It almost sounded like jealousy.”

  Louis glanced up at Wainwright and Horton. Neither man had moved a muscle.

  Emily drew in another deep breath. “He started pacing again, saying things like, ‘I didn’t want to do this.’ And then—”

  She closed her eyes. The room was quiet.

  “Then he said, ‘I have to finish it.”’

  Her fingers wove through Louis’s and she squeezed tight. “I . . . I thought he was going to kill me and I lost it.” A tear made its way down her cheek. She withdrew her hand from Louis’s and wiped it quickly away.

  “I was pleading with him, telling him I wasn’t black. Oh, God . . .” She covered her face.

  “It’s okay, Emily,” Louis said quietly.

  She shook her head rapidly, looking at him. “He wanted to know if I had ever slept with a black man.”

  Her voice grew tight. “No, no . . . he said, exactly, ‘Have you ever fucked a black man?’ And when I said no, he said, ‘Good, all you get from that are monkeys who should’ve been scraped from their mothers’ wombs with a spoon.’ ”

  Louis glanced back at Wainwright. He was shaking his head.

  “That was all,” Emily said softly. She was staring at the floor. “Until he cut me.”

  Louis took a deep breath. “Why do you think he cut you?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Farentino?” He touched her arm. “Emily . . .”

  She looked up at him, tears welling again. “I don’t know, Louis. He cut me and then I felt him put his hand over it to stop the bleeding. Then he was gone.”

  The room was quiet. Emily was slumped in the chair, her face like chalk. She brought up a hand to shield her eyes and sat motionless for a long time. Horton turned off the tape.

  “I think—” Horton began.

  “I was so stupid,” Emily whispered.

  “What?” Louis said.

  She removed her hand, looking at him. “I blew it, Louis. I blew everything.”

  “Emily—”

  “I was in the same room with him,” she said. “I should’ve been able to talk to him. I should’ve been able to get more out of him.”

  “Emily, stop.”

  She curled her hands into fists and leaned on her knees. “That is what I do! It’s what I was trained to do and I couldn’t get past my fear. I just sat there paralyzed!”r />
  Blood oozed from under the bandage.

  Louis leaned forward, hands on her shoulders. “Emily, listen to me. It’s not your fault.”

  “I should’ve been smarter,” she said.

  “Stop this.”

  “I am so sorry . . . so sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

  Her eyes bore into his. “No!” she said. “I should’ve seen it coming.”

  “Listen to me. It doesn’t work that way. I know.”

  She was shaking her head.

  “Something happened to me,” Louis said. “Up in Michigan. Men are dead because of something I missed.”

  She was quiet now, looking at the floor.

  “We all miss things,” he said. “But you can’t keep beating yourself up over it. You go on with your life. You do better next time. You deal with it.”

  She looked up at him. He couldn’t tell if she was hearing him or not. He glanced at her arm. The gauze was soaked through.

  “Emily,” he said, “go get yourself stitched up.”

  She looked down at her arm and nodded slightly.

  Louis heard the door open and looked back to see the paramedic standing there. Louis eased Farentino up from the chair. The paramedic came forward, took her arm, and led her out.

  “When you’re ready, why don’t you guys leave by the back,” Horton said.

  Wainwright nodded. A young woman poked her head in the door. It was Karen, the public information officer.

  “Chief, it’s getting ugly out there,” she said.

  Horton glanced at his watch. “I’m not waiting for Mobley,” he said. “Come on, Karen. Let’s go throw ’em some meat.”

  Louis and Wainwright left Horton’s office and went out the back entrance. The morning sun was still low in the sky but the day was already warm. Louis and Wainwright stood just outside the door for a moment, neither saying a word.

  Wainwright moved away, going to a nearby bench and sinking down onto it. Louis joined him. Two uniformed patrolmen came up the walk, stared at Wainwright’s wrinkled uniform, and went in.

  “Think she’ll be all right?” Wainwright asked.

  “Yes,” Louis said. He leaned his head back against the brick building, closing his eyes.

  For several minutes, neither man moved or said a word. Louis knew they were both long past exhaustion.