Paint It Black

by P J Parrish

  Louis didn’t say anything.

  “Well, I’m going in to shower,” Dodie said. He rose and went inside.

  Louis lowered his hand from his brow and stared after Dodie. Through the kitchen window, he could see him kiss Margaret and wander away.

  Christ. That had been a pretty shitty thing to do. Dodie only wanted to help.

  He shook his head. Big-ass fish.

  Big fish. Rare bird. King mackerel. Deep sea.

  Suddenly his brain kicked into a new gear.

  He got up and went inside, going to the bathroom door. He opened it an inch.

  “Sam!” he called.

  “What the . . . Louis?”

  “Where did that deep-sea boat take you?”

  Dodie stuck his head out of the curtain. “Where? Clear out to the Gulf of Mexico.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  Louis walked into the war room and drew up short. The bulletin board was gone. The table was clear. There was one box on the table.

  Wainwright came out of his bathroom, saw the look on Louis’s face, and shrugged. “I had it all carted over to Horton’s office. We’ll work out of there.”

  Louis nodded, understanding but not liking it. It had been their work. The faces on that bulletin board had kept him going.

  “Dan,” Louis said, “I think I can put Mayo in the shrimp shack.”

  “How?”

  “Blood from a king mackerel was found in the shack. It was fresh, Dan. And the only place you can catch that fish is in the gulf. I checked with a guide today. There are five boats at the wharf. Only one—the Miss Monica—goes to the Gulf of Mexico. We know Mayo worked on the Miss Monica.”

  Wainwright sat down. “Not bad. But I’d rather have something concrete, like Mayo’s prints on the chair.”

  “Nothing back on that yet?”

  Wainwright shook his head.

  Louis sighed and looked back at the empty space where the board had been. “Horton have anything for us to do?” he asked.

  Wainwright shook his head again.

  Louis looked down at the box on the table. “What’s in this?”

  “Just some of Farentino’s personal papers and useless files. I didn’t want to toss them. She wouldn’t be too happy about that.”

  “Won’t be happy about what?” a voice said from behind them.

  They turned to see Emily standing in the doorway. Louis went over to her.

  “Hey, Farentino. How you doing?” he said.

  “Hey, Kincaid. Not bad.” Her smile faded as she noticed the blank bulletin board. “Where’s all our stuff?” she asked.

  “Everything’s downtown,” Wainwright said.

  Emily looked at them. “Then why are we here?”

  Louis slid his hip on a desk. “We’re on standby.”

  “You mean we’re out of it,” Emily said.

  Neither answered her.

  “Louis has a theory,” Wainwright said.

  Louis told her about the shrimp shack connection to Mayo. Emily looked unimpressed.

  “What?” Louis asked.

  “Fresh blood?” she asked. “Louis, Mayo hasn’t been on a boat in almost a month. We know that. We have every boat under surveillance.”

  Louis paused, then turned away. “Fuck!” he said. He kicked a chair. It rolled and crashed into the wall. Wainwright and Emily just stared at him.

  “Goddamn it,” Louis said, shaking his head, hands on hips.

  “Louis—” Wainwright said.

  “I was so fucking sure,” Louis said, staring at the empty bulletin board. They were all silent for a moment.

  “Louis,” Wainwright said finally, “we’ll find another way to place him there.”

  “Don’t try to handle me, Dan,” Louis said. “Please. Not now.”

  “Look, if we have to go back to square one, turn over every lousy piece of evidence, we will,” Wainwright said.

  Louis threw his arm out to the empty bulletin board. “We don’t have any fucking evidence!”

  “Hold on,” Emily said.

  She reached into the box, pulled out a legal pad, and tossed it at Wainwright. He caught it in his lap.

  She turned to Louis. “Interview me again.”

  “What?”

  She pulled a chair up to the desk and sat down. “I’ve been thinking, trying to remember more details. I want to try something. Interview me again.”

  “Are you sure?” Louis asked.

  “Yes.”

  Louis glanced at Wainwright and came back to the desk. He sat on the edge, facing Emily. Emily drew in a breath and closed her eyes. Louis waited, giving her a moment.

  “Tell me what you hear,” he said.

  She pressed her lips together. “I hear a motor running . . . like a refrigerator kicking on.”

  “That would be the freezer truck generator,” Wainwright said. “There was one a few feet away.”

  “What else?” Louis asked.

  She was silent for several seconds. “Nothing. Just water lapping.”

  “What does it smell like?” Louis asked.

  She shook her head. “It stunk, like fish but . . .” Louis waited.

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  The sounds of the outer office drifted in. Phones. Voices. Traffic outside the window. It was distracting her. Louis glanced around and saw a sweatshirt hanging on a hook behind the door. He walked over and grabbed it.

  She opened her eyes as he approached her and saw him holding the shirt.

  He hesitated. She nodded and he placed the sweatshirt over her head, backing away. Her breath quickened.

  “You okay, Farentino?”

  “Yes.”

  He moved to her and placed her wrists on the arms of the chair, palms up. He waited almost a full minute.

  “What does it smell like?”

  “Old wet wood and fish—no, shrimp. I know it’s shrimp.”

  “What is the first thing you hear?”

  “He’s talking, to himself. And he’s dragging Heller. Then . . . he starts talking to me.”

  “What is he saying?”

  “ ‘I want you to tell them something. Tell them I had to do this.’ ”

  “You’re sure he said ‘them’?”

  She nodded. “Yes . . . I think he meant us. He wanted us to understand something about him. He was . . . his voice sounded urgent. Then he said that thing about having to change his plan. And . . . ‘He left me no choice.’ ”

  Louis glanced at Wainwright. That was new. “Who do you think he was referring to?”

  “I don’t know . . . Heller?”

  “What happened next? The stabbing?”

  She nodded. “It went on for a while . . . the stabbing. And the beating.”

  “Did Mayo say anything during this time?”

  It took her a minute to answer. “He said, ‘Motherfucking piece of shit. Don’t look at me.’ It must have been Heller he was talking to.”

  She paused. “And he said, ‘Get it right this time, you idiots.’ ”

  “ ‘Idiots’? Plural?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, idiots.”

  “You were right, Louis,” Wainwright whispered.

  “What happened next?” Louis asked.

  “He dragged Heller out. I heard the door and Mayo came back. He asked me who I was and I told him I was an FBI agent and that I was there to take the missing person’s report.” She hesitated.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “It was his voice. There was something in his voice that made me think I shouldn’t have been there.”

  “Then what?” Louis asked.

  She hung her head slightly. Louis watched the shirt breathe with her.

  “I . . . oh. Oh. He wanted to know what Lynch said about Tyrone Heller. He seemed very interested in how Lynch described Heller.”

  Louis looked over at Wainwright, who was still taking notes. “What did you tell him Lynch said?”

  “I told him
Lynch thought Tyrone was a fine young man.”

  “Did that seem to anger him?”

  “No . . . no. Wait . . . wait. But then he asked me if Lynch had described Tyrone as a black man. He stressed black. I heard it in his voice.”

  Louis glanced at Wainwright. This was new, too. But what did it mean? Louis waited for Emily to go on.

  “At some point . . .” she said, “it was near the end . . . he said that he didn’t want to do this. He was . . .” She paused. “He was almost kind about it, like he was apologizing.”

  Her voice had grown small.

  “What did that mean to you?” Louis asked.

  “That he didn’t want to kill Heller . . . or me. I’m not sure.”

  “Go on.”

  She was quiet for a minute. Wainwright stood up and came over to them.

  “Farentino?” Louis said gently.

  Her breath quickened. “He got mad. He was furious and he wanted to know if I knew what it was like to be black.”

  Emily stopped but Louis didn’t say a word.

  “He was shouting,” Emily said, “and then he asked me about fucking a black man.” Her words rushed out. “And then he said that thing about scraping people from wombs.” She shook her head slowly. “It was like a different person had come into the room.”

  Her chest was heaving and Wainwright looked at Louis, concerned. Louis held up a hand to him.

  “Then what?”

  Her hands were curled into fists. “Nothing.”

  “Think. What else did he say?”

  She bowed her head. “I don’t know. Nothing. There was no more talk.”

  Louis glanced at Wainwright, mouthing the word “gloves.” Wainwright understood immediately and rose. He returned from his office a few moments later with a pair of brown leather gloves. Louis slipped them on.

  Louis picked up a letter opener and ran the tip lightly across Emily’s forearm. Her head shot up, and she sucked the cloth to her face, but she didn’t move.

  He wrapped his gloved hand around the invisible cut, held it there for a second, and backed away. They waited.

  “No,” she said softly.

  A few more seconds passed.

  “No, that’s not right,” she said finally. “Do it again. Without the gloves. He wasn’t wearing gloves when he touched me.”

  Louis took them off and repeated the move, wrapping his fingers around her wrist.

  Emily shook her head.

  Louis looked down at his fingers wrapped around her arm. Tan against white. Suddenly he knew.

  “What about this?” he asked.

  He made the “cut” again with the opener, this time placing his own wrist flat against hers, rubbing.

  “Yes!” she said. “That’s it. That’s what he did.”

  Louis turned away. There was a rock in his stomach. The germ of an idea was there, but his brain couldn’t work fast enough to make sense of it.

  It was like a different person had come into the room.

  He stood with his back to them, eyes closed.

  Do you ever think about what it must be like to be black?

  Emily, on Dodie’s patio: He’s black.

  Roscoe Webb: This was a white man talking to me.

  “Louis?” Wainwright asked.

  He turned. Emily had taken the shirt off her head. She was staring at him. So was Wainwright.

  “He’s not white,” Louis said. “And he’s not black. He’s both.”

  “Explain,” Wainwright said.

  “He’s biracial,” Louis said.

  “How do you know?” Emily asked.

  “All of it,” Louis said. “He has two sides, almost like two people, living inside him.”

  He paused. A sudden image rushed into his head. A man at the wharf. A knife flashing in the sun. Fish guts being dumped into the water.

  He looked at Emily and Wainwright. “Tyrone Heller isn’t a victim,” he said. “He’s the killer.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  The rain beat down on the windows. Louis and Emily sat silent at the table, both lost in their own thoughts.

  Wainwright hung up the phone and looked at Louis. “I told Horton what you said. He wants us downtown immediately. And there’s something new. They found Heller’s truck abandoned in a canal east of the airport. No body, no Heller.”

  Wainwright got up and left the room.

  “He might have skipped,” Emily said.

  Louis was silent.

  “If he goes underground again, we could lose him until he resurfaces,” Emily said.

  “Shit,” Louis muttered.

  Wainwright came back, carrying a computer printout. “Horton sent over Heller’s sheet. He’s got a history. Manslaughter conviction, 1979, Broward County, Florida. Served three years.”

  “We need more,” Louis said.

  “I’ll call over to Broward,” Wainwright said, picking up the phone.

  “We may not have to,” Emily said.

  They looked over at her. She was standing over the box on the table, holding a file. “He’s in here,” she said.

  Wainwright stared at the file in her hand. “How did we miss it?” he asked.

  “It was in the stack of black suspects,” she said.

  “We put them aside after Roscoe Webb, after we decided we were looking for a white man.”

  She flipped it open and scanned it quickly. Wainwright and Louis waited.

  “It’s the first case,” she said. “Heller’s first murder—his own father.”

  “Jesus,” Wainwright said.

  “It’s from the Pompano Beach PD,” Emily said. “It’s where Heller was born, just north of Fort Lauderdale.”

  She adjusted her glasses. “In 1979, when he was eighteen, Tyrone Heller stabbed his father four times. He fled, and the father died hours later. Heller was charged with manslaughter.” She paused. “Listen to this. His public defender wanted to plead him out on diminished capacity and got him a psych exam.”

  “Is the medical report in there?” Wainwright asked.

  Emily nodded. “Here’s the family history. Heller’s mother was white, father black. They weren’t married and Heller’s father denied paternity and abandoned the family. Heller was raised by the mother, whose three other children were white. He was the youngest. Here’s what the psychiatrist wrote: ‘As child, subject was target of emotional abuse and isolation by mother and siblings. Subject expresses rage against absent father and displays extreme episodes of depression and self-loathing.’ ”

  She paused, looking up at Louis and Wainwright.

  “Like he should’ve been scraped from his mother’s womb,” Louis said.

  “All through his teenaged years, Heller tried to locate his father,” Emily went on. “He finally found him living in Fort Lauderdale, but the father again rejected him. That’s when Heller attacked.” She looked up. “They found the body in a bathtub, with the faucet running.”

  “In water,” Louis said.

  Emily let out a sigh. “There’s quite a bit from the psychiatrist here,” she said. “ ‘The subject, Tyrone Heller, exhibits reaction formation and confabulation. ’ ”

  “Translate, Farentino,” Louis said.

  She looked up at them. “Reaction formation is a kind of defensive mechanism, a way of dealing with negative and unacceptable feelings by substituting thoughts or behaviors that are completely opposite of the bad feelings.”

  “I don’t get it,” Wainwright said.

  “Normal people, healthy people, can channel negative feelings into something positive,” Emily went on. “But people like Heller can’t, so they almost turn against themselves.” She paused. “Like the closet homosexual who covers up true feelings about himself by acting like a homophobe or gay basher.”

  “So to Heller the unacceptable fact is that he looks black?” Louis asked.

  Emily was nodding, remembering something. “It’s why he asked me what Lynch said about him. It’s why he asked me if Lynch said he
was black. I think Heller truly believes he is white.” She paused. “It explains his racism toward his black victims.”

  “And why Roscoe Webb was so certain he heard a white man talking to him when Heller called him a nigger,” Louis said.

  “What’s confabulation?” Wainwright asked.

  “Lying,” Louis said.

  Emily hesitated. “Not really,” she said. “It’s more like filling in the gaps in your memory with unconscious fiction. It’s making up stories to cover up the fact that you don’t know the truth. Alzheimer patients do it to hide the fact that they can’t remember things they know they should be able to.”

  Wainwright shook his head. “But you said Heller really believed he was white. So was he was kidding himself? Is that what confabulating is?”

  “In Heller’s case, I’m guessing that the unacceptable fact of his black side caused him to suppress many of his memories about growing up and he has invented a more acceptable past—and identity.”

  “As a white man,” Louis said tightly. He got up and went to the window, his back to them.

  They were silent. The rain pounded on the windows. Wainwright was watching Louis but finally he turned back to Emily.

  “Anything else in there we need to know?” Wainwright asked.

  Emily scanned the rest of the medical report. “Diagnosis: antisocial personality disorder, substance abuse disorder, substance-induced psychosis versus paranoid schizophrenia.” She took off her glasses, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “No wonder I thought I heard two men talking to me.”

  “Jesus, he isn’t one of those multiple personalities, like that Sybil woman?” Wainwright said.

  Emily shook her head. She slipped her glasses back on. “I think I know what set him off—Lynch,” she said quietly.

  “Lynch?” Wainwright said.

  “Lynch told me he was retiring after the fishing season was over. Tyrone Heller probably knew that. And Lynch was Heller’s acceptable father figure.”

  Wainwright was staring at her. “Bullshit,” he said softly. “Some people are just born bad and this asshole is one of them. I don’t buy it.”

  “I do,” Louis said, turning.

  They both looked at him.

  “Heller was raised by people who told him that being black was inferior,” Louis said. “He grew up believing it, believing that being black was less than . . . that it was garbage.”