Florida Getaway

by Max Allan Collins

  Only after they had gone through the struggles of getting a court order, exhuming the Hardy woman’s body, and taking it back to the autopsy table was Grissom’s theory confirmed: Doc Robbins discovered a sliver of tissue under Erica’s left big toenail.

  The sample had been taken immediately to Greg Sanders, who started replicating the DNA in order to get a large enough sample. In an ideal world it would take only minutes to develop and match DNA evidence, but in Grissom’s world the process just didn’t move that fast.

  Lessor broke his connection, slipped his cell phone into his pocket, and cast a pitying smile at Grissom. “Don’t take it personally, Mr. Grissom—you were always working at a disadvantage.”

  Grissom returned the smile, his just as cold as the killer’s. “Don’t make the mistake of confusing luck with intelligence, Mr. Lessor.”

  “I make my own luck, Grissom.”

  The polite “Mr.” had suddenly vanished, a wolf-like gleam glimmering in the cold eyes.

  Grissom tipped his head in a barely perceptible shrug. “Well, this time the luck you made was bad.”

  Lessor strode over to Grissom and, not at all smiling, asked, “How so?”

  Grissom gestured gently toward the man’s neck. “I know now how you got the scratch on your chest…. Erica really struggled, didn’t she? Not just scratching but kicking.”

  Lessor said nothing; he was as still as a statue.

  Grissom went on: “The evidence demonstrating that wasn’t discovered until recently. It will stand up in court…and so will you—when the judge changes your address to death row.”

  Lessor paled, his skin turning nearly as white as his suit. Then he blustered a laugh. “Melodrama coming from you, Grissom, I thought were a scientist.”

  “Science is dramatic. The strides we’ve made in recent years boggle the imagination. Why, ten years ago, you’d have gotten away with this.”

  “I didn’t get away with anything. I didn’t kill Erica.”

  Grissom smiled gently, like a sympathetic priest. “I wouldn’t get too comfortable in Florida, Mr. Lessor, if I were you. I think we’ll be seeing you back in Nevada, very soon.”

  The killer’s eyes tightened, but he offered no rejoinder.

  Grissom nodded to his prey. “Have a pleasant trip, Mr. Lessor—even if it does prove to be truncated.” The CSI assumed a wistful expression. “But, in a way, your travels have just begun—why, there’s the trip back here…then the one you’ll be taking up the river. Melodramatic enough for you?”

  Lessor grunted a non-laugh, turned, and hurried through the security gate. Safely on the other side, he wheeled to find Grissom still staring at him. Grissom watched while Lessor went through the latest security dance, and then, finally, the murderer disappeared from view.

  Back at HQ, Grissom pushed through the double glass doors into the DNA lab. Immediately to his left, in front of the polarized light microscope, Catherine Willows sat on an office chair, turning from watching Greg Sanders as Grissom came in.

  Typically, her attire was understatedly chic and her blonde-tinged red hair framed her high-cheekboned face. The slacker-ish Sanders sat across the room, hovering over his worktable next to the Thermocycler. As he sat on his chair bent over his work his whole body seemed to vibrate.

  “You see our friend off?” Catherine asked.

  Grissom ignored the question. “Progress?”

  She turned back to Sanders. “Greg?”

  Sanders looked over at them, shrugged, then returned his attention to the slide on his table. “Somebody told me once, science keeps its own timetable.”

  Grissom frowned. “Are you quoting me, Greg? To me?”

  Greg looked up from the slide. “Uh…yes?”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Uh…no.”

  Catherine—who had earlier thrown words of Grissom back at him—seemed to be simultaneously trying to swallow her smile and disappear into her chair.

  Unamused, Grissom said, “I’ll be in my office,” and went out.

  Hours later, his regular shift had begun and the CSI supervisor was in his office, catching up on the logjam of paperwork piled precariously on his desk, when a beaming Catherine walked in, Sanders on her heels like a happy puppy.

  “Nailed him,” Sanders said, squeezing past Catherine, waving a file folder in his hand, giddy as a lottery winner. “Actually, toe nailed him.”

  “It’s a match, then,” Grissom said.

  “That was his DNA under her toenail,” Greg said.

  Grissom consulted his watch, did some quick math, and said, “Lessor will have landed by now.”

  “Time to get our Miami friends on the job,” Catherine said.

  Hating that it was out of his hands, Grissom said, “Warrick has good things to say about the Miami people.”

  “As do I,” she said. “Shall I call Caine?”

  Grissom nodded. “See if he can give us a hand and pick up Lessor.”

  Catherine checked her own watch, now. “Might be kind of hard at this hour. He’s dayshift, and I don’t have a home number for him…but I’ll track him down.”

  “Hope we do better with the Miami dayshift,” Grissom said grimly, “than we did our own.”

  And Catherine went off to make her call, Sanders headed for his lab, and Grissom went back to work. There was no shortage of other murders in Las Vegas, unfortunately; and for the time being, Lessor was in Miami’s hands.

  1

  Goin’ Back to Miami

  LIKE ALL BIG CITIES, Miami throbs and moves.

  Not with the business bustle of New York, or the big-shouldered muscle of Chicago, or even the breezy hustle of Los Angeles, though it does share the latter’s sun-bleached sprawl.

  No.

  Miami is a city of dance.

  The Latin rhythms of salsa and merengue are heard everywhere, to fuel the two million souls who call South Florida their home. Miami’s blood races, charging the city with an exotic vibrance—sexy, passionate, and…occasionally…dangerous.

  For some, Miami was thought of primarily as a beachfront retirement community, the place where America went to die. But for the crime scene investigators of the Miami-Dade PD, Miami is also a place where on each and every sunny day, citizens and visitors, young and old alike, unexpectedly find new and unusual ways to accomplish that fatal task….

  Just this one last fare, Felipe Ortega thought as he wheeled the limo through the light late evening traffic, heading west on the Dolphin Expressway toward Miami International. Then he could go to see Carolina Hernandez, his latest girlfriend. Salsa music pulsed through the limo’s powerful sound system—tuned to 95.7 El Sol, “Salsa y Merengue, todo el tiempo,” as their ad promised.

  The vehicle’s monster sound system was a perk Felipe relished…although he figured his pickup, “Thomas Lessor,” would probably prefer easy listening, or maybe that baby boomer “classic rock.” But in between clients, Felipe could give the stereo a real workout, playing real music.

  The pleasant evening inspired Felipe to put the front windows down—why breathe recycled air when the outside world was cooperating so nicely? But the loudness of the music did get him an occasional dirty look, particularly at stoplights, before he got on the expressway. He would ignore these looks-to-kill and just focus on the strait-and-narrow, the heel of his hand keeping rhythm on the steering wheel.

  Twenty-four, and slight of build for his six feet one, Felipe gave off an easygoing vibe that assured the world—and his clients—that he was harmless, even sensitive. Although this gentleness had been often misread growing up just off the famous Calle Ocho in Little Havana, Felipe had learned early in his young manhood that women appreciated his vulnerability.

  As one who’d been bullied as a boy, Felipe surprisingly now found himself the subject of envy among other men. Hombres much bigger, some better-looking, most with more money, tried their luck with the same ladies; but in the end, Felipe was usually the one that won those f
eminine hearts.

  For a decade now he had traveled the path of a Don Juan, but this new girl, Carolina, she had Felipe thinking about settling down, about retiring his Lothario lifestyle and being with just one woman forever. She was smart, she was funny, and would make as wonderful a wife as a lover, as wonderful a mother as a wife. Never before had thoughts of settling down stayed with him like this…it had been weeks.

  Checking his watch, Felipe knew Carolina would already be home from her hostess job at the Leslie, one of the Art Deco hotels on Miami Beach. Carolina had worked there for the last year and made pretty decent money. The tall beauty, her straight raven hair flowing to the middle of her back, was to lure tourists off the Ocean Drive sidewalk and into the sidewalk café of the hotel. With her looks, it wouldn’t have mattered if she had the personality of a potted plant; but she was in fact a charismatic, friendly, flirty girl blessed with a smile that could light up all of South Beach.

  Thinking about her, he let the limo drift across two lanes and drew an angry honk and an obscene gesture from the pissed-off driver of a passing Geo Storm. Out of respect for the elderly, Felipe declined to return the gesture. Just then he caught sight of an overhead sign and jerked the wheel to the right, gliding the limo across two lanes just in time to catch his exit.

  Following the ramp around, spiraling down through the pools of yellow spilled by mercury vapor lights, Felipe cruised through a stop sign, crossed a street, and rolled into the parking garage of Miami International Airport, the salsa music still blasting as it reverberated off the parking ramp’s concrete walls.

  He braked to take the printed ticket from the machine, then moved ahead. As the car rolled slowly onto the second level, Felipe reached over and shut off the radio. He made sure to turn the volume down and change the setting to some dull-as-dishwater station before even thinking about parking the car.

  But even with the radio off, Felipe’s fingers tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel as he eased through the concrete maze toward the livery spots. Though much of the airport traffic evaporated at night, the limos still moved in and out at a fairly regular clip. Many of the celebrities and VIPs landed their private jets here late at night to avoid the paparazzi.

  Pulling into a space, Felipe saw that tonight was a slack traffic evening. Mondays usually were, the jet set who came in for the weekend mostly long gone or on their way home by now.

  Two spaces over, puffing casually on a cigarette, a white-bearded old man wearing a chauffeur’s uniform leaned against a black Cadillac; Felipe didn’t recognize him—a sub, maybe—but nonetheless bestowed the man a brotherly nod, and the codger waved with his smoke. Even older than Felipe’s Tio Acelino, the driver looked sixty if he was a minute, and Felipe wondered idly if he’d still be renting out his car to pay the bills when he was this viejo’s age.

  Driving for the rich and famous was generally a young man’s job, but Felipe was well acquainted with the idea that you had to do what you had to do to keep the wolf from the door. Even as lucky as he’d been in his life—and Felipe knew he had been lucky—he had to wrestle that wolf from time to time himself. Despite his natural attractiveness to women, he still had to spend some money to impress, sometimes more than he would have liked.

  Married life would change all that. He and the beautiful Carolina would be partners. Who could say what wonderful vistas lay ahead, what opportunities for both of them. The excitement of such prospects, the new life ahead of him, put Felipe in a particularly up-tempo mood.

  He plucked the microphone from the dashboard and keyed the button. “Dispatch—you there, Carmon?”

  “What do you want, Felipe?” came a crackling voice from the speaker.

  “I’m at the airport. Tell Tio Acelino.”

  “This your last trip for the night?”

  Felipe glanced at the clock on the dash and thought about Carolina waiting. “Si. This last drop-off, and then I head home.”

  “Fine. Just let me know when you get him where he’s going.”

  “Will do.”

  Grabbing the handwritten placard bearing the client’s name—LESSOR—Felipe locked up the limo, easily made his way across the lanes of light traffic, and strolled into the airport.

  Between eighty-five and a hundred thousand souls passed through Miami International every day, depending on which day of the week it was, but most of those were long gone by the time Felipe entered, only a skeleton crew of the thirty-three thousand MIA employees still here at this hour. He passed a businessman towing a carry-on, a pair of women in floral dresses, and a drunk couple that looked like they’d hooked up in the airport bar and were off to a motel to do something about it. Ah, romance, he thought. Holding up his placard, the chauffeur stood just outside the baggage claim area and waited.

  Barely five minutes later, a tall, good-looking yuma with girlish blond hair and a sharp suit pointed at the placard, then curled his finger as if scratching the air, in a condescending “come here” gesture.

  Patronizing or not, the possibility of a good tip from the client caused Felipe to jump forward. A redcap was coming their way, pulling a cart with Lessor’s luggage. As the businessman tipped the redcap—a ten!—Felipe took over pulling the cart and gestured to his fare, heading for the car. Lessor quickly caught up, then established a faster pace.

  “Hablas ingles?” Lessor asked, striding briskly for the exit.

  Practically running as he dragged the cart and willing himself not to sound annoyed, Felipe said, “Yes, sir—I’m a Miami native.”

  “I would have said Cubano,” the man said, nothing positive or negative in his voice, just a fact.

  “My grandparents on both sides fled from Castro,” Felipe said conversationally, still managing to keep up as he hauled the cart. “My parents were just kids. We’ve been here ever since.”

  “Really,” Lessor said, his voice cold, a signal that their chat was over.

  Lessor went out the automatic doors and then Felipe finally got out in front, leading the man across to the parking ramp and then the limo. They went down the passenger side of the sleek black vehicle, Felipe knowing the man would want to sit inside, maybe pour himself a drink while the chauffeur loaded bags in the trunk. He beeped the alarm and heard the locks pop, then deposited the cart at the rear of the car, leaving Lessor by the back door.

  Returning to the client, he opened the door for him and Lessor climbed in; but before Felipe could do anything else, the older chauffeur from before appeared again out of nowhere.

  “Got a light, kid?” the old man asked.

  Felipe shook his head. “Sorry, Viejo, I don’t smoke.”

  The old man shook his head. “Nasty habit,” he said, and a gun materialized in his hand.

  The weapon was small and shiny and, for just a moment, Felipe thought it was one of those trick lighters—pull the trigger and a flame pops up. Then he looked closer and realized the viejo’s beard was fake, which somehow said the gun was real, and a chill coursed through him.

  “Driver!” Lessor called, sounding a little pissed.

  “What is the holdup?”

  Holdup was right….

  Two more men, both wearing rubber masks, came around on either side of the car, from wherever they’d been hiding. One, on the driver’s side, wore a rubber Bill Clinton mask and the other, who’d come up behind Felipe, was in a Richard Nixon mask.

  Nixon eased the chauffeur out of the way and swung into the car with Lessor, a small silver pistol in his right hand as well. Felipe had been carjacked one other time and knew enough to keep his mouth shut and not look any of the men in the eye for too long. These things scared the shit out of you, but if a guy kept his head, he could survive.

  Felipe heard Lessor say, “What the hell…?”

  Then silence. Lessor had probably seen the pistol in Nixon’s hand. His client’s arrogant attitude would be held in check now. But the silence spoke volumes, about Lessor’s fear, and the lack of any commands from the intruder—no sounds o
f a robbery. Maybe all they wanted was the car….

  On the driver’s side, Clinton kept a watch on the parking garage, his gun-in-hand out of sight, but not out of Felipe’s mind.

  The fake-bearded viejo—was he really an old man, or was that just more makeup?—waved Felipe toward the back of the car.

  “You just relax, Fidel,” the old man said. “Ain’t nothin’ goin’ to happen to you, you behave. Comprendo?”

  The old man dragged out the last word, making it sound like comb-pren-doe.

  “Comprendo,” Felipe said, putting the syllables back together, and nodding.

  Felipe made the short walk around back, to the trunk, the old man’s lack of menace somehow reassuring.

  Clinton joined them in back of the car. His voice muffled through the mask, he pointed to the trunk and said, “Open it.”

  Felipe used his remote and did as he was told, but doubt crept into his fear now. If these pendejos wanted the car, why take him and Lessor along? That made it kidnapping, even if they dumped the pair alive and well along a roadside….

  “Give me your hands,” Clinton said.

  A bad, sick feeling began to crawl through his belly, but Felipe stuck out his hands.

  “Behind you,” Clinton growled.

  Turning his back to Clinton, Felipe put his hands behind him, and then could feel the man removing the remote from his grasp, and duct-taping his wrists. For the first time, Felipe wondered if he and the client were going to get through this night alive.

  “I’ll do what you want,” Felipe said. “You don’t have to tie me up.”

  Finished binding Felipe’s hands, Clinton spun the driver around and slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth.

  “Get in the trunk,” Clinton said.

  Felipe froze.

  “We want the passenger, kid—not you,” the viejo said reassuringly. “Let somebody else do the drivin’ for a change.”