by Donn Cortez
“Really? I thought you tore a strip off him earlier.”
She frowned at him. “Where’d you hear that?”
“When you lose your temper in the parking lot, people are going to notice.”
She crossed her arms. “I did not lose my temper. It was just a difference of professional opinion.”
“The squealing tires afterward is what I heard about. That’s the kind of detail office gossips love, you know.”
“Like you, you mean?” She glared at him.
“Hmm. Apparently the package should have read nonthinking as well as nondrowsy. And warned me against operating heavy machinery—like my mouth.”
Her glare softened a little. “Just put those files on a disc for me, okay? I know the Wolfman wants to see them as soon as possible. And Jenson?”
“What?”
“The next time you’re sick? Stick to aspirin.”
“You mind telling me,” Tripp said, his hands on his hips, “what a rowboat with a hole in it has to do with our case?”
Wolfe had flipped the boat upside down on the blue sawhorses and was squatting underneath it, looking up with a flashlight in his hand.
“It doesn’t,” Wolfe said. “While you were talking to Kingsley’s known associates, I thought I’d do Calleigh a favor.”
“Well, that’s awfully generous of you, but I’m all done talking to Kingsley’s friends. None of them knew about anything he might have been into that he shouldn’t. I thought you were gonna see what you could pull from his computer?”
“Jenson’s working on it. In the meantime, I thought I’d take a look in the SS Minnow here . . . and I think I just found something interesting.”
He went into a crouch, his head disappearing inside the boat.
“What’d you find?”
“It’s what I didn’t find that’s interesting,” Wolfe said, his voice echoing hollowly. “The vic’s hands were burnt off with household drain cleaner, a powerful corrosive. The active ingredient is sodium hydroxide, or lye—and lye reacts with water and aluminum. If the killer had spilt any at all in the boat, which seems likely, I’d be able to tell. I haven’t found any traces, and Delko didn’t find any tracks around the pool where the body was discovered—so where were the hands removed?”
“Don’t ask me,” Tripp said gruffly. “Hell, this isn’t even my case. Or yours, compadre.”
Wolfe extricated himself from underneath the boat and straightened up. “I know, I know. I’ll check in with Calleigh, see if that computer data is ready.”
“Calleigh? I thought Jenson was working on it.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not as long as you preserve the chain of evidence. There’s a couple judges get real sticky about that kinda thing, and those are the ones I always seem to draw.”
Wolfe headed for the elevator, Tripp right behind him. “Don’t worry, Calleigh and I are pros,” Wolfe said.
“I know—but even pros make mistakes. Look at Calleigh and those fingerprints.”
Wolfe frowned. “What? You mean in the original Pathan case?”
“Yeah. Your boy got cut loose because of a fingerprint, right? Word is, Horatio isn’t too happy about that.”
The elevator door opened and they stepped on. “You’re saying that’s why she was taken off the case? No wonder she got mad at me when I brought it up.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. She’ll get over it, and Horatio takes care of his own. He’d take a bullet for anyone on his team, and that includes friendly fire. She’ll be all right.”
“I’m sure she will. If there’s one thing I know about Calleigh Duquesne—”
The doors slid open, revealing Calleigh standing there. “Yes?” Calleigh said. “What exactly is it you know, Mister Wolfe?”
“—it’s that she has really, really good hearing,” Wolfe said. “Hi.”
She gave him a smile that made him swallow involuntarily. He wondered if she’d learned that from Horatio, or if it was the other way around.
“I have the information you were waiting for,” she said, handing him the disc. “Apparently, there are some files that mention phenelzine. Any luck on your end?”
He told her what he’d found—or rather, hadn’t found. “I don’t know what it means yet,” he finished. “But at least it’s something.”
“Thanks, I’ll follow up on it.” She turned around and walked away.
“You think she’ll let me live?” Wolfe asked.
“Too soon to tell,” Tripp said. “But I wouldn’t make any firm plans for the new year.”
As it turned out, the phenelzine wasn’t the big news. Jenson had managed to trace the email back to its source through the ISP, a local Internet company that gave up the address without a whisper of complaint.
“Probably don’t want us getting a warrant and looking at their files too closely,” Tripp said. “Which is fine, because the warrant we want is for this place right here.”
“Looks like it’s in the warehouse district,” Wolfe said, studying the address on the screen. “Not too far from Ms. Steinwitz’s loft, as a matter of fact.”
“You want to try for a doubleheader? Might be able to get a judge to sign off on two warrants at the same time.”
“Let me read through these files, first.”
“All right. I’m gonna go grab a coffee in the break room.”
“Fine,” Wolfe said absently, his attention already focused elsewhere.
Steinwitz, it seemed, had done a fair amount of research on phenelzine, but that didn’t mean she was necessarily taking it. She’d bookmarked sites that featured information about the drug, including one that detailed the adverse reactions possible when it was combined with other anti-depressants.
There was only way to find out if she’d done more than look. Wolfe headed for the break room.
He found Tripp sitting alone at a table, blowing on a mug of coffee and looking pensive. “What do you think?” he asked before Wolfe could say a word.
“I think we ask a judge for a peek inside Monica Steinwitz’s medicine cabinet,” Wolfe said.
“I’ll get the paperwork started.” Tripp set down his cup and stood up. “Lousy coffee, anyway . . .”
“Ms. Steinwitz?” Wolfe said, meeting the woman’s hostile stare with a pleasant smile. “I was in the neighborhood and I was wondering if you’d reconsider my request to use your bathroom.”
“What is this, a joke?”
“Kind of.” He handed her the warrant. “But I’ll let you read the punch line yourself.”
She stepped back from the doorway and Wolfe brushed past her as she was reading the document.
“Ms. Steinwitz?” Tripp said. “I’m going to have to ask you to wait out in the hall, please.”
“You—you—” She seemed to be at a loss for words, but from the rising color on her face, Wolfe could tell that wouldn’t last long. He headed straight for the bathroom, leaving Tripp to deal with its owner.
It didn’t take long to examine. The warrant covered more than just the bathroom, though, and Wolfe followed up with a search of the entire apartment.
It wasn’t really necessary; he was just being thorough.
“Got it,” he told Tripp, holding up a bottle of pills.
“What does that have to do with anything?” she demanded. “I have a prescription for that!”
“You’re going to have to come with us, Ms. Steinwitz,” Tripp said. “We’ve got a few more questions to ask.”
“This is unbelievable,” she spat.
“That’s not how I would put it,” Wolfe said. “Unappetizing, maybe . . .”
Monica Steinwitz left in the backseat of a patrol car. She’d be waiting for them—probably with her lawyer—when they were done, but Wolfe and Tripp had another job to do first.
Their next stop was a storefront three blocks over. It sat between a parking lot and a liquor store, and from the tattered awning over the door it had once been a pawnshop. The grimy front
window was papered over on the inside with yellowing newspapers, the sill littered with the corpses of flies and moths.
“Looks abandoned to me,” Tripp said.
“Well, someone’s been here recently.” Wolfe pointed to one corner of the papered-over window that seemed a little whiter than the others. “The date on that newspaper is only two weeks ago. The rest are all three years old or more.”
“The original probably fell down.”
“And someone replaced it. Someone who wanted this place sealed off from prying eyes.”
“Well then,” Tripp said. “What do you say we take a look at what they’re keeping under wraps.”
He pounded on the front door. “Miami-Dade police!” he called out. “Open up!”
No response.
Tripp pulled his gun, and Wolfe did the same. “Guess I should knock a little louder,” Tripp said. He reared back and kicked the door once, just above the knob, and it flew open in a shower of splinters.
They moved inside cautiously. Tripp called out again, but his voice just echoed through the empty, dusty room. A quick search found an empty storeroom in the back and a bathroom with the fixtures ripped out.
Tripp holstered his gun. “Nobody home.”
“Yeah, but someone was here not too long ago,” Wolfe said. “The floor’s been swept, and I can smell Pine-Sol.” The only furniture in the room was an eight-foot-long wooden table with folding legs. Wolfe walked over and examined it, then looked underneath. “Power outlet and telephone jack. They could have set up a computer here.”
“Registered owner of the property lives in Hong Kong,” Tripp said. “Haven’t been able to get in touch with him, but I’m betting he doesn’t know anything about this. Back door has a little dimple above the lock—just like the one at Kingsley Patrick’s apartment.”
“Well, they were getting power and Internet access. I’ll see what I can dig up on that end.” Wolfe bent over and peered closely at the table-top. “I can see some grains of white powder here.”
“Cocaine?”
Wolfe nodded thoughtfully. “I believe so. And from the size of the granules and the distinctive clumping pattern, I can tell you they were processed from coca plants three to four feet high, grown on the south . . . no, the southwest side of a mountain.”
“Really? You can tell that?”
Wolfe sighed. “Of course not, Frank—it’s a few grains of a white powder. What, you think I have microscopic vision or something?’
Tripp shook his head. “Well, sometimes that’s what it seems like. Usually when I ask one of you CSIs what something is, I get a description that sounds like it came out of an encyclopedia.”
“And I’ll do my best to supply you with one. But not until after I’ve gotten a sample of this back to the lab.”
“All right,” Horatio said. “How do you want to do this?”
Sackheim stared at Horatio from an expensive upholstered chair. The FBI had set up a temporary command post in Khasib Pathan’s mansion, on the grounds it was where the kidnappers were most likely to make contact. Horatio suspected the Bureau just liked the plush surroundings and the excellent coffee and pastries Pathan’s cook was supplying.
“We’ll wait for them to get in touch. You’ll be wired with a GPS transponder and headset, which you will use to stay in constant contact. Other than that, we follow their instructions. Mister Pathan wants his son back and is willing to pay whatever ransom is demanded.”
“And what if the kidnappers don’t ask for money?”
“We’ll deal with that as the situation warrants.”
Which was FBI-speak for we don’t know but we’re not going to admit it. Horatio didn’t push him—if the kidnappers demanded something they couldn’t give, such as the release of political prisoners, then they would have a very dicey situation. Most likely, it would mean that Abdus Pathan was already dead, and the kidnappers just wanted to make a point.
“If I’m going to do this,” Horatio said, “then you keep me in the loop. I don’t want any surprises while I’m out there.”
“Of course.” Sackheim gave him the thinnest of smiles. “We take care of our men in the field.”
A phone chimed. It was Khasib’s house line, the same one the kidnappers had called before. Horatio picked it up calmly. “Yes?”
He listened intently, knowing others tapped into the line were doing the same. The caller said only one thing, then hung up.
Horatio glanced at Sackheim.
“It’s on,” Horatio said.
13
THE SINGLE SENTENCE THE KIDNAPPER had spoken, filtered through a voice-changer, was to direct Horatio to a website. Sackheim’s unit had it up and running before Horatio had put the phone down.
“It’s a geocaching site,” the clean-cut young man with the laptop said. Horatio knew about geo-caching; it was a hobby that combined orienteering skills with treasure hunting. People hid caches in locations that ranged from remote to urban, then posted Global Positioning System coordinates on a website. Treasure seekers used handheld GPS units to track down the caches, then reported their successes on the website. Caches could contain anything from large amounts of money to inconsequential trinkets you were supposed to move to another cache.
“Do a search for Caine,” Horatio said. The young man hesitated.
“Do as he says, Caldwell,” Sackheim said.
“Yes, sir. There’s a new cache that’s just been posted under the name Caine. Downtown Miami, it looks like.”
“Then we’d better get a move on,” Horatio said. “Before some other cacher beats us to the punch.”
“We can get you outfitted in a few minutes,” Sackheim said.
The door opened, and Delko walked in. Sackheim frowned at the same instant Horatio smiled.
“Good,” Horatio said. “That’ll give me just enough time to get Eric up to speed. He’ll be monitoring me in the field.”
“We’ve got that covered—” Sackheim began.
“I’m sure you do,” Horatio said, cutting him off. “Nonetheless, I know Mister Delko’s assistance will prove invaluable . . . right, Eric?”
“Hey, I’m a team player, H,” Delko said, staring at Sackheim impassively. “Ask anyone.”
“Fine,” Sackheim said.
As Wolfe expected, Monica Steinwitz had demanded legal representation before she’d give a statement. Her lawyer sat beside her now in the interview room, a squat, frowning black woman with rows of intricately beaded braids lining her scalp.
Wolfe and Tripp sat on the other side of the table, Tripp doing his best to outscowl the two women. Wolfe took one look at the ongoing competition and decided he might get better results with a lighter approach.
“Hi, I’m CSI Ryan Wolfe,” he said to the attorney.
“I’m Ms. Scapello,” the woman said coldly. “And I’d like to know why my client is being held.”
“Your client was found in possession of a drug used to murder a man,” Tripp said.
Scapello turned her icy gaze on Tripp. “Then why hasn’t she been charged?”
“We’d like to give her the chance to explain herself first,” Wolfe interjected.
“Explain what?” Monica Steinwitz snapped. “I told you, I have a prescription for that drug.”
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t use it to poison someone,” Tripp said.
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Look, we found emails from the woman who called herself Amelia Claus on your computer, and they seem to support your story,” Wolfe said. “But you could have planted those. What we need from you is a DNA sample—the person who slipped our vic the phenelzine also had sex with him.”
“Is that all?” Steinwitz demanded. “No problem. Bring it on.”
Wolfe stood and unwrapped a swab. “Say ah.”
If there was one building that symbolized Miami’s downtown core more than any other, it would have to be the Freedom Tower. Built in 1925, the sixteen-story building housed the Miami News &
Metropolis for the next three decades, the light shining over Miami Bay from the apex of the Mediterranean Revival–style tower symbolizing the light of truth. In 1955 the newspaper moved, leaving the building empty until it was taken over by the U.S. General Services Administration in 1962. The light from its tower now signified not truth, but freedom; the building was Miami’s answer to Ellis Island, processing the thousands of Cuban refugees fleeing Castro’s regime.
But in the seventies, like the newspaper before it, the government abandoned the building. Over the following decades it changed ownership many times, but never regained its former glory; at one point it was a squat for the homeless and the criminal, filled with rotting garbage and discarded syringes. A face-lift in ’87 by an overseas developer failed to attract commercial success and was discovered to be merely cosmetic when the building was evaluated in 1997; the structure’s concrete was riddled with chlorides from Miami’s salty air, and its steel supports were rusting. A major overhaul was begun, with the objective of turning the place into a Cuban-American museum, but as with many of Florida’s grand projects, it proved elusive. After eight years it had yet to open, and the building was sold again. This time, the owners planned to build a sixty-two-story high-rise on the property, demolishing part of the building but keeping the tower intact, enfolded like a tiny needle between two enormous, curving wings. This plan was met with less than enthusiastic approval by the community—until, in typical Florida fashion, the developers donated the tower itself to Miami-Dade College and promised to leave the entire structure intact. Shortly thereafter, plans for the condominium development were approved.
Horatio had driven his Hummer to the tower and gotten the security guard posted there to let him into the building itself. He paced slowly across the concrete floor, between the large white pillars that supported the Mediterranean-style roof overhead, and glanced down at the GPS unit in his hand. Global-positioning technology used thirty Navigation Satellite Timing and Ranging units in orbit to provide precise location coordinates. The satellites each orbited the planet once every twelve hours, covering the same ground once every twenty-four. An atomic onboard clock transmitted a satellite’s position and a time signal to earth; by comparing data from more than one satellite at once, a GPS unit could calculate its own position. Most GPS units were accurate to within fifty feet, but Horatio’s was equipped with a Wide Area Augmentation System, which further refined the signals through the use of twenty-five ground reference stations. A NAVSTAR signal sent through a WAAS could pinpoint a location to within ten feet.