by Unknown
‘No one’s untouchable. Remember that, Rico. Wait for the call. No one but you does it. Understood?’
‘Ain’t he gonna move?’
‘Don’t you worry about that. You just wait till you get that call. Tomorrow or next year. You do what you’re told.’
‘Yeah,’ Rico said.
‘Oh, and Rico. When the time comes, don’t bring your friends along wit’ you,’ the voice said, referring to the Taurus that had crept up the block. Then he disappeared into the busy crowd, leaving Rico all alone at the counter.
32
The man waited in the shadows of the gray stairwell trying hard not to breathe in the stench of old piss and vomit and stale beer. Four stories below, the brilliant lights and glitter and neon of South Beach spread out before him. The hour was late, and the freestanding parking garage on 13th was empty, as it had been for hours, its purpose really to accommodate the shoppers and beachgoers that trolled Washington Avenue in the daytime. He had already checked to make sure that there were no undesirables haunting the many dark corners and crevices on each level, looking to sleep off the day’s drink or get in a quickie in the shadows before heading home to the wife and kids. Only a single car sat alone now on the rooftop of the fourth floor, its engine on, the AC dripping condensation that ran out from underneath its belly trickling into a slow-growing, oily-looking puddle. The car faced east, toward Ocean Drive and the shores of Miami Beach, its windows closed tight against the night, its distracted driver oblivious to what waited for him in the dark stairwell only a few yards away.
It was ironic, really. The same super-ego that would win a cop a gold medal for bravery would be the very same one that would ultimately drive the steel nail into his own coffin. It caused him to join the SWAT team and bust blindly through doors looking for hostages, but it also told him he was invincible, impenetrable to bullets and knives, no matter how many funerals he had attended. The motherfuckers ain’t taking me attitude got a cop through the shift, through the next twenty years. It made them detectives and sergeants, and it drove them here, alone, to a deserted parking lot late on a Saturday night to park and do paperwork just like they’ve always done in the middle of their shift, in silent defiance of department recommendations and of their own fears. Because no mope is gonna make me change my routine, make me change my life. No motherfucker is making me run or taking me down. Just fucking try it. I’ll be waiting. I dare you…
The man walked out of the shadows of the stairwell behind him, inhaling the scent of the sea and suntan lotion that lingered somehow in the beach air even in the dead of night. He walked confidently toward the cruiser, rising to the silent challenge made by the man seated in the front seat.
You’re on, Sergeant, thought the monster as he fingered the blade in his jacket pocket. Then he tapped lightly on the window and, with a smile, introduced himself to the man inside.
33
Just eight more years. Eight more and he would be free from doing this shit every night. Shit that he loved and shit that he hated. It had started not to matter anymore, and for the first time in his career, Lou Ribero had begun to count the time. The time till he was off his shift. The time before he had to go back. The time before he was done with the whole fucking job. He used to think he would do this forever, maybe take the Lieutenant’s test next, then maybe even one day, Captain. Who the hell knows? His wife, she wanted to move up to Mount Dora and antique shop for the rest of her life and he had thought, well, maybe that would be a great job to go out with. Retire after twenty with the MBPD and sign on as a captain with the six-man force of the Mount Dora Police, where the biggest things he would have to worry about would be parking on the swales and people paying for their antiques with invalid credit cards. But he would still be a cop and he would still be on the job, even if the paycheck wasn’t so hot and the crimes weren’t so interesting. He would still be a part of it.
But now… now it was different. Everything was different. He swallowed a chunk of his roast beef hoagie and slugged down a gulp of Coke as he moved the cursor over the right box on the laptop and began to type out yet another detailed report in the dim light of his squad car. His growing ulcer threatened to burn a black hole straight through to his intestines, and he rubbed his stomach trying to ease the pain. Even the pills didn’t help with the stress no more. The past couple of months, the tension at the department over this Black Jacket was so thick you couldn’t breathe sometimes. Now everything had to be perfectly documented, every second accounted for. There was lots of pressure to find the guy, find his motive, weed out the cops who don’t walk the straight and narrow, attack the ones who were victims because that’s where the problem must be. They must have been targeted for a reason. Off-duties were bad, cops could be bought.
It pissed him off, the manipulation of the facts by the press and the hypocritical reaction of indignation from the public. Because the truth be told, people didn’t really want to know what needed to be done to catch the bad guys. Just do it. Find the murderer, get the confession, clean the street, get rid of the dopers, just don’t tell us how – because it might be ugly. The department, well, they preached the rules, but everyone knew what had to be done when roll call was over. As a sergeant, Lou himself had done the preaching.
He had done this job for twelve years, and he had never really given a shit about the press or the bleeding hearts at the ACLU or the hypocritical idiots who wrote editorials in the paper. He’d always slept soundly at night. Of course, he didn’t okay guys on the take. That was different and that was bullshit. And so if it did turn out that Chavez and Lindeman were really dirty and were taking home on the side – not that they deserved to get whacked – but, well, then let the truth come out. The only problem was, Lou Ribero didn’t really think that was why they had been hunted.
He had talked to that prosecutor at Sonny’s funeral and she knew, too, even though she had said nothing. Couldn’t bring herself to say shit to him except sorry. What the fuck was that about? Sorry? She had realized the connection, just like he did, and she was definitely afraid. But of what? Afraid for herself? Afraid for him? Afraid to get caught? Afraid that the secret would get out and she would lose her job? Or maybe she was worried that that psycho Cupid would get out of jail if anyone besides them figured a connection between Chavez and Lindeman.
Lou remembered the headlines back then, how that sick fuck had to be restrained and gagged in court, held back by Corrections all the while vowing to kill the prosecutor, claiming he had raped her, claiming he had been framed, claiming she had set him up, that the police had set him up. That was bullshit. The guy was fucking guilty. Lou remembered that girl’s body, Anna Prado, stuffed like a rag in the back of that Jag’s trunk, eyes wide open and missing a heart. That was an image you never forgot. And bodies don’t just crawl into trunks by themselves. People have to put them there. Maybe the stop wasn’t perfect, but that was just a bullshit technicality and that dead girl was in that trunk and that guy was fucking guilty. Even if there had been a reason to doubt before, then there were those hearts, the hearts of all those dead girls that the task force had found later, linked back to Bantling. There was no coincidence. So they had done the right thing after all.
And in three years, Lou Ribero had never looked back. Cupid had been just another case where a bad outcome had been averted by quick thinking. But now… someone was making him look back, making him take it home, making him wonder, and all Lou could ask himself every single fucking day of this never-ending job was why?
The light tap at the passenger window quickly pulled him out of his troubling thoughts with a start. At the sound, his fingers moved to unsnap the SIG-Sauer P-226 at his side, but when he saw the familiar face smiling at the window he relaxed and unlocked the door.
34
Dominick raced down 395 and the McArthur Causeway with lights and siren on, the tremendous cruise ships in the Port of Miami and the glow of downtown blurring past on his right. He felt the unsettling familiarit
y of déjà vu creep over his consciousness.
Police cars already lined Washington. Patrons were being escorted out of clubs and hurried away from the crazy scene that unfolded on the streets, the crowds excitedly looking around to see where the commotion was coming from. Their eyes settled on the top of the four-story parking garage, which had exploded in a mass of flashing blue and red and white lights. Dominick counted no less than five helicopters that dangled from the sky, searchlights criss-crossing the streets below like the opening of a five-star casino in Vegas, while the MDPD helicopter kept them back, shooing their cameras away from the scene that developed on the roof below.
Crime Scene was dusting the elevator for prints, so Dominick took the stairs two at a time instead, pushing past more techs who photographed and videoed each level of the stairwell from every conceivable angle. He burst out of the stairwell and onto the fourth floor. No less than twenty cruisers were parked haphazardly across the lot. An ambulance and fire truck waited nearby, their lights on as well, but there was no need for either. One cruiser stood alone, its windows painted black from the inside. Just the driver’s door was open, and the heavy white sheet trailed out onto the asphalt.
Handhelds and radios exploded around him, cops reporting back and forth on the status of the wide-reaching perimeter that had been set up, hoping to ensnare a killer who might still be within their grasp. The frantic energy bordered on chaos, as sergeants and lieutenants from different departments barked different orders to those in their charge. Mark Gracker, who had apparently just arrived on scene as well, also barked orders to the FBI agents he had brought with him.
Manny and Ted Nicholsby stood talking with three men in MBPD uniforms, two of whom looked like they had been crying. The third looked sick, and Dominick noticed vomit on the tips of his black shoes. Manny looked in Gracker’s direction and Dominick could tell the Bear wanted to kill him, maybe throw him off the roof to the hungry wolves in uniform below who would love to feast on an asshole – any asshole – right now.
Dominick headed immediately for the lone cruiser, the one no one else wanted to get too close to. The painted windows glistened, as if they might still be wet. He lifted the sheet with gloved hands and cringed. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered.
‘This is bad, Dom,’ said the voice behind him. It was Marlon. He looked shaken up. ‘We’ve got a ten-block perimeter set up and FHP is blocking off—’
‘What the fuck is this?’ Dominick barked, his voice shaking as he stared at the sight below. ‘What the fuck is this?’
‘Looks like the others,’ started Marlon, but Dominick shook him off.
‘Where’s Chris? Where’s Masterson?’ he demanded, his eyes searching through the commotion on the rooftop.
‘He’s here. Let me raise him,’ Marlon said, stepping back to talk into the Nextel.
Dominick spotted her then. C.J., standing by herself next to the entrance to the stairwell. Even through the flash of the red emergency lights that spun across her face Dominick could tell she was pale. Her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, she stared blankly through him at the cruiser.
What the hell was she doing here?
He walked toward her, searching the crowd of uniforms and plainclothes for ASA Andy Maus, but he was nowhere to be found.
‘Dom? Hey, Marlon raised me.’ Chris Masterson appeared suddenly in front of him.
‘What the fuck happened here?’
Chris looked at the cruiser. ‘Sergeant with the Beach. ID’d as Louis Ribero, age thirty-six.’
‘What the fuck happened?’
‘Looks like the same killer,’ Chris started, confused. ‘It’s another necktie, that’s for sure. Throat was slit and then the whole tongue muscle was pulled—’
‘What the fuck happened to his eyes?’ Dominick demanded, his voice rising to almost a shout. ‘What is this freak trying to tell us? You’re the goddamned expert! What the hell is his message and what does he want?’
‘The eyes were gouged. From all this blood, it may be pre-mortem. I can’t tell you what the message is for certain but given the necktie and probable cartel connections we’ve found I’d say the message is this guy saw something. Something he shouldn’t have seen.’
‘And now he’ll never talk about it.’ C.J. was suddenly beside them both now, her eyes still glued on the cruiser. Her voice was distant and flat.
‘Are you okay?’ Dominick asked, taking off his FDLE windbreaker and wrapping it around her shoulders. She looked so cold, even though the air was mild. Chris looked embarrassed, as if he had intruded on an intimate moment, and he backed up a few feet, turning his attention to one of the crime scene techs who had begun to photograph the car.
‘What are you doing here?’ Dominick asked after Chris had walked away. She looked awful. He knew she wanted nothing to do with the Black Jacket case, did not even want to discuss it with him since she had asked to be removed from the task force. ‘You’re not on this anymore. Where the hell’s Maus?’ he asked, looking around past her.
‘I was beeped,’ she said softly.
‘What? Here? Who beeped you?’
‘I don’t know who. I called back the number and got the Miami Beach Police Department’s homicide unit. When I asked who had beeped me, no one knew. The detective who answered said everyone had just gotten called out, here, to another Black Jacket murder that had been tipped on the nine-eleven line.’
‘So it must have been a homicide detective. Are you the on-call?’
‘That’s just it. I’m not on homicide duty this week. Gail Brill is. And it wasn’t the homicide beeper that went off. I don’t even have it.’
Dominick looked confused.
‘Apparently someone wanted me to know, too,’ she said wearily, pulling her hands through her hair. Her eyes finally looked away from the cruiser and up at him, and he knew then that she was more than just frightened. She was terrified.
‘Dominick,’ she whispered, ‘the page came through my cell.’
35
‘Now this is interesting – he used a different knife on the throat. This one was serrated, with a significant dip and curve on the end, before the blade met the handle. I’m thinking, Detectives, that you’re looking for a hunting knife in all likelihood,’ said Dr Joe Neilson, the breath from his words fogging the clear, plastic shield that covered his face. His nose twitched several times, and he looked as if he were about to sneeze. Then his eyes blinked rapidly and he looked back down at the nude, still body laid out on a gurney that ran off next to a stainless steel farm sink.
‘Incredibly sharp and efficient. And here we have the same situation that we found on Officer Chavez,’ he continued with a smile, the nose twitch finally subsiding. Both his face and his stainless steel ruler were now almost lost in Lou Ribero’s ragged throat. ‘Here,’ he said, without looking up, his bloodied latexed fingers motioning for them to come closer. ‘There is an overlap of tears, the first of which initially severs the jugular and the windpipe only. Blood spots in the lungs indicate this guy drowned in his own blood. Again, this overlap appears deliberate. The second went smoothly, straight across from ear to ear, no hesitation.’
Dominick, Manny and C.J. stood in the white-tiled laboratory at the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s. Britney Spears cooed lightly on the radio in the background and the room smelled of fresh coffee and disinfectant and death, a scent C.J. knew never left these walls, lurking in cold storage or sliced up into tissue samples and placed in heat-sealed plastic bags in file folders next to X-rays and death certificates.
Normally, ASAs did not have to attend autopsies, even if they were on homicide duty, as that was the lead detective’s job, but Black Jacket was no ordinary case. Unfortunately, it would take at least another four to five hours for Andy Maus to make it back from a three-day weekend across the state at his nephew’s christening in Tampa. Jerry Tigler had refused to send out Gail Brill, the on-call ASA covering for him, secretly relieved, C.J. was sure, that someone from the MBPD
had been smart enough to beep C.J. first instead of him. There was no room for argument, not unless she was prepared to quit right there and then over the phone, so she had stayed on scene, just a few feet away from the cruiser, its lights still flashing against the backdrop of the city, answering legal questions.
Tigler had also informed her she needed to attend the autopsy. Then, she supposed, he had hung up and gone back to bed. And so here she was, standing as close to the exit door as possible without being conspicuous, arms wrapped tightly around her chest, watching, detached, as this whole macabre scene played itself out. She was trapped, watching the autopsy of a man whose murder – her now frightened and crazed mind told her – she might very well be responsible for.
Sweetheart, Dominick had said, someone in Beach homicide probably remembered you were the original ASA assigned to Black Jacket. They got your cell number from Nicholsby or Dorsett’s Rolodex, or from SAO Criminal Intake, or your secretary, or they had it already, C.J. Maybe they’re embarrassed they beeped the wrong person at 3:00 a.m. and now won’t own up. Honey, you can’t keep seeing ghosts.
Without further explanation, she appeared paranoid. And there would be no further explanation. It was then that she insisted on driving herself to the Medical Examiner’s, and left the rooftop long before Dominick could have the chance to play protector and hop behind her wheel, taking direction of yet another tragedy in the making, his probing questions and soft brown eyes demanding answers that she could not give him. And now she knew he was angry with her, avoiding her when they had met upstairs in the reception area, refusing to look at her now during the autopsy. But the truth was, she had needed to be alone – not because she wanted to be, but because she had to be. She could not trust herself – in a rush to clear her own conscience – not to drag him into this conspiracy.