"How's the leg wound?" she said, and I felt her hand on my thigh where a killer's bullet had caught me on a ricochet. She had been there when they found me bleeding in my shack.
"It'll hold up," I said, reaching up to curl a loose strand of her hair and letting the backs of my fingers brush her cheek.
She tilted her head into my hand and then leaned down and kissed me, the scent of wine and perfume spilling into my mouth and my breath catching in my chest.
The aqua glow caught just the edges of her hair and lit them. But her eyes were in shadow and I couldn't see their color.
25
An electronic warble pulled me out of a half sleep and Richards was up and out of the hammock before my eyes could clear. I just caught a slip of fabric and a flash of blonde hair going through the French doors as I lay there swinging, back and forth, with the force of her leaving.
It was still dark but there was a hint of dawn in the east. I could hear her voice, low and curt. Paged, I thought. A cop who is always on.
A light went on somewhere inside and a couple of minutes later she came out on the deck in a robe. Her hair was brushed and her eyelashes were wet from splashing water onto her face.
"They're calling detectives in on an overnight homicide," she said. "Some shrink who works in the jail was found with his throat cut."
Behind my eyes the dry sponge of a wine hangover was dulling both my eyesight and my brain synapses.
"He worked for you guys?"
"Not officially. We run the jail but the medical staff is contracted through a private company. But it doesn't look good having even a subcontractor get hit in your own jurisdiction."
I could see her head spinning the scene already. Motive and opportunity.
"Shit. We'll be chasing patients the guy's seen for years who are out on the street. They're going to want this one quick."
She came closer and put her hands on my shoulders and bent to kiss me. I was about to say something witty about duty calling when she twisted away.
"I gotta go. Call me," she said, moving to the doors and closing them behind her.
I spent the rest of the morning at Billy's. When I came through the lobby, Murray gave me a few more seconds of eye contact than usual and I thought I could see a slight grin playing at his mouth. I know it's just locker-room humor that people can tell, but how the hell would he know where I'd spent the night?
Billy had long since gone to his office and the apartment was immaculate. He had left a note on top of two large manila envelopes:
Max. This is the Thompson file, including a full dossier and confirmation that she did indeed have a viatical policy through a company other than McCane's and sold it to the same investment group as the others.
The other file is a full dossier on Dr. Harold Marshack, our possible middleman.
Let me know when you get in.
I showered and changed and started a pot of coffee. While I waited I started leafing through the Thompson file. The woman had purchased an inordinately large life insurance policy in 1954 and had been paying loyally for decades. She obviously liked the idea of tucking such death insurance away that in the late '70s, she bought yet another policy that gave her nearly $100,000 in coverage. But four years ago she sold both to the investment group for $40,000. They had required a medical exam, but when they found she had been diagnosed with cancer and had refused surgery, they didn't hesitate.
Different figures, but pretty much the same pattern as the others. I poured myself a cup of coffee and took the other file to the patio. Out on the ocean there were a dozen fishing boats strung out past what I knew was the third reef line. The water was flat and a huge freighter was southbound on the horizon, the visibility so clear I could see the lump of a wave being pushed by the prow of the big vessel. I sat in one of the patio chairs and opened the file on Marshack.
The doctor, who was fifty-two, had taken his degree from a small college in Louisville. The resume listed internships and hospital privileges in both Kentucky and Tennessee. A few years were then unaccounted for, but a license and three different business addresses in North Carolina made me think he must have been struggling to find a steady practice.
It was all pretty undistinguished stuff until I got to the address listing in Moultrie, Georgia. The work address was for the State Penitentiary. His title there had been head of prison psychiatric services. He had worked there for four years. There was another lapse in time before his next official work record for Health and Prison Services of Florida. His current address was in Golden Beaches, just as McCane had said.
What McCane had not said-except to a bartender he was probably trying to hit on at Kim's-was whether he had ever been in Moultrie. I put the file down and stared out at the sun flashes on the small shore break. Coincidence that McCane had worked in the same Georgia prison as the middleman who might be killing Billy's women? Was the old cop chasing down a lead he wasn't filling me in on? How well did these guys know each other?
I was getting more coffee when my cell rang.
"Billy?" I answered.
"Richards," she said, her voice professional and with an edge.
"Hey. What's up? They call you off the homicide?"
"Freeman. Didn't you tell me at Lester's that your partner the insurance investigator was trailing some middleman?
"Yeah, he was doing surveillance on the guy's place and trailed him to the liquor store."
"Said his name was Marshack?
"Yeah. A psychiatrist named…"
"Dr. Harold Marshack," she finished my sentence. "Max, you better get down here."
I called Billy and filled him in on the homicide of Dr. Marshack, McCane's middleman and the county jail psychiatrist. Billy jumped ahead of me.
"And the Moultrie prison psychiatrist. You're thinking they knew each other?"
"Let's get the paperwork before I call McCane," I said, getting up to leave. "Call me."
When I found the address along A1A in Golden Beaches, I again pulled into a lot filled with squad cars and a couple of unmarked units parked alongside. A team of crime scene guys was going over an old-model Caprice in a spot nearby.
As I got out I could see Richards and Diaz, standing next to their boss. Hammonds cut his eyes toward me and then turned back to say something to his detectives before walking away. Richards met me halfway across the lot.
"We've got to quit meeting like this," she said, but the joke had lost some of its humor. "The boss man is hot again."
I nodded, tried to catch the color in her eyes, but gave up when Diaz joined us.
"Hey amigo. Told you we would meet again," he said, the smile undiminished. "You want to tell us again how your private investigation somehow involves the stiff we got upstairs who works for us?"
"Good to see you too, Vince," I said, before running through the case again, only leaving out the Moultrie connection. No use throwing that in the mix until Billy had it nailed down.
"So what'd you tell Hammonds?" I asked when I was through.
"Told him everything we've got," Richards said. "The five naturals. The theory on the insurance scam. Marshack's name coming up as a possible middleman in the deal."
"And?"
She said nothing.
"And she got her ass chewed for not puttin' all that in the report on the killing at the Thompson house," Diaz said.
I looked again at Richards, who was shaking her head like it was no big deal.
"What's passed is passed," she finally said. "You're in, Max. Let's go upstairs and take a look."
"Come on, let's take a look," said Diaz, when I didn't move. "Enlighten us once again, Mr. Philadelphia."
I started to follow them to the entrance door of Marshack's building when Hammonds called out my name. He didn't move. I had to go to him.
He was a thin man, in his late fifties, and he carried the kind of attitude in statement and action that came from years of giving orders. He was in a suit, the knot of his tie cinched up tight against
his throat. Our previous encounters had not been genial. He had resented what he considered my interference in his domain.
"Mr. Freeman," he said when I got close. "Bad things seem to happen around you."
No question was asked, so I didn't feel an obligation to respond.
It was an uncomfortable standoff that he finally broke. "If you plan to keep showing yourself around the county, I suggest you at least get a P.I.'s license."
Again, since a question had not been asked, I only nodded my head.
"Go take a look," Hammonds said. "And I'd rather not have you holding back on us this time."
I rejoined Diaz and Richards and shrugged. All three of us turned and continued to the front entrance.
Marshack's two-bedroom condo had been tossed. Badly. Books off the shelves. Cushions and mattress flipped. Drawers emptied and blood on the kitchen floor.
"They come up with a murder weapon?" I asked.
"Sharp end of a broken bottle," Richards said. "Hennessy Cognac."
We traded looks. I thought of McCane's suggestion of getting a warrant and searching the place. When Richards had given me the name I'd paged the insurance investigator to ask if he'd been on surveillance or just drinking last night. He hadn't called me back.
The desk against one wall of the living room had been pried open. The computer monitor was flipped on its side and the keyboard shoved aside. The hard drive was gone.
"Some old lady down the hall called nine-one-one when she heard a ruckus but she stayed behind her own locked door until the first uniform guys got here. Didn't see a thing," Diaz said.
"Print guys got a lot of latents but could all be the doc's. No jewelry that we could find, and the guys wallet and wrist watch were missing."
"The outside doors are buzzed open after ten and the condo door wasn't jimmied or forced," Richards added. "Makes it look like he let the killer in, put up a fight, might have even broken the bottle of booze himself for protection but got it taken away and jammed in his own neck."
It was the first impression, but I wasn't going for it.
"Then the guy goes through the drawers, the files, the closets and runs out the door with what?" I said. "The wallet, okay. The jewelry, sure. But the hard drive?"
Diaz shook his head.
"How you gonna figure some psycho from the cuckoo's nest if he comes to pay back the doc for puttin' him up in Chattahoochee for a few good years of his sexual prime?" Diaz said and Richards rolled her eyes.
"And what, Vince? He goes through the files and takes the hard drive to get his name off the nut farm list?"
"Like I said," shrugged Diaz. "Cuckoo's nest."
A burglary gone bad, or a bad job of making it look like a burglary, I thought. There wasn't much to look at.
Richards put the crime scene tape back over the door when we left. In the elevators she said the M.E. was giving a preliminary time of death of 4:00 A.M., which matched up with the 911 call.
When we got outside, Hammonds was still talking with the crime scene supervisor, going over the Caprice. When Richards shook her head he never blinked, just went on.
"The trunk lid was popped with a ball peen hammer, just punched it through," Hammonds said to all three of us when we walked up. "But it looks like he missed the false bottom in the glove box."
He held up a plastic evidence bag that held a white, printed bank envelope.
"Six hundred-dollar bills. Still crispy," he said. "The techs are going to run the prints they found inside along with the ones upstairs, but a lot of them looked smeared. We'll try to match them to prisoner files on the forensics unit first. Maybe we get lucky."
No question had been posed, so I shut up. If Richards remembered the hundred-dollar bills, she didn't say anything. When Hammonds left, both detectives walked over to Diaz's SUV.
"Hey, amigo. Thanks for the help, eh?" Diaz said. "We gotta get back to the shop."
"Call me when you hear something?" Richards said, and the look was deeply uncertain.
26
I was still leaning against my truck, looking up at the high tower of Marshack's condo building when my cell rang.
"Freeman," I answered.
"Yo, G."
I told him I wasn't with the government.
"Yeah, you said. You know where D.C. Park at?" said the voice of the leader of the three-man off-limits crew.
"I'll find it."
"Meet us there, man, we got somethin' for you."
The crime scene techs were still working the Caprice. I asked one of them for directions to the park and left.
It took me thirty minutes to get back to the zone. I could feel a tingle of adrenaline in my blood. Maybe we get lucky, I thought. The park was a small square of green along Northwest Nineteenth Street. There were a few transplanted palms and willow trees, a multicolored plastic jungle gym and three worn picnic tables. When I pulled up the place was empty except for the table in the far shaded corner. This time there were four of them.
I kept my hands out of my pockets and crossed the open grass and when I got close enough I recognized the fourth as the Brown Man.
The crew leader nodded when I stepped up. His two friends stood and took a few steps back. The Brown Man kept his head down, only looking up with his eyes.
"So, Freeman," said the leader. He had absorbed my name, filed it. "We did some of our own investigatin' an' come up wit some information might be good." He put an emphasis on the word "might" and cut a look at the Brown Man when he said it.
"The Brown here works his gig down at the dope hole, but you already know that," he continued. The dealer hadn't moved. "He been there forever an' know everybody, hear everything, ah he say nobody been talkin' bout killin' no grands over in the off-limits."
The Brown Man shook his head and said, quietly, "Tha's right."
"But he say he got somethin' on your clean bills but he need to come over here ah see who his information goin' to an' not be seen talkin' to no G by any of his dogs, you know what I mean?"
I had an idea.
"I also need somethin' in return," the Brown Man said, finally looking up at me.
All I could do was nod.
"If you after this motherfucker ah get his ass, he don't come back on my ass, right?"
I nodded again, no vocal promises.
"Cause he one scary motherfucker ah I don't need his crazy-ass trouble, right? I'm losin' steady money on this, but I might be losin' a lot more business, or so say these homies," he said, looking around.
"You have a customer who uses new hundred-dollar bills?" I asked.
He waited. Looked around, avoiding eye contact with the others.
"Junk man," he said. "Big scary lookin' dude always be pushin' his cart round town. He been buyin' dope for a long time. Dimes an' eight-balls and shit. But last year he start buyin' bundles and payin' with new Franklins. First time he give me one I had my boys run the bill down at the store see if it any good. After that, they all be clean. Most of them new."
I didn't say anything, picturing the thick figure of the man, draped in his dark winter coat, looking up into my eyes when he'd bent to pick up a can on the street that day. And I remembered the hands, huge and swollen and powerful.
"Anybody know where this junk man lives?" I asked.
"Nobody pay no attention to him," said the crew leader. "Once we start talkin' about him, everybody seen him around, but nobody know him.
"Dog here say he thinks he live with his momma somewhere's over on Washington by the river," he said, tipping his head to one of his crew. "But he ain't sure where."
The table was silent for a full minute. Nothing more was coming.
"I appreciate the help," I finally said. "You've got my cell number. If you see this junk man, call me."
"No, no, no," said the Brown Man, turning bold. "I ain't callin' nobody down on my own corner. An' that means you too, truck man. Don't be parkin' cross the street messin' wit my business no more. That's part of the deal, too."
> "I'll call you, G," said the crew leader, stepping between us. "But you better come quick we find out this junk man been doin' what you say."
I was driving around the zone, aimlessly. If the dark junk man didn't know anyone was after him, maybe he'd still be on the street, doing whatever he'd been doing during the daytime for who knows how long.
I was thinking about his eyes, the dark tunnels under the shadows of his brow when he looked up and caught my own. Were they eyes that could hold the kind of remorselessness it would take to steal innocent lives for a few hundred dollars? Eyes that could look away while he crushed an old man's throat? I'd seen the eyes of killers before.
"Taking the walk" they called it in Philly, when the arrested or convicted would be walked in their shackles and cuffs from a court hearing back to the jail. They would purposely be taken across an open-air corridor so the press cameras could all get a shot. Some group of cops would always be assigned to do crowd control, holding back the TV guys who wanted to stick a microphone in the guy's face and asked the inevitable stupid question, "Why'd you do it?"
I'd been on the detail when they walked Heidnik. When he looked up to see who'd asked the question, he caught my eyes as I held back the line. Just the quick contact made a shiver flutter at the hairline on the back of my neck. Maybe it was the knowledge that investigators had actually talked of Heidnik's possible cannibalism. Maybe it was just the possibility of pure evil that made you see what couldn't humanly be there. But neither television nor the movies ever got it right.
While driving I had unconsciously taken myself back into the alley behind Ms. Thompson's house when the cell rang.
"Freeman."
"Richards," she said. "The crime scene guys got a match off some fingerprints from the doc's car. Some guy named Eddie Baines. He was in Marshack's forensics unit three years ago for a couple of months on a theft charge. We got an old home address for him, and SWAT is headed out there now. Can you meet us?"
She sounded in control, but pumped.
"Give me the address," I said.
A cop stopped me at a roadblock three blocks away from the house. I gave the uniformed officer Richards's name and he called it in over his radio.
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