It was hard to take in.
‘We need to look in those coffins,’ Martinez said.
‘We need to wait for warrants,’ Duval said implacably, but handed him the monocular while Sam took his partner’s bigger Maglite and shone it around some more, coming to rest on a workbench by the opposite wall.
Rolls of tape and bandages on there, and a pot that held scissors and other implements that glittered under the flashlight’s beam and might, Sam thought with a fresh chill, be surgical in type.
‘Another coffin,’ Duval said.
Martinez handed Sam back the monocular.
Sam located the coffin, small and white, lid open.
Could just see the doll inside. An African-American doll.
Which told him that if he had not blundered into the Petit sisters’ private world tonight, Billie Smith would have gone the way of the other victims – though why hadn’t that happened before? Why had they waited, and why in hell had they taken her?
‘OK, that’s enough.’ Duval sounded hoarse. ‘I’m calling the ASA.’
With no doubt left, but with everything still to prove, they needed the on-call Assistant State Attorney because there was strong evidence here in plain sight, and probably more in the house itself that could be linked to at least six homicides in five Florida counties; and Sam knew it was fortuitous that Duval was already here for the FDLE, but still, the construction of all the necessary warrants had to be as unimpeachable as possible, and the ASA was the person to ensure that.
Duval made the call.
Plenty more calls to follow, to the Office of Statewide Prosecutions and notifying investigators in Orlando, Jupiter and Naples. Fort Lauderdale already knew, were on their way; same deal for City of North Miami Beach, where Zoë Fox, the last victim, had lived and died.
‘No one touches anything,’ Duval said, ‘until we get the warrants.’
No photographs to be taken, no evidence collection or preservation, not even sketches of the crime scene.
One of the Hallandale PD officers came out of the house.
‘The suspect says she wants to talk to Detective Becket,’ he told Duval.
‘Don’t you love it when they think they get to choose?’ Martinez said sourly.
‘I’m just passing on the message,’ the officer said. ‘She says she knows her rights, but she wants to waive them and talk to Sam Becket.’
‘Getting to be a habit,’ Duval said softly.
Sam knew what he meant. That request sounding too like what had happened last year, the interviews with psycho Cal the Hater coming back to him now like mental reflux.
No similarity here, he told himself. That monster had been playing a personal game. This woman, he hoped, wanted to unburden herself.
‘I guess it might be the most productive way to begin,’ he said. ‘Tonight’s craziness started with her telling her sister that she wanted to talk to me.’ He paused. ‘Though we’re not the only ones who’re going to want to interview Petit.’
‘Can we take her to the Beach?’ Martinez asked.
Duval considered, then nodded. ‘Miami Beach is a close enough jurisdiction for us to kick things off there. The Delgado case is yours. So long as I’m there, too, I see no major problem.’
‘Won’t Broward want to process her first?’ Sam asked.
Duval mulled another moment. ‘I’m going to go speak to a few people, get everyone on board with this. You guys make sure no one even breathes near either of these buildings till I get back, OK?’
‘You got it,’ Sam said.
They watched him walk away, pass the officer at the front door, vanish back inside the house, and then Sam and Martinez stepped several feet apart, so they stood, one man blocking entrance to each structure.
Sentry duty for now.
Both Felicia and her father had given Grace permission to pass on the information about the two female suspects, but though she’d tried Sam twice, his phone was still going straight to voicemail and she didn’t want to leave something of such importance in a message.
Back in her car, starting her weary way home, fear for her husband pushed its ugly way back into pole position and she pressed his speed-dial key again.
Third time a charm.
‘How’s Felicia doing?’ Sam was keeping his voice low. ‘Al gave me your message, but things have been a little wild here.’
‘Felicia’s doing better.’ Grace prioritized, not wanting to waste his time. ‘Did Al tell you what he found out about Chauvin?’
‘He did, but the signal here’s lousy, so I’ll fill you in on the rest later.’
‘I have news now,’ she jumped in fast. ‘If we get cut off, call me back.’
‘Will do,’ Sam said.
‘Felicia did not witness her mother’s killing at first hand,’ Grace told him, ‘but I’m fairly sure she could have seen her killers – that’s killers, plural.’
‘Go on. I’m hearing you.’
Grace heard his terseness, knew he had to be in the middle of something important; knew, too, that what she had to tell him might be his biggest break yet in the case.
‘Two women,’ she said.
‘Two women,’ Sam repeated. ‘You’re sure that’s what she said?’
‘You’re not surprised,’ Grace said.
‘I wish I was,’ he said. ‘You’d better tell me what she said.’
‘All of it?’
‘Edited version, please,’ Sam said. ‘But everything you have about the women.’
The deal was that Duval and one of the Broward men would bring Toni Petit to Miami Beach as soon as things were organized, and Sam and Martinez would make their way back to the station in their own cars.
Which gave Sam enough time to make some phone calls while he detoured to Hallandale General to check on Billie and Chauvin.
His first call was to Larry Smith, to tell him that his daughter had been abducted but was safe and needed her parents to come down first thing – two people he owed a major apology for not having listened to their daughter in time to spare her this nightmare.
Then, late as it was, responding to an earlier message from his father, he tried David’s cell phone, heard the number ringing and was about to cut off in case he woke him when his dad answered, his voice hushed.
‘I had the phone on vibrate, son,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get out of the room so I didn’t wake Mildred.’
He brought Sam quickly up to date.
‘Alvarez came in person?’ The only thing tonight that had made Sam smile.
‘The lieutenant thinks a lot of you, son,’ David said. ‘You know that.’
‘It’s you and Mildred he thinks a lot of, Dad.’ Sam paused. ‘So she really is OK and resting?’
‘Thank God,’ David said. ‘She was exhausted.’
‘You must be, too,’ Sam said. ‘Couldn’t you go home now?’
‘I’m not leaving her,’ David said. ‘They’ve wheeled in a cot for me. You don’t have to worry about us, though you might tell Grace I’m sorry for being abrupt with her when she called earlier.’
‘She’ll understand, Dad.’
Sam sent a kiss for Mildred, then hit the key for Grace’s cell phone.
‘I haven’t been home long,’ she told him.
He filled her in about the events of the night at the Adams Clinic.
‘Dear God,’ Grace said. ‘Should I go over there?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Sam told her. ‘They’re fine now and resting.’
‘And this man, this doctor’ – she was incredulous – ‘is in custody?’
‘Alvarez arrested him,’ Sam said. ‘That’s all I know for sure.’
‘That’s something,’ she said. ‘So now can you tell me what’s been going on with you?’
He saw the hospital up ahead. ‘Afraid not, Gracie, not now, but we have a prime suspect in the case to interview, and I’m seriously doubting that I’ll be home any time tonight, so you get some sleep.’ He paused, realizing wh
at he still had not told her. ‘And by the way, our French creep is in the hospital with a minor gunshot wound.’
‘You shot him?’ She sounded shocked.
‘Not me. But he won’t be going anyplace but home to France.’
‘My God, Sam, are you and Al both safe?’
‘As houses,’ Sam said. ‘A few dicey moments earlier, but all good now.’
‘Did you say one suspect?’ she asked, thinking about Felicia’s sighting. ‘Or is it two?’
‘Two suspects: one in custody, one deceased.’
Grace was silent for a moment, and then she asked: ‘Can I call Felicia’s father? So he can tell her she doesn’t have to be scared anymore?’
‘Better hold off till daytime,’ Sam said. ‘I’d hope she’s sleeping.’
‘I’d hope, too,’ Grace said.
Billie was sound asleep in her hospital room.
Doing remarkably well, a nurse had told Sam, given her ordeal.
As the sisters’ only known surviving victim, Billie’s testimony would be crucial. Broward would take her statement initially, and depending on how things moved forward, he and Martinez might participate in further interviews with her as the case against Toni Petit was built.
Not something he was looking forward to.
No more than he deserved.
‘Sam,’ she said, opening her eyes.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘That’s OK.’ She started to sit up, looked woozy.
‘Don’t move,’ Sam told her. ‘You need to sleep.’
‘I will.’ She sat up anyway. ‘I’m OK. I want to talk, need to tell you.’
‘It can wait,’ Sam said. ‘You’re safe here, Billie. You should sleep and we can talk all you like whenever you’re ready.’
‘I’m ready now,’ she said.
Sam hesitated, then pulled up a chair and sat down near the bed. ‘You were ready before all this happened,’ he said. ‘Only I wasn’t listening.’
‘No,’ Billie said. ‘You weren’t.’
‘I am now,’ he said. ‘But it’s the middle of the night and you should be resting, and Broward officers are going to be taking your official statement tomorrow.’
‘Can’t you do that?’
‘I’m out of jurisdiction.’
‘And you should be home,’ Billie said. ‘But I still want to tell you what happened. I’m afraid that if I don’t get it out, I might fall asleep and not remember it all tomorrow.’
No way that he was turning her down again.
He made notes and recorded her on his PDA as she began talking.
When Billie had called him on Thursday a week ago, it had been because she had wanted to talk to him about Toni. As she had at the end of the previous Monday’s rehearsal, when Sam had driven away before she’d had a chance to say anything.
Toni had taken a call during that rehearsal which Billie had noticed she wasn’t happy about, and when Toni had told her caller to wait while she found somewhere more private to talk, Billie had become curious – always a fault of hers, she confessed – and had followed her to the back of Tyler’s garage.
‘I heard Toni say that it was too late to start freaking out, that what was done was done. Sounded like Lady Macbeth,’ Billie said. ‘And then she said: “As far as I’m concerned, this was the very last time”. It had to stop, she said. They had to get out.’
Kate on the phone, Sam figured, ‘freaking out’ after Zoë Fox.
And Toni had wanted out.
A couple of minutes later, Billie said now, she had asked Toni if she was OK, and Toni had given her a long, hard look, as if she knew Billie had been listening. And after that, Billie had felt that she kept on watching her, which had made her uneasy, which was why she had wanted to speak to Sam.
‘Why did you wait till Thursday before you called me?’ he asked now.
‘Because I felt I’d done something to upset you that evening at your place. But then that thing with Toni kept on bugging me – she’d really sounded weird on the phone, and then the way she’d looked at me – and I just wanted to tell you about it before we all got together again at rehearsal.’
Only by then it had been too late.
Toni had shown up out of the blue at Billie’s at around noon, bringing a plastic container of nutritious soup she said she’d made for the company because of the flu going around, and she’d been in the neighborhood and had figured she’d ask Billie to taste it in case it needed more spicing up before rehearsal.
‘I was thrown, especially because I didn’t think I’d told her where I lived, but I let her in,’ Billie said. ‘I didn’t feel I had any choice, but then I told her that I wasn’t hungry, couldn’t face eating, that I’d try it later.’
Which was when everything had changed.
‘Toni went to the door, and I thought she was leaving, that I’d offended her, but she let in another woman, wearing dark glasses, using a cane, carrying a bag, and Toni didn’t introduce us, just said to the woman that I wasn’t hungry – and then the woman came at me, barged me, knocked me off my feet, and I saw the cane swinging at me, at my head . . .’
She remembered nothing else until she’d woken up in the dark, tied down, and someone – she didn’t think it was Toni, so it was probably the other woman – had fed her sandwiches a couple of times and juice, and Billie had known she had to eat something to survive, but she’d kept on getting sucked back down into this heavy kind of sleep, so she was sure they must have been drugging her.
‘Who was the other woman?’ she asked Sam now.
‘Toni’s sister,’ he told her.
‘They will go to jail, won’t they?’
Which was when he realized how very little she still knew about why she had been abducted.
He told her no more than she needed to know. That Kate Petit, the woman with the cane, was dead. And that Toni was in custody and going nowhere for a very long time, probably forever.
‘You weren’t their only victim,’ Sam said.
And then, seeing her start to tremble, he stood up. ‘You have to rest.’
‘You saved my life,’ Billie said.
‘You wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for me,’ Sam said.
In the ER, Sam established that Chauvin was still there, though the only medic Sam could find was too busy to give him more than a few seconds. He explained that Chauvin had witnessed a fatal shooting and that he needed to be sure they were keeping him overnight.
‘The patient needs surgery, so I’d say he’ll be here till noon or later.’ The doctor paused. ‘If he’s awake, you can see him now.’
‘Thanks, but no time,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll be coming to take him home, but no need to mention to him that I was here.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘I already forgot you were.’
Walking back out to his car, Sam had already decided how best to deal with Chauvin, to make sure he never came anywhere near his family again.
Then there was the scumbag who’d scared Mildred, and if his dad hadn’t told him that Alvarez and Riley were on the case, he’d have had even bigger personal issues to fight right now.
But he and Martinez and Joe Duval – and whoever else was coming to join the party – had a suspect to interview.
Long session ahead.
He yawned.
Good job he’d gotten his coffee habit back.
Already hard to imagine a night into morning like this without caffeine.
The interview finally got under way at four a.m.
Toni Petit had been read her Miranda rights for a second time and, as previously, had waived them.
Duval checked with her one more time.
‘Just so we’re all clear, Ms Petit. You wish to waive your Miranda right to silence, and your right to have an attorney present while you speak to us?’ He paused. ‘“Us” being myself – Special Agent Joseph Duval of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; Miami Beach Police Depart
ment Detectives Samuel Becket and Alejandro Martinez; Detective Jerry O’Dea from Palm Beach and Detective Roberta Gutierrez from Fort Lauderdale.’
Five, the ASA had advised, was the maximum number for their side, tonight, if they wanted to avoid future challenges from whichever lawyer Toni Petit ultimately appointed.
‘I’m clear on all that,’ Toni Petit told him.
Sam was watching her closely.
A few hours ago, this woman had shot to death the sister she claimed to have spent almost two decades single-handedly protecting. It had happened in a moment of the highest drama and maximum stress, but Sam was as sure as he could be that she had known what she was doing.
Kate Petit had wanted him dead, but Toni had shot her dead instead, and then she had tried to turn the Colt on herself; had wanted, at that moment, to die.
Looking at her now, Sam felt that nothing had changed on that score.
She had nothing left to live for.
No reason, therefore – perhaps – to lie.
Her face was pale, her eyes dull, her expression remote, as if she had traveled a great distance, was not really here in this stark room with five officers of the law, all strangers.
Sam including himself in that, even if he had thought he’d known her for a number of years. There had been no friendship between them, no significant relationship, nothing to disqualify him from this interview.
He began by taking her back again – for the others present and for the record – to the multiple tragedies that had taken place in Louisiana, through to their escape to Florida and change of name. Kate Petit’s finger on the trigger of the Remington shotgun when it had gone off and killed Jake Grand, but Toni responsible for it, in her own heart and her sister’s.
‘I wanted to stop him,’ Toni said.
‘Because he’d been beating you for so long,’ Sam said.
They had agreed in advance that this would be an interview rather than an interrogation; that they were, it seemed probable, dealing with an ‘emotional offender’, which meant that their technique would be friendly, even sympathetic, at least at the outset.
Emotional offenders were more likely to break.
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