Right to Die

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Good,” Sidney said. He rubbed his face with both hands. Horatio could hear the sandpaper sound of his palms scraping against the growth of whiskers. Sidney smelled like old sweat, as if he hadn’t bathed since yesterday morning. “I expect you to keep this to yourself, Caine.”

  “If it’s pertinent to the investigation, I’ll have to share it with my team, Mister Greenfield. And without knowing what you’re going to tell me, I should also warn you that it might come up in court.”

  “But you’ll make every effort to see that it doesn’t.” He didn’t phrase it as a request.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “It’s about Wendy. Like I told you before, she comes from a different world than me. Originally, I mean. I was strictly upper middle class, knocking golf balls around my family’s yard when I was six and playing at the country club by twelve. My father probably made more money in a month than Wendy’s did in a year, when he was working at all. When he was a father at all, I should say. He had a tendency to disappear for months at a time, the way she tells it, even before he took off for good.”

  Horatio listened quietly, sitting with his head tilted toward Sidney, hands resting on the table, casual, not rushing or pushing the other man.

  “I guess what I’m saying is that she grew up with a different set of standards than me, and a very different life experience. Don’t get me wrong, Caine, we love each other. Or loved, I guess. It’s hard to start thinking of her in the past tense, but I know I have to. Anyway, a lot of people warned me about her when we first got together. They thought she was a gold digger, a social climber—you know, a young, beautiful woman like that marrying a golfer. We can make some money on the tour, but we’re not exactly sexy the way NBA or NFL players are, right? Cardigans and khakis—it takes a certain kind of woman to get excited by that.

  “But Wendy was that kind of woman, hard to believe as that might seem. She was ready for a little stability in her life, a little more conservative approach than she had known in her youth. She didn’t object to the money or the social status, but those weren’t the reasons she was with me. She was with me out of love and mutual respect and sexual attraction and all the things that bring any couple together.”

  Horatio nodded, still keeping quiet. He had a feeling that Sidney was approaching his point, albeit by a roundabout path. Shooting his tee shot into the rough on the left of the fairway, then playing toward the green by bouncing from one bad lie to another.

  “What I’m getting at, Lieutenant, is that part of where Wendy and I were different—not from each other, necessarily, because I’m on the road a lot and I’ve had my share of flings, there are plenty of club bunnies out there happy to polish a golfer’s balls, if you get my drift—but maybe from some other people, is that she had affairs with other men. Here in Miami, not on the road.”

  “And you think she was involved with someone at the moment, and maybe that someone had something to do with her death?” Horatio asked.

  “I know that she was definitely seeing someone, as of yesterday. I don’t know who. I didn’t object to it—that would be kind of hypocritical of me, right? She didn’t share the details with me, but she didn’t have to lie about what she was doing, and that’s how we both wanted it. When I said she was going shopping—well, that was a kind of euphemism we used with each other sometimes, and we both knew what it really meant.” Sidney paused for a long moment, as if working on phrasing his next statement. “So I wanted you to know, in case it does turn out to be important—I mean, I don’t know who the guy was, so I don’t know what sorts of things he was involved in. But also…”

  “Yes?” Horatio prodded.

  “…also, I figured you’d find out sooner or later. And when you did—well, there are plenty of guys who want to kill their wives when they find out about extramarital affairs, right? Isn’t that the stereotype?”

  “It does happen.”

  “Right. So I wanted to let you know that that’s not me. I knew all about it, she had my permission, and I didn’t mind. As long as she came home to me at night, right? I was a happy man. Sometimes she even brought home a new trick or two that she’d picked up from her lovers, and that was good for both of us. I just wanted you to hear that from me before you started heading down the wrong highway.”

  “Of course, if you are guilty, you might tell me this anyway,” Horatio said. “Is there anyone who can back you up on this arrangement you and your wife had?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t really tell a lot of people around here about it. Some of the women I saw on the road—but then, I didn’t always get their names, either. I could probably come up with one or two who I saw more than once, who I described it to. It’ll take some digging.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you would dig, sir.”

  Sidney nodded. He looked like some internal pressure had been relieved, as if holding the secret in had taken a toll separate from the grief of his wife’s death. His posture was slightly more relaxed, and his eyes had taken on a bit of a sparkle.

  “Is that all, Mister Greenfield?”

  Sidney started to nod again, but then he stopped.

  “No, not quite. There’s one more thing I should mention.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You said that Wendy was pregnant.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, that part was kind of a violation of our rules. I didn’t know about it, so I never had a chance to be upset with her. But the baby—well, all I can tell you for sure is that it’s not mine.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m sterile. I always have been. It’s been kind of a relief, knowing that birth control was never an issue for me. You can check that with my doctor.”

  “I will,” Horatio assured him. He was about to let the golfer leave when he remembered the video from the Quick Spree, and the stills he had asked Dan Cooper to print for him. “Can you wait here for just a minute?”

  “It’s not like I have any pressing demands on my time,” Sidney said. He might have meant it sarcastically—still upset about possibly missing the Masters—but Horatio chose not to interpret it that way.

  Horatio hurried to the A/V lab, got one of the prints from Cooper, and took it back to the interview room. He sat down, put the picture on the table, spun it around, and shoved it toward Sidney. “Do you know this man?”

  Sidney picked up the picture, studying it intently. “I don’t think so, no. Who is he?”

  “That, Mister Greenfield, is what I was hoping you could tell me. He’s the last person who we know saw your wife alive. He drove her car, at least for a little while. And apparently he put two shotguns and some boxes of shells in her trunk.”

  “Shotguns?” Sidney’s face looked much like it had when Horatio and Calleigh had told him about Wendy’s pregnancy—confusion and consternation warring for turf. “Why would she have shotguns?”

  “Again, Mister Greenfield, that’s a question that I can’t answer,” Horatio said. “Yet.”

  14

  “HORATIO, YOU’RE GOING to want to see this.”

  Horatio turned around. The elevator doors had just closed on Sidney Greenfield, and Ryan Wolfe walked toward him with a sheet of paper in his hand. “What is it, Ryan?”

  “I got a hit off those prints from Wendy Greenfield’s Eclipse.”

  “That’s good. And?”

  Ryan read off the paper. “Guy’s name is Lyall Douglas. Low-rent thug. He’s done a few stretches for aggravated assault, B and E, a liquor store robbery, drunk and disorderlies, other miscellaneous misdemeanors. A real loser, it looks like. Strictly small time.”

  “It looks like he may have raised the stakes now,” Horatio said. “Murder is a new game for him.”

  “That we know of. He’s never been charged with one, anyway.”

  “Do we have an address?”

  Ryan read him one near Twelfth and Flagler. Horatio wasn’t certain but he thought he could picture the building, a o
ne-story bungalow with an overgrown yard, badly in need of paint. He didn’t know every address in Miami, but he had a good sense for neighborhoods and a nearly eidetic memory for places and people. “Let’s go,” he said, reaching for his phone. Flipping it open, he punched Frank Tripp’s number.

  “Frank,” he said when the Texan answered. “I need backup at this address, and I need it now.”

  Lyall Douglas’s house was empty.

  As it turned out, Horatio had been right about which house he thought it was. But that hadn’t been difficult, since the same general description applied to the majority of the houses on the block. This was a neighborhood where most people worked hard and didn’t have a lot of spare time or energy for yard work or the disposable income to hire gardeners or painters. It was also a neighborhood where there were frequent domestic disputes and drug deals. Break-ins were rare because no one owned much more than anyone else, but the police had been to the street often enough for the other things, and Horatio had processed crime scenes in a couple of the houses nearby.

  Lyall Douglas’s rented house looked like old bones left too long in the ground—faded and dirty, a color that might have been brown once but had become more a memory of brown than brown itself. The roof was made of gray shingles, equally faded and water-stained in spots. A smear of thick black tar showed where a leak had been hastily plugged. The yard was thick with grass tall enough to choke a tractor. Two windows, both curtained, faced toward the street. The uniformed cops jogging up the alley behind the house would have a better sense of its rear than Horatio did, but he doubted that it would offer any surprises in design or upkeep. It was just another relic from the postwar building boom that had housed one lower-middle-class family after another.

  And then Lyall Douglas.

  Who, Horatio sincerely hoped, would soon be moving to a new address for a good long while, as a guest of the state.

  If Wendy Greenfield had been Douglas’s first murder, it didn’t say much for his courage. She had apparently trusted him. No sign of a weapon had been found on her, if you didn’t count the shotguns locked in the trunk, and she didn’t seem to have struggled against him. The crime looked like one that had been relatively easy for the killer—awkward, but not dangerous in any way.

  Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t react badly to the appearance of armed law officers at his home. It didn’t pay to take any such visit lightly, and Horatio had to assume that where there were two shotguns, there might be more or some other equally dangerous weapon. Douglas was probably a coward, like most murderers, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t hit back if he was cornered.

  At a signal from the cops behind the house, Horatio, Ryan, and Frank approached the front door. Uniformed cops stood behind them, covering the door and the windows. Horatio rapped on the wooden door. “Miami-Dade Police!” he shouted. “Come on out, Lyall!”

  Silence answered him from the inside. He could hear Frank’s heavy breathing beside him, and Ryan Wolfe’s shallow exhalations. The cops in the yard shifted positions, their gear clinking softly. A gull’s raspy croak sounded from somewhere down the block. Blood rushed in his own ears.

  But from the house, nothing.

  “We’re coming in, Douglas!”

  He gave that warning a couple of seconds to register, then tried the doorknob. Surprisingly, it turned easily. The latch bolt clicked back and the door swung open when he pushed on it. “Police!” he called into the silence. Third warning. Sweeping his gaze across the room, SIG Sauer grasped in both hands, he entered.

  The room was empty. Uniforms rushed in past him, and he heard the sound of a door being broken down in back, the thunder of boots on the hardwood floors.

  Empty houses have different smells, he knew, different feels, than other houses. One that has been empty for a long time is musty, the air close and thick. A house that someone has just vacated still feels occupied, as if the person’s presence has left behind traces in the walls and floors and furniture.

  This house had not been empty for long. Walking through it, listening to the shouts of “Clear!” as the officers checked each room, Horatio could smell spilled beer and trash left under the sink a day too long and, when he opened the refrigerator, leftover pizza with onion and pepperoni. There were a couple of skin magazines on a coffee table in the living room, on top of the TV section from the Miami Herald.

  But there were also strange voids. In the single bedroom, the carpet had been smashed down in a rectangular shape, as if boxes had been sitting there undisturbed for some time, but whatever had made the shape was gone. There were clothes hanging in the closet, mostly long-sleeved shirts, jeans, and jackets. Horatio glanced into a dresser to make sure, but it appeared that when he had left, Douglas had taken most of his warm-weather clothing with him.

  He didn’t have a search warrant yet, although one was in the works, so he refrained from looking further for the time being. He had hoped to find Douglas at home, and failing that to be able to quickly determine whether the man had gone on a long trip or just down to the grocery store.

  “He’s gone,” Frank said, as if reading his thoughts.

  “Lyall Douglas is in the wind,” Horatio agreed.

  “We need to find him. Any news on that warrant?”

  “It’s ready,” Frank said. “Judge Harrison’s clerk has it.”

  “I’ll have Eric and Calleigh pick it up and head over,” Horatio said. “I want this place processed as thoroughly as any crime scene. If there’s a hint in here of where Douglas has gone, I want it found.”

  “I can get started,” Ryan offered.

  “Not until the warrant gets here,” Horatio reminded him. “Then you will definitely get started.”

  Ryan started to say something, but Horatio’s phone and Frank’s phone sounded simultaneously, so he kept his mouth shut. Horatio answered first. “Horatio Caine.”

  “Horatio, it’s Calleigh.”

  “I was just about to call you. What is it, Calleigh?”

  “There’s been another bombing. In the Gables, at the law office of an attorney named Karen Platt. It sounds like there are several more victims.”

  “Ryan and I will go right over there,” Horatio said. “Grab Delko and pick up a warrant for Lyall Douglas’s house. It’s empty and we need to find out where he’s gone.”

  “The warrant’s ready now?”

  “That’s right. Get it from Jessica, at Judge Harrison’s chambers. Get here as fast as you can. I’ll leave a unit here to preserve the scene until you get here.”

  “Got it, Horatio.”

  Putting his phone away, Horatio could tell by the scowl on Frank’s face that the detective was getting the same news. When he finished his call, he caught Horatio’s gaze.

  “The Gables.”

  “Yes. It appears our bomber has been busy.”

  “Looks like. You going to take it?”

  “Mister Wolfe and I will.” Horatio turned to Ryan. “Another bomb, in Coral Gables. The offices of an attorney named Karen Platt.”

  “I’ve heard of her,” Ryan said.

  “She’s in the news all the time,” Frank said.

  “Takes a lot of pro bono cases, very interested in public affairs and social justice.”

  “Does she represent abortion clinics?” Horatio asked.

  “Not that I remember, but I’ll check. You’re still thinking about the Baby Boomer?”

  “It seems like too much of a coincidence that Special Agent Asher would come to town after him, and then there would be a rash of completely unconnected bombings that happen to share characteristics of the Boomer’s signature. I’ll admit that the change of targets has me confused.”

  “When it comes to the Feds, just about everything confuses me,” Frank said. “But I get your point.”

  “Would you call the Special Agent and make sure he meets us at the scene? I think we need to have another talk.”

  “He’s already on his way.”

  “Good. You’ll ass
ign some officers to wait here for Calleigh and Eric and the warrant?”

  “I will,” Frank replied. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Douglas’ll come home.”

  “Maybe we will,” Horatio said. “You never know, do you?”

  15

  KAREN PLATT’S BUSINESS was a boutique law firm in a boutique town. Her offices were in a former residence—white stucco, red tile-roofed, Mediterranean style—around the corner from Books & Books on Aragon Avenue in Coral Gables, which also made it not far from the local police station, and less than a dozen blocks from where Alexx Woods lived. Officers from that station had been first on the scene, and by the time Horatio and Ryan arrived, they had already secured a perimeter.

  Fire trucks jammed the street, but except for a small blaze fire hadn’t been a significant issue at this scene. The bomb squad had already gone inside and was working on clearing the premises for the CSIs. Wendell Asher rolled up in his rented car while Horatio waited outside. Ryan looked flatly at Horatio, his eyes a warning not to let his emotions carry him away. Horatio gave him a nod and stalked over to meet the FBI agent.

  “Special Agent Asher,” he said. “I haven’t been inside yet, so I don’t know what the situation in there is. But I have to say, two bombings inside twelve hours makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Welcome to my world,” Asher said. He sniffled and pinched his nose as if to shut down his sinuses.

  “Damn cold. Anyway, I’ve been living with this guy for two years plus. It’s driving me nuts, Horatio.”

  “So you do think this is the work of your man?”

  “It feels like it to me. That’s all I’ve got so far, just a hunch. But I’m pretty deep into his head by this point, and I think it’s him.”

  “If you know him so well,” Horatio asked, “then can you tell me why he’s changing targets after all this time? My understanding is that Karen Platt involved herself in various causes, but she wasn’t known for representing abortion clinics or providers.”