Caged (4 page)

‘We should take a look at their old exhibitions,’ Martinez said. ‘See if they’ve ever had any weird kind of sculptures, like couples lying under plastic covers.’ His lips compressed for a moment. ‘The glue ring any bells with you?’

Sam shook his head. ‘We’ll see what the computer throws up.’

‘I wonder what shape the gardener’s in,’ Martinez said. ‘Better make sure he keeps this thing under wraps.’ He made a note. ‘I know what the doc said, but I’ll check him out anyway.’

Sam looked across the lawn, past the numbered flags marking places where the techs had spotted items of possible interest, over toward where a tent covered the dome and bodies.

‘You know anything about performance art, Al?’

‘Uh-uh.’

‘Me neither,’ Sam said. ‘Except I think the performers are usually alive.’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and sneezed twice, then blew his nose. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘God bless you,’ Martinez said.

‘Thanks.’ Sam took a moment. ‘Two victims, moved from one location to another, so we’re either looking for one highly organized . . . I guess it’s not impossible that this could be one physically strong individual acting alone.’ He shrugged. ‘Though it could just as easily be two, or more.’

‘Great.’ Martinez stifled a yawn. ‘Excuse me.’

Said out of courtesy to the dead, more than to his partner.

‘Good evening?’ Sam asked.

‘There’s no other kind with Jessie,’ Martinez said.

‘How’s she doing? I haven’t seen her in a week or so.’

‘She’s great,’ Martinez said. ‘Really great.’

Sam smiled.

SIX

A
lejandro Martinez was in love.

Seriously, head-over-heels in love, for the first time since Sam had known him. The closest he’d come before was when Mary Cutter had first joined the unit, and Martinez had been distracted for a while back then before he’d plunged into a relationship from which they’d both, luckily, emerged with mutual respect, able to continue as colleagues.

This was a whole different ball game. Jessica Kowalski worked as a secretary in the Personnel Resources Unit on the second floor, one down from Violent Crimes, and she was not only good to look at, delicately featured, blue-eyed, with shoulder-length wavy blonde hair and a petite figure, but she was also the type of person it was impossible not to like. Kind, considerate and willing to put herself out for people, like the colleague who’d fallen on the staircase at the station and busted her ankle, and Jess had accompanied her to the hospital and taken care of her when she’d gone home, had shopped and cooked for her and made sure she was kept up to speed with work in her absence.

‘Everyone goes to her, you know,’ Martinez had told Sam after they’d started dating last November. ‘Little problems or big, they take them to Jess because she makes them feel better. And she doesn’t talk about that at all, she doesn’t even seem to realize what a good person she is – but I get people who know we’re seeing each other telling me I’m a lucky bastard, except I don’t need them telling me because I know it.’

He’d brought Jess to Thanksgiving dinner at the Becket house, because her parents lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and though most years their daughter headed home for the holiday, this time she’d chosen to tell her family she was having to work through.

‘I have to say,’ Sam had told Grace, ‘I’m kind of glad she lied to her parents, or I might be worrying about her being too good to be real.’

‘More of a fib than a lie,’ Grace had said. ‘And just to spare their feelings.’

They’d both taken an immediate liking to Jess. She’d brought a Polish honey cake that she’d baked herself, a gingerbread house for Joshua and some turkey-shaped Thanksgiving dog cookies for Woody – the dachshund-miniature schnauzer cross they’d rescued some years back – and the dog had loved her even before she’d taken the cookies out of her bag.

‘She’s so easy to be around,’ Saul had said later. ‘It feels like she’s been with Al forever.’

Which had made Sam deeply happy for his friend. Martinez had always claimed that there was a lot to be said for confirmed bachelorhood – no one to worry about, no one to fret about him – and though he loved Grace, he’d never shown so much as a trace of envy of his partner’s happiness, but Sam knew that Martinez had been lonely for a long while.

Jessica Kowalski was a keeper, no two ways about it.

SEVEN

C
athy loved her job.

Sam had found it for her, which she might have been a dope about, let her pride get in the way, but given that it was exactly the kind of on-the-job training she’d have chosen for herself, she knew she’d have been a horse’s ass not to have jumped at it.

Home aside, the Opera Café on Arthur Godfrey Road near Sheridan Avenue had for some time been one of Sam’s favourite places to drop into for anything from breakfast en route to the station – in South Beach on Washington and 11th – to a late night bowl of soup or a sandwich when he and Martinez were pulling an all-nighter. Since Matt Dooley and Simone Regan had taken over the café about six months back, they’d turned it from a so-so eatery to a comfortable, friendly little café-bistro-restaurant serving top-notch food.

The first time Sam had ventured inside, hungry as a horse after a long evening’s stakeout, too tired to cook for himself and with no intention of waking Grace, they’d been about to close the place, and Sam would have settled for a takeout, but the waitress he’d since come to know as Simone had said they didn’t do takeout, but she’d made him welcome anyway. She showed him to one of their banquettes because their cushions were comfy and he looked so weary, and then Dooley had come out of the kitchen and asked if it was early breakfast or late dinner Sam was after, and if it was the latter, then their minestrone was a good starter.

More than good, in the event, on top of which the choice of music playing at just the right, gentle level – Leontyne Price singing ‘Summertime’ – happened to be one of Sam’s all-time favourites and balm to his tired soul. Opera, in general, being Sam Becket’s big
thing
, possessing as he did a rich baritone that had earned him a number of leading roles with local amateur company S-BOP, but which, these days, was mostly appreciated by his son when his daddy crooned to him.

‘You got yourselves a regular customer,’ he told them, and he’d been true to his word, and Martinez liked it too, though his drop-in cafés of choice tended to be Cuban, and anyway, he lived over on Alton Road these days, so the place was not on his regular route.

Whatever Matt Dooley cooked turned out great. He said it was because he knew his limitations and respected the boundaries past which a decent, ‘average’ cook had no business straying.

‘I’m no chef,’ he told Sam once. ‘Just a whole lot better than some short-order cooks.’ And Simone Regan – a slim, attractive brunette in her forties with soft green eyes – was the perfect partner for him, knew exactly how to look after their customers, and Sam had witnessed her dealing with difficult diners, had seen her expression sharpen in a way that most people seemed disinclined to challenge, especially with Dooley there to back her up.

He was a big guy, tough looking but with gentle brown eyes, and tender as a mother cat with Simone on the rare occasions when she was flagging or getting a migraine; and Sam had witnessed the sudden onslaught of one of those attacks, had seen the capable, energetic woman suddenly fumbling and slow, and he’d started to move to try to help her once, but Dooley had been there ahead of him, had emerged from the kitchen as if he’d picked up her frailty by sonar, and Sam had liked the way he’d taken over, taken care of her.

All of which was why the Opera Café had flown straight into his mind after Cathy had told Grace about the career change she was contemplating.

She’d been thinking a lot lately, she’d said, about her late stepfather, Arnold Robbins – a man she’d dearly loved, and the first to have adopted Cathy in her horribly disrupted young life. Robbins had run a small, successful chain of restaurants called Arnie’s until he and Cathy’s mother, Marie, had been brutally murdered. Now, as she sought new direction more than eight years later, Arnie’s had been returning to Cathy’s mind with what felt like a haunting, nagging sweetness.

‘It’s almost like he’s trying to help me, you know,’ Cathy had told Grace. ‘Except Arnie used to make yummy food that probably jammed up people’s arteries just by being on the menu, and what I’d like to do is make yummy, healthy food instead.’

Like an incalculable number of others in the greater Miami area, Grace had thought but managed not to say, their daughter’s enthusiasm being something she and Sam hated the idea of trampling on.

‘I know,’ Cathy had said. ‘Like ten zillion other people around here.’

‘It’s certainly a competitive business,’ Grace said.

‘I’d want to learn, of course, maybe do a kind of apprenticeship,’ Cathy said. ‘I waited tables in Sacramento.’

‘You never mentioned that.’ Grace was surprised.

‘The woman I worked for said I had a gift for it.’ Cathy smiled. ‘Not so much for waiting tables, but for understanding what the customers wanted. It was only meant to be part-time, but I got promoted to manager the nights my boss took off.’

‘I’m impressed,’ Grace had said.

‘I didn’t tell you guys because if you’d known how well I was doing, you might have worried I was never going to come home.’

Grace couldn’t argue with that.

‘I agree it’s a tough world for her to choose,’ Sam had said, later, ‘but it’s probably a picnic compared to athletics.’

‘Competitive athletics, perhaps,’ Grace said. ‘Not so much teaching.’

‘But she doesn’t want to teach,’ Sam said. ‘And everything’s tough when you look at it long enough.’

And since he’d heard Matt Dooley say that he might be looking for help at the café because Simone’s mother was sick . . .

Dooley had seemed a little hesitant when Sam had made his suggestion, as if he had something on his mind, and then abruptly he’d come right out with it.

‘I have a record.’ He’d paused. ‘Though you might already know that.’

‘I didn’t,’ Sam said. ‘I’m not in the habit of checking up on friends.’

‘Anyway,’ Dooley had gone on, ‘I figure if your daughter does try out here, you’re bound to be the protective kind of father. Which is what I hope I’d have been if I’d had a daughter.’ He’d paused again. ‘I stole some stuff when I was young. I did it with friends, and I didn’t have a good reason, I wasn’t hungry and I didn’t need the things I stole, and I’m heartily ashamed of it.’

‘Hey,’ Sam had said. ‘We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of.’

‘I just thought I should tell you,’ Dooley said.

‘I appreciate that,’ Sam said. ‘Though it really wasn’t necessary.’

‘I guess we don’t even know if Cathy’s going to want the job.’

‘Or if you’re going to want her,’ Sam had said.

‘I have a pretty good feeling about it,’ Dooley had said.

He was right.

Cathy had started work in the first week of January, and a little over a month later her enthusiasm for the Opera Café and everything connected to it was still going strong. And though living with Saul, she was still forever dropping by the house to play with Joshua and chatter with her parents about Dooley’s recipes and Simone’s patience and the nice things Dooley did for people.

‘He doesn’t often get mad,’ she’d said last Sunday after she’d dropped by for supper. ‘And when he does, it’s usually at himself because a dish isn’t perfect or he’s dropped something or a gadget’s let him down, but usually all he does is grit his teeth and jam a dollar bill into this huge cookie jar they keep on the counter.’

‘Like a swear box.’ Sam had smiled. ‘I’ve seen him do it.’

‘And Simone jumps in,’ Cathy had turned to Grace, ‘grabs the moment to tell anyone in the café that the charity
du jour
is whatever it happens to be. But she’s never pushy about it, so no one minds.’

‘How’s the work going?’ Grace asked.

‘It’s pretty tough, because I’m kind of like their busboy, but you know I like hard work, and they’re both cool about showing me stuff, so I’m learning a lot.’

‘That’s good,’ Grace said.

Cathy played with her hair for a moment. It was straight and so close to Grace’s shade of blonde that people often assumed they were biological mother and daughter. In the past she’d worn it long, tying it back when she ran, but she’d had it cut to a jaw-length bob in California, and guys were frequently complimenting her on it. Not that Cathy was ready for dating even now, more than a year since her last serious relationship had ended in tragedy. Too much confusion in her still, too much uncertainty about her own judgement skills, let alone the true nature of her sexuality . . .

‘I know you’ve both been worried I’m turning out to be a flake,’ she’d said.

‘I’m sure you’ve never heard us say anything like that,’ Sam said.

‘You wouldn’t say it,’ Cathy said. ‘Doesn’t mean you mightn’t think it.’

‘We don’t,’ he said. ‘No way.’

‘I’d like to think you know we’re always honest with you,’ Grace said.

‘Sure you are,’ Cathy said. ‘But you’re also kind, and you hate hurting me.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Sam said.

‘So in case you’re stressing because I might just be filling time at the café . . .’

‘If it does turn out that way,’ Grace said, ‘then that’ll be because it wasn’t right for you, and then it’ll have been another step on your journey.’

‘It isn’t always easy finding your path, sweetheart,’ Sam said.

‘I know,’ Cathy had said. ‘And I know it’s early days, but I am beginning to feel that this really might be it.’

‘Then that’s all we could possibly hope for,’ Grace had said.

EIGHT

T
he identification of a homicide victim found without clothing or personal effects was often difficult, unless there was a clear resemblance to a known missing person or some other link with such a report, or where a DNA sample from the victim provided a match with someone on the FBI’s CODIS – Combined DNA Index System – database.