Garden of Evil (10 page)

“No way,” I said. “She's got those little kids to raise without a dad…”

I drove home. Mrs. Goldstein, bless her, had fed the animals, walked Bitsy, and left a department store catalog with a note suggesting I register for china and silver patterns.

McDonald had left two messages on my machine. I'd call him from the office. I showered, put on fresh clothes, brewed myself some strong Cuban coffee, and went back to work. I stopped at La Estrella on the way. The same waitress studied me suspiciously.

“I said I'd be back,” I chirped brightly.

She said nothing, solemnly taking my order of more Cuban coffee to go; an Elena Ruiz, a turkey sandwich with cream cheese and raspberry jam; guava and meat
pastelitos
; and a double order of
maquiritas
. I needed energy. Hell might break loose at any moment. Time was running out for the killer. Nobody can run forever. Soon she would be cornered, caught or killed. I hoped it would be before lack of sleep overtook me. Chewing would keep me awake. I added a side of ham
croquetas
to my take-out order, paid the check, and stepped out onto the steamy sidewalk. The downpour had failed to cool the city. The temperature was an enervating 97 degrees and still climbing.

 

“Hell of a story this morning, Britt.” Ryan watched me place the food containers atop the two-drawer file cabinet beside my desk and sniffed appreciatively. “You brought lunch for everybody?”

“Touch any of this and I'll chew off your fingers,” I warned, brushing aside messages from Althea. Not now, I thought. Doesn't the woman know I'm busy? Doesn't she read the newspaper?

Fred Douglas, the news editor, paused at my desk. “Nice work, Britt. How the hell did ya manage to get the
jump on everybody? One of your police sources call you?”

“I was hungry,” I said. “Long story…”

“Well, we beat 'em bad.” He rubbed his hands together briskly. “But that was yesterday. Keep it up. We want to stay ahead of the pack.”

I nibbled my sandwich with scant appetite. The story was what I hungered for. For the early edition, delivered to racks and convenience stores by 7
P.M.
, I focused on the widow's comments, the massive manhunt, and the growing reward. Funeral arrangements went into a sidebar with eulogies for Sonny and expressions of shock from politicians all over the state.

The task-force detectives had hit town to work with the locals, but I couldn't find them. I did find the Jolly Roger desk clerk, whisked away by the police that morning. Henry Mead was back on the job.

Thin, stoop-shouldered, in his forties, he wore stubble on his weak chin and looked as if he hadn't slept or changed clothes. He knew who Sonny was when he had checked in using a name not his own. He had been there before. He signed the name of a former prosecutor who had tried to nail him in a corruption case. Sonny must have thought it funny to use the prosecutor's name at a hot-pillow joint. This time the joke was on him.

Sonny only wanted the room for an hour or two. So when Henry Mead, the desk clerk, saw that the commissioner's Mercedes had left the parking lot, he climbed the stairs to change the sheets and found the body.

“Changed my life,” he said, shaking his head. “I'm giving notice, getting myself into some other line of work.” He assumed Sonny had picked his companion from the herd of hookers who stmt the Boulevard. He had sneaked a look out his office window as they went up to the room but didn't recognize her. She wore very high heels, a short tight skirt, and had skipped energetically up the stairs. Nice legs, he said, but he never actually saw
her face. On the security tape, which he had viewed with detectives, she was little more than a grainy silhouette, face turned away, to the dark. But he heard her laughter. It sounded free and easy, like she was having fun, a good time, he remembered thinking.

“I'm getting out.” He shoved back his stringy too-long hair. “Going on home to Iowa. This town is no place for a God-fearing family man.”

“You have a family?” I asked.

“No, but I'm thinking 'bout getting me one.”

“But you are God-fearing.”

“I am now.”

 

Ojeda and Simmons were out in the field. I kept missing the task-force detectives, at city homicide, their hotel, the morgue. Where the hell were they?

Back at the office, Barbara, the city hall reporter, said the commissioners had met and were leaning toward appointing someone to serve out Sonny's term. Several names had been mentioned.

“Tell me one of them is not Lourdes Saladrigas,” I said, massaging the back of my neck which had begun to cramp.

“How did you know?” she asked.

 

I snacked, drank more coffee, and checked my messages before settling down to write for the final. They were from Althea, my mother, Charlie Webster, and the usual faithful readers, weirdos, and anonymous callers reacting to Sonny's death. One of the latter had left a terse message:
Dead lawyers don't suck.
And another from McDonald. Damn, I had forgotten to call him. I swallowed the last of the guava pastry and reached for the phone. It rang first.

“Dead lawyers don't suck.”

“I got the message.” I hunched my shoulders, rolled my head around, and listened to the bones in my neck crunch. “Who is this?”

I needed sleep or more food. I reached over to rattle the bags from La Estrella and see what was left.

“A reader, pissed off as hell.” The husky, whiskey-throated voice had an accent so southern that
hell
had two syllables.

“What about?” The last ham
croqueta
felt cold and greasy, so I dropped it in the wastepaper can. What could I lead with for the final?

“You. You're Britt Montero. You wrote those stories about the murder, right?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, you can't believe anythin' you read in the paper. Don't you people ever check anythin' out?”

“I'm on deadline right now,” I said frostily. “Why don't you write a letter to the editor?”

“Well, la-di-da. Too damn busy to discuss how you write all this inaccurate bullshit, huh? That man went right straight to hell where he belongs, and you're probably fixin' to write another story makin' 'im sound like a goddamn saint. You can't shine shit! Good husband? Wonderful father? Dedicated public servant? Bullshit.”

“Those were not my words,” I told her. “I never said that; those were accurate quotes from people who did. I'm only the messenger. Commissioner Saladrigas was a controversial figure,” I conceded, “and he certainly had his share of problems. But it's only natural for people to speak well of the dead.” I silently cursed the editors who insisted we tread lightly when it came to his character in the initial story. “I'm sure you'll see that future coverage is more balanced.”

For the final, I vowed to get in his indictments, his trials and tribulations, maybe even his recent skirmish with the hotel car jockey. Maybe I'd call the valet for a quote.

“A lot of people disliked him,” I added.

“Damn right. That Sonny was a pig—smellin' up the whole room with that damn rotten stinkin' cigar. Why the hell didn't he stay home with his precious wife and kids?”

I swallowed a mouthful of coffee. It tasted muddy, not even lukewarm. “His wife is left with three small girls to raise,” I said wearily. “What would you…”

I paused.

“How did you know about the cigar?” Was that in the paper? No. Or was it? I reached for a copy of my original story and knocked over my Styrofoam coffee cup. The murky dregs splashed across my desk and notes as I rolled my chair back to avoid the spill.

“How d'ya think?” Her seductive voice hinted of dark secrets. “I was there.”

My stomach churned as I snatched some paper napkins to mop up. “When? When were you there?”

“You figure it out.”

I scanned the newsroom. Was another reporter playing games?

“Oh shit,” I whispered.

“What's wrong?” she demanded.

“I spilled my coffee.”

She laughed. “Gotcha going, huh?” She laughed again, free and easy, like somebody having fun. “You've got a nice voice,” she said. “Kinda sexy, younger than I expected.”

“Look,” I snapped. “I don't have time to play games. I'm on deadline here, and I'm tired.”

“Been busy, huh? Me too.”

“Who is this?”

“Who do you think, genius?”

“Are you saying you know something about the case?”

“Sure do,” she teased.

“What?”

“Everythin'.”

“Listen.” I exhaled, eyes focused on the big clock overhead. “We get a lot of crank calls; what makes you think I'd believe—”

“He'd already popped one-a them little blue pills 'fore we got there,” she said, interrupting. “Then he comes on
real pushy cuz he took it and is horny as a toad. Smellin' up the room with that stinkin' cigar.”

“You've got my attention,” I said quietly.

“They tell you what I did with it?” The question sounded like a smirk.

“I heard.” My eyes darted wildly around the newsroom for somebody to signal. That made no sense. What could anybody do? Quietly, I slid my desk drawer open to look for my tape recorder. Not there. Where did I have it last?

“Shoved it where the sun don't shine,” she murmured. “You know so much, why didn't you put that in your story? How come you didn't write that?”

“The police like to withhold some details,” I said, voice thin. “Specifics that only the killer knows.”

She laughed. “And you work right with 'em, like a good little girl, doin' what they tell you.” Her voice was mocking. “What kinda reporter is that?”

“I don't work with them. In fact they're pissed off at me most of the time.”

“They're assholes,” she said, sniffing disdainfully. “Bullies who like pushin' people around. Most of 'em aren't smart enough to find their own ass in the dark.”

“I wouldn't underestimate them,” I said. “If you were with Sonny, what happened? What were you thinking?”

“Maybe I wasn't ready, maybe I changed my mind and didn't want it, maybe he just got a bit too damn pushy. The guy was a crack monster. You know, he wanted to rub coke on hisself to keep him hard longer—Viagra, booze, and all that too—what was
he
thinking? That's the question. That sumbitch never even tried to hide his weddin' ring.”

“But you had sex with him, right?” I said, scribbling notes.

“Sure.”

“And the others?”

“They were all asking for it, pushy as hell. That man
Sonny, he was using cocaine. Hell, I might pop a few pills, drink a little booze, but that stuff'll mess up your mind.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You wouldn't want to do that.”

“Don'chu talk down to me, lady. I'm not stupid.”

“Sorry. If you are who you say, you're
not
stupid. Every cop in Florida is looking for you; you've got them all as frustrated as hell. And if you're lying, you've got me snowed and I'm a trained cynic.”

She laughed again, free and easy. “Don't believe me, huh?”

“You plan to turn yourself in?”

“You lost your mind, woman?”

“That would be the safe thing to do, for everybody, yourself included.”

“In your dreams. Read it right there in your story, everybody's talkin' capital punishment, 'count of this asshole in Miami and that piece-a shit up in Shelby County. Oh, sure, turn myself in. That makes a lotta sense if you're suicidal.”

“Why did you call me then?”

“For a goddamn retraction! Admit it. You got it all wrong. Write the real story and tell 'em what a slob Sonny was.”

“People know all about Sonny. They're interested in you.” My heart thudded. “Your story is the one they want to read. It couldn't hurt you, public relations-wise, to have people see you as human, not a monster.”

She paused. “Have to think on it.”

Bobby Tubbs approached my desk. I saw him coming out of the corner of my eye. I frowned and tried to wave him away. It didn't work.

“Britt?” He loomed over me. “I need your story. How much you gonna have? How many inches?”

“Who's that?” My caller sounded wary and distant.

“My editor. He wants the story I'm working on.”

“Tell him I'll show him how many inches.”

This seemed surreal.

“Hang on,” I said.

“No, I can't. But guess whose phone I'm using?”

“What?”

“Check it out. You know how to do that, don'chu?” She hung up.

I quickly punched star sixty-nine. The number came back, and I matched it to a card in my Rolodex. It was the number of Sonny Saladrigas's missing cell phone, last seen in his missing Mercedes.

“Britt?” Bobby gestured impatiently. “Where's that copy? How can I lay out a page without a length? What do you want me to do?”

“Call the police,” I said.

“Come on. Don't be a wiseass,” he complained.

“You're not the only one who's had a long day.”

“Call the police,” I repeated, raising my eyes to his.

“T
HINK SHE'LL CALL AGAIN?
” O
JEDA LOOKED RED-EYED
from lack of sleep.

“I hope so. She likes to talk.”

“Sure, she's lonesome. Stranger in town, all her acquaintances are dead,” Simmons said.

“We got nothing,” Ojeda said glumly. “Been waiting for the magic phone call. Didn't think she'd be the one who made it. Work with us on this, Britt. Don't try anything cute.”

“Have you ever seen me cute?” I snapped irritably.

“Came damn close a few times.” He winked.

I agreed to forward my office calls to my car, then home. They wanted her on tape and said they would apply for a court order. It's illegal in Florida to record conversations without the other party's consent or a court order. Hell, the way our justice system works, the killer would go free and I'd do jail time. But I agreed to hook a recorder up to my office phone and sign out another from supplies to take home.

“She calls again,” Ojeda said, “try to establish a rapport, draw her out. You know, act interested in her welfare, her feelings, relate to her. Hell, you know how, Britt, you do it with us all the time, trying to get information.”

They would get the court order and apply for traces on my numbers, he promised, as they left to go wake up a judge.

 

The call went unmentioned in my story. Tubbs phone-conferenced with Fred Douglas; Murphy, our managing editor; and Mark Seybold, the paper's in-house attorney. They wanted to be sure, rather than rush into print and risk copycat callers tying up our lines. What's more, if she was the real deal, she might call back.

Cops in the newsroom seemed to trouble my bosses more than a killer on the phone. They had eliminated name plates on reporters' desks years earlier, as a precaution, in case cops or prosecutors ever tried to seize a reporter's notes or tapes. Editors scheduled a meeting to discuss this development in the morning.

I drove home, giddy with anticipation. The superheated night was sultry and starless, saturated with the overpowering scent of night-blooming jasmine as intoxicating as exotic perfume. How close was she? Did she smell it too? My skin dampened with perspiration in the few steps between my car and front door. My phone rang as I approached. I fumbled with the keys, pulse pounding, as it continued to ring. Inside at last, I lunged through the dark, groping for the phone, stumbled over Bitsy's exuberant greeting, dropped the tiny tape recorder, and snatched up the handset.

“So, you're alive and well,” McDonald said.

For the first time since I met him, I was disappointed to hear his voice. “You won't believe what happened!”

“I heard.”

“How? I just left the office.”

“You're talking about Sonny, right? The homicide commander called to brief me. It's been all over the TV news up here. More bad press for Miami—”

“McDonald, listen. I might have…I'm sure I just talked to the killer!”

He did not respond with the enthusiasm I expected as I filled him in.

“How many reporters ever get to talk to a serial killer still at large?” I demanded. “I'd love to interview her!”

“Wait till after she's behind bars,” he said. “You can do it then.”

“Oh, sure, when her defense lawyer is warning her not to talk to the press, or some TV tabloid is offering her big bucks for an exclusive interview. I've been down that road.”

“Let homicide handle it, Britt. They're good detectives, and she's dangerous. Stay out of their way. Let them do the job they're trained to do. Our main concern is that some traffic cop will pull over a pretty girl in a flashy car, without realizing who he's stopping, and wind up dead.”

“I'm not in their way. They need me.”

“So do I, babe.”

“What are you wearing?” I murmured, in a blatant shift of topic. No way did I want to argue with this man, especially about something unlikely to happen. Sinking into my comfortable chair, I made smoochy sounds into the mouthpiece.

“Not much,” he said. “Just stepped out of the shower.”

 

I couldn't sleep later, plagued by conflicting thoughts, obsessing about the killer. Who was she? A throwaway kid, come back to haunt society? An abused child striking back against all men as abusers? Probably one of those disposable people no one cares about, like a puppy dog abandoned at the side of the road. Or was she a pioneer in her field, something new and monstrous, spawned by a mad, disordered, barbaric age? I agonized at all the questions I could have, should have, but never asked during that brief golden moment of opportunity, and prayed for another chance.

 

Awake before dawn, my thoughts haunted by odd and nameless anxieties, I listened for the reassuring plop of the morning paper against my front door. I called homicide. Nothing new.

Coffee brewing, I reread my story, trying to see it through her eyes. What would she think? How would she react?

The phone rang. Recorder in place, I pushed the button, hands shaking.

“Good morning, Britt. Hope I'm not calling too early. I really didn't think you'd be in yet. I merely intended to leave a message.”

“Althea?” Thanks to simple telephone technology, every call, every crank, every complaint, would follow me home, intruding into my private space. Now Althea, with all her fantasies and fears, real and imagined, was in my sunny yellow kitchen.

“Yes, a call to you was on my list of things to do today,” she chirped. “Good news. I guess.” She added the last two words wistfully. “I've made up my mind. I'm putting the house on the market. It's something I never wanted to do,” she said slowly. “I came to this house as a young bride, raised my daughter here. The happiest times of my life took place here. But it's scary to come home to alone now, I can't really afford it, and it will be
such
a relief not to be poor anymore.”

She was trying to convince herself, so I helped.

“A new start is a good thing,” I assured her. “A new life in a new place, with new neighbors.” She could certainly use the last, I thought.

“Yes,” she said. “Perhaps a nice little apartment in a gated complex, with security…”

“Excellent choice for a woman alone.”

“I guess I just harbored some foolish fantasy about keeping the old homestead in the family. You know, in the event my daughter or her children ever needed a place
to come home to. But she's well fixed now, and nobody…” Her voice quavered.

“I hear Gables real estate values have soared through the roof in the past few years,” I broke in cheerily. “And interest rates are at rock bottom. You sure picked the right time.”

“That's what they tell me,” she whispered miserably. “I'm meeting with a realtor today.”

Her future would be secure and happy, shared with new friends, I thought, after we said goodbye, so why did I feel her pain? Change, even for the better, is always hard. That had to explain my own nagging sense of impending chaos, I thought, stepping into the shower. McDonald is coming home—to me. My life might soon change. Why did I feel so uneasy? Happiness is possible. Other people find it. Happily ever after does happen. Look at Lottie, how radiant she was lately. Althea could be happy. So could I.

At the Villa Deli I spied on others who were eating breakfast. Those with newspapers went straight to my story. The best-read story in town, the one on everybody's lips, and it was mine. I stepped out onto the steamy sidewalk, ready for whatever the day might bring.

The meeting was already under way, around the big conference table in Murphy's office: Fred Douglas, half a dozen other editors, including Gretchen Platt, and our lawyer, Mark Seybold. All looked somber as I was summoned into the glass-enclosed office.

Did I believe my caller was the killer?

“I'm pretty convinced,” I said primly, a fresh notebook open on the polished tabletop before me. “Not only did she appear to have details that only the killer could know, she seemed genuinely indignant at what she felt was our too-flattering portrayal of Sonny. She seemed to feel she'd done the world a favor.”

“There are those who would agree with her,” quipped Stan Potter, the state editor.

They were concerned about police tapping our telephone lines. “What are the chances she'll call again?” Murphy demanded.

“I'm not sure. I think she might. As a reporter, I'm hoping she will. I don't believe she'll turn herself in,” I offered. “And if they can't stop her, there will be more victims; at least that's true of most serial killers.”

“What concerns me,” Douglas told the others, “is that we have confidential sources calling in on some lines. For example, that tipster from inside the Department of Agriculture and the justice team's source in that jury bribery investigation.”

“We're not cops,” Gretchen said. “We shouldn't be doing their job. This could be risky to our sources, our credibility, and a waste of time. This caller could simply be another of Britt's cranks.”

Mark nodded, his intelligent brown eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses. A train buff, he was wearing his favorite tie, the one with little locomotives. “I would need to see heavy-duty guarantees,” he said, “that they will absolutely isolate these calls from everything else that comes in here.”

Uh-oh, I thought. I understood their concerns, but I had my own. The detectives didn't care who else called this newspaper, all they cared about was their case. If the paper threw enough roadblocks in their way, they'd feel jerked around, and they were the people I sought information from every day.

“These police officers have been very helpful,” I pointed out. “We wouldn't have broken the story first without them.”

“Any possibility of a quick arrest?” Fred asked. “It would make all this a moot point.”

“Only with some off-the-wall lucky break,” I told them. “They seem to have no major leads. They went to obtain a court order for the phones last night.”

“We could successfully block it,” Mark said confi
dently. “Crimes are committed every day, but the constitution guarantees a legitimate expectation of privacy. They'd be violating the privacy of law-abiding citizens.”

“But it would only be my line,” I protested.

“Even if they could isolate a single line off the main trunk coming into the building, what about your sources, all your other calls, personal and professional?” he said.

For a sobering moment I imagined cops who knew us both eavesdropping on me and McDonald.

“There has to be some mechanism,” Murphy said, “for weeding out what they're not supposed to get.”

“A system that enables Britt to simply press a button that triggers the tape and a trace only when the right call comes in,” Fred said. “Is that technology possible?” They all looked at me.

“I'll find out,” I said. “I'm sure they can make it happen.”

 

A short time later they presented their conditions to Ojeda, detectives from SIS, the Special Investigations Section, and two telephone company employees, a security expert and a technician. All looked pained.

“It's doable,” the security expert said slowly, “but extremely complex to install that type of call tracing system on a public business exchange, a PBX. You've got two thousand lines coming into this building. This will take us at least twenty-four hours to set up. Ms. Montero will have to tell us the precise time the call came in, after the fact. Then it will take us about a day to trace it back.”

“A day?” Ojeda objected. “Our suspect is constantly on the move.”

“What about all those TV shows?” Douglas frowned. “They trace the call, identify the point of origin, and surround the suspect while he's still on the line.”

“That's television,” the phone man said. “And on individual lines, not a setup like you've got in this building. Sometimes there's a technical glitch,” he added, “and the
trace won't work at all. Another thing: older cell phones can be traced to an area a few blocks square. But those new digital phones? They're untraceable.”

“So even with all this, we're screwed anyway if she keeps using Sonny's phone.” Ojeda rolled his eyes.

The phone man was equally pessimistic about call forwarding.

“Every time we step down a generation it becomes more complex,” he warned, “from the PBX, to the office extension, to the car phone, to the house phone.” He shook his head and looked grim.

Nonetheless, all agreed and shook hands.

 

“Sorry about the suits,” I told Ojeda later. “I had no idea it would be this difficult.”

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “These technical experts always like to tell you how impossible a job is, so when they do it they're heroes.”

I walked him to the elevator, hoping to learn what the crime lab had found. “Not for release,” he said, “but they've got lipstick traces on both bullets, just like all the others since Shelby County. The class characteristics could even give us the brand name. And if they both smoked the crack pipe, they should be able to get her DNA.”

“Remember, she said she doesn't use crack, only pills and booze. Doesn't want her mind messed.”

“Well, we'll be getting her DNA anyway.”

“How?”

“A real long shot.” The doors to the empty elevator yawned open and we stepped aboard. “We got lucky. Sonny's genitals were pretty messed up, with all the blood, but they took smears and when the ME looks for sperm on one of the slides, he sees what look like female epithelial cells, from her vagina. He calls the crime lab; they check their slides and see the same thing. They do something like a Pap smear, and lemme tell you, Britt, what they can come up with is awesome.”

“Like what?”

“They can run DNA. They can determine if the cells are pre-or post-ovulatory, even tell us when she's menstruating.”