Down the Darkest Street (26 page)

According to Kathy, Emily was at Baptist Hospital, about twenty-five minutes from Kathy’s apartment and further west on Kendall Drive. Emily had been brought in late the night before and was in intensive care, albeit in some kind of stable condition. She’d been found beaten and left for dead on the side of Coral Way, near the on-ramp from Le Jeune Road. They were going to the hospital. They’d just show up and see what happened. It was all they could do.

After a few detours and some unhelpful front-desk employees, Pete found her room. Kathy followed him onto the elevator.

“Thanks for your help,” Pete said. His eyes focused on the elevator doors.

“I’m just glad you’re alive,” Kathy said. She wasn’t looking at him. “I thought you’d gone and done something stupid.”

“I did,” Pete said. “A lot of stupid things. Too many.”

“We have bigger things to think about,” she said, pushing the fifth floor button again, willing the elevator to go faster. “But at least you’re alive. Emily’s alive. Those are good things.”

Pete started to respond, but the doors opened up, interrupting him.

There were a few seats set up outside of Emily’s room, 521. Pete recognized Rick; then as they got closer, he noticed Aguilera and Harras were there as well. They hadn’t seen him yet. He wiped his hands on his black, borrowed T-shirt and looked himself over: clean, but rough. That was how he felt, too. A new start, but not without the baggage of what came before. Maybe they’d put that on his tombstone. Kathy looked at him and moved her chin in the direction of Emily’s room.
Go
.

Pete took a few steps and saw that Rick had noticed him, as had the two FBI agents. Pete recognized Emily’s mother walking out of her room, looking ashen and despondent. Rick got up with a start and made a beeline to intercept Pete. In a few moments, they were face to face.

“What are you doing here?”

“We came to see Emily,” Pete said, his tone flat.

“Why? Where’ve you been all this time? She doesn’t want to see you.”

“I think I’ll let her determine that,” Pete said, trying to look past Rick, who stepped to his left to block Pete’s view.

“We don’t want you here.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Kathy said, stepping between Rick and Pete. “Now’s not the time for a dick-measuring contest, OK? Let us through. We want to see your wife. Is that so wrong?”

“I want you both gone,” Rick said.

Pete looked up and met Rick’s gaze for the first time.

“I don’t give a shit about what you want,” Pete said, surprised by how controlled his anger was. “Now, either let us pass and see Emily, or do something.”

Rick waited a few seconds before responding. He sized Pete up. Pete could feel the tension rising. Was he going to hit him? Would he end up having to fight Emily’s husband in the middle of a hospital? He hoped not.

Rick stepped back and made room for Pete and Kathy to walk down the hallway. Pete nodded and continued toward Emily’s room. Kathy motioned for him to go in first. He could feel Harras’s and Aguilera’s eyes on him as his hand turned the door handle.

He hadn’t given himself a second to prepare for what he saw. The room was dark, the lights dim. The only sound Pete could recognize was the beeping coming from the machines hooked up to Emily—or what he thought was Emily. He stepped closer. There she was. Lying on the bed, her face bruised and puffed up, scratches and cuts littering her cheeks and forehead. Her left arm in a cast, and her visible skin mottled with blue, black, and yellow bruises. For a moment he wasn’t sure if she was breathing, but then her chest moved—a tiny, half-breath that did not inspire any confidence that she would make it. He felt a tear stream down his face.

Pete pulled up a chair next to her bed and slid his hand into hers, which was hanging over the bed. She didn’t grasp his hand back, but her hand felt warm. He felt a wave of relief each time he saw her breathe. He could stay here forever, he thought. Until she was OK again.

“Jesus,” Kathy said, behind him.

“Em,” Pete said, his voice a whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He let his mind wander. The killer had been on one path—tricking teen and college-age girls into renting apartments, and then murdering them—before Pete became involved. Once Pete and Kathy started sniffing around the case, it was as if the killer felt threatened. Could that be possible? Then the killer had reacted: threatening Pete at Mike’s memorial, destroying Pete’s house, taking Emily. But now, with Pete out of the picture, things had calmed down, at least according to Kathy. There’d been no new murders and Emily had been spared. Nothing else since Pete and Kathy stepped away. The killer considered him a threat, Pete thought. Or was that his ego? Pete put that aside for a second. If Jack and Kathy were right, the killer’s actions had been echoes of another killer, from another time. Rex Whitehurst had tormented South Florida and the surrounding areas for years before being caught and put to death. Was this killer paying homage? Trying to connect or commune with an idol? There was a factor Pete didn’t know enough about to formulate a conclusion. He had been too quick to act, hadn’t spent enough time trying to learn about his foe and his methods. His impetuousness had cost lives and almost ended up with Emily dead. Something outside was affecting the killer. But Pete was in no shape to figure it out. Yet he still managed to stumble further and further into this mess.

Pete was certain there’d been two men in his house on the night it was destroyed. Despite Harras’s doubts, it just didn’t make sense. Someone was helping the killer.

He glanced up at Emily for a second. She looked terrible. He had no idea what was going on inside her body. He looked at his hands, clutching her limp one. How had she survived, though? The killer had murdered each of his victims viciously, yet he had left Emily on the side of the road, as if the job were done. She was beaten, but not stabbed—like the others. It didn’t add up. Serial killers don’t suddenly develop qualms about murder.

Had Emily been taken by the killer, or by someone helping the killer push Pete aside? It seems their plan to scare them off —blowing up Pete’s house—had backfired, as it made Pete work harder on the case. Even Kathy pressed on. But someone let her bosses know that her investigation—which
The Times
was aware of, to some degree—wasn’t on the up-and-up. Allegations were made and it became the last straw. The fact that Kathy had struck a side deal with the FBI to feed her information for a book-to-be-written-later did not sit well with her bosses, so she got fired and, in effect, lost any credentials when it came to helping Pete. But who tipped off the paper?

Pete didn’t have any answers, but he had a lot more questions, and that was a start. His father used to say something along those lines when Pete was a boy. After a grueling night of work—often arriving home in the morning, exhausted, just as Pete was getting up, he would sit in the living room, with Pete sitting by him, listening.

“Sometimes the best break is just the right question,” Pedro had said, sipping a cup of coffee even though he should have probably been trying to get a few hours of sleep before he was due back at work. “If you find the right question, it’s like hitting a good note—it’ll take you to the next one. And then you’re moving along.”

Who wanted us out of the way?
That was the question. He needed to find the answer.

He was startled by the sound of the door opening. He and Kathy turned to see Aguilera stepping into the room, trying to be quiet. He nodded at them and walked toward Pete, stood next to his chair, and looked Emily over.

“Where’ve you been?”

“I had some problems,” Pete said, unable to meet Aguilera’s eyes. “But I’m better now.”

“Your friend is lucky to be alive,” Aguilera said. “Had that couple not found her and called us when they did, she’d be dead.”

“Is this the part where we all hug and thank you? Or realize we’re all on the same team?” Kathy said, standing up. “If so, I may have to politely decline.”

She wove around Aguilera and walked out of the room.

“Can’t win ’em all, I guess,” Aguilera said.

Pete didn’t respond.

“We’ve hit a wall with this,” Aguilera said, waving his hand toward Emily. “We’ve got zero leads and we just got word on another body.”

Pete looked up, surprised.

“Yeah,” Aguilera said, reacting to Pete’s expression. “We think it’s the Henriquez girl—but we haven’t gotten a proper ID yet. We have to go with dental records. That’s not official. We haven’t alerted the press yet.”

Pete didn’t have to ask any more. Resorting to dental records for a murder victim meant that the body was so severely burned or destroyed there was very little that the naked eye could see in regard to identification. The little bit of hope he’d held out for Nina was gone. She was dead.

“It’s gotta be her,” Pete said.

“Yeah,” Aguilera said. “What are you going to do with yourself now?”

Pete was surprised by Aguilera’s sudden concern over his well-being. “I’m going to keep tabs on Emily and try to get on with my life,” Pete said. “What’s left of it, I guess.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean it’s good to work on yourself,” Aguilera said, looking at Emily’s body on the bed. “To become what you were supposed to, in a way. Leave the crazy shit to the crazy cops and agents like us.”

Before Pete could respond, he heard a strange noise from Emily—a tiny, almost childlike whine, like a toddler fighting off a nightmare. She turned on her bed, moving away from Pete and Aguilera. She seemed frightened.

“What’s wrong with her?” Aguilera said. The whining got louder, forming a frightened howl. She began to thrash her arms, lifting them to protect herself.

Pete stood up. “Go get a nurse,” he said, his hand holding onto Emily so she wouldn’t hurt herself. “She’s having some kind of bad reaction.”

Aguilera nodded and walked out of the room. Almost instantly, Emily calmed down, the whimpering slowly dropping in volume.
What the hell had set her off?
Pete ran a hand over her head and hair. She was warm—sweating. He hadn’t noticed that before.

A few moments later, a nurse came in. She stepped in front of Pete and began to check Emily over.

“What’s wrong with her?”

The nurse gave Pete a look which seemed to say, “What’s not wrong with her?” before continuing her work. Finally, she stepped back and put her hands on her hips.

“She had some kind of episode,” the nurse said. Pete could see her nametag, ELISA AYALA. “Something made her anxious. She’s been floating in and out of consciousness for most of the night. The doctors are hoping she comes out of it soon, but the most we’ve seen from her is that: frightened noises and sudden movements.”

“How lucky was she?”

“Lucky?”

“I mean, to have been found when they found her,” Pete said, trying to clarify. “Do you think she was left for dead?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I’m trying to figure out why she was spared at all,” Pete said. He could see the confused look on nurse’s face. She thought he was some kind of freak. He was, he guessed. But a freak who had an idea.

“Whoever left her like this didn’t think she had much time to live,” Elisa said.

“So, they either think she’s dead or want her to be dead,” Pete said.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me,” she said, heading toward the door. “And I don’t like it.”

She stepped out of the room. The door closed with a firm click. Pete turned around to face Emily, who seemed to be sleeping. This wasn’t over. Despite what he’d told Aguilera, he had no intention of leaving things be. It was too late for that. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the feeling that things were about to get much worse.

The West-Dade Regional Library was a bit of a dump, Pete thought, as he took off his sunglasses and entered the large building off Coral Way, less than a ten-minute drive from where Pete’s house used to be. It was close to noon. He’d allowed himself to sleep in, for whatever that was worth, considering that he’d spent the evening curled up once again on the flimsy cot in Dave’s office. He felt rested but not completely back to normal. Maybe there was no such thing.

He walked up to the reference desk and was greeted by a tidy-looking librarian. He wondered what she made of him: unshaven, in a gray Rush T-shirt Dave had lent him and faded blue jeans, his eyes probably bloodshot; at the very least he looked worn-out and beaten.

“I need to do some research,” Pete said.

“Well, you came to the right place,” she responded, her voice cheery and almost melodic. Pete cringed inside.
People actually talk like this?

She took Pete’s silence as a cue to continue. “What can I help you with on this lovely afternoon?”

“I’m trying to find all news articles pertaining to Rex Whitehurst,” Pete said. Her expression changed from perky to perturbed in a second. “I’ve done some basic research, but I need to go farther back into the archives to learn more about him.”

“Well, sure,” the librarian said. “I can set you up on one of those terminals which are connected to our microfiche databases. You can search via keyword. Not everything is digital, though, so I have to apologize. It will let you know where to go to pull the hard copies, though.”