Garden of Evil (5 page)

I decided not to mention Althea Albury Moran to the city desk yet, in case there was no story.

A message waited. I called Charlie Webster back.

“Thought you might be interested,” he drawled. “They found the sheriff's Blazer down in Alachua County, in a ditch out near Turkey Creek.”

“Did they find her? Have they got her?”

“Nope. The lady's long gone again. But she did leave her calling card.”

“What?”

“Dead man. Britches around his ankles. His wazoo shot off, then shot in the head, just like ol' Buddy Brascom. Took his car too. Thought you'd be interested, cuz it appears she headed south again, coming your way.”

T
HE UNIDENTIFIED VICTIM HAD PULLED INTO AN
I-75 rest stop at midmorning. The coffee-shop waitress saw him soon after, chatting with a vivacious young woman. The busy waitress did not see them leave. Five hours later, the pilot of a crop duster spotted the roof of a sports utility vehicle in a dry drainage ditch off a back road bordered by woodlands.

The Alachua County Sheriffs Department and the Highway Patrol dispatched cars, hoping to find the Blazer sought in the Shelby County murder. They did. What they did not expect to find was a dead stranger in his late twenties or early thirties sprawled beside it. His pockets were empty, his car gone, apparently taken by the killer, but no one knew what he had been driving.

The manhunt intensified. I swiveled my chair to study the Sunshine State's gun-shaped outline on the three-by-five-foot map mounted on the wall next to my desk. I found a box of red pushpins in the wire room and inserted one into the map in central Shelby County, the site of the sheriff's office, and another to the south, at the rest stop just off the interstate, where the second victim was last seen alive.

I regretted that the story was unfolding outside our cir
culation area. Not my turf. I opened a file anyway. Was it wishful thinking or because I know that those on the run are inevitably drawn here? I heard someone say once that it is the carrion smell of the corpse flower that attracts the dregs and bottom feeders who drift inexorably toward south Florida. The amorphophallus, now in bloom, resembles a phallus and smells like something dead. Its sickening spoiled-meat odor attracts flies, in the jungle and in Florida gardens.

I drove home at twilight. Looming clouds blackened a tumultuous western sky but failed to keep their promise of rain. The heat evoked dreams streaked by lightning and rocked by distant thunder—or was it gunfire?

 

I woke up dazed, at daylight, Bitsy barking a warning. Moments later an urgent pounding rattled my front door.

“Britt! Britt! Help me!”

Mrs. Goldstein. In trouble. The gun. My mind blanked in a moment of confusion. Where was my gun? Nestled in the glove compartment of the T-Bird, parked outside. Normally I bring it inside, but the night before I had been lugging a grocery bag, notebooks, and my purse.

I threw open the door. “What's wrong?”

“Look! Look what they've done to the amaryllis!”

The yard was alive with huge black grasshoppers with garish yellow and chartreuse racing stripes, red-tipped wings, and orange warning dots. The stuff of biblical plagues, they swooped and swarmed, stripping away succulent leaves.

“Look at their size!” I said. “It must be this crazy weather.”

“They've already eaten all the new growth off the day lilies!” she said. “I haven't seen them like this for years. Nothing kills them!”

Some societies prize grasshoppers as a delicacy. Too bad ours is not one of them.

“The only way to kill these babies is with a small-caliber pistol, but don't try it,” I warned.

Assurances that they would soon swarm off to greener pastures didn't stop Mrs. Goldstein from swinging a broom at them. She was still at it when I left early to go to a scene.

“Stay in the shade,” I urged. “Are you wearing sun-screen?”

She shook her head and sighed. “I'm leaving soon anyway. The Jam and Jelly class at the Fruit and Spice Park starts at ten. You're off to work?”

“Yes. McDonald sends a hug. I talked to him last night.”

“Your handsome captain. He'll be back soon?”

“Few more days.” That got her attention. Romance always does. She's been trying to marry me off for years.

“I knew it.” She looked thrilled. “I always knew he was the one for you.”

She's right, I thought. I knew it too.

 

Lost and looking for a street in South Miami, I stopped to give the right of way to a land crab invasion. They skittered across the road, claws clicking like castanets. I see them less and less frequently now. They're fast disappearing, their habitats paved over, poisoned by pesticides, or crunched by cars.

I finally found the right small, neat house. The owner, a seventy-seven-year-old widow, reclined outside in a lawn chair. A neighbor had seen her lounging there, then noticed the widow still seated in the same position nearly thirty-six hours later.

The remorseless heat had dried her lips, drawing up her mouth as moisture evaporated from her body, shrinking the skin on her face, thinning her nose. Her fingertips had shriveled, darkened, and hardened, the first stages of mummification.

“Doesn't anybody ever die inside an air-conditioned
building anymore?” Dr. Duffy grumbled, as he mopped his brow.

It didn't seem that way. Mother Nature continued to crank up the heat. A woman walking outside the criminal justice building on her lunch hour glanced into a parked car—and screamed. Other passersby joined her, trying to smash the windows. The first cop who arrived shattered them with his club. Too late. The temperature inside had soared to more than 140 degrees. The baby girl, still strapped in her car seat, was dead.

The mother was in an air-conditioned courtroom with her older children, ages three and six. Investigators from the Division of Children and Family Services had recently returned all three, finding no basis for neglect charges against her. Her caseworker had assured the mother that her court appearance, “a mere formality,” would result in a quick dismissal, so she left the little one in the car. The court calendar, as usual, was log-jammed and lengthy.

DCFS supervisors refused comment. When I returned to the T-Bird, the steering wheel was too hot to touch. I could have fried eggs on the dashboard. Pets and people didn't stand a chance.

I had no time to call the Adlers, Althea Moran's neighbors, until after the early edition deadline. Son Kenneth had returned to his New York job; his father wasn't home yet.

“That man could have had a gun,” Emma Adler said.

“What did he look like?”

“Well, when I say I saw him, it's just a figure of speech. It was a glimpse, a shadow disappearing into the dark. That's all any of us had, a glimpse. None of us really saw him.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Dark clothes, I suppose. You're not actually going to put any of this into the newspaper, are you?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Well, don't you use my name. I mean, we don't have
crime here. This is a good neighborhood. We all take excellent care of our homes. Nobody wants anything in the newspaper that could bring down our property values or tarnish the image of our neighborhood.”

“You saw his mask?” I persisted.

“I couldn't swear he had one. All I know is what Althea said. Who knows if that's right?”

“Why wouldn't it be? You think she lies?”

“Well, you know”—her voice dropped to a confidential tone—“she hasn't been herself since her husband ran off with a younger woman.”

“I'm aware she's divorced.”

“I told her then not to keep that house.” She spoke louder, disapproval permeating her words. “It's far too big, too much for a woman alone. But would she listen? No. Told her to hire herself one of those tough divorce lawyers and go after big money. Could have had herself a nice waterfront apartment and enough to be comfortable the rest of her life. Did she listen?

“Look, what happened at Althea's happens every day, but not in our neighborhood. We scared off a burglar. That's it. No big news. If it was a burglar.”

“If he wasn't, who would he be?”

“Maybe some man she knew.”

“Is she seeing someone? Dating?”

“Not that I know, but it wouldn't be the first time something like that happened.”

“Why would she scream and call the police?”

“Who knows? Maybe she was embarrassed or had herself a drink or two.”

“She's a drinker?”

“Well.” She paused. “I wouldn't know, but she was pretty quick to invite us in for a drink that night.”

“Did it appear as though she'd already been drinking?”

“To tell you the truth, I didn't notice, but she was coming home alone, after dark.”

“I thought she'd been volunteering at the hospital,” I
said sweetly. “Did you and your husband ever have a drink at the Masons' home before, when she was married?”

“Oh, sure,” she said breezily. “We had cocktails over there or here, many times. What I'm trying to say is that the reputation and property values of an entire neighborhood shouldn't suffer because of one person's lack of judgment.”

“Lack of judgment?”

“A woman alone, in a big house like that; that's asking for trouble.”

“She might have been killed.”

“Tch-tch. Pshaw. She tell you that? Althea always had a flair for the dramatic. Did some plays, studied drama in college. The woman has too much free time on her hands, if you ask me.”

 

Coral Gables Lieutenant James Swanson recognized the name immediately. “She's called us about her problems,” he said, sounding weary. “A number of times.”

“Are you concerned about her safety?”

“We're concerned about the safety of all our residents, but I can safely say I'm no more concerned for her safety than for any of our other citizens.”

“You don't think she's in danger?”

“We put a watch order on her house, but we obviously don't have the manpower to baby-sit her place twenty-four hours a day. Our uniform personnel are aware of the situation and pay particular attention to the address as they routinely patrol the area.” There was a long slow creak as he leaned back in his leather chair.

“The MO of her intruder is similar to that of the Coconut Grove rapist,” I pointed out. “He wears a black knit mask, breaks in, and waits for women to come home alone. Think there could be a connection?”

The chair squeaked abruptly as he sat upright. “That's
the first thing we checked into, right at the start. We were right on top of it.”

“You mention it to her?”

“No point in alarming her or creating panic among our residents when we'd already eliminated him as a possibility.”

“How do you know it wasn't him?”

“Not for publication, Britt, but that particular individual has never struck in our city. Ms. Moran does not fit the profile of his victims. But more than that, nobody else present saw the mask.”

“Think she made it up?”

“I wouldn't say she fabricated it. She was startled. It was dark. There's the power of suggestion—”

“Power of suggestion?”

“News coverage about that individual mentioned the mask, among other things. If I'm not mistaken, you wrote some of those articles. Say she reads them, lives alone, sees an intruder for a matter of seconds, and decides it's him. That's one reason we don't like releasing that sort of detail. Makes our job harder.”

“Oh, for Pete's sake,” I said. “I doubt she saw those articles.”

“The subconscious mind is a powerful thing,” he said.

I sighed. “But what about the other—”

“The City of Miami incident? The attempted strong-arm outside the supermarket is what alleviated our concerns. She claimed the robber was wearing the same mask. Well, the Grove rapist has never hit that neighborhood either; most serial rapists don't moonlight as purse snatchers or have a partner driving their getaway car. And the Grove rapist has never tried to drag a victim off the street. Doesn't fit his profile. That's what alleviated our concerns and allowed us to place the incident in proper context. I hope you don't plan to print anything suggesting that the rapist is linked in any way to our city. Here's a story for you. Our statistics show an overall decrease of twelve
percent on class-one crimes last year. That's something you can write about. We credit our success to the community awareness programs we—”

“Lieutenant, do you think somebody tried to kill Althea Moran?”

“Hell, no.”

“But two incidents? So close together?”

“You've been around long enough, Britt, to know things happen. She could be either overreacting or craving attention. Sometimes, when women reach a certain age and are alone, that happens. I'm not saying that's definitely the case here,” he added quickly, “but we had a divorcee once, lived over on Sopera, used to dial nine-one-one every damn night. Heard prowlers, noises, thieves, whatever. Just lonesome. She wanted some young good-looking police officers to come by so she could flirt with them.”

“How'd you handle that?”

He guffawed. “Had a no-nonsense policewoman respond to every call from that location. Didn't take long for the calls to quit.”

“Do you know Althea Moran's ex-husband?”

“Dr. Moran? Sure. Excellent surgeon. Operated on my father-in-law, triple bypass. Nice fella. City manager plays golf with him from time to time.”

 

Lieutenant Randy Springer, in the city robbery division, recalled Althea Moran clearly once his memory was jogged.

“Oh, yeah, I remember her,” he said. “Started out real ladylike, but went a little dramatic on us—ripping up her own purse, trying to demonstrate that it couldn't have held up if a purse snatcher had yanked on it.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, the strap snapped right in two, whole thing came apart.”

“How do you explain that?”

“They dragged her around by that strap and they weak
ened it; it was already starting to come apart. Look, Britt, she's a nice lady from a nice neighborhood. I understand her fears. This city, as we both know, gets a little scary sometimes.”

“So you patted her on the head like a good little girl, sent her home, and told her not to worry?”

“That's not fair, Britt. We did all we could. Even talked to the Gables, just to be sure. Look, we had two thousand strong-arms in the past year. There's been half a dozen in and around that parking lot since Easter. We've been meaning to send in CST, the crime suppression team.”