Hell (11 page)

Not the killing part. She never knew about that side of me, and I'll always be glad about that, because I really liked Blossom – maybe I even loved her – and I never wanted her to think badly about me, and I never, ever wanted to harm a hair on her head.

Blossom was rich, too. She'd made her money from prostitution and two wealthy marriages, but when I came into her life, she was lonely and sick, and I made her laugh and, better than that, I gave her the best orgasms anyone ever had, because I was the Joy Boy again. And I never once laughed at her, only
with
her, and I took care of her when she was sick, and it seemed to me for a while that there was nothing I would not have done for her if she'd asked me.

‘You're everything to me,' I told her once.

‘I do hope not,' Blossom said, because she wanted more for me.

‘You're everything my mother never was,' I told her, ‘and I love you for it.'

That was when she told me she'd been going to put me in her Will, but then she'd figured that might bring me trouble, bring me to the notice of the
authorities
, and she knew I wouldn't want that, so why, she said, didn't she just give me my share before she passed on?

‘Sounds good to me,' I told her, and she laughed.

She told me then that she wanted just one thing in return, my help with her own passing, because it seemed too far off for her liking. I cried like a baby when she asked me for that, and I said I couldn't do that to her, I just couldn't, and she cried too, because she knew then that I
really
cared for her, and she knew, too, that I was going to leave her before she passed on, but she gave me the money anyway.

‘No strings,' she said.

I didn't know then how much it was.

‘Don't look at it until you've gone,' Blossom told me.

I don't think I'd have minded if it had been ten dollars.

Because I really loved that lady.

I did what I could before I went. I was there when she wrote her last letter
To Whom It May Concern
, telling whoever found her that she wanted to die, that she'd suffered enough from her cancer, and that no one had helped her. Which made me weep again, but I still helped her as much as I could stand to. I washed her and made her hair nice and her make-up the way she liked it, and there was nothing else I could do for her, no food I could make for her, because she couldn't manage eating anymore.

And I was weeping again when I walked out of Blossom's front door for the last time, and I guess that was when I knew why.

Because I hadn't been Cal the Hater since I'd met her.

And when I looked at what she had given me, I think I sobbed for a while longer, just like a goddamned crybaby.

And then I dried my eyes, checked into the Bohemian Hotel on the riverfront, put the envelope into the safe, went shopping on River Street, bought myself a money belt and some decent clothes, then came back and drank more toasts to Blossom van Heusen than I can remember.

And the next day, I left Savannah.

TWENTY-ONE

May 6

P
lenty of tough and tedious days and nights ahead, Sam knew, until they caught the killer. Everyone working hard to cover the work that came with any new major violent crime, let alone a double – probably triple – homicide, while, at the same time continuing the manhunt for the prime suspect.

Not for the first time – and they'd
almost
had him then.

‘Almost' not good enough.

Ask Andrew Victor.

Ask his friend, Gail, and his sister Anne, both of whom had called yesterday hoping for news, neither heaping blame on the detectives' shoulders for their lack of success.

Nothing to tell them.

They had appealed to the public for information. There was a press release on the department's website, and Fox, CNN, 7 News, CBS 4 and Channel 6 – along with the local Spanish stations, Channels 51 and 23 – were all taking the item.

Calls flooding in.

A lot of them from crazies, as always, taking up time and manpower calling in phony information.

Other calls, too, from good citizens.

Taking them nowhere yet.

It didn't help that their photographs of Cooper were out of date, and there was no way of knowing what he might have done to his appearance. If (and it was still a big if) it had been Cooper that Grace had seen at La Tienda Fiesta on April 19, it gave them nothing to go on.

‘Male, average height, slim, with silvery-blond hair.'

Someone who
might
have walked up behind her and had enough nerve to brush his fingers against her neck.

Might
have been fingers. No certainty even of that.

If the new homicides were down to Cooper – and Sam, at least, had all too few doubts left on that score since yesterday's grisly discovery – then he doubted he'd still be using the same head-to-foot silver get-up in which he'd strutted the South Beach promenade in his earlier, bold killing days . Though if it was Cal the Hater luring unsuspecting men like Andy Victor into his horror web, then he might still be acting out the ‘joy boy, joy giver' character he'd written about in his
Epistles
.

At three fourteen Thursday afternoon, the squad got wind of another missing persons report that sounded warning bells.

Ricardo Torres, age nineteen, from Hallandale Beach, had been reported missing by his mother, Mrs Lilian Torres, after her son had failed to come home for the fourth night in a row. Mrs Torres said that she knew Ricardo had been going out to a party two Saturdays back, on April 24, but she didn't know who'd invited him or where the party had been.

The report had been filed with the local police department, and if there was cause to suspect a sinister reason for the young man's disappearance, any crime would lie in Broward County's jurisdiction.

Little more than dumb luck, therefore, that word had filtered through to MBPD's Violent Crimes Unit, but now they had it, and by five thirty, Sam and Martinez were in the Torres apartment, not far from Hallandale Beach Boulevard.

Mrs Torres was a well-rounded woman with dark, distraught eyes, but she took time to invite them to sit on her narrow balcony, offered them fresh lemonade and home-baked sugar cookies.

‘This is wonderful,' Sam told her. ‘It's not often we get treated so well.'

‘Perhaps you'd like coffee instead?' Lilian Torres's anxiety stretched to giving them the right kind of hospitality. ‘I should have asked.'

‘Ma'am, this is great,' Martinez assured her.

‘I can tell you it made me nervous right away – ' Mrs Torres got down to her fears – ‘that he wouldn't tell me about the party, because usually my Ricardo tells me where he's going, but if he's planning something he thinks I might not like, it's like shutters come down over his eyes, and there's nothing I can do.'

‘Is Ricardo a student, Mrs Torres?' Martinez asked.

‘Not any more,' she said. ‘He works in a shoe store in Aventura, in the mall.' She shook her head. ‘If his father was still with us, Ricardo would still be at college and he would not feel able to disappear like this.'

‘Where is Ricardo's father?' Sam asked.

‘Gone,' she said flatly. ‘I don't know where.'

‘Might Ricardo know?' Sam asked.

‘No,' she answered.

‘So there's no chance your son might be with his dad?' Martinez asked.

‘Not unless he's been keeping that from me too.'

‘Does Ricardo have close friends?' Sam asked.

‘None of them know where he is.'

‘What about a girlfriend?' Martinez asked.

Closest way he could think to ask if the young man was gay.

‘No,' Mrs Torres said.

Martinez's take on the situation as they left the building was that Ricardo Torres might not be missing at all.

‘Deadbeat dad, mom unable to control her kid.'

‘I don't know,' Sam said. ‘He's been gone twelve days.'

He'd seen other things up in the Torres apartment: photographs of a boy with sweet, dark eyes and skin several shades lighter than his own, but still dark, and maybe straight, maybe not, but either way still the kind that Jerome Cooper loved to hate.

To mutilate and destroy.

A young man whose natural wish for independence might have pushed him straight into Cal the Hater's path.

Or maybe not.

‘I hope to God you're right,' he told his partner as they got back in the Chevy.

Martinez still remembered what Cooper's previous victims had looked like.

‘Me too,' he said.

Grace's cellphone rang at six forty-seven Thursday evening.

Sam had called earlier to say he'd be working late. Daniel was having dinner with clients and Mike was going to a party, but the rest of the clan were home. Grace had bathed Joshua and put him to bed, and Cathy had volunteered to cook, and in a little while Claudia was going to open a bottle of Napa Sauvignon Blanc . . .

She answered the phone.

‘Oh, Grace, thank God,' Sara Mankowitz said.

High-octane stress in her voice, which had to mean that Pete, Grace's young patient, was in trouble again.

‘Sara, what's happened?'

‘I'm so sorry to call, but I didn't know what else to do, and there's no way Pete's going to listen to Charlie—'

‘This is Charlie, your new friend?' Grace wanted clarity.

‘Yes, and he knows Pete trusts you, which is why he told me to call.'

‘Sara, slow down.'

‘I can't,' the other woman said. ‘Charlie was working on Virginia Key today, and he suggested we might like to go to Jimbo's—'

‘Jimbo's? Really?' Grace's surprise showed, because Jimbo's Place, a shrimp shack at the end of the road on Virginia Key, was a local institution, but in no way suitable for a nervous boy.

‘I know,' Sara said. ‘But Charlie said he thought it could be just what Pete needed.' She was talking rapidly, tearfully. ‘Some of the types out there unnerved Pete, so we left, but the more Charlie tried to calm him down the worse he got, and then, when Charlie slowed the car down at a junction, Pete jumped
out
, and we've tried everything to get him back, and Charlie's backed right off now, but Pete still won't shift, and I'm scared to death he'll—'

‘Sara, where are you?' Grace cut in, alarmed. ‘And where exactly is Pete?'

‘We're in a pull-off by Crandon Boulevard across from the tennis center, near the big parking lot.' Her voice shook, but Sara kept going. ‘And he's taken cover in the shrubbery near some trees. I can see him, he's OK for now, but if he takes off he could get into the park or even cross the highway—'

‘Sara, you need to call Fire and Rescue,' Grace cut in again.

‘That would
terrify
him, you know it would.' Sara's voice was pitched even higher. ‘Grace, I'm so sorry to ask this of you, but you told me you're staying nearby, and you're the only person who can get through to Pete when he's freaked out. He's just so worked up, he's crouched down in the bushes like some scared animal, and please,
please
say you'll come.'

Grace glanced at her watch – not quite seven, and still light, and dinner was a way off, and she hadn't drunk a drop of wine yet, and this
was
a true emergency – though she was glad she was alone, because if Claudia or the kids knew, they'd be jumping all over her saying she couldn't go.

But she had to go. There was not a fragment of doubt in her mind.

‘I'll be on my way in five minutes,' she told Sara. ‘Keep your line clear so you can talk me in when I get closer.'

She checked that her own phone was fully charged, dropped it into her purse, dragged on her sneakers, looked in on Joshua – thankfully, sound asleep – then ran downstairs.

Claudia was in one of the nooks, watching TV.

‘I have an emergency,' Grace said. ‘No time to explain—'

‘What kind of emergency?'

‘I'll lock my doors there and back, and I'll call Sam from the car, and please make sure Saul and Robbie stay here with you, or Sam will ground me for life.'

Claudia was on her feet. ‘At least tell me where you're going.'

‘Not far.' Grace headed for the front door. ‘Sis, it's a patient, and I think it's a life or death situation.'

Saul and Cathy both emerged from the kitchen at the same time.

‘What's up?' Saul asked.

But Grace had already gone.

Sam and Martinez were doing another tour of marinas.

They'd been to Flamingo Marina – at the end of 16th Street, not far from the Lincoln Road Mall – twice already. They knew there was no logical way they'd strike lucky here of all places, because this was where Cooper had kept his old cruiser, the
Baby
, neatly tied up all through his first killing spree, taking her out mostly to dispose of remains and evidence. The last place therefore, at least for a
sane
person, to return to, but Cal the Hater was a million miles from that, and anyway, if this was Cal-Cooper playing new games with Sam and his family, maybe if they kept on coming by, something might give.

‘Who the fuck knows with this creep?' Martinez said.

Too many people around the first couple of times they'd come to call, and they hadn't shown Cooper's old photos around this place, wanting to keep a low profile, though that was a hard one to call; but it was quiet this evening, felt like a better time to mooch around, and it was the longest shot, yet both men had felt drawn back . . .

Nothing. Again.

And then:

‘Hey,' Sam said, on their way back to the road.

Looking at a small handbill pinned up on a noticeboard near the entrance.