Miami, It's Murder (10 page)

We settled in her comfortable living room, feet up, drinking wine, the TV on, volume low, Bitsy in my lap. Lottie's dog, Pulitzer, a sleek greyhound that she saved from being destroyed after he could no longer race, curled up in front of her chair.

“What's this?” I said, studying a tiny replica of a 1940s jukebox that sat on her coffee table.

“A radio,” she said. “Lights up when the batteries are good. Got it from a mail order catalog.”

She looked embarrassed, gesturing toward a stack of colorful catalogs in a magazine rack next to the couch.

“I never get a chance to shop,” she said, as I picked one up. “So after a tough day like today, I sit here alone with my credit card, thumbing through those catalogs. Lordy, you order once and they send you a buncha new ones every day. Anyhow, I have a glass of wine or two and the next thing I know I'm dialing some eight-hundred number, ordering some doodad or another. You can call 'em twenty-four hours a day,” she said brightly. “It don't matter how late. Then, a-course, by the time it comes in the mail I cain't even remember what I ordered. It's a surprise package waiting when I get home. Like Christmas. Though some of it is pretty weird”—she frowned—“and when I open the package I wonder why in hell I sent for it.”

She looked a bit miffed at my expression.

“We all have our little weaknesses and idiosyncrasies,” she said, shrugging. “We all get lonesome.”

“Look at this,” I said. “These don't look half bad.” I showed her some of the silk flower arrangements in the catalog I was leafing through.

She looked over my shoulder. “Funny, with all the tropical flowers here, I still miss the evening primrose, the tufted Indian paint, the bluebonnets and bluebells from back home,” she said wistfully. “And look at you, you've been hung up on that blue-eyed devil for too long. You've got to get out, Britt, take this boat captain up on his offer. See more men.”

“I had lunch today with Dan Flood,” I offered.

“Nice.” She rolled her eyes. “But I mean somebody who's more than an old friend, somebody your age, with a life expectancy of more than six months. How is Dan doing, by the way?”

“He's depressed, living in the past. He's on a lot of medication. I'm worried about him. I just hope he's not suicidal.”

“Poor Dan. Who wouldn't be, facing a death sentence?”

“You never know, Lottie. A doctor sent my great-granddad to Miami to die of TB when he was twenty-six—and the man lived to be ninety-two. Dan Flood may fool the doctors and outlive us all.”

Lottie looked doubtful but raised her glass. “To Danny's health,” she said. “You catch the Downtown Rapist yet?”

“Hey, look at that,” I interrupted. The handsome face of Eric Fielding had flashed on the screen. “Turn up the sound.”

A paid political commercial. We watched in silence as he spoke sincerely into the camera. The perfect politician: perfect haircut, perfect profile, perfect jacket slung over his shoulder, the state capitol behind him.

“Think he really did it?” Lottie said, her glass in her hand. “The little girl's murder, I mean. Mary Beth … what was her name?”

“Rafferty. Mary Beth Rafferty.” I nodded. “I sure do.”

“Too bad,” she said quietly. “ 'Cause I think he's gonna make it. He's got a lot more money, political support, and charisma than the other guy.”

I shuddered involuntarily at the thought as we watched the unfolding images on the screen, Fielding smoothly addressing a classroom full of eager children about their future and that of our state. These children never heard about Mary Beth, who lost her future twenty-two years ago when this man was a teenager.

“The cops were convinced he got away with murder. The fact that he then had the chutzpah to go into law and politics made it even harder for them to swallow.”

“What is it with this state?” Lottie said, the wine slowing her words and thickening her drawl. “Since I've been here we've had the governor they called the Prince of Darkness 'cause he looked like Dracula, then the country bumpkin—and now it looks like we're gonna have a man who committed murder. I kinda miss Dracula.”

“He wasn't that bad,” I agreed. I checked the time on Lottie's wall clock, a grinning ceramic cat with big eyes that rolled back and forth with each movement of its pendulum tail, proof of another catalog shopping spree, no doubt. “I'm keeping you up,” I said. “You've had a long day.” I put down my wineglass. “I better head home while I can still drive. They're cracking down, and I'd sure hate to get picked up DUI.”

“The cop who busted you would probably be named officer of the month. You can stay in the guest room if you like.”

“No, thanks.”

“Let Bitsy drive.”

“I'm fine.” I really was. She had consumed most of the wine.

She leaned back, closing her eyes wearily. “Thanks for coming, Britt. Go ahead, just leave me for dead. I'll be okay.”

Awash in a flood of dead-end calls and letters about the Downtown Rapist, I welcomed my turn at Take Two, a regular Friday feature. T2 is an update on a story or newsmaker now faded from the headlines. Sort of a “Did you ever wonder whatever happened to …?” Some reporters gripe when assigned to do a T2, but not me. Like real life, journalism is full of unfinished stories. I am always curious about the people whose names and faces are splashed across newspaper pages, and T2 is a handy excuse to look them up and see what their post-headline lives are like.

My topic of choice, of course, was an update on the Mary Beth Rafferty case. I bounced it off Fred Douglas.

“You want to identify a rising political star, a candidate for our state's highest office, as a suspect in an ancient murder that happened when he was a child?” His voice climbed to a crescendo.

“A teenager,” I said quickly, sitting on the edge of a chair in his office. “He was a teenager.”

“Number one, the case is too old. Most of our readers don't even know it happened. Two, Fielding has an unblemished record and was never publicly linked to the murder.”

“It was reported that he found the body.”

“People find bodies in Miami every day,” he scoffed. “That doesn't make them killers.”

“What about the financial links between his parents and those of the murdered girl?”

He sighed. “What about them? It could mean the people are civic-minded saints, concerned and caring neighbors. Maybe they see the new husband as a savvy businessman who will return big bucks on their investment. Nothing against investing. Christ, Britt.” He looked irked. “Maybe you've been on the police beat too long. The man is running hard in the most important campaign of his life. The word is he's set his sights on the White House and may have a shot at it. Nobody's ever accused him of anything in this case, and there's no new information. No way this newspaper would publish tenuous allegations that would smear him.”

“But it looks like he really did it.”

“If you can prove it, it's a helluva story, a lot bigger than a T-Two. But you yourself said the mother of the murdered girl isn't even interested in reopening the case. It's a dead issue, Britt. Don't waste any time on it. Drop it.”

“But—”

“Drop it!”

I backed off and returned to my desk, cheeks burning. I sure didn't want to be reassigned to cover politics in Homestead or the county sewer-bond issue. The mere thought made my eye twitch. Now I knew how Dan felt when his superiors told him to lay off Fielding as a suspect twenty-two years ago.

My first idea for a T2 torpedoed, I decided to track down a paroled gunman named Applewaite who had shot down a Miami policeman named Foster six years earlier. Dan had griped about it at the police memorial service. Applewaite, a little man who used guns to make himself taller, had been sentenced to twenty years. He had done only five before the prison system's good time, gain time, credit for time served, and early release policy combined with the parole commission's benevolent wisdom to spring him back out onto the street.

It took several calls to track down Applewaite's parole officer, who made the usual speech: the man had paid his debt to society, was doing extremely well in his new life, and should be left alone by the jackals of the press. After consulting his records he proclaimed Applewaite a real success story, excelling in his employment at a Hialeah paint and body shop.

I called six Hialeah paint and body shops before I found the right one. The owner said Applewaite never showed up again after day three on the job, and he had heard the man was in jail in Monroe County. That was exactly where he was, on an armed robbery charge. I loved this T2.

And it was a good excuse to call and shoot the breeze with Dan. I told him how my editor had vetoed my initial idea and we vented our mutual outrage against newspaper management and Fielding's White House aspirations. He was pleased that Applewaite was back behind bars.

“Thanks for letting me know. That's the safest place for him,” he said cryptically.

Talking to him cheered me up. More genial than he had been at lunch, he even made me laugh.

“Nothing should surprise us anymore, Britt. Let me tell ya, if there was any justice, Elvis would still be alive and his impersonators would be dead.” We promised we would have lunch again soon.

Half believing Lottie's prediction that jealousy would reawaken McDonald's romantic attentions, I checked my messages with an anticipation I tried to deny.

He didn't call, but lots of other people did.

The next afternoon I began returning calls and opening mail simultaneously, phone tucked beneath my chin. One message intrigued me. Somebody named Jeff had left word that he was “Not the Downtown Rapist.”

He sounded relieved that I had returned his call.

“Listen,” he said urgently, speaking softly as though afraid of being overheard. “I'm in a bind here.” His voice had a side-of-the-mouth quality, the slick oily pitch of a guilty motorist trying to con a cop out of issuing a traffic ticket. “The law has been out to talk to me on this Downtown Rapist thing.”

“You're a suspect?”

He made an exasperated sound. “No. Well, I don't know if they believe me. I might, I might look, ya know, suspicious. I admit I sorta sneak around, ya know. I park the car a couple blocks away, circle around on foot, I might duck in and out of a building, but it ain't what it looks like.”

“What is it, then?”

He hesitated.

“If the police were interested in you, they must have a good reason.” Curious now, I was prodding.

“Things are not always what they seem.”

“Most of the time they are,” I said flatly.

“Look,” he whined. “I admit that I walk around a lot near the Universal building—”

“Where the rapist has struck. Twice.”

He took a deep breath and let it out noisily. “I just cut through it, through the lobby. You know those apartment houses across the street, facing the block directly behind that building?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I go by there maybe a couple a times a week, ya know, to see somebody.”

“A supplier?”

“Nah, a broad. You know.”

“So what's the big deal?”

“The big deal”—he lowered his voice—“is that I'm a married man with a family.”

“And…”

“I don't need my wife getting wind of this whole thing. I wanna make sure you don't put nothing in the paper.”

“So did you give the police the name of your … friend, and are they going to go talk to her?”

“That's another thing,” he said. “It's a very sensitive situation, ya know.”

“She's married too.”

“You catch on fast.”

His guilty conscience combined with a lack of knowledge about how cops and newspapers operate had the man envisioning his name in headlines. Little did he know that no one cared, except those immediately involved in his little soap opera. I didn't feel sorry for him, though he and his lover were probably only doing what lots of married folk do. No matter what care cheaters take, there is no way to foresee being entangled in a net tossed out by police in a manhunt.

“There's kids involved on both sides,” the man on the line was saying. “This could hurt a lotta people, you know?”

“You should have thought of that,” I said, sounding pious.

“Nothing's gonna make the paper, is it?” His voice quavered with concern.

“No.” I sighed and reassured him. “Don't worry. If you're not the rapist and you don't get charged with anything, the police and the newspaper don't care about your private life.”

There was a pause. “You're saying I should.”

“I didn't say that, but it doesn't sound like such a bad idea,” I said, tearing open a letter scrawled in thick black marker on lined, yellow paper:

The jump out boys are ruining Miami. I don't get high anymore—I just get cross-eyed and sleepy. I demand better drugs!

I smiled, setting the unsigned letter to one side. It would give a grin to members of the VIN (Vice, Intelligence, and Narcotics) Squad, better known on the street as the jump-out boys for their speed and agility when jumping out of their undercover cars and trucks to seize stunned suspects and their drugs.

“You're so right,” the man on the phone was saying with an almost religious fervor. “I'm gonna give this whole thing some serious thought.”

I tore open the next letter.

The grungy envelope looked familiar. Another regular pen pal.

Say Britt Montero
,

Why do you not listen. You have offended me
.

A scrawled bow with arrows.

I crumpled and tossed it. A tiny dust trail leaked from the envelope as I did. My hands felt powdery. I squinted up at the air vent, then down at the tiny drift of powder on my desk. Yuck, I thought, touching my fingers to my nose. The stuff was sweet smelling and came off the letter.

My heart skipped a beat. I almost fished the crumpled thing out of the waste bin, but turned instead to the medical writer, who sat behind me to Ryan's right. “Miriam?”

She looked up, squinting behind the ultraviolet protective lenses of her glasses, which reflected a greenish glow from her computer screen.

“Those surgical gloves with talc inside. Is there enough of it to leave noticeable traces on a paper the wearer handled? And does it smell like dusting powder?”

“How the hell would I know?” she said impatiently and went back to work.

I thanked her profusely for her courtesy and then called Rico, an emergency room nurse and sometime source. His answer to both questions was no. Now I was becoming paranoid, I thought. Just another weirdo who writes letters.

A sudden flurry of activity stirred the newsroom and I looked up. My heart lurched and I was sure I was hallucinating. Eric Fielding stood six feet from my desk.

He was real. Tall, trim, and tanned, wearing a navy pinstripe suit, a white-on-white silk shirt, and a power tie, he was vital and youthful looking, despite the shock of prematurely silver hair. His wife was with him, an athletic-looking blonde who would have looked at home on a tennis court. Tall and rangy like her husband, she was the perfect image of a politician's wife, smiling easily, carefully and casually dressed in a Laura Ashley cotton print. A child in a pink sundress tagged along after them. She wasn't wearing a little hat, but she made me think of Mary Beth Rafferty.

Fielding was pressing flesh, shaking hands, highflying the political reporter, smiling down at Gretchen, who gushed all over him.

I bid a hasty goodbye to my caller.

“What's he doing here?” I asked Janowitz, a veteran general assignment reporter who had wandered up from his desk at the back of the newsroom.

“Came in for his editorial board meeting,” he said.

Candidates seeking endorsement by the
News
are routinely interviewed by the board. They rarely sweep though the newsroom shaking hands, but being the hometown candidate, Fielding was already on friendly terms with most of the editors and reporters.

“Come, Kimberly,” I heard Mrs. Fielding say. She took the child's hand and led her to one side, so she would not be lost in the newsroom crowd clustering around her husband.

“Just spent a couple of days down in the Keys,” Fielding said heartily. “A little golf, some fishing, a family break from the campaign, resting up for the homestretch.”

“The polls are looking good,” someone told him.

I joined the crowd. “Britt Montero,” I said when my turn came.

He nodded; his handshake was firm. “Saw your piece on Applewaite this morning; it was right on target. That is exactly what we need to prevent in this state. Intolerable,” he said, eyes flashing with righteous indignation. The man is good, I thought, really good.

I opened my mouth and saw Fred Douglas in the group surrounding us. His eyes narrowed, and he gave a slight shake of his head.

“Good luck,” I mumbled, not believing the words that came out of my mouth.

The smiling candidate turned to pump someone else's hand.

He walked back to the executive offices, trailed by the political writer and Gretchen. His wife and her little girl stopped at the Style section, where Eduardo and several other writers appeared overjoyed to see them. Fred instructed Ryan to escort Mrs. Fielding and Kimberly down to the third-floor cafeteria, where they could enjoy refreshments while waiting for the candidate.

“Should I buy?” he asked anxiously. “Can I put it on my expense account?”

I sat at my desk pretending to work, watching the hallway between the editorial offices and the elevator. Something inside me could not pass up this chance. I checked the time. Endorsement interviews are usually forty-five minutes to an hour long.

Sure enough, he reappeared an hour later, beaming and jubilant, still trailed by fans and glad-handers. I left my desk, carrying a notebook and pen. “Mr. Fielding,” I said, “your wife and daughter are in the cafeteria. I'll show you where it is.”

As the elevator doors opened the hand-shakers backed off and went back to work. We stepped inside, alone together.

My questions should have been worked up to subtly but there was no time for small talk.

“Mr. Fielding, do you remember Mary Beth Rafferty?”

He reacted like he had heard a shot, smile fading. “I certainly do,” he said, following a pause. “That was something no one could ever forget.”

“The case is still unsolved.”

“I'm aware of that.” His color suddenly didn't look as healthy or vibrant. Perhaps it was the lighting.

“I guess you are aware,” I said softly, “that the police considered you a suspect?”

His eyes assessed me coldly. No speech writers to help him here, I thought. “At the time,” he said carefully, “everyone was considered a suspect.”