The Killing Kind (8 page)

Garfield leaned back in his chair and showed De Silva his palms. “Just that it was a little slight, is all.”

“Through no fault of mine, pal, I can assure you. We traced the shot back to a vehicle, and the vehicle back to a long-term airport parking lot. The owner was at some kinda conference in Reno and had no idea it was even missing. The Crime Scene guys tell me the interior of the vehicle was a bust for prints and DNA, on account of our perp bleached the living shit out of it and wiped down all the surfaces he touched—including his shell casings and gun. And, yeah—the rifle was left behind, but its serial was filed off, so no luck there, either. Somehow every security camera for blocks around went down hours before the shooting, so we’ve got no footage of either the shot o
r
Cruz getting hit, and eyewitnesses were no better. Edgar Morales, the owner of the building, is hiding behind a wall of lawyers— we can’t get a straight answer as to whether he was even in the country when the shit went down. We spent hours canvassing the area, and the best we could come up with was a valet for the hotel the shooter’s car was parked at who said our suspect was, and I quote, ‘a white dude, maybe, in a ball cap, aviators, and a bushy beard.’ That beard, by the way, was fake—we found it bleached white in the center console. And when we called around to costume shops in town trying to find out where he got it, we rolled a donut. We worked the trail. The trail ran cold. As simple as that. Whoever killed Cruz knew what he was doing—and my guess is, he’s long-ass gone by now.”

“Look, Detective, we appreciate your efforts,” Thompson said, flashing a glance at Garfield, “and I’m sure my partner didn’t mean to imply your investigation was anything less than thorough and professional. In fact, your expertise could prove invaluable to us. If you’d be willing to take us out and walk us through the crime scene, maybe help us track down some known associates of the vic—”

But De Silva cut her off. “Listen, lady, much as I’d just
love
to drop everything and help you out, the Cruz case ain’t exactly a priority. This whole goddamn state’s a war zone. In Miami-Dade alone, we’ve had fifty-four murders so far this year. Three hundred cases of sexual assault. Well over two thousan
d
aggravated assaults. A full third of those cases haven’t been cleared yet. Most likely, they never will be. If I had to guess, I’d say your so-called vic Cruz was responsible for a handful of each, so to my thinking, whoever whacked him did me and the decent citizens of this city a favor. You want to poke around, that’s your business. But if you want to stand here and gripe that the file’s a little thin, feel free to fill it out yourself. I got better things to spend my time on.”

De Silva stood, yanking open the conference room door. It slammed against the wall, rattling glass. Then he left, red-faced and fuming.

Thompson fumed as well. If Garfield had played it differently, maybe De Silva would have been more cooperative. She eyed her new partner with distaste, but if Garfield noticed, he sure didn’t let on. Instead, he smiled and shook his head, saying to Thompson, “Some fucking detective
he
was. Probably couldn’t find his own dick with both hands and a flashlight.”

“Ass,”
Thompson called him.

“Excuse me?” Garfield replied.

Thompson stared at him a sec, an expression of blank innocence honed in many a late-night poker game pasted on her face. And then she said, “What? That’s the saying.
Couldn’t find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight.
”

“Right,” said Garfield, somewhat mollified. “Now whaddaya say we go take a look at that crime scene?”

8

Engelmann, comfortable despite Miami’s heat in a linen suit and woven cowhide loafers, sipped his espresso and watched the two federal agents bicker in the shadow of the Morales Incorporated Building. From his table at a sidewalk café across the street, he’d watched them parade up and down this stretch of Brickell Avenue for the better part of the afternoon, alternately examining the scant physical evidence Cruz’s murder had left behind, and sniping at each other like an embittered married couple.

Engelmann spent most of his life observing from a distance. Even as a child, he’d felt set apart from his family, from other children, and from the string of governesses in whose care his parents placed him—and whose emotional states he slowly destroyed with his sadistic manipulations. It was by impulse, rather than design, that he tormented them—an omnipresent itch that he could never truly scratch, an urge to ruin and destroy that could be quieted but never quelled.

It wasn’t until he discovered killing that he’d felt truly present in this world.

His first was a pheasant at his family’s summer manor, which was nestled in the Inn River Valley in southwest Switzerland. He was ten. The house chef mistook his interest in the process as culinary in nature, and after he’d observed a slaughter without crying, the chef allowed the boy to bleed a bird himself. In that blissful moment when knife parted flesh, and the headless pheasant began to thrash within his grasp, the air had never seemed so crisp, the sky never quite so true a blue. But if the wizened old chef took note of his aroused state—as Engelmann suspected he had, for Anatole never again allowed the boy to partake in the daily slaughter—he never breathed a word of it to anyone.

Engelmann’s path had nevertheless been determined. So transformative was the experience, young Engelmann spent the better part of that afternoon traipsing about with hands coated red, only grudgingly washing away the stains when they’d crusted dry, the blood’s color fading to rust— and with it, the colors of the world around him. As he watched those flecks of spent iron swirl downstream on the icy waters of the River Inn, he knew they represented the compass by which his heart had been set—a conclusion reinforced weeks later when he took his first human victim, a local farm boy, and experienced an emotional and physical release so thunderous that mere words failed to do it justice.

Today, he watched, as he’d watched the village children decades before, his mind calm and appraising. Of course, he had no intention of harming these investigators. Not that he wouldn’t have enjoyed it. The woman was pretty enough, he thought, or at least would be if she gave a damn, and the man had a certain swagger it might be fun to break him of. But he didn’t see any utility in it—nor did he expect that they’d discern anything from the crime scene he had not yet himself discerned. He’d arrived in Miami some hours before they did and had already been over every centimeter of the sidewalk and the parking lot, so he knew just how meticulous the hit had been. He elected to stay and watch them not for evidentiary reasons, but because he believed the better he understood his fellow hunters, the better he would understand their common quarry.

Engelmann downed the last grainy bit of his espresso and left a twenty on the table. Ordinarily, he found tipping gauche, a horrid American practice he avoided whenever possible, but today he was in good spirits and thought the mood worth sharing. Then he left the café, and left the investigators to their fruitless examination of the crime scene. His nerves vibrated like a tuning fork from excitement and caffeine, a clarion note of anticipation ringing in his head.

That was fine. Useful, even.

Alexander Engelmann had a busy night ahead of him.

“Pardon me,” said Engelmann, “but I was wondering if I might have a word.”

It wasn’t the man’s words that chilled Edgar Morales to his core, nor his polite, well-modulated tone—a tone that implied moneyed good grace and lent an angular quality to his words, a voice suggesting that while he was clearly fluent, this man was not a native English speaker.

What chilled Edgar Morales was the moment itself, for it was four in the morning, and the words had roused him from sleep. He opened his eyes to find his bedroom dark and still, the security panel on his wall blinking green to indicate all was well. But he hadn’t imagined that voice—a voice that signaled to Morales that all his precautions had been for naught and that his life would end tonight.

Ever since Cruz’s attempt on Morales’s life, Morales had spent his nights in his Bayside Village condo out on Fisher Island. He’d bought the place years ago when his company’s value first reached a billion, seduced by the cachet that accompanied the address. What better sign was there you’d made it than living on a man-made resort island that boasted the highest per capita income in the nation? For a kid who grew up poor on a dodgy street in Goulds, the allure of joining Miami’s most exclusive community was too great to pass up. It had taken him a while to find a suitable abode, because he’d restricted his search to the city-facing bay side, ignoring Fisher Island’s ocean-side properties entirely. After all, what was seeing the sunrise over the Atlantic compared to the glint of the sunrise off the skyscraper that bore his name?

In the days since his mysterious benefactor rid him of his Cruz problem, however, his six-thousand-square-foot condo had taken on a new significance for him, beyond signifying his arrival as a businessman. Situated as it was on the uppermost floor, with views in every direction and every access point monitored by a security system so stateof-the-art the Pentagon couldn’t afford it—not to mention the fact that it was on an island with no auto access whatsoever, and ferry access limited to residents and invited guests—it had become his fortress, his island stronghold. The man who saved his life had warned him the Corporation would likely try again, and having witnessed Cruz’s grisly demise, he took that warning to heart—even augmenting his already formidable security with a team of trained sentries. His neighbors, no doubt, thought he’d gone off the deep end, another Howard Hughes type unable to handle the pressures of so much wealth. But to hell with his neighbors—better to be a live eccentric than to be thought of well while dead.

“Who...who are you?” he stammered, his voice hoarse from fear.

“Who I am is of little consequence to you,” Engelmann replied.

“My guards—”

“Are, at present, indisposed.”

“You mean...,” Morales began, only to find he could not summon the words.

“If you’re asking did I kill them, the answer is no; I’ve not been paid to kill
them.
I merely rendered them unconscious so you and I would not be interrupted.”

“But you
are
here to kill me.”

Engelmann smiled. “That depends upon your level of cooperation. You see, I’ve not been paid to kill
you,
either.”

Morales digested the man’s words. “If you’re not here to kill me, why’d you sneak into my bedroom?”

“I need to ask you some questions. About what happened to one Mr. Javier Cruz.”

“You mean the man who died outside my building?” Morales asked. “I don’t know; I wasn’t there.” It was a foolish lie, given the circumstances, but it was a reflex, nothing more. He’d repeated that lie to countless detectives and reporters in the past three days, before instructing his legal team to shut down any further inquiries on the subject.

Engelmann
tsk
ed in the darkness. “Mr. Morales, I think I’ve thus far treated you with decorum, even respect—I’d appreciate it if you would afford me the same courtesy. I may not have been paid to kill you, but hurting you I’d do for free.”

Morales stiffened. He swallowed hard, his mouth dry as sand. “Of course,” he rasped, fumbling for the bedside table. “I’m sorry. If I could just turn the light on, so I can take a drink of water—”

“I’m not an
amateur,
Mr. Morales. I removed your firearm from the drawer before I woke you. And I suspect if you think long and hard about it, you’ll realize it’s in your best interest if you never see my face.”

Morales slumped in his bed, defeated.

“Good,” Engelmann said, as if something of import had been decided. “Now, Cruz.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want you to tell me how you contacted the man who killed him.”

“I—I didn’t!”

Morales heard a metallic
sching
as a blade slid free of its scabbard. His heart slammed painfully against the wall of his chest.

“I did caution you against lying, Mr. Morales.”

Hands on his face. In his hair. Yanking his head back. Morales cried out—wordless, animal. For a moment, he thrashed against his assailant’s grasp, but then he froze as he felt the point of a blade dimple the tender flesh beneath his left eye.