The Night Stalker (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

A
half hour later, I pulled into the Sunset Bar and Grill on the northern tip of Dania Beach, parking my car so it faced the ocean.

I pulled back my shirt sleeve, and inspected my arm. Cheeks’s Mag-Lite had left a purple welt the size of a golf ball. It also hurt like hell. Fighting with Cheeks had been a mistake. Cheeks was a cop, and in the long run, he could hurt me a lot more than I could hurt him.

I walked down to the shoreline with Buster. The tide was coming in, and I pulled off my sandals and stuck my feet into the tepid water. I had tasted despair many times in my life, and the ocean always restored my spirits. It wasn’t long before I was feeling better, and I went inside.

The Sunset was a rough-hewn building, half of it sitting on the beach, the other half on wood stilts over the ocean. I rented a small studio above the bar, which was what four hundred and fifty bucks a month got you these days. It wasn’t much, but the ocean view made it feel special.

I was greeted with a chorus of boozy hellos. Sitting at the bar were the same seven sun-burned rummies who’d been drinking there since I’d started renting my room. I called them the Seven Dwarfs because it was rare to see any of them standing upright. I took a stool at the end of the bar, and stared at the TV.

Sonny served me a cold draft and I ordered a burger with french fries. He asked how my day had gone.

“Couldn’t have been better,” I said.

“I taped your daughter’s basketball game,” Sonny said. “Want to see it?”

“You don’t think the Dwarfs will revolt?”

“They’re too drunk to notice.”

“Sure.”

Sonny tossed me the remote, and I made the screaming mutants on Jerry Springer vanish from the screen. Soon my daughter’s basketball game was playing. It was between the Lady Seminoles of Florida State and the Lady Bulldogs of Mississippi State. The opening tip-off fell into my daughter’s hands, and she dribbled down-court, and scored an easy layup. I pounded the bar.

Jessie and I hadn’t done much together when she was growing up. Then in junior high school she’d taken a serious interest in basketball, and I’d nailed a hoop to the garage, and spent countless hours feeding her balls. Her prowess had earned her a full athletic scholarship to Florida State, making me the proudest father on the planet.

Five minutes into the game, Sonny served me dinner on a tray. Two cheeseburgers, two servings of french fries, and two glasses of wine.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“You’ve got a visitor,” Sonny said.

I sat up straight on my stool. “I do?”

“She’s upstairs. Came in a couple hours ago, just dying to see you.”

The Dwarfs got quiet. They weren’t the kind of guys who could keep a secret very long, and I glanced down the bar at them. To a man, they were grinning their fool heads off.

“She’s a real beauty,” one said.

Sonny handed me the tray with a smile on his face.

“You’re not going to tell me who’s upstairs in my room, are you?” I said.

“That’s for us to know and for you to find out,” Sonny said.

I took the tray. The stairwell to my room was in the hallway, and I climbed up the stairs with Buster trailing behind. I hadn’t had many lady visitors since my wife had left me nine months ago. In fact, I hadn’t had any, and I was clueless as to what beautiful woman might be waiting for me.

My father died a long time ago. Before he did, he drummed a bunch of things into my head. One was the importance of manners.

I knocked on the door to my room. Whoever was in there waiting for me, I didn’t want to startle her.

No answer. I kept my door unlocked because there was nothing in my room worth stealing. I twisted the knob, and poked my head inside. The sight of the woman lying on my bed took my breath away.

It was Rose, my wife.

She lay on the bed in her nurse’s uniform, sound asleep. An open magazine lay on her chest, and her glasses were perched low on her nose. My wife was Mexican, small-boned and perfectly proportioned, with round, soulful, expressive eyes that never failed to light up my heart. I’d fallen for her the first time we’d met, and I’d hit the earth hard the day she’d walked out on me.

I put the tray on the night table and lay down beside her. She was in a deep sleep, and I kissed her on the cheek, and saw the beginnings of a smile.

“Hey, beautiful, wake up,” I whispered.

Rose opened her eyes. The look on her face was one I was never going to forget. It was filled with longing and forgiveness. I held her in my arms and we kissed. A minute later, we came up for air.

“You smell like perfume,” she said. “Is there someone I should know about?”

There was a twinkle in her eye and I grinned.

“I was just in an orange grove,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“The hospital sent its nurses to a special training seminar in Fort Lauderdale,” she said. “I drove down this morning and thought I’d surprise you. What were you doing in an orange grove?”

“Fighting with a cop.”

She thought I was kidding until I showed her the bruise on my arm.

“He must have been trying to hurt you,” my wife said.

“Let’s talk about it later.”

“Okay.”

We climbed off the bed, and went through our ritual of slowly undressing each other. It never failed to get us both aroused, and soon we were standing naked in the center of the room, holding hands and kissing.

Rose pulled me into bed, and we began to make love. My wife stands five feet tall, while I’m an inch over six feet, and it took us a few minutes to get our rhythm back. When we did, the walls began to vibrate and the room started to shake, and I don’t think a full-blown nuclear attack would have stopped us.

We climaxed at the same time, the horn of a passing yacht outside my window masking both our yells. Rose fell on top of me, and I held her overheated body against mine, and tried to catch my breath. The bedspread and pillows were scattered around the room, and I had no idea how they’d gotten there.

“Oh, wow,” she said.

Rose lay her head on my chest. For a while I listened to her breathing. Then I closed my eyes, and started to doze off. Her hand touched my face.

“Tell me why you were fighting in an orange grove with a policeman.”

I opened my eyes, and stared at my room’s cheap popcorn ceiling.

“We had a slight disagreement.”

“How bad?”

“Remember Heather Rinker?”

“Sure. She was one of Jessie’s friends in junior high. She was kind of wild, but I liked her.”

“Heather has a three-year-old son. He was kidnapped three nights ago, and I’ve been hired to find him. I’m certain his life is in danger. The detective working the case doesn’t want me involved, and he’s threatening me. So I threatened him back.”

“Why would he threaten you?”

“I don’t know. He’s got my old job running Missing Persons. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll show him up. Or maybe he’s trying to hide something.”

“Can he hurt you?”

I turned and stared into her eyes. “Yes.”

“How?”

“He could blackball me with other police departments and law enforcement agencies. All he has to do is send out an e-mail saying bad things about me, and I’m finished.”

“You mean it would destroy your business.”

“Yes.”

We didn’t talk for a while. The last time we’d been together, Rose had said that she’d be willing to leave her nursing job and come back to me, provided I could get my business going. If I kept warring with Ron Cheeks, that wasn’t going to happen.

“You hungry?” I asked.

“Starving,” my wife said.

“The food’s probably cold.”

“It will still taste good.”

I opened the window and we sat in bed eating our burgers and watching the cruise ships and pleasure boats pass by. A stiff breeze off the ocean cooled us down. Buster showed his face when we were done, and Rose fed him the rest of our french fries.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked.

Rose took my head in her hands. “Should I be?”

“I may have really screwed myself this time.”

“But you did it anyway.”

“I couldn’t help it. The kid’s life is in danger.”

“Let me ask you a question. Can this detective find him without your help?”

“Not at the rate they’re going.”

“Then you did the right thing. If you dropped this case and something terrible happened to Heather’s son, you’d never be able to live with yourself.”

Rose pulled my face to hers, eyes right next to mine. I felt like she was looking into my soul.

“Do you want to know something else, Jack?”

“What’s that?”

“Neither would I.”

CHAPTER TEN

I
awoke at sunrise the next morning entwined in my wife’s arms. While she showered, I went for a run on the beach with Buster. Then I came back, took a shower, and we made love again. At eight o’clock, I walked her downstairs to her car.

“How soon are you heading back to Tampa?” I asked.

“I’m leaving right now. I’m scheduled to work the afternoon shift, and need to be there by noon.”

I didn’t know what to say. My life had been complete with Rose. Now it wasn’t. It was as simple as that, and at the moment there was nothing I could do to change it. I wrapped my arms around her tiny waist, and held her close.

“I miss you so much,” I said.

“I miss you, too. Now promise me you’ll stay out of trouble.”

“I’ll try.”

“And try not to fight with any more cops.”

“Okay.”

I opened her car door. Rose started to get in, then stopped.

“I almost forgot something,” she said.

Buster was sitting beside me, and Rose bent down and kissed the top of his head. Buster had taken a shine to Rose the first day they’d met. My dog was funny that way: he liked the people I liked, and tried to take a piece out of those I didn’t.

“You take good care of my husband,” she told him.

We kissed again, then she got into her car and drove away. I had never understood what it meant to have a heavy heart. Now I understood it all too well.

Going inside, I heard Sonny call my name from the bar. I stuck my head in to see what he wanted. Sonny had dressed up for work. He wore a Black Sabbath T-shirt with gaping holes in the armpits, and had several silver rings stuck through his eyebrows.

“You just got a phone call,” Sonny said.

“Friend or foe?” I asked.

“Some asshole detective wants to talk to you. Said it was important.”

“Did he leave a number?”

“Yeah.”

At the bar, Sonny handed me the cordless phone and a bowl of table scraps, which I placed on the floor for Buster. In exchange for part of my rent, Sonny saved leftover food for my dog, and I watched Buster noisily chow down.

I felt a pair of eyes staring at me. Sitting at the bar was a perfectly proper British couple eating breakfast. Tourists occasionally ventured into the Sunset, thinking it was a respectable place. Seeing the Dwarfs or my dog usually changed their minds.

“Top of the morning,” I said.

The couple settled their check and left. I filched a piece of toast off a plate.

“Where’s the number?” I asked.

Sonny opened his hand. The number was written on his palm in red ink. I dialed it, and Cheeks answered.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I just found a guy in the county lockup who’s willing to talk to us about Teen Angel,” Cheeks said.

“What’s his name?”

“Vonell Cook. He said he’ll roll on Teen Angel if we put it in writing that he helped us. He’s facing ten years to life for molesting a teenage girl.”

“Did you agree?” I asked.

“Yeah, I agreed. You need to get your ass over here.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting. And, Jack? If you bring that goddamn dog, I’ll take him into the parking lot and shoot him.”

“You’re all heart,” I said.

I made it to sheriff’s department headquarters on Military Trail in good time. I didn’t have much of a wardrobe, but I’d taken care to put on my cleanest pair of cargo pants and newest Tommy Bahama shirt. People I had once worked with were going to see me, and I wanted to make a decent impression.

Cheeks met me at the reception area wearing a rumpled suit and a hangdog expression. He pulled me to the side, and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry about last night. I was drinking before you called. I shouldn’t have gone after you like that.”

He was trying to make nice. I didn’t see any good reason not to play along.

“How’s your arm?” I asked.

Cheeks showed me where Buster had bitten him. The skin was hardly broken. I showed him the bruise on my arm where he’d hit me with his flashlight.

“I guess that makes us even,” he said.

“I guess so,” I said.

We went downstairs to the interrogation cell where Vonell Cook was being held. Before entering the cell, Cheeks sounded a cautionary note. “Be careful what you say around Vonell’s lawyer. He’s a tricky son-of-a-bitch.”

Broward County had a thousand registered sexual predators, and a small group of lawyers in town made a nice living representing them. These lawyers were scum, and loathed by everyone but their clients.

We entered the interrogation cell. Vonell Cook sat in a plastic chair, staring at the wall. In his late forties and shaped like a bowling ball, he wore a bright orange jumpsuit and flip-flops that had seen a thousand pairs of feet before his. Beside him stood his lawyer, a bottom-feeder with crooked teeth and shiny hair plastered to his head. I’d heard his name a few times around the courthouse, but had never bothered to remember it.

“Who are you?” the lawyer asked.

“Jack Carpenter.”

“I’ve heard of you,” he said.

“Everyone’s heard of Jack,” Vonell said.

I took that as a compliment. Grabbing the other chair in the room, I sat in it facing Vonell. As I started to speak, his lawyer interrupted me.

“Here’s the deal. My client is being charged with having sexual indiscretions with an underage girl. I want those charges dropped to indecent exposure so he won’t go to prison with a sexual predator tag on his head. In return, my client will tell you what he knows about Teen Angel.”

Vonell’s lawyer was playing us like a fiddle, and was going to extract every favor he could on his client’s behalf. I glanced at Cheeks.

“You have a deal,” Cheeks said.

The lawyer dropped his hand on his client’s shoulder.

“I’m glad we’ve come to this understanding,” Vonell said.

“Start talking,” I said.

Vonell smiled, more than happy to tell his secret. “You gentlemen are familiar with Internet chat rooms?”

Cheeks and I nodded.

“There are chat rooms for people with different sexual orientations whose members trade information,” Vonell said. “Things like how to stay out of jail, what to do if your phones are being tapped, that sort of thing. There is one group that I regularly chat with. We call ourselves the Conspiracy Club and have six members. One member is engaged in frotteurism, another in zoophilia, a third in scatologia, one is into klismaphilia, another in coprophilia, and the last member is a pedophile.”

“Hold on,” Cheeks said. “Translate the Latin for me. What are these guys doing?”

“Why don’t you tell him, Jack?” Vonell suggested.

Like so many sexual predators, Vonell didn’t believe the things he did were wrong. Rather, he believed that society was wrong in the way it viewed his behavior. Vonell wanted me to translate to show that he wasn’t the only person in the room who knew what these sick obsessions were. For Sampson Grimes’s sake, I obliged him.

“Frotteurism is an obsession with rubbing,” I explained. “Zoophilia is having sex at the zoo, but not with your girlfriend. Scatologia is a sexual fantasy stimulated by talking or loud belching. Klismaphilia is an obsession with giving and taking enemas—not something you want to put on a job résumé. Coprophilia is an obsession with feces. And we all know what a pedophile is.”

“Very good,” Vonell said.

“And you guys all get on the Internet each night and swap secrets,” Cheeks said.

“That’s correct,” Vonell said. “Several nights ago, the pedophile in our group—a man who calls himself Teen Angel—was discussing the Sampson Grimes kidnapping. He had insider information about what had happened.”

Vonell licked his lips and smiled. It was all I could do not to slug him.

“Go on,” I said.

“Teen Angel said the police were focusing their investigation on the boy’s family, which is common in most child abductions. Teen Angel said the evidence showed the boy had been abducted by a nonfamily member.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Cheeks. His face had gone white.

“What evidence was that?” I asked.

“The torn window screen in the child’s bedroom, which was mentioned in the newspaper,” Vonell said. “Teen Angel said the torn screen showed that the abduction was a game Sampson was seduced into playing.”

“A game?” I said.

“That’s correct. Teen Angel called the game ‘Hide from the Parents.’ He said it was a common game for abductors to play when stealing children from their homes.”

“Did he explain how the game worked?”

“Oh, yes. The abductor gave Sampson candy to entice him into playing, and a toy as a reward
for
playing. Teen Angel was certain about this.”

“Candy and a toy,” I said.

“Correct. Teen Angel said a specific brand of candy had been used, and was instrumental in keeping the boy quiet.”

“Which brand?” I asked.

“Milk Duds.”

“Why that brand and not some other?”

“I don’t know. Teen Angel also said that he thought Sampson was a precocious child. He believed the boy had an agile mind, which allowed his abductor to trick him into thinking his kidnapping was a game. Teen Angel said it was harder to trick a stupid child than a smart one.”

Vonell leaned back. I could see the dampness where his hands had rested on his jumpsuit. I said, “Anything else?”

“Yes, there was one other thing. Rather important, I think.”

“What’s that?”

Vonell started to answer, then began to violently cough. “I need some water. My throat is bone dry.”

Cheeks went into the hallway to fetch Vonell some water. I leaned forward in my chair, and gave Vonell a harsh look. I had seen predators pull this nonsense before. During an interrogation they would stop the action, and make another demand. I had come to the conclusion that it was a subconscious need to be in control, or feel like they were in control, even when they weren’t.

Cheeks returned with a paper cup filled with water. Vonell sipped the water, then spoke. “Teen Angel said the child had a special relationship with his abductor. He called it a bond of trust. He said that without that bond, the abduction could not have taken place.”

“You mean a prior relationship?” I said.

“Yes. He said the abductor was someone the boy had contact with on a regular basis.”

“A friend,” I said.

“That’s correct. I believe that’s everything,” Vonell said.

“If I wanted to contact Teen Angel, how would I find him?” I asked.

Vonell glanced over his shoulder at his attorney. The attorney gave him a nod that said it was okay to rat out his chat room buddy. Vonell resumed looking at me.

“Teen Angel works at a local theme park in security,” he said.

I rose from my chair and acted like I was done. I had one more question, and I knew that it had to be said at exactly the right time. I waited until Vonell had let his guard down, then pounced.

“Was Teen Angel involved in Sampson Grimes’s kidnapping?” I asked.

Vonell started to answer, then clamped his mouth shut.

“Yes or no?” I asked.

Vonell dropped his eyes to the floor.

“Answer me or the deal’s off,” I said.

His head snapped up. “But Detective Cheeks said—”

“To hell with what Detective Cheeks said. Yes or no?”

Sexual predators had a code of silence they rarely broke. But Vonell knew I’d make good on my threat. He let a moment pass, then replied.

“I believe he was,” he said.