The Victim (44 page)

“
Back when I was assigned to patrol, I dealt with a lot of bikers. Bike weeks, biker get-togethers, all that garbage. Clubs out of Fort Lauderdale and up into Central Florida would run down A1A and hit up South Beach on the way to the Keys. They never come without guns, drugs, or active warrants. Don’t much care for cops either.” Mandy pointed his index finger at the cropped headshot of Frank Wheaton on the computer screen, toward the low-cut collar of Frank Wheaton’s orange jumper. “You can only see the tops of the letters poking out of his collar.”

Anton leaned in. Against sunburnt skin and curls of dark hair, he could make out the points of the letters, forming an arc across his chest. “Looks like a W, an M…and MC.”

“
Warmasters Motorcycle Club. There’s a chapter in Ocala. At least those are the guys I’ve dealt with when I was working the Beach. Nasty dudes, meth heads. You could spot ’em by their colors. Black leather vests with this skull and crossbones patch on the back, except the crossbones are two AK forty-sevens.”

“
Who do the Warmasters have beef with?”

“
Beats me. You know gangs as well as I do. If there’s one organization, then everybody who belongs to another organization is its enemy.”

Anton wondered whether Lola had gotten herself caught between two rival gangs.

“
Her father was the chapter president of the Romans, who was undercover for the DEA while working off his own trafficking charges. In all likelihood, his own guys take him out. Now, a guy with the same last name who belongs to what’s probably a rival club is bonding Lola Munson out of jail?”

Mandy flipped to the arrest affidavit, bringing the document closer to his face and then a foot away, his eyes trying to adjust to the scribbled narrative.

“
Jesus, did this officer have Parkinson’s or something?”

“
I’m sure your A-forms were no better when you were a cop.”

“
No way, man. I typed mine.” He held the page a few inches from his face, squinting so tightly his eyes appeared to be closed. “Yo, let’s scan this onto your computer and see if we can make the print darker. I can barely read it.”

Anton unclipped the documents from Lola’s Flagstaff file and separated the arrest affidavit from the stack. He laid it down on the glass and activated the scan feature on his printer. A flash of light swept beneath the glass as a PDF document began to appear on his computer screen, uploading in jerky resolution.

The one-page arrest affidavit came into focus. The scan had naturally darkened the ink, making the lines of the officer’s half-assed cursive a little bolder, somewhat more decipherable.

Anton zoomed in, bringing the document into 150% focus. Now he could understand how the deputy clerk entering the information into the computer off of the arrest affidavit had mistaken
Lola Munson
for
Lola Monson
. Frankly, he was surprised it was the only mistake she had made.

Just one lousy letter. No wonder Jack’s pretrial investigation hadn’t resulted in an adult criminal record for Lola. If he had had this information back in 2004, it certainly would have strengthened his defense. What was she doing so far away from home, only to be reported missing by her mother three months later?

Anton carefully panned over the biographical information. Lola
Monson
, age eighteen. No driver’s license, no social security number, and no address provided. Under
scars, tattoos, unique physical features
the officer had noted two things. One, the color of her hair—jet black with blonde streaks. The other, a tattoo.

The letters
b.a.e.b.a.
inked along the underside of her wrist.

Anton cupped his chin with his hand, scratching his stubble.

“
Well…if there wasn’t a connection between Lola, Daniella, Kelsie, and Evan, here it is.”

Mandy stared at the screen, mouth agape.

“
Oh yeah. They’re a family, all right.”

CHAPTER 46

Anton circled the heavy bag, fighting through the fatigue to keep his hands at chin level. He could feel the lactic acid weighing down his arms. In his ninth three-minute round, his T-shirt was soaked through, clinging to his chest.

He was choppy and flatfooted, losing focus. The links of chain connecting the hundred-pound Everlast bag to the ceiling creaked as it swung like a pendulum, mimicking the movements of an imaginary opponent.

He backed off the bag and shook the lead out of his arms. He brought his hands back up, elbows in tight, eyes peering over his gloves. He shuttle-stepped in and fired off three quick jabs with his left.
Pop pop pop.
He bobbed and weaved as the bag came back. He followed up with a straight right, a left hook to the body, and a right hook to the head that landed so hard he felt a shockwave ripple through his back and shoulders.

The round timer clipped to his shorts vibrated, signaling thirty seconds before the end of the round. He unloaded on the bag, letting good form fall by the wayside while he hurled wide haymakers, a spray of forehead sweat pelting the bag.

The timer dinged and he fell to the floor. A dozen heavy bags hung from the ceiling at the far end of the aerobics studio. This wasn’t a boxing gym. It was a four-hundred-dollar a month facility chocked full of state-of-the-art machines, a coffee bar, and two dozen tennis courts. The heavy bags were only there for the cardio kickboxing classes. As far as Anton had seen, he was the only person who ever came in and used them when the studio was empty. He was pretty sure most of the gym’s membership had never been in an actual fight.

He toweled off and unlaced his gloves. He walked passed the weight room, packed to capacity with the six o’clock crowd. Grunts and groans and the clanging of dumbbells. Katy Perry blared from the speakers in the ceiling. Young men in cutoff shirts stood in front of the mirror, doing bicep curls. He passed the cardio room. Women were dressed to kill in formfitting designer workout shorts and sports bras. Some were even wearing makeup. Middle-aged men in sweatpants and college T-shirts huffed and puffed on treadmills and ellipticals, wires trailing from the buds in their ears.

Anton walked into the locker room and found his locker. He peeled the damp shirt off his body and wrapped a towel around his waist. He opened the sauna door and was met with a wave of thick, steamy air. He took a seat on the bench, sweat beads already popping on his forehead. His nostrils burned as he breathed in the smell of hot cedar.

Anton tossed a ladle of water onto the hot rocks. Steam fizzled and rose. The temperature jumped and the wet air irritated his skin. Anton tried to imagine the sensation of being burned alive. He took in a deep breath. He felt a sting in his throat, in his lungs. He tried to put himself in Evan and Kelsie’s shoes. What did it feel like? Were they conscious for all of it? Was the pain as excruciating as Anton could only imagine? What was it like to know that you were going to die?

Anton got out of the sauna, a haze of steam behind him as he stepped out onto the white tile floor. He splashed cold water on his face and sprayed his underarms with a liberal application of complimentary deodorant.

In the cafe upstairs, he ordered a strawberry banana smoothie with a scoop of whey protein. He put it on his account and walked out to his car.

The gym and sauna routine was a must the night before a trial. He had been doing it as long as he had been a defense attorney. It was cathartic in a way, as if he could sweat away the self-doubt and clear his mind.

As a prosecutor, Anton didn’t pay much mind to his trial cases. You tend hit a stride, a year, two years in, where you can try a felony with little more than a police report in your hand. Rote questions flow one after the other, as if recalling lines from a script. Anton had always contended that prosecuting a case was far easier than defending one. Direct examination doesn’t take much thought. As a prosecutor Anton could walk a witness through a perfect testimony without so much as glancing down at his notes. The inductive methods of building a case, question upon question. On the other hand, cross-examination—the lifeblood of the defense’s case—was deductive. The prosecution had built the foundation and now you had to tear it down, exploit its weaknesses. That took work, far more skill.

He drove through the gates, flashed a quick wave to the guard. Until everything began with Daniella, he had taken it all for granted. The massive queen palms interspersed along the grassy median, the ducks congregating around the pond.

When he first moved in, he was afraid that he couldn’t afford it.

Now he was afraid of losing it.

He parked in the driveway and got the mail. The air smelled of charcoal. No doubt a controlled sugarcane burn out in the Everglades.

Dinner was on the table when Anton walked in. He took a thirty-second shower and threw on a T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants. Gina had made panko-breaded veal cutlets and kale salad.

Charley was in her high chair, grabbing beef raviolis by the fistful and shoving them into her mouth. Samson sat patiently at the base of the chair, waiting for something to fall.

They kept the dinner conversation light. Anton’s attention shifted from Gina to Fox News playing on the half-muted television in the family room. They talked about weekend plans and when the cake needed to be ordered for Charley’s upcoming first birthday. Gina talked and Anton responded, mostly in mumbled “yeahs” or “uh huhs,” his eyes locked on the television. Gina had been through the night-before-trial ritual enough times to know when Anton was in the zone.

He took Charley through the formalities of bedtime. He gave her a bath and put on a fresh diaper and her Little Mermaid jammies. He let Samson out and locked up the house, giving Gina a much-deserved night off.

He prepared a bottle and brought Charley into her room. She rubbed her eyes with her balled fists, wormed and writhed in Anton’s arms. He turned on the nightlight, casting a faux star field across the ceiling, and sat in the rocking chair in the corner. She drained half the bottle before her hands went slack and it fell on the floor.

He kissed his daughter on the head, her wispy baby hair tickling his nose. He loved its smell, like honey.

He relished in the quiet and comfort of her room, although the tranquility—as it had been for nearly eleven years, but more so lately—was short lived. His mind began to wander.

Any doubts he had about a connection between the crash on the Beeline, Lola Munson, and Daniella, were gone. The same cryptic tattoo embedded in the skin of four people. Could Mandy have been right?

Had they all been survivors of a wilderness camp in Flagstaff?

To hell and back in the mountains?

As he got up to put Charley down in her crib, his cell phone lit up and vibrated on her nightstand. He checked the screen.

It was Daniella.

In just a few hours it all becomes real.

CHAPTER 47

By noon they had their jury.

Judge Morales had given everyone an hour and a half for lunch. By 1:30, the jurors were back and seated in the jury box. Unless the charge carried the possibility of the death penalty, all Florida juries consist of six members. Of the six that would decide the case, there were four women and two men. Of the women, two were Hispanic, one was Anglo, and one was Haitian-American. Their ages ranged from twenty-one to sixty-four; their occupations included a graduate student, a retiree, a fourth-grade teacher, and a medical assistant. Three of them had children; one had grandchildren. Of the men, one was a forty-six-year-old welder from Cutler Bay, born and raised in Miami-Dade County, both parents born in Cuba. He was divorced and had two teenage sons. The other was a twenty-eight-year-old black man who worked for his family’s garment business in Miami Shores. He was not married and had no children.

The two alternates were a middle-aged woman and a young man who had recently graduated from Miami-Dade College.

Judge Morales had given both the state and defense leeway in questioning members of the forty-person venire; however, in consideration of protecting her record, Morales had conducted a thorough
voir dire
of her own prior to turning the floor over to the attorneys. By the time Sylvia and Anton got up to question the panel, most of the obvious cause challenges had already been identified.