Carolina Rain (27 page)

She sighed. “See that light coming through the left corner of the door jamb? That just might mean someone’s behind the door. Besides, you NEVER walk past a door that might give you something you didn’t have before. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am. I
—
”

The door swung open and an older man with a shaved head and large paunch covered
—
almost
—
with a sweat-stained tee shirt and
leather
tool belt sized them up, mumbling under his breath. He smelled like he hadn’t taken a bath in a month. Somehow, Sophie knew that was
about
right.

“What do y’all want? I’m fixin’ to go home and they don’t pay me no freaking overtime,” he growled. “I spent enough
hours
in this hole for a day. Especially with the killin’ thing downstairs.”

“Well
,
nice to see that good old Southern hospitality hasn’t been lost somewhere in the twenty
-
first century,” said Sophie, showing him her credentials.

“What the hell’s that? Your green card? I ain’t got my readin’ glasses on.”

“Okay, dumbs
hit. We’ll do it your way. I’m with the FBI and this gentleman is with the New Hanover Sheriff’s Department. I’m not here for any sarcastic bullshit unless I dish it out. Got it?”

The man’s mouth dropped open and she could see, even in the dim light, his face turning red. “Sorry
,
Miss. I didn’t know who ya were. My name’s Moss Jackson. What can I do fer ya?”

“Good answer, Moss. I want to know if you saw anyone come or go from that room where we found the body today, say around noon?”

He shook his head
and started
talking, his hands coming along for the ride. “I didn’t see no one. I mean it gets kind of busy here around noon until two or so. Lots of people park down the street there and do their best to sneak to where they be headin’. After a while they all look the same to me.”

“I see. So this is kind of a
getaway for a quickie at lunch
place?”

“I s
’
pose so.
I don’t really care. It’s a pay
check
for me
. Not too awful of a big one but I can eat on it. Besides, didn’t y’all check with the front desk to see who rented that
Godforsaken
room?”

“We did, and the man, this
Daryl
Winters, rented it for two days, asked for two keys, then walked away toward town. That’s all anyone can remember,” answered Sophie.

Detective Garcia step
ped
closer to the door. “We need you to think r
eal hard. It was probably a woma
n, good look
ing, not too big, maybe a blond
wearing something plain, black or gray, and carrying a bag.”

Watching the man’s face for even a twitch of response, she thought maybe she’d misjudged Garcia. That was a good question. Grays and blacks are the colors of choice when
people are trying to stay out of someone’s memory
,
and their killer had worn a blond wig on the video.

Moss rubbed his
stubble
and the odd look on his face told Sophie concentrating wasn’t one of the man’s strong suits
. A
t least he was trying. Finally, he tossed his hands in the air, his eyes weary and angry
.
“I got nothin’. I just don’t pay
no mind
to that shit no more. When I was younger, I was a hound. If’n she wiggled and walked, I was after it. But not no more. I’m
truly
sorry
,
Agent, I just can’t hep ya.”

“Fair enough. Here’s my card. If anything come
s
to you
,
call me, okay?”

“Will do. And sorry I couldn’t do no better.”

Shutting the door, she heard Moss turn the lock and she and Garcia headed for the next room.

“Nice try to get him to rethink his answer. There might be hope for your tall ass yet,” said Sophie.

“Thanks, Agent. I was trying to push his ‘man’ button. You never know.”

She
scowled
. “Man button, huh?”

“Yes. In case you hadn’t noticed, we think differently than women,” he smiled.

“Yeah, I get t
hat,” she said, absent
mindedly.

Striding to the railing extending the full length of the second floor veranda, she looked below and got an immediate, full view of the room where Aphrodite had gone to work. Along the edge
of the railing
were fresh gouge marks where someth
ing had scra
ped off what was left of the red paint. She worked her way down the railing and saw similar marks in several places.

Spinning around, Sophie
took five steps and pounded on Moss’s door again.

He answered much quicker this time. His irritation was unmist
aka
ble, even though he tried to hide it.

“Yes’m. I already told you I don’t know nothin'.”

“You did. I have a
nother question. The folks down
stairs said you don’t have any security system, including cameras, right?”

“Yep. I hear tell its bad for business if’n people know they could be on video some. So?”

“That makes sense. But I guess that wouldn’t stop you from picking out a few hotties during rush hour and taking pictures or even shooting a little video for your own entertainment pleasure, would it?”

“Lady, what the hell y’all talkin’ about?” asked Moss, his eyes darting to Garcia and back to her.

“I think a leopard never changes
his
spots. I think you work here for the fringe benefits. There’s paint on your leather belt. I think that’s from leaning over the railing so you can see what you can see and then use that little camera in the front pocket, the one with the hole about the size of a lens, to snap pictures and
,
better yet, to make your own movies.”

“
Yer
crazier than a
—
”

“Shut up. I’ll take it a step further. I’ll bet you got certain rooms you’ve created special access to
,
and let’s just say
,
have infringed on the guest’s privacy. Am I right? And I bet if we searched that maintenance room, and of course your home, we’d find a library that would make even me blush. Right again? Do you sell them to porn sites? Making a few bucks on the side?”

Moss looked around
as if
he w
ere
thinking of making a break for it, then must have realized how far he’d get. He bowed his head, shoulders slumping, and then looked Sophie in the face.

“I
. . .
no. It ain’t like that. I don’t do nothin’ with them photos or movies. I just watch ‘em when I’m
. . .
lonely. That’s all. I ain’t hurting nobody. I swear.”

Garcia already had his cuffs out and was reaching for Jackson’s arm. Sophie stopped him.

“Here’s the deal. I want video from that room today and anything else you took starting at
twelve noon
. Now.”

“That there room isn’t
. . .
well
,
I don’t have a hole for that one.”

He reached into his tool belt and handed Sophie the camera.
“
There might be something on there that could help y’all. About fifteen minutes in is a few clips of someone that might be like you said. But I ain’t sure.”

Tapping him on the face, Sophie shook her head. “Now that wasn’t so hard. The question is
:
what do we do with your ugly, perverted ass? You could go to jail for three
to
seven, if I remember correctly.”

“Look. I don’t want to do that. I’m an old man and that’d just about kill me. I didn’t mean no harm. They weren’t no kids or nothin’. That shit makes me sick. I just like what I like, is that so bad a thing?”

She was surprised by the wave of compassion she suddenly felt for Moss Jackson. She understood a thing or two about not being like everyone else. She wondered, getting right down to brass tacks, if he was that much different than most people
in this world
. He just had more balls. Besides, this case might be hard to try. They’d most likely need witnesses that would dispute whether he had their permission to be stars in their very own home movies and picture galleries. That didn’t seem like reality to her. But
. . .

“Here’s the deal. In one hour
,
I’m going to send two officers up to this room and see what they see. Then I’m going to send a patrol car to your house to check out your digs. If they don’t find anything, then I think we’re done here.”

“Really
,
Agent? You’d do that?”

Sophie smiled. “Hell no. You’re a sick bitch and need to be off the streets. Detective?”

Garcia slammed Jackson against the wall, cuffed him, and recited his rights as Sophie sprinted down the steps hoping against hope the video wasn’t a dead end.

CHAPTER-37

“Your
statement should be fairly obvious, but I sure as
h
ell don’t like the overtones because we’ve seen more than sick in our
world
,” said
Manny
.

Alex
stood, his knee popping
,
and reached to rub it with his left hand, never
giving
it a second thought. In that
moment
, Manny’s admiration for his friend grew
to a different level
. Alex was moving on and doing the best with what he had
,
prosthesis and all. Life never stopped teaching.

“We have no doubt about that and God knows I don’t want to see those
sick things you’re talking about
again
,
”
said Alex.

“Kind of in the wrong business for that to happen, Boss,” said Dean through his tangled beard.

“I can’t argue with that. Anyway, the tox reports Dean and I looked at were weird.
A
substance
was
taken from the first three victim’s lips. There was a strange arrangement of carbons, hydrogen, and sodium molecules that didn’t make sense. So we did some research and in the end thought the lab had made an error. I didn’t ha
ve them run it through the data
base because there had to be something goofy
about it
. That can happen if the spectrometer needs calibrating or the specimen was tainted during collection.”

“Okay, got you so far,” said Manny.

“The
tech
s in Quantico gave it another whirl and, you guessed it, the graph came back exactly like the first
. M
eanwhile
,
Dean had dug deeper and found a chemical analysis diagram that could have been what we were looking at
except
it was still not quite the same.”

“What did you find?”

Looking at Dean, Alex bowed and then pointed. “Dean?”

“Thank you, sir. The chemical makeup this substance most resembled was something called tetrodotoxin. It’s a paralytic shellfish poison, or PSP
,
derived from certain puffer fish or blue-ringed octopus.”

“So it causes paralysis?” asked Manny, running his hand through his hair.

“Very good. But wait. Remember, I didn’t find an exact match for the compound’s makeup. It had one less carbon and a couple more sodium molecules. So I searched the family tree and found something called saxitoxin, another PSP, with similar properties. It’s amazing that
—”

Manny raised his hand in the universal sign to stop
. “I need you to get to it. You can do chemistry class later.”

“Man, you’re such a kill
joy sometimes. Okay, bottom line. Our girl here combined, or had someone combine, both chemicals into one solution and that’s what we found on these men’s lips. It’s also the reason we
couldn’t locate it in our data
base. We’ve not encountered this before.”

“The autopsy reports for Morgan and Ginny’s husband said they died from a heart attack, not from the corkscrew in the chest
—
” started Manny.

Alex interrupted. “No
,
they died from respiratory failure
;
that’s different. I’ll be general because I don’t want you to have a freaking cow. These toxins attack the nervous system and block the sodium currents to the muscles causing a quick numbness then a progressive paralysis that can happen in as little as thirty seconds. One of these compounds can kill in just a few minutes
,
so no telling for sure what they can do mixed like this. The weird thing about these toxins, no matter if it takes a few minutes to kill you
,
or an hour
—or if
you recover, which some
people do
—
you lose all muscle function
. Anyway you cut it, you’ll
likely
be
fully conscious and can probably feel anything that is happening
to you,
physically.”