Cut and Run (25 page)

Horatio stopped, put the photos down. “Wait a minute. There
is
something missing here…something you'd expect to find in a hot-air balloon.”

“What, H?”

Horatio smiled. “The murder weapon. Only that's not what it would have looked like to Timothy Breakwash…what's one of the main reasons people go up in balloons?”

“The view,” said Calleigh. She saw Horatio's point an instant later, and a smile blossomed on her face as understanding did the same behind it. “A view that extends a long way in every direction. You'd want something to bring parts of it into better focus.”

“So you carry binoculars,” said Horatio.

 

The simulation wasn't hard to rig. Calleigh set up her own basket in the ballistics lab, with a dummy standing in it. The other part took her a little longer, but not nearly as long as Horatio would have guessed.

“Okay,” said Calleigh. “Timothy Breakwash would have been standing. He spots something on the ground far enough away that he wants a better look.” She pulled up a microphone stand on wheels with a pair of binoculars clamped to the top, making sure the eyepieces lined up with the dummy's head. “He looks through them, but something's wrong. One of the lenses seems to be blocked. Without even thinking about it, he does the first thing anyone does; he fiddles with the focus knob in the middle.”

Calleigh stood to one side and put on a pair of protective headphones, while Horatio did the same. Then she picked up a six-foot-long stick with some cloth wrapped around the end and used the padded surface to carefully nudge the focus knob a few degrees to the left.

Blam!

The ballistic dummy jerked backward and fell over, coming to rest with its back leaning against the far edge of the basket. The binoculars shot backward on their wheeled stand, spinning at the same time.

Horatio took off his ear protectors. “And that's how you fake a suicide in midair. You plant the note beforehand, then get the victim to shoot himself in the head.”

“It wasn't hard to build, either.” Calleigh walked over to the mounted binoculars and undid the clamp holding them in place. “I hollowed out one side and mounted a spring-loaded striker with a single twenty-two cartridge in a short length of pipe—basically a zip gun. A little bit of fishing line wrapped around the focus knob tied to a stick holding the spring in place, and that's it. One shot straight through the eye.”

“And the recoil sends the murder weapon into the swamp below.” Horatio nodded. “Okay. Now we know how it was done. But we still don't know who did it.”

“Or why. Presumably it has something to do with Rodriguo's treasure, which makes our two prime suspects the two people who knew Timothy had found it.”

“But we also know that neither Randilyn or Fredo knows the location of the treasure—Fredo wouldn't have tortured Randilyn if he knew, and she would have given him the information if she had it.”

Calleigh paced around the basket, her brow furrowed in thought. “So either Randilyn is a lot tougher than we thought—or she knows the location, told Fredo, and lied about it afterward.”

“I don't think so,” Horatio said quietly. “The torture went on for a long time, which means either she didn't talk or she couldn't—which means neither of them know where the treasure is.”

“And therefore neither of them would kill the only person who did. There's only one possibility I'm seeing, Horatio.”

He nodded. “There must be another partner. That person must know where the treasure is, and eliminated Breakwash to keep it to themselves.”

“Which brings us back to Joel Greer, Lee Kwok, or Sylvester Perrone.”

“Yes. I think maybe we need to take a closer look at all three—specifically in the areas of treasure hunting and gunsmithing. See if any of them has any diving experience, or has rented any heavy equipment recently—winches, flotation tanks, anything to do with salvage.”

“I'm on it.”

 

“Mister Perrone,” said Horatio. “I was wondering if I could have a word.”

Sylvester Perrone looked up from his clipboard. He stood beside a rectangular concrete tank, the lip around two feet off the ground, one of dozens arranged in a grid. Each was about twice the size of a child's wading pool, and Horatio could see the silver flicker of fish beneath the surface.

“Lieutenant Caine,” Perrone said, his voice friendly. “Is the word one I'll like hearing?”

“That depends. How do you feel about murder?”

Perrone's sunny smile faded away. “What? You don't think I had anything to do with what happened to Tim, do you?”

“What I know, Mister Perrone, is that the first time I talked to you you tried to mislead me. I would advise against doing it now.”

“Look, I told you—I was just trying to keep a lid on any rumors that would hurt my business. I was up-front about everything else, including what I told you about Tim.”

Horatio put his hands on his hips. “What you didn't mention was how badly Sweetbright Aquaculture is doing financially. You're about to go under, Mister Perrone—unless you get a sudden and extremely large influx of cash.”

Perrone's eyes hardened. “That's not going to happen, Lieutenant. I built Sweetbright myself, from the ground up, and I'm not giving up without a fight.”

“No matter who gets in your way?”

“The only people getting in my way are my creditors, and I don't think killing them off would do me any good. Neither, for that matter, would killing Tim.”

“Not because of
Pfiesteria
infection, no. All of Tim's data indicated he hadn't found any signs of contamination, and I don't think he was planning on blackmailing you—Timothy had his own plans for getting rich.”

Perrone snorted. “Tim didn't have plans—he had dreams. Wild, unrealistic dreams about striking it rich overnight with some grandiose scheme. He was a nice guy, but I can't say I had a lot of respect for him. You know what his biggest problem was? He refused to consider the possibility of failure. I don't just mean he was optimistic, I mean he had this kind of mental block—like if he admitted that something could go wrong, then it would. He was so afraid of the downside of any project he'd just pretend it didn't exist. You can't run a business like that.”

“You sound somewhat bitter, Mister Perrone.”

“Do I?” Perrone shook his head. “Just frustrated, I guess. It takes a lot of hard work to succeed, and I've put in my years. I didn't just quit the first time something went wrong, and I've always tried to stay aware of any potential problems before they happened. In the end, it looks like my way of doing things might not be any more successful than Tim's.”

“I can see how that would be infuriating, Mister Perrone. Especially if Timothy's methods proved, in the end, to bear fruit.”

Perrone looked confused. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Mister Perrone, that Timothy Breakwash discovered something. Something important.”

“What, you mean one of his crazy ideas finally paid off?”

“It did—and it's why he was killed. But the discovery I was referring to wasn't what Timothy found, it's what he learned.” Horatio took out his sunglasses, unfolded the arms slowly. “That if you chase a dream long enough, sometimes you can catch it. Unfortunately, somebody else wanted that dream badly enough to commit murder. Someone who needed money. Someone with a grudge.”

“Meaning me? That's insane.”

“Is it? I understand you recently purchased some salvage equipment, specifically a barge with a heavy-duty winch. An odd—and expensive—choice for a businessman facing bankruptcy.”

Perrone shook his head in annoyance and glanced down at his clipboard. “That's what I am, Lieutenant, a businessman. And that's what that purchase was—a business expense. I got it for a song from an associate, and in my line of work I can write off a boat at tax time. I plan on selling it for a profit after that, and I've already got someone lined up. There's nothing illegal about any of that.”

“Illegal, no.” Horatio slipped on his sunglasses. “Suspicious, yes. I'll be in touch, Mister Perrone.”

 

Calleigh stood three paces behind the man with the gun. She was sure he hadn't heard her approach.

He spun around quickly when she touched his shoulder, but didn't point his weapon at her. She smiled and showed him her ID, then waited for him to remove the bright orange ear protectors he wore. “Mister Kwok? I'm CSI Calleigh Duquesne. I believe you talked with my boss earlier?”

Lee Kwok glanced around the shooting range as if he expected to see Horatio lurking somewhere in the background, then said, “Uh, yes, I did. What can I do for you?”

“Why don't we go somewhere we can talk? A gun range isn't really the best place for a conversation.”

“Sure. They've got a lounge, we can talk there.”

The lounge was called the Shootin' Gallery, and had the brightly lit, oak-and-brick look of an English pub that had wandered into the wrong country. Calleigh pulled up a wooden chair at a small, round table and motioned for Kwok to join her. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with the name of some research conference on it, and looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“I—uh, I'm not sure what this is about,” he said as he sat down. “I thought I already cleared everything up with Lieutenant Caine.”

“This is just a follow-up visit,” Calleigh said cheerfully. “You know, like going to the doctor. Just making sure we didn't miss anything the first time.”

“Oh. I see.”

Calleigh pulled out a notebook and consulted it. “So, Mister Kwok. You and Timothy Breakwash went to school together?”

“Yes. I'm still working on my Ph.D.”

“Okay. I understand that when Timothy needed access to some equipment, you helped him out?”

“I didn't think I was doing anything wrong.”

“No, of course not. Just a favor for a friend—we all do it. Even police officers.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back tentatively.

“Beyond that, you saw him socially, too, right? You two hung around together occasionally?”

“Not very often. I had a beer with him now and then.”

“Did you ever shoot together? Here, maybe?”

“No. I don't think Tim was much for guns. He owned one—a twenty-two, I think—but I doubt he ever even fired it.”

The waiter showed up and took their orders. Kwok had an imported beer, Calleigh a club soda. She took a sip and then asked, “Mister Kwok, I understand your own experience with firearms is a little more extensive.”

Kwok shrugged. “It's my hobby. I own quite a few.”

“Is that so?” Calleigh let her smile get a little warmer. “I have quite an extensive collection myself. You ever hit any of the gun shows?”

“Oh, sure. I always hit the Southern Classic at the Dade County Fairgrounds. Picked up some nice pieces there.”

“I like the Suncoast shows, myself. They've got some good older stuff.”

They talked guns for a while, until Calleigh could see she'd gained Kwok's respect. Then she casually asked, “You know one of the things I find really interesting? Homemade firearms. You know, the ones that show real ingenuity.”

“Oh, you mean guns built into canes, that kind of thing?”

“All sorts of objects. I've even seen guns built into remote controls—you know, the kind on a key chain you use to set your car alarm?”

“Wow, that's pretty small.” Kwok grinned. “Of course, the scientific principle behind a gun is pretty basic. All you really need is a bullet, a barrel, a propellant, and something to set it off.”

“Ever made anything yourself?”

“Me? When I was younger, sure. Cobbled together a zip gun out of an old piece of lead pipe, a shotgun shell, and some surgical tubing—the elastic kind they use for slingshots. Almost blew my own hand off.”

“Well, I hope you're more careful these days.”

“Don't worry, I am.”

“I'm not the worrying type, Mister Kwok,” said Calleigh. “I've found that sooner or later, things have a tendency to work themselves out.”

“You believe in karma?”

Calleigh finished her drink and got to her feet. The smile she gave Kwok was just a touch cooler than before. “No. Justice.”

“W
E NEED TO FIND
those binoculars,” said Calleigh. She spread out a gridded map on the light table of the Everglades area she'd already searched.

Horatio bent over it, touched one point with a finger. “This is where you encountered Fredo Bolivar?”

“Yes. You think he was there to recover the murder weapon?”

“No, I think he was there looking for the treasure. He might have been tracking the balloon from the ground and trying to figure out what his partner knew but hadn't told him.”

“Not a bad plan—unless Breakwash knew he was being tracked and was trying to throw him off the trail.”

Horatio straightened up. “We don't have the balloon's flight plan, but there must be a more accurate way to track the path it followed.”

“If Breakwash had used a cell phone instead of a radio, we might have been able to use GPS—actually, many balloonists now carry a GPS transponder. But FAA regs don't insist on it, and apparently neither did Tim Breakwash.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Horatio thoughtfully. “If you were searching for a site on the ground you wanted to be able to find later, you'd need accurate coordinates. Maybe the binoculars aren't the only thing missing from the balloon.”

“In that case, the transponder should have been in the basket when the balloon crashed.”

“Unless it was removed,” said Horatio. “And there's only one person who could have done that…”

 

Horatio was waiting outside the hospital room when an upset-looking Joel Greer came out—so upset, in fact, that he walked right past Horatio without seeing him.

“Joel,” said Horatio.

The young man stopped and looked back. “Lieutenant Caine,” he said. He tried to smile. “I didn't notice you there.”

“But I noticed you. Here to see Mrs. Breakwash?”

“Yeah. She—she needs her friends right now. After everything she's gone through.”

“That's true. But you and Randilyn are more than just friends—aren't you, Joel?”

“What?”

Horatio took a step forward. “I took a look at your phone records, Joel. You and Randilyn spend a lot of time talking to each other.”

“Well, of course we do. I worked for the Breakwashes. If I couldn't reach Tim I'd phone his wife's cell.”

“At three
A.M.
? I don't think so, Joel. You don't have a forty-five-minute conversation with the boss's wife in the middle of the night unless you're talking about a lot more than work.”

Fear flashed across Joel's face and was replaced by defiance. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I admit it. Me and Randy are in love. She'd had enough of Tim's get-rich-quick ideas—she wanted someone she could count on.”

“Count on to do
what,
Joel?”

“To be there for her. Tim took her for granted—he didn't understand how hard it was for her. He was always wrapped up in his own little world, off in the clouds.”

“And you,” said Horatio, “were down on the ground with his wife.”

“She deserved better, Lieutenant.”

“Most of us do, Joel. The question is, how far are we willing to go to get it?”

“I didn't kill Tim.”

“Maybe not. But you did steal the GPS transponder from the balloon after it crashed.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Good question. Maybe because you knew about the treasure, and thought the transponder would tell you where it was. Maybe because you knew the transponder could lead us to the weapon that killed your boss. Or maybe just because someone told you to…but that doesn't really matter right now. What matters now is that I know you have it—and I want it.”

“I don't—”

Horatio reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “This is a warrant to search your vehicle and residence, Joel. I'm betting I find what I'm looking for.”

Defeat registered in Joel's eyes. “And if—if you do?”

“Then our next conversation,” said Horatio, “won't be quite as pleasant.”

 

They found the GPS transponder in a desk drawer in Joel Greer's small apartment, and took Greer into custody. Horatio sent the transponder to the AV lab; Cooper was able to pull coordinates for Timothy Breakwash's last journey off it, finally giving them a definite flight path to follow. The murder weapon was still missing, but now they had a much better idea of where it might be. Horatio made some calls and prepared to return to the swamp.

A few hours later at the edge of the Everglades, Horatio surveyed his troops. They consisted of twenty police academy cadets, plus Calleigh, Wolfe, and Delko. “Okay. I know some of you have been out here before, without any success. We're going to try again, and this time we know exactly what we're looking for: a pair of binoculars. Our previous calculations of the search area were off by nearly twenty percent, which means most of the ground you'll be covering will be new. Stay alert, keep an eye out for snakes and gators, and be aware that there may be others searching for the same thing we are. Eric, you'll be coordinating any water searches that have to be made; Mister Wolfe, you're with me. Calleigh's the primary—anything you find, report to her.”

Wolfe walked over as the searchers dispersed. “What do you need, H?”

“Thank you for lending a hand, Mister Wolfe. I'll let you get back to your own investigation shortly.”

Wolfe shrugged. “Glad to help. Delko and I are kind of stuck at the moment, anyway—maybe this'll shake something loose.”

“You never can tell, Mister Wolfe, you never can tell…Calleigh and Eric can handle the swamp search. I need you to check on something else for me.”

“Okay—but why me?”

Horatio smiled. “Because it's a job that requires obsessive attention to detail. While Calleigh could certainly handle it, I need her in the field—and sometimes, you have to play to your team's strengths.”

“I'm flattered—I think. What's the job?”

“I need you to go through every website Timothy Breakwash had bookmarked and look through all his paperwork and reference material. If he could find Rodriguo's treasure, then so can we.”

Wolfe nodded. “Re-create his research, and hopefully come to the same conclusion. Like staging a re-enactment of a crime scene.”

“Exactly, Mister Wolfe. Because whoever killed Timothy Breakwash is going to be headed for the site he discovered…and I intend to be there to greet them.”

 

“So Wolfe gets to do research,” Delko grumbled, “while we have to search a swamp. Figures.”

“Oh, come on, Eric,” said Calleigh. She was a few steps behind him, applying some extra mosquito repellent as she walked. “It's not so bad. You've got me for company, right?”

Delko smiled ruefully. “Yeah, I guess. At least I don't have to lug all my equipment by myself.”

“Eric Delko. I am
not
a pack horse.”

“No, that's the cadet's responsibility—yours is to keep them in line.”

“So I'm a cowgirl?”

“I'll get you a hat and some boots.”

“Just make sure they match. I hate leading a roundup in the wrong accessories.”

He laughed. “All right, I'll quit complaining.”

She grinned and rubbed some bug repellent on her throat. “At least you get to spend some time in the water, away from Florida's national bird.”

“You think the mosquitoes are bad? Try leeches. Not to mention water moccasins, snapping turtles, and the occasional alligator.”

“I thought you said you weren't going to complain anymore.”

“That wasn't a complaint. That was my job description.”

The heat was brutal. Swarms of gnats hovered around their heads like a haze of smoke, and the air seemed thick and heavy. The humid, rotting smell of vegetation was so strong Delko thought he could taste it as well as smell it. Even the sounds of the Everglades seemed slow and hypnotic, a buzzing, sloshing melody only occasionally punctuated by the shrill cry of a bird or animal.

It wasn't long before they came to the first deep pool and Eric had to suit up. He knew visibility would be poor, but he'd be relying more on his waterproofed metal detector than his eyes.

“Keep an eye out for gators,” he told Calleigh as he slipped on his mask.

“Got you covered,” she answered, patting her sidearm. Normally Delko would have preferred his spotter to carry a rifle—but if Calleigh thought she was carrying enough stopping power for a large, hungry lizard, Delko knew better than to argue.

He bit down on his mouthpiece and waded in.

Horatio had his own task to accomplish.

He hadn't confronted Randilyn at the hospital when he'd spoken to Joel Greer, because according to the nurse on duty she was heavily sedated and only semiconscious. But that's where he was headed now, because Randilyn Breakwash was the one piece of the puzzle he couldn't quite figure out.

He mulled it over as he drove. She clearly had a great deal of resentment toward her deceased husband, but that didn't mean she'd killed him; Horatio would have been more suspicious if she'd appeared overcome with remorse. Instead, she seemed angry that Timothy had died, a much more honest response that Horatio had seen many times before. Survivors were often angry; angry at the victim for leaving them, angry at themselves for all the things they never said or did. Angry they couldn't save the one they loved, or even angry they didn't get to end the life of someone they hated.

A lot of that anger was frequently misplaced guilt, and Randilyn certainly had reason to feel that.
The question is,
Horatio thought,
what is it she's guilty of? An affair with another man, or the death of her husband?

He kept coming back to the torture. It seemed to him that it proved conclusively that neither Randilyn nor Fredo could be the killer. Such an extreme act wouldn't be undertaken unless absolutely necessary; the fact that Fredo had gone to such lengths meant he didn't know where the treasure was, and Randilyn's injuries were horrifying enough to convince Horatio she would have talked if she could have.

Maybe one of them killed Timothy because they thought they
knew
the location of the treasure, but were then proven wrong?
Horatio considered the idea—then rejected it. While Tim might have been smart enough to set up a decoy, the killer was too careful to fall for such a trap; the elaborate method of the murder proved that. Whoever had killed Timothy Breakwash was a thorough planner.

That left Joel Greer, Lee Kwok, and Sylvester Perrone. The first was sleeping with the victim's wife, the second had experience with firearms and science, the third needed the money and had access to salvage equipment.
Which one is the third partner?

He didn't know. He suspected that neither Fredo Bolivar nor Randilyn Breakwash knew either, but it was possible Randilyn had information she didn't know was valuable. Horatio intended to confront her about her affair with Joel Greer and see if he could learn anything new.

He thought about all the suffering Fredo Bolivar had put Randilyn through, trying to get her to give information she didn't have. Bolivar hadn't realized one of the truths Horatio lived with every day: Getting the answers you needed wasn't so much a matter of how you asked, but of choosing the right questions in the first place.

 

“Questions, questions, questions,” Wolfe muttered to himself. “Too many questions…”

He was at a workstation in the layout room. The light table behind him was piled high with books, stacks of file folders and magazines, all of it from Timothy Breakwash's study. Wolfe had spent the first hour just dividing it into different categories, and now he was doing the same for the computer files.

He was looking through Breakwash's emails at the moment. The man seemed to have corresponded with hundreds of people on all sorts of topics, but Wolfe was concentrating on the last six months and anything that might be connected to Rodriguo's treasure: missing Cuban art, smuggling stories, information on plane crashes in Florida. There was a ton of material to go through, but he finally hit gold when he noticed a bunch of emails from one particular edress, [email protected]. They'd carried on a lengthy correspondence concerning Rodriguo, a subject swamphunter seemed to know a lot about: