Detective (45 page)

"Yes, I do." Ainslie remembered
Medgar Evers, the civil rights
activist of the 1960s, a World War
II U.S.

DETECTIVE 375

Army veteran who was shot and killed
by a renegade white segregationist,
now serving a life sentence for his
crime.

"Are you related?" he asked.

"Distantly, I think. Anyway, if one
of my children is a boy, I've decided
to call him Medgar."

"And if there's a girl, you could
call her Myrlie." Ainslie had once
met the former wife of Evers, now as
Myrlie Evers-Williams chairperson of
the NAACP board of directors.

"I hadn't thought of that."
Serafine smiled again. "Maybe I
will."

Ainslie thought back to his
conversation with Felicia Davanal, in
which she had revealed that Byron
received a quarter of a million
dollars annually, plus a luxurious
life, for, in effect, doing nothing.
And then her impatient words: For
this family, that kind of money's
petty cash.

He told Lisa, "Here's my advice.
Ask for two hundred thousand dollars
a year until the twins are twenty,
half to be paid to Serafine for
living expenses, the rest to be in
trust for the children's education,
and her present son . . ."

"Dana."

"There should be room for Dana's
education in there, too. Stay with
that figure, and if Haversham's which
really means the Davanals refuses or
tries to bargain, tell them to forget
the oath and the sperm bank, and
you'll take the case to court,
Davanal name and all."

"I like the way your mind works,"
Lisa said. Then, doubtfully, "Though
it's a long way from what was of-
fered."

"Do it," Ainslie said. "Oh, and if
you want, try to convey to Mrs.
Davanal that the settlement idea came
from me. It might help."

Lisa regarded him steadily, but
merely nodded and said, "Thank you."

376 Arthur Halley

. . .

Forty-eight hours later, Ainslie was
at home when Lisa Kane telephoned.
Her voice was breathless. "I can
hardly believe it! I'm with
Serafine, and I've just had word
from Haversham's. They've accepted
everything: no changes, no argument,
just the way I no! . . . just the
way you proposed."

"I'm sure the way you handled it "

Lisa wasn't listening. "Serafine
told me to say she thinks you're
wonderful. So do I!"

"Do you know, by chance, if Mrs.
Davanal "

"Mike Jaffrus at Haversham's
phoned her with your message, and
she sent one back. She wants to see
you. Said you should call her house
to fix a meeting." Lisa's voice
changed, her curiosity too much to
contain. "Is there some thing going
on between you two?"

Ainslie laughed. "Beyond a little
cat-and-mouse game nothing."

"One thing I've learned from this
experience," Felicia Davanal said,
"is not to be indiscreet when
talking with a savvy detective,
especially if he was once a priest.
It can really cost you."

She was with Malcolm Leslie in the
same drawing room where they had met
originally. This time, though, he
was in a comfortable armchair that
matched the one in which Felicia
sat, only a few feet away. She was
as lovely as before, though more
relaxed, obviously because Byron's
death was no longer a mystery with
unanswered questions hanging between
them.

"It sounds as if you've done some
digging,'' Ainslie said.

DETECTIVE 377

"My TV station has an efficient
research department." "Well, I hope
they made sure there's enough petty
cash to handle the settlement."

"Touche!" She leaned back and
laughed. "Malcolm if I may call you
that I'm getting to like you more and
more." She paused, then went on, "The
report I read about you was highly
complimentary. It made me wonder."

"Wonder what, Mrs. Davanal?"

"Felicia please! "

He inclined his head in
acknowledgment. Instinct told him
where this conversation was going,
and he was uncertain how to handle
it.

"I wonder why you're still a
policeman when you're so clearly
qualified to be something more."

"I like being a cop." Then, after a
moment's hesitation, "Felicia."

"That's absurd! You're highly
educated, a scholar with a doctorate.
You wrote a book on comparative
religions that is still a standard
reference . . ."

"I was coauthor, and it's a long time
ago."

Felicia waved a hand dismissively
and continued, "Everything shows
you're a thinking person. Anyway, I
have a suggestion. Why don't you join
the Davanal organization?"

He was startled. "In what capacity?"

"Oh, I don't know exactly; I
haven't consulted anyone yet. But we
always have a need for outstanding
people, and if you chose to join us,
something matching your abilities
could be found." A soft smile
accompanied the words, then Felicia
reached forward, putting her
fingertips on Ainslie's hands. As she
moved them slightly, her touch was
like gossamer, subtly conveying a
promise. "I'm sure that whatever was
worked out, it would bring you and me

378 Arthur Halley

closer." She moistened her lips with
her tongue. "If that would interest
you."

Yes, it interested him; he was
human, Ainslie thought. He felt a
mental and physical stirring as
temptation beckoned. Then pragmatism
prodded. He recalled Beth Embry's
words: Felicia eats men. . . If she
fancies the taste of you, she'll try
again. . . a queen bee with a sting.

Sting or not, it would be exciting
to be devoured by Felicia, and drown
in her honey perhaps worth whatever
outcome followed. Ainslie had had
one affair that he did not regret
even now, despite the penalties of
Cynthia's malice. Where passion was
involved, conventional morality
often took second place; his hours
of listening in the confessional had
demonstrated that. In his own case,
though, he reasoned, the episode
with Cynthia had been enough. With
Karen now pregnant with their second
child, this was no time to start
dancing to Felicia's wild tune.

He reached out, touching her hand,
as she had his. "Thank you, and I
may regret this. But I'll let things
stay the way they are."

Felicia had style. She stood,
still smiling, and put out her hand
formally. "Who knows?" she said.
"Some other time our paths may
cross."

Driving back to Homicide, Ainslie
reminded himself that the
atfaire-Davanal, apart from
postscripts, had lasted only seven
days. It seemed much longer. He was
impatient now to hear Ruby Bowe's
report.

11

It took Bowe exactly eleven days to
determine whether or not Elroy Doil
had been telling the truth during
his "confession" to Malcolm Ainslie.
Until that eleventh day, the crucial
questions remained: Had Doil
murdered the Esperanzas in the way
he claimed? And had he murdered the
Ikeis?

Even if the answers to both
questions were yes, there would, of
course, still persist the most
critical question: If everything
Doil had said about the Esperanzas
and Ikeis was true, had he also been
truthful in his vehement assertion
that he did not murder Miami City
Commissioner Gustav Ernst and his
wife, Eleanor? And if Doil was even-
tually believed about that, was there
another murderer a copycat
killer still at large?

Bowe had begun her search at the
Metro-Dade Police Department Miami's
neighboring force in their imposing
building on Northwest 25th Street.
She asked if the investigator who
had handled the Esperanza double
murder case seventeen years earlier
was still available.

"Before my time here," a lieutenant
in Homicide told

380 Arthur Halley

her. He reached behind his desk to
a shelf of indexed volumes. "Let's
see what we have." Then, after
turning pages, "Yep, here it is.
Esperanza, Clarence and Florentina,
case unsolved, still officially
open. Are you guys going to close it
for us, Detective?"

"Looks like we might, sir. But
first I'd like to talk with whoever
was in charge."

The lieutenant referred to the
page in front of him. "Was Archie
Lewis, retired six years ago, lives
in Georgia somewhere. It's a Cold
Case Squad affair now you people
have one of those, right?"

"Yes, we do."

The Cold Case Squad dealt with
old, unsolved serious crimes,
especially homicides, which nowadays
were being reinvestigated with the
aid of new technologies used to
review bygone records and evidence.
Police departments with such squads
were surprisingly successful in
solving crimes that their
perpetrators hoped had been
forgotten long ago.

"We rotate those cold cases around
the squad members," the lieutenant
said. "Right now the Esperanzas be-
long to Vic Crowley."

Detective Crowley, who appeared
soon after, was balding and amiable.
"I went through that old file," he
told Ruby. "Figured there was
nothing we could work on. Dead as
the Esperanzas."

"It may still be." Bowe explained
how Elroy Doll had confessed to the
Esperanza killings before his
execution, though the truth was
still in doubt. "I'd like to look at
the reports in your file and see if
there's anything to support Doil's
story."

"Then what? You gonna disinter the
guy and charge him? Oh well, I guess
you got reasons. Let's do some
digging ourselves."

DETECTIVE 381

Crowley led the way to a storeroom
where the Esperanza file, faded with
age and bulging, was in the second
cabinet he tried. Returning to his
desk, the detective spread out the
file's contents and after a few
minutes announced, "Here's what you
want, I think." He passed over an of-
ficial Offense-Incident Report form,
which Bowe studied, turning pages.

On the third page she found it a
property department receipt for
evidence collected at the
double-homicide scene, which included
"Money clip, gold color, initials
HB." An investigator's report on a
subsequent page recorded that the
clip had probably been dropped by the
murderer, since the initials did not
match those of either victim, and the
next of kin a nephew told police he
had not seen the money clip before.

"That has to be the one," she
informed Crowley. "Doll told Sergeant
Ainslie that he got it in another
robbery, then Missed it after he ran
from the Esperanzas'."

"You wanna see the real thing? I
guess it's still in Property."

"I guess I'd better. If I don't,
somebody's sure to ask why I didn't."

"Don't they always?"

Crowley made a copy of the property
report for Ruby, then led the way out
of doors to a large separate
building the Property Department,
where a crowded series of vaults and
secure rooms contained the detritus
of countless crimes.

With surprising speed, two dusty
boxes of evidence in the
seventeen-year-old murder case were
located, and when the first box was
unsealed, a gleaming money clip was
visible inside a plastic bag.
Examining it more closely, Ruby saw
the engraved monogram HB. "Hasn't
tarnished,

382 Arthur Halley

so haste be real gold," Crowley
said. "Wonder who the 'HB' guy was."

"That," Ruby said, "is what I need
to find out next."

Metro-Dade Criminal Records was in
another section of the main police
building. Here crime reports from
Dade County's twenty-seven
municipalities, ranging over the
past twenty years, were stored.
Recent records were computerized,
older ones were on microfilm. Like
the rest of Metro-Dade's
headquarters, the offices were
clean, welllit, and modern.

Ruby Bowe had brought with her a
note of Elroy Doil's tape-recorded
confession, in which, referring to
the money clip, he said, "Got it in
a robbery, couple months before I
knocked off them slants."

She decided to begin her search of
robbery records three months before
the Esperanzas' murders, which
occurred on July 12, 1980.

"Do you have any idea what you're
taking on?" a records clerk asked
when Ruby told her. "You could be
here for weeks." She held up a
single microfilm cassette. "In
there, from 1980, are one day's
Offense-Incident Reports for
Dade about fifteen hundred pages on
film, including robbery, burglary,
auto theft, rape, battery,
alarms you name it! So for three
months of reports you'd be looking
at about thirty thousand pages."

"Can't the robberies be separated?"

"Nowadays, by computer, they can.
The ancient stuff on microfilm no
way."

Ruby sighed. "However long it
takes, there's a robbery case I have
to find."

"Good luck," the woman wished her.
"Dade County has an average of
seventeen thousand robberies a
year."

DETECTIVE 383

. . .

As the hours passed, Ruby's eyes
grew weary. She was seated in the
Criminal Records main office, facing
a stateof-the-art Canon
Microprinter, which both read
microfilm and made printed copies if
needed. The microfilmed pages were
copies of standard police
forms Offense-Incident Reports. The
standardization made scanning faster
because at the top of each form was
"Type of Incident," and only when
this showed "Robbery" did Ruby pause
to view the whole page quickly.
Slightly lower was "Nature of Of-
fense," and when this read "Armed
Robbery" she paid extra attention,
believing Elroy Doil was more likely
to have committed that type of
crime. A further item was "Property
Taken," and if no money clip was
listed as had been true in every
case so far Ruby moved on.

The remainder of the first day
produced nothing, and in late
afternoon Ruby quit after arranging
to resume her search the following
morning.