Garden of Evil (13 page)

Lottie was shooting pictures before the tide could obliterate the footprints and drag marks. I joined her and pressed my house key into her hand.

“You've got to do this for me,” I whispered. “The killer knows all about me. It's on the telephone tape, next to my bed. Go there now. Erase it. Make sure the whole thing is blank.”

“You sure?” Her honest brown eyes were troubled.

“Absolutely. I took notes. Erase it all. I'll tell 'em it was a mistake. Take Bitsy along. I'll say you took her home for me.”

“You got it.”

She stuffed my keys into the pocket of her jeans and took Bitsy's leash.

“And, Lottie,” I added, as she turned to go, “you can listen to it first.”

“I was gonna anyhow.” She trotted up the sand, Bitsy running to keep pace with her long legs.

There was a brief flurry of excitement when the lovers on the beach informed the cops about a strange woman they had seen, but it was me.

 

“What the hell's the matter with you? You trying to sabotage the entire case? Trying to win a Pulitzer at our expense?” Ojeda was steamed. “You shoulda called us first. You never, ever shoulda come out here alone. Now the Beach has screwed up the scene and we got the FBI homing in. What do you want to bet, when we track her down, they'll try to steal our arrest. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I did try to call you,” I said for the second time.

“I know. Dispatch dropped the ball at shift change. But that's no excuse….”

“I had to know,” I said. “I wasn't even sure there was a body. If so, he might still be alive. It seemed right at the time.”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn't. If we're going to cooperate on this,” he said, “you're not supposed to think. You call us and we tell you what to do. You got the tape?”

“Back at my apartment. She really got me rattled. Claimed to know where I live. I don't know if she was blowing smoke or not, but she even told me what kind of car I drive.”

He shot me a sharp look, his brow beaded with sweat. “How could she know that?”

“I don't know.”

“Something here you're not telling us?”

I shook my head.

He looked around. “Where'd your pooch go? I suppose he peed on the body too; everybody else did.” He stopped to glower at a Beach cop sipping a soft drink from a vending machine outside the cabanas. “Nice to know that if our victim and killer shared refreshments from that machine before things turned nasty, their prints are now obliterated.”

“She,” I said numbly. “Her name is Bitsy. She didn't pee on the body. She was Francie's.”

He gave a little nod of recognition. “I remember.”

“Lottie took her home for me.”

“To your place?”

“Yes.”

“So the killer may know your address and you send your friend there alone. Very nice. The redhead with the camera don't need any enemies as long as she's got you for a buddy. See?” He turned to his partner. “This is why amateurs should stay outa this business. Let's go get that tape.”

I promised the Beach cops I would come to the station shortly to make a statement.

 

Lottie answered my door all smiles. She had combed her hair and brewed coffee. Bitsy greeted the cops like long-lost friends and the atmosphere was cozy, until they played the tape and heard nothing but the hiss of the machine.

“You sure nobody was in here after you left?” Ojeda thundered.

“The dead bolt was locked when I got here,” Lottie said primly.

“I'd been sound asleep,” I explained, hoping to sound sincere. “I'd given up; I didn't think she'd call. I don't know, I must have pushed the wrong button. I could have sworn the tape was rolling. But don't worry, she said she'd call back, and my notes are still here.” Luckily, only I could decipher them. I read them a censored version and promised a transcript.

The pay phone down the street proved to be out of order, so she had not called from there. She doesn't know where I live, I thought, relieved.

“Probably trying to psych you out,” Ojeda said. “Every place on the beach has a pay phone down the block. She's being cute, but to be on the safe side we probably oughta move you outa here.”

I opted to stay, refusing to be run out of my own space.

“We can ask the Beach cops for a watch order,” Simmons said.

“Of course you know what that means,” Ojeda added. “You live or die on your own.” He ran his hand through his hair. “We need to know how she picked up that other stuff about you.”

Seated across from him at my dining room table, Lottie raised her hand like a schoolgirl.

“I think I know,” she said. “I'm sorry, Britt.”

We all stared.

“Who do we know,” she asked, her stricken eyes on mine, “that's been partying hard in South Beach for the past thirty-six hours and probably still is? Who do we
know who would spill his guts to some sexy stranger in a bar? Who do we know with diarrhea of the mouth and poor judgment to boot?”

“Who?” Ojeda and Simmons chorused.

“Tex,” Lottie and I said. “Tex O'Rourke.”

 

They found Tex facedown on the floor of his Sunny Isles motel room. He was alive but wished he wasn't. Still reeking of booze, he was suffering from the mother of all hangovers.

A leggy blonde passed out half naked on his bed woke up to drawn guns. A model from Amsterdam, she had a purse full of pot and a passport showing she'd arrived in the USA just two days earlier.

“Yellow Rose,” Tex moaned fondly, on seeing Lottie. He blinked and winced painfully. The two cops helped him to his feet as he studied the carpet beneath them, his handsome face bewildered. “I thought my back was to the wall,” he mumbled, “but that was the floor…”

He eased over to sit on the bed, wincing again when he saw it already occupied by the blonde model, who looked equally dazed.

“Who's that?” he croaked to Lottie. “Never saw her before in my life.”

“Sure,” she replied quietly. “You've gotta talk to these detectives, darlin'.” He focused on them, slowly, with great effort.

“You turned me in to the cops?” he asked in hurt disbelief.

“Tex, honey.” Her voice dripped syrup. “Now, why would I turn you in to the police? Bustin' up ain't no crime. No crime at all,” she said succinctly. “They just need to ask you about a woman.” She swallowed hard, struggling to keep it together.

“You're the only woman, darling. Whoops.” He lurched, unsteady, to his feet. “Got to go talk on the big
white telephone,” he mumbled, bouncing off the wall as he made his way into the bathroom.

Ojeda jerked his head at Simmons. “Take care of him. Hold his head, then throw 'im in the shower.”

“Why me?” Simmons grumbled, as he opened the bathroom door to the sounds of retching.

After establishing that Tex had met the Dutch model only a few hours earlier, at Bash, they flushed her pot and put her, protesting, into a taxicab driven by a Jamaican in dreadlocks.

Tex's cuts and bruises were unrelated to his encounter with the serial killer. “I ate the asphalt,” he recalled, thoughtfully fingering a scrape on his chin. Clad in a terrycloth bathrobe, his curly hair was still wet from the shower.

“'Member the other day,” Lottie prompted, “we wuz catching up and I told you all about my friend Britt here?” He squinted up at me. “Well, then you went and talked to somebody in a bar 'bout her, didn't you?”

“You shot me down, Yellow Rose, you shot me down,” he protested plaintively, eyes swimming. “I was hurting and all alone.”

The detectives finally asked Lottie to step outside, to prevent personal feelings from inhibiting his answers. “The only woman I ever loved. There she goes,” he crooned as she left, her eyes reddening. “She's walking away.”

His memory improved after the door closed. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I think I 'member her. Real sweet little thang, a honey babe. A blonde?” He looked up at the detectives questioningly.

“You tell us,” Ojeda said.

“Maybe dark-haired, or one-a them funky shades they use now. Hard to tell under them colored lights. But she was a doll baby, can tell ya that. What happened? That guy didn't hurt her, or nothing?”

“What guy?” the detective asked with interest.

“Some chubby fella. I'da cleaned his clock, 'cept I was so bummed. My woman had just dumped me.” He sighed. “I was hurting, hurting bad, and this gal was real sweet. Good listener. I was telling her all about Yellow Rose, how she shoots pictures for the newspaper and all, and somehow Britt's name came up. I said she just happened to be a friend of a friend. This gal was a good talker, real curious, a big fan of the newspaper.

“We was hitting it off. So it surprised me when this other dude come outa the VIP room and starts coming on to her. I'da kicked him from here to Kansas, 'cept she starts flirting back. Finally she says, ‘So long, sugar,' pecks my cheek, and takes off with 'im. Shoulda seen 'im, proud as a puppy with two tails. Didn't boost my morale any, I tell ya. Guy was kinda pudgy, red-faced. Big spender, bragging 'bout his brand-new Jag, could be what attracted her. I was so bummed, so down and out of it…I jus' let her go.”

Forehead in his hands, he looked green around the gills.

“Mighta been the first smart move you made lately,” Ojeda said. “All I know is you're the first witness we've got who had a good look at this suspect and can put her and one of her victims together right before a homicide. I know you don't feel so good right now, but you're alive. He ain't. She's the Kiss-Me Killer—and he's lying dead on the sand. If he did have a new Jaguar, she's probably driving it. What'd she look like? What name was she using? What was she wearing?”

“Said 'er name was Keri, or Kelly. Somethin' like that. Nice body.”

“What did she look like?”

“Really nice body. Wearing one of them little…” —his hands moved clumsily in a circular gesture—“you know, one of them little sexy things.” He squinted up at them, red-eyed. “Nicely built. Friendly. Liked drinking tequila, liked to talk. Real sweet little thang. You say he's dead?”

 

The dead man was Tommy Karp, age forty-five, the self-proclaimed “King of the Night,” a club and events promoter on South Beach. His 1999 black Jaguar, credit cards, and digital cell phone were missing.

By midmorning, Sonny's Mercedes surfaced on the third level of a South Beach parking garage near the club where Karp and the killer met.

 

“A motherless child,” Dr. Schlatter said thoughtfully, when I called to pick her brain. “How interesting. Serial killers—usually male, of course—are more likely to grow up with absentee fathers and domineering mothers. Hmmm….

“Maternal separation can profoundly affect brain chemistry in the young,” she said, “with lifelong consequences. Studies on Romanian orphans in state institutions showed dramatic results, with extremely high levels of stress hormones. Other studies revealed that the brain cells of baby animals deprived of a mother's nurturing touch and loving care may actually commit suicide. Did she say at what age she lost her mother?”

“All she said was ‘little kid.'” I wondered if any of this really applied to homicide. I hadn't heard about any Romanian orphans on killing sprees.

“Did you ask about her father?”

“No. I'll try if she calls again.”

“She will, I think, unless other circumstances intervene. Sounds like you've done an excellent job in establishing rapport. Good work. Try to make her feel you share things in common. Did you mention my name, give her my number?”

“There was no time.”

“She has so much anger in her,” the doctor mused.

I didn't need a shrink to tell me that.

“Her selection process is quite remarkable,” she went on. “The way she spared the first more sympathetic, more attractive, and less threatening man and took the other.
Clearly her victims are not selected at random but must meet certain specifications to fit her fantasies.”

“Think I have anything to worry about?” I felt embarrassed to ask, but my fears the night before had been real.

“Probably not. You've stroked her ego and she would consider you a confidante, the vehicle by which to tell her story. She wants to use you. But I would advise extreme caution. She's volatile, totally unpredictable, and homicidal.”

Schlatter agreed that the killer probably did not know where I lived, since Tex did not.

“It's just her way of keeping you off balance,” the doctor said.

“She talked about a face-to-face meeting.”

I heard a passionate little intake of breath. Either the idea took her breath away, or a donut had crossed her field of vision. “Feel free to suggest my office,” she said quickly.

 

Tex, still hung over, worked on a composite with a police artist. But too many beautiful women had crossed his path as he partied his way through South Beach thinking of only one. Every sketch looked like Lottie. Ojeda was furious.

The massive manhunt came up with nothing. South Beach is full of beautiful girls in bustiers and leather skirts. Promiscuous, hard partying, and hard drinking, the Kiss-Me Killer had fit right in, disappearing into the atmosphere of sexual abandon, foam parties, and drugs.

 

I was on the phone, trying to reach Tommy Karp's ex-wife in New York for more background on him, when Gloria, the city desk clerk, said I had a call transferred from the sports department.

“It's me,” the killer said abruptly, taking me totally by surprise.

I pushed the button. The phone man had said the system
might be in place by this afternoon, but could it trace a call transferred through the sports department?

“Do you ever sleep?” I asked.