Scent of Murder (11 page)

He felt like this might be his chance. But he didn't want her to see his face. His one saving grace was that no one had a good, detailed description of him and none of his victims could identify him. He wondered if he could work out some sort of trade with Tina. Then he realized it wouldn't be the same. He needed the power. He wanted to smell her fear. To know how superior he was. He had to introduce her to a whole new world. It wouldn't be anything at all like what she was used to. He also realized she couldn't see his face. Unless …

The idea bubbled in his head briefly, then took on a life of its own. He'd never really considered it except as a last resort. She could see his face if she was unable to talk to the police later.

Tina turned and looked in his direction, then began to walk tentatively toward the truck at the edge of the parking lot.

His heart started to beat faster and he felt a tingling in his chest. He pretended not to notice her and acted like he was concentrating on his cell phone. Somehow he managed to look startled when she rapped on the passenger window.

She had a pleasant smile as the window whirred down. He noticed several crooked teeth and blamed her father for not working a steady job to pay for braces. Tina said, “Can you help me out?”

“Whatcha need?”

“I left my ID at home, and that jerk inside won't sell me beer.”

Junior forced himself to wait a moment before answering so he wouldn't sound too anxious. He grunted, “Sure,” as he pulled the handle on the driver's door. As he stepped out onto the littered asphalt parking lot he said, “Wait in the truck. It's a lot cooler in there.”

She hesitated, looked through the window to make sure he was out of the truck, then pulled the door open and slipped into the passenger seat.

That's when he pulled his Beretta from under his shirt and hit the automatic lock button on the open driver's door.

Tina gasped but didn't move.

In a very calm voice Junior said, “I'm not going to hurt you.” His mind raced as he stepped back into the truck, pulling the door shut behind him. This was going to be a wondrous afternoon. Then he would see if he could take things to the next level.

He pulled out onto Military Trail, then turned west at the next light. There were always wide-open empty areas to the west.

 

11

The girl was terrified, and that excited Junior. If what he was doing was a drug, then he'd just mainlined heroin. He didn't know how long he could last, and he hadn't even parked the truck. Since his first sexual encounter with his ninth-grade music teacher, Miss Trooluck, Junior had loved the feel of performing oral sex. It seemed so dirty at the time. Worse than intercourse. Her moans had frightened him at first; then he developed a fascination with it. A fascination that had grown since that day. Some people might call it an obsession, but Junior didn't care. It was one of the few things he looked forward to in his dreary life.

He turned off onto two unkempt farm tracks with heavy brush on each side of a canal. Except for the occasional fisherman, no one would ever have a reason to come out here. He was glad he'd borrowed the big F-150 pickup as it clattered down the road. He could hear tools rattling in the toolbox in the bed behind the cab.

Tina had hardly said a word during the trip. He'd asked her a few questions and couldn't ignore the electricity he felt when she looked him in the eye. This was something he'd missed with the previous girls. They'd always worn blindfolds and sort of flailed around aimlessly. Now he could see the emotion in her face and knew that he'd tapped into a fear she had never considered. He'd surprise her. Eventually she'd like his attention. He realized she had no idea what he intended to do, and if Junior thought about it, neither did he. That was part of the thrill.

He found a number of trails that led away from the canal through brush and sporadic crops. Cornstalks grew up through Brazilian peppers mixed in with Australian pine trees, all of the nonnative plant species that people bitched about.

Junior had the Beretta tucked in his belt, but he had a number of other options still available to him, even if Tina Tictin did not.

*   *   *

Darren Mori listened while Tim Hallett briefed him and Ruben Vasquez on their duties with the detective bureau. After the adventure at the airport, Darren had gone on a cadaver call with Brutus and missed the meeting. Turned out there was no cadaver. Just a pissed-off drunk who had wandered away from the Salvation Army and someone reported him as dead in a field. It was just one of many incidents that made him smile now but horrified him at the time. All dog handlers experienced stuff like that.

Police service dogs had a long history that could be traced back to over three hundred years ago in Europe. In the United States, Boston and New York had working dogs by the end of the nineteenth century when Florida was a mysterious swamp no one wanted to visit. Both the First and the Second World Wars taught military trainers the value of using dogs for different tasks, but it wasn't until as late as the 1960s that a Miami police trainer named Jay Rapp instituted the training protocols that were the basis for modern K-9 units.

None of the CAT members would've guessed the amount of training that went into preparing a dog for work on the street before they joined the unit. The initial courses for patrol and drug-sniffing dogs were nine to twelve weeks each. The courses covered everything, including legal issues. The academies were long because once a K-9 unit hit the street they were pretty much on their own. But unlike most squads in police agencies, the K-9 units trained together on a regular basis, often as much as once a week.

Although Ruben wasn't a sworn law enforcement officer, he administrated the grant that funded their unit and was a consultant for training the other K-9 units. After Hallett had finished, Ruben gave them one of his rare smiles. “That's good you're doing something different. The only way this program will work is if you move from assignment to assignment and make a reputation for yourselves.”

Somehow Ruben's voice always seemed to captivate the dogs. He insisted that no matter what the discussion or issue, dog handlers should always have their dogs with them. At this moment both Brutus and Rocky stared at Ruben as if they were apostles listening to Jesus.

Darren and Hallett had often discussed how old they thought Ruben might be. Neither of them had enough balls to ask him. A scar that ran along the right side of his face made it difficult to judge his age. He also had a slight limp, which he told them was from an IED in Iraq. The blast had ended Vasquez's military career. Even with all that information, the best estimate they could make was that his age was somewhere between thirty-two and forty-five. Darren also openly envied Ruben's thick, dark hair. Even cut short, it showed no thinning or gray. That was a sore spot for Darren. He cut his hair short so he could use different products to hide his ever-growing bald spot. His new favorite baldness cure was a spray that filled in the round patch at the crown of his head. Unfortunately, Darren's height made it easy for anyone over six feet to look down on his scalp.

Ruben said, “The dogs will be invaluable on a case like this.” He looked at Darren and said, “Just remember, Brutus is not trained to run after someone and apprehend them. He's a seeker. He'll find cadavers, explosives, and even the track of a fugitive, but don't use him in ways he wasn't meant to be used.” Ruben was always in teaching mode, even during an administrative meeting like this.

Ruben turned to Hallett and said, “Do you got your head on straight? There'll be a lot happening, and this will be new for Rocky.”

“I'm not worried about Rocky. He'll have less to concentrate on than me.”

“Really? That's what you think? You don't believe that if your olfactory sense was a million times better than it is now and you were able to change your outer ear to focus on a particular sound, you wouldn't have enough to concentrate on?” Ruben paused and wiped his face with a handkerchief. “I know you guys are good cops. And you're good dog handlers, too. But sometimes you, Tim, overlook the obvious things Rocky is trying to tell you. I can't teach you every specific mannerism or sound. I can only show you how to open your mind to understand what he's saying.”

Darren learned a lot when other people were getting scolded. He noticed Hallett shift his eyes up like a kid talking to a teacher in elementary school.

Hallett finally said, “He did do something yesterday I've never seen him do before.”

“What's that?”

“When he sniffed a rag that was possibly used by a suspect, he made a sound I'd never heard. A cross between a growl and a yelp that made him sound like a lawn mower starting.”

Vasquez nodded his head and steepled his fingers under his chin as he contemplated this information.

Hallett said, “What does it mean?”

Vasquez leaned down and looked Hallett in the eye. “You're asking me what it means?”

Hallett nodded.

“Who do you think I am, Dr. Doolittle? Do you think I can talk to the animals? He's
your
dog. Get your head out of your ass and start paying attention to him.”

Hallett didn't mind the trainer talking to him like that. Most cops were used to it. Besides, if a guy like Ruben, wounded in Iraq, couldn't be a tough guy, no one could. He decided to get his head out of his ass and figure out what Rocky's alert meant.

*   *   *

Junior felt very satisfied with his selection of locations. He had barreled onto a dirt road west of U.S. 441, and there didn't appear to be anyone around. Thank God he'd worn his single pair of decent ankle-high boots. There was nothing in the field or on the bank of the canal that would penetrate them. He hadn't rushed, and instead enjoyed the subtly changing light around him as the sun slowly set. The girl, on the other hand, had become more and more frightened despite his efforts to calm her down. And her fear had only excited him more.

He'd left his clothes on and enjoyed the feeling of power as he tried to open a world of excitement to the young Tina Tictin. She had shaken and quivered, and he honestly didn't know if it was from fear or sexual excitement. Now she sat in the passenger seat of the stolen F-150 with her legs tucked under her and her sundress still clinging to her body. The whole experience was intoxicating. The fact that she didn't have a blindfold and her dark brown eyes focused on him with such intensity made him almost lament that he'd never looked into the eyes of one of the girls before this. That left him with another dilemma: She could easily identify him. From the mole on his upper forehead to his ears, which stuck out just a tad too far. But the solution had stuck in his head the moment Katie Ziegler had run from him. He almost shot her in the back as she ran, but he had held out hope he could use her.

Junior had no idea how killing this girl would affect him both physically and psychologically. He thought about the gun tucked in his waistband, but there were two issues: the mess and the evidence. He didn't want to leave a lead round for the police to recover, and he wasn't interested in digging it out of her body, either. He'd seen a big fishing knife, a tree saw, and a couple of shovels in the toolbox in the bed of the truck. A knife was messy, though, and he wasn't sure it was something that He would be able to appreciate.

She looked up at him with those big brown eyes. They were moist, but she'd stopped crying. He noticed a tattoo peeking out from the top of the sundress near her right shoulder and blamed her parents for not being strict enough. This girl needed some guidance. Maybe not the kind of guidance he had given her today, but she needed something in her life.

She started to sob quietly and pulled her knees up in front of her body. She had a hitch in her throat and couldn't breathe enough to maintain her crying and it gave Junior the perfect idea.

He felt an electric charge surge through him as the idea formed and solidified. This would solve all of his problems, but it was also the most exciting thing he'd ever considered.

Junior said, “It's probably time to drive you back to your house.”

Tina looked at him and released her legs, sitting up straight in the seat. She said, “Really?”

Her voice now had a little-girl quality that thrilled him. He'd also managed to distract her enough to make his move. Slowly at first, without any threatening movement, he turned toward her and extended one hand. Then, with a conscious effort, he swung his left hand around as he slid his right hand off the back of the seat and set them firmly around her graceful neck.

It took longer than he expected for Tina to quit squirming under his grip. As soon as he was certain she was dead, he realized that now the real work would start. He couldn't risk her being found. There was just a hint of daylight left outside, but he had a pretty good plan already formulated in his head.

This had been totally worth it.

 

12

Tim Hallett didn't want to be one of those children that avoided their parents, but sometimes his mom made it hard. She clearly didn't like his career choices and thought K-9 duty was beneath the D-bureau. The public rarely understood anything about police work, and his mom in particular based all of her assumptions on what she watched on TV.

He had set up the lunch to see if his mom would adopt the two poodles he had liberated from the gator poachers. Josh had already fallen in love with the little dogs and named them Sponge and Bob. Hallett laughed every time Josh yelled, “C'mon, Sponge, Bob.”

Now he tuned out his mom's monologue on the dangers of not eating enough fiber. His mind drifted as he wondered about the investigation into Katie Ziegler's abduction. Once Sergeant Greene had told him that Ludner was a suspect, it all made perfect sense to him. These were exactly the kind of girls a pervert like Ludner would seek out.