Thicker Than Water (18 page)

“Let it go, Louis.”

Louis stumbled, catching the back of the booth for balance. A ripple of embarrassment moved through him. God, he hated getting sloppy.

“I'm sorry, Dan,” Louis whispered, hoping no one could hear him. “I didn't mean to get this drunk.”

“Yes, you did,” Wainwright said, taking his arm.

 

 

Louis closed the door on Wainwright's cruiser and stumbled into the darkness toward his cottage, hearing Wainwright holler out a goodbye.

He brushed aside a palm and tripped over the rocks that lined the path. He squinted, trying to pick his way in the dim light thrown off by the Branson's On The Beach sign.

His stomach was starting to churn. He needed a bed. Now.

Something snapped behind him. He jumped and spun.

“Where ya been, Louie?”

Louis stared into the shadows of the swaying palms. “Cade?”

He heard the rustle of the wind in the sea oats but still couldn't see anyone. He staggered, almost falling, but pulled himself up.

“Goddammit, Cade. Come out where I can see you!” he shouted.

“I ain't hiding.”

Louis scanned the dunes and dark trees, but all it did was make him nauseous. Finally, he picked out Cade's silhouette.

“I told you not to come here again,” Louis said.

“You told me not go in your house. I didn't.”

Louis closed his eyes. He couldn't fight it anymore. He turned and threw up in the bushes, grabbing onto the palm.

“You done?” Cade asked.

Louis wiped his mouth and looked back at Cade, using those few seconds of clarity that come immediately after vomiting up half a bottle of brandy. His heart kicked an extra beat.

Cade was holding something small and dark in his arms. It was Issy.

“Let her go,” Louis said slowly.

Cade had the cat clamped under his elbow, holding its front paws tightly with his left hand. He was stroking the cat's fur with his other hand.

“Let her go!” Louis said.

Cade's hand hesitated at the cat's neck. Then, suddenly, he let go. Issy sprang away and ran into the shadows.

“I wasn't gonna hurt her, Louie,” Cade said.

Louis struggled to focus on Cade's face. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Cade was silent. Louis waved a dismissive hand at him and started toward the porch. Cade moved quickly, catching Louis's arm. When Louis pulled away, he stumbled.

“You fucked me and my family,” Cade said.

Louis pointed at him. “Tell it to someone else. You fired me. You're crazy. Your kid is crazy.”

“I told you to leave it alone and you didn't.”

Cade came closer and Louis thought he saw a flash of silver. A knife? Louis felt his heart quicken and he tried to stand up straight and focus. It was dark, they were away from the street, no one in the other cottages would hear or see a thing.

Make a move and you're dead. Think . . . bluff.

“What?” Louis said. “You come here to put a hole in me? Like . . . fuck, what's his name, that Haitian guy?”

Cade took a step closer.

“What are you going to do, Cade? Kill me and jump bail?”

“That's not a bad idea.”

“You gonna take Ronnie with you? What about Eric? You wanna trash his life too?”

Cade had stopped moving at least. Louis couldn't see the knife anymore. Maybe he had imagined it.

“I found out something,” Louis said. “Something about Kitty that could help you.”

Cade didn't move.

“There's a lab report that's missing.”

“So what?”

“It shouldn't be,” Louis said. “It should be there and it isn't.”

“You're talking like a drunk, Louie.”

“Listen to me, Cade,” Louis said. “The report could prove you didn't rape her, that someone else did it.”

Cade was silent. “How?” he asked finally.

Louis knew there was no way to explain it right now so Cade could understand it. “Blood, Cade,” he said. “They can tell by your blood.”

“What if it has Ronnie's blood?”

“Fuck, Cade, what if it doesn't?” Louis asked.

Louis couldn't make out Cade's face, but he had heard something change in Cade's voice. Louis tried to see Cade's right hand, tried to make out the glint of the knife. He wanted to be ready if Cade made a move.

“What about it, Cade?” Louis said.

“You're asking me to put my kid's balls up on the block and hope no one chops them off. You're asking me to trust you.”

“I'm asking you to trust your own fucking son.”

Cade said nothing, but Louis could hear the rustle of his clothing. Suddenly, there was another glint of silver and Louis heard something hit the sand at his feet.

He looked down.

The butt of a knife was sticking out of the sand, only an inch from his foot. He looked up.

Jack Cade was gone.

The small reception area outside Mobley's office was crowded. Louis guessed that the young woman and the disheveled man were reporters, but he didn't recognize the two blue-suited black men who stood solemn-faced near the Amazon's desk. The Amazon herself was on the phone, scribbling on a pink message slip to add to the pile at her elbow. She gave Louis a harried look as he wedged himself in near her desk.

The room was stuffy. Louis massaged his temples, hoping the aspirin would kick in soon. He knew he should have just stayed in bed this morning, but the nagging voice in his head had drowned out the hangover.

Let it go, Louis.

He was tired of hearing that. Okay, maybe he was obsessed, but damn it, someone had to be. He was on his own now, fired, dismissed with a knife at his feet.

He looked at Mobley's closed door. But he was still in need of an ally.

The Amazon hung up the phone. She looked at Louis and cocked her head toward Mobley's door. Louis didn't even look to see if the others were pissed that he was going in ahead of them.

He closed the door, shutting out the ringing phones.

“You've got two minutes, Kincaid.”

Mobley shoved aside a stack of papers and began rifling through his messages, obviously irritated.

“I need something from you, Sheriff.”

“What?”

“After Jack Cade visited Duvall threatening to sue him, Duvall asked his secretary to pull Cade's 1967 trial file. The secretary says it was still on his desk when she left just before Duvall was shot. Your guys picked it up as part of the crime scene.”

“And you want to look at it.”

“Yeah.”

Mobley shook his head. “No way. It would raise all kinds of questions that I don't need right now.”

“Sheriff—”

“Forget it. I don't want to piss Sandusky off, Kincaid. Especially for you and some moldy old case.” Mobley leaned back in his chair. “Besides, I heard Outlaw fired you, that true?”

Louis ignored the question. He rubbed his brow, catching sight of the evidence box from Kitty Jagger's homicide on Mobley's credenza. Vince had said the old sample was either destroyed—or returned.

Louis motioned toward the white box. “Can I look through that box again?”

“Look, Kincaid. I've already got my ass in a sling because you're out asking questions about Kitty. From her father, her high school friends—”

“That's what I do—ask questions,” Louis said. “Just let me take a look, okay?”

Mobley raked a hand through his hair. “Make it quick.”

Louis put the box on Mobley's desk and began taking out the evidence bags. When he got to the Clot Buster, he carefully set it aside.

Mobley's phone rang and he picked it up. “I told you no calls.” He slammed it down and looked back at the Louis.

“What are you looking for?”

“A slide.”

“What, like a lab slide?”

Louis nodded. Mobley stood just as Louis pulled out a large yellow envelope with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement seal, postmarked 1977. Just as Vince had said, the samples had been returned to the police ten years after Cade's trial. He turned it over. It had been opened once.

Mobley was reading over his shoulder as Louis pulled out a letter from the lab. The phone on his desk started to ring again, but Mobley ignored it.

Louis emptied the envelope's contents onto the desk: a half-dozen slides, some fingerprint cards, and a small heart-shaped locket, everything still sealed in plastic.

He glanced at the locket, thinking of Bob Ahnert, then began sorting through the slides. He stopped at the one labeled R-24, Vaginal. It had Ahnert's initials on the seal.

“This is it,” Louis said.

“What is it?” Mobley asked.

Louis turned to him. “There were two semen samples taken from this crime. One off the panties, which the cops assumed came from Cade, and one from her body.”

Mobley looked down at the slide. “They match, right?”

“I don't know. That's why I wanted to see Duvall's old case file because the report on the second one is missing from what
you
gave me.”

Mobley turned away, looking at his ringing phone with venom. “I gave you everything, Kincaid. I wouldn't hold anything back.”

“You never had the report. I think someone removed it from the case file twenty years ago.”

“Why?”

“Because it didn't match Cade's O-positive and someone wanted to keep the prosecution's case simple.”

“Who? The prosecutors themselves?”

“It's missing from
your
files, Sheriff. I think maybe it was Dinkle. I think he did it after the trial so no one would ever ask questions again.”

The phone started again, and Mobley walked to it, knocking the receiver off its cradle.

“You sure like to sling mud on the uniform, don't you, Kincaid?”

“No, I don't.”

“The hell you don't.”

Louis tightened, the pounding in his head growing stronger. He knew he didn't owe Mobley an explanation. But he was tired of the looks from the deputies, tired of groveling for their assistance when he needed it on something as simple as tracking down a deadbeat dad. He was tired of being looked at like a leper when he walked into O'Sullivan's, for chrissake.

“I've shown you and your department every respect in this case,” Louis said.

“Respect? Don't talk to me about respect,” Mobley said, his voice rising. “What about last March? You and Dan Wainwright butt-fucked me in front of the whole city. Shut me out of the biggest case this county ever had.”

Mobley went back behind his desk and sank into his chair. Louis resisted the urge to put his hands on his temples.

“Leaving you out wasn't my call,” Louis said. “It was Dan's.”

“They laughed at me, dammit.”

Louis knew he needed to say something else, but an apology wasn't it. Mobley had blown it on the Paint It Black case. They
had
laughed.

Louis picked up the slide. “Maybe we can turn it around with this,” he said. “Let me have this typed again. Discreetly. I'll take it to Vince myself.”

“I don't know.”

Louis took a breath. He knew Mobley had no business letting a civilian take evidence, even from a closed case.

Okay. Start lying. You're getting pretty damn good at it.

“Look,” Louis said, “if you don't agree to this, Susan will eventually subpoena Sandusky for any copies he has.”

Mobley's eyes jumped to Louis's face. His expression took on a whole new look of frustration.

“It's us against the lawyers, Lance.”

Mobley swung his chair slightly. “All right. But I get to see the results first. If that slide comes back O-positive, it goes back in the box and neither of us ever touched it. Agreed?”

Louis nodded. “What if it doesn't?”

Mobley picked up the Clot Buster and bounced it lightly against his palm. “Maybe it still goes back in the box,” he said.

 

 

Louis sat on the bench outside Vince Carissimi's office. He could hear Vince inside, talking to someone. Across the hall, through the glass door to the autopsy room, he could see a green bulk moving slowly around. It was Octavius, the diener, finishing up a cadaver. Louis leaned his head back against the cool tile.

He had called ahead, but the receptionist told him Vince was busy. Louis had come over to wait anyway. His eyes drifted up to the wall clock, then to the sign above the autopsy door.

Mortui vivos docent.
“The dead teach the living.”

He reached back to the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the picture of Kitty. It was starting to get creased from all the handling and he ran his palm over it, trying to flatten it back in shape. Finally, he reached back again for his wallet, opened it, and carefully slipped the picture in between some bills.

He heard Vince's door open and jumped to his feet, slipping the wallet back in his pocket.

A strange man came out, followed by Vince, who looked at Louis in surprise. “Hey, Louis, what gives?” he asked.

“Vince, I need your help,” Louis said, picking up a manila envelope from the bench.

“Gotta be quick, man, I am up to my ass in alligators today,” Vince said, starting down the hall with long strides.

Louis was at his side, holding out the envelope. “I got the sample.”

Vince stopped, frowning at the envelope.

“The missing vaginal semen sample,” Louis said.

Vince hesitated, then took the envelope. He dug inside and pulled out the slide, still in its twenty-year-old plastic evidence bag. Vince held it up to the florescent light.

“Can you type it?” Louis asked.

Vince sighed. “Won't know 'til I get it under the scope.”

“Can I wait?”

Vince gave him a look, then glanced at his watch. “All right, come on.”

In the lab, Louis hovered in the background while Vince slipped the old slide under the microscope. He knew this was a long shot. What were the chances that anything could survive twenty years in some municipal storeroom? His fears were confirmed when Vince turned. He could read it in the M.E.'s face.

“It's totally disintegrated,” Vince said.
“Memoriae,
Louis, nothing but a memory now.”

Louis let out a sigh and watched as Vince pulled out the slide and slipped it back in the plastic. He handed it to Louis.

“I'm sorry, man,” Vince said.

“I appreciate you trying, Vince.”

Vince cocked his head. “You okay?”

Louis nodded, looking at the slide in the plastic evidence bag.

“Look, I understand how this can be,” Vince said. “I had a little girl on my table once, an abuse case. I didn't sleep for weeks until they finally put her stepfather behind bars. A case like the Kitty Jagger thing, it can get under your skin.”

Louis looked up at him. Maybe it was the way Vince had said her name, maybe it was just the look of compassion on Vince's face. But something pulled inside Louis's chest.

“I've got to get going,” Louis said. “Thanks again, Vince.”

Outside, Louis paused to slip on his sunglasses. His gaze drifted over to Page Field, where a small plane floated down to the runaway and rose again, the pilot practicing touch-and-goes.

Dead end. Like Vince said, there was nothing but memories of Kitty now, memories that the decades had rendered useless. Joyce Novick's rose-colored reminiscences, Willard's fading echoes, none of that could help him now.

Bob Ahnert . . .

Louis watched the plane circling. But Bob Ahnert remembered clearly, remembered things he didn't want to tell. Kitty was still talking to him. And he was still listening.