Tropic of Night (37 page)

Agent Robinette’s presentation wound to a close. A couple of people asked questions, and a discussion started about whether active steps to forestall or trap the unsub were possible. The cops around the table didn’t like the FBI theory. They wanted a cult, a black Cuban or Haitian cult, maybe with some white adherents. Miami was cult city?did it make sense that someone would breeze in from out of town and pursue some mad scientist enterprise? It did not. And where was he getting these exotic drugs? From the botanicas, from root doctors, brujos, curanderos …

These interesting speculations were arrested by a rumble from the head of the table. Neville D. Horton had not spoken substantively yet, but now he did, and everyone fell silent to hear what he had to say, not only because he was chief of police, but because he was an imposing man, six four and well over three hundred pounds, all of it the color of baker’s chocolate except for a fringe of feltlike prematurely gray hair. The rumble said, “People, in about two hours I am going to see the mayor and the city manager. Shortly after that I am going to stand up with those two fine gentlemen in front of the TV and tell the folks out there that we are hot on the trail of this fiend, that we got the FBI practically giving us his address and phone number, and that it’s only a matter of time before he’s a cooked chicken. I am not going to get up there in front of God and everyone and say that we’re looking for a black white mad scientist on a fucking bicycle. Get serious, people! If we got to put an armed guard with every nine-months-pregnant woman in the city of Miami, then that’s what we got to do. This can’t happen again. Arnie, you’re in charge. In fact, now that I think of it, you should be on the TV, too, so folks’ll know who to blame.” He smiled at this, a broad one, to show that he was kidding, or wasn’t.

“Meanwhile, I need talking points and a plan. You got an hour. People, thank you for your good work. Good luck to you, and God help all of us if we fuck this up.” He rose above the table like a broaching whale and strode out of the room, followed by his aides.

After that, Mendés took charge, snapping out orders to the assembled brass, who resnapped the orders to their underlings as the meeting broke up. Mendés motioned Barlow, Paz, and Robinette to his own office. Mendés was angry, suspecting that he was being set up, in his turn, for the same fall he had outlined so vividly to Paz. He stared balefully at the three others. “Well? What do we tell the public?”

Robinette said, “Captain, it might be time for a strategic misstatement.”

Mendés snorted. “I love the phrase. Meaning?”

“This guy must be feeling pretty pleased with himself. He’s outsmarted the cops so far. He’s probably following the press reportage pretty closely, and laughing his ass off. What if we issue a profile to the press, not the real one but a phony construct suggesting that the perpetrator is an inadequate individual with a load of sexual hang-ups, impotent, working at a menial blue-collar job. It might put stress on him, get him to contact the press, maybe a talk show. At worst, he might think we’re so off base that it makes him careless. It’s worked before. And we could have the chief say that we’re providing security for pregnant women in certain spots, see if he’ll be arrogant enough to challenge you.”

Mendés grinned maliciously. “Oh, yeah, the boss is going to love that one, using the pregnant ladies as bait. Something happens, we’ll all be lucky to get jobs parking cars at the Orange Bowl. How many are there in the city do you think?”

“The U.S. birthrate is fourteen per thousand,” answered Robinette, “figure a million women in the Miami SMSA, so fourteen thousand per year, figure one-twelfth of those are in their last month this month, so eleven hundred sixty, give or take.”

“Hm. Well, that’s at least doable, if it comes to it,” said Mendés. “They can all stay out at your ranch, Cletis.”

“Glad to have them,” said Barlow. “I’ll tell Erma to start boiling water right now.”

Paz said, “Chief, meanwhile I think we should go to New York, see the cops up there and talk to people at the murder scene, the dead girl’s father and so on.”

“And why is that?” asked Mendés. This was the moment to bring up the photo from the Long Island case file and the speculations arising from it, but when he looked into his chief’s eyes and assessed their expression, which was cynical, ready to mock, patronizing, he chickened out. It would keep for a while, until he had it nailed, until Mendés would have to eat it whole and like it. So he said, “Because the guy was there. He did his thing there. He left some trace, somebody remembered him. You heard Agent Robinette here say they did a half-assed investigation because they figured it was a domestic and the killer killed herself after. Now we know that’s not true. People will have bits, threads they never followed up on because they closed the file too early. Someone the dead girl knew, or maybe she was in a cult of some kind, and they didn’t want to bring it up if they didn’t have to. Maybe one of those threads leads to Miami. Someone who was there then is here now?like that.”

“Okay, go,” said Mendés after a moment. “There and right back. Cletis, you go, too.”

Paz made a couple of calls to insure that the people they wanted to see in New York would be available, and another call to the manager of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, where he got the answer he expected. As they left, the homicide unit secretary waved him over and handed him a manila envelope. A lady had brought it by during the meeting. She had said it was important, about the murders. Paz shoved it into his briefcase. They boarded a USAir flight at one-ten from Miami International to La Guardia. Barlow took his seat, said, “The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. Isaiah 35:8,” went to sleep immediately after takeoff, and remained out. He awoke when the wheels touched down, stretched, and grinned at Paz. He said, “Nothing like being paid to sleep. You look like a wet hen, boy. How many of them little tiny drinks you have?”

“Seventy-three,” said Paz, sourly.

“I better drive our car, then.”

Paz got into their white Taurus and dropped off immediately, and awoke when he felt the car slow, then stop. He shook himself awake, straightened his tie, tasted the inside of his mouth, wished for a cigar, settled for a stick of spearmint gum, and looked out the window. They were in a parking lot in front of a low gray modern building with a neat circle of lawn in front of it and a flagpole in the middle of that. It could have been a minor electronics firm, but it was the Hicksville barracks of the New York State Police.

Detective Captain Jerry Heinrich, the man who had led the investigation into the killing of Mary Elizabeth Doe, had a large, modern office, with the usual featureless furnishings and a wall full of award plaques and photographs. There was a big stuffed bluefish on the wall, too. He was a comfortable slow-speaking sort, with curly brown hair graying at the sides, and the perfectly ordinary look of a high-school teacher or an appliance salesman. He seemed reasonably open and glad to help.

After the usual preliminaries, Heinrich said, “If you got the FBI file, you’ve got all we set down on paper. Obviously, we put out the max on this one. We had gubernatorial interest and a totally clear field. The county boys and the locals let us handle it completely. You know about this family?”

“We heard they were local big shots,” said Paz.

“You could say that. More like an institution in this part of the world. Money? It doesn’t mean anything to them anymore. Churches, charities, hospitals. Hell, they sent half the bright kids on the north shore through college, and they’ve been doing it since forever. And they’re related to everybody who’s been here longer than the Nixon administration. So it wasn’t like they had to make any angry phone calls. People just pitched in to do anything they could, which was why the press was kind of frozen out of it, and believe you me, they were swarming for a while, the victim being such a big model and all. But no one would talk. And the isolation helped. You been there yet? Sionnet?”

Barlow said, “Is that how you say it? No, we haven’t. We’re going out after we finish here. We thought we’d talk to Mr. Doe and any of his people who were around then.”

“Yeah, well good luck. Boy, I’ll tell you, we had every detective on the Island talking to people, and some from upstate, too, and we got zip. Four people in the house when the thing went down, the butler, guy named Rudolf, been with the family since Pluto was a pup. Well, in this case we’re pretty damn sure the butler didn’t do it. Then a girl who worked for the family, cooking, slept in, was in the kitchen all the time, working on dinner. Then the mother, in her bedroom, sleeping, she said, and I tend to believe it.”

“Why?” asked Paz.

Heinrich lifted his hand to his mouth, cupped. “All the time. And pills, too. A damned shame. Besides, hell, a thing like that, you don’t usually figure Mom for involvement. And there was Jane, the other daughter. She was out on the north terrace facing the water, for most of the afternoon. She said. But it turned out no one recalled seeing her there at the time of. Near as we can figure it, it was done between three and four in the afternoon. And I was saying about Sionnet, it’s isolated, out on a neck, maybe a hundred fifty acres, but to get to it you have to go through Sionnet village, and there’s nothing at all past the village but the estate. There’s a big sign saying private road and a little turnaround for tourists who get lost. On a busy day in the summer you might get six cars going that way through the village, people working at the estate and so on. This particular day was September sixteenth, a Saturday. People recalled Mr. Doe driving out with his two sons-in-law to see that car show in Huntington, about one, and then driving back around four-thirty. Hell of a thing to come home to, huh? Anyway, no strange cars at all during the critical times. And you’re going to ask about boats. They would’ve heard a boat for sure. There were people working on the place, down by the dock, and the daughter said she was down there, too. Yeah, sure, some commando could’ve landed a dinghy and snuck in there, but …” He gestured to show how unlikely he thought that was.

Barlow asked, “You were in charge from the get-go?”

“Yep. Lucky me.” He described his involvement in the case, and what they had found, which was pretty much what Barlow and Paz had found, and Heinrich expressed the same anger, sadness, bitterness, and frustration that they both felt.

“They buried the mother and baby in the same casket,” he told them. “They got their own cemetery, right there on the property. There was just the extended family and a few close friends at the ceremony, a couple of dozen folks. Mr. Doe was like a rock. Mary’s husband was leaning on him, crying, that German photographer. The mother?hell, she didn’t know where she was. And the sister, Jane. I never saw anyone so scared in my life.”

“You attended?” asked Barlow.

“Oh, yeah. We’re always ready for a remorseful graveside confession. Anyway, Jane was white as paper, and shaky. She dropped the trowel, you know, for picking up a clump of earth and tossing it in there? Shaking like a damn paint mixer, holding on to her dad and her brother. Her husband was standing off by himself. An African-American fella, by the way.”

“What was he like?” asked Paz, a little too avidly. Heinrich gave him a look.

“Oh, a nice fella. Well spoken. A pretty famous writer, plays and stuff, poetry. Of course, he was off with the other two men the whole time, so there was no question. The sister, on the other hand, his wife …” Heinrich paused, swiveled in his chair, and checked out his bluefish.

“You think she done it?” asked Barlow.

Heinrich lowered his head, like a bull deciding whether to charge the cape.

“Well, you know, we never actually concluded that. But the woman had a history. When she came back from Africa?Josiah Mount, the brother, actually he’s a stepbrother, brought her back?she was apparently pretty loose in the screws, raving about black magic?crazy stuff. She thought her husband had turned into a witch. It’d happened before, too, Mount said. He pulled her out of Russia, a couple years before this, also off her head. He thought she was on some kind of native drugs, messed up her brain. And, well, the way she was acting at the funeral?like I said, I thought she was about to jump in the grave. Then, also, she had a thing with her sister. Jealousy. Well, let me say, she had something to be jealous about.”

“How’s that?” asked Barlow.

“Hell, Mary Elizabeth Doe was the most beautiful woman I ever saw close-up. I mean she was what they call a supermodel, like you see in magazines. Jane, well, she wasn’t exactly a dog, kind of big and craggy like her old man, but when they were in the room together she might have been a damn houseplant for all anybody looked at her. And she was jealous Mary Elizabeth was having a baby too. Jane couldn’t have kids, according to her husband, and Mr. Doe?well, carrying on the family line and all, it was important to him, he was paying a lot more attention to Mary than he had before. Jane had always been his pet, sort of, and she resented it. It’s all in the files you got.”

Barlow said, “So you thought this murder, the way it got done, was like jealous rage. Jane just snapped and carved her sister up?”

“That, and the, well, excisions, we thought that part could’ve been the witchcraft stuff. Which also fit with the drugs we found in the body. But then when she killed herself, that kind of put the stopper on that theory, although, you know, in deference to the family, we never made it official. Officially, the case is still open.”

“Was there a note?” asked Barlow.

“Not that we found,” said Heinrich carefully. “I was in Jane’s room right after she did it. Neat as a pin and her desk with a box of stationery out and a pen. But no note. Mr. D. wouldn’t look me in the eye when I asked him. So …”

“How did she kill herself?” asked Paz. “Something about a boat … ?”

“Oh, that was another pain in the neck. The murder was Saturday, the funeral was Tuesday. On Tuesday night, it was starting to blow pretty good from the west, and she took their yacht out, just motored out into the Sound, hoisted sail, and headed northeast, up the Sound. A little past midnight, she was about five miles south of New Haven when the boat blew up.”