When Darkness Falls (4 page)

I t was after midnight, and Alicia was still standing outside Houston’s Restaurant waiting for the valet attendant to bring her car around. That was one way to crack down on drunk drivers, make everyone wait till dawn at the valet stand. Next time she would be sure to drive her yellow Lotus or red Ferrari and get “preferred parking” right at curbside.

Her cell phone rang inside her purse, which, in turn, was inside a doggy bag. She planned to bring the whole thing into the lab in the morning to have them check for fingerprints, which could confirm that Falcon was the lipstick bandit. She let the phone ring to voice mail, but it started ringing again. Someone was psycho calling her. She wrapped her hand in a tissue, carefully removed the phone, and answered it. It was her father. He wanted to know where she was, and she told him.

“Sweetheart, your mother and I think you should come home tonight.”

“I am going home.”

“No, I mean here, with us.”

She was twenty-seven years old, and her parents still thought of their house as her home. It was a price she gladly paid for being the only daughter of a Latin father. “Papi, it’s late, and I have to work in the morning. I’ll come by this weekend.”

“We’re just concerned for you, that’s all.”

There were times in her life when she could have sworn that her parents knew everything about her-including whom she was dating and whether he called her or nudged her in the morning. But could they possibly know that her purse had been stolen? “Why are you concerned?”

“You know why. That Falcon wacko is out on bail.”

“That seems to be the top news for the night.”

“This is serious, Alicia. The state attorney assured me that setting bail at ten thousand dollars was as good as throwing away the key on this guy. That obviously didn’t turn out to be the case. He may be a drifter, but we have to be very careful with him.”

She couldn’t have agreed more, but she didn’t want to worry her parents further by telling them about the stolen purse. “Look, I can’t come over tonight. But I promise, first thing tomorrow I’ll meet with the chief and the state attorney about tacking on a restraining order to the terms of release.”

“All right. That’s a good plan. But be careful going home tonight.”

“I’m a cop, remember?”

“You’re my daughter first. We love you, that’s why we worry.”

“Love you, too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

The valet brought her car around as the call ended. The drive home took fifteen minutes, which she spent in total silence, no radio. The stolen purse had given her plenty to think about, enough to make her stop worrying if the call to Vince had been a mistake-for now, anyway. Phone calls to old lovers, particularly those made from a bar, usually didn’t start replaying in your mind until about three a.m.

Alicia lived alone in a Coconut Grove townhouse. The Grove was part of the City of Miami, an area unto itself that was well south of downtown. Alicia was one of eight of “Miami’s bravest” assigned to patrol it. Long before the developers took over, the Grove was known as a Bohemian, wooded enclave, a haven for tree lovers and flower children of the 1960s. Some of that charm had managed to survive the bulldozers and wrecking balls. The sidewalk cafés on Main Street were as popular as ever, and finding your way through the twisted, narrow residential streets beneath the green tropical canopy was a perennial right of passage in Miami. But to Alicia-to any cop-the Grove was essentially a world of extremes. It was a place where some of south Florida’s most expensive real estate butted up against the ghetto, where the mayor’s multimillion-dollar mansion was just a short walk from his daughter’s “questionable” townhouse. The Grove could ser vice just about anyone’s bad habit, from gangs who smashed and grabbed, to doctors and lawyers who ventured out into the night in search of crystal meth, to the distinguished city councilman in need of a twenty-dollar blow job. But yes, it did have some of that old charm, whatever that meant, and Alicia couldn’t imagine living anywhere else in Miami.

“I hate this place,” she muttered. Searching for a parking space always made her feel that way. Naturally, some jerk had taken her assigned space outside her townhouse, so she was forced to cruise the lot for a visitor’s spot. She found one next to the Dumpster, which of course meant that her car would be covered with raccoon tracks in the morning. She turned off the ignition, but her Honda continued to run. It sputtered twice, the chassis shook, and then it died. Never before had she owned a car that made such a production out of killing the engine. This one was such a drama queen, which was why she’d named it Elton.

She got out and closed the car door. An S-curved sidewalk led her through a maze of bottlebrush trees and hibiscus hedges. A rush of wind stirred the leaves overhead-another blast of Arctic air from one doozy of a cold front. She walked briskly, with arms folded to stay warm, then stopped. She thought she had heard footsteps behind her, but no one was in sight. Up ahead, the sidewalk stretched through a stand of larger ficus trees. The old, twisted roots had caused the cement sections to buckle and crack over the years. It was suddenly darker, as the lights along this final stretch of walkway were blocked by sprawling limbs and thick, waxy leaves.

Again, she heard footsteps. She walked faster, and the clicking of heels behind her seemed to quicken, matching her own pace. She stepped off the sidewalk and continued through the grass. The sound of footsteps vanished, as if someone were tracing her silent path. She returned to the sidewalk at the top of the S-curve. Her heels clicked on concrete, and a few seconds later the clicking resumed behind her. She turned and said, “Who’s there?”

She saw no one, and there was no response. In the darkness beneath the trees, however, she sensed someone’s presence. I wish I had my gun, she thought. She never carried it when out drinking.

She turned toward her townhouse, and her heart leapt to her throat. A man was standing on her front step. She was a split second away from delivering a martial-arts kick, then stopped.

“It’s me, Felipe,” he said.

A wave of relief came over her, though she still felt like killing him. “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that. What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” he said.

Felipe was one of her father’s bodyguards. He was about six-foot-six and built for the fireman’s calendar, with handsome skin that was just a shade too dark to be called olive. His crew cut was nicely groomed, except for the crescent-moon bald spot on the crown of his head. The scar was exactly the size of the bottom of a beer bottle, and it smacked of a bar fight gone bad. His five-o’clock shadow was perpetual-at least in the sense that it was there without fail every time Alicia saw him. The first time they’d met was at a victory party the night her father was elected to his first term as mayor. Felipe was a hottie, she had to admit, and she figured that he must have been drunk and off duty when he introduced himself by saying that he’d like to guard her body. It soon became apparent that he was just another sober jerk, with one redeeming quality: He loved the mayor like his own father and, if he had to, would probably take a bullet for him. That kind of loyalty more than made up for the occasional and mostly harmless lousy come-on.

“Did my father send you?” she said.

“Of course. He just wanted to make sure you got into the townhouse safely.”

“I know. But I think you can see that’s not really necessary. I’m sorry you had to come all the way over here so late.” She started up the stairs. He followed. She stopped at the front door and said, “You can go home now, Felipe.”

He had a smug expression, as if he knew how much this was going to bug her. “Your dad specifically told me to go inside ahead of you and check things out. Make sure no one is hiding in the closet, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’m a cop.”

“Hey, I’m just doing as I’m told.”

This was turning into a night that she’d sworn would never happen-the two of them standing at her front door as Felipe the Conqueror flashed the macho man’s grin, the kind that came only with the right to enter. But it was too darn late to phone her father and argue about it. She unlocked the door and stepped aside. “Make it fast, please.”

Felipe gave her an obnoxious little wink as he crossed the threshold and switched on the light. “Nice place,” he said in a breezy tone, as if he were expecting her to turn on some music and offer him a drink.

Alicia’s townhouse was cozy-a nice way of saying “small.” The kitchen and living room were downstairs. There was no dining room per se, just a dining area that was really part of the living room, separated from the kitchen by a little pass-through opening over the sink. Alicia followed him to the sliding glass doors. He unlocked them and stepped outside to check the patio. It was late, she was tired, and she was losing her patience for this. Then something caught her eye. Her computer was in a little work area directly off the kitchen. She had DSL ser vice, so her computer was always online, and she noticed several new e-mails in her in-box.

“All clear. Where’s the bedroom?” Felipe asked as he came in from the patio.

“Upstairs.” She wasn’t about to go up there with him, and her expression had apparently conveyed as much.

“Be right back,” he said.

Alicia’s attention returned to her e-mails. There was the usual smattering of spam, but it was another message from an unknown sender that caught her eye. The subject line read, ABOUT YOUR PURSE. She opened it with a click of her mouse, and her heart skipped a beat. The sender was identified only by a jumble of numbers and characters, not a real name. She read the message once, then read it again. It was short, to the point, and downright creepy:

“I’m sorry. Please don’t be frightened. Soon you will see, it is only out of love that I seek you.”

Felipe was back. “Everything’s fine upstairs. Are you-” He stopped himself in midsentence. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She managed an awkward smile, trying to keep it cool as she showed him to the door and opened it.

“I’ll let your dad know that everything checked out okay.”

She was about to say good night, but he interrupted. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“You look like you seen a ghost.”

“Nope. No ghosts here,” she said. None that I care to tell you about, anyway. “Good night, Felipe.”

“Good night.”

She closed the door and locked it, her thoughts awhirl. This was no longer a drifter’s one-time demand to speak to the mayor’s daughter. The stolen lipstick, the e-mail-this was outright stalking.

Alicia checked the lock again, making double sure that the deadbolt was secure. Then she went upstairs to her closet-to get her gun.

T he next morning, the Miami-Dade crime lab found a fingerprint on Alicia’s compact that didn’t belong to her. A scientific confirmation that Falcon had stolen her purse would have made things pretty simple. Nothing, however, was ever simple.

The print didn’t match Falcon’s.

“That’s weird,” she said. “If it’s not mine and it’s not Falcon’s, then whose is it?”

“No one in any of our databases,” was the answer she got.

She wanted to ask if they were sure, but she knew these guys were thorough. Fingerprint analysis wasn’t just a matter of pushing a button and seeing what came up on the computer, the way it was portrayed on television. The Miami-Dade crime lab checked and double-checked. When they said “no match,” there was no match.

Around ten o’clock, Alicia headed over to the tech geniuses in the audio-visual department. Her laptop was in the hands of Guy Schwartz, one very smart geek, who had done the trace on the “Sorry about your purse” e-mail.

“The message was sent from the Red Bird Copy Center,” Schwartz said. “That’s in the big shopping plaza on the corner of Red Road and Bird Road. Easy to find, but now comes the hard part.”

“How do you mean?”

“The Red Bird Copy Center is the kind of place that rents computer time by the hour, like an Internet café without the lattes. People can come in off the street and send e-mails to whoever they want. I can’t just look at your computer and determine the sender’s identity. Your only hope is that the clerk at the copy center can tell you who rented the particular computer in question. Or maybe you can pull a fingerprint from the keyboard or mouse.”

“I’m on it,” she said.

Twenty minutes later, Alicia and Detective Alan Barber were in the Red Bird Copy Center. Alicia had “a personal stake in the case”-a rather lame way to say “the victim,” but such was police lingo-so she had to beg for permission to accompany Detective Barber and his team of crime-scene investigators. The last thing the prosecutor needed was for Alicia to testify at trial as both the victim and the investigating officer. She was allowed on the scene strictly as an observer. Period. End of discussion. Alicia was okay with that.

Detective Barber had twenty years on the force, and he was probably about six months away from perfecting his Joe Friday monotone. Miami was rarely cold enough for a trench coat, so the chilly weather was like costume day for Barber. He was standing at the counter near the cash register, his hands buried deep in his coat pockets, his fleshy brow furrowed into the anatomical equivalent of the Spanish Steps. A glossy color photograph, Falcon’s mug shot, lay flat atop the glass. Last night’s desk attendant was leaning on one elbow, staring down at it, studying the image. It was Barber’s standard interrogation tactic. Never ask the witness to describe someone out of the blue. Put the photo in front of him, let it jog his memory. “Ever seen this guy before?” said Barber.

The young man scratched at the tattooed dragon on the left side of his shaved head, just above the ear, directly below the scalp ring. “Nope.”

It wasn’t the response that Alicia or the detective had expected. “You sure?” said Barber.

“Dude, I think I’d remember this loser if I saw him.”

Barber kept his composure. Alicia resisted the urge to jump in with her own line of questioning. Standing on the sidelines with a virtual gag on her mouth was proving much more difficult than anticipated.

The computer in question was in pod number three. The crime-scene investigators were proceeding in their usual methodical fashion, dusting for prints and searching for other physical evidence that might identify the person who had sent Alicia the e-mail.

“Do you remember who was using that computer last night?” asked Barber.

“What time?”

Barber fumbled for a copy of the e-mail. Alicia filled in the blank for him: “The e-mail was sent from your computer number three at ten twenty-two p.m.”

Barber shot her a look, as if to say “No talking, that was our agreement.”

“Ten twenty-two p.m.,” he repeated.

“Don’t remember exactly. But I think it was a woman.”

“A woman?”

“Yeah. An older woman.”

Barber shoved the photograph toward the clerk again. “You sure it wasn’t this guy?”

“I don’t think so.”

Barber seemed annoyed. “Can you describe for me the last three customers you dealt with last night?”

“Sure. One was a woman, and-Uh. No, two were women, and the last one was a man. I think. I don’t know. It was either a man or a woman.”

“That certainly narrows it down,” said Barber.

Alicia waited for him to follow up, but the detective was suddenly more concerned with the text message on his vibrating cell. Alicia asked the clerk, “Do your customers sign a log book or anything like that?”

“No, they just pay by the hour and go.”

“The woman who rented pod number three, did she pay with a credit card? Anything to create a written record?”

“Uh-uh. We don’t take credit cards for anything under twenty dollars. I’m pretty sure I had only one credit card transaction all night.”

Barber was still reading from his text message, so Alicia forged ahead. “Do you have a security camera on the premises? Could we get a look at her that way?”

“No. We respect our customers’ privacy.” Translation: How would you like it if someone watched you surf the porn sites?

Barber was suddenly drumming his fingers across the glass counter-top. “Anything else you’d like to ask, officer?”

Alicia backed away. She wasn’t trying to upstage him, but she could tell that his heart wasn’t in her case. Barber was a top-notch homicide detective, with plenty of homicide cases that needed his full attention. He was assigned to a stalking case only because Alicia was the mayor’s daughter. Alicia didn’t like it any more than he did, but if he wasn’t going to pursue the obvious questions, she would. Perhaps she’d pushed it a little too far. “You go right ahead, detective. Sorry.”

Barber said, “Can you describe this older woman for us, kid? The one who rented pod number three?”

The clerk made a face, as if it hurt to search his memory for something that happened all of fourteen hours ago. “Not really. Hispanic, maybe. Kind of short. Just another customer, you know. We get lots of customers.”

Barber asked a few more follow-up questions, none of any consequence. He ended by passing the clerk his card and asking him to call if anything came to mind.

“I hope I was helpful,” said the clerk.

“You were, thank you,” said Alicia.

Barber checked with the CSI team, which had about another hour of work on computer pod number three. They could handle it on their own. Barber gave the signal, and Alicia followed him outside to the sidewalk.

“You think the boy’s covering for somebody?” she asked.

“No,” said Barber. “I don’t think he pays much attention to who comes and who goes from the place. It’s just not important to him.”

“You don’t actually think it was an old woman who stole my purse and sent me that e-mail, do you?”

“Could have been a woman who sent you the message. I have no idea who stole your purse.”

“Are you saying two people might be involved in this?”

“Look, Alicia. You ask a lot of questions, and that’s a good thing in this business. But see, the trick is to ask people who might possibly know the answers. How the hell do I know if there’s two people involved or not?”

He started walking toward his car. Alicia followed. She was thinking about what the clerk had told them. “It just doesn’t add up. Someone steals my lipstick, and then a little old lady sends me an e-mail saying that it’s only out of love that she seeks me?”

“The kid could have been confused.”

“What if he’s not? What if it was a woman who sent me the message?”

“Hey, stranger things have happened, honey.”

She climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. Barber started the car and backed out of the parking space. Alicia looked out the window toward the Red Bird Copy Center.

“Not to me,” she said as they drove away. Honey.