“I'll get the inventory on his car,” Simmons offered. “It was towed after he was arrested.”
“Good,” Rick said. “If there is a ticket, we need the time and the date. If they match his story, we need to talk to the trooper, ask him to confirm by describing this guy.”
“He could be blowing smoke,” Jim said, “about this ticket shit. Or it could be the wrong date.”
“I hope so, he looks good,” Rick said. “A burglar, a prowler. A rapist with a rap sheet. He steals guns, likes to tippy-toe around in the dark, and he admits to being in the neighborhood at some time.”
“I better get back in there,” Simmons said. “I've got a lot of other cases to talk to him about. I hope he's not too spooked.” He looked skeptically at Jim. “You really order his cheeseburgers?”
“Certainly. A uniform is on his way in with them. Oh darn,” he said, over his shoulder, as they walked away, “I forgot the catsup and the pickles, and the two Classic Cokes.”
To Rick, he said, “Too bad it wasn't me with a shotgun who caught that piece a shit in the act, instead of the Crime Watch captain.”
Dusty looked up, her smile eager. “How did it go? Is he our man?”
“Could be.” Rick was surprised that Dusty could appear so vibrant on so little sleep. “He's looking good but claims an alibi. If it checks out, we're back to square one.”
“Please, God, let it be him,” Jim said fervently, rolling his eyes toward heaven.
“Amen,” Rick said.
Dusty's eyes softened when she looked at him. Jim sighed. Rick has got to be one crazy son of a bitch, he thought. Laurel may be a beautiful girl, but this one is all woman.
Rick was on the phone, scribbling an address. He turned to them, his expression resigned. “The good news is, they found López-Gómez. The bad news is, we were right. He's already been autopsiedâby an amateur.”
“Awwww. They don't need us,” Jim said. “He's stolen property. Can't robbery or missing persons handle it?”
“Yeah,” Dusty said. “We already sent him to the morgue once. It's somebody else's turn.”
Rick shook his head. “He belongs to us.”
The body snatchers had used a Ginzu knife, the one advertised by fast-talking pitchmen on late-night television commercials. Their surgical theater was in a cheap motel room west of the airport. The bathroom was now a Salvador Dali nightmareâin surreal greens, reds, browns and purples. Rummaging through López-Gómez's intestines had proved far more difficult than expected.
A middle-aged maid made the discovery. She quit her job on the spot, saying she was leaving Miami for good.
Dr. Lansing was already there, in high dudgeon. “They didn't even know enough to clamp off the abdominal aorta,” he grumbled in greeting. “Look at this mess!”
The amateur pathologists had begun their treasure hunt with José López-Gómez reclining in the bathtub, his upper body elevated. Their first mistake, they discovered, after severing the big artery along the backbone, the one the size of a garden hose. The blood in the upper part of the body quickly flooded the area they were most eager to explore.
“They had to tear out his entire digestive tract and search through twenty-six feet of intestine,” Lansing said.
“It smells to bejesus,” Jim said, pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket.
“It could have been worse,” Rick said, noting that the air conditioner was set on high.
“What is that?” asked Dusty. “It looks like a burn. How do you suppose this happened?” A section of plastic shower curtain had shriveled, and there was a scorch mark on the wall over the tub.
Dr. Lansing smiled approval. “You know, it's really good to have you back aboard, Detective Dustin. I was about to point that out. This is extremely interesting.” He looked enthusiastic. “I think I can tell you something about one of the men who made this mess.”
“And what might that be, Doc?” Jim's voice was muffled by the handkerchief pressed over his nostrils.
“You're looking for a man who could be minus his mustache, eyelashes and eyebrows. See the distended bowels. We all know from experience during autopsies about the enclosed gases that build up.” The group nodded unhappily. “They're a mixture of methane and other gases. If you light a match or a cigarette lighter as the bowel is punctured and the gas escapesâyou get a beautiful blue flame.”
Lansing leaned over the tub and what was in it. “Look at this!” he said triumphantly. The item he retrieved and held high in his gloved hand was a cigar, the end bitten off.
“You mean a flaming fart took off somebody's eyebrows?” Jim said.
“Yep. Every time he cut to take out a bag, here came this puff of gas. It was okay until he lit his cigar. Maybe he just wanted a smoke, maybe it was to mask the odor. Whichever, it was like opening a propane container and lighting a matchâone big
whoosh
, like a flamethrower. He'd have singed his face, hair, the whole thing. I'll show you,” Lansing said eagerly. “Anybody have a cigarette lighter?”
Nobody moved. They were alone in the room. The uniforms, usually eager to crowd into any air-conditioned crime scene, had elected to wait outside on this one.
Lansing studied each solemn detective in turn, then shrugged and turned back to the tub.
“Did they get the cocaine?” Rick asked.
“Looks like they did,” the doctor said. “See where the stomach and intestine is all inflamed? That looks like a ruptured condom. It probably killed him.”
“Let us know when you're sure,” Rick said. “If so, that could get our man Sly off the hook. No telling how many bags there were. But they must have thought it was worth it, to go to all this trouble.”
“I bet they didn't think so any more by the time they were through,” Dusty said. “I'll let the hospitals know to be on the lookout for a Latin male with singed whiskers and a distinct aroma.”
The nervous hotel manager was convinced that the occupant of room 109 had fallen victim to a gruesome murder. “He was already dead when he arrived,” Jim told him. “Trust me.”
The man who had signed the register and his companion matched the description of the gunmen at the morgue. But one would look different now. The room was registered to José López-Gómez. “Cute,” Jim said. “For a stiff, he really gets around.”
Jim slammed the door of the wagon after López-Gómez was slid inside, zipped into a polypropylene body bag. “This is getting to be a habit,” he told Lansing. “Try to hang on to him this time.”
Dusty was assigned to distribute the police artist's drawings of the two Latin body snatchers to hospital emergency rooms. “One must have flash burns and may be missing his eyelashes, eyebrows,” Rick said. “See if you can come up with an ID. Try all the Latin clinics too.”
“That'll take days,” she said.
“Try to get it done tonight,” he said grinning. “Then go home. You don't need to come back in, unless you hit paydirt.”
“What an incentive. Bye, guys.” She picked up the manila envelope with the pictures and took off.
From his desk, immediately behind Rick's, Jim was scowling at another detective, his feet up on his desk, chatting on the telephone, just out of earshot. “Wonder what the good goddamn he's up to now,” Jim muttered. “That guy has covered up more shit than a cat. It's amazing he's still around. You can't trust him.”
“What do you think about Dusty, Jim? Can I trust her?” Rick swiveled his chair around to face his partner. His face was serious.
Jim looked perplexed. “You're the man who should know, bro. You got some reason not to trust her?”
“Not exactly. But I thought our working together would be no problem. Now I find she apparently took our ⦠relationship more seriously than I thought. She got a little weepy the other day.”
“At the Southwind.” Jim nodded.
Rick leaned forward and lowered his voice, although no one else was close by. “Laurel knows, and she's a little jealous that we're working together.”
Jim looked puzzled. “How'd she find out about you and Dusty?”
“I told her.”
“Oh swell, there's not enough trouble in this world, you like to create a little more for yourself, huh? Jeez, when it comes to policemen and sex, the heat from their balls travels up to their brains and turns them to shit.”
“Give me a break, Jim. She picked up on it somehow and asked point-blank. I'm not gonna lie to her.”
“She woulda put it together anyway,” Jim conceded. “Women can smell it on each other when they have the hots for the same guy. Dusty always had eyes for you, probably always will.” His pale eyes looked wistful.
“Remember back when Dusty first joined the department? We didn't know her yet, but you couldn't miss her. There was scuttlebutt about some situation she was involved in before she came to Miami. You remember what the scoop was?”
“They talk about every broad that joins the department. I don't listen to station-house gossip, unlike most cops.”
“You don't think she'd do anything to upset Laurel, you know, woman scorned shit?”
“Hot pants have no conscience,” Jim said, leaning back in his creaky chair. “But on the other hand, Dusty is a champ as far as I can see. And if it's a mandate that we gotta have a woman in here, I sure want her and not somebody like Foster, who couldn't find her ass with both hands if she was sitting on it. You know she takes off her bra when she thinks it's too hot in her patrol car. Or Tierney, who wouldn't know if it was day or night without her police radioâall she's conscientious about is the shade of her lipstick and what her hairdo looks like.
“Or even that good-looking redhead in forty sectorâa real sweetheart, but if a stranger so much as said âBoo!' she'd go into cardiac arrest. There's places for women, Rickâpolice work ain't one of them. If we have to have a woman partner, we're damn lucky it's Dusty. I warned you when you first started screwing around with her that you shouldn't shit where you eat. Everything that goes around comes around.”
“Thanks, pal. I could have lived without the lecture.” Rick frowned. “You're right, I guess. A lot has happened lately, and Laurel is sort of moody and changeable. I never know what to expect with her. She still has some growing up to do.”
“Told you that, too,” Jim said, shifting his gaze over Rick's shoulder. “Uh oh, here comes trouble.”
Mack Thomas ambled toward their desks.
“Looks like he ate the canary.”
“Well, I see you finally put that bum Sly right where he belongs,” Mack said. He removed the cigar from his mouth and looked pleased. “So the king of kung fu has got his ass in a sling this time.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jim said. “We're waiting on word from the ME.”
Thomas parked himself on the edge of Rick's desk. “I've got some news. Your neighbor, the Thorne kid. Wuz that his name?”
Suddenly attentive, Rick kicked an empty desk chair in Thomas's direction.
“Remember my Pakistani convenience-store clerk blown away in a holdup that is still unsolved?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, ballistics now informs me that the .38-caliber bullet that nailed him came from the same gun that wasted your neighbor.” He waved a yellow copy of the lab report.
Jim was on his feet and took it from Mack's hand. “When didja get this?” he said accusingly, staring at the date.
“It came to my attention yesterday.”
“Why the hell didn't you tell us right away?”
Mack extended his palm, stiff fingers vertical, as if to deflect the arrows of instant outrage. “I've been very busy with grieving relatives,” he said, “and it momentarily slipped my mind. But no problem. Time is of no essence. We've got nothing, no witnesses, no suspects, no leads, same as you have in your caseâzero.”
“I want to see the file,” Rick said briskly. “Everything you've got.”
“Likewise,” Mack said. “We've got to catch this guy. He's leaving too many dead bodies in our jurisdiction.”
“We do have a suspect,” Jim said. He turned to Rick. “What about our rapist?”
Rick dialed the rape squad.
“Just about to call you,” Simmons said. “I got the ticket from the wrecker service that towed his car. The time and the date are as he told us. The trooper confirms it. He remembers the guy, says he had a bad attitude. If it wasn't for the old folks he had with him, he probably would have arrested him. He's sorry now that he didn't. Sorry, Rick. I know this guy is going to cop out to some of the rapes, but it looks like he's not the man in your homicide.”
“Thanks, that's okay, Dave. It was a good try. Appreciate it.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jim said bitterly.
“We've got nothing,” Rick said. “Except now we know it was no isolated incident. This guy is trigger-happy.”
Picking up his walkie Jim held it close to his ear. “Maybe we do have something,” he said. “Sounds like another convenience-store shooting just went down.”
The hospital emergency room was a beacon of light in a sleeping city of darkness. Rick and Jim burst through the automatic doors, men in a hurry. The wounded clerk was alive.
A passing patrolman had heard the shot, seen the man with the gun flee the store and drawn down on him. The robber had dropped his gun and surrendered.
It was a good catch, worthy of officer-of-the-month honors, Rick thought, but disappointing nonetheless. The robber's gun was an automatic, .22-caliber, and his getaway car had been stolen in Atlanta, where he had escaped from police custody twenty-four hours earlier.
The clerk, a young black man robbed seven times in as many months, was fed up and tried to wrestle the gun away from the holdup man. He did not believe the weapon was real. It was. The clerk was lucky. The bullet had entered and exited his left thigh, inflicting a painful wound but no major damage.
They talked to him briefly in the ER. “It was small,” he said, wincing in pain, his face wet with tears and perspiration. “I thought for sure the damn thing was a toy. I'm probably in real trouble now. Company policy is never to resist a robbery. I hope I don't lose my job over this.”
The detectives stopped at the nurse's station to talk to the officer writing the report.
“Can you believe that?” Jim said. “The poor guy gets shot and has to worry about getting canned cuz he objected to getting robbed for the umpteenth time. They oughta give him a bonus for balls.”
“They're worried about liability,” Rick said. “They'd rather give up the few bucks in the till than see somebody get hurt and file a claim.”
“Yeah,” Jim groused. “If the robber got injured, he probably woulda suedâand collected. I'm telling ya, Rick, I gotta bail outta this line of work.”
The nurse in charge returned to her station, and Rick flashed the boyish grin that was second nature. “How goes it, Aileen?”
“Good, now that you're here. Have you come to take me away from all this? At last?”
“Not this time. My roommate won't let me.”
“That's right. I forgot. How is domestic bliss?”
“I'm not sure yet, I'll let you know.”
“What else is on your mind?”
“These two guys.” He placed the likenesses of the two Colombians on the desk. “Did Dusty come in earlier with these?”
“Detective Dustin? Haven't seen her tonightâor them. What are you looking for, a bullet wound?”
“No, one of them may have flash burns on his face.”
“Leave the copies, we'll let you know if they show up.”
A teenage girl was weeping noisily in a wheelchair behind Rick. Her clothes were torn, there was a small cut on her forehead and her lower lip and knees were bloodied. “What happened to her?” Jim asked the nurse.
“Some sort of run-in with a car. Her boyfriend is over there having slivers of glass dug out of his feet. Must have been quite a date. Remind you of anything?” She smiled coyly at Rick.
“Hey, they weren't all that bad,” he said. “Were they?”
The dark-haired young man she had indicated lay facedown on an examining table in a nearby cubicle, partially concealed by a privacy curtain. A doctor seemed to be working diligently on the bottoms of his feet. Officer Terry Lou Mitchell stood at the head of the table, eyes narrowed, her expression dubious. She was shooting questions at the patient and filling out a report.
Her face lit up when she saw Rick, and she stepped out from behind the curtain. Just then the automatic doors whispered open, and four people surged inside. They were a middle-aged couple, a youth about twenty, and a young girl who strongly resembled the bruised teenager in the wheelchair.
The girl in the wheelchair began to wail. “Mami, Mami!” She opened her arms as her mother and sister rushed to her. The father and the brother looked around, spitting curses in Spanish, saw the young man on the examining table and charged.
“Uh oh,” Jim said.
Officer Mitchell stopped them, waving them back as though directing traffic. “Your daughter's okay. It's not his fault. They both got hurt,” she said. “He is being treated right now. Let the doctor do his work.”
Reluctantly, the two men joined the women, still angrily muttering invectives over their shoulders.
“What the hell happened?” Rick asked Mitchell.
“Who knows?” She spoke quietly, out of the corner of her mouth. “They're ticked that the kid kept their sixteen-year-old darling out way after curfew and she wound up getting hurt. They were out partying on the beach at Key Biscayne, a little beach blanket bingo. Doing a little drinking, I think, if that's all they were doing. He claims he cut his feet up while chasing off some intruder. She says she got scared, ran after them and got bumped by a mystery car whose driver didn't stop.
“She has no car description, no tag number.” She looked skeptical. “God only knows what really happened out there. They probably aren't sure themselves and wouldn't tell if they did. You know how kids are.”
“Yeah,” Rick said, “having been one myself.” He turned away, eager to go back to the station to read Mack's file on the convenience-store murder. With any luck, it would help them find a killer who apparently never left a witness.