Garden of Evil (6 page)

“The other muggings there—were they by the same guys?”

“Hard to say.”

According to Springer, the getaway car belonged to a college student and was stolen off a South Beach street while he partied there with friends the night before. Other witnesses in the parking lot did confirm that at least one of the muggers was masked.

“Isn't that odd?” I asked him.

“A little out of the ordinary, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it odd.”

“Any other recent muggings done by masked men?”

“Not that I'm aware of.”

“I'm just trying to determine her credibility, Randy. I don't want to run with it and get burned. What do you think?”

“Honest opinion? Two unrelated, isolated incidents. It happens. Remember that tourist, got robbed three times in one day? Hey, the mayor's car has been stolen twice. Remember the married couple, had both their cars stolen the same day? Shit happens. It was her turn.”

“You don't believe anybody's trying to kill her?”

“Hell, no. She's not the type, doesn't live the life, far as we know. I mean, we talked to her. Her divorce was no war. No reason for anybody to kill her or have her
killed. And if those jokers were hired hit men, you'd have to admit they were pretty sloppy.”

“She seems convinced.”

“Like I said, nice lady. Something did happen. Twice. Maybe she's just taking herself a little too seriously, a little paranoid. Or she's looking for sympathy from her ex. Gotta go, staff meeting's about to start.”

I read through all my notes, wavering on Althea's story. My cynical mean-spirited self thought: spoiled society wife gets dumped, is lonely, has a couple of bad experiences, thinks life as she knew it is coming to an end, and wants the world to join her pity party. But then I remembered the look in her eyes. Her desperation was real. What if—? My telephone rang.

“He's here!” Lottie hissed.

“Who?”

“O'Rourke!”

“Who?”

“Tex O'Rourke, my ex-husband.”

“In Miami?”

“Hell-all-Friday, Britt. In the building!”

I scanned the newsroom for a sinister face. “Where?”

“The lobby, five minutes ago. Chip from security called. O'Rourke was at the front desk asking to see me. I told 'im not to let him come up, to say I was out.”

“So he's probably gone.”

“Britt, the man called from Fort Worth last night. I said don't come. Told 'im I was engaged, booked up, knocked up, screwed up, had gained seventy-five pounds, and had chicken pox. He's here anyway. You think
our
security kin stop him?”

She had a point. News security guards routinely demand that I present my ID card to enter the building, but their record of challenging suspicious strangers who could be heavily armed mad bombers was not a distinguished one. I recently saw a violent repeat offender, free on bond and awaiting trial, busily using our newsroom copy machine.
A stack of legal documents he needed to copy for his lawyer, he said. When I asked how he slipped by security, he looked puzzled. Security?

“Where are you?” I asked Lottie.

“Under a desk in the sports department,” she whispered. “Photo is the first place he'll go.”

“Let's meet for coffee in the cafeteria.”

“Wish I had a disguise.”

Lottie's wild and frizzy mane of flaming red hair was hard to hide. “We'll go to a table back in the corner where the pressmen sit,” I suggested. “Take the freight elevator. Meet you there in two.”

I arrived first, poured myself coffee, and got her hot tea in a Styrofoam cup. She appeared as I stocked up on napkins and plastic spoons. I signaled her, then stared. Her hair, brushed and shining, was sleekly pinned back on one side with a silver and turquoise clip. Her lashes were coated with inky black mascara, her lips were creamy coral, and she had discarded her khaki vest, the pockets always crammed with film canisters and camera lenses. She even walked different. Her usual easy long-legged stride had been replaced by smaller, more dainty, almost mincing steps.

I whistled under my breath, then muttered, “You sure have a peculiar way of scaring this guy out of town. Wouldn't it be more effective to paint on whiskers?”

“Jist want 'im to see what he's missing,” she murmured self-righteously, as we sat down. “Got any blusher on you, Britt?”

“No, but I think there's some in my locker upstairs. I don't believe you,” I said, still staring.

She watched the doors behind me as we talked.

“How 'bout this?” She opened the top two buttons of her L. L. Bean blouse, exposing a hint of cleavage.

“Look okay?”

“Enough,” I said, as her fingers moved to the third button. “You don't want to be too obvious.”

She settled down enough to launch into a diatribe against the mother of the dead baby in the car.

“Ought to string that woman up,” she muttered. “I'll do it. Why spend money on a trial? Better yet, they oughta stick her in an oven and turn it up to broil. Animals take better care of their young'uns.”

She sipped her tea carefully, so as not to smear her lipstick.

“Hear they identified the second guy shot by the woman who killed the sheriff?”

“No, where'd you hear that?”

“Hid out in the wire room awhile, read everything that came across. He wuz driving down to Orlando from Live Oak for a job interview. Never showed up. Got a description on his missing car. Shouldn't be long now. They'll git 'er.”

“Be interesting as hell to find out who she is, what she's all about. I thought maybe she panicked and shot the first one defending herself, but jeez, another one makes her look like a stone-cold killer.”

“Maybe some man done her wrong.” Lottie shrugged.

“'Member that Orange Bowl queen?” I said, and told her all about Althea. “What's weird,” I mused, “are the masks. Muggers and burglars don't wear them. Shit, you see convenience store robberies on TV all the time. They walk in, pull guns, knowing there are security cameras, but even they don't bother to wear masks.”

“Maybe he wuz trying to look like the Grove rapist,” she said. “So if anybody saw him, the rapist'd git the blame.”

“But why target her at all? She's got no money, no insurance, no enemies, no friends—except for that neighbor; with a friend like that she doesn't need enemies. Why would anybody want to kill her?”

“Something to do with her being Orange Bowl queen?”

“Twenty-six years later?”

“Her picture was in the paper, on TV. She was every
man and boy's fantasy back then. You telling me she didn't have a stalker?”

I sighed, shaking my head. “That was way before stalking became the national pastime.”

“Then it's gotta be her ex-husband or something she's not telling you,” Lottie said.

“The husband got a good deal, must feel lucky he's not paying through the nose. And why would she hold anything back when she's the one looking for help?”

“What does the desk think?”

“I'm not mentioning it to them until I'm sure she's not nuts and that there really is a story. For all I know, she's as phony as Ryan's Medal of Honor winner.”

“Do not mention that man to me.” Lottie's eyes flashed fire. “Saw him panhandling downtown the other day and nearly stopped—and not to pin a medal on 'im.”

“The guy's one hell of a storyteller. I sat right there while Ryan interviewed him. Believed it myself. So did the staff at the homeless shelter; they're the ones who tipped Ryan off about 'im.” I checked the clock. “Looks like your ex isn't in the building after all. He's probably on a plane by now.”

“Think so?” She looked disappointed. “He's outside, I betcha, watching the exits. Wish I'd lost that ten pounds I've been meaning to drop. You kin drive me to my car. I'll hide in your trunk.”

“No way, the trunk is not comfy. Why are you so determined to duck him?”

“Cuz if I see him, I'm a goner,” she said, focusing on the door behind me.

“The guy's probably fat and bald by now. What does he look like anyway?”

“Like that,” she whispered, and licked her lips. “Jist like that.”

I followed her gaze. A man stood at my elbow, facing her.

“Carlotta Samantha,” he drawled, in a gravelly baritone. “Make a wish.” Their eyes locked.

“Why, if it isn't Austin Jeffrey O'Rourke,” she replied, with an air of total surprise.

He was tall and lean, his black hair curly and his piercing eyes intense. He wore blue jeans and hand-tooled leather boots and exuded a magnetic energy. So did she.

How perfect they looked together, I thought. I was clearly in the way.

“Sit down,” I offered, pushing back my chair. “I was just leaving.”

He thanked me without taking his eyes off her. She returned his smoldery stare. Neither noticed when I left.

 

Two messages from Althea waited in the newsroom. I pushed them aside and read the wire copy on the rest-stop murder. Roland Miller, age thirty-six, had been driving a beige Ford Taurus. When he failed to keep his appointment for the Orlando job interview, the company contacted his home. His worried wife called the highway patrol to ask if he had been in an accident. They matched his description to the dead body in Alachua County.

Charlie was not at his desk but returned my call minutes later. “We've got us a helluva breaking story here.” I heard the excitement in his voice.

“Did the Shelby County detectives go down there yet?”

“They were all over it the minute the Blazer turned up. It's the break they were waiting for. I just caught up with 'em twenty minutes ago.”

“What'd they say? How many times was the victim shot?”

“Twice.”

“Where?”

“You probably already guessed.”

“The same?”

“He died a happy man—at least till she pulled the gun on 'im.”

“Why—”

“Maybe she's a man-hater.”

“I just saw a short wire story. Why aren't they releasing more?”

“They're about to. Britt?”

“Yeah, Charlie?”

“She shows up on your turf, you sharing information?”

“Sure. We're not competitors. The street runs both ways.”

“Okay,” he said. “The sex angle's about to hit the fan. We're running with it too. But there's something else. Medical examiner down in Alachua saw something that didn't look right in the cavity at the front of a hollow-point Black Talon he dug outa that poor bastard.”

“What?”

“A pigment that didn't look right. Not blood or human tissue. He had the detective take it right over to the crime lab and they identified it.”

“What was it, Charlie?”

“Lipstick.”

“Lipstick?”

“They're thinking she kissed the bullet, left traces of lipstick on it, 'fore she loaded the gun.”

“But why?”

“Send a message, I guess, such as in kiss-your-ass-goodbye. I don't know. But it was too good to stay a secret. Somebody leaked it, it's been all over local TV down there. With that and the sex, they're calling her the Kiss-Me Killer. Ain't that something?”

The Kiss-Me Killer. I stared at the map above my desk and at the red pin nestled at the rest stop just off Interstate 75. The highway rolls on south through Ocala and divides near Wildwood. The main branch, I-75, runs west to Tampa, down the Gulf coast, and across Alligator Alley. The other jogs southwest of Winter Garden, cuts through Sebring, and snakes around the great Lake Okeechobee south near Belle Glade. The two roads reunite en route to Miami.

S
HELL HUNTERS FOUND
R
OLAND
M
ILLER'S MISSING
Ford Taurus the following day, at the end of a no-name road that runs off Canoe Creek, outside of St. Cloud in Osceola County, about a hundred and fifty miles south of Alachua. The powdery-sand road, where local kids like to mud-slide when it's wet, according to the wire stories, skirts the outer edge of a giant stand of bald cypress. As it winds deep into the swamp, the road is lined with an assortment of discarded appliances, furniture, and the rusting hulks of abandoned cars and trucks. Locals use the area for target practice, taking potshots at squirrels, snakes, and swamp rats. Three teens collecting used cartridge shells to repack and use themselves had seen the vehicle. Thinking it was occupied by lovers, they gave it a wide berth. Hours later, when the car was still there, they grew curious.

The doors were unlocked. They might have considered a joy ride but were distracted by swarms of flies buzzing in a nearby clearing. Miller had kept a yellow blanket in his trunk for weekend beach outings. Spread out beneath the live oaks as though for a picnic or romantic woodland rendezvous, the blanket was now saturated with the blood
of a stranger, who sprawled atop it staring cross-eyed at the sky.

Two hollow-point Black Talon nine-millimeter slugs had shattered his lower forehead and the bone structure around his eyes. With no anchor for the muscles that hold them in place, both eyes turned inward.

The dead man, about forty-five years old, had been well dressed before removing his trousers and undershorts, folded neatly nearby. His genitalia had been mutilated by a close-range gunshot blast.

According to Charlie Webster, crime scene technicians from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found the Taurus wiped clean of prints. How could she spend more than a day and a night in a car without leaving telltale evidence? Hair, fiber, the scent of her perfume? I had a hundred questions.

Attempts were under way to construct a composite of the Kiss-Me Killer, based on the uncertain recollections of the coffee-stop waitress, who had been working a full counter at the time, and merchants with whom the killer had used her victims' credit cards.

The dead man's pockets were empty, his vehicle, if any, missing. Technicians attempted to photograph a second set of tire impressions at the scene, but results were not promising due to the dry weather.

Teams of lawmen from north and central Florida had coalesced into a task force. The FBI was working up a psychological profile, and the reward had grown to $100,000.

The story, with its reports of Black Talon bullets kissed by the killer and the victims' “sexual mutilation,” caught fire. The
St. Pete Times
and the Tampa and Lakeland papers assigned teams of reporters. Fred Francis did a report for
NBC Nightly News
, and CNN sent in a crew. TV in Miami was already following the case, and the
News
was allotting it more space on the state page.

The speedy and all-out response from law enforcement
and the media was interesting, I thought. Murdered women are frequently found along remote roadsides or in canals. Roving serial killers often achieve double-digit body counts before law enforcement begins to link cases and seriously question whether a monster is at large. Was the early and extraordinarily speedy mobilization in this case because the victims were men? Was there major media coverage because most publishers, executive editors, and news directors are men?

Lottie had taken comp time to spend with Tex. The state of their rekindled relationship was so far so good, I learned, when I called her. They had gone parasailing and water-skiing and were planning to scuba dive under a full moon. I reported the latest on the killer and her most recent victim.

“Hell-all-Friday, somebody sure has pissed her off. Maybe,” Lottie suggested, “a man infected her with
AIDS
and she's getting even. 'Member that story a couple weeks ago? Four out of ten people infected with HIV don't tell their sex partners—and two-thirds admit to not using condoms. Could be she's positive and pissed.”

“Could be anything,” I said. “The victims seem to be strangers unlucky enough to cross her path. Doesn't sound like they look alike. Maybe they say or do something that triggers her. Or maybe she just wants to rob them and doesn't like leaving witnesses.”

“What about the sex?”

“It can't be at gunpoint,” I said. “Not many guys could perform under those circumstances.”

“Unless they find it excitin',” Lottie said cheerfully. “I once knew a guy who liked—”

“Spare me,” I said. “Gotta go.”

 

My destination was an Opa-Locka nursing home. The eastern horizon blurred beneath a reddish-brown haze that looked like smog as I drove the interstate north. The annual migration of red African dust had begun. A monster
cloud five hundred miles wide had ridden trade winds and air currents more than three thousand miles from the coast of West Africa. The sky would be milky by tomorrow, with a whitish haze. People with respiratory problems would have breathing difficulty, and Miamians would find their cars coated with a thin rougelike red powder.

Detectives were still interviewing employees at the Golden Sunset Nursing Home. Two elderly patients, one suffering from advanced Alzheimer's, the other a helpless stroke victim, had been wheeled as usual to a remote spot on the landscaped grounds at 9
A.M.
, for a few minutes of fresh air and sunshine while an aide changed their beds. The temperature had already climbed to 96 degrees but the spot was shaded and the ritual brief. Today, unfortunately, their aide was interrupted by a telephone call. Her child's grade school principal insisted that she pick up her sick youngster from school at once.

The aide left in a hurry, harried and upset, assuming fellow staffers would look after her charges. Not until 4
P.M.
did someone note that they were not in their room. A search was launched. By then, the shifting sun had done its brutal work. Still strapped in their chairs, their deaths were apparently due to heat exhaustion.

I remembered Lottie's words about what we have to look forward to and imagined how it felt to be helpless and forgotten in the merciless heat. If only it would rain, I thought. Life would return to normal. Instead, tempers frayed, motorists fought in traffic, and as I listened in my car, City Commissioner Sonny Saladrigas mouthed off on Spanish-language radio, branding the mayor, his former ally, a crook and a Castro spy.

Three days and counting until Kendall McDonald returned. I stopped to shop on the way home. At a liquor store I spent too much on a bottle of good champagne. In Burdines' lingerie department, I bought a frivolous new nightgown, short silky lavender trimmed with fine pale
lace. The champagne in the fridge and the gown wrapped in tissue paper in a bedroom drawer, I awaited his call.

The phone rang late. I was dozing.

“Hi, love,” I breathed into the mouthpiece.

“Didn't know you cared.” The braying laugh came from Bobby Tubbs in the night slot.

“What is this, an obscene call?” I grumbled, and checked the time: nearly 2
A.M.

“Not unless you want it to be.” He sniggered. “Seriously, Britt, I'm just closing up shop and I know you've been keeping tabs on those killings upstate. There's a development. Sorry, thought you'd still be up.”

“They identify that last victim?” I felt suddenly alert and awake.

“No, but they've got a new one.”

“Where?”

“They found this guy near Clewiston, up in Hendry County.”

I visualized my map. Clewiston was near the south shore of Lake Okeechobee, closer to Miami than the last one. “Are they sure it was her?”

“Cops seem to think so, same MO. Want to make sure you'll be available if she shows up here. Heard you talk about taking comp time next week.”

McDonald and I had discussed driving across state to Sanibel Island in the Gulf of Mexico. The first place we had ever been truly alone together, it was away from Miami, far from our jobs. If the man planned to propose, that's where it would happen.

“Think she's headed here?”

“Who knows? They could nail that crazy bitch tonight, but I need to make sure we're covered, just in case. This is turning into a major national story, and I need to get somebody working on a-matter in case it breaks here and you're not available.”

“I' m available.” I spoke quickly, staring into the dark.
“I think she'll be here, Bobby. I have a feeling about this one.”

“Me too.”

What were the chances of the Kiss-Me Killer and McDonald showing up in Miami at the same time? I wondered, Remote, I told myself. I wanted McDonald; I wanted this story. Is this why you should always be careful what you wish for? How could I juggle both? But how nice it would be to break this professional drought and have a front page byline again. I switched on a light.

“What play did my story on the nursing home fatalities get?”

“Well,” he began slowly, “you're aware that we've got space problems again.”

“It's an incredible outrage story,” I said accusingly, sitting upright.

“Yeah, I know, could be anybody's grandmother, but we just don't have the space. And we won't know for sure that the heat killed them until after the autopsies tomorrow.”

“Oh, sure! They just happen to die simultaneously of natural causes after being left out in the sun all day. It
did
make the paper, didn't it?”

“Sure. Six-B, the obit page.”

Not even the local front.

“So,” Bobby said, “we can count on you? Your plans won't interfere if the Kiss-Me Killer story breaks in Miami?”

“For sure,” I said bleakly. “Count on me.” Hell, McDonald hadn't even called.

I tossed and turned, waiting for the phone, then dreamed of endless ribbons of bloody highway streaming south beneath a hazy sky tarnished by African dust.

 

McDonald called at 8
A.M.
“Sorry, babe. Dozed off; by the time I woke up it was way too late. Didn't want to call in the middle of the night and scare you.”

“It's never too late for you to call me,” I said softly. “Scares me more when you don't.”

“You sound so good,” he murmured. “Man, do I miss you. Two days to go. I'll drive straight through. Then you'll really have something to be scared of.”

 

Coffee brewing, I ignored my story, buried with the obits, and focused instead on the story stripped across the top of the state page:

BLOODY SIX-DAY THRILL SPREE LEAVES FOUR DEAD.

Few details on victim number four. The story broke late, but Bobby had managed to fly in a new lead as presses rolled.

The upstate sexploits of the Kiss-Me Killer led the radio morning news, followed by stories on the record-breaking heat and a shoving match between Commissioner Saladrigas and a valet car parker at the Inter-Continental Hotel.

The valet asked Saladrigas not to leave his Mercedes on the hotel ramp. Sonny went into a tirade and, witnesses said, shoved the valet. When the valet shoved back, Sonny made threats and displayed a gun tucked in his waistband.

Gone by the time police arrived, Sonny, reached at home, denied everything and blamed his political enemies, “the tools of Fidel Castro,” for trying to discredit him.

I pitied the valet, who was expendable. Hotel management probably would not risk offending a powerful politician known for his long memory and his bad temper. Sonny, I thought, could get away with murder.

A wave of heat washed over me as I stepped from my apartment. My damp skin felt coated with an invisible film of African dust before I slid into my ovenlike car. The police beat seemed relatively quiet so I beelined for the office, eager to find out more about the Lake Okeechobee murder. I read the wires and made some calls.

Victim number four was young, a first-year college student on a football scholarship at the University of Florida. He was working for the summer in his father's all-night
service station, which answered motorist-in-distress calls from the nearby highway. An attendant who worked with him took the tow truck out on an emergency call at about 10:30
P.M.
When he returned shortly before midnight, the door was locked and the office dark, though the exterior lights still burned. A late-model Cadillac he had not seen before was parked behind the station. The college football player's red Trans Am was gone.

As he wondered whether to call the owner, a local trooper drove in to buy a soft drink and write an accident report. He shined a flashlight through a barred side window and saw blood.

She must have assumed he would not be found until morning. She was on the run in a red Trans Am, with little head start. The chase was heating up.

The lime-green Cadillac was registered in Osceola County to the Reverend Jeremiah Truesdale, the wires said. Victim three, the man on the yellow beach blanket, had now been tentatively identified. An evangelical preacher, Truesdale had not been reported missing by his wife because he often disappeared for a day or two, she said, on missions to save the wicked, preach the gospel, or perform impromptu baptisms. It was unclear to me which of those he had been attempting on the yellow beach blanket when the killer sent him to meet his maker. Family and friends had not linked the preacher to descriptions of the unidentified corpse found dead at the sordid woodland scene. This was a man of God.

I jabbed the fourth red pin into the map, studying the trail of the killer's odyssey. She'd stuck mostly to main highways, with brief, deadly excursions into rural areas and small towns. It seemed doubtful she was from out of state; she knew the terrain too well. Settling at my terminal I checked anyway. No similar cases reported anywhere in the United States. Sheriff T. Rupert (Buddy) Brascom had apparently been the first. I focused on the map again, trying to think like her. She could have gone north or turned
west to the Gulf. She might be halfway to Biloxi. In my heart I knew she was not. She was coming our way.