Читать книгу The Memory Killer - J. Kerley A. - Страница 8

“You want to grab a case from Miami-Dade?” Roy McDermott said from behind his broad desk, patting down the straw-hued cowlick that immediately bounded back in defiance. “What? We don’t have enough cases of our own?” Outside his twenty-third-story window the Miami skyline was a study in muscular architecture. The FCLE was in the downtown Clark Center, and was the state’s top investigative agency, usually summoned when special expertise was needed. We stayed busy.

“Doc Morningstar thinks it’s the way to go.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, partner, but she’s a pathologist, not an investigative professional.”

“We can do it, right? Assert jurisdiction?”

Roy nodded reluctantly. “We’re state, they’re local. But it’s basically a missing-persons case that’ll probably get filed as a sex crime. I don’t see the reason, Carson. It’s not like we’re begging for work.”

My phone rang and I checked the caller: Morningstar. I made notes as she detailed her latest findings.

“That was the good Doc herself,” I said when we’d finished.

Roy clapped his hands in mock delight. “Goodie. Does she have any more cases to add to our list?”

“She has a newly isolated agent in the tox combo. Something called raphides. Given the plant-based nature of the other toxins, Morningstar thinks it came from dieffenbachia.”

“The houseplant? I used to have one in my office until it died. Probably had something to do with stubbing out cigars in the pot.”

“Dieffenbachia is also called dumb cane. Seems the raphides cause paralysis of the vocal cords.”

Roy spun to study the skyline. “So the perp drops this nastiness in a drink. The black locust makes the target head home with cramps and muscle weakness, the datura makes him hallucinate like Timothy Leary squared, and this last stuff …”

“Makes it impossible to call for help,” I said.

Roy turned back to his desk and picked up the phone.

“You’re tight with Vince Delmara, right?”

I nodded. Vince was a senior investigator with the Miami-Dade County Police Department. We’d worked together on my first case in Florida last year, and I’d found Delmara a first-rate detective, old school, the kind to visit a crime scene just to sniff the air. We’d hit it off from the git-go.

“Good,” Roy said. “Let Vince schmooze you through the transfer and it’ll go easy.”

“You think?”

He grinned. “Unless some honcho has a burr under his saddle, they’ll be delighted to pass the potato to us.”

My partner in most operations was Ziggy Gershwin. I gave him a call and was outside his Little Havana apartment minutes later, waiting until a slender man with coal-black hair pushed from the door, jamming a scarlet shirt into tan chinos, his cream jacket hanging across his shoulder, a rolled tortilla in his mouth like a cigar. An ancient woman was walking a tan puff of dog down the sidewalk and Gershwin’s cordovan boat shoes leapt over the bewildered canine, earning an icy glare from the woman. I filled him in as I drove, as much as I knew.

“Oy caramba, Big Ryde,” Gershwin said as he buttoned his cuffs. “That’s some crazy cocktail.”

A few months back Ziggy Gershwin would have been wearing threadbare jeans, a T-shirt advertising a beer brand, and orange skate shoes, but becoming an active agent in the FCLE had upped his fashion game. The product of a Jewish father and Cuban mother, his full name was Ignacio Ruben Manolo Gershwin, and he’d been Iggy as a child. But a teacher had started calling the hyperactive, darting kid Ziggy, and it stuck.

“Morningstar thinks Kemp received repeated and heavy doses of the tox mix, Zigs, maybe starting at a bar.”

“What, we’re doing legwork for Miami-Dade?”

“We’re appropriating the case. The Doc figures it’d take a psycho to sicken and weaken people, turn off their screams, then fill their head with hallucinations while he rapes them.”

“No matter how lovely Señorita Morningstar may be, isn’t she a pathologist and not a—”

“Heard it from Roy,” I said, cutting him off.

I called and found Vince at his desk in MD’s headquarters and said we’d be by in minutes. He had two words: Bring coffee. He meant real brew, not the stuff cooked up at cop houses across the land, desiccated brown crumbles boiled into a bitterness no sugar could blunt. We stopped at a bodega and filled my large Zogirushi with righteous espresso thunder and were at MD in minutes.

Vince Delmara was in a cluttered cubicle in the Homicide unit, his wingtips on his desk as he reviewed jai-alai scores in the Miami Herald. He looked up, saw us approaching, and folded the paper. Vince was medium height and slender and his dark complexion was marred with acne pocks, his black hair brushed straight back. His dark eyes were large and piercing and with his prize-sized proboscis Vince called to mind a thoughtful buzzard. He always dressed in dark suits, white shirts and neon-bright ties, capping the ensemble with a Dick Tracy-style fedora to enter the bright Miami sun, which he regarded with vampiric suspicion.

I poured his ceramic mug full of caffeine and Vince’s toucan-sized beak sniffed. He drank, leaned back his head, moaned, then, as if his day had been re-booted, set his eyes on Gershwin and me. “Jesus … too much Scotch last night. I’m surprised I didn’t wake up wearing a fucking kilt.”

“Your wife still make you stop and get a few pops before you come home?” Gershwin asked.

He nodded. “Says it makes me easier to live with.”

“She must have found you real easy to live with last night,” Gershwin said.

“Beatrice is in Tampa visiting her sister. I had to live with me last night.” He took another blast of java. “What can I do you gents for?”

“We’ve got a guy who was a Missing, Vince. He’d been drugged, kept for a week, then dumped. We’re planning to pull the case into our purview. Doc Morningstar thinks it’s a psycho at work.”

Vince gave me a raised eyebrow. “Last I noted, Carson, the gorgeous doc was a pathologist and—”

I sighed and raised my hand. Had everyone been handed the same libretto? “I know, Vince. But I figured you might smooth the way, politics-wise.”

He sucked coffee and thought. “Well … given that details are just getting clear, the case will transfer from Missing Persons to Sex Crimes, but I’ll bet it’s still officially in MP. Lemme see what Missing Persons has listed.” He sat at a blank screen, pecked the keys. Nothing happened.

“Works best when you turn it on, Vince,” Gershwin said. “Let me do the honors.”

Gershwin flipped the switch and seconds later we saw a photo of Dale Kemp in the corner of a screen of missing persons. His well-attended blond hair sparkled with highlights above sculpted cheekbones and penetrating gray eyes. His occupation was listed as medical-products salesman, and I figured his good looks created a buzz among the female staff when he entered a physician’s office.

Vince read the investigative report: “Moved here last April from Minneapolis. Liked to hit the beach and bars, but who doesn’t when they’re twenty-seven and in Miami.”

“Gay?” I asked.

“Yep, but you got to read between the lines. Lemme see who owns the case.”

Vince expanded the screen to the full report, tapped a bottom line. “The case is still in Missings, headed by Katey Beltrane, twenty years in the biz, eight in MP, and a pro. She’ll thank you for lightening her case load. Step in and snatch a case from an insecure pissant and you’ll—”

“Wind up in shit-fight corral,” Gershwin finished.

Vince tipped back the fedora and nodded at Gershwin. “For a young buck, you know a couple things. Let’s get it done so I can see how much I lost on jai-alai last night. Here’s a tip, never call your bookie when you’re smashed.”