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The Death Box
J. A. Kerley


Detective Carson Ryder faces his most terrifying adversary yet in this nail-biting thriller from the author of Her Last Scream.Carson Ryder thought he’d seen everything …A specialist in twisted crimes, Detective Carson Ryder thought he’d seen the lowest depths of human depravity. But he’s barely started his new job in Miami when called to a horrific scene: a concrete pillar built of human remains, their agony forever frozen in stone.Finding the secret of the pillar drags him into the sordid world of human trafficking, where one terrified girl holds the key to unraveling a web of pain, prostitution and murder. There’s just one problem: Ryder’s not the only one chasing the girl.And the others will kill to keep the secret safe.


















To James Lewinski,

Who showed me Prufrock


Table of Contents

Cover (#u323bbcd3-56fe-5eda-8e11-ceb4dae72fbd)

Title Page (#ufcdb1e43-4aba-5930-9bd6-a83350dd5618)

Dedication (#u47d09d04-7ce1-5190-b20d-4972e507e080)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by J.A. Kerley

Copyright

About the Publisher




1 (#u1c272a9a-a57c-5d98-b54d-f1b3d45cec31)


The stench of rotting flesh filled the box like black fog. Death surrounded Amili Zelaya, the floor a patchwork of clothing bearing the decomposing bodies of seventeen human beings. Amili was alive, barely, staring into the shadowed dark of a shipping container the size of a semi-trailer. Besides the reek of death, there was bone-deep heat and graveyard silence save for waves breaking against a hull far below.

You’re lucky, the smiling man in Honduras had said before closing the door, ten days and you’ll be in Los Estados Unitos, the United States, think of that. Amili had thought of it, grinning at Lucia Belen in the last flash of sunlight before the box slammed shut. They’d crouched in the dark thinking their luck was boundless: They were going to America.

“Lucia,” Amili rasped. “Please don’t leave me now.”

Lucia’s hand lay motionless in Amili’s fingers. Then, for the span of a second, the fingers twitched. “Fight for life, Lucia,” Amili whispered, her parched tongue so swollen it barely moved. Lucia was from Amili’s village. They’d grown up together – born in the same week eighteen years ago – ragged but happy. Only when fragments of the outside world intruded did they realize the desperate poverty strangling everyone in the village.

“Fight for life,” Amili repeated, drifting into unconsciousness. Sometime later Amili’s mind registered the deep notes of ship horns. The roar and rattle of machinery. Something had changed.

“The ship has stopped, Lucia,” Amili rasped, holes from popped rivets allowing light to outline the inside of the module, one of thousands on the deck of the container ship bound for Miami, Florida. The illegal human cargo had been repeatedly warned to stay quiet through the journey.

If you reveal yourselves you will be thrown in a gringo prison, raped, beaten … men, women, children, it makes no difference. Never make a sound, understand?

Eventually they’d feel the ship stop and the box would be offloaded and driven to a hidden location where they’d receive papers, work assignments, places to live. They had only to perform six months of house-keeping, yard work or light factory labor to relieve the debt of their travel. After that, they owned their lives. A dream beyond belief.

“It must be Miami, Lucia,” Amili said. “Stay with me.”

But their drinking water had leaked away early in the voyage, a split opening in the side of the huge plastic drum, water washing across the floor of the container, pouring out through the seams. No one worried much about the loss, fearing only that escaping liquid would attract attention and they’d be put in chains to await prison. The ship had been traveling through fierce storms, rainwater dripping into the module from above like a dozen mountain springs. Water was everywhere.

This had been many days back. Before the ship had lumbered into searing summer heat. The rusty water in the bottom of the module was swiftly consumed. For days they ached for water, the inside of the container like an oven. Teresa Maldone prayed until her voice burned away. Pablo Entero drank from the urine pail. Maria Poblana banged on the walls of the box until wrestled to the floor.

She was the first to die.

Amili Zelaya had initially claimed a sitting area by a small hole in the container, hoping to peek out and watch for America. An older and larger woman named Postan Rendoza had bullied Amili away, cursing and slapping her to a far corner by the toilet bucket.

But the module was slightly lower in Amili’s square meter of squatting room. Rainwater had pooled in the depressed corner, dampening the underside of Amili’s ragged yellow dress.

When the heat came, Amili’s secret oasis held water even as others tongued the metal floor for the remaining rain. When no one was looking Amili slipped the hem of her dress to her mouth and squeezed life over her tongue, brown, rusty water sullied by sloshings from the toilet bucket, but enough to keep her insides from shriveling.

Postan Rendoza’s bullying had spared Amili’s life. And the life of Lucia, with whom Amili had shared her hidden water.

Rendoza had been the eighth to die.

Three days ago, the hidden cache had disappeared. By then, four were left alive, and by yesterday it was only Amili and Lucia. Amili felt guilt that she had watched the others perish from lack of water. But she had made her decision early, when she saw past tomorrow and tomorrow that water would be a life-and-death problem. Had she shared there would be no one alive in the steaming container: there was barely enough for one, much less two.

It was a hard decision and terrible to keep through screams and moans and prayers, but decisions were Amili’s job: Every morning before leaving for the coffee plantation Amili’s mother would gather five wide-eyed and barefoot children into the main room of their mud-brick home, point at Amili and say, “Amili is the oldest and the one who makes the good decisions.”

A good decision, Amili knew, was for tomorrow, not today. When the foreign dentistas came, it was Amili who cajoled her terrified siblings into getting their teeth fixed and learning how to care for them, so their mouths did not become empty holes. When the drunken, lizard-eyed Federale gave thirteen-year-old Pablo money to walk into the woods, Amili had followed to see the Federale showing Pablo his man thing. Though the man had official power it had been Amili’s decision to throw a big stone at him, the blood pouring from his face as he chased Amili down and beat her until she could not stand.

But he’d been revealed in the village and could never return.

Good decisions, Amili learned, came from the head and not the heart. The heart dealt with the moment. A decision had to be made for tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, all the way to the horizon. It could seem harsh, but decisions made from a soft heart often went wrong. One always had to look at what decisions did for the tomorrows.

Her hardest decision had come one month ago, when Miguel Tolandoro drove into the village in a truck as bright as silver, scattering dust and chickens. His belly was big and heavy and when he held it in his hands and shook it, he told of how much food there was in America. “Everywhere you look,” he told the astonished faces, “there is food.” Tolandoro’s smiling mouth told shining tales about how one brave person could lift a family from the dirt. He had spoken directly to Amili, holding her hands and looking into her eyes.

“You have been learning English, Amili Zelaya. You speak it well. Why?”

“I suppose I am good in school, Señor Tolandoro.”

“I’ve also heard of your prowess with the mathematics and studies in accounting. Perhaps you yearn for another future, no?”

“I have thought that … maybe in a few years. When my family can—”

“Do it today, Amili. Start the flow of munificence to your family. Or do they not need money?”

Amili was frightened of the US, of its distance and strange customs. But her head saw the tomorrows and tomorrows and knew the only escape from barren lives came with money. Amili swallowed hard and told the smiling man she would make the trip.

“I work six months to pay off the travel?”

“You’ll still have much to send home, sweet Amili.”

“What if I am unhappy there?”

“Say the word and you’ll come back to your village.”

“How many times does that happen?”

“I’ve never seen anyone return.”

Amili startled to a tremendous banging. After a distant scream of machines and the rattle of cables the container began to lift. The metal box seemed to sway in the wind and then drop. Another fierce slam from below as the module jolted violently to a standstill. Amili realized the container had been moved to a truck.

“Hang on, Lucia. Soon we’ll be safe and we can—” Amili held her tongue as she heard dockworkers speaking English outside.

“Is this the one, Joleo?”

“Lock it down fast. We’ve got two minutes before Customs comes by this section.”

Amili felt motion and heard the grinding of gears. She drifted into unconsciousness again, awakened by a shiver in the container. The movement had stopped.

“Lucia?”

Amili patted for her friend’s hand, squeezed it. The squeeze returned, almost imperceptible. “Hang on, Lucia. Soon we’ll have the agua. And our freedom.”

Amili heard gringo voices from outside.

“I hate this part, opening the shit-stinking containers. They ought to make the monkeys not eat for a couple days before they get packed up.”

“Come on, Ivy. How about you work instead of complaining?”

“I smell it from fifty feet away. Get ready to herd them to the Quonset hut.”

Light poured into the box, so bright it stole Amili’s vision. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Okay, monkeys, welcome to the fuckin’ U S of – Jesus … The smell … I think I’m gonna puke. Come here, Joleo … something’s bad wrong.”

“I smelled that in Iraq. It’s death. Orzibel’s on his way. He’ll know what to do.”

Amili tried to move her head from the floor but it weighed a thousand kilos. She put her effort into moving her hand, lifting …

“I saw one move. Back in the corner. Go get it.”

“It stinks to hell in there, Joleo. And I ain’t gonna walk over all those—”

“Pull your shirt over your nose. Get it, dammit.”

Amili felt hands pull her to her feet and tried to turn back to Lucia. “Wait,” she mumbled. “Mi amiga Lucia está vivo.”

“What’s she saying?”

“Who cares? Haul her out before Orzibel gets here.”

“Orzibel’s crazy. He’ll gut us.”

“Christ, Ivy, it ain’t our fault. We just grab ’em off the dock.”

Amili felt herself thrown atop a shoulder. She grabbed at the body below, trying to make the man see that Lucia was still breathing. The effort was too much and the corners of the box began to spin like a top and Amili collapsed toward an enveloping darkness. Just before her senses spun away, ten final words registered in Amili’s fading mind.

“Oh shit, Joleo, my feet just sunk into a body.”




2 (#u1c272a9a-a57c-5d98-b54d-f1b3d45cec31)


One year later

It seemed like my world had flipped over. Standing on the deck of my previous home on Alabama’s Dauphin Island, the dawn sun rose from the left. My new digs on Florida’s Upper Matecumbe Key faced north, the sun rising from the opposite direction. It would take some getting used to.

On Dauphin Island the morning sun lit a rippled green sea broken only by faint outlines of gas rigs on the horizon. Here I looked out on a small half-moon cove ringed with white sand, the turquoise water punctuated by sandy hummocks and small, flat islands coated with greenery. Like most water surrounding the Keys, it was shallow. I could walk out a hundred yards before it reached my belly.

Which seemed a pleasant way to greet the morning. I set my coffee cup on the deck rail and took the steps to the ground, walking two dozen feet of slatted boardwalk to the shoreline. There were no other houses near and if there had been I wouldn’t have seen them, the land around my rented home a subtropical explosion of wide-frond palms strung with vines, gnarly trees dense with leaves and all interspersed with towering stands of bamboo. It resembled a miniature Eden, complete with lime trees, lemons, mangoes and Barbados cherries. After a rain, the moist and scented air seemed like an intoxicant.

At water’s edge I kicked off my moccasins and stepped into the Gulf, bathtub-warm in August. The sand felt delicious against my soles, conforming to my steps, familiar and assuring. I seemed to smell cigar smoke and scanned the dawn-brightening shoreline, spying only two cakewalking herons pecking for baitfish. Neither was puffing a cigar. I put my hands in the pockets of my cargo shorts and splashed through knee-deep water toward the reeded point marking one horn of the crescent cove, revisiting the conversation that had led me so swiftly and surprisingly to Florida.

“Hello, Carson? This is Roy McDermott. Last time we talked, I mentioned changes in the Florida Center for Law Enforcement. We’re creating a team of consulting specialists.”

“Good for you, Roy.”

“Why I’m calling, Carson … We want you on the team.”

“I don’t have a specialty, Roy. I’m just a standard-issue detective.”

“Really? How about that PSIT team you started … specializing in psychopaths and sociopaths and general melt-downs? And all them freaky goddamn cases you guys solved?”

I smelled cigar smoke again. Looking to my right I saw a black man walking toward the shore with a stogie in his lips, five-seven or thereabouts, slender, his face ovoid, with a strong, straight nose beneath heavy eyebrows. His mouth was wide, garnished with a pencil mustache, and suggested how Tupac Shakur would have looked in his mid-sixties, though I doubt Shakur would have gone for a pink guayabera shirt and lime-green shorts. A crisp straw fedora with bright red band floated on the man’s head and languid eyes studied me as if I were a novel form of waterfowl.

“You the one just moved in that yonder house?” he asked.

“Guilty as charged.”

“The realtor tell you two people got killed in there? That the place was owned by a drug dealer, a Nicaraguan with metal teeth?”

The law allowed the confiscation of property employed in criminal enterprises and the place had indeed been the site of two killings, rivals to the drug dealer who had owned the house. The dealer went to prison and the house almost went on the market, but the FCLE was advised to hold it in anticipation of rising home values. And it wouldn’t hurt for time to lapse between the killings and the showings. When I told Roy I was thinking of looking at places in or near the Keys, he’d said, “Gotta great place you can crib while you’re looking, bud. Just don’t get too used to it.”

I nodded at my impromptu morning companion. “I heard about the murders. Didn’t hear about the teeth.”

“Like goddamn fangs. Heard one had a diamond set in it, but I never got close enough to check. You buyin’ the place from the guv’mint? Nasty history, but the house ain’t bad – kinda small for the neighborhood – but a good, big chunk of land. As wild as it was when Poncy Deleon showed up.”

The house itself – on ten-foot pilings to protect against storm surges – wasn’t overwhelming: single story, three bedrooms. But it had broad skylights and a vaulted ceiling in the main room, so it was bright and open. Outside features included a hot tub and decks on two sides. Mr Cigar was right about the land: four untamed acres, like the house was in a tropical park. Plus the property abutted a wildlife sanctuary, a couple hundred swampy acres of flora gone amok. I figured the dealer had picked the place for the wild buffer zone, privacy for all sorts of bad things.

“Afraid I’m just renting,” I said. “It’s too pricy for me.”

A raised eyebrow. “Kinda work you do, mister?”

“In two weeks I start work for the Florida Center for Law Enforcement. I came from Mobile, where I was a cop, a homicide detective.”

A moment of reflection behind the cigar. “So I guess we both made a living from dead bodies.”

“Pardon me?”

“I used to own funeral parlors in Atlanta, started with one, ended up with six. Retired here last year when my wife passed away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? I like it here.”

“I mean about your wife. Was she ill?”

“Healthy as a damn horse. But she was twenny-five years younger’n me an’ only died cuz one a her boyfriends shot her.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I walked his way, splashing up to shore with my hand outstretched. “Guess we’ll be neighbors, then. At least for a while. Name’s Carson Ryder.”

His palm was mortician-soft but his grip was hard. “Dubois B. Burnside.” He pronounced it Du-boys.

“The B for Burghardt?” I asked, a shot in the dark. William Edward Burghardt DuBois was an American civil-rights leader, author, educator and about a dozen other things who lived from the late 1800s to the sixties. The intellectual influence of W.E.B. DuBois was, and still is, felt widely.

“That would be right,” he said, giving me a closer look.

“You live close by, Mr Burnside?”

He nodded at a line of black mangroves. “Other side of the trees. Daybreak used to find me heading to the mortuary to get working. Now I head out here and watch the birds.” He took another draw, letting blue smoke dribble from pursed lips. “I like this better.”

“Dubois!” bayed a woman’s voice from a distance, sending a half-dozen crows fleeing from a nearby tree. “Du-bois! Where you at? Duuuuuuuu-bois!”

My neighbor winced, pulled low the brim of the hat and started to turn away. “Stop by for a drink some night, Mister Ryder. We can talk about dead bodies. I may even have one you can look at.”

I splashed away, the sun sending shadows of my temporary home out into the water to guide me ashore. I slipped wet feet into my moccasins and jogged the boardwalk to the porch, moving faster when I heard my cell phone chirping from the deck. The call was from Roy McDermott, my new boss.

“Looks like we got a regular Sunshine State welcome for you, Carson. I’m looking at the weirdest damn thing I ever saw. Scariest, too. I know you don’t officially get on the clock for a couple weeks, but I’m pretty sure this can’t wait.”

“What is it you’re looking at, Roy?”

“No one truly knows. Procurement gave you a decent car, I expect?”

“I signed some papers. Haven’t seen a car.”

A sigh. “I’m gonna kick some bureaucratic ass. Whatever you’re driving, how about you pretend it’s the Batmobile and kick on the afterburners. Come help me make sense of what I’m seeing.”

I hurled myself through the shower and pulled on a pair of khakis and a blue oxford shirt, stepping into desert boots and tossing on a blue blazer. My accessorizing was minimal, the Smith & Wesson Airweight in a clip-on holster. On my way out I grabbed a couple Clif Bars for sustenance and headed down the stairs.

The elevated house was its own carport, with room for a dozen vehicles underneath, and my ancient gray pickup looked lonely on all that concrete. I’d bought it years ago, second-hand, the previous owner a science-fiction fan who’d had Darth Vader air-brushed on the hood. After a bit too much bourbon one night, I’d taken a roller and a can of marine-grade paint and painted everything a sedate, if patchy, gray.

The grounds hadn’t been groomed since the dope dealer had ownership, overgrown brush and palmetto fronds grazing the doors as I snaked down the long crushed-shell drive to the electronic gate, eight feet of white steel grate between brick stanchions shaded by towering palms. I panicked until remembering I could open the gate with my phone and dialed the number provided by the realtor.

Phoning a gate, I thought. Welcome to the Third Millennium.

I aimed toward the mainland, an hour away, cruised through Key Largo and across the big bridge. My destination was nearby, a bit shy of Homestead. Roy had said to turn right at a sign saying FUTURE SITE OF PLANTATION POINT, A NEW ADVENTURE IN SHOPPING and head a quarter mile down a gravel road.

“You can’t miss the place,” he’d added. “It’s the only circus tent in miles.”




3 (#u1c272a9a-a57c-5d98-b54d-f1b3d45cec31)


It wasn’t a circus tent in the distance, but it was side-show size, bright white against scrubby land scarred by heavy equipment, three Cat ’dozers and a grader sitting idle beside a house-sized pile of uprooted trees. Plastic-ribboned stakes marked future roads and foundations as the early stages of a construction project.

A Florida Highway Patrol cruiser was slanted across the road, a slab-shouldered trooper leaning on the trunk with arms crossed and black aviators tracking my approach. He snapped from the car like elastic, a hand up in the universal symbol for Halt, and I rolled down my window with driver’s license in hand. “I’m Carson Ryder, here at the request of Captain Roy McDermott.”

The eyes measured the gap between a top dog in the FCLE and a guy driving a battered pickup. He checked a clipboard and hid his surprise at finding my name.

“Cap’n McDermott’s in the tent, Mr Ryder. Please park behind it.”

It felt strange that my only identification was a driver’s license. I’d had my MPD gold for a decade, flashed it hundreds of times. I’d twice handed it away when suspended, twice had it returned. I’d once been holding it in my left hand while my right hand shot a man dead; his gamble, his loss. It felt strange and foreign to not produce my Mobile shield.

You made the right decision, my head said. My heart still wasn’t sure.

I angled five hundred feet down a slender dirt road scraped through the brush, stopping behind the tent, one of those rental jobs used for weddings and whatnot, maybe sixty feet long and forty wide. I was happy to see a portable AC unit pumping air inside. On the far side, beside a house-sized mound of freshly dug earth, were a half-dozen official-looking vehicles including a large black step van which I figured belonged to the Medical Examiner or Forensics department.

Beside the van three men and a woman were clustered in conversation. Cops. Don’t ask how I knew, but I always did. A dozen feet away a younger guy was sitting atop a car hood looking bored. I wasn’t sure about him.

The entrance was a plastic door with a handmade sign yelling ADMITTANCE BY CLEARED PERSONNEL ONLY!!! the ONLY underscored twice. Though I hadn’t been cleared – whatever that meant – I’d been called, so I pressed through the door.

It was cool inside and smelled of damp sand. Centering the space was a pit about twenty feet by twenty. Above the pit, at the far end of the tent at ground level, were several folding tables. A woman in a lab coat was labeling bags atop two of the tables. Another table held a small microscope and centrifuge. I’d seen this before, an on-site forensics processing center.

I returned my attention to the pit, which resembled the excavation for an in-ground swimming pool, wooden rails keeping the sandy soil from caving. Centering the hole was an eight-foot-tall column with two lab-jacketed workers ticking on its surface with hammers. I estimated the column’s diameter at five feet and watched as a white-smocked lab worker dropped a chipped-off shard into an evidence bag. When the worker stepped away, a photographer jumped in. The scene reminded me of a movie where scientists examine a mysterious object from the heavens. Shortly thereafter, of course, the object begins to glow and hum and everyone gets zapped by death beams.

“You there!” a voice yelled. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

I snapped from my alien fantasy to see a lab-jacketed woman striding toward me, her black hair tucked beneath a blue ball cap and her eyes a human version of death beams. “Where’s your ID?” she demanded, pointing at a naked space on my chest where I assumed an identification should reside. “You can’t be here without an—”

“Yo, Morningstar!” a voice cut in. “Don’t kill him, he’s on our side.”

I looked up and saw Roy McDermott step from the far side of the column. The woman’s thumb jerked at me.

“Him? This?”

“He’s the new guy I told you about.”

The woman I now knew as Morningstar turned big brown death rays on Roy. “I’m in charge of scene, Roy. I want everyone to have a site ID.”

Roy patted dust from his hands as he approached, a luminous grin on his huge round face and the ever-present cowlick rising from the crown of semi-tamed haybright hair. He called to mind an insane Jack O’Lantern.

“I’ll have someone make him a temporary tag, Vivian. You folks bring any crayons?”

Morningstar’s eyes narrowed. “Condescension fits you, Roy. It’s juvenile.”

Roy climbed the steps from the pit and affected apologetic sincerity. “I forgot his clearance, Vivian. I’m sorry. All we have time for now is introductions. Carson, this is Vivian Morningstar, our local pathologist and—”

“I’m the Chief Forensic Examiner for the Southern Region, Roy.”

“Carson, this is the Examining Chief Region of the – shit, whatever. And this, Vivian, is Carson Ryder. We’re still figuring out his title.”

Morningstar and I brushed fingertips in an approximation of a handshake, though it was more like the gesture of two boxers. Roy took my arm and swung me toward the pit. We stepped down on hastily constructed stairs, the wood creaking beneath us.

“Now to get serious,” Roy said. “Damndest thing I’ve seen in twenty years in the biz.”

Three techs stepped aside as we walked to the object. Seemingly made of concrete, it resembled a carved column from a temple in ancient Egypt, its surface jagged and pitted with hollows, as though the sculptor had been called away before completion.

“More light,” Roy said.

The techs had been working with focused illumination. One of them widened the lighting, bringing the entire object into hard-edged relief.

A woman began screaming.

I didn’t hear the scream, I saw it. Pressing from the concrete was a woman’s face, eyes wide and mouth open in an expression of ultimate horror. She was swimming toward me, face breaking the surface of the concrete, one gray and lithic hand above, the other below, as if frozen in the act of stroking. The scenic was so graphic and lifelike that I gasped and felt my knees loosen.

Roy stepped toward me and I held my hand up, I’m fine, it lied. I caught my breath and saw ripples of concrete-encrusted fabric, within its folds a rock-hard foot. I moved to the side and saw another gray face peering from the concrete, the eyes replaced with sand and cement, bone peeking through shredded skin that appeared to have petrified on the cheeks. One temple was missing.

My hand rose unbidden to the shattered face.

“Don’t think of touching it,” Morningstar said.

My hand went to my pocket as I circled the frieze of despair: two more heads staring from the stone, surrounding them a jumble of broken body parts, hands, knees, shoulders. Broken bones stood out like studs.

My hands ached to touch the column, as if that might help me to understand whatever had happened. But I thrust them deeper into my pockets and finished my circle, ending up at the screaming woman, her dead face still alive in her terror.

“It was found yesterday,” Roy explained. “A worker was grading land when his blade banged a chunk of concrete. The foreman saw a mandible sticking out and called us. We had the excavation started within two hours.”

Most municipal departments would have needed a day to pull the pieces together, maybe longer. But that was the power of a state organization. The FCLE arrived, flashed badges, and went to work.

“What formed the column?” I asked.

Morningstar tapped the object. “The concrete was poured into an old rock-walled cistern. Stones initially surrounded the object, but the techs spent last night dislodging them.”

“Any idea when it was put here?”

“Could be a few months, could be two years. I’ll get closer as we analyze more samples.”

“You’re gonna find different times,” called a basso voice from above. “Older bodies, newer ones. The bottom bodies may go back years, decades even.”

I looked up at a guy on ground level, mid-forties or so, dark complexion, black suit, gray shirt. His sole concession to festivity was a colour-speckled tie that seemed from one of Jackson Pollock’s brighter days. The man’s gleaming black hair was swept back behind his ears. He wore dark sunglasses on a prize-winning proboscis, more like a beak. With the clothes, nose, and down-looking pose he called to mind a looming buzzard.

“What you been up to, Vincent?” Roy asked.

The guy brandished the briefcase. “Copying property records at the Dade County assessor’s office. Someone had to know the cistern was here, right?”

Roy nodded approvingly. “Come down into the hole, Vince. Got someone you should meet.”

I shook hands with Vincent Delmara, a senior investigator with the Miami-Dade County Police Department. Though the FCLE might swoop in and start bee-buzzing a crime scene, shutting out the locals invited turf wars which, in the long run, had no winners.

“You’re thinking these bodies were built up over time, not just dumped all at once?” Roy asked Delmara.

“We got us a serial killer,” Delmara exulted. “He’s been using the hole as a dumping ground over years. We’re gonna solve a shitload of disappearances.”

I understood Delmara’s enthusiasm. Miami-Dade, like any large metro area, had a backlog of missing persons. If this was a serial killer and the bodies were identified, a lot of cases could be cleared and families granted closure.

“I’m thinking he used an ax,” Delmara said. “He dumps the corpse in the cistern and pours in concrete to cover. They were supposed to stay hidden for ever, except development got in the way.”

“What do you think accounts for the brownish cast to the concrete?” I asked. “And the rusty streaks, like here?”

“Mud mixing with the cement. Dirt.”

Roy produced an unlit cigar to placate his fingers. “The only problem I got is picturing a guy mixing a tub of ’crete every time he dumps a body. It gets riskier with repetition.”

“Maybe he gets off on the risk,” Delmara said. “Mixes his concrete as an appetizer, dumps the body for his entree, jacks off into the hole for dessert.” Delmara circled his fingers and mimed the concept.

“For Christ’s sake,” Morningstar said.

“How many crime scenes you been at where jism’s squirted all over the place, Doctor Morningstar?” Delmara grinned. “More than a few, I’ll bet.”

I closed my eyes and pictured the area as if it were a time-lapse documentary, day turning into night and back to day, clouds stampeding across blue sky, white clouds turning black, sun becoming rain becoming sun again.

“Maybe the concrete was poured in dry to save time and risk,” I suggested. “Rain would soak the cement powder, time would harden it.”

“Genius,” Roy said, clapping a big paw on my shoulder. “No fuss, no muss, no mixing. Plus cement contains lime, which helps decomposition.” He looked at Delmara. “What you think, Vince?”

“Tasty.”

“You think we got us a serial killer, Carson?” Roy asked.

I turned to the column to study a splintered ulna, a severed tibia, a caved-in section of rib cage. Many seemed the kind of injuries I’d noted in car crashes. Whereas Delmara was seeing an ax used on the bodies, I was picturing a sledgehammer. Or both, the violence was that horrific. Something felt a shade off, though I couldn’t put my finger on it; having no better idea, I nodded.

“It’s the way to go for now.”

“Hell yes,” Delmara said, punching the air. “We’re gonna close some cases.”

Morningstar stepped forward. “Excuse me, boys. But if you’re done being brilliant, I’d like to get back to work.”

Delmara made notes. Roy and I retreated up the steps as Morningstar motioned her team back into place. The chipping of chisels began anew.

We stopped at the entrance. Roy lowered his voice. “Look, Carson, I want you to start work early and be the lead on this case.”

“No way,” I said.

“I need you, Carson.”

“Your people are gonna be drooling for this case, Roy. It’s a biggie.”

“How many bodies did John Wayne Gacy stack up under his house before he got nailed?” Roy said. “Twenty? Thirty? How about Juan Corona? We might have a grade-one psycho out there, Carson. Your specialty, right … the edge-walking freaks?”

“I’ve not even met your people, Roy. If I start by giving orders I’ll start by stepping on toes. Bad first step.”

“You were here ten minutes and figured out the concrete angle.”

“A conjecture.”

“It’s the kind of thinking I need. And don’t worry – I’ll deal with any delicate tootsies.” He slapped his hands – conversation over – and headed outside. I followed, thinking that if his people let a newbie waltz in as lead investigator on a case this big, they must be the most ego-free cops the world had ever produced.




4 (#u1c272a9a-a57c-5d98-b54d-f1b3d45cec31)


The semi-truck rumbled down the sandy lane in the South Florida coastal backcountry, a battered red tractor pulling the kind of gray intermodal container loaded on ships, traversing oceans before being offloaded to a truck or train to continue its journey. Tens of thousands of the nondescript containers traveled the world daily and it had been calculated that at any given moment over three per cent of the world’s GDP lay within the containers of Maersk, the world’s largest intermodal shipper.

But those were official loads. This particular shipment was a ghost, its true contents never recorded in any official documents. With the complicity of bribed clerks and customs agents, this simple gray box had boarded a ship in Honduras, sailed to the Port of Miami and been offloaded to the red tractor, with only the kind of glancing notice that came from eyes averted at the precise moment the container ghosted past.

“Looks quiet to me, Joleo.”

The passenger in the cab porched his hand over a scarred and sunburned brow, his dull green eyes scanning a stand of trees in the distance. Between the treeline and the truck was a corroded Quonset hut, a hundred feet of corrugated aluminum resembling a dirty gray tube half sunk in the sand. The passenger’s name was Calvert Hatton, but he went by Ivy, tattooed strands of the poison variety of the weed entwining his arms from wrist to shoulder.

“Our part’s almost over,” the driver said, pulling to a halt. He was tall and ropey and his name was Joe Leo Hurst, but over the years it had condensed to Joleo. “Go move ’em to the hut, Ivy.”

Ivy jumped from the cab and walked to the rear with bolt cutters in work-gloved hands as Joleo climbed atop the hood to scan the area.

“I still hate opening that damn door,” Ivy grumbled. “After that shipment last year …”

“We’ve done a bunch more since then. You remember one shipment that went bad?”

“I get nightmares,” Ivy whined.

Ivy wore a blue uniform shirt that strained over a grits-and-gravy belly and his thinning hair was greased back over his ears. He reached the bolt cutter’s jaws to the shining lock on the container and snapped the shackle. He climbed the tailgate to undo the latch on the doors, jumping down as they creaked open.

“The goddamn stench,” Ivy complained, pinching his nostrils as he peered into the module. “OK, monkeys, welcome to the Estados Unitas or whatever. Come on, get off your asses and move.”

A rail-thin Hispanic man in tattered clothes lowered himself from the container on shaky legs. He was followed by twenty-two more human beings in various stages of disarray, mostly young, mostly women. They blinked in the hard sunlight, fear written deep in every face.

“They all OK?” Joleo asked, now beside the cab and smoking.

“All up and moving.”

The Hispanics stood in a small circle at the rear of the truck, rubbing arms and legs, returning circulation to limbs that had moved little in a week. Ivy was lighting a cigarette when his head turned to the incoming road.

“Cars!” he yelled. “Orzibel’s coming.”

Joleo squinted in the direction of the vehicles and saw a black Escalade in the distance, behind it a brown panel van.

“Relax, Ivy. He’s just gonna grab some of the load.”

“That fucker scares me. He gets crazy with that knife.”

“Right, you get nightmares.”

Joleo was trying to joke, but his eyes were on the Escalade and his mouth wasn’t smiling, watching the car and van drive round the final bend and bear down on them. The black-windowed Escalade stopped hard at the rear of the truck, the van on its bumper. The Hispanics, senses attuned to danger, backed away, the circle re-forming beside the truck.

The driver’s side door opened on the Escalade and a man exited, as large as a professional wrestler and packed into a blue velvet running suit bulging with rock-muscled arms and thighs. He seemed without a neck, a round head jammed atop a velvet-upholstered barrel. The head was bald and glistened in the sun and its features were oddly small and compact, as if its maker’s hand had grasped a normal face and gathered everything to the center. And perhaps the same maker had tapped the eyes with his fingers, drawing out all life and leaving small black dots as cold as the eyes of dice. The dead eyes studied Ivy and Joleo as if seeing them for the first time.

“Yo, Chaku,” Joleo said. “S’up, man?”

If the driver heard, he didn’t seem to notice. The package of muscle nodded at the passenger side of the Escalade and another man exited the vehicle, or rather flowed from within, like a cobra uncurling from a basket.

His toes touched the sand first, sliver-bright tips of hand-tooled cowboy boots made of alligator hide. He wore dark sunglasses and walked slowly. His black silk suit seemed tailored to every motion in the slender frame. His snow-white shirt was ruffled and strung with a bolo tie, a cloisonné yin-yang of black enamel flowing into white.

The man was in his early thirties with a long face centered by an aquiline nose and a mouth crafted for broad smiles. His hair was black, short on the sides and pomaded into prickly spikes at the crown, a casual, straight-from-the-shower look only a good stylist could imitate.

A brown hand with long and delicate fingers plucked the sunglasses from the face to display eyes so blue they seemed lit from behind. The eyes looked across the parched landscape admiringly, as if the man had conceived the plans for the intersection of earth and sky and was inspecting the results. After several moments, he walked to the Hispanics, a smile rising to his lips.

“Hola, friends,” the man said, clapping the exquisite hands, the smile outshining the sun. “Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. Bienvenido a gran riqueza.”

Welcome to the United States. Welcome to your fortunes.

Eyes rose to the man. Heads craned on weary necks.

“I represent your benefactor,” the man said in Spanish. “We are happy you made the journey. If you work hard you can make vast amounts of beautiful American dollars.”

His words sparked a nodding of heads and the beginnings of smiles. This was why they had left their homes and villages. The man gestured to the Quonset hut. “Most of you will go to the building and wait. Soon you will continue to Tampa, Pensacola, Orlando, Jacksonville. Some will be returning with me to Miami. Wherever you go, money awaits. All you have to do is honor your contract, and …” the hands spread in munificence, “the divine cash will shower into your palms.”

The smiles were full now, the heads a chorus of bobs. Someone yelled “Viva el Jefé.”

Long live the Chief.

The smiling man entered the group, basking in smiles and Vivas and hands patting his back as though a saint walked among them. He studied each face in turn, paying particular interest to the dark-haired women. One kept shooting glances through bashful, doe-like eyes. He took her small hand, holding it tight as she instinctively tried to pull it away.

“What is it, little beauty?” he said, patting the hand. “Why were you staring so?”

A blush crept to her neck. “I first thought … when you stepped from the beautiful car … we were in the Hollywood.”

“What makes you say that, little one?”

The blush swept her face as her eyes dropped to the ground. “You are so handsome,” she whispered. “Surely you are in the cinema.”

“You are far too kind. What is your name?”

“Leala … Leala Rosales.”

“I need four women and one man for Miami, Leala Rosales. Would you like me to show you the most beautiful city in the world, my city?”

“I … I … don’t know if …”

“You have stepped into a new world, Leala. Now you must trust yourself to jump.”

“I will … Yes, I will go with you, señor. Can my friend Yolanda come as well?” She pointed to a nearby girl.

“Perhaps the next time, Leala. There is only so much room in the car.”

“It looks very big.”

“Appearances can be deceiving. Hurry to the car, Leala. I will meet you there in a moment.”

The girl ran to the Escalade. The man’s white teeth flashed. “Did you want a fresh boy, Chaku?” he said in English. “Come look at the selection.”

The first sign of life in the driver’s eyes. He tapped the skinny shoulder of a male youth no older than fourteen, and pointed to the van. The boy understood nothing but that he was to move toward the vehicle, so he moved.

The handsome man walked among the Hispanics, directing three more women to the van, pointing the others toward the Quonset hut. The driver and passenger jumped from the van, two bandana-headed Hispanics with tattoos on arms and necks. They hurried the four selections into the rear of the vehicle. As the new occupants climbed inside, the driver opened a side door and retrieved two magnetic signs saying A-1 WINDOW TREATMENTS and applied them to the sides of the van.

The handsome man turned to the hulking driver. “Let me talk to these gentlemen in private, Chaku.” The comment was followed by a small and cryptic flick of the blue eyes. The driver retreated to the Escalade as the man gestured Ivy and Joleo to the side of the trailer. In the distance the Hispanics walked toward the gray hut. They were smiling and laughing.

The handsome man’s eyes flicked between the men. “Did it go smoothly?”

“Yes, sir,” Joleo said. “Like always.”

“Are you receiving your compensation correctly?” He turned his eyes to Ivy.

“Yes, sir,” Ivy said, trying to keep his gaze from falling to his shoes. “A day after every delivery. Th-thank you, Mr Orzibel.”

Orlando Orzibel flashed his supernova smile. “Good work deserves no less. And good work means quiet work, right?”

Both heads bobbed. Orzibel nodded in satisfaction and turned away. He stopped and turned back. The smile had disappeared. “So how is it I heard of lips speaking my name in a filthy little bar last month? A rathole called Three Aces?”

Ivy seemed to waver on his knees. His mouth fell open to show darkened teeth. “I … I … it was a mistake, Mr Orzibel. It’ll never happen again. And all I said, was—”

An arm from nowhere wrapped around Ivy’s neck, lifting him off the ground. The huge driver had somehow left the Escalade and crept across the crunchy sand and beneath the trailer without making a sound.

“And your lips not only used my name,” Orzibel said, “they implied my business.”

“A mistake …” Ivy gasped, pulling at the arm around his neck as his face reddened. “It’ll never hap … gain. Please—”

Orzibel nodded and the hulk named Chaku opened his arms and Ivy fell to the ground. Orzibel lowered to a squat. A knife had appeared in his hand, a dark-bladed commando knife with few purposes but destruction.

“Please, Mr Orzibel …” Ivy begged, tears falling down his cheeks. “Remember how I helped you with the cement last year … made your problem go away? How I worked all night for you …”

The knife whispered through the air and Ivy’s lower lip dropped in the dirt below his face. His eyes were disbelieving as his fingers touched the open teeth, coming away shining with blood.

Orzibel picked up the lip with the point of the knife and held it before Ivy’s horrified eyes. “Eat it,” he hissed. “Eat it or die.”

“No, pleagggh …” Ivy wailed.

“Eat,” Orzibel commanded. “Eat the lip that spoke my name.”

“I ca-ca-cand,” Ivy bubbled, blood spattering with his words.

“You have three seconds,” Orzibel said. “One …”

Ivy’s shaking hands plucked the flesh from the knife, tried to bring it to his mouth, dropped it in the sand. “I c-c-cand,” he moaned, his words mushy through blood and the mucus pouring from his nose.

“Two.”

Ivy retrieved his lip and brought it to his open teeth. He began to bite gingerly at the strip of meat, but a torrent of vomit exploded from his throat and washed the lip from his fingers.

“Three!” The knife whispered again and Ivy grabbed at his throat, his forearms glistening with the blood pouring from his slit neck. After scant seconds his eyes rolled back and he fell backward. Orzibel bent over the twitching body and wiped the knife on its shirt.

“You have the plastic in the trunk, Chaku?”

“Always.”

“When he drains, wrap him tight and put him in the trunk. Tonight we’ll drop him down the hole in the world. Be sure to purchase ample concrete.”




5 (#u1c272a9a-a57c-5d98-b54d-f1b3d45cec31)


Ernesto “Chaku” Morales took the shining Escalade on little-known dirt roads skirting the Everglades, driving beside mangrove-studded drainage canals as the sun burned toward zenith in a cloudless sky. The air reeked of heat and stagnation. Lizards darted across the path as listless vultures hunched in low branches.

Chaku thought about his new boy. The old one had grown vacant in the eyes; the drugs, Chaku knew, both blessing and curse. At first the boys liked flying to dizzying heights where the village lessons turned to vapor. But later they started to hide in the drugs, becoming sullen and useless.

A new boy would be fun, Chaku knew as he spun the wheel, turning right, then left, ignoring the sounds in the rear of the Escalade. There was much to teach them, although the learning always started hard. Like with the fresh girl in back, Leala Rosales. Once they’d stopped so Mr Orzibel could have Chaku thrust the girl’s sobbing face beneath black water in a drainage canal. That always got a new arrival’s attention and made lessons easier.

It was a simple lesson Mr Orzibel had started the girl with today, basically a lesson in English.

She was learning the meaning of the word Blowjob.

Roy said he’d meet me in Miami and climbed into his vehicle. I aimed in the same direction, taking Highway 1 and angling through South Miami and Coral Gables toward the heart of the city.

Miami was basically foreign to me, known on a pass-through basis when a vacation found me drifting over from Mobile, my pickup bed clattering with fishing gear. It seemed less a defined city than a metroplex sprawling from Coral Springs to Coral Gables and including Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach, Hialeah, and two dozen more separate communities squeezed between the fragile Everglades and pounding Atlantic. Drive a mile one way and find homes that could satisfy Coleridge’s version of Kubla Khan, a mile the other and you seemed in the slums of Rio.

The main headquarters of the FCLE was in Tallahassee, in the panhandle. Though it didn’t make logistical sense – Florida crime centered in large cities in the peninsula: Miami, Tampa/St Petersburg, Orlando, Jacksonville and so forth – Tallahassee was the state’s capital and thus the political center. Like every government agency, FCLE had to keep its ears and voice close to where the funds were allocated.

But the bulk of the employees in Tallahassee worked on legal and clerical staffs to adjudicate crimes in the capital’s collection of courts. The investigators were spread across the state. The main South Florida office was in Miami. The department leased office space in the towering Clark center, Miami-Dade’s governmental seat, and I figured Roy was somehow responsible for getting FCLE into such a plum address in the heart of the city.

Roy’s official title was Director of Special Investigations, but the title was misleading, as Roy had never carved a wide swath in the investigative world. He was a showman, a dazzler, a back-slapping reassurance salesman who could zigzag a conversation so fast you wondered where you’d left your head. I’d heard Roy McDermott could waltz into a budget-cutting meeting in Tallahassee, work the room for a few minutes (he knew every face and name, down to spouses, kids, and the family dog), give an impassioned speech too convoluted to follow, and leave with his portion of funds not only unscathed, but increased.

To pull this off required results, and the endless to-the-ground ear of Roy McDermott tracked careers the way pro horse-track gamblers shadowed thoroughbreds. He had a gift for finding savvy and intuitive cops stymied by red tape or dimwit supervisors and bringing them to the FCLE, filling his department with talented people who credited Roy with saving them from bit-player oblivion. To pay him back, they busted ass and solved crimes.

I found a parking lot and paid a usurious sum for a patch of steaming asphalt, the attendant staring at my pickup as I backed into a spot.

“That ’ting gonna start up again when you shut it off?”

I walked to the nearest intersection and felt totally discombobulated. The streets were a pastiche of signs in English and Spanish, the gleaming, multi-tiered skyline foreign to my eyes, the honking lines of traffic larger than any in Mobile. A half-dozen pedestrians passed me by, none speaking English. Palms were everywhere, stubby palms, thick-trunked palms of medium height, slender and graceful palms reaching high into blue.

What have you done? something in my head asked. Why are you here?

The breeze shifted and I smelled salt air and realized the ocean was near. Water had always been my truest address and the voice in my head stilled as I took a deep breath, clutched my briefcase, and strode to the looming building two blocks and one change of life distant.

“Grab a chair, bud,” Roy said, waving me into a spacious corner office on the twenty-third floor of a building rabbit-warrened with government offices.

I sat in a wing-back model and studied the back wall. Instead of the usual grip’n’grin photos with political halfwits, Roy’s wall held about twenty framed photos of him hauling in tarpon and marlin and a shark that looked as long as my truck. I smiled at one shot, Roy and me a few years back on Sanibel, each cradling a yard-long snook and grinning like schoolboys.

“First, here’s your official job confirmation,” Roy said, handing me a page of paper. “Before you leave we’ll get your photo taken for a temp ID. It may not glow in the dark, but even Viv Morningstar will let you live if you show it.”

“When comes permanent ID?” I asked.

“When we decide who you are. You’re the first of the new specialists we’ve hired who’s a cop. Are you cop first, consultant second? Or vice versa? Details, details.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes indeedy-do, my man. In a state-sized bureaucracy every description has its own weight and meaning. F’rinstance, are you a consultant, which gives you the scope to go outside the office and initiate actions on your own? Are you an agent, which means full police powers but stricter adherence to chain of command? Are you solely a specialist, which means you can only be involved for certain crimes? There’s a bureaucratic niche for everything and a word to describe it.”

“Where’s Yossarian?” I asked.

“What?”

I waved it away. Roy leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “I’m looking for the job description that gives you the most clout without having to sit through every useless goddamn meeting. We’re still feeling our way along here.”

“But I am able to command an investigation?”

A wide grin. “You already are, in fact. Or will be after you meet the group. I told them that you’re the lead investigator on this thing, the freak angle and all.”

“How’d they respond? My taking the case?”

Roy seemed to not hear, busy checking his watch. “Whoops, the crew’s been cooling their heels in the meeting room. Let’s put you on the runway and see how pretty you strut.”

I followed Roy to a windowless conference room, fluorescent lights recessed into a white acoustic tile ceiling. A large whiteboard claimed the far end of the room and beside it an urn of coffee centered a rolling cart. I saw four people at the conference table, three men and a woman. They were tight and fit and looked like they knew their way around a gym floor. I tried a smile but got nothing back but eight eyes studying me like a rat crossing sanctified ground.

“My top people, Carson,” Roy boasted. “There are fifteen other investigators and you’ll meet them all soon enough, but this is the A-plus Team: Major Crimes. When it’s too much or too big for the munies to handle, even the big-city departments, it comes to our division of the FCLE, right, my cupcakes?”

No one so much as nodded. A squealing sound pulled my attention to the guy heading the table, pressing fifty and looking like a retired heavyweight boxer, six-four or five, two-fifty or thereabouts, heavy features under a slab brow and steel-gray crew cut. Thick fingers were busy pinching pieces from the lip of a Styrofoam cup. He’d pinch, add the piece to a growing pile beside the cup, pinch again. Each pinch made the cup squeal.

“This is Charlie Degan,” Roy said. “It was Chuckles here who almost single-handedly took down the Ortega mob back in 2004.”

I smiled and nodded. “I remember when the Ortega enterprises went belly-up. Helluva job, Detective Degan.”

He nodded without commitment as the fingernails chomped at the cup. I doubted anyone else could have called the monster Chuckles, but it sounded as natural as rain from Roy McDermott.

Roy moved down the dour queue to the sole woman in the room, early forties, her olive face holding huge dark eyes framed by hair as brightly strident as a new trumpet. Her teeth were toothpaste-commercial white and could be glimpsed in flashes as she chewed pink gum.

“This is Celia Valdez,” Roy said. “Ceel was the FCLE agent of the year last year.”

My offer of congratulations was cut off by a snap of gum. Roy moved to the next guy, fortyish and olive-complected with flint-edged cheekbones and slender, cruel lips below a pencil-thin mustache. His chestnut hair was just long enough to display a curl and he wore a gray silk suit with a pink shirt and turquoise tie. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Roy’d found the guy at a Samba competition.

“That brings us to Lonnie Canseco. Say hi to Carson, Lon.”

Canseco rolled eyes. I hoped it was how he showed joy.

“Lonnie came here from Pensacola, where he did first-rate work in Homicide. But the advancement breaks weren’t coming his way. So I grabbed the collar of his Bill Blass suit and yanked him to my crime crew.”

Canseco yawned. Roy smiled and progressed to the last face at the table, a slender black guy. He was in his mid-thirties with a mobile, puckish face and short hair, wearing a loose brown blazer over blue slacks, his white shirt open at the neck.

“And this fella on the end is Leon Tatum. Lee was a county mountie who got fired for asking questions about the local landfill. He spent the next four months digging into records and asking questions. What you get for that, Lee?”

“Fired.”

“But Lee moved to Tallahassee to root through records up there. Turns out the fill was being used for dumping hazardous chemicals and had been for years, a huge moneymaker for some corrupt politicos.”

“Four or five years back?” I said. “I recall the FBI perp-walking a Florida politico who’d been involved in a chemical-dumping scheme. That was yours?”

Tatum shrugged, no big deal. Roy shook his head. “Unfortunately, our brothers at the federal level managed to grab the lion’s share of the credit and we all know how that goes.”

“Fuckers,” Degan grunted, torturing the cup. “Dirty, rotten, underhanded, ass-sucking federal snotlickers.”

“Two weeks later Lee was here.” Roy beamed. “Jeez, has it been five years, Lee?”

Tatum puckered and blew McDermott a kiss. “Every day one of sweetness and light, Roy.”

Roy looked out over his crew with paternal joy. “And that’s the crime crew, our crème de la crima of investigative specialists and my sweet beauties. Plus there’s our art expert, gang consultant, computer whiz, financial guy. You’ll meet them as you need their specific services.”

A cleared throat. Everyone turned to the guy in the corner, chair tilted back against the wall. When I scanned him my eyes didn’t register Cop, they said, Skate Punk. I ballparked him at twenty-five or so, with the whippy build of a skateboarder though the upper body had spent time with the weights. He wore a floppy tee advertising a bar in Lauderdale under a black leather vest, tight and beltless Levis pulled from the bottom of the laundry basket, white socks and blue suede Vans with rubber soles.

“Sorry,” Roy said. “This here’s Ziggy Gershwin, Carson. He’s currently with us for, uh, training. Charlie’s his mentoring officer.”

I looked at Degan, still tormenting the cup. Pinch. Squeak. He didn’t look thrilled. Roy slapped my back, gave me the Say Something look and I pushed a bright and false smile to my face and started to stand. Before I could open my mouth, Canseco pushed from the table.

“Can we go now, Cap?” he said. “I got work to do.”

The rest of the crew made the motions of escape. No one so much as glanced at me. Roy held up both hands. “Hold on … As I mentioned to y’all yesterday, Carson’s gonna lead on the cistern case. That means you folks have to be his resources.”

Someone moaned. It wasn’t Valdez since she was already complaining. “… guess my big question, Cap, how come Ryder’s getting this action? We know the rules, we know the territory, we’ve got the chops. A cistern stuffed with corpses should be ours.”

Roy crossed his arms and leaned the wall. “You know what I been telling you, sweet peas. Mr Ryder knows how crazies operate. He’s the best.”

“It’s fucking Florida, Roy,” Degan growled. “Every fourth person is a psycho. We’ve all tracked ’em and taken them down. We don’t need a freakin’ profiler.”

“There’s more than profiling,” I said. “You’ve got to—”

“Figure out are they organized or disorganized,” Canseco interrupted, “sexual or nonsexual. Sadistic? Vengeful? We all know how to read psychos and every shrink tries to turn it into a bigger deal than it is.”

“Fucking A,” Valdez popped. “Fucking A-plus.”

Roy rubbed his big palms together. “How often do you hear me say my mind’s made up, chillun?”

‘’Bout once every two years, boss,” Tatum said.

“Then you got nothing to worry about for the next twenty-three months. Class dismissed.”

The group filed out like scolded schoolchildren. Only Gershwin acknowledged my existence, pausing to extend his fist as he stepped past. I knocked my knuckles against his.

“Nice meeting you, Alabama,” he grinned. “Welcome to the Sunshine State.”




6 (#u1c272a9a-a57c-5d98-b54d-f1b3d45cec31)


“Leala Rosales? That’s your name?”

“Y-y-yes, señorita.”

“Stop your bawling. You look like you have something to say. What is it?”

“Th-the man, the man who b-brought me here … h-he did things to me in the car. Fi-filthy, sinful things and—”

A crack like a whip.

“Do you know what that slap was for little Leala? LOOK AT ME WHEN I TALK TO YOU! It was for being a snitch. NEVER tell me such things. And what the gentleman did was not filthy … it’s how you make money. And you better start making money, little Leala. You have a debt to be paid off.”

“P-please, señorita. I want … to go back. To g-go home.”

“In that case you must pay what you owe plus the return costs. Do you have thirty thousand dollars?”

“I HAVE NOTHING! I w-was told that …”

“You must work, Leala. It’s as simple as that. And there is one very important thing you must know: It is about the police. They are muy peligrosa, dangerous. They hate illegals and will throw you in prison for ever. Look into my eyes, Leala, so that you will see the truth. Do you see it?”

“Y-yes.”

“The man who told you of our service. Back in Honduras. Does he not know exactly where you are from?”

A tentative nod. “Si. He has been to my home.”

“Then here is God’s truth, Leala: If you are ever stupid enough to talk to the police, you will never see your mama again. You will return to a headstone.”

“No … please …”

“So now you know what you must do. Pay your debt.”

“I c-c-can cook, I can clean. I-I was told I might be a housekeeper.”

“Are you a virgin?”

“I-I did not hear. What did you say?”

“You seem as stupid as you are beautiful. I’ll say it slowly so maybe you can understand: Are you a virgin, Leala Rosales? Have you managed to keep the peasants and priests from your pussy?”

“The man in the car, he …”

“He fucked your mouth. Hopefully you learned something useful. Come here and lift your dress. My finger will tell me.”

“P-please señorita, I beg you. No.”

“No is not a word you can use any more, Leala Rosales.”

The footsteps of the investigative staff disappeared down the hall. Roy broke the silence. “That went well, I think.”

“Went well? I was smelling a lynching.”

“You’re over-reacting, bud. My guys are intuitive detectives, edgy and a bit self-centered. Like most natural-born dicks they’re basically high-strung children.”

I shot Roy the eye. He said, “Present company excepted, of course.”

“It was like they had a personal grudge against me, Roy. I understand being pissy about me having the case, but it seemed bigger than that.”

Roy beamed at me like I’d just called every winner at Hialeah an hour before the starting bell. “You are beautiful, Carson. Reading people, situations. You absolutely nailed it.”

“Nailed what?”

“Initially I planned to add a junior investigator to the staff, got Tallahassee to budget the extra bucks, with enough left over to bump my guys up a well-deserved grade in pay, two actually.”

“And?”

“Then I thought, why a junior investigator? I’ll put the money into a seasoned pro. The idea felt so good I thought, Go even further, Roy. So I decided to not only hire a senior investigator but one who was a specialist in crazos as well, more bang for the buck. Bingo, here you are.”

I replayed Roy’s scenario in my head, following the money. I was making double my salary in Mobile. I sighed. “Degan, Valdez, Canseco, Tatum … not one of them got a raise, did they, Roy? What would a two-grade jump average, about seven grand?”

“Closer to ten, actually. No big deal, there’s another state budget session in the winter. I’ll get the guys their jumps then.”

Not being a high-strung child I avoided banging my head against the wall. “So not only do I grab a plum case from your crew, I’ve pulled ten grand from their wallets.”

Roy’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “I told you some of this, right? Before you got here?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Sorry, things get tangled in my head at times. Probably because I’m still figuring it all out.”

“The crew hates me,” I said, perilously close to a moan. “They won’t rest until I go down in flames.”

Roy’s hand fell over my shoulder. “You’re a pro and they’re pros. Maybe it’ll be a teensy bit tough at first, but I know you, buddy. You’re gonna fly like an eagle.”

I slumped in Roy’s footsteps as he led me to where my office would be when in Miami, right now just a fifteen-by-fifteen box with a cheap metal desk and chair and a phone on the floor. The why-am-I-here? thoughts started afresh.

“You can work from wherever suits you, Carson. Here or at your place or from a ship at sea. If a police chief from Deltana says he’s got a perp killing hookers and chopping off their toes, you can advise what to look for. Or go to Deltana and handle the case directly. Your decision.”

“You give your people a lot of autonomy.”

“I’m a lazy bastard. When my crew handles stuff without me even knowing it, I’m thrilled. Basically, all I want to see are files stamped Case Closed.”

“Speaking of crew, what’s the word on that other guy? The kid who looks like a skate punk?”

Roy frowned, a rare event. “Ziggy Gershwin. Christ, did you ever hear a goofier name? Gershwin’s kind of a special case.”

A trio of clerical types passed by the open door, two women and a guy. They shot micro-glances inside: Look at the new guy.

“Special?” I said. “How is Gershwin so special?”

“A couple months back a trio of Albanian psychopaths grabbed a ten-year-old kid from West Palm, wanted five mil in ransom. The family called the authorities. BOLOs went out on a green van noted at the scene, everything real hush-hush. Gershwin was a newbie county cop working in Glades County, rural, west of Okeechobee. Two days after the grab – by then the family had received a pinky finger—”

“Jesus.”

“Gershwin is roaming the backcountry and sees a green panel van parked outside a rental house …”

“He gets curious.”

Roy nodded. “He pulls down the road and sneaks back. Blinds are tight, nothing moving, just a single-story ranch with an outbuilding separated by a hundred feet of open grass. He creeps to a side window, peeks inside and sees the Albanians in the living room and the kid taped tight on the couch. Gershwin also sees a freakin’ armamentarium: Uzis and AKs, handguns, grenades and even a goddamn mounted RPG. It looked like an NRA convention in there.”

“He calls it and sits tight?”

“SWAT positions behind a canebrake on the far side of the house, everyone scared a full-on assault meant a dead kid.”

I felt my heart thumping. Roy pulled a cigar and began twirling it.

“In the meantime, one of the Albanians is getting progressively freakier. He’s suddenly got a knife out, grabbing the kid’s hair and pulling his face up. Gershwin realizes the guy is gonna slice the kid’s nose off.”

Roy studied the cigar as if wondering whether he could get away with smoking in the building.

“Christ, Roy, don’t leave me hanging. What’d Gershwin do?”

“Radioed the commander that the Albanians were dragging the kid out the back door.”

“Gershwin lied?”

“Said he needed a fast distraction. Naturally, the SWAT team charges toward the rear. The Albanians hear the commotion, forget the kid and run for the artillery.”

My palms had started sweating. “Damn. And?”

“Gershwin smashes the window and tosses two grenades, a flash-bang and a stunner, comes in after them. He nails one in the chest and the others dive out a side door screaming, ‘No shoot, no shoot.’”

I replayed Gershwin’s action in my head. Saw the looming knife. The need for a split-second decision. “You know the odds against that kid coming back alive, Roy? Gershwin did a helluva job.”

Roy sighed. “What troubles folks is how he did it. If the Albanians had launched an RPG a dozen cops could have been massacred. Gershwin didn’t have the pay grade to make that decision, Carson.”

“Maybe Gershwin didn’t have time to argue seniority.”

Roy started to argue, paused. “Thing is, Gershwin is here and we gotta deal with him for a few days.”

I gave him a puzzled frown.

“History lesson, Carson: The abducted kid’s grandfather hit Miami with ten pesos in his skivvies and within a year owned a grocery store selling Latin specialties. Now they’re coast to coast. The kid’s family has power in Tallahassee and told some major politicos that Gershwin deserved his assignment of choice.”

I nodded. “Gershwin picked the FCLE, obviously.”

“I get a lot of favors from Tallahassee, Carson. Sometimes I have to do one.”

“What’s gonna happen with Gershwin?”

“I’ll let Degan seem to train the kid for a couple weeks, then get Gershwin a desk in Vehicle Theft.” Roy winked. “You can’t hotdog much there.”




7 (#u1c272a9a-a57c-5d98-b54d-f1b3d45cec31)


I left Roy to his Machiavellian hijinks and headed out to the forensics dig, since I now owned the case. The site was as busy as a beehive in spring, chisels tapping, soil being sifted through mesh, photos flashing as bits of fabric or bone were removed from the grisly sculpture, new horrors revealed beneath the old. Morningstar was beside the column, arms folded as she watched a pair of techs extricate shards of clothing from a torso still half-buried in the matrix. I stood aside as they fastidiously bagged the evidence and passed me on the steps.

Morningstar shot me a look when I hit bottom.

“Rumor has it this monster is gonna be your first case, Ryder.”

“Not my choice, Doctor.”

“Roy’s concept of baptism would be to fling the kid into a pond. You still on board with Delmara’s serial-killer theory?”

I circled the mass of concretized humanity, still unable to absorb the full horror. “If so, he’s as angry as a psycho can get. Incredible rage.”

“We have four complete bodies free. Every spine is shattered, most limbs broken, usually compound. A jumbled mess.”

A tech called out a question from above and Morningstar muttered, “Do I have to do all the thinking?” and started up the steps. “Look, but don’t touch, Ryder,” she said over her shoulder. “It may be your baby, but I’m in charge of birthing it.”

It was just me remaining in the pit and I leaned against the buttressed wall and stared as if waiting for a voice to call from the tumble of bodies, a voice to say, Here is the story of our death, please let it not be in vain.

But the stone lay as silent as the ruins of Ozymandias, and after a few minutes I climbed to the upper level and quietly left the tent. Until Morningstar’s team found something to point me in a direction, I was a compass in a world without North.

Orlando Orzibel was bored. Most of the clients were paying their fees and he’d not had to go out on a threat run, always a nice time-killer: one hand held the knife, the other an open palm, fingers waving for money. If the money didn’t materialize, arrangements were made. If the arrangements weren’t honored, the knife went to work.

He checked his phone, no word from Chaku, who should be dumping the hillbilly biker, Ivy, in an hour or so, five minutes to throw the fat scuzzer down the hole, pour a couple bags of dry ’crete, book away. That fucking hole had been a gift from the universe.

Orzibel sighed and grabbed his remote, playing a porn DVD on the five-foot screen in the corner. He watched for several minutes, his hand drifting to his crotch as a burly bodybuilder with lightning-zagged tattoos pounded away at a diminutive Asian. The woman screamed and pretended to resist, but it was obvious she was a professional, probably wondering what kind of pizza she’d order after she drank the guy’s jizz.

Fuck fuck. Orzibel flicked off the video and tugged at his genitals. How long since he’d gone to the basement? There were four girls tucked away down there, plus Chaku’s new toy. All were fresh procures, raw, not yet ready for assignment, though getting close.

The process could always be sped up.

With the pounding bass of electronic dance music pulsing through the walls, Orlando Orzibel descended to the shadowy basement of the nightclub, a warren of concrete-walled rooms. The nightclub had been built by Mob money during Prohibition, the main floor a speakeasy, the basement used for prostitution and other illicit activities. The water-seeping wall was still strung with dozens of ancient and fraying wires mounted on ceramic insulators; the wires originally connected to banks of telephones forming a subterranean bookie operation, the largest in all Miami.

Orzibel wrinkled his nose at the smell of mold and unlocked the heavy gate at the base of the steps. Built of cyclone fence welded within a reinforced steel frame, the gate had taken three powerful men plus Chaku Morales to hang it on its industrial-grade hinges. Orzibel pushed open the first door he came to, seeing two girls asleep on a mattress, a ragged cover over their bodies. What were their names? Did it fucking matter? They were heading to Jacksonville tomorrow. He bypassed the next portal, the room holding Chaku’s fresh bride, not Orzibel’s business. He pushed open the following door, saw one of the new acquisitions – Yolanda? Her eyes grew huge and terrified. He’d had a session with her yesterday.

“Later, puta,” Orzibel said, pulling the door tight. He reached the next door. Who was in here? Ahh … little Leala, the pretty one. Orzibel replayed the trip back from the delivery, felt her struggle under his hands. He touched himself.

Yes!

Orzibel pushed open the door to a cramped room, the walls gray and stained with leakage, pipes and ducts crowding the ceiling. Two king-size mattresses were on a frayed green carpet and an open toilet was in the corner. A small and battered television sat on a stool in the corner, the program – a soap opera on Univision – blurry and tinted a bilious green.

On a mattress and swiftly pushing back into the corner was the girl. She was a beauty and Orzibel felt a wild grin propelled to his face. “Ah, how’s our little Leala today?” Orzibel crooned. The girl cowered in the corner, pulling a blanket over her ragged yellow dress.

“G-go away, señor.”

“What did you say to me?”

“Please, señor. No.”

Though she was terrified, there was something in her eyes. Dios … could it actually be defiance? He snapped the blanket away and threw it to the floor. “You do not make the rules here, Leala,” he said, unbuckling his belt. “Let me see … where did we leave off?”

“I do not w-want to—”

‘YOU DO NOT TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT. I TELL YOU WHAT TO DO!” Orzibel dove onto the bed and grabbed the girl’s arms. “Open that pretty mouth, Leala.”

“No!”

What was it with this one? His hand slashed and Leala’s head spun. “One call and I can have your mama’s eyes carved from her head. Do you know what that feels like, Leala?”

Crying. Orzibel’s frenzied hands pulled his pants and silk boxers lower as he perched on his knees, his fingers grasping the girl’s hair as he pulled her close. “Work on this the way I taught you. With tenderness.”

Her head moved closer and her lips parted. But her face seized in agony and her hands rose as if guided by a separate force, pushing him away. Leala’s legs kicked at Orzibel as she backpedaled across the mattress.

“Filthy little bitch,” he hissed, yanking his pants to his ankles. He seized her hair and wrestled her to him, climbing over her, clamping her arms to the mattress and spreading her with his knees. A hand tore away her underwear.

“OPEN IT UP!”

“NO NO NO …”

He spit in his palm and rubbed it over his penis, then grabbed Leala’s shoulders and fell across her, his tongue licking her face as his buttocks rose and fell. The act took under a minute and he emptied into her with a shuddering gasp. He startled to a sound at the open door but when he turned saw no one. He withdrew and Leala sprawled as if dead, her slender legs wide and a circle of blood at the apex.

“You are a woman, now, Leala,” Orzibel proclaimed as he stood unsteadily. “You can do a woman’s work.”




8 (#ulink_6d61861b-fab6-5fb9-837a-ad04c0b24846)


The horrific column at the forefront of my mind, I drove home to Matecumbe Key, unable to understand the level of violence frozen into the concrete. I had a couple of pieces of fried chicken in the fridge and took them to the deck. The sun was riding a pillow of purple clouds to the horizon and a golden light suffused the air. A wobbling strand of pelicans skimmed across the cove barely a foot above the waves.

“Hey neighbor,” a voice called, suspending my unsettled thoughts. I saw Dubois Burnside at the point of the cove. “You doing anything important?” he called through cupped hands.

“Not sure I ever have,” I returned.

“How about you come by the house?” he said, overlarge gestures miming the pouring of a drink.

I shot a thumbs up. “There in fifteen.”

I threw on a fresh shirt and snatched up a bottle of liquor I’d received at a going-away party last month, dropping it into a brown bag. Burnside’s home was past a football-field-long buffer of vegetation and surrounded by a cream-colored wall with an ornamental gate at the entrance, a pair of mirroring flamingos perched on single legs. I hit the buzzer and heard the gate unlatch.

I walked down the drive to his home, a combo of styles, Moorish Art Deco, I suppose, the Moorish displayed in two stories of textured stucco tinted yellow and topped with terracotta tiling, the Deco reflected in flamingo-themed grating over wide and manteled windows. The drive ended in a portico shading a blue 500-series Mercedes and a spiffy red Beamer convertible. The plate on the Merc said FUNRL 1, the Beamer’s said ZAZZI.

The front door was iron-belted mahogany recessed within an arched vestibule, more Moor. Marble slabs framing the portal sported bas reliefs that echoed the Deco flamingos. The door opened as my hand reached for the iron handle. Instead of Dubois Burnside, I beheld a handsome black woman in a floor-length red gown with a décolleté my eyes did not follow to its conclusion because that would have been impolite. I judged the lady in her early forties, and she was not much shorter than my six feet.

“You must be Mister Ryder. I’m Delita Matthews.”

She extended her hand on a long and slender arm dressed in silver hoops. “Dubois will be with us in a minute. I told him to change into some decent clothes and not wear them saggy old pants. Every time I catch up to them pants I toss ’em in the trash.”

“And every time I fish them out, baby,” Burnside said as he strolled into the room in threadbare cargo shorts beneath an extravagantly embroidered Mexican wedding shirt. His feet flapped in ancient huaraches.

Delita aimed a long red fingernail at me like I was Exhibit A in a courtroom. “We got company.”

“He ain’t company, he’s our neighbor.”

The woman shot Burnside a raw glare but when she spun to me the eyes were Kahlua and cream. “You must be thirsty, Mr Ryder. May I get you a drink?”

“Actually,” I said, pulling the bottle, “I brought this along. It’s supposed to be pretty fair and I thought—”

“Hot damn,” Burnside said, plucking the bottle from my hand and squinting at the label. “This is thirty-year-old brandy.” He held the bottle up to Delita Matthews. “Company brings hoity-toity wine, girl, neighbors bring fine brandy. Grab us a couple tumblers.”

“We have brandy snifters, Dubois.”

“I wanna drink it, not slosh it around.”

But snifters it was and I poured hefty tots for Burnside and myself, Miz Matthews demurring. “I’m meeting friends at the Saddle Club in a few minutes,” she said. “There’s an orchestra and dancing, but Dubois refuses to go.”

“I boogie,” Burnside proclaimed. “I don’t cha-cha.”

Miz Matthews sashayed across the floor to the door, opened it and started out. A second later she leaned back in. “You using them coasters ain’t you, Dubois?”

“Baby, you got ’em covering the table from end to end,” Burnside called over his shoulder. “A man can’t set down his glass without landing on a coaster.”

The door closed and Burnside took a sip of brandy. “I don’t know what this thing is I got for bossy-ass women, but I got it. Had four wives and ever’ one had a face like an angel and a thumb built for mashing me down.”

The psychologist in me wanted to ask about his mother, the diplomat in me demurred. We shot the breeze for twenty minutes, Burnside providing the low-down on local bars and eateries. Talk inevitably drifted to occupations. “In my line of work I’ve seen some badly mangled bodies, Dubois,” I offered. “I’m always amazed when I see what a good mortician can do.”

Burnside set his snifter on the table – between two coasters – and leaned forward. “Remember that scene in The Godfather, Sonny’s been shredded by machine guns and Marlon Brando tells the mortician to make Sonny presentable at the funeral? I been there, Carson.”

“You knew Marlon Brando?”

“Ha! I mean I’ve had to do reconstructions where the body was more putty and paint than person. A couple decades back two workers were on a catwalk at a paint company, standing above a huge mixing vat with these big steel propellers choppin’ through the paint. The catwalk tore from the wall and these two poor guys got dumped into the vat. Before the machine shut down the bodies got all busted up and mixed in together.”

“Jesus,” I said, aghast.

“You wouldn’t believe the time I had getting the deceased cleaned and arranged in whole bodies again. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle with meat.”

Pictures started to arrange in my mind. I saw bodies whirling in paint. Arms, legs, faces became a kaleidoscopic jumble as I set my glass down on one of a dozen coasters.

“I gotta go, Dubois. I need to make a call. Give Delita my regards.”

“You all right, Carson?” Burnside frowned. “You look like you’re seeing a ghost.”

I blew out the door and dropped into a sprint with a gibbous moon lighting my way. I had to call Roy and have him set up a meeting first thing in the morning.

Dance music pulsing from below, Orlando Orzibel sipped a mineral water and considered his escapade with Leala Rosales. He’d lost control, a bad thing. But the little bitch had it coming, talking to him like that. Before leaving he’d told the weeping girl to wash herself, rinse the sheet, and keep silent on the matter if she valued her mother’s life. The little whore would not talk.

The cell phone buzzed from the glass table beside Orzibel. He snatched it up, checked the number, grinned and put the phone to his ear. “You must be finished with the business in the trunk, Chaks … Got that Ivy planted, right?”

After a few seconds the grin inverted, his voice a tense whisper. “A tent? A fucking tent? Bulldozers? I figured that hole would stay hidden until Christ himself showed up.”

Orzibel hung up and threw the phone to the couch. He went to his desk and retrieved a second phone, a burner, to be used and discarded. He dialed a number from memory.

“It’s Orlando, Jefé. It seems we have a problem.”




9 (#ulink_d2449f5c-32d4-5d4d-b459-d4f43e135328)


Roy had set the meeting at eight a.m. Instead of the three promised members of the investigative crew there was only Valdez. Luckily, Delmara, Morningstar and Gershwin made the table look less empty.

“Where’s Tatum and Canseco?” I asked Roy. “Degan?”

“Turns out they had other commitments.”

I gave him a look. He said, “They’re busy boys.”

“I got a crime scene needs me,” Morningstar said, long and elegant fingers ticking colorless nails on the tabletop. Gershwin yawned in his tipped-back chair. Delmara sat a pen and pad in front of him and scratched his beak.

“Dr Morningstar,” I said, laying out my case to the small audience, “would you outline the scope of the injuries you’ve been able to identify?”

“Like I’ve said, I’m seeing the kind of injuries I associate with high-impact vehicle accidents.” Her hands went to a file of photos on the table. “I have the exact details here if you—”

“Have you found any seams in the matrix, Doctor? Yesterday I theorized dry cement poured into the cistern atop added bodies. After further thought, I suspect the next layer would not perfectly adhere to the preceding concrete. It would leave discernible seams.”

She shook her head. “The concrete matrix appears to be contiguous. Where are you going with this?”

“I’m pretty sure I know how the bodies got there.”

“How?”

“In a cement-mixer truck.”

Eyes-wide stares from everyone. Roy said, “Explain that one, Carson.”

I spun my index fingers around one another. “Ever see the inside of a mixer drum? It’s an inside-out auger. The rotating vanes force concrete deeper to keep it mixed. At the jobsite the rotation is reversed and the screw action lifts the concrete up and out of the drum.”

“Jesus,” Morningstar said, reaching into her file and pulling out eight-by-ten photos of the column, staring at the jumble of arms and legs and faces and concrete. “It explains the brownish cast to the concrete,” she said quietly. “It’s blood.”

“Sure explains the damaged bodies,” Roy said.

I nodded. “It’s a blender on wheels.”

Morningstar rose, clamped shut her briefcase. “There’s a lot to do before I can verify anything like your mixer theory, but I have to say it’s decent, Ryder.”

I nodded my thanks and she was gone. Roy turned to Valdez and Delmara.

“Guys?”

“I gotta think about it,” Delmara said. He was trying to look upbeat, but I’d punctured part of his serial-killer explanation. Roy angled to Valdez.

“Ceel?” Roy said to Valdez.

“Just what is it you’re looking for, Ryder?” she said, aiming her big eyes into mine. They weren’t saying Congratulations on a spiffy idea.

“Looking for, Detective Valdez?”

“The Carson Ryder morning show here. You want something, right?”

“We have to start looking into concrete mixing companies, Detective. We need someone who can ask the right questions and tell when the answers are shaky. A pro.” I used the inclusive we, hoping to spark camaraderie. There was a coterie of FCLE investigators at Roy’s disposal – and, I supposed, mine as well – but I wanted the experience of the department’s top people, hoping a few hours of working together might diminish the wall between us.

Valdez reached to the floor for her briefcase and popped it open, coming up with a two-inch-thick folder. She dropped it on the table, whump.

“These are my current cases. Where does we fit in?”

I resisted the urge to look to Roy for assistance and didn’t hear any, the silence of the Buddha.

“Or,” I said, “I could grab some folks from the pool investigators downstairs.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Valdez said, standing.

Delmara followed suit, tucking his notepad into his suit jacket and forcing a half-smile to his face. “Nice idea on the mixer, Detective,” he said, following Valdez out the door.

Roy grabbed my shoulder. “Great theory, Carson! Morningstar was gushing over the idea.”

“Gushing?”

“If Vivian isn’t pissing on an idea, it’s gushing. You’re winning her over, bud.”

“Yeah? What about the others?”

We heard a cleared throat and turned to see Gershwin, chair tipped back, dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt advertising a surf shop. Both Roy and I had forgotten about the kid. “If y’all don’t need me for anything,” he said, “the folks in maintenance would like me to mop the bathroom with my tongue.”

Roy tucked away his notes and nodded absently. “Good for you, kid. Keep it up.”

Gershwin shook his head and was gone.




10 (#ulink_fd5145b7-cecf-52aa-862a-9ba75daa195f)


Roy and I elevatored down to the investigators’ floor, a horizontal hive of cubicles like I’d vacated in Mobile. Harry and I had our jammed-together desks closest to the elevator and my eyes turned there when the door opened, seeing not a lineman-sized black man dressed in a clashing color palette, but a white guy in his mid fifties with a wind-tunnel blowback of gray hair and Elvis Costello glasses. It wasn’t Harry but a Florida version of Martin Scorsese, and for a moment the world felt unsteady.

Where am I?

“Here you go, Carson,” Roy said, snapping me back to the present. “Grab who you need.”

I studied the cubicles, most empty. The ones holding people held busy people: some guys on phones furiously scribbling notes as they talked, two women and a man bent over a desk and arranging photos, a pair of guys arguing in another cube.

“Everyone looks busy, Roy.”

He laughed. “What … you think I keep my lovelies sitting in a corner and jiggling their nuts while they wait for an assignment? Who looks good, Carson? Pick an assistant or two. Shit … wait … let me introduce you to everyone.”

I heard myself giving my Happy to Be on the Team speech a dozen more times while trying to remember a roster of names.

“How about Gershwin?” I said, seeing the kid reading in a far corner. “He doesn’t look busy.”

Roy looked uneasy, like I might actually be serious. “That would make Gershwin a member of the crew, Carson, maybe not a great idea right now. The others might get a bit miffed that—”

“Who gave me the You’re-in-Charge speech, Roy?”

Roy puffed out a resigned breath. I walked across to Gershwin, still licking his thumb and turning pages. “What you reading?” I asked.

He held up the Yellow Pages for Miami-Dade. “I’m scoping out the concrete section. I didn’t know anything about this crap before.”

“You got anything going on right now?” I said. “I might be able to use you.”

He tossed the book and leaned back in the chair with his hands behind his head and kicked his heels up on the desk. His smile was as wide as it was false. “What, Alabama … you need coffee? A shoe shine? Someone to run your laundry to the cleaners?”

“You seem to have an attitude problem, Gershwin.”

“I came here to work and instead I get treated like I spit in the face of everyone in the FCLE. You know what F-C-L-E spells, right? Fickle. McDermott treats me like I’m transparent, and everyone else looks the other way when I walk in a room.”

I pushed his feet off the desk. He wasn’t expecting it and it brought him to sitting erect. I sat where his feet had been and looked him in the baby browns. “If you’re unhappy all you need to do is complain to the family of that kid you saved and have them pull strings on your behalf. Again.”

The chin jutted. “I never asked them to push for me.”

“Your refusal technique must be flawed. A powerful family offered you an unearned step up and you took it.”

I’d scored a hit. The kid started to argue, had nothing. He nodded at me. “Truth is, I was tired of handling DUIs, brain-dead methheads and crackers screwing their dogs and daughters. I wanted action and when the kid’s family said to pick my spot, I said Miami.”

“And here you are. What do you expect to happen?”

“What else? McDermott’s gonna dump me at some backwater desk until I get tired of pushing paper and retreat to the sticks.”

“And that’s what you plan to do … quit?”

“That’s McDermott’s plan. Mine is to, to …” He pulled up short and frowned.

“What?”

“I dunno,” he said, honestly perplexed. “I don’t have a clue.”

I pushed the Yellow Pages his way. “Here’s an idea: start checking concrete companies for employees with criminal records. Or does that lack the action you’re looking for?”




11 (#ulink_16142f8d-16d6-5241-81ae-4d84dfec3c13)


The dark-haired woman finished tapping on the MacBook Air and switched it off. She sat behind a mahogany desk, antique and polished to a soft gloss. The sole light flowed from a Tiffany-shaded desk lamp and the woman’s olive skin seemed to glow in the light. She wore a sedate navy ensemble, her dark hair curled in a businesslike chignon.

“I’ll be finished in a moment, Orlando,” she said.

There were no personal trappings in the room, no pictures of family or mugs with funny sayings. The desk held only an in and out basket, the latter holding a neat stack of various invoices. The office – painted in a sedate, mossy green with two windows draped in burgundy – was almost as large as Orzibel’s.

The woman turned to the credenza behind her desk. The doors opened to a built-in floor safe the size of a mini-fridge, welded to the frame of the building and immovable. The safe was designed to resist nearly any assault short of cannon fire. She locked the computer in the safe and reclosed the credenza.

“When is the man arriving?” she said, looking across the room.

“The client is downstairs with a bottle of Dom Pérignon,” Orzibel said, waiting in a wing-back chair with hands tented beneath his chin. He was in soft black leather: jacket, vest and pants. His boots were tipped with silver and ticked in time to the bass notes filtering through the floor.

“Dom? On the house?”

Orzibel laughed. “What he spends with us, I don’t care if he drinks a case of it.”

“Is the product ready?”

“Tericita, and Alicia. And Yolanda from the fresh shipment. I will present them when the client is ready, a parade. The man likes little parades before his party.”

“All dressed the same, right? For his choosing?”

“Si. It must be the pink dresses and pink canvas shoes. White panties. And red scarves for the hair. I keep a supply of several sizes in my office for when the client wants a party.”

“Mr Chalk hurt one last time, Orlando. Badly.”

“He paid well for his sport.” Orzibel’s long fingers made the money-whisk. “Are you suddenly concerned about their welfare?”

“I’m concerned about arousing attention. The man is not of normal mind.”

Orzibel waved her words away. “I have taken extra precautions by reserving a rear cabana suite at the Oceana, where sounds cannot travel through the trees. Chaku will stay nearby during the man’s festivities, though he will not interfere unless sounds carry.”

“We must be able to trust the owner of the Oceana, Orlando. Totally.”

“The owner has a side business selling various substances. He knows we know this. And I promised him an evening with one of our best products. Free.”

The woman gave Orzibel a look of irritation and turned to retrieve the MacBook from the safe, setting it on her lap. “You must always tell me when you make side arrangements, Orlando. I must note it or the records will be off.”

“Instead of praise for my careful planning I get a lecture on my memory? Would it be painful to your mouth to say something nice?”

“I have a duty to keep the accounting, Orlando.”

“Yes indeed,” Orzibel said, voice wet with sarcasm. “How dare anyone forget the numbers for your precious accounts.”

The woman’s eyes turned cold. “I keep precise numbers not for me, Orlando Orzibel, but for the one above. El Jefé. Mock me and you mock him.”

“I mock no one,” Orzibel said, sitting straighter and looking as if the room had grown tight. “I will go and start the parade.”

The woman nodded, then seemed to find an afterthought worthy of a frown. “One more thing, Orlando: What of the new one named Leala? Why haven’t you chosen her for the parade?”

A pause. “A peon, that Leala. The client deserves better. I’m sending her to Madame Cho. Cho will get stupid little Leala started in her career.”

“It’s not stupidity, Orlando. It’s ignorance … the naïveté of a peasant. There’s a difference.”

A mischievous light came to Orzibel’s eyes. “Were you ever that ignorant, cariña? That naïve?”

“How else did I get here?”

Orzibel uncurled from the couch and crossed the room, leaning against the desk with his arms crossed. “Ah, but you showed a special light, amiga. And you used it well, didn’t you?”

The woman returned the computer to the safe and turned to see Orzibel’s leer.

“Don’t look at me like that, Orlando. It’s not to be.”

“You are not his, princésa. El Jefé has others. Surely you are not blind to it: you see everything.”

“I am his when he needs me. And he needs me to run this enterprise.”

A flash of anger. “I run this enterprise.”

The woman hid a smile. “Ah, forgive me, Orlando. I meant the part of the enterprise that keeps track of things. So that he can—”

“So he can count the money we make,” Orzibel said.

“Be careful, Orlando. Dangerous words lead to dangerous places.”

Orzibel froze, eyes darting side to side as if fearful of hidden listeners. “I was not speaking against him,” he said quickly. “I have nothing but respect for his enterprises. He should be praised for having so much money to count.”

“Which bring us back to Leala, Orlando. Her innocence, her naïveté. That’s what our special client pays big money for, no? Why did you not include her in the parade?”

“Did you not hear?” Orzibel snapped. “I decided to send Leala to Cho.”

“But Leala is a virgin, is she not? Worth more money?”

“Why are you questioning me? You make decisions about the numbers. I make decisions about the product.”

The woman leaned back in the cushioned chair and regarded Orzibel as if he were a caged animal at a zoo. “Things get a bit hot yesterday, Orlando?” she said after a moment’s reflection. “Just couldn’t control yourself? Again?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I inspected Leala myself, Orlando. Two days ago she was a virgin. What would my finger find today?”

“Fuck you,” Orzibel hissed. But at the edges of his eyes, fear.

The woman’s eyes remained level and unblinking. “What would you do if the Jefé discovered he has lost money because you lost control, Orlando? Could you ever return to pimping runaways collected from parks and bus stations?”

Orzibel’s hands clenched into fists, his eyes blazing. He seemed to waver between worlds. Then, as if depleted of oxygen, his head slumped forward. He started to speak, but threw his hands up in surrender.

“I-I had a moment of weakness. It was all a mistake and I humbly beg you to, to …”

The woman began laughing. “Begging demeans you, Orlando. Plus it’s not sincere.”

“I am confessing my sins! The girl’s flesh was too beautiful for my will. Something dark came over me and I—”

“Please, Orlando, you’re turning my stomach. But be assured I will keep my tongue on the matter and you will stay safe from wrath. Go with the girls you have selected. But make sure Chaku stays close during the man’s pleasures. Mr Chalk is truly sick.”

“Sick is money,” Orzibel muttered, turning for the door. He paused in the entrance. “Gracias for your silence in the matter of my weak moment. I am in your debt, Amili Zelaya.”

“Here you go, Carson.” Roy handed me a small box and a file folder bulging with official documents. “You’re officially official. I got you a brand-new shootin’ iron, too, a Glock 17. And your shield.”

I took the badge and almost moved it to my pocket, but it felt so good I closed my fingers around the metal. “What’s my designation, Roy? You ever figure that one out?”

He handed me my ID card. I stared. “‘Consulting Investigative Agent, Senior Status’? What’s it mean?”

Roy grinned like he’d just invented the rainbow. “I’m not quite sure, since you’re the only one. You’re an investigative agent like the crew, but you’re also a full-time consultant like the art and finance guys. It gives you the broadest range of freedom I could buy.”

“How about ‘Senior Status’?”

“That’s kinda like four-star general in the pecking order. It means people will want to be nice to you.”

“The crew?”

“Well, most people.”

“What’s this second box?”

“Gershwin’s party favors. You got ’em for him, you can give ’em to him.”

I saw a bunch of papers and a holstered nine, the holster stained and the weapon nicked and losing its finish. “OK,” Roy said, “So maybe it’s not a new piece. Tell the kid to keep it in the holster and we’ll do fine.”

I studied Gershwin’s new ID card. “Provisional Investigator?”

“I let him in the door, but he’s not getting the big key. This’ll let him do whatever odd jobs you need.”

I thanked Roy and turned for Gershwin’s private Siberia. On the way I dropped the badge in my pocket and patted its weight. It felt good.

“Provisional?” Gershwin asked when I got back, staring between me and his new ID.

“Don’t start with me,” I said. “I’m a four-star general.”

He slid the card in his wallet. “That mean I have to salute you, Alabama?”

“No. It means you call me Detective Ryder. You have to keep your ass on the concrete firms, our only lead. There’s a lot to do in digging up employees with records.”

Gershwin reached for the Yellow Pages and opened to a sticky tab. “There’s over twenty concrete companies in the area, more if you include surrounding counties. If each company has twenty employees to be checked out, that adds up to—”

“I knows how math works, kid.”

A smirk and waggled finger. “Ah, Deee-tective Ryder, but what if there’s a short cut that names ex-cons working around concrete trucks?”

“Sure. And what if there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?”

He handed the book to me. “What do you see?”

“Ads for concrete companies.”

“Look closer. A lot of them have little logos: Better Business Bureau, Business Alliance of Florida, American Association of Concrete Haulers, that sort of thing.”

I nodded. “True. What I don’t see is a listing of the criminal backgrounds of the employees, which is what we’ve got to get working on.”

“Check out the Redi-flow company, lower right.”

A half-page ad featuring a drawing of a truck dispensing concrete into a foundation as workers looked on. The ad had the usual listing of professional-organization logos plus an outline of a fish holding the letters CPP. “It’s all the same except for the fish logo,” I said. “You know what it means?”

“It stands for the Christian Prison Project, religious businesspeople who mainstream ex-cons back into civilian life, get them starter jobs. I figured that’s what Redi-flow does, and if so, they have ex-cons on the payroll, right?”

I’d thought the kid was joking, but he’d combined brains and observation and come up with gold.

“So we’re going to the Parole Board next, Gershwin?”

He waved a sheaf of pages. “Nope. They just faxed me a list of company hires. The business is owned by a dude named George Kazankis. Turns out Kazankis has hired twenty-six ex-cons in twelve years in business.”

I felt my pulse quickening. “Light-timers or hardcore?”

“Anyone’s fodder for Kazankis’s personal ministry. He’s also got a good record for keeping them straight: most have managed to stay out of the joint.”

I shot a thumbs up. “Sounds like we pay a visit to Mr Kazankis. But first we stop by the motor pool.”




12 (#ulink_35537414-0270-5b99-94ba-f46bbdfb9a60)


“Son of a bitch,” Gershwin said, staring at yards of gleaming black metal and chrome. “That’s yours?”

I looked to the guy who just handed me the keys, a label on his stained blue work shirt embroidered with the name Julio. He nodded. “All yours, Detective Ryder. Captain McDermott said you were senior status. That means the Tahoe.”

I climbed inside. After my pickup, the thing felt like I was in the pilot house of a destroyer. The instrumentation appeared to have been pulled from a Cessna. The new-vehicle smell made my head light. I jumped out.

“Got anything smaller, Julio?”

Julio stared at me like I’d asked a waiter to return a prime filet and bring a can of tuna instead. “But this is what all senior personnel drive, Detective.”

“Dude,” Gershwin said. “I mean Detective Ryder, this is hot wheels deluxe.”

“What else you got, Julio?”

“All the others are standard cruisers.”

I saw a line of cars and trucks across the lot. “What are those?”

“Seized contraband, vehicles taken from criminals. When someone gets caught the state can take away—”

“I know how it works, bud,” I said, not mentioning my house was in the same condition. “Anything available over there?”

“All are, I suppose. They get taken out for surveillance because they don’t look like police vehicles.”

We followed Gershwin to the line-up, a dozen cars and trucks, some looking new, most in obviously used condition. I was immediately drawn to a beige Land Rover Defender, fully outfitted with heavy black grille guard, full roof racking, and a high-sprung body with more right angles than curves.

“Tell me about the Rover, Julio.”

“That?” Gershwin wrinkled his nose. “It’s left over from an Indiana Jones movie.”

“You don’t want the Rover, Detective,” Julio argued. “It’s sprung like a tank.”

“And built like one, too,” I said, admiringly. “Where’d it come from?”

“A Lauderdale dope dealer who had it custom-outfitted in South Africa for a month-long safari, but cut the trek short after three days. When he had the monster shipped over here, he liked how it looked a lot better than how it rode, probably why it’s only got two thousand miles on it. I also don’t think he much liked a manual transmission after the novelty wore off.”

“The Tahoe,” Gershwin pleaded.

“How long would it take to outfit the Rover with a siren, flashers, and an on-board computer hookup, Julio?” I asked. “Given that y’all don’t look too busy around here.”

Gershwin moaned.

Thirty minutes later, feeling better than I had all day, I aimed the revamped Rover for Redi-flow. It was southwest of Miami, down toward Homestead. Once off the highway we wove through streets that turned from storefront businesses to small and brightly painted houses clustered on miniscule lots festooned with tropical foliage. The houses soon grew sparse, the land as much sand as dirt, errant terns pecking at prickly pears for insects. I smelled swampland nearby but never saw water.

Within minutes we banged past a lot holding smaller dozers and graders, cranes, trucks, and machinery of indecipherable usage, and a small abandoned building beneath a faded sign showing a crane and proclaiming OLYMPIA EQUIPMENT RENTAL – SINCE 1975.

Gershwin pointed. “Think they’d rent us a crane, sahib? You could shoot at lions from above.”

“The Rover is fine. And it’s Detective Ryder.”

We passed over rail tracks into a complex dominated by piles of gravel and sand, metal towers hovering in the air, one large silo emblazoned with a tall cross, below it the words REDI-FLOW CONCRETE, INC … A MIX FOR EVERY NEED. A half-dozen mixing trucks sat on the lot and two were pulled to one of the towers, workers standing beside them. In a far corner of the lot was a jumble of metal boxes and round tanks. I’d seen them at construction sites: portable mixing units conveyed on semis and set up where needed.

We pulled beside a squat building marked ‘Office’ as a helicopter blew by overhead, low enough to read the word EVERGLADES AIR TOURSon the fuselage.

Kazankis was in his early fifties, tall and square-built and in a blue uniform dusted with cement. He was ruggedly good looking, wavy silver hair pomaded and combed back from his high and sun-brown forehead. His voice was deep and resonant and had Kazankis stood with a Bible in his hand and started preaching about salvation it wouldn’t have been much of a shock.

I showed my new ID. “Why we’re here, Mr Kazankis, is we’re investigating a crime involving an amount of poured concrete that probably took a mixer.”

“You came to us because of who we hire?” he said quietly, meaning ex-cons. “I feel it’s my calling to help the fallen back to their feet.”

“I’m not questioning your calling, sir. I may wish to question some of your employees.”

“Our employees are no longer criminals. When first from prison, I employ them here. Some stay, others move to new careers. The record speaks for itself.”

“An exemplary record, indeed,” I said, credit due. “But you’ve had failures, Mr Kazankis. It goes with the territory.”

“True. I’ll be the first to admit cases of recidivism. Not, thankfully, very many. But given that the possibility exists … what may I do for you, Detective?”

“First, sir, what can you tell me about this sample?” I opened my briefcase and handed over a bone-free chunk of concrete. Kazankis flicked a thumbnail over its surface.

“Low aggregate. Mainly sand and cement with a dye, one of the umbers. Is this part of the crime you’re investigating?”

I nodded. “Have you ever had a loaded truck stolen?”

“A truckload is mixed, then goes directly to the site. A person might steal a truck at night, but it would be empty.”

“Maybe I’m looking for concrete diverted to another usage. This would have been around a year ago.”

Kazankis frowned. “I’m sorry, Detective, but I can’t recall details that far back.”

“Would it be possible to get a printout of all employees from that period?” I asked. “It would save us a trip to the Parole Board.”

“Certainly.” Mr Kazankis sat by a computer, made some taps on the keyboard, and a printer behind the desk began humming. Our next move would be cross-checking employee names against violent crimes. Records in hand, we turned to the door.

Gershwin halted. “One more question, Mr Kazankis. Do your employees ever take concrete home or anything like that? For use later?”

“Like for next-day delivery? It would harden in the truck.”

“I guess I mean their own projects. Like fixing a sidewalk or whatnot.”




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