A Dark and Lonely Place (3 page)

“The girls’ll be back if they don’t see the news. Left their luggage. What girl leaves behind her Jimmy Choo four-inch heels and Victoria’s Secret thongs? Left my card so the girls can give me a jingle and impressed the urgency of my request upon the housekeeper, who is minus her green card, by the way. Promised to give us a buzz at the girls’ first sighting.

“Not that I don’t trust her, but I also left a rookie in an unmarked behind the island’s guard house. He’s watching for ’em.”

“Good,” John said. “You find next of kin?”

“A couple ex-wives. No problems with ’em lately, the housekeeper says. Parents deceased. His office manager’ll know. Left a message; Eagle’s law office is closed for the weekend.”

“That buys a little time,” John said. “If we can’t inform next of kin, we can’t confirm Eagle’s ID to the media.”

After the body was bagged, tagged, and en route to the morgue, both returned to headquarters.

John shook the sand out of his shoes. As he wondered where he left his socks and where Summer Smith was staying, Eagle’s housekeeper called. The three young women had returned.

“Keep ’em there. We’re on the way,” J. J. said, then paused. “What?” He clamped his hand over the mouthpiece. “They just left!” he shouted. “What the hell? Sez they changed clothes and took off!”

“What about the rookie watching for ’em?”

“If he ain’t dead in the bushes, he’ll soon wish he was.”

Two of the women, the housekeeper said, drove off in one of Eagle’s cars, a yellow Lamborghini, a two-seater.

“No two high-maintenance broads ever got dressed that fast to go out on Saturday night,” J. J. said, grimly. “They know something. They’re running.”

The third girl left in a Yellow Cab with her luggage.

They found the rookie staked out to watch for the girls’ return alive, well, and texting a friend. He had missed their return to Eagle’s home but had seen the sunshine yellow Lamborghini depart. Its sleek design so dazzled him that he had failed to notice the occupants.

“A bright yellow Lamborghini can’t be that tough to find,” John said.

“Right. We can rule out my driveway for a start,” J. J. said.

Yellow Cab reported that the fare picked up at Eagle’s place went to the departures level at the United Airlines terminal at Miami International Airport.

Pressed for descriptions of Eagle’s young female houseguests, the Guatemalan housekeeper suddenly forgot what little English she knew. Questioned by a Spanish-speaking detective, she seemed to have forgotten Spanish as well.

A BOLO, Be On the LookOut, paid off after midnight. The Lamborghini lit up the night, parked in plain sight on the street outside Sky, a Miami nightspot just south of the Design District.

The doorman clearly remembered the car and the two women who arrived in it. Clearly unaccustomed to waiting behind velvet ropes for
admittance, they brushed by the line and strolled inside, too hot to be challenged.

But that was hours ago and they no longer seemed to be there.

The detectives even checked the restrooms, both men’s and women’s.

John and his partner sat in the manager’s office with the doorman to watch the video surveillance tape.

“There they are!” The doorman pointed as two shadowy figures entered the frame. “That’s them! They’re hot!”

John blinked at the grainy tape. “I don’t believe this!” He rocked back in his chair, hungry, thirsty, tired, and elated. His head ached, his eyes stung, but no doubt about it.

“They’re models! They were working at a photo shoot on South Beach today when it all went down.”

“Yesterday.” J. J. glumly checked his watch.

John stared at the tape, and Summer Smith, her familiar walk, the way she tossed her head back and laughed.

“I know that girl,” he said with certainty, “just can’t remember where we met.”

“That’s a first,” J. J. said. “You never forget a face.”

“Her name’s Summer Smith, got it from the photographer. Didn’t ring a bell, must be an AKA. Wonder if she has a rap sheet.” Perplexed, he squinted at the screen. Had he seen that face on a wanted poster?

Now she has to talk to me, he thought. He looked forward to it. Couldn’t wait, in fact.

They took the tapes to view back at the station. Hopefully they’d reveal who the girls met at the club, who they’d left with, and when. Why leave an exotic $400,000 car behind? When no one returned for it by four a.m., with rain threatening, the police had it towed for processing.

An hour before dawn, a call went out: a charred body in a still-smoking Dumpster a mile north of Sky.

Not their case, but John decided to swing by the scene. J. J. argued against it. “I’m running on empty,” he complained. “Let’s call it a night. I hate it when you do this. I need sleep and something to eat. We can start fresh in the morning.”

“Just this one stop,” John said, as they waited at a railroad crossing for a passing train. “Let’s see what they’ve got.”

J. J. bitched, moaned, and complained. But John loved watching the Southeast Railway train roar through the city, gates lowering, lights flashing, the train stopping traffic as it raced through the night like a wild animal. It reminded him of something intimately familiar yet impossible to remember.

Unmistakable odors—smoke, gasoline, and burned flesh—hung in the air. The rain hadn’t come. A security guard on his way home had spotted the flames and called it in. Firefighters were unaware until they doused the blaze that it had been set to cremate a corpse along with any physical evidence.

Like most such attempts, it wasn’t successful. Something always remains. Even professional gas-fired cremations need hours of twenty-four-hundred-degree heat to consume a body.

A woman’s purse, the contents scattered, was found two blocks away. No ID, but car keys with a distinctive emblem lay in the gutter and fit the Lamborghini.

The victim was burned so badly that only a medical examiner could determine the sex. But a small silver ring fell from a charred finger bone as the remains were carefully removed from the Dumpster. Cleaned up at the morgue, the ring was a woman’s size five with the initials
S.L.S.
engraved inside.

John would never see her again. Ever. Why did that hit him so hard? Summer Smith was a stranger. Or was she? Weariness overtook him. He agreed with J. J. They’d quit, catch a few hours sleep, then restart, refreshed, in midmorning.

Lucy had let herself into his apartment to leave a meal he could reheat in the microwave, and a note to call her if he wanted company, no matter how late. He didn’t. He couldn’t eat or sleep but dozed after daylight. In the recurring dream she was warm, vibrant, and she loved him, despite the danger around them, but this dream was different. He finally saw her face.

He awoke with a start, realizing he had finally found the girl, the woman who had haunted him both day and night since childhood. But too late. She now slept in the morgue, a charred corpse.

CHAPTER TWO

T
he knock at his door was familiar—three sharp raps. John didn’t want company but Lucy had her own key and wouldn’t hesitate to use it, kick out a window, or smash in a door. A positive trait for an ambitious, aggressive young cop. For one’s sweet young fiancée, not so much.

“Miami Police! Open up! Now!”

He surrendered.

“Hey!” Detective Tracy Luisita Dominguez stepped inside, a spectacular sight in her starched, tailored, sharply creased dark blue uniform. She was so perky it made his head hurt. Her dazzling Latina smile hurt his eyes. But he followed the aroma as she took over his kitchen. She had brought strong Cuban coffee and warm, fresh-baked guava pastries.

“You look terrible,” she chirped. “Tell me every gruesome detail. You know you should switch to days. Midnights kill our social life.”

She didn’t understand, never would. Dangerous predators roamed Miami’s wilderness after midnight, and he was the hunter. He popped the lid off a steamy-hot coffee, then bit into a pastry. He knew it was sweet and flaky, but it tasted bitter, the way he felt.

“They posted the date for the next promotional exam,” Lucy said. “Are you taking the lieutenant’s test?”

They’d discussed it before. “No. Promotion would mean a transfer out of Homicide. I like what I do.” Except today. Except now, he thought. “It’s what I do best.”

“But”—she straddled a kitchen chair, a supersexy position for a woman, especially one wearing a gun, a uniform, and lots of leather. “You could climb the ladder, fatten your pension, then land a chief’s job in some small town, stay long enough for a second pension, and we
retire in style. Chief Ashley. I like it.” She licked her bright red lips suggestively.

“If I retire, I won’t go into policework somewhere else. It’s too political. You know I don’t play well with others.”

He didn’t tell her the real reason. How could he, when he didn’t understand it himself? All he knew was that he was never more alive than when on Miami’s darkest streets. The first time he’d felt the city’s pulse beat, he knew it was where his destiny lay. Several times he’d thought the moment had come, but realized later it was not the challenge he was born for, waited for.

“You need to be a team player. Think about it,
querido.
”

She shoved the chair aside, balanced daintily on the steel-tipped toes of her safety shoes, and kissed his mouth. She was hot but not the woman on his mind.

“We’re working Eagle hard,” he said gruffly. “Gotta go.”

“You okay?” She rested her palm on his forehead.

“Just tired. The case . . .”

“Developments?”

“Nothing good,” he said. “A second victim.”

Her dark eyebrows rose. “Who?”

“Just a girl he knew,” he said bleakly. He hated how that sounded.

“Probably a hooker,” she said casually, opened his fridge, and gasped. “You didn’t eat the meat loaf? Not even the mac and cheese?” She turned, shocked, hands on her hips. “You didn’t call either! I wanted to hear all about your case.”

“Came home and crashed,” he muttered.

He was grateful his phone rang.

“What do you know?” J. J. crowed.

John heard the traffic around him.

“The other broad made it through the night. Called to report the Lamborghini stolen this morning. Used Eagle’s address. Said she was a house-guest using his car until it disappeared from the street in front of Sky—”

“Good, she coming in?”

“Hell, no. I’m not taking any chances. I’m picking this one up myself. See ya at the station.”

John’s desk phone rang as he walked in the door. Eagle’s office manager, Gil Lonstein, returning J. J.’s call.

“We need to talk,” John said.

“It’s about my boss, isn’t it?” He sounded young, a slight tremor in his voice.

“Why do you say that?”

“A speedboat just like his ran aground and crashed yesterday on South Beach. I saw the TV news. The reporter said the only person aboard was killed. I immediately tried to reach my boss but couldn’t. His housekeeper said he left in the morning and a detective showed up that afternoon to ask about his next of kin. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to put two and two together.”

“Right,” John told him. “And we need your help.”

Lonstein arrived twenty minutes later. A young-looking thirty, with a fox-sharp face and intelligent, deep-set brown eyes set a tad too close together. His glasses were rimless, his shirt button-down, and he wore a jacket on the summer’s steamiest Sunday.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Gil Lonstein greeted him.

John nodded. “He is.”

“He was a daredevil, full of bluster and bravado.” Lonstein’s voice shook, as J. J. joined them and pulled up a chair. “But he was also smart, careful, always used a checklist.”

The man who expected bad news seemed shocked to hear it. “. . . was a championship boat racer. Flew a jet helicopter . . .”

The detectives winced, imagining the scene had Eagle crashed a big jet chopper instead of a powerboat on the crowded beach. “Thank God for small favors,” J. J. muttered.

“How could this happen?” Lonstein’s brow furrowed. “A stroke? Heart attack? I had an uncle, age forty-four. He passed his annual physical with flying colors. Fell dead in the street the next day. An aneurism, they said.”

“Was Eagle in poor health?” John asked.

“No.” Lonstein waved the question off as preposterous. “The man’s an animal. Never late to court. Never missed a day of work in spite of . . . all his other activities.”

“Enemies?”

The young man’s jaw dropped. “You don’t suspect . . . ?”

John nodded. “No heart attack, no stroke, no accident.”

“Deliberate?” Lonstein looked aghast. “You think somebody tampered with his boat?”

“Let’s just say the circumstances are suspicious. He was dead before the crash.”

Lonstein fell back in his chair, bit his lip, and studied the ceiling. His eyes were shiny when they refocused on the detectives. “Not a good time to job hunt.” He sniffed and wiped his face with a monogrammed handkerchief. “I’ll need a new resume . . .”

“I’m sure you’ll be asked to stay with the firm.”

“What’s to stay with?” He laughed ironically.