Midnight Rambler (11 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

I
left the apartment complex with my head spinning.

I needed to prove Melinda was lying. That wasn't going to be easy, considering that it was her word against mine. But if I could punch holes in her story, people might stop believing her and start listening to me.

Joy Chambers was one way to do that. Joy was a local prostitute who'd dated several cops. I wasn't one of them, but I had done her a favor and helped her locate a child she'd put up for adoption years before. I knew a lot about Joy, including where she lived, and her real name, Joyce Perkowski. If I asked her to contact the newspapers and say we weren't sleeping together, I felt certain she'd do it.

I called Joy's number, and she didn't pick up. She lived in Tamarac, and fifteen minutes later I pulled into her driveway. Her gray clapboard house was eclipsed by the tangle of brush covering the front lawn and a veil of vines creeping down from the roof. It was an eyesore, which was how she liked it.

I banged on the front door, then tried the buzzer. It wasn't working, and I went around to the back. The kitchen door was open, and I tapped on the glass.

“Joy? Are you home? It's Jack Carpenter. I need to talk to you.”

There was no answer. I entered the kitchen with my dog. It was spotlessly clean. Joy kept the interior of the house immaculate. She did not bring her johns here, or any of her suitors. Just a few trusted friends.

I went down a hallway to the front of the house. The living room had brand-new nice furniture and looked like a department store showroom. In the corner was a TV with lines of static running across the screen. A remote lay on the glass coffee table. I picked it up and pressed the Cable button. Nothing happened.

Buster let out a yip. I followed the sound to the master bedroom on the side of the house. Joy lay on the bed, stripped naked, her head twisted at an unnatural angle. Her face was ashen, her mouth wide open as if it were frozen. Buster stood beside the bed, licking the fingers of her outstretched hand.

I made my dog lie down, then studied her corpse. The position of her body indicated she'd been dragged into the room, tossed on the bed, and had her clothes torn off. Her attacker had straddled her—the imprints from his knees were still on the sheets—and strangled her. The purple bruises ringing her neck said he'd used his hands. He'd left quickly, not bothering to cover her body or close her mouth. It had happened fast, which I supposed was a blessing.

I knelt down beside the bed. Joy had been a fighter, and I could not envision this happening without some struggle. I looked at her hands. The left was clenched into a fist; the right wide open. The knuckles of the left were bruised. Joy had punched her attacker as he'd killed her, and left her mark on him.

“We'll get him,” I told her.

I rose from the floor. I wanted to cover her but was afraid of contaminating the crime scene. I went into the kitchen to call 911. As I punched in the numbers an envelope on the kitchen table caught my eye. It was addressed to me.

I dropped the phone into the cradle, then picked up the envelope and tore it open. Inside was a handwritten letter. It was from Joy, dated two days earlier. She was breaking off the affair we'd never had. My hands began to tremble. Her killer had made her do this.

As I slipped the letter into my pocket a numbing realization swept over me. Joy had been killed in an effort to set me up. That setup included Melinda Peters telling Neil Bash that Joy and I were having an affair. As hard as it was for me to believe, Melinda was part of this.

I searched the house for anything else linking me to Joy. Finding nothing, I wetted a paper towel in the sink and wiped down everything I'd touched. This included the phone, but only after I dialed 911 and heard the call go through.

It was dark when I returned to the Sunset. The new TV was sitting over the bar, and the Dwarfs couldn't stop commenting about the sharpness of the picture. I bellied up to the bar and motioned to Sonny. He came over, and I handed him ten hundred-dollar bills to cover my double tabs and my rent. The sight of the money made his jaw drop.

“You don't have to pay me all at once,” he said.

I was tempted to take some of it back.

“Keep it,” I said.

Sonny slid a cold can of Budweiser toward me. “A reporter called for you earlier, said she wanted to talk about Melinda Peters. I've got her number in the till.”

I groaned, and everyone in the bar looked at me.

“Shitty day,” I said.

I killed the beer, then started to leave.

“Remember what the prophet said, Jack,” Whitey called out.

I stopped in the doorway. “What's that?”

“In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man will be king.”

“Hear, hear,” several of the Dwarfs said.

Climbing the stairs to my room, I wondered if Whitey was right. Perhaps I was a one-eyed man, seeing only those things I chose to see.

Joy's murder was going to haunt me. Russo would want to question me about her murder. If he didn't like my answers, he'd arrest me as a suspect. Since I couldn't post bail, I'd go to jail for a few weeks, or even longer.

Melinda's lies were also going to haunt me. Not only was Skell going to walk, but the Midnight Rambler case would be reopened. This time, the scrutiny wouldn't be focused on Skell. It would be on me, and how I'd handled the investigation.

I entered my room and switched on the light. I was in a world of trouble. So much so that I found myself counting the people I could ask for help: Kumar, Sonny, my wife, and my daughter. Not a big group, but better than nothing.

My cell phone rang. I dug it out of my pocket. Caller ID said it was Jessie. I sat on the bed and kicked off my shoes. Then I answered it.

“How's the world's best basketball player?” I answered.

My daughter was sobbing. It made my mind return to that horrible day on Hutchinson Island.

“How
could
you?” she wailed.

“How could I what?” I asked.

“I was in my dorm watching CNN, and they showed your photo and a photograph of some stripper. They said you were screwing her and had fabricated evidence and all sorts of horrible things.
How could you do this to me and Mommy?”

“It's all lies,” I said emphatically.

“
Then why are they showing it on TV?”

“It must be a slow news night.”

Jessie didn't see the humor and screamed at me. I tried to explain, but she refused to listen. Finally I hit my tolerance point and jumped in.

“Lower your voice, or I'm hanging up this phone,” I said.

My daughter grew quiet, and I continued. “Whatever you might think of me at this moment in time, I'm still your father, remember?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“Good. Now, let me ask you a question. When have I ever lied to you?”

My words were met by a short silence.

“Never,” she replied.

“That's right. Never, ever have I lied to you.”

“Not that I know about,” she chimed in.

“
Never, ever,” I said. “What you heard on the TV was a pack of lies.”

“But that stripper said you had an affair with her, and another woman as well.”

I could hear my teeth clench. I didn't give a rat's ass if the rest of the world thought I was slime, but with Jessie it mattered.

“None of it is true,” I said.

“You need to talk to Mom,” my daughter said. “She heard it on the news in Tampa. She's awfully upset.”

“I'll call her right now.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, I promise. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Daddy.”

I ended the call. Then I spent a minute gathering the courage to call Rose.

I'd always blamed myself for our breakup. My wife was from Mexico and deeply religious. In her faith, the spirits of the dead hung around long after the body was gone. Many times she'd told me that Skell's victims were clinging to me and that she couldn't compete with them. Like a fool, I didn't argue, so she left me.

I punched her number into my cell phone.

“Hey, Rose,” I said when she answered.

“Who is this?” she asked suspiciously.

“It's me. Jack.”

“What do you want?”

“To apologize.”

“It's too late for that.”

“No, listen. Everything you heard on TV is a bunch of crap.”

“I don't believe you.”

“You have to believe me.”

“No, I don't.”

I put my hand over my eyes. “Rose, please, listen to me.”

“I'm filing for a divorce.”

“What? No. Please don't do that.”

“Tomorrow. First thing in the morning. I already have a lawyer. I'll send you the papers. Now I have to go to bed.”

My heart felt ready to break. I could not let her go.

“You can't give up on me,” I said.

“Give me one good reason why.”

“Because I need you, and because I love you.”

I heard my wife's sharp intake of breath.

“Go to hell, Jack Carpenter,” she said.

I had no answer for that, and heard her hang up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A
t four a.m. my alarm clock went off. I dragged myself out of bed and rousted Buster. My dog rolled over, expecting to get his tummy scratched. Instead, I tugged on his hind leg.

“Road trip,” I said.

Five minutes later we pulled out of the Sunset's parking lot. Tampa was three hundred miles away, and my goal was to reach my wife's place before she left for work, and beg her for another chance. We'd been married for twenty years, and I wasn't going to let it end with a phone call.

Driving through the streets of Dania, I found myself wondering if I'd ever return to south Florida. I'd never run away from a fight before, but this fight was destroying me. I needed to regroup and come up with another strategy. Then I would come back.

But before I did any of those things, I needed to see Rose.

A1A took me to 595, which led to the Florida Turnpike. My car was old enough to have a tape deck, and I popped in a collection that I fondly called the soundtrack of my youth. It included songs by the Doors, the Allman Brothers Band, the Eagles, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, the Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin performing at New York's Madison Square Garden.

I reached the Vero Beach exit in two hours thirty minutes and got off. The sky was clear and there was a chill in the air. I took Highway 60 through Yeehaw Junction, a redneck burg of truck stops and squawking chickens strutting on the highway. Forty-five minutes later I stopped at a McDonald's in Bartow and ordered breakfast. As I pulled up to the take-out window, a teenage girl opened the slider.

“Two sausage biscuits and an OJ?” she asked.

“Not me,” I said.

She stared at her computer screen. “One egg biscuit and a small offee?”

“Wrong again.”

“You'd better repeat your order. My computer's messed up.”

There were no cars behind me in the take-out line, and I wondered how her computer could be placing orders for customers who didn't exist.

“Large coffee and hash browns,” I said.

I was back on 60 sipping my drink when my cell phone rang. Central Florida used to be one giant dead zone, but modern technology changed that. Caller ID said Unknown.

“Carpenter here,” I answered.

“Jack, this is Veronica Cabrero.”

“How's my favorite prosecutor?”

“I'm afraid I've got some bad news.”

Bartow was famous for its speed traps, and my foot eased up on the gas pedal.

“What's wrong? Don't tell me your case against Lars Johannsen went south.”

“Lars was found dead in his cell this morning,” she said.

“What happened?”

“He slit his wrists. The police think his wife slipped him a razor in court yesterday.”

I nearly said “Good riddance” but bit my tongue instead. Veronica was a devout Catholic who did not believe in capital punishment, and I could tell this turn of events had upset her.

“Any idea why he did it?” I asked.

“Lars knew he was going down.”

“How so?”

“I followed up on your hunch,” Cabrero said. “You told me Lars matched the profile of a predator who'd been beating up hookers in western Broward. I ran an advertisement in one of those strip club magazines with Lars's picture and asked any women who'd been brutalized by him to come forward. One finally did, and she agreed to testify.”

“So Lars knew you had him by the short hairs.”

“Yes. Now, I need to ask you a question. The police are considering charging Lars's wife as an accessory. What do you think?”

I braked at a stoplight and considered Veronica's question. If there was anything I'd learned as a cop, it was that there was no understanding the tangled relationships between men and women. Perhaps Lars's wife was an accomplice and into the same twisted things as her husband. But more likely she loved the guy and, when the truth became known, afforded him a graceful exit.

“I think you should leave her alone,” I said.

“Seriously?”

“Yes. She'll have to live with this for the rest of her life. That's punishment enough.”

There was a short, thoughtful silence.

“Thanks, Jack. I really appreciate this.”

“Anytime, Veronica,” I said.

I crept into Tampa with the rush-hour traffic. Tampa had the feel of a small southern city, the downtown streets paved with brick and uneven. The people were a lot friendlier, and it was rare to hear anyone honk their horn. The beaches weren't as pretty, but a lot more of them were unspoiled. And the sunsets beat any in the state.

At eight-thirty I pulled into Rose's apartment complex in Hyde Park. I had her address written down on a piece of paper and found her building without trouble. Her blue Nova was parked in front, and I parked two down.

I left Buster in the car with the windows rolled down. Rose's unit was on the second floor, and I took the stairs, feeling apprehensive. It had been a while since my wife and I had seen each other, much less had a real conversation.

A copy of the
Tampa Tribune
was stuffed into her mailbox. I pulled it out, then knocked. Rose answered in her white nurse's uniform.

“Surprise,” I said.

The resounding slap my wife delivered across my face had every ounce of venom in her body.

“You stinking bastard!”

She raised her arm to strike me again. I grabbed it in midair.

“I didn't sleep with Melinda Peters. Or Joy Chambers.”

“Let go of my arm,” Rose declared.

“You have to believe me.”

“Let go.”

I obeyed, and she slammed the door in my face.

“Don't you want your newspaper?” I asked.

“No,” she shouted through the door.

“It has my picture on the front page.”

“Lucky you.”

“Yours, too.”

The door opened, and my wife snatched the newspaper out of my hands. I got down on one knee and looked up into her face.

“I swear to you, Rose. I didn't sleep with them. You have to believe me.”

Rose stared at me impassively. She looked no different from the day we met. Small-boned and perfectly proportioned, with toffee-colored skin and big round eyes. She was waiting tables in Fort Lauderdale while going to nursing school, and I was six weeks on the force. In my face she'd seen my daddy's Seminole genes, and mistakenly thought I was part Mexican. We'd started dating, and ten months later Jessie was born.

“A woman would not say those things unless they were true,” she said.

“This woman did,” I said. “They're not true.”

“You'd better not be lying to me, Jack Carpenter.”

“I didn't drive all this way to lie to you.”

Rose scrutinized the newspaper to make sure her picture wasn't on the front page, then went inside. This time, she didn't slam the door in my face, and I followed her.

Rose's apartment was a one-bedroom with furnishings purchased from secondhand stores. My wife made enough money to spruce the place up, but instead she sent a monthly allowance to Jessie that I wasn't supposed to know about.

“You want a cup of coffee?” she asked.

“That would be great,” I said.

I cleared off the coffee table in the living room while she brewed a pot. Sitting on the table were five hand-carved wooden boxes, which Rose had owned since I'd known her. Each box had a drawing of a skeleton and contained a belonging from one of her dead relatives. A button from her grandfather, a lock of hair from her grandmother, and other keepsakes from her aunts and uncles. The boxes were part of Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a religious holiday celebrated in Mexico each year. In my wife's faith, not to remember the dead was considered a disgrace.

I handled the boxes gently as I placed them on the floor. Rose entered the room holding two steaming cups, and sat down beside me.

“Why did you come so early?” she asked.

“I wanted to catch you before you went to see the lawyer,” I said.

We drank in silence. My eyes drifted around the apartment. Hanging from the wall was the family photograph that also sat on the night table beside my bed. It was a painful reminder of our past.

“You've lost weight,” she said.

“Almost twenty pounds,” I said.

“You look like you did when we met. Lean and tan and . . .”

“And what?”

She wouldn't let the word come out of her mouth.

“You look the same, too,” I said.

“No, I don't,” she said.

“You look beautiful.”

“Why did you really come, Jack?”

“Because I love you and don't want to lose you.”

Her cup hit the saucer hard. “Then why haven't you come for me? Why stay in south Florida and let people destroy your reputation? I love you, too.”

“I know you do.”

“Then why haven't you come for me?”

I moved closer on the couch and put my hand over hers. “Because I can't leave until I figure out how Simon Skell killed those women. If I do that, he stays in prison. If I don't, he goes free. I must resolve this. Then I'll come back to you.”

Her face melted, and I watched her fight back tears.

“Is that a promise?” she asked.

“Yes, it's a promise.”

She took my left hand and stared at the gold band encircling my third finger. Looked at it a long time, her eyes blinking with thought.

“Take it off,” she said.

“You mean my wedding ring?”

She nodded, and I tugged my wedding ring off my finger. I didn't know what Rose was up to, and I watched her lift my left hand and stare. The place where the ring rested was milky white, the rest of my finger dark brown.

“You never took it off,” she said.

Then I got it.

“Not once,” I said.

“Never went out on a Friday night and played the field?”

“No, honey.”

“No strippers on the side, or trysts with female cops? There were a couple who had their eye on you.”

“Nope.”

“You knew I was waiting, didn't you?”

“I hoped you were,” I said, smiling.

She rose from the couch and motioned to me. I stood up, and she unbuttoned my shirt and ran her fingertips across my hairless stomach. Her nose twitched, sniffing my skin, and before I knew it, her head was resting on my chest and I was holding her.

“I love you so much,” she whispered.

After a minute she called in late to work. Then, clasping my hand, she led me to her bedroom. She undressed me, then I undressed her. It was our little ritual and never failed to get us both aroused. We tossed the sheet on the floor and got into bed.

“I want to be on top,” she said.

“You sure?”

“Yes. Lie down.”

I was too tall for her bed, and my feet stuck out at the end. I wiggled my toes and pointed at them. She laughed and slapped me on the thigh.

“Move over, big boy.”

I slid across the bed until I was lying crosswise. Then Rose mounted me. At first our lovemaking was awkward, and I felt like a teenager doing it in the backseat of my car. Rather than be annoyed, my wife smiled at me. If she'd needed any more convincing that I wasn't fooling around, she just got it.

It only took us a minute to get our rhythm back, and then we were flying through the clouds. Rose knew what made me happy, and as I climaxed I was reminded of all the times in our relationship that she'd pulled through for me.

When we were done, she snuggled up beside me and put her head on my chest. Then she drifted off to sleep. Her energy was flowing through my overheated skin, and for a little while I felt whole again.