Paint It Black (14 page)

“I don't think Driggs appreciated your comment,” Louis said.

“Do you think he even got it?” Emily said.

They were in a Sereno Key squad car, heading toward Fort Myers Beach. They passed the turnoff for the marina where Louis had questioned the jumbo shrimp woman, and then went up over the bridge and onto Fort Myers Beach. Louis had to slow the car to a crawl on congested Estero Boulevard.

“Sodom and Gomorrah,” Emily said, eyeing the crowds.

“Good place for The Saint,” Louis said.

The Blue Heron was a mom-and-pop hotel with fading pink stucco that spoke of a heyday sometime in the late fifties. It was sandwiched between a 7-Eleven and a new Taco Bell. Louis parked in the convenience store lot and he and Emily set out for the beach.

As they waited to cross the street, Louis looked south down Estero Boulevard. Barely visible in the glare of the sun was the familiar green sign of the Holiday Inn, the site of Anthony Quick's abduction.

On the beach, they spotted The Saint's operation immediately, a couple of old card tables set up under a palm. About twenty shabby men milled around, trying to find some shade as they quietly ate sandwiches and drank coffee from Styrofoam cups. There were two men manning the line and Louis zeroed in on the older one, a gaunt, deeply tanned man of about sixty, with a white beard, wearing shorts and a Tampa Bay Bucs T-shirt.

“Excuse me, are you The Saint?” Louis asked.

The man peered at him with milky blue eyes. “Nope.”

“You know where I can find him?”

“Nope.”

Louis stifled a sigh. Emily stepped forward. “We're trying to find someone, and we were told he might have come here.” Emily paused. “You are The Saint, aren't you?”

The man slapped a bologna sandwich on the plastic tray. “Look, we're not hurting anybody here. Why can't you cops just leave us alone?”

“We're not—”

The old man turned away to hand a cup of coffee to a man who had trudged up beside Louis. “Hey, Willie, where you been? Ain't seen you around.”

“Was up in Jersey for the summer. Took me a while to get back this time. Good to see ya, Saint,” the man said. He took his food and moved away.

The bearded man looked at Louis and extended his wrists. “Okay, take me in again. I don't care. I'll just find another place. This is public property. You can't stop me from giving away food.”

“We're not here to harass you,” Louis said. “We just need some help.”

The man stared at Louis and slowly let his arms fall. “Help,” he said with a snort. “Who doesn't need help?”

“We're trying to identify a man, a dead man, who might have been homeless,” Louis said. “Have you ever seen a man here with a tattoo on his left arm of a dog and the name Bosco?”

The Saint was staring at Emily now. “You really a cop, a little bitty thing like you?” he asked. He didn't wait for her answer. He looked back at Louis.

“Bosco . . .” he said. “Yeah, I know that tattoo.” He paused and looked at some kids playing in the surf. “Shit. You say he's dead?”

Louis nodded. He was glad when The Saint didn't ask for details. “Was Bosco his last name?” Louis asked.

The Saint shrugged. “Who knows? Lots of folks here don't use their real names. It's like a family, I guess. We just call each other by whatever name fits, you know?”

“You called him Bosco?” Emily asked.

The Saint eyed her, still unsure he should reveal much more. “Nope. We called him Harry.”

“Do you know where he was from, where he lived?” Emily asked.

“Lived?” The Saint gave a small smile. “Well, you could try behind that 7-Eleven over there. Other than that, I don't know much about him. He always showed up for his food here. I haven't seen him in weeks now. I thought he just moved on. Or disappeared. Most do.” He glanced back out at the ocean.

Emily reached in her pocket and pulled out a card and pen. She scribbled a number on it. “If you think of anything else, call, okay?”

The Saint took the card and slipped it into his shorts pocket. “Sure, miss.”

“Thanks for your help,” Louis said. He paused, then reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills. When The Saint saw the two twenties, he shook his head.

“I don't need it,” he said. He smiled. “I've got plenty of my own money. I spent my share of time on the street but my brother left me a bundle when he croaked. Asshole never called me when he was alive but then . . .” He gestured toward the sandwiches. “Sixty grand buys a lot of bologna.”

Louis and Emily left The Saint and trudged up the beach to the street. Louis waited while she emptied the sand from her shoes and they continued on to the 7-Eleven. The clerk had never heard the name Bosco or Harry and they had no photo to show her. But she said the management was constantly chasing away the homeless who slept behind the store near the Dumpster.

Behind the store, Louis and Emily discovered a heap of discarded boxes and dirty blankets, the remnants of a dismantled homeless camp.

“Lots of motor oil back here,” Emily said, nodding at the stained asphalt.

“Yeah. But whoever was here moved on,” Louis said. He kicked at an empty bottle of Mad Dog. “Let's get out of here.”

They wound their way back through the tourists, toward the squad car. Louis climbed in and as soon as they were away from the crowd, he radioed in to Wainwright, telling him what little they had found. Wainwright's response was clipped. Louis knew he was aware that Emily was listening.

“He doesn't like me much, does he?” Emily said as they inched along in the traffic. She said it more as a statement than a question, but Louis sensed she wanted an answer.

“He was expecting the bureau to send an old friend,” Louis said.

“Malcolm Elliott retired a year ago,” Emily said. “They sent me instead.”

A tightness had crept into her voice. He wasn't sure if it was defensiveness. Whatever it was, it made him uncomfortable.

“Look, Farentino,” he said, “Wainwright is kind of old school.”

“The good old boy network,” she said softly. “I know all about it.”

“Give him time.”

“I told you. We haven't got time.”

She pulled her briefcase onto her lap and started rooting through it.

Louis stared at the cars inching along in the baking sun. He felt the need to say something conciliatory.

“So, how'd you come to work for the bureau?” he asked.

“I joined after getting my master's degree at Stanford.”

“And before that?”

She leveled her eyes at him. “If you're trying to find out if I was ever on the street, the answer is, no, I wasn't.” She turned her attention back to the briefcase. “Except for the week they made us ride with the NYPD.”

Louis glanced at her. “I wasn't—”

“Yes, you were,” she said quickly.

They crept along in silence. Emily rummaged furiously through the briefcase. She finally pulled out a file and tossed the briefcase to the floor with an impatient grunt. She started reading the file.

Louis kept silent. Great. Emily Farentino didn't have any real experience. Wainwright was going to go nuts when he found out. He wasn't exactly happy about it himself. Shit, he wasn't happy about Wainwright retiring from some obscure division of the FBI, for God's sake. He found himself wondering how long it would be before they were forced by public pressure to lateral the case over to the sheriff's department. Wainwright would be back to busting shoplifters at the Sereno Key drugstore. And he himself would be on a plane back to Michigan.

He let out a sigh.

“What?” Emily asked.

“Nothing,” he said. They finally made it to the bridge. This was nuts. If he was going to have to work with this woman, he had to find a way to get through her armor.

“So, what division you work?” he asked.

“BSU.”

Louis glanced at her again.

“Behavioral Science Unit.”

“I don't know—”

“Nobody does,” she said abruptly. She let out a sigh. “It's new, the unit, and what we do. It's . . . new.”

Louis tried to recall what little he had read about serial killers. He had read something about how police departments were starting to use psychologists as consultants. They were calling them “profilers,” the idea being they could figure out the twisted minds of criminals by poking around in the messes they left.

“So you're what's called a profiler?” Louis asked.

She looked surprised he knew the term. “I prefer ‘forensic psychologist.' ”

“Ah. A shrink,” Louis said.

She shook her head. “I'm not a doctor.”

You're not a cop, either,
Louis thought.

They were up on the bridge now, heading back toward Fort Myers.

“Wainwright doesn't know any of this,” Emily said finally. “Unless he's checked.”

“He hasn't checked,” Louis said. “You going to tell him?”

She took off her glasses and began to clean them on the tail of her shirt. “I heard things about Dan Wainwright before I came. I think he is—” She stopped herself. “There are some people who aren't open to new ideas.”

Louis let a few moments pass in silence. For a moment, he considered asking her what the hell OPR was. But he didn't want Wainwright to think he was checking up on him. He also didn't want to do anything to make this case harder than it already was. Men were dying and he didn't want to waste time playing referee between Farentino and Wainwright. They needed to get going in the same direction.

“Listen, Farentino,” he said finally, “if I've learned one thing it's that you don't get much by muscling your way into things. We're outsiders here, both of us. Wainwright is in charge, at least for now. You ought to respect that.”

She lasered her eyes back to Louis. “And how many more bodies do we bury while showing this respect?”

Louis tensed, a quick knot forming in his belly.
How many more men are you going to bury, Chief Gibralter?

Did she know? Had she checked
him
out? Did she know what had happened back in Michigan? She knew about Wainwright. She had all the resources in the world at her fingertips. She could easily have checked out his background. He would have done the same thing.

He inhaled thinly, determined not to let her rattle him. He stared hard at the road, slowly allowing himself to digest her remark differently. He had to appreciate her sense of urgency; he felt the same thing. He was seeing faceless black men in his dreams. He didn't want to see any more real ones.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “So let me hear your theory.”

“About what?” she asked.

“About how this guy picks his victims.”

“I need to study the pattern first.”

“There is no pattern,” Louis said. “We thought there was, but he keeps changing. Except for the day he kills.”

“Tuesday,” Emily said.

She was quiet for a moment. “He has two needs,” she said finally. “He needs a place to live where he won't stand out. But he needs a place to do his work that's secluded.”

Louis thought her choice of the word “work” was odd.

“I'd say he lives near Fort Myers Beach,” Emily went on. “It's crowded there, with lots of tourists and transients, and he would blend in. He wouldn't live on Captiva or Sereno. The locals would know him. Also, serial killers tend to dispose of bodies away from where they themselves live.”

“So you think he stalked them?”

“It fits the usual pattern. He seems very impatient. I don't think he stalks them for days on end. I think he zeroes in on them and then follows them until he feels the moment is good.”

“Well, what about Tatum then?”

“What about him?”

“We think his murder was pure impulse.”

Emily closed the file on her lap. “Why would you think that?”

“Tatum was different than the other two. Tatum's car broke down. When Wainwright's men found it, the hood was still up, so we're guessing Tatum was stranded there for a while before the killer came along.”

“Came along,” she said. “Just came along, conveniently armed with his shotgun and can of spray paint.”

Louis glanced at her, glad the sunglasses hid his eyes. “So you think Tatum was followed, like the others?”

“Yes.”

“From where?”

“That's what we need to find out.”

Louis turned on his blinker as he slowed at a corner. She was making sense. Shit. Wainwright was going to love this.

It was Emily's idea to go see Roberta Tatum. When Louis told her that Roberta had already been questioned, Emily said simply, “Wives know things their husbands don't know that they know.”

The Tatum home was a yellow stucco cottage, buried behind a riot of banana trees and purple bougainvillea vines. A storm was gathering over the bay by the time they arrived, and deep shadows moved in the junglelike yard where the windswept palm fronds played treble to the bass of approaching thunder.

They had called ahead and Roberta was waiting for them. She stood behind the wooden screen door, a stocky silhouette in a caftan of orange and green that billowed around her in the breeze. Her hair was concealed beneath a matching turban, giving her round, fresh-scrubbed face a stretched and youthful look.

Emily spoke first. “Mrs. Tatum, we're sorry to bother you—”

“Have you found him?” Roberta said, her eyes going to Louis.

“Levon, or your husband's killer?” Louis asked.

“Either.”

“No.”

Roberta sneered. “That's what I thought.”

“May we come in, Mrs. Tatum?” Emily asked.

Roberta's eyes slipped to Emily, then back to Louis. “Who's she?”

“This is Agent Farentino. FBI.”

Roberta made no move to open the screen door. She was staring hard at Emily.

“Mrs. Tatum, please,” Louis said.

Roberta shoved open the door. “This is what they give Walter,” she said as she moved away. “A cookie and a meatball.”

Louis entered first and Emily followed slowly. He found himself in a small living room, with a kitchen off to his left. The rough-textured walls were painted a soft gold and the furniture was a pleasant mishmash of overstuffed sofas and rattan. A rainbow-hued Kilim rug covered the tile floor, and there were several beautiful wood sculptures around the room that looked to be good copies of African primitives. The jalousie windows were open to the breeze, and with each waft of air came the smell of stewing tomatoes and distant rain.

“You have a lovely home, Mrs. Tatum,” Emily said, edging forward through the archway. Louis followed, his gaze going past the tiny dining room to the open French doors that offered a glimpse of pool and greenery. He could hear wind chimes dancing.

Roberta grabbed a pack of cigarettes off an end table. “All right, what do you want?”

“The night your husband was killed—” Emily started.

Roberta's sharp glance silenced her. Roberta waited until she was sure Emily didn't plan to speak again, then looked at Louis.

“Where did Walter go when he left here?” Louis asked.

Roberta shrugged. “How would I know?”

“Give us a break here, Mrs. Tatum,” Louis said. “We're here to help you. You told me you want this bastard found and we're trying to do that.”

“You and I both know why they aren't looking too damn hard.” Roberta turned away, picking a bit of tobacco carefully from her lip.

Louis could almost hear Emily bristle and he lifted a hand to keep her from intervening. She was no match for Roberta.

“We're doing everything we can,” Louis said.

“It's been almost a month,” Roberta said. “And what do you have? You can't even find Levon.”

Louis rubbed his forehead. “We will.”

Roberta laughed softly. “I heard about your piggyback ride. I wish I could've seen it.”

“Mrs. Tatum,” Louis said slowly, “are you going to help us, or not?”

Roberta suddenly seemed deflated and she sat down, resting her forearms on her knees. The cigarette dangled from her long fingers.

Emily seized the moment. “Mrs. Tatum, we think if we can recreate your husband's whereabouts the night he was killed, we might have a better idea what happened.”

Roberta looked up at Emily, then at Louis. He could read in her eyes that she wasn't going to tell Emily Farentino a thing. He was about to ask Emily to go outside when Emily spoke again.

“You were his wife, Mrs. Tatum. You know things that could help us. Please.”

Roberta took a deep drag on the cigarette. She fell back in the chair, staring at the wall.

“I wasn't his wife,” she said. “Not legally, anyway. But we were together for twenty-two years and that counts for something.”

Emily hesitated, then sat down on the sofa opposite Roberta. “My parents were together for thirty-five years, and they weren't married, either,” she said.

Roberta looked up at Emily.

“It counts,” Emily said.

Roberta's eyes welled. She looked away.

“Mrs. Tatum,” Emily said, “is there anything you can tell us about the night Walter died?”

Roberta wiped a hand across her eyes. “He used to like to go over to Hibiscus Heights in Fort Myers,” she said softly. “They got a couple of joints over there that run all night. He'd drink and then I'd feel him crawling into bed when the sun was coming up.”

Louis waited, glancing at Emily.

“I used to worry he'd drive off that bridge one morning and kill himself,” Roberta went on. “Never thought . . . never dreamed somebody would do it for him.”

“What are the names of these places?” Louis asked.

“You can't miss them,” Roberta said. “There's a string of them on a little street called Queenie Avenue. But they don't get going till after eleven. Anyone who works late there will know him.”

Her voice had gone flat, her gaze vacant. The long ash from her cigarette fell to the rug. She didn't seem to notice it.

Louis spotted a framed photo on the television and went to it. It was a photograph of Roberta and Walter. It had been taken on a cruise ship and they were in formal wear. They were smiling like prom-goers.

“Can I take this, to show around?” he asked.

Roberta looked up at him. It took a moment for her to focus on the frame. Then she rose suddenly and disappeared into another room. She came back and thrust something at Louis.

“You take this instead,” she said.

It was a snapshot of Walter, taken at a Christmas party. Walter was smiling and wearing a Santa hat. His face was blurry.

“Mrs. Tatum—” Louis began.

She snatched the frame from Louis and set it back on the television. “You use that one,” she said, nodding at the snapshot.

Louis motioned to Emily and she headed toward the door. Roberta followed them. As they reached the door, Roberta grabbed Louis's arm. He turned, but Roberta waited until Emily had walked toward the car before she spoke.

“Don't let them fuck around on this,” she said. “Make them understand Walter is important. Walter is important, you hear me?”

“I hear you, Mrs. Tatum,” he said.

Roberta let go and Louis stepped out, letting the screen slap shut behind him.

Emily was standing at the squad car, waiting. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees with the coming rain and she was hugging herself, as if cold.

Louis glanced at his watch. “It's only five o'clock. No point in going to Queenie Boulevard until later tonight. We might as well go back to the station. Or do you want me to drop you off at the inn?”

Emily was looking at something across the street and didn't answer.

“Farentino?”

Her head snapped back to Louis. “What?”

“I was asking you if you wanted me to drop you off at the inn.”

“No.” She hesitated. “Could we go get some dinner maybe?”

There was something in her voice that caught him off guard. She wasn't coming on to him; there wasn't even a hint of that kind of vibration. But she wanted something. Maybe she just didn't want to be alone. Shit. He kept forgetting that when he went home to the Dodies' cheerful company each night, she was stuck alone in a mildewed hotel room.

“I could use a burger or something,” Louis said. “Come on, I know a good place.”