Spiral, page 33
part #13 of John F Cuddy Series
TWENTY-THREE
We found her car,” said Lourdes Pintana’s voice on the other end of the line.
”Where?”
”Got a pencil?”
It was a big, park-and-lock lot near the beach, behind a string of restaurants and bars. I could see a marked cruiser and an unmarked sedan blocking the driveway, Pintana and a uniformed officer standing together at the dovetailing trunks. Nearby, an older man sat in a lawn chair and stroked the neck and back of an obese cat taking up most of his lap.
I left the Achieva at the curb and walked over to the police cars. Pintana pointed at a yellow Toyota Celica several rows away, then beckoned me to follow her toward it. Over a shoulder, she said to the officer, ”Dundee, don’t let anybody else drive in.”
The older man looked up from his cat. ”Oh, that’s just peachy.”
Pintana said, ”Only until our tow truck arrives, Mr. Freeman.”
A squirting spit from the lawn chair. ”What I get for calling the cops in the first place.”
Pintana just shook her head.
As we approached the Celica, I said, ”How did you find it?”
”Didn’t,” she said. ”I put it in the computer as a bolo.” Meaning, ”Be On the Look Out” for. ”And?”
”And when ‘Freeman, Arthur’ back there noticed this car was still in his lot a day later without the guy coming back to claim it, he called into the department to let us know it was going to be towed.”
I said, ”The guy?’”
We reached the Toyota. ”Sí.”
”Description?”
Pintana almost smiled. ”I’ll let you ask Freeman when we get back to him.” Then she turned serious. ”I don’t see any damage. You?”
I walked around the car. ”No.”
”See anything else?”
My hands clasped behind me so I wouldn’t accidentally touch paint-job or chrome, I peered in through the windows. A beaded talisman hung from the rearview mirror. Some wadded napkins lay on the floormat, passenger’s side, and a puddle of dark liquid had dried on the armrest, driver’s side. The rear seat was clean, as though Malinda Dujong never used it.
I mentioned the stain to Pintana.
She said, ”That all?”
”I saw something like the talisman on the rearview when we were back in Dujong’s apartment.”
A nod this time. ”Me, too.”
”You pop the trunk?”
”I thought we should wait till our truck got it back to the garage, let the techies do their thing in a controlled environment.”
I said, ”What if Dujong’s in there?”
”I don’t get any decomposition smell coming out.”
”What if she’s alive in there?”
”You think that’s likely?”
I looked around the lot. ”Seems to me there are plenty of places in your city where our killer could have left her car without its being found this quickly.”
Pintana stared at me a long moment before turning toward the uniformed officer at the entrance. ”Dundee?”
”Yo?”
”You got a tire iron in your vehicle?”
It took Dundee three tries, but he finally got the lock to spring. As the lid came up and the little light came on, I held my breath, but there was nothing inside the trunk. Well, almost nothing.
Dundee started to reach for it, but Pintana said, ”No. Let the techies deal with the thing. Besides ” she glanced up at me, ”we can read what it says.”
The sheet of paper lay centered on the trunk’s rug, a small flat rock as anchor. The letters were cut individually and pasted, just like the note I’d gotten back at my hotel.
Only this one said, ”sHe’S Not HerE, cUdDy.”
After Pintana sent Dundee in search of a rope or bungee cord to secure the trunk lid of the Celica, I said to her, ”I’ve seen one of these before.”
She crossed her arms. ”Where?”
I explained it to her.
Pintana frowned. ”You didn’t report this note to me.”
”At the time, I thought somebody was just trying to help my investigation without identifying themselves.”
”Who?”
I looked back down at the paper. ”That seems to be the question, doesn’t it?”
When Dundee got back, Pintana and I walked over to Arthur Freeman. As we reached him, I thought the cat might jump down and run away, but apparently it was enjoying the petting too much.
Pintana said, ”Mr. Freeman, this is John Cuddy. Would you mind repeating for him what you told me?”
Freeman blinked and frowned. ”Might be easier, y’all arrived at the same time. I could tell about this fellow the once, get back onto my business.”
Fellow came out ”feller,” and business, ”bidness.” Pintana put a little syrup into her next words. ”Please, Mr. Freeman?”
He cleared his throat, but you could tell Freeman was going to cooperate, because he stopped stroking the cat. ”Yesterday, around five in the evening, this fellow come by in that yellow car. My sign there says five dollars to park-and-lock. Well, he had the bill already out in his hand. So I took it, and he drove into that space there.” The cat made a grumbling noise.
I said, ”This man never spoke to you?”
”Not a word.”
”How about describing him?”
”Didn’t really look the fellow in the eye.”
”When he got out of the car, though?”
The cat grumbled again, twisted its head toward Freeman. ”I was already taking on somebody else.”
”So you never saw him standing?”
”Not standing, not walking, not doing cartwheels if he could.”
I smiled in spite of our topic. ”But you did say, ‘that’ car, not ‘his’ car.”
Freeman looked up at Pintana. ”What, y’all train every cop to ask the same questions?”
I said, ”Was there something about him that led you to—”
”That fetish thing.”
”Fetish?”
Freeman now stared at me. ”You’re still a young enough fellow, you ought to know what a ‘fetish’ is. If not, I’d bet the farm this pretty little detective can show you.” I tried not to blush. ”Mr. Freeman—”
”Whatever y’all want to call it, I mean that thing hanging from the rearview mirror.”
”I still don’t see your point.”
Arthur Freeman’s cat grumbled a third time, and he went back to stroking it, the cat’s eyes closing in ecstasy. ”Didn’t seem the kind of thing a fellow’d have in his own car. Felt kind of... feminine to me.”
From behind her desk, Sergeant Lourdes Pintana said, ”Justo Vega is missing as well?”
”I tried calling you. Unfortunately, Cascadden answered.”
Her eyes closed like the parking-lot cat’s, but I didn’t think in ecstasy. ”When was this?”
I told her.
”Madre de Dios.” Opening her eyes, Pintana picked up the phone like it was a flyswatter, then just banged it down the same way. ”We don’t know where Mr. Vega was when he got taken?”
”Supposed to be en route, Miami to Fort Lauderdale.” Pintana exhaled loudly. ”So, city or county down there, city or county up here. Wonderful, just wonderful.”
”And even better that Cascadden’s caused you to lose a couple of hours getting on it.”
Pintana glared at me, then shook her head and picked up the phone again. After punching in some numbers, she said, ”Cuddy, Mr. Vega’s car?”
”Cadillac coupe.”
”Tag number?”
”You mean his license plate?”
”Yes,” impatiently.
I told her I didn’t know.
Sergeant Lourdes Pintana had to hang up and start over. Again.
Outside her office, I was walking toward the security door when Detective Kyle Cascadden entered through it.
”Beantown, you didn’t come visiting without telling me first?”
”We found Malinda Dujong’s car.”
Cascadden stopped. ”And?”
”Now your sergeant’s looking for Justo Vega’s.”
”Still doesn’t sound like Homicide’s problem to me.”
”After talking with Pintana, you might change your mind.”
A grin. ”Lourdes hasn’t heard my side of whatever you’re pitching yet.”
I moved by Cascadden. ”Call me later, let me know what she thought of your fastball.”
Driving back to the Helides house, I tried to reason through the question of who would have sent both notes.
You think about it, the second note seemed pretty clever, anticipating I’d be there when the trunk was opened. Maybe the killer believed that, after I realized Malinda Dujong was missing, I’d drive around the city, trying to spot her car. But Fort Lauderdale is huge, and I’d have no reason to cruise any particular part of it. So, whoever left that note must have figured that the police would be notified of the yellow Celica and would contact me.
Which also made the second note seem pretty stupid, too: I could now tie whoever took Dujong—and presumably Justo Vega—to the person leaving that envelope for me at the hotel. If only Damon on the registration desk had noticed who’d delivered it.
But even if the killer knew he hadn’t been identified there, why leave anything in Dujong’s car that connected her to the person telling me I should ”ask the band about Sundy Moran?” And assuming there was a reason to make Dujong disappear because of what she could have ”sensed” that day at the Skipper’s party, why take Justo as well, giving me yet another connection I didn’t already have?
None of it made any sense. Who in their right mind would plan so elaborately, and then tip —
Jesus. Their right mind.
I pulled to the side of the road and stopped. There was opportunity. In fact, the perfect opportunity, thanks to the party. But an apparent absence of means. And no motive.
At least, none that I could see.
Shelving means for a while, I went back over what people had told me about Veronica Held. How manipulative she was in getting her own way. How interested she was in things sexual, including, according to Cassandra Helides, coming on to her. How enticing she was, from Ricky Queen’s ”demographics” explanation to the videos I’d seen myself of the birthday party and Spiral’s ”dry-run.”
How David Helides, the ”resident expert” on drugs, thought Veronica was under the influence when she gave her performance at the party, an impression borne out by the autopsy report that found cocaine in her system.
Killing Veronica Held made sense if she really did have some leverage that—under the spell of chemical inducement—she might reveal to the wrong person. Like maybe to her grandfather, since Nicolas Helides held most of the strings to the marionettes of family and band around him. And since Veronica would want to appease the Skipper for having behaved so badly on his birthday.
Except that given the means, and especially the sexual violation with condom, the killing still seemed premeditated, not something done on the spur of the moment after Veronica ran beyond the range of Kalil’s camera. And why would the murderer tell me through the paste-up notes anything that would lead to Sundy Moran or her relationship with—
No. No, back up. When I got the note suggesting I ask the band about Moran, I assumed it came from someone other than the killer and pointed toward someone in the band as the killer. Then, when the person taking Malinda Dujong planted that second paste-up in the trunk of her car, the composer of both notes seemed to be the murderer.
Which went back to handing me connections I didn’t have, scrambling the people potentially having motives.
I decided to shelve motive and go back to means. If you believe the killer was male, and exclude on...
Wait a minute. Could that be the key?
It would explain means, all right. And even motive. In fact, the one would beget the other. But I had to be sure, especially before telling Colonel Nicolas Helides what I suspected.
Picking up my cell phone, I dialed the Skipper’s house. When Duy Tranh answered, I said, ”Can you give me some directions?”
TWENTY-FOUR
It lay off a dirt and marl road that reminded me of the one going by Billy’s, the roadhouse where Donna Moran worked. Only I hadn’t seen a building or a light since leaving the paved state route about half a mile back.
Tranh’d told me over the phone to watch for a neon-orange surveyor’s tape on the left, because a driveway into the Colonel’s tract had been punched through a little beyond it. Another quarter-mile, and I spotted the tape knotted around a stout trunk, fresh tire tracks curving into the hammock.
Which is when I turned off my headlights and engine.
I waited until my eyes adjusted to the dark and my ears to the silence. After a minute, I could make out both the shapes of trees against the cloud-streaked night sky and the sounds of frogs singing in them. After another minute, the shades of gray became relatively distinct, and I was hearing sounds of creatures I couldn’t recognize. High-pitched barking, low-pitched chuffing, even a roar that belonged in Jurassic Park.
I opened the driver’s side door and stepped out onto mushy grass, my shoes squelching in the quiet around me. I didn’t know how far sound would travel, but I’d guessed that anybody for a mile around could have heard the car engine, so I didn’t sweat closing my door.
Ten steps up the driveway—really just a cleared and packed trail—the mosquitoes found me. I waved at them, but didn’t slap any, figuring that noise could be identified as obviously human by somebody close by. And though Tranh had said the driveway went on for nearly half a mile into the hammock, he wasn’t sure how many side-paths might have been blazed, so I wasn’t sure how close that somebody might be.
I moved down the center of the driveway, since I hadn’t known him to use any distance weapons, and I wanted the open space of the cleared brush around me to buy reaction time.
Thanks to moonlight trickling through the canopy of tree crowns above, I could make out a narrower path cut to the right. The surrounding trees, ferns, and vines—some thick enough for Kyle Cascadden to swing from—were so dense, I didn’t think anyone would use anything else to move along, so I followed the path to a dead-end about fifty feet farther down. On the way back out, I listened carefully. I’d learned in Vietnam that a human being could remain silent in the bush by standing stock still, but almost every motion in dense foliage gives off some sound. I was fairly certain no one was moving on either side of me.
I still trod very slowly, though, swinging my head left to right in a slow arc and then back again, letting what images there were come in at an angle to my retinas, my ears like radar dishes for any noise, any movement. The Skipper had commented a couple of times about the old days, and that sense of walking on a razor’s edge came close to what I was feeling now.
Back on the driveway, I moved farther along, the peek-a-boo moon giving me glimpses of continuing tire tracks. I passed three more side-paths, one on the left and two on the right, but even though leaving them unexplored and to my rear bothered me, I thought following the tracks might bring me somewhere faster.
Especially since I seemed to be getting closer to the creature making the low, chuffing noises.
Another hundred meters by my stride count, and three more side-paths, all on the left this time. Passing them was even more troubling, but the chuffing was getting louder.
Fifty meters farther, and I could see the driveway curving for the first time, to the right. I stopped and listened as carefully as I ever had in my life. Nothing I could call human, but the chuffing sound was now less than a baseball toss away.
Just around the curve, in fact.
I stayed on the inside of the driveway arc, moving two steps, then stopping, then one and stopping, then three and the same. Enough times to pick up sound, but hopefully without any kind of predictable pattern for someone to spring an ambush or—
I saw her first.
I’d already stopped for a listen. If I hadn’t, I’m not sure the change in the shape of this particular tree would have been apparent until I was a lot closer.
Not that it made any difference to Malinda Dujong.
This time, the cloying smell of decaying flesh hit me ten feet later, the process no doubt accelerated by the heat of a Florida day. And by some creatures in the hammock as well, from the strips of flesh ripped from her body.
Up close, the eyes and earlobes were gone, peck-marks on her cheeks. The lips had been saved by black electrician’s tape over them. Her dress was torn in places, less like random slashing and more like careful cutting, as though the intention were to expose certain parts. Her forehead was lashed to the trunk of the tree, her wrists around the back of the trunk, and her ankles to its base, all by wire cable like a trendy outdoor cafe might use to secure its tables and chairs after closing time. I didn’t quite understand the reason for the wire as opposed to rope until I could see her neck and shoulders.
The skin looked as though acid had been dripped on it, the flesh scoured down to the bone in some spots. Through the gaps in her dress, more burned areas. And on her arms and legs...
Anywhere that had been in contact with the tree.
Which is when I heard the chuffing noise grow louder, a little farther along the curve. Fighting the reflex to run, I stayed to the inside of the arc, but not stopping as frequently as I could have. Or should have.
Though I’m not sure that would have made a difference, either.
At each stop, I turned to look back at Dujong. She was still in sight as I rounded a protruding tree limb and saw Justo Vega, thirty feet in front of me.
He was lashed to another tree, his eyes bugging but still in their sockets. His left arm seemed to be tied around the back of the tree, as Dujong’s had been, but his right arm was bound at his waist in front, what I thought was the little Cuban flag I’d seen on the dashboard of his car now dangling limply from that hand.
And given the way his chest heaved and neck strained in time to the chuffing sounds, Justo was the ”creature” making them.
