No Good Deed, page 7
part #2 of Lancaster & Daniels Series
Daniels removed a digital camera from her windbreaker, and took several shots of the tattoo. She put the camera away and replaced the sheet. She rose to her full height and took a long look around the parking lot. A creepy-looking person had drifted in off the street. He looked like trouble, and refused to leave when Daniels told him to.
“You must be hard of hearing,” Daniels said.
The creep outweighed Daniels by fifty pounds and was a half foot taller. But that didn’t stop Daniels from twisting his arm behind his back, and marching him away from the crime scene. She gave him a shove, and sent him tumbling down the sidewalk.
“Don’t come back,” she warned him.
She took another look around. She still hadn’t noticed him.
Lancaster felt anger boil up inside of him. She’d never returned his messages or answered his texts. He’d been jilted by women before, and had gotten over it. But this time had really stung. Perhaps it was because Daniels had told him how much she enjoyed being with him. Most law enforcement officers had a hard time letting their guard down. But it had been easy when they’d been together. It had felt real.
A hand touched his shoulder. It was one of the other FBI agents.
“Did you see what happened?” the agent asked.
He nodded.
“Go inside the office. We’ll get a statement from you soon,” the agent said.
He glanced at Montalvo and his partner, who now stood beside the cruiser. Montalvo could not hide his disgust and shook his head.
“Fuck you,” Lancaster said.
The agent recoiled. “What did you say to me?”
“I said, fuck you, asshole. That goes for your whole team. You’re a bunch of god damn dickheads. Show the cops some respect, and you might get some in return.”
A flashlight’s beam hit Lancaster’s face. Daniels was pointing it at him.
“Jon? What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.
He glanced at Logan’s body, then back at her.
“He’s my brother,” he explained.
CHAPTER 11
Daniels pulled him into the motel office and slammed the door. She went to the window facing the street and struggled to lower the blinds. They came down crooked, and she let out a stream of obscenities that would have made a sailor blush.
He faintly sniffed the sweet smell of pot. A half-rolled joint and a bag of weed that he hadn’t noticed before lay on the counter, and he guessed Skip had been getting ready to light up a number when he’d heard the shotgun blast and stopped what he was doing to come outside. Back when he was a cop, he’d turned a blind eye to small quantities of dope when he’d run across it, believing that it was foolish to arrest people for a product that came out of the ground.
He scooped the joint and the bag off the counter and tossed them into a trash bin. Daniels was still messing with the blinds, and he went to assist her.
“Sit down. I’ve got it covered,” she said.
“You could have fooled me,” he said.
“Don’t be a wiseass, Jon. I’m not in the mood.”
He moved the folding chair into the middle of the room and parked himself on it. Daniels muscled the blinds down and turned to face him. Her cheeks were a pinkish salmon color, a clear sign that she was flustered.
“I didn’t know Logan was your brother,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“How long have you been chasing him?”
“Your brother’s been on our radar for several days. I need you to explain what you’re doing here. I don’t want to hold you any longer than I have to.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Holding me?”
“Yes. The FBI believes Logan was an accomplice to a murder and a kidnapping. Since he was your brother, you might have known what he was doing. That’s enough for me to hold you. If I don’t like your answers, I can arrest you.”
“Would you do that?”
“If I thought you were involved, yes.”
“But I wasn’t involved. Come on, you know me better than that.”
“I’ll be the judge of your involvement.”
He shook his head in disbelief. He liked Beth and would have trusted her with his life. He obviously hadn’t left the same impression on her.
“Now, tell me what you’re doing here, and don’t leave anything out,” she said. Her words felt like a slap to the face. He removed a pack of nicotine gum from his pocket and popped a piece into his mouth. He’d smoked when he’d been a cop but eventually quit. When he was tired or feeling down, the cravings reared their ugly head, and he had to fight them off.
“Answer my question,” she said.
“You need to talk to Deputy Stahl with the District III sheriff’s office in Citrus Park,” he said. “Stahl can explain everything. I also gave a statement to Officer Montalvo a short while ago. You should talk to him too.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
He worked the gum hard. “Go talk to the police. They know everything.”
“I want to hear your version of things.”
“Afraid not.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “And why is that?”
“I don’t have the strength to deal with you.”
It was her turn to be hurt, and her lower lip trembled.
“Keep it up, and I’ll run you in,” she said.
“On what charge? Obstructing justice?” He shook his head. “I’ve been totally transparent with the police. They know everything I know. Talk to them. Good night.”
He hopped off the chair and moved toward the door. It was a ploy, designed to push her buttons and get her hackles up. She took the bait and grabbed his arm.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she snapped.
“I’m going to go find a bar and have a stiff drink. Logan wasn’t much of a brother, but he was the last relative I had. Care to join me?”
Her face softened, and the Beth he knew rose to the surface. She released his arm and made a pleading gesture with her hands. “The sheriff isn’t a fan of mine. If I ask Stahl for information, he’ll stonewall me.”
“You know, I think I heard that,” he said.
“What did Stahl tell you?”
“Stahl said you leaked a story to the newspaper that made the sheriff’s department look bad. Stahl said that you were convinced a psychopath had murdered a kid, when in fact the killer was a teenager named Lenny DeVito. Stahl said that when the DNA test implicated DeVito, you didn’t own up to your mistake.”
“Stahl said that about me?”
She was getting worked up into a lather, and he simply nodded.
“Let me tell you what really happened. It’s the FBI’s policy to review every child murder in the country. The victim in this case was named Ryan Witt, and his death was particularly brutal. An agent in our Tampa office examined the evidence and was bothered by how violently Witt died.”
“Stahl said the boy was strangled.”
“Witt was strangled. There were two broken vertebrae in his neck, and his skull was fractured. I got the file, and after reviewing the evidence, I determined Witt’s killer was a psychopath. So I told the sheriff to run the DNA test on Lenny DeVito first.”
“But the DNA test proved DeVito was guilty. You were wrong.”
“I wasn’t wrong! May I finish?”
She looked fighting mad, and again he nodded.
“Before the DNA link was made, the evidence against DeVito was weak. A judge granted DeVito bail, and he went to stay with his parents. When the FBI made the arrest, they went on DeVito’s personal computer, and found evidence that he was planning to shoot up his high school and kill his classmates. In his bedroom closet was a homemade bomb and a tear gas canister. He also had a key to his father’s gun cabinet, which contained an assault rifle. We got him just in time.”
“Stahl never mentioned any of that.”
“I’m sure he didn’t. DeVito pleaded guilty, and it got buried in the court records. I wanted to share what we’d found with the newspaper, but my boss nixed the idea. He didn’t want me further damaging the FBI’s relationship with the sheriff’s department.”
“That’s some story. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“Apology accepted. Now, are you going to help me or not?”
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation. Daniels jerked the door open to find one of her agents standing outside. “What do you want?”
“We just got a statement from the manager. He said Logan Lancaster has had several guests in the past few days,” the agent said. “We want to search his room, but need a key to open the door. The manager said the key ring was behind the counter.”
“Hold on.”
Daniels went behind the counter and found a key ring hanging on a nail. She gave it to the agent and said, “I’ll be right out,” and closed the door in his face. To Lancaster she said, “When did your brother get out of prison?”
“He was paroled two months ago,” he said.
“How long was he in for?”
“He served twenty-five years.”
“So we can assume that his guests were guys he knew in prison,” she said.
It was a logical assumption, and he nodded.
“Was your brother in a gang?” she asked.
“Yes. They’re called the Phantoms. My brother made them sound like a cult.”
“How so?”
“The leader is named Cano. My brother told me that Cano could cast spells on people and perform all sorts of other crazy stuff.”
“Do you think your brother was brainwashed?”
The question gave him pause. Logan hadn’t been very intelligent, and he’d been easily conned by people who were smarter than him.
“Probably,” he said.
She nodded approvingly. He’d opened a door for her, and helped move the investigation forward.
“Thank you, Jon,” she said.
“Anytime, Beth.”
“I need to supervise the search of your brother’s room. Will you stay until I’m done? I need you to tell me everything you remember from your conversation. It just might help me solve this.”
Daniels could have just as easily ordered him to stay put. But she’d chosen to use a teaspoon of honey, and get back on an even footing.
“I’ll stay,” he said. “Go do your search.”
She gave his arm a squeeze and left the office. He needed some air and followed her outside. Three members of her team stood in the parking lot wearing rubber gloves and holding plastic evidence bags. Daniels snapped on a pair of gloves and marched her team to his brother’s room. There was a protocol to gathering evidence, the rules hard and fast, and she did it as well as anyone.
His brother’s lifeless body still lay on the ground. A photographer from the sheriff’s department had removed the sheet and was snapping photographs. The course to become a crime scene photographer took three days, the students schooled on how to control a photographic exposure in order to capture the high-quality, evidence-grade photographs required in law enforcement. What the course didn’t teach was that the dead needed to be treated with dignity, no matter who they were.
Kneeling beside his brother’s body, he wiped away the insects. Rising, he stepped aside, and heard the photographer mutter her thanks under her breath.
She snapped shots from multiple angles. The camera wasn’t functioning properly, and she replaced the sheet, then retreated to one of the cruisers. Beneath the car’s harsh interior light, she opened her camera, and tried to identify the problem.
The sheet flapped in the breeze. Logan was trying to spook him. He’d done that plenty when they were kids, jumping out from behind corners and scaring the crap out of him. It was always followed by a playful shove, and an invitation to come play with the older kids. He was still alive because Logan had come to his rescue, just like long ago. Everyone had an angel sitting on their shoulder, and Logan had been his.
His head started to spin. He alternated between wanting to scream and wanting to break down in tears. It had been a long time since he’d felt this bad.
He needed a stiff drink. Several, actually. To hell with what he’d told Beth. It would be a while before she and her team were done collecting evidence, and he couldn’t hang around that long. Whatever she needed to ask him could wait.
With his phone, he found a bar called the Double Decker in Ybor City that stayed open late. His car was blocked by the police cruisers, and he decided to Uber it.
He waited by the curb for his ride. The hookers, drug pushers, and other nocturnal creatures had returned to their street corners and were back to doing business, acting like nothing had happened. Someone had died tonight, but the sad truth was, people died all the time, and it didn’t change anything.
The Uber app said the driver was a minute away. He glanced over his shoulder for a final look. The photographer had gotten her camera working; she’d pulled away the sheet covering Logan’s body, and was again taking pictures.
He started to choke up. The misery of being with the dead was the helpless feeling their presence invoked. You wanted to help them, only it was too late.
Logan had asked about Jesus before he’d died, wanting to know if he could still be saved. Had his brother gone to church while in prison? His final act suggested that he had. Logan was still angry at him for what had happened twenty-five years ago, yet he had not allowed his anger to cloud his judgment.
His ride pulled up to the curb, and he stole another look before getting in.
“I owe you,” he said.
PART TWO
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS
CHAPTER 12
Broward County had been a different place in the early eighties. The beach had its splashy hotels and towering condos, but the rest of the county had been farmland. Thirty miles to the south, the Miami drug wars were claiming lives every day, but that was a different world, and far removed from Broward’s slow, laid-back pace.
Lancaster had grown up in an area called Southwest Ranches. The houses sat on big lots, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a horse tethered to a hitching post. When people talked about predators, they meant the hawks that cut the skies, searching for prey.
One early July afternoon, his mother had gone shopping with her two sons. A flyer in the paper had announced a sale at Macy’s, and she wanted to buy several items. Macy’s was the anchor store in the Pembroke Pines Mall, and she parked on the building’s north side. Before getting out, she made her boys promise there would be no shenanigans once inside.
Logan had broken his word as they’d neared the entrance.
“Logan hit me!” Lancaster said.
“Logan, stop tormenting your brother,” their mother said.
“Jonny stuck his tongue out at me,” his brother lied.
“No I didn’t,” he bellowed.
His mother made them stand in front of her, and pinched their chins. “That’s enough out of both of you. If you don’t behave, there will be no Tastee Treat during the drive home. Are we clear?”
Her sons nodded solemnly. There was no greater treat than a soft ice cream twirl from Tastee Treat, the roadside buildings designed like giant ice cream cones.
They entered the store. Just inside the doors was the toy department. The boys stopped in their tracks, transfixed by the end display on the first aisle. It was the Atari Asteroids space shooter game that was all the rage, the clamor of spaceships and cannon fire tearing up the air.
“Can we play?” they asked.
Their mother removed the flyer from her purse. One of the sale items she wished to purchase was a few aisles away in household goods.
“You may, so long as you stay together,” she said.
“Yes, Mom,” they said.
No sooner had she walked away than they were arguing about who should play first. Logan won out, and was soon blowing up alien spacecraft while trying to avoid being hit by counterfire. As the game progressed, the obstacles increased, and Logan became hypnotized by the machine’s flashing lights.
“Let me play,” Jon said.
“You’re up next,” Logan said.
“I want to play now.”
“Stop bothering me. I’m close to making ten million points.”
He’d started to sulk. Soon their mother would be finished, and they’d leave the store, and he wouldn’t get a chance to play. It sucked being the younger brother.
“You stink,” he said.
Logan gave him a Bronx cheer. Steaming, he walked into the appliance department, and flipped the channels on a TV with a remote while pretending it was a video game. He did not notice the strange man until he was right on top of him.
“Hey, little guy,” the stranger said.
The man flashed a twisted smile, and he put the remote down and backed away from the TV. His mother had taught him not to talk to strange people.
“What’s your name?” the stranger asked.
He shook his head as if to say, Nothing doing.
“Look at what I have. Help yourself.”
The man had a brown paper bag, which he opened and shoved beneath his nose. It was filled with an assortment of mouthwatering candy. The temptation was too great, and he stuck his hand in, and pulled out a bag of M&M’s. He frowned and tossed it back.
“What’s wrong?” the stranger asked.
“I don’t like M&M’s,” he said.
“That’s too bad. What’s your favorite candy?”
“Reese’s Pieces. When we leave the store, my mother is taking us to Tastee Treat, and I’m going to get a chocolate twirl sprinkled with them.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jonny.”
“Well, Jonny, you’re in luck. I’ve got a big bag of Reese’s Pieces in my car. Come with me, and I’ll give you some. What do you say?”
“Okay.”
The stranger gave another smile. His face was marred by a wandering eye that refused to stay still, and his clothes smelled dirty from days of wear. Two of the buttons on his shirt were undone, exposing a shiny purple fabric underneath.
