Three hundred-dollar bills and the white notebook paper, the kind with the blue lines and the thin red stripe on one side. Typed in the middle of the page: Mrs. Abigail Thompson 1027 NW 32nd Ave.
Eddie knew Ms. Thompson from years past. She may have even gone to church with his mother. He also knew the alley behind her house. Eddie knew all the alleys.
11
Billy poured himself another glass of Merlot. I took another swallow of coffee. Both of us had had enough shrimp fried rice. I was ready for a prowl car tour of the area where Billy's women had died.
The beach run had been painful. The humidity of surfside Florida teamed up with the soft sand to make my three miles a fine torture. Most of my life my regular runs had been done on Philadelphia streets, several blocks east to Front Street and then north along the Delaware to Bookbinders and back. I was used to cruising on hard concrete, slapping a rhythm, dodging through intersections. If I went down the shore, I'd do miles on the Ocean City beach at low tide when the sand was wet and brown and hard. Here it was slogging, half your energy used digging out of each footstep. My lungs were burning but I'd sprinted the last hundred yards down in ankle- deep water.
The shower afterwards was always a treat. Out at my shack all I had was a rain barrel above my porch that was fed by water flowing from the eaves and fitted with a hose and nozzle.
Billy filled me in on his paper trace while we ate. His women had come to South Florida at different times and they'd bought their insurance policies at different ages but all within a close time period. They probably knew one another because of their era and proximity, but it would have been on a social basis. None was in business with the other. There were no family connections. No shared churches in the recent past.
"Has McCane been any help to you?" I said.
"He has accessed s-some dates and m-medical questionnaires on the policies his company h-held."
"You talking with him?"
"Only on the phone."
"I'll check with him tomorrow. Maybe I should have asked him along tonight."
We traded sideways glances.
"Maybe not," I said, and we both relaxed.
I pushed the plate away. I'd already bagged my things, planning to get back to the river afterwards. I'd dressed in jeans and a dark polo shirt and black, soft-soled shoes.
"How is Sherry?"
"Looks good," I said.
"W-When are you two going to quit d-dancing around each other?"
Billy was trained to be forward and blunt. But he rarely took that step with me.
"She's still got a ghost in her head."
"She's the only one who's b-been able to p-pull you off the river."
"Liar," I said, fishing out my keys.
"Well, I d-don't count," Billy said.
I drained the coffee and tipped the cup at him.
"Yes, you do."
When I got to the sheriff's office I parked my truck near the front entrance and was starting across the lot when a spotlight snapped on me. When I raised a hand to shade my eyes, the light went off. Richards was backed into a spot and was behind the wheel of a green-and-white. I opened her passenger side and climbed in. She was in uniform. Starched short-sleeved white shirt and deep green trousers with a stripe down the leg. Her hair was pinned up. Her 9mm in a leather holster at her side.
"Regulation," she said. "Got to wear the whole rig if you're driving a squad car," she said in greeting.
"I remember," I said.
She slid a clipboard over to me with a form on top.
"Absolves the office if you get hurt. Sign the bottom."
"I think you've got the wrong impression of me and my propensity for getting hurt," I said.
"No, I don't," she answered, grinning as she shifted into drive.
We pulled onto the street and headed west. The strip centers were single-story and second-rate. A carpet outlet. A fish market. "Jiggles" nightclub with "Girls, Live Girls."
We turned north onto a side street and a block and a half off the main thoroughfare we were into residential.
There were no sidewalks but street lamps were set every two blocks. At this time of night cars were parked in most of the driveways, some on the grassless swale. Richards punched off the headlights and swung onto another cross street. Two houses in she twisted the handle on the door-mounted spotlight and snapped it on. The beam caught the black maw of an open doorway and she swept across the windows that were boarded up with plywood.
"Crack houses," she said. "We try to keep them boarded up. But they rip the stuff down faster than we can get it up. The owner who lives god knows where won't keep it sealed even if it is the law."
She flashed back over the doorway and the light picked up some movement inside.
"You arrest them for trespassing or possession and they're out by Friday."
She flipped off the spot and pulled the headlights back on and kept going. As a patrolman in Philly I'd done the same thing. It was exactly the same neighborhood only one-story instead of two. Less brick. More trees. Same despair.
"Your husband work this zone?" I asked and immediately wondered why the question came into my mouth.
The dash lights gave her jawline a sharp edge. Her nose held a small but not indelicate hump. A touch of mascara showed at the corner of her eye, which stayed focused ahead.
"Sometimes," she finally said. "But he preferred the eastern zones. He wasn't much for the action. He worked a lot with kids in the Police Athletic League."
And got shot by a kid, I silently finished the sentence for her.
She turned another corner.
We rolled through an intersection and Richards slowed again to a crawl. Every city has a dope hole and this was theirs. Nearly eleven o'clock and there was a busy nonchalance that showed in the slow spin each man did as the green-and-white slid by. Drag from a cigarette. "I ain't give a shit about no cop," but the cupped hand helps hide the face. The older ones sitting on empty milk crates, elbows on knees, something too interesting to stare at in the dirt but proud enough to raise their jaws in defiance as the back fender glides by. The young ones who don't hide. They goof and throw signs with twisted fingers and pull at the loose fabric in their crotch and their eyes say "Ain't no big thing" and their justification is "All I'm doin' is bidness."
We got some extra scrutiny; two new faces on the night shift. But I knew Richards wasn't showing me this for the dealers. Dope dealers don't kill old ladies for life insurance money. They also don't need to rape and murder. There are enough addicts who will give it up for whatever the dealer wants. Richards was looking past them, into the back corners and at the side of houses for the desperate ones.
"We tried to set up surveillance, watch the customers drive in and out, check the plates, run the names through NCIC looking for a hit with a sex crime conviction. Nothing.
"We've got some liaison with the community leaders who are trying to clean things up, appealed to their sense of safety, hoping to pick up at least some rumor. Nothing."
"Too scared?"
"And distrustful," she replied.
"And scared," I repeated.
"And probably tired as hell of nothing ever changing."
She tightened her jaw and we turned again. She seemed to have a destination in mind. A few more blocks and we pulled to a stop next to a dark, undeveloped field of overgrown grasses and brush. The orange glow of the street lamps had little effect on the interior of the empty land.
"Not exactly an urban park," I said.
"The land was originally bought by the city for some kind of trash transfer station," she said. "But the commissioner who represents this area fought it. So now they're waiting for someone to come up with the money to develop it."