Greg was gone when I got up a few minutes before eight the next morning. The sleeping bag was rolled up with the pillow plumped on top of it. The cash I had laid out was still on the desk and there was a scribbled note I could barely read:
I have the feeling that what you will do today will be something other than what I would like. Consider the cash payment for your putting up with me last night. Greg Legerman is not an easy town.
I called Ames and told him I would pick him up in half an hour.
“Did you get any sleep?” I asked.
“Some.”
“Our shooter?”
“Didn’t move.”
“You have breakfast?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Okay if we eat here?”
“Sure.”
Half an hour later I was seated at a table in the Texas Bar and Grill and being served by Big Ed. We ate chili and eggs and didn’t say much.
“Thanks,” I said.
“For?”
“You fixed my car window last night,” I said. “Or was it the car window fairy?”
“Me. Took a few hours off when our shooter was tucked in.”
“You armed?”
Ames pulled his jacket open to reveal a small holstered gun.
“Leave it here,” I said. “We won’t need it where we’re going.”
I called Ettiene Viviase and he agreed to meet us at the jail just down the street when I told him what I wanted to do.
We could have walked to the jail from the Texas, but I drove and we found a space with a two-hour meter. I dropped enough quarters into it and we met Viviase in the reception area in front of the bulletproof window, behind which sat a uniformed woman.
“She’s here,” Viviase said. “Make it good.”
He took us through a door and into a small room where lawyers and clients, relatives and inmates, cops and criminals met to talk and lie and threaten and plead.
Torcelli, wearing an orange uniform, sat at the table.
He looked at me and said, “You’ve come to get me out.”
“No,” Viviase said. “He came to be sure you stay in here. You killed Philip Horvecki.”
Torcelli’s nose was covered by a wide bandage that didn’t hide the spreading purple. The cavities of his eyes looked as if they had been painted black.
“I didn’t… What? I didn’t kill Horvecki. Tell him Fonesca.”
“Go ahead,” said Viviase. “Tell us.”
I told my tale slowly and carefully so Torcelli wouldn’t make any mistake about what he was hearing.
The first words from him when I finished talking were, “I want my lawyer.”
“He withdrew from your case,” said Viviase. “He has a bad cold.”
“His feet are cold,” said Torcelli. “Alana stopped paying him, didn’t she? Find Rachel. Rachel will pay him.”
“We’re looking for her,” Viviase said.
“This is a mistake,” Torcelli said again, this time looking at Ames, who said, “Take it like a man.”
“I didn’t touch your daughter,” Torcelli tried, turning to Viviase. “A kiss, maybe. What’s the harm in that?”
“She’s fifteen,” Viviase answered.
“Fonesca, you were supposed to help me,” Torcelli said, his voice dropping, his head in his hands.
“I guess I failed,” I said.
19
"You sure?” Viviase asked.
“Sure,” said Ames. “Followed the taxi right here.”
The sky was almost black. Thunder from the north. Lightning flashes. The rain was light. It would, I was sure, turn heavy. It was a typical Florida rainstorm.
We had backup, two patrol cars running without sirens or lights, two armed police officers in each.
“Let’s get it done,” said Viviase, walking up the path to the door with one of the police officers, ringing the bell and stepping to the side.
Ames and I stood off to the side on the sidewalk, watching the other cops, two left, one right, circling around the building. Viviase rang again and then used a key to open the door and step in, his back against the doorjamb.
“You need a warrant,” a voice came from the darkness inside. “You have a warrant?”
“We don’t need a warrant,” Viviase said as a single small light came on, and Rachel Horvecki stepped forward inside the room. “This is a crime scene.”
“I want him,” I heard her say.
“Fonesca,” called Viviase. “You want to step in here a minute? The lady wants to talk to you.”
Ames and I stepped forward and through the door. The shades and curtains were all down and closed. The room was a funereal black.
Thunder rolled toward us. Then lightning, and in the flash we saw Rachel standing completely nude and carrying a shotgun that looked big and powerful enough to down a large, charging rhino.
We stood in darkness.
“Your husband confessed,” Viviase said.
“To what?”
“To killing your father,” Viviase said. “He says you helped him and it was all your idea so you could get your father’s money.”
“He didn’t say that,” she said.
“You’re under arrest,” Viviase said firmly. “Tell her, Fonesca.”
Imperative. An order. Tell the naked woman in the dark with the shotgun how you figured out she and her husband murdered her father.
“I came here last night,” I said. “You were out, looking for me. You were followed by Mr. McKinney. I found your father’s collection of shotguns and rifles in the back room and some photographs on the wall of you and him. You were about thirteen and cradling a weapon almost as big as you were. Your father has his hand around your shoulder in all the photographs.”
I could hear her move a little. I glanced at a shadow moving past the window to her right as she said, “If they shoot, I shoot.”
“No one’s shooting,” said Viviase.
“I found some of your poetry in a drawer in your room,” I said.
“You had no right,” she shouted.
“Crime scene, remember?” said Viviase. “Your father died just about where I think you’re standing.”
I knew there were still bloodstains on the floor.
“You tried to kill me,” I said.
“Why would I want to kill you? You were helping Ronnie.”
“You were afraid I’d find out that your husband really did kill your father.”
“Not true,” she said.
“True,” said Ames.
A slight tink of metal as I sensed the shotgun moving toward Ames.
“Ronnie, or both of you, killed your father early that night,” I went on. “You chose that night because you knew you had a nearly perfect witness. Essau Williams, a policeman or Jack Pepper, a minister, would be parked across the street watching your father’s house, wanting to be watched as they returned to that spot across the street, like men punching into work. It was Pepper. And what did he see? Hours after your father was already dead, the Reverend Jack Pepper saw Ronnie enter the house just as a man in a coat and watch cap came through a side window and run down the street. Almost immediately, Ronnie came back out the door and looked both ways for the man in the watch cap. He looked around and he went back inside. You had already called 911 and said there’d been a murder. There was a car there almost immediately. A bloody Ronnie was kneeling by the body. The police didn’t find you, because you were the man in the watch cap. There was only one problem.”
“What?” she asked.
I was sure the shotgun was getting heavier. It was probably pointing down at the floor.
“Jack Pepper didn’t immediately come forward about the man who came through the window and about seeing Ronnie in the house for only a few seconds. He didn’t want to explain why he was sitting in his car in front of your house. There was a restraining order against him. You waited a while before coming forward with your story about seeing a man in a watch cap kill your father and go through the window. Your father was already dead. You were the one in the watch cap. When Pepper showed up, you talked loud enough for Pepper to hear a muffled voice and something thudding, probably you hitting the wall.”
“Pepper should have come forward sooner,” she said.