Crowley led the way to a storeroom where the Esperanza file, faded with age and bulging, was in the second cabinet he tried. Returning to his desk, the detective spread out the file's contents and after a few minutes announced, "Here's what you want, I think." He passed over an official Offense-Incident Report form, which Bowe studied, turning pages.
On the third page she found it a property department receipt for evidence collected at the double-homicide scene, which included "Money clip, gold color, initials HB." An investigator's report on a subsequent page recorded that the clip had probably been dropped by the murderer, since the initials did not match those of either victim, and the next of kin a nephew told police he had not seen the money clip before.
"That has to be the one," she informed Crowley. "Doil told Sergeant Ainslie that he got it in another robbery, then Missed it after he ran from the Esperanzas'."
"You wanna see the real thing? I guess it's still in Property."
"I guess I'd better. If I don't, somebody's sure to ask why I didn't."
"Don't they always?"
Crowley made a copy of the property report for Ruby, then led the way out of doors to a large separate building the Property Department, where a crowded series of vaults and secure rooms contained the detritus of countless crimes.
With surprising speed, two dusty boxes of evidence in the seventeen-year-old murder case were located, and when the first box was unsealed, a gleaming money clip was visible inside a plastic bag. Examining it more closely, Ruby saw the engraved monogram HB. "Hasn't tarnished, so haste be real gold," Crowley said. "Wonder who the 'HB' guy was."
"That," Ruby said, "is what I need to find out next."
* * *
Metro-Dade Criminal Records was in another section of the main police building. Here crime reports from Dade County's twenty-seven municipalities, ranging over the past twenty years, were stored. Recent records were computerized, older ones were on microfilm. Like the rest of Metro-Dade's headquarters, the offices were clean, welllit, and modern.
Ruby Bowe had brought with her a note of Elroy Doil's tape-recorded confession, in which, referring to the money clip, he said, "Got it in a robbery, couple months before I knocked off them slants."
She decided to begin her search of robbery records three months before the Esperanzas' murders, which occurred on July 12, 1980.
"Do you have any idea what you're taking on?" a records clerk asked when Ruby told her. "You could be here for weeks." She held up a single microfilm cassette. "In there, from 1980, are one day's Offense-Incident Reports for Dade about fifteen hundred pages on film, including robbery, burglary, auto theft, rape, battery, alarms you name it! So for three months of reports you'd be looking at about thirty thousand pages."
"Can't the robberies be separated?"
"Nowadays, by computer, they can. The ancient stuff on microfilm no way."
Ruby sighed. "However long it takes, there's a robbery case I have to find."
"Good luck," the woman wished her. "Dade County has an average of seventeen thousand robberies a year."
* * *
As the hours passed, Ruby's eyes grew weary. She was seated in the Criminal Records main office, facing a stateof-the-art Canon Microprinter, which both read microfilm and made printed copies if needed. The microfilmed pages were copies of standard police forms Offense-Incident Reports. The standardization made scanning faster because at the top of each form was "Type of Incident," and only when this showed "Robbery" did Ruby pause to view the whole page quickly. Slightly lower was "Nature of Offense," and when this read "Armed Robbery" she paid extra attention, believing Elroy Doil was more likely to have committed that type of crime. A further item was "Property Taken," and if no money clip was listed as had been true in every case so far Ruby moved on.
The remainder of the first day produced nothing, and in late afternoon Ruby quit after arranging to resume her search the following morning.
The next day produced nothing, either, although by this time Ruby was moving at high speed through the microfilm reels, having learned to keep the non-robbery reports sliding by. By the end of that day she had reviewed and discarded five microfilm cassettes.
The next morning, while threading film from a new cassette through the reader-printer's setup reels, she wondered doubtfully, Did this robbery ever happen as Elroy Doil claimed ? And if it did, was it ever recorded ? The nagging questions stayed with her through the next two hours as she realized how much more searching lay ahead.
Suddenly Ruby's attention was riveted on an armed robbery case, number 27422-F, dated April 18, 1980. At 12:15 A.M. that day a robbery occurred outside the Carousel Nite Club on Gratigny Drive, Miami Lakes. She zoomed in to magnify the details. These showed that the robber, wielding a knife, approached his male victim, Harold Baird, and demanded all of Baird's money and jewelry. Four hundred Dollars in cash was taken, as well as two rings worth a hundred Dollars each, and a gold money clip worth two hundred. The clip bore the victim's initials, HB. The report described the perpetrator as "a very large white male, identity unknown."
With a sigh of relief, Ruby pressed the machine's printout button and reached for the emerging copy of Report 27422-F. Then she leaned back and relaxed, knowing she had found proof that at least part of what Doil had told Sergeant Ainslie was true.
Now on to Tampa.
* * *
Back at her Miami Homicide desk, Ruby telephoned the Tampa Police Department, was transferred to the Detective Bureau, and then to its Homicide Squad, where a Detective Shirley Jasmund took Ruby's call.
"We have some information here," Ruby announced, "about what we think is an old case of yours a husband and wife named Ikei, murdered in 1980."
"Sorry, I was still in school that year fifth grade." Detective Jasmund giggled, but added, "Somewhere, though, I've heard that name. How'd you spell it?"
When Ruby told her, Jasmund responded, "It may take a while to look up, so give me a number and I'll call back."
Three hours later Ruby's phone rang and Jasmund's voice announced, "We found that file, looks interesting. An old couple Japanese, both in their seventies stabbed to death in a summer home they had here. Bodies shipped back to Japan for burial. No serious suspects, it says here." "Are there details about the crime scene?" Ruby asked. "Sure are!" Ruby heard the sound of pages turning. "Officers' reports say it was very messy. Bodies brutalized, bound and gagged, facing each other . . . money taken, and . . . wait, here's something odd . . ."
"What?"
"Hold on, I'm reading here . . . Well, there was an envelope found beside the bodies. It had blobs of sealing wax on the back, seven in a circle it says, and inside was a printed sheet a page from the Bible."
"Does it say what part of the Bible?"
"No . . . Yes! Here it is. Revelation."
"That's it! The case I want." Ruby's voice was excited. "Look, we have a lot of information to exchange, so I'm going to fly up to you. Would tomorrow be okay?"
"Let me ask my sergeant."
The sound of muffled voices followed, then Jasmund's again. "Tomorrow's fine. You've got us all curious, including our division captain, who's been listening. He said to tell you that the Ikeis' relatives in Japan still phone each year with the same question: Is there any news? That's where I heard the name."
"Tell the captain that when he gets his next call from Japan, I think he'll have answers."
"Will do. And when you know what time you'll get in, call and we'll have a squad car meet you at the airport."
* * *
An early Gulfstream Airlines flight from Miami to Tampa took sixty-five minutes, and Ruby Bowe was at the City of Tampa Police Department by 8:30 A.M. Detective ShirIey Jasmund came to the front desk to escort her to the Detective Bureau, and the two women black and white liked each other immediately. "Word's gone around about you," Jasmund said. "Even the chief has been told about that old case with the Japanese. When we're all through, he wants a report."