Jason, returning from school, was equally pleased. Joining his father at the dining room table, he shoved some Homicide files aside to clear space for his homework, and the two worked side by side, interrupted only when Jason had questions like, "Dad, did you know that when you multiply by ten, all you have to do is add a zero? Isn't that neat?" . . . "Dad, did you know the moon is only two hundred and forty thousand miles away? Do you think I'll ever go there?" . . . And finally, "Dad, why don't we do this all the time?"
* * *
It took Ainslie two full days to pore over the files he had brought home, extract details, make notes, and finally create a crime-by-crime chart, but at the end he had drawn some important conclusions.
He began by reviewing the crime-scene details that were kept from the media withheld in hopes that a suspect might incriminate himself by volunteering such knowledge. Included in those facts were the series of bizarre objects left beside the victims, beginning with the four dead cats. Something else not disclosed was the radio that police found playing loudly at all the crime scenes. Yet another detail was that each couple, while bound and gagged, was positioned facing each other. The fact that all of the victims' money had been taken was disclosed, but there was never any mention that valuable jewelry, which could have been removed, had consistently been left.
Some reporters, however, had private sources of information within the Police Department, and whatever they learned unofficially was broadcast or printed, restricted or otherwise. Which left two questions: First, had the news media managed to publicize everything about the four double killings preceding the Ernsts'? Almost certainly not, Ainslie thought. And, second, was there a possibility as Leo Newbold had implied of a leak within the Police Department, either accidental or deliberate? In Ainslie's opinion, that answer was yes.
Ainslie considered next: Were there any differences between the murders of Gustav Ernst and his wife and the other Doil killings? Yes, he discovered, there were several.
One concerned the radios left playing at every murder scene. At the Frost murders at the Royal Colonial Hotel, the radio had been tuned to HOT 105 and was playing hard rock, that station's staple fare. The Clearwater murders of Hal and Mabel Larsen were next and, because no radio was referred to in the report, Ainslie phoned Detective Nelson Abreu, the senior investigator. "No," Abreu reported, "as far as I know, no radio was on, but I'll check and call you." He did so an hour later.
"I just talked to the uniform who was first on the scene, and yes, there was a radio on, he tells me now, says he remembers it was loud rock and roll, and the idiot turned it off and didn't report it. He was a new kid, and I've reamed him out good. Was it important?"
"I'm not sure," Ainslie said, "but I appreciate your checking."
Abreu was curious about the query's background. "The Larsens' next of kin have asked whether Doil definitely did those killings here. Do you have anything on that?"
"Not at this moment, but I'll tell my lieutenant you'd like to know if anything breaks."
Abreu chuckled. "I get it. You know something but can't tell me."
"You're in this business," Ainslie said. "You know the way things are."
He knew that Doil's Raiford confession had not been circulated so far, and for the time being he hoped it would not be. Eventually, though, for the peace of mind of the victims' survivors, the full story would undoubtedly be released.
After the Larsens came the Fort Lauderdale slayings of Irving and Rachel Hennenfeld. During a liaison visit to Miami, Sheriff-Detective Benito Montes reported that when the bodies were found, a radio was "playing hot rock, so goddam loud you couldn't hear yourself speak."
Then there were Lazaro and Luisa Urbina, killed in Miami. A neighbor turned off a loud-playing radio while he called 911, but left the dial setting unchanged at HOT 105.
A radio was also playing loudly when the bodies of Gustav and Eleanor Ernst were discovered by Theo Palacio, their majordomo. Palacio, too, turned off the radio, but remembered it was FM 93.1, WTMI, "a favorite station of Mrs. Ernst," he'd said, because it played classical music and show tunes. WTMI never played hard rock.
Was the type of music at the murder scenes significant? Ainslie thought it might be, especially when combined with another difference at the Ernsts' the presence of the dead rabbit, which, from the beginning, Ainslie was convinced was not a symbol from Revelation.
So, he asked himself, was it possible that whoever had committed the Ernst murders had heard of the Frosts' four cats and mistakenly believed another animal would fit the bill? Again the answer seemed a likely yes.
Also significant was that Ainslie's Revelation theorem had become known to a small group of senior investigators the day after the Ernst murders, and before that time the meaning of the murder-scene symbols was anybody's guess.
Another time factor raised questions, too.
After each of the preceding killings Frosts, Larsens, Hennenfelds, and Urbinas the elapsed time before the next double killing was never less than two months and averaged two months, ten days. Yet between the Urbinas' and the Ernsts' murders, the gap was only three days.
It was as if, Ainslie thought, wheels had been set in motion for the Ernsts' deaths, which would have occurred after the normal time gap if the Urbina killings had not abruptly intervened. And while news of the Urbina killings spread quickly, was it, perhaps, too late to stop the wheels rolling on the Ernst murders?
A fleeting thought occurred to Ainslie, but he dismissed it instantly.
* * *
As to Elroy Doil's final killing, that of Kingsley and Nellie Tempone, while the crime lacked some of Doil's previous hallmarks probably because he was interrupted and tried to flee the timing came close to fitting what had gone before, and Ainslie had a theory about that.
It was Ainslie's belief that, notwithstanding the court ruling about sanity, Doil was insane. If so, it was possible he had a compulsion to commit murder on a regular schedule and, tragically for the Tempones, Doil's killing time had come.
But the validity of that theory, Ainslie knew, would never be known.
Immediately following his two-day research, Ainslie went on an expedition to the Miami Police Property Unit.
* * *
Property, a pivotal, bustling organization, was located on a lower ground floor of the main Police Department building. Its commander, Captain Wade Iacone, a heavyset, graying, twenty-nine-year police veteran, greeted Ainslie in his office.
"Just the man I needed to see! How are you, Malcolm?"
"Fine, sir. Thanks."
Iacone waved a hand. "Forget the formality. I was about to send you a tickler, Malcolm about those Doil serials. Now that the guy is dead and the case is wound up, there's a mountain of stuff we'd like to clear. We desperately need the space."
Ainslie grimaced. "Forget the tickler, Wade. One of the cases has been reopened."
"Tickler" was jargon for a periodic memo sent to police officers who had brought in crime evidence for storage, perhaps, while awaiting trial, or in the hope of making an arrest eventually. In effect the tickler said, "Hey! We've held this for you a long time and it's taking up space we urgently need. Please consider whether you need it any longer, and if not, let's get it out of here." More often than not, removing the evidence involved getting a court order.
Another code word, "stuff," referred to vast quantities of items stored in the Property Unit, including narcotics cocaine and marijuana in case-numbered plastic bags, worth several million Dollars on the street; hundreds of firearms, including guns, rifles, machine pistols, ammunition, "enough to start an insurrection," as Captain Iacone once declaimed; blood and body fluids from homicides or sexual assaults and preserved in refrigerators; then more prosaic stolen TV sets, stereos, and microwaves, plus hundreds of sealed and stacked-high cardboard boxes containing the bric-a-brac of other crimes, including homicide.