The computer showed that a Florida sheriff named Carl Zeno had taken into evidence a severed female hand with the fingertips removed. The hand was at the Tampa Coroner's Office. It had been delivered to a woman on April 13, one day after the murder of Candice Wilcox. The name of the woman who had received the hand was Tashay Roberts, 901 Court Road, Tampa, Florida.
"John," Karen called excitedly, "I got something!"
Chapter 26
Sheriff Carl Zeno leaned back in his metal chair and put a dusty boot up on the corner of his desk. He sucked loudly on a toothpick and spun his wide-brimmed Smokey hat insolently on his index finger as he looked at them.
"Tashay, she gets herself in with some pretty strange people," he said, dropping the hat on the desk. "I'm her stepdaddy and that gives me some rights, I spose, but you know how that is… I ain't blood, so I do what I can t'help her mom, Cherise, with her… but it don't always go down the way I want."
They were in the Sheriffs sub-station in Fort Myers, Florida. Karen had shown Zeno her Customs ID and introduced Lockwood as a Customs Inspector. Zeno had written down their names but had not asked to see Lockwood's badge. The office was a five-man cop-shop in a one-story brick building. Yellow linoleum floors, metal desks, and the smells of disinfectant and tobacco smoke completed the ambience.
Carl Zeno was blond, with a rock-hard handshake and a Sam Brown gun harness stretched tight over a potbelly. He had good-ol'-boy charm that barely hid a nasty disposition.
Karen thought she'd hate to be pulled over by this guy on an empty highway and say the wrong thing.
" 'Course she's got this Bobby Shiff guy she lives with now," he said sneering. "Hosed off and naked, that freak don't weigh a hundred pounds. Tashay, she's real easy on the eyes, but you oughta see Shiff… looks like an extra in a vampire movie. He sings in a Death Metal band called Baby Killer… calls himself Satan T. Bone. Don't y'love that?"
Karen looked over and caught Lockwood's eyes.
Zeno caught the glance. His gaze was lazy and insolent, and there was a small smile playing at the side of his mouth.
"What'd you say your name was again, sugar?"
"You wrote it down. It's right in front of you."
He smiled at her. "We don't get good-lookin' lady cops in this unit. All we got is bats with hats. Got one patrol woman on this shift, looks like Mike Ditka."
"That's real helpful," Lockwood said, smiling. "But we'd like to get in touch with Tashay Roberts. We checked the address on Court Road in Tampa; nobody answers the door."
"She and Shiff are down in Miami. He's got a gig down there. Left last night. She dropped by an' gimme two tickets… like I'm gonna go down there an' listen to that stringbean holler into a twenty-dollar sound system. I can hear better music sitting right here, listening to drunks fart."
"If you're not using the tickets, we'll take 'em," Lockwood said.
"Let's see here…" He reached into his pocket slowly; then, not finding them, into his desk drawer. He finally extracted two tickets and held them up. "Twenty dollars gets you into seats C-16 and 17, front an' center. Ear and nose plugs are extra."
Lockwood pulled out his wallet and dropped the twenty on the desk. "That hand she got sent, is it still in the Tampa morgue?" he asked as Zeno handed him the tickets.
"Far as I know. But it ain't got no fingertips so y'can't print it…"
"I wanna get a blood type and tissue match. I think it came off a dead woman in Atlanta."
"You go on up there an' talk to Deke Sanders. Dr. Death… dead bodies, bad jokes, and Muzak. Runs that icebox like it was the fuckin' Tonight Show. You laugh at his jokes, he'll give you anything you want."
Lockwood looked at Karen. "Anything more you wanna ask him?"
"Down here," Zeno said, "the men do the investigatin' an' the ladies string the yellow tape an' chalk up the sidewalk." He turned and smiled at Karen. "But go on an' ask anyway, Honey."
"You ever sleep with your stepdaughter?" Karen deadpanned.
Zeno sat up straight in the chair. It was as if she'd lit him up with a thousand volts. Then he started to flush and stammer. "Uh… I… What you talkin"bout? What the hell kinda dumb-ass question is that? 'Course not. Why don't you two get outta here? I got a heapa things to attend to."
Karen got up; as they left, a light sheen of sweat had already started to form on Carl Zeno's forehead.
Outside the sub-station, Lockwood stopped her before they got into the car. "Bull's-eye, but where did that come from?"
"Guy was pissing me off"
"How did you know?" He grinned at her.
"Picture of his family behind the desk. I figured the sexy one was Tashay. He was holding her closer than his wife. And that story about her dropping off the tickets… She drives all the way down here to give that slimeball two tickets instead of mailing 'em? And the way he said she was easy on the eyes. I don't know, it just hit me as possible."
Lockwood smiled as he got into the car. The best cops always had that instinct: the ability to play streaky hunches that sometimes defied logic but hit the 10 ring. Often that ability could make a case. You couldn't teach it; it didn't come with a uniform or badge, or in the long, tedious classes at Quantico. You got issued that instinct by a higher power.
He'd once been trying to arrest a child pornographer in a small Georgia town. The investigation had led him to a psychologist who treated disturbed children. He'd been there just to get background information, but he'd looked at the photographs of children on the wall and knew instinctively that he was talking to the perp… It was such a long shot, it was off the boards. But he knew the child psychologist was molesting the children. There was something strangely sexual about the innocent pictures. Lockwood couldn't describe it or say how he knew, but he did. He set up a stakeout and busted the doctor two nights later.
The five o'clock news had the whole story. The Rat watched it on the television in the darkened hull of the rusting barge. The generator hummed outside, causing a pleasant vibration in the hull. He saw what was left of his house on the newscast… scattered debris, the smoking ruins. He saw the picture of Malavida Chacone with his prn number across his chest. The field correspondent, Trisha Rains, said Chacone was a famous computer criminal. And then The Rat knew where he'd heard the name. The black eyes of the Mexican convict stared straight at him from the TV and bored holes of pain through The Rat's head. Malavida was a famous cracker, some said the best ever. He'd read about the "Mac Attack" in computer journals. The Rat now knew it was Chacone who had penetrated his secret chat room on the Internet. Killing the woman in Studio City had solved nothing. It had only made things worse, because now there was this other man, this Customs agent whom the newscasts had mentioned.
The Rat had been clever and lucky. The bomb in his basement had gotten Chacone. The newscast said that he was hanging between life and death in a Miami hospital. The Rat wondered if he could use his computer to find a way to cut the cord. Then the story switched to John Lockwood. It showed a picture of a handsome, dark-haired man standing at the crime scene. Next to him was a woman. Her back was to the camera. She was identified as Dr. Karen Dawson. The Rat moved closer to the TV screen and leaned in, looking intently at the woman. Then she turned and he could see her more clearly. It was the woman he had caught snooping at his house. He was troubled and frightened. The newscast ended, but The Rat remained unusually agitated for a long time.
Malavida Chacone, John Lockwood, Karen Dawson… What was the significance? Was it a sign? What should he do?