Chapter 82
“HEY, WHO WANTS A BEER BRAT?” Peter yelled, smiling, as he snapped barbecue tongs in front of his smoking grill.
With the festive smell of charring jerk chicken and chorizo sausage, the cries of running children and Neil Diamond playing softly from his backyard speakers, the barbecue seemed more like a birthday party or a christening than an event for the surviving family of serial killer victims.
It was an eclectic group: black, white, brown, rich, poor, even a gay Protestant minister. Death didn’t discriminate. Peter knew that firsthand.
The barbecue was actually one of several events planned for the group this week. Tomorrow, a chartered bus and plane from Miami would take all of them to the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee for a sit-down and some more press coverage, Peter hoped. Then it was over to Raiford on Friday for an all-day camp-out vigil before Harris’s midnight execution. An exhausting schedule for these poor folks but one that he hoped would provide some closure.
Knowing that Jeanine was actually still alive disqualified Peter’s membership in the group, but, hey, who was he to burst everyone’s bubble with a technicality?
Besides, she’d be deader than grunge music once he went back up to New York and hunted her down after the execution.
He was flipping some peppers and onions when the minister formed a prayer circle around the pool.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Peter said along with everyone as he took his place between his beaming wife, Vicki, and the minister.
Across from them, his new best friend, Arty Tivolli, the multimillionaire, smiled approvingly.
The closing on the golf course was scheduled for a week after the execution. Peter would be splitting the six percent commission with the broker. In two weeks’ time, if all went well, he’d be handed a check for three and a half million dollars.
And it all would go well. He of all people would see to that.
An hour later as everyone was lining up along the seawall in lawn chairs to watch the sun set, Peter’s cell rang.
“Hey, Peter. How’s it going? It’s Brian Cogle from the Boca PD.”
“Of course, Bri. What’s up?” Peter said to the crusty old cop. He knew everybody who was anybody in South Florida law enforcement. It was all about the networking.
“Just wanted to let you know that we got a visit from Harris’s mouthpiece, that son of a bitch Charlie Baylor. He was asking about the hairs.”
“Those, huh?” Peter said, frowning. Baylor was such an asshole.
“There was a woman with him, too. A lawyer. He got some help.”
Shit, Peter thought. That was all he needed to upset the apple cart. Some eleventh-hour crusade. If Justin Harris was given a stay, who knew how pissy Tivolli would get. Now was not the time for the unexpected. Harris needed to be in a pine box by next week.
“Any chance your boy at the lab who squelched the hairs will squeal?” Peter said. “If there’s any friction, I’d be willing to make it worth his while.”
“Pete, c’mon. Don’t insult me,” Cogle said. “I got it under control. The lab rat is my geeky little brother-in-law. I’m his son’s godfather. Besides, he’d get canned. Not a chance.”
“Good,” Peter said. “Like I told you before, Brian, getting rid of them was the right thing. Showing that there was a second person at the crime scene would have complicated the whole case and gotten that son of a bitch off. You did the right thing, brother. I’ll never forget it.”
“Don’t even mention it. Had it been my wife, I know you’d do the same for me,” Cogle said. “You going up to demonstrate at the execution?”
Behind Peter, the gathered crowd began to ooh and aah as the sun began to descend over the gulf. Peter squinted out at the water as the sky turned the color of a new penny.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Brian,” Peter said.
Chapter 83
WE HAD TO DRIVE UP to Jacksonville to get a direct flight back to Key West, so it was almost nine p.m. by the time we spilled out of a puddle jumper back at the Key West airport.
We had our cabdriver take us directly to Madeline Pelletier’s house on Fogarty Avenue, not far from Key West High School. The front yard of the small stucco house she lived in was strewn with toys.
“Yes?” said the pretty, petite teenaged black girl who answered the door.
“Can we speak to Maddie Pelletier?” Charlie said.
“Mom,” the girl called back into the house. “It’s white people.”
“Hello,” said a not much older version of the girl who’d answered the door a minute later. “I’m Maddie. Can I help you?”
“Hi, Maddie. Sorry to bother you so late. We’re lawyers representing Justin Harris. Could we speak to you?”
“Oh, wow. Poor Justin,” she said, shaking her head. “I pray for him. What can I do for you?”
“Well, we actually need to speak to your cousin Fabiana,” I said. “But we can’t seem to find her.”
“Do you think Fabiana can help Justin?”
“Justin claims that he and Fabiana were on an all-day date at the Miami Seaquarium the day he was accused of killing that girl,” Charlie said.
“But Fabiana said it was a lie,” Maddie said.
“We know,” I said. “But we have some new information and just need to ask her some questions. We really need to speak to her.”
“That’s what helped the jury to convict Justin?” Maddie said with a stunned look on her face. “I had no idea. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say her mother is behind this somehow.” Maddie shook her head. “I’m not sure what to do. My aunt Isabelle, Fabiana’s mother, is a very old-school Haitian, very suspicious of everything. She stopped speaking to me for years after she found out that I introduced Fabiana to Justin at a bar. She’ll go crazy if she finds out I sent you.”
“She won’t find out from us,” Charlie said.
“Aunt Isabelle runs a pretty successful Haitian restaurant near South Beach in Miami. It’s called the Rooster’s Perch. She and Fabiana live in Little Haiti. Hold the door. I’ll get the address for you.”
Charlie and I stared at each other as we waited.
“Is this what I think it is?” Charlie said. “Are we actually making some progress?”
“Shhh,” I said. “Hold your breath. We don’t have the address yet.”
Chapter 84
AFTER AGREEING that neither one of us could physically set foot on another airplane until morning, Charlie and I decided on dinner instead.
“I’ll behave, too. I’ll drink only light rum,” Charlie said as our taxi let us out on crowded Duval Street.
We sat in a booth at Jack Flats. The place had an awesome, long, beat-up wooden bar and old black-and-white photographs of cigar factory workers who had populated the island in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Outside the open stall-like doors, Duval was the same as ever. Think a drunken Greenwich Village block party in New York, with flip-flops. Only it was even crazier now that the Independence Celebration was in full swing.
I stared, amazed, at the Yanks-Rays game playing above the crowded bar beside a neon Dolphins helmet. I’d been so busy in the last few crazy days, I’d almost forgotten that there was a sport called baseball. I needed to call Emma as well. I decided I’d text her once I got back to my hotel.
“Don’t tell me. You’re a Yankees fan, too,” Charlie said as I clapped at a Posada double. “Could you try just a tiny bit more not to make me hate you even more?”
“Not a chance,” I said before finishing my beer and standing. “Watch my seat, and I counted my wings, by the way, Harvard boy.”