“Let’s go,” Louis said quietly.
Wainwright shook his head. “I can’t sleep.”
“I can’t either. Let’s go take a look at that shack.”
Wainwright nodded. “Yeah. . yeah. Good idea. Thanks.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
They stood at the door to the storage shack.
The crime scene techs were almost finished. Louis had watched as they meticulously dusted every inch of the walls, the wooden table, the wooden crab traps, and the chair that still sat in the middle.
Under the chair, they had scraped up blood Louis guessed would turn out to be Emily’s. From another area, they took samples of blood that Louis was sure belonged to Tyrone Heller. The techs had also found tiny specks of dried blood, probably from the tread of a shoe.
Bags of evidence had been removed: fish scales and shrimp shells, hairs, fibers, some rusted cans, crumpled pieces of tissue, blue and white buoys, and some cigarette butts. On both arms of the chair, there were several loops of yellow plastic rope.
Louis’s eyes swept over the tiny room, trying to get a feel for what had happened. No. . a feel for the killer’s mind, that’s what he wanted. He focused for a moment on the chair, then moved to the bloodstain, rimmed with black paint. It was smaller than the bloodstain from Quick up on the overlook. But Mayo had dragged Heller out right after killing him. Louis’s eyes went now to the walls. The old gray planks were splattered with blood. There was more on the ceiling.
He realized he was feeling nothing. No vibrations. And worse, no emotion.
“We need something out of this mess to tie Mayo in,” Wainwright said. “We need proof he was here.”
“Mayo’s prints are on file,” Louis said. “Maybe we’ll get a match from here.”
“He’s using gloves. He hasn’t left his prints anywhere else.”
Louis was looking at the bloodstain again, noticing something new. There was less blood than at the overlook but more paint.
“He used a lot of paint on Heller,” Louis said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Wainwright said. “Why do you think he went overboard this time?”
“Remember what Farentino said she heard him say? ‘Get it right this time, you fucking idiot.’ Maybe she heard it wrong. Maybe he said ‘idiots.’ ”
“Plural?” Wainwright asked.
Louis nodded. “Maybe he was talking to us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe he saw the press conference. Maybe he’s pissed that we didn’t mention the paint. It’s important to him and he wants us to notice it this time.”
Wainwright nodded. “Farentino said he might react to anything. I guess we found out.”
The techs moved out, taking the table. They told Wainwright they would return for the chair and to tear up the stained floorboards and walls.
Louis’s eyes went back to the chair. “Why didn’t he kill her?” he asked.
“Maybe your theory about the skin shades is wrong and he’s not working toward a white victim,” Wainwright said.
Louis shook his head. “No, I still think there’s something to it. Heller is lighter than the others and he killed him.”
“Then why did he even bother to take Farentino in the first place?” Wainwright asked.
“Maybe she was just in the way,” Louis said. “Maybe he was going to kill her but changed his mind.”
“Doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t fit his profile.” Wainwright paused. “Maybe it’s like all the paint this time. Maybe he wants to tell us something and Farentino was just the messenger.”
“What’s the message?”
Wainwright let out a weary sigh. “I don’t know. We’re both so fucking tired we can’t think straight.”
They were silent for a moment. “He’s not finished,” Louis said. “I still think he’s moving toward something.”
Wainwright’s eyes were focused on the bloodstain. “The question is, what?”
Louis woke and immediately looked at the clock. Two-thirty in the afternoon. He had fallen into bed after coming home from the storage shack and gotten a couple hours of fitful sleep. There was still grit behind his eyes but he knew he couldn’t sleep any more.
He showered, dressed, and went out to the kitchen. Empty. Issy looked up at him from her bowl of kibbles.
Louis heard country music from the patio and went outside. Margaret was cutting the dead blooms off one of her orchids.
“You’re up,” she said, turning.
“Anybody call?” he asked.
Margaret shook her head and slipped her pruning shears into her apron.
“How ’bout I fix you a sandwich?” she said, starting for the kitchen.
“No, Margaret, I’m fine,” he said quickly.
“Didn’t we talk about this before?”
Louis sighed. “Whatever you want to fix is fine. Where’s Sam?”
“Fishing,” Margaret said with a grimace.
Louis followed her into the kitchen. He picked up the wall phone and dialed Horton’s office. Horton picked up immediately.
“Any news?” Louis asked.
“Still no sign of Heller. The other crewman-Woody something-said Heller didn’t show for work this morning. We did a welfare check at Heller’s trailer. No sign of anything out of the ordinary. No sign of Heller’s truck either. We’ve got a BOLO out on it.”
“Mayo probably followed Heller to the Dockside,” Louis said. “Maybe he used the truck to take Heller to the storage shack and then abandoned it.”
“We thought of that. Got the whole wharf area covered. Nothing.”
Margaret came into the kitchen and began to busy herself at the refrigerator. Louis turned away and lowered his voice. “How’s Farentino?”
“Sleeping at her hotel,” Horton said. “I put a uniform outside her door.”
“Anything back from the scene yet?”
“There was a lot of old trash but nothing fresh. The owner says the place used to be a storage shed for the shrimping company nearby, but it’s been abandoned for years.”
Louis could hear Horton flipping some papers. “Let’s see. . shrimp shells, rusted cans, fish scales, specifically snapper, spot-tail, king mackerel. Dozens of prints, but the only fresh ones were on the chair and we’re running them.”
“What about the blood?”
“AB-negative under the chair. Rare stuff,” Horton said. “It matches Farentino’s. The big stain was O-positive, but we don’t know what Heller is. The specks of blood on the floor turned out to be from king mackerel.”
Louis sighed. “Is there anything I can do?”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Dan this morning,” Horton said. “Get some rest. We’ll call.”
Louis hung up. When he turned, Margaret was standing there holding a plate.
“Eat this, damn it,” she said.
He thanked her and took the peanut butter and jelly sandwich out to the patio. Margaret came out a moment later and set a Dr Pepper at his side. She went to the small cassette player and turned her tape over. The song “Luckenbach, Texas” started playing.
Louis wolfed down the sandwich and set the plate aside, wishing Margaret had made two sandwiches. He tried to remember the last time he ate.
He laid his head back, closing his eyes, thinking about the events of the last twenty-four hours. What a night.
He had a sudden picture of Farentino’s tear-streaked face in his mind. She must be a wreck. Alone, in a strange town, scared to death. He wondered if she’d slept, if she’d be up for a visit.
He got up. Margaret looked over. “Where you going?”
“To visit Farentino,” he said.
Margaret wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ve got some fudge you can take her.”
Chapter Forty
The Sereno Key Inn was a clot of wooden cabins clustered around a marina not far from the town center. It had a funky, fifties air, like time had not quite caught up. He spotted a Fort Myers patrol car in front of one of the cabins and parked next to it. An officer was sitting on a lawn chair on the porch and rose as Louis came forward.
“Louis Kincaid, Sereno Key PD,” he said.