"Mr. Freeman. Mr. Freeman. Wait. Please!"
Diaz was nearly skipping to catch up. I turned to acknowledge him but kept moving toward my truck. He came alongside and blew out a quick breath.
"You gotta excuse Hammonds. He's wired a little tight these days," the young detective said, sticking his fingers down in his pockets despite the heat.
"I'll give him that," I said, unlocking my truck door.
"These murders got everybody on edge. The bosses, the politicians, the civilians. The feds are pushing and threatening to take over if we don't show something soon. Everybody wants the killer and Hammonds is the one that has to keep saying we haven't even got a good suspect."
"And he still hasn't," I said, opening the door.
"Hey, I made some checks up north myself. No one said you went signal twenty after that shooting with the kids."
"Is that right?"
Diaz was looking at the long jagged scratch running through the paint on my truck and shaking his head.
"But no one knew you'd come down here either. They just said you took a payout and disappeared."
"Yeah, well, that was the idea," I said, closing my door and starting the engine. Diaz stepped back as I pulled out of the space, his hands still in his pockets.
I was cursing under my breath as I pulled out into traffic. Always listen to your lawyer. Especially if he's your friend. I'd done myself no good here. But at least I knew where I stood. They were desperate and had me on the target board and it was going to take a lot more than a Mr. Nice Guy smile to get me off it.
When I pulled up behind a line of cars on the ramp to the interstate the traffic was as insistent as it had been at ten o'clock and would be at five and at eight tonight. There were no lazy Southern afternoons here.
As my line lurched again with the cycle of the light, I caught sight of a newspaper hawker working his way down the row.
"Slain Palm Beach Child No. 4" read the headline. When the guy got close I rolled down the window. He looked in and I saw that he had a fat face that folded in on itself and a spit- soaked cigar planted in the side of his mouth. I did a double take and then handed him a dollar. He passed the paper in and when he started to dig for change I waved him off.
I held the paper against the steering wheel and read the secondary headline.
POLICE LINK KILLING OF GLADESIDE KINDERGARTENER TO MOONLIGHT MURDERER
I scanned the front-page story, shuffled to the page inside where it continued, and found mention of the funeral home where the girl's visitation was being held. The blast of a horn snapped my head up. The line was moving. I swung onto the northbound ramp, squeezed my way onto the interstate and settled into the middle lane, staring into the line of cars in front of me.
In Philadelphia I had still been in the hospital when they buried the twelve-year-old I shot. I'd read the follow-up stories in the Daily News that identified him as a sixth grader in the North Philadelphia neighborhood near Temple University, that his family was churchgoing, that a collection was being taken up. I'd asked the nurse to get me an envelope and while she was gone I'd climbed out of bed, retrieved my wallet and emptied it. Later I scratched the name of the church on the envelope and wrapped the money inside with a piece of paper with the name of the fund on it. Another shift nurse promised she'd get it mailed. Despite being raised in my mother's Catholic home I am not a prayerful man. But I prayed for Lavernious Coleman. And I prayed that no nosy reporter would find out about the donation. And I prayed a little bit for myself.
When I got to Forest Hills Boulevard, I got off at the exit and headed west. After four or five miles, I started looking for the approximate numbers on the neat new shopping complexes and the low, discrete business marquees. They were trying to avoid creating another neon trash alley like those that plagued so much of South Florida's sprawl. Maybe it was neater, in a gameboard kind of way, but it somehow made me nervous.
I found Chapel Avenue and followed a curving two-lane avenue with a grass-and-palm-lined divider until I saw the inevitable white Doric columns. The architectural necessity of that classic touch on funeral homes was lost on me. Maybe it had something to do with the pearly gates, a hopeful hint for those left behind. The street was lined with sedans and SUVs. An attendant was directing the overflow to a parking area behind the building. I turned into a lot across the street, backed into a spot and left the engine and air conditioner running.
There was a television news truck parked a block down. Its telescoping antenna had not been raised, but I could see that the van's side door was open and at least one reporter and her crew were working the sidewalk. I watched them stop a couple in their thirties with a small child in tow and ask, I assumed, about the little girl who now lay inside surrounded by flowers and grief.
I picked up the newspaper and read about the child I'd found on the river.
According to the news account, Alissa Gainey, like the others, had been taken after dark-this time from the enclosed pool area of her home where her parents had set up a lighted play area. "'She had her little plastic kitchen out there, her table and dolls. She spent hours out there, just playing,' said a tearful Deborah Gainey. 'She was already in her pajamas. Her little blanket was gone. She never put it down. Oh God, she's gone.'"
The story said the mother had been just inside the sliding- glass doors, writing out household bills. She hadn't heard a sound. The doors to the screened patio had been locked. The killer had neatly sliced through the thin screening with a razor or sharp knife. The mother had discovered Alissa missing when she went to call her in for the night.
"The Gaineys' Gladeside home is in a newly built community of single-family homes that was completed two years ago. The location, a mile from the official berm area that acts as a buffer to the Everglades, is similar to those neighborhoods where the previous child abductions have taken place."
Beside the age of the victims, their homes in the suburbs seemed the only other common trait in the cases so far. It didn't narrow things down much.
I was new to Florida but I knew enough about the modern-day range wars. Despite its growing population, everyone from the big builders to the workaday carpenters to the little guy waiting to open his dream bagel shop looked out on those acres and acres of open sawgrass and said: "Just a little more. What's the big deal?"
It had been going on like that for a hundred years and the environmentalists had fought it for a hundred years. The developers had ruthlessly bid and outbid each other for open land as they pushed out into the Everglades. The landowners either refused to sell on principle or milked the demand for the highest price they could get. And the home builders had to sell every unit to make a profit over the costs. There was plenty of money involved. Tons.
I looked up from the paper and the flow of couples, dressed in dark and respectable suits, was increasing in and out of the funeral home's double doors. I watched as the news crew approached a middle-aged man whose face flushed with anger as he pointed his finger into the face of the young woman reporter and backed her off the sidewalk. A uniformed officer seemed to appear from nowhere and slip between them. The reporter was whining, the mourner moved on.
I turned back to my paper and stared at the inside photograph of Alissa, a blond, thin-limbed child, posing for a school picture in a cornflower-blue dress, her hair in braided pigtails. She had been a quiet, intelligent and friendly student, according to a quote from her kindergarten teacher. The story said she was an only child.
I thought about Mrs. Gainey's mention of her daughter's blanket and wondered if it had been wrapped inside the canvas package I'd found her in. Had the killer taken anything personal with the other children, a sick keepsake, a memento of conquest? Or was it all business with him? I thought about the news printouts that Billy had given me at the restaurant. The quiet stealth was incredibly risky. I'd worked child abductions from playgrounds, busy department stores and parking lots, but never from a home, unless it was parent related.