“Maybe you could tell me who you sell these to,” Louis said as he took the flower.
“Why would you need to know that?”
“I have my reasons.”
Bianca shrugged. “Well, I have dozens of clients on the island. But I would never give out their names.”
“Flower sales are confidential?”
“Privacy is everything here, Mr. Kincaid.”
There was something about the way she said his name. He was close to snapping. He’d had it with these people.
“Look, lady,” Louis said, “I can be back here in an hour with a county deputy and a search warrant for your records. Or we can do this nice and easy.”
She just stared at him.
“How about if I name a few names and you just nod?” Louis said. “You know, like in that movie with Deep Throat?”
She didn’t move. Louis could almost read her mind: The nice fellows at the pink police station would protect her. If she could just get to the phone.
“Okay, first name,” Louis said. “Tucker Osborn.”
Nothing. Not even a blink.
“Let’s try again,” Louis said. “Richard Lyons.”
Still nothing. The woman was good.
Or maybe he was wrong. Maybe the orchid meant nothing. Maybe he was wasting precious time and needed to be concentrating on the humidor. Maybe it was time to go back to basics and see if the sword’s blade matched the wound on Mark Durand’s neck. It was possible that Dr. Steffel had something by now.
“Thanks for your help,” he said, and left the shop.
Outside, he paused to put on his sunglasses. He was about to toss the orchid sprig but put it in his pocket instead.
He was almost to South County Road when a horn beeped behind him. It was a red BMW 325, not the newest model but shined to a gleam. Swann was behind the wheel. He pulled to the curb, and the window whirred down.
“I’ve been looking all over for you. Get in.”
“Where we going?”
Swann couldn’t hide his eager smile. “We’ve got a third body.”
Chapter Twenty-three
It felt good to get off the island. Maybe it was just that he was sick and tired of doing the Bizarro World boogie-woogie, or he just longed for something plain and real. Whatever the reason, out here on the open highway, fifty miles west of Palm Beach, Louis felt freer than he had in a week.
Swann was a good driver, weaving the BMW through the truck traffic on US-80 like a cop used to car chases. Louis doubted Swann had ever had to push his police cruiser past forty over on his home turf. But the guy had changed in the last few days, taking to his role in Reggie Kent’s case with the eagerness of a raw recruit.
Swann had found the third headless victim buried in the records of the Hendry County Sheriff’s Office. Now they were on their way to find out if the body had any connection to their case.
As they drove, Louis filled Swann in about his visit to Tink Lyons. Swann was stunned into silence. Part of it was disgust, Louis suspected. But there was also something personal in Swann’s silence, like he was angry at himself for being so naïve about the people who paid his salary. Or worse, he was feeling incompetent, eclipsed by a private investigator.
Finally, Louis broke the quiet in the car. “How’d you find this guy exactly?” he asked.
Swann glanced over at him then looked back at the road. “I’ve got a contact high up at the FDLE,” he said. “Once I got somebody on the computer, it didn’t take long. I just asked him to do a search for young male victims who had been decapitated or tortured.”
Louis knew the Florida Department of Law Enforcement didn’t jump at just anyone’s request, and they sure didn’t cough up information overnight.
“Must be somebody with some juice up there,” Louis said.
Swann just stared straight ahead. “My father’s a retired major for the state police. His name still carries some weight in Tallahassee.”
Swann reached down and turned on the radio. He began stabbing at the buttons. Louis watched him, wondering how heavy that weight sometimes felt on Swann’s shoulders. Heavy enough to flee all the way down to Palm Beach?
After a flurry of country music, sports talk and static, Swann finally gave up on the radio.
“How old’s this one?” Louis asked after a few more minutes of Swann’s silence.
“He was found three years ago, fall of ’86,” Swann said. “A couple of Seminoles found him in a swamp. Or what was left of him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“All they found was a torso with one arm,” Swann said. “He was pretty chewed up by alligators. But there was enough for prints, and turned out he had a minor drug record in Fort Lauderdale.”
“But we don’t know if he was decapitated or a damn gator just bit the head off?”
“No, but when I found out he worked as a bartender in Palm Beach, I thought the connection was too big to ignore.”
“How’d you find out he worked in Palm Beach?”
“County health records,” Swann said. “You’ve got to have a card to work in the food and beverage business in Palm Beach.”
“Good work, Andrew.”
Swann glanced at him but said nothing.
The Hendry County Sheriff’s Office was located in La Belle, a sleepy town of cracker houses, oak trees, and an old white courthouse on the banks of the Caloosahatchee River. The station on Bridge Street had two Hendry cruisers out front. But it was the third one that caught Louis’s eye. It had the Palm Beach County seal on its door.
Barberry was in the detective’s office when they walked in. He looked like he’d been caught on his day off. He wore baggy Bermuda shorts, white tube socks with loafers, and a Hawaiian shirt. His gold badge hung on a chain around his neck.
Swann’s contact in Hendry County, a Detective Hernandez, stood nearby. He was a few years under thirty, with messy brown hair, a meager mustache, and an ugly polyester jacket that ballooned over his slender build.
Barberry was reading a file, but he must have heard the footfalls across the tile floor because he looked up. His sneer at Louis was expected, but his expression changed when he saw Swann. It registered disbelief, then he chuckled.
“Well, well, Andrew Swann,” Barberry said. “Papa Hewitt know you’re here, boy?”
Swann stopped in front of Barberry, but Louis could see he was having a hard time holding Barberry’s eye. He had the same look that Bianca Lee had had in her fancy flower shop: busted.
Louis introduced himself and Swann to Hernandez. Hernandez mumbled a hello and looked at Swann.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” he said to Swann. “I had to call you back for something, and I thought you worked for the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, but they told me they didn’t know you, so I just asked for the officer in charge of the headless-corpse case, thinking he would be your partner, and then, well, they gave me to this-”
“Shut up,” Barberry said. He looked to Louis and Swann. “What do you two jackasses think you’re doing, calling people all over the state and getting them worked up into thinking we got a serial killer on the loose here?”
“We think we do have a serial killer,” Louis said.
“On two lousy bodies that have nothing in common?”
Louis wasn’t ready to tell him they had a third victim named Emilio Labastide or that they had already exhumed and examined the body, but he had to give Barberry something just so they would be allowed to stay in the damn room.
“They were both headless,” Louis said.
Barberry gestured to the file Hernandez was holding. “Oh, for crissakes,” he said. “This one here was probably made that way by a damn alligator.”
“Well, now, Detective,” Hernandez began. “That might not be accurate. If you’d take a look at the ME’s report, you’ll see that-”
“Shut up,” Barberry said.
“Don’t tell him to shut up,” Louis said. “Go ahead, Detective Hernandez, what were you going to say?”
Hernandez stuck out his hand. “If I could have my file, sir?”