“What kind of knife, Bobby?”
“One of those wood-carving knives, an X-Acto, with a red plastic handle, and like a long scalpel blade in it. I bag that. Then the sarge comes up the other elevator with Dick. And they take the guy away. And Lieutenant Kinsey’s there, my shift loo, and he goes, great job and all, everyone’s slapping me on the back. I mean I remember this. It happened. And the loo goes, Hey, take the rest of the shift off, it’s all over. So I take my car back to the precinct, and change, and go home. I go to bed. And it’s like I’m having a dream, like a nightmare, there’s this smell, a sharp smell, and I’m in this dark place, cramped, like a coffin, but I’m standing up. And then … I realize, I’m not dreaming, I’m not in bed, I really am in a dark place, with this smell, like strong bleach. It was a maid’s closet on the fourth floor. I walk out and there’s cops all over the hallway and all of them looking at me, and Sergeant Duval goes, Where the fuck you been? My cuffs are still on my belt. The first thing I say is, You got the guy, right? You got the guy! And they look at me. And they tell me what went down.”
Ruiz put his face in his hands, saying, “Ah shit! Ah, fuck it!” Dry sobs followed. Paz did his little talk about exotic drugs, but it did not seem to help. The perp had somehow stolen this kid’s sense of reality, and it was a violation like the rape of a virgin, but of the mind not the body, an incurable wound.
Paz wound up the interview; Ruiz could not recall a face either, not a big surprise. Paz walked out of the hotel to get some air, but what air there was was full of fumes from the vehicles, both police and press. The copter chattered uselessly above. He sat down on a stone bench and looked through his notes as the sunrise lightened the horizon over the sea, the dawn of a day that no one in the Miami PD was anticipating with joy. He felt his phone ring.
“Where’s your car?”
Paz told him. “What’s up, Cletis?”
“Call just came over TAC One. They found the baby.”
“Where at?”
He gave an address. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
Ten minutes later, they pulled up in front of a foliage-clotted front yard on Hibuscus, behind which stood a two-story flat-roofed house built in the old Grove style, crumbling tan stucco over Dade County pine. A patrol car was parked there, its bubble-gum lights making weird patterns against the overhanging trees. As they left their car, an ambo from Jackson arrived, adding its own crimson flickerings to the scene. The young patrolman looked pale as he led them back to the yard.
The baby, a female, was lying in the center of several blood-soaked sheets of the Miami Herald, yesterday’s edition, the sports pages. The top of its skull was placed neatly to one side, just above the shoulder, and the excised brain was on the other side. Early flies had taken an interest and there was at least one palmetto bug rooting around in the empty skull. Barlow spoke gently to the patrolman and sent him back to secure the street entrance to the yard. The crime-scene people arrived. Shortly thereafter, Echiverra from the M.E. showed up.
Barlow said, “The owner and her family’s in the house. I’ll go talk to them. Woman named Dolores Tuoey lives in the garage apartment with her kid. Why don’t you take charge out here, talk to the garage lady, see if anything strikes you funny.”
“Like what, a clue?” snapped Paz.
“Hey, this is a break for us here, son,” said Barlow.
“How do you figure that? Because he didn’t kill the mayor too?”
“No, because he changed a successful pattern. He had us foxed six ways to Sunday the way he was going. We’re stumped, right? So why’d he change it? Why move the baby? Why’d he leave it here, of all places, and not a Dumpster or the bay? Think about it.” He walked away. Paz spoke to the crime-scene captain and to Echiverra, both of whom looked tense and frightened. There was no graveyard humor.
Paz walked around the yard, trying to keep his vision clear. The back and the north side of the yard were blocked off by high hedges of croton, allamander, and hibiscus, whose pink flowers were just responding to the oncoming day. Besides the large mango, heavy with fruit, a guava, a key lime, and a lemon tree also stood in the yard, perfuming the neighboring air. The lawn beneath them was rough and patchy but neatly clipped.
A stir among the crime-scene people; they had found a liftable footprint on one of the patches of bare earth near the mango. Paz went and took a look. A nice print, the herringbone pattern of a good boat shoe. Paz showed polite interest, and strolled over to the garage that nearly closed off the third side of the yard.
Paz looked up at the garage apartment. For an instant he saw a face at the window, then nothing. He walked away and then back again, slowly. He was not looking for anything physical now; the crime-scene people would pick up all that sort of thing, like the footprint, for whatever good it would do. He was thinking about what Barlow had just said. This was not a random dump. This was a message, important enough to the perp for him to risk carrying absolute for-sure death-penalty evidence around with him (on a bicycle!) between the Milano and Coconut Grove, with every cop in the city having no other thought but to grab his ass. He snapped another look at the window of the garage apartment. Again, nothing.
Paz felt strange now. People were moving around him, talking, doing their technical tasks, but he felt as if they were wraiths, that he was the only real person in the yard. The colors of the flowers, of the brightening sky seemed more vivid than usual; he looked up. The clouds overhead were boiling, as they are shown to do in horror movies. Then things moved back in the direction of bland normality, without quite arriving. There was something about this place, this instant; he searched for a word one of his women had used … nexus? It all came together here, in this scruffy yard, not just the case, but in a way he could not begin to explain, his whole life. He walked up the stairs to the garage apartment. He knocked on the door.
TWENTY-FIVE
Aknock at my door. I am busy stashing my Mauser, my journal, and the jar of Olo witch sauce back in my box. It’s funny that through all this, my absurd hegira, I have never thought about avoiding the police. Because I haven’t done anything wrong, except maybe sink my father’s boat, and use some bad paper. And kill Luz’s mom, I always forget that one, because I can’t feel it was very wrong to defend myself and Luz. Ifa cut her line and used me as his instrument. But clearly my husband wants the police involved with me, or he wouldn’t have decorated Polly’s garden with his latest victim. A test? Does he want to see if I will rat him out? Does it matter to him?
A brief check in the mirror to insure as much invisibility as I can muster. The blinds are drawn, the light in my kitchen is out, my spectacles are on, my pathetic bangs are in place. I open the door, and my knees almost fail to hold me up. I must clutch at the doorpost. For an instant, I think I’m back in a dream, that my husband is standing in front of me with a police badge stuck, as a little joke, in the pocket of his sports jacket. He says, “Detective Paz, ma’am, Miami PD. Could I …” His face registers concern and he adds, “Excuse me, are you all right?”
But an instant later I see that it isn’t him. The structure of the face is different, with higher cheekbones and a lower hairline; he’s solider, too, with more muscle in the shoulders and neck; his eyes are yellow-brown, not hazel-gray, like Witt’s. And that jacket, no, Witt didn’t care about nice clothes, this all flashed through my mind while some ogga in there yells, “Asshole! He could show up in the dress uniform of the Grenadier fucking Guards?it’s a dream!”
But I back away and let him in, saying, “No, it’s … in the yard … horrible. Will they … take it away soon? I don’t want my daughter …”