A FALSE DAWN Read online

  “This isn’t the time or place to resurrect old ghosts. My demons are my private demons. Just like the first Gulf War, did what I had to do. Not much of a topic for a dinner conversation, though.”

  Leslie smiled and inhaled deeply. She moistened her lower lip, searching for the right words. “As corny or presumptuous as this might sound, Sean, I only want you to know I’m a pretty darn good listener. I’m here if you ever feel like talking to someone…someone who cares.” She looked at the coals glowing in the grille, the flames iridescent in her wide pupils. “Maybe, in an odd sort of way, your circumstances made you a good detective.”

  “I’m not sure how good of a detective I really was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The criminal mind is an insane place to enter. To hunt them, I had to program myself to become like them, at least in terms of motive. What’s the line between justice and retribution? It was always clearly marked for me, until one night I’d tracked down a serial killer. The guy was a pedophile who started off by giving his oldest daughter a pair of high heels and lipstick when she was seven. She killed herself at age twelve when her father sold her a few times to pay for his gambling depts.”

  “Oh my God. Where was her mother?”

  “She was there, in denial. Her senses short-circuited on pills and cheap wine. The perp had gone way beyond his daughter, and left a string of bodies. When I found him in an abandon warehouse on Miami’s eastside, he had just killed his seventh victim. A little nine-year-old-girl he’d taken from her bedroom. Her bloody body lay there on the cold concrete floor of a former banana import company. The perp got up and off her when he saw me approaching. I’ll never forget his lurid face, the blood on his hands, his eyes mocking me like a hyena rocking its head above dead prey. ‘You’re not going to shoot me,’ he yelled. I told him he was right. Then I charged, knocking him to the floor, and I beat his head senseless against the same concrete where the child lay dead. There was an open freight elevator shaft a few feet away. I dragged him to it and dropped him down the shaft. I don’t know if I beat him to death or whether he died when he hit the floor below. In the report, I wrote we’d fought, he lost his balance and fell.”

  Leslie was quiet, the pop of firewood the only sound. “Sean, you stopped a child killer. I’m not going to try to justify what you did. You’ve gone though that over and over in your mind. But anybody can understand it.”

  “Doesn’t make it right. If every man has a breaking point, I’d reached mine, and I didn’t like what I saw. I’d promised Sherri I would try to regain whatever it was in me she found and loved unconditionally. I’m still struggling with it. And now I’m chasing another serial killer. The question that haunts me is what will I do when I find him?”

  She touched my hand. “You’ll do what you have to do. You’ll arrest him, and in a few years the state of Florida will do the killing.”

  Over hot apple pie, vanilla ice cream and coffee, the conservation turned to the murders and the DNA linked to Silas Davis. She said, “Although the DNA on the toothpick is a definite match for the traces found under the vic’s fingernail, there’s no DNA match between that and the hair on the duct tape you found. We didn’t get a hit from CODIS on duct tape hair. We’ll pick up Silas Davis tomorrow.”

  “What kind of backup are you taking?”

  “You worried?”

  “Silas Davis, Juan Gomez, and Hector Ortega come from another planet. These are labor contractors who traffic in human beings. Worried? Nah, you can handle them.”

  “I believe Dan and I can handle the arrest, but we’ll take back-up.” She paused, slightly tracing the tip of her spoon around the ice cream. “Dan’s not a fan of Slater’s, either. Slater’s been watching me like a hawk. I was trained to work in forensic crime scene investigations, not to keep looking over my shoulder for a bad cop.”

  “That turns your job into a covert mission.”

  She smiled. “We’ll question Davis tomorrow and see if we can get him to talk.”

  “Davis is big and cunning. Not a dumb guy. He abuses the workers because the system allows him to. He actually works for Juan Gomez and Hector Ortega. And they’re as indifferent to farm workers as Davis, maybe more so. They speak the language, bring in the workers from other countries, slap false debt on them, and hold them. I believe Gomez, Ortega, and Davis are all involved in the killings in some capacity. Davis might have killed the girl I found, and the other victim, but I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He doesn’t fit the profile for the kind of killings, at least on the surface he doesn’t. He’s no scout leader. Mean as they come, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense for him to kill these women. Also, don’t see many black serial killers.”

  “Maybe the victims were going to the police.”

  “That’s possible, but doubtful. They don’t trust a system that allows this to happen. Davis is a vile guy, a criminal, but even though we got an exact DNA match, that doesn’t make him the killer. That tells me she scratched him. Could have occurred the day of the murder. Maybe sometime before it happened. Whoever is killing these women, and it may be Davis, is a psychopath of the worst kind. He can’t feel guilt because he can’t feel love.”

  “Can he feel hate?”

  “His type can’t form intimate relationships. He might not hate in the vengeful kind of way that most people understand. There is a banality to his killing. Which makes this guy the most frightening kind. You can’t see him coming until he’s there.”

  “And you believe these last two girls are not the first of his victims?”

  “He’s killed before. Could be responsible for the nine unsolved that fit the MO and profile. And I bet there are more that we don’t know exists.”

  She was silent, her thoughts somewhere else, and then she looked up at me, a smile as tender as the night.

  “I really should be going,” I heard myself say.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have a good answer, only an honest one, but not a good one.”

  “Then stay the night,” she said again, reaching across the table and touching my hand.

  FORTY-THREE

  Leslie said, “I have some Grand Marnier a friend gave me, but I haven’t had a reason to have an after-dinner drink. Now I do, because you’re here. One nightcap?”

  “Just one,” I said.

  She poured the Grand Marnier and raised her glass. “To the night, may this one be the first of many.”

  We toasted and sipped the liqueur. She set her glass down on the counter and touched my cheek with the tips of her fingers. She was trembling slightly, her eyes probing mine. She stepped closer, pressing her body gently against me. I could feel her warmth, the scent of her hair, and a lingering perfume somewhere on her long neck.

  “I don’t think…” I heard myself say. Her lips seemed to move to mine with no measurement in space and time. They were just there.

  The kiss was like a feather at first, gentle, searching. Her mouth was soft, tasting of the Grand Marnier, lipstick and vanilla. In less than a half minute, the kiss became one of a buried passion erupting. She was sensuous and receptive. I could feel a strong arousal, a heat building in my loins. I wanted to pick her up and take her into the bedroom, but I pulled back a moment, then kissed one of her closed eyes.

  “I can’t stay the night,” I whispered.

  “Then stay as long as you can,” she said, rising to kiss me again.

  #

  IN THE BEDROOM, we undressed each other, eyes locking on eyes, hands discovering. I held her close, backing her onto the bed. The light from the patio broke through the partially opened blinds, illuminating Leslie’s beauty. Her body was sculpted from good genes and exercise. I touched her hair and face. Our bodies moved in a rhythmic motion of discovery, and then moved as one. Our fingers locked, and I held her arms beside her head, soft brown hair cascading on the pillow, her eyes searching, finding me. Within a few minutes, we both were climaxi
ng, in long powerful couplings.

  I leaned back, but Leslie’s right hand stayed laced in mine, holding me, refusing to let me lean too far up. She reached and entwined her fingers in my other hand.

  “Sean…just breathe…say nothing. You’re here now. Nowhere else.”

  #

  IT WAS AFTER 3:00 A.M. when I got back to Jupiter. The cockpit door showed no sign of entry. I unlocked it, got a beer from the galley, climbed up into the fly bridge and sank into the captain’s chair. A breeze stirred across the river and lagoon, bringing with it the damp smell of rain. It was the darkness before dawn. Fog drifted through glowing orbs of light cast from security lights down by the charter boats and at the end of the five long docks lined with boats.

  The marina was eerily quiet, only an occasional strain from Jupiter’s bowline, the tide moving silently between the boats and pilings. I sipped the beer and turned my collar up in the cool of the morning. I was exhausted, but my thoughts bounced from Leslie to Sherri and then to the dead girl. But Sherri was dead. DEAD. As a former homicide detective, death was my shift. The eternal night shift. I had clocked in again.

  I watched the gray daybreak rise over the boats in a cloak of diffused light, enveloping the marina with an ethereal tint of an aged photograph. The dawn arrived unannounced, like the ghost of the ancient mariner. It was a black and white world, devoid of warmth and colors. A light rain began to fall as soft as a whisper. Its gentle rhythm was the last thing I heard as my eyes closed. I wanted to dream in warm colors, to turn away the cold edge of shadows.

  FORTY-FOUR

  It was two days before I called Leslie. There was a pleasant smile in her voice, but more businesslike than I wanted. But then what did I want? I wanted to take her to lunch, to be with her, to meet, and dine with her near the water. The way the sun comes through a bent Venetian blind, her light broke through the tiny slants in my armor even though I tried to shield her from my darkest corners.

  Leslie met me at the Lighthouse Restaurant, a block from the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse and fifty feet from the Halifax River. A life-sized pirate, made from stone and painted in primary colors, stood next to a rusted galleon anchor in the parking lot. The restaurant was a blend of cracker Florida inlaid with Key West T-shirt tackiness.

  Outside, a wooden deck was built around a large live oak tree. There were a dozen tables and chairs scattered across the deck. Some of the lunch crowd sat in a replica of a shrimp boat docked and attached to the deck.

  Leslie and I took a table in a far corner of the deck with a nice view of the river. I watched a sailboat motor toward the pass. One man at the helm. I could see him opening the jib, a gust of wind pulling the bow in the direction of the sea.

  Leslie said, “Nice spot. Do you bring guests here often?”

  “Guests?”

  “I thought I’d hear from you the next day. Then, when I didn’t, I thought it was something I said.”

  “No, Leslie. It’s not you. It’s me. I have had a lot of closed curtains opened suddenly. It’s just that this light pouring in has caught my house in sort of a mess.”

  “I don’t want to change your world or redecorate your house. All I want is to feel comfortable when I’m in it. To feel welcome, maybe even special.”

  “You are.”

  She looked out across the water and was silent. Then she changed the direction of the conversation. “The DNA sample we got from Richard Brennen didn’t match the hair from the duct tape. Got to be ice water in that man’s veins.”

  “There’s something cold-blooded in him.”

  “Okay, now to Silas Davis. Dan Grant and I grilled him at headquarters. Interrogated him for more than three hours.”

  “What’d you get?”

  “Probably capable of murder, but I don’t think he’s the perp.”

  “Why?”

  “You even said that his skin under her fingernail doesn’t make him the killer.”

  “But I want to hear why you think he may not have killed her.”

  “Davis is cocky, but he’s scared, too. We reminded him that his skin cells were under the vic’s fingernail, which is enough hard, indisputable evidence to take it to the DA. Sean, the guy wouldn’t crack. He insists that she slapped him, cut his face with her nails, and the last time he saw her was when she got in a van to be driven to another work location.”

  “Talk with the other girls that night in the van. Who was driving?”

  “Hector Ortega. Dan and I questioned him and Juan Gomez at that slum trailer park they run. Gomez said he pays his workers cash and doesn’t know the vic’s real name. Said he called her pájaro, Spanish for bird. Ortega says the last time he saw her was when she bolted from his parked van while he was urinating off the side of the road. And where he happened to make his unscheduled stop to pee is what turned your world around. He was less than a half-mile from your home. The vic allegedly ran toward the river where she was assaulted and left for dead. You stumbled onto her the morning after it happened. Ortega says some backwoods redneck probably did it.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. Did the pathologist find anything on both victims that might have the any remote similarity?”

  “Are you having short-term memory?” She laughed. “Remember, we couldn’t find so much as a speck of hair, carpet fibers, blood, latent prints, semen or anything physical that link the two. Although the second vic was raped, no foreign pubic, no sperm, and no condoms tossed in the bushes. Outside of the rape, and what we know linking them—gender and ethnicity—the common link seems to be the way they were murdered, and the fact the bodies were found less than twenty miles from each other. Ortega and Gomez say they didn’t know and had never seen the second vic.”

  “You believe them?”

  “No, but then we don’t have a lot to go on either.”

  My mind raced down a long black tunnel and an image flashed. It was a dead body. A girl. Broken. Beaten. Smashed like a bird that hit a car windshield. Legs spread. Bloody. Panties torn off. The headlights from a parked squad cruiser illuminated her face in a theatrical spotlight of white. I was kneeling by her body looking at her open eyes. Eyes locked on horror. Her nose was the only part of her face showing color. Both nostril passages had tiny circles of blood encrusted like rings on the outside.

  “Sean, where were you? Your eyes were so intense.”

  Now I remembered what I’d seen on the girl I’d found. “The girl I found by the river was almost killed by strangulation and then stabbed. She had blood on her nostrils. If a guy hunting for frogs hadn’t been shinning a light near the area, I believe her neck would have been broken, too. The second girl also was strangled and found with a broken neck.”

  “Right. And your point?”

  “Leslie, the coroner couldn’t determine the exact cause of death, strangulation or a broken neck, right?”

  “The psycho did both within seconds. ME’s report said the second vic could have died from either. The perp probably strangled her then broke her neck as a parting gift.”

  I looked at the bay and inlet for a moment. “What if she didn’t die from a broken neck or strangulation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if she died from asphyxiation?”

  “Sorry, I don’t follow you, Sean.”

  “What if she wasn’t strangled? What if she was asphyxiated? Toyed with…brought to the point of passing out. Brought to near death and then allowed to breathe again. Given mouth-to-mouth by her attacker until he tired of it and killed her.”

  “I don’t know if a human can go to the level of cruelty,” she said. “Almost kill a woman, resuscitate her only to kill her the next minute. I’ve never seen evil like that.”

  “I have.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Three bikers, straddling Harleys, roared into the oyster shell parking lot next to the deck. I watched them park their bikes, trudge into the restaurant, and sit at the bar.

  Leslie reached across the table, softly touching my hand. “T
ell me about it. What happened?”

  “Miami. About four years ago. It’s one of the cases I still relive. You don’t forget investigating a crime scene where women have been beaten, raped, and left with a plastic bag over their heads.”

  “What?”

  “We never solved them. I never solved them and I think about it often. For some reason, the killings stopped. My partner, Ron Hamilton, and I thought they’d stopped.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The perp killed at least seven women, probably more. He’d pick out vics that usually wouldn’t be missed by family or friends. Prostitutes. Runaways. The killer would attack his victims, slap them into submission, place a clear plastic bag over their heads and begin the asphyxiation. All the time raping them. When they’d lose consciousnesses, he’d push up the plastic bag and give them mouth-to-mouth. Once they regained consciousness, he’d do it again. He’d even kiss them through the plastic bag he’d pulled back over their faces. We believe he’d time his climax as they died looking at him.”

  Leslie touched her throat, her eyes looking toward the water.

  “One woman managed to survive, barely. She was attacked in a park, near South Beach at night. The perp was surprised by two high school kids making out in a car about two hundred feet away from where the assault happened. They turned on their headlights, and the perp got up and ran. They couldn’t get a good look at his face.”

  “Could the vic ID him?”

  “She said he was very strong. Dark features, but she was so traumatized, all she could remember was his eyes. Called them ‘wildcat devil eyes.’ And now I think those eyes could have resembled that of a jaguar. After she recovered, at least recovered physically, she looked at hundreds of photos. Couldn’t pick out one. Something inside her died, though. She left Miami and moved in with her mother. I think they’re in Jacksonville.”