I walked into the bar late afternoon and the darkness and the odor of stale beer and a subtle hint of mildew stopped me. I took two steps in and waited until my eyes adjusted, pupils spiraling down from the brilliance of the sun outside.
There were three humped backs at the bar, men with their shoulders turned in as though the light that came through the door was a cold wind. There was a blonde head moving beyond them. Her hair was pulled back tight. Marci, working the day shift just as Laurie had told me over the phone. The manager had offered quickly that the girl had just asked to switch her shifts and get off the eight-to- two for a few weeks. Laurie became even more suspicious when I said I needed to talk with the girl and would rather do it in private.
"She came in with the strangest look. Said there was nothing wrong but I knew there was. Is she in some kind of trouble with the police?"
I told her again that I wasn't a cop and that I was only a consultant when detective Richards and I had met with her.
"But you didn't say that then, did you?" she reminded me.
I apologized for leading her on.
"It's OK," she said, brightly, like she meant it. "You get used to liars in this business."
I let the dig sit.
"So can I talk with Marci?" I asked.
"You don't need my permission. She's on four-to-eight all this week."
I made my way down the bar and took the end seat on purpose. I had called Richards the same day I'd given her the picture. I knew she would look up his name. Pissed as she was, she was too good a cop to turn away from it. What I was surprised at was that she gave me the rundown. Maybe it was in the form of an apology, maybe she was intrigued. It was hard to read her over the phone.
Kyle Morrison. Three years on the Fort Lauderdale Department. Came in from a small department in North Florida. Since he'd been here there were a handful of complaints in his file. Most of them gripes from arrestees about use of force, but not one that had stuck. Like most metropolitan departments, Fort Lauderdale had a strong union. They dealt with most complaints internally and even if they did think Morrison was heavy-handed, there wasn't much they would do unless he knocked around someone prominent and it went public. He was assigned to a night prowl car shift in the Victoria Park area. The only odd thing Richards said she noticed was that despite his experience Morrison had never taken the sergeant's exam. He seemed to be satisfied with what he had, which does not always endear you to the powers that be. Supervisors are wary of those who don't aspire to management like they did. It makes them second-guess themselves.
I complimented Richards on her thoroughness and her sources.
"I'm sorry for this morning, Freeman," she'd said and hung up.
Marci looked twice at me when I sat down and then she reached into the cooler. She brought out a Rolling Rock and pried the cap off.
"Hi," she said when she put the bottle in front of me and then stood back, waiting.
"How you doing?" I said, my tone conversational.
She stared at my face a couple of moments too long. Her eyes had a color like rainwater on a concrete slab and had about the same amount of emotion in them. She looked older than the last time, and not just by days.
"You on the job?" she said, like an accusation.
I took a sip of beer and couldn't hold her look.
"Used to be. Now I'm working as a private investigator," I said.
The other men at the bar were too far down the rail to hear me. I had the feeling it was as intimate a setting as I was going to get with her.
"But you were with that cop the other day, the woman with the hair?"
"Yeah. She's looking into a case that I was trying to help her with."
"What kind of case?" she said, all subtlety gone from her voice. I had the feeling she'd given up on subtlety.
"The disappearance of some women," I said. "Women who were all bartenders."
She actually stepped back, though I was sure she was aware of it.
"From here?"
"One from here," I said. "The others from a couple of places in the area that are pretty much like this. Small bars. Relatively quiet. Regular customers."
"What happened to them?"
"No one has been able to find out," I said. "They never turned up. They just vanished. No notes. No argument with family. No damage to their apartments. It was almost like they went out on a date and never came back."
When I said it I watched her face. I thought she was looking at the mirror on the wall behind me but I could see a paleness spread down her face like the blood was sliding down out of her cheeks, leaking somewhere below her throat. She stumbled like she'd suddenly fallen off a pair of high heels and I came off the stool and reached out for her.
She put up her palm.
"Don't touch me," she said, regained her balance and then turned and poured herself a shot of brandy from the back of the bar. When she tossed it back one of the boys down the way picked up on the movement and raised his tumbler of dark liquid.
"Cheers," he croaked in a raspy voice, downed the drink and went back to studying the wood grain on the bar top.
I waited for a hint of color to come back into her skin but I wasn't going to waste my advantage.
"You know a guy named Morrison, Marci? A Kyle Morrison?"
"Yeah," she said and I could see a flicker of fear in her eyes. "Why? Does he have anything to do with this?"
"It's possible," I said, using the fear. "How well do you know him?"
Now she was looking down into her empty shot glass.
"Maybe not as well as I should, huh?" She motioned for me to take a stool down around the corner of the bar, behind the electronic poker machine, and we talked for an hour, breaking on occasion so she could tend to the others when they tapped their glasses on the African mahogany. At first she just listened while I described the cases that Richards thought were more than just disappearances. I gave her the details about the girls, all from places far away with no local family connections and not a lot of close friends outside the bar business. They had all lived alone. They were all single. She waited until I'd given as much detail as I was going to give and then she poured herself another brandy.
She hadn't known any of the women. She had heard some of the other bartenders gossiping, but hadn't given it much thought. Trading in rumor was all part of the business.
"So, you don't know if any of them was raped?" she asked, the question coming far too quickly.
"No. There weren't any reports made before they disappeared, no," I said.
The slightest tremor had set up in her chin. Scared? Disappointed? Heartbroken? I couldn't tell. She looked vulnerable for the first time, but I am not beyond taking advantage of vulnerable.
"Tell me about Kyle, Marci," I said, looking straight into her eyes.
"He's a cop," she said.
"I know."
"I've been dating him."
I let her eyes look past me again.
"You two have a drug thing going, him supplying, you selling to the customers over the bar?" I said.
"No," she said instantly. "Shit, no. Kyle doesn't do drugs. Neither do I. No."
But she was putting him somewhere.
"Then why are you so scared, Marci?" I said. She was shaking her head and despite her effort to stop it, moisture was coming into her eyes.
"You think Kyle did it, that he killed those girls?" she said.
I shook my own head.
"No one's sure of anything," I said. Marci had made the jump, suspecting Kyle, for some reason. And I did not peg her as a simple, paranoid woman.
"Why? Do you think he could have?"
I was watching her eyes to see if she was working back on days or nights or conversations with Morrison, putting him in a context that she had never before imagined.
"The guy we're talking about went out with these girls several times, knew where they lived and had some access to their apartments so he could cover up afterward," I said.
I knew I was leading her. But I didn't care. If my drug theory was out, I had to find something to get this Morrison guy off the list.
"Jesus," she said and her head dropped and she slowly shook it, letting strands of her hair swing loose. After a few seconds her chin came up and it was set, back teeth tightened down.
"Kyle," she said and nothing more.
"Do you think he's capable?"
"Goddamn right he's capable," she said, now letting the anger into her voice.
"Why? Did you see anything? Did he say anything that makes you believe that?"
She shook her head.
"Too smart," she said, again with the look over my shoulder, seeing him and all his motives and moves through a whole different looking glass. "He'd be way too smart for that."
I still didn't know for sure where she was coming from, but I did know there was something under the surface. Even if your boyfriend has jerked you around and done you wrong, you don't accept the accusation that he's a killer this easily.
"But he wasn't smart enough with you," I said, hoping it would come.
"No, he wasn't," she said, and the anger she was holding flashed into her eyes. "He raped me. And I let him."
Christ, I thought. As a cop, I had heard the accusation of rape fly from the mouths of a lot of women. The word still stung, just the thought of it, even when it had a ring of untruth. But this wasn't an accusation. It was an admission. Marci turned her face away from me. Some guy at the other end of the bar banged his glass on the wood. I looked down at him and the expression on my face made him return his attention to the bottom of his glass for further study.
Marci did not move, no sobs, not even a snuffle. The blonde ponytail, for Christ's sake, made her look like a college girl. I put my hand on her shoulder and she did not flinch, just rotated the stool back to me and her eyes were dry.
"So what do you need to know?" she said.
The rape had taken place two nights before. She had not gone to the hospital, so there was no rape kit. She had come home and scrubbed herself in the shower after throwing up in the gutter. She had slept with Morrison several times over the last couple of months and it wouldn't make any difference, she said. They'd call it consensual, she said: "And they'd be right. I let it happen."
I kept shaking my head no. She was turning on herself, giving him a way out. I needed the strong side of her.
"Don't go there, Marci. Husbands get convicted of raping their wives. Don't go there," I said. "You can file charges against him."
I tried to make my voice sound convincing, even while she kept shaking her head no, no, no.
"Where did this happen, Marci?" I said, still thinking evidence, evidence.
"Out in the Glades," she said. "Way out past the toll booth on the Alley."
"All right. Do you think you could find it again, this place out in the Glades?"
She shook her head, still facing the length of the bar away from me and the other men now began to take notice.
"There's no way I would recognize it. It was dark when he took me there. It's an unmarked turnoff."
"Had he taken you there before?" I asked. Every human has a pattern, does what he does in a way or in a place that he considers a comfort zone. The bars, the women running the show in those bars, the night as cover.
She nodded her head and turned away, picked up the empty shot glass but did not move to fill it.
"You'll never find it," she said.
I looked across at myself in the mirror. I knew I could take this all to Richards. God knows she'd be all over Morrison if she thought she could substantiate another officer raping a woman. She'd shot and killed the last one.
But I also knew the system, the PBA lawyers, the disparagement of the victim, the drawn out court process with filings and cross- filings. My own mother had taken a more direct route to justice and I'd praised her for it. If there were other victims, they too would be buried forever in the paperwork. If Morrison was our guy, it might be the best chance to come up with evidence to give those girls and their families some justice. If Morrison wasn't our guy, at least we'd have the chance to nail his ass.
I knew I was freelancing on this. I'd have to tell Richards in either case, but not yet.
"All right. Then there's another way," I said. "But it would involve some risk-to you."
She turned around and her eyes were dry and hard.
"Then I'm in."