Harry knew from newspaper accounts of her trial that Darlene Beckett lived in Tampa, but since no ID was found on her body he called in and asked for a computer check of the sex offender’s registry to get a current home address. A computer technician radioed back five minutes later, and as the information came through the radio’s speaker, Vicky noticed Harry’s hands visibly tighten on the steering wheel. She resisted her natural curiosity and just stored the information away.
The place that Darlene Beckett had called home turned out to be a slightly rundown garden apartment complex in northern Tampa, a mixed neighborhood both racially and economically with a smattering of college students thrown in from the nearby University of South Florida.
The apartment was a half hour drive from the Brooker Creek Preserve and throughout the trip Harry hadn’t spoken a word. Again, Vicky said nothing. She simply concentrated on the passing scenery.
“Darlene wasn’t exactly living high, was she?” Vicky observed as they pulled up in front of the address listed on the registry. It was an end unit in a two-story apartment building, one of four built in a square surrounding a central green. Each apartment had its own entrance, driveway, and garage, making them seem more like town houses. The original intention was a quaint village effect, but the buildings’ white painted bricks were now flaking badly, and the grass front yards of several units had patches of heat-hardened earth showing through. Darlene’s was simply overgrown and dotted with weeds.
They tried the front and rear doors, found them locked, and located the building super, a short Latino about thirty years old with a ragged goatee and cynical eyes. He answered their questions, telling them the little he knew about Darlene. When told she was dead he simply shrugged, and asked when her apartment could be shown to prospective tenants.
“Nobody goes in until the crime scene tape is taken down,” Harry said, nodding to the roll of yellow tape Vicky carried.
The super, who had given his name as Juan Vasquez, sneered at the answer. “Owner’s gonna want it rented. Gonna be all over my ass about it.”
“Anybody goes in before the tape comes down they get busted,” Vicky said. “You tell the owner that goes for him too. In fact, you tell him he sees the tape’s down he better call us anyway. Make sure it was us who took it down.”
The warning produced another sneer. “Doan know why anybody gives a shit. Broad was nothin’. Jus’ a fuckin’ short eyes.”
Harry noted the prison term for a child molester and looked at the man more closely. Detecting something at the bottom edge of his T-shirt sleeve, he reached out and raised it, exposing a crude prison tattoo of a dagger piercing a heart. “Where’d you do your bit?” Harry asked.
Juan stared up at him. He was short and stocky with a swarthy complexion and dark brown eyes. His mouth twisted into a sneer that held a lifetime of hard-earned cynicism. He looked away and shook his head.
“Up north. New York.” He shook his head again. “So now I’m a fuckin’ suspect.”
Vicky took a step forward. “Hey, Juan, it’s like they say on TV. Everybody’s a suspect.” She gave him an innocent smile, and then let her eyes slowly harden. “So fish out your driver’s license.”
Vicky copied his name, address, and date of birth, then asked for his Social Security number and added that to her notebook. It would all be used later for a computer check at the National Crime Information Center. Finished, she gave him another smile. “Now open the damn door.”
Juan took out a massive ring of keys, found the one to Darlene’s front door, and opened it.
“You can go back to your apartment,” Harry told the super. “When we’re finished somebody will come and get you, so you can lock up.”
“How long?” Juan asked.
“It’ll be a couple of hours.”
Harry watched the man shuffle away, jotted his name in his own notebook with the words New York beside it, then got on his cell and called the CSI team.
“They still at the preserve?” Vicky asked when he had finished.
“They’re just loading up. Be here in half an hour.”
Darlene Beckett’s apartment was immaculate. Not a thing out of place; not a dirty dish in the sink. Even the bath off the master bedroom was scrubbed clean. Except for the full closets it looked like a model apartment; as if no one really lived there. Harry and Vicky donned latex gloves and cloth shoe coverings like those worn in hospital operating rooms and moved slowly through the apartment. They found the ankle monitor on the first pass through her bedroom.
“Somebody had to help her get that off,” Vicky said. “And that somebody is going to have some heavy questions to answer.”
They continued with the walk through.
“You think Darlene was this much of a neat freak?” Harry asked when they had been in every room.
“If she was, she was like no single woman I ever met.” Vicky paused and thought about what she’d said. “Actually, she was like no single woman I ever met.” She turned to Harry. “You think the perp came in here and cleaned up? Like maybe he’d been here before and wanted to make sure there was nothing for us to find?”
“There’s always something,” Harry said.
“Yeah, but maybe the perp doesn’t know that.”
They spent an hour looking through Darlene Beckett’s personal effects- clothing, bills, letters, books and magazines, makeup, food supplies, and prescription drugs-drawing together a picture of what the woman had been like, her personal needs and tastes.
Vicky concentrated on Darlene’s bedroom. Like the rest of the apartment the closets and dressers were neat and carefully arranged. Even so, they were close to overflowing. The woman had owned twice the amount of clothes and shoes as Vicky herself.
In the top drawer of a small bedside table Vicky found a collection of sex toys and a plain white envelope that held what appeared to be five Viagra tablets. She pointed them out to Harry.
“No prescription bottle,” she noted. “Probably bought on the street, either by her boyfriend or maybe she bought them herself. There’s a regular black market on stolen E.D. pills.”
“A boyfriend’s not gonna leave them here, unless he’s a pretty regular boyfriend,” Harry said. “According to Juan there were plenty of guys, but nobody special.”
“So you think she bought them?”
“Just a guess. Maybe she wanted to make sure her lovers could handle seconds or thirds.”
Vicky gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look. “Guys can do that?”
“You’re a regular comic.”
“I try,” Vicky said, turning away to hide an impish grin that had broken through.
“There’s something even more interesting in the kitchen,” Harry said, causing her to turn back.
“What’s that?”
“Come and see.”
Vicky followed him into the small, galley-style kitchen.
Harry opened a drawer next to a battered gas range. Inside Vicky saw a collection of red paper matchbooks, each identical to the one they had found on the Brooker Creek hiking trail, each bearing the name The Peek-a-Boo Lounge.
“Looks like Darlene had a favorite bar,” Vicky said.
“Looks like,” Harry agreed.
Vicky studied the floor, then raised her eyes to Harry. “I told you I never met a single woman like her. You can put a big star next to that line. I guess we better check that place out tonight. And bring some pictures of her with us.”
The CSI team arrived just as Harry and Vicky finished their search and were preparing to hit the streets to interview neighbors. Martin LeBaron, the deputy sergeant who headed up the unit, collected Harry and Vicky’s shoe coverings and bagged them so they could be processed for any trace evidence they had picked up.
“So tell me what you found,” LeBaron said.
Reading from his case notebook, Harry gave him a detailed list.
“Matches from a tits-and-ass bar, huh,” LeBaron said. “I’ve driven by that joint. It’s the pits. That broad, she was a piece of work, wasn’t she?”
Harry ignored the comment and reminded LeBaron that he needed a complete workup on the apartment as quickly as possible.
“I know, I know,” LeBaron said. “I already got that be thorough, be fast crap from your captain, as well as some clown in the chief’s office.” LeBaron was tall and slender and somewhere in his forties, with unruly black hair, a large nose, and eyes that seemed perpetually tired. “You guys seem to think we’ll do a half-assed job if you don’t stay on top of us. I promise you that won’t happen.”
“It’s a big case,” Harry said.
LeBaron grinned at him. “Harry, all your cases are big cases, and every time you have one you tell me the same thing.” He looked at Vicky. “You his new partner?”
“I am,” Vicky said.
“God help you.” LeBaron laughed and waved a hand at them. “So go canvass the neighborhood and let me do my work.”
Like Juan, the building super, most of the neighbors seemed unmoved by news of Darlene’s death. One woman even expressed relief that she was “finally out of the neighborhood,” and several others said they had kept a close eye on who visited Darlene’s apartment. According to the neighbors there had been a steady stream of men, but no one visitor who seemed to come more than the others. There was also an older man and woman, who neighbors had assumed were Darlene’s parents. Several emphasized that none of the visitors had been children, with one woman flatly stating that she would have called the police “if anyone under eighteen had gotten within ten feet of her front door.”
At an apartment directly across the small green from Darlene’s unit, a man in his mid-to late-seventies confessed to keeping an even closer eye on his notorious neighbor.
“I watched her good,” he explained with a clear element of pride in his voice. His name was Joshua Brown and he was short and slender, almost frail, with a white beard masking his chocolate-colored face. He was the kind of witness that Harry both loved and hated-someone with enough time on his hands to watch what was going on very closely, but who also might not live long enough to testify at a trial.
Brown grinned and nodded his head as he spoke. “Whenever she had a visitor I took my dog Junie for a walk,” he explained. “So’s I’d get a better idea of what was goin’ on.”
Harry looked past the man and saw an ancient tan mongrel sleeping on the floor next to a battered leather recliner. The dog had not stirred when they rang the doorbell, or even opened its eyes while he and Vicky interviewed the man. Harry smiled to himself, thinking how the old man must have dragged the dog out the front door every time he felt the need to spy on Darlene Beckett.
“You think you could identify the men who visited Ms. Beckett?” Harry asked.
“Kin do better than that,” Brown said. “I kin give you a list of the license plates on their cars, and the dates I saw them parked in her driveway.”
Harry was seldom shocked by what came out of a neighborhood canvass, but this time he was. “Why did you keep a list like that?” he asked.
“Figured somebody might need it if they turned out to be a bunch of perverts like she was,” Brown said.
When the door closed, he turned to Vicky and shrugged. “That old man just saved us a day or two of work.”
Vicky nodded absently, and then shook her head.
“What?” Harry asked.
“I just realized what a fishbowl that woman was living in.” She watched Harry’s eyes harden.
“Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for her,” he said. “If she was living in a fishbowl, it was one she made for herself.”
Harry went back to their car with the list of tag numbers and dates that Joshua Brown had given him and called in the plates. Since Darlene’s garage was empty he also asked for information on any vehicle registered to a Darlene Beckett at the north Tampa address. A short time later he had a description and plate number for a green 2004 Ford Taurus registered to Darlene Beckett, along with the names, addresses, and dates of birth of the owners of the vehicles on Joshua Brown’s carefully compiled list. He then placed a second call and ordered a check of wants and warrants on each of those persons, as well as a rundown on any criminal histories. He asked for the same for the building super. With a little luck-meaning the state computers wouldn’t go down-they should have all the information he had requested by the end of their shift.
“Where to now?” Vicky asked. “The strip club?”
“First we check the street for Darlene’s Taurus, then the strip club,” Harry said.
Vicky paused a beat. “While we’re checking for the car, let’s drive around the neighborhood a little more? I’m not familiar with this part of Tampa and I’d like to be.”
“I’m familiar with it,” Harry said. “I lived a couple of streets away until I was ten years old.”
Vicky wondered if this was why he had seemed so tense while coming here. She decided now was the time to find out. “Show me,” she said.
Harry drove through the neighborhood, his mood suddenly distant; his body language setting up a shield between them. You’d make a lousy criminal, Harry Doyle, Vicky thought. Your emotions come off you like sweat.
Vicky studied the streets as they drove. It was a typical lower-middle-class neighborhood, each house, each apartment building in a varying state of repair, each announcing the degree of affluence of the people who lived within its walls. The main streets were much the same, a neat block adjacent to one where the sidewalks and gutters were littered with debris. There were lower-end shops and Mom-and-Pop stores, all announcing sales in their windows. There were fast-food chains and discount clothing and shoe stores, all still open late into the evening, racks of clothes and tables of shoes out on the sidewalks. Harry slowed as they passed a small evangelical church and Vicky looked across the front seat and saw that he was staring at it.
“Your church as a kid?” she asked.
“My mother’s church. She was always there for something.”
“She didn’t drag you along?”
She watched as Harry shook his head, saying nothing.
“You’re lucky. We were Greek Orthodox, and there was always something going on. My mother dragged me to everything. When I was a teenager it drove me nuts.” She laughed. “Now I don’t go at all. Probably the result of being dragged there so much.” She smiled at the memory. “So where did you live?”
She was still smiling when she looked back at Harry, but the smile died quickly when she saw the cold, hard look in his eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“What’s all this crap about wanting to see where I lived?” They were stopped at a light, and he was looking straight into her eyes. His voice was still soft, but so cold Vicky could almost feel the icy vapor rising from the words.
“Hey, it’s nothing special. I was just curious,” she said.
“You wanna see where the dead detective got his name, is that it?” Again, the ice in his voice almost made her shiver.
Vicky began to stammer. “Jesus, no… I mean… I didn’t know it had anything to do with that.”
“Alright, forget it,” Harry said. The light had turned green, and he turned his attention back to the road and drove. “Let’s get back to work and forget all the other crap.”
They drove in silence for almost ten minutes before Vicky spoke again. “Look, Harry, I didn’t know I was getting into your baggage back there. I’m sorry if I went someplace I shouldn’t have gone. We’ve all got baggage we don’t want to talk about.”
She could see his jaw tighten, and wondered if she had gone too far again.
“So what’s your baggage?” he said at length.
His words had a challenge in them, and she knew if they were going to have any success as partners she had to answer. She was sure Harry knew that too.
“A week from Saturday I was supposed to get married in that Greek Orthodox church I was telling you about.”
“So you decided not to.” Harry spoke the words dismissively.
Vicky paused. “No, I didn’t decide anything. He decided.”
Harry glanced at her, then back at the road. There had been a look of regret in his eyes and she realized that it was as much of an apology as anyone would ever get from Harry Doyle.
“Guy was obviously a jerk,” Harry said at length.
“Thanks,” Vicky said. “But I think he just realized that a cop who made a lousy girlfriend because she was never available, well, the chance of her becoming a good wife and mother down the road just wasn’t in the cards.”
Harry was quiet again, then said: “Maybe wives and mothers are overrated.”
There was another long pause and Vicky allowed it to draw out.
“The house back there, the one I grew up in,” Harry finally said. “My mother murdered my brother and me in that house.” He drew a long breath, almost as if he needed it to steady himself. “One morning she just decided we had to die. So she drugged our orange juice and dragged us into the garage. Then she laid us out, side-by-side, put small silver crosses on our foreheads, and covered our faces with hand towels. Then she started her car and left.” He shook his head. “She went to that church you saw.” He punctuated the sentence with a mocking breath. “Anyway, a neighbor heard the car running and called the cops. Two Tampa uniforms forced the garage door open and found us. We had both stopped breathing; no heartbeat; nothing. They worked on us anyway, and they were able to bring me back. But my brother was younger and smaller. They couldn’t help him.”
Now Vicky drew a long breath. “When was that?”
Harry kept his eyes on the road. “Twenty-one years ago. Twenty-one years ago today.”
“Where’s your mother now?”
Harry glanced at her briefly. “Central Florida Women’s Correctional Facility. She copped a plea to avoid the death penalty. She got life.”
And that’s where you were today, Vicky thought. On the anniversary of your brother’s murder. And that’s where you told that correctional officer you were going to take his Glock and shove it.
“Do you ever see her?” Vicky asked.
“Never have, never will. She writes to me once a year. Always makes sure it arrives on this date. There should be a letter waiting for me when I get home.” He turned and stared at her. “I don’t answer the letters.”
No, you just visit the prison and sit outside, she thought. “She have any shot at parole?”
“Not if I can help it,” Harry said.
They were quiet for several minutes. Then, as they pulled up at a stop light, Harry turned to her.
“Did you notice the look on Darlene’s face?” he asked. “The look of surprise that seemed to be changing into terror as she realized that her throat had been cut and she was going to die? Then how it froze, halfway between those two sensations, as she lost consciousness?”
Vicky nodded, unable to form any response.
“Well, I remember that. I remember lying on the garage floor, starting to wake up from the drug my mother had given me, but still too knocked out to pull myself together and get up. I remember seeing the exhaust fumes coming out of the back of her car; smelling them, but being too weak to force myself up so I could pull my brother and myself out of there. And then I remember the terror I felt when I knew I was going to die… how everything started to cloud up and fade away as I lost consciousness again. It was like my head was suddenly being filled with cotton.” He stared at Vicky for a long moment. “That’s how it was for Darlene. That’s how it is when you know you’re going to die and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
The light changed and they drove on in silence, Vicky thinking about what Harry had told her. She couldn’t even imagine what a heavy weight he carried around inside. But she did know it was heavy enough to be a problem in the case they were working. She also knew it was a concern she couldn’t voice, at least not yet. But there was no getting around the fact that Harry Doyle might be the wrong cop to be working the murder of a child-harming monster like Darlene Beckett.
The dark sedan stayed three car lengths back in the far right lane. Traffic was light so it was easy to maintain a safe, unobtrusive pace, to speed up whenever it was needed to make a light; then fall back and blend into the traffic again.
He had almost missed them. He had gotten tied up by things he couldn’t avoid, and it had taken longer than expected, and he had rushed out to Darlene’s apartment complex, assuming it would be one of the first places they would visit after finding her body. The local radio and television stations were full of the news; were already running special reports reliving every detail of her corrupt life, and he had no doubt the networks would soon pick up the story, if they hadn’t already done so. It was the only part of her murder that displeased him, giving her more of the notoriety that she had so clearly enjoyed. But that couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t dwell on that, had to force himself to ignore it. Now he had to concentrate on the detectives who were working the investigation. He had to know what they were doing so he could stay one step ahead. One of the news reports he had heard claimed the sheriff’s department had assigned one of its top homicide investigators to handle the case. Harry Doyle. Well, we’ll see, won’t we? We’ll just see just how good Harry Doyle is.
When the car carrying the two detectives made a turn on to Nebraska Avenue, he knew exactly where they were going. One point for you, Harry Doyle, he thought. You got here faster than I thought you would. Now we’ll see if you’re good enough to find anything. But I don’t think you will be. Oh, no. In fact, unless I’m very much mistaken, you won’t ever find what you’re looking for, not here, not now, not ever. You see, I’m very sure that all traces of the whore’s killer have already disappeared.
The Peek-a-Boo Lounge was located on Nebraska Avenue in an area dominated by street walkers and their pimps. It was a windowless white cinder-block building with a massive air conditioner hovering above a wooden front door that had been painted red. On each side of the door the name of the bar had been painted in large, block red letters along with the silhouette of a naked dancer. The only other decorative touches were the four scraggly cabbage palms that lined the adjacent crushed-shell parking lot. All in all it was a depressing sight and Harry and Vicky both knew it would be even more so in daylight.
Harry pulled the car into the parking lot, gathered up a photo of Darlene Beckett that they had taken from her apartment, and headed for the front door. Vicky hurried to catch up.
“You always in such a hurry to get into a place like this?” she asked his back.
“I lead a lonely life,” Harry said over his shoulder.
“Don’t we all.”
Harry pulled open the door and stepped aside. “Ladies first,” he said.
“You’re cute,” Vicky snapped back.
The interior of the Peek-a-Boo Lounge was as original as its name, a central stage with two fireman’s poles stretching from floor to ceiling, a battered collection of tables and chairs gathered before it, and a long bar off to one side. There were two dancers working the poles, each wearing only the briefest of thong underwear, the tops of which were stuffed with currency. The dancers glistened with sweat and the smell of that sweat and the sweat of those who had preceded them mixed with the odor of cigarettes, spilled booze, and stale beer, and seemed to permeate the room. The heavy beat of rap music pulsated from speakers set above the stage.
“Nice place,” Vicky offered. “I wonder if they do wedding receptions.”
It took a moment for their eyes to refocus as the door closed behind them. Except for the stage, which was engulfed in lights that presented a continuous change in color, the room was dimly lit and filled with a haze of cigarette smoke. Through that haze they could make out men sitting at the tables set before the stage. The men stared dully at the women who gyrated before them, occasionally luring one closer by extending a hand that held a folded bill. When the dancer reached the edge of the stage, squatted and rolled her hips to the beat of the music, the men would stuff the bill into the string of her thong.
There were men at the bar, filling half the stools, most turned toward the dancers, some just staring blindly into their drinks like drunks the world over. Harry moved toward the bar with Vicky at his side, stopping at the far end and raising his shield for the bartender when their eyes met.
The bartender, a thickly built thirty-something with a shaved head and one gold earring, gave a heavy sigh to let Harry know he wasn’t pleased to have cops in his bar, then moved slowly toward them.
“You need somethin’?” he asked.
Closer up Harry could make out part a barbed-wire tattoo that showed through the open collar of his shirt and appeared to encircle his neck. There were matching tattoos encircling each arm.
“I need you to look at a picture,” Harry said.
“I’m not too good with pictures,” the bartender replied in the raspy voice of a heavy smoker.
“What’s your name?” Harry asked.
“Name’s Jack.”
“Well, Jack, if you’re not good with pictures, it’s probably the lighting in this pisshole of a joint.” Harry made a show of looking around the room and squinting. “I think it might help if we took you someplace where the light is better.”
“I’m workin’,” Jack offered.
“Yeah, so are we,” Vicky said. “And guess whose work comes first.”
Jack turned his head away to demonstrate his disgust. “Show me your picture,” he said. “I’ll light a match if I need to.”
Harry handed him the photo of Darlene Beckett.
Jack looked at it and snorted. “This is who you wanted me to ID? Shit, that’s Darlene.”
“How do you know her?” Harry asked.
“I know her ’cause she’s here a couple times a week,” Jack said.
“She’s a regular?” Vicky asked.
“As regular as they get here. Hell, she was here last night.” Jack jerked his head toward the front entrance. “Her car’s still in the parking lot. I saw it there when I came to work.” He gave them an evil smile. “She musta got lucky and found somebody to take her home last night. Not that it would take much. I mean she’s a good-lookin’ broad.” He grinned again. “And, what the hell, she’s a fuckin’ celebrity, am I right?” The grin widened and returned to its distinctly evil quality. “I mean a real fuckin’ celebrity.”
Harry and Vicky ignored the comment.
“You ever take her home?” Harry asked.
Jack shook his head. “Never got that lucky.”
“You sure?” It was Vicky this time.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
How come you know what her car looks like?” Now it was Harry. They had Jack’s head swiveling between them as though he were watching a tennis match, and small beads of sweat had formed on his upper lip.
“Hey, I helped her get it started once, that’s all.”
“Just a good Samaritan, huh?” Vicky said. “Just the kind of a guy who offers to help when a lady finds herself in a tough spot, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Bullshit,” Harry snapped.
“Hey, what the fuck is goin’ on here? What’s this all about?”
“Who was Darlene with last night?” It was Vicky again. “Who was she talking to?”
“How the hell do I know? I mean she was a friendly broad. She sat here at the bar and talked to lots of people.”
Harry leaned in closer. “ You better talk to us, Jack. You better stop the shit, and talk to us.”
“Hey, look, I don’t want no trouble, alright? I don’t remember who she was talkin’ to, not what guys, anyway. I know she was talkin’ to Jasmine. She’s one of our dancers. Darlene likes to talk to the dancers. I always thought maybe she goes that way too.” He tried a knowing sneer; then gave it up when he saw it wasn’t working.
“Is Jasmine here?” Harry asked.
“Yeah. She’s in back.” He inclined his head toward a black velvet curtain between the stage and the bar. “She’s doin’ a private lap dance.”
“Get her,” Vicky ordered.
“Hey, that’s a fifty-buck gig for her. Maybe more, you know what I mean? She ain’t gonna be too happy I break it up.”
“Guess what, Jack? We’re not here to bring sunshine into your lives,” Vicky said.
“Get her,” Harry said. “Get her… now.” As Jack moved away Harry leaned in close to Vicky. “While we’re waiting, check the parking lot and make sure Darlene’s car is there.” He jotted down the plate number the DMV had given him and handed it to her. “If it’s the right car, call the CSI unit and tell them we have another job for them. Then give Tampa P.D. a call and tell them we need backup. At least four uniforms. When we get through with Jasmine we’re gonna shake this place down.”
Jasmine was dressed in her thong, a white see-through rayon beach robe, and a sour expression when she came to the bar a few minutes later.
“You just cost me money,” she snapped.
“Life is hard,” Harry said. He matched Jasmine’s stare. “Sit down,” he ordered.
Vicky returned from the parking lot just as Jasmine eased herself on to a stool. Harry moved to one side of her, Vicky to the other, effectively pinning her between them.
Harry glanced at Vicky. “You find it?”
Vicky nodded. “The team is on the way. So’s the backup.”
They both turned their attention to Jasmine.
“Now, you’re going to answer some questions,” Harry began. “And if I think you answered them straight you get to go back to work. If I don’t think you answered them straight that cute little butt of yours is going to be sitting in the back of a patrol car headed for the Pinellas County sheriff’s office. You got that?”
“I got it,” Jasmine said.
“Be sure you got it,” Vicky said. “Because if you screw with him, you’re gonna find out this policeman is not your friend.”
Jasmine raised her hands and let them fall back to her lap in a gesture of surrender. “Alright, alright. You ask, I’ll answer. I just wanna get back to work. It hasn’t been a very good week, okay?”
Jasmine was a beautiful woman, hard around the eyes and with far too much makeup, but someone who would be eye-catching if she cleaned herself up. She had a lean sensuous body, with full breasts and long shapely legs. Her hair was short and black, and her eyes were a vivid blue and seemed to jump out of a sharply defined face. She was also chewing gum with her mouth open, snapping and popping it with each movement of her jaw, which for Harry destroyed whatever sensual effect she hoped to achieve.
Harry showed her the picture of Darlene Beckett. “You know her?”
“Yeah, that’s Darlene. She was here last night.”
“What time did she get here, and what time did she leave?” Harry asked.
Jasmine shrugged, then seemed to think better of it. “When she comes, she usually gets here around nine and stays for about an hour. She has a curfew, you know… because of her… because of the trouble she had.”
“You know who she left with?” Vicky asked.
“No. I mean I can’t be sure. I was in the changing room when she left. But she was askin’ me about this one particular guy. Askin’ if I knew him, if I thought he was safe.”
“Did you know him?” Harry asked.
Jasmine shook her head. “I mean I saw him. He was young, kind of cute, not like most of the creeps we get in here. But I never met him or nothin’. But I got the impression from her that he’d been watching her.” She shrugged to confirm her uncertainty. “Darlene liked it when guys watched her.”
“Has he been in tonight?”
“No, I haven’t seen him tonight. In fact, I never saw him before, either.”
“Tell us about him,” Vicky said.
“Like what? I told you I never met him.”
“Start with what he looked like, how he was dressed,” Harry said.
“Well, like I said, he was cute. He had short hair, what I could see of it, ’cause he was wearin’ a cowboy hat, you know? But no beard or mustache. He just looked kinda clean, kinda neat.”
“What was he wearing with the hat?” Vicky asked.
“He was neat that way too. Nothin’ special. Just jeans with a big ol’ silver belt buckle and a T-shirt. But the clothes were good, expensive, you know, and real clean, like everything had just been washed and ironed.”
“What kind of shoes?”
“I dunno. I didn’t see his shoes.”
“Glasses, anything like that?”
Jasmine shook her head.
“What color was his hair, his eyes?”
“His hair, I guess it was brown, what I could see of it. I never saw his eyes.”
“How tall was he? How heavy?”
“I remember that he wasn’t a big guy, but he wasn’t short either, kind of just above average I guess. Maybe five-ten, five-eleven.” She shrugged.
“Weight?”
“He wasn’t fat, or real skinny, but I don’t remember him looking real strong. Just kind of normal, you know? Like medium, maybe a hundred and sixty, a hundred and seventy pounds. I’m not too good with weight on guys.”
“Do you know what kind of car he was driving?” Vicky asked.
Jasmine shook her head.
“Did Darlene leave with him?”
“I dunno. Like I said, she left when I was in the dressing room. But come to think of it, I didn’t see him when I came out. So she could have, I guess.”
“Did Darlene usually pick up guys when she came here?” Vicky asked.
Jasmine gave them another shrug. “Sometimes. I mean Darlene liked to have guys look at her, liked to know they liked what they saw, maybe wanted her, you know what I mean?” She let out a little laugh. “Like that would be a surprise. The guys who come here are all horny. Hell, that’s why they’re here, to look at the dancers. But I think Darlene liked to have them want her even more than they wanted the dancers, almost like it was some kind of competition-her against us-you know what I mean?”
“That’s a little sad,” Vicky said.
Jasmine looked at her, thinking about what she had said. “Yeah, it is.” She shook her head. “God, if I didn’t have to come here I wouldn’t walk through those doors. But I got a kid at home who likes to eat, and she’s got a bum for a father who never sends his support checks, so I’m here doing what I have to do.”
Harry wanted to tell her there were other jobs, jobs where her life wouldn’t be at risk, but knew it would be a waste of breath. An uneducated woman could never find a straight job where she could make the kind of money she could in a place like this. At least until her body gave out. “Somewhere down the road I’ll want you to look at some mug shots, maybe a lineup, so I need your full name and current address,” he said instead. “I also want you to give a description of this guy to a police artist. You willing to do that?”
Jasmine nodded.
“Is your real name Jasmine?” Vicky asked.
“No, my real name’s Anita Molari.”
“Pretty name,” Vicky said.
Jasmine looked at her as though she had said something strange. “You think so? I never liked it.”
When the Tampa P.D. backup arrived Harry ordered the bartender to kill the music and turn on all the lights, then to bring all the dancers out to the main room. When that was done, and as the backups moved in to block all exits, he announced who he was and explained that everyone in the room would have to submit to a police interview as part of an official investigation. He also assured them that the stage shows would resume as soon as they were finished. Groans filled the room, but no one attempted to leave.
The interviews with the patrons and dancers proved useless. All the men sitting at the tables and the bar insisted they had not been there the previous evening, and while several acknowledged having seen Darlene on earlier occasions, none remembered seeing her with any one particular individual. The dancers also provided little information, although most said they had talked with Darlene over the past few months, with several commenting that Darlene clearly had her eye out for good-looking men. Harry was certain some of the men had lied to him about being there the previous night, but there was little he could do about that. He took down names and addresses in case any further interviews proved necessary. He also planned to run criminal record checks on everyone present. Any hits would be followed up with a more intense interrogation.
“Well, it wasn’t a complete loss,” Vicky said as they returned to the parking lot. “We know where she was last night; we have a description of a man she may have left with; and we found her car. That’s a lot of pluses.”
“It’s a start,” Harry said as they headed toward Darlene’s 2004 green Taurus, which was now cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape and bathed in portable high-intensity light.
They stopped outside the tape and watched Martin LeBaron dust the passenger’s-side door. When he saw them he beckoned them inside the tape. “We finished with everything around the car,” he said. “In fact, when I finish with this door, we’ll have done everything we can here. I’ll be towing it back to the garage to finish up there.”
“You find anything?” Vicky asked.
“Nothing that jumps out at me,” LeBaron said. “Plenty of prints inside and out, just as you’d expect. We’ll have to run them; see what comes up.”
Vicky turned to Harry. “What now?”
“Now we go back to the office, write up what we found, and get our murder book started. I also want to go back to DMV and have them send us copies of the driver’s licenses of all the people whose cars we ran earlier. I want to see if any of them match up to the description of the guy Jasmine told us about. If any of the photos fit that description we’ll show them to Jasmine tomorrow, see if she can ID him.”
We gonna see everybody on that list?”
“That’s the drill.” He gave her an amused half smile. “You thought homicide was going to be all glamour, huh?”
Vicky shook her head. “No, I’ve been a cop too long to think that.”
It was three a.m. when Harry slipped his key in the front door of his two-bedroom beach house off Mandalay Avenue on Clearwater Beach. He had bought the house ten years earlier, well before Clearwater Beach property had gone through the roof. He had put himself in hock to the tune of $200,000, and now found himself the owner of a “beach shack” worth five or six times that. It wasn’t the house of course; it was the property, sitting as it did directly behind a small dune with a clear view of the Gulf of Mexico. For the past five years he had fended off realtors with ever-escalating offers-each one representing a buyer who wanted to tear down his beach shack and build some glass-and-stucco monstrosity like all the others that now lined the beach. Harry told them all that he planned to wait for the hurricane that would eventually level the house, and then decide whether to rebuild or sell the land and the pile of sticks that sat on it. He was certain the realtors left hoping the next hurricane season would get him.
The house was a simple one-story wood-frame dwelling with a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bath. It had a screened lanai off the living room facing the gulf, and a deck off the master bedroom that also overlooked the water. If he left the bedroom’s sliding glass doors open he could go to sleep each night to the sound of the waves rolling up on the beach. The house was his private bit of heaven, the one thing that kept him sane.
He had been thinking about Darlene Beckett’s mutilated face when he found the annual letter from his mother waiting in the mailbox. Just one more bit of EVIL to end his day with, he thought, as he collected it and tossed it, unopened, on a small side table just inside the front door. He kicked off his shoes, also leaving them near the front door as he always did, just under the longboard and helmet that hung on a rack behind the door. He used the board-a longer, more elegant version of a skateboard-as a form of exercise, racing along the sidewalks and streets early in the morning, or late at night, testing the tolerance of pedestrians whose comments often followed him down the street. He loved the board, loved the exercise it gave him, loved how it brought back memories of riding alongside his brother Jimmy, on the battered skateboards they had as kids, always together back then.
Harry cut three oranges in half, squeezed a glass of juice, and went out on the lanai. It was high tide and a light breeze coming in off the gulf sent a steady line of waves against the shore. He took a deep breath to let the ugliness of the day drain away. He knew it wouldn’t work, not today. Darlene Beckett was too fixed in his mind, the image of her lifeless body with its catlike Mardi Gras mask, the seedy strip club she had visited so regularly, all relentlessly coming back at him, all unreasonably mixed together with the letter that waited in the living room.
“Hi, Harry.”
He looked toward the screen door of the lanai and found Jeanie Walsh standing there.
“What are you doing up so late, or early, or whatever?” he asked.
“Couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk on the beach.”
“Dangerous,” he said. “I’ve told you that before.”
“I know. Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
Jeanie entered and took a seat next to him, facing the water. She was a few years younger than Harry, five-five and slightly underweight, but in a pleasing sort of way, with short, curly blond hair and very soft, very gentle brown eyes. He had met her early one morning while he was terrorizing the neighborhood on his longboard. He had come around a corner far too fast, startling her and causing her to drop a container of coffee she had just purchased. He had apologized, walked her back to the coffee shop and bought her another. Within fifteen minutes they had become friends.
Jeanie lived in the blot-out-the-sun condo next to Harry’s house. She was a stockbroker, financially secure, recently separated, and lonely. Within a week they had become casual lovers, a matter of comfort and convenience for each of them-Harry who wanted no emotional commitment in his life, and Jeanie who was still in love with her long gone husband, even though he was addicted to sweet young things and had cheated on her repeatedly while they were together.
“So why the solo beach walk? Just trying to tempt the homeless psychos who sleep there at night?”
Jeanie leaned her head back, turned her face toward him, and smiled. Harry thought it was a beautiful smile.
“Just brooding about my soon-to-be ex-husband.” The smile faded and she looked back toward the water. “It’s like I told you when we first met. I’m just a born sucker.”
“So stop,” Harry said. “Look, maybe you’ll get lucky, or unlucky, or whatever, and that clown will wake up some morning and realize what a great lady you are. Maybe he never will. But in the meantime you’re still a great lady. Enjoy being one. You’re part of a rare and exclusive breed.”
“Not so rare, Harry. You just don’t trust women.”
“I don’t trust men either. Kids, well, they’re so, so.”
Jeanie laughed. “If people ever find out what a softie you really are, you’re going to have a hard time selling yourself as a big, bad detective.”
“So don’t tell anybody.”
“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
They sat quietly for several minutes; then Jeanie reached out and took his hand. “Can I stay here with you, Harry? I don’t want to be alone for the rest of the night. I don’t want anything. I really couldn’t handle anything. I just want to climb into your bed and lie next to you.”
“Sure. I’d like that.” Harry thought about the letter from his mother that awaited him in the living room, and he thought about Darlene Beckett and what awaited him there. He squeezed Jeanie’s hand, turned to her, and nodded. “I don’t really want to be alone either,” he said.