“Sir, I’d like to be part of the pursuit. I feel fine.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” The lieutenant softened the command with a fraternal chuckle. “Hell, Jimbo, we’re just gettin’ started.”
He handed the trooper a stack of forms and a pen.
The body of Tony Torres inevitably became a subject of interest to a newspaper reporter working on hurricane-related casualties. The autopsy report did not use the term “crucifixion,” but the silhouette diagram of puncture wounds told the whole grisly story. To avert embarrassing publicity, the police made a hasty effort to reignite the investigation, dormant since the aborted phone call from a woman claiming to be the dead man’s widow. Within a day, a veteran homicide detective named Brickhouse was able to turn up a recent address for the murdered Tony Torres. This was done by tracing the victim’s Carrier wristwatch to a Bal Harbour jeweler, who remembered Tony as an overbearing jerk, and kept detailed receipts of the transaction in anticipation of future disputes. The jeweler was not crestfallen at the news of Senor Torres’s demise, and graciously gave the detective the address he sought. While the police department’s Public Information division stalled the newspaper reporter, Brickhouse drove down to the address in Turtle Meadow.
There hefound an abandoned hurricane house with a late-model Chevrolet and a clunker Oldsmobile parked in front. The Chevy’s license plate had been removed, but the VIN number came back to Antonio Rodrigo Guevara-Torres, the victim. The tag on the rusty Olds was registered to one Lester Maddox Parsons. Brick-house radioed for a criminal history, which might or might not be ready when he got back to the office in the morning; the hurricane had unleashed electronic gremlins inside the computers.
The detective’s natural impulse was to enter the house, which would have been fairly easy in the absence of doors. The problem wasn’t so much that Brickhouse didn’t have a warrant; it was the old man next door, watching curiously from the timber shell of his front porch. He would be the defense lawyer’s first witness at a suppression hearing, if an unlawful search of the victim’s residence turned up evidence.
So Brickhouse stayed in the yard, peeking through broken windows and busted doorways. He noted a gas-powered generator in the garage, wine and flowers in the dining room, a woman’s purse, half-melted candles, an Igloo cooler positioned next to a BarcaLounger- definitive signs of post-hurricane habitation. Everything else was standard storm debris. Brickhouse saw no obvious bloodstains, which fit his original theory that the mobile-home salesman had been taken elsewhere to be crucified.
The detective strolled over to chat with the snoopy neighbor, who gave his name as Leonel Varga. He told a jumbled but colorful yarn about sinister-looking visitors, mysterious leggy women and insufferable barking dogs. Brickhouse took notes courteously. Varga said Mr and Mrs Torres were separated, although she’d recently phoned to say she was coming home.
“But it’s a secret,” he added.
“You bet,” Brickhouse said. Before knocking off for the evening, he tacked his card to the doorjamb at 15600 Calusa.
That’s where Neria Torres found it at dawn.
Matthew’s pickup truck had followed her all the way from Fort Drum to the house at Turtle Meadow. The seven Tennesseeans swarmed the battered building in orgiastic wonderment at the employment opportunity that God had wrought. Matthew dramatically announced they should commence repairs immediately.
Neria said, “Not just yet. You help me find my husband, then I’ll let you do some work on the house.”
“I guess, sure. Where’s he at?”
“First I’ve got to make some calls.”
“Sure,” Matthew said. “Meantime we should get a jump on things.” He asked Neria’s permission to borrow some tools from the garage.
“Just hold on,” she told him.
But they were already ascending the roof and rafters, like a troop of hairless chimpanzees. Neria let it go. The sight of the place disturbed her more than she had anticipated. She’d seen the hurricane destruction on CNN, but standing ankle-deep in it was different; overwhelming, if the debris once was your home. The sight of her mildewed wedding pictures in the wreckage brought a sentimental pang, but it was quickly deadened