Chapter Twenty-eight
Jack could smell the rain approaching. He was standing outside Club Inversion on the onlookers’ side of the yellow line of police tape. A breeze kicked up and blew Neil’s hat off. Jack picked it up.
“Investigators better hurry,” said Neil. “Gonna rain.”
The downpour in Coconut Grove was definitely headed their way. Maybe it was all the cops around, but Jack was reminded of the time Vince Paulo had shown him how the smells that warned of rain in Miami were as poignant as the sight of thunderclouds over the Everglades. Jack closed his eyes, breathing in the hint of rain-and trying to comprehend the turn of events. But when he opened his eyes, the Miami-Dade Police and Miami Beach Police perimeter control were still on the scene. Investigators were still combing over the vehicle that had given up Jamal’s foot and ankle bracelet. A media van was even pulling up. It was all real.
It wasn’t a dream.
Neil got the attention of a Miami-Dade officer on the other side of the tape, a woman in uniform. “Hey, can you find Detective Burton?”
Burton was the homicide detective handling the Lincoln Road Mall investigation. Obviously Miami-Dade PD had picked up on a possible connection between the two deaths and called out Burton.
“I’m sure the detective is busy,” said the cop.
“I spoke to him on the phone,” said Neil. “He told me that he would meet us here.”
“Who are you?” she said.
Neil told her, and the words made Jack feel as if the world had been turned upside down: “We’re the lawyers for the victim.”
The victim.
He and Neil exchanged glances, as if they were feeling the same sense of flip-flop and disconnect.
“I’ll see if he’s here,” the cop told them.
Jack’s gaze swung back toward the rental car. It was parked at the curb on the other side of the four-lane street. Traffic was light at this hour on a Sunday, but perimeter control wouldn’t let Jack close enough to see exactly what the investigators were doing. Blood samples were definitely being collected from the trunk.
“What do you think happened?” asked Neil.
“I sure as hell don’t think he ran,” said Jack.
“Trapped animals do it,” said Neil. “They’ll chew off their own feet to get free.”
“He’s not a mink.”
Jack felt the first raindrop. He looked up to the sky, which was growing darker by the minute. The investigators moved faster, kicking into another gear to beat the weather.
“Do you think he’s alive?” asked Neil.
“Not if he didn’t get medical attention.”
“That was one of the first things I asked Detective Burton. Unfortunately, not a single emergency room in the county treated that kind of injury last night.”
“The loss of blood has to be tremendous.”
“But not necessarily fatal,” said Neil.
“Are you a doctor, or do you just play one on TV?”
“A few years ago I took my daughter hiking in New Mexico to a place called Sky City. It’s what the Spaniards thought was the Seven Cities of Gold. Our guide told us that when they enslaved the local Indians, each adult male had a foot severed to keep him from running. I can’t imagine they rushed to the emergency room in the sixteenth century.”
It was an interesting story, but Jack was staying with his gut instinct. “Somebody killed him.”
“Why?” asked Neil.
“Clearly, it was someone who didn’t want the body to be recovered. Otherwise, they would have just put a bullet in his head and let the police find him still attached to the ankle bracelet.”
“That makes no sense,” said Neil. “Why leave a foot behind that allows for a positive identification, but take the body?”
Jack thought about it. “It only makes sense if they needed to keep him alive for a while. If you cut these Omnilink bracelets, an alarm goes off. Cops would have immediately come looking. Whoever did this needed to take him someplace alive and took extreme measures to make sure the police wouldn’t track them down.”
“Take him why?”
“So that they could get something out of him.”
Neil seemed to catch his drift. “Torture and interrogate?”
“You got it,” said Jack. “Maybe pick up where they left off in that secret detention facility in Prague. Get the information they couldn’t get out of him three years ago.”
“And then what?”
“This time they kill him,” said Jack. “Just like they killed McKenna.”
“Shit,” said Neil. “With that kind of follow-up interrogation, it’s no wonder the CIA doesn’t want to talk about that secret site.”
“Be careful with that,” said Jack. “We’re pretty sure it’s not a CIA site.”
“Okay, a secret site operated by a private security firm that was hired by the Department of Defense.”
“I’m even having my doubts about that. A severed foot. What does that remind you of?”
It took a few moments, but Neil had a thought. “That serial killer in Canada. Remember all those severed feet in sneakers that kept washing up on the beaches of the Georgia Straits in British Columbia?”
Jack hadn’t even thought about that, but Neil had defended several serial killers over the years, so it was no wonder that his mind had gone there.
“I was thinking more along the lines of organized crime,” said Jack.
“That was a severed horse head in The Godfather, not a foot.”
“I’m talking real life. It was the discovery of a severed foot in a vacant lot that finally unraveled the mystery of how Joseph Massino got rid of three captains in one night to become the undisputed boss of the Bonanno crime family.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s one of the FBI’s proudest moments. You keep forgetting I’m engaged to an undercover agent.”
“Mr. Goderich?” the Miami-Dade detective said.
Detective Burton surprised them, having approached from behind. Jack felt a few more raindrops as they shook hands, and it was now falling steadily enough for droplets to bead on Burton’s clean-shaven head.
“Any news?” asked Neil.
“Only bad, I’m afraid,” said Burton. “We found the body.”
Jack knew it was coming, but the news still hit him like a punch to the gut. “Where?”
“Everglades National Park. Near a canoe launch.”
It was like another body blow, but Jack kept his reaction to himself.
“I’m headed there now,” said Burton. “I’ll keep you posted.”
Jack watched as the detective ducked under the yellow tape and walked toward his car. The rain was coming hard enough to trigger a few umbrellas. Investigators were scrambling to protect the scene with sheets of plastic.
“We should go, too,” said Neil.
“Didn’t you hear the location of the body?” said Jack.
“Of course. I was standing right here.”
“Everglades National Park near a canoe launch. That’s the same place they found Shada Mays’ car after she disappeared.”
“Wow, that’s interesting.”
“It’s more than interesting,” said Jack, and he was speaking his thoughts as quickly as they came to him. “Police suspected that Shada was tracking her daughter’s killer when she vanished. Supposedly, Shada had some e-mail or other communications with him over the Internet. The cops’ theory was that the killer was Jamal, and when Shada pushed too hard to get him to turn himself in, Jamal killed her, dumped her body in the Everglades, and tried to made it look like a suicide.”
