“ Marilee, would you tell us now, in your own words, what happened the night of the fourteenth of May when you said you encountered a man who abducted, raped and choked you?”
“ He was the Night Crawler. One I’ve read ‘bout, butatta time, no one… give him a name. He near’t kilt me; it’s a miracle I’m still alive.”
Her lines sounded practiced, Jessica thought, and her voice was sounding more normal as the interview progressed. With Jake hovering nearby, Jessica didn’t doubt Marilee had had plenty of practice. Maybe this was a wild- goose chase. Jessica next asked, “He picked you up at a bar in South Miami?”
“ Tollee’s… I was working nearby.”
Jessica had information that she was hooking nearby and had sat down at the riverside bar to rest her feet and have a beer. “You went to the bar and had a beer, and then what happened?’’
“ He seemed nice; real polite.” She had to speak at an excruciatingly slow pace, each word painful. “Thought he must have money; he was well-dressed, you know, so when he offered to take me river-riding, why, hell… I said, why not? So I went with him.”
“ Did you ever tell the police this?”
“ Sure I did, but they didn’t any of them want to hear it, not from me… not at the time.” Jessica realized why. The girl had been found naked, swimming in from the sea. Police at the time quickly determined that she was new to the area, an “out-of-town prostitute” with an arrest record. Detective Mark Samernow took her “story” of innocence and filed it away and forgot about it. It explained Samernow’s sourness from day one. He’d had information relative to the case but hadn’t recognized it at the time. He knew later, long after losing Marilee’s trail, that he’d had an eyewitness and that he’d let her go. But Marilee was among the first whom the killer had taken in Samernow’s jurisdiction. Samernow, having a daughter of like age and appearance, was likely sickened and disgusted by Marilee and wanted to be shed of her as quickly and efficiently as the system allowed, and so it went.
“ Go on, tell us what happened,” encouraged Quincey, whose size made the walls here bulge.
She got up, paced to the door leading to the bedroom; she closed it on the children. “Don’t want them to hear this. Told it all to Uncle Jake.”
The man was her senior by perhaps twenty-five or thirty years, and Jessica realized that Marilee had literally turned herself over to him for a roof over her head, and food to eat. “Go on,” Jessica gently repeated.
She told of her seduction in broad strokes, embarrased still before Uncle Jake. Jessica kept interrupting, asking questions, searching for specifics. ‘ ‘What exactly did he say to you? What promises did he make?”
“ Promised to take me all around in his boat.”
“ All around where?”
“ Everyplace.” A bit exasperated with the girl, Jessica again asked, “Around the harbor, around Miami, the state?”
“ Said he’d take me to places I never heard of before.”
“ What places? Do you remember any of the names?”
“ Carmen islands, I think he said, or maybe Caramel or Caravel?”
“ Cozumel, maybe?”
“ No… not that. Someplace in the Caribbean, he said.”
Jessica didn’t want to lead her, but she wanted the girl to corroborate what their other witness, Judy Templar, had said about the Cayman Islands, but Marilee simply could not recall the exact name on her own.
“ Go on,” Jessica gently nudged her on.
Marilee described how the romantic moment turned sour in a sudden blink; she told of his brutality toward her, his repeatedly choking her and how ferociously she had fought back. She told of waking up in the cabin of his boat and pretending she was not yet conscious, and how she could not swallow. She knew instantly that he was dangerous, and that she had been choked near to death more than once by him. A clock on the wall told her that hours had passed.
“ Where did this happen?”
“ On the river.”
“ Just offshore?”
“ Yeah, he never lef sight-a land. Houses, beautiful hotels not two hunerd yards from the boat.” Her hoarse voice caught, snarled on every syllable in the river of her speech. She sounded like a stuttering computer.
“ What else did you see in his cabin?”
“ Nothin’ much… the usual stuff. A bed, a dinin’ area, but I was flat on my back on the floor, without… without no clothes on. He’d torn off my clothes, had raped me and beat me and choked me. I thought he was through with me then, that he thought I were dead, you know? I thought he was sittin’ there wondering what to do with my body by then, but I was wrong.”
“ What do you mean?”
“ He… he had me come to; poured water-damned cold water, salty water from the river-down on me to bring me round.”
Jessica and Quince both knew that the Intracoastal river fronting Miami, as in most areas of the Intracoastal, linked as it was with the sea, was, during high tide in particular, a salty environ.
Jessica put her hand on Marilee’s and gently pressed. “And then?”
She was crying softly now. “I… I…” The stammer, the tears and her now naturally hoarse voice conspired to outwit the tape. “I was choked.”
“ Choked by hand?”
“ Again, yes. He brought me around so he could do it again-even said so. Said I pleased him; said it-killing me over slowlike-it pleased him. Said he liked how I fought.”
“ Then you held a conversation with him?”
“ I pleaded with him, but it only made him wilder.”
“ What kind of voice did he have?” Jessica asked.
“ Mild, pleasant… never above a whisper… as pleasant as pie. All in a pretty accent. English, I think.”
“ How did you escape?” asked Quincey.
“ Second time I came around; it was nearly dawn then, but he was up on deck, tending to something or other there. I… I got up all my nerve and slipped up on deck. My hands were tied with rope, and he had a noose around my neck-a hangman’s noose! I knew if he found me alive again, this time he’d kill me sure. So, I just got out of there. I got up to the top and… and… I ran like a banshee, screaming, and hit the water.”
“ With your hands tied?” asked Jessica.
“ No, no… I found a knife… on the counter, cut the rope ‘n’ got outta there soon as I… I snatched off the noose. But I didn’t have no clothes. Swum ashore stark naked… run up to a house and begged help. Thank God they didn’t turn me away. They give me a blanket and called 911.”
“ He didn’t pursue you?”
“ Sure he did, but by time he’d turned the boat, I was long gone.”
“ Marilee’s as strong a swimmer as ever I seen in a woman,” added Uncle Jake. “Then when you awoke, the motor was chugging?” asked Quincey. “He was taking the boat out of the Intra- coastal? What kind of boat was it? Was there anything special you recall about the boat?”
“ Big is all I know… and no, I don’t know where he was taking it, but we were moving, yes.”
“ Tell me, Marilee, and think hard now,” began Jessica, “when you were in the man’s cabin, did you see anything-anything-the slightest bit out of the ordinary?”
“ What do you mean?”
Jessica tried another tack, asking, “Can you tell me if you saw anything that might tell us something about this monster or his habits? What did you see lying around that cabin, on the bed, on the countertops?”
“ Place was full of instruments.”
“ Instruments?”
“ Computer stuff. A lot of blippin’ and mechanical stuff.”
“ State of the art, would you say?”
“ It was… seemed so, yes.”
“ Anything else catch your eye?” pressed Jessica.
“ Besides the knife? I thoughta using it on him. But jumpin’ for shore seemed the wisest choice I had.”
