“Where at?”
He gave an address. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
Ten minutes later, they pulled up in front of a foliage-clotted front yard on Hibuscus, behind which stood a two-story flat-roofed house built in the old Grove style, crumbling tan stucco over Dade County pine. A patrol car was parked there, its bubble-gum lights making weird patterns against the overhanging trees. As they left their car, an ambo from Jackson arrived, adding its own crimson flickerings to the scene. The young patrolman looked pale as he led them back to the yard.
The baby, a female, was lying in the center of several blood-soaked sheets of the Miami Herald, yesterday’s edition, the sports pages. The top of its skull was placed neatly to one side, just above the shoulder, and the excised brain was on the other side. Early flies had taken an interest and there was at least one palmetto bug rooting around in the empty skull. Barlow spoke gently to the patrolman and sent him back to secure the street entrance to the yard. The crime-scene people arrived. Shortly thereafter, Echiverra from the M.E. showed up.
Barlow said, “The owner and her family’s in the house. I’ll go talk to them. Woman named Dolores Tuoey lives in the garage apartment with her kid. Why don’t you take charge out here, talk to the garage lady, see if anything strikes you funny.”
“Like what, a clue?” snapped Paz.
“Hey, this is a break for us here, son,” said Barlow.
“How do you figure that? Because he didn’t kill the mayor too?”
“No, because he changed a successful pattern. He had us foxed six ways to Sunday the way he was going. We’re stumped, right? So why’d he change it? Why move the baby? Why’d he leave it here, of all places, and not a Dumpster or the bay? Think about it.” He walked away. Paz spoke to the crime-scene captain and to Echiverra, both of whom looked tense and frightened. There was no graveyard humor.
Paz walked around the yard, trying to keep his vision clear. The back and the north side of the yard were blocked off by high hedges of croton, allamander, and hibiscus, whose pink flowers were just responding to the oncoming day. Besides the large mango, heavy with fruit, a guava, a key lime, and a lemon tree also stood in the yard, perfuming the neighboring air. The lawn beneath them was rough and patchy but neatly clipped.
A stir among the crime-scene people; they had found a liftable footprint on one of the patches of bare earth near the mango. Paz went and took a look. A nice print, the herringbone pattern of a good boat shoe. Paz showed polite interest, and strolled over to the garage that nearly closed off the third side of the yard.
Paz looked up at the garage apartment. For an instant he saw a face at the window, then nothing. He walked away and then back again, slowly. He was not looking for anything physical now; the crime-scene people would pick up all that sort of thing, like the footprint, for whatever good it would do. He was thinking about what Barlow had just said. This was not a random dump. This was a message, important enough to the perp for him to risk carrying absolute for-sure death-penalty evidence around with him (on a bicycle!) between the Milano and Coconut Grove, with every cop in the city having no other thought but to grab his ass. He snapped another look at the window of the garage apartment. Again, nothing.
Paz felt strange now. People were moving around him, talking, doing their technical tasks, but he felt as if they were wraiths, that he was the only real person in the yard. The colors of the flowers, of the brightening sky seemed more vivid than usual; he looked up. The clouds overhead were boiling, as they are shown to do in horror movies. Then things moved back in the direction of bland normality, without quite arriving. There was something about this place, this instant; he searched for a word one of his women had used … nexus? It all came together here, in this scruffy yard, not just the case, but in a way he could not begin to explain, his whole life. He walked up the stairs to the garage apartment. He knocked on the door.
TWENTY-FIVE
Aknock at my door. I am busy stashing my Mauser, my journal, and the jar of Olo witch sauce back in my box. It’s funny that through all this, my absurd hegira, I have never thought about avoiding the police. Because I haven’t done anything wrong, except maybe sink my father’s boat, and use some bad paper. And kill Luz’s mom, I always forget that one, because I can’t feel it was very wrong to defend myself and Luz. Ifa cut her line and used me as his instrument. But clearly my husband wants the police involved with me, or he wouldn’t have decorated Polly’s garden with his latest victim. A test? Does he want to see if I will rat him out? Does it matter to him?
A brief check in the mirror to insure as much invisibility as I can muster. The blinds are drawn, the light in my kitchen is out, my spectacles are on, my pathetic bangs are in place. I open the door, and my knees almost fail to hold me up. I must clutch at the doorpost. For an instant, I think I’m back in a dream, that my husband is standing in front of me with a police badge stuck, as a little joke, in the pocket of his sports jacket. He says, “Detective Paz, ma’am, Miami PD. Could I …” His face registers concern and he adds, “Excuse me, are you all right?”
But an instant later I see that it isn’t him. The structure of the face is different, with higher cheekbones and a lower hairline; he’s solider, too, with more muscle in the shoulders and neck; his eyes are yellow-brown, not hazel- gray, like Witt’s. And that jacket, no, Witt didn’t care about nice clothes, this all flashed through my mind while some ogga in there yells, “Asshole! He could show up in the dress uniform of the Grenadier fucking Guards?it’s a dream!”
But I back away and let him in, saying, “No, it’s … in the yard … horrible. Will they … take it away soon? I don’t want my daughter …”
I sit in one of my two chairs. He’s staring at me. “Yes, ma’am, the M.E.’s here now. It’ll all be gone in ten minutes or so.” He sits across the table. He brings out a notebook and mechanical pencil. I drop my head and work on getting my ki out of my throat and down where it belongs.
“You’re, um, Dolores Tuoey?” I confess that I am. I am finding it hard to meet his eyes. “Ms. Tuoey,” he says, “did you see or hear anything unusual last night, anything at all?”
“No, not really,” I say. “Jake?that’s Polly’s dog?woke me up. Then I heard Polly come out, to shut him up. We have raccoons and possums and sometimes he barks at them, and I heard her yell, and I went out to see what it was. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”
“Okay, I assume you realize what you got out there in the yard …”
“Yes, it’s a dead newborn. I used to be a nurse-midwife.”
“Really? I meant do you know who did it?”
“No! How could I …” Protesting too much here. I focus on the next breath. The next.
“I mean you know we’re looking for a serial killer who attacks pregnant women. It’s in all the papers and the TV?”
“Oh, right, of course. Yes. And this is one of his. Yes.”
“Right. Now, can you think of any reason why our perpetrator would choose this particular yard to leave this dead baby? A man, maybe. Anyone you know, anyone you’ve seen hanging around?”
I am forming a neutral answer when little pounding feet sound above, and on the ladder, and Luz jets into the room in her nightgown. We both look at her and she stops dead when she sees the detective, and runs to me and hides her face against my side. I put my faithless arm around her.
The detective says, “This must be your daughter?”
“Yes. Luz, honey, say hi to Detective Paz.” More burrowing; a snatched peek. “She’s shy.”
“Yes. She’s real pretty, though.” He looks from me to her. I can see him thinking about Gregor Mendel and his rules of heredity and I wish I had learned to do chint’chotune, the thought spells that make people forget, or recall things that did not occur. No, I don’t wish that. I wish I were far away with Luz.
He puts away his notebook, slides a business card across the table, and says, “Here’s my card, ma’am. I’ll be by to check with you later. A lot of times we find that even though people don’t recall things right after a shocking event, they’ll come around in a couple of days, something will just pop into their heads. And if you do think of anything like that, please call me anytime, day or night. This guy, well, he seems to be very hard to catch. And he’s going to do it again, unless we can stop him. Another woman, another baby, the families …”
I say, too quickly, “I wish I could help, but really, I didn’t see or hear anything.” Now I see something cold pass into his eyes. I can’t look at him. He says, “Forgive me for asking, but you said you were a nurse-midwife. Where was that? Where you practiced.”
