Don't Even Breathe Page 15

  Maggie balked. “What I’m like?” She made a face, waiting for him to expand. She saw the struggle in his eyes, knowing that he wouldn’t back up his claim.

  He blinked at her through his alcoholic haze, clearly unable to find any words that wouldn’t inflame. “Just come back inside,” he said at last.

  “No.”

  “I made ice cream.”

  She frowned. “You made ice cream?”

  “Hey, don’t sound so skeptical. I got skills.”

  “What flavor?”

  “Double chocolate pecan. Admittedly, a calorific calamity. But something to behold. Come on, Novak. You know you’re tempted.”

  “I know I need to see Dana’s car, and it can’t wait till Tuesday. You coming with?”

  “Yes. But . . . I’m just a teensy bit on the tipsy side of sober right now.”

  Maggie smirked. “Get over yourself, Loomis. You’ve had two glasses of wine. You must be the only cop from New York who can’t hold his liquor.”

  “What can I say? I’m sensitive.”

  She waggled her fingers. “Come on. Give me your keys.”

  “You’ve been drinking, too.”

  “Cast-iron constitution from my dad’s side. I’m fine. Come on. Hand them over.”

  He dug the keys out of his pocket. “Okay,” he said. “You drive the minivan. But on one condition. No speeding. This isn’t your Mustang.”

  “Relax,” she said, popping the locks. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Maggie drove Loomis’s minivan west toward Apopka with her foot all the way down on the gas, only easing up for slower traffic and the occasional red light.

  Loomis sat in the passenger seat, holding on tight, offering driving tips and moaning about insurance premiums.

  According to dispatch, Dana’s white Chevrolet Cruze had been abandoned on a secluded service road near Lake Apopka, in an area of district-owned conservation land hugging the eastern shoreline. The location was a five-minute drive from Paradise Heights, lying within walking distance of the Cullen family home.

  Between complaining about Maggie’s driving, Loomis attempted to get her to open up about her feelings regarding Rita. But she told him she didn’t want to discuss it, not just yet.

  “I’ll just keep hounding you until you cave,” he said.

  “You should know by now that I never give in.”

  “Like a dog with a bone. I know. Be your undoing, Novak.”

  “Maybe.”

  They left the highway at the signpost for Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive and followed Lust Road as it sloped downhill a quarter mile before slipping under the Maitland Boulevard overpass. Woodland stretching away on either side. Apart from a distant sparkle of red and blue up ahead, no other lights were visible anywhere.

  “Ideal place to dump a vehicle,” Loomis commented dourly as he gazed out at the darkness on either side. “And only a stone’s throw from civilization. You ever been out this way before, Novak?”

  “Not for a long while.”

  In fact, it seemed like a lifetime ago. So much had changed in the meantime, but not everything.

  “This road runs straight as a die for another mile or so,” she said. “Right to the shoreline. When I was young, we rode horses through here in the summertime.”

  “Privileged upbringing.”

  She glanced at him. “They don’t have horses in New York?”

  “Only at the racetrack and the police stables. You don’t get to ride them.”

  After New York, Florida must seem like an alien world to Loomis, she thought, and with more strange wildlife than you could shake a stick at.

  The road widened after a few hundred yards, forming a disc-shaped turnaround spot for vehicles at the entranceway to Wildlife Drive. A sheriff’s cruiser sat at an angle in the center, its roof lights flashing and its headlights partly illuminating a large metal gate closing off the road ahead, and a big white visitor information board fixed to the aluminum bars.

  Maggie tucked the minivan behind the cruiser, and a familiar face greeted them as they climbed out.

  “Well, if it isn’t Deputy Ramos,” Loomis said as he approached them. “What are the chances?”

  “My patch. My shift. Pretty good, I guess.” He nodded greetings at Loomis, but his gaze was on Maggie.

  “Show us what you’ve got,” she said.

  “All right. This way.”

  Ramos walked them around to the front of his cruiser, to where its powerful headlights lit up a burned-out vehicle standing in a rusty puddle on the rim of the turnaround. Oil and burned paint flakes floating on the murky water. Maggie took out her phone and snapped a picture.

  “No one mentioned the vehicle had been torched,” Loomis said with a note of disappointment. “Who found it?”

  The deputy pointed off to one side. “There’s a fruit farm a little ways back. You don’t notice it in the dark. The owner picked up on the smoke around eight o’clock and came out here to investigate. When she saw it was a vehicle on fire, she called nine-one-one.”

  Maggie glanced at her watch. “That was over two hours ago.” She took another flash-lit photo, then one of the closed gate and the noticeboard.

  “Firefighters from Apopka FD arrived within minutes,” Ramos explained. “But the connection with your homicide wasn’t made right away. I was attending to a neighbor dispute when the report came in. Dispatch logged it as a possible stolen vehicle. I got here about an hour ago. Of course, I was aware of the BOLO you guys put out earlier. So I checked the tags. Sure enough, that’s when I realized it was your victim’s car.”

  “Nice work, Deputy.”

  A smile brightened up his face. “Well, I appreciate it, ma’am. Means a lot coming from you.”

  “I’ll get the stuff,” Loomis told Maggie, rolling his eyes as he walked away.

  “My partner is feeling a little off-center right now,” Maggie explained as she saw the deputy’s puzzlement. “Just ignore him. I do.” She nodded at the closed gate. “The noticeboard over there. It says the drive is open Friday through Sunday.”

  Ramos directed his flashlight at the visitor information, revealing black text on a white background. “That’s right. And closes an hour before sunset.”

  “Which means it was open to visitor traffic till around five thirty today, right?”

  “Right.” His gaze came back to hers. “The killer dumped the car after sunset. Otherwise, visitors would’ve seen it earlier and called it in.”

  “Exactly what I’m thinking. Plus, as you can see, there’s a serious lack of street lighting around here. It’s pitch black after the sun goes down.” Maggie retreated a few paces so that she could see back along the length of the service road. “Even better, this spot is secluded from the highway. No direct line of sight. It’s completely hidden.”

  “The killer knew about this location beforehand. He could be from the neighborhood.”

  Loomis returned with flashlights and two pairs of plastic overshoes and gloves. He handed Maggie her share. “You got sights on being a detective?” he asked Ramos as they put them on.

  Ramos’s smile was self-explanatory, showing teeth. “Yes, sir. Someday. Soon, hopefully.”

  “You put in for the exam yet?”

  “Matter of fact, a couple of weeks back. I know I’m young and relatively new to the job. But I’ve plenty of experience, mainly with the Military Police. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to reach the top. I’m really proud of my conversion rate. Number one in Sector Three.”

  “Nice.”

  “Ideally, I want Homicide.”

  Loomis nodded. “Deathtectives all the way, right?”

  “You bet. Any kind of recommendation would go a long way to making it a reality. If that’s all right with you guys. Working Homicide is my dream job.”

  Maggie caught Loomis’s raised eyebrow, but Ramos missed it.

  “Well,” Loomis said as he snapped on his gloves, “good luck with that. These days, there’s a high
er chance of winning the Powerball than a place in Homicide Squad. But don’t let those sky-high odds deter you.”

  “No, sir. I won’t. Thank you.”

  Maggie flicked on her flashlight. “Okay, Deputy Ramos. Thanks for your input. We’ll handle it from here.”

  He nodded and returned to his cruiser. Maggie waited until he had shut himself inside his vehicle before turning to Loomis and quietly saying, “What’s with all the passive aggression?”

  Loomis shrugged. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  She showed him a frown.

  He sighed. “Don’t bust my balls here, Novak. What can I say? The dude’s a bit on the intense side, to put it mildly.”

  “He’s young and he’s eager. Give him a break. We’ve all been there. You can’t shoot a guy down in flames for being keen.”

  “Still . . .” Loomis glanced over his shoulder and faked a smile at the deputy. “That cheesy grin of his gives me the creeps.”

  “What’s new? Since the twins came along, just about everything freaks you out. A Pop-Tart pops out of the toaster and you jump out of your skin.”

  Now he smiled genuinely. “Those babies will be the ruination of me for sure.”

  Maggie pointed to the public noticeboard fixed to the gate. “We have a big problem here. The time line’s all wrong. Wildlife Drive was opened to visitors today until around five thirty. That means Dana’s car must have been left here and set on fire after the gate closed.”

  “Okay.”

  “So Cullen can’t be the one who dumped it. He’s been in our custody all afternoon.”

  “He has an accomplice.”

  “Or he’s being set up and the real killer dumped it here.”

  Loomis looked toward the burned-out wreck, the beam of his flashlight throwing twisted shadows onto the trees behind it. “If the real killer is out to frame Cullen, dumping Dana’s car after we detained him is a pretty dumb move on their part. It reeks of an amateur.”

  “You’re forgetting. People don’t think like police. For us, it’s all we know. We work on time lines, working out who did what and when. Regular folk don’t think that way. Most people are poor planners. Killers are no exception.”

  “Either way,” he said, “it’s a dead giveaway. Someone else is involved in Dana’s murder.” Loomis took out his phone. “Best let Smits know before he talks to the prosecutor.”

  Maggie put a hand out, stopping him from dialing. “Hold that thought,” she said. “We both know Smits won’t budge without incontrovertible proof. If we go in there half-cocked and it turns out we haven’t done our homework, he’ll have us working desk duty the rest of the month. Let’s see what evidence, if any, we can find here first.”

  Dana’s car had been abandoned on the compacted white sand that fringed the turnaround. Sand that was now waterlogged and clayey and pitted with overlapping boot prints. Sooty puddles and ash in the trees. Off to one side of the wreck, a single yellow metal barrier barred access to an overgrown side road.

  “Bad combo,” Loomis said. “Fire and water damage. Not exactly prime conditions to preserve potential evidence, that’s for sure.”

  Maggie stepped over a puddle. “Never say die.”

  He snickered. “A saying that always strikes me as weird considering we’re Homicide.”

  The blaze had reduced the Chevy to a shell of mangled metal and glass fragments, intense heat evaporating the paintwork and turning the base metal into a pitted brown-black husk. Melted plastic and incinerated upholstery. Had it not been for the manufacturer’s logo and brand name on the bodywork, it would have been impossible to determine the exact make and model by visual inspection alone.

  Maggie aimed her flashlight inside, peering through the empty frame of the driver’s window. This close, the noxious stench of liquefied plastic was almost overpowering. Clawing at the nose. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t much left of the interior—just exposed metalwork, springs, and crumbs of glass. She inspected the floor space, looking for signs of foul play. Although fire destroyed hemoglobin, it had to work hard to completely disintegrate pooled blood. When it came to trace evidence, the old saying that blood was thicker than water was never more applicable. When exposed to concentrated heat, pooled blood tended to coagulate, turn syrupy, and then harden into a glaze. Only an inferno with a sufficiently high temperature and a long lifespan could completely cremate blood and remove every last trace of it. If Dana had been shot before being put in the car, or shot inside and bled out on the upholstery, Maggie was hoping that the fire had been doused in time to save at least some recoverable blood evidence.

  But she didn’t expect finding it to be easy.

  Contrary to popular belief, wounds stopped spouting blood the second the heart stopped pumping. Residual traces seeped for a while, but once the body was inert, time and gravity pooled the body’s fluids to the lowest points, causing the distinct bluish-purple discoloration known as lividity.

  The only way they might find blood trace here was if Dana had been alive inside the car after being shot, her bullet wound pumping blood onto the seat.

  But she could see no visible signs.

  “Let’s check the trunk,” Loomis said.

  The back of Dana’s car was illuminated in the cruiser’s headlights. Paint flakes swirling in the beams. Maggie tried the release catch, but the lid refused to pop.

  Loomis hit it with the side of his fist, trying the catch again, but the lid remained sealed. Either locked or welded shut with the heat, or both.

  “I’ll be right back,” Loomis said, heading back to the minivan.

  Maggie took pictures with her phone while she waited—close-ups of the buckled license plate and the keys still dangling in the ignition.

  “This ought to do the trick,” Loomis said, wielding an oversize crowbar.

  “You keep that in your family car?”

  “You’d be surprised what I keep in my car.” He hefted the iron. “Step back from the vehicle.” He wedged the chisel end into the lid seam beside the locking mechanism, and applied some brute force. At first the lid wouldn’t budge, but as he leaned his weight into it, the metal groaned, creaked, and suddenly it jumped open an inch. Smiling to himself, he handed the crowbar to Maggie, hooked his fingers into the crack, and heaved the lid all the way up on its protesting hinges.

  The first thing that hit her was the smell, followed a fraction of a second later by the realization that Lindy Munson was curled up in the trunk.

  Chapter Seventeen

  IN HARM’S WAY

  Maggie woke with a start, her pulse pounding and sparks flying in her vision. Momentarily disoriented, she lay deathly still in the dark, sucking in air and trying to fathom what had shaken her from her sleep. A fine coating of sweat lacquered her skin, and a dull ache throbbed behind her eyes.

  Where was she?

  It took a few seconds for her ricocheting senses to recognize her surroundings as the hard-edged topography of Steve’s bedroom, with its door in the wrong place and its big picture window overlooking the Golden Bear golf links.

  It came back to her: she’d been dreaming of Rita.

  Not the caring, considerate, ever-smiling image of the girl from her childhood, with her luminous freckles and her tomboy haircut, but the charred corpse from Maggie’s worst nightmare, the ghastly remains of Rita Grigoryan, creeping toward her across the chilled tiles of the ME’s examination room, her boiled-egg eyes unblinking as she reached with witchy fingers for Maggie’s throat.

  Gasping, Maggie pushed herself up on one elbow.

  Steve lay beside her in the bed, his chest rising and falling with the sluggish beat of the overhead fan.

  She watched him for a moment, willing her speeding heart to slow.

  Rita’s premature death had haunted Maggie for years, branding her memories. Time had helped heal things over, but Dana’s murder had wrenched open those old wounds, forcing the painful past into the present and rewinding Maggie’s feelings all the way back to
the moment she’d first learned that her former best friend had died in horrific circumstances.

  Was it any surprise she couldn’t sleep?

  She sat up, swinging her legs out of bed as lightning flashed outside. Cool-blue light illuminated the bedroom, flickering wildly for a few seconds before plunging her into darkness again. Six seconds passed before a deep rumble sounded in the far distance.

  Feeling headachy, Maggie pushed to her feet and padded into the bathroom. She found Tylenol in the mirrored medicine cabinet and guzzled two down with tepid water from the tap.

  Lindy Munson was dead.

  The recollection came back to her with a jolt, overriding her thoughts of Rita. She quaked, clinging to the vanity until it passed.

  Lindy Munson.

  Broiled in the trunk of Dana’s car.

  Maggie felt nauseous.

  She and Loomis had waited a difficult hour for the cavalry to arrive, both of them unable to put into words the horror of what they’d found.

  At some point during early evening, the killer had ditched Dana’s car on the service road and then set it on fire with Lindy in the trunk, stripped down to her underwear and hog tied with plastic zip ties. Until Elkin had taken a look, it was impossible to say if she had been dead in the trunk before the blaze, or if she’d still been alive when fire had engulfed the car. Either way, the enclosed space had acted like an oven, roasting her flesh and steaming off moisture, blistering her skin until it had peeled and split and turned bright crimson.

  The thought of Lindy cooking to death had put Maggie’s head in a spin, and by the time she had handed over control of the death scene and driven Loomis back home, it was after one in the morning, and her brain hadn’t stopped hurting since.

  “You okay?”

  Maggie looked back toward the darkened bedroom. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” She went back into the room. “I have to go.”

  “Go? Go where, Maggie? It’s still dark.”

  Maggie scooped up her clothes from the back of a chair. “There’s something I need to do.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “It won’t let me sleep.” She pulled on her underwear, shirt, and jeans.