“Did he say what the caller sounded like? Any accents, speech patterns?”
“He said the guy talked in a soft monotone. Like he was in total control.”
At that moment, I wanted to hear Santana’s voice. I knew how Richard Brennen spoke. Measured. Complete control. But Richard Brennen had brown eyes, unlike that of a jaguar.
I parked in the Marina lot and walked to the office. The door was locked. I had forgotten that it was Sunday. The office was only open from 8:00 A.M. — noon on Sundays. I checked my watch: 2:45 p.m. I wrote a check and slipped it under the door.
Turning to leave, I almost ran into Dave Collins.
“Sean, what the hell happened to you? Don’t tell me I should see the other guy.”
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
“Yeah, worse shape than me.”
“Did you…”
“I didn’t kill him. I would like to have, though.”
“What happened?”
We sat on the aft deck of the Gibraltar. I told him everything that had happened. I concluded by saying, “Not only is Santana a serial killer, he’s figured out a way to make a huge profit from his spoils. Dave, this perp is the most sadistic and smartest criminal mind I’ve ever come up against. I might have to set a trap to draw him out.”
“What kind of trap?”
“Not sure. It has to be one that he can’t resist. I need to dig as far into his mind as I can. I have to get as close to his way of thinking as I can consciously permit myself to travel. Evil is a dark destination.”
“Maybe if you knew Santana’s past, you could predict his future. If you could open his mind, a psychopath who kills the way he does…the asphyxiation…what would you see? I’ll make drinks, maybe it’ll take away some of the pain in your wounds.”
Dave served Grey Goose martinis with slivers of ice bobbing on the surface. I said, “In the processing shack, the liquid in the vat looked like this martini. I didn’t see any ice in it, but it was cold. Not a subzero cold, but more like a chilled syrupy liquid.”
He listened intently, brow wrinkled, eyes trained on me, and then he glanced to the side like what I said brought back some distant connection. “Santana has a pipeline for quick distribution,” he said. “Maybe some hospital is turning a blind eye and accepting the organs. He might have a network getting them to recipients far away.”
Dave sipped his martini and continued. “I recall a study done on the wood frog. The frog is found far north as Alaska. They survive severe winters by increasing the glucose stored in their cell fluids. This acts as a kind of antifreeze providing the tissue, membranes, and internal organs with a greater freeze threshold. Gives the frog the ability to withstand temperatures minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit. What if Santana had some type of agent, antifreeze if you will, that allowed them to dramatically cool down organs without damaging the cells and tissue, essentially providing greater latitude from the time the organ leaves the victim to the time it enters the receiver’s body? Makes it easier to ship from point A to B.”
I watched Dave scratch Max behind the ears. She was asleep in his lap. I said, “Thanks for the martini. I can’t finish it. A little sore. Can you to watch Max for a few hours tomorrow? I have her food on Jupiter.”
“I’d love spending some time with the lass. Where’re you going?”
“To point A.”
SIXTY-THREE
On the drive to SunState Farms migrant camp, I called Special Agent Lauren Miles. It had been ten days since I had last spoken to her. After the shootout at the processing house, I’d asked Dan to fill her in on the details. Between the soreness in my mouth and my cracked ribs, I had been in no mood to deliver a dossier for the FBI.
She had news for me. “We have a little more on Santana, but it’s not much. Nothing from DMV. Can’t find photos. There is no record of his birth in America. He’s said to speak three languages. Owns or has partial ownership in an upscale strip joint called Xanadu. He’s also said to have ties to some of the new hotel casino combos and some coming up in Florida. His Xanadu website mixes pictures, video and pay-per-view porno. We found a connection to an Internet escort site, Exotic Escorts.”
“I bet the guy has a few degrees of separation between himself and his businesses. He’s smart, ruthless, well-connected, and manages to buy people or trap them like a spider, and that’s when he uses them.”
“As in Jude Walberg, the good doctor?”
“The same. One of Santana’s former strippers is missing, probably dead. Name’s Robin Eastman. Ring a bell?”
“No, it doesn’t. You think Santana did it?”
“Or he had it done. May have been a cop who did the killing, a Detective Mitchell Slater, Volusia County. See what you can find on Slater. For some reason he’s connected. The guy who owned Club Platinum in Daytona, Tony Martin, was killed after he left the club. Martin had just got into his car and was talking on his cell with his girlfriend, Robin Eastman, when he was killed. Eastman told her mother that Martin had said, ‘You’re supposed to be a cop,’ right before she heard gunshots.”
Lauren was quiet a moment. “If it was a rogue cop playing hit man, Santana’s either paying him many times his pension, or he has something on him?”
“Slater has political aspirations. He was at the Brennens for a fund-raising, and pissed off that I would question them. He knew Leslie was about to implicate him. I’m convinced he killed her. I think he’s a guy paid to look the other way, and when the stuff really hits the fan, then he’s a triggerman behind a badge. Your people are good at surveillance, see if you can follow Santana.”
She was silent for a few seconds. “We have followed him, but we can’t seem to get close enough to catch him in anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s where your skills have helped greatly. You’re closer, at least you’re coming closer than anyone else. You’re beginning to directly link him to things. Our profilers say Santana’s one of the worst-of-the worst, if these creeps can get any worse. So, although we’ve managed to profile him, we haven’t caught him.”
“Your profilers? You’ve known about Santana all along! You recruited me to hunt him down for you.”
“It’s not that simple. Our information corroborates everything you’ve said, but, you actually have more than we do.”
“Were you planning on sharing what you knew, or was I always the only one to sift through clues and hand it to the feds?” I felt my anger boiling up.
“Sean it’s not like that.”
“Bullshit! Keep me in the dark and let me hunt for a jaguar that knows I’m walking under his tree. Thanks, Lauren.”
“We’re not using you, we need you.” Her voice dropped. “We need your help. I’m sorry.”
I said nothing.
“Santana is an easy guy to despise, but he’s a hard person to catch because he has everyone else doing his dirty work. No one’s talking because he seems to have some frightening power, absolute control over those who work for him. We believe he’s tied at the hip with one of the most ruthless human trafficking rings in the world.”
“One of the most ruthless? What do you call harvesting human organs? Does it get any more ruthless than that?”
Lauren sighed. “I haven’t held information back from you that would help solve this or find Santana. He’s a terrorist of a different breed. Intelligent. Fearless. And he enjoys killing…personally. We’re running out of time.”