He moved to the doors and peered in the dark-tinted windows, tempted to try the door handle. He knew he couldn’t open the doors as a cop, but he wasn’t sure where he stood as a private citizen. He also knew it would bring Van Slate storming from his apartment. He decided to take the chance.
He opened the truck door. The interior was clean, except for sand on the driver’s-side floorboards.
“You can’t touch that without a warrant!” Van Slate shouted, bursting from his apartment.
Louis turned, facing him. Candy was standing to Van Slate’s left, watching.
“Get away from my truck.”
“Where were you last night?” Louis asked.
Van Slate was panting. Louis glanced back at the truck. There was definitely something in there that Van Slate didn’t want them to see. What was it? Gloves? A knife hidden under the seat?
“Where were you last night?”
Van Slate took a step toward Louis and Candy gently slapped the nightstick sideways against his belly. Van Slate looked down at it.
“I can puncture your spleen and never leave a bruise with this, Van Slate,” Candy said calmly. “Want to see?”
Van Slate took a step back.
“Answer the man,” Candy said.
“I went out drinking with my friends. I was at the Lob Lolly till after two. Then we went to the beach.”
“What beach?”
Van Slate glared at him. “Fort Myers.”
“You weren’t on Captiva?”
“Captiva? Hell no.”
Louis was looking behind the seat now. On the floor, he saw what looked like the handle of a knife, but he wasn’t sure.
Damn.
He wondered what the chances were of getting a quick warrant for the truck. He looked over at Candy.
“Watch him.”
He walked back to the cruiser and radioed Wainwright, and told him about what he thought he saw. He asked about a search warrant.
“All we got is his past crimes,” Wainwright said. “Unless you can break his alibi, it’s weak. Damn weak.”
“I know.”
“Can you call it plain view exception?” Wainwright asked.
Louis glanced back. “Yeah. Let’s try it.”
He clicked off and returned to the truck, reaching under the seat.
“What are you doing?” Van Slate yelled.
Louis used a pen to carefully extract the knife handle so he could see the blade. But it wasn’t a blade. It was a putty knife, dull and gobbed with a hard mud-brown paste.
Louis let the seat fall back into place. Damn it.
“What? What?” Van Slate asked.
“Let’s go,” Louis said to Candy.
They got back in the cruiser and pulled away. Louis was watching as Van Slate moved quickly to his truck and started rummaging inside.
“What a nightmare,” Louis muttered.
“What?” Candy asked.
“He might be destroying evidence and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”
It was late when he got home that night. Inside, the house was quiet and dark except for the patio lanterns out back.
Louis grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, picked up his files and notes, and slipped out the sliding glass door to the patio. He dropped into a chair and took a drink. It was pitch-black, no moon, no stars. A cool breeze drifted in from the mangroves bringing with it the dank smell of low tide. The quiet was broken only by the groan of Dodie’s boat against the pilings.
Serial killer.
When Wainwright had come out and said those two words, something had ignited inside him-horror, fear. He wasn’t afraid to admit it. More dead men, more dead black men, more crushed faces and broken families.
But with the horror had come something else-a ripple of adrenaline coursing through his veins.
He had spent most of the day after the visit to Van Slate wading through the NAACP files. One hundred and five angry white men, all with axes to grind, rage to vent. All looking for someone to blame for their own misery.
He thought back to the encounter with Van Slate. The guy hated blacks, that much was obvious. But did he hate them enough to kill? He didn’t know that much about serial killers, but he did know enough about people in general, that sometimes what you saw on the surface wasn’t what simmered beneath. Did enough rage boil below Matt Van Slate’s bigotry to turn him into a murderer? Was there a seed of evil there?
“You’re in late.”
Louis turned to see Dodie standing near the patio door. He was wearing boxers, a T-shirt, and white socks. His little spikes of gray hair shimmered in the lantern light.
“Need a fresh one?” he asked, nodding at Louis’s beer.
Louis shook his head. “No, thanks. Did I wake you?”
“Nah, I was watching the news in bed. The guy said cops think it’s a serial killer now. That true?”
Louis nodded and took a drink.
Dodie sat down across from Louis. “You know much about serial killers?”
“Just a little, from reading,” Louis said. “They weren’t such a hot topic when I was in school. Kind of a new breed.”
“They caught Bundy down here, you know.”
“I know. Stopped by a traffic cop. We could stop our killer tomorrow and not know it was him. We have no idea who he is.”
“You’ll catch him. You and Wainwright make a good team. He’s got a damn good reputation down here.”
Louis laid his head back. “He’s calling in his buddy from the bureau.”
“Well, that’s gotta help.”
Louis got up abruptly. He tossed his beer into the trash can and stood there, staring out at the canal. It was so dark out here. So quiet.
“What’s the matter, Louis?”
“Nothing.”
Dodie was quiet for a minute; then Louis heard the chair squeak as Dodie got up. Louis turned and watched him walk toward the sliding glass door.
“I need to tell Wainwright about Michigan.”
Dodie came back and sat down across from Louis.
“I don’t want him to hear it from someone else. I want him to know why I had to quit the force.” Louis looked away. This was hard. “I don’t want to lose his respect.”
“Then tell him.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Tell me first then,” Dodie said. “It’ll be easier the second time around.”
The darkness seemed overwhelming. Louis could feel the sweat on his forehead.
“It all came down to one night,” Louis began slowly.
Twenty minutes later, Dodie sat back in the lounge chair, his eyes leaving Louis’s face for the first time. For a long time, Dodie just sat there, staring at his hands. Then he looked up at Louis.
“Sounds to me like you had no choice, Louis,” he said.
“Should I tell Dan?”
“If you feel like you need to, yeah. If it’s bothering you that much, tell him.”
Louis shook his head. “But he’s got so much on his mind right now. He doesn’t need this.”
Dodie nodded. “You’ll know when. It’s your choice.” He rose, stretching. “Well, I’m going in to bed. Night, Louis.”
“Night, Sam.”
Dodie left. A few minutes later, the light in the bedroom went out.
Choice. . had he had a choice that night in Michigan? Yes, he had plenty of choices he could have made. Not to go into the woods, not to pull the trigger. Men were dead because of his choices. And he was just now learning to live with that.
The question was, could others see it the way he had that night in the woods? Could a cop like Wainwright see it and not condemn him?
Louis gathered up the files. He would tell Wainwright. But not now, not until this case was over. They needed to catch a murderer and to do that, they had to believe in each other. The rest could wait. It would have to.
Chapter Eighteen
The large bulletin board took up the entire wall near the watercooler. Wainwright told Louis he had put it up that morning, and this was the first time Louis had seen it.
It was divided into three columns, one for each victim, and covered with photos and colored note cards. Wainwright had told him it was a method he learned back at the bureau.