Diego instantly hunkered down by her and looked up at Brett. “No pun intended, but it appears that Mrs. Diaz has fainted dead away.”
* * *
Lara wasn’t sure why she felt as confident of her own safety as she did. Of course, by midmorning the place was bustling. It was Saturday, which meant it was a great day for parents to spend time in the sun with their children.
Every swim and encounter was booked. Adrianna’s theory was that they were especially busy because Sunday would be totally devoted to the military and Just Say Thanks.
Whatever the reason for the crowds, Lara wasn’t the least bit concerned about walking around the place. She decided “safety in numbers” was a reality, not just a cliché.
She was able to put yesterday’s threat out of her mind because she was certain that whatever cowardly creep had put that doll on her desk couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Sea Life, other than having bought a ticket. Yes, whoever he was, he’d found his way to her office, but it wasn’t that difficult. The building was clearly marked as being for employees only, and her name was on her office door.
As she walked around the facility, she was pleased with the way everything for the following day seemed to be falling into place. Several reporters would be on hand, they’d received a nice response from the local community and every one of their military guests had been slotted into the schedule for their experience of choice.
With everything going so well, she decided to take a walk down to the educational building and have a chat with Dr. Amory about what she’d seen at lunch the other day.
When she arrived, classes were underway. Cathy and Myles were talking to a room full of people of all ages, from grandparents to toddlers.
Myles waved to her but continued speaking as she smiled and walked by.
Nelson Amory left the public programs to his staff so he could focus on his research. He was undeniably brilliant, so it was undoubtedly a much better use of his time.
He looked up the minute she walked into his office and flushed. Was he feeling guilty? Or had she only imagined his momentary look of unease?
He smiled and said, “Hello. What can I help you with today, Miss Media? Looking for news for your next press release?”
“Oh, no, I’m not here to grill you,” she said. She pulled up a chair and sat down in front of his desk. “Honestly? I came here because I’m worried.”
“Worried?” he asked quickly.
She nodded gravely.
Could he have been the one to put the savaged doll on her desk?
“About what?” he prompted her.
“You were at lunch with some heavy hitters the other day.”
He shook his head. “Yes, some of our top sponsors. Why should that worry you? I don’t owe you an explanation, Lara. You’re the new kid on the block here, you know.”
She nodded. “I do know. And you’ve all been wonderful to me. I just wanted to ask you to tell Grady if you’re considering leaving. To give him time to find someone else.”
He looked down, as if his papers were more important than her presence. Then he said quietly, “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving.”
Lara leaned forward. “Did one of them offer you a job?” She spoke lightly, but she was serious, and she was sure he knew it.
He leaned back. “Taggerly,” he admitted. “He wants to develop a protocol for testing a new category of drugs.”
“But your specialty is marine mammals. How would you...?”
He nodded. “In my past, I did a lot of necropsies on marine life. Not just mammals. Sharks. I was with a company that did all kinds of work on sharks. They rarely get sick, and cancer is especially rare. Ely thinks—and I tend to agree with him—that research into the shark immune system will transform medicine.”
“But you were with Blackwood and Martinez, too,” Lara reminded him.
He nodded. “Taggerly is encouraging the others to invest in this new line of research with him. I guess he figured he’d wow us all at once—them with predictions of huge profits and me with the huge salary he offered—and we’d all fall into line.”
“But you really didn’t accept?” Lara asked.
He stared at her, irritated. “If I’d accepted, I’d have turned in my resignation already.”
“Was the salary really that huge?” she asked.
“My God, you’re nosy. Must be from hanging around with the FBI all day,” he muttered.
He looked at her squarely. “I have to admit, I was tempted. But I’ve had jobs in that kind of research before. I’ve analyzed enzymes, cells, brains, blood systems... I’ve tried to measure the effects of naturally occurring chemicals, how certain animals live so long, why others die so young. Truth is, I like it here. I like Grady. I love the dolphins and all our other animals. But the dolphins most of all. Their intelligence is virtually unmatched in the animal kingdom, and yet they still love interacting with people. Look at how much Cocoa loves to work with you! It’s fascinating. So yes, I turned down the job. And I never said anything to anyone here because I turned it down. I’m here, and I’m staying here. Poor but happy, instead of rich but miserable.”
Lara smiled at him. “That’s great,” she said.
“Poor is great?”
“As long as it comes with happy,” she said. She stood, hesitated, then said, “And by the way, I’m sorry for being so nosy about the salary.”
“It’s all right. I’ll be nosy myself soon enough. As I said, I’ve been fascinated with Cocoa’s determination to win your approval.”
“Is that what she’s doing? Trying to win my approval?”
“Yes.”
“I thought she was just trying to be friends.”
He grinned. “Same thing, I guess. But dolphins are like people in a way. When they like someone, they want to please that person. Cocoa’s determined to please you. I think it’s important, and something to be studied. As is her ability to find and bring you things in the water other than objects you’ve specifically asked her to locate.”
“Body parts,” Lara said.
He nodded gravely. “Body parts,” he repeated, and shivered. “Let’s hope the cops get this guy—and quickly.”
“Amen,” she murmured.
She thanked him and headed out of the office. No, she couldn’t believe that he had left a butchered doll on her desk. Look how honest he’d been with her.
Then again, was she truly capable of knowing?
She left the building via the classroom. She waved to Myles and Cathy, then felt them watching her as she kept walking.
Of course. She’d interrupted their class. And she’d gone to see Dr. Amory. Maybe they were wondering what she’d talked to him about.
And maybe she was just being paranoid.
No, she wasn’t.
Someone had warned her to keep out of the water. To stay out of the Miami zombie case.
As she walked back to her office, she caught various bits of conversation coming from the crowd.
No, they hadn’t abandoned Sea Life in horror.
But they were talking about body parts in the water.
And zombies.
* * *
This time, when the questions flew, when the medical examiner arrived, when crime scene techs flooded the place, Brett had no trouble believing that Geneva Diaz had absolutely no idea how a corpse had ended up in their embalming room—the corpse of the man who’d had her key.
When Jonathan Douglas and Richard Diaz arrived, both of them now eager to help with any investigation, Geneva cried and confessed what she’d done to both men. Oddly, the truth seemed to make things easier for everyone at the mortuary.
Phil Kinny told them that he would know more details postautopsy, but he was quite certain that Jose Acervo was
truly dead.
He wouldn’t be coming back to life to usher anyone else into heaven or, in his case, hell.
“I’m guessing that cause of death will turn out to be stabbing,” Kinny told them after his initial on-site examination of the remains. “You can see that he was stabbed several times. I won’t know the order of the wounds until autopsy, but they were to the heart, stomach, kidneys, spleen and liver.”
Kinny looked at them from the far side of the body. “Come see me tomorrow. It’s Sunday, when even the Lord said we should rest, but this case is too important to wait. Come in and I’ll show you what I’ve got on the bodies of Antoine Deveau, Randy Nicholson, Miguel Gomez and your Mr. Acervo here.”
“We’ll be there,” Brett promised him.
The body was removed, but the crime scene techs stayed on.
Richard Diaz was clearly worried for his wife; he was dismayed that she had done what she had, but he felt that the failure was his, as well. “She should have come to me. She should have felt that she could tell me anything,” he said over and over.
Brett and Diego offered the Diazes protective custody until the case was solved, but Richard preferred to handle things himself, planning a trip that would take them out of the area for the immediate future.
Since Douglas and the rest of the staff had no direct connection to the crime, they would be provided with police patrols and an officer on mortuary premises for at least the next several weeks.
Jill managed to get Brett alone for a few minutes. “What happens if you don’t find whoever is doing all this? What if it goes on for months...years? Just how long will the police protect us?”
“Jill, I can only tell you again, we will find him. This is too big. Too many people are involved, and we have so many officers from so many different agencies working on this that we can put a lot of pressure on the whole enterprise. Whoever’s behind this, he’ll make a mistake, and then we’ll get him.”
She nodded. “We’ll just have to be very careful, I guess.” She started to walk away, then turned and asked, “You will make sure we know if...if there’s a reason for us to watch out for something or someone in particular, right?”
“Yes,” he said. He shouldn’t have, of course. But she’d helped them immeasurably, and since he couldn’t personally watch over her and her family, the least he could give her was peace of mind.
When she left, it was finally time for him and Diego to head out and meet back up with Matt and Meg, and try to put the pieces together.
“We’re fucked,” Diego said as soon as they were outside.
“Fucked?”
“That guy was our best lead. If we’d found him alive...”
“He wouldn’t have said a word. He would have gone to jail before he ratted out his boss, who in this case might be Barillo or might be someone else entirely. Anyway, we’re meeting with Kinny tomorrow, so let’s see what he has to tell us.”
“Let’s hope to hell it’s something useful.”
“No matter what,” Brett said, “I think we’re going to pay a visit to an associate of Acervo’s.”
“Barillo?” Diego asked.
Brett nodded grimly.
“He’s denied everything. He made a point of confronting you face-to-face to deny everything.”
“But Acervo was a known associate of his. I want to see what he has to say.”
“You’re worried,” Diego said. “You’re worried about Lara.”
Brett managed a smile. “Yes—and no. Meg won’t leave her. And I honestly believe that the man pulling the strings will make a mistake, and soon. And then all this will be over.”
Diego was quiet. “Money’s involved in this somewhere,” he said. “We already knew that, though. After Kinny and Barillo, we’re going to start looking at money.”
“Who the hell has more money than Barillo?” Brett asked.
Diego smiled. “Lots of people. Lots of rich people. This is Miami, mi amigo. Lots of people here have money.”
* * *
When Sea Life closed at five o’clock, people jumped into action to make everything spick-and-span. Everyone was excited about the next day. The entire staff was set to arrive early to be ready to greet the massive numbers of soldiers and supporters who would be coming.
As things wound down and staff started leaving, Lara wandered back out to the lagoon to check on Cocoa. There were still people around, and it was daylight, so she wasn’t worried about her own safety. The dolphin swam over to the platform and allowed Lara to stroke her. Then she backed away, chattering, and Lara turned around quickly, her heart suddenly pounding, expecting to see someone coming up behind her.
The sun was still up but sinking slowly, and at first she saw no one.
And then she did.
Miguel Gomez was standing there, watching her and Cocoa, a slight smile on his face.
“Hello, Miguel.”
“Hola, senorita.”
“Join me,” she suggested.
It didn’t even seem odd to her that she was speaking to a ghost.
He came and sat with her. “That dolphin is very special, is she not?” he asked.
“Yes, she is.”
“She sees me,” he whispered.
“I think so.”
“Have you found out...how this happened? To me, I mean,” he asked.
“No, but we’re making progress.”
He nodded. She felt his sadness as if it were something in the air that washed over her.
“I wish I could help,” he said. “I wanted to live the dream, and we did, for a while. But now...I’m here. And Maria... I want so badly to see her, to know that she forgives me...”
“I’m sure she does,” Lara said.
He looked at her anxiously, as if desperately hoping she could say something that would prove the truth of her words to him.
And suddenly she realized that she could.
“My friend...the FBI agent. You know him, too. Brett Cody. He’s seen Maria. She knows it wasn’t really you.”
He seemed to brighten. “This is true?”
“Cross my heart,” she said, smiling.
He shook his head. “Why can’t I see her?” he whispered.
“Maybe you will,” she said. “Maybe soon. Maybe when we find out what happened to you.”
She didn’t know that, of course. But she felt she had to say something to reassure him.
After a moment he said, “I hope so. For now, I am just...here.”
She looked at him and said, “Miguel, someone threatened me. They went up to my office and put a broken-up doll there, warning me. Since you’re here, perhaps you could watch and see if anyone does something like that again.”
He frowned. “People come and go from that building all day.”
“You see them, right?”
He nodded.
“Who?”
He lifted his hands. “All the people who work here.”
“Did you see anyone else? People who don’t work here?”
“I don’t know what happens all the time,” he told her. “I come a lot to the water. To watch the dolphins.” He pointed to Cocoa, who was watching them from the water. Cocoa and the other dolphins often watched people. It made Lara wonder just what they were thinking, if they were as curious about human behavior as humans were about theirs.
He smiled. “I think she performs for me sometimes. Just for me.”
“She certainly might,” Lara said.
He smiled at that, and continued to watch the dolphin for a minute. Then he turned to her. “I will watch for you,” he said. “I will help solve this if I can. I promise you that. I tried to be a man for my family when I lived. I loved my wife, and I was so lucky to have a wife who loved me, too, so dea
rly and so deeply, for so many years. I will watch for you. And I will know who comes and goes from now on.”
“Thank you, Miguel,” she told him.
She smiled, pointing to Cocoa, who had decided to entertain them with a high-flying flip.
“Look, Miguel,” she said. “I know that was for you.”
But when she turned back to look at him, he was gone.
15
“So this man, Jose Acervo, he’s really dead?” Lara asked.
Brett nodded, enjoying being out to dinner again, despite the circumstances. They’d chosen another restaurant on the water, though this one offered a certain amount of privacy despite the fact that it was Saturday night and the area was in full swing. They’d headed to South Beach in his Bureau car. He hadn’t used the restaurant’s valet service because he’d learned early in his career to have his car available at all times, but his federal plates allowed him to park in places the average driver couldn’t, unless they were looking to incur a fine.
As they ate, music spilled from a dozen clubs. Miami’s beautiful people were out, the women in short skirts and ridiculous heels, along with tourists in flip-flops and T-shirts. They’d actually decided on the beach because of the crowds; it was easier to talk in private when the noise around you didn’t allow for anyone outside your intimate circle to hear what you were saying.
Diego was taking the first watch at Sea Life again while the rest of them escaped for a few hours.
“We’re getting close—closer anyway,” Matt said. “The fact that Acervo was killed—and left at Diaz-Douglas as a...warning, I suppose—is telling. Someone was afraid that we would find Acervo and get him to talk about what’s going on. I wonder if the killer thought Geneva Diaz would be so terrified by the arrival of the corpse that she would make sure he was buried quickly to avoid her secret coming out. Any word on whether the crime scene techs found anything useful?”
“Not yet,” Brett said.
“Well, I discovered something pretty interesting today,” Matt said. “I pulled up all kinds of information and statistics, and I emailed all of it to you and Diego,” he told Brett. “And based on what I found, I can tell you that I don’t think this began with Miguel Gomez, or Randy Nicholson or Antoine Deveau. About three months ago, the body of a young woman washed up on a beach up in Broward. There had been severe damage to her head.”