Midnight Rambler_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [11]
“What do you want?” I repeated.
“A woman has been calling for you,” Sonny said. “She sounded hysterical, said she needed to talk to you. Sounds like a booty call.”
“What's her name?”
He started to wipe the bar with a dirty rag. “I put it in the till.”
“You going to get it for me?”
“What's it worth to you?”
Sonny was going to end up back in prison if someone didn't straighten him out. I dropped my voice. “A punch in the face—that's what it's worth.”
“You'd hit me in front of all these customers?”
“If I ask them, they'll probably hold you down.”
The loopy grin left Sonny's face. He got a slip of paper from the till and slapped it on the bar. I read the name printed on it and felt myself shudder. Julie Lopez. Six months earlier, I had helped Julie come to grips with a loss that no one should have to bear. I hadn't seen her since, knowing that my presence would only open deep wounds.
I walked outside and punched her number into my cell phone. Julie answered immediately, her voice riddled with grief.
“It's Jack Carpenter,” I said. “What's wrong?”
“The police found Carmella,” she wailed.
“Where?”
“In my backyard!”
My head started to spin, and I leaned against the building and tried to compose myself. What Julie was saying couldn't be true. Carmella Lopez was murdered by Simon Skell, who made her disappear just the way he made seven other young women disappear. Of all the places he might have put Carmella's body, Julie's backyard couldn't be one of them.
“What are the police saying?”
“They think Ernesto did it.”
“Is Ernesto there with you?”
“The police arrested him and took him away.”
“Did you call a lawyer?”
“I ain't got no money. You've got to help me. I don't know what to do.”
My head would not stop spinning. The police were wrong. I told myself that if I went to Julie's house I would get to the truth of the matter.
“I'm coming right now,” I said.
“Hurry,” she begged me.
Dania Beach was separated from the mainland by a short steel bridge. I raced across it and soon was on 595, driving toward the western reaches of the county. The sky was a murderous black, and large drops of rain pelted my windshield. I was heading into a storm, but I didn't slow down.
CHAPTER SIX
I parked at the end of Julie Lopez's driveway, my wipers furiously beating back the rain. The neighborhood had always been marginal but had slipped further since my last visit, with cars parked on lawns and black security bars on most windows.
Two police cruisers were parked in front of me. The cops were not going to be happy to see me, but it was a free country. I told Buster to lie down, and he shot me a disapproving look. Aussies are bred for herding, and my dog would have liked nothing better than to spend every waking moment by my side.
I got out and within seconds was soaked to the bone. I trudged up the driveway to the wooden privacy fence that enclosed Julie's backyard. When I stepped through the gate, my feet went ankle-deep in water. If lightning hit nearby, I would be history, yet I continued to slosh ahead. Four uniformed cops and a plainclothes detective were huddled in the backyard. They were looking at something, and I wanted to see what it was.
Carmella Lopez had been my last case as a cop. She and her sister were both prostitutes. Carmella turned tricks in a massage parlor, Julie through a live-in pimp named Ernesto. When Carmella went missing one day, Julie called and asked me to find her. I took the case and during my investigation stumbled across Simon Skell, whom I linked to Carmella's disappearance as well as to seven other missing women in the sex business. There wasn't much hard evidence, just a lot of circumstantial threads that pointed to a rampaging sociopath. The district attorney bought my theories and took Skell to trial. The judge threw out everything but Carmella's case, so the DA tried that. We won, and Skell was sent to Starke.
Yellow police tape lay on the grass. Ignoring it, I sneaked up behind two uniforms and peeked through the