Midnight Rambler_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [12]
Something in my chest dropped. Even though the woman's face was gone, I knew who it was. Carmella.
Lightning crashed nearby, rocking the ground. None of us flinched. We'd all stood in this shit before. I started backing up. This was the last place on earth I should've been. Suddenly a voice roared my name.
“Carpenter!”
Plainclothes detective Bobby Russo broke from the group and rushed toward me. The head of Broward Homicide, his meaty Irish face resembled a four-alarm blaze. Around his neck hung a necktie painted to look like a dead fish. It was Russo who'd coined the phrase “My day starts when your day ends.”
Russo threw me to the ground and started kicking me. He was out of shape, and the kicks lacked sting. He shouted my name as if he'd already looked into the future and seen what a nightmare I'd created for him and the other detectives who'd helped put Skell away. It was hard to believe that I'd ushered at his wedding and that we were once friends.
The uniforms pulled Russo back. I got in a sitting position and assessed the damage. Nothing felt broken, and I stood up and faced him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Russo shouted.
“She called me,” I answered.
“Who?”
“Julie Lopez. She called me. What happened?”
“That's none of your business.”
“Come on, Bobby. It was my case.”
Russo cocked his fist as if he was going to take my head off. Instead of throwing the punch, he spoke to one of the uniforms.
“Arrest him.”
“On what charge?” I asked incredulously.
Russo pointed at the police tape lying on the ground.
“Trespassing on a crime scene.”
“This is bullshit,” I said.
“Welcome to my world,” Russo said.
The uniform patted me down and handcuffed me. Together we walked down the driveway. He pulled my wallet from my hip pocket, then got into a cruiser and called in my driver's license on his radio. He knew I wasn't wanted for anything, just as Russo knew. They just wanted to harass me. Another crash of lightning shook the ground.
“I'm going to get killed out here,” I yelled.
The uniform's face appeared in the driver's window. His eyes were lifeless, his face the same. I cursed, and saw him flash a smile.
The rain continued to drench me. I had planned to go swimming later, and I told myself that standing in a downpour accomplished the same thing. This was another of my daughter's maxims. I'm supposed to look on the bright side of things.
The uniform took his sweet time, and I let my eyes roam. A cable company repair truck sat on the street with two workers inside. Trenching equipment was in the truck, and I imagined the workers running a line across the backyard and happening upon Carmella's grave.
“Jack, is that you?” Julie Lopez stood inside the open garage, her face ravaged from crying. Shaped like an hourglass, she wore ragged cutoffs and a Miami Heat athletic shirt.
“Hey, Julie,” I said.
“It's Carmella's body, isn't it?” she asked.
I nodded, and Julie stifled a sob. She had clung to the hope that her sister Carmella would turn up alive one day, even though Skell had been put away for her murder. A false hope, but sometimes those are the ones that keep us going.
“They took Ernesto away,” Julie said. “What am I going to do, Jack? Will you tell me what I'm going to do?”
During the trial, Simon Skell's defense attorney had tried to paint Ernesto as Carmella's real killer. Ernesto was no angel, but I'd never pegged him for a killer, and neither had any of the homicide detectives who'd worked the case.
“I don't know,” I told her.
“Please come inside and talk to me,” she said.
“I can't.”
“You don't want to talk to me?”
I showed her my cuffed wrists.
“I'm under arrest.”
“What did you do?”
I took a deep breath. My brain was on overdrive trying to come up with a way to tie the body in Julie's backyard to Simon Skell. Only I couldn't make the connection. My case