Morningstar tapped the object. “The concrete was poured into an old rock-walled cistern. Stones initially surrounded the object, but the techs spent last night dislodging them.”
“Any idea when it was put here?”
“Could be a few months, could be two years. I’ll get closer as we analyze more samples.”
“You’re gonna find different times,” called a basso voice from above. “Older bodies, newer ones. The bottom bodies may go back years, decades even.”
I looked up at a guy on ground level, mid-forties or so, dark complexion, black suit, gray shirt. His sole concession to festivity was a colour-speckled tie that seemed from one of Jackson Pollock’s brighter days. The man’s gleaming black hair was swept back behind his ears. He wore dark sunglasses on a prize-winning proboscis, more like a beak. With the clothes, nose, and down-looking pose he called to mind a looming buzzard.
“What you been up to, Vincent?” Roy asked.
The guy brandished the briefcase. “Copying property records at the Dade County assessor’s office. Someone had to know the cistern was here, right?”
Roy nodded approvingly. “Come down into the hole, Vince. Got someone you should meet.”
I shook hands with Vincent Delmara, a senior investigator with the Miami-Dade County Police Department. Though the FCLE might swoop in and start bee-buzzing a crime scene, shutting out the locals invited turf wars which, in the long run, had no winners.
“You’re thinking these bodies were built up over time, not just dumped all at once?” Roy asked Delmara.
“We got us a serial killer,” Delmara exulted. “He’s been using the hole as a dumping ground over years. We’re gonna solve a shitload of disappearances.”
I understood Delmara’s enthusiasm. Miami-Dade, like any large metro area, had a backlog of missing persons. If this was a serial killer and the bodies were identified, a lot of cases could be cleared and families granted closure.
“I’m thinking he used an ax,” Delmara said. “He dumps the corpse in the cistern and pours in concrete to cover. They were supposed to stay hidden for ever, except development got in the way.”
“What do you think accounts for the brownish cast to the concrete?” I asked. “And the rusty streaks, like here?”
“Mud mixing with the cement. Dirt.”
Roy produced an unlit cigar to placate his fingers. “The only problem I got is picturing a guy mixing a tub of ’crete every time he dumps a body. It gets riskier with repetition.”
“Maybe he gets off on the risk,” Delmara said. “Mixes his concrete as an appetizer, dumps the body for his entree, jacks off into the hole for dessert.” Delmara circled his fingers and mimed the concept.
“For Christ’s sake,” Morningstar said.
“How many crime scenes you been at where jism’s squirted all over the place, Doctor Morningstar?” Delmara grinned. “More than a few, I’ll bet.”
I closed my eyes and pictured the area as if it were a time-lapse documentary, day turning into night and back to day, clouds stampeding across blue sky, white clouds turning black, sun becoming rain becoming sun again.
“Maybe the concrete was poured in dry to save time and risk,” I suggested. “Rain would soak the cement powder, time would harden it.”
“Genius,” Roy said, clapping a big paw on my shoulder. “No fuss, no muss, no mixing. Plus cement contains lime, which helps decomposition.” He looked at Delmara. “What you think, Vince?”
“Tasty.”
“You think we got us a serial killer, Carson?” Roy asked.
I turned to the column to study a splintered ulna, a severed tibia, a caved-in section of rib cage. Many seemed the kind of injuries I’d noted in car crashes. Whereas Delmara was seeing an ax used on the bodies, I was picturing a sledgehammer. Or both, the violence was that horrific. Something felt a shade off, though I couldn’t put my finger on it; having no better idea, I nodded.
“It’s the way to go for now.”
“Hell yes,” Delmara said, punching the air. “We’re gonna close some cases.”
Morningstar stepped forward. “Excuse me, boys. But if you’re done being brilliant, I’d like to get back to work.”
Delmara made notes. Roy and I retreated up the steps as Morningstar motioned her team back into place. The chipping of chisels began anew.
We stopped at the entrance. Roy lowered his voice. “Look, Carson, I want you to start work early and be the lead on this case.”
“No way,” I said.
“I need you, Carson.”
“Your people are gonna be drooling for this case, Roy. It’s a biggie.”
“How many bodies did John Wayne Gacy stack up under his house before he got nailed?” Roy said. “Twenty? Thirty? How about Juan Corona? We might have a grade-one psycho out there, Carson. Your specialty, right … the edge-walking freaks?”
“I’ve not even met your people, Roy. If I start by giving orders I’ll start by stepping on toes. Bad first step.”
“You were here ten minutes and figured out the concrete angle.”
“A conjecture.”
“It’s the kind of thinking I need. And don’t worry – I’ll deal with any delicate tootsies.” He slapped his hands – conversation over – and headed outside. I followed, thinking that if his people let a newbie waltz in as lead investigator on a case this big, they must be the most ego-free cops the world had ever produced.
The semi-truck rumbled down the sandy lane in the South Florida coastal backcountry, a battered red tractor pulling the kind of gray intermodal container loaded on ships, traversing oceans before being offloaded to a truck or train to continue its journey. Tens of thousands of the nondescript containers traveled the world daily and it had been calculated that at any given moment over three per cent of the world’s GDP lay within the containers of Maersk, the world’s largest intermodal shipper.
But those were official loads. This particular shipment was a ghost, its true contents never recorded in any official documents. With the complicity of bribed clerks and customs agents, this simple gray box had boarded a ship in Honduras, sailed to the Port of Miami and been offloaded to the red tractor, with only the kind of glancing notice that came from eyes averted at the precise moment the container ghosted past.
“Looks quiet to me, Joleo.”
The passenger in the cab porched his hand over a scarred and sunburned brow, his dull green eyes scanning a stand of trees in the distance. Between the treeline and the truck was a corroded Quonset hut, a hundred feet of corrugated aluminum resembling a dirty gray tube half sunk in the sand. The passenger’s name was Calvert Hatton, but he went by Ivy, tattooed strands of the poison variety of the weed entwining his arms from wrist to shoulder.
“Our part’s almost over,” the driver said, pulling to a halt. He was tall and ropey and his name was Joe Leo Hurst, but over the years it had condensed to Joleo. “Go move ’em to the hut, Ivy.”
Ivy jumped from the cab and walked to the rear with bolt cutters in work-gloved hands as Joleo climbed atop the hood to scan the area.
“I still hate opening that damn door,” Ivy grumbled. “After that shipment last year …”
“We’ve done a bunch more since then. You remember one shipment that went bad?”