Caged Read online

  Leaving would be a simple waste of the resource that his mind had become. It would also, as Sam saw it, be a betrayal of his colleagues and those people he might have been able to help.

  It would be giving up.

  Anyway, however tough it got, he loved the goddamned job.

  He sneezed on it, twice.

  ‘Gesundheit,’ Sanders said, finished for now, pushing down his mask and taking a deep breath of unusually chilly Florida morning air. ‘You got a head cold, keep it to yourself.’

  ‘Doing my best,’ Sam said.

  Sanders pulled off his gloves, which would be discarded to avoid cross-contamination, as every item of protective clothing was discarded each time they left any crime scene.

  Martinez took two steps closer to the victims. ‘They really look like they were doing it when . . .’ His round face and dark brown eyes showed distaste for the crime. Several inches shorter than Sam, the forty-five-year-old Cuban-American had been known to be tough as a charging bull when roused.

  ‘They weren’t,’ the ME said flatly.

  ‘You do have something,’ Sam said.

  ‘Rigor still present,’ Sanders said, ‘but you know I can’t tell you more on that till later.’ He paused. ‘Definitely washed post-mortem, probably positioned before rigor mortis, then moved. The marks on both ring fingers aren’t very distinct, so they may have been married, but perhaps not for long, and possibly, though obviously not definitely, to each other.’

  Sam waited. ‘And?’

  ‘I won’t know this for sure till I get them back to the office.’

  ‘Goes without saying,’ Sam said.

  ‘Glue,’ Sanders said grimly. ‘I think some sick bastard stuck their genitalia together with some kind of goddamned superglue.’

  Now Sam and Martinez both felt sick.

  FOUR

  Saturday was one of Mildred’s days for helping Grace out in the office.

  Sam said that no one who’d ever seen her in the old days would recognize her now. Grace had never met Mildred back then, but Sam had spoken about her often, had said it was clear to him that what lay beneath the layers was remarkable.

  Up until mid-June of last year, Mildred Bleeker had been a bag lady who slept on a bench in South Beach. Now, she was living in a Golden Beach house with Dr David Becket, a semi-retired paediatrician, though if you were to ask her, Mildred would probably have insisted that she was ‘just staying awhile’. And maybe that was true, but all the Becket family hoped that it was not.

  For one thing, although David was only sixty-four years old and in good physical and excellent mental health, Grace was sure that Saul would never have felt entirely easy about moving into his own home if it hadn’t been for Mildred moving in.

  It seemed to Grace that some things were just meant to be.

  None of the Beckets knew Mildred’s true age because she wasn’t telling, and if she’d had a birthday any time in the last seven months, she hadn’t divulged that either, and as with most personal things relating to this lady, they’d all come to understand that they would just have to wait for Mildred to be ready to share.

  Sam had first become acquainted with her because, as a homeless citizen, she had by definition been out there on the streets, eyes and ears open. And Mildred, having particular cause to wish the truly wicked – most especially those who profited from illegal drugs – off those streets, had few misgivings about assisting the police, if she happened to be in a position to do so.

  Sam and Mildred (who insisted on calling him Samuel, his given name and from the Good Book, as she pointed out) had developed a mutual respect and, over time, something more than that, a real friendship. And then a killer calling himself Cal the Hater, fearing that Mildred might identify him, had struck late one night, and against all the odds she had survived, but after that Sam had hated the idea of her going back to the streets.

  His father, having taken to visiting her in Miami General Hospital and having come to relish those encounters because of the lady’s courage and wit, felt the same way, and felt too that Mildred Bleeker harbored a secret wish to be needed again. So David had dropped in regular mentions of how big his house was for one old man, and how much he was coming to value their conversations, and finally he’d told her that if she would not agree to spend her convalescence at his place, then he’d be forced to find a lodger, since otherwise his younger son, Saul, would never grab hold of the freedom he badly needed.

  ‘A lodger sounds just the ticket,’ Mildred had said.

  ‘I don’t want some stranger,’ David said.

  ‘They wouldn’t be a stranger for long,’ Mildred pointed out. ‘And they’d pay you, which I could not, as you know.’

  ‘I’m fortunate enough not to need the money,’ David said.

  ‘Most folk seem happy enough to get more.’

  ‘I’d rather have your company,’ David had persisted. ‘Besides, like you, I’m fond of an occasional drop of Manischewitz.’

  ‘If Samuel has been casting aspersions on my good character,’ Mildred said, ‘I’ll be wanting a little talk with him.’

  ‘Samuel thinks you’re the bee’s knees,’ David said.

  It was the first and only time he’d seen her blush.

  Much more to Mildred than met the eye, though she was a striking-looking woman, her eyes blue, her face lined, but less weather-beaten since she’d come off the streets, and with a new haircut that accentuated her fine bone structure. And Mildred Bleeker had believed her own vanity long dead, yet now she secretly relished the flattery her new appearance had brought her, reminding her a little of the way Donny, her late fiancé, had paid her compliments in the old days.

  Her new friends had changed everything.

  Dr Becket, a wise, rumpled, craggy-faced, kindly warhorse of a man. Grace, Samuel’s beautiful, golden-haired psychologist wife, who seemed to grasp more than most that Mildred needed time and space and, above all, privacy.

  Samuel, though, was her hero. The six-foot-three African-American cop, who’d always shown her true respect. Who’d gone to the trouble and expense of buying her a cellular telephone of her own so that she’d be safe from a stranger who’d alarmed her. A man with a precious family, good friends and a job that made a real difference to the citizens of Miami Beach. A man who faced danger and worked too many hours most days, but who’d still made time for her.

  Who had made space in his own family for her.

  Not that she’d found that altogether easy. Having people who cared brought responsibility. Having a room that David insisted was her own, yet had never entirely felt like hers, and walls still bothered her, and there had been – still were – some sleepless nights when she almost longed to be out there again with the ocean and the whole night sky to gaze at.

  Though then she’d be alone again.

  ‘If I’m going to visit with you for any longer,’ she’d told David last fall, ‘I have to do something to earn my keep.’

  ‘You help babysit Joshua,’ he’d told her.

  They’d been washing dishes after dinner in the kitchen that was as old-fashioned and well-worn as every other room in the house that he’d inhabited for over thirty-five years.

  ‘That’s a privilege,’ Mildred had said, ‘not a job.’

  ‘You don’t need to get a job.’

  ‘I don’t need to be told what I need,’ Mildred answered crisply.

  David had asked what she had in mind.

  ‘Seems to me,’ she said, ‘you could use a housekeeper.’

  He was shocked. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  ‘I hope we are,’ she said. ‘Though I can’t see what that has to do with it.’

  ‘But we’re fine as we are,’ David said. ‘We take care of each other, muddle along. You, me, and Saul, of course, until he goes.’

  ‘You’re a doctor,’ Mildred said. ‘A busy man.’

  ‘I’m less and less of a doctor,’ David pointed out. ‘And you’re no housekeeper.’
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br />   ‘You don’t know what I am,’ Mildred said. ‘Or what I have been.’

  ‘How could I know,’ he said, ‘when you won’t tell me?’

  ‘In time,’ she said, ‘perhaps I will.’

  ‘So setting the past aside, as always,’ David said, ‘what would you like to do now? Other than cooking and cleaning for an old man.’

  ‘Not so old,’ Mildred said.

  ‘Thank you,’ David said.

  ‘I do have one other idea.’ Mildred paused. ‘Your office is a mess.’

  ‘Perpetually,’ David said.

  ‘I don’t want to clean it,’ Mildred said. ‘But it does strike me that your filing systems could use some organizing.’ She paused again. ‘If you’re concerned about confidentiality, I know how to keep my nose out of other people’s stuff.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ David said.

  She’d asked him to think it over, and he had, because the running of his office had, until her final illness three years before, been Judy Becket’s domain, and so David had felt he’d needed a silent word with her just then because it seemed to him that this smacked, a little, of infidelity.

  Judy had sent down no thunderbolts, and Saul, when consulted, had said he thought it a fine idea.

  So Mildred had gone to work.

  ‘The woman is a wonder,’ David had told Sam a week later. ‘She has energy like you wouldn’t believe, but most of all she has the greatest intelligence.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ Sam said.

  And after that, adding Grace’s office to Mildred’s schedule had seemed a natural progression.

  The necessity of finding someone to help her keep order once she’d returned to practice after having Joshua had become a bit of a bugbear for Grace, her experiences with her last administrative assistant having turned into a nightmare.

  David had made the suggestion.

  ‘It would solve all your problems,’ he’d told her. ‘Aside from her excellent organizational skills, Mildred could babysit Joshua on the premises while you see patients.’

  ‘Do you think she’d consider it?’

  ‘She’s had her eye on the job ever since I mentioned you could use some assistance.’ David paused. ‘Though I think she’s concerned that your patients’ parents or guardians might not be keen on your employing a former vagrant.’

  ‘Mildred wasn’t a criminal,’ Grace said crisply. ‘Seems to me they couldn’t ask for a more exemplary person.’

  ‘Sounds to me like she has the job,’ David said.

  ‘I think we’d better meet,’ Grace said. ‘Maybe agree a trial period, for both our sakes. And a salary, of course.’

  ‘I’m not sure she’ll be keen on taking money from you,’ David said.

  ‘If Mildred works for me,’ Grace had said, ‘she will most definitely be paid.’

  ‘She did mention to me once that she has a social security number.’

  ‘And knows it by heart, I’ll be bound,’ Grace had said.

  FIVE

  Two representatives from Beatty Management, dug out of their respective Saturday activities, drew up in a Lexus outside the Oates Gallery just after noon, almost an hour after the unusually speedy arrival of the search warrant.

  Larry Beatty, CEO of the company, thirty-something, tall, nattily turned out in a well-cut navy blazer, blue jeans and an open-necked blue and white striped shirt, was sober-faced as he emerged from the driver’s side, identified himself to an officer, then stooped to duck beneath the tape and finally introduced himself to Becket and Martinez on the front pathway.

  ‘Terrible thing,’ he said. ‘Whatever I can do to help.’

  Beatty was handsome, fair-haired, hazel-eyed and even-featured, but there was, Sam thought, a blandness about the man that made him less attractive than he might have been.

  ‘We appreciate it, sir,’ he said.

  The door on the passenger side of the Lexus slammed belatedly, and a harassed-looking young red-haired woman in a dark pants suit and sneakers, carrying a battered briefcase, came hurrying around the car and followed Beatty’s route under the cordon.

  ‘Ally Moore,’ she said breathlessly, quickly amending: ‘Allison.’ Her eyes were grey and anxious. ‘I’ve brought keys.’

  ‘And I’m here primarily to give the owner’s consent,’ Beatty said. ‘Her name is Mrs Marilyn Myerson, and I have her full Power of Attorney.’

  ‘I have certified copies of those papers, too,’ Ally Moore said, edgily pushing strands of curly hair off her freckled, lightly made-up face.

  ‘Ms Moore is responsible for regular checks on the property,’ Beatty said.

  ‘Though I imagine, sir,’ Sam said, ‘that as CEO of Beatty Management and as Mrs Myerson’s legal representative, you have overall responsibility.’

  ‘For using our firm’s best endeavours to care for the property, of course,’ Beatty accepted. ‘Though the security levels here have been somewhat limited by Mrs Myerson’s budget.’

  ‘There is an alarm system,’ Ally Moore explained. ‘But the power’s turned off most of the time, so security’s been down to locks and regular checking.’

  ‘Mostly to guard against trespassers or squatters,’ Beatty said, ‘since there’s nothing left to steal.’

  ‘So no alarm,’ said Martinez. ‘But they pay for a gardener.’

  ‘Poor Mr Mulhoon,’ Ally Moore said. ‘That’s right.’

  She rummaged in her case, withdrew some papers and a bunch of tagged keys and, although the mansion had been entered within minutes of the securing of the search warrant, Martinez took them from her anyway.

  ‘Does Mr Mulhoon usually work weekends?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Moore said. ‘He comes on the most convenient day – to him, I mean – closest to the fifth of each month. A cleaning firm comes in too, around the twentieth.’

  ‘The aim has been to keep up basic maintenance,’ Beatty said. ‘As I said, fixtures aside, there’s nothing the average burglar would be interested in.’

  ‘Maybe the fireplaces,’ Ally Moore said. ‘You hear of things like that being dismantled and taken away.’

  ‘The side gate to the garden was unlocked,’ Sam said.

  ‘It’s always kept locked,’ Moore said quickly. ‘But I guess Mr Mulhoon would have unlocked it when he arrived.’

  ‘Did the Oates Gallery belong to Mrs Myerson?’ Sam asked Beatty.

  ‘She was the landlord,’ the other man said. ‘The place was run by a manager and staff, and my firm took care of the property requirements. If you need our files, I can send them over Monday.’

  ‘Today or tomorrow would be better,’ Martinez said. ‘We could come to you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Larry Beatty said. ‘I’ll do my best, though it might not be easy to locate them over the weekend.’

  ‘When did the gallery close down?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Just over a year ago,’ Beatty said.

  They were still on the front path, and the part of the backyard in which the deceased lay was entirely obscured from view, but Ally Moore’s eyes kept veering toward the gate leading to the garden and its new, apparently appalling contents.

  ‘Two people?’ she said softly. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Sam said.

  ‘Do you know who they are?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Sam turned to Beatty. ‘We’ll need to speak with Mrs Myerson, sir.’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ Beatty said. ‘She has advanced Alzheimer’s disease.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Sam said.

  ‘Does she have close relatives?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘None I’m aware of,’ Beatty said.

  The structure having been pronounced clear of danger, the power back on and Crime Scene having given them the OK, the detectives finally escorted Beatty and Moore into the mansion.

  ‘So all you need,’ Moore asked nervously, ‘is for us to say if anything seems out of place, right?’

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sp; ‘Main thing,’ Martinez told them, ‘is you need to be careful not to touch anything.’

  ‘We’ll be very careful,’ Beatty said.

  Their footsteps echoed in the silent house, even the padding of Moore’s rubber soles audible. Picture lights and unevenly sized pale spaces on walls attested to paintings that had once hung there, and an absence of dust or cobwebs on the rather ugly chandeliers indicated a decent job carried out by the cleaning firm.

  Its barrenness notwithstanding, Sam found the mansion unattractive, an architectural mishmash of Doric-style columns, ornate covings and fireplaces plucked from different periods and styles. Though as a showplace for paintings and sculptures it had probably served well enough, offering no competition to the art, and maybe it was just his head-cold making him so unappreciative.

  Not to mention the bodies in the backyard.

  They moved carefully and methodically through the house.

  ‘Everything looks the same,’ Ally Moore said, partway up the broad central staircase. ‘Though I guess I’ve never looked at it quite this closely before, you know?’

  ‘Sure,’ Sam said, easily.

  ‘When were you last here, sir?’ Martinez asked Beatty.

  ‘About three months ago,’ Beatty said. ‘For a formal check.’

  ‘I come in the middle and at the end of every month,’ Moore volunteered.

  ‘And how does it feel to you?’ Sam asked her.

  She stood at the top of the stairs. ‘It feels OK.’ She took another moment. ‘The same as before, I guess.’ She gave a small grimace. ‘No offence to Mrs Myerson, but it’s always felt a little spooky to me.’