The Forgotten (john puller) Page 8

  “I managed to open the gate latch and stepped into the backyard. I was looking at the door as I came around the corner of the house. I almost didn’t look in the direction of her little fountain pool, but luckily I did. I couldn’t see it from where my deck is situated, you see. But now I could.”

  Puller stopped him there. “Okay, if you could just take it one step at a time. Tell me everything you saw, smelled, heard.”

  Puller had taken out a notebook and Cookie looked at it anxiously. “The police told me it was an accident.”

  “The police might be right. Then again, they might be wrong.”

  “So you came down to investigate?”

  “I came down to see my aunt. When I found out she was dead, I paid my respects. Then I switched to investigation mode to make sure she didn’t leave this world against her wishes.”

  Cookie gave a little shudder and continued. “I saw her lying in the fountain pool. It’s only about two feet deep. You’d think no one could drown in it. But she was facedown, her entire head was underwater.”

  “Which way was she facing?”

  “Her head was pointed toward the house.” “Arms outstretched or by her side?”

  Cookie considered this for a few moments, obviously trying to picture the scene in his mind. “Right arm outstretched and over top of the stone surround. Her left arm was by her side.” “Her legs?”

  “Splayed.”

  “Her walker?”

  “On the ground on the right side of the pool.” “What did you do next?”

  “I ran over to her. At that point I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. I kicked off my sandals and walked directly into the water. I grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her head out of the water.”

  Puller thought about this. Cookie had wrecked the crime scene. He had to do it, because like he’d said, he didn’t know if Betsy was still alive. Crime scenes could be legitimately tainted by first responders trying to save lives. That trumped even preserving evidence. In this case, unfortunately, it had been for naught.

  “But she wasn’t?”

  Cookie shook his head. “I’ve seen a few dead people in my life. Not just at funerals and such. Smoke inhalation killed my little sister over fifty years ago. One of my best friends drowned in a pond when we were teenagers. Betsy’s face was deathly white. Her eyes were open, her mouth hung loosely. There was no pulse, no sign of life.” “Foam around the mouth?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Were her limbs stiff or supple?”

  “They seemed a little stiff.”

  “But just a little?”

  “Yes.”

  “Upper arms stiff or supple?”

  “Stiff. But her hands seemed normal, if cold.” “What did you do then?”

  “I set her back down exactly as I had found her. I watch a lot of CSI and NCIS. I know you’re not supposed to mess with the area where a body is found. Then I went back to my house and called the police. They showed up about five minutes later. A man and a woman.”

  “Landry and Hooper?”

  “Yes, that’s right. How did you know that?” “Long story. Were you around when they went over the scene?”

  “No. They took my statement and then asked me to go back to my house, and to stay there in case they had any other questions. Other police cars showed up and then I saw a woman with a medical bag drive up, get out, and go into the backyard.”

  “Medical examiner,” said Puller.

  “Right. Then a black hearse arrived a few hours later. I watched them bring Betsy out on a gurney with a white sheet over her. They put her in the hearse and it drove off.”

  Cookie sat back, obviously exhausted and saddened by retelling the story. “I’m really going to miss her.”

  “Did she still drive? I saw the car in the garage.”

  “Not really. I mean, I hadn’t seen her out in the car in a while.”

  “But she was still capable of driving?”

  “I would say no. Her legs were weak and her reflexes were shot. Her spine was bent. I’m not sure how she dealt with the pain.” He paused. “Come to think of it, she did go out the day before I found her. I saw Jerry drive up.”

  “Jerry?”

  “Jerry Evans. He has a car service. I’ve used him. He picked Betsy up around six in the evening and she was back around thirty minutes later.”

  “Short trip. Any idea where she went?”

  “Yep. I asked Jerry. He said to mail a letter.” Puller knew it was the letter. “Why not just put it in the mailbox out front?”

  “Our mail comes early here. Jerry said the box she used had a later pickup. It would go out that night.”

  Puller thought, She mailed a letter. And a bit later she was dead.

  Before Puller could even ask, Cookie handed him a business card with Jerry’s name and number on it.

  “Thanks. Did she often go into the backyard at night by herself?”

  “She liked to sit on the bench by the fountain pool. Usually during the day. To catch the sunlight. I’m not the best person to ask about what she did later at night. She normally went to bed long before I did. I like to get out and about. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but anyone in their seventies is considered a ‘young’un’ down here. We’re supposed to go out at night and party hearty.”

  “Did you notice anything suspicious the night before you found her? People, sounds, anything?”

  “I was out visiting friends across town so I probably wouldn’t have seen anything. I got home late. Everything seemed normal.”

  “Was she dressed in her pajamas or regular clothes?”

  “Regular clothes.”

  “So the probability was she died the night before. She hadn’t been to bed.”

  Cookie nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “Over the last few days leading up to my aunt’s death, did she talk to you about anything she was concerned about?”

  “Like what?” Cookie asked, looking curious. “Anything out of the ordinary. Did she mention a person? An event? Something she’d seen, perhaps at night?”

  “No, nothing like that. Was she worried about something?”

  “Yeah, I think she was,” said Puller. “And it looks like she might have had good reason to be.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Puller sat in his rental and called the medical examiner, Louise Timmins, and after that the attorney, Grif Mason. Timmins was a practicing physician busy with patients until six that evening. Mason was out of the office at a meeting. Puller arranged to meet Timmins at seven at a nearby cafe and he left a message with Mason’s office to call him back when he returned.

  He called Jerry, the driver, who confirmed what Cookie had already told him but added, “She looked tired, and worried about something.”

  Puller thanked him, clicked off, and thought back to Cookie’s commentary. Upper arms stiff, hands normal. Rigor started in the upper extremities before moving outward. Then it went away in the reverse order. She had not been dead long enough for the process to start reversing.

  Puller thought through the possible timetable. She had mailed a letter at six p.m. and her body was found at eleven a.m. the next day. Puller didn’t think she had died the moment she had returned from the mailbox but probably later that evening. So stiff upper arms told Puller that rigor was just beginning on his aunt’s body. That meant that when Cookie found her she had been dead probably about twelve to fourteen hours. That number could be skewed by the Florida heat and humidity, which would speed up a body’s decomposition, but it at least gave Puller a range to work with. If Cookie found her shortly after eleven her death might have occurred around ten the previous night, give or take. Or about four hours after she mailed the letter.

  Puller checked his watch. It was past three in the afternoon and he didn’t yet have a place to stay. Now it was time to find a bed.

  Right as he put the car in gear he spotted it. A vehicle parked at the curb four car lengths down from him an
d on the other side. It was a tan Chrysler sedan, Florida plates that began ZAT. He couldn’t see the rest because the plate was dirty. Perhaps intentionally so, he thought. The reason this was significant was that Puller had seen this very same car parked across the street from the funeral home.

  He eased the Corvette from the curb and slowly drove off. He checked his rearview mirror. The tan Chrysler started up and pulled out.

  Okay, that was progress. Someone was interested in him. He took out his phone and snapped a picture of the Chrysler’s reflection in his rearview mirror. There looked to be two people inside, but the sun’s glare made it difficult to see much detail.

  He drove up and down the main strip right off the water but easily gauged that all of these places would be far beyond his budget. He began driving off water, block by block. He checked prices at the second and third blocks and found them to be so high he wondered how anybody could afford the places on the water.

  He finally got on his cell phone and did a search of lodgings in the area by price. On the fifth block from the water was one that landed in his sweet spot, a residence inn called the Sierra, where one could rent by the day or week. Eighty bucks a night, breakfast included, or you could get it down to four-fifty for the full seven days paid in advance. Actually it wasn’t all that sweet for a guy whose salary was paid by Uncle Sam, but it was going to have to do.

  The three-story building was a block of ragged stucco with an orange terra-cotta roof, which was in as bad shape as the stucco. It was sandwiched between a gas station on one side and a building undergoing renovation on the other. The narrow street it was on had nary a palm tree. What the streets did have in abundance were old cars and trucks, some on cin- derblocks, others looking as though they were close to being so. It didn’t seem to Puller that any of the rusted vehicles were from later than the 1980s.

  He looked in his rearview for the Chrysler but didn’t see it.

  A group of barefoot kids in shorts and no shirts was running up and down the street, kicking a soccer ball with great skill. They all stopped playing and stared when Puller pulled up in front of the Sierra in his Corvette. When he got out, they stared even harder and drew closer.

  He grabbed his bag from the passenger seat, shut and beeped the doors locked with his key fob, and strode up to the kids.

  One of the boys looked up at him and asked in Spanish if that was his car.

  Puller answered in Spanish that it was actually being rented by a friend of his named Uncle Sam.

  The boy asked if Uncle Sam was rich.

  “Not as rich as he used to be,” answered Puller as he walked toward the Sierra’s little front office.

  Puller paid for two nights, got his room key and instructions on where and when breakfast was served. The woman behind the desk told him where he could park his car. She gave him a key card to access the garage.

  “I can’t leave it on the street?” said Puller She was a small Latina with straight dark hair. “You can, but it might not be there in the morning.”

  “Right,” said Puller. “I’ll put it in the garage.” When he got back to the car the gang of boys had surrounded it, touching it and whispering. “You like cars?” Puller asked them.

  They all nodded their heads.

  “I’ll let you hear the engine.”

  He got in and fired it up and revved the engine. They all jumped back at the sound, looked at each other and started laughing.

  Puller drove to the garage area that was on a side street next to the Sierra. He put his key card in an electronic reader and the large metal door rose, revealing a large space beyond. He pulled through and the door automatically closed. He parked the car, exited via a side door of the garage, and walked back to the Sierra.

  At the comer he saw one of the boys who had been admiring his car. He had brown curly hair and looked about ten or eleven. Puller noted the skinny, undernourished frame. But he also saw that the boy’s muscles were hard and his features determined. His gaze was wary, but then Puller figured around here one had to be careful.

  “You live around here?” asked Puller in English.

  The boy nodded. “Si.” He pointed to his left. “Mi casa.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Diego.”

  “Okay, Diego, I’m Puller.” They shook hands. “You know Paradise really well?”

  Diego nodded. “Very good. I live here all the time.”

  “You live with your mom and dad.”

  He shook his head. “Mi abuela.”

  So his grandmother was raising him, thought Puller.

  “You want to earn some money?”

  Diego nodded so vigorously that his soft brown curls bounced up and down. “Si. Me gusta el dinero.”

  Puller handed him a five-dollar bill and then took out his cell phone. He showed him the picture of the Chrysler.

  “Keep an eye out for this car,” he said. “Don’t go near it, don’t talk to the people in it, don’t let them see you watching, but get the rest of the license plate for me if you can, and what the people inside look like. Entiendes?”

  “Si.”

  Puller held out his hand for the boy to shake. He did so. Puller noticed the ring on the boy’s finger. It was silver with a lion’s head engraved on it.

  “Nice ring.”

  “Mi padre gave it to me.”

  “I’ll be seeing you, Diego.”

  “But how will I find you?” asked Diego.

  “You won’t have to. I’ll find you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The home was one of the largest on the Emerald Coast, ten acres on prime waterfront on its own point with sweeping views of the Gulf across an infinite horizon. Its total cost was far more than a thousand middle-class folks collectively would earn in a year.

  He pushed lawnmowers and hefted bags of yard debris and loaded them onto trucks parked in the service area behind the mansion. The landscape trucks were not allowed to come through the front entrance with its fine cobblestone drive. They were relegated to the asphalt in the rear.

  There were two pools in the rear grounds, one an infinity pool and the other an Olympicsized oval. The grandeur of the grounds was matched only by the beauty of the interior of the thirty-five-thousand-square-foot home with an additional twenty thousand square feet in various other buildings, including a pool house, guesthouse, gymnasium, theater, and security quarters.

  He had seen one of the indoor maids venture outside to receive a package from a FedEx driver, who also was relegated to the service entrance. She was a Latina dressed in an old-fashioned maid’s uniform complete with white apron and black cap. Her body was slim but curvy. Her face was pretty. Her hair was dark and luxurious- looking.

  At the end of the dock that ran straight out into the Gulf was a 250-foot yacht with a chopper resting on top of an aft helipad.

  He labored hard, the sweat running down his back and into his eyes. While other workers stopped for water or shade breaks he continued to push on. Yet his tasks had a purpose. They allowed him to circumnavigate the grounds. In his mind he placed all of the buildings onto a chessboard, moving pieces in accordance with various scenarios.

  What he focused on most of all was the deployment of the security forces. There were six on duty during the day. All seemed professional, worked as a team, were well armed, observant, and loyal to their employer. In sum, there didn’t seem to be many weaknesses.

  He assumed there were at least a fresh half dozen deployed at night and maybe more, since the darkness was a more apt time for an attack.

  He drew near enough to the main gate coming in to see the alarm pad and surveillance camera mounted there. The gates were wrought iron and massive. They looked like the ones in front of the White House main entrance. The walls surrounding the front of the estate were stucco and over six feet high. The homeowner obviously wanted privacy.

  He dropped to one knee and was performing some pruning tasks around a mound of bushes when he saw a Maserati convertible
pull up to the gate. Inside were a man and a woman. They were both in their early thirties and had the well- nourished and pleased looks of folks for whom life had held no hardships.

  They punched in the code and the gates swung open.

  As they passed by him neither of them even looked at him. But he looked at them, memorizing every detail of their faces.

  And now he also had the six-digit security code to the front gate, beacuse he’d seen the man input it. The only remaining problem was the surveillance camera.

  He drew closer to the gate and worked on trimming back a bush. His gaze ran up the pole to which the camera was attached. The power line was enclosed in the metal pole, a standard practice, he knew. But once the pole was set in the ground the power lines had to go somewhere.

  He stepped through the gate before it closed all the way and started to work on a patch of lawn running back from the camera post to the fenceline. As he got down on his hands and knees and clipped at weeds and picked up an errant leaf that had had the effrontery to land on the lush grass, he studied the slight hump in the ground. This was where the trench had been dug for the electrical line running to the gate, which also powered the camera, voice box and security pad.

  He eyed the rumpled contour of the lawn to where it disappeared under the fence. If one had not been looking for it, the evidence of the trench would have been almost invisible. But not to him.

  He had to assume that the power line would be encased in a hardened pipe, but maybe not.

  He rose and walked around the perimeter of the property. He could not go back through the gate without revealing that he now knew the code. He also wondered how often it was changed. They were in the middle of the month and also the middle of the week. If they changed the code at the end of seven or thirty days, which was probable, he still had time.

  He reached the rear of the grounds and saw the vastness of the Gulf spread out before him. Seagulls swooped and dove. Boats either flew across the water or slowly puttered along. People were fishing, sailing, motorboating. That was during the day.

  At night they were moving other kinds of product. The kind he had once been. But luckily he had escaped. Others had not been so fortunate.