Dead or a Lie, page 17
“It was there when I left,” I said, without mentioning it was Kathy who took me there in the first place. I assumed he knew that already, but it was hard to know for sure.
“The money… It was in the same unit with the appliances? And the TVs?” Canzano nodded at Mike. “You look inside any of them?”
“Inside what?” Mike said.
“The washers. Dryers.” Canzano turned to me. “Is that where it was? Inside one of the—”
“It was in a different unit. On the second floor.”
Canzano closed his eyes and sighed, shaking his head. “Shit. I knew it.” He looked at the security guard. “Why didn’t you think of that?”
Mike just shrugged. “How was I supposed to know they’d put it in a different unit?”
“Who is they?” I said.
Canzano looked at me, like he was confused with my question. “Your buddy, Mason. And Jillian. They’re the ones who ripped me off in the first place.”
It wasn’t exactly news to me. I’d just wished I’d gone to see Canzano sooner. “They ripped you off, but you expect me to believe you didn’t kill them?”
“I’m not the only ones they ripped off. But you can believe what you want. I didn’t kill them. And it’s not that I didn’t want to. Someone else just happened to get to them first.”
Alex said, “So you know who killed them?”
Canzano shook his head. “All I’m telling you is those two stole from me. They had it coming. Jillian… I’m the one who set her up. Paid her well. But she hooked up with Mason for some reason and stabbed me in the back. I trusted both of them.”
“What exactly did they do,” I said. “Stole appliances from you?”
“And took my cash,” he said.
“Your cash?” I said. “Don’t you mean, money you stole?”
“I didn’t steal money. Not technically.”
“No?” I said.
“I supply the payment method. Credit cards. That’s how the goods are purchased. ” He had a sly smile on his face. “You’d be surprised what people throw away.”
I said, “So you steal people’s credit cards? From their trash?”
“Not exactly,” he said, but didn’t offer more.
As much as I appreciated the fact this man was openly telling me his role in crime, I was somewhat concerned why he would.
“So, you use stolen credit cards to buy appliances?” I said.
“I play a small role,” he said. “Of course, you gotta have someone honest-looking to buy the goods. Jillian Rogers was just the person. She’d go in the store with the stolen credit card, make the purchase, and someone else would take it from there, turn it into cash.”
“So it wasn’t just you and Jillian?”
“No.”
“I’m guessing you’re not going to tell me who else is involved?”
“No,” he said, as if he felt he’d told me enough.
“You won’t tell me?”
“I don’t know. There’s a guy, runs the operation, but I never met him or anyone else.”
“Him?” Alex said.
Canzano shrugged. “Him. Her. Could be a broad, I guess. I told you, I don’t know who runs the show. All I know is too many people get involved, it always falls apart at some point.”
Alex gave me a look, and I could see she was ready to get out of there.
Canzano looked at his watch, pressing a button on the side. The face of it glowed in front of him. “Hey Mikey, take care of these two, will ya? I gotta get going.”
I glanced at Mike, his gun raised and now pointed at my head.
“Wait!” I said. “What do you mean by that? What’s going on?”
Canzano had already started to walk away, but stopped and turned back to us. “You think I was going to tell you everything I just did, and let you walk out of here alive?” He laughed, turned, and started toward the main building.
“Wait!” I said. “What if I can help you find the money?”
Canzano stopped in his tracks, turned and looked my way and was still, like he was thinking about it. “I don’t think you can,” he said.
Alex lifted her shirt, came out with the Glock she had tucked in the front of her pants, and pointed it at the security guard who still had his gun pointed at me. “Put it down,” she said, her voice calm.
“Uh, Raymond?” the guard said.
Canzano stopped and turned around, eyes wide when he saw Alex with the gun pointed at Mike. That’s when he pulled his gun from his pants like he was going to fire, but Alex fired first. Then fired again, Canzano taking a step back then collapsing onto the asphalt.
The security guard was about to fire a shot, but I ducked and charged him, holding his arm up and driving him straight into the truck’s rear deck. The gun went off just as it flew out of his hand.
Alex had her gun in his face when he fell to the ground.
But he didn’t move.
Alex checked his pulse. “He’s alive,” she said, and we both looked around the area where he fell. “Did he hit his head?”
“I don’t know,” I said, then went over to check on Canzano.
“Is he dead?” Alex said, walking up behind me.
But Canzano’s eyes were open. “You son of a bitch,” he said, his voice strained and quiet. “I’ll find you.”
Alex was already dialing 9-1-1, and we waited until we saw the red and blue lights in the distance before we ran back to the Beemer and took off out of there before the cops showed up.
Chapter 27
“Maybe we shouldn’t have left,” I said, glancing over at Alex in the passenger seat. “He’s going to be looking for our heads on a platter.”
“You’re assuming he survives,” I said.
“He’s not going to die. I didn’t shoot to kill.”
“Maybe you should have,” I said.
I had the pedal to the floor, the speedometer close to eighty-five on the highway.
“Shouldn’t you slow down?” Alex said.
I looked in the rearview, and noticed a set of headlights I felt had been following us for a good part of our ride since we left Canzano’s.
Alex followed my eyes in the mirror and turned around to look. “What is it?” she said, then straightened out in the seat.
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Unless someone else was at Canzano’s place.” I shifted my eyes from the dark road ahead to the mirror, keeping an eye on the headlights that followed us. The car seemed to be back enough of a distance I wondered if I was wrong.
“We’re turning ahead,” Alex said, her phone with GPS on it in her hand, the glow from it lighting up her face.
I took the next exit for Turnpike North, toward Fort Lauderdale.
Alex looked out the passenger window for a couple of moments before turning to me. “If Canzano didn’t kill Brock or Jillian, then…” She paused, as if she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. “Do you ever wonder if Kathy could’ve done it?”
“She was with me when Brock was killed,” I said.
“Well, she was likely in the hospital when it happened, if you want to get technical,” Alex said. “But, I don’t even mean… What I’m saying is, what if she knows who killed him? Or was behind it in some way? Don’t you think that’s possible?”
I kept my eyes on the road but didn’t respond. “She wouldn’t have called me in the first place,” I said. “Why would she have me come down here, if she was going to kill her only brother?”
Alex waited before she answered. “I’m just throwing it out there. The whole thing just seems suspicious from the start.”
“What I’m saying is why would she include me in on any of it?” I said, “If she had something to hide from me?”
“What if she wanted to draw attention from herself? Maybe she wanted to get you over there knowing the cops were watching?”
I cracked a smile. “I feel like you’re reaching. Besides, how would she know the cops were watching? They saw both of us there.”
“Yeah, but she disappeared,” Alex said. “Leaving you to defend yourself. And you even said she wanted to take the money. You think she’d just change her mind, because you told her not to?”
“She was as surprised as anyone when we opened those doors. And keep in mind, she married a man with money. I don’t see why she’d want to get involved in any of this, whatever Brock and Jillian were up to.”
“I just don’t think she’s as innocent as you’d like to think,” Alex said.
“I never said she was innocent at all. But she didn’t kill Brock, and that’s where you started with all this.”
We were both quiet for a good minute or so.
I looked in the rearview and this time didn’t see the same car.
Alex turned to get a look herself. “Did they turn off somewhere?”
I waited before I answered, making sure I wasn’t missing something. I eased my foot off the gas and slowed down, then jumped onto the Ronald Reagan Turnpike.
I said, “Whoever followed us from the motel where Brock was hiding wasn’t after me. At least I don’t think they were.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying. You don’t know if Kathy pulled you into this for some other reason. How do you know she’s not using you, like I said, to draw the attention away from her? What if these people who’ve come after you think you know where that money is?”
“We’re assuming that’s what they’re after,” I said.
“Isn’t that what everybody’s after?” Alex said.
I laughed, shaking my head. “Not me!”
Alex didn’t even crack a smile. “You shouldn’t try to defend her.”
“Kathy?” I said. “I’m not trying to defend her,” I said. “But I can’t see what reason she’d have for killing Brock.”
We were both quiet again, both of us not only trying to get our heads wrapped around all that had happened, but both completely sleep deprived.
I said, “So, back to Canzano… Don’t you find it strange he told us everything?”
“He told us what we wanted to hear,” she said. “Are we supposed to believe he didn’t kill Brock and Jillian? When he was about to kill both of us, right there on the spot?”
I nodded, like I agreed. “Then maybe we should go to the cops,” I said. “Tell them everything?”
“Were you surprised he turned the camera off?” she said.
“Surprised? In what way?”
She waited a moment before she answered. “I was worried right then, why he’d do that.”
“Because he turned off the camera?” I said.
“He knew he was going to take us out of the picture,” she said. “Before he even started flapping his gums.”
I kept my eyes on the dark road ahead, turning onto Northwest Twentieth Street. We were in Kathy and Luke’s neighborhood now, most of it excessively lit with all the artificial light you could ever ask for, from the streetlamps and porch lights.
I heard a siren in the distance, growing louder by the second, that was soon followed by blue lights filling up the neighborhood. Two police vehicles took the corner, coming toward us.
“Oh no,” Alex said, with worry apparent in her voice.
“They can’t be for us,” I said. “There’s no way Canzano would tell the cops the truth about what happened back there.”
“You’re right,” Alex said, turning in the seat to look out the back.
I pulled over to the side of the street when the blue lights got closer, flooding the inside of the BMW when the police vehicle blew past us at full speed.
Another police vehicle came from the opposite direction ahead of us and turned hard down Kathy and Luke’s street, almost on two wheels when it took the turn.
I pulled out and drove ahead, turning down the same street after the two police vehicles.
I stopped one house away from Luke and Kathy’s house, both of us waiting, watching the cops run from their cars and across the lawn.
“What do we do?” I said, the car still in drive, my foot down on the brake.
The blue lights were all flashing, the vehicles empty.
I heard more sirens in the distance, this time followed by red lights turning the corner.
An EMT vehicle went past us and drove across the lawn, then backed up around the side of the house.
More sirens could be heard in the distance, growing louder.
I stepped out of the car.
“What are you doing?” Alex said. “You sure we should go back there?”
I didn’t answer, hurrying across the lawn and toward the back of the house.
The EMT vehicle had backed all the way onto the lawn in the backyard and parked by a ground-level wooden deck. A spotlight on the vehicle lit up all of the grass and four cops standing back there, almost in a circle.
I got closer and saw two paramedics crouched down over a body in the grass.
I took a few steps closer without anybody noticing, until I was just a few feet from whoever was on the ground.
Luke Arnold lay in his boxer shorts and nothing else, blood covering the area around his chest.
“Is he alive?” I said, and the four officers turned to me. “Who are you?” one of them said. I recognized the taller one from my hotel.
“Henry Walsh,” I said.
Nobody had answered me at first. I don’t think anyone knew for sure. But then the paramedic stood and said to the cops, “We’re too late.”
Luke Arnold was dead.
Chapter 28
It was barely six in the morning and I’d left Alex asleep, going outside to get some much-needed air after nonstop rolling for the handful of hours since we’d gotten back to the hotel.
The police had no indication of who could have killed Luke Arnold, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Kathy had ended up, instead, with the same fate as her husband.
The air outside the hotel was somewhat cool but still humid. The sun was starting to rise, a tint of orange bleeding into the sky above it.
Neither Detective Collins nor Detective Helms had returned my calls. Of course, it was in the middle of the night when I called. But I was surprised neither had arrived at the scene behind Luke Arnold’s house while Alex and I were still there.
I was afraid of the finger-pointing that could come my way, considering there was obvious friction between me and Kathy’s husband, most of it directed toward me, from him, than the other way around.
I knew how these things often went, and how quickly cops liked to jump on a suspect.
I’d taken my phone from my pocket to look at the screen, when I glanced up and saw a Miami-Dade police vehicle turn into the parking lot, practically jumping the curb, blue lights flashing but no siren.
The car stopped in the circular drive in front of me. A single uniformed officer jumped out and rushed toward the entrance. Even though it was still somewhat dark outside, the cop wore dark sunglasses and a Miami-Dade PD baseball cap pulled down tight to where the hat’s bill met his sunglasses.
I was about to step out of his way, but he pulled a gun and held it on me, the gun gripped with both hands. “Hands against the wall!”
I looked behind me, as if there was a chance he was talking to someone else. But there was nobody else around. Even the lobby was empty. I didn’t do as I was asked.
So the cop grabbed my arms and spun me around, throwing me up against the wall. My face smashed into the Stucco exterior.
“What the hell did I do?” I said.
All I could think was it had something to do with Luke Arnold’s death.
But the cop didn’t say a word, throwing the cuffs on my wrists, then taking my wallet from my pocket.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw him look at one of my business cards, then tossed the wallet on the ground.
“What the hell are you—”
The cop punched me in the back of the head. “Shut your mouth!” He then pushed me toward his car and into the back seat.
“You didn’t even read me my rights,” I said, the rear door slamming in my face.
The cop was not a small man by any means, wedging himself into the front seat behind the wheel.
I still hadn’t gotten a good enough look at him, until I looked into the rearview. He still had the sunglasses on, but it hit me who he was. “It’s you!” I said. “From the park!”
I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket, but with my hands cuffed behind my back, there was nothing I could do to answer it. But when I looked out of the car and into the hotel lobby, I could see Alex running on the other side of the glass toward the hotel’s entrance, the phone to her ear.
The cop took off, and all I could do was look out at Alex, chasing after us barefoot and in a T-shirt and shorts, the way she was in bed before I left.
The cop hit the same curb leaving the parking lot as he had coming in, and I bounced in the seat and slid almost to the other side when he cut the wheel hard, driving into oncoming traffic. He picked up the phone and said, “Got him. Be there in ten.”
I didn’t recognize the area we were driving through. But I at least knew the turn for the Miami-Dade Police headquarters.
When we drove past it, I knew I was in bigger trouble than if he had taken me to the police station.
I looked out the back window after the so-called cop missed the turn. I watched the guy looking straight ahead toward the road. “You’re not a cop, are you,” I said.
He didn’t seem to react in any way whatsoever, driving straight, doing the speed limit as if not in much of a hurry, until we passed the sign for Miami Lakes.
Things were about to go from bad to worse.
He turned into the parking lot of what looked to be an abandoned church, continuing straight and around to the back where two cars were parked.
He left the engine running and got out of the vehicle, came around to my side and opened the door. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” I said, not willing or ready to so easily follow his command.
He reached in and pulled me out of the car, yanking at my arm and dragging me across a walkway. With my hands behind my back, there was little I could do about it. Leading me to a door at the back of the church, he knocked.
