Chapter 17
Another envelope. My heart contracted into a knot, emanating pains that radiated to my neck and upper arm. Oh, God, not another one. I didn't think I could bear it.
I clenched my teeth to curb my emotions and jogged down the three flights of stairs to the lobby. Clustered around the reception desk I found Raptor, Silvio Bonani and Will Metzgar, the whole Miami management team. They were staring with rapt attention at a brown kraft envelope lying on the desk, as if it were a deadly snake about to strike.
Behind the desk in a high-backed leather chair sat Warren Davidson, a white-haired Special Forces veteran who manned the reception area on weekdays. In spite of his age, pushing sixty, he still passed his RangeMan proficiency test with ease every year and was a crack shot. Sitting in a wheeled desk chair next to Warren was a Latino boy around ten years old with straight dark hair and saucer-wide brown eyes. He was barefoot and wearing a faded Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and baggy canvas shorts.
"Rico, this is Ranger, the guy I was telling you about," Warren said to the boy. "Ranger, this is Federico Ortega. He lives with his mother in an apartment above the deli down the street."
I tried to make my face open and friendly, squatting down to the boy's level and holding out my right hand for a handshake. "Hi, Rico. I'm very pleased to meet you."
"Hi, Mr. Ranger," said Rico, shaking my hand. "Are you really the boss of this whole building?"
I smiled at him, trying not to grimace at the thought of what was in that envelope on the desk. "I try, Rico, but these guys don't always listen to me."
Actually, every man in the building obeyed my orders without question, but I didn't want to scare the boy. It was clear they wanted me to meet him for a reason.
I continued in as pleasant a manner as I could summon up. "How come you're not in school today?"
"We got out last week. It's summer vacation."
"I bet you're happy about that."
Rico couldn't suppress a grin as he nodded.
Warren spoke up. "Rico brought me that envelope that's on the desk. He said a man in front of the deli gave him five dollars to bring it down here and drop it off."
"Is the man still out there?" I was twitching with eagerness to go after him.
Warren answered, "No sign of him, sir. Rico and I already checked. But he was right in front of the deli and the jewelry store across the street has security cameras outside. We might be able to see something."
"Did you see where the man came from?" I asked Rico.
"He came around the corner from 3rd Street. I didn't see if he had a car or anything. He was walking when I saw him."
"Can you tell me what he looked like?"
"He was pretty old. He had gray hair and brown skin, but not black. Kinda like yours or his," he indicated Raptor, whose coloring is just a shade lighter than my own, but with more red, proclaiming his Native American ancestry.
"How old, do you think? As old as Warren?" I tipped my head at Davidson. "As old as one of these guys?" I waved an arm around at Raptor, Silvio, and Will. "As old as me?"
Rico considered, studying each of us. "He had gray hair like you, only a lot shorter, but his face looked older. But not as old as Warren."
"What was he wearing?"
"Tan shorts with lots of pockets and a short-sleeved shirt, kinda red and brown plaid, tucked in."
"Excellent powers of observation," I said, and a smile of pride crossed Rico's face.
"What else did you notice about him? Any tattoos or scars or big hairy moles?"
Rico grinned at that last one, but rapidly sobered. "His skin on his arms and legs looked kinda funny. It was lighter in some spots and sort of wrinkly, not like old people wrinkles, but like there was something wrong."
Burn scars. El Látigo. He's here. The energy was buzzing through me, the thrill of getting close.
"Did he hand you the envelope with his bare hands?" I asked, dragging myself back from a vivid vision of gutting El Látigo and pulling his entrails out with my bare hands.
"His hand looked funny, all smooth and pale."
"Could it have been a clear glove? You know, the kind doctors and nurses sometimes wear?"
"Yeah, it coulda been a glove. It probably was. But not like the doctor wears. His are kinda white, not see-through. This one was see-through. And it was only on one hand. He was holding the envelope and the 5 bill together in that hand."
"Where is the 5 bill?" I asked.
Rico started to reach in his pocket.
"No!" I snapped, sharper than I intended. I gentled my voice. "Sorry, Rico, didn't mean to yell. But we only want to handle the 5 bill with gloves so we don't cover up any fingerprints that might be on it."
By this time a couple of men had come down from the office with a box of latex gloves and several clear evidence bags. I pulled a glove out of the box and offered it to Rico.
"Would you like to put a glove on to take the money out of your pocket? I'd be glad to trade you that five-dollar bill for this." I pulled my money clip out of my pocket and peeled off a hundred.
"Wow," Rico breathed, his saucer eyes growing to dinner plates as he looked at the money. "I've never seen a hundred dollar bill before. Wait 'till I show my mom!"
Rico pulled the large glove over his small hand, struggling to get his fingers in the right holes. When he pulled the bill from his pocket I held open an evidence bag for him to drop it into.
"You did really well, son," I said, handing him the hundred. "I'm going to give you a card with my phone number and if you think of anything about the guy that you didn't tell me you can call."
I handed him a card and he grinned again as he shoved it in his pocket with the money. "Thanks, Mr. Ranger," he said.
"Warren will take you home now and explain to your mom what happened. Glad to meet you, Rico, and when you get a little bigger come on back and I'll give you a job."
I watched them go out the door and turned back to the envelope, which the guys had placed in a plastic evidence folder.
"Schedule a meeting of everyone on shift for 1100 hours," I instructed, "and have someone go get the security tapes from the jewelry store."
I grabbed the envelope and headed at double-time for the stairs.
oOo
Chapter 18
I locked myself into my office and pulled on the gloves that were stuffed in my pocket. To my relief nobody had followed me up the stairs. I needed to do this alone.
I slid the brown envelope out of the evidence bag and sucked in a deep breath through my nose as I opened the clasp. I knew it was going to be bad. Each picture had been worse than the previous one, escalating, as Foster would say, and this one would be the worst yet. I said a prayer for Stephanie as I pulled out the picture. Please, God…
This one was in the envelope face down, so the first thing I saw was that forceful black printing.
She thought you were
a hero. I showed her
what you did to my family
My heart was trying to pound its way through my ribcage as I flipped over the photo.
Oh, God.
I was looking directly into Stephanie's eyes, huge and brilliant blue, with tiny pinpoint pupils. Drugged. Some type of narcotics, most likely.
She was on her hands and knees on that same stained mattress, her head forced back by his left hand buried in her hair, her mouth slack and hanging open.
There were fresh whip marks on what I could see of her back and shoulders, crisscrossing the partially healed ones from the last photograph. I looked carefully, trying to discern how many times she had been whipped, but only her shoulders and a small portion of her back were visible. I couldn't tell.
Her breasts were hanging down, white and pristine, no whip marks there. Yet.
Her weight was resting on her hands, cuffed at the wrists, and I finally brought my eyes to her arms to view what I knew would be there. Cigarette burns. Six on one upper arm, and one on the other. Angry bloody red-black circles, just beginning to scab over.
He was visible from the waist down standing close behind her, his feet on each side of her knees. He was wearing brown cotton pants, but I couldn't tell whether they were open and he was fucking her or he just had his groin pressed against her ass.
His right hand was at his side holding a slender black leather switch, and the burn scars streaked lighter pinkish patches up his brown arm. On the hand holding the whip was a gold ring. It was in semi-profile, but I could tell it contained a large onyx with a diamond set into the center. The sight of it catapulted me back in time, and I remembered that he wore it always, was wearing it when we left him to die in the explosion.
No question. El Látigo.
And he was here. In Miami.
I felt like screaming, like crying, like jumping out of my skin. We were oh-so-close, and yet still so far. But I was pumped to have new information, to know he was so near.
I picked up my phone and called the task force number that rang directly into the conference room at RangeMan Trenton.
"RangeMan," came the pleasant, contralto voice. Foster.
"Put me on speaker," I commanded.
"Okay, boss, done," came Tank's deep, echoing rumble.
"Who's there?" I demanded.
Tank answered. "Almost all of us. Murphy, Foster, Gonzales, Simmons, Bobby, Lester, Manny, Zero, Alvirez. Hal and Ram are out checking the mailbox cameras and replacing batteries. Vince and Woody are taking a surveillance shift on the mailbox at South Broad and Bridge. Don't know where Morelli and Caterson are."
Since most of our task force members were paired up, with the exception of Gonzalez from DEA and ATF agent Simmons, who were both used to working alone, Caterson had attached herself to Morelli. She was an attorney, almost useless, a political appointee to Homeland Security, and primarily interested in covering their asses, just in case.
Morelli had been a good sport about it, taking her along when he was following up leads and giving her lessons in investigative techniques. It helped that she was quite attractive and very sympathetic to Morelli's pain, more than willing to help him put the kidnapping of his girlfriend out of his mind for a few hours.
And after the third picture arrived, I suspected Morelli was letting her.
The silence stretched for a long moment and then I broke it. "I've got another picture."
Pandemonium in Trenton.
Tank's voice broke through the cacophony, urging everyone to shut up. "Foster first."
Foster's voice came through. "How did you get the picture?"
"It was hand delivered to the front desk by a little boy from down the street. El Látigo gave him five dollars to bring it in."
"How do you know it's Torres?" she asked.
"From the boy's description, and from the ring on his hand in the photograph."
"Describe the photo."
I gave them a precise description, right down to the position of the cigarette burns, and read them the words from the back. "I'll have it scanned and emailed in a few minutes. You should all go pack. The jet will be at Trenton-Mercer in three hours."
I was waiting for Foster to ask me about the cigarette burns, but she didn't.
"Any chance of getting his picture from your security cameras?"
"Not from ours. He was too smart to get in range. But there's a jewelry store right across from where he found the boy. I've got men there now looking at the tapes."
Alvirez's voice came through. "Did you get the money from the boy?"
"Yes, it's in the lab here being processed."
Silence.
"Anything else?" I asked, impatient, wanting to move, needing to do something.
"Anyone?" I heard Tank say. "No, boss. We'll see you there late afternoon."
I snapped my phone shut, shoved the photo and envelope into the evidence bag and headed for the lab.
Stephanie had been gone thirty-two days.
oOo
Chapter 19
That evening
The largest conference room at the Miami office wasn't as big as the one at Trenton, and with the task force plus about a dozen added Miami men we were shoulder to shoulder.
On the large, flat-screen monitor mounted on the end wall were two different greatly enlarged, poor-quality photos of El Látigo taken from the jewelry store surveillance video. Silvio had enhanced them using every possible technique, and they were recognizable to me. I hoped they were good enough to be recognized by someone who had seen him in passing.
Next to El Látigo was a better-quality enlargement of the ring on the hand holding the whip from the inkjet printout, plus a closeup of Stephanie's face from a photo I had of her in my apartment.
Raptor passed out copies of all four photos and assignments for the evening. We were going to try to cover every bar and strip joint in the Latino sections of the city, showing the photos to bartenders and patrons, trying to get a fix on El Látigo's location.
There were seven teams of two from the original task force, counting Tank and me, with Gonzalez and Simmons paired together. There were an additional five teams from RangeMan Miami.
Conspicuously absent were Morelli and Caterson. Neither of them answered their phones until the jet was already in the air, so they were flying commercial out of Newark, scheduled to arrive at Miami International at 2300.
According to Morelli they'd been knocking on doors within view of the corner of South Broad and Bridge, re-interviewing everyone and hoping to catch someone at home who'd seen the second envelope dropped into the mailbox. An exercise in futility, but sometimes plodding legwork turns up the information that breaks a case.
"It must have been a dead spot in the cell grid," Morelli said when I finally reached him.
Yeah, right. I prayed for Stephanie's sake he was telling the truth.
Armed with photos as well as our guns and knives, Tank and I set off in an SUV to mingle with the scum and the bottom feeders.
oOo
Two days later— Thursday, June 5
"Task force meeting at eleven hundred," I said to Tank as we trudged wearily back up the stairs at the office. The dawn light slanted across our faces, making us squint and throwing gruesome shadows that exaggerated and distorted Tank's features. I imagined I looked even worse.
Another new day. We'd spent two full nights, more than ten hours each night, going from bar to bar, strip joint to club, showing our pictures to patrons and bartenders. The other teams, twelve of them once Morelli and Caterson finally arrived, were canvassing as well, checking in with Alvirez in the control room at regular intervals. From early evening until the 0500 closing time for the entertainment district we pounded the pavement.
Nothing.
Everyone else was tired too, heading back to their quarters for a few hours sleep before the 1100 meeting. Like Trenton, the Miami office had one floor of apartments for employees. I'd moved several Miami employees out to temporary housing and doubled up to squeeze all the team members from RangeMan Trenton into the small apartments.
I offered the two women, Foster and Caterson, efficiency apartments in the building as well, and had taken a block of rooms in a Holiday Inn Express a short distance from the office to house the rest of the task force. Foster accepted the RangeMan apartment. Caterson preferred to stay in the hotel with the other Feds. And Morelli.
Wednesday morning, the day after the fourth picture arrived, I ordered five thousand posters and temporary staff to paper the city with them. The posters showed two pictures of Stephanie, the one from my apartment and one pulled from the Trenton security cameras, plus the two shots of El Látigo and the close-up of his ring.
I was offering a ten thousand dollar reward for information leading to the location of either of them. I was going to make it more, but Foster had lectured me on the added danger it could cause Stephanie if the gangbangers and drug dealers knew how valuable she was to me. Someone might kidnap her from the kidnapper and hold her for ransom. She convinced me, so I went with the ten big ones.
Six men from the RangeMan Miami staff were on call day and night to follow up any leads that were phoned in from the posters. There were surprisingly few of them.
It was an effort to keep from dragging my feet as I walked into my apartment. I badly needed a shower. My eyes were gritty and I felt grubby from the hours spent slogging through the squalor of the downtrodden neighborhoods, talking with the desperate people.
I set my watch alarm to wake me at 1030 and collapsed into bed for a few short hours of restless, dream-filled sleep. Stephanie haunted my dreams, as she had ever since her disappearance. The moment sleep overtook me she'd be with me, whimpering with fear and sobbing with pain, suffering every atrocity I'd ever committed. I woke up sweating and gasping, my heart pounding, my eyes tearing.
Or, just as bad, she'd be naked and wrapped around me, making love to me and crying out my name as she came. I'd awaken with a throbbing erection, or ejaculating in my boxers, and the realization that she wasn't really there was shattering, every single time.
But this morning I didn't even get the three hours of fitful sleep that I'd anticipated. I jerked to alertness at the vibration of my cell phone on the nightstand. Everyone on the task force had been out all night, and they all should be sleeping.
I grabbed the phone and flipped it open, clearing the hoarseness from my throat. "Talk," I ordered.
It was Raptor. "Another one, boss. They're on their way up with it."
TBC