Blood Relations Read online

  If, as Ryabin suspected, Frank Tolin had been jealous of Charlie Sullivan, what better statement than to shoot him in the heart, then take off his pretty face? It all fit. It fit with George Fonseca, who had supplied drugs to Frank. But why would Frank poison his drug dealer with Parathion? Had Fonseca threatened to turn him in?

  For a moment, then another, and another, as if he were dreaming and at the same time knowing he was dreaming, Sam saw himself standing by the window, a man holding his broken right hand. A tall, broad-shouldered man in suit pants and shirt and loosened tie, home from the office. Now looking out the window again, into the deepening shadows, at the shed in a corner of the backyard.

  Unlatching the patio door, going along the walkway, then across the thick grass. Sun is down, nearly dark. A few birds making a racket in the neighbor’s tree. A woman’s voice over the fence. Calling the kids to dinner.

  The shed was small, about six by ten, made of heavy-gauge aluminum. The door opened smoothly on strap hinges, and the rich, warm smell of fertilizer rolled out. Sam ducked his head to avoid a pot hanging from the gently sloped roof. They had never run current out here, but light came through the door and a single window, and Sam could see well enough. Dina kept it well-organized. An old electric mower and some yard furniture were stored to one side. Pots were stacked according to size under the workbench, and over it hung a neat row of small gardening tools on metal hooks. Shelves took up the wall to the right.

  It was still hot and stifling in here, and sweat broke out on Sam’s neck. He peered closely at the boxes, cans, bags, and bottles on the shelves. Miracle-Gro. Fire-ant spray. Raid. Black Flag. Rose dust. He cursed for not having his glasses. Toxadust. Aphid pellets. Brown glass bottles with ingredients in print so small he couldn’t make the words out. He took three bottles to the door of the shed, balanced along his left arm, holding them carefully with his right forearm, unable to use the hand. Malathion spray. Parathion.

  One bottle crashed on the concrete step. Sam slowly put the others on the workbench and took a breath. The acrid, greasy stench of poison filled his nose. He told himself to wait, wait. Wait.

  They had all been killed by the same person. Good. Because Dina didn’t even know George Fonseca. And when Charlie Sullivan died, she was out of town. And Marty Cass? She didn’t know him either. Every backyard gardening shed in Miami, every one, had insecticides. And Sam wasn’t going to make another insane telephone call to Tarpon Springs.

  In a neat silvery row over the workbench hung her gardening tools. Green wood handles, worn from use. A small rake with clawlike tines. A narrow, pointed trowel. A tiny shovel with a razor edge. And the clippers Dina had been using when she accidentally slashed her hand. Blood had dripped onto the red bricks of the walkway. Sam ran a thumb over their points.

  He closed the door of the shed carefully and walked across the yard. As he went through the kitchen Melanie asked what was that awful smell? Was he all right? Dad? He told her he had to make some phone calls, never mind dinner.

  Upstairs in the bedroom with the door shut he dialed the number.

  “Nick? It’s me. Sam. Listen … No, goddammit, listen, it’s about Dina … No, she isn’t all right.… Nick, please. You’ve got to tell me. When did she leave Tarpon Springs that weekend in May? Saturday or Sunday … I know you told me. Tell me again.… I am not, I promise you, going crazy.… She might be in trouble. If you love your sister, for God’s sake—”

  “She thought you were cheating on her, Sam. She flew back a day early to find out.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “She made us all swear, that if you called—”

  “All right.” He took a breath.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Nick, it’s okay. Can I call you tomorrow? I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.” He hung up.

  When she came back from the grocery store—she should have been back already, but when she got back—they would talk. He would find out. He would ask her.

  Shaking, Sam went into the bathroom and turned the water on and splashed his face with his left hand. He would have to be calm about this. Sit her down in the chair in their bedroom. Dina, tell me. It’s going to be all right. I promise. I’ll take care of you.

  He would hire the best attorney. They would enter a plea. Not guilty. Not guilty by reason of insanity.

  Sam lowered his head to his arm, which lay across the sink.

  Nothing would happen to her. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He would find a place. The best doctors. He had always taken care of her.

  Slowly he stood up. In the mirror a madman looked back at him. Maybe he was going crazy. This was his own delusion, a product of rage and desire. He hated the men who had destroyed Matthew, hated them enough to want them dead. I would have shot the bastard myself, for what he did to Matthew. His desire for Caitlin Dorn had led him to suspect his own wife of murder. He wanted to be free of her. He would place on Dina the burden of his own guilt. Yes, Nick, I did commit adultery with a blond model eleven years younger than myself, so your sister had every right to see what was going on behind her back.

  He dried his face on a hand towel. But Dina hadn’t known Fonseca. She didn’t know that George Fonseca had given Matthew heroin. Ruffini had a better reason to kill Fonseca. He had tried to blackmail Ruffini. And Ruffini hated Charlie Sullivan in the long feud over Claudia Otero. And Ruffini had known Marty Cass. Sam laughed. Shit, maybe Eddie Mora had sent Dale Finley to pull the damn trigger. Or Beekie Duran. Now there was a theory and a half.

  He looked at his pants. They stank of insecticide. He changed quickly into sneakers and old slacks and a T-shirt, and went downstairs. He dumped his ruined pants into a plastic bag.

  Melanie was taking a dinner out of the microwave. One of her low-calorie entrees.

  “Did your mother say when she’d be back?”

  “No, she just had to go to the store for something.”

  “All right. When she comes home, tell her I’m in my study.” Sam threw the plastic bag into the trash.

  Caitlin Dorn had been waiting in the parking lot behind the performing arts center for ten minutes or so. The woman she’d spoken to about the party tonight lived on one of the private islands. She had said that directions to her house were simply impossible at night, so just wait there for her.

  The party would be outdoors, she explained, so wear something cool. But, please, try to look like one of the guests, not like a photographer. So Caitlin had worn her gauzy green dress, the one she’d worn to meet Sam Hagen at the hotel. That had turned into a total disaster.

  While she waited she’d been thinking about his telephone call. Trying to decide how she felt about it. Burdened. In a few days she would be driving to New York, she and Rafael Soto. She hadn’t wanted to take anything along, not even Sam’s wish that she go because it was important to her. Sam had problems of his own. Right now she wanted to be quiet. Mend. Take care of herself for a change.

  She looked at her watch. It would be nice if Mrs. Costas would show up. It would be hard for them to spot each other now, anyway, with cars beginning to fill the lot. There was something going on at the theater tonight, a concert of some kind. If she hadn’t already been paid an exorbitant deposit of $500, Caitlin would have left. Then she saw the headlights. The car parked next to her, a Volvo a few years old, which surprised Caitlin a little. She had been expecting something more expensive.

  A woman in black slacks and a red knit top got out. A handsome woman in her mid-forties, with dark curly hair.

  “Hi, I’m Sevasti.” She had a firm handshake and a nice smile. “I am so sorry for running late, but the caterers had half the food wrong, and the band was stepping all over my flowers—” She laughed. “Well, you don’t want to hear all that.”

  Caitlin was almost sure she had seen her somewhere, and said so.

  Mrs. Costas smiled. “Well, probably you have. I’ve lived on the Beach for years.” She walked back to her car and put her keys un
der the seat. “Listen, my daughter is playing violin in the orchestra tonight, and I told her I’d leave my car for her. I’ll just ride with you, all right?” She put her bag over her shoulder, then went around the Toyota and smiled through the window while Caitlin unlocked the passenger’s door from inside.

  chapter thirty-six

  Sam fixed himself a drink, sat in the kitchen with it till he could breathe again, then walked to the door of the family room.

  “Mel?” His daughter, still on the floor, was aiming the remote control at the television. The big screen popped and flashed through the channels. “Melanie.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She turned off the volume, then craned her head around on the little sofa pillow.

  “I’m in my study,” he said. “I’ve got some work to finish.”

  “And when Mom gets home, tell her to go see you.”

  “No. It’s all right. It’s getting late.” The clock on the VCR said 8:10. “What time did she get home from work?”

  “She didn’t go today.” Melanie sighed. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you. She took the day off.”

  “Never mind.” He said, “Hey, is that one of your mother’s good sofa pillows from the living room?”

  “I can’t find the one I like to use.” Melanie sat up and smoothed the wrinkles out. “It’s gone. I think she threw it out. She said it was dirty.”

  Sam had closed the door to his study and was unsnapping his briefcase before he heard what she had said. Gone. The little green pillow that Melanie liked to use was gone.

  He went back to the family room. She was on the sofa. “Mel? When was the last time you saw your pillow?”

  She shrugged. “A couple of weeks ago, I guess. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  He returned to his study. As soon as his vision cleared, he reached on top of the bookcase and found the key to his gun cabinet. He unlocked the door. His Colt pistol and one clip full of hollow-points were gone.

  He stared at the empty box.

  The pistol wasn’t there. He grabbed at an explanation. Somebody had broken into their house. Dina couldn’t have committed murder. Not Dina. She didn’t know the victims. Didn’t know they’d been involved with Matthew. Sam wondered if he had mumbled their names in his sleep.

  Then he thought of Frank Tolin. Frank had known Marty Cass. He had known Sullivan and Fonseca through Caitlin. Or from hearing things said in conversation. Gossip. Then Frank had inadvertently passed this knowledge to Dina? Incredible.

  But the facts themselves thudded into Sam’s consciousness like perfectly hewn blocks to form a logical, irrefutable structure. The pistol was gone. And so was the pillow. Dina had taken the pillow. She had used it to muffle the noise when she had shot Charlie Sullivan in the chest. One in the chest, then one through the back of the head. The blow-out had imbedded bits of green cloth and pillow stuffing in his scalp. She’d carried the gun in a bag. Natural for a woman to carry a bag. Why had he gone with her? What reason had she given?

  There would have been another reason for George Fonseca, A party to plan? Drugs to buy? Then the poison in his beer. Appropriate. He must have felt it working, and she had to kill him to get away. And Marty Cass. But why? Why Marty Cass?

  Sam remembered Dina at the dining room table, balancing accounts. Looking for the money, twenty thousand dollars, that Matthew had spent. Money stolen, she had said. And Marty Cass had taken it?

  His head reeled, and Sam’s laugh came out as a groan. Matthew had blown every last dime, had wasted it all, but Dina couldn’t believe that. Dina believed that Marty Cass had stolen it, sending her son a little farther toward the rocky shallows of Biscayne Bay. So Dina had shot him in the back, then had tried to hack off his thieving hand. Maybe she had used her clippers. Or the trowel. Or whatever gleamed most brightly across the dim shed when she opened the door.

  Dina had killed them all, each one guilty of destroying her son. Then she had come home and cleaned the pistol. She knew how. Sam had showed her at the gun range how to clean it. How to fire it. As if the gun might reappear, Sam stared once more into the empty box.

  She had his pistol. She was somewhere on Miami Beach with a Colt pistol fully loaded with .45-caliber hollow-points.

  Sam staggered to his feet. “Caitlin!”

  Mrs. Costas said to keep going straight on Alton Road.

  “I thought you lived on one of the islands,” Caitlin said.

  “We’re picking up my son’s girlfriend first. I told you. No, I guess I didn’t. Sorry, it’s been so hectic today.” Her voice was melodious and self-assured. “Take the next left.”

  Caitlin drove into a quiet residential area north of Forty-first Street. The street led past some two-story houses, then onto a narrow road marked No OUTLET. Through the trees Caitlin could see the Miami skyline a mile or so west, broken by the outlines of the small, uninhabited islands in Biscayne Bay. Slightly south, the lights of the causeway extended across the dark water.

  “Park there.” Mrs. Costas pointed to the turnaround at the end of the street.

  The headlamps picked up the mottled trunks of the pine trees, a tangle of underbrush, and a glint of broken glass. In the rearview mirror the nearest house was at the other end of the block. Caitlin put on the brakes. “Wait a minute. Nobody lives down here.”

  Her hands still on the wheel and the motor idling, Caitlin turned to look at Mrs. Costas. Pale face, framed by heavy waves of hair. Full lips, hollow cheeks. And her hand around the grip of a gun whose barrel, like a single eye, looked directly back at Caitlin.

  The woman’s mouth moved. She said something. Caitlin’s hands would not loosen from the steering wheel. She stared into the barrel of the gun. It was a heavy, squarish gun with a silvery sight rising up from the half-inch circle of black pointed at her face. The raised barrel sloped down and down to the curve of a hammer. The gun gleamed dully in the light from the dash.

  A thumb moved onto the hammer and pulled it back, a hideously smooth clicking of metal.

  “Caitlin. I said, take the keys out of the ignition and give them to me.” When Caitlin didn’t move, Mrs. Costas’s hand turned the keys, then withdrew them, jingling softly in the now-quiet car. She dropped them into her bag.

  Caitlin began to tremble.

  “I’m going to get out now. You come across the seat this way. We’re going to take a walk, not far. We’ll talk for a while; then you can go home.”

  The tires on Sam’s Honda slid, then grabbed, screaming, around the corner to the Palmetto Expressway, and a car behind him blew its horn. He shot up the entrance ramp and scattered gravel swerving around a truck. Taillights seemed to hurtle toward him, then flash past to the left or right.

  He would go east across town, then over the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach. And then—and then where?

  Hitting a clearer stretch of road, Sam grabbed the car phone with his injured hand and nearly dropped it. Wedging it between his knees, he punched in Gene Ryabin’s number. He would be home having dinner with his wife. Had to be.

  No answer. Sam hit the numbers for a call-back.

  He dialed the number at the DeMarco house, where Caitlin had been staying. He had called her an hour ago, or less, and he still remembered it.

  A young voice answered. A girl.

  Sam forced himself to speak slowly. Where was Caitlin Dorn? This was an emergency.

  She didn’t know. A birthday party. Taking pictures. Yes, for a woman. No, I don’t know her name. No, no, she didn’t say where she was going.

  The girl was on the point of hysteria when Sam hung up.

  Over the high-pitched noise of the Honda’s four-cylinder engine, he could hear himself shouting aloud, unwilling to accept this, even now. Dina had gone out to the firing range. Or she had thrown the gun away, fearful of having it in the house.

  Impossible that he could live with her and not know. Who would believe that? When she went to trial—if she was declared competent to stand trial—he would also be judged. His care
er was over. He would have to resign. It would take everything they had to keep her out of the electric chair. Better to have her declared insane. Save her life.

  Sam slammed his right fist onto the console between the seats, wanting the pain, but barely feeling it. Where was she?

  If he found them in time—please, God, let me find her—he could save Caitlin. He could see himself holding out his hands. Dina. Give me the gun. He would plead with her, tell her to think of Melanie. Everything would be all right. Caitlin would go to New York. Forget this happened. Then he would take care of Dina. They would move to Tarpon Springs together. No one would know.

  He laughed out loud. It would never happen that way. He didn’t know where in hell she was. It would be a deserted place. Dina would take Caitlin there, reach into her bag as if for a cigarette, slide her hand around the pistol, and pull the trigger. Then she would drive home. She would ask Melanie, Where’s your father? And Sam would arrive soon afterward. And then what? Whatever his decision, their lives would be over. But Caitlin might survive. Again and again he muttered a prayer: Please, don’t let her die.

  The toll plaza on the Dolphin Expressway was directly ahead when his car phone rang. Toll booths stretched across the highway, a row of green and red lights. Sam aimed his car for an unmanned lane in the middle and took out the wooden arm as he went through. The spotlighted buildings of downtown Miami moved toward him in the windshield.

  He picked up the phone. It was Gene Ryabin.

  The shore on the west side of Miami Beach, unlike the gentle, sandy incline on the east, was a rocky shelf of shallow water, warm as a bath this time of year. It smelled of salt and algae and seaweed. Except in rare patches, there was no beach, only dark and pitted coral rock and crushed shells. It was these that Caitlin walked on now in her canvas sandals, a few yards out from the shore, in water to her knees. The hem of her green dress dragged behind her. Mrs. Costas walked just along the edge of the land. She had her bag over her shoulder and the gun at her side.