CHAPTER TWO
“I’m just saying there’s no way he could have contacted someone to do this,” Marcus repeated for the twelfth time as they stepped off of the jet bridge into Miami International Airport.
“He’s locked up tighter than a… than a…” Kate looked at him, and he said, “Well, I don’t want to say what I’m thinking, but it’s something we used to say in the SEALs. ”
“So, it’s sexist and vulgar.”
“Yeah. But still true.”
Kate sighed. “I’m not saying that Cox is doing this because I’ve been refusing his requests to meet. I’m only saying that we can’t rule him out just because he’s in prison. We’ve done that before and had to eat our words.”
“I just don’t want to jump right to that conclusion,” Marcus said.
He kept his eyes averted, but the set of his jaw and the flush in his cheeks told Kate that what he was really thinking was that he didn’t want Kate to fall back into her own obsession and endanger her newly repaired relationship with Winters and the FBI in general by letting Cox play on her emotions again.
Kate heated a little at that realization, but he wasn’t wrong.
When it had become clear that Cox’s claims about her weren’t entirely sprung from his warped imagination, Kate did allow it to get to her, and that had caused her to make poor choices that jeopardized her career, along with that of Marcus and Winters.
“Well, we don’t have that babysitter from headquarters anymore,” Kate reminded him. “That’s good.”
After Kate’s most recent extracurricular escapade, the Bureau had elected to compromise.
Rather than fire an agent who, despite her penchant for breaking the rules, had proven to be their best line of defense against Cox and his disciples, she had been written up—again—and the field office had been placed under temporary watch by a pencil-pusher from Washington.
They’d endured his not-so-out-of-the-way interference for about seven weeks before he decided things were all good and Kate wasn’t likely to make them bad again.
Winters kept her job, Kate kept hers, Marcus kept his, and all was right with the world.
Well, not all. They were here to investigate a double homicide related to the seventh commandment. That wasn’t exactly peachy.
“Speaking of babysitters,” Marcus said.
Kate followed his gaze to see a sharply dressed man waiting for them at baggage claim.
He wore an immaculately pressed black suit with a gleaming white shirt and jet-black tie.
His equally dark hair was swept back and kept in place by a generous amount of product, and his piercing blue eyes shone all the brighter set within his lightly coppered skin.
Full lips, pouty enough to have landed him a job as a supermodel if he was ten years younger, rounded out the impression of a mafioso of middling rank rather than an FBI agent of middling rank, but Kate recognized him as Carlos Rivera, the Miami Field Office liaison assigned to them during their investigation.
She extended a hand. “Kate Valentine. It’s nice to see you, Special Agent Rivera.”
Rivera raised an eyebrow as he accepted her handshake. “Have we met?”
Marcus offered a handshake of his own and a far terser greeting while Kate explained, “Briefly. We both attended the same seminar on organized narcotics distribution in New York a few years ago.”
“Ah, right. I remember that conference. I apologize for not remembering you. You weren’t famous then.”
Kate chuckled politely, but Rivera’s expression didn’t budge. She cleared her throat and said, “Shall we?”
Rivera led them from the airport to a waiting FBI sedan.
The Portland Field Office had two such sedans, fifteen-year-old Lincoln Town Cars that had recently developed a wheeze under moderate to hard acceleration.
This sedan was a sleek new Cadillac, smaller than the old Lincoln boats but far more modern, and, as Kate noted when she took a seat next to Marcus in the rear compartment, far more comfortable despite the more limited legroom.
Rivera stepped into the driver’s seat. “How are you two with seasickness?”
Kate frowned. “Explain.”
“We’re taking the ferry to Fisher Island. It’s a three-mile ride. Takes about twenty minutes.”
“That should be fine,” Kate said. It was close to lunchtime now, and she hadn’t eaten much of her omelet before Marcus called her away anyway.
“Fisher Island,” Marcus repeated. “That’s some prime real estate.”
Rivera puffed air through his nose. “Yeah, it is. The Carltons weren’t billionaires, but they were closer to it than I am to retirement.”
“What line of work were they in?” Kate asked.
“Well, officially, they were in real estate. Mostly sale of overseas properties to domestic manufacturers who like paying cheap wages instead of benefits. Unofficially, they were probably the most well-known and celebrated swingers on the East Coast.”
Kate and Marcus shared a look. “When you say swingers…” Kate began.
“Yep. Exactly what you think it means. They kept it on the down-low for the general public, but if you’re in the lifestyle, you know who they are.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “I’m not in the lifestyle. I just happen to have CI’s who are.”
“Hey, we don’t judge,” Marcus said.
“Well, someone did,” Rivera replied. “The killer mutilated both victims’ genitals before they died.”
“Jesus,” Marcus breathed.
Kate swallowed. “On second thought, if you have an antacid, I’ll take one.”
“I’ll get you one,” Rivera said, retrieving a packet from the center console of the Caddy. “But it won’t make the scene any less disturbing.”
***
Rivera turned out to be right about that.
Richard and Vanessa Carlton’s bodies had been removed from the sprawling waterfront mansion before Kate and Marcus arrived, but white tape helpfully outlined the positions of their bodies, and the handcuffs used to restrain them to the headboard of their enormous mahogany bed still dangled from the posts.
Pools of blood located in between the spread outlines of their legs emanated a sweet, fermented aroma and helpfully bridged the gap between Kate’s imagination and the photographs Rivera provided of the bodies as they were discovered.
“Fuck me,” Marcus breathed. He looked as green as Kate felt a few minutes ago. “I’m not even going to ask you to pardon my French.”
"Yeah, it's bad," Rivera said. "I've seen shit like this before with the cartels. Usually, the victims will pass out before the job's finished, but the coroner's assistant was pretty sure they were alive the entire time."
“Jesus,” Marcus swore again. He pushed the photos toward Kate. “Hey, you want to see these?”
“Not really,” Kate replied.
She was more interested in the ciphers carved into the headboard.
The word sheva was the only one written in Hebrew.
The rest appeared to be in Aramaic, a distinct though morphologically similar lingua franca popular in the Near East during the Greek and Roman periods.
It was a cipher, though, not just a statement.
The words were arranged in gibberish. Kate would need to put some work into figuring out exactly what the killer had written.
She had a good starting point, though. The line directly under sheva no doubt represented the commandment in question. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“What’s with the roses?” Marcus asked.
Kate lifted her eyes to the garland of roses hung over the bed.
They appeared to be held in place by wires tacked to the ceiling.
They were just starting to wilt at the edges, suggesting they were fresh when they were strung over the bed either just before or just after the commission of the murder.
“No idea,” Rivera replied. “We assume it has something to do with marriage, but that’s only because the victims themselves were married.”
“It’s a safe assumption,” Kate said. “The commandment referenced here is ‘thou shalt not commit adultery.’”
“Is swinging adultery, though?” Rivera asked. “Again, I’m not in the lifestyle, but my understanding was that all parties were consenting, including the husbands and wives being cuck—uh, enjoying other people.”
“Well, Cox and his disciples are rarely concerned with how other people interpret the law,” Kate said, taking pictures of the cipher. “I’m willing to bet that the killer views sexual contact with anyone other than a person’s spouse as sinful.”
“So, you’re sure that it’s Cox,” Rivera said.
“No,” Marcus replied firmly before Kate could answer.
She rolled his eyes. “We don’t know yet if Cox is involved in this personally either directly or indirectly.
We do know that someone mutilated and murdered Richard and Vanessa Carlton in their own bed because they believe the Carlton’s violated the seventh commandment.
” She frowned. “Who was here, anyway? There’s no way they were alone in the house? ”
“We’re trying to figure that out,” Rivera said. “The security cameras on the property were inactive during the commission of the murder.”
“Destroyed?” Marcus guessed.
"No, shut off. The Carltons' guests often included people who don't want to be seen attending one of their parties."
“But there weren’t any staff members here?” Kate pressed.
“We’re working on it,” Rivera repeated. “The woman who called it in was their housemaid, but she has an alibi. She was home on the mainland, and when she left, Carlton and their guests were still alive.”
“We should talk to her,” Marcus said. “Maybe she can give us the guest list and let us know if she saw or heard anything untoward.”
Kate nodded. “Is she here?”
“She’s on the property,” Rivera replied. “She refuses to re-enter the house. She’s with a pair of sheriff’s officers in the pool house. It’s past the garden.”
“I’ll go talk to her,” Marcus volunteered.
When he left, Kate looked around the room and tried to get a feel for what had occurred.
Unless this was a conspiracy between multiple parties—which was possible—the killer had struck when there was absolutely no one else in the house.
The guests had to have left, and the servants, apparently, had all left too.
Or the other guests and other servants, if, as Kate suspected, one of them turned out to be their killer.
The large bay window that opened onto an even larger balcony overlooking the Caribbean Sea didn’t appear scuffed or damaged.
Kate tried the door and found it locked.
She unlocked it and stepped onto the balcony.
No scuff marks, footprints, or fingerprints that indicated someone had tried to climb up.
“If you’re looking for forced entry, there wasn’t any,” Rivera said. “We’re leaning toward one of the guests or staff.”
“I am too,” Kate replied, “but take a closer look anyway.”
“We will. Any idea what the writing on the wall is?”
Kate continued to look through the window at the beach ahead.
The beach was exclusive to residents of the island and sported dozens of fabulously wealthy men and women with fabulously expensive bodies clad in fabulously expensive swimsuits.
Kate wondered how many of those men and women had been here the night before, and which, if any, of them had killed their hosts.
She realized she hadn’t answered Rivera. “It’s a message,” she replied. “A warning to others. ‘This is what happens when you break God’s commandments.’”
Rivera whispered. “Well, they sure as hell weren’t subtle about it.”
Kate looked back at the cipher on the wall.
She’d have to disagree with Rivera’s assessment.
The killer—Cox disciple or not—was brazen in action but subtle in explanation.
That was another hallmark of Cox’s murders.
The killings were for the masses, and they were as clear and simple as the commandments to which they referred.
The messages, the ciphers, were for Kate.
Marcus feared that Kate would obsess over Cox, and he had good reason to fear that. There was no more doubt in Kate’s mind. This killing had Cox’s stench all over it.
She shivered, imagining his malevolent smile burning through her skull.
I’m not done with you yet.