He shook his head. “Why can’t I see her?” he whispered.
“Maybe you will,” she said. “Maybe soon. Maybe when we find out what happened to you.”
She didn’t know that, of course. But she felt she had to say something to reassure him.
After a moment he said, “I hope so. For now, I am just...here.”
She looked at him and said, “Miguel, someone threatened me. They went up to my office and put a broken-up doll there, warning me. Since you’re here, perhaps you could watch and see if anyone does something like that again.”
He frowned. “People come and go from that building all day.”
“You see them, right?”
He nodded.
“Who?”
He lifted his hands. “All the people who work here.”
“Did you see anyone else? People who don’t work here?”
“I don’t know what happens all the time,” he told her. “I come a lot to the water. To watch the dolphins.” He pointed to Cocoa, who was watching them from the water. Cocoa and the other dolphins often watched people. It made Lara wonder just what they were thinking, if they were as curious about human behavior as humans were about theirs.
He smiled. “I think she performs for me sometimes. Just for me.”
“She certainly might,” Lara said.
He smiled at that, and continued to watch the dolphin for a minute. Then he turned to her. “I will watch for you,” he said. “I will help solve this if I can. I promise you that. I tried to be a man for my family when I lived. I loved my wife, and I was so lucky to have a wife who loved me, too, so dearly and so deeply, for so many years. I will watch for you. And I will know who comes and goes from now on.”
“Thank you, Miguel,” she told him.
She smiled, pointing to Cocoa, who had decided to entertain them with a high-flying flip.
“Look, Miguel,” she said. “I know that was for you.”
But when she turned back to look at him, he was gone.
15
“So this man, Jose Acervo, he’s really dead?” Lara asked.
Brett nodded, enjoying being out to dinner again, despite the circumstances. They’d chosen another restaurant on the water, though this one offered a certain amount of privacy despite the fact that it was Saturday night and the area was in full swing. They’d headed to South Beach in his Bureau car. He hadn’t used the restaurant’s valet service because he’d learned early in his career to have his car available at all times, but his federal plates allowed him to park in places the average driver couldn’t, unless they were looking to incur a fine.
As they ate, music spilled from a dozen clubs. Miami’s beautiful people were out, the women in short skirts and ridiculous heels, along with tourists in flip-flops and T-shirts. They’d actually decided on the beach because of the crowds; it was easier to talk in private when the noise around you didn’t allow for anyone outside your intimate circle to hear what you were saying.
Diego was taking the first watch at Sea Life again while the rest of them escaped for a few hours.
“We’re getting close—closer anyway,” Matt said. “The fact that Acervo was killed—and left at Diaz-Douglas as a...warning, I suppose—is telling. Someone was afraid that we would find Acervo and get him to talk about what’s going on. I wonder if the killer thought Geneva Diaz would be so terrified by the arrival of the corpse that she would make sure he was buried quickly to avoid her secret coming out. Any word on whether the crime scene techs found anything useful?”
“Not yet,” Brett said.
“Well, I discovered something pretty interesting today,” Matt said. “I pulled up all kinds of information and statistics, and I emailed all of it to you and Diego,” he told Brett. “And based on what I found, I can tell you that I don’t think this began with Miguel Gomez, or Randy Nicholson or Antoine Deveau. About three months ago, the body of a young woman washed up on a beach up in Broward. There had been severe damage to her head.”
“I remember that, actually,” Brett told him. “The theory was that she’d fallen overboard and been killed by an engine propeller. She was eventually ID’d as an illegal, finally claimed by an uncle after he received his legal status in the country.”
Matt nodded. “Fishermen out in the Florida Straits brought up a body about four months ago. A man. Same thing. Head bashed in. They never did discover who he was. The assumption is that he was an illegal, trying to make landfall so he’d be allowed to stay in the country. No one ever claimed him, needless to say.”
“That’s the problem here. So many people take off from Cuba or Haiti in rafts and boats, desperate to make it to land anywhere they can. A lot of them don’t make it, but a lot of others do and then end up part of the criminal underworld, because that’s the only option open to them.”
“A whole slew of unwilling human subjects for medical experimentation?” Meg asked thoughtfully.