I hit the department a bit past nine and headed to the investigative section to finally introduce myself to the rest of the dicks, then grudgingly seek a place to live. But I arrived to find the place as empty as a politician’s promises and I realized it was Friday and everyone was on the streets trying to get far enough ahead to take a couple days off.
Pushing dark thoughts to the back of my head, I took the stairs up a floor to my office, passing the small whiteboard giving the crew’s current whereabouts, Canseco in Jacksonville, Degan in Boca, Valdez listed as DO, Day Off. Tatum was in town, just not here. I pined for one of my so-called colleagues to pass me in the hall, say something like, Got a tough case with a perp in Fort Myers, looking like a psycho. Gotta couple minutes to kick it around, bud?
All was silence save for the sound of a radio nearby, an announcer giving the forecast.
“… rain giving way to clearing skies and the heat and humidity returning …”
I headed to my corner office until stopped by hearing my name, and turned to see Bobby Erickson, a retired Florida State Police Sergeant who worked the phones. He proudly wore his dress blues daily, but had bad feet so Roy allowed him to wear slippers, big pillows of tan suede with fleece pushing up around his ankles. Erickson was short and round and looked perpetually concerned, lips pursed, eyes in a frown over half-glasses. He seemed to bear me no animosity and I figured I hadn’t waylaid any of his money.
“Morning, Bobby,” I said. “Whatcha need?”
“A woman came to the downstairs desk a half hour ago. She asked if there was a detection man named Señor Ryder in this building.”
“Detection man?”
“The desk folks have your name, of course. They phoned up here but I told them you hadn’t arrived yet, expected soon. When they went to tell that to the woman, she was gone.”
“A half-hour ago?”
“There’s more. Five minutes later this note was left at the desk. It was delivered by a clerk with the assessor’s office, asked to deliver it by a woman resembling the one at the desk.”
I opened the folded note, my name on the outside.
MET AT A POOL FOR SWIMING PLESE 10 TO-DAY it said in a flowing hand more precise than the spelling.
“Met at a swimming pool at ten?” I scowled. “Met what?”
Erickson eyeballed the note. “Maybe it’s meet. You’re supposed to meet her at the swimming pool.”
“Where’s a swimming pool around here?”
He shrugged and pushed the lips out further. “Got me.”
I started away but he called again. “Almost forgot, Detective. She asked what you looked like.”
Though I hadn’t seen surveillance at the entry, I figured it was there, just nicely tucked away. “There are cameras at the entry, right? How can I get a look?”
“The surveillance center’s in the basement. But unless it’s an emergency it’s gonna take an hour to pull the stuff.”
Erickson padded away on his tan cushions. I gazed out windows, wondering if there was a nearby hotel with a pool. My eyes wandered the plaza, wide walkways overhung with shade trees, people strolling or sitting the steps around the fountain, a center spray of water into a shallow circle pool of …
Pool. Was that what my caller meant?
I checked my watch, saw 9.56, and elevatored down to the wide promenade. The pavement was damp from rain but the sky was breaking through in the west, a bright blue shout through tattered cumulus. Gulls darted above the trees as pedestrians moved below. I crossed to the fountain – swimming pool? – and surveyed the surroundings: Business types bustling to work, joggers, a man pushing a food cart, a long-haired kid sitting a bench and tuning a guitar, a busload of school kids wrangled by a trio of teachers, probably visiting the center as part of a class in government.
I sprinted to the far side of the fountain to scope things from that angle. No one seemed interested in me. I continued to circle the pool, hands in my pockets, studying everyone within sight. More office workers. A trio of teens playing hacky-sack. A group of tourists, German by their voices, cameras strung around necks craning toward the skyline.
I heard footsteps and turned to see a woman passing behind me, face hidden beneath a pulled-low white scarf and large sunglasses, age indeterminate, but youthful in her profile. The blue dress needed a session at the ironing board and she seemed to have a slight limp.
“Miss?” I called. “Excuse me, miss?”
She turned. “Si?”
I jammed my hands in my pockets and smiled benignly. “I’m Carson Ryder. Does that mean anything to you?”
A pause. The shades seemed riveted on me.
“No hablo inglés, señor.”
“Sorry,” I said. She continued away.
Leala moved quickly from the plaza, needing time to weigh information. The man was a gringo, bad. But he was not a hulking, stoop-shouldered monster, probably good. He was actually nice looking, slender, with dark hair and eyes. Still, there was something that seemed threatening about the man, but it did not seem directed at her. Perhaps it was his eyes, scanning all directions at once. Or maybe it was how he walked, almost carelessly but with surprising speed. She had seen him exit the building, but had looked away when distracted by a vendor. When she looked back, he was on the far side of the pool.
Cats did that sort of thing, and cats could not be trusted.
But when he’d spoken, there was no threat in his voice, only curiosity. That was good. Could such an hombre with such a concerned voice be bad in his heart? Or were he and the woman named Victoree wolves in disguise?
What was true, what was a lie?
Questions without answers. Leala passed a large building, her eyes catching the sign, seeing the word Library. That meant the building was a biblioteca, a place where the books lived. There was a biblioteca in the village six kilometers distant and Leala’s mother made sure Leala got there once a month for books.
Books held the answers.
She turned and darted inside, shaking back her hair and straightening her spine, acting like she belonged with the people entering the long building. She was halfway across the wide floor when her eyes saw a flash of uniform against a far wall: a guardia! He was looking right at her. Leala felt her knees loosen and her breath turn to ice. Keep moving, her mind said. Do not look his way. You are just one of many seekers of knowledge. She saw a huge counter with several workers behind it. One was a young man, not much older than her, shuffling books into a pile. She took a deep breath and stood before him.
“Help you?” he asked.
Leala had her story ready, created in the twenty steps it took to cross the floor. “I-I am an estudiante visiting from Honduras. May I see into the books? It is proper for me?”
A smile. “Certainly. What are you looking for?”
Leala handed him the poster from the laundromat. If Victoree Johnson was a trap to catch illegals, there would be nothing about her in the library. Would anyone be so tricky as to put a trap in books?
“I seek the informacíon to this project. The who is it that they are.” Leala added a phrase from her class, one used by Americans a good deal. “And so forth and so on.”
The man paused to digest Leala’s words. “You’re doing research, then?”
“Si,” she nodded. That was the word. “I am to do the research.”
The young man read the poster, nodded as he handed the poster back. “Aha. The director, Ms Johnson, gave two talks here. Quite unsettling, as you might expect.”
Leala felt her eyes widen. Was she receiving a confirmation without having to figure out which book might tell her? The library was huge, big enough to hold her entire village, every house, every plot of land, every pig and every chicken.
“The director, then … she es verdad?” Leala said. “One that is real?”
“Pardon, miss?”
Leala knew her English was falling apart. Was the guardia listening? Could he tell she was a criminal?
“Victoree Johnson was here?” Leala asked, shooting a glance at the guard. He looked like he was yawning, but it might be a trick. “Señorita Johnson is the real woman?”
“As you get, I expect. I was in the front row of the audience and …” the man paused, his eye narrowing. “Are you all right, miss?” he asked.
The man’s eyes had turned into question marks. All he had to do was point at Leala and yell “Criminal!” and the guardia would throw a net over Leala and pull her away to be raped and tortured. She shot a concerned look at her bare wrist and slapped her forehead.
“Dios mio … I am mas late to an appointment. I will return in the mañana.” Leala pushed a bright smile to her face and turned for the door.
“You’re not wearing a watch,” the man called to her back.
But Leala was outside and ducking between and around pedestrians. She sprinted across the street, hastening down another block to a bus stop on the opposite side of the street from where she was dropped off. She boarded a westward-bound bus, the direction of her safe place. She paid her fare and sat behind the driver, her mind racing.
“Damn,” I muttered, studying the surveillance video and watching a pretty teenage girl in a white scarf and blue dress speaking to one of the clerks at the Clark Center’s info desk. The building’s security office was in the basement, and the chief of security, a square-jawed ex-cop named Talbot, stood beside me as a minion ran a playback from a camera at the front desk.
“I’m to speak to Señor Ryder,” the woman was saying, her soft voice picked up by one of the sensitive mics mounted in the desk. “He said I am to … to meet him in the lobby. But I cannot know who is he. Es possible you show me a fotografía please?”
I watched the clerk pop my ID pic onto the screen, turn it to the woman. She was the one I had the fleeting interaction with on the plaza. She must have been terrified to be in a government building that housed a major police agency, but she held herself with amazing aplomb, the façade dropping for a split second as a uniformed cop walked to the desk. When the girl’s eyes saw the cop they widened as her shoulders tightened. When the cop turned away and the girl’s face re-assumed the mask of concerned citizen, standing on tip-toe to study my photo before thanking the clerk and retreating.
Her story about having a meeting with me – at my request – and needing to ID me in the crowded lobby was pitch-perfect, delivered with sincere confusion and disarming innocence. Whoever the girl was, she had brains and bravery … getting me outside so she could look me over.
Had I passed a test? Failed?
“Someone you know?” Talbot asked.
“Someone I’d like to.” I thanked him for pulling the video and headed back upstairs, nothing to do but go back to my office and hope the girl phoned.