P. Parrish - The Little Death

“Well, well,” Vinny murmured. “Minima maxima sunt.”

“‘The smallest things are the most important,’” Swann said.

Vinny grabbed a magnifying glass off the shelf and used it to peer at the shriveled hand. He looked back up at Louis.

“The original autopsy was done by Thomas Cartwright, a.k.a. Careless Cartwright,” Vinny said. “He wasn’t the sharpest scalpel in the drawer and was known for going with what seemed the most likely. He noted a mark on the right hand, and because he knew the victim had been stabbed, he assumed it was a defensive wound.”

Vinny motioned Louis closer and held the magnifying glass over the hand for him. Swann came, too, filling the space with a citrusy aftershave, which, given the stench from the table, was strangely welcome.

“Now, I ask you,” Vinny said. “Does this look like a knife wound to you?”

Louis looked at the ashy, bloated hand. The furrow across the palm was clearly visible. He glanced down at his own hand, at the old knife scar that banded his palm like a strap. The line was white, flat, and razor-thin, nothing like the mark on Labastide’s hand.

“That’s not a knife cut,” Vinny said. “I’d say that’s a rope-burn-type mark, like the kind you’d get playing tug-of-war.”

“Could it be a whip mark?” Louis asked.

Vinny raised a brow, then bent to examine the hand more closely. When he lifted his head, he nodded. “Sure could be.”

Louis moved away from the table. His mind clicked back to the crime-scene photos he’d seen at O’Sullivan’s, and suddenly it wasn’t difficult to imagine the last few moments of Emilio Labastide’s life.

Willingly or not, Labastide had been driven more than a hundred miles to the middle of nowhere. At some point, Labastide was overpowered by someone who stabbed him in the chest. He fought back and managed to get away. His attacker pursued him, maybe with the knife, but with a whip for certain. Labastide was young and strong, and despite the stab wounds, he managed to catch the tail of the whip in an attempt to wrestle it away.

But then he started to lose strength. Or maybe his killer came at him with a knife or the sword and hacked away with a madness that cops saw only in crimes that were intensely personal or blind rage. But were they looking at a lone serial murderer or a group motivated by pure hatred?

“You okay, Louis?” Swann asked.

Louis nodded.

There was no question in his mind that the murders of Mark Durand and Emilio Labastide were committed by the same killer or, quite possibly, killers. The links-the last known locale of the victim tied to Palm Beach, vicious decapitations, and torture with a whip-were too strong for even someone like Barberry to ignore.

Not that Louis intended to share any of this information with him. He knew Barberry would, beyond all logic, continue to dismiss any evidence that didn’t favor his case against Reggie Kent.

If they wanted to make their case for a different killer irrefutable, they needed to offer the Palm Beach prosecutor not just circumstantial evidence but a believable motive for someone other than Reggie Kent.

Louis looked back to Vinny, who was pulling the X-rays off the clips. “Thanks for doing this, Vinny,” he said. “We appreciate it. Can you hold the remains until we can notify his sister and find out where she’d like him reburied?”

“I can give you about three days,” Vinny said. “Then I have to send him somewhere. Unless, of course, your benefactor wants to pay storage fees.”

“We’ll get back to you as soon as we can,” Louis said.

Vinny pulled his headphones back on his head and covered the remains with the sheet. Louis and Swann left the autopsy room, walking quickly down the long hall in search of fresh air. Once outside in the sunlight, Louis paused on the sidewalk and took two or three deep breaths.

Swann came up next to him, hands in pockets, wearing Ray-Bans. “Are we going to see Labastide’s sister now?”

“Yeah,” Louis said. “We need to tell her we’ve found her brother, and after you apologize to her, you need to ask her some tough questions.”

“About her brother’s sex life?”

“Yeah. You up for that?”

“Sí, jefe.”

Louis stared at him.

“Yes, boss,” Swann said.

Rosa was watering the red flowers outside her door when she spotted Louis and Swann coming up the stairs. Her look to Louis was warm, but when she recognized Swann, her brown eyes snapped with scorn.

Swann must have seen it, too, because he held out a hand in a gesture to stop Louis and moved slowly by himself to Rosa. Rosa set the water can on a small table and crossed her arms.

“Es usted. ¿Cómo se atreve a usted presentarle aquí?”

Louis didn’t understand a word she said, but from the tone, it was not kind.

Swann stood close to her and began speaking very softly. Louis stayed where he was, a few feet from the open front door. Rosa’s head was down, face hidden behind the thick curtain of ebony hair as she listened calmly to Swann.

“Su hermano está muerto,” Swann said. “Lo siento.”

Louis understood a few words-brother, dead, sorry.

Rosa’s hands went to her face, and to Louis’s surprise, she fell gently against Swann. He let her cry for a moment, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her inside the apartment. Louis followed.

Swann took Rosa to the small table near the kitchen window and sat across from her. She continued to sob, handfuls of Kleenex pressed to her face.

Louis sat on the arm of the sofa. For the next five or six minutes, he was quiet, listening to the soft murmur of Swann’s Spanish and looking around at the meager Christmas decorations.

A small artificial tree stood on a table, draped with gold tinsel and decorated with three-only three-brightly painted glass ornaments in the shape of a sombrero-wearing señorita . Sitting on a plate nearby was a small array of what looked like gingerbread cookies shaped like the flowered decals of the hippie era.

A gurgle drew his attention to a blanket-draped playpen near the window. He went to it and looked down. A baby in a white T-shirt and an old-fashioned cloth diaper and rubber pants stared up at him, its brown eyes wide in curiosity. It was sucking tenaciously on a pacifier.

Louis heard the crinkle of a plastic bag and turned back to Swann and Rosa. She was calm now as Swann showed her the crucifix Burke Aubry had given them. Rosa touched it through the evidence bag, then gave Swann a nod and opened her blouse to show him an identical one around her neck.

Swann put the crucifix away and reached across the table to cover her hand with his. Then he said something in Spanish that brought a rise of color to Rosa’s cheeks. She looked to the window, then lowered her head as she answered him.

Louis eased closer.

Suddenly, Rosa looked up at him and then back at Swann. “¿Me pregunta usted si mi hermano fué homosexual?”

“Sí,” Swann said.

Again, Rosa glanced at Louis. “No,” she said. “No, era muy popular con las mujeres.”

Swann looked to Louis. “She says he was very popular with the ladies.”

“Tuvo muchas novias.”

“He had many girlfriends.”

Rosa said something else. Swann nodded and then turned to Louis. “But that was when he was in Mexico. He changed once he came here.”

Rosa’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “Tuvo una niña en Mexico,” she said.

Swann listened intently, then turned to Louis. “He got a girl pregnant back in Mexico, and they had a daughter. That’s why he came here, so he could make money to send home.”

Rosa started to cry, and Swann took her hand in his and spoke to her softly in Spanish. It seemed intrusive to watch, so Louis turned his gaze back to the living room and, for want of something interesting, down to the baby.