Orchid Blues

29

Holly, in a phone conversation with the Sebastian chief of police, arranged for her department to take possession of the two bodies and three vehicles, then she had the bodies removed to the Orchid Beach medical examiner's offices and the vehicles taken to the police garage, with orders that no one was to touch them until she arrived. Then she went to her own office and called Harry Crisp.

"We've found Franklin Morris and his wife," she said.

"Locally?"

"Next town up. Both cars and the trailer had been rolled down a boat-launching ramp at a defunct marina. Both bodies were in the car."

"Cause of death?"

"My tech says two each in the head, but the ME hasn't done his report yet. You want to send somebody up here?"

Crisp thought for a moment. "How long have the bodies and the vehicles been in the water?"

"My tech says since the couple disappeared."

"Have you been over the vehicles yet?"

"No, I wanted to talk to you first."

"If they've been in the water for that long, we're unlikely to find anything useful. Why don't you have your man go over the vehicles, then send me his report, along with the ME's."

"Glad to do it," Holly said, relieved, as she didn't want to wait for Harry's people before starting on the vehicles.

"Get back to me," Harry said.

As she hung up, it occurred to Holly that the FBI wasn't much interested in the Morrises; they were small potatoes.

Holly went to see the medical examiner. The two bodies lay side-by-side on stainless-steel tables in the lab, with a sheet over each. On a smaller table nearby, two piles of clothing and possessions lay.

The ME took a deep breath and started. "Cause of death is easy: two gunshot wounds to the head of each."

"How long have they been dead?"

"Probably since soon after they left their rental house," he replied. "Before they were shot, their hands were secured behind them with duct tape, and they were pretty badly beaten up; you might say, tortured. Both show evidence of lots of blunt trauma, probably from fists and boots."

"Anything else you can tell me?"

"Not much else to tell," he said. "You might look through their effects over there." He nodded toward the small table.

Holly slipped on some latex gloves and went through the clothing first. The couple had been dressed nearly identically, in jeans, knit shirts and sneakers. One of the woman's shoes was missing and so was her purse. The man's wallet was on the table, and Holly emptied it. There was more than a thousand dollars in cash, credit cards in several names, and three driver's licenses, all with different names, but each bearing the photograph of the man the bank employees had known as Franklin Morris. There was also a Rolex wristwatch and a signet pinky ring, both of which were engraved with the initials S.C.L., which did not match the names on any of the credit cards or licenses. Holly dropped all the effects into a plastic bag and gave the ME a receipt for them.

"Thanks, Doctor," she said. "Will you fingerprint them and take DNA samples?"

"Sure, that's standard. What then?"

"Eventually, we'll get a burial order, but first I want to try to identify them. Just keep them on ice for the time being."

"As you wish."

Holly left the ME's office and drove back to the station. She collected Hurd Wallace, the tech and four other officers, and together they walked over to the garage, across the parking lot.

The three vehicles were lined up in separate service bays. Holly called the group together. "Here's what we've got," she said. "These two people were tortured, then shot to death. Unless somebody tortured them for the fun of it, which I doubt, the torturers wanted something from this couple, and they may not have gotten it. I want two people on each vehicle. I want everything removed and examined, then I want you to take the vehicles apart."

"What are we looking for?" the tech asked.

"I don't know, but I think I'll know it when I see it. Let's get started, everybody."

The group began work, and as they began removing things from the vehicles, Holly walked back and forth from one to the other, watching their progress. The couple's belongings were unloaded from the trailer and set aside, and Holly examined them. There were suitcases and boxes of clothes; there were small pieces of furniture and kitchen equipment; there were a couple of soggy file boxes. And there was a computer. Holly slipped on some gloves and started to go through the contents of the file boxes.

She found multiple birth certificates in different names for both people and blank letterheads from various financial institutions, none of which Holly had ever heard of and which she suspected were nonexistent. Some of the papers had melded together while wet and would probably not be salvageable, she thought, but everything she saw in the file boxes had something to do with obtaining false identities or stealing identities from other people.

Hurd came over, and she showed him the materials. "Looks like these folks were hardworking con artists," he said.

"Did you finish with the convertible?"

"Pretty much. We've taken everything off it we can unbolt and looked in every cavity without finding anything. Harvey is taking off the tires now, to have a look inside them."

Holly walked around the convertible, which now looked as if it were at the beginning, rather than the end, of an assembly line. She looked in the trunk, which had been stripped of its spare tire, tools and lining. "Did the VIN get run yet?"

"Yes," Hurd said. "The convertible was stolen in Fort Lauderdale on the same day that the plates were stolen from the Buick. The van was stolen a couple of weeks later. I'm not quite sure how you trace a horse van. It doesn't seem to have a VIN, and it didn't have any plates, either. I guess we can run a check to see if any horse trailers were reported stolen in the past few months, but even if we find out where it came from, I don't know what that's going to tell us."

"It might tell us where they went after they left Lauderdale," Holly said. "Call the station and send somebody over to the ME's office to pick up the fingerprints of the corpses and their DNA samples. Run the prints first, on both the state and federal computers, and see if we get a hit."

Hurd pulled out his cell phone and made the call, while Holly walked around the van, which was nearly as disassembled as the convertible. "Anything?" she asked the officers working on the van. Both shook their heads. She walked over to the horse trailer, which looked more whole than the other two vehicles.

"There's not all that much to pull off it," a young officer said.

"Let's get in on a hoist and look underneath," Holly said. The two officers maneuvered the trailer over the hoist, and soon it was six feet off the ground. Holly walked around under it, dodging drips of Indian River mud. "Pretty dirty," she said. "Use the pressure washer."

She stood back as the underside of the trailer was cleaned, then she looked again.

"What's this?" an officer asked.

Holly joined him at the rear of the trailer, where a metal box had been fixed to the chassis. "That doesn't look like it belongs on a trailer," she said. "Get it out of there."

The officer went to get a radial saw and returned. "Looks like it's been welded there," he said. "This blade ought to do the job." He put on goggles, switched on the saw and began working on the welded seams. After a few minutes of noise, the box dropped onto the garage floor.

Holly walked over and inspected it more closely. "Looks like some sort of strongbox," she said. "There's a keyhole. Anybody a good lock picker?"

"I'll give it a shot," Hurd said. He found some small tools and began working on the lock. Ten minutes later, it snapped open, and Hurd lifted the lid. "Well, I'll be," he said.

The box, which was about twelve by eighteen inches and four inches deep, contained bundles of money that had been shrink-wrapped. Hurd cut one open and found the bundles to be made up of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills.

"I think we've found out what these people were tortured for," Holly said. "Let's get it back to the office and count it."

Half an hour with a calculator later, Hurd looked up from his tally. "I make it $161,000, even."

"I guess a lot of people would torture and kill for that," Holly said.

"I guess they would," Hurd said.

"It's got to be what they embezzled from the bank," Holly replied. "They must have spent the rest."

"But who killed them?" Hurd asked.

"So far, I've got only one suspect, or rather, one group of suspects."

"How are we going to tie these murders to them?"

"I don't know," Holly said, honestly.