The police maintained poker faces, but they had to give the crooks grudging respect. They’d done their homework: It was one of those fancy hotels where the doors to the rooms don’t automatically close all the way, which meant no need for forced entry. And details of the hoax, especially the fire extinguisher and nudity parts, guaranteed guests would be leaving in a hurry without wallets and purses.
The police issued an APB and canvassed all exterior security cameras for vehicles leaving the premises between four and five A.M.
What they didn’t know was the most savvy touch of all. Since the gang knew the police would check surveillance tapes for departing cars, they made sure not to appear on them. Instead, they went to the very last place the police might think to look, where they would remain until checkout time when the coast was clear: in their own room on the twentieth floor, enjoying the contents of the minibar.
Chapter Eleven
JUST BEFORE SUNRISE
A convoy of landscaping trucks arrived before most people were out the door for work.
But those people were not near. The field was down a soothing country road west of the city. It curved through cattle land and bulldozed citrus groves awaiting rows of identical pre-fab houses with screened-in pools stacked on top of one another. Small egrets picked bugs off the backs of cows. Herons worked the standing water, and vultures worked the road.
Mini-tractors and other riding equipment were unchained and rolled backward off flatbed trailers. A lone machine began buzzing, which touched off many more, like the first cricket in a mating swarm.
Someone with a chain saw on a long pole attacked a dead limb overhead. Twin bush-hog mowers went at the field from opposite ends. Another tractor-like vehicle lowered a mechanical arm in front of the cab. At the end of the arm was a whirling vertical cutting disk with menacing carbide teeth along the circumference. The operator had a protective screen of safety glass to deflect any high-velocity debris as the disk hit the ground and swept side to side.
A giant branch snapped with a loud crack. A man in a construction helmet took off running with his chain saw before the limb landed where he’d just been standing. The bush hogs made progress to meet in the middle of the field like spike-drivers on the Transcontinental Railroad. The employee with the spinning disk had ear protection and didn’t hear when he hit metal. But he wondered what had just bounced so violently off his safety glass.
Then someone else in a helmet ran at him, waving wildly. “Stop the stump grinder! Stop the stump grinder!”
The employee operating the grinder was suddenly blinded when an aggressive red spray covered his safety glass. The machine went silent. The spinning disk slowly rotated to a stop.
All the mechanical crickets in the field were quiet when police arrived. The other employees had abandoned their own equipment and were standing around the stump grinder. Then they were told to stand somewhere else. The crime-scene people initiated a grid excavation with surveying stakes and twine. The only things they could bag and tag were small fragments of possible evidence.
The detectives hated wearing suits in open fields at noon. They threw their jackets in the cars and went looking for the medical examiner.
“Where’s the body?” asked the lead investigator.
“Working on it,” said the coroner.
“You called us out here and we don’t even know if we have a body?”
“No, we have a body all right,” said the examiner. “Just can’t rush and disturb the scene. This is an ugly one.”
“So where is it?” said a second detective.
“Right there.”
The detectives looked down at a broad circle of bloodstained wood chips. “Okay, that’s the homicide scene, but where’d they move the body to?”
“They didn’t.”
“What?”
A forensic excavator worked tediously with an archaeologist’s brush. He dusted off one of the larger roots along the edge of the stump. “Sir, I found another one.”
“Another what?” asked the detective.
The coroner didn’t answer as he knelt next to his assistant. “Okay, slowly cut the root, freeing the eyelet . . . Perfect. Now start twisting carefully . . .”
The detectives watched in bewilderment as an unidentified object slowly rotated up out of the ground and revealed itself.
“What’s that?”
The examiner grabbed it with a latex glove and pulled it the rest of the way from the dirt. He walked back to the detectives and slipped it into one of his larger evidence bags. “Hurricane tie-down.”
The investigators stared at the iron corkscrew. “Tie-down?”
“Found three so far, and I’d bet my paycheck there’s another in the fourth quadrant,” said the examiner. “They’re screwed into the ground to firmly secure sheds and stuff from being overturned or blown away in tropical storms.”
“I’m not making the connection here.”
The examiner handed the bag to an assistant. “The culprit used these to hold down the stump.”
