Thicker Than Water

by P J Parrish

  He turned onto First Street. Damn, Susan would take his head off if he even brought this up. Blaming the victim because she was attractive was neanderthal brain thinking. It was also cop brain thinking. No one liked to admit it, but the vestige of sexual bias was still there.

  No dating, Willard had said. And Ahnert’s reports had not mentioned any boyfriends. That still didn’t mean boys . . . men . . . didn’t see what he himself saw in the photo.

  The beeper went off. He ignored it.

  How was he going to get Susan to let him stay with this? Especially when he had no leads.

  At McGregor and Linhart, he stopped at a light. Linhart Avenue. That’s where Kitty got on the bus after work.

  The light changed and Louis swung across the left lane, cutting off a truck. The guy leaned out to give him the finger. Louis turned onto Linhart.

  He drove slowly past a stripmall, a medical complex and the Driftwood Motel. He braked hard.

  Damn . . .

  There it was. Hamburger Heaven. It was still there.

  It had been remodeled, he guessed. The drive-in spots had been blacktopped over, the speakers taken out, the fifties-style architecture tarted up with tropical pastels. But it still had an old neon sign that advertised “Best Fries In Florida.”

  He parked and went in, taking a stool at the counter. When a young waitress approached with a menu, he realized he had not eaten all day.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Only if you were about twenty years older,” Louis said.

  She frowned.

  “Sorry. Bring me a cheeseburger, fries and a Coke, please.”

  The place was nearly deserted even though it was lunch time. Louis saw the white cap and black face of the cook. The smell of frying meat filled the cool air.

  Louis thumbed through the countertop jukebox while he waited. It was a mix of oldies and new stuff. “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by the Four Seasons. “Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna.

  The waitress brought his food. The fries were a golden mound next to a plump-bunned burger.

  “Looks great,” Louis said.

  “If you like grease,” the waitress said.

  “A quick question,” Louis said.

  She looked suspicious.

  “Is there anyone here who was working here twenty years ago?”

  “Ray was, I think. I mean, he’s really old.”

  “Is Ray the owner?”

  “No, the owner’s dead. Ray is his son.” She paused. “You looking for a job? Ray’s looking for a cook. I’ll go get him.”

  She was gone before Louis could say anything. He tried a fry. It was delicious. He dug into the burger. It was cooked just right.

  A man emerged from the back. He was about forty-five, red-faced, his big belly wrapped in an apron.

  “You the guy asking about the cook’s job?” he said, coming up to Louis, wiping his hands on the apron.

  “No, the waitress misunderstood,” Louis said. “I’m an investigator. I’m looking for some information.”

  “Investigator? What you investigating?”

  “Kitty Jagger’s death.”

  Ray was silent for moment. “I guess this has something to do with that Cade guy?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I read in the paper he got arrested again. He kill another girl?” He shook his head. “Man, they should’ve never let that bastard out.”

  Louis let it go. “Were you here when Kitty worked here?”

  Ray nodded. “My dad owned the place then. I was working for him, learning the business. I was only nineteen.”

  “So you knew Kitty?”

  Ray smiled slightly. “Oh yeah. Kitty was a great kid.”

  “Were you here the last night she worked?”

  Ray’s smile faded. “Yeah, but I left early. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had given her a ride home.”

  “You gave her rides home?”

  “When she’d let me. Mostly she walked down to the bus stop.”

  Louis paused, wondering where to go with this. “What kind of girl was Kitty?” he asked.

  “What you mean?”

  “Did she have a lot of friends?”

  Ray shrugged. “I guess. I mean, she wasn’t one of the real popular kids, you know, the inner circle. You know how bad things can be in high schools with the cliques. There was only her and Joyce. They were like joined at the hip.”

  “Joyce? Did she have red hair?”

  Ray nodded. “She worked here with Kitty.”

  “You remember her last name?”

  “Crutchfield. I don’t know if she’s still around, but I remember she dropped out in her senior year and married some guy named Novack. I think he was from Immokalee.”

  “What about boyfriends?” Louis asked. “Did you ever see Kitty with anyone?”

  Ray hesitated. “Not really.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean, there wasn’t one guy she was interested in. Though the guys that came in here, they sure were interested in her.” He paused, seeing the look on Louis’s face. “She was beautiful,” he said. “I mean, not just pretty like some girls. Kitty was beautiful. She could’ve been a model or something.”

  “These guys,” Louis said. “Any of them try to pick her up?”

  Ray looked uncomfortable. “Yeah. But she never went.”

  Louis had to ask. “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Try to pick her up?”

  Ray’s beefy face got redder.

  “Ray, I’m not a cop,” Louis said.

  “Okay, I asked her out once. She turned me down, all right?”

  Louis had a vision of the fat teenaged Ray sweating up the courage to ask Kitty Jagger out. He hoped she had been kind.

  “She give you any reason?”

  Ray frowned. “Yeah, in fact she did. And you know what? I still remember. Twenty years later and I still remember exactly what she said.”

  Louis waited.

  “She said, ‘I’m saving myself for a rich guy.’ ” Ray shook his head. “Shit, like she was going to find a way out, going home every night to her crippled old man.”

  The tone of Ray’s voice had changed. “What a waste,” he said.

  A phone rang. The waitress called Ray’s name and told him he had a call.

  “I gotta go,” Ray said to Louis. He pointed at the fries. “What do you think?”

  “Best in Florida,” Louis said.

  Ray gave a wry smile. “Lot of good it does me. The high school is only two blocks away, but they all go to McDonald’s now.”

  Louis popped the last fry in his mouth and stood. “Thanks for your help.”

  Ray went in the back. Louis left money on the counter with a nice tip for the waitress. Outside, he paused, his headache gone now, but the images of Kitty’s bedroom still a swirl in his head. He had to find Joyce Novack.

  He paused to put on his sunglasses and his eyes drifted down to the newstand by the door. The headline in that morning’s News-Press couldn’t be missed.

  HAITIAN PRISONER KILLED IN JAIL

  Louis bought a paper and scanned the story. Jesus. The man who had been sitting next to him and Cade the other day had been stabbed to death. An investigation was ongoing, according to Mobley.

  Louis got in the car. He was just starting the car when the beeper went off again. He grabbed it off the seat and got out, going to the pay phone. He dialed Susan’s office.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

  “Never mind that right now.”

  “Never mind? Look—”

  “Susan, we have to talk.”

  “Damn right we have to talk. We had a deal—”

  “Not now. I’ll meet you at O’Sullivan’s in fifteen minutes.”

  “Screw that. I can’t—”

  “Be there, Susan. This is important.” He hung up.

  Chapter Sixteen

  O’Sullivan’s was nuts-to-bu
tts cops. The Tampa Bay Bucs were battling the Bears to a soundtrack of clacking billiard balls and the swoosh of the bar dishwasher.

  Louis made his way to the bar, the newspaper under his arm. He scanned the smoky room for Susan but didn’t see her. He hoped she hurried.

  The football game broke for half-time and Louis looked up as a news update came on the screen. A small picture of a Haitian man came on the screen and the bar went silent.

  “Sheriff’s officials are remaining silent on the death of a Haitian inmate Friday night in the Lee County jail. In a statement released this morning, the sheriff’s department said Lucien Faure was found dead in the inmates’ shower facilities. Officials stated Faure bled to death, but no weapon has been found. Officials have not named any suspects.”

  “Who the fuck cares?” someone hollered from the back.

  The man next to Louis shook his head. “The lawyers will be all over this. I heard the Haitian Liberty League is already beating down Mobley’s door.”

  Louis didn’t comment. He pulled the newspaper from under his arm and stared at the face of the dead Haitian.

  Someone touched his shoulder. He turned to see Susan. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater, her face icy in the flat light given off by the bar. He motioned for her to follow him into a dim hallway back by the restrooms. He handed her the newspaper folded to the article.

  She looked at it, then back at him. “So?”

  “I think Jack Cade killed him.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Last time I saw Cade at the jail, this same guy was next to us, talking to someone,” Louis said. “Cade got pissed at them, wanted them to shut up, said they were annoying him.”

  Louis waited while a man pushed between them, headed for the john. “Then last night, Cade showed up at my house.”

  “He came to your house? Why?”

  “He gave me this bullshit story about wanting to talk about Kitty Jagger, but while he was there, he told me his old man was killed by a fork to the belly. Leaves a hole, he said.”

  She looked at him blankly.

  He poked a finger at her chest. “A hole, he said.”

  “Cade’s been out since . . . what? Saturday afternoon?”

  “The guy was stabbed Friday night.”

  Susan frowned. “That doesn’t mean Cade killed—”

  Louis raised a hand to silence her until another man moved past them.

  “All right, we know he’s despicable, Louis,” she said, her voice lower. “But there’s nothing we need to do about this. There’s no evidence, and Cade’s not a suspect or I would have been the first to know.” She held out the paper. “I’d say it’s not our problem.”

  He took the paper back. “We have to tell Mobley.”

  “The hell we do. Besides, you can’t even if you wanted to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Excuse me,” someone said.

  Susan stepped aside to let a man pass, then leaned close to him. “You’re an official agent of the public defender’s office. You’re bound by confidentiality. Anything Cade says to you is privileged.”

  “Bullshit. Not if he was planning to commit another crime. Even I know that.”

  “Did Cade threaten the Haitian man? Did he make any move toward him?”

  “No.”

  “When he came to your place, did he tell you he did it?”

  Louis was getting pissed. “No.”

  “Then we have no legal obligation,” she said.

  “What about a moral one?” Louis snapped.

  “Morality doesn’t come in to play here. Besides, do you know what an accusation like that would do to our case at this point? We have a big enough problem with Cade’s image as it is.”

  Louis tightened, turning away. “I don’t believe this.”

  Susan gave him a minute, then touched his arm. “It’s just your cop brain kicking in, Kincaid. It’ll pass.”

  “It’s wrong.”

  “It’s the law.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit worried Cade will get pissed at me or you and put a hole in one of us?”

  Susan was trying to keep a steady gaze, but it wavered slightly as she spoke. “I’ve been threatened before. Goes with the territory.”

  He leaned back against the wall.

  “Look, forget this,” Susan said. “What else have you got? Did you hunt down Candace’s girlfriend yet?”

  “No,” Louis said, folding the newspaper slowly.

  “What about Bernhardt? Or the divorce? Anything new?”

  He was silent.

  “Damn it, Kincaid, what the hell have you been doing all day? I paged you four or five times.”

  “I went to see Bob Ahnert and Willard Jagger.”

  Susan’s mouth drew into a line. “Who is Bob Ahnert?”

  “The detective who worked Kitty’s murder.”

  She was silent. Louis could almost see her counting to ten. Or thinking of a way to take his head off while twenty cops watched.

  “Well, that’s just great,” she said finally. “I’m grasping at straws and you’re out chasing irrelevant shit.”

  Louis glared at her. “Ahnert is important.”

  “For what?”

  “Background. It’s important to show Duvall may have manipulated Cade’s case. It’s important to Cade’s motive.”

  “Cade doesn’t have a motive because we’re trying to show he didn’t do it!”

  Another man tried to push past them and Susan turned on him. “Can’t you wait?”

  “Screw you, lady,” the man mumbled.

  Louis took her by the shoulders and moved her aside. When the man passed, she shook her head.

  “Reasonable doubt, Kincaid, reasonable doubt. That’s all I need to show. I’m not Perry Mason, for God’s sake. Real lawyers don’t prove who else did it, only that someone else could have. We can’t waste time—”

  Louis heard Mobley’s name and looked over Susan’s head toward the front door. Mobley had come in and was chatting with some of his deputies at the bar.

  Susan was still talking. “. . . and Bernhardt and the wife are certainly more believable as suspects—”

  “Excuse me,” Louis said.

  Susan spotted Mobley and grabbed Louis’s arm. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t tell Mobley anything, please. You could take both of us down.”

  He pulled away from her and walked to the bar, edging up to Mobley.

  “We need to talk, Sheriff.”

  “Well, it’s the Lone Ranger,” Mobley said. “Where’s Tonto?” He saw Susan approaching and raised a hand. “How,” he said solemnly.

  She didn’t even look at either of them as she swept by.

  “That woman could use a charm course,” Mobley said.

  Louis saw Susan pause at the door and look back at him before she left. Louis looked back at Mobley.

  Damn it. She was right. What was the point? The Haitian wasn’t going to get any deader. But Mobley could make life miserable for Susan, and Cade’s case could end up in the toilet. Okay, it could wait for now. God help them, though, if Cade got a burr up his ass because someone else pissed him off.

  “What do you want, Kincaid?” Mobley asked.

  “Never mind.”

  “Good. It’s assholes and elbows at work and I don’t need any shit from you.”

  Louis motioned to the bartender to bring both Mobley and himself a beer. When it arrived, Mobley looked at him.

  “If that’s a bribe, I don’t come that cheap.”

  “Not a bribe. Just incentive.”

  “For what?”

  Louis leaned on the bar, moving closer to Mobley. “I saw Bob Ahnert today.”

  “I heard.”

  “He indicated he wasn’t allowed to ask all the questions he needed to ask in the Kitty Jagger case. Said Dinkle stopped him.”

  “Look, Kincaid, Howard Dinkle is like God in this town. And as much as
I hate hearing about the golden days of Dinkle, I’m not going to let you pin a misconduct medal on a fellow cop, even though I hear you’re pretty good at that kind of thing.”

  Louis let the comment pass. “Ahnert also said there is something in the file that can get those questions answered.”

  Mobley shook his head. “Let me tell you something about Robert Ahnert. I pulled his jacket after he called me about you. Ahnert was a lot like you, always digging too deep and too long. He caught the Jagger case because our other detective was on leave of absence. He was reprimanded during that case for inappropriate behavior, so it’s no wonder he blames Dinkle for not being able to do his job.”

  “What was the inappropriate behavior?”

  Mobley eyed him. “That’s confidential.”

  “I’m getting to hate that word.”

  Mobley snickered. “All right, I’ll tell you, just so you know how little stock to put on his investigation. He stole an item that belonged to the victim.”

  Louis looked over. “What was it?”

  “A gold necklace. Some kind of heart-shaped locket. Guess Ahnert needed the money.”

  “Why? Did he pawn it?”

  Mobley shook his head. “Someone else found it in his cruiser before he could pawn it. But if he wasn’t going to pawn it or sell it, why the fuck would he take it?”

  Louis resisted the urge to touch his own back pocket. He knew the picture he had taken from Kitty’s bedroom was still there.

  “I’ve got to go,” Louis said suddenly. “Thanks, Sheriff.”

  “You owe me again, Kincaid,” Mobley said. “And like I said, I don’t come cheap.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Louis sat in the Mustang a long time, Monday’s newspaper folded on his lap. He had not wanted to come out here to J.C. Landscaping again. The place had a sadness about it that drained him. But the questions couldn’t wait.

  He wanted to know about why Cade had asked about Bob Ahnert. He wanted to know more about Kitty and what Cade told Spencer Duvall during the trial. And he wanted to know about the Haitian man.

  He got out of the car. It was almost December, but the temperature was still in the mid-eighties, the air sticky and thick. He looked at the lopsided trailer, sitting in the brush, baking under the mid-day sun.