Quint Mitchell 01 - Matanzas Bay

by Francis, Parker

During the five minutes it took to reach the sandwich shop, Wannaker remained remarkably quiet. He admitted he’d spoken with the State Attorney, but said he’d tell me more after he had something in his stomach.

  Only three bites into my cheese steak sandwich, I watched Wannaker swallow the last of his turkey and ham combo. The man ate faster than anyone I’d ever seen, inhaling great gulps of food seemingly without chewing. Finally, he sucked a long swallow of Dr. Pepper through his straw, wiped his mouth and looked at me.

  “Up front, I have to tell you things look rather bleak for Dr. Poe,” Wannaker said.

  “What about Mrs. Lawson’s deposition?”

  “I spoke to the State Attorney first thing this morning. He was polite, and said he’d have the SAPD check into Mrs. Lawson’s story and get back to me.”

  “Did he?”

  “Oh yes. In fact, he called me back ninety minutes later. Apparently, Chief Conover sent one of his detectives out almost immediately.” Wannaker picked up his drink and loudly slurped the last few drops.

  “And?”

  “It didn’t take them long to determine Poe didn’t have much of an alibi. By the time the detective finished talking with Mrs. Lawson, she was so confused she couldn’t be sure when she saw Poe. Not even what day it was.”

  I was afraid of that. Even the best witnesses are known to make mistakes, and Mrs. Lawson was a seventy-something woman who admitted her memory wasn’t what it once had been. Not exactly a scenario designed to strike fear in the heart of the prosecuting attorney.

  “Did you verify this with the witness?”

  “Of course I did.” He looked at me as though I’d hurt his feelings, picked up a few slivers of turkey remaining on his wrapper and chewed them slowly. “She apologized several times, saying how bad she felt for Poe, and that she’d let him down. At her age, she has trouble keeping track of things and it could have been any day last week. But she did remember seeing him and would be happy to testify if it would help.”

  I nodded, knowing Mrs. Lawson would never see the witness stand on this case. “What about Jeffrey? Did you tell him?”

  “I drove out to the lock-up right away. I thought I should be the one to tell him the bad news.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Jeffrey said you were his friend. How well do you really know him?”

  “I’ve known him from before his wife died. We’re pretty tight.”

  “Then you won’t be surprised when I tell you he fell apart.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He went ballistic, cursing the police, Mrs. Lawson. When I tried to calm him, tell him it was only a temporary setback, he turned on me. Finally, he shut down.”

  “This has been an emotional roller coaster for him,” I said. “First you tell him Mrs. Lawson was his ticket out of jail. Then he hears this. I’m sure it hit him hard.”

  “In my business I deal with a lot of emotional types, but this was something else.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “It was like he’d given up all hope. I don’t know, he collapsed into himself. Checked out. Gave up.” Wannaker took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not a psychiatrist, Mr. Mitchell, but I’d say my client, your friend, is a manic depressive who might be very close to a nervous breakdown.”

  I thought back to Poe’s behavior following the death of his wife. About how he cut off contact with everyone and fell into a morass of self-pity and depression.

  “What can I do to help?”

  He appeared to give my question some thought for a moment, using the time to pry the top off his drink cup, and prod the ice into his mouth. After a few crunches, he said, “This is going to be a very short trial if we don’t come up with something to offset the county’s case. They have the murder weapon with his fingerprints on it. They have motive and opportunity. And they found pieces of the victim in Poe’s shed.” He reinforced each point by tapping the table, each tap louder than the one before.

  “Yes, but—”

  He cut me off. “Any first-year assistant prosecutor can sleepwalk through this case and be guaranteed a guilty verdict, but State Attorney Thomas is taking the lead on this one himself.”

  I looked down at my uneaten cheese steak sandwich, the smell of grilled onions and peppers suddenly rank and sour. “I repeat my question, Mr. Wannaker. What can I do to help?”

  “Simple. Find Marrano’s killer or your friend is headed to Death Row.”

  “Is that all?” I said with false bravado. Unbidden, the last line of Henderson’s poem flitted across my mind.

  Hope drifted away like ashes.

  EIGHTEEN

  Wannaker dropped me off at his office after our lunch. I climbed into my car and rolled down the windows to let some of the heat out. I sat there sweating and worrying over what the attorney had told me. All the evidence pointed to Poe. No reasonable jury would see it any other way. Hell, if I were on the jury I’d have to vote to convict based on the evidence.

  Whoever framed him had done a damn good job, but Wannaker laid it all on my shoulders—unless I found Marrano’s murderer, Poe had a one-way ticket to Death Row. Quint Mitchell, super detective and savior of lost and hopeless cases.

  I rolled up the windows and turned on the air conditioning. Letting it wash over me, I considered the very real possibility that Jeffrey Poe would be convicted Sure, I had no doubt someone else killed Marrano and framed Poe, but I needed more than gut feelings to convince Conover and Horgan they had the wrong man. Someone knew why Marrano was murdered, and unless I discovered the reason this case would drift away like ashes, again thinking of Henderson’s poem.

  The flash of Henderson’s poem reminded me of Kurtis Laurance’s insinuation that Henderson might somehow be involved. What had he said? He’s not the noble creature everyone seems to think he is.

  Henderson and Laurance obviously shared an antipathy for one another, but I chalked it up to a clash of giant egos. Still, a small inner voice whispered to me not to ignore what Laurance said.

  I pulled out of the parking lot onto US 1, and for the second time that day visited the downtown library. I found a vacant computer station and Googled Clayton Ford Henderson. As expected, the search engine pulled up hundreds of references, including a fan site with photographs, biography, and snippets of his poetry. I scrolled through pages of old news stories on his appearances, honors won, book reviews, and his appointment as Poet Laureate by former Governor Lawton Chiles.

  He was born in Oxford, Mississippi, moved to Huntsville for a brief time and then to Tuscaloosa where he taught at the University of Alabama. While there, he published his second book of poetry and picked up a PhD. He later accepted a position as professor at the University of Florida’s Department of English.

  Once in Florida, he established himself as one of the nation’s foremost poets, winning fellowships and publishing four more books of poetry, including A Flash of Silence. Five years ago, he retired and moved to St. Augustine.

  I clicked through to more listings of interviews and articles until on the sixth page, near the bottom, I spotted an intriguing item titled Poet of Death? The descriptive line beneath the title read Clayton Ford Henderson’s rise to the stratosphere of the poetry heavens began with the mysterious death of …

  When I clicked on the cached article an old piece from a defunct magazine appeared on the screen. The article’s by-line credited Perry Roberts, a name I recognized as belonging to a sleazy shock journalist who’d written four or five controversial and unauthorized biographies of celebrities and presidents. Roberts hadn’t built his reputation on unassailable journalism, but he knew how to get headlines.

  A black and white photograph, reminding me of a still from an old noir movie, accompanied the article. In it, two uniformed police stared into a swimming pool while another talked with a man obviously in a state of shock. The photograph captured a look of disbelief on the man’s face. His dark hair was in disarray, a shirt half buttoned as
though he’d just woken and hadn’t had time to finish dressing. The picture evoked a sense that something monstrous had happened in this tranquil neighborhood.

  I recognized the man in the old photo as Clayton Ford Henderson, perhaps forty or forty-five years ago. His grief reached out to touch me. Looking closer at the photograph, I saw the reason for his grief. There, in the pool, floated a woman’s body. I began reading the article.

  Poet of Death

  By Perry Roberts

  Clayton Ford Henderson’s rise to the stratosphere of the poetry heavens began with the mysterious death of his wife in Oxford, Mississippi in 1970. My investigation into her death shows that the hometown of William Faulkner, one of America’s great storytellers, may have been the setting of another literary figure’s most deadly creation.

  Henderson attended the University of Mississippi where he met and later married Elizabeth Swinton, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Swinton. Mr. Swinton, a multi-millionaire industrialist, perished along with his wife when their private plane crashed during a thunderstorm. This left Elizabeth sole heir to an enormous fortune.

  The courtship and marriage had all the trappings of a storybook romance for the Henderson’s. But the story didn’t have a happy ending for Mrs. Henderson who was found floating in the couple’s backyard swimming pool sixteen months later.

  The drowning caused more than a few to raise their eyebrows since, as a student, Elizabeth Swinton had set several Southeast Conference records as captain of the women’s swim team. While the Oxford police wouldn’t admit Henderson was a suspect, my sources tell me he was questioned for days and remained under constant surveillance until the case was officially closed and labeled an accident.

  This fit the pattern of Roberts’ smear jobs. He dug into a person’s background looking for any peccadillo or weakness, hacked away at it, weaving rumors and gossip in such a way even the pope would be hard-pressed to defend himself. I made a few notes and continued reading.

  The poet told police he had stayed up late working on his new book of poetry and had fallen asleep at his desk. When he awoke it was nearly 6:00 a.m. and he went to the kitchen to make coffee. At that point, according to Henderson, the children began crying and he went to check on them. He called for his wife to help him, but she didn’t answer. Not finding her in bed, he began searching the house, calling her name.

  Eventually, he went outside and found his wife’s body in the pool. Elizabeth Henderson had a cut on her forehead, and the medical examiner testified it might have come from her falling and hitting her head against the side of the pool. After his wife’s death was officially declared an accident, Henderson became the sole recipient of the Swinton millions.

  A year later he sold the Oxford house and moved to Huntsville, Alabama with his two children.

  Questions still remain about the drowning death of a swimming champion, and the poet who inherited $8 million. Could it be that Clayton Ford Henderson planned and carried out the perfect crime? He certainly had the rhyme and reason for it.

  The story continued with two more pages of wild speculation, but I didn’t have the stomach to finish it. It seemed to me that Henderson had grounds for a solid libel suit. Still, something didn’t feel right, and tiny lights began to flash in my head.

  NINETEEN

  Leaving the cool, tranquil atmosphere of the library, I walked to my car through a series of lengthening afternoon shadows. Sergeant Buck Marrano fell into step beside me.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around town?” Counting our initial confrontation at the church, this was the third time Marrano had surprised me in a parking lot. Our first encounter left me doubled over, sucking wind, and the last time he shocked me with his racist tirade. Even considering the impact of his brother’s murder, Buck Marrano struck me as a bully with a vicious streak. Certainly not the kind of person who should be carrying a badge for the City of St. Augustine.

  “Ah, man, you better be careful or you’ll hurt my feelings.” Marrano’s face broke into a surprisingly engaging lopsided grin, his sunglasses glinting in the sunlight. “I thought you’d be happy to see a member of the criminal justice system since we’re sworn to serve and protect.”

  “Are you telling me it’s a coincidence you bumped into me? Maybe you’re here to pay an overdue fine on your coloring book?”

  “Funny guy. No, it’s not a coincidence. The Chief sent me to give you a message about your friend Poe.”

  I doubted Chief Conover would ask Buck to deliver messages for him since he’s not supposed to be working the case. Horgan probably told his Detective Commander about Eleanor Lawson changing her story, and now Buck wanted to rub my nose in it.

  I ignored him, walking the last few steps to my car. The sergeant silently tagged along like one of the shadows dappling the parking lot.

  “Okay, let me have it,” I said, hoping to rid myself of the gloating detective as quickly as possible. “You want me to know Poe’s alibi didn’t hold up, and poor Mrs. Lawson was dazed and confused.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Mitchell. It sounds like you’re the one who’s dazed and confused.” He turned his head away and spit on the ground.

  “Then what’s your message?”

  Marrano removed his sunglasses and made a show of taking out a handkerchief and wiping the lenses. Holding them up to the light, he spent another half a minute inspecting them while I fumed, my internal temperature rising by the second.

  Finally, he turned to me, still holding the glasses in his hand. “I thought you’d want to know your buddy Poe tried to commit suicide this afternoon.”

  His statement stunned me. He said the words with little inflection, no emotion. I sagged against the car remembering Wannaker’s warning.

  “Is he … did he?”

  “Nah, he’s not dead, if that’s what you’re trying to say. Tried to strangle himself, but screwed it up. He tied one of his pant legs around his neck and the other to the top of his bunk. One of the guards heard him thrashing around and got him down before much damage was done.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “They took him to the emergency room to be checked out, but he’s back in his cell on suicide watch.”

  “I’d like to see him.”

  “You know the rules. No visitors until seven tonight.”

  I slammed my palm against the car’s fender. “Damn it, Marrano, Jeffrey’s in bad shape. He needs to see a friendly face.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are? Poe’s a gutless murderer. Are we supposed to change the rules because your friend couldn’t live with himself? Too bad he didn’t finish the job.”

  Marrano put on his sunglasses and said, “Guess my job is done. You can take it from here, hoss.” After flicking me a mock salute, he turned and walked away.

  I sucked in several deep breaths of humid air. Banal thoughts of suicide being a permanent solution to a temporary problem flashed through my head. I closed my eyes for a moment picturing Jeffrey Poe struggling against the knot tightening around his neck. I couldn’t imagine the desperation he must have felt, the feeling of total isolation and abandonment. Fortunately he failed, but I knew I had to do something before he tried again.

  TWENTY

  While waiting for the light to turn green at the corner of San Carlos and San Marcos Avenues, I spotted a black Buick LaCrosse swing out from the electronics shop across the street. It pulled into line two cars behind me. I turned away, my mind still rehashing Marrano’s revelation about Poe’s suicide attempt.

  I wanted to reach out and assure Poe he still had the confidence of his friends. That he shouldn’t give up. Easy for me to say, but I wasn’t the one wearing the orange jumpsuit or sleeping in a jail cell.

  I couldn’t even imagine a solution to his problems, so I decided to check in with my client. I called Erin Marrano as I drove slowly along Castillo Drive, passing the new Pirate & Treasure Museum. Her phone rang eight or ten ti
mes before her recorded voice asked me to leave a message. I didn’t want to break the news of Poe’s attempted suicide on the phone, so I said I wanted to talk with her and would check back later.

  By now I’d passed the statue of Ponce de Leon and turned right onto King Street. Checking my rearview mirror, I noticed the same Buick still behind me. Coincidence? Possibly.

  I crept along Charlotte Street hoping to find a parking place close to Henderson’s house. St. Augustine’s parking situation could cause a nun to swear, but I did my best to concentrate on avoiding exchanging paint with the lines of cars parked on both sides of the narrow street. I passed Henderson’s restored home, turned on Bravo Lane and eased into an open parking place in front of a small frame house badly in need of a coat of paint. As I climbed out of my car, the black Buick slid by me so close I saw the driver clearly through the tinted glass. He turned his head away from me as if looking for an address across the street, but I’d have to be blind not to recognize Lem Tallabois.

  The man may have been a former New Orleans Police officer, but he knew diddly-squat about moving surveillance. I watched him drive to the end of the street and turn onto Aviles without signaling. Had Laurance sent his boy to keep an eye on me after our conversation in his office?

  Suppressing my growing aggravation with the heavy-handed Tallabois, I walked to Henderson’s house. Henderson answered the door himself, greeting me enthusiastically, grabbing my arm, and pulling me inside. “Just when I feel like I’ve been abandoned, what with Jarrod going off, I open my door and find my own gentleman caller. Do you bring me truth in the guise of illusion?”

  I looked at him wondering how many of those Anastasia Island Teas he’d sampled. We walked through the hallway arch past a formal dining room with a massive table replete with twelve place settings as if I’d arrived for a dinner party. Although he still used the cane, he didn’t seem to have any problems walking.