Micanopy in Shadow

by Ann Cook

  John lifted his briefcase from the coffee table and strode back into the kitchen. Brandy knew that look. It started with one hand rubbing his forehead and ended with the elevated left eyebrow. “You know what sometimes happens when you’re over-zealous—and over-confident. Just be careful.” He leaned over to kiss her lips, as if to take the sting our of his remark.

  “Not to worry. I’m just setting up a few interviews.” A slight frown still creased his forehead when he closed the door. This constant surveillance annoyed her. But better to have a concerned husband than one who didn’t care.

  As soon as Kyra rang the doorbell at 9:00, Brandy picked up her notepad and canvas bag. Today was her first chance to return Ada’s few possessions. Fortunately, her grandmother was an early riser. Brandy could stop by and still make her appointment.

  “I’m looking forward to meeting Grant this afternoon,” she said. Then she hurried down to her car.

  At her grandmother’s cottage, she opened the unlocked front door and brushed by the cat, sitting its customary watch at the front window. Her grandmother was in the kitchen, preparing birdseed for her back yard feeder.

  “I’m worried about the store,” Hope said. She set the box of birdseed back into the cupboard. “Dealer next door called me yesterday. He’d like to buy our place and consolidate the two. But Snug always says he won’t sell.”

  Brandy’s cousin, Snug Haven, that is. His parents must have thought the name amusing, which surprised Brandy. From the photographs she’d seen, they looked like the humorless couple in American Gothic.

  “I’ll talk to him.” Brandy handed her grandmother the Adele Marco tape, along with the prayer book and brooch. “Any chance you remember what you wore that last day?” Adele Marco had sensed a child in blue.

  Hope looked away. “I don’t remember my mother clearly, let alone my clothes.” She tapped her lips with her index finger, as she often did when she mentioned her foster mother and spoke with a hint of bitterness. “Mother Haven got rid of my old clothes. She wanted me to wear the new things she’d bought for the daughter who died.” She set down the box of birdseed with a thump. “I don’t know what dress I wore then. But I’ve told you.…” She gave Brandy her school teacher glare. “Everything that’s ever happened is still in the loaf of time—including my mother’s death. Adele Marco cut through to it.”

  Brandy nodded. Maybe so. But she still preferred a flesh and blood source.

  * * *

  Tendrils of fog and the keen scent of wet undergrowth lingered above the pines and oaks beside Shot Hunter’s property. His white house with its narrow green shutters seemed to rise out of the mist. The neighborhood was unnaturally quiet. Nothing stirred. There was no car this time in the vacant lot down the street. One cottage’s kitchen in the next block burned a light, but she could see no light in Hunter’s. Brandy cut her engine and checked her watch. Ten o’clock.

  The door to his house stood open, which surprised her. She didn’t see Shot. Not at first.

  And then she did. He lay on his side, head toward the living room, legs curled between the wall and the open screen door, one arm outstretched. A dressing gown twisted around his body. One black bedroom slipper lay on the front step.

  He was still, much too still.

  SEVEN

  Brandy stumbled out of her car, heart thudding, and plunged up Hunter’s walkway. As she knelt on the steps, she saw the small, bloody hole in the front of his robe. The wound no longer bled. Hunter’s face was turned to one side, the eye she could see open and glazed. She crawled forward and laid trembling fingertips against the radial bone of his exposed wrist. Nothing. Brandy withdrew her hand. She could not identify the odor, but it wasn’t pleasant. Still kneeling, she fumbled in her bag for her cell and dialed 9-1-1.

  Brandy knew she must touch nothing else, and yet her knees felt too weak to hold her upright. She slumped beside the body, her back against the upper step, and watched the road. She scarcely noticed the splintered sections of cardboard lying next to Hunter’s legs. No one passed. In the fog a block away the nearest house sat silent. She remembered to look at her watch. Time would be essential. It was now 10:10. She must’ve found him fewer than five minutes ago.

  She heard the purr of the deputy’s engine first, then a white and dark green Crown Victoria slid to a stop at the curb, the gold star on the door a welcome sight. Brandy hauled herself up, limp with relief, and waved the Patrol Division officer toward the house. He was a lean young man, the brim of his gray Stetson smartly cocked and the pants of his olive green uniform sharply creased. As soon as he spotted her, he strode up the walk and halted before her, the corners of his mouth drawn down and his jaw tense. His gaze swept over Hunter’s corpse. Then he also knelt and felt for the pulse in the wrist and on the temple. Then he placed his hand under Hunter’s accessible armpit.

  “Dead when you got here, M’am?”

  Brandy still felt tottery. Shock, she thought. “Yes. I felt for a pulse. He hadn’t any and he wasn’t breathing. His wrist is all I touched.”

  “I think the ME will find he’s only been dead a short time.” He pulled out a pen and notepad. “Deputy Phil Walker, ACSO, M’am.” He looked down. “God, looks like Captain Hunter. I heard he moved down here.”

  “We had an appointment at 10 A.M.”

  “And you found him when?”

  “A few minutes before 10:00. I spoke to him last night.”

  Walker scribbled a few notes in a pad, then turned to his patrol car. “I’ve got to call Dispatch.” He nodded toward Brandy’s Prius. “That your vehicle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait in it. We won’t go into the house until the techs have gone over everything. Dispatch will send someone to take your statement.”

  Brandy welcomed the chance to sit. While he hurried back to his cruiser, she followed and slid into her passenger seat.

  She had a difficult time adjusting to the fact of Hunter’s death. Was she responsible? He was following up his father’s information about Ada because Brandy asked him to. He said he had a promising contact.

  While the deputy returned to the scene, still jotting in a notepad, Brandy took out her cell again and dialed John. He should be in the office now, or inspecting the fire station restoration job, but she could reach him. Her eyes filled as soon as she heard his calm voice. The cell phone shook in her hand.

  “John, something terrible—Shot Hunter’s been killed. I found the body.”

  There was a pause. “I’m sorry, Bran. It must’ve been an awful shock.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll get home. Will you call Kyra? Ask her to stay until one of us gets home?” With all her heart, she wished John were with her.

  “Sure.” He paused and sighed. “Here we go again.” He didn’t need to elaborate.

  “You want me to come?”

  He could do nothing but hold her hand and stop its quivering. “No. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  Fifteen minutes later a white unmarked Sheriff’s car pulled up behind Deputy Walker’s. Two detectives climbed out, a short stocky man in brown slacks and a female officer in an ivory blouse with a blue scarf at the neck.

  In the next block a woman opened her front door, walked out into the yard, and looked toward the officers. The neighborhood, scattered as it was, had become aware of the law’s arrival.

  When Brandy stepped out of her car, the male officer extended his hand. “Sergeant Hamilton Noble, Alachua County Sheriff’s Office. The detective looked about fifty, his body solid rather than plump. A shock of gray hair angled above shrewd blue eyes. Brandy shook his hand, noticing the clean, neatly clipped nails. His grip was firm but not bruising. “Brandy O’Bannon,” she said.

  “You the lady who found Hunter?”

  “I’m afraid so, Sergeant. I’m still upset. I only met him once but I
liked him.”

  “Deputy Walker says you had an appointment.”

  “He said he had information I wanted. It was about the death of my great-grandmother. I wonder.…”

  Noble interrupted. He was already looking toward the house. “My partner will take you to my office. She’ll want a full statement.” He started toward the body, turning toward the deputy. “You check for footprints or tracks?”

  “This lady had already been to the house. Her prints are on the paved walk and the lawn. Someone else could’ve walked on the paved driveway. If they did, they didn’t leave prints. No one else came over the grass.”

  “Can’t be helped.”

  Another car spun up to the curb, followed by a van—the crime scene techs, probably the medical examiner, too. Brandy edged as far as she dared toward the scene.

  She heard Noble. “God a-mighty, I hate to see this. He was always good to me, but he did rile a lot of people.”

  Noble’s partner had already reached the scene. “Heard he was a bit rough on the bad guys. Had that reputation.”

  “Kicked in a lot of doors. If we did what they say Shot Hunter did, we’d be playing rock hockey in Atlanta now. The Sheriff asked him to take early retirement.” Noble squatted beside the body. “I could name several guys had him in their sights. The Sheriff didn’t like that stuff. He’s by the books.”

  “We’ll check it out. Didn’t he have to testify again soon? One of his cases being re-tried?” Noble nodded. “Wife left him, too. Another guy. Something else to look into.”

  Brandy watched two techs hurry across the front lawn. Noble stepped aside for the techs and spoke to the first. “Go over every square inch of this house and grounds.” One carried cameras and began taking measurements. The other, carrying an evidence kit, began making a quick sketch. The detective glanced behind him and added, “Let the ME in.”

  The medical examiner was a tall skinny physician with a black string tie hanging crookedly from his collar. In one bony hand he held a kit of his own.

  Noble turned next to the crime scene tech with the kit. “Examine those scraps of cardboard near the body. I want a good picture from every angle of the open door, the shots in the chest, and the cardboard. They remind me of a case in Tampa about thirty years ago. The Richard Cloud murder. He was also a former detective, but still after the mob. He was gunned down when he answered the door.”

  Noble glanced up at the doorframe and the screen, still half open. A slug had torn through it. “That killer was carrying a box, like a deliveryman. Killer held his weapon inside the box and shot right through it. The Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office nailed the shooter by identifying the slug. Caught the bastard and convicted him. Unless the techs find some brass, Hunter was shot with a revolver, too.”

  He stared at the scene for a second, then looked at his partner. “I’m going to start canvassing the area. See if anyone heard anything. You take Miss O’Bannon in to the office and tape her statement.”

  Brandy moved closer. She hadn’t forgotten something that could be significant. “When I was here on Saturday, I saw a file folder on Hunter’s kitchen table. It concerned an old case I’m interested in. It was labeled The Losterman case. Will your people look for the folder? It could be important. It had information he said he’d share with me this morning.”

  “Yeah, sure, M’am. Won’t be a toothpick we don’t look at.”

  “Could I find out what’s in the file?”

  Noble shook his head. She was taking too much of his time. “Lady, we keep any evidence we find. Just how old is this case, anyway?”

  When Brandy said eighty-one years, the corners of his mouth twitched up. He shook his head again. “Miss O’Bannon, go with my partner, Detective Tennis.”

  Brandy asked to follow the detective in her own car so she could continue on to Payne’s Prairie. In spite of everything, she didn’t want to miss meeting Grant Wilson and his grandfather.

  * * *

  The fog had finally lifted but the day remained gray and damp. Brandy sat in Noble’s office on a fake leather couch and waited for Sergeant Tennis to take a seat behind a wooden desk cluttered with papers and an overflowing in-box. A portrait of a woman with a boy about nine sat on one corner. Brandy assumed they were Mrs. Noble and her son. The only picture on the institutional beige wall was one of Florida’s governor, the only document a framed bachelor’s degree.

  Tennis looked about thirty. Her brown hair was short and neatly cupped to her head and her lithe figure was rounded in the right places. She probably elevated a few pulses when she joined the Crimes Against Persons Squad, but today she was all business. She set a small tape recorder on the desk and glanced up. She had wide-set gray eyes and a shapely nose and mouth.

  Brandy looked at her watch. “I need to call my apartment first. I’ve got a sitter. She needs to know that I won’t be home for lunch.”

  Before the interview began, the desk phone rang. When Tennis picked up, she turned her head away, but Brandy still could hear Noble’s baritone. “About two hours before O’Bannon got there, a woman down the road heard a heavy car go by. Find out if O’Bannon heard or saw it.”

  Brandy spoke up, “I didn’t see any car at all this morning. Last time I was there a small, light-colored car was parked beside the vacant lot almost a block away—a two-door model or a compact—but not a big, heavy one.”

  Tennis walked out into the hall carrying the phone and lowered her voice. When she returned it to its cradle, she said, “Shot twice, thigh and chest, probably with a revolver. You hear any shots?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did the lady down the block. They’ll be able to recover both bullets.”

  No officer was likely to report developments to her. Brandy explained that she was researching a book about Micanopy. The Sergeant led her through the account of her previous visit and then the discovery of the body this morning. Brandy gave her every fact and impression she could recall.

  Before they left Noble’s office, Tennis put in another call to him and took it outside the room again. When she returned, Brandy stood. “Did they find the folder I told him about?”

  Tennis shook her head. “No folder labeled “Losterman.” They’ve checked every drawer, every nook and cranny inside and outside. The folder’s not there. Before you leave, we’ll trouble you for your fingerprints.”

  “Sure, but I didn’t touch anything in the house, only a bench under the arbor Saturday, and nothing today except Hunter’s wrist.”

  “We’ll check.”

  Brandy rose and followed the Sergeant out of the room. She knew she’d seen the folder. It disappeared.

  After a deputy finished rolling her fingertips on a pad, Brandy walked out into the wan light of the parking lot. Strands of Spanish moss hung motionless from the branch of a live oak. It was good to be outdoors again.

  * * *

  By 1:55 Brandy turned off Route 441 at the entrance to the State Preserve. She pulled up to the toll booth, a small stone house, sheltered by a tall water oak and cabbage palms. A woman in a park preserve uniform stepped out to the car.

  “I’ve got an appointment here at 2:00,” Brandy said. “Grant Wilson’s the ranger’s name.”

  The woman handed her several Prairie trail maps. “I’m filling in here for the attendant,” she said. “You must be the lady wants to meet old Mr. Wilson. Grant’ll be here in a jiffy. He’s been surveying for the next burn and trimming back underbrush.” She glanced ahead at the road into the park. It narrowed at its first curve and picked up a border of long-needle pines and a fringe of saw palmettos. “He’s coming in now.”

  A four-wheel ATV ground to a stop in a grassy area across the road. A lanky young man unfolded his legs from under the wheel, stood, set his cap firmly over dark brown hair and approached Brandy’s car. High cheekbones and a
n angular forehead formed planes around his deep-set eyes.

  He bent to the level of the driver’s window. “Mrs. Able?” Brandy nodded. “Best you follow me. My granddad lives near the Hawthorne Trail between Gainesville and the Prairie.”

  Brandy agreed, and a half an hour later drew up beside Grant at Boulware Springs Park. They walked east on a paved path so wide that they were not shaded by the laurel and turkey oaks that rose on either side. Bikers passed, bending low over their handlebars, as well as hikers with sweaters tied around their waists. Brandy decided not to mention Hunter’s murder. Grant would have too many questions, and she didn’t want to take the time. A few modest houses lined the walkway on their left. Grant opened a chain link gate to one of them, and Brandy followed him past myrtle oak and saw palmetto into a yard overgrown with wiregrass and rattlesnake weed.

  “Hope we don’t run into Aunt Liz,” he murmured. “Granddad’s daughter and caretaker.” His lips curled in a wry smile. “Your interest is in Zeke Wilson. She’s the chief keeper of the town marshall’s flame. Aunt Liz had a bad experience with a journalist who wrote a magazine article some years ago. She distrusts all reporters.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” Could be the same journalist who offended Mr. Stark. Brandy looked beyond a neglected concrete birdbath at a screened porch. An old man sat there in a wheelchair.

  “Granddad likes to watch people pass along the Hawthorne Trail.”

  Brandy had read about a series of sinkholes that sprawled across the Prairie basin, many water-filled—all that remained of Lake Lachua, once large enough for a small steamboat. Truck farming and ranching took a toll on the Prairie before the Gainesville Garden Club rescued it in the 1960s and 70s.

  Grant added, “Now, you know, Granddad’s ninety-three.”

  Before Brandy could respond, he opened the screen door. Both stepped onto the porch and Grant approached the wheelchair. “I brought this young lady to talk to you, Granddad. Remember?”