Fatal Decree

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “Did you check the time of the service?”

  “Of course I checked. She paid with her VISA card at five fifteen Friday afternoon. And her neighbor told me that the BMW was in the driveway of Nell’s house between six and eight, because the neighbor was sitting on her front porch chatting with her husband during the entire two hours.”

  “What about the gun that was used to kill Nell?” I asked.

  “Nowhere to be found. He must have ditched it somewhere. I ran the ballistics through all the federal databases, and there’s no indication that the gun has been used in a shooting anywhere in the country since it was used to kill the Miami victims.”

  “Any thoughts on how he came into possession of that particular gun?”

  “No. And that scares the hell out of me. Where did he go in that BMW after he killed Nell? And where did he get the gun, and what did he do with it? He’s too young to have been involved in the Miami murders. Was he just a killer hired by the real Miami murderer? If so, where is the real killer, and why does he want me dead?”

  “This isn’t doing my indigestion any good. Did you get anything from Miami yet?”

  “Not yet. It should be along shortly.”

  “What about the statements?”

  “An FDLE agent’s coming down from Tampa. He’ll talk to me and then he’ll meet with you and Jock. I’ll call you when he gets here. Bye.”

  I related the information to Jock.

  “Doesn’t sound good, podna. Maybe I shot the wrong man. It’s obvious that he’s not the killer from Miami.”

  “It’s also pretty obvious that he’s the one who killed Nell.”

  “It could be just a fluke that the pistol ended up in Qualman’s hands. Or maybe, the killer from Miami is running this show and wanted to let J.D. know that he’s still out there.”

  “And you want the guy who ordered the hit.”

  “Damn right. It’s an article of faith in the agency that if you take out one of us, you pay the price. You die. And that applies to our families.”

  “You shot the right man. It just might not be the one you wanted most.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  J.D.’s call came an hour later. The FDLE agent was at the police station and ready to speak to us about the shooting. He met us in the lobby and identified himself as Don Fielding. He wanted to talk to Jock first, so I spent a few minutes reading an ancient magazine I found in the lobby. Jock came out and said the agent was ready for me.

  “That was quick,” I said.

  “He took one look at my credentials, called the number in Washington, and then talked about Florida State football for a while. He seems a bit obsessed with it.”

  I laughed. Jock carried credentials identifying him as a special agent of the president of the United States and giving him extraordinary powers. Jock told the agent to call a phone number in Washington, D.C. The number was to an office in the White House and the person who answered told the agent not to question Jock. He also told the agent that the agent’s boss in Tallahassee would call him right back. Fielding got the call within a minute, recognized the voice of the director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said yes sir, hung up, and turned the conversation to football.

  I didn’t have any credentials, so I spent the better part of an hour with Agent Fielding, answering all his questions. He was an astute interviewer, and by the time we finished, he knew exactly what I knew about what happened. We discussed Jock’s actions in protecting J.D., and Fielding seemed satisfied that Jock had done the right thing. He told me he would recommend that the FDLE find that the actions of a private citizen, one Jock Algren, who held a concealed weapons permit, were taken to protect the life of a police officer and were fully justified. In short, a righteous shooting. We were finished. We shook hands and Fielding said, “Nice to meet you. Go ‘Noles.” I left, shaking my head.

  It was almost noon, and I was getting hungry. I stuck my head into J.D.’s office and asked if she wanted to go to Mar Vista for lunch. She shook her head. “Sorry, Matt. I’m going through the information Miami-Dade e-mailed me. I’ll touch base later. I want Jock to see what we have. So far, I can’t make much sense out of it.”

  Jock and I were pulling into the Mar Vista parking lot when my phone rang. Blocked number. Probably Agent Fielding wanting to talk football. I answered.

  “Matt, David Parrish.” The deep voice rumbled over the circuits, tempered with the accents inculcated into him during a childhood in Statesboro, Georgia. The many years he had lived in Orlando had not robbed his voice of the richness of the Old South.

  “Damn, it’s good to hear your voice. It’s been too long.”

  “It has been too long, but I’m afraid I’m calling on business. Do you have time for lunch?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “How about now?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Just crossing the Cortez Bridge.”

  “Come on to the Mar Vista. Jock Algren’s with me. We’ll meet you there. You know where to go?”

  “Sure do. And it’ll be good to see Jock again. Be there in about ten minutes.”

  Jock and I had worked with David in the past, and he knew Jock and his connections to the U.S. government.

  The Mar Vista Pub was housed in one of the oldest buildings in the village. It had been there well before any of the homes and condos were built to the south. It sat on a piece of property facing the bay and was a favorite hangout of the locals. I pulled into the shell parking lot and walked through the old bar area to the outside. Jock and I told the hostess that we were waiting for one more person, and she led us to our table. I knew most of the people at the other tables and waved as we passed. We sat under an ancient banyan tree, shaded from the noontime sun by its branches. A slight breeze blew off the bay, carrying a tinge of diesel exhaust that emanated from the large boat maneuvering into the restaurant’s dock. The temperature was about seventy degrees, the humidity low. Florida at its best, I thought.

  “David must have some interest in our recently departed hit man,” said Jock.

  “Maybe. But if it’s that, he’s moving fast. It’s a couple of hours drive from Orlando. That means he was brought into this either last night or very early this morning.”

  “Here he comes,” said Jock.

  Parrish was a large man with quick movements, like the college line-backer he’d once been. His blond hair had turned mostly gray, and he moved a little more slowly than he had when he roamed the football field, taking down runners, as swift and sure as a lion attacking a gazelle. He walked with a slight swagger, a man confident of his place in the universe and contemptuous of anyone who dared question it. He was courtly in his approach to others, a gentleman of the Old South with a mind as incisive as any I’d ever met. He was wearing a gray suit, white dress shirt, maroon striped tie, and black wingtip shoes. The quintessentially buttoned-down lawyer, decidedly out of place at the Mar Vista.

  David and I had been law school classmates and good friends. When I moved to Orlando after graduation and joined an old, established law firm, he came too. He went to work in the office of the state attorney, which in Florida is the chief prosecutor of a judicial circuit, not unlike the district attorney in many states.

  He’d enjoyed the work and became a career prosecutor, a man devoted to taking the bad guys off the streets. After a few years as a state prosecutor, he moved to the United States Attorney’s office and prosecuted federal crimes. He rose to chief assistant U.S. attorney and, finally, a new arrival in the White House had seen fit to appoint him the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, in effect making him the chief federal law enforcement officer in a district that included Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, Ft. Myers, and everything in between. It was a big job, and David Parrish was ultimately suited for it.

  David ambled over to our table, shook hands, and sat. “Great to see you guys,” he said. “Man, I love this island. I think you won the rat race, Matt.”


  “Congratulations on your promotion,” I said. “How do you like being the big cheese?”

  “Thanks. I don’t think much has changed except now I’m the one responsible for every screw-up in the district. And I’m too bogged down with administrative crap to get into the courtroom.”

  “Can’t you pawn that off on an assistant?” Jock asked.

  David grinned. “I’m in the process. I hired a woman from the state attorney’s office who never was much of a lawyer, but is the best administrator I’ve ever seen. I think she’s going to work out fine.”

  “Okay, David,” I said, “I’m glad you’re here, but I suspect it’s not just to spend a day in the sun with your old buddies.”

  “Not exactly. Jock managed to kill one of my informants last night.”

  “Informant?” asked Jock.

  “Well, he used to be an informant. He got involved with a bunch of drug dealers when he was about fifteen. The Drug Enforcement Agency caught him selling cocaine near an elementary school in Osceola County and gave him the choice of working with us or being tried as an adult and spending the rest of his life in a federal prison.”

  “How’d that work out for you?” Jock sounded skeptical.

  “Actually, he did a good job. We got several convictions of some of the upper echelon of the group based on information he gave us.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “How did he end up in state prison?”

  “Pussy.”

  I laughed. “Better explain that one.”

  “He fell for some little bimbo who turned tricks on South Orange Blossom trail in Orlando. She got into some kind of jam and needed money to get out of it. Our boy Pete decided to knock over a convenience store and got caught by the locals.”

  “You guys didn’t try to work a deal?” asked Jock.

  “We talked briefly to the state attorney about it, but it seems that young Pete beat the crap out of the Pakistani guy behind the counter. And he did it with a Glock pistol he’d stolen from an unlocked police car about two weeks before. They might have dealt, but they weren’t going to let him walk. We were afraid if we got involved in it, he’d be marked as an informant, and he’d last about two days in prison before somebody put a shank in him.”

  “He only got out a couple of months ago,” I said. “Did you guys put him back to work?”

  “We were going to, but he never showed up at the probation office. He completely dropped off the grid.”

  “Until today,” I said.

  “Right. I’ve been in the Tampa office for a couple of days and got a call this morning from a DEA agent who saw something in the St. Pete paper about the shooting in Longboat. Pete Qualman’s name was in the story, so the agent called me. I talked to Bill Lester and he told me Jock had shot the little bastard, so here I am. Since you’re involved, Jock, I’m wondering if somehow there are any national security issues in this thing.”

  “We don’t think so,” said Jock. “Qualman killed a woman who was the wife of an old friend of mine, one of my agency’s analysts who retired here last year. We think she was probably just a target of opportunity, not connected to the agency in any way. I just happened to be on the island visiting Matt when it happened. My director asked me to look into it to make sure there were no national security implications.”

  “Give me your take on this whole thing,” David said.

  Jock nodded at me, and I spent the next twenty minutes bringing David up to speed on what we knew, what we suspected, and what we were concerned about: that Qualman may have just been a hit man hired by somebody who wants to kill J.D. Jock chimed in when he had a nugget to add, but otherwise sat quietly sipping iced tea. The server had taken our order and brought it to the table. We ate as we talked.

  “There’s a disconnect here somewhere,” said David, when I’d finished the update. “Qualman was never violent, except that one time at the convenience store.”

  “Prison does a lot of damage to people, especially the young ones,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said David, “but I thought he might be one that would make it out. He had no record of trouble at Glades Correctional. A model prisoner.” He shook his head. “I thought he might turn out to be the exception to the rule. I guess not.”

  “Do you have any information on whom he might have been friends with in prison?” Jock asked.

  “None. Why?”

  “I’d sure like to know how he got involved with someone who wants to kill J.D. The most logical place for him to meet somebody like that would be in prison.”

  “Probably,” said David. “But he’s been out for two months. Maybe he ran into somebody after he was released and the murder was a way to make some quick cash.”

  “Could he have hooked up with his old girlfriend when he got out?”

  “No,” said David. “She died of an overdose about two years ago.”

  “Any of the drug people he used to be involved with?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. We rolled up most of them, and the rest are dead. Their life expectancy isn’t very good on the streets. There’s always somebody who wants the territory and the best way to get rid of competition is to simply kill it off. Literally.”

  “After Qualman killed Nell Alexander,” said Jock, “he apparently drove about three hundred miles in her car before turning up in the parking lot last night. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “Not offhand,” said David. “There are a lot of places in Florida within a hundred-fifty-mile radius of Longboat Key.”

  “Other than the Orlando area, can you think of any place Qualman could have gone to ground for a couple of days?” I asked.

  “I guess he might have hooked up with someone in prison that would have taken him in. Maybe he went there.”

  “The gun that killed Nell Alexander also killed the three women in Miami twelve years ago,” said Jock. “The gun didn’t turn up in Qualman’s possession, and I don’t think he would have ditched it. The gun may be some sort of an icon. It’s been around for at least a dozen years. There’s no record in the federal databases that it has been used in all that time in another shooting. That tells me that there is somebody else involved, somebody who pointed Qualman toward J.D., and somebody who now has the pistol that killed Nell and those other women in Miami.”

  “You’re probably right,” said David. “But, unless there is some federal connection, I can’t get my office involved. I’ll be happy to share whatever we have on Qualman or any of his old associates, but I doubt that’s going to be much help.”

  “Are you in a hurry to get back to Tampa?” I asked.

  “I’ve got to be back for a dinner meeting at six this evening.”

  “I’d like you to meet our Longboat Key detective, J. D. Duncan. She’s gotten a file from Miami-Dade PD with information on all the people she put away that might have a grudge against her. I’d like to get her over to my house so we can take a look at it. See if anything jumps out at you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Parrish followed us the couple of blocks to my house. I called J.D. on the way and told her that the U.S. attorney was at my house and would like to talk to her and see her files from Miami.

  J.D. arrived about ten minutes after us, and I introduced her to David.

  “Nice to meet you, David,” she said and pulled a flash drive from her pocket. “Can we use your computer, Matt?”

  She plugged in the drive and brought up the file. “I’ve culled this a great deal. I’ve made hundreds of arrests over the years and most of them ended up in convictions. Not all of the perps went to prison. Some were sentenced to probation or county jail time. Of the ones who went to prison, most are still locked up, and some died. Any one of those still in prison could theoretically be running the show from there, so I’ve tried to eliminate the ones that didn’t commit violent crimes, the burglars, embezzlers, scam artists, and the like. Some of the ones I put away toward the end of my career with Miami-Dade would have been too young twelve years ago
to have been involved in the original murders. And I got rid of anybody who was in jail at the time of the murders in Miami.”

  “How many did you end up with?” I asked.

  “Ten, but none of them seem to have any connection to the murders in Miami. Or at least I can’t find any. I’m going to have my old partner take a look at them and see if he can come up with anything. David, maybe some of these guys will ring a bell with you.”

  We scrolled carefully through the file. There was a synopsis of each of the men, giving his personal information, the crime for which he was convicted, the date of the crime, how much time he served, and in which of the 144 Florida prison facilities he had been incarcerated. Several had spent time in more than one institution.

  “Each of these ten guys did some of their sentences at Glades Correctional, which is where Qualman served his entire sentence,” said J.D., “and they were there for at least part of the time that Qualman was. They may have known each other. I’ve got the warden down there scratching through records to see if he turns up anything. Like, were any of them cellmates with Qualman. I’m looking for any connection, no matter how tenuous.”

  “How about somebody that you put away who has been released?” I asked. “Wouldn’t someone like that be a pretty good suspect?”

  “I’ve tried to factor that in. I ignored the ones who were released before Qualman got to prison, but he may have met somebody when he got out or knew them before he went in. I have no way of knowing that. This is just a process of elimination, and I want to rule out these ten before I start beating my head against the wall trying to tie a bunch of old cons to Qualman.”

  “I can get you a list of the people Qualman dealt with in the drug business,” said David. “You might turn up a name there, somebody you arrested who also knew our boy before he knocked over the convenience store. It’s a pretty long shot.”