Fatal Decree

by H. Terrell Griffin

  Soon the coastal zone would be overrun with people and they would start moving inland. That was already happening north of Orlando, all the way to the Georgia state line. Towns springing up, old Florida villages becoming boom towns fueled by the new retirees’ need for sunshine. I supposed the growth would eventually make its way into the cattle ranches and truck farms of the interior of South Florida. What then? What would we do when that last vestige of old Florida filled up with people ignorant of the history of this magical place? Invade Cuba, I guess. Build a bridge across the Florida Straits so the snowbirds could move easily into the Caribbean. Castro wouldn’t know what hit him.

  My cell phone rang. I looked at my watch, not yet seven. Blocked ID. I answered.

  “Matt, Martin Sharkey.”

  “Good morning.”

  “I understand our detective is sleeping over with you.”

  “Well, she’s in the guest room.”

  He laughed. “Sorry about that. Is she up yet?”

  “No. She’s sleeping in. I can wake her.”

  “If you don’t mind. It’s important.”

  “I’ll have her call you back. You at the office?”

  “Tell her to call my cell. She has the number. And tell her I’m pulling the cop from your front yard. We’ll have somebody there again tonight.”

  I knocked on the guest room door. “J.D.?”

  I heard a sleepy voice say, “What?”

  “Sharkey called. He needs to talk to you.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost seven. He said to call him on his cell. Said you have the number.”

  “Okay. I’m awake. I’ll call him. What’s the weather like?”

  “A little chilly. Better put on some clothes.”

  “I thought I would, you pervert.”

  I went to the kitchen and put on a fresh pot of coffee and then back to the patio and my paper. The news hadn’t gotten any better.

  J.D. came out fifteen minutes later. She was wearing jeans, a plain white sweatshirt, and running shoes. Her hair was in a ponytail, still wet from the shower. She had a cup of coffee in her hand. “Good morning, Sunshine,” I said.

  She smiled and sat down next to me. “Good morning, Matt. Wouldn’t you be warmer inside?”

  “Are you cold?”

  “A bit. Want to go to the Dolphin for breakfast?”

  “Sure. I’ll wake Jock up.”

  “He’s up. I heard him rattling around in his room.”

  “Sharkey sounded as if his call was important,” I said.

  “The superintendent down at Glades Correctional e-mailed a bunch of stuff to Bill Lester during the night. I guess the governor must have chewed on him a bit.”

  “Anything that’ll help?”

  “Martin said there was a lot of paper. He wants me to come in and look at it. He said if I showed up without you or Jock, I’d be in trouble.”

  “You got time for breakfast?”

  “Sure. An hour or two isn’t going to make a bit of difference.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Jock stayed at my cottage, saying he had some e-mails to catch up on. He also wanted to talk to his director and bring him up to date on what progress had been made on finding Nell Alexander’s killer. Not a whole hell of a lot, I thought.

  “Not much to tell,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I’ve been thinking about that Guatemalan connection.”

  “If there is such a thing.”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time in Central America,” he said. “Maybe they’re after me and you just got in the line of fire. Mistaken identity kind of thing.”

  “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’ve got hair and I’m a lot better looking than you.”

  “In a feminine sort of way,” he said.

  I gave him the finger, and followed J.D. out the front door. She was shaking her head, and had one of those looks on her face that I can only describe as a frown of dismay.

  Breakfast was a quiet affair. She didn’t seem in the mood to engage in a lot of small talk, so I held my tongue. Finally, she said, “Do you think the Guatemalans are after you?”

  “No.”

  “What about that car trying to hit you?”

  “I think the driver was just a drunk tourist. There’s no reason for a Guatemalan gang to be after me.”

  “You don’t think whoever is trying to kill me might hire those guys to do their dirty work?”

  “It’s possible, but why would they be after me?”

  “Other than revenge for the shooting of Qualman, I don’t know.”

  “That’s possible, I guess, but if this whale tail bunch is hiring Guatemalan gangbangers, why wouldn’t they just hire out the hit on you? Put another layer between you and the people who want you dead.”

  She shook her head. “I just don’t know. Maybe they did. Qualman and Bagby definitely weren’t part of the original whale tail murders.”

  “We’ll figure it out sooner or later,” I said.

  “I hope so.”

  By the time we reached the police station on Gulf of Mexico Drive, it was raining, a soft cold drizzle that was part of the front enveloping the island. The temperature had dropped while we were having breakfast, bringing a touch of winter to our usually sunny key. By tomorrow, the front would be gone, and we’d have clear skies for a couple of cool days, with the thermometer reaching only into the low sixties. Winter in southwest Florida didn’t amount to much.

  I followed J.D. through the reception area and into her office. A stack of printouts sat on her desk, the trove from Glades Correctional. Martin Sharkey followed us into the office and shut the door. “J.D.” he said, “I’ve got more bad news. Fred Bagby woke up dead this morning.”

  J.D. had a puzzled look on her face. “What do you mean?”

  “He was dead in his bed when the jailers tried to get him up for chow call.”

  “How?”

  “They don’t know. There weren’t any obvious signs on the body. Other than the ones you left when you kicked his butt. The medical examiner will do an autopsy today, so maybe we’ll know by late this afternoon.”

  “Could I have killed him?” J.D. asked.

  “I doubt it. It may have been a natural death. We’ll have to wait for the M.E. Let me know if you find anything in that stuff from Glades.” Sharkey left, closing the door behind him.

  “Darn,” she said. “There goes our best shot at getting information.”

  “His lawyer wasn’t going to let him say anything,” I said.

  “He might have if we offered him a deal.”

  “You’d deal with a guy who tried to kill you?”

  “If it’d get us to the one pulling the strings.”

  “The puppet master,” I said.

  She smiled. “That’s a good name for him.”

  “Or her,” I said.

  She chewed on that for a moment. “You could be right,” she said. “But there are no women prisoners at Glades.”

  “Maybe Glades isn’t the connection.”

  “It looks good so far. Let me see what’s in all this paper. You go on. Nobody’s going to take a shot at me in the police station.”

  “I’ll come get you for lunch. You’re supposed to be at the hospital at two. We can eat downtown.”

  “Okay,” she said, and gave me a little wave goodbye.

  As it turned out, we didn’t make it to the hospital that day.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I was buckling myself into the Explorer when my phone rang. Jock.

  “You still at the police station?”

  “Just leaving.”

  “Meet me at Gene Alexander’s house.”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Maybe nothing. I’ll see you there in five minutes.”

  Gene lived in a small ranch house dating to the 1960s in a neighborhood known as Emerald Harbor, about five minutes from the police station. His house was perched beside a wide canal that emptied into Sa
rasota Bay. The yard was dominated by an ancient gumbo-limbo tree and spotted with beds of flowers that bloom in the fall in Florida. Begonias, impatiens, and geraniums provided splotches of red, pink, and white, less brilliant than usual as they hunkered down under the low clouds that dripped rain. The lawn was slightly overgrown, as if no one had mowed it in a couple of weeks. Jock was pulling up just as I arrived. We met on the sidewalk leading to the front door. “What’s up?” I asked. “It’s a bit wet out here.”

  “Gene’s not answering his phone. I’ve been trying to get hold of him for the past two hours.”

  “Maybe he’s sleeping in.”

  “Maybe. But he always has his phone on. Old habit.”

  “The battery could be dead.”

  “So could he.”

  Jock knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again. Nothing. “Can you look in the garage?” he asked. “There’s a door on the side that has a small window.”

  I went to the side of the garage and looked in. There were two cars in the garage. That wasn’t good. I reported back to Jock, and he tried the door. It wasn’t locked. It swung open to reveal a living room that opened to French doors facing south to a patio overlooking the canal. A kitchen with a breakfast bar open to the living room was to my left. A short hall ran to what I assumed to be a door to the garage. A conversation area with a sofa and two club chairs was grouped at the middle of the room, providing a view across the patio to a pool and the wide canal. The floor was a rich wood, probably oak. Expensive-looking Oriental carpets were spread about. A fireplace took up most of the west wall, bordered by a hallway that must have led to the bedrooms. At right angles to the fireplace, a large flat-screen TV sat on a table to my right, against the north wall. Two identical recliners were placed in front of it. One of the recliners was in the open position, footrest even with the seat, the back all the way down. Gene Alexander was lying in the chair, as if he’d fallen asleep watching television. But he wouldn’t be getting up.

  We were looking at his right side. His temple had a large hole in it, black around the edges. His right hand was in his lap, clutching a pistol that looked like a .45 caliber. Blood and brain matter had splattered the chair to his left.

  “Shit,” said Jock. “Call it in, Matt.”

  We didn’t move, standing as if we were rooted to a single spot on the hardwood. I took out my phone and dialed 911, identified myself, gave the operator Gene’s address, and told her there was an apparent suicide, the body still on the premises. We backed out the way we’d come in, not wanting to contaminate the scene. We waited for the cops on the front stoop. Neither one of us had much confidence that Gene had taken his own life.

  “I’m sorry, Jock,” I said.

  “Thanks, podna. You know Gene didn’t kill himself, right?”

  “Doesn’t look that way.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Jock.

  “The hand holding the gun was in his lap. That big a pistol will have some kick to it. It would have thrown his arm outward, away from the path of the bullet. It would have been hanging by his side, the pistol on the floor.”

  Jock was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t even think about that, but you’re right.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “Gene isn’t the kind of guy to kill himself.”

  “I don’t know, Jock. He just lost the only family he had.”

  “Yeah, but he’s a tough guy. He would’ve handled it. And if he’d killed himself, he’d have called somebody before he did it. So that we’d know. He wouldn’t have left a note. He’d have called.”

  Sirens came whooping into the street leading to Gulf of Mexico Drive. A patrol car was followed by an ambulance and an unmarked. A uniformed officer, a captain, crawled out of the cruiser. J.D. and Martin Sharkey got out of the unmarked and walked toward us, a fire department paramedic close behind. “What’ve we got?” asked Sharkey.

  “Gene Alexander’s in there, dead,” said Jock. “Looks like a suicide, but I don’t think it was.”

  “Why?” asked J.D.

  “You guys take a look,” said Jock. “See what you think.”

  Sharkey turned to the police captain. “Set this up as a crime scene. I’ll get the forensics people out here, but that’ll take a while. They’ve got to come from Bradenton. And get me some more uniforms to keep the gawkers away. Let’s take a look, J.D.”

  They went to the front door and looked in. They didn’t enter the room. They stood there for a few minutes, talking quietly. They walked back to Jock and me. “Gun’s in the wrong place,” said J.D. “It just wouldn’t have fallen into his lap, and when he died his fingers would have let go of it. Somebody tried to set this up.”

  “I agree,” said Sharkey. “What do you guys think?”

  “Matt thought the same thing you did, J.D.,” Jock said. “I agree. I think if Gene was going to kill himself, he’d have called somebody first. Just to let them know. I’ll check with my director, see if he called any of his old friends. If he did, they would have called it in. Martin, can you check with the 911 operators, just to be sure?”

  Sharkey nodded. “Let’s get J.D. under cover. I don’t want a repeat of that fiasco at Leffis Key.”

  “I’m fine, Martin,” said J.D. “This is what I do. Investigate murders.”

  “I know,” said Sharkey his voice tense, “and as soon as forensics finishes, I want you on top of it. But for now, just until we have a better handle on the situation, I want Matt to get you the hell out of here.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing, J.D. I’m not going to have you shot while we stand around with our thumbs up our asses. I’ll call as soon as the forensics guys have anything.”

  J.D. was steaming. “Damn it, Martin, what’s the chief going to say about this?”

  “He’ll back me up. He’d say my first job was to keep you safe. He’s at some kind of meeting at the sheriff’s office over on the mainland. Dispatch called him and he’s on his way here.”

  “Right,” J.D. said. “Protect the girl.” Her voice had taken on that edge that I recognized as repressed anger.

  “Get her out of here, Matt. J.D.,” Sharkey said, his voice softening, “you’re the toughest cop I know. But you’re not invulnerable. I’d send any of my people, man or woman, out of here under the circumstances. I’ll call you as soon as we’re sure there’re no shooters lurking around.”

  She turned on her heel and walked toward my car. I followed. I thought I could see steam coming out of her ears, but it was probably just my imagination.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  I figured I was in for a long morning. Living with a really angry woman can be trying. But J.D. seemed to accept the wisdom of Sharkey’s decision to get her out of the line of fire for the time being. She was quiet, pensive, as if she had a lot on her mind. She’d had a tough week and seemed to want some time with her own thoughts. I read the paper and watched the rain and stayed quiet. At some point, she called the hospital and canceled her meeting with the doctor, telling them that she’d reschedule.

  Jock stayed at Gene’s house, working his phone, talking to his director and who knew who else. It was nearing noon when he called. “I’m leaving in a few minutes. I’ll stop for sandwiches on the way to your place. What do you guys want?”

  I turned to J.D. “Jock’s going to pick up some sandwiches. What do you want?”

  “I’d prefer to go out,” she said. “What about Moore’s?”

  I told Jock to meet us there and hung up.

  J.D. grinned. “I think I’ll be safe with two big brave men babysitting me.”

  “Sarcasm does not become you,” I said.

  “Sorry. I don’t like being benched.”

  “I know. But in this game, you’re the football.”

  She frowned. “Football? I think we need a new metaphor.”

  “Let’s go eat,” I said.

  At Moore’s, we took a table by the windows overlooking Sarasota Bay. The rain w
as still falling and our world seemed small and isolated. Sister Key was barely visible through the mist and the homes that hugged the shoreline of the little lagoon on which the restaurant sat were draped in opacity. The bay was gray, somber under the lowering clouds, its surface ruffled by little whitecaps dancing in the wind. Halyards rattled on the sailboats anchored nearby as they rocked in time with the feeble gusts of the dying front. Springlike weather would come with tomorrow’s sun, returning our island to its natural state. Winter was not a welcome visitor, but we would see more of it in the coming months. The fronts, weakened by their passage across the landmass of America, would make their way down the peninsula, bringing cold air and rainy days. Then, as suddenly as they’d come, they would dissipate in the warm currents of air moving north from the tropics and our key would resume its life in the sunshine.

  J.D. shivered. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m a long way from Miami.”

  “Miami doesn’t have bad weather occasionally?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not really talking about the weather. If we were in Miami, I wouldn’t have to have a babysitter.”

  “Okay,” I said, an edge creeping into my voice. “I’m getting kind of tired of this babysitter crap.”

  She reached out and covered my hand with hers. “I’m sorry, Matt. I don’t mean to take it out on you, but this little island is starting to stifle me.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t do anything here that isn’t the subject of common gossip within hours. I’m already getting stares from some of our locals who’re damn sure I’m not sleeping in the guest room at your house.”