Fatal Decree

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “You’re welcome to stay here,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said, getting off the sofa, “but I need my own bed. See you tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  I was up early on Tuesday and ran my four miles on the beach, Jock beside me. We both carried sidearms holstered at our waists beneath our T-shirts. If anybody decided that the beach was a good place to take us out, we were prepared. As it turned out, the run was uneventful except for the chaffing of the holster on my bare skin. A small price to pay for the confidence the gun gave me.

  J.D. called at midmorning. “I called Ben Flagler, the lawyer for that idiot who stabbed me. He said he couldn’t talk to me because of the attorney-client privilege. Legal ethics and all. Like that really exists. Do you think you might have better luck? Lawyer-to-lawyer sort of thing?”

  “I’ll give it a try. The privilege died with his client. He should know that. Anything new on Picket?”

  “Steve promised me something by noon.”

  “Good. I think I’ll go see the lawyer this morning.”

  “His office address is a residential condo in Sarasota.”

  “That’s odd,” I said. “He must not have much of a practice.”

  “He’s brand-new. I looked him up on the Florida Bar website. He was just admitted to the bar last week. Graduated in June from the University of North Dakota Law School.”

  “He shouldn’t have been representing anybody on a charge as serious as the one on Bagby.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said J.D. “I checked the court file, and he was the only one who filed a notice of appearance. Maybe he was appointed.”

  “No judge would appoint somebody with no experience to a case like this. Maybe a misdemeanor, but not a major felony. I’ll go see Mr. Flagler.”

  • • •

  The condo complex where Flagler lived was on Fruitville Road, out near the interstate. It was a sprawling place that had seen better days. Paint was peeling from the sides of many of the buildings, and potholes had long since turned the interior streets into an obstacle course. A large sign near the entrance announced that anyone interested in renting should stop in at the office.

  It was one of those complexes that dot the state of Florida, places that had once been homes for empty nesters downsizing now that their children were grown, and second homes for snowbirds seeking the winter sun. When the economy took a tumble, as it always seems to do in cycles that no one can predict or fully understand, the dream faded and a lot of the units never sold. The developer filed for bankruptcy and a company that buys distressed properties and rents them out acquired the complex for a lot less than it was worth. Most of the amenities promised the original buyers, such as exercise rooms, tennis courts, pools, never materialized. The few original buyers stayed on for a while, moved out, and tried to recoup their losses by renting the units or letting them go back to the lender.

  It was an old story in the Sunshine State. We tend to draw dreamers, men and women seeking their fortunes, following the stories of those who had come before them and made a lot of money. They don’t understand that for every person who finds the gold, fifty or a hundred find nothing but ruin. They slink back to where they came from, leaving their own broken dreams strewn among those of the people they took advantage of. Those lost dreams manifested themselves in abandoned projects and condo complexes going to the dogs. Such was the home of the young lawyer named Ben Flagler.

  The parking lot was mostly empty and the few cars remaining were older and in need of repair, their bodies rusted or crumpled by some long-ago fender bender. An old dog rested under a gumbo-limbo tree that had resisted the onslaught of decay that had turned the complex into a slum festering in the autumn sun.

  I parked in front of the ground-floor unit that bore the address of the lawyer I’d come to see. A new Mercedes sedan, as out of place as the town drunk at a Sunday school picnic, sat next to the spot I’d pulled into.

  I stepped over a crumbling curb, walked to the door of the unit, and knocked. In a few moments the door swung open. A small man who reminded me of a ferret said, “Yes?”

  “Good morning, sir,” I said. “I’m looking for Mr. Flagler, the attorney.”

  “I’m Flagler.”

  He was older than I’d thought he would be, at least in his late thirties. Maybe he’d gone to law school later in life. A lot of people did that. I stuck out my hand and said, “I’m Matt Royal. I’m a lawyer on Longboat Key.”

  He shook my hand, and I saw a flicker of what might have been recognition move across his face, gone in an instant. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “I’d like to talk to you about your late client, Fred Bagby.”

  “What’s your interest in Bagby?”

  “May I come in?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m working with the police,” I said. “I’d like you to tell me what you know about why Bagby tried to kill a Longboat Key detective.”

  “You know I can’t discuss my client. Attorney-client privilege.”

  “That privilege died with your client.”

  Flagler looked confused. “I don’t think so.”

  “You haven’t been a lawyer very long, Mr. Flagler, so I suppose there are things you don’t know yet. But you can look it up under the ethics code. It’s online. At the Florida Bar website.”

  “I don’t need you to teach me ethics,” he said in a voice that was close to a snarl.

  There was something off about this guy. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but he was home at eleven thirty on a Tuesday morning, wearing cutoffs, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. He didn’t seem too sure about the ethical ramifications of his situation and he was rude. That pissed me off more than his ignorance. “I’m quite sure you’ve read chapter forty of Florida Statutes as it relates to the privilege,” I said.

  “You can put that in the bank.”

  Chapter forty actually dealt with juries and the ethics code was the Florida Bar Rules of Professional Conduct. They were not part of the Florida Statutes. Anybody who had recently passed the bar exam should have known that. I was beginning to suspect that Flagler was a fraud.

  “Mr. Flagler,” I said. “I can assure you that you can and will talk about Bagby. He tried to kill a cop, and you’ve got no privilege. I can have the police out here in five minutes and drag your ass downtown. You’ll be fingerprinted, your mug shot taken, and then you’ll answer every question I put to you, or the judge will hold you in criminal contempt and you can sit your ass in jail until you decide to answer my questions.” A lawyer would know I couldn’t do any such thing, but I was pretty sure the man standing in front of me wasn’t a lawyer.

  “Come in, Mr. Royal,” he said, and stood back to give me room to enter.

  I had a sudden premonition that if I went inside I might never leave. I don’t know if it was some insight or just that I’m basically a chicken. Whatever, the interior of the apartment was not exactly inviting. “No, thank you,” I said. “We can talk here or down at the police station. Your choice.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Okay. Let me change clothes, and we’ll go to the police station.” He shut the door, and I heard the dead bolt snap into place.

  I had not expected that. I thought the last place he’d want to be was the police station. Maybe he was who he said he was. I was thinking that we’d find out pretty soon when I heard a motorcycle engine roar to life. In a couple of seconds the bike came from behind the apartment, jumped the curb and, dodging potholes, ran toward Fruitville Road. The little man who looked like a ferret was in the saddle. He turned right on Fruitville Road before I could get to my car. He was gone, and I wasn’t going to catch him in my Explorer. Crap. I hadn’t seen that one coming.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  I called J.D. and explained what happened. “Can you get a warrant to search his place? I’m sure there are fingerprints. That’ll tell us who he really is.”

  “
No judge in her right mind is going to issue a warrant on the basis of your intuition.”

  “It’s more than intuition. This guy isn’t a lawyer. How did he get into the jail, get his name on the Bar’s list of lawyers? Did his notice of appearance in Bagby’s case have a Bar identification number on it?”

  “Yeah. He looks legit.”

  “Call the Bar office in Tallahassee,” I said. “Tell them you want to see the paperwork he used to qualify for the Bar exam and to get sworn in. They might give it to a cop.”

  “I’ll see what I can turn up.”

  “Can you run the license plate of a Mercedes parked in front of this guy’s condo?” I gave her the tag number.

  “Okay. What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll call Jock. Maybe he can get some of his people to do a forensics sweep of Flagler’s apartment.”

  “You know whatever you find won’t be admissible evidence. Not without a warrant.”

  “I know. But if we can figure out who this idiot is, we may be able to move up the food chain and get whoever is responsible for the murders.”

  “Be careful, Matt.” She hung up.

  I called Jock, and he said he’d get a forensics guy out of Tampa and meet me at Flagler’s apartment. “It should take about an hour,” he said.

  “You’ve just got forensic teams standing by all over the world?” I asked.

  “No, but we have agents who’re trained in some of the forensic sciences. They aren’t able to do a full work-up, but they can lift fingerprints. Do the basic stuff.”

  I sat in my car, listening to the radio. The news was mostly bad, troubles in the Middle East, tribal conflicts in Africa, a factory worker who killed six of his coworkers at a plant in North Carolina, a commercial for a diet supplement to help those with erectile dysfunction. The world seemed to be cracking up. I sometimes felt like the human race was circling the drain, about to consign itself to oblivion.

  J.D. called back. “The car belongs to one of those fleet leasing outfits. Want to guess who this particular Mercedes was leased to?”

  “A lawyer named Ben Flagler?”

  “You got it.”

  “How did he make the payments?”

  “Cash up front. He leased it for six months and paid the entire lease payment when he signed the contract.”

  “Didn’t the leasing guys find that a bit strange?”

  “They said it happens more than you’d think.”

  “What happens if the guy doesn’t bring the car back at the end of the lease?”

  “They’ve got insurance to cover that. They don’t worry about it.”

  “Can you get a warrant to search the car?”

  “Nope. Same problem as the condo.”

  “Crap.”

  “Hey, you’re the lawyer.”

  “Right. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Jock rolled up in his new rental and joined me in the Explorer. Ten minutes later a black SUV with two men in the front seats drove into the lot. Jock got out and waved them over, talked with the men for a few moments, and then led them around to the rear of the building. He came back and sat in the Explorer.

  “The forensics team?” I asked.

  “Well, they’re what passes for one on short notice. They’ll take the place apart and dust for fingerprints.”

  “We need to have them go over the Mercedes, too.”

  “You sure it belongs to Flagler?”

  “Yeah. J.D. ran the tag.”

  “I’ll get a wrecker out here and we’ll haul it to Tampa,” Jock said. “We’ll get some of our real forensic people to go over it.” He pulled out his phone and made a call, arranging for Flagler’s car to be picked up.

  “How did you get into the apartment?”

  “Broke a window on the back door.”

  We sat for a while, listening to the radio. A Sarasota Police Department patrol car turned into the lot and drove slowly toward us. “I think we might have been busted,” Jock said. “Wait here.”

  He got out of the Explorer as the cruiser came to a stop behind us, blocking my exit. Jock walked over to the police car holding an ID case in his raised hand. The cop on the passenger side motioned him over. Jock handed him the case and they talked for a minute. The cop used his cell phone to make a call, hung up, and gave the ID case back to Jock. The officers drove back out to Fruitville Road and disappeared.

  Jock climbed back into the Explorer. “One of the neighbors called in what she thought was a burglary. They came to check it out. I told them we were on a national security detail and that we’re the ones who broke into the place.”

  “Are there going to be any repercussions on this?” I asked.

  “No. They accepted my credentials and called their supervisor. They’re in the clear and so are we.”

  We sat for another thirty minutes, my stomach sending out signals that it was being starved. The two men who’d gone into the apartment came around the building. Jock got out and went to talk to them. The conversation was short, and the men got into the black SUV and left.

  “They found a cell phone,” said Jock, grinning.

  “Flagler’s?”

  “Probably. One of the guys found it right next to where some ruts in the grass indicated the motorcycle was parked. It probably fell out of Flagler’s pocket when he was hurrying to get away from you.”

  “That could be a real break,” I said.

  “Our techs will pull every bit of information in the phone. We’ll see where that leads. But, I’ve got something even better.”

  I stared at him, waiting. He grinned. “What?” I asked.

  “They found a twenty-two-caliber pistol. They’ll run the ballistics in Tampa, but I’m betting it’s the one used in the whale tail murders.”

  “J.D. isn’t going to like you ruining her evidence. We don’t have a warrant. The pistol can’t be used.”

  “It won’t matter. If this is the guy, he’ll never go to trial.”

  I shrugged. I knew he was right. “Any prints?”

  “A lot. They ran the best ones through the system on their portable scanner. They belong to a man named Jeff Worthington. Guess where he spent the last fifteen years?”

  “Glades Correctional,” I said. “He’s the one J.D. came up with.”

  “Bingo. He got out five months ago.”

  “Then how did he become a lawyer named Flagler?”

  “The University of North Dakota is sending me a photo of Flagler from his student ID card. Glades is sending a mug shot of Worthington. We should have them in a few minutes.”

  Jock’s phone dinged. He opened it and fiddled with the keypad. He handed it to me. There was a picture of a handsome young man on the screen. “Is that Flagler?” Jock asked.

  “Not even close.”

  “That’s Ben Flagler, late of the University of North Dakota Law School.”

  The phone dinged again and Jock held up another picture, a mug shot of a man who was definitely the one who’d just ridden off on a motorcycle.

  “That’s the man who said he was Flagler,” I said.

  “Worthington took Flagler’s place somehow. But why?”

  “Good question. And where is the real Ben Flagler?”

  Jock shook his head. “He’s probably dead.”

  “What about his family?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. The agency is checking on that. A lot of manpower is coming to bear on this one.”

  “Have you heard anything out of New Orleans?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll be updated as soon as they have anything.”

  I called J.D. “Flagler’s in the wind, but Jock’s people got an ID. It’s the same guy you locked onto at Glades. Jeff Worthington.”

  “Damn,” she said. “That’s got to be our guy. How the heck did he get to be a lawyer?”

  “It looks like he killed a young man who’d just graduated from law school and stole his identity.”

  “I’ll be damned. You hungry?”

&nb
sp; “Starving.”

  “Why don’t we meet at your house? I’ll bring Steve and his paperwork and stop for sandwiches. We can eat and talk.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  We were back at my dining room table. Steve Carey was there with his laptop, his arm still in a sling. He could use both hands on the computer, but the small grimace of pain told me it cost him.

  J.D. had brought sandwiches and the remains littered the table. She looked pointedly at me. “If you’d get the trash off the table we could get to work.”

  “Isn’t that woman’s work?” I asked.

  She reached for her gun. “What did you say?” She was smiling. I think.

  “I said I’d get right on it.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said.

  “Matt’s got some kind of a death wish,” Steve said.

  “Nah,” said Jock. “He’s just not very bright.”

  I gathered up the lunch detritus and took it to the trash can in the kitchen.

  Steve was talking when I came back. “Flagler, or actually, Worthington, may be the linchpin. He and Qualman shared a cell for a time and just before he was released in June, his cellmate was Barry Steiffel, the guy whose fingerprints were found on the boat used in the Leffis Key shooting.”

  “But,” said J.D., “Worthington was in prison at the time of the Miami whale tail murders. He couldn’t have been involved in those, and both Qualman and Steiffel were too young to have been a part of it. Plus, there’s no evidence that any of them were ever in Miami.”

  “Look at this,” Steve said, putting a page full of diagrams on the table. “We have three known participants in the attempts on J.D. Qualman from the parking lot at Lazy Lobster, Steiffel from the boat at Leffis Key, and Bagby who tried to stab her. We don’t know exactly what Worthington’s connection to the murders is, but he is connected to all three of the others through his time at Glades and his so-called representation of Bagby.”

  “But none of them could possibly have been involved in the original whale tail murders,” said J.D. “And none of them would have any reason to come after me.”