by Rick Outzen
Alphonse smiled. “Razor because I never could grow a beard. I’m pleased to finally meet you, Mr. Holmes. My aunt speaks highly of you.”
“Call me Walker or Holmes,” I said. “Please skip the mister.”
“Using ‘mister’ is part of my military background,” he explained. “I spent six years in the Air Force as a judge advocate officer.”
I asked, “Are you with a local law firm, Razor?”
He shook his head. “I’m on the Florida attorney general’s Child Predator CyberCrime Unit.”
According to the Federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, Florida ranked fourth in the nation in volume of child pornography. The CyberCrime Unit protected children from computer-facilitated sexual exploitation.
The Florida attorney general set up five regional offices to work cooperatively with local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to provide resources and expertise. Pensacola had one of the regional offices. The identity of the staff at those offices was confidential information, but we knew they were active. Last month, the task force, in conjunction with local, state, and federal law enforcement officials, arrested twenty-six individuals across the Panhandle for targeting children.
“You’ve been busy,” I said. “The work must wear on you.”
Razor said, “Getting the sick bastards off the streets makes it worth the effort. Unfortunately, new ones pop up every day.”
So we drank. Our second drink was to “Operation Yellowtail,” the name of the bust operation last month. The third was in memory of Sue Eaton Hines. The fourth was for the maritime park because Razor loved baseball. And the last was for short black dresses.
Razor and I exchanged business cards and agreed to drink again soon.
As I got ready to head back to the loft and Big Boy, the bartender handed me an envelope. “A woman told me to hand this to you before you left,” he said.
“What did she look like?”
He shrugged, “I don’t know . . . fat.”
I opened the white envelope when I got back to the loft. A single, off-white piece of stationery fell out.
It was Sue Eaton Hines’ suicide note.
11
Jace Wittman had always thought of himself as special. Like his brother-in-law, Bo Hines, Wittman was a miracle. He was the fifth child in a brood of six, which in and of itself didn’t make him special, except for the fact that his mother had had three miscarriages before his birth.
His mother always called Jace her gift from Saint Theresa. Every miscarriage took its toll on Mary Alice Wittman, but the Roman Catholic Wittmans didn’t believe in birth control. Jace Francis Xavier Wittman’s birth proved God still loved his mother, and even though she would eventually have another child after him, a girl, Jace would always be the special one.
His older brothers teased him and often ganged up on him, but nothing ever dimmed his belief in his predestination to greatness.
“No matter how many times we hit him,” his older brother Frank would tell friends, “Jace would never back down from an argument.”
Jace was never wrong, and his mother made sure the Wittman siblings understood it. No one could ever tell her that Jace wasn’t perfect. When he was caught with matches and gasoline setting a neighbor’s shed on fire, Mary Alice blamed his friends for egging Jace on.
On the baseball diamond, Jace was the best baseball player. He had gloves for batting, fielding, and running the bases, a trio of bats to use, and real cleats. Jace pitched and played shortstop when not on the mound. The biggest kid on the field, he led the league in home runs—that was until Stan Daniels’ family moved from Gulf Breeze to Cordova Park when the governor appointed his father to a county judgeship.
Stan played with a hand-me-down glove from his older brother. He wore Keds, not baseball cleats, and used whatever bat the coaches handed him. But he could hit homers from the right and left sides of the plate, and his fastball was unhittable.
Roger, whose nephew played on Stan’s team, remarked, “It was something watching the Daniels kid come up to bat. He was thin and wiry, with lanky, rust-colored hair that fell straight over blue eyes. Everything seemed effortless for the boy.”
Jace hated him, and so did his mother. When Stan was the altar boy at St. Paul’s, she wouldn’t take communion.
Both Stan and Jace made the Little League’s all-star team. At the team party at the Wittman house, Jace beat all his teammates on his brand-new ping-pong table playing, of course, with his own special paddle.
Then Stan took off one of his flip-flops. Using it as a paddle, he beat Jace in three straight games. Mary Alice had her husband put the table on the street after the party. Jace never played ping-pong again. Neither did Stan.
Both boys went to Pensacola Catholic High. Stan didn’t try out for the football team his freshman or sophomore years. He worked at his grandparents’ grocery store after school. His parents were fine with that. They wanted him to learn the value of a dollar and how to handle customers.
Jace quarterbacked a rather mediocre team, which won its district but never progressed far in the state tournament.
The coaches watched Stan in PE and convinced him to try out his junior year. He not only won the starting position but also quarterbacked the team to two consecutive state titles. Jace was moved to tight end.
Stan got a scholarship to Florida. Jace went to Louisiana Tech and never forgave Daniels for stealing his thunder and proving that he wasn’t as special as his mother and he thought. Within a year, the Louisiana Tech coaches kicked him off the team. There were rumors that he had gotten a professor’s daughter pregnant—something never mentioned in polite social circles.
Stan, meanwhile, was injured his sophomore year and never started a game at Florida as quarterback. He still earned a UF letter after the coaches switched him to be the long snapper on punts and field goals. Stan went on to law school, worked two years with the state attorney after graduation, and then joined one of the big firms in town.
Both Jace and Stan returned to Pensacola and married girls that were best friends at Pensacola Catholic High. The wives never expected Jace and Stan to get along, which was a good thing since they didn’t.
Jace went back to school at Pensacola State College until he flunked out. He got a job as a bartender at a Warrington dive, The Barrels. His career changed when his father died in a boating accident, and his mother married Bruce Eaton, Sue Hines’ father. Jace became an agent for Eaton’s real estate firm.
Though their wives stayed close, Jace and Stan rarely crossed paths. Stan became a managing partner of his law firm and president of The Florida Bar. His firm, one of the oldest in the state, mainly handled the legal affairs of corporations, specializing in the utilities, health-care systems, banks, insurance, real estate, and construction industries. They partnered with large out-of-town firms to defend the tobacco and pharmaceutical companies when they were sued in Florida courts. Whether the lawyers won or lost their cases, Daniels’ firm always got paid.
The animosity between Jace and Stan came primarily from Wittman. Stan never commented on Jace and their high school days. For his wife’s sake, he tried to keep his relationship with Jace civil. But Wittman saw every success of Daniels as something that was stolen from him.
Jace floundered as a realtor, largely because he spent more time playing softball and hunting on the Eaton’s land in South Alabama than selling real estate. When Stan’s firm hired him to handle a land deal on Pensacola Beach, Jace botched it so badly that his stepfather was forced to rescue him. This gave Wittman even more reason to hate his rival.
Then Jace somehow got himself elected to the Pensacola City Council. In politics he found the adoration and attention that was sorely lacking in the rest of his life. He positioned himself as a rebel who was an environmentalist and advocate for the people. He didn’t win many council votes, but he never lost an election until the maritime park controversy.
The proposed project was a no-brainer for most
people. The city would take polluted waterfront property across from city hall that it owned, use bond money to remediate it, and create a public-private joint venture to revitalize downtown Pensacola that was still struggling to recover from Hurricane Ivan and the 2008 recession. It was progressive thinking outside of the box, something that Jace would naturally support.
But there was one big problem for Jace. It turned out Stan Daniels represented A. J. Kettler, the owner of Pensacola’s minor league baseball team who wanted to use the ballpark proposed for the site for the Pensacola Pilots’ games. Jace could not let Stan take credit for the renaissance of downtown Pensacola, which would happen if Daniels’ client got a piece of the maritime park.
Wittman found every reason to oppose the plan to build the park. So no matter what Stan or anyone else said to persuade him that it would be the best idea for the city, Jace refused to agree that the maritime park would revitalize Pensacola. Stan even had the bishop try to intervene and mediate the dispute between Jace and Kettler, the baseball team’s owner. But Jace wouldn’t budge.
When the Pensacola City Council finally passed the plan for the park by a 9-to-1 vote, Jace immediately began a petition drive to rescind the decision. It became a vicious battle. There were no bounds to the lies and half-truths that Jace spread to stop the park. He focused primarily on the baseball park, overlooking the maritime museum, office building, and other components of the project. As far as Jace was concerned, the battle over the construction of the maritime park boiled down to whether to have a ball field for the Pilots. Jace called the public-private venture a “land grab by a millionaire carpetbagger,” completely ignoring Kettler’s sixteen-million-dollar investment in the project.
The Pensacola Insider supported the construction of the new maritime park and expressed enthusiasm for the addition of a ball field. I created a weekly feature in which we tackled Wittman’s lie of the week. My blog became particularly effective in bedeviling the councilman and his cohorts. I rapidly rose on Wittman’s enemies list, though never high enough to supplant Stan Daniels.
The referendum to build the park passed with 57 percent of the vote. A year later, Wittman lost his council seat. His wife died of cervical cancer while he was running for reelection, and he and his daughter moved in with Bo and Sue. The couple had plenty of room, and Sue provided a motherly influence for her niece. Besides, Jace had been forced to sell his house to pay for the cancer treatments.
Wittman’s new petition drive sponsored by his political action committee “Save Our Pensacola” was his final attempt to stop the park and deny another victory for Daniels and his client.
Wittman’s goal was to cancel the building contract and force a new contract that didn’t include construction of the ballpark. He needed to present a petition signed by 10 percent of the city’s registered voters—about 3,700 signatures.
One more time it was Jace Wittman versus Stan Daniels. Jace could not—would not—let Stan beat him again. Any collateral damage didn’t concern him.
He had to win.
12
The note was written on cream-colored linen stationery that was monogrammed “SEH”—Sue Eaton Hines. The message was one sentence:
“Sweetie, no more lies.”
There were water stains on the paper. Tears, maybe. Was this Sue’s suicide note? How could I be sure? And if it was, what the hell should I do with it? I had to publish it, didn’t I?
I couldn’t take this to Bo Hines. He wouldn’t let me in the house. Even if he did, why would he help me? This could be damning to his trial. Obviously, his wife killed herself because of his lies. Right?
I shouldn’t have had that last bourbon and coke. The walk four blocks to the loft helped sober me up some. I found Big Boy bouncing all over the place, so I attached the leash to his collar, and we headed out to find Dare. Maybe she would recognize the handwriting. She wouldn’t answer my phone call, but she would meet me the door at her house if she saw me with Big Boy.
It was after nine, but Dare stayed up late. If her porch light was on, we would ring the doorbell. To hedge my bet, I texted her: “Coming over with BB. Have new info on Sue.” Half a block later, I sent a second text message: “Please.”
While we walked toward Aragon, Dare texted back: “K.”
Dare lived in the trendy downtown neighborhood, Aragon, which was built on the site of a former housing project one block north of Pensacola Bay. Twenty years ago the city fathers realized, with the help of local developers who made large contributions to their campaigns, people would pay top dollar to live downtown near the bay. Why waste the view on poor black people?
The city relocated the housing project residents with the understanding that Aragon would have a quarter of its lots set aside for first-time homebuyers. The catch phrase for the project was a “new, urbanist, traditional neighborhood.” Really, that’s how they described it when the developers presented the drawings to Rotary Clubs in the area.
The developers moved the poor people. Expensive townhouses, cottages, park houses, side-yard houses, small cottages, and row houses replaced the tenements. The developers made millions, and the city added thirty-five million dollars to the tax rolls.
What about the first-time homebuyers? They turned out to be the sons and daughters of the developers and their buddies. Nobody else could afford it. No blacks and none of the offspring of the families that had been moved off the property lived in the new Aragon homes.
Dare resided in a two-story row house in the middle of Aragon. Big Boy and I reached her house in about twenty minutes. A lot of beautiful trees lined the streets between my loft and her house. Both the dog and I took advantage of more than a few of them.
The front porch light was on. Big Boy made a dash for Dare’s front door as soon as he saw it, jerking his leash out of my hand. Hearing the jingle from his dog tags, Dare opened the door and greeted the mutt with a hug and kiss. She unhooked his leash, and Big Boy ran in and immediately jumped up on her couch. I followed the pair and shut the door behind me.
“I’m still pissed at you for suggesting that Sue committed suicide,” Dare said over her shoulder as she sat next to Big Boy, who put his head in her lap. She was dressed in a red Ole Miss polo and navy blue shorts, and wearing pearls, of course. Spread out next to her laptop on the coffee table were financial reports and contracts.
“I know, I know. Isn’t everyone mad at me?” I replied. “That’s my superpower, pissing people off.”
“Stop right there, Walker Holmes,” Dare interrupted. “You brought Big Boy here to soften me up, but it won’t work. The dog is always welcome. You? I’m not so sure about. Just tell me what you found.”
I handed her the note. She turned on the light next to the couch and grabbed her reading glasses off the coffee table. She folded herself back into the couch. Dare read the note maybe three times, handed it back to me, and got up and left the room. When she came back five minutes later, she had a tissue and her eyes were watery.
“Did Sue write that note?” I asked, quietly.
“Where did you get it?”
“From a fat lady, but that’s not important,” I said.
Dare glared at me as if to say really? “Your wisecracks aren’t as funny as you think,” she added out loud.
I said, “That’s what the bartender told me, really.”
This wasn’t where I wanted the conversation to go. I pointed to the stationery in Dare’s hand. “Dare, did Sue write the note?”
“I think so. Sue had a unique writing style, a mix of cursive and print letters. There was no rhyme or reason to it, except it worked for her.” She paused. “I think I have a thank-you note she wrote me a few weeks ago.”
Dare went to her study. I heard her rummaging through her desk. Big Boy had fallen asleep and was snoring. She brought back the thank-you note. It, too, began with “Sweetie,” written nearly identically to the suicide note. We appeared to have a match.
Dare started to sob. I held her for a
few minutes until the wave of tears passed. Then I walked into the kitchen and poured us both cups of coffee. Good old Dare, she always had a pot of coffee brewed. She followed me, and we sat around the large island in the middle of the kitchen.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “What lies is she talking about? What has Bo done? Sue worshiped him. Is it about the Arts Council money?”
“I don’t know,” I said between sips. “It could be the missing funds. It could be something far worse. The state attorney’s office is debating whether to prosecute Bo. His lawyers are trying to get an immunity deal in exchange for him testifying against the council’s executive director. Bo could walk away from this with a slap on the wrist. Nothing to die for.”
Dare started to tear up. “You are an asshole. You’re talking about my best friend’s death.”
“I’m sorry. Really I am, but help me figure this out. Did you hear that Bo is now supporting Jace Wittman’s petition drive? He gave it ten grand tonight.”
“What?” She looked up and set down her cup. “That makes no sense. Sue told me that Bo’s company could get some subcontractor work at the park.”
Dare stood and looked at a framed photograph on the counter. It was her, Rory, Bo, and Sue on Hines’ yacht, all wearing huge smiles.
She turned to me. “Those men should be thinking about Julie. That poor girl has lost her mother and her aunt. Sue told me her niece had become sullen and withdrawn lately.”
Dare refilled her cup. “She quit the swim team. Her grades fell. Sue was struggling with how to connect with the girl.”
I said, “Would Jace or Bo listen to you?”
She shook her head. “No, Bo is too heartbroken, and Jace is too full of himself as always. Maybe I will reach out to Julie.”
We sat and drank coffee, each caught up in our own thoughts. Big Boy continued to snore in the next room. Before I did anything with the suicide note, I needed to have an expert verify the handwriting.
