by Tom Corcoran
13
I grunted a fake-sleepy “Mmyeh?” into the receiver.
“How’s your back?” said Liska.
I drew a star on my chest—a badge—to identify the caller. Bobbi rolled her eyes and held a finger to her lips. She hung back to listen.
“Lemme roll out and check for pain,” I said. “My reputation is screwed, I know that much. The downtown buzz has me employed.”
“Word got out?”
“I’m hardwired to the telegraph. Do I have to opt out of this mess in writing?”
“Think about it a few days, Rutledge. Look, the reason I called, you got a twin here in the Keys. I had the Rock Harbor surveillance video brought down yesterday. I looped it last night and, spooky as hell, I saw your face ten times in a row. I mean, I know it wasn’t you, but it was you. Millican made an honest mistake.”
“So he’s excused?”
“His suspicions are. Not his actions. There’ll be a proper inquiry, punishment as the case warrants.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You don’t feel compelled to solve two or three murders, but you’re hot on discipline procedures?”
“I’m hot on all of it. I have subordinates who follow through.”
“Cool,” I said. “Was I supposed to be one of them?”
“Why don’t you forget I ever asked?”
“Is that all you need?”
“Your back hurts?” he said.
“Raw torture.”
“The reason I ask is a deputy drove through the lodge parking lot two hours ago on a routine security check. He spotted a certain Toyota Celica adjacent to your room. You still have one of my detectives in custody?”
I pointed at her. She waved both hands.
I said, “What color was that Celica?”
Lewis threw her hands up.
“Congratulations, Rutledge. You passed the physical. Pain or no pain, you’re checking out of that two-hundred-dollar-a-night infirmary. Put her on.”
I handed her the receiver and headed for the bathroom.
When I came out, she was in her car with the engine idling. I pulled on my shorts and went to speak with her.
“Get your stuff and get in,” she said. “I’m your taxi, too.”
My stuff was my shoes, six remaining pain pills, and the book I’d begun to read. Before I could slam the door, the phone rang again. I wanted it to be Tim calling from Homestead to tell me he was sorry and he’d left the Keys.
“Alex?” It was Tim’s new flame, my ex-lover Teresa.
“You got me,” I said. “I hear that I’ve become a distant, less recent unpleasantness.”
“You hear out of context, but…yes, that’s why I was calling.”
“You’ve got your hands full this time,” I said.
“It’s more than that—”
“Please, no details. Is he there right now?”
“No, I’m at work,” she said. “But I wanted to say…to tell you…I’m not trying to do something false to fuck with your head. I really like him. You two are very different, and I wanted you to know that. Am I confusing things or making sense?”
“If it makes sense in your heart, it’s okay with me,” I said. “But watch you don’t pay for all the food and rent.”
“He insists on covering his share. He’ll start doing drywall with a renovation group at six-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“Are you calling to have me bless your union?”
“I guess so, but something else—”
“Consider it done. I gotta go.” I hung up and hurried to the car.
We needed to go north. The Lower Keys rush hour had us stuck waiting for a break in both the south- and northbound traffic. Bobbi finally broke through. Face-front to the rising sun, I rejoined the world with which I’d been out of touch for forty hours. With the school zone at Mile Marker 19 and an accident cleanup across from the Sheriff’s Substation on Cudjoe, it took twenty minutes to reach Little Torch. Thanks to the Celica’s age-hardened shocks, I felt every bump of the journey. I contorted myself to get out of the car without summoning new agony.
Lewis said, “Straight question wanting a straight answer. What, beyond the davits, did you see at the Kansas Jack and Milton Navarre murder scenes that supports direct link?”
“The bottom end of the wealth spectrum and identical but mirror-image noose knots. What did your forensic people find?”
“Zilch, except for alcohol levels that would destroy you or me. No footprints, fingerprints, or drugs. I’ve got no leads, no trail to follow. I don’t even have a damned forest to get lost in.”
“They sure as hell weren’t random acts of violence,” I said. “But here’s your big question. Why would someone want to snuff two nobodys? Find out why they’re dead, and who done it might come into focus.”
Bobbi nodded, accepted my reasoning.
“I also figured a way to buy in to your suicide idea,” I said. “Do you want a far-fetched concept, just for its entertainment value?”
“Please entertain me.”
“Connect, somehow, Mason, Navarre, and Haskins. Then imagine that Lucky killed the first two and committed suicide out of remorse.”
“When we start drawing diagrams,” she said, “I’ll post that one for all to see. Except you provided the disproof for that one. If Lucky had made perfect noose knots for his victims, why wouldn’t he show the same pride for his own demise?”
“Good thought,” I said.
“One last thing. Did you apply for a home-equity loan or a refinance in the last few weeks?”
I shook my head. “Where’d you come up with that?”
“I wanted to see if Weedy Fields might be alive up in Michigan, just so I could follow up on his daughter’s whereabouts. I went to the county to look up the deed and transaction records for your address, to find what city he was from. I couldn’t help noticing that someone had checked out your records, I don’t know, maybe two weeks ago.”
“My records weren’t there?”
“Oh, they never leave the records room. But they make you sign a cover sheet when you have a look. I couldn’t decipher the signature.”
“Sure as hell wasn’t me.”
Bobbi backed up to leave Manning’s yard but stopped before reaching the street. She put her phone to her ear, became lost in the conversation.
I started up the outside stairway and remembered I had no keys in my pocket. A good start to the day: the Key Largo deputy had obeyed Millican and left the door unlocked. A moment later the Celica pulled under the house and its engine went quiet. I walked back downstairs.
Bobbi held a hand to her forehead. Tears smeared her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’ve been laughing.”
I took her words as evasive and steeled myself for awful news, a deputy or a relative dead or injured, Liska with a heart attack. She composed herself and got out of the car, weak-kneed, supporting herself against a fender, and began to laugh again. I had no idea how to console her, to diminish hysterics. I ran for a chair, brought it around, helped her aim for the flat part.
When she gained a semblance of calm, she took a deep breath and her face became stern. “You will not fucking believe this. Detective Millican…” The wide grin returned.
“Don’t laugh,” I said. “Too much of anything is bad.”
“Fuck it. I needed this.” She took a deep breath, began to smile, stopped, and set her jaw for delivering facts. “Millican was due for an interview at seven this morning, downtown, on the possible civil rights beef. He was a no-show and the feds were steamed. His attorney called around. His neighbors in Marathon thought they heard him leave after midnight.”
“Cops know their life expectancy in jail,” I said. “Stands to reason he hit the trail. By next week he could be driving a cab in Nicaragua.”
“No, they found him on the road out of town.”
“Trying to thumb a ride?”
“Pictu
re a plywood star taller than you, painted gold.”
“I’m with you.”
“That accident cleanup across from the Freeman Substation on Cudjoe?”
“The one we just passed?” I said.
“Someone kidnapped Millican before dawn and drove him to Mile Marker 21. They bolted the star to the bus-stop sign post across from the substation, then pantsed him and tied his neck, wrists, and ankles to the points. When the sun came up, there was Millican, blindfolded on the star with his trousers bunched around his ankles, showing his butt to southbound traffic.”
“They starified him?”
“It gets better. Remember the city’s flap with the uniformed mannequin?”
“Beth Watkins told me that Matilda was stolen.”
“Sure as shit, they found her, still in her uniform shirt but naked from the waist down. She was between him and the star, positioned to look like they were screwing. To make sure everything stayed in place, the kidnapper superglued his dick inside her. An EMT extracted him, and the stuff that neutralizes glue is not recommended for private parts.”
“That’s just wonderful,” I said. “How long did he remain on display?”
“At least thirty minutes.” Bobbi began to chuckle again. “The supervisor found him. He said he thought at first that Millican was a new species of tropical flower.”
“Millicanthus?”
“Stop with that. I can’t start laughing again. I have to go to work.”
“A whole new concept for Art in Public Places?”
“Stop.” She looked too wiped out from her jag to put in a full day.
“I’m baffled by the logistics of it all,” I said.
“The star was hinged down the middle so it would fit in, say, the bed of a pickup truck.” She took a breath, fixed her eyes on mine, removed the excitement from her voice. “We’re not seeing this at the same level of humor.”
“Where was he taken from? How was he kidnapped?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t told that. Apparently I didn’t care enough to ask.”
“What was he tied with?”
“I believe they said it was rope.”
“Anyone think to save the rope?”
Her eyes hardened, moved away. “What do you care? It wasn’t your revenge. Your alibi is tighter than Dick’s hatband.”
“My wild imagination paints odd pictures. I keep an open mind toward evidence.”
“You’re as bad as my ambitious new neighbor.”
“Beth Watkins? I thought you liked her. Hell, you brought her to Lucky Haskins’s place.”
“She wanted to watch us work a county crime scene, to see if there were ways to improve her approach. Now it’s like she’s made these hangings her personal crusade. I can understand she might be bored in the city, but damn. All her questions and ideas…”
“Maybe that explains her visit on Saturday morning. She wanted to pick my brain.”
Suspicion filled Lewis’s eyes. “A visit here?”
“She was out riding her nifty motorbike. She came by to admire my Triumph.”
“She knew how to find this place?”
“Drove right in,” I said. “I assumed she got it from you.”
“This was before Millican came and got you?”
I nodded.
“A lot of screwy shit going on,” said Lewis.
“Aside from his klutz move,” I said, “what did you think of Bixby?”
“He treated the Haskins death scene like it was his ticket to a Pulitzer Prize. Why do you care?”
“Watkins told me that he helped solve two murder cases while earning his master’s degree. I would think he’d be sharp enough to keep from falling off a seawall.”
“He was focused on glory more than results,” she said. “That always kills cases.”
“I’d love to know how a student put himself into a position to solve anything.”
“Your phrase, ‘put himself,’ telegraphs your doubt. Maybe he got there first?”
“Exactly my thought. When will you get a report on Kansas Jack’s fingerprints?”
“Maybe today,” she said. “Wednesday at the latest.”
“Has the Milton Navarre murder case been reassigned?”
“I don’t think so. It was a quick wrap. A man’s in custody, and they’ve got a witness who claims he heard the accused threaten the victim. Fifty cents says Millican wrote his reports before he came to get you. The prosecutors can play with it now.”
“Even if the man in custody didn’t do it?”
She gave me a quizzical stare. “Don’t even think about it.”
Ten minutes later we ran a repeat of Bobbi’s departure. This time she made it four houses down the street before stopping to answer the cell. I was putting the box with the duct tape into the fridge I when heard the tires crunch the pea rock.
I walked downstairs to greet her. “You don’t look so gleeful this time around. Don’t tell me Millican died of exposure.”
“End of jokes, Alex. How long were you going to wait before you told me?”
Oh, shitstorm.
“Who called you, Teresa?” I said.
“No, your friend Beth Watkins.”
“And what was so grim about her conversation?”
“Your ex-girlfriend has a new boyfriend?”
“It wasn’t a priority,” I said. “What’s with the cloudy face?”
“Teresa asked Beth Watkins to run a background check on him.”
Now I understood why Teresa had called the lodge an hour earlier. I’d hung up before she could ’fess. “Checking a man’s past is a wise move for any woman—”
“You never told me he went to prison,” she said.
“I don’t know that he did.”
“I bring sad tidings.” Bobbi raised a notepad and read from it. “He stood thirty-one months of a five-year pull in Pennsylvania for armed robbery. He held up a dry cleaner in Altoona brandishing, of all things, a carpet cutter.”
“How long ago?” I said.
“He hit the street fifty-five days ago. The State Correctional Institution at Greensburg is what they call medium-security, southeast of Pittsburgh. It’s more like a fortress, full of hard cases. Your brother must have pissed off the sentencing judge. He probably did a lot of push-ups inside, fighting off potential boyfriends.”
“I thought he looked beefed-up across his shoulders.”
“That’s your entire reaction?”
“What’s to change?” I said. “His past is just that—his. I’m booked up living my own life.”
“Eloquent. Watkins phoned the prosecutor up there. He recalled the case. Your brother was seeing a sophomore in some local college. She had him settled down, and she was the only thing keeping him straight and narrow. Then, out of the blue, she killed herself with pills. He rode it downhill and hit the sauce. They caught him shoplifting a few times before his holdup. If he had used a gun instead of the knife, he’d be in for another seven years.”
“Sad chapters dominate Tim’s story,” I said.
“When you were still in the hospital—that phone call from Liska—he told me Millican matched your face to a credit-card scammer. Is that why you kept his presence a secret? You resemble your brother?”
I shrugged. “Do you think Tim learned new tricks in jail?”
“Don’t they all? Of course, if you think about it, we all know how to do crimes. Lucky for us, we don’t put our knowledge to use.”
“So you’re thinking…”
“I’m thinking your brother screwed up within an hour of entering Monroe County.”
“What’s your next move, arrest him?”
She shrugged. “For now, I just want to talk with him.”
She backed in a half-circle and left Manning’s yard with her foot in the carb. Or in the kazoo, whatever Celicas have. It sounded like a Waring blender.
I reflected on Tanker Branigan’s grand plan to help Tim get a grip, and whether the big gold star had been hi
nged to fit inside a Chevy Caprice station wagon.
I quit wondering.
I knew.
I could think of only one approach with the “rejected evidence” in the fridge. I wasn’t sure what photos of the duct tape might glean, but I needed to talk with Monty Aghajanian, an ex–Key West cop who had saved my life before going to the big leagues. These days I asked few favors and never assumed he would grant them.
After Monty’s basic training at Quantico, Virginia, the FBI had posted him to Newark. I dialed his direct number, hoping to reach his office answering machine. I wanted to pose my questions without having to answer any. The machine granted my first favor. I sent my best wishes to his family, told him what I needed, gave him my cell and Manning’s home numbers with an okay for voice mail.
My ’70 Triumph Bonneville and ’66 Shelby GT-350H waited under the house. I had been reminded during my midnight horizontal therapy that my body still needed to heal. I chose the car because I didn’t have to balance it. I could stop without falling sideways.
I sifted through boxes until I found the Shelby’s distributor cap, carried it to ground level, and hooked up the plug wires. I tripped the electric fuel pump’s hidden switch, pumped the pedal five times, then twisted the key. The Shelby’s engine sounds like a boat explosion when it comes to life. To fans of muscle cars, the sound is pure symphony. To those accustomed to fewer than eight cylinders and the modern muffling of catalytic converters, the motor is raw threat.
Wendell Glavin, from across the street, fit the first group. Before the oil pressure peaked, he was worshipping at the altar of carbon monoxide.
“That’s an old Hi-Po 289, isn’t it?” he yelled, strolling across the street.
I shut it down and told him a lie. “It’s a massaged 289, but not a Hi-Po.”
“I hear those solid lifters.” Wendell inspected the interior. “Looks like somebody in the old days tried to make a fake Shelby out of a Mustang. Too bad it’s not the real thing. You’d have some bucks in the old beast.”
His words struck an odd note. Glavin lived in a neighborhood where residents spent more for boats than they did for their cars. “Too bad I didn’t buy this house in 1998, too,” I said. “You have to live with what you’ve got.”
