by Tom Corcoran
My computer came to life and an email arrived through my web site, my business-only address. It almost went the way of obvious spam. But the sender’s address looked like Manatee County. I guessed—correctly—that it was from Detective Glenn Steffey:
“My apology for the hardass who would not patch you through. If you saw Tharpe in town, we are on that solid. We connected with Mr. Beeson, more or less. Other ideas, call me. Don’t print this or you will learn tetherball the way we play it in our jail. Kidding.”
He signed off with his personal cell number. I saved it into my phone.
Halfway through my Beeson folder, I found a problem in an image that I took the morning of his liver-twisting hangover. Wanting to show the building’s nearness to transport, I had shot from the ladder that Luke Tharpe brought me in his high-riding, high-dollar pickup. I had aimed through a tree line to catch semis rolling northward on I-75.
In the only image that showed two trucks nose to tail, the smudge caught my eye like a lens flare. It was probably no more than a pale rock next to a foreground tree, but it killed the photo’s impact. From past experience, I knew how to remove it with Photoshop’s clone stamp. I bumped the image to twice its actual size and, looking more closely, I could see that it wasn’t a rock. It looked like a road bum’s rucksack. Still, it was a distraction.
Just before I worked my digital magic, a thought came bouncing into my skull. I pulled a dozen bad shots back out of the “Trash,” opened them in Photoshop and found what I wanted. In that moment when I lost my balance and almost tumbled from Tharpe’s ladder, I must have pressed the button, so here’s to auto-focus. The “rucksack” was, indeed, a wad of clothing or a yellow bandanna wrapped around a jacket or a pair of trousers. An odd package to see in the scrub weeds, too far from either the Interstate or the service road to have, perhaps, fallen out of a truck.
Nothing to lose. I reduced the image to a size more suited to email and sent it to Steffey. I told him what the clothing wad looked like to me and explained where and why I snapped it. I suggested that it might be of interest so close to a murder scene.
Exhausted, I made two thumb drive copies of Dubbie Tanner’s Tower Bar debacle video, then shut off the computer.
Before she went to the bedroom, Beth elaborated on Darrin Marsh’s background. I assumed that her info was a blend of office gossip, his confidential personnel files, and the news release from his first week on the force. There wasn’t much to it beyond clues for a two-bit run at analyzing his outlook, hangups and screw ups. He had been an average high school student but a star football and baseball player. His scholarship to a small college in upstate New York hadn’t led to playing first-string in either sport. He went from majoring in business to history and finally to law enforcement sciences. In two years of police work in his hometown, he had rescued two women from a flooded car and talked a suicidal teenager off a river bridge arch. An “office romance” led to his only reprimand. During a vacation in Key West, he had gone to the new police station and applied for a job. Someone found mention of his heroics on the Internet, and the city hired him pending state certification. He moved to Key West, took a training course and pinned on his badge.
Teresa Barga met Darrin Marsh in the course of her efforts as the KWPD’s Public Information Officer. Accusations of police brutality, specifically naming Marsh, had been published in a weekly paper known for its grudge against cops. It turned out that the story fed to the paper was bogus. Marsh was wrongly accused, and Teresa helped clear his and the city’s reputation. Their romance began shortly after that. There had been four complaints since then about Marsh’s handling of arrests and investigations. He had dodged reprimand each time.
That was it. Nothing stuck.
On my way to the bedroom, I was again reminded of each injury from my guest role as Darrin Marsh’s punching bag. It hurt to brush my teeth. It hurt to change my T-shirt. For the first time in our romance I was glad that Beth didn’t sense my arrival and try to snuggle. My aching chest assured me that the morning would be a special adventure.
Aboard ship in the Navy, at sea in the Atlantic, I learned to listen in my sleep. When I first came aboard, it took me time to adjust. Certain sounds always were there. The rhythm of the propulsion system, echoes of waves striking the hull, distant sonar pings, the keel pounding in rough weather, leather soles on steel ladders, hatches being opened or secured. I heard new sounds as threats though most were filed in my sleeping brain as shipboard normalcy. I knew when the midwatch was chasing an unidentified submarine. The ship’s roll told me the bridge was preparing for a dawn refueling from an oiler or carrier. I’m sure that I wasn’t alone in blending noise into my dreams. The second to last thing any sailor wanted to hear was General Quarters at four am. The worst thing he could hear was splashing water.
Since my release from active duty, I have been a light sleeper. I never have felt burdened by my alertness. It allows me to close windows before rainstorms, hear vehicles in the lane at the wrong time of night and flip on my backyard light to send a prowler to easier pickings. On the other hand, I worry when I miss noise inside my house. The sounds of Beth Watkins dressing and leaving at sunup. Or of Chicken Neck Liska setting up his satellite office on my front porch before a rational human might think of starting a day’s work. How had I not heard him arrive? Was I that exhausted from Marsh’s pounding? At least the sun was shining, the air warm for mid-January. Probably the reason Beth left the door open.
“Coffee, sheriff?” I said.
“Been there.” He looked away from my T-shirt and skivvies. “Nice pajamas.”
“I’m fresh out of donuts. If your schedule’s out of synch, I can microwave a Marie Callender’s chicken teriyaki dinner.”
“You’re a laugh a fucking minute, Rutledge.”
“Minutes are a toss. I take the hours seriously,” I said. “Like the two more of sleep I’m about to miss. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
He stared at the tabletop as if it had committed a heinous crime. I went to pull on shorts and start a pot of Bustelo. When I returned to the porch, he was reading his horoscope on the web.
I said, “Have you been upstaged in the ordering of an autopsy?”
“Minor blip,” he said. “I’ve got an inbound shitstorm that’s got nothing to do with work.”
“Your financial connection to the subject of the autopsy?”
It took him thirty seconds to raise his glazed eyes, lift his jaw, close his mouth and figure out how I knew. “Does this mean I have to be civil with the Bumsnoops?”
“Take the big leap and lose that name,” I said. “If you can’t bring yourself to say ‘the Aristocrats,’ their first names are Wiley and Dubbie.”
“To be precise,” said Liska, “their names are William B. Tanner and William B. Fecko.”
“I didn’t know that. They’re good, eh?”
“They may not even know that about themselves,” he said. “Who else knows?”
“No one,” I said. “They’re discreet, too. No axes to grind, no downtown agenda. They told me because they knew we were friends.”
“That could become ancient history,” he said. “Are they good enough to remove it from the online search engines?”
“I can ask, but it was in the news years ago.”
He nodded. “When I worked for the city. No one believed it was true because I had so little money. Of course, my lifelong poverty was the reason I rolled the dice with Caldwell, the douchebag. At least I got out when there was something to get.”
“Leave you with a spoonful of bitterness?” I said.
“Bitter takes too much time. If I had the luxury to be pissed about anything, it would be my choice of women for the past twenty years. They’ve cost me more than I ever would have lost with Caldwell.”
Maybe, I thought, he chooses misery because that’s where he’s most comfortable.
“What’s next on your list?” I said.
“This Canadian link, the Fed
s are breathing down my neck,” said Liska. “They’re in touch with the governor’s office and everyone wants fast results.”
“It’s been four days since the murders. I don’t even know which case is yours. Do you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not authorized to discuss the investigation.”
I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to leave the story-telling to Liska. He hadn’t come to my house to keep his mouth shut or to bad-mouth old girlfriends.
He closed his computer. “The deaths of Pulver and Teresa belong to the city. The FDLE took Caldwell and his autopsy off my hands yesterday, which I don’t mind at all. But I’m still stuck with Ocilla Ramirez, for two reasons. Her cute housekeeping business, Acting Chief Execs, specialized in cleaning homes of the vulnerable. We aren’t sure yet whether she or Pulver, or both of them, accessed some of their clients’ computers. Their scam didn’t go after current cash. They would hit medium-sized retirement accounts, lightly. They targeted money that people look at once or twice a year. Or never, in some cases. Their odds of success were huge.”
“So your priorities are with money crimes instead of murders?” I said.
“In effect, yes,” said Liska. “The murder investigations are covered by competent people, including your friend Beth. And we’re back to the joint ops case I mentioned to you several days ago. There may be, in fact, an additional ongoing scam involving these people. My people are doing the legwork to keep federal agencies out of the equation. If Ocilla’s handlers suspected fed involvement, they might close up shop. We can always arrest Ocilla but we’d never get near the crime managers.”
“You have to work on the FDLE ‘s deadline?” I said.
“It’s always somebody’s deadline. They think the scam will tie together two of the three murders. When is there time to do a job the right way?”
“You know what race drivers say?”
He studied the driftwood on the wall. “Will this be useful to me or just to you?”
“They tell you to drive your own race,” I said. “Focus on your job, not on theirs. Don’t let the guy on your bumper dictate what you do in the next corner.”
Piss and moan music felt right at the time. I sang along with Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris in the outdoor shower, tried to recall the quick sling of words to “Ooh, Las Vegas.” I harmonized elegantly on “Hickory Wind,” and felt more on top of things when I emerged as the new improved me in slide sandals and a towel. The yard was a wash of post-rain color, and the bright sunlight threw off my vision. It took me a moment to adjust to the shaded porch.
There sat Anya Timber in extreme cut-off jean shorts and a red plaid farmer-girl top, gold loop earrings, the Rolex, but no bracelets. Her dark hair was tied back at the nape of her neck, and she was toking on the slimmest joint I had ever seen. She must have worn a jeweler’s loupe to roll it.
A truck with a salt-rotted muffler rolled up Fleming. Its raw noise reminded me of a detail that had nagged my thoughts since Sarasota.
“Edwin Torres told me he used to work at a Midas shop,” I said. “Did he install those hot-sounding tailpipes on your Porsche?”
“You’ve been holding that one in your brain for how many days?” she said, offering me the doobie. “I thought you would want to discuss Luke Tharpe.”
I declined the smoke. “All my poisons are liquid, thank you,” I said.
Her eyes dropped to my chest. “Did you walk into a door?”
“I got hit by an asshole. Speaking of Luke, I almost suffered a double.”
“I knew we would get to him sooner or later.”
I leaned against the door jamb. “Do you call him your pet chameleon?”
She didn’t reply, smile or frown. We stared at each other for a few seconds. Her gaze drifted off to the screening, and I realized she was watching a prowling lizard.
“Let me start over,” I said. “I’m sorry about the loss of your friend.”
“Thank you.” She nodded. “I think I’m hurting even more than Justin is. And Eileen, for now, is the strong one.”
I agreed. “But her remarkable eye for detail, her ability to paint subtle light and tone shifts. That could easily translate into her view of our adult world. Could be she dwells inside herself with too much comfort. Please make sure she isn’t masking too much.”
“I will do that, if I see her. She trusts me, and I couldn’t bear to let her down.”
I nodded, dropped my eyes from her face to the floor, allowed her legs to register in my thoughts.
“Did you enjoy looking at my pussy four days ago?” she said.
“Sure,” I said. “Don’t we all enjoy watching a lovely sunset, a classic sailing yacht underway?”
“Well, your eyes sort of tended toward that region. Justin was still awake when I went to bed that night. For some reason he wanted me to shave myself before I came to bed. I trimmed it a little.” Anya unbuttoned and unzipped her shorts, pushed them down an inch or so. “Do you think too much?”
“I can’t see from here,” I said, “but it’s really none of my business.”
“We’re not talking business, Alex, we’re talking about the absence of pubic hair.”
“And tailpipes and a murder.”
“So,” she said, “that night in Sarasota, we didn’t make love.”
I stared through the screening at a croton bush. “Correct.”
“Can we say that you and I put one in the bank? A night of unfinished business, snug in the safe deposit? It could be ten years from now, but we’ll see each other, somewhere in the world, and we’ll both know.”
“Like, we’ll always have Paris, except we haven’t had it yet.”
“And maybe we’ll shake hands and smile and walk away.”
“Probably so,” I said. “Can I ask a question off the subject?”
She tilted her head and squinted.
“Why did Justin change his plans so quickly? Why did we all fly to Sarasota two days earlier than he said we would?”
“He mumbled something about Amanda’s bullshit. He said that only when they argued about Eileen. I could tell it wasn’t a good time to press for details.”
“I’m going to put on shorts and a shirt,” I said. “Can I get you anything? Water or coffee, a glass of wine?”
Anya went back to studying my bruises. She began to speak, then stopped and shook her head. “I don’t fuck Luke, just so you know.”
My turn to shake my head. “Again, none of my business, Anya. I am not the guilt god or the bed police. When I sit in judgment, it’s usually on saloon singers or pizza delivery service. A negative rating means I could do better myself. That’s not saying much.”
“Can I have two more minutes?” she said. “Then I will leave. You can put on your clothes and shoes and get on with your day.”
“That’s what all the girls say to me.”
It took her no more than three seconds to register my words. Then she went on a laughing jag that lasted nearly the whole two minutes. I was afraid every neighbor in the lane would come around to hear my joke. I have no idea why I cracked a tired old one-liner, except that I was weary of murders and recriminations and intrigue. I wanted to change the channel, kiss off the scammers and power geeks, the mystery women and pro victims. I felt like I needed another shower.
Anya pulled herself together. She made sure the joint was out, flicked off the ash then rolled the remaining sliver into a capsule-sized pill and swallowed it. “As you know,” she said, “Justin found you by asking around the island for a photographer. When your name came up, I overheard several people discuss your ability to… also to… make things right. Is that a good way to say it?”
“It sounds fine,” I said, “but it’s half right or half wrong, and that depends on how you look at life.”
“I’m looking back at death, Alex. Five of us need your help, because none of us knows who killed Amanda. I don’t know, and I’m certain that Justin couldn’t have done it. Amanda lived apart for the sake
of the child. She also did a few things to boost her dismal self-esteem, things Justin and I couldn’t help her with. A few people who knew about us didn’t like the idea that we were a trio. We could give you a list of possible…”
“You’re getting to the heart of my selfishness,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“Every time I’ve ever unraveled a knotted story, it was because someone close to me had been hurt. And, yes, I can focus. Once in a while I can help. But I can’t solve all the problems in the world.”
An angry expression crossed her face. “You sure as shit couldn’t solve mine four nights ago.” She stood and stormed off the porch, her lovely legs all the way up to her shorts.
Blame it on the second-hand smoke. I caught myself wishing for one last look at her bare ass. Then I told myself not to test a shark’s friendliness by sticking my hand in its mouth. Or something like that.
She wasn’t accustomed to being turned down.
Malcolm Mason’s office may be the most luxurious land-based 600-square-foot space on Stock Island. A few yachts in marinas equal its precision cabinetry, wall art, earth-tone tile flooring, and the touch and scent of its teak furniture and leather upholstery. But his oasis of affluence amazed everyone who set foot inside the place. It was the sizzle that sold the burgers. Every cubic inch helped to market used yachts. Ironically, his small building looked like a bait shack in a foliage-free “transition” neighborhood of trailer homes, rusted-out sedans and ten-foot chain link fencing.
I arrived to find a tray of chilled seafood. Conch seviche, steamed shrimp, salmon mousse, thin-sliced ahi tuna, smoked fish dip and water crackers.
“Let me guess,” I said. “A promising client arriving in twenty minutes.”
“Yes, but help yourself,” said Malcolm, sitting behind his desk. “Hors d’oeuvres to sustain you in the elements.”
“I could call it breakfast, knock down a bottle of Pinot gris, take a nap and do the shoot tomorrow.”
He grinned. “Then I’d have to charge you restaurant prices.”
