Escape Clause

by James O. Born

  Tasker heard a vehicle approaching.

  “Here comes Billie. What do you think of her?”

  “Very pretty.”

  “Wish she was a little less pretty and a little more motivated.”

  Tasker stood out of habit as the small pickup truck came to a stop next to the tent. Strands of hair fell over her small, delicate features. She looked like a gymnast, her muscular body moving under jeans and a tank top. Her jet-black hair shone in the sunlight as she smiled at the professor.

  “Billie, you remember Bill Tasker.”

  She smiled and nodded.

  Tasker said, “You surprised me the other night. I didn’t expect a ‘Billie’ to look like you.”

  She bowed her head slightly and said, “I didn’t expect a cop to look like you.”

  eight

  Bill Tasker strolled across the open yard of Manatee Correctional. He never strolled. He walked fast, trotted and ran. This was a new feeling. Although the sun was shining and the temperature a perfect seventy, the only reason he wasn’t racing to his destination was that Department of Corrections Inspector Renee Allison Chin was walking alongside him. He was on official business, but times like this reminded him why he liked his job so much.

  In his right hand he held a folder with thirty-two crime scene photos of the body of Rick Dewalt. The young man’s body lay next to a cement landing with three steps that led to the common door to lockdown and the psychiatric ward. The photos gave him a good sense of the position of the body and the marks around his neck, but not the feeling for the location. He wanted to see if, by looking around the compound from the site where Dewalt had been found, it might give him an idea why his body had been left there. Was he killed there? Was the location hidden from normal view? That was why he was physically in the prison, to get a firsthand look at the circumstances of the death.

  As they came to the long, blank wall with its one door, Renee said, “One of the officers found him here about ten in the morning. I responded almost immediately.”

  Tasker nodded. “Your reports cover all that pretty well. Did you ask any of your sources?”

  “Sources?”

  “Um, snitches, I mean, informants. Everyone calls them something different.”

  She smiled. “And you’re sure I have informants in the general population.”

  “You’re too competent not to.”

  She kept smiling. “Yes, I have talked both formally and informally to my regular sources of information.” She looked at Tasker. “Does that sound more like a cop? Sources of information?”

  “That’s our politically correct term.”

  “In here people are always looking for an angle, so they share the one commodity they all have: information.”

  Tasker nodded and then stood on the cement landing looking down on the ground where the body had been found and then up and around the yard. “This is a little isolated, but I’d be worried about someone seeing me if I was choking someone here. That usually takes a few minutes.”

  “So you think someone dumped the body here?”

  “Too early to tell. I’ll talk to the ME and try to keep an open mind. What’s your take on it?”

  “I always thought Dewalt was killed somewhere else, but we have no clue where.”

  “He worked as a trustee inside here, right?”

  “Yeah, he switched between psych and lockdown, cleaning up and keeping sodas in the coolers for the officers. That sort of thing.”

  “No time log when he came and went.”

  She shook her head. “The trustees have to be available, but the officers send them all over on errands.”

  “He didn’t owe anyone money or have bad blood with anyone?”

  “Not that I could find out. He was real low-key. As you probably know, his dad is a rich land developer. I don’t think Rick Junior was ready for life on the inside. He tried to fly below the radar whenever possible.”

  “I know most of that from reading your reports.” He looked at her and grinned. “R. A. Chin.”

  She laughed. “I just always sign things that way. Sorry if your mind wasn’t open enough to think I might be a female.”

  Tasker smiled and went back to his review of the photos as he thought, And some kind of female, at that.

  Two hours later, Bill Tasker pulled into a spot right in front of the small structure in the parking lot of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, which housed the medical examiner’s office. The two-building facility was known by most detectives and agents in the county, and so was the building’s most interesting occupant, Assistant Medical Examiner Dominick Freund. Tasker waited at the front until the operations officer, Tony, escorted him in.

  “The doc is in the procedure room,” said Tony. Each of his strides made up two of Tasker’s. He had that perpetual stoop really tall guys develop as a defense against low ceiling fans and other obstructions hung by short people. He turned his usual smiling face to Tasker and said, “Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

  “I was transferred to Miami four years ago.”

  Tony grinned and said, “I guess I did see something about it on the news.” He led Tasker through a small outdoor walkway from the administration building to the rooms used for evidence storage and procedures.

  Tony said, “He’s just finishing up.”

  “That’s good.”

  Tony smiled and said, “Everyone says that.”

  Tasker followed him into the large room with four separate stations. He’d hate to see a time when all four were being used. At the far station, his friend Dom Freund was lifting a bucket and preparing to dispose of the contents.

  “Still have the problem, huh, Doc?”

  Freund turned. “Billy Tasker. You back up here now?”

  “Nope. Believe it or not, I’m out in the Glades for a while.”

  “You find airstrips again?”

  “Looking at the death at Manatee about six weeks ago.”

  “I remember it a little. Let me clean up and I’ll get my notes in the office.”

  Ten minutes later, after catching up on family matters and Freund’s need for buckets during autopsies, Tasker settled into a comfortable high-backed leather chair in the assistant ME’s cluttered office.

  Freund read over his notes and reviewed a few photos and said, “Yeah, I remember it now.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “He died of asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation.” The ME looked up at Tasker and added, “That is, a weapon was used to choke him, not someone’s hands.”

  Tasker said, “Thanks, Doc. Went to the police academy, remember?”

  “Most of you FDLE guys are a little slow on the uptake. Just making sure.” He smiled and continued with his analysis. “Based on the marks on his neck, probably by a belt or thick cord.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Wide mark and the object didn’t dig into the sides of his neck deeply like a rope might have. Plus there are no strand marks like a rope might leave. His hands were very loosely tied. Didn’t show marks of a struggle.”

  “Wouldn’t he have struggled if someone was choking him? I mean, that takes a minute or more.”

  “If the initial pressure was strong, he could have lost consciousness almost immediately. I have to look at the totality of the circumstances. He was outside, there was no lividity in his extremities. If he had been hanging like a suicide, the blood would have pooled in his hands and feet. Blood will go to the lowest point without the heart pumping.”

  “Okay, then what’s your theory?”

  “I’d say someone looped the murder weapon around his neck and pulled. He might have been choked right from the stairs where he was found.”

  “Almost sounds like someone was trying to make it look like a suicide, but something went wrong.”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe someone saw them and they had to abandon the body right where it lay.”

  “You cops have to have
a theory for everything.”

  “He’s dead. My theory right now is that something killed him. Can you help me with anything past that?”

  “Nothing except you have your work cut out for you out in that snake pit.”

  nine

  Bill Tasker parked at the end of the wide circular driveway, saw a Corvette and a four-wheel-drive Toyota truck parked in close to the garage and a big four-door Cadillac in front of the entranceway. Tasker took in the massive two-story structure with the glass inlaid walkway as he fumbled with his steno pad to make sure he had the right house. He was pretty sure a successful land developer would live in a place like this. It wasn’t a Palm Beach mansion, but out here in Wellington, an upscale community with its own polo grounds, this place looked nice.

  A small woman about fifty answered the door with a smile.

  “Mrs. Dewalt? I’m Bill Tasker, we spoke on the phone.”

  She nodded and motioned him in all the way.

  As he entered the silent house, he could tell that this woman had taken her son’s death hard. She still hadn’t said a word as he followed her through two giant rooms toward a series of open sliding glass doors and a patio surrounding a pool with two separate water fountains.

  “Rick, the state policeman is here.”

  Tasker saw the wide man with round wire-rimmed glasses stand and turn to greet him. He had a bottle of bourbon and a half-filled glass by a stack of contracts. Tasker would’ve bet he never drank during the day a few months before.

  After settling in, Tasker started with simple questions about their son’s background and how he ended up in a state prison. He had already looked at the few belongings Rick Dewalt, Jr., had left behind at Manatee. A few pieces of jewelry, a cheap watch, things like that. Nothing that gave any indication about the young man’s history or family.

  Big Rick Dewalt, as he was sometimes called, said, “You cannot tell me pot is not a dangerous drug. If it weren’t for marijuana, little Rick would’ve graduated from UCF and gone on to teach. The boy had a gift for mathematics.”

  Mrs. Dewalt just nodded and stifled a sob.

  “Did your son talk about any problems he was having out at the prison?”

  “All he had was problems. You saw the scum out there. No place for a decent white man to get sent. As much as I paid the fucking cutthroat lawyers, you’d think they coulda done better for him. But no, the Department of Corrections acts on its own. Judges don’t influence them.”

  “Was your son bitter about jail?”

  “He knew he brought it on himself, if that’s what you mean. No one else to blame.”

  Mrs. Dewalt said, “No one but the people that kept getting him hooked on drugs. He was in rehab four times. Finished it, too, then someone would always get him using drugs again.”

  Big Rick Dewalt nodded. “Almost as expensive as the goddamn lawyers, that rehab shit. Every place more expensive than the last. It was just another scam. Everyone is out to make a buck.”

  Tasker made a few notes. Nothing useful. He worked hard not to ask if developing Florida land was a scam, too. As far as he knew, that’s all it was. Part of the scam included buying off county commissioners or whoever else could approve the use of what had been wetlands or preserves. Tasker stuck to the point.

  “When was your last contact with your son?”

  Mrs. Dewalt said, “I visited him the day before they found . . .” She finished with a sob.

  Big Rick Dewalt said, “I saw him when he was sentenced.”

  “You never visited Manatee?”

  “No.” He glared at Tasker, almost daring him to inquire further. Then he added, “I spoke to him on the phone from time to time.”

  “What sort of things would you talk about?”

  “Just catching up. He was a land surveyor, so they used him to mark out new construction projects now and then. We’d talk about that sort of thing.”

  Tasker stared at his pad, trying to decide where he was going with the next question. Then the half-in-the-bag businessman said, “Don’t get me wrong, Tasker. He was my son. But I have two other kids to worry about. A nineteen-year-old at Florida Atlantic and a twenty-four-year-old at Stetson. Little Rick chose to throw away his life. I don’t have enough time to waste on someone like that.”

  Tasker nodded, still silent. There was something up with this guy, but Tasker had no clue what. He turned to Mrs. Dewalt. “Did he seem all right to you? Was he particularly despondent?”

  Her hair had a slight gray tinge to it and her eyes had gentle wrinkles around the corners. She looked like she had laughed a lot at one time. Now she asked, “How do you mean? He was always down when I visited him.”

  “Anything. Anything worse than usual?”

  “Well, he said he’d like to end it all. But he said that all the time.”

  Tasker thought about it and was about to ask if she thought he’d committed suicide when Big Rick said, “Guess someone ended it for him.” The big man stood and said, “That’s all we care to say about our son right now, Mr. Tasker. Just find out who killed him, so we can lay the whole thing to rest.”

  Tasker knew the end of an interview when he heard it.

  That evening, Tasker scurried around his little apartment picking up clothes and generally trying to make it presentable for Donna and the girls. He had spent the afternoon considering his encounter with Big Rick Dewalt and his quiet, ghostlike wife. He had the idea that the senior Dewalt was more embarrassed by his son than saddened by his death. Tasker figured the wife was the one pushing for answers to her son’s death. Big Rick looked like he would rather be filling in part of the Everglades for more condos.

  Donna had reluctantly agreed to drop the girls off for the weekend if he could drive them back Sunday afternoon. With his visits to the medical examiner, the sheriff’s office and the Dewalts, the week had flown by. His only regret was that he hadn’t seen much of Renee Chin. Not officially and not socially. But he hoped both situations might change soon.

  He glanced at the hamster cage that Professor Kling had made into a trap as he hustled some newspapers to the garbage. He had looked in the cage every day since Kling had given it to him. Tasker had begun to doubt its effectiveness, but now he stopped to stare in amazement. The little mouse with the yellow stain was now calmly munching on some peanut butter the professor had used as bait. The trap had shut and the vermin was secure. Tasker smiled as he heard a car pull up.

  He met his ex-wife as she came up the three steps onto the old wooden porch he shared with Professor Kling. His girls both darted from the car up the steps in front of the professor’s apartment and into his arms. He crouched and kissed them both on the heads, then the cheeks. As he stood, Donna leaned in for a kiss and turned her head to the side. He delivered a platonic peck on the cheek and knew what she had planned this weekend.

  “Have time to come in?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She stepped through the door before him. Following her was never a problem. As pretty as her face was, her rear view was just as spectacular. She stopped in front of him midway through the door.

  “Billy, what did you do?”

  He hesitated, then peeked in at the girls, both of whom were kneeling by the cage and cooing at the trapped mouse.

  “I, ah . . .” He didn’t want to tell her the truth because he was afraid she might not let the girls stay in an apartment with rodents on the loose. “I needed company and knew the girls would get a kick out of it.”

  “What’s his name?” asked Kelly.

  “Ah, well, I call him Mousy,” he finally stammered out.

  “Can we rename him?” asked Kelly.

  “You bet.”

  Donna turned to him. “Billy, that thing isn’t coming to my house when you move back to Kendall.”

  “That a question?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess it’s coming to Kendall with me.”

  “Can we hold him?” pleaded Kelly with a quick second from Emily.


  He was caught short. “Ah, not right now. He was a little sick when I first, ah, picked him up, and a vet should take a look at him.”

  “Can we take him to the vet in the morning?”

  “Ah . . .” He looked at Donna and then the girls and just nodded his head. “Sure.”

  He heard another car and turned his head to see Professor Kling and Billie heading to his apartment. The older man looked up and smiled.

  “Hello, my FSU friend. Finally have some visitors?”

  Tasker motioned him up, then inside, and made introductions. Billie scurried on to the professor’s apartment with something in her arms. When the professor stepped toward the girls to see the cage, Tasker realized his danger.

  “Ah, Professor, tell Donna about your dig. It’s really fascinating.”

  The professor ignored Tasker, leaned over and lowered his glasses. “I say, my boy, it worked.”

  “What worked?” asked Donna, now suspicious.

  Tasker immediately said, “He fixed this cage so I could use it for the hamster I bought the girls.”

  The professor turned to him. “The hamster?”

  Tasker blinked his eyes hard and said firmly, “Yes, that hamster.”

  “But—” was all the professor got out when they all heard a deep howl like an air raid siren.

  “What’s that?” asked Donna.

  Tasker knew the sound and what it meant. “Escape at Manatee.”

  Luther Williams’ heart raced as he watched correctional officers swarm to the front gate and a man with three hound dogs on leashes hustle to the partially open gate access. It had taken them a lot less time than he had calculated to discover the breach and react. And their reaction was much more specific and effective than he’d ever thought possible. He watched the men rush through the gate, and two officers, armed with big, black Remington 870 pump shotguns with extended magazines, stood by the open door so only authorized personnel left that way.

  “Damn,” Luther muttered to himself as he clicked the stop-watch he was holding and sat back on his stool next to Dorm A. He had spent a month convincing that moron Leroy Baxter from Daytona to attempt an escape. When the young man had come to him that afternoon, Luther explained that a wedge on the correctional officer’s single door at the right time would lock it open enough for someone to slip through. He had done it solely to see how the guards handled an escape. Now he had his answer: They handled it well. Two minutes from the moment the armed robber had casually made his way out the jammed door that no one noticed until the alarm sounded. Four minutes and fifteen seconds later, the guards, with dogs, were hot on his trail. The boy didn’t stand a chance. They’d run him to ground inside an hour. That made Luther’s chances even harder.