A Hard Death

by Jonathan Hayes

  Brodie said wearily, “Yeah, about the missing farm workers. Well, we ain’t missing any farm workers. We told that to the deputy who called, told that to the guy who came by yesterday.”

  Rudge said, “What guy came by yesterday?”

  Brodie put his hands on his hips and leaned back. “Oh, some kid, asking questions about missing farmhands, and were people happy with working here.” He worked his lip a bit, then spat again. “I’m telling you the same thing: all our workers are present and accounted for, all of ’em happy to have a job here with us. And we pay well, and they’re happy. The end.”

  Rudge shook his head and took a step back with a wide smile. “Well, Brodie, I figure you’d have to pay them extra because of the goddamn smell. Tell the truth—you use that gun to keep the vultures away, right?”

  Brodie’s eyes had narrowed to slits. “Detective, we don’t take to cursing around here. I gotta ask you to speak to me civil, or not at all.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Brodie. I figured you’d be used to the question by now.” Rudge spat.

  Jenner looked down the field, where two Mexican farmhands were herding pigs down to another mud bath. “So, Mr. Brodie…Why pigs? Not too hot for them down here?”

  “The sprayers keep ’em cool.” Eyes still fixed on Rudge, Brodie lifted his shoulders in a slow shrug; it was like watching a snake slowly rise and uncoil before striking. He glanced back at Jenner. “Owner wants pigs, he gets pigs.”

  Behind Brodie, Bentas stood, face somber, hands on his hips. When he turned, Jenner saw the blocky shape of a pistol grip under the man’s shirt, wedged inside his waistband; he had no idea how Rudge had spotted it. It occurred to Jenner that they were out in the middle of nowhere, Rudge antagonizing a man with an armed bodyguard. What was it Douggie Pyke always said? Don’t poke a skunk.

  Jenner was about to suggest they move on when Brodie tipped his head back, took off his cap, spit again, then said to Rudge, “You got anything else, boy? Because we got work to do.”

  The stiffness instantly slipped away from the detective’s body. Rudge’s smile grew wider. “Nothing for now, Mr. Brodie. But we’ll be back with a warrant, get a good look around here without having to disturb you.”

  He turned to Jenner, nodded at the car.

  Brodie said, “You’re welcome to look around all you want! But hell, yeah, you go get yourself a warrant! Let’s keep it nice and legal.”

  Now Brodie was smiling too. “Y’know, we got lawyers, too. We know that game. This is a working farm, we got shit to do, can’t be giving tours of the property all the time. So, you go ahead, you just show your probable cause to the state attorney. Tell you something, though: when you do, he’ll tell you you can kiss his fat white ass with your warrant.”

  The smile stopped. “Now get the fuck out of here, boy.”

  Rudge’s smile didn’t falter. “Well, Mr. Brodie…I guess we’ll come on back tomorrow, y’all! Y’hear?”

  As they walked back to the car, he called out, “I’m gonna need to see your associate’s carry permit and his state or federal ID.”

  As Brodie and Bentas watched, they climbed into the car.

  Jenner said, “Well, that went well!”

  Rudge’s smile was gone. “I’m going to ram that warrant so far up his ass I can play Whac-A-Mole with his tonsils.”

  “You think you’ll have a problem getting it?”

  Rudge started the car; he exhaled slowly. “Maybe. We’ll see. Don’t know who owns this spread, but like as not they play golf with the judge at the Polo Grounds.”

  They drove in silence, looping down the driveway, between the fields. As they passed the miniature barn on the way back up the drive, the door opened, and Jenner glimpsed a farmhand standing in a room filled with piglets, surrounded by wall-mounted shelves stacked high with red-and-white feed bags. The piglets poured around the man’s legs like bubbles, charging out to lose themselves in the mud.

  “Why did you ask about the carry permit?”

  “I didn’t like that guy. See his hand? On the base of his thumb, he’s got a pachuco cross tattoo—they say you get them for doing a rape, a murder, and an arson. The guy smells of gangs and the joint to me, and if he’s got a record—any felony, domestic violence, whatever—he shouldn’t have a permit.”

  Jenner looked out over the farm. Near the mangrove swamp, there was a large airboat tied to the dock, and next to it a shallow draft swamp boat. The Everglades stretched beyond the fields in an infinite green swath, shot through with glimmering gold threads as the water caught the setting sun.

  When they reached the gate, their path was blocked by a large white box truck. Rudge steered the Taurus onto the grass shoulder so the truck could pass; the truck had a logo Jenner couldn’t quite place, a pale blue globe with the letters CBM.

  As the truck inched past them, Jenner glanced back toward the main buildings. In front of the farmhouse, another man had joined Brodie and Bentas, tall and skinny, in a black cap; Bentas and the new man went to meet the truck but Brodie stayed on the porch, staring at the Taurus, talking on his cell phone. Even after they’d passed out of sight, even after they’d reached the highway, Jenner felt Brodie’s eyes still on them.

  CHAPTER 62

  It was past seven p.m. when Rudge dropped Jenner at the ME office. The main municipal building was brightly lit but the lab wing was dark.

  Jenner reached for the door handle, then turned to Rudge and said, “Hey, can I ask you something? When we were at the farms, did you get the feeling we were being watched? Not by the management, by the workers, I mean. I could swear one of the field hands made a phone call about us as we were leaving UFL.”

  Rudge nodded and grinned. “Actually, Jenner, the first call was made by the guy at the taqueria in Bel Arbre. No two ways about it: they’re watching us.”

  “The farm owners, you think?”

  “Unless they own the taco stand too, I’d say no: I’m thinking it’s the Mexicans.”

  “The same people who approached Adam Weiss?”

  “Maybe them, maybe bad guys—no way to know. It’s a tight community, and we’re sticking our dicks in it.” Rudge stretched. “Okay, Jenner, I gotta go write up my notes. See you tomorrow.”

  Jenner crossed the shadowy lobby and went down the hall into his office. The voice mail light blinked aggressively on his phone. He scanned his desk for the envelope, then stepped back into the hallway to check the mailboxes.

  Still no paycheck. Christ.

  He sat at his desk, punched in his code, and listened to his messages. There was a message from Anders’s receptionist Arlene, asking him to see the sheriff as soon as possible. She stressed that no matter what time he got back, the sheriff would be in, and that he wanted to see Jenner urgently.

  The last message was from Deb Putnam. She spoke softly and with an unforced warmth. She was following up—they’d talked about maybe getting dinner tonight. She’d called during the day, but he’d been out. She figured he might be too tired, but if he felt like it, he could give her a call when he got the message. She wasn’t doing much anyway, so if he wanted to hit Outback, they could do that, or maybe one of the fancier places down on the Promenade.

  He added her number to his call list, then hung up.

  He pulled out his cell. He hesitated for a second, then dialed Maggie Craine’s number.

  His call went straight to voice mail. After an instant of indecision, he said, “Hey, Maggie. It’s Jenner. It’s about seven thirty p.m., and I’m about to get off work. Wondered if you felt like getting a drink or something. I’ll catch up with you…Take care.”

  He hung up, feeling like a high school boy—regretting the call, regretting the message even more.

  Jenner left the gloom of the lab wing and crossed the glass-block passage into the main building. The walkway was brightly lit from outside; the glowing corridor of white light made him think of near-death experiences, and then of his own death. He grinned—he’d never been good at thinking abo
ut his own mortality.

  The door to Major Crimes was open, and seeing Rudge, Jenner stuck his head in.

  “Hey.”

  Rudge nodded grimly. Detective Bartley, a tanned man in a khaki suit, with brush-cut hair and a gold earring, was sitting on his desk near Rudge; he glanced at Jenner but said nothing. The two were looking at the TV.

  Jenner turned to see what Bartley and Rudge were watching so intently. He recognized the show instantly—the lurid red-white-and-blue graphics (truth, justice, and the American Way) would have been enough, even without the tawdry American Crime logo in the corner.

  Jenner was on TV.

  Of course. That was why Amanda Tucker had come herself rather than sending one of her winged monkeys—the horrible deaths of four men alone couldn’t have dragged her down to this godforsaken swamp. Marty Roburn and his wife, rotting gently in a drowned car for weeks? Also not enough.

  She’d come for Jenner.

  She’d come to play with him, come to carve him up again, pop out his limbs like some gluttonous king tearing apart a chicken, come to open him up and serve him to her public.

  He pulled up a desk chair and sat.

  American Crime had put together a biography of Jenner; they’d done their homework. Over the caption INQUISITOR PATHOLOGIST IN FL, the camera panned slowly across a photo of him in medical school, his mother and father applauding as he received the prize in physical diagnosis. Then a montage from the ensuing years—on Miami Beach, Jenner next to the body of a drowned swimmer. Video of Jenner in court, gesturing emphatically as he testified in a child abuse case. A Miami Herald photo of him standing next to a bullet-riddled car in Liberty City, the bloody body of a man dangling through the driver’s-side window.

  He watched it all, almost unable to hear. The location shifted to New York—a skyline shot of Manhattan, sliding down the West Side from the Empire State to the World Trade Center. Then the familiar 9/11 video—the planes hitting, the towers collapsing, the thousands of dust-covered workers fleeing in horror. Then Jenner’s photo from his New York ME ID card, the word QUIT in red block letters suddenly stamped across his face. His face was then replaced by head shots of the Inquisitor victims punching into the screen with a rat-a-tat rhythm. When they showed Joey Roggetti’s funeral, the detective’s flag-draped coffin surrounded by a welling ocean of blue serge dress uniforms lining the streets of Queens, Jenner could barely breathe.

  And then Ana de Jong. Ana. The New York Post telephoto shots of them on the sidewalk in front of his building, Jenner fully dressed, Ana in one of his sweatshirts, bare-legged in sneakers, up on tiptoe to kiss him. Then Jenner with his arm around her shoulder, lifting his coat to shield her from the photographer. Then grainy ambush video, slowed to a crawl, the two of them running down Crosby, fleeing the paparazzi. Jenner hadn’t seen that one before; it was from after he’d killed Ana’s tormentor, when he’d brought her home from the hospital.

  He watched the flow in silence, the images gushing through him. Amanda Tucker now, the return of the “creepy, creepy sexual opportunist” clip. Then Jenner, his New York State Physician Identification, the words LICENSE SUSPENDED forming onscreen. A map graphic showing southern Florida in orange, with Douglas County highlighted and a yellow star for Port Fontaine. The camera zoomed to the star, then cut to standard tourist footage of the town—beaches, the Promenade boutiques, a waterfront seafood restaurant.

  Then Marty and Bobbie Roburn, and an artist’s rendering of four men hanged in a jungle, then what looked like a yearbook photo of Adam Weiss, the images stacking into a neat pyramid on the screen, with Weiss at the top.

  Amanda Tucker in front of the municipal building, chatting with Tom Anders, walking the marble halls to his office. Anders in front of the huge bronze bust of his dad at the entrance to his office, talking about the investigations. Then in the sheriff’s office, Anders’s sweaty sheen an uncomfortable contrast to Amanda Tucker, cool and dry in her cream pants suit.

  Jenner stood. He didn’t need to see this.

  But he didn’t leave.

  Onscreen, Amanda was showing Anders their video biography of Jenner. She then asked the sheriff if he’d known that Jenner had lost his license in New York. Anders stressed that, though he was vaguely aware of Jenner’s involvement in the Inquisitor case, today was the first he’d learned of the suspension. The late medical examiner, Dr. Roburn, had recruited Jenner and had spoken extremely highly of Jenner’s skills.

  Amanda pushed it. “And now that you’re aware of these issues, will you be looking into Dr. Jenner’s qualifications? Have there been any problems with his performance?”

  Anders pursed his lips, then nodded, saying, “I would say that some of Dr. Jenner’s decisions have seemed questionable to me.”

  “And, Sheriff Anders, do you now feel that Dr. Jenner is…the ideal person to be investigating these killings? Particularly given that one of them is his former mentor, Dr. Roburn.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this, Amanda. My office will review his credentials, and if there’s anything that doesn’t meet Douglas County’s standards, appropriate actions will be taken.”

  “And what would you mean by ‘appropriate actions’?”

  “Well, today I’ve spoken with the Dade County medical examiner’s office in Miami; they’ve agreed to provide emergency coverage, should the need arise.”

  Amanda Tucker nodded, a look of firm approval on her face, said, “I see.”

  The outro clip was the slow motion video of Jenner and Ana running to the safety of his loft.

  And then they were in a commercial break, an earnest Vanessa Redgrave–lookalike urging Americans to invest in gold in a time of crisis.

  Rudge, with a long whistle, leaned back, then looked at him. “Hey, Jenner—maybe if you’re really extra-good this year, Santa will bring you the DVD…”

  Jenner, unsmiling, shook his head.

  “That all true?”

  Jenner stood. “What do you mean ‘true’? Yeah, that was me. Yes, I did those things. Yes, I was with the girl, and yes, she was an Inquisitor victim. But it wasn’t like I…you know, planned it or anything—it just happened. I was having a hard time, she was having a hard time, and it happened. And it’s all right now, she’s gone.”

  “And the cop? The detective? Roggetti, was it?”

  “What about him?”

  “What really happened?”

  “Just like it said in all the papers: the guy got the drop on us. He beat the crap out of me, killed Joey Roggetti, and cut up another detective real bad.”

  Rudge thought for a second, nodding.

  “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Well, I’m luckier than Joey,” Jenner said, forcing a fake grin.

  Rudge raised his hands in irritation. “Jesus, you gotta let that shit go. Roggetti was a cop, one of New York’s Finest. He knew the risks—we all know the risks, but we know the odds are in our favor, know what I’m saying? And sometimes it don’t work out, and we lose. But we do what we do because we believe in it. Roggetti died doing what he believed in. He protected and served, right? He’s a hero. And you killed the man who killed him, right? You tracked down that muthafucka and flat-out killed him dead. You did what had to be done for Roggetti, so in my book you’re a hero too.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t go around carrying this shit, Jenner—I saw you tense up when the funeral came on. Sooner or later you have to tell yourself: ‘It’s not my fault’…”

  Jenner said, “Look, I watched Joey die in front of me, watched him bleed out maybe four feet from where I was lying. That man beat me down, beat me so bad I couldn’t move—all I could do was watch my friend die. Joey died in my building, trying to help my girlfriend. So don’t tell me whose fault it is or…”

  “Dr. Jenner?” He turned to see Anders right behind him. “You and I need to have a little talk.”

  CHAPTER 63

  Deb Putnam sat on Jenner’s porch, stomach growling.

  Jenn
er had blown her off twice now, and normally, for her, one strike and a guy was out; she could afford to be picky. Coming to his motel was probably an awful idea, but Deb had been brought up to believe it was worse not to try than to fail.

  There was something different about Jenner; she’d recognized it the first time she saw him at the Visitor Center at the Glades. He was standing on the edge of the parking lot, ignoring the tourists swarming the gift shop, just watching the marsh. He didn’t take a single photograph, just looked out over the windswept plain of saw grass, taking it all in. Watching him, Deb had decided that Jenner understood the beauty and purity of the land to which she’d devoted her life.

  She grinned as she thought of him describing his trek out to the mahogany hammock in the dark, certain he was being hunted by gators. Her father would’ve liked Jenner. And, she figured, Jenner would’ve liked the old man, too.

  The sadness came back quietly. It had been horrible to watch her dad waste away; he never complained, but by the end, he’d clearly welcomed death. She remembered how afterward the silence had descended on her life like a fog, how the emptiness had trickled into the little home they’d shared. Some days, it felt like she’d tracked that emptiness into her new place, as if the old furniture she’d brought with her came with the sadness still attached.

  Jenner was new; she was grateful for that. She liked that, for him, her loss was something already in the past. When she’d told him about her dad, he’d offered no kneejerk pity, no rote condolences; he’d just been kind and sincere.

  And listened to her talk about snails.

  She smiled.

  If something happened, it happened. If not, Jenner was a decent guy, and there was no shame in trying for something more.

  She looked at Jenner’s weird dog again. It lay with its belly flat on the floor, its pointed snout resting on her foot by the water and food bowls.

  The handwriting on the envelope tacked to Jenner’s door was delicate and feminine. Deb was curious but too polite to snoop.