DEAD GONE a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by T. J. Brearton

  Tom changed into a second set of clothes he’d brought, using the bathroom at the morgue. When he left, he swung the Jeep past the building’s dumpster, took the clothes he’d had on, and threw them in the garbage.

  It was time to tell the world about Carrie Anne Gallo.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bob Mandi was a big man with a round stomach. He shook Tom’s hand gruffly then bent over his phone. Apparently he was the type of person who left the button tones active — they bleeped and chimed as he pecked at the keys. Perhaps more importantly, Mandi worked beneath the attorney general and was able to prosecute crimes that impacted two or more judicial circuits.

  They had gathered in the antechamber to the press conference room along with a police-media liaison and ADA Heather Kibble, who had little to do now the case had gone multi-jurisdictional. There was an excitement surrounding the broadening scope of the investigation.

  Blythe spoke. “Agent Lange contacted a co-worker of the victim through NamUs. Lange then met the woman at her place of employment — a strip club called Hush, in Tampa. You have that information. Lange tells me he has learned some new things since we spoke earlier. Lange?”

  Tom cleared his throat. He went through the DMV information and social media. They now had Carrie’s maiden name.

  “Well done.” Mandi put away his phone.

  Tom stressed the importance of the apartment and vehicle search. He could feel Blythe watching him.

  Mandi looked at Blythe. “You want me to reach out to Tampa, get them ready, or did you already talk to them?”

  “We made the call, but a follow up from you would help.” She cut a quick look at Tom after she said it.

  Mandi nodded and addressed both agents. “Let’s talk to everyone. All the strippers, bartenders, this guy Bosco. Tampa can really help you there, get all the statements. Where are we with the victim’s family? And what about a formal ID?”

  “We have witness identification of the victim,” Blythe said. “Forensics is almost there. I’ve spoken to the decedent’s mother, explained that due to the investigation, the press conference was urgent.”

  The police-media liaison made some notes, and showed them to Mandi, who nodded. Then they all shuffled into the conference room.

  The large room bristled with cameras and outstretched microphones. There was a mult-box feeding more mikes at the podium for the bigger broadcast channels.

  The press spent the first part of the conference focused on the relationship between the law enforcement bodies. The state typically worked big cases, often involving the investigation of other law enforcement. A recent FDLE audit of the Clearwater Police Department was still in the news. The Rookery Bay case was a bit outside the norm, and the press had a lot of questions about the state bureau working with Everglades County. They were used to the FDLE being involved in malfeasance investigations, fraud, missing guns — not dead bodies.

  Mandi worked the media with aplomb, deftly avoiding any controversies and sticking to the facts. He reminded them that the state bureau had a violent crimes division.

  Tom stood off to the side with Blythe, neither of them required to say anything.

  “The state has taken this case due to its jurisdictional nature,” Mandi said. “The Everglades County Sheriff’s Office is working with the FDLE in a fully cooperative manner.”

  “Weren’t there state agents present at the scene yesterday morning?”

  Several sets of eyes and a few cameras turned to Tom and Blythe.

  “Yes,” Mandi said. “As the estuary is partly state run, the FDLE has had a presence since the beginning.”

  “Do the police have any suspects?”

  “We have several promising leads. We’re urging anyone who knew the victim, Carrie Hobson, to come forward.”

  Mandi offered the hotline number and Tom glanced at the picture of Carrie. It was a blow-up of her driver’s license photo. In it, she smiled brightly, her eyes vivacious. She might not have been as conventionally beautiful as the other exotic dancers she worked with, but she was certainly alluring. Tom thought Nick would call her “the girl next door.”

  * * *

  After the press conference, Blythe surprised Tom by inviting him for dinner to catch up with how things were going. She told him which restaurant to meet at and they both went home to change.

  At home, Tom looked in his closet and all he could find was a flower-print shirt hanging from the rack. A gift from Nick. He hadn’t done a wash in weeks and dirty laundry was heaped on the closet floor. He sniffed the shirt to make sure it didn’t reek of the morgue. It smelled like a department store, good enough, so he pulled it on and stepped into a pair of jeans then looked at himself in the mirror. Hey, it wasn’t a date.

  Near where 41 changed from east–west and elbowed to run north–south was a collection of touristy restaurants and a mall called “Tin City” along Naples Bay. It was a tourist trap filled with shops selling bric-a-brac — seashell necklaces, wall art with phrases like Since I Retired Every Hour is Happy Hour — couched in a working-class, seaside aesthetic. It was also the mini-mall that housed his brother’s realty office, Lange Real Estate.

  Tom parked the Jeep and walked around inside the mall, stopping at Nick’s office, which was closed up for the day. The glass front featured a monitor displaying properties. Toward the end of the slide-show was a picture of Nick grinning hammily. Seeing his brother stirred regret. Nick’s plight had been bothering him all day, interfering with his concentration.

  He left the mall and headed for the Dockside Restaurant at the far end of the complex. His timing was good. Blythe was talking to the hostess. They greeted each other and were shown to a table beside the wharf.

  Blythe ordered crab and Tom got the sea scallop special. They waited for their food, each nursing a drink — Tom a beer and Blythe a vodka gimlet. It was like they needed the food before they could break the ice and start talking, so they watched as boats moored in the harbor bobbed in the black water.

  On the other side of 41 from Tin City was the Bayfront Inn and Condominiums. You could cross from Tin City to the condos via an underpass alongside a creek flowing from Naples Bay. Thick, concrete bridge supports were stained rust-colored from high tide. The tide was low now, water purling over the rocks.

  Blythe finally spoke. “Nice shirt.”

  “Please. I need a housekeeper.”

  When the food came, she got down to business. “Good job today.”

  He didn’t know exactly what she was referring to — maybe how he’d been with Bob Mandi — but he didn’t fish for more compliments.

  She cracked open a crab leg and suckled the meat. “So, what are you thinking?”

  He liked this version of Blythe. “I think Carrie Hobson was nobody remarkable. And I don’t mean that as a character judgment, but maybe it was part of the killer’s motive.”

  Blythe nodded, but said, “Her family thinks she’s someone remarkable. Her mother is Eileen Gallo. She’s in Idaho, and she’s trying to get a flight down. Maybe tomorrow, maybe Thursday we’ll have her do the formal ID on the body. The two sisters I haven’t been able to track down yet. But we know they’re far-flung. One in New York, one in California.”

  “What about the father?”

  “Deceased. She alluded to cancer.”

  Tom got back on track. “Of course she meant something to her family. I meant that as a cultural characteristic, Carrie being unremarkable. As something her killer thought about her. Maybe why her killer chose her.”

  “You don’t think a stripper is remarkable?”

  “She was a dancer who didn’t make it big. Kind of a cliché, really. She became a stripper out of necessity.”

  “She has a family, an ex-husband.”

  “Right. She’s not completely isolated. That’s kind of hard, this day and age, to be a total loner. But even among the dancers at Hush, she’s the one who you kind of pass over . . .” He gave Blythe a quick look, catching himself in a
possibly sexist or objectifying remark, but she was listening impassively.

  “I think . . .” He paused, looking out at the harbor. “I think that maybe the killer feels that way, too.”

  “Feels invisible?”

  “Maybe passed over. Under-recognized. Unappreciated.”

  “You’re making a leap here . . .”

  “Maybe. I’m thinking of someone in a visible position who feels inadequate, even rejected. Someone with something to prove. Or maybe that’s my years-sitting-at-a-desk-in-school talking.”

  “Touché.” She smiled lightly, and he felt his skin flush. “But you do realize it sounds like you could be describing yourself.”

  She’d hit a soft spot, but she wasn’t insinuating he’d had anything to do with Carrie’s death, only that his profile could describe a lot of people. It still threw him off guard and he tried cheap humor. “Yeah, well, you think I’m good shit — it can’t be me who’s the killer. I’ve got my high praise.” He took a showy swig of his beer and grinned at her.

  Blythe laughed. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh in two days. A throaty laugh, genuine, contagious. Somehow she’d found him funny.

  “You’ve been talking to Director Turnbull,” she said after a moment.

  “No, I can just sense it.” He cut his eyes back to her and found her smiling. Damn she was attractive. “Do you even have a first name?”

  “I do. It’s Lauren.”

  “Hi Lauren, I’m Tom.”

  He stuck out his hand. She took it, smiling, then she looked away. No wedding ring on Blythe’s finger. He wondered if she’d ever been married, if she was in a relationship now. If anyone had ever hurt her.

  A thought struck him. “What if our guy never had sex with her? Ward hemmed and hawed about post-mortem modifications, but he would’ve seen something by now. The colposcopy shows nothing. And I’m sure you’ve seen the email from the lab, initial sampling is negative for semen, negative for any trace evidence, really.”

  “She was in the water a long time.”

  “You’re right. She was. I’m just playing out a theory. That maybe it wasn’t about possessing her, or being with her. Maybe it wasn’t about sex. I mean, it could be, in the broader context — lust of the eyes, love of the world, that sort of thing — it could be a statement. But without the act as part of the crime.”

  “Are you going biblical on me, Agent Lange?”

  His foster family had been religious. “‘For everything in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world.’ First John, 2:16.”

  She watched him a moment, the subtle smile still on her lips. “Maybe it’s not about obsession at all.” Then she wiped her mouth, set her napkin aside and grew serious. “Alright. I’m going to let you in on something. I’ve been talking to Sergeant Danny Coburn, vice narcotics.”

  “With Everglades County?”

  Blythe nodded.

  “They think this is drug-related?” He’d certainly considered it, but for him, it hadn’t fit. For one thing, Naples wasn’t really a strategic point for drug trafficking. True, Everglades City, further southeast, was once a major smuggling point. Weed, coke, brought in by boats, was then hauled up I-75 and into Tampa. I-75 passed through Naples, but Naples was nowhere near the market Tampa was. And Everglades City had been hammered by the DEA and the Sheriff’s Office.

  Still, it was possible.

  And maybe this explained why she’d been so scarce lately. She’d been in talks with vice narcotics. From what Tom knew about the VNB, they set their own rules. They wore street clothes, drove unmarked vehicles, spent months building cases.

  “They’re interested. But they’re real tight-lipped about what they’re working on. They don’t want to educate anyone.”

  Tom understood. The narcotics guys didn’t even like to talk to other cops about what they were doing. And in certain cases, they were legally prevented from it.

  Blythe said, “They busted this guy in Immokalee last week buying a nine-piece. Had the interdiction officers pull him over, and, you know how it is — they act like they don’t know anything, like it’s a random stop so the bad guys don’t know how far up their asses the VNB has actually gotten. And the vice guys hang back, stay out of sight.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “They didn’t say where it led, but Sergeant Coburn, Coby, called me today and asked me some questions about our vic.”

  “That’s it? Just some questions?”

  “We opened a dialog.”

  “I’m sure they wanted to know why we took it over, right? I mean, as long as jurisdictions are willing and able to cooperate, we’re not really needed. Just like Everglades vice narcotics works with Tampa vice narcotics, and they don’t need us to hold anyone’s hand.”

  She picked up her drink, looking into it, and didn’t answer.

  “I mean, it went to County CID, then we hopped on and took it over. I already heard the answer that it’s a state preserve, but I think we both know County could have handled it. Why did Turnbull step in, get us involved?”

  She pushed her plate aside, the meal finished, then turned and looked out at the harbor, sucking at something in her teeth. “Turnbull is . . . well, you’ve met him. He’s taciturn. He might talk for five minutes but not tell you anything. There’s always changes in administration, and what we do, you know, what we cover, it’s not static.”

  Tom sat back, thinking Blythe had just given him her own taciturn, non-answer. When the waiter came around, he ordered another beer. Blythe abstained, and he got the sense that the conversation was winding down.

  He got back to the victim. “Hopefully we’ll find something at Carrie’s apartment. And we’ll talk to the ex-husband. I’m just glad the autopsy part is over.”

  He looked at her, hoping maybe she’d pick up on his cue and say something more about why he’d spent so much of the past two days with the body. But it had already proven to be time well spent, and given them the evidence to proceed with Carrie’s death as a homicide. Blythe said no more about it.

  The waiter returned with his drink and cleared their plates, asked if they wanted anything else, and Blythe requested the check.

  They made a bit of small talk about the boats in the harbor, and then Blythe excused herself for the evening. Tom was relieved. It had been a good talk, but he had more to do. The night was calling.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He swung past Nick’s place first, but his brother wasn’t home. He sat outside the dark house, thinking about Nick and Alicia. Pushing them aside wasn’t getting rid of the nagging sense that his help was needed.

  He called Alicia. She answered right away. “Hi, Tom. I was just thinking about you.”

  She sounded sleepy. Maybe even a little drunk. He wondered where Gwen was, and hoped she was okay.

  “Oh yeah? What were you thinking about?”

  “Just how it’s nice to have a guy like you around.”

  Yeah, definitely sauced, her tone flirtatious.

  “I’m glad you feel that way.”

  She laughed, and said, “Plus, you’re cute. You know you’re cute, right? Well, not cute. A lotta guys are cute. You’ve got that former-high-school-jock thing going on. Were you a high school jock, Agent Lange? I don’t think so. I think you were quiet and shy.”

  “Alicia, are you alright? How’s Gwenny?”

  “She’s fine, Tom. We’re fine.”

  A heavy silence developed. Tom figured he needed to come right to the point. “Alicia, I think you’re scared. I can understand that. But I think if you meet this thing head on—”

  “Jack is nice,” she interrupted. “He took us to the pool. You have a great pool over there . . .”

  “Alicia, did Josh call you last night?”

  There was a long pause. When she spoke again she sounded a bit more together. A bit colder, too. “Tom, I’m really sorry for what I did. I shouldn’t have
gotten you involved. I’ll leave you alone now.”

  “Alicia, that’s not what I want. I want to help you.”

  “You want to help me? The best thing you could do for me is forget you ever met me.”

  “I can’t do that. I want to help, but . . . I don’t know the right thing. Have you seen Josh since you were at my place?”

  She was silent for so long he wondered if she’d hung up. When she finally spoke, he could barely hear her. “Yeah. I saw him.”

  The quality of her voice — everything was clear to Tom. “What did he do?” His voice was rising. “Alicia? What did he do?”

  “It’s best to just let it go.” She was crying now. “Goodbye, Tom.”

  “Alicia? Hello?”

  She was gone.

  * * *

  Tom found Josh McDermott’s address in the Yellow Pages, and ten minutes later he turned the Jeep down an unlit road. He drove until he found a plant nursery, several vehicles parked around the yard. In the darkness he could just make out Four Palms Landscaping on the sides of two vans.

  He slowed almost to a stop, looking down rows of potted ferns, baby palms and thin pines ready for planting. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. He got out with his flashlight and checked the premises. The humidity was thick, the air moving with tiny insects, crickets singing.

  After a little walking around, Tom found a single-story house behind the plant nursery, the windows dark.

  All manner of junk was piled around the house — hubcaps and busted tables, discarded boxes, a jet ski converted into a four-wheeler, large empty planters and bags of potting soil and mulch. McDermott’s pickup was nowhere in sight. The man was not home.

  Tom circled the house. More stuff out back — pallets piled up, stacks of sod, an old boat on a rack, half the paint scraped off. Tom had to push through the undergrowth to get around to the front of the house. By the time he did, the anger was flowing, the sweat coursing down. He stood there for a moment, mosquitos circling, and decided it was time for a drink.