by Tom Lowe
I said nothing.
Dan looked towards the coroner’s van. “Can’t believe she’s gone…” He paused to compose himself. “I was just talking with her earlier. She told me a joke she heard on talk radio. She filled me in on the questioning of the mother in Tampa. She told me about your trip to Jacksonville, and the Miami connection, this guy called Santana who may have put out a hit on club owner Tony Martin.” He exhaled pent up air. “Who’d do this, Sean? Hit Leslie? Why? The perp didn’t even take the time or initiative to make it look like a forced burglary. Nothing seems out of place.”
“Any idea what caliber of bullet?”
“Not yet.”
“See if it matches ballistics in the shooting of club owner Tony Martin. Who reported Leslie’s death?”
“A neighbor. Man two doors down. Out walking his dog. Said he saw a jogger running down the road—”
“And?”
“Jogger had slipped on a sprinkler head. The neighbor tried to see if he was okay but the jogger just took off running. Neighbor walked his dog a littler farther. When he came to Leslie’s house, he noticed that the light was on in her car. He was worried that the car battery would be dead in the morning, so he went up to Leslie’s door. He said when no one came to the door, he stuck his head in and called Leslie. Saw the body in the foyer.”
“Where’s this neighbor?”
Dan pointed toward an elderly man standing behind the yellow tape with two dozen other onlookers. I approached him. “I understand you saw a man, a jogger, leaving the area.”
He pushed black-frame glasses up on his nose. “Yes, sir, he took off running after he tripped on a sprinkler head.”
“Were you watering your lawn?”
“Leslie’s yard. She has the sprinklers come on the same time every night in the summer, eight o’clock sharp. I felt bad for the feller. He took a nasty spill. Hit the grass and the sidewalk. Had to hurt like the dickens. He comes up all wet, probably grass in his mouth, and he starts running.”
“Running or jogging?”
“He was running. Coming around third and heading for home.”
“Could you identify him?”
“Not his face.” He nodded toward a utility pole. “That street lamp isn’t working. Told the county about it. They can’t be bothered. Meantime, poor Leslie is killed.”
“You said, not his face. Can you identify anything else? His build? Clothes?”
“I’d just started walking my dog toward Leslie’s when I saw a man running, trip and fall. The sound was like what I’d hear when I used to play football. This jogger had just taken a fall right near the sidewalk towards the front of Leslie’s yard.”
“Can you show me where?”
“Sure,” he said, walking to the sidewalk. “Right there.” He pointed to a spot with a few pieces of grass blades on the concrete. “The jogger tripped on the irrigation head. He was running across Leslie’s yard. Looks like he got a good soakin’ before he could run off. For a jogger, he dressed a little funny. Had a hooded sweatshirt. Didn’t have the hood on his head, but as he ran the opposite direction from me, I could see it bouncing around his shoulders. You know how a woman’s ponytail bounces?”
I knelt down and looked at the sidewalk. “Are you on county water out here?”
He laughed. “Hell no. We’re on well water. I spend a lot of my pension just putting salt and chemicals in the tanks to keep the rust outta the water.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that all? Think the jogger did it?”
Dan said, “Thank you, Mr. Boone. We’ll probably talk with you again.”
I walked toward the house with Dan and said, “Put the tape up immediately around the spot where he tripped and fell. Keep people off the sidewalk!”
“Okay.” Dan turned to a uniform and ordered the crime scene tape around the sidewalk. Then he turned to me. “I wish I could let you in Leslie’s house to go over the place. Slater’s in there. Probably wouldn’t appreciate my inviting you in.”
“Maybe I’ll just go in, crash his party.”
“He’ll have you thrown in jail.”
“He’s done it before.”
“Yeah, but why play his game? He’ll mess up, and when he does, we’ll be there.”
“Because the bodies keep piling up. As a cop, Slater has the perfect alibi, the perfect cover, and the perfect opportunity to take people out. Even cops.”
“He’s coming out of the house right now. Maybe you ought to go back home. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Can’t do it on this watch,” I said, walking up to Leslie’s house.
FIFTY-SIX
I saw a TV news reporter and his cameraman slip under the crime scene tape.
Dan said, “O’Brien! Wait a damn minute!”
It was too late for Dan to pull me back or have an officer tackle me. Slater saw me coming. There was a mixture of nervousness and contrived arrogance in his eyes.
“What are you doing here, O’Brien? Might have known you’d be here. Anytime there’s a body, there’s O’Brien. Now why’s that?”
“I know you killed her.”
“I’m having you committed. We’ll Baker Act you for your own protection.”
“How is it investigating your own crime, Slater? Which do you like best, the killing part or coming back as the actor, acting like you’re investigating a crime when you’re covering up one? Doing your best to make it a cold case.”
The pupils in his eyes became tiny enraged dots.
“Fuck you!” He raised his right hand, and I grabbed his wrist, turning his hand over, exposing a fresh scrape on his palm. The portable lights from a TV news crew turned on, freezing an image of Slater while I gripped his wrist. He drew back his left fist to connect just above my eye. I felt my skin split and the blood flow.
Two uniforms pulled me back. A reporter yelled, “Get a close up!”
“Get them back behind the tape!” Slater bellowed. “This is a crime scene!”
Dan ran up. “All right, gentlemen, behind the line, you know the rules.”
“What’s the argument about?” asked a reporter holding a microphone.
“Just a little misunderstanding in the middle of a crime scene investigation. The gentleman was overcome with grief and struck out at Detective Slater. I’m sure there is nothing intentional. Emotions are a little frayed at a time like this.”
Dan was good. He turned toward Slater, the cameras still rolling and said, “I’m sure if the gentleman volunteers to leave the property peacefully, we won’t have a need to file charges under these trying circumstances. Don’t you agree Detective Slater?”
Slater didn’t know how to react, his mouth opening, trying to form the right words. He said, “Yeah, I’m sure it was just an overreaction, but this is one reason why we can’t allow anyone to cross into a working crime scene.”
“How was the victim killed?” asked another reporter.
Slater stepped closer toward the TV camera. His composure regained. “This has been one of the toughest nights in my life. We’ve lost one of the finest members of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department…”
Dan motioned for me to follow him to one side. Under the seclusion of a tall tree he said, “That was so dumb! What were you trying to prove? You take a swing at the chief of fucking detectives while TV news crews are camped out to record it. And I know you saw them coming!”
“Let’s hope they got their close ups.”
“What are you saying? You know, Leslie had her doubts about you. At first, she didn’t know if you were really good or just plain lucky. She felt you were good. Maybe the best. Why’d you go off like a nut? Slater can have you committed, and he can get a court order tonight. This the kinda shit you did at Miami PD?”
I looked at my watch. “Call your office and record the 11:00 news. You have twenty minutes.”
“Why?”
“I want to see if they got a close-up of Slater’s hand.”
“Why?
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“Because it was scraped and bloody, just like he slid into home plate.”
“You saw it?”
“Yes, and if the cameras saw it, you have visible proof.”
“A scrape on the palm of his hand won’t get a conviction.”
“It will if you can get some skin samples off the sidewalk. The sprinklers didn’t hit the sidewalk. A tiny sample might be still there. Right where the old man pointed.”
“Maybe.”
“Use sheets of clear adhesive plastic to lift anything if something’s there. Bring in klieg lights and shine them at a low angle across the sidewalk. Look for fibers, grass, blood, anything. Find the hooded sweatshirt he wore. Analyze it for the grass and water stains. Do a chemical analysis on the grass. Her yard is St. Augustine. The grass leaves a distinct stain. The well water will be like nature’s fingerprint swirling with good stuff like iron and sulfur. Take a sample from Leslie’s well. Compare that with what’s in Slater’s sweatshirt. If the stuff matches, book the bastard, Dan.”
I started toward the Jeep.
Dan said, “Sean, wait a sec.” I turned to face him. “Leslie was right about you.”
“He’s not convicted yet. And he’s not in this alone. Find that sweatshirt. Get a court order, knock down his door, do whatever it takes. Find it tonight while he’s here.”
“Where you going?”
“To be with a friend.”
* * *
I sat with Max on my screened porch and watched the fireflies play tag in the dark down by the river. Heat lighting danced in the sky. I stretched out in my rocking chair, my feet up on the cypress table, Max curled in my lap. The cicadas and the crickets seemed to alternate their chanting. A bullfrog droned across the river.
I sipped three fingers’ worth of Jameson over ice and thought about Leslie, thought about the last thing she’d said to me, Let’s find a place where there are a lot of tropical flowers, turquoise sea and gentle people with genuine smiles. My chest felt like a vice was compressing it.
The temperature started dropping, and the wind picked up, pushing the air across the river. I could smell rain coming. I scratched Max behind her ears. She didn’t even open her eyes. “Max, let’s go to bed.”
I finished the Irish whiskey, picked up Max, and started for the bedroom. As I walked past Sherri’s framed picture, I stopped, my eyes falling on hers. “Goodnight,” I said. Max licked my chin, and we went to bed.
I lay there in the dark for more than an hour, the events of the day played back in my mind, scenes in slow-motion, intercut with my own public service messages of how I could have prevented Leslie’s death.
Max sensed my restlessness. She inched up beside me and laid her head on my chest. I rubbed her neck for a few minutes, my eyes heavy, my mind drifting to the sea. Then darkness descended like a high tide at midnight and carried everything away.
They had no faces. I felt myself reaching out to catch one. All I wanted to do was get my hands around a neck. They were dark figures at the foot of the bed. Faceless apparitions. Standing, staring, appearing somewhere between the threshold of madness and dreams.
In the white flash of a lighting bolt, I sat straight up in the bed. I tossed the sheet off, sweat dripping through my chest hair and down my sides. My heart pounded, and my lungs seemed to ache for more air than what the bedroom could provide. Distant thunder rumbled downriver. Through the windows, I could see the live oaks swaying in the wind.
Max stuck her head up like a prairie dog coming out of her den. She looked at me through sleepy eyes, her tail wagging. She crawled in my lap and licked my hand. She made one of her yawns that seemed to whinny at the same instant.
“Want some fresh air, Max?”
I opened my back door to the porch and stepped out into the night air. It was after 3:00 A.M. Standing on my front porch, I thought about Joe Billie and the native people that once populated the river basin. Maybe some of my night stalkers were spirits of these long-forgotten people. Maybe they were angry that I was here. I couldn’t fault them. After we annihilated their race, they had a right to be pissed off.
A cool breeze brought the promise of rain and the scent of blooming night jasmine. Within a minute, the first large drops began plopping, almost one at a time, on the tin roof. They were soft tears from heaven, and then the gentle weeping turned into frenzied sobbing.
Thunder hit on top of us with the percussion of mortars, lightning slicing through the black sky striking a large oak at the river’s edge. The light was a searing explosion of white heat, shearing a thick limb in a split-second freeze frame of rain and raging wind.
The air smelled of sulfur, burnt oak, and wet Spanish moss. I sat down in the porch rocker and put Max on my lap. Within a few minutes she fell asleep. I listened to the rhythm of rain beating the tin roof, the palm fronds scraping the screened porch, and the frogs singing in chorus of thousands. Long rolls of thunder seemed far away now.
The storm passed, and the night shadows became gray ghosts that faded into trees in the dawn of morning light. A mist rose from the river’s surface. Soon the sun, like a glowing red coal, cleared the tree line and backlit the mist. The light painted the river in red brushstrokes, steam rising, slowly twirling as if ruddy spirits were slow-dancing across a watery stage.
The reclusive dream weaver finally came. I was a young boy again walking through an orange grove on our farm. I stood on my tiptoes to pick one of the ripe oranges. I jumped and snatched the orange like a shortstop grabbing a fly ball barehanded. With my pocketknife, I sliced the orange in half. The juice dripped down my hands and wrists. The sun was warm on my face. I bit into the orange, and the sweet liquid quenched a thirst deep in the back of my throat.
FIFTY-SEVEN
The next morning I left the house early. I was beginning to feel very guilty about handing off little Max to my kind neighbors. First, I felt like I was taking advantage of their generosity, even though they insisted I wasn’t, and secondly, Max genuinely seemed sad when I left her.
I thought about that glancing in my rearview mirror on my way to SunState Farms, and realized I was being followed.
The driver was good. I hit my brakes for five seconds, and my pursuer or pursuers backed way off, almost out of sight. I sped up. The car followed, then it made an abrupt turn off the road, vanishing on a country road. He or she knew I had made them.
I slowed down, less than twenty miles per hour and watched my rearview mirror. Nothing. No pursuit. Only the flat topography of the rolling Florida landscapes.
I turned off the state road and began driving down a country road. The land was a mix of cattle pasture, scrub oak, and lakes. As I rounded a curve, I slammed on the brakes. A farmer drove a tractor at a speed of less than ten miles and hour. It was an old John Deere green tractor, puffing diesel fumes and taking up most of the lane.
I checked my rearview mirror, pulling out into the passing lane, I noticed a car far off in the distance. It was the same car that had been tailing me. Nobody was that good.
I passed the farmer and brought the Jeep up to more than ninety miles an hour. I wanted to put a lot of real estate between the posse and me. I swerved off the paved road and took a bouncy ride down a dirt road. I intentionally kicked up dust. Come get me, assholes! I found a wooded area, parked the Jeep, left the motor running, and ran to wait behind the natural cover.
The dark blue Ford sedan rolled quietly down the road. They were in no hurry, and I knew why. There was nowhere I could run where they wouldn’t find me. I knew they’d been tracking me by satellite.
There were two people in the car. A man and a woman. The man drove slowly, and I could see the woman pointing toward my Jeep. As they stopped, I chambered a round in my Glock and waited. Less than fifty feet from my Jeep they got out of the car. Both of them had drawn their weapons. The man approached the Jeep from the driver’s side. The woman covered him.
I crouched behind the palmettos, lifted my cell phone, and started recording video.
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“Out of the car!” ordered the man, pointing the pistol directly into the empty passenger seat. “He’s not here!” he said, about to turn my way.
“I have a gun aimed at the back of your head!” I yelled. “Drop your weapons! Turn around slowly!” They hesitated. “You’ve got two seconds! One of you will have a bullet in your leg. Drop the guns and hold your hands in the air.” They both did as ordered and turned to face me.
The man was mid thirties. Teeth gnashing. Disbelieving face that looked pained. He sported government-issued attitude and a crew cut. The woman was striking, even from a distance. Brunette. Nice legs. Hair pinned up. Eyes testing. I recognized her.
The man said, “You just committed a felony.”
“And I may commit a few more.”
“You drew a gun on federal agents,” he said. “You could be spending the next twenty years of your life in a federal prison.”
“You look more like a travel agent than a federal agent.”
He started to lower his hand. “Hold ‘em high, pal, and let’s get something straight real fast. You and your girlfriend drew on me first. Got it all right here on cell phone video. The video these phones record is good enough to use on TV news. I have a permit to carry this gun. I’m holding you at bay in self-defense.”
I touched a nerve in the woman. She spoke up. “I’m not his ‘girlfriend.’ I’m FBI Special Agent Lauren Miles, and this is Special Agent Mark Helmer. We didn’t come here to harm or arrest you, Mr. O’Brien.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“My apologies. We actually wanted to talk with you.”
“There are simpler ways than using GPS tracking to stalk me. Maybe at Quantico they didn’t teach you to use the telephone. I’m sure you have my number. I know you visited my boat and my marina friends. If there is anything you needed to know about me that you don’t already know, Special Agent Miles, all you had to do was ask, especially after I fed your bug to the crabs.”
“Would you please lower your gun and your voice?” she asked.
“Show me some ID.” I approached them. They produced their federal IDs, and I shoved the Glock behind my belt.
