Hawk Channel Chase

by Tom Corcoran

  “No, but…”

  “What,” she said, as a statement of fact. She apparently didn’t have the energy to make it a question.

  “My name is Alex Rutledge,” I said. “I live here in town and I’m here to ask a non-sexual favor for which I would be willing to shell out some cash.”

  “First things first,” she mumbled. “Why not sexual?”

  “You’re not a hooker and I don’t buy fucks.”

  “Good answer. My name is Barb. Do I smell bad?”

  Bad is the smell of death, I thought. “No, Barb, you don’t.”

  “So what are you buying?” she said. “You mind if I sit down?” Without waiting for my answer she slid down the door jamb and plopped her butt on the floor, stuck her legs straight out. The whoosh of wind gave lie to my last statement.

  I said, “You and your friends were taking pictures on the beach last night…”

  “Whoa, that sounds sexy to me. Or pervy. We were flashing our twins and buns.”

  “I was sitting with two men at a table in the outside bar. I’d like to see if one of your snapshots showed their faces.”

  Barb burped. “Very mysterious.”

  I feared that her next burp might come up in Technicolor.

  “A little mysterious,” I said. “One wants to sell me his boat, but I think he’s a boat thief.”

  “His price is too good to be true? My dad used to sell boats in Milwaukee. Your name again?”

  “Alex.”

  She sized me up, calculating her next move. “I smell, don’t I?”

  “If you really must know…”

  “They’re all at the Hog’s Breath or Captain Tony’s, and Patsy’s got her camera with her,” said Barb. “But she might have moved her pictures onto her Vaio. Please help me up. I still have shame left in my conscience. You’re going to have to wait two minutes while I shower.”

  The room looked as if a small waterspout had come ashore and had its way with a dozen duffels and bags. Again, no big deal, the nudity. She dropped the robe, grabbed a hairbrush from the top of the television and plodded to the bathroom. Below her chin, a pleasant figure, the start of a beer belly, not a hair on her body.

  I appreciated her graciousness in washing up. She came out in less than a minute wrapped in a towel, soap-scented, her walk an uncertain hula, her ample bottom two-thirds exposed. She went straight to the laptop on the small desk, pulled a chair close, turned on the computer.

  “You just want to see it, right?” she said. “I don’t have a blank CD to burn.”

  “I’ve got a jump drive in my pocket.”

  Barb quickly found a photo file dated only six hours earlier. “We might be in luck,” she said. She launched a Picture Manager utility that sequenced the photos forward in time, starting with several in another room and the adjacent hallway, a faux strip show from one of them, two others mooning the camera. “That’s what my ass looked like when it was drunk two days ago,” she said.

  “Better than some girls’ faces,” I said.

  “You’re so kind.” She scrolled onward, skin and smiles, go cups and attitudes. If photographs still cost what I used to pay for film and developing, the women probably couldn’t have paid their hotel bill. She finally found a series that went from outside Sloppy Joe’s, then inside the Pier House restaurant, then their beachside song and dance routine. “There’s you,” she said. “Sitting in the shadows, gawking at Patsy’s little bitty titties. That’s not good of the other men, but… There.” She stopped the photo sequence. “You’ve got those two other men and four ta-tas, including my chubby babies.”

  Sure enough, the faces of Copeland Cormier and Ricky Stinson had been caught straight on by the camera flash.

  “It’s Alex, right?” said Barb. “You said you’d be willing to… what did you say, shell out cash?”

  I pulled the tiny flash drive out of my pocket. “Yes, I said that.”

  “I will make you a deal. I will copy this picture to your thumb device if you buy me a food delivery and a six-pack of Cokes from the best deli in town.”

  I handed her the small drive, picked up the phone, dialed 9, then the number I had memorized for Damn Good Food To Go. The place was great and only three hundred yards away. I ordered a turkey melt with American cheese on sourdough, macaroni salad, a fresh fruit cup, chicken noodle soup, a large café con leche and the Cokes. I hung up, took forty bucks from my wallet, put it next to the phone.

  Barb had copied the photo for me. She also had zoomed on the picture, blown up Ricky Stinson’s face to fill the monitor.

  “It’s photo number DSC-3031,” she said. “Is this guy your boat thief?”

  “That’s him.”

  “I never would’ve remembered it happening.”

  “It?” I said.

  “He came to the door this morning, I don’t know how early. We were still passed out, except I’d gotten up to barf for the third or fourth time. I cracked the door and he offered to buy our cameras for five hundred bucks. I figured he was a nut case, so I closed the door in his face, hooked the chain and went back to bed.”

  Stinson with something to hide. My gig as a private eye might be a washout, but my instincts still were tight.

  Barb looked at my expression. “Why the look?”

  “Please believe me,” I said. “Except for your friends or a Russian kid waving bags of food, don’t open that door again, okay?”

  Barb leaned forward to study Stinson’s face. “He’s worse than a boat thief, eh?”

  I told myself it was rational caution, not blatant fear, that had me pacing the Pier House lot in search of Porsche Cayennes. Either way, it was pissing up a tree. If I found one, even if I was sure it was Catherman’s, I wouldn’t learn a damned thing.

  The lot, given its proximity to Lower Duval’s standard battle of the bands, was oddly quiet. The walk offered me a pause to think ahead so I might, for the next few hours, act instead of react.

  My first stop would be Carmen’s cottage. Her yard was the safest place that I could park my Triumph overnight, and she needed to know about or be comforted regarding the second neighborhood murder and Russell Hernandez’s arrest.

  The city had posted a uniformed officer at the lane’s entrance. I was asked to show photo ID and to remove my helmet for visual verification to ride past my own home. Carmen did not come out to her back porch to greet me. I assumed correctly that comfort was required. Carmen was in a massive funk. Beth Watkins had visited first, to verify the information I’d given her about Jason and Russell’s arrival in Key West, so she knew about the newest killing, too. More crushing was the big picture now planted in her head: her parents would not be moving to Ocala.

  “Scam, scam, scam,” she said.

  Maria sat at the kitchen table, trying not to stare at her mother, doodling on her homework, unsure how to respond.

  “You had a good plan in motion,” I said. “Don’t let one rotten deal keep you from following through.”

  “You say, but somehow my mother got the idea that she’ll be cold in her bones that far north. She’s having second thoughts. Other than that, I’m having doubts about my job. And other than that, Carol Anne, Jason Dudak’s mother, is pissed at me because Russell’s in a jam.”

  “You’ve got a job for life, Carmen… Are you catching shit because of Jerry?”

  Maria sat up and pointed at the cuss kitty, an empty rum bottle now half-full of dimes. I added my ten cents and turned back to her mother.

  “Surely you can’t be held accountable,” I said.

  Carmen dug around in her purse, pulled out a dime, walked to the cuss bottle. “A few people at work actually liked the asshole.” The dime made a dull click as it joined the others. “The cops don’t have a suspect, so to them I’m the next best fall guy. And now Carol Anne blames me because Russell bought a stolen hard drive. That’s just plain stupid. Thank goodness she paid for a tank of gas when they left Ocala so they’d have cash to rent a place when they got here. She
still has the receipt from Sunday morning, so she’s going to email me a copy to show Detective Watkins. At least my daughter didn’t borrow a cartoon DVD from a murderer.”

  “Was there any sign of Marnie during all the confusion?” I said.

  Carmen shook her head. “There was a guy from the paper who stuck around maybe five minutes. I think they ran him off.”

  I asked Carmen to plug my thumb drive into her computer and locate photo DSC-3031. She found it and told Maria to stay in the kitchen.

  “I’ll explain when it’s no longer highly classified,” I said.

  “I’ve already reduced its status,” she said. “No class at all.”

  We cropped the photo once to show both men and saved it as a new file. Then we cropped to show only Ricky Stinson’s head and shoulders and saved that. There wasn’t much usable resolution in either close-up. Carmen printed two copies of each on postcard-sized photo paper, closed the file and extracted the thumb drive.

  “Don’t debase yourself,” she said, “wasting money with these young tourist chicks. Any time you get the urge to see bare breasts, bring me a free bottle of Estancia Meritage.”

  I walked four blocks to Beth’s and arrived as another man, a young, athletic-looking fellow, was leaving, looking smug, counting his money. It was the Russian delivery man from Damn Good Food. I don’t hold stock in telepathy, but I mentally predicted that my supper would be a turkey melt on sourdough with macaroni salad and a fruit cup.

  Beth gave me a hug and led me to her kitchen. She had ordered more adventuresome food: it was a Reuben by the Sea. Blackened grouper, melted Swiss and coleslaw on rye. I would get four bites then wait twelve hours to finish it.

  I had put my cell phone on vibrate instead of ringtone. It buzzed in my front pocket. Once again acting counter to common sense, I dragged it out, saw the number and whispered, “Damn.”

  “I know that ‘damn’ tone of voice,” said Beth. “If it’s Bobbi Lewis, she probably heard about the body in the box. You may as well talk to her.”

  I shook my head and took the call.

  “Where are you?” said Sheriff Chicken Neck Liska. “On the island?”

  “Yes, camping at a friend’s home because my place is a crime scene.”

  “So I heard,” he said. “I need you at my house right now. I trust the words ‘need’ and ‘now’ carry a little weight.”

  “Any clues as to topics, et cetera?”

  “You know me,” said Liska. “Master of the party surprise. Use the gate through the fence around back.”

  “Will the county cover my cab fare?”

  “I arranged for a ride. Call Lewis on her personal cell.”

  “Oh, wait a minute,” I said.

  “Put aside your issues for the greater good.” He hung up.

  I faced turf packed with land mines. I explained my dilemma to Beth. It prompted a sympathetic expression.

  “I’m okay with it.” She opened a cabinet, took a spare house key off a rack, handed it over. “You’re a man at the plate with a fastball headed for your elbow. You’re going to take one for the team.”

  Beth’s phone rang. She picked it up from the counter and walked from the room. “I’ll get this while you make your call.”

  I brought up Bobbi’s number and pressed the green button.

  “I’m outside your house,” she said, “looking at yellow crime scene tape. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but yes. The city wanted to secure it for a day.”

  “I’m your taxi. Where are you?”

  I could tell by the echo that she was in her SUV.

  “Does it matter?” I said. “I’ll meet you in front of Mangia Mangia.”

  “Give me more credit than that, Alex. I lived next door to the woman for a year, and I sure as hell know where she bought her new house.”

  I knew Bobbi was a good detective. This was too good.

  She knew I was stymied. “I had a chat with Deputy Ericson at the substation an hour ago. You two were out riding?”

  “Yep,” I said. “I’ll meet you in front of Mangia Mangia.” I shut off the phone, stared at my sandwich.

  Intent as I was on keeping things businesslike and impersonal, I was stumped for words. I opened the passenger-side door of the SUV, nodded hello, climbed in and hooked the seat belt.

  Bobbi turned right onto Margaret. Slowing for the stop sign at Fleming, she said, “Are we history?”

  So much for my high-road intentions.

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  “What about my Montana trip? You always said you would drive me out to Livingston. You were going to introduce me to all your artsy lit-type friends out there.”

  “You made your choice,” I said. “You tossed a fit and walked out of the restaurant. Did you assume I’d be overjoyed to reconnect?”

  “You had nothing to talk about except your questions about that missing Catherman girl.”

  “I asked if we had a romance. I said that I wanted us to work. I told you that while I walked from the house to dinner I felt alone without you there. Your exact words were, ‘This is bullshit I don’t need right now.’”

  Bobbi let the dust settle for a minute or two before saying, “I’m not allowed to be tired, worn to a fucking frazzle?”

  “When you walked out of the restaurant you made it clear that you didn’t want much to do with me. Right behind that came an alternative, an acquaintance that turned into a closer friendship. That’s when I made my choice.”

  “Nice word for the girl, ‘alternative.’ Although, I will admit, she is a good cop.”

  I felt a moment of déjà-vu, which wasn’t too difficult on a small island. We were on Flagler, the road Beth and I had taken out of town that morning.

  “By the way,” said Bobbi, “I got only two sets of fingerprints in the Miata. We matched Sally’s to a hairbrush in her bedroom, and the other set belonged to her father. It looked like the steering wheel and door handles had been wiped clean.”

  “Tell me about Marv Fixler,” I said.

  Bobbi hesitated, perhaps wondering how I knew his last name. She said, “A brave man, sharp as a tack.”

  “Law enforcement career man?”

  “Oh, yes. Went to college for it.”

  “Where did Marv go when he left the sheriff’s office?”

  “That’s confidential information,” she said.

  “A government job, then.”

  “Indirectly.”

  I made an authoritative-sounding guess. “Was he contracted to the government for security work?”

  “That’s quite simply not your business.”

  A second impulse: “Has he spent time in third-world countries?”

  “Again, classified.”

  “I guessed as much. He came by the house today.”

  “He what?” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  I pointed at Liska’s house. “I think we’re here.”

  “Hang with me on this, Alex.”

  “Hang for what, more shit you don’t need?”

  “The whole time we dated I lived on Big Coppitt,” she said. “I felt so removed from the city and from you. I wondered about you on the nights I didn’t see you.”

  “We talked every night, unless one of us was working. Did you want me in your sights constantly?”

  No answer.

  “So you worried that I was running around?” I said. “Should I have worn a monitoring device? An ankle bracelet?”

  “Did anyone talk to you?”

  “What about?”

  “Maybe someone I work with told you I might have had issues in the past… With a man who wasn’t as true as he claimed.”

  Liska had, indeed, counseled me to go easy and extinguish her fears of abandonment if I wanted the relationship to continue.

  “What prompted this?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I talked with a couple people today about that Jerry Hammond murder. You asked me, you begged me never to call you again
for a death-related photo job. Then a city detective gets a case and suddenly you’re Johnny-on-the-Spot.”

  “I went there a day after Hammond was found. I had her assurance that the body was gone. I didn’t want to see a dead person this week, or ever. I shot the surroundings, not the corpse.”

  “Why didn’t you take real crime scene shots?”

  “Because of my proximity to the dead man.”

  “Were you a witness or a suspect?”

  I shrugged. “I guess her SWAT Team boys did the dirty work.”

  “I know the SWAT guy who takes the photos. He’s very good. Why did she need pictures without her victim around?”

  “She didn’t think it was random. She wanted to tie motive to lifestyle or vice-versa.”

  “She was opening the door,” said Bobbi. “To hit on you.”

  “So you think that’s my pattern, I wait for offers? I have no taste, no say in the matter?”

  I saw the look on her face and knew I had gone too far or struck too close to home. Because Bobbi had taken the first steps in our relationship.

  She stopped in front of Liska’s house. “Do you want your say? Do you want to share your feelings?”

  “I feel like a scuffed pair of shoes you’ve put in the back of your closet. You might wear me once or twice next year if you get in the mood.”

  “Marv is a flu bug I’ve got to get out of my system.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a spectator sport, Bobbi. Thanks for the ride.”

  “Thank my boss,” she said. “I was just doing my job.”

  25

  I had been to Chicken Neck Liska’s home on Eagle twice before. Each time, in late evening, I arrived to find him alone in his living room, drinking in near-darkness. This time I would blaze a new trail, as would he. His front yard was dark as a cave. The narrow driveway was bordered by crotons to one side, an eight-foot wood slat fence on the other. He hadn’t spent a cent on shrub trimming or security lights.

  I fumbled my way around his personal sedan, nudged the tall door set into the fencing, almost caught a mess of pine splinters in my palm. The gate’s electronic lock made a soft click but gave and let me enter.