The Scientology Murders

by William Heffernan

  “Your cranky disposition is back. I’m gonna call Mama and tell her to get over here to keep the nurses safe.”

  “Tell her to bring my cigarettes,” Jocko said.

  Harry shook his head and laughed, then turned to the police artist. “How’s the sketch of the perp coming?”

  “We’re getting there—”

  “I don’t like it,” Jocko interrupted. “It doesn’t look anything like the guy.”

  “It will. It just takes time.” The artist extended a hand to Harry. “I’m Jeremy Jeffords. I work out of forensics.”

  “Harry Doyle, the son of this tough old billy goat and also a detective with the sheriff’s office.”

  “Yeah, Max Abrams told me about you.”

  “Can I see what you’ve got so far?” Harry asked.

  Jeffords handed over his sketch pad. Harry stared at it, studied the drawing of the man’s face—the long narrow jaw and nose, eyes that were close set, a mouth that seemed to hold a hidden sneer. “Not a very pleasant-looking guy, but definitely somebody who might shoot you in the back.” He passed the sketch to Vicky. “This is my partner, Vicky Stanopolis,” he explained.

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t look like the guy who shot me,” Jocko insisted. “I liked the first sketch better.”

  “We’ll get there,” Jeffords replied. “Just take it slow and easy like your doctor said.”

  “We’re going to move along,” Harry said. He turned to Jocko. “Did you come up with anything else about this guy?”

  “I remember a tattoo, but I can’t remember where it was on his body. It was a knife, a stilleto. I think it was on his forearm but I can’t remember for sure. It’s drivin’ me nuts.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Harry said. “What you gave me is terrific. Just relax and let whatever else there is come to you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jocko said.

  Harry leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll talk to you later.” He turned back to Jeffords. “Don’t work him too hard.”

  * * *

  They drove north eight miles to Tarpon Springs. When Harry was a child his mother had brought him and his brother here. Back then, a quarter of a century ago, the road from Clearwater to Tarpon Springs weaved through seemingly endless orange groves and horse farms. Now it was bordered by one walled housing development after another and rush-hour traffic clogged every road, including Route 19 that had been widened to four lanes to accommodate all the new housing. Needless to say, all the horses and orange trees had fallen victim to this version of progress along with the bulging bank accounts of fat-cat developers. But Harry knew that blaming the developers was only the easiest answer. A fishing boat captain he knew said air-conditioning was the true villain. It allowed people to live in subtropical climates year round, rather than just the winter months. Air-conditioned homes, air-conditioned cars: it made paradise available to all.

  Harry thought back to what he had learned over the years about Tarpon Springs. In 1876 this small coastal area with numerous bayous flowing into the Gulf of Mexico began to attract wealthy Northerners in search of winter homes. These newly arrived residents spotted tarpon jumping out of the waters and named it Tarpon Springs. At the turn of the new century sponge beds were discovered off the coast of Tarpon Springs and a local entrepreneur, John Cocoris, recognized its potential as a major sponge-harvesting area. Cocoris promptly recruited sponge divers from his native Dodecanese Islands in Greece and by the 1930s this new industry was generating millions of dollars a year.

  Today, even with the sponge industry greatly diminished, the “Sponge Docks” remained the focal point of Tarpon Springs, a place where boats still unloaded the remaining sponges to professional buyers, and Greek-owned shops and restaurants catered to a continuing stream of tourists.

  “Where is the shop we’re going to?” Harry asked, as they turned onto Dodecanese Avenue.

  “It’s almost directly across the street from the Sponge Docks,” Vicky said.

  Harry drove past the shops and restaurants that lined both sides of the avenue until he reached the Sponge Docks and its row of gaily painted sponge-diving boats with their strings of freshly cleaned sponges hanging from bow to stern. He pulled to a stop next to a bronze statue of a sponge diver, his massive brass hard hat held heroically in the crook of his arm. Parking wasn’t permitted on that stretch of road, so Harry flipped down his visor to display an Official Sheriff’s Business card. “Let’s go find Lilly Mikinos,” he said, as he slid out of the car.

  Vicky led him across the street and into a shop offering a plethora of clothing and baubles and seashells and sponges and what all, each item identified as coming from Tarpon Springs, the Sponge-Diving Capital of the World.

  They found Lilly at the rear of the store unpacking a new delivery of T-shirts, each bearing the name Tarpon Springs with a diving helmet below and the word Spongers beneath that.

  Vicky greeted Lilly in Greek, jabbered away for a few moments, then turned to Harry and switched to English. “This is my partner, Harry Doyle,” she said.

  Lilly looked Harry over and smiled, then spoke to Vicky in Greek. Whatever she said brought a faint blush to Vicky’s cheeks.

  Vicky quickly changed the subject, switching back to English and bringing up Mary Kate O’Connell’s death.

  “I read about it in the paper,” Lilly said in English. “So sad, but then her whole life was sad.”

  “Why do you say that?” Harry asked.

  Lilly looked around and called to a woman on the other side of the store. “Mama, I’m going outside to take a short break.” The woman waived her hand dismissively and Lilly turned back to Harry and Vicky. “Let’s go across the street to the docks. This place is going to fill up with customers before you know it.”

  They followed Lilly across the street. She appeared to be in her mid to late twenties, close to Vicky’s age. She was a small woman, barely an inch or two above five feet, with a slender figure and large brown eyes beneath wavy black hair. She had a long, slender nose and a wide mouth, and she was dressed in tight tan jeans and a loose-fitting white T-shirt emblazoned with a large red heart.

  They stopped near one of the sponge boats tied up to the seawall. Two young men were working on the deck, checking out a compressor that would send air into the diver’s helmet by way of a heavy rubber hose. Harry noticed that they also took the time to check out Vicky and Lilly.

  “So, tell me why you feel Mary Kate’s life was so sad,” Harry said.

  Lilly didn’t hesitate; it was as though she had been waiting for someone to ask her that very question. “People who come to Scientology are desperately seeking answers,” she began. “And most have been seeking those answers for years. But it doesn’t matter what the questions are, Scientology promises that you will find the answers if you follow what they teach.”

  “Do people find the answers they’re looking for?” Harry asked.

  “The church tells them they have. I just don’t know if they do or not; if I did or not. But I do know there are rules, strict rules that you have to follow. And there are taboos that are simply not permitted.”

  “Like homosexuality?” Harry asked.

  Lilly nodded. “Yes, that’s a biggie for them. If you’re suspected of homosexual behavior you’re labeled as 1.1. You can also find yourself labeled 1.1 if you’re involved in casual heterosexual sex, or if you refuse to disconnect with your family.”

  “Does everyone have to disconnect from their family?” Harry asked.

  Lilly thought for a moment. “Eventually, yes, unless the family follows their child into the church. You see, the religion is for believers only, and if you’re a believer you don’t associate very much with anyone but other believers, not on a personal level. Oh, you can work with nonbelievers, if necessary. But you don’t socialize with them too much; you never talk about church matters with them, unless you think they can be converted. And in those cases, you bring in help from the church.”

 
“Was Mary Kate considered to be 1.1?” Vicky asked.

  “I think so, and I think it might have been justified.” The words seemed to offend her as she spoke them. “Justifiable for them,” she added. “Based on what they believe.”

  “Did you think Mary Kate was gay?” Vicky asked.

  “I suspected that she was, yes.”

  “Did she come on to you?” Harry asked. It was the question everyone had been circling around.

  “I think so. Oh God, who knows? It was nothing terribly overt. But it was a definite feeling I got. Maybe it was because I knew other people who thought she was gay. I mean she was so goddamn needy. She seemed to want to be close to everyone, to be protected by everyone.” She folded her arms across her chest, creating a barrier. “You do know that everyone in Scientology is watched, right?”

  “I’ve read about people being watched after they leave the church,” Harry said. “Cars supposedly parked near their homes that follow them wherever they go; same for people who write about the church, or simply go around asking too many questions.”

  “Yes, there’s that,” Lilly said. “But the people inside the church are also watched. There’s a whole department that keeps track of us.”

  “The office of church discipline,” Harry said.

  “That’s right. When I left the church and came home there were people all over the Sponge Docks keeping track of me. Then I’d see them parked near my house. It was pretty scary being watched like that.”

  “No one spoke to you?” Harry asked.

  “Just one time. A woman entered the shop and asked if I was coming back to the church. That’s the way she said it: coming back to the church, as if I had defected or something. You see, they don’t let go very easily.”

  “Do you still see them? Up here, I mean.”

  “Every so often I see someone who looks familiar.” Lilly shrugged. “But Tarpon is a popular place for tourists, so who knows?”

  “Was Mary Kate being watched?” Harry asked.

  “Oh yes. And she knew it was happening. She said there was a scary-looking guy with white hair and very pale skin who watched everything she did and it really scared her. I knew who she was talking about. We used to call him ‘the albino,’ and whenever he was around everyone seemed nervous.”

  * * *

  Tourist activity had increased and Tony Rolf used it to get closer to the three people he was watching. He stepped inside the Hellas Bakery, bought himself a pastry, and took a table near the front window.

  He knew both women Doyle was talking to—he had seen the detective’s partner on other occasions. Like Doyle, she did little to conceal the large automatic pistol she wore on her hip, leaving no doubt that she was a cop. The other woman had taken a bit longer to place. Then he remembered the great stir she had caused when some bearded Greek priest dressed in a cassock had approached her on the street right in the heart of the church’s Clearwater compound and demanded she return to her parents’ home. And she had gone with him. In an act of open betrayal she had walked away from the church.

  Now what was she up to? They were undoubtedly talking to her about the woman he had been forced to kill. Had she been one of her lovers? Did she know something about him? Since she had been a member of the church it was quite possible that she knew he worked for the office of church discipline, as many members did. She might even have known from the woman herself that he had been assigned to her case. But she couldn’t have known that he was assigned to take her out to the cruise ship Freewinds for auditing. Even the O’Connell woman hadn’t known that until just before she died. But what did this Greek woman know, especially about him? And what was she telling these two cops?

  He knew he had to find out, and he had to do it quickly.

  * * *

  He waited until the shops began to close, then took a position near a small gyro shop at one end of the Sponge Docks. From there he could drink a soda and watch the front of the Mikinos store from which Lilly should soon emerge. He had already checked the rear of the shop for a car but found none. He had called his office and learned that the home address they had for Lilly was only a few blocks away on Athens Street. She would be walking, unless someone picked her up, and if so she should be turning onto Athens Street minutes after she left the family shop. He only hoped she would be alone.

  Chapter Six

  It was nine twenty before Lilly left the shop. Two older women had left before her, apparently leaving Lilly to close up for the night. Tony Rolf had moved across the street and positioned himself to the right of the door as if studying items in the window display. When Lilly stepped out and turned to lock the door he rushed up behind her, placed one hand over her mouth, and used his body to push her back into the store.

  She spun out of his grasp and turned to face him. A look of fury filled her face, which quickly turned to confusion and then to fear.

  “You remember me?” he hissed.

  Lilly looked at his hair. It was blond now and it had initially confused her. She had thought at first that the assault was a simple robbery attempt and she had been ready to fight him off, or at least to try.

  “I asked if you remember me.”

  “I remember you. You’re from the church. You’re the one we used to call the albino.”

  “What were you telling those cops today? Did you tell them something about me?”

  “I don’t know anything about you.”

  “I think I spoke to you once. I think I asked you about that dyke Mary Kate. Did you tell them that?”

  Anger flared over the slur, but Lilly fought to control herself. “That’s all I knew about you. That you asked about Mary Kate, and that other church members thought you were creepy.”

  “But they didn’t feel that dyke was creepy, did they?”

  Lilly felt another flash of anger, a rush of adrenaline that momentarily overcame her fear. “How do you know she was a dyke? Or did you just decide she was because she turned you down?”

  Rolf’s eyes widened and color came to his pale complexion. “Are you suggesting I tried to initiate something sexual with her? Are you implying that I’m 1.1?” He moved forward, using his body to push her back until she was pressed against a display case.

  Lilly’s mind raced with possibilities for escape. Without warning she drove a knee into his groin. It wasn’t a solid hit, but it was enough to move him back, and she spun away and raced to the back of the store where her family kept a baseball bat to use against would-be robbers. She heard a loud growl and looked back over her shoulder. Rolf was moving toward her, his eyes wild, and she saw the flash of a knife in his hand.

  She reached the storage room where the bat was kept and grabbed it, swinging it as she turned to face him. The first blow hit his arm and he howled in pain and she raised the bat again. He lunged at her and she felt a sharp blow to her stomach, then another to her chest.

  Rolf stopped and watched her.

  Lilly looked down at her shirt and saw dark stains spreading out from her stomach and chest. Confusion came to her face and she looked up at Rolf as if he might tell her what was wrong. “What have you done?” she asked, no longer sure to whom the words were directed. Then her eyes began to cloud and she started to fall. She never felt herself hit the floor.

  * * *

  Harry got two calls to his cell phone, one after the other, before he had poured his first cup of coffee. First Max Abrams and then Vicky; both told him that Lilly Mikinos had been murdered in her family’s Tarpon Springs shop.

  Abrams picked up Harry at the marina ten minutes later and headed for Tarpon Springs.

  “I recognized the name when it came through this morning and realized it was the same woman you were going to interview yesterday,” Abrams explained. “Do you think her murder has any connection to our case?”

  “It’s possible,” Harry said. “It’s also possible it was just a robbery that happened after Vicky and I talked to her.”

  “You actually think it could
have been a coincidence?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Harry said. “I don’t believe it either. But if it wasn’t, it raises an ugly possibility.”

  “That somebody followed you.”

  * * *

  Vicky was already there when they arrived at the Mikinos store. She looked pale, shaky.

  “One of Lilly’s aunts called me this morning to tell me what happened,” she told them. “She wanted to know if Lilly’s murder had anything to do with our meeting yesterday.”

  “What did you tell her?” Harry asked.

  “What could I tell her? I said I didn’t know.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It had to, Harry. Nothing else makes sense.”

  “Not a coincidence?”

  “Don’t believe in them.”

  Harry glanced at Abrams. “I don’t think we could sell that idea to anyone,” he said.

  * * *

  They met with the two Tarpon Springs detectives who had caught the case and filled them in on their meeting with Lilly the previous day, along with the fact that she had been a friend of Mary Kate O’Connell, the victim in the case they were investigating.

  Max had brought several copies of the latest sketch that the police had produced along with the caveat that it didn’t have the wholehearted endorsement of Jocko Doyle. “But it’s the best we’ve got,” he said.

  The Tarpon detectives were treating the case as a murder resulting from a robbery, based on the fact that the cash register had been cleaned out, but said they would show the artist’s sketch around the Sponge Docks and keep a two-way line of communication open until the case was resolved. Vicky, Harry, and Max then headed to the medical examiner’s office to see what had been learned from the preliminary examination of Lilly’s body.

  * * *

  The ME’s office was located in a nondescript two-story building a short distance from the sheriff’s office on Ulmerton Road. They found Lilly’s body in the main autopsy room being prepped for a postmortem examination. The body was naked and an autopsy technician named George Rios was going over it inch by inch, looking for any DNA evidence the murderer might have left behind.