“We have no reason to do that,” Troy said. “No legal reason. Mostly I just didn’t want to get shot in the back leaving. They were a little emotional.”
The canoe was there too and Troy examined it. Milo took the keys back upstairs. No one would open the door at his ring so he used the house key to let himself back in and left the keys on the table by the door.
“Why didn’t we just arrest those idiots?” Milo said as he drove them away. “Kid hit you.”
“Arrest for what? Bruising the police chief? If I needed them out of the way for a day I would have done it. But we already had all we were going to get today.”
“You knew I’d get the judge’s gun.”
“Yep. Quick move, there, Slick. No point in making a deal out of that, either. The judge would only say he was trying to hand it to me.”
“Waste of time all around,” Milo said as he drove Troy to the Gulf View Motel where Troy would serve his next search warrant.
“That’s police work,” Troy said. “Mostly, we wanted the sports car and the boat. And the Stiders got rid of both before we could get the search warrant delivered. But we did get the computers. Those are things we just always want to grab. Investigate them at our leisure. Might be useful. People leave the darndest things on their computers.”
“Usually an assistant state attorney’s office can get us a warrant in an hour,” Milo said. “Odd how this one took so long.”
“Well, it’s the holidays. A judge can work the system to kill, or at least slow down, a warrant that’s being served on him. And our fax-delivery system at the town hall needs work. Realistically, none of that matters because they got rid of the car and the boat so quick.”
“Why are we hoisting up the boat? I know you want to do that.”
“We will. Got that arranged. The experts say that any blood evidence in the boat might be pretty much ruined by now, from exposure to salt water and the current carrying it away. But if some got into any cracks or holes, anywhere like that, it might still be useful.”
“How long will it take for FDLE to research the GPS from the boat, the thing you recovered?”
“The chart plotter,” Troy said. “It’s much fancier than a GPS. They’re looking at it today, they told me. It’s similar to recovering files off a computer.”
Milo looked at Troy a moment, then back at the road. “I notice that you never mentioned that to the judge. He doesn’t even know you have that chart plotter.”
“Must have slipped my mind.”
“Nothing ever slips your mind, Chief.”
Troy looked over at Milo. “Talked to Kyle Rivers the other night at the town hall meeting. He told me your name had come up to the top at the sheriff’s but that you had turned them down to stay here. You ever planning to tell me?”
Milo looked at Troy and back out the windshield. He was pulling into a parking space by the Gulf View Motel. “I guess I didn’t think of that. What’s the big deal?”
“Doesn’t going on the sheriff’s pay better? I wouldn’t know, seeing as nobody over there ever offered me a job.”
“It’s a little more. But I’d have to work odd hours and drive a long ways from my house here to wherever they assigned me.”
“And I always thought you found the Mangrove Bayou Police Department a little…confining. And then to top it off I made you pull night shifts. First day I met you, you told me you were only with us until you could get hired on at the sheriff’s.”
Milo smiled. “I was sort of a jerk, okay? And Chief Redmond, he let me be a jerk because he was afraid of my uncle.”
“Lester Groud, mayor and fishing guide par excellence.”
“Yeah. Sure. I got any other fucking uncle?”
They both laughed. It was an in-joke with June Dundee.
“You’re not afraid of my uncle. You respect him, I know that. He respects you too. He never respected Chief Redmond. Anyway, you made me think, Chief. About being a police officer. I wasn’t a police officer before. I was a kid with a badge and a gun and an attitude. Now I’m a police officer. Six months ago, would you have trusted that I would grab the judge’s gun back there.”
“No. You have come far, Grasshopper. But now you also have a live-in girlfriend. How did Wanda Frister like the idea of you joining the sheriff’s?”
Milo got out of the Suburban. Troy got out his side. Milo looked at Troy across the roof. “She had a shit fit. Said she owed you her life and I was abandoning you. How did you know that?”
“I’m the police chief of Mangrove Bayou. I know everything.”
“I hate it when you go all Zen on me.”
Troy laughed. “So, did Wanda talk you into staying here?”
“No. I was already staying. I just let her carry on like that so she wouldn’t be able to blame me later for not taking the better-paying job.”
“You’re learning,” Troy said. “Fast.”
“Got a good teacher.”
Chapter 35
Monday, December 30
At the Gulf View Motel, Troy found Loren Fitch in his office. He handed Fitch the warrant to search Room 101. The manager was not happy to see Troy.
“Got bad news, I’m afraid,” Fitch said.
“And that is?”
“The Stider kid yelled at one of the maids and she cleaned his room and changed the bedding.”
“How did you let that happen?”
“I told them, both maids, not to do his room. But yesterday he was yelling at her and she was right there with her cart, cleaning the next room anyway, and she got scared. He’s pretty big and he sort of threatened her.”
“She wash that bedding yet?”
Fitch stared with his mouth open. He looked down at his desk. “I guess so. Didn’t even think of that. Sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Troy said. “Any defense attorney would make hash of the evidence there, mixing those sheets in with others. But Loren, you have seriously let me down here.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try to make it up to you.”
“How? Give me a free room? I live a few blocks away, for God’s sake.” He turned to Milo. “Take us back to the station, Officer Binder, before I lose my temper and make a mess out of Loren, here.”
Troy walked into the stationhouse through the back door, waved to Norris Compton in the lobby, and went back to his office. Norris followed him. Troy sat behind his desk. Norris stood and looked down at Troy.
“Yes?” Troy said. “More bad news? This is the day for it.”
“Hope not. While you were wasting time up at the Stiders’ I was busy next door at town hall.”
Troy stared. Norris was enjoying this. “And just what were you doing in the town hall?” he asked because that seemed to be what Norris was waiting for.
“I was registering to run for town council.”
Troy stared at Norris and raised one eyebrow just because he knew how. “Aha. And the one town councilman up for reelection this time around is our very own Doctor Councilman Principal Howard Parkland Duell.”
Norris smiled. “Election is at the January town hall meeting. I’m the only opponent. I have a month to campaign. Get in major Hollywood stars, buy a lot of television ads. Stir up controversy. I may ask Duell for his birth certificate and past ten years of tax records.”
Troy grinned. “Suppose it would be no secret that you’d have my vote. I believe the usual thing is to spend upwards of twenty-seven dollars on homemade yard signs and maybe two of those magnetic signs you stick on your car doors.”
“I can manage that, between my handsome retirement plan and what you pay me to sit at June’s desk now and then and look over your books occasionally.”
“I pay you nothing. You do get to attend the monthly Bad Words Jar party when we use that money to buy pizza and beer.”
“Which, I notice, you never attend.”
Troy shook his head. “It’s for the troops. Let down their hair a little. It’s the one night a month they can swear in he
re and not have to put money into the jar. They not only don’t need me around, they might want to talk about me. I take over the patrolling that night.”
“What happens at Bad Words Jar Party stays at Bad Words Jar Party?”
“Something like that. There’s a problem with you being a candidate for doctor-all that stuff-Duell’s job. You can’t go on working here, at least not while running for office. Maybe not after.”
“Why not?”
“Conflict of interest. Not on your part, on my part. Paid or not, people will think you’re my staff member and that I put you up to this. So, you’re fired.”
“Hadn’t thought of that. Is it all right if I finish out my shift?”
“Sure. Then you need to escort yourself to the door. Wouldn’t want you swiping the stapler or anything.”
Chapter 36
Tuesday, December 31
Cord MacIntosh always drove an old white van with plain windowless sides. Nobody ever noticed those, parked on a street or following along behind. There was room also for his tools, of which he had many, and for nautical odds and ends, of which he had even more. There was even a cot to sleep on, which he had been using because there was no place to stay in Mangrove Bayou, a set of drawers for clothes, and a small porta potty. Perfect for the private investigator with a big sailboat to maintain. When one old white van wore out he bought another from some used-car lot.
Just past breakfast time Cord swung his van in off the street and parked in a small area in front of the gate and office at the Naples-Storage. Inside the office, he rented a unit from an elderly retiree eking out a pension. Cord signed in on the log, the clerk opened the gate, and Cord MacIntosh was in business. He hadn’t seen any monitors in the office other than the television on which the retiree was watching his daytime talk shows. As Cord drove slowly down the lane between green-painted metal storage units, he saw no cameras.
He parked his van by his assigned unit. It had a rolling vertical door that he raised on its tracks. Inside was clean and swept. He looked around for a few minutes, not because he wanted to store anything but because he was curious. He examined the door tracks and checked that there was a handle on the inside too, and tested the door, running it down and then back up a few times. Inside was dark with the door down and there were no lights or electricity. He supposed that most people just left the doors open while working inside their units. He left the door open.
Inside his van he got out a long zippered bag. He transferred to it his bolt cutter, a padlock he had bought that morning, a small box of miscellaneous tools, a Nikon camera with built-in flash, and a large flashlight. He put on some latex gloves. In all this time nobody drove past his unit or even down that lane. On a Tuesday morning the place was deserted.
He left the van and walked briskly down the lane and around the corner, whistling the tune from Spanish Harlem as he walked, and up the adjacent lane, counting off the unit numbers until he stopped in front of the one rented by Hans Stider. He used the bolt cutters on the small padlock there and put both the bolt cutters and the cut-off padlock into his bag. He hoisted up the door, entered, and pulled the door back down. He’d forgotten to turn on the flashlight first and had to fumble around in his bag to get that out and lit. He aimed it at the ceiling. It was so powerful that it lit the small space nicely.
He looked around. The storage unit was only a third full. Plenty of room for him to work. There were the usual odds and ends of furniture. Cord decided that people always seemed to store that stuff when they ought to have given it to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. He opened a half-dozen stored suitcases of various sizes and they were all empty. There were a dozen or more terracotta flower pots, five large glass water jugs that would go on top of an office water dispenser, some rope, anchors and seat cushions for a boat, a green plastic case on top of a large blue zippered bag with “WFO Sportfishing” on the side, an old Smith-Corona portable typewriter with a spare ribbon cartridge stuck down into the workings, several large blue plastic tarpaulins folded up, and several cardboard boxes full of files. And that was just what was in front.
Cord looked at the files. Files were always a number-one priority when it came to searching. But these appeared to be old and from the days when Hans Stider had a law practice in Fort Myers. Cord opened up the green plastic case. Inside was a .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol. The gun looked like a 1911 .45-caliber but on steroids. It was done with a gold finish. Cord pulled it out of the box, which was the one the pistol came in from the manufacturer, and racked the slide and one round popped out and landed on the concrete floor. He dropped the magazine and checked once more to make sure the thing was empty. He sniffed at the end of the barrel. When he did so he noticed a tiny smudge, some brown substance, on the leading edge of the front sight. He put the loose round and the magazine, and the gun, back into the green case. He photographed the gun and case. The WFO Sportfishing bag had several boxes of ammunition for the gun, a cleaning kit, some paper targets, gun oil and cleaning patches. He put all that back into the blue bag and resumed the search, whistling as he worked.
Chapter 37
Tuesday, December 31
When Troy came to work on the last day of the year he had email from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement office that had been examining the Stider boat chart plotter. There was a lot of discussion of the type of plotter, that it was IP7-rated to withstand submersion to a depth of one meter for thirty minutes, and other things. Troy opened the attached files, which were images of routes taken by the boat. The FDLE had been able to extract the previous twenty routes and superimpose those over a nautical chart.
Troy took his radio off the charger on his desk and called Bubba Johns, who was on day shift and out patrolling. While Bubba was driving in, Troy transferred the FDLE files to a thumb drive. He went to the lobby. June Dundee was filing her nails.
“June, got some investigating for you to do.”
“Like a real police person?” June Dundee said. She wasn’t actually an officer. She womaned the front desk five days a week but often was the only person in the station.
“Just like. It’s exciting. I want you to telephone every medical clinic around. See if they ever treated Martha Stider. I think she’s been abused. Is being abused. Start next door with Doc Vollmer, but also call anywhere in Marco Island, Everglades City, Naples. Make a list of who you called and any results.”
“Is that all?”
“Actually, no. I also want to know if anyone named Stider had a Porsche detailed at any car wash around here.”
“How do I find car washes?”
“The Internet, of course. Where we find everything these days.”
“That sounds incredibly boring.”
“Welcome to police work.”
Troy went through the connecting door to the town hall, then down a hallway to a connecting door to the town clinic. He found Dr. Barry Vollmer in his office reading a Sharper Image catalog.
“Please tell me you don’t buy your instruments out of Sharper Image,” Troy said.
Vollmer looked up. “Maybe some. Just the sharp, pointy ones. Why, are you sick? I’m short a nurse. If you crap or barf I have to clean it up myself. So don’t do that.”
“Where’s Sasha Thompson?”
“Gone. Quit. Moved to Atlanta. Said we were all too prejudiced here.”
“Does she think it’s any better in Atlanta? Or Chicago? Or Nome, Alaska?”
“Beats me. At least in Atlanta nobody has shot her dogs yet.”
“Good point. I’m sorry to hear that she’s gone. She did get mistreated. I tried to help, break through. Seen it too often. Felt it too often myself. I mean, look at me. One of the worst things about being racially profiled or discriminated against is that it’s only natural to reciprocate, to lash out. You don’t just have to be twice as good; you have to be twice as tolerant. For some, it’s just too much.”
“She did have a bit of a chip on her shoulder. But she liked you. She told me so.”
“She will need to come back sometime, testify against that son of a bitch who shot her dogs.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. I think we are pretty much in her rear-view mirror.”
“Well, I got the perp on a weapons charge. That’s actually better anyway. And I don’t need her testimony to push it.”
“Was that why you came by? To ask about Sasha Thompson?”
“Came to get a body bag.”
Vollmer put down the catalog and stared at Troy. “You got a body?”
“Not yet. I’m about to go hunting. Keep that to yourself for now.”
“I think I have two bags left.”
“I’ll take one. Just in case.”
Back at the station Troy found Bubba sitting at Troy’s desk looking at the Stider boat routes on Troy’s computer. Troy laid the heavy rubber bag on the coffee table and sat in a visitor chair. “Les Groud might want to see this,” Bubba said.
“Why?”
“They must really like this one fishing spot,” Bubba said. “Eighteen of the twenty trips were out to that one spot.”
“Was that spot out in the Gulf of Mexico?”
“Nope. Some teensy hole back in the north part of the Everglades park. Must be some good current through there, some reason for fish. Why?”
“If they had been out to the Gulf, they might be running drugs. Getting them off a mother ship. But back in the Park, not likely. Too shallow.”
“Right. Well, the routes aren’t dated. Too bad. But the one out to the Gulf of Mexico ends out there. No return trip. That’s the one where we caught up to the boat and you cut the chart plotter out of the console. It stopped recording when you cut the power supply from the boat’s battery. Then there’s this one trip totally different, run up north of Faka Key in the Ten Thousand islands.”
Troy nodded. “Let’s get out our boat and go look at that route.”
Death Among the Mangroves Page 17
