The Dead Detective

by William Heffernan

  The call came into Harry’s cell phone just as he was crossing the parking lot headed back to his car, and minutes later he was speeding toward Pinellas County with lights flashing and siren blaring.

  The trailer park was on a small lake just off Keystone Road, a neat, quiet, secluded community with a scattering of large shade trees that kept the sun off the tin structures. Jim Morgan was standing beside an unmarked car; Vicky was thirty feet away helping a crime scene officer set up a laser to determine the trajectory of the bullet that had smashed through a trailer window.

  Harry walked up beside Morgan and raised his chin toward the trailer. “Your place?” he asked.

  Morgan nodded. “It used to be my aunt’s. She left it to me when she passed.”

  “Were you inside when the shot was fired?”

  Again, Morgan nodded. “I’d just gotten home and I was in the kitchen making a sandwich and I hear this thud as the bullet hits my refrigerator.”

  “Just the thud? No sound of a gun being fired?”

  Morgan shook his head. “That’s the thing, Harry. There wasn’t any sound. I mean, even if it had come from inside another trailer I would have heard something.”

  “Did you hear a car?”

  “I don’t have any recollection of a car. But that wouldn’t be unusual. There are almost a hundred units in the park, and there are cars going in and out all the time, so I wouldn’t have paid much attention if I heard one approaching. I also hit the floor as soon as I realized what was happening, so I could have missed the sound of a car pulling away. The first thing I thought of when I was laying on the floor was that it’s too thick in here for a bullet to have come from a long distance, so I got my own weapon out, called it in on my cell, and crawled to the back door so I could work my way around the house. Of course, there was no one there by the time I did. I don’t want to be dramatic about it, but the only thing I can think of is that whoever did this used some kind of suppressor.”

  “You seem pretty calm given what happened.”

  Morgan gave him a boyish grin. “Yeah, now I am. With all you guys here. You should of seen me right after it happened. I had to check to make sure my pants were dry.”

  Vicky approached holding a plastic bag. She held it up. There was a mangled bullet inside.

  “It’s a.38. But as far as ballistics go, the slug is useless. The laser shows a trajectory that indicates the shot was fired from the same height the shooter would have been at if he was seated in a car.”

  “No chance it came from a trailer across the road?”

  “Only if the shooter was lying on the ground in front of the trailer directly across from the window.”

  Harry turned and studied the trailer on the opposite side of the narrow road. He turned back to Morgan. “Who lives there?”

  “An elderly couple, late seventies, early eighties. I can’t see either of them being able to handle a weapon.”

  “We’ll check them out, but I agree, it doesn’t sound very likely.” Harry studied the ground for a moment. “Any enemies from past police work? Or anything personal?”

  Morgan shook his head. “Nobody I can think of.”

  “There could be one,” Vicky piped in. “But not from the past; from the case we’re working on now.”

  Harry had already thought of Nick Benevuto, but was waiting for someone else to voice the suspicion. “Let’s work the scene here first. If we don’t find anything we’ll brace Nick.” He turned to Morgan. “Vicky and I will do it. I don’t want you there. He’s pretty hot about you and the computer stuff you found, and I don’t want to aggravate the situation.”

  Morgan seemed suddenly agitated. “You’re not taking me off the case, are you?”

  “No, don’t worry about that,” Harry said. “I just don’t want you there when we interview Nick about this.”

  The canvass of the trailer park produced nothing. No one in the immediate vicinity of Morgan’s trailer had heard or seen anything untoward. Reluctantly, at ten p.m., Harry moved on to Nick Benevuto.

  Nick lived in an older condo complex in Countryside, a densely populated residential area on the northern fringes of Clearwater. Twenty-five years earlier it was among the first to fall victim to the real estate boom, its sprawling orange groves and horse farms seeming to disappear overnight. Now the only country left in Countryside was its name.

  Nick’s car was parked outside his unit. Harry placed his hand on the hood. It was hot to the touch. Vicky gave him a questioning look.

  “It’s been driven recently,” he said. He watched a small smile begin to form at the corners of her mouth, and added: “For whatever that’s worth.”

  “At least we know we’re not wasting our time,” she said.

  It took Nick almost a full minute to answer the door, and when he did he had a drink in his hand. His eyes told Harry it had not been his first. Harry saw suspicion flood Nick’s face. It only hardened when his gaze switched to Vicky. He looked back at Harry.

  “I guess it’s not a social call.” He raised his chin toward Vicky. “Not if you need your partner with you.” His voice was steady, no slur that Harry could detect.

  “Wish it was. Can we come in? It won’t take long.”

  Nick was dressed in khaki shorts and a T-shirt that emphasized the belly he had earned through a lot of hard drinking. He gave Harry a long stare; then a small who-gives-a-damn shrug. “Sure, come in. After dealing with those rat bastards from IAD, how much worse can it get?”

  Nick’s apartment was as rumpled and disheveled as his life. The living room he led them into was furnished out of a Rooms To Go catalog with a leather sofa, two matching chairs, an ottoman, and glass-topped coffee and end tables. All the glass tops had water rings and food stains, and through an archway Harry could see several days’ dishes piled in the sink. He didn’t want to see Nick’s bedroom.

  Nick picked up a dirty shirt and shorts from one of the chairs, told them they could sit if they wanted, and offered them a drink, which Harry and Vicky both declined.

  “So what’s this about?” he asked as he took a seat at one end of the sofa, stretching out a leg so no one could sit next to him.

  “Do you own a.38, Nick?”

  Nick raised his eyebrows. “Sure, what cop doesn’t, especially if he’s been on the job as long as I have? I’ve got my first service revolver, the one I carried when I was on patrol, and a snub-nosed Chief’s Special, that was my first piece as a detective. That was in the good old days, before we switched over to Glocks. But you’re too young to remember those days, right, Harry?”

  “I remember, Nick. I grew up in a cop’s house.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” He paused a moment. “You know Jocko knows me. You tell him about this bullshit they’re tryin’ to pin on me?”

  “I told him,” Harry said.

  “And … ?”

  “He said he thought it was a crock.”

  Nick nodded as if that should settle the matter.

  “Can we see the two.38s?” Harry asked, bringing him back.

  “What for?”

  “Somebody took a shot at Jim Morgan tonight. Whoever it was used a.38. I just want to rule you out.”

  “Morgan okay?”

  “He’s fine.”

  Benevuto nodded but said nothing more.

  “So? Can we see them?” Vicky pushed.

  Nick glared at her. “Yeah, you can see ’em. There in my locker at work. When I had it, I kept my Glock here. As far as the other weapons go, I didn’t want to take a chance of somebody breaking in and walking off with them. Too many people around here know I’m a cop.”

  Harry nodded. “I’d like you to go to the office with us so we can have a look.”

  “Tonight? It can’t wait until tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid not, Nick. By the way, what time did you leave work?”

  “Around four, right after those humps from IAD left.”

  “You come straight home?”

  “Yeah. Why?
”

  “Your engine’s hot, like the car’s been driven recently.” Harry glanced at his watch. “It’s been six hours since you left work.”

  “I ran out of bourbon and went out to the liquor store. You’ll find the empty bag with a receipt inside on the kitchen counter.” A sneer came over his face. “But hell, maybe I stopped on the way to squeeze one off at Morgan.”

  “I’ll take the bag and the receipt with us,” Harry said, ignoring the comment. “You okay to drive?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Then just follow us down.”

  Nick stood in front of his locker, his shoulders shaking with what could have been rage … or fear.

  “They were fucking here, damnit. They were here this morning.”

  Harry stepped around so he could look into Nick’s face, see what was there.

  “Are you sure, Nick? Do you specifically remember seeing them this morning?”

  He stood there thinking about what Harry had asked. “If you mean, could I swear to it in court and not worry that I might find out later they’d been missing for three days … no, I couldn’t.” He shook his head. “Shit, Harry, they were covered with that cloth you see on the top shelf. I mean I might not have noticed they were gone until I actually looked for them.”

  Nick reached for the cloth but Harry laid a hand on his arm, stopping him. “I want to have the inside of the locker dusted, Nick. If anyone took them, they would have been sweating the idea of a cop walking in here, so they probably did it in a hurry.”

  “And they might have gotten careless,” Nick said hopefully.

  “Is there any chance you left the locker open?”

  Nick shook his head. “Never happen. Hell, you know as well as I do, cops steal.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of the maintenance people. They’re in here late at night cleaning up.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said, hopeful again, “and it would be easy to have one of them standing watch outside while the other went through lockers seeing what he could find.”

  Vicky stared off, clearly annoyed. “That’s a really big stretch, isn’t it? Alright, maybe a maintenance guy would pick up a loose gun, figuring he could sell it, but almost all of the people who come in here are cops. Why would another cop wanna steal Nick’s weapons?”

  “What if it isn’t theft?” Harry asked.

  Both she and Nick stared at him, openly confused.

  “We’re assuming the weapons, or at least one of them, might be involved in the shooting at Morgan’s house. But the bullet was so mangled, even when we find Nick’s guns, there’s no way to prove or disprove that one of those weapons fired the shot. And maybe Nick’s missing guns had nothing to do with any of it.”

  “What do you mean?” Vicky asked.

  “Maybe somebody took them for an entirely different purpose. Maybe IAD searched Nick’s locker and took them to see if they could tie them in to something else.”

  “Then there’ll be a warrant,” Vicky said.

  “Not necessarily. This is sheriff’s department property—the building, the room, the locker. Who’s to say they can’t go inside a locker just with the okay of a boss? They do it every time a cop dies, or gets fired. It’s department property.”

  Nick’s features darkened. “Those fuckers. I never even thought of them. They coulda been looking for evidence that would tie me to Darlene; noticed the two.38s and just grabbed them to see if they could score a hit on something else.”

  “So we’ll ask them,” Vicky said.

  Both Harry and Nick looked at her as if she were out of her mind.

  “Okay, dumb idea,” she conceded. “What do you suggest?”

  “We’ll wait, see if their prints show up.”

  Harry got home at midnight. Checking his mail, he found a letter from the Florida Parole Board. It was formal notification that his mother had been granted a hearing on the following Tuesday. He had expected the letter; had known it was coming, but it didn’t stop his stomach from churning. He read the letter again, noting the time: nine a.m. Then he read it a third time. Finally, he threw the letter on a table, went to the kitchen, and poured his nightly orange juice. He went out on the lanai, headed for a long beach walk, and found Jeanie Walsh curled up asleep on one of the chaise lounges. A sense of relief flooded him, and he sat down next to her and gently stroked her face. She smiled in her sleep, then her eyes fluttered and opened.

  “I was just dreaming about you stroking my face.”

  “The power of positive dreaming,” he said.

  “Mmm, that’s a nice thought.” She smiled up at him. “If it works that way maybe I’ll go back to sleep and dream about you doing something else.”

  “Are you trying to seduce me?”

  She closed her eyes again and smiled. “Sure am.”

  “I’m not that easy,” he said.

  She laughed. “Oh, yes you are.”

  He scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the house.

  “Sir, where are you taking me?”

  “I’m taking you to my bed, where I intend to ravish you until you can speak nothing but gibberish and your eyes roll around in your head.” He leaned close to her ear and whispered: “Yes, I’m that good.”

  Jeanie threw her head back and laughed. “You better be, mister. Especially after a buildup like that.”

  The bed sheets lay in a twisted mass about their feet and their bodies were covered in a thin layer of perspiration.

  Jeanie turned on her side and rested her head against Harry’s chest. “I don’t know what got into you, mister, but I hope it gets into you again.”

  Harry slipped his arms around her and pulled her even closer. He brought his mouth to her hair and lightly kissed her. “You are one great way to end a lousy day.”

  “Mmmm, I like that idea. I think I might take it up as a hobby … helping Harry Doyle recover from very bad days.”

  Harry lightly ran the tips of his fingers along her back. “That could take up a lot of your time.”

  She ran her own fingers through the hair on his chest. “I have the time,” she said simply.

  They lay quietly for several minutes before Jeanie spoke again. “Harry, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But what upset you … Was it something at work … or something closer to home?”

  “Work is always the same. They throw a murder at you and it’s either clear cut, or it’s a big puzzle. This one’s a puzzle, and right now I don’t like the way it’s going. Darlene has stopped talking to me. But that’s not surprising. Victims always do. They only know so much. And I can only hear them for a short time after their deaths. But in this case I’m afraid there are going to be more victims.”

  “Will they talk to you?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Don’t the victims always talk to you?”

  “No. They only talk to me when they have to; when they have something to say. Sometimes their deaths were just a terrible surprise and there’s nothing they can tell me.” He paused, thinking about how he could explain without sounding as if he had a loose screw. “With Darlene … everything I felt from her shouted out religion right from the start. But after that it stopped; there wasn’t anything else.” He paused. “Maybe she just didn’t know anything more.”

  “So now you think there will be more victims and they might tell you more?”

  “Yes. But that’s part of the problem. There’ll be more victims because I haven’t caught the killer with what I already know.”

  “And that’s what’s bothering you?”

  “That’s most of it, yes.”

  Harry let another minute pass. Finally, he sighed and blurted the rest of it out. “A letter was waiting when I got home. It was from the parole board. My mother’s hearing is at nine a.m. next Tuesday.”

  “Are you still planning to go?”

  “Yes.”

  Jeanie pulled herself closer. So you have two monsters to deal with, she thought. A
woman who sexually abused children, who you hope will whisper secrets to you about her killer, and that other monster who killed you and your brother all those years ago, and who hasn’t stopped whispering to you since. She squeezed him lightly. Oh, Harry, you poor, sweet man. What an emotional nightmare you’ve been dealt in this life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bobby Joe Waldo started to sweat before Harry finished his first sentence. By the third sentence his floral Tommy Bahama shirt was clinging to his back.

  “Look, you got this all wrong.” Bobby Joe stood up from his desk, went to a wall-mounted thermostat, and lowered the air-conditioning by several more degrees. It was a beautiful Florida morning, warm and sultry with cloudless blue skies overhead. None of it found its way into Bobby Joe’s box of an office. The room was already cold; soon it would be freezing.

  “Alright, so why don’t you just tell me how wrong I’ve got it,” Harry said.

  Returning to his chair, Bobby Joe propped his elbows on his desk, formed a steeple with his fingers, and began speaking through it. “I don’t care what those women say, detective. They were just plain mistaken. I wasn’t in that bar and I sure wasn’t in there with Darlene Beckett.” He gave his head a solemn shake to emphasize the point. “For God’s sake, I’m a minister in a respected church.”

  The self-righteous pose forced Harry to fight back a smile. “You don’t look like you slept very well,” he said, smoothly changing tact. “Are you having problems here at the church?”

  Bobby Joe gave him as hard a stare as he could manage. “I slept fine. And I don’t have any problems at the church.”

  Harry lowered his voice, making the conversation more intimate. “Look, Bobby Joe. We know somebody from the church was at that bar. We can prove that one of your cars was in a minor accident in the parking lot. We can also prove that you resolved that problem for the church. Now, that doesn’t mean you were the person involved in the accident, but it’s sure a possibility.”

  “My daddy told you how that probably happened … somebody from the congregation complaining that her husband was going to that bar, and an assistant minister going out to see what he could do to help a sinner.”

  Harry smiled. “Yeah, I know what your daddy said, Bobby Joe. The funny thing is that you’re the one guy who keeps popping up. First it’s you paying off the accident in the parking lot—and paying off without telling anybody here at the church what you were doing—and now again with these dancers telling me they saw you in the bar, and not only in the bar, but in the bar with Darlene Beckett. And they’re also telling me that you’re sitting there with her and that she’s coming on to you pretty strong. How did they put it?” Harry stared off as if trying to recall the dancer’s exact words. “Oh, yeah, that she was ‘usin’ all her best moves’ on you.” Now Harry shook his head and put an extra good-ol’-boy twang to his words. “My Lord, Bobby Joe, a woman who looked like Darlene did, who had a reputation like Darlene did, and she’s just sittin’ there in that titty bar, puttin’ her best moves on the guy sittin’ next to her. Now that surely would be a temptation, wouldn’t it, Bobby Joe?” He dropped the twang and let his eyes harden. “And all that’s a big contradiction from what you’re telling me, Bobby Joe. And it makes it real hard for me to believe you.”