The Dead Detective

by William Heffernan

  The door to Bobby Joe’s office swung open and his father wielded his great bulk through the door. A step behind him was a tall, slender, balding man with a solemn expression spread across his face. He was dressed like someone who had just been dragged off a golf course.

  The Reverend Waldo stretched his lips in a closed-mouth smile. “Sorry to interrupt you, detective, but you seem to keep comin’ back to visit us, so I thought it was time to bring in the church’s lawyer. This here’s Walter Middlebrooks. From here on he’s gonna sit in and advise anyone you need to question.”

  Harry glanced at Bobby Joe. He seemed confused, his eyes showing relief, then fear, and then relief again. Harry decided it was time to wipe away that sense of relief. He looked up at the older minister and slowly nodded. “Then I guess we’ll have to change our procedures a bit.” He turned his gaze to Middlebrooks. “I was trying to keep everything informal for now, but that seems not to be working for you folks. So I’m going to make a call for some deputies to take Bobby Joe down to headquarters and we’ll continue down there.”

  “Are you charging him?” Middlebrooks snapped.

  “Not for now. Right now he’s a material witness. We have other witnesses—please note the plural there, counselor—who have placed Bobby Joe at a certain topless bar in Tampa in the company of our murder victim, shortly before her death.”

  Middlebrooks ground his teeth. “And I suppose this will involve flashing red lights, handcuffs, and perhaps a leaked story to the media,” he snapped.

  Harry inclined his head to one side. “Well, as you know, counselor, cruisers have to leave their red lights flashing when they enter a building on a call, and handcuffs, are department procedure when transporting a suspect. For a material witness, it’s kind of up to the deputies doing the transporting.” He ended the line with a false smile. “As far as leaks to the media go, that is definitely not department procedure. And I’ll do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen.” Harry closed it off with a faint smile.

  Reverend Waldo swelled up like an angry toad. “What does all this mean, Walter?”

  Middlebrooks put a calming hand on his arm. “It means that if we want a lawyer present during questioning, he intends to name Bobby Joe as a material witness and take him in for formal questioning, rather than do it quietly here. It also means that other deputies will arrive here at the church with the red lights on their cars flashing, and they’ll put Bobby Joe in handcuffs and take him away with them. Informally, it’s known as a perp walk, a form of embarrassment the police like to inflict on people.” He turned toward Harry. “Does that sum it up, detective?”

  “That’s pretty much right, counselor, except for the embarrassment part.”

  “Well, I don’t want that,” Reverend Waldo snapped. “I don’t want that at all.” He glared at his son. “I won’t have the church put in this position.”

  Middlebrooks patted his arm again. “Let me talk to the detective a moment, John.”

  The lawyer walked across the small office and took a seat next to Harry. “Now exactly how reputable are these witnesses who placed Bobby Joe with this murdered woman? I mean it is a minister we’re talking about here.”

  Harry nodded, fighting off a smile. “I know that, counselor. But the witnesses both identified Bobby Joe from his old mug shots.” He watched the lawyer wince at the words. “But, of course, we’ll do a formal lineup at headquarters and let them identify him in the flesh.”

  The Reverend John Waldo began to sputter, but Middlebrooks raised a hand asking him to hold off any comment. “And who exactly are these witnesses?” the lawyer asked.

  “They’re both topless dancers at the Peek-a-Boo Lounge,” Harry said. Middlebrooks began to object, but now Harry raised a hand and continued speaking in a slow, methodical voice. “And … they were both close acquaintances of Darlene Beckett. And … they also both say that shortly before Darlene’s murder, they saw her sitting at the bar engaged in some rather heavy flirting with Bobby Joe, and that after a time … Bobby Joe and Darlene appeared to leave together.” Harry let his words sink in before going on. “In my book, counselor, that’s enough to make him a material witness.”

  “Well, we shall have to see about that,” Middlebrooks intoned in his best lawyerly voice.

  At that point Reverend Waldo stepped forward and smiled down on Harry. “Now look here, son. What’s say we take a step back and decide not to get our lawyer involved, maybe just go on like before? We do that, can we maybe do away with the need for the flashing red lights and the handcuff business?”

  Harry took a moment to feign consideration. He glanced over at Bobby Joe, who seemed suddenly hopeful. He looked at Middlebrooks, who now seemed annoyed at having his golf game interrupted. Then he looked up at the Reverend John Waldo, his plump cheeks again spread into a cherubic smile.

  Slowly, Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry, reverend. I’d like to help you out here, but I think we’ve gone a bit too far.”

  Harry watched the reverend’s smile turn into quick, red-faced rage, before he turned to his son. “Bobby Joe, I’m afraid we’re gonna have to take a ride down to headquarters.”

  Harry took out his cell phone and called for transport.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bobby Joe sat in the interrogation room breathing in hot, stagnant air, looking very much like a lost soul. Harry entered the room with Walter Middlebrooks and immediately came up short.

  “Damn, the air-conditioning seems to be on the blink again. Let me go see what I can do to get it back on.” Harry turned and left the room, the door automatically locking behind him. A uniformed sergeant was waiting for him.

  “When do you want me to turn the air back on?” he asked.

  “Let them sweat for about twenty minutes; then turn it on. I’ll go back in ten minutes after that. It’ll be nice and cool by then.”

  The sergeant laughed and Harry headed for the soft drink machine.

  When he returned a half hour later the sergeant was still standing outside the door grinning. “That lawyer started pounding on the door about ten minutes after you left, but nobody could hear him; kept on pounding until the air went back on. It should be cool now, but I don’t know how hot he’s still gonna be.”

  “I’m sure the Reverend Bobby Joe explained that we all have crosses to bear,” Harry said as he reached for the door handle.

  Walter Middlebrooks was glaring when Harry entered the room.

  “Sorry it took so long,” Harry said. “Our maintenance guy had slipped away on a coffee break.” He raised his hands at his sides as if testing the air. “It sure feels good in here now, though.”

  Middlebrooks looked at him through narrowed eyes.

  Don’t blame me, Harry thought. You talk to your fat preacher client. He looked down at Bobby Joe. “First thing we want to do, Bobby Joe, is get these two women who placed you with Darlene to get a look at you in the flesh. All they saw was a mug shot and that was a couple of years old.”

  Bobby Joe twisted in his seat, looked up at Middlebrooks, and asked, “Do I have to do this?”

  “No, you don’t,” Middlebrooks said.

  Harry shrugged and gestured to a large mirror on the wall. “You know what’s behind the mirror, right?” He waited while Bobby Joe nodded. “These two ladies … We could have brought them in there to have a look at you through the one-way mirror. I could also bring them out to the church tomorrow or the next day and wait for you to go to your car. What I’m trying to do here, Bobby Joe, is give you the best shot at being eliminated as a suspect.”

  Bobby Joe peered up at him, the distrust in his eyes so vibrant it seemed alive. “How do I know you’re not settin’ me up?”

  Harry paused, surprised by the question. He decided to let it go unanswered and move on. “It’s like this, Bobby Joe. Doing it this way gives you your best shot at shaking their earlier ID. What I do is I put you in a lineup with five other guys, all your size and age and physical description, and
if these ladies can’t pick you out as the one and only guy they saw with Darlene …” Harry offered up a shrug. “Then their earlier ID isn’t worth anything and I’m back to square one.”

  Bobby Joe looked up at his lawyer.

  Middlebrooks nodded. “That’s all true, but this lineup isn’t something they can make you do unless they charge you. It’s also true that they’ll find a way to do it anyway, and that way might not be as favorable to you.” He turned to Harry. “But if my client agrees to do this I expect to be present and in the same room with these … women … when they try to make a positive identification.”

  The lineup room was just off the booking area on the first floor. It was actually two rooms, separated by a large viewing window made up of one-way glass. One room was dimly lit and had a row of chairs where witnesses could sit and look into the second room without being seen by the people they were viewing. The second room was long and narrow with bright lights centered on the wall opposite the viewing window. That wall was lined and marked in feet and inches so the height of those being viewed could be noted.

  A uniformed deputy led a line of five men into the room. Bobby Joe was the third man in line. The men were approximately the same age, all were white and between five-ten and six feet in height, and all had longish hair. The two dancers were seated behind the one-way window watching as the men entered. Harry had introduced them to Bobby Joe’s lawyer only by their first names. Middlebrooks seemed confused by their appearance. Both young women were dressed modestly in shorts and T-shirts and neither was wearing makeup. They looked more like college coeds than exotic dancers and that fact obviously unsettled Middlebrooks. One of the women was, in fact, a junior at the University of South Florida, which was only a short drive from the Peek-a-Boo Lounge. She lived with her mother and used the money she earned to pay her tuition. She had also made the dean’s list the past three semesters. Middlebrooks and Bobby Joe had been told none of that. Harry was saving those bits of information to further unnerve them.

  The viewing room filled as five uniformed officers took seats between the two dancers, effectively separating them. Harry didn’t want a reaction from one to influence the other. As a deputy directed the men to take numbered spots along the wall, Harry gave paper and pen to each woman and instructed them to write down the number of anyone in the lineup they could identify. As Harry moved to the back of the room, Vicky came up beside him.

  “Which one is your guy?” she whispered.

  Harry held up three fingers so the young women, whose backs were to him, wouldn’t hear his answer.

  The deputy in the lineup room went through the routine, asking each man to step forward and then turn to the left and the right. When he had gone through all five men, Harry repeated his instructions to each dancer.

  “Each man has a number above his head. If you recognize anyone as the man you saw sitting with Darlene Beckett in the Peek-a-Boo Lounge, just write down the number.” Each woman scratched a number on the sheet of paper and Harry collected them.

  “You both identified number three,” he said. “Is that correct?”

  The two women glanced at each other for the first time. The one on Harry’s left shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, number three,” she said.

  The other nodded. “Yeah, it was definitely three.”

  “Are you both certain he’s the man?” Harry asked.

  “Yeah, no question about it,” the first woman said.

  “Definitely, he’s the guy I saw with Darlene,” the second added.

  “I’ll need the names and addresses of these two witnesses,” Middlebrooks chimed in. He kept his voice low and rumbling and filled with as much threat as he could muster.

  Both women gave him a dismissive glance, and Harry decided the lawyer needed to do some serious work on his threatening voice.

  Harry turned the two witnesses over to John Weathers with instructions that he take signed statements from each; then returned to the interrogation room with Middlebrooks and Bobby Joe. Vicky and Jim Morgan slipped into the small viewing room and took chairs behind the one-way window.

  Morgan spoke without ever taking his eyes off Harry. “I hear that Harry’s tops when it comes to questioning a witness or a suspect. Weathers told me he’s got like a sixth sense for it.”

  Vicky thought about that, and about Harry’s insistence that Benevuto wasn’t their killer. Her eyes hardened and there was a tightening at the corners of her mouth. “I’ve only worked with him a few days, but from what I’ve seen, he’s very good.” She turned to Morgan. “But you are too, Jim. And we never would have had the plate numbers that led us to Benevuto if you hadn’t gone back and questioned that old man who lived across the street from Darlene. Harry missed that one. I guess his sixth sense wasn’t working that night.”

  Morgan nodded almost as though he hadn’t heard the compliment. He continued to watch Harry. When he spoke his voice sounded distant. “I’m not as good as he is, not yet, not by a long shot … But someday …”

  Harry took a seat opposite Bobby Joe and Middlebrooks. “Okay,” he began, placing his palms on the table, “I guess we all know where we stand here.”

  Middlebrooks gave Harry a false smile. “I think we do. Shall I sum it up?” He stared at Harry, who shrugged agreement. “Let’s see,” the lawyer continued, “we have two exotic dancers who claim they saw my client—a respected minister—sitting next to Darlene Beckett in a darkly lit lounge a few days before she was murdered. My client insists they’re mistaken. Now who is a jury of good, God-fearing Florida citizens to believe?” Middlebrooks shook his head. “I don’t think the state’s attorney will be too impressed with what you have.”

  Harry leaned back in his chair and nodded. “Those are some very good points, counselor.” He glanced at Bobby Joe. There was a self-satisfied smirk on his lips, but he could still see the nervousness in his eyes. Harry leaned forward again, resting his elbows on the table. He turned his gaze back to Middlebrooks. “I think you’re missing a few points, counselor. First, you’ve got Bobby Joe’s criminal record.”

  “A juvenile record,” Middlebrooks interjected. “Not admissible, as you are well aware.”

  “There were several arrests as an adult.”

  “But only one conviction,” the lawyer said, interrupting again. “And one I believe a jury would accept as a regrettable and youthful mistake, one Bobby Joe made before he found Jesus.”

  “Quite possibly, counselor, but the arrests are still a matter of record.” Harry flipped several pages in his notebook. “One charge involved possession of a controlled substance, which was dropped when Bobby Joe agreed to turn snitch for the arresting officers and provide information about his supplier. The supplier was eventually arrested and copped a plea, so Bobby Joe never had to testify. Another was a bad check charge, also dropped when restitution was made. And finally there was a charge involving a phony tree-trimming scam. Seems Bobby Joe tried to bilk an elderly couple out of several hundred dollars in that one. The couple got suspicious when Bobby Joe wanted half the money up front, so they called the cops. An investigation found that he had pulled the same scam on another couple a few blocks away. They paid him half the money up front and he never showed up to do the work, so the investigating officers busted him on that one as well as the attempted fraud on the second couple. The attempted fraud charge was eventually dropped two days after the couple met with the senior Reverend Waldo. We can only assume what happened at that meeting. The first couple refused to drop their charge and Bobby Joe did a year in county jail. But you’re right, counselor. There is only one conviction. Still, it’s not exactly a spotless record.”

  “He’s a man of God now. And these two women you have as witnesses.”

  “Let’s talk about these two women.” It was Harry’s turn to interrupt. “I’m sure if this matter proceeds you’ll be hiring an investigator to check them out pretty thoroughly, just as we’ll be checking out Bobby Joe pretty thoroughly.” Harry glanced at Bo
bby Joe. The smirk had disappeared. He turned back to Middlebrooks. “Let me save you a little time.” He flipped several pages in his notebook. “The first dancer, Sara Jones, she’s pretty similar to Anita Molari, the dancer Bobby Joe paid for the scratch on her car. She’s a single mother with a child at home.” Harry paused and smiled. “She says she takes her little girl to church every Sunday, by the way. The other young lady …” he checked his notebook again, “… is Cindy Lewis. She’s single. She’s a junior at the University of South Florida—hopes to be an anthropologist one day—lives with her mother, and uses the money she makes dancing to pay her tuition.” Harry paused and looked down at his notes for effect, although he already knew what was there. He looked up again. “Made the dean’s list the last three semesters,” he added.

  The lawyer’s lips tightened. “A very commendable young lady; the proverbial whore with a heart of gold. I’m sure the state’s attorney will love throwing that old saw at a jury. Who knows? They might be into buying clichés on that particular day.”