“Neither of these women is a prostitute,” Harry said. “In fact, neither one has any criminal record at all.” He shifted his gaze to Bobby Joe as he spoke. “Not juvenile, not even charges that were eventually dropped.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out. “Look, we can go around and around on this without either one of us getting what we want. And in the end Bobby Joe gets himself locked up. But that doesn’t have to happen. Let’s say I’m willing to buy the argument that Bobby Joe didn’t kill Darlene Beckett. Let’s say I’m willing to accept the idea that he was at the Peek-a-Boo Lounge for some other reason—maybe I even buy Reverend Waldo’s suggestion that some member of the congregation asked for help with a straying husband. So let’s say I buy the idea that Bobby Joe goes there to try and help some sinner, and lo and behold, he just happens to sit next to Darlene Beckett. And the dancers see him, and all of a sudden he’s in the middle of a murder investigation just because he was trying to do his duty as a minister of the Lord.”
“You’re forgetting, detective, Bobby Joe insists he wasn’t there at all,” Middlebrooks said.
“Yeah, well, that one I’m not buying. I’ve got credible witnesses who say otherwise. And I’ve got another witness who saw him leaving her apartment. You want the rundown on him? He’s a retired security officer—a bonded officer who worked at a local bank for thirty years.”
Middlebrooks let out a long breath. “So what is it you want?”
“First let me tell you what I think happened.” Harry tilted back in his chair, playing the role of storyteller to the hilt. “The way I see it—the way the evidence points right now—the Reverend John Waldo was outraged that Darlene Beckett molested a child from his flock. He was further outraged that the boy wouldn’t testify against her and that without that testimony Darlene ended up with little more than a slap on the wrist. He even gives a sermon telling the congregation to do everything they can to make sure she ends up in jail. They can do that, he says, by reporting any contact she has with kids, or any other violations of her terms of house arrest. In other words: keep an eye on this woman, and when she crosses the line—which she will, being the sinner she is—report her to the police. He even repeats that in a church bulletin. I know that. I have a copy of the bulletin.”
Harry leaned forward again, propped his elbows on the table. “Well, I think Bobby Joe decided he was going to do his daddy’s bidding, so he started following Darlene around. What he didn’t count on was Darlene taking a shine to him, and before he knew it he’s rolling around in her bed. And he gets himself seen not only at the Peek-a-Boo but also by her neighbors when he leaves her apartment.”
Harry grasped two fingers with one hand. “But here are two reasons why I think Bobby Joe may not be her killer.” He released his fingers and raised one. “First, even somebody as self-centered as Bobby Joe had to know that Darlene was nothing more than a fast roll in the hay, and that she was willing to take that roll with anybody who had the right equipment. So right there we rule out jealousy as a motive.” He raised the other finger. “And second, even Bobby Joe isn’t dumb enough to let himself be seen all over creation with a woman he planned to harm or kill. He’s got enough of a criminal history to know that a mistake like that is certain to get his ass caught.”
Middlebrooks jabbed a finger on the table. “So if you believe these things, why are you harassing my client?”
Harry smiled across the table. “I didn’t say I believed them, counselor. I said I might be willing to accept them. What I do believe is that Bobby Joe wasn’t the only person from the church who was checking Darlene out. And I think Bobby Joe knows who those other people are. So if your client wants me off his ass, he’s going to have to give up those names. But even then, that doesn’t mean I’m through with him. Down the road, if I turn up more evidence that points to him, I’ll be right back knocking on his door.”
“So the bottom line is, you want Bobby Joe to help you widen your net?”
“That’s one way to put it, counselor.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Harry gave him a small shrug. “Given the evidence I have, that leaves him as my primary suspect. And right now, I think the state’s attorney might feel it’s enough to hold him.”
Middlebrooks stared off for a moment. “We’ll need to consult with Reverend Waldo,” he said at length. “He was leaving this afternoon on church business. He’ll be back the day after tomorrow.”
“I believe they have this invention called the telephone,” Harry said.
“I will, of course, talk to him by phone,” Middlebrooks said. “But I’ll also want the three of us to sit down; perhaps even bring in someone who specializes in criminal law. I assume Bobby Joe will be free to go with me.”
Harry nodded very slowly. “I’ll know where to find him if I need him.” He glanced at Bobby Joe. The young minister’s eyes were filled with as much fear as Harry had ever seen. His own eyes hardened. “And if you run, I will find you, Bobby Joe. You can make book on that.”
Jim Morgan glanced at Vicky and nodded. “Pretty darn slick,” he said. “Harry squeezed him like a ripe orange.”
“Yeah, he did,” Vicky said. “The kid looked like he was ready to wet his pants. I’d bet my next paycheck he’ll give Harry all the names he can think of.” She let out a small grunt. “Hell, he may even make up a few.” She glanced at her watch. “We’re supposed to meet Darlene’s parents at the morgue. We better get moving.”
After identifying the body of their daughter, Darlene Beckett’s parents returned to the squad room with Vicky for a more thorough interview. Harry watched them from across the room. They were a couple not unlike many he had seen over the years: the nondescript people who filled Florida’s trailer parks and crowded villas, lonely people who seemed to be living out their final days huddled under a dark cloud, each one destined for some tragedy they could not escape.
As they concluded their interview and started to leave Harry watched the mother, whose name was Betsy, precede her husband across the squad room. Withered was the only word he could find to describe her. She seemed drained, washed out, as if all the energy had been sucked from her body. Her hair, once blond, was streaked with gray, a thin, limp shank that fell to her shoulders. Her eyes were equally faded, as if any color that had existed simply dissipated over time, and they were set in a face that was a mass of broken lines and sagging jowls. He knew, from his investigation, that she was only fifty, although she carried herself like a woman ten or fifteen years older. The pale gray, calf-length dress she wore only added to that image.
Her husband Bert was a retired Navy chief who ran a small insurance agency that specialized in auto and boat policies, although he still had the look of a man who had spent his life working with his hands. He was dressed in baggy gabardine trousers and an open-neck white shirt, a short, stocky block of a man with large, rough hands. He had a broad, clean-shaven face with a flattened nose and a hairline that had receded well back on his head. What little hair was left was salt-and-pepper gray and cut short. His eyes, like his wife’s, were lifeless and dull, and Harry wondered if it was due to the death of their daughter or the result of a hard, dispiriting life.
Harry had never interviewed Darlene’s parents. Initially, that had been left to John Weathers and Nick Benevuto. Weathers had told him that, while hurt by her death, they had seemed almost relieved she was out of their lives. Harry thought that was the saddest commentary of all.
Now, with Nick suspended, the parents had been turned over to Vicky and Jim.
When Vicky had seen the couple out and returned to her desk, Harry approached her.
“Where’s Jim?” he asked.
“He stayed behind to make sure all the paperwork on the release of the body was by the book … chain of evidence and all that,” Vicky said.
“I saw the parents leaving.”
“Yeah, it was pretty grim at the morgue. They had a funeral director with them to collect the body. They�
�re planning to have the funeral tomorrow; short and sweet and quick. They want to avoid extensive press coverage, which of course they won’t.”
“I’m surprised they agreed to come back here with you,” Harry said.
Vicky nodded. “I was too. I told them there were some things I had to go over with them; stressed it might help us find Darlene’s killer. They’re still in a state of shock and they came along like a pair of sheep.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Quite a bit, actually … even more if my intuitions are correct.” She gave him a hard stare. “You’re not the only one who has them, Harry.”
Harry ignored the sarcasm. “Wanna share?”
“You’re such a pushy detective.” She paused a moment. “I’ll make a deal. You tell me what’s going on with your mother, and how it’s affecting you on this case, and I’ll tell you everything I learned, factual and intuitive.”
“How do you know anything’s going on with my mother?”
“Word gets around the squad room, you know how it is. Cops in Hillsborough hear something; they talk to their cop buddies in Pinellas. Suddenly everybody knows, even me. Do we have a deal?”
“You’re asking for a quid pro quo. That could be construed as threatening to withhold evidence from a superior officer.”
“And at my departmental trial I’ll testify that your mental condition is precarious, at best. I could probably make a good case for that.”
Harry looked off to the side and fought off a smile. “I bet you could,” he said when he finally turned back. “She has a parole hearing coming up. My adoptive father—he’s a retired Clearwater cop—has been in touch with a friend in the state’s attorney’s office in Tampa to see if they’re planning to oppose it. So far he hasn’t been able to get a straight answer.”
“And you? Are you going to oppose it?”
“She killed my kid brother and she tried to kill me. I want her locked up.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“The same letter I get every year, on the anniversary of my brother’s death. She tells me how much she wants me in heaven with Jesus and Jimmy.”
Vicky looked down at the floor. “That must hurt a lot.”
Harry’s jaw tightened. “It’ll hurt a helluva lot more if she tries to send me there.”
Vicky raised her eyes and kept her voice soft. “What will you do if she does?”
Harry stared at her for what seemed a long time. She wondered if he was trying to work the answer out himself. His eyes blinked, then he drew another long breath. His voice was cold and flat when he finally spoke.
“I’ll stop her,” he said.
Vicky studied his eyes but could find nothing revealing. There had been a note of finality in his voice, a hint of impending matricide, and she wondered if it was something he could really do. It certainly didn’t fit the man she had come to know. But her years as a cop had taught her that people were sometimes forced to do things beyond the pale of what they would normally consider. It might be that way for Harry, and she wondered if he could emotionally survive if forced to commit an act so terrible. She knew she could not.
“Okay, you got your pound of flesh, now tell me about Darlene’s parents; what they told you about her.”
His question brought her back and she put her other thoughts aside. “Most of what I learned came from the mother. It was very interesting. You remember Darlene’s claim that she was sexually abused as a child?”
“It was a big part of her defense, one of the excuses she gave for what she did to that boy.”
“Yeah, it was. Well, the mother confirmed that abuse, but in an odd way. When she talked about Darlene’s childhood, she claimed that even as a little kid she liked to sexually tease men. The mother said it started when she was only eight or nine years old; that even then she liked to sit on men’s laps and when she did she would ‘wiggle’ around in a provocative way.” Vicky used her fingers to place imaginary quotes around the word, indicating she thought little of the accusation. “She claimed Darlene would also put her head on their chests and give them long, lingering hugs.”
“So she claimed that Darlene brought the abuse on herself.”
“That’s exactly what she wanted me to believe, although she never came out and said it directly. It was so damn obvious what she was doing. She was deflecting blame away from herself as a parent.”
“Did she say who Darlene supposedly teased?”
“No, she didn’t, it was all very general. She claimed it was just about every adult man she met.”
Harry paused. “Why do you think she wouldn’t be specific? Was it because the father was there?”
“Yeah, I think it was. Are you thinking that maybe the father might have been the abuser?”
Harry nodded. “It’s always a possibility.”
“Yeah, and that’s exactly the vibe I got off the whole conversation.” Vicky tapped the side of her nose. “The father was very quiet throughout the conversation. Mostly he nodded agreement to whatever his wife said. Whenever I asked for his opinion he deferred to her, claiming she was in a better position to know; that he was away a great deal of the time when Darlene was growing up. I gathered that his job in the navy took him out to sea for long tours of duty.” Vicky bent forward as if preparing to impart some secret. “The mother said she tried to get Darlene to stop what she called ‘this obvious sexual flirting,’ which of course was nothing more than a kid imitating what she’d seen adult women do, either in person or on film or television. When I asked her if she’d had any success modifying that behavior, she said everything she tried failed, even though Darlene had been severely punished—those were her words.” Vicky shook her head. “So what we had was a young girl who was getting a positive response from men when acting flirtatious and anger from the primary female in her life, her mother.”
“But that experience alone couldn’t have been enough to turn her into a child molester.” Harry’s voice had become incredulous.
Vicky vigorously shook her head. “No, of course not. I think it was a contributing factor, but no more than that. Look, I consider myself an expert on sex crimes, but I’m certainly no shrink. Based on what I’ve read of her history, it’s no secret she was a very disturbed woman and I’d bet anything that her claim in court that she suffered from some bipolar disorder wasn’t very far off the mark. And maybe we add some heavy abuse as a kid.”
Harry was quiet for several moments, digesting what Vicky had said. When he spoke again his voice was soft and low and slightly raspy. “It still doesn’t excuse what she did to that little boy.”
Vicky studied Harry’s eyes, wondering if they were still talking about Darlene Beckett. “No, it doesn’t,” she finally said. “Illness may explain why something happens, Harry, but it never excuses the act.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bobby Joe listened to his daddy’s voice rumble through the speaker. He was seated in Walter Middlebrooks’s well-appointed office, his father hundreds of miles away in Atlanta, but even so he could still see the look on his father’s face; feel the anger emanating from his eyes, just as if he were seated across the room listening to his son’s stream of excuses.
“Who can you give this cop that’ll get him off your back?” his father demanded, cutting him off. “And understand me, boy, I mean somebody who is not gonna lead him right back to my church.”
Bobby Joe could not think of anyone who would not hurt the church. There was one whose involvement with the church might be overshadowed by other facets of his life. But he also knew what would happen if he ever offered him up, and he had no intention of paying that high a price for his daddy’s fucking church.
“I’m not hearin’ any answers, boy.”
“I’m tryin’ to think, Daddy. Almost all the people who were keeping an eye on Darlene were church people, at least in the beginning right after you sent out the call.”
“There was no call, damnit. And don’t you ever tell any
body there was. And stop callin’ that harlot by her first name. I know you were sleepin’ with her, but I don’t have to hear her talked about like she was a good, God-fearin’ woman. And certainly not one who was bein’ persecuted by me.”
“Yes, Daddy.” He musta forgot, Bobby Joe thought. He musta forgot how he preached it from his goddamn pulpit and had it written down in his goddamn church bulletin.
“So, who?” his father’s voice shouted across the line. “Who are you gonna give up to this cop?”
“I’m thinkin’, Daddy.”
“Well, think faster.”
Bobby Joe looked at Middlebrooks, his eyes begging for support. Middlebrooks turned away, just as older adults had turned away from him his whole life. Then an idea came to him. It was an audacious idea and a dangerous one, but there might be a way to pull it off if he got his daddy and Middlebrooks to do it for him.
“There was one person that Dar … that Mizz Beckett talked about. He really seemed to make her nervous.”
“Who was it?”
“It was this cop who she said was pressing her to … to … well, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” His father’s voice was riddled with sarcasm. “To do what my own son was already doin’ with that strumpet.”
The hope Bobby Joe had felt plunged to the pit of his stomach. “I guess it’s a bad idea,” he said.
There was quiet on the other end of the line.
“I just remembered it, and how she acted about it when she told me.” Back then there had been no question in Bobby’s Joe’s mind that Darlene was already sleeping with that cop. He had known it as soon as she mentioned him. It was just her way of bragging about how much other men wanted her. She couldn’t seem to help herself when it came to that.
“No, it’s not a bad idea.”
His father’s voice jolted him, brought him back to reality. “It’s not?”
“No, in fact it’s a fine idea. We do it and we can take the accusations this detective is makin’ about our church, and we can turn it right back on him. Put this Harry Doyle on the defensive for a change. What do you think, Walter?”
The Dead Detective Page 20
