Found

by H. Terrell Griffin

  Jock was quiet for a moment and then looked at me. “You got anything else?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I’ll be right back,” said Jock, and stepped out onto the front porch, pulling his phone from his jeans pocket.

  He was back a couple of minutes later. “Captain,” he said. “I’m going to give you a bottle of water from your refrigerator. I’ll hold it to your mouth so you can drink as much as you want. If your hood comes off, you’re dead. I’m going to cover you with a blanket and leave. In a couple of hours some men will be here to take you someplace where you can cool your heels until we figure out which law enforcement agency to turn you over to. Understand?”

  “Yes,” McAllister said just above a whisper. I was listening to a man whose life was over.

  We packed up our things, including the documents from the safe and the thumb drive with the pictures and left. I knew Jock had called some men from his agency who would come down from Tampa and keep McAllister incommunicado until we were ready to put him in jail.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  The ride into town was quiet, each of us lost in his own thoughts. We had a lot of the answers, but they had come at a cost to Jock and me, not to mention McAllister. I wasn’t going to waste any time on sympathy for McAllister. He was a cretin, a dirty cop who sold his soul to the drug dealers. I would have been perfectly happy killing him for what he did to Katie, but I knew it was better to let the law handle this one. McAllister would spend the rest of his life in prison.

  We needed to talk some more to Evans. I was sure that the pictures on McAllister’s thumb drive would include some of Evans raping Katie, and I thought he hadn’t told Jock everything he knew about the drug operation.

  I was a bit puzzled by the situation with Bud Jamison. Who was he running from? On the other hand, he might have been taken by some of King’s cronies. In that case, if Jamison knew the key to the code and had given it to the bad guys, he’d probably be buried in an orange grove in Avon Park.

  “Jock,” I said, “we need to talk to Evans again.”

  “That we do, podna. I’m thinking that it might be easy to meet him in his office. Maybe you ought to go see him. I don’t think he’ll try to bullshit you if he has an inkling as to how much you already know.”

  “It’s worth a try.” I looked at my watch. It was nearing six o’clock. “You want some breakfast?” I asked.

  We pulled into the parking lot of a Denny’s on Tamiami Trail and went inside. We were just finishing a breakfast that had a lot of grease and other things bad for the circulatory system when Jock’s phone rang. He answered and then listened silently for a few moments.

  “You’re kidding me,” he said, finally.

  More quiet, then Jock said, “Okay. Make sure you don’t leave any traces of your visit and get out of there. Use a secure phone to call the Sarasota Sheriff’s office and give them some story that’ll get deputies headed that way.”

  There was a little more conversation and Jock clicked the off button on the phone. “Bad news, podna,” he said. “Somebody killed Captain McAllister.”

  “How?”

  “Gunshot to the forehead. He still had the hood on. He never saw it coming.”

  “He got what he deserved,” I said. “Do you think the killer knew we were there?”

  “I don’t think he was there when we were. He would have put a stop to our interrogation if he’d known about it. Finding McAllister trussed up like a Christmas turkey would have given the shooter good reason to think the captain had talked to somebody. The only reason to kill McAllister is to shut him up.”

  “Bonino, you think?” I asked.

  “Bet on it.”

  “I’d better call Harry Robson and get some protection on Evans. He may be next on the list.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Jock. “We’re not supposed to know about McAllister’s death and, without that, we’d have no reason to suspect that Evans is in danger.”

  He was right, of course, but I felt impotent, sitting there over the remains of breakfast while Evans might be about to be murdered. “Maybe we ought to go sit on him,” I said.

  Jock agreed. We paid our check and drove to Evans’s house. Dawn was just beginning to lighten the sky when we turned onto Evans’s street. Lights were on in all the neighboring houses. Two police cruisers were parked in front of Evans’s house. An unmarked police car sat in the driveway behind a coroner’s van. Uniformed cops were milling about in the front yard, bored, waiting for orders. “We’re too late,” Jock said, and kept driving.

  “Somebody’s cleaning up loose ends,” I said. “Either we’ve got two killers or the one stopped here before going after McAllister.”

  “The cops look like they’ve been here a while. The killer probably took Evans out and then went for McAllister. If he’d done it the other way around he’d have found us with the captain. We got lucky.”

  “I wonder if he killed Evans’s family.”

  “Let’s get back to the key and get J.D. working on this. We need to know what happened.”

  I’d hardly gotten that out of my mouth when my phone rang. J.D. wanting to know where the hell we were. I told her that both McAllister and Evans were dead and asked if she could follow up and find out what the cops knew.

  “Later,” she said. “I need you back here to babysit Katie. I’ve got to go to a meeting. I just got a call from Bud Jamison.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  J.D. was waiting impatiently on the sofa, drinking coffee, when we walked into the house. She got up, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “See you later.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Jamison called me an hour ago. He wants to meet me at seven in the Cracker Barrel Restaurant out on I-75. It’ll take me forty-five minutes to get there and I’m already late. I’ll fill you in when I get back.”

  “Take me with you,” I said. “I can fill you in on the way about our meeting with McAllister.”

  “He said to come alone, and I’m not going to take the chance of spooking him. I’ll call you when I get to the mainland. My duty phone is secure. I’ll call you on Jock’s phone, and you can tell me about McAllister. I’ve got to go.”

  Ten minutes later, J.D. called. She told me that Jamison had called about six o’clock, waking her up. He said he had to meet with her, but he wanted the meeting to be somewhere public, far enough away from Cortez that nobody would recognize him. They’d agreed on the Cracker Barrel.

  I told her what McAllister had told us and about the photographs and documents I had. She agreed that we needed to find out about the bank accounts. She was particularly interested about the part dealing with Jamison and the submarine and the coded documents. I also told her that someone had killed McAllister after we left him and that something was going on at the Evans house.

  “He fooled a lot of people for a long time,” J.D. said. “I wish we could have brought him into a courtroom and put him in jail forever.”

  “Jock and I think Evans is probably dead, too.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll call Harry Robson at Sarasota P.D. later and see what he can tell me.”

  J.D. said she’d call me again after she talked to Jamison. She was planning to come straight home after meeting with him.

  Jock’s phone rang again thirty minutes later. He handed it to me. “J.D.,” he said.

  “Matt, I’m on Highway 64 almost to the Cracker Barrel. Jamison called and when I told him where I was, he told me to get on I-75 and drive south at exactly seventy miles per hour. He said he would time me and would call again when I should be nearing the exit that he wanted me to take. He’s changing things up.”

  “It sounds like he’s just being cautious,” I said. “Call me as soon as you know where you’re going.”

  I heard Katie stirring in the guest room and in a few minutes she walked into the living room. “Good morning,” she said. “Is J.D. up yet?”

&nb
sp; “She had to leave,” I said. “What can I fix you for breakfast?”

  “If you’ve got cereal and milk, that would be fine. And some coffee, please.”

  J.D. called back while I was getting another pot of coffee going. “He just called. Told me to exit at University Parkway and drive west. He’s going to call again. I’m pulling off the ramp now.”

  “Do you have your gun?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Be careful. Stay in public view.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll call you when I get new instructions.” She clicked off.

  “He’s running her all over the east county,” I said to Jock.

  “He’s a careful man. He’s thinking J.D. may be bringing the cops, or worse, with her.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Katie.

  I told her about the meeting with Jamison and how careful he was being.

  “Who’s Jamison?” she asked.

  “An old man who was a friend of another old man murdered on the key last week. He disappeared a couple of days after the murder. We were afraid he was dead.”

  “So, he doesn’t have anything to do with the drugs and Captain McAllister.”

  “Only tangentially,” I said. “King and McAllister and the others had a side deal going. They were trying to find a key to decode some documents King found on a sunken World War II submarine. It was kind of a crazy scheme, but King apparently thought that Goodlow, the man murdered on the key, and Jamison were involved somehow. We think King was after Jamison, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the drugs.”

  “If Mr. Jamison was involved with either McAllister or King,” Katie said, “he’s probably in trouble.”

  “Katie,” I said, “I need to tell you something. We don’t know the details yet, but we’ll find out when J.D. gets back.”

  “This sounds bad,” said Katie.

  “Actually, I think it’s a good thing. McAllister is dead and we think Evans is, too.”

  She sat back in the chair. “Tell me what you know,” she said.

  “Jock and I met with McAllister early this morning. He confirmed everything you had to say, by the way.”

  “Did you kill the bastard?”

  “No. When we left, he was alive. But somebody put a bullet in his head shortly after we left him. We think Evans may have been killed by the same person, but we don’t really know that. When we drove by his house an hour or so ago, there were cop cars all over the place. Something happened there. We’ll know when J.D. can check in with the Sarasota cops and the sheriff’s office.”

  Katie breathed out a long breath. “I guess that is good news,” she said. “In a way. I’d like to have killed the bastards myself.”

  “It means you won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “Or face them in a courtroom.”

  “That would’ve been hard, but I planned on doing it. I was mostly afraid that McAllister, being a cop and all, would get away with everything. That nobody would believe me.”

  Jock’s phone rang again. He answered and held it out to me. J.D. said, “He directed me to the short-term parking at the airport. I just got here, but don’t see him. It’s full daylight, so I’ll just wait.”

  I heard the ding of the alarm signaling that one of the car doors in J.D.’s Camry had opened. “Never mind, he’s here. Hang on for a minute.”

  A male voice came on the line. “Good morning, Mr. Royal. This is Bud Jamison. I assure you my intentions are benign. I need to talk to Detective Duncan. This won’t take long and she’s safe. She’s got a gun and I don’t.”

  “Tell her,” I said, “to call me in fifteen minutes. If not, I’ll call the cops.”

  “Not to worry,” he said and hung up.

  But I did worry. Calling the cops would be useless. In fifteen minutes, J.D. could be dead or so lost in the tangle of roads near the airport that we’d never find her. But then, she had her gun and she was a good cop. Tough and resilient. And she was in a very public place with cars and people coming and going.

  I was too nervous to do much but pace the floor. Five minutes went by and my phone rang. J.D. “We’re coming to your house,” she said.

  “We?”

  “Jamison and I. You’re not going to believe what he has to tell us.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  J.D. walked through the door, followed by a tall, slender man who, while obviously elderly, didn’t look like he was in his nineties. She introduced Jock and me to Bud Jamison.

  “Where’s Katie?” she asked.

  “In her room,” I said. “She didn’t want to get in the way.”

  “She’s a part of this,” J.D. said, and went to knock on Katie’s door.

  When we were all seated in my living room, J.D. said, “I wanted you to hear what Mr. Jamison has to say. He told me some of it, but I haven’t heard all of it. I wanted to wait until we were together so he only has to go through it one time.”

  Jamison said, “This is a long story that covers a lot of years. I’ll tell it all and answer any questions you have.”

  “Why did you disappear?” I asked.

  “Some very bad men were looking for me.”

  “Then why resurface now?” I asked.

  “One of the men, Porter King, was killed last weekend. I thought about it for a few days and decided that I needed to talk to Detective Duncan about the other man that would want to do me harm. I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t turn me over to the bad guy, so I went through some machinations today to make sure she wasn’t bringing somebody with her.”

  “But you’re here,” I said.

  “I told Detective Duncan that the leader of a group of very bad people was a cop; Captain Doug McAllister. When she told me that he was dead and what he’d said about King, I thought I could tell her the rest of the story and come out of hiding.”

  “Tell Katie who you are,” said J.D.

  He turned to look at Katie. “Do you recognize me?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen you somewhere, but for the life of me, I can’t remember where or when.”

  “I once drove you to the bus station in Tampa.”

  Surprise, or shock, or something suffused Katie’s face. “Of course,” she said. “You were in front of my house the night my husband was killed.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand,” Katie said.

  “Let me show you something,” Jamison said. He pulled a small photograph from his shirt pocket. It was a duplicate of one I’d seen in his bedroom when Jock and I searched the place, the one of the skinny woman standing in the surf holding an infant.

  Katie took the photograph and looked at it for a moment. “Okay?” she said, a question in her tone.

  “That’s you and your biological mother,” Jamison said, “taken when you were five days old.”

  This time the look on Katie’s face was one of skepticism. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Your mother was dying of cancer when that picture was taken. Your father was the captain of a long-line fishing boat and was lost at sea a few months before your birth.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Katie. “What happened to her?”

  “She died a month after that picture was taken.”

  “How did you get this picture?”

  “I took it.”

  “Who is the woman?”

  “My daughter,” Jamison said.

  Now Katie looked puzzled. She was quiet while she worked it out. “I’d like to hear the story,” she said.

  Jamison smiled. “Your mom’s name was Melanie. Melanie Jamison. My wife died in childbirth, bringing Melanie into the world. I raised her by myself, with a lot of help from the people of Cortez. I left the sea and took work in the fish houses. Sometimes, I had to go back to sea for a few weeks to make enough money to keep us in food. When I had to leave, Ken Goodlow and his wife took Melanie in and took care of her.

 
“She grew up to be a wonderful young lady, smart and full of life. She graduated from high school and went up to Tampa to the University of South Florida. When she finished, she came home and took a job teaching at Manatee High School. She got married and within a year was pregnant with you.”

  “What happened?” Katie asked. She was intent now, focused on Jamison, intrigued by the story, but perhaps still skeptical, not believing what Jamison was telling her.

  “As I said, her husband, your father, was the captain of a long-line fishing boat that would be at sea for several weeks at a time. One day, the boat didn’t return. A bad storm had come up the Gulf from south of the Yucatán. There was no warning. It developed fast and moved north with tropical storm winds. We’re pretty sure your father’s boat was caught in the storm. There was no more radio contact and the Coast Guard couldn’t find any trace of the boat. A few months after the boat disappeared, when your mom was in the last stage of her pregnancy, some debris washed ashore down on Marco Island. They were able to identify it as coming from your father’s boat.”

  “Tell me about the cancer,” Katie said.

  “Your mom was pretty sick during the pregnancy, but it got worse, and the doctors did a lot of tests. They found the cancer, but it was too late. They told us that if your mom underwent chemo and radiation treatments, she had a slim chance of beating it. But, the treatments would kill you. She thought it would be better to save you than try to hang onto life. I have to tell you that I argued with her about the decision. I didn’t want to lose her.”

  “But you did,” said Katie. “Lose her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not keep the baby?” Katie asked. I noticed that she didn’t refer to the little girl as “me,” just “the baby.” She still wasn’t convinced.

  “I was in my fifties,” Jamison said, “and still working the boats some. I knew I couldn’t raise a child the way she should be. Melanie and I talked it over and decided to put you up for adoption.”