Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set

by T. J. Brearton

  * * *

  As they approached The Bonita Springs Greyhound Track, Tom saw the second story, walled in glass, hanging over the concrete stands. The dirt race track was just out of sight.

  Tom followed the Escalade around to the side of the building where a sign declared “Clubhouse” and “Heroes Lounge.” Nick parked the Escalade off to the side, blocking access to a double set of dumpsters.

  Tom maneuvered into a nearby spot. The storm pummeled the Jeep, loud as a bucket of coins dropped from the sky. Nick came running over, holding an arm over his head. When he jumped in the Jeep he was soaked.

  He pointed at the lounge sign. “I’m going in there,” Nick said. “Shouldn’t take long.” There was a walkway in the shadows toward an unmarked door.

  “I’ll come in with you.”

  “Nah. Not a good idea.”

  Tom looked at the steel gray door beyond the deluge of milky rain. “Where does that lead?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Goes into the kitchen. There’s an office in the back. Hey, I got this, bro. Easy-peasy. Just got to hand over the keys and the title.”

  Nick gave the Escalade a forlorn look.

  “You gotta give ’em that whole vehicle? I thought you were only in it for ten grand?”

  “No, I’m gonna cut the car into quarters, give them a fourth of it,” Nick said with a straight face. He slapped Tom on the leg and opened the door. Tom watched him go, running through the storm in a hunch, before disappearing through the gray door without looking back.

  Tom sat watching the rain drumming down. The few imported palm trees were bending almost sideways as the wind ripped over the flat land. He didn’t know how long Nick was going to be and his patience was already running thin.

  He banged out of the Jeep and jogged to the main entrance, passing a sign: Poker Room, Open Daily 9:45 a.m. to 2 a.m. Next to it was a cheesy photo showing four dogs, dressed to the nines, sitting around a poker table, cards fanned out in their paws. Rain pelted and coursed down the sign, melting the whole thing into surrealism.

  Tom ducked inside.

  He stood a moment, drenched, looking around. The ugly drop-ceiling felt too low, and a couple of fluorescent light-squares flickered with bad bulbs. A few old-timers, one wearing a classic, banded fedora hat, were queueing between velvet ropes. A distorted voice blared over the P.A. system, and Tom could hardly discern the words.

  Even if he wasn’t going to place any bets, he still needed to queue for entry. Tom sluiced the rainwater off his blazer, drawing a look from the attendant as it pattered to the floor.

  The attendant was a buxom middle-aged woman who asked him if he wanted to become a VIP card holder. Tom declined. A dirty desk fan twirled in the attendant booth. It was warm in here, the AC turned low. The track was keeping their costs down. He could’ve just showed his badge, but he coughed up the two bucks for entry.

  She handed him a schedule and he passed through the turnstile. Thursday featured “Poker High Hand” and dog racing post times at 11:45 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. He stuck the schedule in his back pocket and went to the next floor.

  The rain thrummed like white noise, but it was tapering off at last, the wind dying down.

  He bought beer in a plastic cup from a vendor and continued to wander until he had a view of the dog paddock and kennel. A couple dog-trainers were out in the mud, dark-skinned guys in white polo shirts, getting dirty. They surrounded one lone dog who was curling around in a circle, barking.

  The men spoke softly to it, and one of them got a hold of it and stroked its short coat. The other man fitted a racing jacket over the dog with the number 8 on it. The storm having passed, it looked like a post-time was imminent.

  Tom checked his phone to see if Nick had texted or called. He hadn’t, and it was after six o’clock. Sipping the half-gone beer, Tom headed for the betting booth and placed ten dollars on number eight, who was three-to-one odds. He was handed a slip of paper with his betting info on it and took a seat on one of the wet benches.

  The stands were nearly empty, the track and infield choked with weeds. The numbers on the dog gates were tattered and sun-faded. The place looked like it had been through a war, and the storm hadn’t helped.

  His phone rang before he finished the rest of his beer.

  Blythe.

  “Lange, they got him. This thing could be over. You need to get to Tampa. I’m already on my way.” She sounded excited, out of character.

  “Wait, they got him? Coyote?”

  “Yeah. It’s Raymond Bosco, just like we thought. He’s been distributing narcotics out of the strip club. He’s got some of the strippers peddling to customers. They do a private dance with them, ask them if they want a little blow . . .”

  “What about Carrie?”

  “Well, we don’t know for sure. But Coby gave up another name: Sasha Clay. She’s in the network.”

  Tom had thought Sasha made her money stripping, he knew it could bring in lots of cash. Sasha wasn’t the only stripper in Tampa to be living high on the hog — it was a whole subculture. But having extra drug money possibly helped her to live the dream. There was one problem.

  “Sasha Clay was the one to do the NamUs search. To try and find Carrie.”

  “So? She was looking for Carrie. So what?”

  “Well, bit weird if they’re part of the same drug network. You’d think Sasha would keep a low profile.” He’d told Sasha he was police from the get-go, and she had still been willing to meet. She’d even taken him to her house. If it hadn’t been for Sasha, the police could’ve struggled for a lot longer to identify Carrie.

  “Listen,” Blythe said. “I’m going to observe when they interview Bosco. You can join me or you can follow up with Eileen Gallo. She was still with Ward when I left the ME’s office.”

  Tom looked around, hoping he’d catch sight of Nick coming up from the kitchen, or wherever the hell he was. The trainers were getting the dogs into place behind the starting gate. The sun was back out and a few people were wandering into the stands. No sign of Nick, though.

  “I want to be there,” he told Blythe. “But I’m still doing this family thing.”

  An announcement blared over the speakers that there was a fifteen-minute warning until post.

  Blythe was incredulous. “You’re at the dog track?”

  “It’s my brother . . .” Tom didn’t know how to explain.

  “Forget Tampa,” she said. “You stay the hell away.”

  Tom struggled to find the right words but after a few seconds, realized it didn’t matter. Blythe had hung up.

  “Shit!”

  Someone glanced over and Tom put his phone away. He got up, chucked his empty beer cup in the trash. Blythe had told him he had two strikes. That was doubtless the third.

  He headed for the parking lot. Fuck this. His brother could find his own ride back to Naples. He pushed through the exit turnstile. As he legged it over to the Jeep he heard footsteps running up behind him.

  “Hey,” Nick said. “Sorry, bro.”

  Tom wheeled around on his brother, ready to give him holy hell. He stopped when he saw the way Nick was moving, limping along and holding his side.

  “What did they do to you?”

  “Nothing, Tommy. Pushed me around a little bit. I fell.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Nick started to argue, but coming out of the alleyway by the dumpsters were two heavy-hitting guys in flashy shirts. They headed for Nick’s SUV, sloshing through the puddles. Tom left Nick and started toward them, seeing red.

  “Tommy!” Nick’s voice was an urgent whisper. He got in Tom’s path. “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy . . .” Nick was a bit smaller than Tom. Sometime in their teens, Tom had sprouted and ended up topping his older brother by three inches. Tom outweighed him, too. But Nick was strong, and dug in his heels, holding Tom back.

  “Don’t. Don’t, bro.”

  The heavies got into the SUV. The one slipping into the driver’s side looked across the parki
ng lot where Tom and Nick were standing. Then he disappeared behind the tinted windows and started up the vehicle. The wheels barked against the blacktop as the driver made a tight U-turn and roared off.

  Tom watched them go, furious. He turned away from Nick and walked back to the Jeep. Nick hobbled along behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Nick refused to go to a hospital so Tom dropped him off at home and went to the District Medical Examiner’s Office. He didn’t know for sure Blythe was going to reassign him, but he didn’t dare call her up to find out. He figured the best thing was to proceed with the option she’d given him to follow up with Carrie’s mother.

  But Eileen Gallo was gone. The receptionist said she’d left fifteen minutes earlier. Ward was gone, too.

  Tom thanked the receptionist and turned to leave, when he saw Andrea, Ward’s mousy assistant, hustling toward the entrance. He caught up to her outside, as she was climbing into a tiny Geo Prism.

  “Hi,” he said, startling her.

  Andrea barely stood as tall as his shoulder — and looked even paler outdoors than she had inside. He wondered if she ever saw much sunlight.

  “Is something the matter?” she asked.

  “No. I like hanging out here. It’s grown on me.”

  She didn’t smile.

  “How do you like working here?” he asked.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Yeah? Where did you go to school?”

  Andrea glanced back toward the medical office.

  “University of Florida, where Dr. Ward went.”

  “Yeah? Hey that’s cool.”

  She blinked at him impassively. “That’s why he hired me.”

  “Oh. I see. He likes to stick to his own. What’s it like, working for him?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “What do you think about this case? About the woman from Rookery Bay? Anything strike you? Stand out?”

  “No.”

  Tom had run out of road. And the longer she stood there, the more awkward it felt. “Alright, well, take care. Thanks for all of your hard work.”

  She slipped into the driver’s seat without another word. She seemed to fumble for the keys. Tom leaned against the adjacent vehicle and watched as she pulled away.

  Then she stopped the car with a jerk and rolled down the window.

  Curious, Tom stepped closer.

  “Listen, Agent Lange.” Andrea peered out of the car with glassy eyes. “I measure a person based on their work. Dr. Ward is a brilliant pathologist. I believe in him in and I support the decisions he’s made. People get too caught up in scandals and need to look at what he’s done.”

  Tom began to reply but she rolled up the window and took off without a second look.

  Huh.

  He drove back to the field office. The sun was just about gone for the day, a few of the usual inland clouds low on the horizon, dark underneath, puffy on top. He went into the office and set the murder book on his desk.

  He called the ROC and spoke to the officer who had been handling the hotline calls since the press conference.

  “Yeah, Agent Blythe checked in, too. We’ve had twenty-six calls. Eight of them were from reporters digging for more on the story. The other eighteen have been followed up but they led nowhere. Someone called about a body floating in the water in Immokalee, but it turned out to be a dead dog. That’s it.”

  “Alright. Thank you.”

  Tom flipped through the binder until he came to the section with the 911 transcript. He’d already read it, but he wanted to hear the call with his own ears.

  Everglades County had sent across an audio file of the call, and he found it in the shared network folder on his computer.

  “911, for what city?”

  “Ah, for Naples.”

  “And do you require the police, fire, or ambulance?”

  “Um, I’m not sure. Maybe an ambulance. But she looks dead.”

  “Okay, what’s the address of the emergency?”

  “This is Rookery Bay.”

  “Rookery Bay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, what’s the number you’re calling from?”

  Susan Libby, with a trembling voice, gave her number. Tom imagined her in her kayak, Carrie Hobson’s body floating in the mangrove tunnel, Joe and Linda VanCott looking on, likely horrified.

  “Okay, tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I’m a guide, I give kayak tours in Rookery Bay. I’m giving the sunrise tour this morning. I have two customers. We are on Stopper Creek right now . . . there’s a body in the water.”

  “A body? Do you mean a person?”

  “Yes, I mean a person. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Is he or she conscious?”

  “I think it’s a she. No. She doesn’t look conscious. She looks dead.”

  “Is she breathing?”

  “No. She’s floating face down.”

  “How close are you to this person, ma’am?”

  “Um, just a couple yards away. I don’t want to touch it. She looks very dead, you know? Like she’s been in the water a while.”

  “Do you think you could give me an approximate age for the person in the water?”

  Susan Libby sighed, a sound like radio static on the digital audio file.

  “No. I mean, could be twenty, could be forty. No older than forty, I don’t think. Can you send someone? I need to get my people back to shore.”

  The emergency dispatcher continued to follow protocol and Susan Libby grew increasingly agitated. She really wanted to get out of there, and Tom couldn’t blame her. But she agreed to meet the Everglades County deputies who would arrive shortly, and assist them with locating the body once they were on scene. Tom listened to the entirety of the call, which lasted another five minutes.

  He sat back, thinking. The call stirred two concerns, hard to say how minor or major. One was the sex of the victim. For certain, Susan Libby had made a guess, but by the conclusion of the emergency call, both Libby and the 911 operator were using the pronoun “she.” Prior to arriving on scene, Ward would have been given a quick overview, and chances were good such an overview would’ve referred to the body as being that of a woman. Yet Ward had initially insisted the sex was unknown. Tom felt bothered by it. Ward acted like he was the only one capable of making any evidentiary determinations. But maybe that ego came with the territory.

  The other concern circled back to the jurisdiction issue. The call for service had gone to Everglades County first, as protocol dictated. At what point had Turnbull intervened? At whose behest? Tom thought it was unlikely the Sheriff had been the one to call. For one thing, Tom thought, most cops didn’t like the FDLE. The agency often investigated other police.

  He paced the field office waiting for some fresh coffee to heat up.

  He’d been kept out of the loop from the beginning. He didn’t even know what Blythe had been doing these past few days. This thing with Coburn’s drug op — she’d let him in, but not completely. She was controlling what he knew, how much he was involved. Follow up with Eileen Gallo? Ward had already importuned the woman while she sat wracked with grief. And they’d asked her their questions. Tom had already found out what he’d wanted to know — Carrie had been sending her money, and that’s why she’d been hard up for cash.

  Spending more time with Eileen Gallo was a fool’s errand.

  “This is bullshit,” he said. Blythe may have told him to stay away, but he couldn’t. He left the office with the coffee still brewing and sped north toward Tampa.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Tom slipped into the monitoring room. Blythe glanced over but said nothing. Gathered around a large screen were Sergeant Coburn and two vice narcotics officers, the Tampa Police Captain, and the statewide prosecutor Bob Mandi, watching Raymond Bosco being questioned by Detective Gomez. On a second screen no one was watching, Sasha Clay sat alone, slumped in her chair.

  Gomez was just finishing up with Bosco. He ga
thered some papers and put them into a file, rapped his knuckles on the desk and said to Bosco, “Thanks very much. Sit tight for just another minute.”

  Blythe leaned her head toward Coburn. They spoke in low voices until Gomez stepped into the room. Gomez made a nod toward Tom, then approached the other officers, tapping the file against his open palm.

  “That’s one slippery fucker,” Gomez said.

  Coburn turned to the Tampa captain. “You gotta kick him loose.”

  Blythe held out her hands, opened her mouth, as if betrayed.

  Gomez said, “You heard him. Bosco’s at Hush six nights a week. Comes on at seven o’clock, works until four a.m. Confirmed time of death for Carrie is between eight and nine p.m., Wednesday afternoon. It’s a no-go.”

  Tom realized the more precise time of death must have come from Ward, probably while Tom was dealing with Nick.

  “Bosco runs the club,” Blythe said, sounding unhappy. “He could have written up his own time sheet.” She glanced at Tom again, her eyes like hard jewels.

  “Sasha Clay corroborates it,” Gomez said. “She was on a shift at the same time.”

  “She could be covering.”

  “She’s not even in the system. Zero record. She’s pretty clean for a stripper.”

  They all looked at Sasha on the screen. She had spruced herself up to talk to the police, wearing a white, frilly Southern Belle-style blouse, but she looked desultory, her face partly covered by her hair.

  Blythe pointed at Bosco on the screen. “This is our guy.”

  Bob Mandi cleared his throat. “What do we charge him with if he’s got an alibi? Right now neither of them have requested a lawyer, because they’re both here under the assumption that this is a follow-up on Carrie Hobson, and nothing more.”

  Tom wished he’d seen the interviews. He made a mental note to watch the recordings later.

  “Well,” Blythe said, “we can let her go, but we’ve got to keep him. Come on, Bob. Coby . . . We can hold him for forty-eight hours . . .”

  Coburn seemed to think about it. He was a big man, over two hundred pounds, with a salt-and-pepper beard. He wore a dark blue T-shirt with the Everglades County Sheriff’s Office insignia on it and a pair of jeans, sunglasses perched on his head. The gun on his hip was a 9 mm Beretta.