A Death in Live Oak

by James Grippando

  “That’s right,” said the ranger. “Dinnertime. I’ve seen gators hungry enough to eat other gators. Don’t let it be you. Is that as clear as Ichetucknee River water?”

  Brandon and a fraternity brother exchanged uneasy glances. “Clear,” Brandon answered.

  Hey, pardner, I got some news.”

  The voice on the line was Owen McFay’s—the old gator hunter who’d taken Jack and Theo down the river. Jack found a quiet spot in the hospital hallway outside the diagnostic department. “What’s up?”

  “I was on the river this morning, like always. I come across a buncha black students from UF. They was out looking for that boy who went missing.”

  “Percy Donovan,” said Jack, his heart sinking. “Did they find him?”

  “No, but get this. They found one of those foam shoes along the riverbank.”

  “You mean a Croc? Like the other one?”

  “Well, good question. The police are all hush-hush about it. But nothing happens on the river without me gettin’ to the bottom of it. I hear the shoe they found today matches the other one the divers found.”

  “You mean the one—”

  “Yes, sir,” said McFay. “The one they pulled outta the muck where Jamal got lynched.”

  Jack blinked, not quite comprehending. The Croc retrieved from the fire-damaged Theta house was supposed to have been the match.

  “That’s useful,” said Jack. “Thanks, pal.”

  CHAPTER 55

  A long line of motorcycles rumbled across the Florida-Georgia line. By sundown, Andie and a couple dozen other Alliance members entered Stephen C. Foster State Park, eighty acres of wilderness situated at the western entrance to the famous Okefenokee Swamp. The bikers set up camp at the pioneer site. The last directive from Steger had been to clear out of Florida, and the plan was to sit tight and wait for further instructions from their leader.

  Of the women making the trip, Andie was one of a handful riding solo. She’d owned a bike in Seattle, before her transfer to the Miami field office—her life before Jack. The Harley-Davidson provided by the FBI for this operation was the fruit of a federal forfeiture proceeding against a criminal gang in South Florida. The Harley Street Glide was bigger than the middle-weight bikes that most women preferred, but Andie’s riding skills impressed even the most macho men in the group. Still, she would feel much more comfortable when Paulette’s “boyfriend”—Andie’s undercover counterpart from the Atlanta field office—caught up with her.

  Andie set up her tent next to William’s and then joined him by the campfire. The temperature was dropping with the moon’s rising, and the fire’s warmth felt good. Seated on a fallen cypress log, Andie watched the dance of yellow flames kicking off sparks that drifted up into the night sky.

  “So we just sit here?” she asked.

  William tossed more wood on the fire and returned to his seat on the log. “Yup. Steger calls the shots.”

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “I have my own idea.”

  It had taken Andie weeks to gain William’s trust and hear his theories. She was one of the few who seemed to credit his thinking, which he liked. “Tell me,” she said.

  He glanced over his shoulder, as if checking to make sure no one was listening. “Steger wants the Alliance far away from that whole area, from Ichetucknee to the Santa Fe, cuz something is about to go down.”

  “That makes no sense. If something is about to go down, doesn’t he need us?”

  “I don’t mean causing a riot outside the Theta house or starting a fight with a search party. I mean Steger, by his lonesome, is up to something. He doesn’t want fingers pointed at the Alliance, so he told us to clear out.”

  “Has that happened before?”

  “Sure. About six months ago, he found a traitor inside our group. Steger told us all to clear out. Two days later I saw the pictures of that poor bastard chained to a tree. No hands and no feet. Nobody can ever prove Steger had anything to do with it, and the cops never did figure out who done it. Nearest member of the Alliance was two hundred miles away when it happened.”

  For strategic reasons, Andie—an infiltrator—chose not to show much interest in the traitor. “What do you think Steger is up to this time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have a guess?”

  William smiled thinly. “I think he’s got something in store for that boy from the frat house.”

  “Steger has him?”

  “Steger or one of his lieutenants. That’s what I hear.”

  Andie gazed into the flames, trying not to show her frustration. She didn’t know if William’s theory was correct. But she was stuck in the middle of the Okefenokee Swamp with Alliance underlings, while the real work was being done on the other side of the state line. She needed to do something to work her way up—impress one of the team leaders, maybe. The bureau hadn’t sent her undercover to take long motorcycle rides.

  “Hey, William! You want a beer?”

  One of William’s friends approached, along with three other members. They walked as if they’d already downed a case of long-neck Buds among them.

  “Thanks, Colt.” William twisted it open and took a long pull.

  Andie didn’t recognize Colt and his friends. She watched and listened carefully as they took a seat on the bigger log on the other side of the fire, their images blurred by the heat and rising smoke.

  “You missed a good time at UF,” said Colt.

  “Crack any heads?”

  Colt took another long swallow. “It was classic. All these uppity frat boys shouting all their ‘justice for Jamal’ bullshit. Then the fire starts, and people start freaking out. I go up to one of the Alpha boys, get right up close in his face, and I say, ‘Strange fruit, motherfucker. You’re next.’”

  The men rolled with laughter. Then Colt’s gaze cut through the flickering flames and landed on Andie. He seemed to like what he saw.

  “So, who’s the MILF?” asked Colt.

  “Don’t call her that,” said William.

  “It’s a compliment,” said Colt. He glanced at Andie, flashing a drunk’s smile. “Tell him, green eyes. You like being called a MILF.”

  For guys like Colt, an asshole in his early twenties, any woman over thirty was a “mother I’d like to fuck.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Andie. “Not one bit.”

  “Well that’s too fucking bad, MILF. Cuz I’d like to. Right in the ass.” Colt rose, towering over the fire, and chugged down the last of his beer. “Stand up for us, bitch. Show us that ass.”

  William didn’t come to her defense. Maybe it was because Colt had more status in the group, or maybe he wanted to see Andie’s ass, too. Unless “Paulette’s boyfriend” from the Atlanta field office showed up in the next sixty seconds, Andie was on her own.

  She rose slowly, locking eyes with Colt.

  “That’s right,” he said, smiling like the pervert he was. “Now turn around.”

  Andie didn’t move. She just stared back at him, studying his face. And then she saw it—the tattooed lightning bolt that ran from the corner of his right eye. Colt was the guy in the photograph she’d seen at FBI headquarters.

  “I’m asking like a gentleman,” said Colt. “But I’m only gonna ask once.”

  It was the moment of decision. Colt was a big guy, but she was trained to fight bigger. If she backed down, she’d be the lowliest member of the group. “Fuck you, Colt.”

  Colt chuckled, but it was filled with arrogance, and he wasn’t smiling. “I’ll see that ass, bitch. Count on it.”

  Andie studied his expression. Colt wasn’t just talking tough to save face in front of his friends. If she didn’t defend herself now, he’d be in her tent tonight, and she’d be fighting off a sexual assault. Pregnant or not, her choice was clear.

  In a quick motion, she reached for the knife that was strapped to her forearm, pulled it from under her sleeve, and flung it. The tip stuck in a log in the pile of fi
rewood that was beside the fire, equidistant from her and Colt.

  Colt smiled again. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Andie had seen “the Alliance challenge” once before. It was how the members settled internal differences. The challenger threw the knife. It was up to the other guy to go for it. If he didn’t, he was a pussy. If he did, the fight was on.

  “Uh-uh,” said Andie, staring him down. “I’m not kidding.”

  He made a face. “I’m not gonna fight a girl.”

  She might not have pushed it, but the options were to fight him now, when Colt was drunk, or fight him later, when he came to rape her. The ace in the hole was that he’d probably never faced a woman who’d trained at Quantico.

  “I’m not a girl, Colt. I’m a MILF. And when I’m done kicking your ass, I’ll be the mother you wished you’d run from.”

  “Ooooh,” his friends said in unison.

  Andie could see that she was getting under his skin. Colt tossed his empty bottle into the fire, glaring at his challenger. Then he lunged toward the knife.

  Andie was quicker and grabbed the knife by the handle, but Colt broadsided her like a runaway bus. They tumbled through the pile of firewood, locked in a wrestling match. Andie still had the knife but Colt controlled her wrist as they rolled through the dust. She heard the other men cheering her on, which only seemed to make Colt stronger. When they stopped rolling, Colt was on top, but he was too focused on the knife in Andie’s hand to see the split log coming from the other direction. Andie clobbered him across the side of the head.

  Colt went down, conscious but dazed. Andie rolled on top, with full control of the knife. She shoved the blade against his throat.

  “Not another move,” she said.

  Colt went still. The night was silent, save for the crackle of the fire.

  “Now, repeat after me. The only MILF who would fuck me is my real mama.”

  He grunted but said nothing. Andie pressed the blade down hard enough to draw blood.

  “Say it!”

  He did, but Andie could barely hear him.

  “Louder! So your friends can hear.” She slid the blade a fraction of an inch closer to his jugular, just enough to tell him that he was one second away from a throat slashing.

  “THE ONLY MILF WHO WOULD FUCK ME IS MY REAL MAMA!”

  It was loud enough for the entire campground to hear. Andie jumped to her feet. Colt remained flat on his back in the dirt. He brought his hand to his throat, and although it wasn’t a serious injury, there was enough blood to scare him stiff.

  The other men stared at Andie in amazement.

  “The rest of you boys got any bright ideas?” asked Andie.

  “Fuck no,” was the only answer.

  “All right, then. Y’all have a good night.”

  Andie tossed the log—the one she’d used to club Colt—onto the fire. Then she turned and headed toward her tent, passing another group of men who had been drawn to the campfire by Colt’s announcement.

  Andie contained her smile, confident that she no longer needed a male undercover partner to keep her safe. But it was still important that he return. And soon.

  Someone had to relay William’s theory back to headquarters—his guess that Steger was still in north-central Florida, and that he had something planned for Percy Donovan.

  CHAPTER 56

  The regional crime lab serving Suwannee County was in Jacksonville. Jack made the ninety-mile drive from Live Oak on Thursday morning. He called home from the car to check on Righley before preschool.

  “When are you coming home, Daddy?”

  The court hearing to determine Mark’s pretrial release was scheduled to begin in about twenty-six hours. “A few more days, honey.”

  “When’s Mommy coming?”

  When. It was Righley’s biggest concern. Jack had lain awake, too, more worried about what Andie was doing. “Undercover” could mean anything from working on Wall Street to living on the street. Jack knew that she’d signed on for this assignment—whatever it was—long before she became pregnant. No matter how “maternity friendly” the bureau claimed to be, if Andie withdrew now, the only thing the men in charge would remember when staffing the next operation was that she’d withdrawn the last time. Jack totally got that. He loved that she’d been a Junior Olympic mogul skier while growing up in the Pacific Northwest. That she’d emerged from her FBI training as one of the few female members of the “Possible Club,” an informal honorary fraternity for agents who shoot perfect scores on one of the toughest firearms courses in law enforcement. That after moving to Florida, she went cave diving in places like the Devil’s Ear at Ginnie Spring, where hundreds of scuba divers have lost their way—and their lives—in the limestone labyrinth of the Florida Aquifer. But after hearing Righley’s little voice on the phone, he couldn’t help thinking that if he was going to have no clue about what Andie did at work all day, he might have preferred an accountant or a computer programmer.

  “Mommy will be back as soon as she can,” he said, and it seemed to satisfy Righley enough to head off to school.

  Jack entered the lab around nine thirty. Hannah Goldsmith had flown up from Miami and was waiting for him in the lobby.

  Jack had known Hannah since she was in middle school, when her father had hired Jack straight out of law school to work at the Freedom Institute. Four years of nothing but “death cases” had proved to be enough for Jack. But a decade later, when Neil passed away, his widow begged Jack to step into Neil’s shoes as director. Jack met her halfway: he moved his law practice into Neil’s office, kept the institute afloat by paying much higher rent than he should have, and mentored Hannah the way her father had mentored him. Neil would have been proud of the lawyer his daughter had become, and Jack relied on Hannah whenever he needed help in his own cases.

  “I think you’re going to find this pretty interesting,” said Hannah.

  Jack had put Hannah in charge of finding an expert to conduct a forensic examination of the Croc that the crime scene investigators had pulled from the Theta house. Official policy required the defense expert to perform his tests at the lab. Dr. Calvin Shad was ready to explain his findings.

  An officer led Jack and Hannah to a locked room that was set aside for the testing. Dr. Shad was standing behind the counter with two evidence trays before him, one holding the Croc that had been pulled from the muck at the scene of Jamal Cousin’s murder, and the other displaying the charred remains of the foam resin shoe that police had found at the Theta house. The officer left the room so that the defense team could talk in private, but he watched through the window in the door to make sure there was no tampering with the evidence.

  “So this is what I can tell you,” said Dr. Shad. “There’s only one manufacturer of Crocs. All the others are Croc-offs.”

  There was silence. “Sorry,” said Shad. “A little lab humor there. Anyway, Crocs are made of a proprietary closed-cell resin called Croslite. Both foam shoes I examined are made of the proprietary resin, which means they are not imitations.”

  “Here’s what I’m worried about,” said Jack. “The Croc found at the crime scene is a half size smaller than Mark’s normal shoe size, but that’s close enough. Crocs aren’t about a perfect fit. So here’s the first question: Doctor, is there any way to determine the size of the Croc found in Baine’s closet?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Look at it. It’s burned too badly to ascertain what size it was originally. To be perfectly honest, reasonable minds could differ as to whether these charred and melted remains are from one Croc or a complete pair.”

  “That’s important,” said Jack. “Oliver Boalt is very firm in stating that this is one Croc, and it’s the mate to the one at the crime scene.”

  “I think he’s being very aggressive,” said Dr. Shad.

  “Second question,” said Jack. “Can you collect DNA evidence from either of the Crocs to test for a match to Mark or Baine?”

  “Definitely not on the burned o
ne,” the doctor said. “To be reduced to this charred and melted condition, that foam resin had to be exposed to extreme temperatures, probably in excess of eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. DNA found in teeth and bone fragments can survive extremely high heat. But the sources of DNA we’re talking about—human sweat, leg hair, flakes of skin—wouldn’t survive.”

  “What about the Croc from the river?” asked Jack. “Any DNA?”

  “A different problem, but the same conclusion,” said Dr. Shad. “The Ichetucknee is crystal clear and mostly sand bottom, but this Croc was pulled from the muck along the riverbank. The swamplike conditions surrounding the cypress trees and other flora make for a highly acidic environment. I won’t bore you with molecular details, but there are constant chemical reactions occurring to create the tannins that stain swamp water black. Sweat or even fingerprint oils on a Croc buried in that muck won’t survive.”

  Hannah was thinking through the implications. “So this third Croc—the one found yesterday—could be the whole ball game. If it matches the first Croc found in the muck, and if there’s DNA on it, we have a killer.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” said Jack.

  “But if those two are mates, why was there a third Croc in Baine’s closet?” asked Hannah.

  “Like the doctor said. The pile of melted foam in Baine’s closet could be a pair of Crocs, not just one.”

  “But that would mean Baine just so happened to own the same color Crocs as the killer,” said Hannah. “That would be one heck of a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

  “Probably,” said Jack. “But if you’re not one to accept coincidences, there are a couple of other possibilities.”

  “What?”

  “Either we’re looking for a three-legged killer,” he said, his gaze drifting toward the charred foam resin on the counter. “Or someone has been planting evidence.”

  CHAPTER 57

  Mark Towson had another visitor.

  A corrections officer escorted Mark from his new cell. They’d moved him to administrative segregation that morning, one day before his Arthur hearing. The threats from Bulldog had stopped, so when Mark called his lawyer to tell him that jail officials had moved him to solitary anyway, he led Jack to believe that it was simply a protective measure in anticipation of Friday’s court hearing, where racially inflammatory evidence would surely surface. That made sense. But it wasn’t true. Fearing that Jack might tell his parents, Mark decided not to tell him that they’d put him in solitary after another inmate had tried to grind his “fucking Nazi skull” into the breakfast table with a metal cafeteria tray.