Horgan greeted the new arrival and passed the clipboard to the man, who wore a limp seersucker jacket that looked like it may have been purchased at a 1978 JC Penney summer sale. He tucked a small black valise under his left arm in order to hold the clipboard and signed in.
As the primary investigating officer on the scene, Horgan was responsible for documenting the chain of evidence. If I was right, the gentleman with the retro coat and black bag was the county medical examiner. They conferred for a minute before Horgan pointed to the hamper where Marrano’s remains were now attracting dark clouds of gnats and flies.
The medical examiner’s first order of business was to confirm the victim’s death. His next task would be to estimate the time and cause of death. The corpse’s temperature provided an approximation as to how long the victim had been deceased. But most of the answers would be found during the autopsy.
Standard crime scene investigation procedures call for photographic documentation of the scene in order to create a permanent historical record, collecting of trace evidence and writing a detailed report, including diagrams, of everything found at the scene. But prior to all of this, I knew the police were required to clear all non-essential personnel from the crime scene.
Right on cue, Horgan looked up and spotted me.
“Mitchell, what the hell are you still doing here?” he blared out from his position next to the excavation site. “Even a PI should know a crime scene when he sees one. Now move your ass before I ask one of these officers to escort you to headquarters. If we need you, we know where to find you.”
As he yelled, Horgan’s eyes bulged to the point I expected to see one of his orbs pop out of his head and roll across the ground like a marble.
“Don’t get your tighty-whities in a twist, detective. I was just leaving.”
Horgan didn’t need to remind me the police were in charge of this investigation, but as I walked away from the church, I worried about my friend. Jeffrey Poe was obviously more than a person of interest. He was at the top of the SAPD’s suspect list, and I didn’t want to see him railroaded because he and Bill Marrano had disagreed over St. Augustine’s future skyline.
I’ve known Poe for about five years. We’ve grown increasingly close, particularly after his wife Gail died three years ago. She suffered through an agonizing bout with liver cancer, Poe suffering along with her, a part of his spirit departing when she died. In the weeks following her death, he retreated behind a wall of grief, refusing to answer his phone and ignoring the friends and neighbors who came to check on him. Poe eventually dug himself out of his pit of depression, but now, I worried how he would react to this latest trauma.
After Poe was taken in for questioning I spent an hour sitting on a bench in the Plaza de la Constitución making phone calls and observing the waves of tourists washing over the old city. The Plaza was slung between Cathedral and King Streets. Tourist guides tout it as the oldest public park in the United States, established by Royal Spanish Ordinances in 1573.
From where I sat, across from the Government House, I watched young people playing among the Civil War cannons and running the stairs of the covered pavilion that was once used as a public marketplace. Also known as the Old Slave Market, during the civil rights struggles it had been the gathering place for local demonstrators. During the summer months, the park hosted weekly concerts and an occasional art show. These days, though, homeless men inhabited many of the benches.
If I walked two blocks up King Street, I’d be facing the Casa Monica Hotel. Thinking of the hotel made me remember how Sergeant Marrano had erupted when he heard my name. What did he say? That I was involved with that Howard woman. His statement was correct. I just didn’t like the way he said it.
Serena Howard is the marketing director for the Casa Monica, and we’ve been seeing each other for the past three months. Unfortunately, what had begun with a flash of sparks and grew into one of my most meaningful relationships had flickered down to its last embers. Time to pour water over our campfire and declare it officially dead.
I didn’t want to think about our crumbling romance now, so I walked the six blocks to the St. Augustine Police Department. I wondered how Poe’s interrogation had gone. What could he tell them other than he was completely in the dark about Marrano’s murder? But how could he explain away the bayonet?
Poe had a stubborn streak. Sometimes his temper might push common sense aside and he’d say things he later regretted, but in my heart I knew my friend was not a killer. I glanced at the monument sign in the middle of the sidewalk identifying the neat concrete building as the St. Augustine Police Department before climbing the white steps and entering.
A half-dozen plastic chairs hugged the walls inside the small waiting room. In one of the chairs sat a bony woman in a shapeless black dress covered with tiny yellow flowers. Emitting invisible signals of distress, she stared at the massive set of double doors separating the lobby from the rest of the building.
I walked past the woman to the information window on the right side of the lobby. The window was identical to those you see at security-conscious gas stations for after hours’ transactions and included a stainless steel tray at the bottom as well as a round aluminum grid in the center for two-way conversation. Behind it, a solidly built woman in a white and green uniform talked animatedly on the telephone, scribbling something in a large three-ring binder.
I waited patiently until she finished her conversation, turned the page in the notebook and finally acknowledged me. She studied me for a moment above a pair of half-frame reading glasses before approaching the window.
“Can I help you?”
“Do you know if Jeffrey Poe is still here?”
Muscles tensed along her fleshy jaw line as she looked down at the notebook still in her hands and back to me. “He’s being questioned,” she said. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
I walked to one of the chairs facing the interior doors. By the time I sat down the receptionist had returned to her desk, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the worried woman who broke the silence with a phlegmy cough.
I gazed at the row of photographic portraits lining the wall directly in front of me. Each member of the St. Augustine City Commission including Mayor Hal Cameron and Vice Mayor William Marrano wore a nearly identical smile. Marrano’s face jolted me back to the discovery of his mutilated corpse. I had a little experience with murder cases, but this one didn’t seem to fit into the typical patterns of violent crime—escalating domestic abuse, drug-related shootings, or random acts of violence that are more likely to be crimes of opportunity.
Whoever killed Marrano had taken the time to saw off the commissioner’s legs, and bury the body at Poe’s survey site. This wasn’t the work of your average street criminal. A brutal and twisted killer, for sure, but clever enough to know the police would immediately zero in on Poe as their main suspect.
About the time I’d mulled this over, one of the large wooden doors swung open and Poe and Chief Conover walked through. Poe held his wide-brimmed hat in both hands, covering his chest protectively. The archaeologist tried to smile when he saw me waiting for him, but only managed a grimace.
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Poe,” Conover said. “I guess I don’t have to tell you not to leave town until we get to the bottom of this.”
“Yes, yes, I know.”
I approached Poe, asking, “Are you okay?”
He pushed past me without a word and scurried out the front door.
His long legs were striding east toward the historic district, when I caught up with him. “How’d it go?”
“I can’t believe the bastards suspect me. They asked me the same questions over and over. Where was I yesterday? The day before? Did I own a wicker hamper? Had I ever seen the bayonet?”
“What about that bayonet? It looked like the one you showed us at your house.”
“I have half a dozen bayonets in my office and at home. Hell, they’re on display at the Visit
or’s Center and the museum.”
Poe stopped at the intersection of King and Riberia Streets and turned toward me, his eyes seeking an answer in mine. “I don’t know, Quint. It did look like the same bayonet, but how’s that possible?”
“When did you see it last?”
“Not since the night you were there. You saw me leave it in my storage room. I swear I haven’t touched it since then.” More than a hint of desperation had crept into his voice.
“What happens now?”
“They’re getting warrants to search my office, my house, even my truck.”
“That’s standard procedure, Jeffrey. You don’t have anything to worry about if—”
“If I didn’t do it? Do you think I’d kill Marrano and bury him at one of my own excavation surveys? How stupid do you think I am?”
“I know you’re innocent, and I’m sure the police will come to the same conclusion. But you understand why you’re on their radar, don’t you?”
“I’m just so damn confused right now. Finding Marrano’s body under our noses is too much of a coincidence.” He let out a long shuddering breath.
***
In bed that evening, my mind traversed the day’s events, and I tried to make some sense of it all. When I closed my eyes, a succession of images swirled around like dirt caught in the grip of a wind devil, then settled into strange and unnerving forms. I attempted to push away the bloated and discolored face of William Marrano insinuating itself into my thoughts and focus instead on what may have led to his murder.
Poe emerged as the principal suspect because of his heated disagreement with Marrano over the Matanzas Bay project. With St. Augustine’s limited tax base, the fifteen-acre Malaga Street site had been trumpeted as the centerpiece of a new downtown renaissance.
Malaga Street was off the beaten path for the tourist trade. The acreage where the development would be built had been used by the City of St. Augustine for its motor pool operations and warehouse storage. Vice Mayor Marrano had proposed selling the property to the private sector hoping it would stimulate development and revitalize the entire area. After a lengthy process and a bidding war among four developers, the St. Johns Group emerged as the winner. Their plan called for a ten-story condominium unit with an adjoining 130-room hotel and a seventy-five-slip marina. A second phase would later add a six-story office building and an upscale spa and health club.
The high-rise condos and commercial buildings were standard stuff for larger cities like Jacksonville and Orlando, but quite a leap for St. Augustine. As the City Archaeologist, Poe considered St. Augustine sacred ground and didn’t believe condos were a fitting tribute to the generations of Spanish, British, Indians, Minorcans and others who lived and died to create a unique piece of American history.
Even though the development would front the San Sebastian River, the developer named the project Matanzas Bay, a name with a history of its own. Every school kid in the area knew the story of how Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the settlement’s protector and first governor, had massacred several hundred injured and starving shipwrecked Frenchmen. The Spanish found them on a sandbar in the Matanzas Inlet and ferried them to shore in their rowboats. As they collapsed on the sand thinking they’d been rescued, they were greeted by more Spanish soldiers who put them to the sword.
Miles away from the historic heart of St. Augustine, the inlet had been named after the massacre—Matanzas, Place of Slaughter. The bayfront of the Matanzas River is in the very heart of the old city, not far from the San Sebastian River, a tidal channel of the Matanzas.
The 600-year-old massacre touched memories still fresh in my own past, and the thought of the doomed Frenchmen pleading for their lives, their ripped and bloody bodies tumbling in the surf, was too painful for me to contemplate. I tried to wipe the unsettling pictures from my mind and finally fell asleep.
Drifting in a current of darkness, the dream returned. Curtains parted inside my head and there she was again, driving with one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding a cell phone to her ear. The camera in my mind zoomed in even closer, and I saw a clearer picture of a young girl with short hair and bright eyes. The girl chatted excitedly, actually taking her hand off the wheel at one point to gesture with an open palm. She laughed, her mouth open, light glinting from the braces across her teeth.
Now my silent movie added a soundtrack, and I heard screeching tires, screams and curses. The light tunneled into a narrow beam outlining a face transforming itself from one of youthful giddiness to a mask of terror.
In my dream, the scene swish-panned from the accident to a peaceful Long Island shoreline. Crunching sounds and screams from the automobile accident gave way to the cries of gulls and waves slapping the beach. I knew what was coming next. My unconscious fought to protect me from the awful pictures of my brother’s mutilated body moving in gentle rhythm as the waves washed over his wounds in bloody baptism.
I suddenly felt a giant hand crushing the breath from my chest, and I awoke to find my T-shirt wet and twisted. Sitting up in bed, I pulled the shirt down and did what I did every night. I begged forgiveness.
FOUR
The tide was out the next morning as I hit the beach for my three mile-run. I headed north passing the Jacksonville Beach Pier where five or six early risers dangled their fishing lines over the side. Bogie, my yellow lab, bounded ten yards ahead of me, tail wagging, streaking left and right to investigate the treasures strewn over the beach. He seemed to take great pride in leading the way, like the high priests going before an Egyptian Pharaoh. Or maybe he thought he was the Egyptian Pharaoh and I was the slave who picked up his poop.
We scattered a few seagulls, and I nodded to the occasional beachcomber searching for sharks’ teeth. I made a U-turn at Oleander Street and waited for Bogie to take the point again. He paused a moment and seemed to smile as if to say, “Is that as far as you can run today, O two-legged one?”
As I sprinted over the hard-packed sand, my thoughts returned to the bayonet and the first time I’d seen it at a dinner party at Poe’s house two weeks ago.
***
Poe’s culinary skills were amazing. He concocted incredible meals for dinner parties of twelve and fifteen guests at a time when Gail was alive. Months after her death, Poe slowly started cooking again and the process became a catharsis, helping him reconnect with people. These weren’t fancy gatherings planned for months in advance, but usually spontaneous calls to a few friends or neighbors to help him share what would have been a lonely meal.
Two weeks ago I received one of those last minute invitations. When I arrived at his house that night, I found the party already in full swing. Through the screen door I heard music and a loud voice I didn’t recognize offering a toast in a distinctly Southern accent. “Here’s to that monstrosity fallin’ down on his head.” The words were slightly slurred, but the meaning unmistakable.
I knocked and let myself in. Poe met me in the living room and led me back to the Florida room. Four people were sitting around an oblong table, drinks in their hands. They all turned toward me as we entered the room.
An elderly man held his glass high, tipping it toward me in greeting. His deeply lined face broke into a smile, highlighting the broken capillaries sketched over his nostrils. Next to him sat a woman who would never see seventy again. Deep wrinkles grooved her lips and forehead. Her hair, surprisingly thick for a woman of her age, framed her face with silver curls, and when she looked at me, it seemed her eyes were not quite focused.
Sitting across from the two older guests, with their chairs turned slightly away as though they were fearful of catching the old timers’ disease, were two young men. I recognized one of them as Denny Grimes, who had volunteered with me on several of Poe’s digs. The other man smiled at me with straight, white teeth. He had short blond hair and a bemused look on his handsome face.
“Quint, I don’t think you’ve met all of these people,” Poe said, with a nod toward the table.
“I
know Denny. Good to see you again.” I stuck out my hand and Grimes gave it more than a friendly squeeze. He was a short man, maybe five-six, who compensated by lifting weights. I remembered that he once worked for the City of St. Augustine, but had left to start his own company. Something to do with website development.
“Hey, Mitchell, how they hanging?” Grimes said, finally releasing my hand.
Poe had me by the elbow and turned me toward the old woman. “This is my neighbor, Eleanor Lawson. She lives across the street and has to look at my pitiful front lawn everyday, so she’s definitely entitled to a free dinner or two.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Lawson.”
“Please, call me Eleanor.”
Her light and reedy voice sounded like it had floated in through the window. High cheekbones, slightly faded brown eyes, a pert little nose. Eleanor must have been a knockout when she was young. No longer young, though, liver spots freckled her face and hands and she drooped in all the usual places.
“I’ve sent my lawn man over to see Jeffrey, but he prefers to do it himself. When he can find the time,” she sniffed.
“I’m sure you know that most any idiot can mow a lawn, but few people can cook like the good doctor here.” This came from the man sitting next to Eleanor.
“Thank you for that, Clayton. Quint, meet my good friend and protector, Clayton Henderson.
Henderson put his glass down, grasped the table and pulled himself up with great effort. His face momentarily contorted in pain before he straightened to take my hand. Only then did I notice the cane hooked over the back of his chair, an expensive-looking model with a shiny black shaft and a curved handle tipped with a sterling silver lion’s head.
“Don’t get up,” I said about five seconds too late.
“Young man, I’m not going to use my knee surgery as an excuse for poor manners.” His hazel eyes twinkled and his face blossomed with a robust smile. Clean shaven except for a fuzzy patch beneath his lower lip, he laughed and pumped my hand, shaking a wattle of loose skin hanging below his chin.
Matanzas Bay Page 3