by A. E. Howe
Full and feeling more relaxed, we waited for the check.
“Are you working on a case?”
“I’m always working on a case. Several right now.”
“Anything you can tell me about them?” Cara took the last swallow of wine from her glass.
“Just the details that our press officer has made public. But I’m surprised that you’re interested.”
“You think because my family is full-on hippy that we aren’t tough? That would be a mistake. We saw the dark side more than once when we were on the road. Mom and Dad taught me to look at life the way it is, but to try and make it the way it should be.” She said this last with a sincerity and sadness that spoke of someone who’s seen some bad things.
“I’m working on two murder cases and an arson.” I couldn’t tell her that they were related. The department was still holding that information back. I gave her a few more details that had been in the paper and she listened with interest.
On the way home we talked about Mauser, Alvin and Ivy… the really important things in life. Too soon, I pulled up to her duplex.
“No invite to go over to your house or a request to come in for a nightcap?”
“Does anyone say ‘nightcap’ anymore?” I asked her.
“I just did, but I have a bad habit of watching old movies before I go to bed.” The wine had made her voice higher and the giggles more regular.
“I am going to walk you to your door,” I said. “But I figure I’ll either get a second date and we’ll see where we go then, or this is the last date we’re going to have and, if that’s the case, what are the odds you’re going to invite me in? I can save myself the humiliation.”
“Second date, then. And this time I get to name the time and place.”
“Fair enough.” I turned serious. “I have enjoyed it.”
I got out of the car and came around to open her door, but she was waiting for me by the time I got to her side. We walked to the house and she unlocked the door, turning back to me. I leaned in and she moved her lips to meet mine. They touched for a moment before parting.
“Good night,” we said together.
I bounced back to the car. Not love, not yet. But affection for sure, and just being “in affection” with someone felt new and fresh.
My phone started ringing as I got to the car. I looked to see who it was before I answered.
“What is it, Eddie?” I asked, plummeting back to earth at the sight of his name.
“Tomorrow. Early afternoon.”
“What? Do you mean it’s time to move in on the dealers?”
“Tomorrow’s Friday. They always try to have a lot on hand for Friday afternoon ’cause people get paid and are buying for the weekend.”
“This better go down easy.” Jesus, I’m doing the cops and robbers thing again. “If this is some kind of trick, I will find you and beat your ass.” I meant it.
“You hit them at the house around noon, you’ll make a haul. I’m serious.” Did he have to add the I’m serious? That just made me skeptical.
“How well armed are these guys?”
“They’ve always got guns, but they don’t know shit about them. I doubt they’ve ever done more than shoot them up in the air.”
Eddie gave me the address of the drug den. “You have this phone with you tomorrow. Understand?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“I’ll talk to you when it’s done.” I hung up, frustrated. I had wanted to indulge in thoughts of Cara and our evening together, but now my mind was filled with all the crap I needed to do to get ready for tomorrow. Plus, there were all the things that could go wrong and the consequences if they did.
By eleven o’clock Friday the squad that would enter the house was suited up. The warrant had been granted based on my confidential informant’s statements and several complaints that I found from neighbors about activity at the residence. It was a “no-knock” warrant, which I was morally opposed to, but I’d checked and double-checked the address and had driven by it first thing that morning, just to be sure.
The squad was made up of half a dozen deputies that served as our SWAT team when they weren’t doing road duty. We also had a DEA agent from Tallahassee. I felt awkward and out of place wearing body armor. I’d turned down the M16 they’d offered me. I’d qualified on one, but I felt more comfortable with my Glock handgun. I’d brought two extra magazines and had checked all three twice and made sure that I had a round in the chamber.
The sergeant leading the SWAT team would direct the entry and I would be in charge of the scene and the suspects once the building was secured. We got ready to move and everyone stood poised, waiting for my watch to tell us to converge on the location. I thought about calling Eddie one more time, but didn’t. Eleven-fifty. I keyed my radio.
“Go.”
Twenty minutes later I was looking at a couple of knuckleheads lying on the floor, hands cuffed behind their backs, whining about lawyers and rights. The DEA agent was using his flashlight to look at the drugs lying everywhere around the house. The windows were all covered to keep out prying eyes and the lamps must have had forty-watt blubs in them. Were they trying to save money? I thought. Maybe the low light was better when all your clients had dilated eyes.
“Lot of shit here,” the agent said happily. “Enough to put these scumbags away for a long time.” He thumped one of them with a large black boot.
“Plenty of guns too,” the SWAT leader said, looking in a closet.
So a happy ending. But I wasn’t sure. Something about this bothered me. Maybe it was too easy. You get some information, you raid a house and, boom, you have a big collar. Maybe I didn’t like it because I knew that I was doing the dirty work for other dealers. But I couldn’t let it bother me now. The deal had been made. I went outside and called Eddie.
“Told you,” he said as soon as he answered. I looked around. He must have seen it go down or had someone else watching. Most likely the former. He wouldn’t want anyone else knowing what he was doing. Unless he’s not the one directing this and you are totally being played, said the negative nelly voice in my head.
“Good so far, my cross-dressing confidential informant. But there better be more to come.”
“I’m delivering.”
“And I delivered for you. But this was just the first step in our partnership, right?”
“I said so. Man, you are hard. What the hell is it going to take for you to trust me?”
“That probably isn’t ever going to happen, so let’s just work on our little joint project one step at a time, never forgetting that we are working toward an ultimate end. Okay?”
“I’m on your side, man.” He sounded wounded.
Feeling like a sucker, I told him, “Thank you. You were spot-on with this bust. Call me if there’s anything I need to know.”
“Okay. Bye.”
I hadn’t realized that having a CI was going to involve the same ups and downs as maintaining a romantic relationship.
As I headed back toward the house, my phone rang. I looked at the name: Kemper—Frye. I had a system for keeping track of witnesses and other interested parties. When I put someone connected with a case into my contacts list, I put the name of the case first, then the last name of the person and sometimes a first initial. So I knew that this was Mark Kemper’s ex-boyfriend calling.
“Mr. Frye, what can I do for you?”
“I was looking over the texts I got from Mark over the last couple of months. And there were some funny ones.” His voice trailed off. His words were a little slurred. At noon? On a weekday? Killers destroy so many lives.
“What do you mean by funny?”
“Okay, one says, and I quote: ‘I’m thinking of doing something I should have done a long time ago.’”
“Did you ask him what he meant?”
“Of course. He said: ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ No wait. It says ‘couldn’t understand.’”
“Do you have any idea what
he meant?”
“No, and I just let it go at the time. We used to get in arguments about how I didn’t understand how he felt, and he couldn’t understand what I was going through… All that crazy shit you say when you’re arguing with someone you love.” I could hear him choking up. “Oh, hell.”
“Were there any more?” I felt bad for him, but keeping him focused might be the best way to get both of us through this call.
“A couple. Just a week ago he sent one that said: ‘I’m going home. Hope you don’t hate me when you find out why.’ I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. And he said, and I quote: ‘You’ll know soon enough. Wish me luck.’”
“Did you call him or email him and ask more questions?”
“No. Look, you had to know Mark. He was funny and sweet, but he could also be very melodramatic sometimes. I tried not to feed into it. Wait, there was one more I missed earlier. He said: ‘Don’t worry, it’s just family business.’ Which means nothing to me. His mom is just about the only family he had. A few cousins that live out on the west coast, but they’re on his father’s side and… Well, screw that old man.”
“Can you think of anything else that might help?”
“Nothing can help at this point. It’s all turned to shit. I guess Mark wasn’t the only one that could be melodramatic, huh?”
“You’ve suffered a horrible loss. Talk to someone. Family. A professional. A friend.”
“I talked to Mark’s mom last night. I feel so bad for her. I think I’m going to go visit her. She’s going to have a memorial for Mark. She asked me to stay with her.”
“She seemed like a nice woman.”
“Mark loved her. He would have loved that asshole father of his if that toad would have given him a chance. Mark said once that he thought fathers should be forgiven. That it could be hard to know what the right thing to do was.” His voice just trailed off.
“Thanks for calling. If you think of anything or need anything, call me.”
“Sure. I’m going to go get royally messed up now. Bye.”
I looked up to see the DEA agent standing there. My sympathy for Frye must have shown on my face. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I shook my head. “How’s it looking?”
“We’re tagging and bagging now. All of it will go through your evidence room. The only thing that we need is to check all the electronic devices to see if any of them can give us some intel on operations up the food chain. Of course, anything that is local we’ll share with your department…”
He went on, but I lost track of the conversation. Officers who specialize in a certain area get tunnel vision that sometimes prevents them from seeing the world around them. Everything has to revolve around drugs or guns or SWAT operations. I could never see life through that narrow of a lens.
Chapter Sixteen
We spent the rest of the day cleaning the house out, interviewing the suspects—which included recording gems such as: “It’s my cousin’s house, man” and “We was just fooling around”—and then finally writing up the reports.
At seven o’clock my phone rang… Dad’s gunshots.
“Nice job!” High praise from the parental unit.
“Thanks,” I said, exhausted.
“I have a couple news crews coming into the office for an interview. Meet us in the large conference room in half an hour.” He hung up. Guess it wasn’t optional.
With video rolling and cameras clicking, the DEA agent talked about the amount and value of all the drugs. Dad gave them the standard stump speech about the need to be ever-vigilant in keeping our county clean. We all stood behind a table where a large sample of the drugs and guns was laid out. Dad even shook my hand for the cameras. Why didn’t it feel better? Was it because it was a gift that I was going to have to pay for later? Maybe. Or maybe drugs always left me feeling dirty. At last the news people left and I was finally free to go home.
After a shower, food and time with Ivy, I had a moment to think about the murders. I’d been the lead on five homicides since I became an investigator. The first one was vehicular. We found the driver within twelve hours. She’d been drunk and her significant other called us when he found the car in the garage, bloody and damaged. The second was a body dump by drug dealers. It took a week, but one of them told a friend who told a friend who dropped a dime on them to get off of a possession charge. The third was a body found in the woods, decayed and unidentifiable. She was still on our books as a Jane Doe. Possibly sexual assault, maybe a serial killer. I came back to it when I had some time.
The fourth was a real TV whodunit. Woman found in her bathtub, husband claimed she had committed suicide by pills. The coroner said that the marks on her body indicated she’d been held underwater and that the pills she’d taken were not fully digested and therefore hadn’t had time to enter her system. The husband was still awaiting trial.
The fifth and last was a barbecue shoot-out. A family having a cookout when friends of one guy got in an argument with friends of another guy. Knives and guns came out. Three people injured and one man dead. Two days of taking statements finally got us to some version of the truth and a charge of second-degree manslaughter.
Now I had a real puzzler. Two murders, one arson and no physical evidence tying them together. Not that we didn’t have any physical evidence. In fact, a ton of trace evidence was collected at both the Kemper dumpsite and the murder and dismemberment site. But it would be months before most of it was processed. Fibers, hair and possible DNA samples were found at the second murder site as well, but since it was a motel room, God knows how many people left evidence in that room. It looked like our killer was only there for a short time. If he or she left anything, it was mixed up with dozens of other samples. Again, it would be months before it was analyzed. We might eventually get enough evidence to convict, but not to discover.
That meant we had to find the motive. I had already decided to give up my Saturday and go over to the Danielses neighborhood and question the old timer that Pete had identified. Something that happened back then had to hold the answer. But what? Something in the text that Mark had sent his boyfriend was nagging at me. I texted Frye and asked him to copy them to an email and send it to me. After I looked over them, I might want to call Mrs. Kemper and talk with her again.
Pete met me at the office the next morning. The place was quiet on Saturday.
“You don’t have to go out there with me,” I told him.
“Are you kidding? Sarah is already getting ready for Thanksgiving. She’s driving me crazy. I would have paid money to come into work today.” He squeezed into my car and put his sixty-four ounce Coke in the cup holder. “The guy’s name is Leonard Watkins. Lives two doors down from the Daniels house.”
It had turned warm again. That was life in north Florida. These days the seasons seemed to intermingle. All except summer. Summer was just plain hot.
Mr. Watkins’s yard was immaculate. There wasn’t a lot of landscaping, but what was there was trimmed and mowed to within an inch of its life. Before we reached the front door the garage opened. A tall black man with greying hair stood there holding a large piece of wood.
“Heard you drive up.” He held up the piece of wood. “Working on a bench for the backyard.” He put the wood down. “Come on through.”
We followed him through an OCD workshop. There were hospital operating rooms dirtier than his garage. We entered an equally well maintained backyard where we took seats around a glass-topped table.
“Deputy Henley here,” he indicated Pete, “said you all were investigating the fire at the Daniels house. He said you all thought it might have something to do with the kids that used to hang out there.”
“That’s right. You were living here then?”
“We were the second black family to move into the neighborhood. We moved here in 1977. The Echols were the first. They moved here in ’75. They took most of the crap for being the first. Us, not too much. There was a cross on
our lawn, but the morons never got it lit. Our mailbox was smashed a couple times, but that might have just been kids doing stupid shit, because a couple white neighbors’ boxes were vandalized too. Hell, the cross turned out to be a good thing. My wife was freaking before that because no one was talking to us, but after that several of the families, including the Danielses, came over and told us that that wasn’t what the neighborhood was all about. Mr. Daniels and Tom Canfield offered to stand watch and make sure it didn’t happen again. Broke the ice.”
“So you knew the Daniels family pretty well?”
“I wouldn’t say that. We got invited to some backyard cookouts and a few Christmas parties. I knew everyone in the family by sight. We waved to each other.” He shrugged.
I gave Pete the What are we doing here? look. He stepped in. “You knew Mark Kemper pretty well,” Pete said to Mr. Watkins.
“Yeah, I knew Mark real well. Super nice kid. I can’t believe he was killed.” He shook his head. “At first he kind of stopped by like everyone else after the cross. Told me how bad he felt. But then he just kept coming by. He’d help me with building projects or work in the yard, that kind of stuff. He kept in touch after he moved away too. When I found out he was gay it kind of all made sense.”
Mr. Watkins saw my raised eyebrows. “No, no, man, nothing like that. I just think he saw us as outsiders too. You know. He felt different and here was this family in the neighborhood who were different too. Also, it was the seventies. I was young, into the funky scene a little. I’d dress to the nines when I wanted to and play some serious R&B. I gave him some tapes. Different times, man.”
“Did he tell you about any problems or concerns he had?”
“I’ve been trying to think of anything that might help. Though I can’t see how anything back then could have caused someone to kill him today. Hey, wait, I did dig up something.” He got up and headed to the house. “You want anything to drink?” Pete and I declined the offer.