by A. E. Howe
“Okay, so there wasn’t anything in particular that your mother had a problem with?”
“With Aunt Dell? No, just the usual, always telling her she dressed like a slob and that she should lose weight. But, like I said, that’s Mom. Of course everything she said was true. Aunt Dell’s clothes were crap. Like she bought them from Walmart or something.”
“Why’d you go to live with your mom? How old were you, twelve?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? Dad never did anything but work on that stupid farm and go to church. And Tim is… was his mini-me, for sure.”
“Think hard, did you ever meet Mark Kemper?” Matt put a photo of Kemper down on the table in front of her. “This is a pretty recent picture. Maybe you met him when you were younger?”
I’ll give her credit. She looked hard at the photo and took her time answering. “I don’t care much for gay guys. He even looks gay in this picture. I never saw him before. Like I said, I don’t pay much attention to gay guys, but I think I’d remember him. I can’t believe Mom dated him. Damn.”
Matt stepped up. “It would be helpful to know where you were Monday night, November second.”
Tilly sat up, her body tensing. I guess we’d moved into “good cop, bad cop” mode.
“Are you serious?” Tilly ended the sentence by dropping her jaw and staring at Matt.
“We have to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. If you can tell us where you were, and it checks out, then that’s one less person we have to keep an eye on.”
“What? Like you’re watching me?” Her mouth was still hanging open.
“We have two murders. We keep an eye on everyone associated with any murder until we can be sure they have no connection with them. Understand?” Matt spoke fast and with an attitude. He was ramping this up way more than I thought was necessary.
“This is bullshit. Why would I even kill him? Do I look like someone who could shoot a man with a shotgun?”
I had to step in here, because I’d thought about this. “I know that your dad took you dove and quail hunting as soon as you were old enough to hold a shotgun.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Leon had said he saw a man point the gun at Mark Kemper, but the mind can fill in details and the brain will try to make sense of things even if that means changing reality to make it fit. If our witness couldn’t imagine a woman with a shotgun, then when he saw one in the dark and from a distance, his mind might have just changed the facts to fit what his brain told him he should be seeing. That’s one of the many reasons that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
“Money is always a good motive,” Matt continued. “You don’t work. Did your mom offer you money to kill him?”
“I don’t need money. My dad left me half of his. And you might remember, I already knew that Dad probably wouldn’t survive.” She at least had the good grace to say that last a little sadly. I was very surprised to hear that Jim had left half his estate to Tilly. I’d imagined that all, or at least most, of it would go to Tim and I said as much.
“Shows what you know. Dad didn’t leave a will. It was one more thing he was weird about. So half goes to me and half to Tim.”
“Just tell us where you were on the night of November second and we can move on.” Matt leaned on the table and got in her face.
“I don’t know, partying, I guess.”
“On a Monday night?”
“Maybe at home. I don’t have to answer your stupid questions.”
“That’s true. You can walk out of here and we’ll put you at the top of our list.”
Her mouth opened wide again. “No way. What the hell? You can’t do that.”
“Just answer the question.”
“I don’t know. Let me think. Monday, what, a couple of weeks ago?” She pulled out her phone and looked at her messages. “Let me see.”
Matt loomed over her.
“I was at a bar!” she said triumphantly. “The Den, in Tallahassee.” She showed her phone to him. I gently took it from her. There were a number of texts with selfies of her at a bar between the hours of eleven and two in the morning.
“Who are these people with you?” I asked, and she rattled off the names of half a dozen people. Young, dumb and drunk from the looks of the photos. “Hold on. Write them down with phone numbers.” I slid my pad over to her and gave her back her phone. She wrote down names and numbers after looking them up on her phone.
I glanced over the list. “Thanks. Does your mother have anyone else that she relies on? A best friend? Is she dating anyone?”
“She broke up with some old guy a couple of months ago. He was rich. If they don’t have money, they don’t count, is the way she dates. She told me once she didn’t want arm candy, she wanted a deep wallet.” Her voice trailed off.
“Okay, we appreciate you coming in.”
“What a bunch of crap,” she threw back at us on her way out.
“That was a fucking waste of time,” Matt said after she left.
“You didn’t have to pull out the thumbscrews,” I told him.
“Give me a break. If she’d been guilty, I would have gotten a confession out of her.”
“You can get a confession out of most people if you browbeat them long enough. Look at the Norfolk Four.” The Norfolk Four were four sailors who confessed to a 1997 rape and murder. It became clear after several years and the confession of another man, who was a known rapist, that the confessions were false. Through little more than sleep deprivation and constant aggressive questioning, the four young men had been willing to confess to a heinous crime they hadn’t committed.
Matt gave me a withering look and walked out. Back to square one. I considered all of the information. If we had been talking about the murder of Jim Devries, then she’d just given me a great motive for her or Tim. Maybe I’d check with Jim’s doctors and make darn sure that there wasn’t any chance his death could have been anything but natural causes. A call to Jim’s lawyer was in order too. A man of his wealth not having a will seemed crazy, even knowing how much he hated contracts.
Chapter Twenty
I followed up with two of Jim’s doctors and left a message for his lawyer. The doctors assured me that the hemorrhagic stroke Jim suffered was a natural event. Of course they couldn’t just tell me that. They had to explain that a hemorrhagic stroke differed from an ischemic stroke. The hemorrhagic stroke is caused when a blood vessel in the brain ruptures. The ischemic occurs when a blood clot lodges in a vessel in the brain and blocks the flow of blood. Hemorrhagic are less common and generally cause more damage.
So much for making his death out to be a murder, even though I had already begun to map out the events. Jim is somehow given a stroke; Mark knew something and was killed; same goes for Dell; and then Dr. Brook was killed because he had some knowledge of the medical condition that was exploited to cause the death. What was really upsetting was that, as crazy as that scenario sounded, it was better than anything else I’d come up with. But it was all for naught if Jim’s death was natural.
The doctors did give me one small opening, saying stress was possibly a contributing factor. However, there was no way that someone could have known Jim was susceptible to a stroke, and certainly it wasn’t credible that you could count on him having a massive stroke just because he was put in a stressful situation.
My phone rang.
“What the hell are you doing accusing my sister of killing Mark Kemper?”
“Tim, we had to look at all the possibilities. She’s cleared now.”
“You demanded an alibi!” No room for doubt about how upset he was.
“That’s not exactly the way it was. I admit that Deputy Greene might have leaned on her a little heavy, but we’re fighting an uphill battle with these murders. I will say that you need to consider the fact that these deaths and arsons are very close to your family.”
“Do you think I need to be reminded that my aunt was murdered?”
“
No, I just meant that there could be some danger to your immediate family. Since we don’t have any idea who’s committing these murders, or why.”
“Is that some kind of threat? If we don’t cooperate, we could be next?”
This wasn’t going well. He didn’t seem to want to be calmed down. Maybe this is his way of venting all of the emotions that must have been building up with the death of his father, the murder of his aunt and the arrival of his mother. He probably needs to be careful that he doesn’t have a stroke. Not a very kind thought. I decided to take another tack.
“You have every right to be mad. I should have told you why we asked your sister to come in. But we thought it would be better to just do it and get the ugly job done as fast as possible. Is your sister still upset?”
“What do you think?” He was finally cooling down. “I know my sister has her flaws, but killing people isn’t one of them.” Hearing him say it did make our suspecting her sound stupid.
“We had to take her off the list of suspects. And we have. Her alibi checked out.”
“I guess we should be grateful for that.” He just sounded irritated now, not like he might go ballistic at any moment. “Am I on your list too?”
“In an investigation like this, we look at everyone.” I wanted to ask where he was on that Monday night, but I didn’t think now was the time. Besides, like everyone else, what motive did he have?
“I guess you’ll just have to keep me on your list. With Dad in the hospital I was going back and forth between the hospital and the house the day Kemper was killed.”
“I understand.” Best let it drop for now. We said our goodbyes and hung up.
What a day. But tomorrow was my date with Cara and this time I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from going out with her. Dead bodies be damned. They could just pile up if no one else wanted to deal with them. I called dispatch and told them that if anything came up tomorrow, the word was that I was unreachable. Lunch for everyone on Monday if I wasn’t disturbed.
I decided to stop by Dad’s on the way home. It was a preemptive measure: just in case Tim called him, I wanted to let Dad know what went down. Dad’s car was in the driveway so I let myself in, shouting to the house that I was there. The expected brutal greeting from Mauser didn’t happen. This was explained when I went into the living room and found him chewing contentedly on a huge frozen bone. Like any veteran law enforcement officer, when he was eating, he was off duty. He barely lifted his eyes when I came into the room and sat down on the sofa.
Dad walked in, fresh from a shower and dressed casually, which meant that he was wearing old-man shorts with a polo shirt, everything in hideous colors because he always bought the ones on the clearance racks.
I told him how the interview with Tilly went. He sat there frowning. I couldn’t tell if he was grinding his teeth or if it was just Mauser tearing his bone apart.
“I told you so.”
“Thanks, Dad, I appreciate you not saying ‘I told you so.’”
“If it’s necessary in the line of duty, I expect you to do whatever you have to to bring about law and order and to come home alive. But if you can avoid it, I would appreciate you not pissing off the richest and most influential people in the county less than a year out from an election.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” I hated the politics of the job. I know Dad did too, but that was the reality. I’d never seen him do anything wrong in order to keep his job, but I’d seen him do things he didn’t want to do.
I stayed and had dinner with him—leftover spaghetti and garlic bread. Ivy was put out with me for coming home after eight, but I tried to placate her with the idea of turkey for a week after Thanksgiving.
Cara called to make sure that we were still on for tomorrow. I assured her that nothing was going to stop me from being with her.
“Where are we going?”
“On Monday I was planning on surprising you, but now after a couple of false starts I’m just going to tell you. I thought we’d go to Wakulla Springs.”
The springs were an hour away, about twenty miles south of Tallahassee.
“I haven’t been there in years. I loved it as a kid,” I said sincerely.
“I haven’t ever been.”
“I wish I’d thought of it.” Picking a state park rather than a posh restaurant raised her up a dozen pegs on my score board. I was beginning to worry that I might not live up to her standards. We agreed that I’d pick her up at ten.
I really wanted to make a great second impression. The weather was neither warm nor cold, so I didn’t have to make any major clothing decisions. I checked the car and cleared out the trash and some of the paperwork. I’d gas it up before I picked her up in the morning. I checked Google maps to be sure I knew where I was going. Ivy followed me around the whole time.
“Guys worry about stuff too. We aren’t all Neanderthals, or at least we aren’t all always Neanderthals,” I told her. She chose that moment to sit on her back, bend forward and start cleaning her butt. I knew this was not a coincidence. “Yeah, maybe you won’t be getting quite as much turkey next week.” But she knew it was an idle threat.
I got a text from Eddie Saturday morning as I was making last-minute preparations to pick up Cara. It was simple enough: Found guy who was asked by guy about arson. I just wasn’t in the mood for a texting exchange with my CI, especially when it started out that vague. It could wait until the evening.
Cara looked beautiful, wearing a sundress in a mix of bold colors. It was a bright day and her red hair glowed in the sunlight. As we drove I wished I had a convertible. Cara would have looked perfect smiling up at the blue sky with her hair flying behind her.
Wakulla Springs in the fall, even on the weekend, is off the beaten path. There were a few cars in the parking lot, but it wasn’t crowded. We walked through the old lodge, admiring the curiosities of days gone by and imagining ourselves in a world where Florida was still exotic.
“I sometimes feel that I was born in the wrong time,” Cara said dreamily. “I guess that’s pretty common.”
“I think it speaks to our desire for the romance of a time and place when the world still seemed filled with mysteries you might reach out and touch.”
“These days all the things to be discovered seem to require powerful telescopes or deep-water submersibles.”
According to the plaque on the wall the lodge had been built in 1937.
“Hard to imagine Hitler had taken control of Germany by then and the world waited to learn what fate had in mind,” I said.
“Aren’t you the romantic?” She put her arm through mine.
“I wanted to study history. It fascinates me. Reading about people in the past and imagining what it would be like to stand in their shoes and face the daunting tasks without knowing if you would be successful or not…”
“Don’t we face huge challenges which leave us unsure of the future?” she asked as we walked outside and strolled through the grounds, the maze of live oak branches overhead mottling the sunlight.
“Somehow our times seem less dramatic. I don’t know… Maybe it’s that the number of people and the complexities make everything less clear. A hundred years ago, if a man or woman wanted to go somewhere and reinvent themselves, they could. It was possible to leave your old reality behind and pioneer a new life. Good luck today leaving your past and starting over.”
“I know what you mean. My parents lived a freer life in their hippy world than I think is possible today. Even they’ve settled down. Is there something you’d like to escape?”
“No… I’m not exactly trapped.”
“But not free? You told me how you became a deputy. It’s not too late to do something else. Go back to school, study history. Do whatever you want.”
I looked at her and, for a moment, she made me believe that the world did hold endless possibilities. Maybe if you are with the right person they can help you to move toward the life you want. Or maybe if you’re with the right pers
on, the life you have is the life you want.
“Or I can just keep doing what I’m doing until I’m too old to remember that I wanted to do something else,” I said with a chuckle.
“Love the one you’re with if you can’t be with the one you love,” she said.
“I like the ‘love the one you’re with’ part,” I said, turning to her. I leaned in and she raised up on her toes so that our lips met. The kiss was perfect. We parted and looked into each other’s eyes.
“Let’s take the boat tour,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to say anything that would spoil the kiss, and if the silence hadn’t been filled with some banality I would have been telling her my feelings when it was too early to know what my feelings really were.
“Great,” she said, giving no indication how the kiss had affected her beyond the sparkle in her eyes. She let go of my hand and started running down the bank toward the boat docks. I didn’t catch up with her until we reached the little office that sold tickets. We had to wait for a while until the next boat went out. We passed the time looking at the movie posters on the wall. Starting in the 1940s, the springs had been used by Hollywood to film underwater scenes for various movies. There were posters for Tarzan movies and Airport ’77.
“You aren’t going to believe this, but that is one of my favorite films,” I said, pointing to a poster for The Creature from the Black Lagoon. “It was Dad’s favorite growing up. He had it on VHS when I was a kid and a couple times a year he’d ask me if I wanted to have dinner in the Black Lagoon. He’d bring home a pizza and turn off all the lights. For dessert we’d make wild and crazy sundaes. Those were some of the best times I had with my dad.
“Not long after I started working for the department, I had one of those really bad days when I saw some stuff that nobody should have to see. I asked Dad how he decompressed after one of those days. He told me he’d put The Creature on and eat pizza and ice cream with his son.”