by Lowe, Tom
“It’s great that you still wear it.”
“I’ve worn it so long I don’t even think about it.”
She was quiet, her eyes narrowing and falling to just above my heart. I said, “When I offered to help you, it was to give you a ride into town. You really need to take all this to the police. Tell them what you saw when your friend was killed at the carnival. If you run, it’ll look very suspicious in the eyes of a county prosecutor. Tell them what you know.”
“I don’t know anything, especially like who killed Lonnie. You did more than offer to give me a ride to town, you saved my life. Those two men would have killed me. I do know that. Maybe it's some kind of weird destiny thing, but I don't believe you just happened by last night.”
“What do you believe?”
“That sometimes, in some places, stuff happens ‘cause it was supposed to happen. I believe there was a reason we met on the road in that forest. I don’t know what it is, but I think the reason might be bigger than you pulling those men off me.”
I was silent, watching her body language, fingernails bitten down, red nail polish chipped. She looked up as a white pelican alighted on the canvas top of an adjacent boat. I could see the frightened young girl's face in the pretense of the bold disguise she tried to wear.
She said, “But I don't know the reason I'm here. Maybe it's because I have no place else to go. Maybe it's because you might be the only one who believes I didn't kill Lonnie, and somewhere inside of me something tells me that you might help find who did. Lonnie, was a carny, so the cops won't do much, except say I did it.” She bit her lower lip for moment. “You found me in the forest walking in the dead of night. Maybe you can help me find my uncle. He took something from me, but he took something from my grandmother, too. I'll never replace what he stole from me, but I might get back what he took from her, the gold Celtic torc she wore all her life. I feel so freakin' self-conscious even coming here. I'm sorry.”
“I wish I could help you, but I’m not a police officer. I’m not a private detective. I’m just a guy teaching part-time at a local college.”
“What do you teach?”
I started to change the subject, and then said, “Criminal justice.”
“Were you a cop?”
“Once.”
“My instincts were right.”
I said nothing.
“I’ll pay you. I don’t have much money now, but I have strong principles and work ethic. I’ll pay you for your time.” Max jumped up next to Courtney and rested her chin in the girl’s lap. She scratched Max behind the ears and said, “This little dog is smart. I wish I’d had a dog when I was a girl. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here. I apologize for wasting your time.” She stood to leave.
“Just sit still a minute,” I said, looking to her left, down the dock toward the Tiki Bar parking lot. Two police cruisers and an unmarked car pulled into the lot. “Sit back down, Courtney.”
“Why?”
“Unless you can swim across the bay, there’s no place for you to run. The police just got here. And they're coming this way.”
“I don't know what to do?”
“Yes you do. Tell them the truth.”
10
Two Volusia County sheriff's deputies walked down the dock next to a detective. As the three men approached Jupiter, Courtney and I were standing in the cockpit waiting for them.
“Here, Courtney, take this.”
“What is it?”
“My business card.” I handed it to her. “It says Sean O’Brien … fishing charters. I’m not very good at it, that’s why I teach part-time. Job changed, but the phone number’s the same.”
“Thank you.” She slid the card in the back pocket of her jeans.
The police officers were coming closer. I recognized the detective. Dan Grant, skin the color of coffee with a shot of cream, mid-forties, wide shoulders, dressed in a tan sports coat, pressed jeans, and no tie. He walked with a straightforward pace, hands slipping into his jean pockets and shaking his head when he stepped up to Jupiter's stern.
“Well, well,” he said. “Why am I not surprised to see Sean O'Brien standing here with a person wanted for questioning in a murder?”
“Hello, Dan. It's been a while.”
“I'm sure you both have great explanations as to why we're all gathered here today. But let's start with the basics.” He cut his eyes to Courtney and stepped closer. Max wagged her tail. “Are you Courtney Burke?” Grant asked.
She nodded her head. “Yes.”
“Miss Burke, we'd like to talk to you about your relationship with Lonnie Ebert.”
“Okay.”
“But before we do, I'd want to hear how you got to this marina and this boat.” He sighed and took out a small notepad. “Sean, let's start with you. How'd she get on your boat?”
I told him how I found her and added, “That's when we were visited by two gents with a lot of fur and gang rape on their dull minds. That would have happened to her after they split my skull.”
Grant slid the pencil behind his ear. He looked over to a charter boat that was coming into the marina, the whiff of diesel exhaust in the wind. “So, that was you who did some damage. Those bad boys are gonna be out of work for a long time.” He turned toward Courtney. “And that's how you got here. Sort of took your time hitchhiking through the Ocala National Forest after leaving a murder scene. Why'd you leave in such a hurry?”
“I was scared. I didn’t kill Lonnie. You gotta believe me.”
Grant studied her a few seconds in silence, probably trying to read eyes that were unreadable. Two sea gulls flew above the masts of moored sailboats, their staccato cries like mocking laughter across the harbor. Grant said, “Miss Burke, I'm going to take you downtown to talk about this murder. At any time you can have an attorney present.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No, but we need to talk. I want to hear your story.” He nodded to the two deputies who boarded Jupiter. “These officers will escort you to their patrol car. We'll all reconvene in a little while. Sean, if you can think of anything else you may have seen or heard, you know where to find me. Let's go.”
Max barked once and followed Courtney to the steps leading over the transom to the dock. A deputy sheriff walked on either side of her. As they took her away, she turned toward me, her eyes wide, frightened, and now pleading, terrified eyes that would forever be padlocked deep in my mind.
***
Four hours later, Dave Collins ambled across the dock and boarded Jupiter. He stuck his head in the open salon and said, “Well, the arrest of that young woman is the talk of the marina, especially down at the Tiki Bar, and you're nowhere to be seen.”
I looked up from the bilge housing where I was storing some new belts and filters I'd bought. “She wasn't arrested, Dave. They took her in for questioning.” I stood, closed the hatch, and used paper towels to wipe some oil from my hands. “How'd they track Courtney here? You're probably the only one who picked out my voice on that 911 call.”
“I walked down to the Tiki Bar for ice. Kim said she recognized Courtney when the girl stopped in and asked for directions to your boat.”
“Did Kim call the police?”
“No. She said Captain Bill, you know the guy, retired charter captain with too much time on his hands, overheard the conversation and dialed 911.” Dave stepped to the small bar that divided the salon from the galley. He sat and blew out a deep breath, his forehead creased in thought. “So what do you think, Sean? Did the girl murder that guy? Is she a killer?”
“A killer? I don't know, maybe. Did she kill the man found dead at the carnival? I don't believe she did.” I told Dave everything Courtney had said to me and added, “Dan Grant is a good detective. He'll be fair with her. Unfortunately, fairness, integrity, and circumstantial evidence don't always balance the scale of justice. It'll depend on the physical evidence, apparent motive, and whether the prosecutor thinks he has enough on her to get a conviction
.” I walked to the galley, pulled two very cold Coronas from the refrigerator, sliced fresh limes for each one, and handed a bottle to Dave.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a short sip and setting the bottle on the bar. “I've never seen eyes on anyone quite like the eye color I saw in Courtney's eyes. I saw something else, too.”
“What's that?”
“I don't know, exactly. But for a kid like her, it’s the oxymoronic combination of a saddened wisdom of the ages, and an old, recycled soul, if you will—cluttered with the outlying hope of real trust. It's as if she's a war refugee, a young woman with normal dreams buried inside some Old World culture.”
“When anyone's raped, especially a kid, the physical pain will fade with the passage of time. The torment of the spirit never completely heals. That will give a child an old soul before her time. It's horrible and a damned shame.”
Dave started to respond as my phone buzzed from where I’d set it on the table. It was Detective Dan Grant on the line. He said, “Sean, we cut the girl loose a couple of hours ago.”
“Good.”
“Maybe not so good.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m telling you this for two reasons: one is because we have a history together. You helped with a couple of cases. But then I remember why you helped. It was because, in one way or the other, you either knew the victim, or as a former detective, you’d crossed paths with the perps.”
“I told you why she came to see me at the marina.”
“Back away from this one, Sean. I’m still gathering information, but I have enough to push my suspicion meter way up. Courtney Burke is a nut case. I’ve got a report that tells me she’s been in two different mental institutions, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.”
I said nothing, watching the condensation roll down the Corona bottle.
Dan said, “The FBI will be checking into this one, no doubt.”
“Why?”
“The murder at the carnival’s on their radar because it’s apparently not isolated. Feds are reporting the deaths of two other people, all men in their mid-twenties. All carny workers who were killed in the last six months. Each victim worked at a different carnival. If the perp is Courtney Burke, the county has a serious problem on its hands.”
For a brief moment, I remembered the look on Courtney’s face when the two men in the pickup truck rolled their windows down. I saw chipped red polish on her fingernails, her cotton white knuckles, her eyes looking back at me as she was led away by the deputies. I said, “She may have issues, but I don’t believe she’s a serial killer.”
“Maybe not. But I’m betting the dried blood on her T-shirt will match the vic’s blood. And I know she claims she got it on her hands trying to help the vic. But then she fled the scene and did nothing to call help, no dialing 911. The carnival is at the county fairgrounds for a week. I’d wager I’ll have a confession from her before the week’s up.”
“And I’m betting there is another reason why you’re telling me this. You think she’s coming back to the marina, don’t you?”
“She came to you once. She might return. Female serial killers are rare, but not rare enough for me. If she contacts you, let me know everything she says. I’d hate for you to wind up with an ice pick through your heart.”
11
It was a half hour past sunset when Courtney Burke arrived back at the Bandini Brothers Amusement Carnival, the noise of the thrill rides like simulated thunder in the cool night air, the earth trembling beneath coasters and big wheels built to challenge gravity. As she weaved her way through the crowds, she was hoping the throngs of people would provide some degree of concealment walking down the midway. But the lights, screams, and roar of motors and hydraulics captured her every move in slices of bright surrealism. The air was heavy with the scent of sizzling Italian sausages, grilled onions, peppers, and funnel cakes, thick as the dust kicked up by thousands of shoes.
With suspicion following her like harsh shadows, there was no anonymity in a sea of strangers. The carnies watched her from behind the games of chance. Their eyes veiled under the sweat-stained baseball caps, eyes long ago blinded from lack of empathy and focused on near constant distrust. The hooded eyes tracked her every move as she made her way down the bright midway to the Bandini trailer.
She looked straight ahead, ignoring the stares as she thought about the events of the day—the time she spent on Sean O’Brien’s boat and the interrogation at the police station. She liked Sean. He had a calm way about him. She tried to remember the last time she trusted anyone, especially a man. Maybe she couldn’t trust him either. But something pulled at heartstrings she knew long ago had been cut and cauterized by bad people. What is it about him? Why did she feel she could trust him? What was the connection? Was there even a connection? She fought back the rise of hope in her heart, covered it with doubt and buried it beneath the frost of uncertainty. Forget him. I’m innocent. Police will have to see that.
She knew the Detective Dan Grant didn’t believe her story. She felt that the carnies weren’t the only ones watching her. Plainclothes police could be mixing in with the crowd. She glanced over her shoulder, to her left, then to her right. Who was the man in the open sports coat? Did he avert his eyes from mine? Her head hurt. She looked away, folded her arms across her breasts for a few seconds, and then walked on, moving faster, the music from the rides loud, piercing, and bouncing around inside her skull like a .22 bullet.
The reverberating layers of noise grew louder. She placed the palms of both hands over her ears, the lights of the midway like a freight train barreling down the tracks of her mind. She saw Lonnie’s eyes staring up at the full moon behind her. She looked at her hands, the blood wet and sticky between her fingers. “No!” she shouted.
Two teenage boys shooting hoops, trying to win plush animals for their girlfriends, turned and stared at Courtney. One said, “Maybe her meds wore off.” He turned around and tossed the small basketball, sinking the shot. One of the teen girls shrieked and popped a bubblegum bubble.
Courtney turned and ran, ran hard down the midway, knocking a box of popcorn from an overweight woman who stepped in front of her. “Hey! What the—?” the woman said to her thin husband. Courtney darted past the swarms of people, around the Zipper, Tilt-A-Whirl, and cut between the House of Mirrors and the Lost Mine, slipping into the shadows beyond the midway. She stopped walking behind the House of Mirrors and looked up at a cracked full-length mirror propped against a metal garbage can. She stared at her reflection in the damaged glass, her face flushed and glistening in the light. She lowered her eyes to her hands, expecting to see Lonnie’s blood on them. Nothing. Nothing but broken fingernails, and a tiny ruby in a gold setting, a ring from her grandmother on Courtney’s sixteenth birthday.
There was a sound from behind her. She looked into the mirror and saw the image of a little man, a dwarf. He was dressed in a red and purple Hawaiian-print shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. His dirty blond hair was combed straight back. His tanned faced creased with laugh lines set in the cheeks, dimples the size of dimes, and he wore a gold hoop earring in one ear.
Courtney turned around and smiled. “Hi, Isaac. You’re a sight for really sore eyes, a hurting brain, and other things.”
“Glad you’re back, kiddo. The police were looking for you.”
“They found me.”
“What happened?”
“They questioned me for hours. Tried to get me to change my story, like to say stuff that isn’t true. They truly believe I killed Lonnie. No matter what I said, they’ve got their minds made up. Lonnie was dead when I got to him, after a man knifed him. To get to Lonnie, I had to jump from the Big Wheel when it swept close to the ground, but I was too late.”
“Are you okay?”
“No … no, I’m not okay. Lonnie was lying in a pool of blood fighting for his life. I tried to pull that ice pick outta his chest, but I was too late. He just looked up at me, then looked beyond my head lik
e he was staring at the moon and he stopped breathing. I felt like I was gonna vomit. I just ran. And I didn’t stop running until I was so far away I couldn’t see the lights from the carnival. I spent the last three hours telling the same story over and over to the police. Nobody believes me.”
“I believe you. Looks like you could use a hug.” Isaac walked to her and held out his short arms, a wide smile spreading across his face. Courtney leaned down, and he hugged her. At three and a half feet, Isaac Solminski had a line-of-sight most people didn’t possess. He could read people, could see into situations, spot trouble, and avoid it if possible. After twenty years on the road, he had no illusions about anything. But he did have faith and hope.
He had befriended Courtney Burke when she started working at the carnival three months earlier. Isaac believed Courtney was a special young woman who would never fit in as a carny. She was put on this earth for something else. He could feel it in his heart. And he could see farther than most men twice his height. Tonight he didn’t like what he saw. He said, “My precious Courtney. I’m surprised you came back.”
“Where am I gonna go? I need the work. I need to feel I’m getting closer to what I came for, too. Besides, if I run again, the cops will think I’m running from all this. I’m innocent.”
“Come with me. I’ll make us some tea. There’s something I want to tell you.”
She nodded and followed the little man as he stepped over a garden hose and waddled around pitched tents, campers, and motorhomes, many covered with grime and years’ worth of travel dents and dings in the body paint. Diesels hummed. Air conditions rattled. Courtney could see the blue lights from a TV screen flickering through the dirty window of a trailer. The night air carried the odor of diesel fumes.
Isaac climbed the two wooden steps to his small camper, opened the door and turned on the lights. Courtney had been in the small camper once before. It was a morning he’d made her breakfast after a drunken carny had slapped her across the mouth because she refused to go to McDonald’s with him for breakfast.