Lowe, Tom - Sean O'Brien 08

by A Murder of Crows

  Maybe the hunter’s camera would have captured more recent history.

  And if he were very lucky, maybe O’Brien would be able to see something caught through the lens of the camera like an animal in a trap—but with a human face.

  * * *

  Wynona Osceola watched him. She quickly read his phone messages when no one was looking. She came into the CID office earlier than the rest, scanning the call records of Detective Henry James, looking for area codes connected to Miami, New York and New Jersey. She watched him on the phone, closing the door to one of the conference rooms when he used his cell phone. She watched him through the glass. Pacing. Agitated. More pronounced hand and body movements than Henry James usually displayed. Wynona knew it was because of Sean’s pressure on the mob.

  Maybe Dino Scarpa was coming unglued.

  Maybe Henry James was ordered to do something.

  She waited for him to come out of the conference room. He walked to his desk, lifted his sports coat off the back of his chair, and left the room.

  Wynona followed.

  She followed him through the labyrinth hallways of the police department, out through the employee entrance and into the parking lot. As he unlocked the door to his unmarked car, she said, “We need to talk.”

  Detective Henry James turned around, the speckled shade of a mimosa tree falling across his puzzled face. “What’s up, Wynona?”

  “The other day, when we questioned Kimi Tiger … you said very little.”

  He grinned. “I thought you should take the lead because of the girl-to-girl thing.”

  She stepped closer. “The girl-to-girl thing. What is that supposed to mean?”

  He crossed his arms. “Chill, Wynona. I just figured since she was a teenage girl, she’d respond to your questions better than mine.”

  “But you wouldn’t even look at her. Why? You think you’d catch a disease.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You telling Joe Billie that she’s promiscuous when he’s telling you she’s been a sexual abuse victim.”

  “Not here in the parking lot, Wynona. You got a problem with the way I investigate, take it up with the chief. Now get the fuck out of my way. I have an appointment.” He turned to walk away.

  She went for it. “Would that be with Dino Scarpa?”

  He turned slowly back to her, glancing up at the exterior of the police department. He lowered his voice. “We all know you see ghosts ever since you emptied a clip into that guy in Michigan and caused your partner to take a bullet to the back of his head. So you’ve got an overactive imagination. Be careful Detective … you start mentioning names, and those ghosts will come to haunt you.” He sneered, a nerve under his left eye causing his skin to twitch.

  Wynona stood in the shade of the mimosa tree, watching Detective Henry James as he drove slowly across the lot, looking up into his rearview mirror as he approached Josie Billie Boulevard. She knew Henry James had breached. And she knew her life had just become more dangerous.

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  “You’ve reached your destination.” O’Brien glanced once more at the satellite map image on his phone screen, slowed his Jeep, parked and got out, picking up his phone. The dirt road had narrowed to nothing much more than a wide trail for wildlife. The land was thick with cabbage palms, slash pines, blood-red bromeliads, and oak hammocks protruding out of swamps in the distance. The bush pulsed with the droning of cicadas.

  He looked to the far left, the temple mound rising from the tangle of trees like the spine of a lost Mayan city tucked away into a North American chapter of primeval history. A wood stork rode the air currents above the mound, flapping its massive wings and sailing into the infinity of the verdant horizon.

  O’Brien looked at the dirt path. He saw deer tracks in the soft earth. He spotted the tracks of a Florida panther. He knelt, clenched his fist next to one of the panther’s tracks, the track as large as his fist. He slowly rose, looking around, the trees filled with birdsong. O’Brien walked toward a slight ingress into a stand of royal palm trees.

  The camera, with its solitary glass eye, stared back at him.

  He walked to the far right, out of the range of the lens, and then he doubled back, coming up from behind the camera. It was strapped to a pine tree, about five feet above the ground. The exterior of the camera was covered in the universal camouflage patterns of browns and greens. O’Brien recognized the trail camera, a Browning, capable of video and still images. Excellent night vision photography, too. He opened the camera, hit the playback button and scanned the recorded images on the SD card.

  The images and video were time-stamped, date and time of recording. He saw deer, a black bear, and a large Florida panther cross the trail at different times and days.

  And he saw a white Range Rover.

  O’Brien played back the video. The Range Rover was a late model. The driver’s side window down, the man holding the wheel with both hands. Even from a distance of about fifty feet, O’Brien could tell the man looked scared. Across from him was a second man. His face was a dark silhouette, the sunlight coming from the opposite side of the Range Rover.

  When the vehicle passed slowly by, the driver looked out the window, the trail camera capturing his face clearly. Was it Lawrence Barton? O’Brien stopped the playback. He used his phone to search for news stories about the death of Barton. A picture from a local newspaper popped up. And there in the frame was the same face that was looking toward the trail camera, the face of Lawrence Barton.

  O’Brien stared at it a moment. Who was in the Range Rover with him? And was that guy holding a gun on Barton? Although the passenger was in heavy silhouette, O’Brien knew it wasn’t Joe Billie. Was it Carlos Bertoni or any of Dino Scarpa’s hit men? Was the Land Rover registered to Lawrence Barton?

  O’Brien used the SD card to upload the video, no more than ten seconds long, to his phone. He scrolled down and found the mobile number to Citrus County Detective Robert Edwards and made the call. It went to voice-mail. “Detective Edwards, this is Sean O’Brien. I found a trail camera in the vicinity of the mound on the Hawkins’ ranch property. I’ve uploaded the video from the camera. I’m sending it to your phone. It’s about ten seconds long. You can see it’s time and date stamped. It shows Lawrence Barton driving a Range Rover to the mound the day of his death. Someone is in the seat next to him. It’s not Joe Billie. I bet whoever it is has a gun pointed at Barton. Joe was on the property in his truck – not the Range Rover. I hope this helps your investigation. Let me know if you have questions.”

  O’Brien hit send and waited for his phone to ring.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  It took less than ten minutes for O’Brien’s phone to vibrate. He stood next to his Jeep on the ranch property. He looked at the caller ID, hoping it was from Detective Edwards in Citrus County. Unknown caller. Before he answered, O’Brien made a gut decision to hit the app on his phone that recorded in-coming calls.

  After he answered, there was a pause and Dino Scarpa said, “O’Brien, that was really good of you, leaving your business card with my crew. It’s not every day that I get to call a mark to tell him he’s a walking dead man. You stuck your nose where it doesn’t belong. You threatened the family and you’re messing with our business expansion. Not good. And then you take out one of my men. Now it’s your turn. Eye for an eye.”

  “Why’d you kill Frank Sparrow, Dakota Stone and Lawrence Barton? Is the hope of getting a slice of the Seminole gambling profits worth what you’re going to face, the death penalty?”

  “You got nothin’ on me you fuckin’ prick. Nothin’!”

  “You don’t know everything Carlos Bertoni told me.”

  “I hear he came down with a really bad headache. He can’t remember much.”

  “And you threatened to kidnap Kimi Tiger, your business associate’s daughter, if her uncle, Joe Billie, goes to the police with your dirty laundry. I thought you’d be smarter than that, Dino. Too bad y
ou didn’t take my offer. You didn’t fix it. But now I will.”

  “I’ll fix you asshole! I know where you live. I know who your friends are. I’m gonna burn your boat to the waterline. I even know about your little dog. I’ll have that fuckin’ dog stuffed and mounted. Keep it as a trophy on the mantle in my house. Maybe use the dead mutt’s nose for games of ring toss. And I hear you’re bangin’ that female piece on the Seminole police department. I’ve two hung mules that’ll take turns with her before swingin’ a baseball bat to the bitch’s skull. You messed with the wrong guy, O’Brien. This fuckin’ time around you’re goin’ down.”

  “Hey, Dino, by law I am supposed to tell you I’m recording this call. Consider it done.”

  There were two seconds of silence before Scarpa hung up.

  O’Brien felt his heart pounding. He gripped his phone, palms moist. He looked around the vast forests, the dark woods surrounding the old mound, and expanses of scrub savannah and wetlands leading toward the Withlacoochee River, the hammering sound of a woodpecker drilling into a cypress tree. He thought about Scarpa’s threats, the fanatical ranting of a psychopath. Nothing Scarpa had said on the phone could directly tie him to the deaths of Frank Sparrow, Lawrence Barton or Dakota Stone.

  Scarpa was beginning to crack. Just a little. But the foundation was weakened.

  O’Brien was concerned about the safety of Wynona Osceola, Dave Collins and Nick Cronus. And he thought about little Max, only ten-pounds, wagging her tail when greeting strangers. Dino Scarpa had just threatened each one of them.

  His phone vibrated. Dave was calling. He said, “I have the contact information for the professor and the two grad students.” Want me to text it to you?”

  “That’d be great, thanks.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I just got a call from Scarpa. I recorded it, hoping he’d incriminate himself, or I’d get something I could use to help Joe. Scarpa’s coming unglued, what I was hoping for. He’ll make more mistakes that way. Acute anger causes slip-ups.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Threatened to finish the job and kill me. He knows where I live. Knows I have a boat at the marina. He said he’d take out my friends, Max and Wynona Osceola, and along the way, he wants to burn my boat. It’s most likely a bluff, Dave. But you and Nick need to be extra careful. Advise Nick to be very aware of his surroundings, especially at the Tiki Bar. He needs to know if he’s being watched or followed. I know you have an AK-47 on your boat. Keep an eye on Nick. Give him access to one of my pistols on Jupiter. You know where most of them are located, right?

  “Most?”

  “Sometimes you only have seconds to reach one.”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “I located a trail camera out here on the ranch. The camera is used to capture game movement. It’s not far from where Lawrence Barton’s body was found. On the camera, there are ten seconds of video capturing a white Range Rover driving by and heading in the direction of the mound. Lawrence Barton is driving. Another man, on the passenger side and in silhouette, is with him. I think the passenger is holding a gun on Barton.”

  “Can those few seconds of video exonerate Joe Billie?”

  “I don’t know because the image is very dark and slightly blurred. If the frames can be lightened, and it’s clearly evident the passenger is not Joe, which it would be, then yes. In the current state, the DA may say it’s not visible proof and that Joe could have been waiting near the mound, and he was the one who did the murder and scalping after Barton was kidnapped and made to drive to the location.”

  “He could pitch it to look like Joe had a partner in crime. Can you get the video from the camera?”

  “Already did. Sent it to Citrus County Detective Robert Edwards. I asked him to call me. I’m sending it to Joe’s attorney, Lana Halley. If I have to, I’ll send it to the news media.”

  “Send it to me as well for backup. Be damn careful out there. Who knows how far Scarpa’s reach goes. Maybe to Bobby Hawkins.”

  “I have an incoming call, Dave. It could be the detective. I’ll send you the video after that.”

  EIGHTY-NINE

  O’Brien heard something in the brush. Limbs cracking. A snorting sound. He looked at the woods, the moving shadows, answering the phone call. Detective Robert Edwards said, “O’Brien, I appreciate your attempt to help. First, you bring us a nine mil round dropped at your feet by a crow, and now you’ve emailed video allegedly from a hunter’s bush camera on the Hawkins’ ranch. I hope you have permission to be there.”

  O’Brien ignored the remark. “I’ll snap a photo of the camera and give you coordinates. Come look for yourself. In the video, you can clearly see Lawrence Barton driving a Range Rover on the ranch property. You can see his face. He looks terrified. And it’s probably because the guy sitting opposite him has a gun aimed at Barton’s ribcage. Guess what Detective, that guy’s not Joe Billie.”

  “Why didn’t you call us when you found the camera?”

  “Two reasons. First, I didn’t know what if anything might be captured on the camera. Secondly, it has a thirty-two-gig SD card that’s filled to capacity. It’ll begin recording over the images unless someone dumps the card or stops the recording. I didn’t want to take the chance of losing it.”

  “I see. Whose camera is it?”

  “I don’t know. Lloyd Hawkins allows some of his friends to hunt on the property. The camera is less than two hundred yards from the mound. Do you know what kind of car Lawrence Barton drove?”

  “There was only one vehicle seen on the property, and that was Joe Billie’s truck.”

  “I’m betting that whoever was in Barton’s car with him either placed that feather in Joe’s truck or knows who did.”

  “We didn’t see any tire tracks near the crime scene.”

  “Maybe the perp parked and walked Barton to the mound.”

  “We don’t know that, do we? If there are other players in this murder, we’ll find them. Because I’m bettin’ your pal, Joe Billie, will start to sing—try to cop a plea deal to keep him off of death row.”

  “There will be no plea deal because Joe had nothing to do with the death of Lawrence Barton. The DA needs to see this video.”

  “Let us do the police work, okay? We’ll take a look at the video. Stay away from the field camera. We’ll get it. I have to go. Gotta take a call that’s been holding.”

  “Maybe you can find time to see if that was Barton’s Range Rover, and if so, did it ever make it back to his home?”

  “Later, O’Brien.” The detective disconnected.

  The sound from the bush returned. Grunting. The blow of heavy breathing. And then a wild boar stepped out of the scrub. O’Brien stood next to his Jeep, motionless, staring at the massive animal. It stared back. O’Brien figured the boar was more than a thousand pounds. At least eight feet long, black, scraggly fur. Two ivory white tusks, each larger than O’Brien’s thumbs, protruded from the boar’s lower jaw.

  The animal cocked its head, eyeing O’Brien. He stood motionless, watching the boar. O’Brien used his right hand to slowly reach behind his back, easing the Glock from his belt. He knew the boar could run fast in short bursts, and its tusks could easily gut a man. And he knew, if the boar charged him, he’d have time for one or two shots. Both would have to be in the kill zone or the animal would keep coming.

  O’Brien looked at the boar. “Take it easy. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.” He took a side step toward the Jeep. The boar lowered its head, like a bull facing a matador. It snorted, turned and trotted off in the forest. O’Brien opened the door to his Jeep, got inside and called Wynona Osceola. He told her about finding the trail camera with the images on it. “I’m not sure who’s in the Range Rover with Barton. There’s no doubt that he had a gun trained on Barton. Maybe it was Carlos Bertoni or any other of Dino Scarpa’s goons. It was definitely Lawrence Barton’s last ride.”

  Wynona was quiet a second. “Does the video correlate with
the day of his death?”

  “Yes. Its date and time stamped. The camera captured it the same day Barton was murdered.”

  “So was Barton kidnapped?”

  “I’d bet the house on it. I transferred the video from the trail camera to my phone and I sent it to the lead detective in Citrus County working Joe’s case.”

  “That would be Detective Robert Edwards, one of the two guys that picked up Joe at the station on the rez.”

  “That would be him.”

  “Let’s hope he seizes the lead you just handed him and refocuses his investigation on someone else.”

  “He suggested the Joe could have had an accomplice, and the guy in the car with Barton was delivering him to Joe. Wynona, maybe you can run down Barton’s name on a vehicle registration. See if you can find a home phone number, too.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Maybe we can find something for Joe’s attorney, Lana Halley, to use in tomorrow’s bond hearing. Did you speak with senior Detective Henry James?”

  “Yes. More than once. When the two of us questioned Kimi Tiger, Henry James wouldn’t even look at her. It was as if he was ashamed. Before we got there, Henry said he did place a call to Kimi’s mother, Nita Tiger, a couple of weeks ago, but she never returned his call. I approached Henry earlier today in the department’s parking lot. I brought up Dino Scarpa’s name … suggested that he’s involved with Scarpa. Henry gave me one of the most evil looks I’ve seen in years. And then he issued a veiled threat before driving away.”

  “Dino Scarpa called me.”

  “The poked bear is pissed.”

  “He’s angry and running scared because he sees the door leading into the tribe’s casino action slowly closing. Too much heat leads to publicity the mob family doesn’t want. His attempted, messy hit on me and the fact that one of his two thugs is probably dead while the other limped home, doesn’t play well with Scarpa’s boss—the head of the family, the Don. Somehow Dino Scarpa knows about us.”