Collateral Damage

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “Sure. I’m in an expansive mood.”

  We sat and ate and talked into the night. Friends stopped by, had a drink, joined the conversation for a bit and moved on to the next bar, the next set of friends. It was getting late and J.D. said she had to work the next day. I pointed out that retired guys didn’t even have to get out of bed unless they wanted to. She punched me with her elbow, got up, and pecked me on the cheek. “I’ll call you tomorrow as soon as I hear from the crime-scene people about those pictures. If we get anything, I’ll bring them by.”

  The old peck on the cheek. She didn’t usually do that. Was it a sign? Was J.D. Duncan having erotic thoughts about me? Sure, Matt. Sure. Delusion is good for the soul. Keep thinking that way. Of course, I’d had more than a few erotic thoughts about her. But we were friends. Nothing more. Never even a hint from her that there was anything more. Well, maybe a hint, or maybe it was just my overactive imagination. I watched her walk down the ramp to the parking lot. She got into her Camry and drove away, waving as she left.

  “Billy,” I aked, “did you happen to work the Desmond wedding in June?”

  “Sure did. Who’d have thought the groom would be dead within twenty-four hours?”

  “What was the setup?”

  “The wedding was held on the beach just at sunset. We had a big tent covering the deck and the reception was held there. It wasn’t a big wedding, but everything was done first class. It wasn’t inexpensive.”

  “Did you see any problems, fights, arguments, anything of that nature?”

  “No. Everything was smooth. Why?”

  “The groom’s dad is an old friend of mine from Vietnam. I’m looking into the murder for him. With J.D.’s help.”

  “Wait a minute. There was one strange thing that night.”

  “What?”

  “A guy came up to the bar and wanted a drink. He wasn’t part of the wedding party, and I told him we were closed. He seemed pissed off about it and mumbled something about rich people taking over everything.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You mentioning Vietnam made me remember him.”

  “Why?”

  “He was Asian. But I’m pretty sure he was American. He didn’t have any accent at all. He spoke American idiomatic English. I don’t think you get that comfortable with a language unless you grow up speaking it.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “He was pretty big. Not huge, but bigger than the average Asian. I’d say five ten to six feet tall, maybe one-eighty, one-ninety.”

  “Did he leave right away?”

  “No. He sat for a little while kind of staring at the party. I didn’t want to be rude to him, but finally I told him he’d have to move along.”

  “Did he leave?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t say another word. Just got off the stool and walked out.”

  “Have you ever seen him again?”

  “No. I’d never seen him before either.”

  “That means he’s probably not an islander. Did you get the idea he was staying here at the hotel?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean anything. He may have been a guest here. I didn’t ask and he didn’t volunteer.”

  I sipped my beer, talking with Billy about fishing. He was planning to go with Logan and me next time we went out. I finished the beer, paid my tab, shook hands with Billy, and went home.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Only I didn’t go home. I stopped at Tiny’s, the small bar on the edge of the Village that served as sort of a clubhouse for the northenders. It was quiet with only a few people huddled at the bar. I knew them all, the late night denizens of the Village and one mid-key condo dweller, my buddy Logan Hamilton. I hadn’t seen much of him lately. He was in love and spent much of his time with his lady, Marie Phillips, who lived in one of the high-rises on the south end of the key.

  “You get dumped?” I asked as I slid onto an empty stool between him and Les Fulcher.

  “Right. How would she ever replace me? She had one of those girlie things tonight. Dinner at Michaels and drinks at Marina Jack.”

  “Girlie thing?” “Yeah, you know. The girls get together and gossip. Marie probably likes to tell them how great I am in the sack.”

  “Just another group of nice people lying to each other, huh?”

  “Well, exaggerating, maybe. Just a little.”

  I turned to Les. “How’s retirement?”

  “Lots of fishing.”

  “Catching anything?”

  “Not much.”

  “I haven’t seen you lately. I heard you’ve been off island for a while.”

  “Yeah. For two months. Went to Guam.”

  “Guam? What’s a broken-down firefighter doing in Guam?”

  “Broken-down my ass. I retired in the peak of health. Still got my youthful glow. I am the epitome of boyish exuberance.”

  “How’s the knee?”

  “Gotta get it replaced. I go in the hospital the first of the month.”

  “So why Guam?”

  “I’ve got a buddy out there and I spent some time fishing and diving.”

  “When did you get back?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “I guess you heard about the murders we had last month.”

  “Yeah. I knew Jake Prather, Dulcimer’s captain. He used to live next door to me in the Village.”

  “Sorry about your loss.”

  “I hadn’t heard anything about it until I got in yesterday. I went to see Janice, his widow, this morning.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s doing okay, I guess. Jake had some life insurance. Not much, but it’ll see Janice through. Did you know them?”

  “No. I knew the name and I knew he ran Dulcimer, but I don’t think I ever met him.”

  The conversation turned back to inconsequential things. Tiny’s owner, Susie Vaught, kept the beer coming and joined in the conversation. It was a pleasant evening on the downside of July, old friends gossiping, trading fishing spots, laughing at the crazy politics of our island. We decided that July was the safest month on the key since the Town Commission didn’t meet. All its members were up north somewhere trying to escape the heat.

  I was up early the next morning, jogging the beach as the sun rose over the mainland. I ran two miles south and turned for the trek back to my starting place. I left the beach and walked down Broadway and into the Village and home. The peacocks were roaming the streets hunting their breakfast. People were walking their dogs, waiting patiently while the animals sniffed the ground and found the best place to do their business. Full daylight was on us and the air was getting wetter with the humidity that always comes with the sun in summer.

  I showered, shaved, put on clean shorts and a T-shirt with the logo of a local restaurant and took my newspaper, coffee, and a muffin to the patio. It was still cool enough in the shade of the overhang to enjoy the outdoors. It was not yet eight o’clock.

  My phone rang. J.D. calling.

  “The techies came up with some pictures from the elevator cameras at Tropical,” she said. “You want to see them?”

  “I’ve got coffee on.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I’d moved back inside and the new pictures were spread over the coffee table. The first thing I noticed was that the person in these pictures was wearing the same clothes as the person in the pictures from the Grand Beach elevators. The second thing was the size of the new guy. There was no clear shot of his face. He was wearing the same ball cap as the one from Grand Beach and he kept his head down.

  “Did you notice the clothes on this one?” I asked.

  “Yeah. They look identical. Like a uniform or something.”

  “Same briefcase.”

  “Identical.”

  “And this is a pretty big guy,” I said.

  “Yes. You can tell by comparing his size to the elevator door. I’d say he’s around five feet ten. Not huge, but bigger than the Grand Beach g
uy.”

  “The time stamps match. The one at Grand Beach and this guy were going up and coming down at about the same time.”

  She took a sip of her coffee. “We’ve got at least two people involved in this. A hit team?”

  “Looks like it. Maybe more than two.”

  “More than two?” she asked.

  “What if Jim hadn’t gone jogging that morning. This was their last chance to get him before he left for Europe. There had to be someone else as a backup.”

  She thought about it, her teeth massaging her lower lip. “Or maybe there was a backup plan. If he hadn’t jogged that morning, they may have planned to get him somewhere else.”

  “You could be right. But why? Who’d want to hit a young guy just out of college?”

  “If we answer that question,” she said, “we’ll probably have an idea of who the shooters were.”

  “Even if we don’t get the shooters, if we can figure out the why and the who behind this, I’ll have somebody to sue. We can take it from there.”

  “Where do we start?”

  “The statements from Chaz Desmond and Jim’s wife, Meredith, weren’t much help. I wonder if I might have a little more luck. Not being a cop, and all.”

  J.D. bristled a little at this. “You think you can take a better statement than I can?”

  “No. Not at all. But Chaz is my old friend and the guy who wants me to proceed with this suit. He can get me to Meredith as part of the family. There just might be secrets there that they would share with me that they’d want to keep out of the public record. And by talking to you they would be afraid that everything would become public sooner or later.”

  She relaxed, smiled, sat back in her chair. “Good recovery, chum. But I think you’re probably right. And there’s nothing to lose by trying.”

  “So it’s okay with you for me to talk to them?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about the other witnesses?”

  “No problem. Just keep me informed.”

  “Suppose we set up a new file, one that’s not part of the official file. That way I can assure the witnesses that while I’ll share the information with you, it’ll be completely off the record and that you won’t use it without their explicit permission.”

  She was quiet for a beat, thinking this over. I knew it went against all her training. The rules are specific. Everything goes into the master file. All evidence and statements are to be kept for use in a trial. She would be breaking all kinds of regulations by going off the reservation, as it were.

  “I don’t know, Matt,” she said after a minute or so. “I work for the town. I don’t know if I can hide anything from the prosecutors and other cops.”

  “Think of it this way, J.D. I don’t have to share any of this with you. I can claim attorney-client privilege or work product and keep it out of the hands of any of the authorities. But I’d like your help. Besides, you’re at a dead end on this case. You’ve got no suspects, no motive, no nothing. You can’t possibly hurt the case by working with me off the books.”

  “It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Suppose I talk to the chief. If he agrees, will you go along with it?”

  “If the chief gives me the okay, I’m in.”

  “There’s a good girl.”

  “Girl?”

  “There’s a good detective.”

  “That’s better,” she said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  After J.D. left, I went to my computer and Googled Charles (Chaz) Desmond. Doc had been a busy man in the years since I’d seen him. There was quite a lot on him, all of it good. He was what he seemed to be. A successful businessman who dealt fairly with his customers and honorably with his competitors. There was nothing apparent that would lead me to believe that he had any enemies.

  I spent some time looking up James Ronald Desmond, the dead son. There was very little on him. Most of what I found had to do with his years at the University of Georgia. He’d been involved in the fraternity life on campus and had written a couple of letters to the editor of the university newspaper. He was not happy with the football coach and vented his frustration in the letters in the paper, but that was not something that usually got someone killed by a professional hit team. Especially at the University of Georgia where half the student body was always unhappy about the coach.

  I found an engagement announcement in the Atlanta Constitution dated two weeks before the wedding. A very short engagement. It did give me one bit of information I didn’t have. The maiden name of the bride.

  I Googled Meredith McNabb and found pretty much the same stuff from the University of Georgia and a lot of debutante crap from the Savannah newspaper. She came from a very wealthy family whose fortune was several generations old. The only oddity I found was that she had spent a year between high school and college working with volunteers building a school in Laos.

  I dug some more and there it was, in the Savannah Morning News about five years before. A picture of Meredith McNabb in Laos, standing with a small group of other young people, including Jim Desmond. Their names were all listed in the caption below the picture. The story was about the local debutante who’d left a life of luxury to spend six months in rural Laos, living among people so poor they had never seen indoor plumbing or electricity. God, they looked so young and dedicated and happy. And five years later, one of them was dead and the star of the story was in mourning. Life can be a bitch.

  I called Desmond on his cell phone. He answered immediately. “Good morning, L.T.”

  “Morning, Doc. How’re you?”

  “About the same. I’m thinking of putting Julie in the hospital.”

  “Hospital?”

  “That’s a nice name for the booby hatch. She can’t seem to snap out of her grief.”

  “I’m sorry, Doc. I wish there were something I could do.”

  “Find the killers, Matt. Just find the assholes who took our boy.”

  “Tell me about Jim’s work in Laos.”

  “Not much to tell. He wanted a bridge year, I think they call it. A year out of school before starting college. He was aware of the fact that he’d lived an above-average life and felt that he should give something back. Help the less fortunate. He came across this group run by a charity based in Macon that put the so called bridge year kids into projects in the Third World.”

  “Was the group legit?”

  “Far as I can tell. I checked them out. They seem to do very good work and the money they take in is accounted for. Most of it goes into the projects and very little to administration. The volunteer kids who can pay their travel expenses are asked to do so. The ones who can’t are funded by the charity.”

  “Did he like it? Laos, I mean.”

  “He came home all hopped up about what they’d been doing. He felt like he had helped some people who had no hope.”

  “Love life?”

  Doc chuckled. “Oh, yeah. Meredith was with the same group. They met during the orientation on the Mercer University campus in Macon. That blossomed into quite a romance. Took everything her parents and Julie and I could do to keep them single until they finished college.”

  “Did Jim ever indicate that there’d been any trouble in Laos?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Any tension with any of the other students. Anything that could have carried over to the present.”

  “I doubt it. If there was, I’m not aware of it.”

  “What about at the university? Any big issues with other students?”

  “I don’t know of any.”

  “I’d like to talk to Meredith. Is she in Atlanta?”

  “No. She’s in Savannah with her parents. I can call her for you. I’m sure she’d be glad to talk.”

  “I think I’ll go up there. Can you set up an appointment in the next couple of days and let me know?”

  “Sure thing, Matt. I’ll get back to you this afternoon.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN


  Savannah is an old city by American standards, founded in 1733 by English settlers led by General James Oglethorpe. This lovely town sits on the banks of the Savannah River and is famous for its twenty-one historic squares, small oases of peace in a bustling city. Meredith met me at a Star-bucks at the corner of Bull and East Broughton Streets about halfway between Johnson and Wright Squares.

  Meredith had called me the afternoon before, about thirty minutes after I hung up from talking with Doc. She said she was leaving on a trip with her family in a couple of days, but if I could come to Savannah, she’d meet me the next afternoon. We agreed on Starbucks at three o’clock in the afternoon. I called J.D. to let her know where I was going.

  I’d driven up from Longboat Key, up Interstates 75, 4, and 95. It’s about a seven-hour drive, a little more if you count the stop for a Big Mac. I checked into a hotel out on the interstate and drove into the city for our meeting. Savannah was more humid than Longboat Key, and I had the air-conditioning on the Explorer cranked as high as it would go.

  I wasn’t too sure about drinking hot coffee on a day like this one, but iced coffee made me irritable. I think it was the combination of caffeine and my distaste for cold coffee. Some things just need to be drunk hot. I ordered a small coffee and sat at a table that gave me a sight line to the door.

  I recognized Meredith as soon as she walked in. I’d seen her picture in the newspapers I’d found on the Internet, but they didn’t do her justice. She was a tall blonde, with shoulder-length hair, a trim figure, and a face that was still showing grief. She was wearing a pink blouse, white mid-thigh shorts, and white sandals. Her only jewelry was her wedding ring, a simple gold band.

  I stood and introduced myself, asked if I could get her a coffee. She declined in a soft voice carrying the accents of the South. I started to explain what I was trying to do and she interrupted me. “Chaz explained it to me. You’re an old friend trying to help us. I appreciate that.”

  “I know you talked to the police. I’ve seen the statement you gave. I’m hoping there is something that you inadvertently left out, something that will give us a lead.”