“What do party promoters pay girls for something like that?”
“Didn’t say, but it must be enough to make a living.”
“Even if that’s all she does?”
Nazario shrugged. “They party down every night in South Beach. Says she gets a bonus to be a human table.”
“The hell is that?”
“A girl who lets rich guys eat sushi off her naked stomach.”
“Sounds like ptomaine city to me. Jeez, you see a big, beautiful house, the fancy cars, the big bucks, and think the people who live there and their kids don’t have a care in the world. Uh-oh.”
The door to the interview room slammed shut.
“Over to you.” Riley went into her office and closed the door.
“Let’s go pick up the pieces,” Burch said.
Stokoe’s body language and cocky demeanor had changed. Slumped in his chair, he rocked back and forth.
“I don’t want to talk to her anymore!” He jabbed a finger at them. “Jesus God, what kind of woman is that? I don’t wanna see her again!”
“That can be arranged,” Burch said. “If you cooperate…”
“Sure, whatever you want to know. I’ll tell you the whole thing. Just keep her the hell away from me.”
After being advised of his rights, Stokoe said, “I went up there that night to see Summer Nolan. You should a seen ’er. She was so beautiful that cars would wreck when she walked down the street. But meaner than a snake.”
“Mean?” Nazario asked.
“Had an attitude. Pretended not to see you. Wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“She was only sixteen,” Burch said.
“So? I was seventeen, perfect for her. I’d say hello, she’d look the other way. Followed her home once. Then I started going up there almost every night. I’d ride my bike or take the bus.
“I’d watch her, though a bedroom window. She used to dance. All alone, in her room. I’d stand on a rock and watch her. Used to get off. She hadda know I was watching. She’d undress. Sometimes she’d touch herself.”
Stokoe licked his lips, eyes dreamy. “She wanted me. She knew I was there, hadda know. But I was scared shitless of her father. He was a big guy, a big shot. I’d been caught red-handed, so to speak, once before, down in the Roads section. The judge gave me one more chance. It was my third or fourth one. I couldn’t afford to get caught again. I didn’t wanna go to Youth Hall.”
“So that’s why you shot Pierce Nolan when he caught you that night.”
“Hell, no!” Stokoe jerked back in his chair. “I never shot nobody. I have scruples. I was a victim. Think I’d be sitting here talking to you guys if I killed anybody? I’d be lawyered up and outta here. Hope you catch the guy who did it—you can charge him with assaulting me, too.”
“Sorry,” Burch said. “There’s that pesky statute of limitations again. So what happened?”
“That was one hot, steamy night. Summer was alone in her room. She was waiting for me. I knew it. She had music on the radio. She took off her dress first, real slow, in front of the mirror. She was swaying back and forth. Started doing ballet exercises, bending and stretching. Really sensuous shit. Hadda know I was there. She starts dancing, barefoot, in a little slip. I’m jerking off, fantasizing about what I’d be doing to her if I was in there. I was really excited, but it was taking me longer. She had Patsy Cline on the radio, singing ‘Crazy.’ I’m whaling away and, Shit! I hear his car coming up the driveway. Almost there, I had to quit. Hated leaving her but I didn’t want him catching me. Son of a bitch was a big guy, an athlete. So I ran down behind the hedge, figuring I’ll circle around behind his car and split once he goes in the house. But something’s moving on the far side of the driveway. I don’t know what it is. I’m thinking maybe they got a dog. So I freeze, outta breath, take cover, and wait. Nolan gets outta his car, starts to walk inside, then stops and yells something at me. I’m thinking, Oh shit.
“Then I see a burst of red flame and hear the blast. Came from the other side of the house. Nolan staggers around, making noises, trying to call for help, and all of a sudden somebody charges outta the dark right at ’im and blasts him a second time. Point-blank. And I get hit. I’m in the line of fire, behind Nolan. I take a shotgun pellet at the top of my shoulder, by my neck. I’m bleeding like crazy. Hurts like hell. All I want is outta there. I run around behind the house to go back down to Bayshore Drive. Then I hear somebody, something else, running, too. Ahead of me, breathing hard. The guy with the gun. He’s in front of me. All kinds of screaming is going on behind me. I’m too scared to stop, I know they’ll blame me. I just had the damn run-in with the juvy judge. I keep going, falling, getting cut and scratched up by the branches. I get down to the highway and don’t know what to do. I call somebody from a pay phone, ask ’im to pick me up. Needed a doctor to get the goddamn shotgun pellet dug outta me. I still got the scar. If I shot him, how the hell did I get shot?”
He leaned back in his chair and studied their faces.
“I’ll take a polygraph,” he offered, “but only about the shooting. Nothing else. Any time, any place. Tell my parole officer I cooperated. A hundred percent. I don’t want no hassle from him. Got that? I’m telling you the truth here.
“How’d you find me?” His expression grew wiser. “Did my goddamn brother throw me under the bus?”
“You saw the gunman?” Burch asked.
“It was dark as hell out there. I was a kid. I was scared. He’s crashing through the bushes ahead of me. I thought if he turned and saw me, he’d shoot me, too.”
“What did he look like?”
“Taller than me. Had a long gun, a long stride. Heard his breathing. I was praying he wouldn’t turn around and come after me.”
“Was he black, white? What was he wearing? Did he say anything? Did you hear his voice?”
“Nah. Never said a word that I heard. It was dark as hell. If he’da turned around so I could see him, I probably would a had a heart attack. Never saw his face. Didn’t want to.”
“When did you lose sight of him?”
“When we got down onto Bayshore, he ran left. I took off to the right, to the pay phone at the service station on the far side of the highway.”
“You sure it was a guy? Was it possibly a female?”
“No, no way it was a woman. I think he had a car. Heard the door, then heard it start. I was scared he would turn it around and come after me, but he didn’t.
“Until my…ride came, I stayed in the men’s room at the service station. Didn’t want the guy with the gun to come back looking for me. Didn’t want anybody seeing me. My face and arms were all scratched to hell and bleeding. I had splinters, thorns, scrapes, and everything else you could imagine, and was bleeding like hell from that shotgun pellet.”
“Did you go to the hospital?”
“No, my ride took me to a clinic in the Shores. We used to get our shots there cheap when we were kids. Get patched up every time we got hurt. I think the law said they had to report gunshot wounds back then, but since this was only a pellet, I don’t think the doctor reported it.
“I tol’ ’im I got hurt when a bunch of us guys were target-shooting at a fishing camp out in the ’Glades. That it was an accident. I sweated it for a long time, whenever there was a knock at the door, when stories about the Nolan murder ran on TV or in the newspaper. Nothing happened, till now.
“The story in the newspaper, is that what brought you to my door? I don’t know nothing about any babies. Don’t know what the hell that was all about.”
“All the nights you watched Summer, ever see her and her father in her room?” Burch asked.
“Yeah. Once. She was dancing, had music on the radio. He must’ve knocked, because she turned off the radio and ran to put on a robe. It was him. Her father came into the room. He looked so big and tall next to her. They sat on the bed for a while, talking. Then he got up, kissed her on the forehead, and said good night.
“Th
en she sat down at her little desk and started to do her homework.”
“That was it?”
“Yeah. I scouted around looking in some of the other windows. The younger girls were always on the phone or in their books, and the mother…she was something, too. Always wanted to catch the mother and father together, doing it. But she always drew the curtains before she got undressed. I caught her in the shower once, but it was that rippled glass that blurs everything. All you see is an image, but sometimes that’s a turn-on.”
“You ever tell anybody what you were doing up there?” Burch asked. “Anybody else ever peeping at those girls?”
“Hell, no. I wouldn’t have been up there if I didn’t think I was alone.”
“You ever hear about any of the Nolan girls being pregnant?”
“No way. Far as I knew, they were untouchable little virgins. Funny. Never saw Summer again except for her picture in the paper at his funeral, but years later I saw a girl who looked just like her, uncanny resemblance, in a cowboy movie. She got abducted by Indians. That little fantasy kept me going for a while.
“Went to see it two or three times, read the credits, some girl named Kathryn or something. Had me going, reliving all that shit, all those hot nights.”
“We’ll arrange a polygraph,” Burch said, “and call you.”
“Right,” Nazario said. “We want you to go home. Think hard about that night, then write down everything you remember, even the smallest details.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Nazario said sadly, outside the interview room.
“Crap,” Burch said. “I really wanted it to be him.”
CHAPTER 15
Rusty paper clips held some related papers together, others were loose and faded. Tax forms, canceled checks, receipts, and bills from vendors.
A snapshot of his parents, his father’s arm around his mother, both beaming from behind the counter at Stone’s Barbecue.
There were pamphlets on how to operate a small business and directions on how to apply for Small Business Administration loans, along with the application forms.
Optimistic booklets on how to franchise a business. Framed pictures of Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy that had hung behind the counter, along with articles and inspirational quotes on how to succeed in life, love, and business, clipped from magazines and newspapers. Some of the passages were highlighted. One read, “You never know how high you can fly until you spread your wings.” It all made him want to weep. There was nothing here about why anyone would kill them.
He went through business cards from wholesalers and from area organizations that had ordered food for employee luncheons, picnics, and special events. There were receipts for ads his father had placed in a small weekly newspaper for “the best barbecue in town.”
A small leather-covered telephone book full of alphabetically listed numbers, mostly friends, relatives, purveyors, and customers. Stone recognized his mother’s neat, legible handwriting.
Tucked inside the front cover was a snapshot of himself, Sam Stone Jr., smiling at age three from his grandmother’s lap. He was surprised at how young Gran looked in the photo. Next to it, a wallet-sized copy of his third-grade picture taken shortly before the murders.
He felt despair. He saw nothing here that could help, only a painful history of dreams and lives cut short. He knew he would keep every scrap of paper as long as he lived—in remembrance of them. But he would have to look elsewhere for clues to why they died.
He sighed and closed the address book. Taped to the back was a small form, one of the preprinted paper meal checks presented to customers with their orders. This one had not been used. All that was written on it, in his father’s handwriting, was a name, Asa Anderson, and an out-of-state number with a 601 area code. The meal checks came in books, consecutively numbered, so it appeared that the name and number had been written on this one sometime shortly before the murders.
He checked the area code. Mississippi.
They had no relatives there.
He dialed the number. The woman who answered knew no one named Stone and had only had the number for six months. He tucked the snapshots of his parents, and him with Gran, into his wallet and closed the box.
Online, back at his computer terminal, he located a database with old Mississippi city and telephone directories and began to research who that number was listed to in 1987.
He got a hit. Surprisingly, it was not to a man named Anderson.
In 1987 that was the telephone number of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Justice Department in the Southern District of Mississippi.
What did that have to do with his father?
He found the current number, called, and asked for Asa Anderson.
“I don’t show anyone by that name on any of our personnel rosters,” a young woman drawled.
“Okay, can you put me through to the person with the most seniority in your office, somebody who was on staff in 1987?”
“I’ve only been here a year,” the woman said. “But I guess that would be Mildred. She’s been here at least a hundred years, but don’t you dare tell her I said that.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
Mildred proved talkative. “Oh sure, I was here in ’eighty-seven. I started here as a clerk right outta high school. Now I’m the office supervisor.”
“I’m looking for Asa Anderson.”
“Sure, I remember him. One of our investigators, retired ’bout five, six years ago. Top-flight. Nice fella.”
“Is he still around?”
“What did you say your name was again? What department are you with?”
There was a long pause after he told her.
“Do you know where he’s at now?” Stone asked.
“Sure thing. Think he’s at Eagle Lake, up in the Delta. Has a fishing cabin up there.”
Stone sighed in relief. At least the man was still alive. This was probably nothing. For all he knew, Asa Anderson had vacationed in Miami and enjoyed Stone’s Barbecue. But why didn’t he leave a business card? Why was his number simply scrawled on a blank food check? That indicated that the man must have called and that his father, busy behind the counter, jotted his number down on the first handy scrap of paper. Why did somebody from the Justice Department in Mississippi call his father? Or mother?
“You have his home number?”
Mildred was suddenly guarded. “Sorry, don’t think I’m allowed to divulge that information. Gotta take another call now.”
Stone called back, asked for Human Resources, identified himself, and got Anderson’s number.
He called several times throughout the afternoon. The phone rang endlessly, no answering machine. He wondered if he had the right number. Shortly after five P.M. a man answered.
“I’m looking for Asa Anderson, former investigator for the Justice Department field office in the Southern District of Mississippi.”
“You’ve got him,” the robust voice replied cheerfully. “What can I do you for?”
“Glad to finally catch you. My name is Sam Stone. I’m calling from Miami.”
“Sam Stone? From Miami? Is that what you said? You bastard! You sick son of a bitch! Who the hell is this?!”
“Excuse me?” Stone said.
But the line went dead.
CHAPTER 16
“Go, go, go!” K. C. Riley waved them toward the elevator. “Before the chief changes his mind. You know how hard it is to squeeze travel money out of the budget.”
“Stokoe looked so good,” Burch mourned. “I really thought we had our guy for a while. Thanks for softening him up.”
“Anytime,” Riley said. “Now go. Bring back some answers.”
The trip to interview Spring Nolan at the Villages had blossomed into a cross-country itinerary. The Villages, San Antonio, Frisco, and Oxford, Ohio.
“It would be a hell of a lot easier if the members of this family would live in the same state,” Burch said. “But they can’t stand to
be that close to each other.”
As he confirmed their Orlando flight, every other phone line in Homicide was busy. Word had leaked out that a person of interest had been questioned in the Shadows case. Inquiring minds wanted to know.
The detectives suspected Padron, the public information officer, of tipping the press, trading favors with certain reporters.
“Nazario!” Emma waved. “Pick up your phone. Your lady friend.”
“He has a lady friend?” Corso hooted. “Since when?”
“Pete! I’m so glad you’re there!” Kiki sounded excited.
“We’re on our way to the airport,” he said. “To see some of Nolan’s family.”
“Perfect! Perfect! You won’t believe what I found! I think I’ve solved the mystery!”
“Shoot,” he said, expression skeptical. “We need all the help we can get.”
Burch caught his eye, pointed to his watch, and frowned.
Nazario covered the mouthpiece. “Hang on a sec, Sarge, this might be important.”
“You know that a number of Irish fighters fought against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, right?” she said.
“Never mind,” he told Burch, and got to his feet. He grabbed his jacket.
“Look, Kiki, I gotta go.”
“Wait! Pete, this is huge. The family may know the truth.”
“The Spanish Civil War?” He lowered his voice so Burch couldn’t hear. “Wasn’t that back in the thirties? The one where Ernest Hemingway—”
“Right. It all makes sense,” she crowed, heady with excitement.
“All right. Spit out the short version. We have to catch a plane.”
“Okay! I went to the South Florida Historical Museum to do some research and stopped to see an exhibit by David Beale, the famous Spanish Civil War photographer.
“He shot group photos of Irish soldiers in the International Brigade. A face in one of them stood out. The caption included the name Clifford Nolan. It was the same one that caught my eye. Captain Cliff Nolan, the rumrunner, the man who built the Shadows!
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