Cooler Than Blood

by Robert Lane

  “What’d it look like?”

  “I’ll get there. But, like two, three minutes tops, my guy says he pulls out. He didn’t think much of it. He had breakfast, hit the head, and brushed his teeth—his words; personally, I brush my teeth before I hit the head—and went to close the patio door. When he did, he saw another car crawl into the same space. It’s there maybe five minutes, and then it leaves.”

  “This guy’s in the act of closing the patio door yet hangs around for five minutes?” Garrett asked.

  “Roger that. Because Sugar Boy, when the second car’s in there, hears glass break and then clanking, like metal on metal. Couldn’t figure out what it was, but it kept him on his patio until he was late for work. He planned to check it out, but by noon the whole beach knew. Body found, police tape around the beach scene and car.”

  “Police ever question him?”

  “Negatory, Chess Man. He grows the holy crop in his apartment, so he didn’t come forward. Been afraid of a knock on the door ever since, so he moved his horticultural activity to a friend’s.”

  “Plates? Anything to identify either car?”

  “Florida on the second vehicle. Bland model. Guy says he doesn’t really know wheels. Didn’t need to on the first one, though.”

  “Why? Did the car stand out in some manner? Give me a description.”

  “You’re going to love it.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Sheriff’s car, Jake-o.”

  “Sheriff’s car?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You sure?”

  “No mistakin’ bacon. Lee County white with one ugly-ass green stripe down its side.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The wake crashed onto the shore and crushed me against the concrete seawall.

  Fucking idiot. Fucking idiot. Fucking idiot. All that clutter in my head, and I can’t think. Can’t see. Rutledge drumming his fingers, blowing off Zach’s phone call, and me not checking Zach’s phone. Deflecting my question about prints on Billy Ray’s car. I gave up the Winking Lizard. Rutledge—I’m willing to bet—has big IOUs in Vegas. I gave her up. I’ve got to be the biggest—

  “JT, you there?” PC asked, interrupting my annual binge of constructive self-criticism. “I said I got the guy’s cell. Said you could call him anytime.”

  I told him to text it to me and thanked him. He asked if I wanted him to do anything else, and I told him about Jenny’s picture in the Laundromat and asked him to take it down. We disconnected. I found myself standing next to my grill. How’d the cover get so dirty? Cat paws prints all over the place.

  “Billy Ray told Jenny about the money,” I said to Garrett, although I would’ve preferred talking to the grill, as it was incapable of judging me. “She tells Rutledge, and he takes off looking for the car. He finds Billy Ray’s car and has enough prescience to keep moving. No doubt his cruiser has a GPS in it that tracks his movements, not to mention a camera. Rutledge told Susan he lived not far from her. He goes home, gets his car, and returns.”

  “He wiped down the trunk,” Garrett said as he eyed me from across the porch. “What time did McGlashan tell us they found Coleman’s car?”

  “Ten.”

  “Any doubts on that?”

  ‘“Around ten the following morning’ was what he told me. The scene is less than half a mile south of Billy Ray’s car. If Jenny had told Rutledge there was money in the car, he easily could have broken into it, taken the stash, then sat back and let it play out.”

  I broke away from Garrett and out toward the water. It all seemed the same. On the flats, a fisherman tossed a cast net over the side of his boat, and the sun reflected off the splash. At the marina across the bay, a boat was being brought out from the racks to where it would be lowered into the water.

  “He cut it out of the interview,” Morgan explained, “but in the second interview, Jenny would mention the cash. Rutledge didn’t snatch her; the Colemans did. Do you think they’re working together, and Rutledge had the Colemans kidnap her?”

  “No,” I turned to Morgan. “I’m confident the Colemans have nothing to do with Rutledge. They would’ve rolled when we talked with them. Plus they’re the ones who initially told us that Jenny did mention that Billy Ray had told her about the money. We just didn’t connect the dots.”

  “Zach’s call to her.” Garrett added.

  “You know it’s on her phone. Rutledge saw it. He offered to have me look at it, knowing I wouldn’t take him up.” I shook my head in disgust. “Nice bluff. He outplayed me.” I realized what else had bothered me during that conversation with Rutledge in the truck as we’d left the Colemans—what had flashed in my mind but I couldn’t hold on to. I verbalized it as the thought hit my brain. “When I informed him that Jenny had told the Colemans that Billy Ray had spilled to her about the money, Rutledge’s first reaction was to claim she never told him.”

  “A reflexive, defensive remark.”

  “He moved on quickly from there,” I added as I recalled the conversation. “Tried to sound nonchalant about the whole thing.”

  “But in the second interview,” Morgan cut in, returning to his earlier comment, “wouldn’t this have come out?”

  “Rutledge wasn’t worried about the second interview,” Garrett said and took a drink from a bottle of water. “He would have blown right through her. He’d simply deny she had mentioned it the first time around. Who’d believe a runaway eighteen-year-old girl over a detective with a tape recording to back him up? Besides, we don’t know exactly what he did say to Jenny. When she disappeared, it was a gift in his lap. Who are you calling?”

  “Binelli,” I said as I punched my phone. “She said something earlier that I didn’t pay much attention to. Something about recognizing one of the names when I’d told her McGlashan and Rutledge were the detectives in charge. I’d assumed she’d meant McGlashan, with his Super Bowl ring and all, but maybe she meant Rutledge.” I left a voice mail and told her to run a check on Eric Rutledge. I didn’t know why the FBI would have anything on him, but it was another line in the water.

  I looked at Garrett. “Toss me that.” He threw his bottle of water at me, and I finished it off. “When it was just Rutledge,” I said, picking up where Garrett had left off, “he could steamroll Jenny’s assertions about the money. But once we discovered there was money in Billy Ray’s car, meaning there were other people who could corroborate her claim, her story gained credence. Her kidnapping impedes his case. He can’t say she was confused and neglected to mention it during the first interview. And we led him to that conclusion.”

  “You’re jumping,” Garrett said. “Making unsubstantiated conclusions. Maybe it was McGlashan who left the crime scene and found the car. Maybe it was a third person we don’t even know.”

  “Rutledge is a Vegas junkie. Want to bet he doesn’t owe money to nasty people?”

  “He might, or he could just be an opportunist.”

  “Rutledge didn’t interview the renters at the apartment,” I added, as my mind replayed all the missed signs. “Even McGlashan questioned that and said he’d ask him to reconsider. Everybody viewed Jenny as a runaway who had run again. That gave the police a free pass. No one gave a damn, and that’s not the worst of it.”

  I paused, but neither Garrett nor Morgan was going in. They both knew and were too considerate to incriminate me. I hanged myself. “I gave Rutledge the Winking Lizard,” I said to no one, and then everything was astonishingly quiet. No boats, no birds, no waves crashing off my seawall. Even the wind died in symphony.

  Hadley III whined, and Garrett said, “We use that. We focus on Rutledge, and we find Jenny.”

  “McGlashan indicated that Rutledge had only been with the department a short time,” I said, “and based on McGlashan’s comment on Vegas, and his own preference for fishing, I don’t make the two out to be after-hours buddies. McGlashan said Rutledge had relocated from Tampa. Maybe he still keeps a place up—”

  “I’l
l see what I can find,” Morgan said, darting into my house. He was gone longer than I would have thought. I was about to yell at him and tell him where my iPad was when he came back to the porch with it and plopped back down on the chair. I knew what he would say before he spoke.

  He said, “I fed Hadley the Third.”

  Okay, so I didn’t know. He continued with what I’d expected. “Over four million people. Too many hits to chase them down one-on-one. Middle initial?”

  “No clue,” I said.

  Morgan punched the pad and said, “According to the Lee County site, it’s Eric W. Rutledge.” He struck the tablet a few more times and said, “That cuts it down, but there’s no way of knowing who uses their middle initial and who doesn’t.”

  “I’m giving McGlashan a call. I’ll bring him up to speed and see if Rutledge’s missing.” I picked up my phone.

  “Ease off,” Garrett said. He kept his eye on me as a fishing boat, Reel Girls, with three outboards cruised off the end of my dock. I’d not seen it before.

  “Why?”

  “What if McGlashan’s interests aren’t aligned with ours?” He paced the far end of the porch like a caged cat. “You don’t know him that well. He might be a political animal, and his prime concern is to protect the department. He could end up working against us.”

  “I’ll go with my gut. He’s on our side. He won’t hide behind department bureaucracy. I don’t think there’s any love lost between him and Rutledge.” I hit McGlashan’s number but got voice mail. I asked him to give me a call and said it was urgent.

  Binelli called back and said she was still checking on Eric Rutledge. The name wasn’t the strong hit for her that I’d hoped it would be. She professed a belief that she had at least seen it somewhere because, “They generally don’t pass out a list of good people.” I told her he might have Vegas debt and to cast a wide net in her search for information on him. We disconnected.

  “We’ve got another problem,” I said.

  “Dangelo,” Garrett responded. He ceased his motion and faced the water. “He’ll think we took Jenny, maybe even finger us for the money. We need to let him know it wasn’t us. Before we focus on Rutledge and Jenny”—he turned to me—“we have to talk with him.”

  CHAPTER 36

  It was a little before one when Garrett and I spotted Joseph Dangelo as he strolled out of Long Sally’s. My buddy, Baby Carrot, who knew “Lewis Carroll” was a pseudonym for Charles Dodgson, got in the driver’s seat of a black SUV. I thought of pen names and heard McGlashan’s voice in my head: Goes by the name of Eric Rutledge. At the time, I had thought it was an unusual, but not uncommon, way to give someone’s name. A style of speech. But McGlashan, who hadn’t called me back, was a straight shooter. He had shifted his weight after he had given Rutledge’s name. Did Rutledge go by a different name?

  Garrett and I had dispatched Morgan on his Harley to Dangelo’s place at Ybor City, as we didn’t know which location he would pop in at. I texted him and let him know we had him. As I followed a block behind Dangelo’s car, I hit Binelli’s number again. She picked up, which I wasn’t expecting. I told her to stick with Rutledge but to open it up to different first names.

  “There aren’t many variations,” she said. “Erik with a ‘k,’ but that’s about it.”

  “Erich,” I said, spelling it out for her. “But it’s German, and Rutledge is English, specifically northern England.”

  “Right. And you think he’d be true to his genealogical roots?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Middle initial is ‘W.’ Maybe you can run with that.” I switched gears. “Have you given more thought to my proposal?” I was eager to solidify her as a permanent asset. I didn’t like her uncertainty, which accompanied every conversation. Her hesitancy was a weak link. This is a business where everyone has to be on board, and you need to be 100 percent right, even when you’re wrong. I didn’t know why Binelli was afraid to commit. Fear of job repercussions? Moral ambiguities? Maybe she was considering bidding adios to the bureau and teaching inner-city junior high. If so, she was qualified—she carried two guns every day.

  She asked, “Have you answered my question yet?”

  “Which question?” I asked, although I knew what she was referring to.

  “You know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was a lie and a double answer; it could serve as a claim that I didn’t know what question she referred to, or a direct response to the question we both knew I perfectly understood. She hung up. I felt cheap, like I’d been discovered to be a fraud and let down those who mattered most. I wouldn’t dodge her again; I wouldn’t dodge myself again.

  Dangelo’s car rolled up to a valet stand for a restaurant on Beach Drive. I swung the truck into the next side street. Garrett and I decided it would be best if I flew solo. It would be less threatening.

  Dangelo sat at a back table along with a goateed man. I wondered where Tweedledum’s twin was, but thought two bodyguards was overkill in the first place. They watched as I approached.

  “This place used to have standards,” I said as I stood over them. A waitress with a shirt that wanted to pop its buttons dropped by and inquired if I would be joining them.

  “Yes,” Dangelo answered, “he will be.” He turned to Tweedledum. “Let us have some time, Chuck.”

  Chuck stood, brought his face into mine—his eyebrows needed to be trimmed—held that pose for a beat, and said, “‘This place used to have standards?’ That old horn’s the best you can blow? I had higher expectations for you.” He sauntered over to the bar, and I claimed his seat. It was warm. I wanted to pick it up and break it over his head.

  I turned my attention to Dangelo. “His last name wouldn’t be Dodgson by chance, would it?”

  “No. It’s Duke. Chuck Duke.” Dangelo gave me a quizzical look. “Why do you ask?”

  “He go to college?”

  Dangelo chuckled. It was a pleasant sound. He was a hard man not to like. “I see you’ve had the opportunity to talk with him. Mr. Duke carries unusual mental capacity.”

  “Yet he’s a goon for you,” I said. I thought of PC and decided to redouble my efforts to steer him away from the street life.

  “He has a myriad of responsibilities within our organization,” Dangelo said, “and the only person who has shown tendencies of being a goon, Jacob”—he rubbed his neck—“is, I’m afraid, you.”

  “How’s the bar business these days?”

  Dangelo landed a hard stare that would register a point in a boxing match. He brought his hand down from his neck and placed both hands evenly in front of him on the table. He said, “You took the girl. I want my money.”

  “I have neither.”

  “You took her.”

  “I did not.”

  “You know where she is.”

  “I do not.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I am not.”

  He tossed his hands up in disgust and glanced away from me and out toward the restaurant. He came back to me. I doubted it had been an inside job. I’d made Rutledge out for swiping Jenny, but I still needed to eliminate the possibility of a coup within his organization. I went in strong, as if I already knew. “It’s one of your men. Someone’s trying to work you and—”

  “Give it up,” he punched out. “Why do I have to keep telling you that? You took her.”

  “No. Why do I have to keep telling you that?”

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. My phone vibrated in my pocket. Next to us, a young man in a blue suit opened a leather briefcase and spread loose documents on the table. His companion, an older man in a short-sleeve shirt, gave the pile a bored glance. He reserved his real interest for the waitress—specifically her stressed buttons.

  Dangelo asked, “Who is the third party who has the girl who leads to my money?” The words tumbled out like a poetry reading.

  The waitress placed a glass of water in front of me. They needed a new dishwasher. The glass had the
faint outline of a woman’s lips on it. I picked it up—lip marks away from mine—and took a sip. An ice cube slipped into my mouth. I placed the glass back on the white tablecloth and leaned back in the chair. I like sipping on ice. It gives my mouth something to do when I’m not talking.

  “You know, don’t you?” Dangelo asked.

  “You’re not privy to that at this time. I just dropped by to inform you that it wasn’t me who waltzed out of the Winking Lizard last night with Jenny.” I planned on playing all my cards, but not yet.

  “You knew she was there—you were there—yet you deny taking her. What more do you require of me? Join the Flat Earth Society?”

  “I don’t care if you sit on a roof and wait for Jesus. I batted cleanup. Someone beat me to her. Someone, as you know, who had a front-door key or was already inside the bar.”

  “The back door?”

  “Send me a bill.” My phone buzzed my thigh again.

  “It looks like you took a battering ram to it. It’s not even salvageable.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “But the front door was unlocked.”

  “Baffles me too,” I said.

  He leaned in. “It wasn’t locked when you were there?”

  “You’re a fast one.” I crunched the ice and put my elbows on the table. “I think someone stayed in after closing hours. Maybe in the head. Wandered in late in the evening and hung out until the place was empty.”

  Dangelo’s eyes glazed past me as if he, too, were deciding which cards to play and when to show them. He said, “We concur. Can you give me a description? I can see if anyone remembers such a man.”

  “You’ve got a security camera.”