DEAD GONE a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by T. J. Brearton

  * * *

  Tom and Blythe watched on the monitors. They had grilled Hobson and now he sat alone in the room looking deflated.

  “His story is sticking,” Blythe said.

  It was true. No matter how they phrased the questions, Hobson came back with the same answers. Tom had talked to the neighbor, and she was willing to swear Hobson was home on Wednesday, the eighteenth, too. That was the date of death. So he had an alibi, and his phone and email data — which he’d turned over to computer forensics willingly — was consistent with his story. He hadn’t been in touch with Carrie other than the times he’d already mentioned. Carrie’s phone had not been found in his house, and he didn’t own a Lexus. The only question left was what to do about his pending charges.

  Blythe had an answer. “A guy frequents a prostitute, marries her, divorces her and she’s later killed, probably by someone else. I can’t even think about a solicitation charge for this poor schmuck.”

  “Whatever,” Tom said. “Kick him loose.”

  “You sound tired.”

  He shrugged.

  “This really bothers you? That Carrie was a pro? Are you a moralist or something, Agent Lange?”

  He thought about it. He’d gotten rough with Hobson. “It bothers me that I didn’t see it.”

  Blythe fell silent a moment. “How’s your brother?”

  Her comment surprised him. Before he could respond, she said, “Look, I know I came down on you about it. But, I get it. Family is important. I have a brother, too . . . I look out for him. There’s always one, you know?”

  “Thanks. I like it when you do this human thing.”

  “Does it make you feel warm and fuzzy?”

  “It does. I’m not going to lie, Blythe. I like warm and fuzzy.”

  She laughed. He thought when she laughed, she really meant it.

  “So where does this leave us?”

  They were alone in the viewing room. Blythe pushed back from the desk, rolling in the swivel chair. They faced each other.

  “I like Bosco for it. You know that. It’s just been tricky with Coburn’s operation. I also think Sasha Clay could be involved. We just have to play it cool, wait for Coburn’s word.”

  “We’re not afraid Bosco is going to run?”

  “No. They have eyes on him. He’s not at work, but he’s still in Tampa. They’re waiting to see what he does. But, it’s close. We’ll move as soon as we can.” She paused. “You really don’t like Bosco for this?”

  “It’s not that I don’t like him for it — he fits, but the location doesn’t. Why Naples? And then there’s the video, the Lexus, and the other guy. I told Gomez to get a sketch artist with Jimmy Kendall. Jimmy says he saw the man in the Lexus.”

  Her good humor dissolved. “You did what?”

  “He saw the fucking driver, Blythe.”

  She stood and scrambled for her phone. She dialed a number, Tom watching. “What are you doing?”

  “Calling Coby.”

  “Why?”

  “Jimmy could be in the net. We ran him. He’s had two possessions and a DUI. I think he may be an informant. I need to run it by Coby.”

  Tom stood too, cursing under his breath.

  He watched the monitor a moment. The door to the interview room opened. Harley ran to his father and they embraced. Hobson squeezed the boy tight. It looked like he was crying.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tom drove south through amber streetlights. The long, flat drives between cities were wearing him thin. This convergence of cases was a real problem. Now they were waiting until tomorrow to decide whether to send a sketch artist to Jimmy because of his informant status. No wonder cops grew sick of procedure.

  He opened the glove compartment and took out a bottle of pills. They were over the counter, non-prescription, in the natural remedies section of the drug store. They were supposed to help a person relax, quiet their mind. He doubted they even did anything except on a psychosomatic level. But he shook two out and popped them in his mouth anyway.

  It didn’t help matters that Blythe thought she had the case solved. Bosco was all she could see. But Tom thought there were people they hadn’t looked at yet, possibilities unexplored.

  Waterways, connecting to Rookery Bay.

  The victim as incidental, the killer meaning to satisfy some other craving or need besides sex or murder per se, but to prove a point, make some kind of statement. These thoughts were like an itch that Tom couldn’t scratch.

  His phone rang, interrupting his train of thought, and he pulled off into a gas station.

  It was Veronica Morley from the crime lab.

  “We matched the prints to the baseboard. One set belongs to Raymond T. Bosco. The other we’ve matched to Sasha Clay, thanks to your beer bottle.”

  That clinched it. Bosco and Sasha had been in Carrie’s apartment and had removed whatever had been tucked away in her wall space.

  “Thank you, Veronica.”

  “Yeah. I’m going home. Been here eighteen hours straight today. Gonna go watch some Netflix and pass out.”

  “You do that. Thanks again.”

  He hung up, and tapped his cell phone against his knee.

  Sasha and Bosco in Carrie’s apartment . . . But Carrie wasn’t someone that Coburn’s team was interested in — Coburn didn’t consider her part of the network. If Sasha and Bosco had been using her apartment as a stash house, it made Carrie a facilitator. But what if Carrie hadn’t known? Her prints weren’t on the baseboard. Maybe she had arrived home early one day, and busted one of them. Probably Bosco. And since she’d discovered what he was doing, he’d killed her, then had someone else drive the body to Naples? Such as the man in the Lexus, part of the same damned drug operation Tom wasn’t allowed to touch.

  He understood the legalities of Coburn’s op as well as the emotion — vice narcotics had run on overtime for months, building their case. A murder charge brought against Bosco was a wrecking ball that would scatter the network. Coburn could lose the whole thing unless they all made just the right moves.

  Coburn would try to get Bosco to flip, and take Palumbo down, close his clubs, shut down the drug traffic. Somewhere in there they could get Bosco to confess to the murder of Carrie Hobson, if he had done it.

  Tom wished it felt right, but it just didn’t.

  He pulled out of the gas station and drove the rest of the way into Naples.

  When he got back to the field office, no one else was there. It was dark outside, mercifully cool in the small space. It was late, and he figured he should take Blythe’s advice and pace himself. Go home, sleep in his own bed, start fresh the next day.

  But he couldn’t. Not yet. That itch was there.

  He booted up his computer. With no one else in the office, he decided to sneak a cigarette, ashing in a paper coffee cup while he checked his email. He’d been copied, along with Blythe, on an email about Carrie’s car. IFS had worked the car and analyzed a few clothing fibers, hairs, and stains — possible sweat secretions. What they’d determined was that Carrie had had a couple different people in her car over a period of weeks, but no flags were raised. Still, they suggested that all employees at Hush submit to DNA tests so they could match the trace evidence, wherever possible. Tom ran a hand over his face and groaned. Such a process would be tedious, and cause Coburn more trouble.

  He drummed his fingers on the desk, waiting for the courage to listen to his gut. Thinking about someone with something to prove.

  Someone who’d seemed to revel in the ambiguities of post-mortem evaluation. Someone whose socially awkward assistant had blurted out something about a scandal.

  It had been bugging him since talking to Andrea the previous afternoon.

  Tom pecked at the laptop and opened up the website for the District Medical Examiner’s Office.

  Like Blythe said, Dr. Alan Ward had done extensive schooling to get where he was. He’d gone to school at the University of Florida and William R. Maples Center for
Forensic Medicine and graduated near the top of his class. Then he’d gone on to Miami to complete a residency training program in anatomic and clinical pathology. After residency, he’d trained as a forensic pathologist under noted forensic consultant David Albrecht.

  Educated, indeed.

  Tom stared at Ward’s picture, thinking of the way he’d been on Monday morning, snippy and standoffish. He considered the way Ward had seemed to bully Eileen Gallo into using the mortuary service he probably received referral fees from.

  I’m being silly, Tom thought. Grieving relatives probably needed a firm hand to guide them through such a horrific ordeal. Still, he flipped through his notes and found Young & Sons, the service Ward had prescribed, then found their website online.

  The images of shiny caskets and floral arrangements stirred memories of his parents’ funeral. One funeral, two caskets. His father’s body had been badly burned and the casket was closed. His mother had died more due to smoke inhalation, and hers had been open. He’d reached out to touch her, unthinking, just drawn to her, and Nick had grabbed his hand . . .

  Tom looked at more pictures of Ward.

  The pathologist had bothered him since day one. But just thinking Ward was an asshole wasn’t grounds to be suspicious. It was Andrea’s mention of a scandal that had really done it. What was she referring to?

  There were some shots of Ward with a group of other doctors, posing in their laboratory. Tom analyzed the pathologist’s posture. He was slender, always unsmiling, his hands delicate.

  One lab picture accompanied an article from the Tampa Bay Herald. It described a lawsuit filed by Ward, dated five years ago.

  An official of the Tampa Medical Examiner’s Office sued the city on Wednesday, claiming that he had been forced from his job for raising questions about the office’s use of a novel form of DNA testing whose reliability had come under question.

  The lawsuit is likely to add to a growing debate over the office’s use of new techniques to analyze trace samples of DNA, a practice that other public crime laboratories have shied away from because of concerns over reliability.

  Such critics say that while DNA profiles analyzed from a drop of blood or a semen stain are the gold standard of forensic evidence, the “low copy number” method involves too much subjectivity and even guessing, and could lead to wrongful convictions.

  Tom lingered over the words “low copy number” for a moment before continuing.

  The former employee, Dr. Alan Ward, 46, served for nearly a decade as director of the office’s Forensic Toxicology Laboratory, which conducts post-mortem examinations to determine the absence or presence of drugs, and what role they may have had in causing someone’s death.

  But Dr. Ward claimed in the lawsuit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Tampa, that he fell out of favor with his superiors because he had sought more transparency about the office’s research into the novel technique.

  The Medical Examiner’s Office said on Wednesday that it was “committed to fairness and providing the highest standards of service for the people of Tampa.” It added that court had “recognized that our DNA techniques are reliable and generally accepted by the scientific community.”

  Tom sat back after reading, reminded of multiple interactions with Ward wherein the pathologist warned against making evaluations too soon.

  He searched for an article describing the outcome of the lawsuit, but there weren’t any to be found. The press wasn’t as interested, perhaps, only the sensation of such a filing in the first place made the news. He scanned for more headlines and found articles on Ward being involved with several homicide and death investigations for Everglades County. All pretty standard stuff.

  The lawsuit was very likely what Andrea had been talking about.

  Tom did one last search, on Dr. David Albrecht, Ward’s former mentor during his fellowship program, recently retired. He found a phone number.

  The time was just before 10 p.m. — a bit late for a phone call.

  On impulse, he dialed anyway. The phone number was for a landline. Albrecht didn’t answer, but a machine picked up. Tom left a quick, general message that he was with the FDLE and had a couple questions for Albrecht about a case.

  Tom hid the evidence of his smoking, rinsing the paper cup before trashing it, washed his hands, and left the office.

  * * *

  Ward’s home address was in the Everglades County personnel and contact file. He lived ten minutes from the field office in Central Naples, on Malaga Way. Tom kept watch on the house numbers then pulled over when he found Ward’s one-story home with stucco siding and a red clay roof. There were a few lights on inside and a light-brown Toyota Rav 4 sitting in the driveway.

  Ward was unmarried. At least, Tom had never seen a wedding ring on the man, and there was no mention of a wife or children on any website or police contact information. His house was modest, the vehicle he drove inexpensive. Yet, as chief medical examiner for the county, with all his credentials and experience, Ward had to be making a very comfortable living. By all accounts he ought to have had a home closer to the ocean, and he could’ve driven a much nicer vehicle.

  Tom saw a shape move past the window. Someone was home.

  Suddenly Tom’s suspicion collapsed, and reality poured in. He had nothing solid on Ward at all. He’d gone digging around in the past of a respected pathologist, and now he was sitting outside the man’s home, evaluating his lifestyle.

  It was ridiculous.

  Tom pulled away from the curb and headed home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  SATURDAY

  Tom swam his morning laps in the pool. It was still early enough that a mist skimmed the surface and the water felt like warm silk. He tried to concentrate on his form as he plowed through, but his mind kept drifting. It was now five days since Carrie Hobson’s body had been pulled from the bay.

  He reached the shallow end for the twentieth time and rose up out of the water. He came face to face with a pair of shoes and looked up at Agent Blythe.

  “You weren’t answering your phone,” she said.

  Tom got out, grabbed his towel. It wasn’t even seven thirty, with the sun just breaking over the condo rooftops. “What’s wrong?”

  Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. “Get dressed. I’ll tell you in the car. You can ride with me. Hurry up, though, okay?”

  Tom jogged back to the condo. Normally he would’ve showered off the chlorine, but he dressed quickly, opting for a pair of slacks and one of the button-downs he’d had the intern buy for him. He ran the toothbrush hastily over his teeth, and returned to Blythe, sitting in her department-issued Crown Vic.

  He drew the seatbelt across his chest, looking at her. “The suspense is killing me.” He was trying levity, but Blythe’s expression was slack, her mouth a wry line.

  She rolled out of the complex. “Just sit back. Okay? Relax. When we get there, let me do the talking.”

  Her tone of voice, her hidden eyes — it was starting to get to him. He could feel the old anxiety creeping up his neck, like a heat. Something terrible was just around the corner.

  “Where?”

  “Downtown. We’ve got another body.”

  * * *

  Naples PD was everywhere — they were up on the bridge, having closed down both an eastbound and westbound lane of route 41 traffic, and in the Tin City parking lot. A uniformed officer waved Blythe through and she parked the vehicle. An ambulance sat nearby.

  Three nights ago, Tom had been sitting with Blythe near the harbor, able to see this spot where the creek flowed out of Naples Bay beneath the bridge. Now he followed Blythe toward the same underpass, his stomach tightening as they slipped into the shadows.

  The water was low, the thick, concrete legs of the bridge — spaced every few yards — were stained that rusty color from high tide. A long scree of rocks broadsided the concrete walkway.

  A body lay on the rocks, face down, dark hair fanned out.

 
; Several detectives surrounded it, standing on cardboard laid out to protect the ground. Naples PD had erected barricades on both sides of the underpass. The lamps along the walkway were unlit, everything gray in the bridge shadow.

  Blythe and Tom climbed over the berm and onto the rocks, following the cardboard path. The closer he got to the body, the more his stomach knotted. He already thought he knew who it was.

  “Morning,” Blythe said to the group.

  “Morning,” said a man with a trim goatee.

  Blythe held up her badge. “Special Agent Lauren Blythe, and this is Special Agent Tom Lange.”

  The other law enforcement officers returned introductions. Detectives Bill Reddy and Angelo De Sauza with Naples PD, and Lieutenant John Haylock with Everglades County, who wore the goatee. Katie Mills was also there.

  “What’ve we got?” Blythe asked, looking down the rocks toward the dead woman.

  Bill Reddy answered. “A jogger called 911 from her cell phone at 5:38 this morning. We got the call for service, and 911 sent the bus.”

  Someone else was approaching. Dr. Ward climbed over the berm and down onto the rocks.

  They waited until he reached them, and everyone greeted. Mills started taking pictures. “My team is on the way,” Mills told Ward. Everyone fell silent as she took more shots and Ward, down on his knees, absorbed the scene. Finally, Ward motioned to one of the cops standing by. De Sauza bent down and helped turn the body over. Tom braced himself. When he saw the woman’s face, he exhaled.

  Haylock snapped a look at Tom. “Know her?”

  “Sasha Clay. From Tampa.”

  Haylock glanced at Blythe. “Your Rookery Bay case.”

  Blythe nodded, studying the dead woman’s face. Blythe was probably thinking, Coby’s case, too. At least Sasha appeared intact — nothing had eaten away at her. Tom noted the high-water marks on the bridge supports again, then glanced upriver. Sasha had wound up on the rocks, but maybe only after the water settled and left her there.