by PJ Parrish
“Kent, listen to me,” Louis said. “You have to help us here.”
He finally looked up and nodded.
“We found out who Mark was seeing,” Louis said. “I need to ask you about them, but you can’t tell anyone the names. Do you understand?”
Reggie nodded again.
“One of the women was Carolyn Osborn,” Louis said. “Did he ever mention her?”
“The senator?” Reggie whispered. “Mark was… with the senator?”
“Yes. Did he ever talk about her?”
Reggie looked stunned as he shook his head slowly. “No, no, he never… he never even escorted her anywhere. Neither did I. She… she wasn’t really part of our set. I mean, people liked her, but she was always in Washington. She just didn’t go to the parties and things.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded numbly.
“What about Tink Lyons?”
“Tink? Good Lord…”
“What?”
Reggie just shook his head, shutting his eyes. “She’s… she’s… I just can’t imagine Mark with her. No, it’s just not possible. No, no…”
Reggie was too kind to say what Louis was thinking. What did it take for a young man to bed someone like Tink Lyons? How much money was enough?
“I need to ask you something else,” Louis said. “I found a humidor in Mark’s room. Do you know how it got there?”
Reggie’s pale face was a blank. “Humidor? Mark hated cigars.”
“And you’re sure you never saw that sword before the day the police searched your house?”
Reggie managed only a tired nod.
Swann leaned in toward the glass. “Reggie, what about the boots?” he asked. “Do you know where Mark got them?”
“Boots?” Reggie asked softly.
“The boots Barberry took from your house,” Swann said. “You remember the boots?”
Reggie closed his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Did they belong to Mark?”
“I don’t know… I just don’t know.”
Swann looked at Louis in frustration, then back at Reggie. “What size shoe do you wear, Reggie?”
“What?”
“Shoes, what size are you?”
“Eight.”
Swann looked at Louis. “The police report said the boots were a size eight and a half.”
“That’s close enough for Barberry,” Louis said quietly.
“Reggie,” Swann said, “do you know what size Mark wore?”
“I… Mark had big feet,” he said. “I think he wore a ten.”
Again, Swann looked at Louis. “The boots were custom-made. If they were a gift from someone, why weren’t they made in Durand’s size?”
Louis was quiet. The boots were the most damning piece of evidence in Barberry’s case. As long as those boots were tied to Reggie, Louis would never be able to prove he was innocent. But even now, as he looked at the pathetic man on the other side of the Plexiglas, Louis couldn’t help think that Reggie Kent was still holding something back.
The guard who had been standing back against the wall came forward. “Time’s up,” he said.
“One more minute,” Louis said. “Please.”
The guard took a long look at Reggie and backed off.
“I need you to think,” Louis said. “We were able to trace two of the women Mark was with by the things he had in his bedroom. If there are more women, we need to find them, too.”
“But I told you he never mentioned anyone by name.”
“I know,” Louis said. “But I need you to think really hard about anything Mark might have had that struck you as too expensive.”
Reggie was still shaking his head, staring blankly at his hands. Louis glanced at Swann, then at the guard, as they waited for Reggie to reply. The guard tapped his watch.
“I’m sorry,” Reggie said. “Except for that one time when I found the watch, I stayed clear of his room. He was very adamant after we… separated, that I respect his privacy.”
The guard came forward again and touched Reggie’s shoulder. Reggie looked up at him, fresh tears filling his eyes. His entire body seemed to wilt, and he could barely get to his feet.
Before Louis could ask anything else, the guard pulled Reggie away, and the two of them disappeared behind the steel door.
Louis and Swann left the jail, both silent until they were outside. Louis stopped walking and looked up at the jail. Then he let his eyes drift toward the boxy section of the complex where the sheriff’s department was housed.
“Reggie will be dead in another week,” Swann said.
“I know,” Louis said. “You up to a visit to the Barbarian?”
Swann followed Louis’s gaze toward the checkerboard of dusty windows. It had been only twenty-four hours since they had seen Barberry in Hendry County, and so far, it seemed he had kept his promise not to expose Swann’s involvement to Swann’s boss. But promises from Barberry were only as good as his mood, and Swann didn’t need to aggravate that.
“I’ll go up alone,” Louis said.
“No,” Swann said. “I’ll go with you.”
Barberry made them wait in the lobby for more than an hour. Louis paced for a while, then took a walk around the building, trying to get the image of Reggie’s battered face from his mind. Every cop knew what happened when backs were turned and the lights went out in a large, understaffed county jail.
Not that Louis felt sorry for most of the bastards who inhabited the zoo. Most belonged there. But Reggie Kent didn’t. And it seemed beyond depraved to keep him there.
“Louis, Barberry’s ready for us.”
Louis turned. Swann was standing outside the door, waving him inside. They found Barberry standing near his desk, working a wad of gum. He wore a polyester forest-green sports coat and a pea-colored tie.
“You got two minutes, Kincaid.”
“You need to get moving on this case, Detective,” Louis said. “Kent’s getting kicked around pretty bad, and every day you waste gets him closer to getting killed.”
“Well, jail ain’t supposed to be The Breakers,” Barberry said. “Maybe someone should tell him that.”
“You have more than enough information to talk to your prosecutor,” Louis said. “You know Reggie Kent didn’t murder Durand or either of the other two. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Barberry said. “I’m still looking into those other two guys, the bartender and the Mexican, like I told you I would. An investigation takes a lot of time. You know that.”
“Have you even talked to your prosecutor about the possibility of a serial killer?” Swann asked.
Barberry turned to Swann. It was clear he still hadn’t forgiven him for playing double agent between the sheriff’s office and two rogue PIs.
“I ain’t had time,” Barberry said.
“Have you talked to anyone?” Swann asked. “Your chief of detectives? Your sheriff, for God’s sakes? This is not just a routine homicide anymore.”
Barberry glared at Swann, his jaw grinding hard on the gum. A small twitch fluttered the loose skin under his eye.
“You haven’t told a soul, have you?” Swann said.
Barberry held Swann’s eyes for another second or two, then turned slowly to his desk and picked up the phone. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said.
Swann crossed his arms and looked away. Louis wondered who the hell Barberry was calling right in the middle of a conversation. Then, just as he heard a muffled male voice on the other end of the phone, it hit him.
“Yes, Chief Hewitt,” Barberry said. “I appreciate you taking my call. I thought I should let you know that one of your officers has been wasting your department’s time hanging around over here, trying to elbow his way into a homicide case we’re trying to work.”
Swann spun back to Barberry. A red flush crept up his neck as he listened.
“Swann,” Barberry said. “Andrew Swann, that’s right. Yeah.
It’s about that guy Reggie Kent. Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, I would appreciate it if you’d have a word with him.”
Barberry held out the phone. Swann seemed frozen, the red in his neck now coloring his face.
“Your chief wants a word with you, Andrew,” Barberry said.
Swann took the phone. Barberry didn’t even give him the courtesy of some privacy. He stood close as Swann lowered his head and listened.
“Yes, sir, I understand. Yes, sir… yes, sir… yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Swann hung up and, without a word, left the squad room. Louis looked at Barberry, who was unwrapping a stick of gum.
“You son of a bitch,” Louis said.
Barberry laughed. “Yeah, well, like that little spic in Hendry County said, ‘Don’t come over here and fuck with me on my turf.’ If and when any charges are dropped against Kent, you’ll be the first to know. Now, go away and let me do my job.”
Louis found Swann in the parking lot, leaning against the Mustang, head bent and arms crossed. He looked up when he heard Louis’s footsteps. His cheeks were still bright with color.
“You okay?” Louis asked.
“I’ve been suspended,” Swann said.
Swann made no move to get into the car. For a second, Louis couldn’t read Swann’s expression. Then he realized he had seen it once before, ironically on the face of a woman. He had been called out on a domestic abuse, and the woman had been sitting there, her face bloody, tears in her eyes, as she watched them haul her husband away. She said she had finally gotten up the nerve to leave him, and it was all there in her face—anger, humiliation, and relief.
“Come on, Andrew,” Louis said. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Swann was silent on the drive back to Palm Beach. Louis didn’t push it. He didn’t know the guy well enough to give him advice about his job or his life, but he sensed that Swann had nowhere to go. So as they left the bridge and pulled onto Royal Poinciana Way, he asked Swann if he wanted to come back to Reggie’s house for a beer.
Swann accepted quickly.
When they walked into the house, Louis stopped and stared. The main wall of the living room had been stripped of Reggie’s beloved Haitian paintings. In their places were two large bulletin boards covered with papers and photographs. The small dining table had been pushed to the center of the room. There Mel sat, his head bent low, magnifying glass in hand.
“What’s all this?” Louis asked.
Mel looked up. “Welcome to the pigpen.”
Louis and Swann came forward. The bulletin board resembled the displays Louis had seen in big-city homicide rooms for major cases, and when working with the FBI on a serial-killer case three years ago.
Separated into columns and color-coded, the board offered an easy-to-grasp visual blueprint of their complicated and increasingly confusing investigation.
On the right side were the victim’s names across the top, with commonalities listed under each and linked in green marker. Under that were lists of physical evidence and subsequent leads formed. On the left side were the two women’s names and those of their husbands, followed by what they knew about each person. A final column had the heading what we know we don’t know. It was blank.
On the second board, Mel had tacked up Swann’s pilfered photographs of Durand’s crime scene and close-up shots of the sword and the boots and all of the other items they had found in Durand’s bedroom. Mel had even cut out pictures of Tucker and Carolyn Osborn and Tink and Dickie Lyons from the Shiny Sheet and hung them up.
“This is impressive,” Swann said. “Why do you call it the pigpen?”
“That’s what we called it back at Miami PD,” Mel said. “Whenever we had a big case going, we’d put all the stuff in one room and we’d sit in there drinking bad coffee and eating cold burgers and throwing shit at the wall.”
Louis knew it had probably taken Mel all day to put this together, given the trouble his eyes gave him with detail work. But Louis didn’t want to deal with headless corpses right now. He was worried about Reggie. And Swann. That wasn’t like him, to take the troubles of near strangers to heart. And no one here in Bizarro World was supposed to give a damn about anyone else.
Louis went to the kitchen to get a beer. But the only things in the refrigerator were a quart of milk, orange juice, and two bottles of Evian.
Louis grabbed the bottles of water and returned to the living room. Swann looked up.
“Sorry, Andrew, we’re fresh out of beer,” he said. He tossed a bottle and Swann caught it against his chest. Louis dropped down onto the sofa and kicked off his shoes.
Mel put down the magnifying glass and looked up from his spot at the table. “What’s with the tone, Rocky?”
Louis opened the water and took a huge drink. “What tone?”
“We’re fresh out of beer because Mel was too busy hanging out at Ta-boo again to go get some.”
“Did I say that?” Louis said.
“You don’t have to say it. I can still hear it.”
“Give it a rest, Mel, will you?”
Louis looked over at Swann. He was standing at the bulletin board, staring at them both. He turned away, on the pretense of studying the photographs. Louis fell back against the cushions and closed his eyes. God, he wanted this case to be over. Nothing about it was making any sense, and every time he was able to empty his mind, Joe was there to fill it.
I want you to want something from yourself.
Right now, all he really wanted was to go home to his cottage and sleep in his own bed. He wanted to sit on his island, on his beach, and watch the sun melt into the Gulf.
“You ready to listen to what I found out today?” Mel asked.
“Go ahead,” Louis said, without opening his eyes.
“First, I’m close to finding the private eye that Osborn said spied on his wife,” Mel said. “Her rival, Morty Akers, died a couple years ago but I tracked down his former aide, who told me the PI’s name was Barney Lassiter.”
“Barney still among the living?” Louis asked.
“Yeah. He’s got a current PI license out of Okaloosa County up in the Panhandle, but his listed employer, Sax and Sax Services, went out of business a few months ago. So, I haven’t been able to zero in on Barney, yet but I got feelers out.”
Louis swung up to a sitting position. “Osborn told me Lassiter did stakeouts and surveillance,” he said. “What do you think the chances are he caught anything on film?”
“Not very likely,” Swann offered. “If he had, he would have used it against the senator. I’ve never heard one piece of dirt on her. In fact, she’s made her name drafting ethics reform and touting family values.”
“That don’t make her a saint, Andrew,” Mel said.
“I never said she was,” Swann said. “I’m just saying she seems like a pretty unlikely candidate for the kind of sleazy adultery we’re talking about here.”
“Let me tell you something, son,” Mel said. “When it comes to sex, no one is an unlikely candidate. Anyone with working genitals can be enticed if the drought has been long enough.”
Swann turned back to the bulletin board. Louis sensed that the conversation embarrassed him. Or maybe he had heard the slight condescension in Mel’s voice. He forgot that Mel didn’t know about Swann’s suspension yet.
“Did you ever hear of those monkeys called bonobos?” Mel asked.
“Spare us,” Louis said.
“They’re a lot like chimpanzees,” Mel went on unfazed, “but unlike chimps and gorillas, the bonobos are almost completely nonviolent and nonterritorial. And do you know why?”
“I said spare us.”
“They’re sex maniacs,” Mel said. “They have sex at every opportunity, as a greeting, a goodbye, before they eat, after they eat. They can even be passing a strange monkey in the jungle and they’ll stop and—”
“We get the picture,” Louis said. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, maybe
if people were more like bonobos, they wouldn’t find themselves curled in a fetal position on a therapist’s couch. Or end up killing each other.”
Mel’s pontificating left the room in a tired kind of silence. Swann stayed at the board, studying the photographs with the expression of someone trying to figure out a piece of op art.
“I have something else to share,” Mel said.
“Enough with the bonobos,” Louis said.
Mel ignored him. “I found the manufacturer of those ostrich boots. It’s a company called Safari Soles. I called their factory in Minnesota and although the lady was very nice, she told me we would need a warrant to get access to sales records.”
“Shit,” Louis murmured.
“You know any judges here we could convince, Andrew?” Mel asked.
Swann shook his head. “Not anymore.”
Mel looked to Louis with questions, but Louis held up a hand, telling Mel not to push it. Mel shrugged and turned back to his notes.
“I’ve saved the best for last,” Mel said. “I spoke with Dr. Steffel today. Since the sword didn’t match the wounds, I wanted to ask her if she’d had any time to compare other blades and come up with something that was at least consistent.”
“Did she?”
“She thinks it was a machete,” Mel said.
Louis sat forward. “Like a cane machete?”
“She couldn’t be that specific,” Mel said. “But when she told me that, I had the same thought you’re probably having. Who in Palm Beach would have a machete lying around the mansion?”
“Tucker Osborn has one,” Swann said.
They both turned to stare at him.
“How do you know, Andrew?” Louis asked.
Swann let out a long breath. “About four years ago, I got called to a domestic there. The senator was crying, and Mr. Osborn was pretty drunk. He was waving a gun and yelling.”
Swann got quiet.
“There’s no such thing as privacy in a murder case, Andrew,” Louis said.
Swann nodded. “I had to get Mr. Osborn quieted down, so I took him into his study. That’s when I saw all the swords and stuff. He’s got a closet full of them, including machetes.”
“Who called you?” Mel asked.