He found two Collier County deputies parked off the southeast side of the highway just where it went across the Collier River bridge and beside a clump of bushes. Troy eased the Subaru in behind them.
“Need you to move along, sir,” a deputy said. “Nothing to see here.”
“I’m Troy Adam, the Mangrove Bayou police chief.” He took his badge out of his shirt pocket and showed it. “My dispatcher said you wanted me to stop by.”
“Kyle Rivers,” the deputy said. “Glad to meet you. Sorry about that but where’s your uniform? He looked at the Forester and grinned. “Don’t the chief in Mangrove Bayou get a cop car? Something with a si-reen?” The other deputy was down the embankment peering into a Chevy pickup truck that was half-submerged. There were tire tracks, in the soft soil and weeds that showed the truck had run off the road through a small gap between the guard rail along the highway and the concrete balustrade that was part of the bridge.
“New uniforms. Starting next Monday. As for the car, I’m only hired on six months’ probation,” Troy said.
“They give you a police car after that?”
“Nobody ever mentioned it. What’s with the truck?”
“Beats me. Joe, come up here and talk to us.”
Joe struggled up the bank. His shoes and pants up to his knees were soaked. “Driver-side window is broken and there’s blood all over what’s left of it and the driver’s side of the interior. But there’s no body.”
“Accident?” Rivers asked. “Put his head through the side window?”
Joe shook his head. “It’s a lot of blood. Some other things, bone, brain. Truck’s not bad damaged, just run into the water. Guy didn’t just climb out and hitchhike on home.”
“Maybe a gator took it,” Rivers said, pointing. There were two that they could see just fifty yards away. Beyond the alligators was the vast stretch of Everglades, tall sedge that extended east to the far horizon, in fact all the way across the state to the outskirts of Miami. The inches-deep sheet flow that originated at Lake Okeechobee gave the Everglades the nickname of “River of Grass.”
“Maybe,” Joe said. “Driver door was open. No body. Strange.”
“Find anything else?” Troy asked. “Search the truck?”
“Quick look around,” Joe said. “Nothing in the back. I’ll go over it in detail once we get it out of there and hauled into the impound lot in Naples.”
“Let me know if you turn up anything interesting.”
“Will do.”
“Bad luck,” Rivers said. “Only place for miles you could even get past the guardrail. And you’d have to take it at almost a ninety-degree angle to get through there.”
“You think it was bad luck?” Troy asked.
“No. Of course not. Someone thought they could sink the truck in the river. But it ended up stuck in the canal instead.”
“Why did you guys ask for me?” Troy said. “We’re a couple miles out of my jurisdiction.”
“Ah. Let me show you something,” Rivers said. He led Troy behind the clump of bushes. There were some palmetto fronds on the ground. Troy squatted to look at them. The big fan-shaped leaves had been cut from a nearby plant. “Clean cuts. Sharp knife,” Troy said. “Fresh too. Fronds are still green.”
Rivers pointed. “Check the bike track.” There was a foot-long imprint in some mud of a bicycle tire. Troy and Rivers walked out to the road. There was a matching muddy print on the highway, repeating every time the wheel had rolled around to the muddy spot, across the road. Beyond that the tracks were smudged out by passing traffic.
“Observant,” Troy said.
Rivers grinned. “Maybe they’ll make me a sergeant someday.”
“Bicyclist appears to be headed south on the highway. Whoever it was picked up the mud right here and made the marks going away,” Troy said. “And since the last rain. And the last rain was day before yesterday. At least in Mangrove Bayou. But summer thunderstorms are very local.”
“I figured the same and that’s why we called you. Either he was some passing nut wanting to peddle from here to Miami, which sounds like suicide by sunstroke, or he was headed that way in order to turn and go down Barron Road to Mangrove Bayou. Only place close enough, to the south, to think of biking to from here. Even Ev City, where I’m stationed, is too far down the road. And why the cut fronds anyway?”
“Hide the bike from passing traffic, I imagine. In readiness until it was needed.”
Rivers nodded. “I don’t think it’s coincidence this truck is in the canal next to a hidden bike. If this all happened at night, someone might not have noticed he left a track.”
“Probably thought the truck would sink out of sight. Otherwise why bother with this?”
“Some times of the year he’d have been right. But the water level’s still low.”
“You run the tag?”
“Yep. Truck is registered to Jarvess Michaels. Address in Goodland.”
“That name rings a bell,” Troy said. “Can’t place it, though.”
“We know him. He’s been in the system a few times and he’s hard to miss. Nickname is ‘Tats’ on account of how he’s tattooed to a fare-thee-well.”
“A ‘fare-thee-well’? Big tough Collier County deputies don’t say, ‘fare-thee-well.’”
“Been going to night school. It’s like to ruint me.”
“That’s better.”
“I need it to get promoted. There’s a tow on the way. We’ll have the truck gone over. We’ll get a cast of the bike track and pictures too. Let you know if we find anything interesting. You do the same for us.”
“Will do. Email me those pictures. If you can get a make and tire name too, let me know. Good work here. Tell the sheriff I said to promote you.”
“That’s the final thing I needed. Passed the test, got the time in. But I needed the approval of the Mangrove Bayou police chief.”
“Actually I’m a director of pubic safety. Says so on my office door.”
“Which, as I recall, is also a fire exit.”
“You’ve been to my office?”
“Sure. Back when Bob Redmond was chief.”
“What was he like? I never met him.”
“Flaming asshole, you want my opinion. He gave being a bigoted, ignorant, southern redneck small-town cop a bad name.”
“Hard to imagine.”
“So you won the lottery? How did you come out on top? You don’t mind my saying so, you seem a little…flavorful…for Mangrove Bayou.”
“My charming personality, mostly. But also, of the two candidates, I was the one whose eyes both pointed in the same direction.”
“Damn. I could have applied. But why? Make more money on the sheriff’s.”
“Know what you mean. So far, being unemployed would be a step up.”
Chapter 19
Wednesday, July 24
Back in his office, Troy looked in the file he had been sent on Kathleen Pragga, now Katie Barrymore. There was a booking photo of Kathleen, looking a little younger and a little stoned. Troy thought that most people looked stoned in booking photos, whether they were or not. Jarvess Michaels was also listed on the arrest report for the burglary. He had worked as a mechanic for powerboat dealerships in Ft. Myers, Naples and Marco Island. He’d gotten a year for the burglary; Katie had received probation. That had been years ago and Michaels would be a free man if he were alive. Troy downloaded the booking photos of Jarvess Michaels and Kathleen Pragga and printed out six copies of each. He put one of each into the file.
Troy called June on the intercom. When she came into his office he handed her the remaining photos. “Starting this evening, I want one of our two on-duty officers taking these photos around Mangrove Bayou first, then Goodland, then Marco Island. Show it to all the motel clerks, and owners if they can find owners. Restaurants too. Each officer covers all the motels and restaurants; those people have shifts too and we don’t want to miss anything. I want to know if these two were together in any motel
or eatery and when. I’ll liaise with the sheriff’s office and the Marco Island police so they know what we’re doing in their jurisdictions.”
“Who’s going to do half the patrols if we’re one person short?”
“I’ll do as many as I can stand. Tell the guys to use private cars, and civvies would be good too. Low key. I’ll cover the per diem for the cars.”
“You’re spending money like a drunken sailor,” June said. “Our town manager, Mortimer Potem, isn’t going to like that.”
“I’ll have to learn to live with Mortimer Potem’s disapproval.”
Chapter 20
Thursday, July 25
The entire Mangrove Bayou town council stopped by Troy’s office early the next morning. Mayor Groud and Councilman Principal Dr. Howard Parkland Duell took the two visitor chairs. Maxwell Reed came through the door last and lost the musical chairs contest. Troy pushed the intercom button on his phone and asked June to bring another chair. He laid some paperwork aside, sat up straight, folded his hands on his desk in front of him and looked attentive.
“We need an update,” Groud said. “You found a body on a boat out at the yacht club. People are talking. I need to know what to tell them.” June appeared with a chair and Max Reed sat down too.
“Got more and better office furniture coming,” Troy said.
“I know. I paid for it,” Groud said.
“Town council paid,” Max Reed said.
“Waste of money,” Councilman Principal Dr. Howard Parkland Duell said.
“Is there a fourth town councilman named Shemp?” Troy asked. Groud grinned. Reed and Duell just looked blank.
“Actually, Con Lohen, the Osprey Yacht Club dockmaster, found the body,” Troy said. “I looked at it. We had it taken up to Naples for an autopsy.”
Troy looked from one councilman to another. There was a silence.
“That’s it?” Reed asked.
“So far. Haven’t heard back from the M.E.”
“What’s an M.E.?” Reed said.
“Medical Examiner. Last guy on earth you ever want to see. Of course by that time you’re not seeing much anyway.”
“Ahem, well that is hardly sufficient,” Duell said. “We didn’t hire you to stand around and stare at corpses. We hired you to do something about them.”
“What would you have me do?”
“I hardly know. That’s not my department. This,” he gestured around at the walls, “is not my department.”
“That’s right. It’s mine. On probation, of course.”
“We hardly need your levity.”
“You need someone’s levity. I have taken all the steps a policeman normally takes when coming upon a dead body. There may be additional steps to take, but I don’t know that yet or, if so, what steps to take. I await events.”
“Thing is,” Reed said, “word’s going around that you are acting as if the man was murdered.”
“Really? Who said that?”
“Oh, come on. Mangrove Bayou is one huge gossip club. You sealed up the boat. You took things away in evidence bags. The autopsy. Searching the widow’s house.”
Troy nodded. “The medical examiner does autopsies on anyone dying under unusual circumstances. I didn’t search the widow’s house, she asked me if I wanted to look in the garage for some tools and I did so. When did she call you to complain?”
“Last…how did you know Katie called me?”
“I’m the police chief of Mangrove Bayou. I know everything.”
“Director of public safety, technically,” Duell said. “By the way, did you know that your title is misspelled on your office door?”
“Yes. I do. Was there anything else, gentlemen?”
Mayor Groud shifted a little and sat forward. “Thing is, if it is a murder, we need to get the sheriff’s investigators in on it.”
“Why?”
“Well. You know.” Groud looked around the office. “This is sort of a small department. I mean, we expect you to mostly hand out parking tickets and keep tourists from peeing on the beach.”
“Perhaps you need to expect more of your police force. I certainly do.”
“Humm. I see. So if it is a murder, you plan to solve the case yourself?”
“It is. And I already have.”
Groud and Reed looked astonished. Duell looked slightly pained. “If it’s murder, and you know who did it,” Duell said, “why aren’t you out making an arrest?”
“Ah. The answer to that requires lengthy review of hundreds of years of English common law,” Troy said. “But, to summarize, I need proof. I don’t have that yet.”
“You have nothing whatever,” Duell said. “You’re just waffling, trying to keep a job you are clearly not qualified to have.”
“Or,” Troy said, “It could just be that.”
“You’re keeping something close to your vest,” Groud said. “The walls have ears here. Even some of the ears here have ears, if you get my drift.”
Troy nodded. His hands were still clasped in front of him on the desk. He was still trying to look friendly and alert but he was growing weary of it.
“I’m inclined to give you more rope,” Groud said. “But not much. You screw the pooch on this and you’re outta here.”
“And you still have the wall-eyed one-tooth guy who also applied. Good to have bench strength.”
Groud struggled not to grin. “Well. Can we count on you telling us as much as you can tell us when you can tell us?”
“Absolutely.”
The trio tramped out. Troy took the extra chair back to the lobby. He suspected that Lester Groud would be back alone, or calling on the phone, soon. He also assumed that Katie Barrymore would have a full report soon. She would be disappointed that he hadn’t spilled all his information to Max Reed.
Since all the court system was in Naples, Troy got on the phone to the state attorney’s office and tried to talk them into getting a search warrant for Kathleen Barrymore’s house. They weren’t having it. He was still on his own.
An hour later he did receive some useful news. The autopsy on John Barrymore had concluded that he had died of accidental electrocution. Case closed.
“So sayeth the experts,” Troy said to his empty office. He shook his head and added the report to the file.
He walked up to the lobby. June was explaining to some tourists, an elderly man and wife, that no, there was no bus service in town.
“How about a taxi?” the man asked.
“No taxi,” Troy said. “Why are you needing one?” It occurred to Troy that the town really needed a taxi service, even a part-time one.
“I wanted to go to the museum. The one by the Calusa shell mound. And look at the mound too, of course. I used to teach archaeology. Up in Ohio.”
“How did you get here without a car?”
“Friends brought us over from Miami for the week. I’m Richard Patterson, this is my wife Rachael. We’re staying here on Barron Key with them. But they left today to go back to Miami for some business.” He chuckled. “We’re sort of on shanks mare today.”
“There’s an expression I’ve not heard in a long time,” June said.
“Tell you what,” Troy said. “Wait a few minutes and I’ll take you up there. To the museum.”
“That would be very kind of you. Who are you?”
“I’m the police chief. Troy Adam.”
“Don’t you have a badge or something?”
Troy fished it out of his shirt pocket. The man peered at it from a distance of about a foot. “Well, that’s good. How would we get back from the museum?”
What I get, Troy thought to himself. No good deed goes unpunished. “Call June, here, and she’ll send someone. But that’s a this-day-only offer and only seeing as how you are an archaeologist and my degree is in history.”
Rachael Patterson laughed. Richard smiled. “We’ll await your chariot,” he said.
“June, how often do people call or stop by looking for a taxi?”
June thought. “In here? Maybe once a month off-season, a few times a day in-season. But I think mostly they ask in front, at the town hall office. Why?”
“Seems like this town needs a couple guys to run a taxi service.”
“No argument from me. Who did you have in mind?”
“Had in mind Bob, your husband. And maybe one other to spell him. Two cars. Easy enough to set up. Buy a couple used vans. Repaint them. Dispatch by cell phone, just like we do here sometimes. Maybe run a limo service up to Naples shopping every other day. Keeps Bob out of your hair and you can actually take Mondays off instead of coming in here to avoid him.”
“I like it. I’ll ask Bob about it.”
Troy turned to the Pattersons. “Richard, Rachael, come out the back way with me.”
He drove the Pattersons over to Airfield Key and then east to the end of Airport Road and the small museum and large shell mound.
“How come you don’t have a police car?” Rachael asked as they got out in front of the museum.”
“It’s like this, Rachael. I’m new and was only hired on six months’ probation.”
“Oh, I see. So after that they give you a real car?”
“I don’t think so.”
Chapter 21
Thursday, July 25
After dropping off the Pattersons, Troy drove back west on Airfield Road to Côte d’Or, the Barrymore manse. Both cars were in the garage and the garage door was still open because the workmen were still adding to it. Troy did not enter the garage. He stood in front of it and stared. There was one bicycle hanging from a ceiling hook. There were two hooks.
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