Angel elbowed Milo. “Don’t say things like that. He’s done good so far.”
“Well, he’s a hell of a good shot, I know that now.”
“Actually, Milo’s right about my lucking into the job,” Troy said. “Milo, how come you didn’t just ask for a promotion to chief? Your uncle is the mayor, after all.”
“I wanted to. My uncle told me to shut up and sit down.”
Troy laughed. “For a guy who tries to act like a backwoods ’neck,” he said, “there’s no moss growing on Lester Groud. Now get out and start looking. I have important police chief things to do.”
Back in town, Troy checked the cells. All the crew and their families had left. June was on duty but was sleeping at her desk in the lobby, her head down on her crossed arms. The place needed a tidying up and good scrubbing but Troy decided that wasn’t important now.
“You had anything to eat lately?” he asked Norris Compton through the barred window in the upper half of the cell door.
“Nope.” Compton was lying on his back on his bunk, reading a book. Troy was past wondering where he had acquired that.
“How about water?”
“Got plenty of that.” Compton held up a plastic water bottle. “And, actually, the sink and toilet still work.”
“They would. One thing hooked into the circuit for the backup generator is the pump for the water tower. I’m hungry too. I’ll raid the meeting room upstairs. They have emergency supplies there. See if I can round up something to eat. It won’t be five-star.”
Chapter 42
Wednesday, July 31
That afternoon Troy took Norris Compton up to Naples. They didn’t go to the jail. They met with an assistant state attorney named Rita Shaner. Troy handed over a copy of Compton’s file. Compton’s attorney was there too, out of some law office in Naples. They all sat around a table in a conference room.
“You arrested him for discharging a firearm within city limits?” Shaner said. She was thirtyish, five-eight with black hair and brown eyes and tending to plumpness. Shaner raised her eyebrows. “That’s a misdemeanor. And you jailed him for that?”
Compton raised his head and looked at Troy. Troy winked at him. Compton smiled and said nothing. Compton’s attorney looked puzzled.
“We take such offenses very seriously in Mangrove Bayou,” Troy said.
“Geez, I guess so. Well, we’ll take it from here. Can’t believe you’re wasting my time with this. Misdemeanors are county business. I’ll run this by any county judge back there who, like me, was dumb enough to show up for work today. Come back for him in a half-hour.”
Troy stood to leave. He looked down at Compton. “Norris, stick around and I’ll give you a ride back. I got a thing to do here myself.” Troy went down the hall and talked to another assistant state attorney about the shooting of William Poteet. They set a date for a full hearing when the witnesses could testify too.
On the way back to Mangrove Bayou, Compton sat in the front seat and not in the back behind the cage. “I appreciate what you did for me back there,” he said.
“I’ll keep the gun. Damn thing’s too dangerous anyway. It’s an antique. What did they give you at the hearing?”
“I’m a bad boy. They haven’t done the paperwork yet but it’s one year’s probation. Got to check in with some probation officer once a week. And some kind of community service for one hundred hours.”
“Kelly Thompson,” Troy said.
“That was the probation officer’s name. Is Kelly a man or a woman?”
“I have no idea. Never met the person, only seen the name on some paperwork. I’m new and only here on probation myself.”
Compton chuckled. “Well, let’s hope neither of us screws it up.”
“Got three more things for you to do,” Troy said. “You don’t have to do any of them. I arrest people, I don’t decide on the punishments.”
“What now?”
“Get yourself into an AA program of some kind. You’re a smart guy when you’re sober, and pretty stupid-acting when you’re drunk. In AA I believe they refer to ‘pulling a geographical,’ meaning that moving from Atlanta to Mangrove Bayou doesn’t make the underlying problem go away.”
“I can do that. What else?”
“Second, I can use your help around the station but I can’t pay you. Maybe I can talk to this Thompson person and get you assigned to me. Come in a couple times a week and do some filing, straightening up the paperwork. I can really use the help. And you got to work off your community service anyway.”
“Beats picking up cans and bottles along the road in August.”
“Yes, I suppose it would. Last, you’re going to learn to fish. I’ve arranged for you to work for Lester Groud. He’s our mayor and also a fishing guide. He’ll probably work you like a dog, doing anything nasty he doesn’t want to do. He’ll not pay you anything but at least he’ll treat you bad. But he knows how to fish and he’ll teach you.”
“Why are you doing all this?”
“You need some structure. You need some point to living here in Mangrove Bayou. You need to be a part of the community and you need to be doing something useful to the rest of us. Otherwise, you will have no self-respect and you’ll just be seeing the world through the neck of a beer bottle.”
Troy turned off U.S. 41 and onto Barron Road. He called Angel and Milo on the radio and told them where he was. “You guys find anything interesting for me? I can check now.”
“A few spots,” Angel said. “Two on the right side heading south. One on the left just a half-mile or so in. That one looks good. Some clothes, bloody. We’re almost to the Airfield Key bridge. June’s going to come pick us up in a minute.”
“Looks like you get to watch actual police work going on,” Troy said to Compton. He slowed down and looked ahead for spray-painted circles. When he saw the one on the left side he stopped, facing the wrong way in that lane, and turned on his emergency lights. “Stay here,” he said to Compton.
Angel and Milo had found some muddy and obviously bloody clothing. There was a depression where the clothes had been buried but whoever buried them hadn’t dug a very deep hole. The heavy rain had washed some of the loose soil down the embankment into the canal, exposing part of a pair of blue jeans. He called June on the radio and asked her to get Tom VanDyke headed his way with his camera. He used his cell phone to call Kyle Rivers at the Everglades City Sheriff’s Substation and tell Rivers what he had found.
“And doesn’t anyone else work District Seven? You seem to be the one I get every time.”
“Got one other guy on duty. Not counting the lieutenant, whom we don’t count on anyway.” Troy heard a male laugh in the background and some muttered comment. “Other guy’s out doing actual patrolling. I’m just sitting here rewriting all my reports, make me look better. Why do you need me?”
“Don’t. But you’re in this Tats Michaels thing too. Courtesy call. Come on over and say hi. I miss you.”
“Will do. Take me a half-hour to get there, maybe longer. Damn storm ran square over us last night. Roads are tore up,” Rivers said.
“We’ll be here for a while. Look for you soon.”
Troy sat in the Suburban. He looked at Compton. “Got to wait. Police business is usually pretty boring.”
“Gee,” Compton said, “on TV they always solve the crime in sixty minutes, minus the commercials.”
“Well, we’re just not as good as those guys.” He saw a car coming up the road from town. It pulled in and parked and Cilla Dowling got out. Troy had forgotten that she had a police scanner. He got out to talk to her.
“Bloody clothes?” Dowling said.
“Stay on the asphalt,” Troy said. “Come look.”
She photographed the scene with her cell phone. “What do you make of it?”
Troy shrugged. “Some bloody clothes and a hole is what I make of it.”
“Um. Hum. You had two officers out here walking around right after a storm, when they would be
better employed helping clean up the town. This isn’t just coincidence. Hi there, Norris. I see they let you out.”
Compton had come to stand beside them. “Bad man goes free, thanks to the Chief here,” he said. He looked at the hole and the clothes and back at Cilla. “I’m sentenced to helping in the police station, attending AA and learning to fish.”
“Really? Our new chief seems to be a creative fellow.”
“Do I need to be here for this conversation?” Troy asked.
“Not really,” Cilla said. “So how did you and Lee Bell make out?”
“A gentleman never discusses such things.”
“Meaning you two did make out. Good for you. She’s a catch.”
“Thanks for the recommendation.”
When Tom VanDyke showed up he got some evidence bags out of the back of his car. He photographed the scene and then put on some gloves. He pulled the jeans out of the hole and put them into one bag. He pulled out a tee-shirt, small, a pair of woman’s underwear, and a small pair of sneakers and put each into separate bags. Next came several very wet tissues. Tom carefully opened one.
“Aha,” Troy said.
“What is it?” Cilla asked.
“Eye-liner.”
“And you would know, magically, whose eyes that came from?”
“I would. She killed him but also wept a few tears for him. Possible DNA too.”
At the bottom of the hole Tom found a small garden trowel. He pulled that out and held it up. “If our perp had used a real shovel, he could have dug a deeper and better hole.”
“Yes. But you can’t carry a shovel in a purse,” Troy said.
“You figure these clothes come from the killer and not from another victim?” Tom said.
“Be my guess. We found Tats Michaels just a quarter mile or so that way,” Troy said, pointing. “After shooting Tats and dragging him down into the canal there she must have been covered in blood. Then she had to drive his truck up to Forty-One and ditch it by the Collier River.”
“She?” Dowling said.
“Our mysterious unnamed and alleged perp,” Troy said. “You want some exclusives on this, keep it to yourself for now. Otherwise I call the Naples News-Press and give them a statement.”
“Ouch. That hurt. You promise. Me first.”
“You first, Cilla.”
Troy and Tom looked up and down the canals for a hundred yards each way, both sides of the road, and saw nothing else. While they were doing that Kyle Rivers drove up in a sheriff’s patrol car. Tom showed Rivers his bags of evidence. Rivers looked at the photos, displayed on the back of the camera.
“Be plenty of DNA in the panties and the shoes,” Troy said.
“Yeppers,” Rivers said. “Someone never expected the storm surge to open up this hole.”
“New. Dirt’s still loose, not compacted.”
“Did you expect to find this? That why you had your people walk the roadsides?”
Troy shook his head. “I just thought it possible that there would be more clues, and right after a storm is a good time to look for anything not visible the first time around. You know what they say, ‘luck is opportunity meeting preparation.’”
“I don’t recall reading that on the sergeant’s exam.”
“Comes higher up. In the stratospheric realm of the chief’s exam.”
“Oprah,” Cilla said. Both men turned to look at her. “Oprah Winfrey said that.”
Rivers looked at Troy. “You used to watch Oprah Winfrey?”
“Well, I was just hoping she would give away a chief’s car.”
Troy and Norris Compton drove slowly on down Barron Road, with Tom VanDyke, Cilla Dowling and Kyle Rivers trailing him. They passed two big Florida Power & Light trucks parked by the side of the road. Three men were out in the marsh doing something on one of the towers there. Troy stopped twice more when he saw white circles in the road. One find was a battered red life jacket, faded to a pale yellow on one side.
“Whattya think?” Tom asked, holding it up.
“I think it probably blew out of some guy’s boat several years ago while it was being towed down the road here,” Rivers said. “Seen that happen a few times. Laid out there in the marsh until the storm surge floated it up here. Sun’s bleached it out.”
Tom tossed the life jacket into his truck. “No need to litter,” he said. Their next find was a used condom. “That float up here too?” he asked.
“Eww,” Cilla said. She took a photo of Tom, with green-tinted latex gloves, picking up a white latex condom.
“Lord only knows,” Troy said. “But it’s DNA. Take it.”
“Please don’t run that photo on the web site,” Tom said.
Cilla grinned. She looked at Troy. “Another side-benefit of being the town news reporter is that people will bribe me not to run photos on the web site.”
“She’s demanding a bribe from a law enforcement officer,” Tom said to Troy.
“You two work something out,” Troy said. He got back into his truck. They drove on into town. Tom and Kyle Rivers went straight to the station. Cilla went to her office. Troy dropped Compton off at Compton’s house, then turned in the truck back at the station. Tom had already catalogued the evidence and stored it in the evidence room. A printout was on Troy’s desk. Tom had gone home. Nice to have good staff, Troy thought. Rivers was sitting in one of Troy’s visitor chairs. He and Rivers walked over to the Sandy Shoes for dinner. Mangrove Bayou seemed to have electricity back.
“Looks like the town did OK in the storm,” Rivers said. “I heard you did some shooting, middle of the night.”
“Had to.” Troy told Rivers about Wanda Frister and Billy Poteet. “And then I had to leave the body there all night because I was too busy with the hurricane.”
“Sucks,” Rivers said. “Shooting him, I mean. I had to do it once. You ever had to use your gun before?”
“Yes.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Strong, silent type, eh. They’re the worst. It sucks. How do you feel about it?”
“I don’t know yet. Have to sleep on it a few nights.” See if my dream is any different.
Rivers looked down at his plate a moment then up at Troy. “Yeah. Well, be careful. Seeing a shrink might be a good idea. That’s even routine in some departments.”
“I’ll think on that too.” In fact, Troy already had an appointment, made long before the storm.
“Slippery slope,” Rivers said. “Pulling the trigger gets easier. So I’ve heard.”
“Heard that too. I think it may be the other way around. My opinion. Anyway, there’ll be a review board next week, up at the county admin center.”
“They’ll OK the shooting,” Rivers said. “You got witnesses. Helps that the only guy to testify for the other side is dead. It’s the winners who get to write the history.”
“Doesn’t always work out that way,” Troy said.
Chapter 43
Thursday, August 1
Thursday morning Troy got to his office early. No one was around and he made the morning coffee. Back at his desk he went over the Barrymore file yet again. What was he missing? What could be revisited? He was in the break room refilling his mug when it came to him.
June had come in to work and he called her to his office.
“Who is our diver?” he asked.
“Diver? You mean like a SCUBA diver? We don’t have one. Juan likes to dive, I know.”
“Call him in. Tell him to bring his dive gear.”
“He works the night shift this month. Remember that we just changed over. We’ll be waking him up. And after that storm, he needs the sleep.”
“Call him.”
Juan looked enthusiastic when he came into Troy’s office. “You need a police diver?” he said. “Is there extra pay? I’m your man.”
Troy sat back with his foot on his desk drawer, his hands folded in his lap. “One free tank of air per police-related job. And,
of course, any OT you happen to luck into.”
“That’s it? How about a promotion to corporal/police diver-in-charge?”
“You drive a hard bargain. I’ll toss in one free swear-word per month.”
“That would be out-fucking-standing,” Juan said.
“Don’t be so profligate with your new wealth,” Troy said. “You have almost the whole month to go through yet and here you’ve used up your free word.
“Is profli…whatever…a swear word?”
“No.”
“Works for me. What do you need today?”
“I want you to search the canals on either side of Barron Road.”
Juan stared. “That’s five miles, Chief. Doubled, since there’s a canal on each side of the road.”
“You don’t have to do it all. I want you to search just where it enters the town. You’ll look for a bicycle that was tossed in there in the past weeks. If you don’t find one there I want you to look around and under the 11th Street bridge over to Airfield Key. If you don’t find it there then I’ll ask Bubba to bring the boat and run you up the Collier River to opposite the Barrymore house and search in there. Any idea how long that might take?”
Juan thought about it. “A bicycle is pretty big. Easy to find, even having to feel for it in murky water. Being recent it won’t have gotten down into the muck so much. Couple hours each side off Barron Road. Not really canals at that point, just open bay but the bicycle would be close to the road and that’s not deep. Maybe an hour under the bridge. Couple hours in the Collier River. There’s not that much current so it wouldn’t be swept downstream. Where is the Barrymore house?”
“Airfield Road, about six down from the museum.”
“I doubt that I would need the boat. I could swim that far from the bridge if the bridge doesn’t pan out. But I would need tank changes. That’s hard work even in shallow water. Probably go through four tanks if I need them all. I have two.”
“That will work,” Troy said. “We can refill one while you use the other. Or just rent extras from that dive shop next to the boatyard on Snake Key.”
“Donald Duck.”
Mangrove Bayou Page 20