Hawk Channel Chase

by Tom Corcoran

  “He did this on a postal worker’s salary?” I said.

  “We’re looking into his finances. We’ve heard there was an inheritance. He was about the right age to have dead or dying parents. You want to start work, Alex?”

  I opened my camera pouch. “It doesn’t matter that I don’t know forensics? The tech people have gone into overdrive since I started this little sideline. I feel a bit intimidated here.”

  “Techs are good at identifying perps,” she said. “That’s not enough.”

  “That’s more than you could get ten years ago.”

  “Screw history. I want more than just locating bad guys. I want evidence I can use to grab juries by the short hairs. I want arrests but I also want to convict the fuckers.”

  “So you want me to photograph motives?”

  “That would be a good start,” she said. “Motives in high-resolution, full color. Compulsion snapshots, psychopathic portraits, whatever you think best. I need to make a call. I’ll leave you to it.”

  I wanted to walk the house, do a general survey. But first I quit moving, stood in one spot. It was a trick I had learned from Bobbi Lewis several years ago when she was in a mood to share. She had counseled me to get a feel for a place where someone had died, to attempt a higher level of focus, to know another dimension of a room I had never seen before or observed carefully, and absorb a sense of what belonged or didn’t.

  Right away the living room bothered me. There were no pictures of people, no family, no friends. Maybe I would find them in other rooms. Hammond had installed high-traffic carpeting, tables with rounded corners, four chairs and twin sofas designed for hard use, and bland knick-knacks positioned to fill space. He had hung a jumble of opulence: primary-tone abstracts, watercolors of Old Island facades and backcountry scenes, and swirling art deco prints. Expensive-looking, no doubt hip in some circles but, to me, visual cacophony.

  His CDs and DVDs also bothered me. Unlike the orderly state of the tasteless room, they were strewn in disarray on two broad shelves and, while the stereo and TV looked expensive, new, there weren’t many movies or music disks. Why own upscale electronics and not have a media collection? The room had a split personality. It held no clues to direct my thinking. All I knew for certain was that the air conditioning was not in use.

  I walked the hall past the dining room where Hammond had been strangled, where Beth now stood in a far corner talking into her phone. I passed a half-bath with a walk-in shower under the loft stairway. A square pantry gave to the master bedroom at left and the kitchen to the right. My powers of observation dwindled as I walked. Chemicals used a day earlier by the city’s forensic team were making my eyes water. The mint toothpaste wasn’t working. I might have been smarter to push wasabi up my nostrils. Even with cracked windows and the mint, the death stink still registered. Beth had done me a favor by advising me not to shower. I wondered if a complete interior repainting would fix the home’s odor, or if the IRS would allow me to write off my clothing. The prospect of inhaling fresh air drew me through the kitchen, out the back door to a small porch.

  A narrow deck with a short sloping roof bordered the rear wall of the house. I was surprised to find that Hammond had a remarkably clear view of my yard. I was never able to see though his hedge, but he could easily see the area around my shower and the classy little shed that housed my Triumph motorcycle. It was time to grow my own shrubs, consider a fence if it wouldn’t kill the breeze across my screened porch.

  I saw no ashtrays, but the back porch smelled like one. I caught a reflection of sunlight through the deck slats and knelt to lean far enough over the deck edge to see what was there. A beer can had rolled under the porch stairs. I jumped to the ground and looked carefully. Cigarette ashes were stuck to the can’s lid. Odd that the techs hadn’t found it, taken it for a DNA check against the FBI’s database system. Maybe an animal had nudged it out from under the house. All I knew was that someone had been banished to smoking outdoors. Looking around, I saw no cigarette butts. None under the porch, none in the tiny yard of bricks and spindly grass.

  I opened my phone, dialed Carmen’s cell.

  “I’m supposed to clock out for personal calls,” she said.

  “This is business. Did your recently deceased ex-co-worker smoke?”

  “He quit about five or six years ago,” she said. “For a while there he went from being a complete asshole to a total, all-encompassing asshole. Then he went back to being a regular, smoke-free asshole.”

  “That’s all I needed,” I said.

  “Maria asked me first thing this morning if you would take her to borrow that DVD from Jason Dudak.”

  “I’m on a shaky schedule. I’ll do it if I’m at home or as soon as I get home. Tell her to keep checking on me.”

  I hung up and again braved the inside of Hammond’s home.

  Aside from dirty dishes left over from two or three meals, the kitchen came off as the chow hub of a fitness nut and comfort-food maniac. It reminded me of the old stories about hippies who never ate meat but snorted cocaine every night.

  One side of the fridge held five Chek Vanilla Colas, a bucket of leftover Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a half-eaten twelve-pack of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. On the other side cottage cheese, a half-gallon of soy milk, orange-pineapple juice and a bowl of seedless grapes. One vegetable bin held bacon, a dozen eggs, hot dogs, and two kinds of sausages. The other bin contained plastic bottles of fish oil, niacin, multi-vitamins, glucosamine, saw palmetto capsules, and something called CoQ-10.

  I opened the freezer. A sealed sixteen-ounce plastic bowl of Hershey’s Kisses. A carton of Haagen-Dazs Mocha Almond Fudge. Six boxes of “No Sauce” Bird’s-Eye vegetables. Two boxes of Amy’s natural, organic meals. Magnets on the refrigerator door held a diagram of the food pyramid, the six food groups, a short article on the benefits of oat bran and a “healthy salad” recipe clipped from a magazine.

  I checked a cabinet. Kellogg’s Smart Start cereal, four metallic packets of tuna fish, green tea, whole wheat vermicelli, and Sunmaid raisins. In the next cabinet canned soup, instant ramen noodles, barbecue-flavored potato chips.

  Truly a bipolar food collection. Fat, salt and cholesterol versus anti-oxidants, regulators, neutralizers and gruel. There were no compromise foods, no low-fat ice cream or Healthy Choice cookies. It was an all-out war. Longer life versus clogged arteries and booming blood pressure.

  Risking a huge backlash I redialed Carmen’s cell.

  “What now?” she said.

  “This is all to get you off the hook,” I said. “You’re a suspect.”

  “Kiss my ass and tell that to the city.”

  “Eating habits?”

  “He brought unidentifiable things to microwave for lunch. Veggie this and germ that and meat-free burgers and we could never decide if the food smelled worse than he did after he ate it.”

  “Nothing in the junk category?” I said.

  “If he saw one of us eating M&Ms, the world would end. God help us if we grabbed a Whopper while running an errand. He had opinions.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Carmen had closed her phone before I said “you.”

  I want to claim that I did a thorough job in the loft. But the temperature was close to boiling and four pieces of furniture told me nothing. The “double” bed, smaller than a queen and larger than a cot, a small bureau, a nightstand and an old rattan rocker all looked less than fresh but unused. The bed had a mattress cover but no sheets or pillows. The nightstand held a cheap table lamp. The sole article of wall decor was a pen-and-ink drawing of a classic yawl in a driftwood frame. I retreated before I turned into a puddle of my own sweat.

  The small bathroom had a sink, an under-sink cabinet, a toilet and a walk-in shower. A rack above the toilet held towels and face cloths. I could see an assortment of soaps, shampoos and conditioners that filled a rack in the shower. Without entering I photographed a vertical view of the shower then a horizontal view
of the flooring and cabinet door. I caught a reflection off the floor close to my camera, so I elevated my hands and reshot. Still the odd brightness. I kneeled and looked closely. A sprinkling of dust or bath powder covered the floor. I tried another angle then checked the camera’s LCD window. Even on the tiny two-inch-square I could see blank spots in the powder, small foot-shaped smudges just inside the doorway. I took four more photos to ensure that the flash was catching what I could see.

  A king-size bed with six pillows dominated Hammond’s master bedroom. Set into his front wall was a wide closet with sliding doors. The rear wall had a slim French doorway to the outside deck. Sure as hell, the same great view of my yard. Stuck into a corner was a filing cabinet and an oak table where Hammond kept his Apple laptop computer. Beth had mentioned a missing hard drive. I could tell by the number of USB, Firewire and power wires to nowhere that more items were missing.

  I sat at Hammond’s desk, made another attempt to find the “zone.” I gave it a half-minute but didn’t feel a grand moment of insight. I slid open the top drawer of the two-section oak file cabinet. Behind a pile of his bills and bank statements was a file jacket full of folders in clear plastic sleeves. I leafed through and found instruction booklets, warranty cards and receipts for every damned thing he had purchased for years. The man was organized. He had pamphlets on everything from his Hitachi cordless drill and Braun coffee maker to his cordless phone, Craftsman electric hedge trimmer, a convection oven, Bose bookshelf speakers and two “some-assembly-required, do-it-your-damn-self” bookcases.

  Who could possibly need instructions for bookshelf speakers?

  Midway through the stack I found pay dirt. Installation guides for two hard drives, a one-terabyte Western Digital and a twenty-gig Toshiba. A guide to an old Epson printer. And booklets for a CD burner and a DVD burner, both LaCie brand.

  The only things from that group left on his desk were the low-capacity Toshiba and the printer. I pushed the chair aside, sat on the floor and slid under the desk to unscramble a jumble of wires that led to his power strip. After a minute of deciphering manufacturers’ labels on the step-down units, I concluded that the wires for both drives and both burners were still in place.

  With a new-looking MacBook Pro laptop on the desk, why would a thief swipe only the peripherals plus waste time by not stealing the power and connection hookups? Proper wires can cost as much as basic equipment. The other odd sight under the desk was the telephone cord. Hammond had used a dial-up service for the Internet rather than cable or some other high-speed mode.

  “What are you doing down there?”

  I explained my discoveries then led her to the small bathroom.

  “My camera flash lighted some powder.” I pointed to the floor in front of the cabinet. “It looks like one, maybe two sock or moccasin prints.”

  “Damn,” she said. “I asked those guys to bag up the carpet section that was right on top of those prints. It was their last effort before they quit the place. They didn’t check the floor under it.”

  “Why would the carpet be this close to the door? Wouldn’t it be closer to the cabinet and mirror or over by the shower? Unless someone in a hurry to grab the hair dryer kicked the rug. But that begs the question, why socks?”

  “No sneaker prints to run through our database,” said Watkins. “You’d be amazed how many break-ins are solved by identifying high-end shoes.”

  Beth went to her briefcase, came back with masking tape. She wrote her initials on the tape then stretched two lengths in an X across the doorway. “I’ll get a tech to come back and process that footprint.”

  “Was there anything of note in the medicine cabinet?”

  “A ten-year supply of Viagra,” she said.

  “You had those six pictures in the envelope, but there are no pictures displayed in the whole house.”

  “Why would that be suspicious behavior rather than choice?”

  “You confirmed that he lived here alone?” I said.

  “Two close friends volunteered information. Both said that was the case. There was a woman several years ago who owned a condo here in town. She spent half her time here, and he spent half his time at 1800 Atlantic. The romance went south and they went their separate ways. She confirmed it and no one’s contradicting.”

  “Did you ask the neighbors if anyone else was spending noticeable time here?”

  “The neighbors on each side are seasonal. One’s due back next week, the other after Christmas. Across the street, nobody knew or paid attention.”

  “What would you think looking into a fridge that held a bag of take-out from Kentucky Fried Chicken and a container of Dannon Plain Yogurt?”

  “The man had good intentions and bad cravings. How do you read it?”

  “I think someone who was a guest here—short-term, long-term, whatever—knew a time when Hammond wouldn’t be home and started to rip him off. He interrupted the thief. The murder wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “But if this person panicked, killed the guy, then it stands to reason that the perp left in a hurry. Why no evidence?”

  “The killer knew he had time and knew how to clean up a crime scene. But he didn’t think to cover the fact that he was staying here. Or he ran out of time.”

  “We got dozens of fingerprints, hair samples, other sources of DNA.”

  “Did your people find any cigarette butts?”

  She shook her head, pondering.

  I told her about the beer can out back, asked her to bag it for prints and DNA. “If someone stole computer hardware, they might be back for the wiring. Is there a night guard posted on the place?”

  “Only until I finish with the scene. Once we study the bathroom floor, we’re done.”

  “What do want me to do with these pictures?”

  “Have you got backup media for your camera?”

  “The one in the camera’s a four-gigabyte card. I’ve got a couple two gig cards at the house.”

  Beth returned to the foyer and took a three-inch by five-inch Photo Safe from her briefcase. “Give me yours and bill us for a replacement. I’ll dump your photos onto this portable drive and seal your chip in an evidence bag. That way, back in the office, I can drag the pictures from this thing to my hard drive and back them up on our system. We’ll have something to carry into court if the digital prints are challenged.”

  “When you open them, don’t resave them as JPEGs. Save them as TIFFs so you don’t degrade the quality.”

  “What?”

  I handed her the memory from my camera. “Call me. Don’t launch your photo program until I talk you through it.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  The uniformed officer from out front stepped inside the door. “Detective, the county is here.”

  “Hold them off,” said Watkins. “Tell them to come back in an hour.”

  “Frinzi used to work for Liska,” I said. “He’ll let the county in.”

  She blew air out the side of her mouth. “I’ll go defend the fort. You didn’t call your girlfriend, did you?”

  “I had to get permission to work for you.”

  Her face fell. “You didn’t… oh, right,” said Beth. “If you want people to really take your bait, you better thin out your bullshit.”

  “We need to talk about Bay Point,” I said. “How about a late lunch?”

  “You sound like you’re scraping for inside info.”

  “You make me sound sneaky. I just want an overview on ground rules, seating charts, manpower and contingency plans.”

  “I hate to say it,” she said, “but I don’t know. I was fishing too.”

  I handed her my invoice. “Let’s ride our cycles up the Keys when this crap lets up.”

  “The crap never lets up,” she said. “Let’s run our lives so that riding always comes first.”

  A woman after my heart.

  12

  I had forty minutes to kill before I had to meet Copeland Cormier at St. Paul’s Church on Duval. Sam
Wheeler’s friend Captain Turk had been on my mind from the moment Sam asked me not to bother him unless “odd shit” went down. But I hadn’t taken Sam’s directive to mean that I couldn’t drop by Turk’s boat slip, give him a chance to confide in me. Any “odd” detail would be better than a blank slate. I was fresh out of sources, kicking myself for not having taken Catherman’s call before I left to take pictures. My search for Sally, from the start, was a search for peripheral info. Cormier, on behalf of Sam, had asked me to take the gig. Sam, for reasons he had kept to himself, had asked me to forge on, to keep looking for a dead girl. Cutting Bob Catherman out of the loop was a mistake. Blame it on my hustle to help Beth Watkins. I needed my brain to catch up with my actions.

  And I wanted to ride the motorcycle. A quick run to Turk’s slip, a fast chat, should eat up a half hour.

  Years ago, in the spirit of job security, to keep my cameras and lenses out of the crackhead barter system, I built a lockbox into the false base of a homemade waist-high cabinet. It sits in my bedroom, looks, as it should, like the result of bad carpentry. It’s too ugly and heavy to steal but it’s kept my gear mine during two break-ins in the past ten years. I stashed my stuff in its spot, grabbed my helmet and walked out back.

  One look at Jerry Hammond’s fence reminded me that fragments of my life had been on display. It wasn’t a big deal that a stranger might have spied my bare ass as I entered the outdoor shower. That was their fault for looking. But the privacy of my guests and safety of my home needed fixing. As soon as I could find time.

  The light tackle slips at Garrison Bight are a mile from the lane. There was no way to avoid traffic. I dodged the Palm Avenue bridge by ducking southward on Eisenhower and going left on North Roosevelt and it still took me ten minutes to get there.

  I didn’t see Flats Broke as I drove up US 1. There was always the chance that Turk was on the water, earning a day’s pay. When I eased into the center lane, to turn left into the charter boat lot, I saw that Captain Runaground’s, the floating restaurant next to the road, had blocked my view of the white Ford Crown Victoria snugged up to Turk’s dock box. The cruiser was unmarked except for the inverted flat black spotlight next to the driver’s-side windshield pillar. But I was stuck. If I tried to rejoin the fast lane, I’d be pancaked. I had no choice but to turn.