Dead Center (The Still Waters Suspense Series Book 2)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  He didn’t have the emotional energy for her just then, so, when he spotted her tending her tables and flipping her ponytail like she was taming lions with it, he dialed the number on the wooden sign and called in his order rather than go inside. Shrimp tacos with jalapeno bacon marmalade sounded interesting enough.

  He scanned through stations on the radio for a few minutes while waiting, then shut it off and popped open his laptop. The Jake Bellamy file, what little there was of it, was open. He had memorized the names Jake’s widow had provided, local relatives, friends, coworkers. He had reviewed the photographs too often already, to the point that he had been somewhat desensitized to the violence they portrayed. This time, as he flipped through the images, he used a program that automatically inverted them, causing each to be less familiar to his eye. He hoped the difference in angle might lead to some new detail he had missed that may have been lost due to his familiarity with the photos.

  He studied each shot, trying to put himself back at the scene, conjuring the sounds, the smells, the texture of the air. Nothing popped in the first dozen photos. He’d been through them twice more when there was a rap on his window. He turned to see Jordan leaning over to look in at him, a Styrofoam box in her hand.

  Evan hit the button to lower the glass. “Hi, Jordan,” he said. “I could’ve come in to get that.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” she said, leaning further into his car, “I needed an excuse to step out…Oh sick, is that that guy who got stabbed in the park?”

  He quickly shut his laptop.

  She stared at him for a moment then straightened a bit. “Well, I guess it ain’t really my business, anyway, huh?”

  “How much for the tacos?” Evan asked.

  “Oh,” she looked surprised. “It’s on the house, Evan.”

  “No, Jordan. It’s not on the house,” he said with mock patience. “We’re not allowed to accept gifts based on our law enforcement status.”

  “Well, my boss says I can’t charge you for it.” She looked at him with a hint of a pout and eyes that seemed to ask how ever can we resolve this dilemma? “You don’t want me to get fired, do you?”

  “No, I just want to eat my lunch,” Evan said. He pulled a twenty out of his wallet and pressed it into her hand. “Here, take this. Call it a tip.”

  “Awww!” She drew it out like a ten-year-old seeing a newborn puppy. “You’re such a good guy. She practically dove through his open window to hug him.

  “Jordan!” he barked, nearly dropping his lunch.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, withdrawing, but smiling all the same. “It’s just, you’re so great…and, you really looked like you needed a hug, is all.”

  Evan tried for a kind smile but shook his head. “I’m sure I do.”

  She threw him an enigmatic smile, stepping away from his window. “I put some key lime in there for you.”

  Evan looked at the Styrofoam box. “Thanks. You staying out of trouble?”

  “I don’t have time for trouble, between work and my baby girl,” she said. “I’m being good.”

  “Good. I’ve got to go,” Evan said. He pushed the window up button. “Goodbye, Jordan,” he said before it closed all the way.

  “Goodbye, Evan!” she called, waving and giggling as he pulled out of the lot.

  “We put the crazy in Krazyfish,” he muttered, shaking his head. But the tacos smelled delicious, kicking his appetite back into gear. And Jordan, for all her lack of discretion, immaturity, and general boundary issues, had managed to take the edge off the irritating emptiness that had plagued his day.

  From the parking lot, a right would take him home to the marina and his boat, a left would take him to the Sheriff’s Office. Evan decided that on a Sunday afternoon, his best chance at solitude would be behind his closed office door. With no thought beyond that, he hooked a left.

  Only a few other cars sat in the SO parking lot. In the lobby, Tosh Bradley slouched behind the front desk, arms folded, legs crossed. Evan understood, at first glance, that the kid’s dark glasses served only one purpose, they hid his eyes, so no one would know he was asleep. It might have been a more effective ploy if he wasn’t snoring.

  His iPhone was propped sideways with its back against the telephone, live streaming college football. Evan thought it sounded like an exciting game, based on the announcer’s voice, but apparently not quite exciting enough to keep Tosh awake.

  Tosh had been employed by the SO as a mechanic/handyman for the past two years before being selected to attend the Law Enforcement Academy. Two weeks into his training, he had broken his wrist in a Defensive Tactics class and had to drop out. They’d let him take a second crack at it in a few months once his wrist had healed, but in the meantime, he was out of luck –- the mechanic job had been filled shortly after he vacated it.

  Evan had agreed to keep him on as Mission Support, partly to tide him over, and partly to mitigate some of the distrust and unease that had resulted from Evan’s sudden promotion and subsequent trashing of the former boss’s formerly beloved reputation. Mission Support was a fancy title that meant Tosh got all the jobs nobody else wanted and that didn’t require a badge and gun. That included front desk duty on Sunday afternoons.

  Evan managed to make it past the front desk without waking its occupant. He could hear a two-finger typist punching out a report somewhere in the bullpen but didn’t look in to see who it was. He walked straight to his office, his steps silent on the beige industrial carpet, past Vi’s empty desk, and closed his office door behind him.

  When this office had belonged to Sheriff Hutchens, the walls had been crowded with framed certificates, diplomas, community posters featuring the formerly popular Sheriff Hutchens, and, of course, several large photographs of Hutch shaking hands with various politicians, business leaders, star athletes, and one movie star. These had been collected by a representative of the family shortly after his case had been closed.

  Evan did not have much in the way of wall décor, and not much interest in getting any. He had ordered a custom leather desk chair, which had arrived a few days back. It was a duplicate of the one he had used back in Brevard County and its familiarity relaxed him. His only other attempt at personalizing the office, at least so far, was a three-by-six corkboard he had intended to use for organizing leads, tips, persons of interest, and suspects when working larger cases. Until yesterday, there hadn’t been any large cases on the books, so initially, he had simply tacked up wanted posters – now known as BOLOs or Be On the Look Out’s – just so that the board wouldn’t seem useless.

  As Evan sat down and opened his lunch, he glanced up at the BOLO board and couldn’t help smiling. Every deputy on staff grinned back at him, each with a wrong –- or ridiculously fake –- name pinned beneath their photograph, and each wanted for some truly embarrassing or out of character crimes.

  Within a week of taking over the office, and installing the BOLO board, Evan had inadvertently called a deputy by the wrong name during an all office meeting. The following day, during morning muster, he again called the same deputy by the wrong name, though it was a different wrong name that time. When he arrived at work the next morning, the pictures had been pinned to his board. Each deputy’s name had been written in thick black marker on Post-it notes and pinned below their photo. At the top of the board, the pranksters had pinned the lower half of an old surveillance BOLO which read, “If you can identify any of these subjects, please call the Gulf County Sheriff’s Office. You WILL remain completely anonymous.”

  From the first day it appeared, the new BOLO board had been a source of intense amusement to most of the deputies and other office staff. The deputy’s names were always being scrambled or replaced with joke names. Evan had never mentioned it, which made the responsible parties nuts, but he made no effort to stop it, nor did he intend to. If he needed a corkboard to arrange leads, he’d go buy a new one. This board was the first of many jabs and counterstrikes he and his new team would engage in over the
next few months testing each other’s tolerance, each other’s spirit, building a foundation that someday might be able to support a structure as tenuous as trust.

  Evan returned his attention to the desktop. It was clear except for a couple dozen properly organized, neatly stacked files. He pulled the thick Bellamy file toward him, then straightened and reorganized the rest, shifting the stack to the right a few inches. Not only did this make room for his lunch, the process also grounded him.

  With the desk properly cleared, he opened the Krazyfish box and laid out his lunch. Jordan had had the foresight to pack the pie in its own container inside the box, which surprised Evan. And, he was very glad she did. Her ambush hug had dumped the contents of his taco into his coconut shrimp, which was a tragedy, but not beyond mitigation. He opened the dessert box and was relieved to see that the Key Lime pie wasn’t one of the ridiculously green fakes pawned off on unsuspecting tourists.

  The tacos were surprisingly good, if somewhat messy. He ate with his left hand, leaning over the box for each bite, as he flipped through the Bellamy file with his right.

  The first file contained pretty much every bit of data available on Jacob Bellamy in the public record, which turned out to be a significant pile of paper. As a successful insurance middle-manager, Jake had his personal finances well organized. He had a retirement account in the early stages of development, a few thousand in savings, a little less in checking. The income was stable, the expenditures were modest and uninteresting. Beyond the house, his only debts were two low-balance credit cards and an auto loan for one of their vehicles. The other vehicle had been paid off a year ago. The file held statements from savings accounts and college funds he had established for both of his daughters. He had a healthy life insurance policy but, unless he was a complete ass, it wasn’t enough to be killed for. If money had been the motive, he was worth far more alive than dead.

  Of course, if the wife was running around on him, that would be a different story. Evan popped a shrimp in his mouth, crunching through the coconut crust, and considered the widow Bellamy. Nothing about her reaction gave any reason for Evan to suspect her. That didn’t mean she was cleared – some people were better actors than Danny Coyle – but the feel of the whole encounter testified against her involvement. A stay-at-home mom in a new town was very unlikely to have the time, energy, interest, or availability to start an affair, fall so deep and so hard for the new guy as to conspire to kill her husband, all while keeping her house tidy and her kids well-behaved.

  He opened Karen’s file beside Jake’s. Her finances were just as stable and uninteresting as his. She had no accounts listed under her maiden name. She had no accounts with a billing address different from her home address. The officer who had compiled this report stated that none of her social media activity seemed suspicious. Evan flipped a tab on Jake’s file and saw a similar note about his social media accounts. Neither had any criminal history or civil suits. This was a first marriage for both of them. None of the obvious motives jumped out at him.

  Karen had provided names of everyone Jake interacted with on a regular basis in the Port St. Joe area, as well as his boss and coworkers back in Tallahassee. Vi had processed about a dozen of these names and stuffed printouts into individual files for each. Evan flipped through these as he finished his shrimp, not really expecting to find anything but to lay a foundation for the investigation to come.

  By the time the tacos and shrimp were gone and the pie was looking tasty, he had skimmed everything on his desk. He had highlighted one or two items for deeper consideration later, but for the most part, it seemed like Jake Bellamy had no enemies, had no addictions or compulsions, had no high-risk behaviors or associates. According to the reports, there was no reason for Jake to be dead.

  Evan closed the files and reorganized them on the left side of his desk. He shut the box containing the remnants of his lunch and set it aside, and pulled the pie closer to him. He had just lifted his fork to take a bite when his direct line rang. On the second ring, he answered.

  “Caldwell.”

  “This is Vi,” said a voice that would have made Churchill jealous.

  “Yes, Vi, what can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Caldwell,” she replied. It was never Sheriff, never Evan. He was okay with that. “Go home.”

  He stared at the phone for a moment, trying to figure out how to respond, or how she had known he was there, or whether she had the authority to tell him to go home. In the background, he heard the faint strains of Crosby, Stills & Nash singing Southern Cross, one of his favorites, and a cat meowing plaintively. For just a second, he wondered if she was on his boat. Before he could ask her, she had hung up.

  With the lunch hour past and Monday approaching, the marina had quieted down significantly by the time Evan got home. Boaters visiting for the weekend from other points Floridian were packing up and pulling out. The Dockside Grill had quieted, its crowd reduced to just the full-time liveaboards relaxing with a beer or cocktail, and non-boating tourists having one last snack or drink before hitting the road.

  By the time he was halfway down his pier, Evan had decided that he’d be happier cleaning up the boat while out on the bay than he would sitting there in the marina, so he changed out of his work clothes, threw on some cargo pants and a long-sleeved tee shirt, and prepared to get out on the water for the first time in too many days.

  He usually took the fishing boat out when he wanted to get on the water. It was a 2001 Sea Fox 257 center console that he’d bought used from a RICO sale back in Brevard. He’d sold his car and kept Hannah’s Pilot because it was paid for, but he’d hung onto the Sea Fox for his mental health. Today, he wanted to take the whole house out. He hadn’t done so since he’d anchored out in the bay for a weekend, over a month ago, so he went through his checklist carefully before firing up the engines. Sarah got his lines for him but declined to go out with him when he’d invited her. She was studying for her ACT, and he figured that was as good a reason as she could have.

  It was a windless day, and there was almost no chop to the bay. Evan was in no hurry to be anywhere specific, and he kept the Chris-Craft at fifteen knots or so. She topped out at thirty, but he’d only run her that fast once, to get the cobwebs out.

  Once he was out in the bay proper, he saw that the cool weather had kept most people on land. There were only a few other boats out; a small ketch that was on the hook, and a few sport fishers looking for redfish or just an excuse to kick back with a few beers.

  Evan decided to take her around the northern tip of the peninsula into the Gulf and had just changed his heading when he saw a flash of black down in the open hatch located over the V-berth. It was gone, and then it was back, and Plutes slid out of the hatch and walked toward the bow.

  Evan cursed under his breath, put engine one in reverse, effectively shifting into neutral, then jumped from the ladder down to the aft deck, tossed himself over the rail to the deck below, and made his way along the starboard side as quickly as he could.

  When he got to the bow, Plutes was sitting pretty as you please, between the open hatch and the windlass. He turned his head regally as he heard Evan approach, then flattened his ears and ran to the port side as Evan got closer. Evan waited for him to slide off and into the water, which would heap even more coals of spousal guilt onto his head, but the cat kept his footing and disappeared around the corner. Evan followed.

  The cat was gone by the time he made the port side. Evan hadn’t heard a splash, but he looked over the side anyway before hurrying to the aft deck. There was no sign of Plutes there, and Evan mentally kicked himself for forgetting to close the forward hatch as he again walked forward on the starboard side. Plutes was back on the bow, sitting tall like he was waiting for fireworks to start. Evan got to within a foot of the cat before it looked over its shoulder, but Evan managed to scoop him up anyway.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he muttered, newly surprised at how heavy Plutes actually was. He to
ok him through the salon and down to the V-berth. Evan used the room for storage since he never had guests; mainly plastic totes of Hannah’s belongings stacked neatly on the full-sized berth. Evan could see that it was an easy twelve inches or so from the top of the tallest tote to the hatch. He dropped Plutes on an empty spot on the berth, then reached up and secured the hatch.

  On his way back out, he double-checked that all of the windows were closed, then made sure to close the glass door behind him. He couldn’t help thinking that it would be just like his life for him to lose the cat in the Gulf a week before his wife finally awoke. Somehow, in his imagination, it was the cat she asked for first. Then he felt ashamed, because, contrary to the implications made by her affair, he knew Hannah loved him.

  Once Evan had dropped anchor and spent about an hour on routine cleaning, he fell into a peaceful state close to meditation. The mindless rhythm of the work, the gentle lap of the water against the hull, the occasional cry of a gull, all worked to calm his mind. He spent half his time focusing on the facts of the Bellamy case, and the other half trying not to think about it.

  It was close to five by the time he’d finished work, had a cup of coffee on the aft deck, and then gone ahead and pulled anchor. As he made his way back along the port side toward the bridge ladder, he passed Plutes sitting on top of the teak built-in, staring out the window. The cat gave him a baleful look as he passed.

  EIGHT

  MONDAY MORNING, Evan and Goff sat across the desk from each other in Evan’s office, sipping hot beverages. Both beverages could be called ‘coffee,’ but one likely wouldn’t recognize the other if they met in the wild. Evan’s travel mug transported his café con leche in style and comfort. Goff’s drink felt right at home in a paper cup. It was as black and occluded as old motor oil, but he claimed to enjoy it.

  Three copies of the Jake Bellamy file sat in a neat stack between them. Evan had asked Vi to make duplicate files so that each team member would have one. The master file would be retained in Evan’s office and updated each morning with the prior day’s developments.