Dead Center (The Still Waters Suspense Series Book 2)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “I wonder how much of a hardship losing his job has been for this guy,” Evan said, as they passed a fenced yard where two toddlers argued over a Little Tykes truck.

  “He’s probably okay,” Meyers said. “House is paid for.”

  “You know him?” Evan asked.

  “I know her,” Meyers answered. “From high school. Not real well, but enough to talk to at the last reunion. Her mom came into some life insurance, gave Cindy and him the money for the house a few years back.”

  “Makes you wonder why a guy with a paid off house is stupid enough to do what he did.”

  “I think stupid’s the key word, there,” Meyers said. “That and arrogance. The guy didn’t make much of an impression on me when she introduced us. Twelve-oh-one, guess that’s it on the left.”

  The Babcock residence was a ranch with a fake stone front and dark-stained wood trim. It looked like thousands of other bland, contractor-designed houses, but it was well kept. A sedan and a fairly-new pickup occupied the open two-car garage.

  “Looks like he might be home after all,” Meyers said.

  Evan pulled into the driveway and eyed the house.

  “You thinking he might try to run?” Meyers asked.

  “If he does, he’s an idiot,” Evan said. “We don’t have anything on him yet.”

  “It’d make our job a lot easier,” Meyers said.

  Evan thought it might take Meyers a minute or two to get his big frame up to speed, but he also decided he’d never want a guy that size chasing him.

  “Tell you what,” Evan said, “let’s just go knock on the door and see what happens.”

  What happened was, a pretty blonde woman in her mid-thirties answered the door with a baby on her hip. She seemed mildly annoyed when she saw Meyer’s uniform, then smiled when she looked at his face.

  “Hey. Carter Meyers, right?”

  “Colin.”

  “Right.” Her smile faded as she looked Evan over, but she didn’t look particularly worried. He introduced himself, and she expressed shock and mock modesty that the actual sheriff himself would drive all the way across the bridge just to talk to lil’ ol’ her.

  “You know,” she said, with an impressive eyeroll, “Nelson and Seminole made a pretty nice chunk of change off those policies. Probably just as much as we got. I didn’t see him refunding any of that money.”

  “Ma’am,” Evan said, “That’s not what we’re here about. Is Mr. Babcock home? We’d like to speak with him if we could.”

  “He’s busy,” she said. “Haven’t we been through enough already?”

  Before Evan could respond, Meyers spoke up. “Cindy, we need to ask your husband some questions about something totally different. It’s serious. Please go get Phillip.”

  She glared at him for a moment, then finally said, “Well, you might as well sit on the sofa so you don’t let all the damn heat out.” She flapped her free arm in the general direction of the living room, then marched toward the back of the house.

  Evan raised an eyebrow at Meyers, Meyers nodded at Evan, and the two of them entered, closing the door behind them, and moved into the living room. They did not sit, however, but stood near the picture window as they waited for Babcock to make an appearance.

  After a few minutes, and a few harsh words muffled by a closed door, he did. He was a tall man with a sharp nose and a slightly hen-pecked appearance. He wore khakis and a polo shirt and was barefoot. Clearly not getting ready for a job interview.

  “Now what?” he asked, more resigned than antagonistic.

  “Mr. Babcock,” Evan said, “I’m Sheriff Caldwell, this is Deputy Meyers. We need to ask you a couple questions.”

  Babcock motioned to the couch, then sat heavily in a plush recliner. Evan and Meyers settled at either end of the sofa. From somewhere down the hall, Cindy yelled, “I’m putting the baby down, so keep it quiet out there.”

  “What kind of questions?” Babcock asked, paying no mind to his wife.

  “You were recently let go from Seminole Mutual, correct?” Evan asked.

  Babcock nodded.

  “Can you tell us about that?” Evan asked.

  “No,” Babcock said. “I didn’t do anything illegal, I just had a different interpretation on some of the company’s guidelines. But, my lawyer says I’m not supposed to talk about it, just to be safe. If this is about that, you’ll need to talk to him, not me.”

  “How long ago was that?” Evan asked.

  “Well,” Babcock said, turning to look out the front picture window at the stark blue sky, “we’re sitting here in the middle of January, and they sent me packing end of October. So…two, two-and-a-half months? You can do the math.”

  Evan nodded. Beside him, Meyers scribbled notes on a pad. Evan asked, “Mr. Babcock, without divulging anything that might get your lawyer cross, can you think of anybody who might be upset at you? A client, or perhaps someone up the chain from you at Seminole?”

  “Shoot, everybody at Seminole was upset at me, pretty much all the time,” Babcock said dismissively. “First they were mad because I wasn’t selling enough. Then they were mad because I was selling too much.”

  “What about your clients?” Evan asked. “After you were let go, did you get any threatening calls or letters?”

  Babcock sat up a bit straighter, leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. “No,” he said slowly. “Why are you here? This isn’t about insurance, is it? Something else is going on.”

  “Yes, it is,” Evan said. “I want you to think very carefully. Did you receive threats of any kind in the last few months of your employment at Seminole Mutual, or after leaving there?”

  “What do you mean?’” Babcock asked. Evan noticed that his wife, Cindy, had silently slipped back into earshot just inside the hall. Her nostrils flared slightly, and her eyes were keen.

  Evan said nothing, He let the gravity of his previous question hang in the air.

  After a moment, Babcock said, “No, I didn’t get any threats. I mean, nothing serious. Every once in a while, we get some ridiculous claim and the customer thinks he can bully his way around the facts, you know, and when that doesn’t work, they usually make a lot of noise, but nothing ever comes of it.”

  “Has that happened recently?” Evan asked.

  Babcock looked back to the window, thinking. Eventually, he shook his head. “No, not that I can recall.” He paused, then asked, “What are you talking about?”

  Meyers said, “How many times you been arrested, Mr. Babcock?”

  “What?” he said, turning his head and cocking it slightly. “I didn’t get arrested. I told you, I got fired, but I didn’t do anything illegal.”

  “So,” Meyers said, flipping through his notepad, “you’ve never been arrested?”

  “Well, once, but that was twenty years ago,” Babcock said. “Maybe more.”

  “Twenty-two years,” Evan said. “You attacked someone up in Tallahassee. What can you tell us about that?”

  “What? I didn’t attack… Listen,” he leaned forward and licked his lips. “Listen, I don’t know what you heard, or what they told you, but that was just kid stuff. A bunch of us got into a ruckus at a college football game. The cops had to break it up, but it was really no big deal.”

  “Assault with a deadly weapon is a big deal, Mr. Babcock,” Meyers said.

  Babcock flopped back in his chair and let out an exasperated sigh. “What is it that you want? Yes, I got fired. Yes, I got arrested once for being a drunk football fan. No, I can’t think of any other publicly humiliating events in my life for you to ask me about. So, if there’s nothing else, I’d like to get back to my job search.” He gestured in the direction of the bedroom.

  “What was the deadly weapon?” Meyers asked.

  “It wasn’t a weapon, it was a beer bottle,” Babcock said. “And it wasn’t deadly, that’s why they dropped the charges.”

  “Also, because your mom was sleeping with the district attorney,” Cindy said from th
e hall.

  “Really, Cindy!” Babcock said, “Do you really need to bring that up now?”

  “It’s the truth, ain’t it?” she said. “That’s what they’re here for. Just the facts, ma’am. Right?”

  “They’re not here to ask who my mom was sleeping with,” Babcock said, craning his neck around to look down the hall at her. “You want me to start giving them the facts about your sister?”

  “Wait a minute!” Evan said, holding up a hand. “Let’s try to stay on one topic at a time, okay?” He looked at Cindy until she sighed and slumped her shoulders, then turned back to her husband. “Mr. Babcock, do you keep in touch with your former coworkers at Seminole?”

  “No, why would I? They all acted like they were so much more ethical than me.”

  Evan reached into his jacket and pulled out a copy of Jake Bellamy’s license photo. He held it out to Babcock. “Do you know this man?”

  Babcock took the photo. “No, why? Is this the guy you think might be after me?”

  Evan took the picture back from him. “No, he’s the man who replaced you.”

  Babcock shrugged. “So, what does he have to do with anything? I hope he’s very happy with Nelson and the rest of those idiots.”

  “He’s not. He’s dead.”

  Babcock’s eyes widened. His wife suddenly appeared back in the doorway. “Who’s dead?”

  Evan kept his eyes on Babcock, whose mouth had dropped open just a bit.

  “Is that why you think someone is after me?”

  “I didn’t say anyone was,” Evan said. “We’re just looking at all possibilities, including those related to Seminole.”

  “Well…I’m not related to Seminole anymore.”

  “Where were you early Saturday morning?” Evan asked him.

  “How early?”

  “Between five and seven.”

  “I was at the Homewood Suites in Pensacola,” Babcock answered. “I checked out after breakfast, around eight.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Why?”

  “Please just answer the question, sir.”

  “I was visiting my brother. He wanted me to come work with him in his construction company.”

  Evan looked at Babcock’s wife, still standing in the doorway. “Were you with him, ma’am?”

  “No. I hate those people. His whole family’s a bunch of rednecks.”

  “Cindy—” Babcock started.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, ignoring him. “Is this about the guy that got stabbed?”

  “Who got stabbed?” Babcock asked, like he was losing the thread of the conversation.

  “Yes, this man is the man who was killed Saturday morning,” Evan said. Babcock wasn’t their guy. “So, you were here alone Saturday morning?” Evan asked the wife.

  “Yeah. I mean, the kids were with me.” She popped a fist onto her hip. “So?”

  Evan stood up. Meyers seemed a little surprised by this but was just one beat behind him.

  “You folks probably don’t have anything to worry about,” Evan said. “Like I said, we’re just trying to cover all the bases.”

  “Well, are we in danger, or what?” Babcock asked.

  “Probably not,” Evan answered. “Just be aware and let us know if anything makes you nervous.”

  By the looks on their faces, Evan was the one making them nervous. He didn’t care; he’d been, he’d heard, he was ready to go.

  Five minutes later, they pulled out of the Babcocks’ driveway.

  “When we get back to the office, check with Homewood Suites and see when he checked out.”

  “You think he might have done it?” Meyers asked.

  “No, I don’t. He seemed pretty convinced that we were there because he was at risk. He could be a good actor, but I doubt it.” Evan pulled his visor down. The sun was like needles at this time of day. “Also, there’s no way he wears a size eleven shoe. He’s a nine at best.”

  “Man, I didn’t even look,” Meyers said, slapping his thigh. “You know, if I was a bad guy in this situation, I’d go buy a pair of shoes two sizes too big and stuff ’em.”

  “Yeah, but you’re smart,” Evan said. “As much as I would like Babcock to be our guy, he just isn’t that bright.”

  NINE

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Evan pulled into the Gulf County Medical Examiner’s Office. It was a small, tan building that could pass for a dentist or accountant’s office if someone didn’t catch the unobtrusive sign. The sign itself was practically camouflaged, as if by hiding the ME’s office, the county could convince residents that there were, in fact, no dead people in town.

  Evan was waved through to the back, where he found Danny looming over a stainless-steel table. A small iPhone speaker on the counter beside him was playing something by The Buggles. Evan had never been a big fan, so he couldn’t remember the song, but it wasn’t what he would have expected, either from Danny or the morgue.

  There were three other tables in the room. Two were empty and one held a body covered with an opaque plastic sheet. The feet of the body over which Danny was laboring were facing Evan and he could see that they were small and wrinkled; clearly not Bellamy.

  “What have you got there, Danny?” Evan asked.

  The kid jumped just enough to notice, but he smiled when he looked up at Evan. “Oh, hey, Sheriff!” he said, then exchanged his smile for a look of sorrow, which was sincere despite its speed. “Neighbor found this poor little lady dead in her La-Z-Boy yesterday. It’s looking like heart failure.”

  “Probably as good a way as any,” Evan said, then took a sip from his bottled water.

  “Right?” Danny asked. He started pulling off his gloves. “I have serious phobias now about how I don’t want to die, right? For instance, I’m definitely not in favor of either a motorcycle or automobile accident, in particular, anything involving one of those flatbeds full of lumber or big iron pipes. I don’t have to worry about plunging to a fiery death from the sky because I don’t fly—Jesus said ‘Lo, I am with you always,’ so I stay on the ground, you know?”

  Evan didn’t bother agreeing or disagreeing. He just drank his water as he watched the kid toss his gloves in the biohazard can nearby and pull another pair out of a box on the counter.

  “I’m also against dying from TB, any kind of worm or other squirmy parasite, Ebola, and testicular cancer.”

  Danny pulled the plastic sheet up over the old woman and headed for the other occupied table. Evan followed.

  “This is my second year, right, and I also did some volunteer medic work in Haiti, the DR, and Mexico. As a consequence, I’ve got a long list of CODs that give me nightmares, you follow?”

  “I do.”

  Danny leaned on the table that Evan presumed held Jake Bellamy and sighed. “It should go without saying that stabbing is in the vicinity of the top of that list. If it wasn’t already, it would be now.”

  “Bellamy’s pretty bad,” Evan commiserated.

  “Right?” Danny asked, his expression one of dramatic relief, like everyone else he’d talked to had disagreed. “So, speaking of Jacob, he’s a mess.”

  Danny pulled the plastic sheeting down and folded it just above Bellamy’s knees. Evan no longer cringed at the sight of a body sporting the enormous Y-incision made for autopsy, but he couldn’t help wincing at the sight of Jake Bellamy. One would think that a victim looked much worse covered in blood, but in fact, once the body was cleaned up and its wounds were left bare, it was much more appalling, at least to Evan.

  “Yeah, so—oh, hey!” Danny cocked his head like he’d just heard his mom calling him, then started doing some weird jerky thing. For just a second, Evan was surprised to think that Danny was epileptic, but then he realized he was just dancing.

  “Johnny…” he sang along in a breathy voice. “Riding on the monorail…”

  He stopped jerking as abruptly as he’d started and looked down at Bellamy. “My favorite. So, anyway, Jacob did not have an easy de
ath.” He grabbed what looked like a long pair of tweezers and started tapping gently at the cluster of narrow wounds on Bellamy’s torso. “As you can see, we have nine separate stab wounds here, with several overlapping. Judging by blood loss and tissue samples, I’m going to wager that he was alive for at least the majority of these. At least three wounds would have killed him at some point on their own. They punctured the liver. But he could also have died eventually from a combination of blood loss and two punctures to the upper right lobe of the lungs.”

  “Okay,” Evan said, then took a drink.

  “Meanwhile, as you saw Saturday, we have numerous defensive wounds on the hands, both back and front, including a through and through in the left palm. The rest of the wounds to the hands and forearms are slicing motions. Only one of them has any real depth to it.”

  “What does that tell you?” Evan asked.

  “Oh, well, he definitely wasn’t in the mood to die,” Danny said without humor. “He put up a good fight. I find it interesting that there weren’t any slashes on the torso, though.”

  “I think you said that at the scene,” Evan said.

  “Yeah. Because you would think if someone was fighting back, that the killer would just be swinging wild, right? Because to me, this doesn’t look like a seriously organized thing. He just hammered away here until the guy was dead, but the stab wounds themselves are pretty concentrated.”

  Evan didn’t disagree, though he wasn’t sure it meant anything, except that it wasn’t a professional hit or even a very experienced killer. His impression was that there was a lot of anger, and maybe even fear, behind the frenzy of wounds. “What can you tell me about the weapon?”

  “Well, measurements of the wounds tell me you’re looking for an eight-inch, very narrow blade. Also, based on the nicks to the fifth and sixth ribs that correlate with two of the flesh wounds, it’s a double-edged blade. So, I’m thinking switchblade. A stiletto, actually. No flaws or deviations I could find, so I would say the blade is new or has been extremely well cared for and maintained.”

  “Okay,” Evan said. “What can you tell me about the person wielding it? Anything?”