by A. E. Howe
Chapter Nine
A text from Pete let me know that Isaac Nichols was coming in at three for a formal interview. I decided that I had enough time to check out one or two of the witnesses that Deputy Edwards had talked to. I called dispatch and asked them to have Edwards meet me in the shopping center parking lot.
A few minutes later he pulled up to my car, driver’s side to driver’s side in the classic cops-bullshitting-with-each-other formation.
“I found two people who thought they’d heard something that night,” Edwards said, giving me their addresses. He was short and dark haired. He looked more like an English teacher than a deputy, and he wrote his reports more like a novelist than a cop.
“I wouldn’t bother with the first one. The guy was coming home from his job in Tallahassee and thought he might or might not have heard something. Now the other one was your classic Agatha Christie, nosy old lady type. You might know her. Maggie Gavin. She made it a big point to tell me that she was the founder of the local neighborhood watch.”
The name sounded familiar. “What’d she say?”
“She was being pretty cagey, trying to leverage the information for some face-to-face time with someone higher up the food chain than me.”
“You’re kidding!”
“She’s a piece of work. I had to deal with her last year when some kids were busting up mailboxes. Phone calls at two in the morning. I kid you not. She hears all and knows all. Go by, tell her you’re an investigator and the sheriff’s son, and you’ll probably get an earful. But I wouldn’t doubt she makes stuff up, so take it all with a big grain of salt.”
“I can’t wait,” I said, then added, “Did you get a chance to pull any of that CCTV footage yet?”
“Yeah, I left the copies on your desk. I looked through them and didn’t see much.”
I thanked him then steeled myself for the meeting with our local Miss Marple.
I pulled up to a small block house painted a garish blue with white shutters. The yard was well kept and the flowerbeds neatly trimmed, ready for warmer weather. The neighborhood was made up of what would have been called working-class homes thirty years earlier. They were close together, and while some of the small yards had toys scattered about, others were full of the kitschy lawn stuff that old folks always seem to like.
The door opened almost before I could get out of the car. A stooped woman with lasers for eyes stepped out onto the small concrete front porch.
“You with the police,” she said, more as a statement than a question.
“I’m an investigator with the sheriff’s office,” I told her. I started to show her my star, but she waved it away.
“I know a cop when I see one. And that car practically screams law enforcement. Hope you don’t expect to fool anyone with that,” she said sternly, waving a hand at my unmarked vehicle. Finally, after giving me the eye from head to foot, she turned and went into the house. “Come on, you’re letting all my heat out. Wipe your feet good.”
I followed her into a very neat and uncluttered living room. I’d expected it to be full of knickknacks, but it was almost Spartan in its decor. The furniture dated back to the seventies, but looked brand new with plastic covers over all the cushions. This was not a crazy cat lady.
“I’m Deputy Larry Macklin,” I said once we were seated.
“Macklin? Like the sheriff?”
“I’m his son.” For the first time, she looked at me with interest rather than like a freak insect that had wandered into her yard.
“Good. I’ve got a few things I need your father to take care of. Our neighborhood has some troublemakers and idiots. You know that I founded the neighborhood watch?”
“Deputy Edwards did mention that,” I said, tugging at my collar. She must have had the heat turned up to eighty degrees. I was already sweating. “He also said that you heard something the other night.”
“The night of the murder? Yes, I did. First, let me give you my list.”
She got up surprisingly fast for a person of her age. Before I had a chance to stop her, she’d headed to the back of the house. A minute later she came out carrying four pages of notes, single-spaced, and handed them to me. They were detailed lists of various infractions of the law and suspicious activities that had occurred over the last couple of weeks.
“Normally, I email those. But lately I haven’t been getting a reply. I suspect that my reports aren’t getting to the sheriff. Here, I’ll go over them with you.”
“Really, this is great,” I said, holding up the report. “I can go over them with the sheriff later. Right now I…”
Her eyes went cold. The last person who’d looked at me that way had broken a bottle he was holding and lunged at me with it.
“I want to go over this first so I know that you know what problems we’re having here in the neighborhood.” Her voice was flat.
I smiled broadly, giving in. “Of course. You’re right.”
We spent the next half hour poring over the report, where she had highlighted every time that a neighbor did anything that she considered to be out of line.
“Assure me that you will go over this with your father. I’m especially interested in having him take a personal interest in the Goodsons. They don’t seem to be able to understand the trouble that can follow if they let their trashcans overflow like they do. The broken window syndrome. Once a neighborhood looks neglected, the hoodlums move in.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
“I went down to Orlando for the neighborhood crime prevention conference a couple years ago.”
“We really appreciate your efforts. Now, about the murder…”
“I guess I’ve raked you over the coals enough,” she said with a gleam in her eye. “Come over here.”
She got up and I followed her into the kitchen. She pointed through the window over the sink, which was completely lacking the frilly curtains or potted plants that you’d expect in an old woman’s home. In fact, there was only a set of plain blinds that she had drawn up as high as they would go.
“There, you see? I can look right out to the back of the store.”
She was right. There was a large pecan tree in her backyard, but this time of year it didn’t have any leaves on it. The back of the shopping center was about two hundred yards away. If you moved to the far left side of her sink, you could see the dumpster.
“What did you see that night?”
“I came to the sink for a glass of water and I looked out.” I didn’t bother to stop her and ask if it was normal for her to look out the window. We’d clearly established that she was a busybody. “I saw a light over there, behind the store.”
“What kind of light?”
“At first it was the headlights of a car. It stopped, which made me suspicious. We’ve had trouble with folks coming behind the store late at night in their cars and doing… Well, God knows what. I’ve had to call the sheriff’s office at least every other month.”
“Did you call on Wednesday night?” I asked and got a squinty-eyed glare from her.
“The people doing you all’s dispatch can be mighty rude sometimes. I’ve learned to wait until I’ve got something firm to report. Wednesday I thought I’d watch for a few minutes and see if the car stayed there or moved on. If your 911 people appreciated me more, I might have called and stopped a murder.” She said the last in an accusatory tone, not approving of the 911 operator’s efforts to cut down on crank calls.
“So you saw the headlights of a car behind the store…”
“That’s right. After a minute or two, the lights went out. At least the headlights went out. I could still see the parking lights. Maybe even some glow from the… What do you call them… fog lights.”
“But you couldn’t see the car?” It would have been impossible with the naked eye, but for all I knew she had a professional-grade pair of binoculars under the sink.
“No.”
“What happened next?”
“Well, to say
the least, that got my attention. So I kept watching. Thought they might be breaking into the store or something. Of course, more likely they were doing some dirty business.” She shook her head. “After a couple of minutes, I saw the headlights come on again and then there were a couple gunshots. I could even see the flashes. It was a little odd because I saw the flashes before I heard the sound.”
“Did you see the deputy’s car pull up?”
“I told you, it was already there. He turned his police lights on, and then I heard and saw the shots.” Mrs. Gavin looked at me like I was stupid. I was feeling a little stupid right at that moment.
“So you’re saying that the car you saw pull up and turn its headlights off was the patrol car?” I was trying to come to terms with what this might mean.
“That’s right. I’m sure of it.”
“Could you see anything else before the rest of the first responders showed up?”
“No, not really. It was only a few minutes. Maybe five before the next patrol car showed up.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Gavin.” I pulled out one of my cards. “If any other officer comes by to ask you questions, call me first. Don’t even let them in before you’ve talked to me. Understand?”
She heard the tone of my voice and saw the look on my face and for the first time since I’d arrived, she looked uncertain.
“Yes. Okay, if you think that’s best. But why…?”
I held up my hand and stopped her. “You are now very important to this investigation. I think that you could earn the personal gratitude of the sheriff if you follow my directions to the letter.” The only way I could think to get this woman to take it seriously and do as I said was to appeal to her pride.
“Yes, of course.” It worked. Now she sounded like a member of the French Resistance assuring her comrades that she could be trusted.
After another warning or two, I was back in my car headed to the office. Things had taken a very black turn for Deputy Nichols. Nichols, Matt… Could we really have that many dirty cops? Eddie, my CI, had suggested that there could be more than one. But I was never sure when he was being straight and when he was being overly dramatic.
Chapter Ten
I had about ten minutes with Pete before Nichols was scheduled to arrive. I brought him up to speed on my interview with Mrs. Gavin, and we agreed not to confront Nichols with what we now knew.
“We’ll just get his side of the story for the record,” Pete said.
“Let him dig a hole that we can bury him in later,” I agreed.
“I explained to Major Parks that we had some questions about Nichols’s account. Parks said that he’d let us take the lead for now, and just to keep him up to date.” Then Pete shook his head. “This is some crazy shit. Something very wrong went on behind that store. Finding out what and why isn’t going to be easy.”
“Especially with two of the three witnesses dead,” I mumbled to myself.
We’d been talking in the conference room, which had a door with a small vertical window. Through the window I saw Deputy Nichols as he walked past, headed into CID.
“There he is,” I said, taking a deep breath to steady my nerves. Nothing is harder for me than hiding revulsion from a suspect.
Pete went out to bring him back to the conference room. We’d decided not to use one of the more official interview rooms in order to put Nichols more at ease… And the better to encourage him to run his mouth. Most criminals sink their boat by filling it up with their own words.
I smiled when they came in and shook Nichols’s hand while Pete invited him to have a seat.
“Thanks, guys. I wanted to get this interview over with today so it isn’t hanging over me all weekend. I really need to get back to work. The wife is killing me with her honey-do list.”
Pete and I smiled and chuckled politely at his predicament.
“We want to get you back on the street too. The other deputies are tired of picking up your slack,” Pete joked. “Okay. Are you sure that you don’t want anyone else present?” We all knew that he was talking about a lawyer.
“No. I’m fine.” Nichols looked relaxed.
“Of course we’ll be recording this.” Pete took a small recorder out of his pocket and set it on the table. Nichols nodded his head. It was standard procedure to record this sort of interview.
“Let’s start with your last call.” I knew that Pete wanted to begin with verifiable facts, and then move forward into whatever story Nichols was going to tell.
Nichols pulled out his phone. “I’ve got my notes here.” All deputies are encouraged to keep and retain notes. Having something to refer to when you’re being questioned by attorneys can save you some heartache.
“At eleven-fifteen I responded to a domestic dispute. When I got to 1754 West Carver Street, the wife told me that she and her husband had been fighting, but it was over. I took her outside to my car where she could talk without the chance of her husband hearing. She assured me that there was no problem and that there would not be any more trouble. I left the call at eleven-forty.” Nichols looked up from his notes. All of that had been verified by the dispatch records.
“You left the domestic call… What then?” Pete asked, nonchalantly making notes on his pad.
“Things were quiet, so I decided to cruise some of my regular spots.”
“Regular spots?”
“You know, places where I knew something might be going down. I went by the Fast Mart on Jefferson. There’s always some lowlifes hanging out there. Some of the regulars were there and I checked in with them, but nothing was up that night. After that, I decided to drive over to the shopping center and see if anyone was parked out back.”
“Okay, go slow now and tell us everything you did from the moment you pulled into the parking lot,” Pete said, looking a little more interested while trying not to seem too aggressive.
“Sure. I pulled into the drive off of Jefferson and proceeded around the north side of the building.”
“Okay. I know when I’m checking out a spot, I sometimes try and sneak up. You know, turn my radio down, maybe my lights off. You do anything like that?”
For a moment I thought Pete had gone too far. Nichols looked at him with a funny expression, but went on. “No. I just drove around the back.”
“When did you first see Ayers and the woman?”
“I saw his legs when I got about halfway down the backside of the building. I thought it might be a homeless guy sleeping by the dumpster. But as I got closer and turned my car toward them, I could see that he was trying to have sex with someone.”
I had to bite back the urge to put some pressure on him now. We knew he was lying, but Nichols was too savvy to fall for our usual interview techniques.
“So you stopped?” I asked.
“Right. I pulled in and stopped where you found my car. I still thought they were probably having consensual sex. I’ve found prostitutes in front of the store in the past who take johns behind it to do the dirty.”
Why did he emphasize that he parked his car and didn’t move it? I wondered. “You got out of the car then?”
“Right. I got out, pulled out my flashlight and pointed it at them.”
“But you didn’t call it in?”
“No. I… Well, I thought it might be someone that I could just let off with a warning. Like I said, I was still pretty sure it was consensual.” He acted embarrassed that he might have let people off who were breaking the law. It’s a ploy of the guilty to pretend to have committed a minor offense and feel bad about it in order to gain sympathy from the interviewer. It also implies that you are baring your soul when, in reality, you’re hiding a crime.
“You’re out of the car. You’ve got your flashlight in your hand…” Pete encouraged Nichols.
“Yes, that’s right. I put my other hand… my right hand, back on my gun. Looking at them, I got a weird vibe right off. The guy seemed to be just lying on top of the woman. I told them that I was a deputy and that they
needed to get up.”
“What exactly did you say?”
“Think it was: ‘Sheriff’s deputy! Stand up slowly.’ But still there wasn’t any response. From either of them. Alarm bells were really going off now. You know what I mean?” Nichols asked us. Another ploy to get us on his side? Pete just nodded.
“So I put my flashlight back in its holster and drew my gun. I switched on the light when I did.” The officers on night patrol all had small flashlights fixed to the tops of their Glock handguns. “This time I yelled at them, ordering them to stand up and turn around slowly, hands in sight.”
Nichols stopped talking and seemed to be lost in a world of his own mind’s creation. “Go on,” I encouraged, trying not to sound too cynical.
“That’s when Ayers spoke. He said: ‘Officer, we’re just having a little fun.’ And he started to get up. I kept my gun on him. The girl was motionless. Of course I know now that she was dead, but I think it was partly the way her body looked… lifeless… that had me wired. Usually, you come upon a couple having sex and the girl’s all squirming and upset. This was the first time one ever just laid there.”
“Let’s go slow from here. As much detail as you can remember,” Pete prompted.
“Yeah, I admit that some of it is kind of fuzzy. I think I reacted as much by instinct as anything else.”
“That’s understandable. Just do the best you can.”
“I had my gun up in a ready position. Ayers started to get up and I thought there was something in his hand so I yelled: ‘Keep your hands where I can see them!’ He said something… I don’t remember what. I don’t even think I really heard it. Just something in a real soothing tone. But my eyes were focused on his hands like they train us. Funny, I can still hear you saying that.” This last was to Pete.
“Might have saved your life.”
“I think it did. There was just a second when I saw the knife clearly as he turned and charged me. At that point, my training took over. I pulled the trigger twice without being conscious of doing it.” Nichols was pretty much ignoring Pete’s request for details. If he was lying, as I was pretty sure he was, he was smart enough to know that the details would be hard to keep consistent if he had to repeat his story during multiple interviews.