Death Among the Mangroves

by Stephen Morrill

  Troy was wondering who would run out of gas first when Bubba spoke. “She’s stopped.” In another few minutes they pulled up alongside the Stiders’ boat. The sea was calm, with only the gentle swell. There was no one in the boat and it was sinking, the stern under water with the weight of its twin engines, the sides barely awash now, the bow high still.

  “Bored holes in it and set the autopilot to take her out to sea,” Bubba said. “She ran until the engines went under and shorted out the electronic ignitions. Old insurance trick.”

  “Boats today have built-in floatation,” Troy said.

  “That’s true, Chief. Boat shouldn’t sink anyway but they usually load ’em up with cement blocks or sandbags.” Bubba came alongside and reached across to hold the side of the sinking boat. “Not gonna tie off to her. Don’t want her taking us down too.”

  Troy pulled his holster and pistol off his belt and laid that and his wallet on the RIB’s center console. He jumped across to the sinking boat. He was in knee-deep water. He bent to feel. “It’s sandbags,” he said. “Bubba, see that chart plotter on the center console? I want that. Get the chainsaw and cut the damn thing off the boat.” He held the two boats together while Bubba opened a storage bin and got out the chainsaw that they used for getting through mangrove branches in narrow channels.

  “Not tying off. We don’t need to have to swim for it,” Bubba said. “I’ll hold on, you cut.” Bubba handed the chainsaw to Troy. Troy fired it up and in just a minute had cut into the console, through fiberglass and wiring, and separated out the chart plotter. He handed that and the chainsaw across to Bubba. He tried to toss out some sandbags but the boat quietly sank beneath him. Bubba leaned over and pulled him up and over the side of the RIB. Troy was grateful for the inflatable collar around the boat. Being hauled aboard a sailboat, he knew from experience, usually involved a lot of bruises.

  “Mark this spot,” Troy said. “Maybe I can get someone out here who can pick that boat back up. How deep is it here?”

  Bubba pressed the MOB button on the RIB’s chart plottter. That was intended to instantly record the position of a man overboard so that the boat could be brought back to the exact location. They could get the latitude and longitude coordinates off it later. Bubba looked at the fathometer. “It’s about forty feet. Easy dive. Pull out the sandbags and she’ll likely come back up. Drop the engines—which we could do with tools—and the hull would pop up like a cork. Why you want that chart plotter so bad?”

  “I’m not sure. But it’s the brains of the boat, and its memory too. I want the hull because there’s likely to be blood traces in it. Barbara Gillispie’s DNA.”

  “Why would you even think that?”

  “That boat, with two big outboards, is pushing, and maybe more than, eighty thousand dollars,” Troy said. “The judge and his kid didn’t sink it for the insurance. There has to be something on board they don’t want us to find. I’m cold and wet. Take us home.”

  Bubba pushed in the throttles and headed east, at a more moderate speed, toward the state of Florida and the sea buoy marking the Collier River entrance. “You want we should stop and pick up the guys in the canoe?” he asked. “Bet they’re feeling a mite…peaked…by now.”

  “They should be nearly back to their car. No, stay back from them. Let’s keep our little secret as our little secret.”

  Chapter 23

  Thursday, December 26

  Troy did his morning run, from the Sea Grape Inn on the beach, through town and out Barron Road on the causeway across Oyster Bay to Government Key and then back to the police station. He lifted weights, took a shower, and was starched and pressed in his “longs” at his desk at eight a.m. and watching the morning activity at the boat ramp when Juan Valdez walked in with a grin on his face.

  “Been detecting,” Juan said, sitting down.

  Troy nodded, still facing the window and tilted back with his foot on a desk drawer. “Les Groud will be pleased that you’re earning your salary.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I found?”

  Troy took his foot down and turned to face Juan across the desk. “In the worst way.”

  “First thing I found is that being a detective is seriously boring. I’d rather ride around in a patrol truck, looking at cute chicks for a living.”

  “One of the bennies of outdoor work in a beach town,” Troy said. “Tell me about the boring part.”

  “Well, first off, the Stiders don’t own any other properties, at least none I could track down in Florida.”

  Troy nodded. “But you did find their storage unit, I take it.”

  Juan stared. “Man! I hate it when you do that! If you already knew about the storage unit, why make me look for it.”

  “I didn’t know about the storage unit. I just knew that I had given you two items to check and you didn’t come in here with that cat-ate-the-canary grin just to tell me about researching sixty-seven property-appraiser web sites.”

  “That was bad. That was the boring part,” Juan said. “You were right about the storage places. Not so many of those. I hit all of them in one long day. Took my wife along, let her smile at some of the old codgers they hire to sit in those offices. Gave her a chance to see a police detective in action.”

  Troy nodded. “And the winner was?”

  “Place in Naples. Ten-by-ten, non-air-conditioned standard unit. Rented to one Hans Stider. Rental dates back years but the clerk recognized the photo of the kid. One thing for the kid, he’s easily recognized. Clerk said the kid had been in recently. Customers have to sign in. I checked the log and Mark Stider was there on December 22.

  “Excellent work, Juan. You may have the makings of a detective yet.”

  “We don’t have a detective rank.”

  “No we don’t. But if we ever do, you’re in the running.”

  “There’s more pay for that, right?”

  “Wrong again. But it’s an indoor job, mostly.”

  “Damn! Same pay and no more bikini-watching? Who wants that?”

  “That will be a dollar, Officer Valdez.”

  Chapter 24

  Thursday, December 26

  By noontime Troy almost felt like a man who had not been up all night bouncing on a small boat in the Gulf of Mexico. Almost, but not quite. The light was dim in his office because he still had all the blinds closed and he had only a desk lamp on. Most of the television trucks were back, the morning’s supply of doughnuts was gone and the reporters were eagerly awaiting the lunch sandwiches of mystery meat. Cover Christmas puppy stories one day, homicides the next. A lot like police work, Troy thought.

  He walked into the break room for more coffee. He decided against eating lunch. It would only make him sleepier. When he came back, June was seating two people, a man and woman, both middle-aged, on the sofa in his office.

  Oh boy, Troy thought. Won’t this be fun. He sat the coffee on the coffee-warmer on the credenza behind his desk and turned one of the visitor chairs around to face the sofa. There was a low table between them. “I’m Troy Adam,” he said as he sat. “I’m the police chief here.”

  “Pete Gillispie,” the man said. He put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “My wife Geraldine.” Peter Gillispie wore a dark gray silk suit that cost more than Troy’s entire wardrobe. He wore glasses with heavy tortoiseshell frames. Geraldine had almost the same glasses but was stout, short and artificially blonde. She wore a pink wool suit that cost more than Troy’s entire wardrobe too. Neither had anything resembling a tan. Compared to the average Caucasian Floridian, they looked like ghosts.

  “You had said you were coming down,” Troy said. “I appreciate it. I wish I had some news for you.”

  Peter Gillispie was staring at Troy. “I didn’t realize, talking to you on the phone, that you were…um…colored. You don’t have any accent.”

  “Well, I probably do have an accent,” Troy said, “but it would be a New York state one, same as yours.”

  “That’s right,” Gil
lispie said. “You said you were from Troy.”

  Troy nodded. “And we usually don’t call ourselves ‘colored’ any longer. That went out with separate water fountains.”

  “I’m sorry. Of course. You would be ‘black,’ I suppose.”

  “Actually, our mayor says I’m beige. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You have a picture of our daughter on your desk,” Geraldine Gillispie said.

  “Yes ma’am. Helps me to focus.”

  “Is that circus outside all on account of our daughter?” Peter Gillispie said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Chief Adam, I’m in the insurance business,” Gillispie said. “I have spent my lifetime assessing other people’s odds of dying. I’m good at it. I’ve been thinking about what to say to you, all the way from Albany to here. To Naples. So let’s have it. Is Barbara, is our daughter dead?”

  Troy looked at Peter and then at Geraldine. “Probably so.”

  Peter Gillispie started weeping. Geraldine didn’t. She just stared at Troy. “If she’s dead,” Geraldine said, “where’s the body? How can you possibly know anything if you haven’t found her?”

  Troy stood and got a box of tissues from his desk drawer. He handed that to Peter and sat once more. “Did you happen to look at the marsh on either side of the highway as you drove from Naples to Mangrove Bayou?”

  They stared at him. Finally realizing he was actually asking a question, Geraldine said, “Yes. Of course. So what?”

  “We’re pretty certain that she didn’t leave town by way of any vehicle. We have searched the town and its islands. We are still searching the marsh and mangroves. But there are maybe three thousand square miles of that marsh surrounding this town. And that is easy to search compared to a thousand or so square miles of mangrove forest along the coast. We have searched all the likely places close by. We’re still looking; we have not given up.”

  “Well, maybe she’s out there, someplace. Maybe she got lost somehow.”

  “We can always hope. But, ma’am, only the most experienced people could survive out there for any length of time.”

  Peter spoke up. “You’re saying she’s dead and we’ll never even see her body again?”

  “That is…possible. I’m working on it, trust me.” In fact, that morning Troy had shipped the chart plotter he had recovered from the Stiders’ boat off to a computer forensics lab at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, or FDLE. He hadn’t even attempted to remove the memory chip for the routes and trip logs. He’d simply put it all into a large box and FedEx’d it. Mortimer Potem, the town manager, would scream when he saw the bill.

  “Don’t you have any clues?” Geraldine said. “She would not have just run off into some swamp. Someone must have murdered her. Can’t you find that person?”

  “I am working on it,” Troy said. “But I can’t tell you what I have because I am still investigating.”

  “You can’t or you won’t?” Peter Gillispie said.

  “Actually, you’re right. I just won’t.”

  “Maybe you need more people,” Peter Gillispie said. “This is a very small town. How much experience do you actually have with this sort of thing?”

  “Sadly, more than I would wish,” Troy said. “I worked some years in the Major Crimes unit at the Tampa Police Department. I’m pretty good at what I do. If I can find Barbara, I will. If I can catch anyone who hurt her, I’ll do that too.”

  “I can’t say I’m too impressed with your results so far,” Gillispie said. “I think you need help and I have already hired a private investigator to come down and be my own eyes and ears here.”

  Troy stared at him. Can’t say I blame him, he thought. “Who might that be?”

  “Man’s name is Cordwainer MacIntosh,” Gillispie said. “Came highly recommended by a guy at the Tampa Police department.”

  Troy smiled. “Know the gentleman. Goes by ‘Cord’ usually. But Mr. Gillispie, we’re working the problem. What I don’t need is someone getting in the way. What else did you have in mind about helping us?”

  “A reward, for one thing.”

  “Well, you do as you feel you must,” Troy said. Rewards sometimes worked. Equally often they simply resulted in overloaded police switchboards. And the Mangrove Bayou Police didn’t even have a switchboard. But Troy knew that Peter Gillispie wanted to feel that he was doing something to save his daughter. Troy would live with it.

  “Look, we have some of Barbara’s things here,” Troy told the Gillispies. “Her suitcase and what she brought with her when she came here. We’ve already gone over it all and you can have it back. Or I can ship it up north if you prefer.”

  “We’ll take it now,” Peter Gillispie said. “I can ship it myself. We’re staying in a hotel in Naples, the Ritz-Carlton. We couldn’t even get a room here in Mangrove Bayou.” Troy wrote that on a pad on his desk. They both had cell phones and he noted their numbers as well.

  “I’ll call each afternoon around five,” Troy said. “If I can’t for some reason, feel free to call me here and I’ll bring you up to date.”

  He got the suitcase from the evidence room and walked the Gillispies to the front door and out onto Connecticut Avenue. Twenty reporters swarmed the Gillispies and Troy. One tried to grab the suitcase from Troy and he caught the reporter in the jaw with an elbow. “Oops. Sorry,” Troy said as the man fell down. The Gillispies’ rental car was a block up the street, beyond most of the television trucks. Troy loaded the suitcase into the trunk. Geraldine got into the passenger side. Peter Gillispie turned to the crowd. “Gather around me,” he called.

  Oh, boy, Troy thought. Here it comes. Rich man improves upon police work.

  “My name is Peter Gillispie.” The reporters crowded forward. Troy, for once, was ignored. He stood in the back of the crowd, watching.

  “I’m Barbara Gillispie’s father. The local police obviously have not done enough to find my daughter. So I have hired a private investigator to oversee their work. I’ll talk to the other agencies too, sheriff, state police, whatever the system is here in Florida, and get more people on this.

  “But I’m also offering a reward, here and now. Anyone who finds my daughter alive will receive a one hundred thousand dollar reward, no questions asked. Anyone who finds her dead body will receive a ten thousand dollar reward, no questions asked. Maybe that will light a fire under some of the local yokels.” He turned, got into his rental car, and drove slowly away.

  The pack turned and descended upon Troy, shouting questions. “What can I say?” Troy said. “He’s a private citizen. I understand his pain. Now excuse me while I get back to work.”

  “She wasn’t crying,” June said from her desk in the lobby as Troy locked the front door and headed back to his office. “When they left the office here. He was still weeping but she hadn’t cried at all. I could tell by her makeup.”

  Troy nodded. “She’s the one I worry most about. She’s the one who will explode back in their hotel room.”

  “We better find that girl, Troy. This really sucks.”

  “Yes, June, it certainly does.”

  Chapter 25

  Thursday, December 26

  That afternoon Troy drove over to Snake Key where he had arranged a neighborhood meeting at Donna Callas’ home. Callas was the large woman with the denim wardrobe and the bullet hole in her refrigerator. Tom VanDyke had recovered the bullet, not that it mattered any. Not all the neighbors were there but Troy took what he could get. Today there were six women and one man in the Callas living room sitting on chairs and a sofa that all faced a large television screen mounted above a fireplace mantelpiece. Donna Callas had handed out cans of Dr. Pepper to everyone and Troy took one to be polite.

  “First, I want to assure all of you that we have Gerry Whyte in custody and he won’t be running around here shooting off guns again,” Troy said. “Turns out he was already on probation for some other stupid things he had done and he was a convicted felon in possession of a
firearm. That’s sort of a freebie for us. He’s not bonding out any time soon.”

  “He was just defending himself and the rest of us from those dogs that nigger woman brought here,” the tall, fat man with a red face, said.

  “What’s your name?” Troy asked.

  “My name’s my damn business,” the man said.

  “I see. Well, Damn Business, it turns out that Gerry Whyte cut the lock off of Sasha Thompson’s back gate and chased the dogs out into the street. Then he followed them in his car until he saw them start to run with a jogger who was passing by. She told me the dogs were nothing but friendly. Donna, here, heard her say that. But Mr. Whyte drove past her and the dogs and stopped, and then opened fire on the dogs as they ran past him.

  “In short, he set up the whole thing. While ‘defending’ all of you he fired one shot that came through Mrs. Callas’ window, barely missed her and her daughter, and ended up in her refrigerator.”

  “Well, he shouldn’t a done that,” the man said. “But still…”

  “That’s not all Damn—mind if I call you Damn? I feel that we’ve known each other for so long—Whyte, and someone else, had been harassing Miss Thompson for months. Threatening letters, false reports to various state agencies.”

  “So? And stop calling me Damn.”

  “Point is, Damn,” Troy went on, “your new neighbor is a good, hardworking professional woman who owned two loveable Labradors, who moved to Mangrove Bayou to work in the clinic as a nurse. Her goal in life is to take care of all of you when you need it. And this is how at least some among you treat her.”

  “I didn’t shoot no dog,” the man said. “And Gerry was acting in full compliance with the law.”