Death Among the Mangroves

by Stephen Morrill

  “Interesting turn of phrase,” Troy said. “Exactly, word for word, what was in one of the anonymous hate mails Sasha Thompson received. Am I going to find your fingerprints on those letters Damn? I’m checking.”

  Damn frowned and glanced quickly around. Aha, Troy thought. He reached across and carefully picked up Damn’s Dr. Pepper can, holding it by only the very top rim. “I’ll just take this back to my office with me, Damn,” Troy said. “Souvenir of our little chitchat.”

  “Stop calling me that. And give me back that can.”

  “I’ll keep the can. Now, Gerry Whyte hasn’t the education to have written that letter, though I think he wrote some of the others. And he’s so impulsive and dumb that he used a handgun without thinking that it would guarantee him going back to prison.

  “In fact, you and some others around here gave Gerry Whyte the idea that you all wanted Sasha Thompson off of Snake Key. He told us he was only doing this because he thought the entire neighborhood wanted it. That’s no justification for him, of course. But it’s why I came by here tonight.”

  “That’s about what I expect from a nigger cop too,” the man said. “They all stand up for each other.” There was a collective gasp from the women.

  Troy looked at Donna Callas. “Am I making any progress here do you think? Or wasting my breath arguing with the local Grand Lizard?”

  She looked at the man. “Shut up, Vernon! Just shut up!” She looked at Troy. “His name’s Vernon Dudley Throckmorton.” She spelled it. She glared at Throckmorton. “I could have been killed. My girl could have been killed. Everyone knows Gerry Whyte is a halfwit and does whatever you tell him to. All this is on account of your hate. You been bad-mouthing that poor girl since she moved here. This is what happens.”

  “Well, I hope it won’t happen again,” Troy said. “As the head nigger cop in town, I do my best to protect and serve all of you, even the Grand Lizard, here.” There were a few giggles and Troy decided to leave the rest of the discussion to Donna Callas, and got up and left. He took along Throckmorton’s Dr. Pepper can, mostly to annoy the Grand Lizard.

  He had barely sat down in his office when Lester Groud came in and sat in one of the two visitor chairs. “What’s all this?” the mayor said, waving a slip of paper. “Mortimer Potem almost crapped his silk suit.”

  “Request. I want to hire a barge, crane, divers and small towboat to go out and fish up a sunken motorboat.” Troy told Groud about the Stiders and their sinking their boat out in the Gulf of Mexico.

  “I’ll be…never mind what I’ll be,” Groud said. “You and your Bad Word Jar. Smart move, following the boat like that. So you think there’s some evidence on that boat? Like what? Blood maybe?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know if there’s any evidence on the boat or not. But wouldn’t we look stupid, not finding out. They sure didn’t sink it because they were bored and wanted a night out on the briny deep. The Stiders thought that there was something there that we would want to see. I trust their judgment. I want to see.”

  “Where would you get this barge? Is this the best price you could get?”

  “The barge and crane and boat would come out of Marco Island. They use it up there for driving pilings, putting in seawalls, that sort of thing. Cost is ten thousand dollars to go from Marco to the point in the Gulf I gave them as a reference, raise the boat, haul it in here and take it off the barge and put it on the shore at the Snake Key boatyard. I had June call three companies and that’s the lowest quote we got.”

  “You mean to say there are three people, or more, who now know exactly where that boat is. Isn’t that a little free with your information?”

  “You have good instincts, Les. I may not have given them the correct position, but one at the same distance from them. Once we hire the barge I’ll send someone out with them to supervise and that person will have the true coordinates.”

  “Aha. You’re pretty slick sometimes.”

  “I have my moments. So do we do this?”

  Groud thought about it. “Man. That’s a lot of money. And spent on just a hope and a prayer.”

  “How much money is this killing, and that’s what I’m assuming now, costing Mangrove Bayou in lost tourism? And I can’t keep the boat a secret much longer. I’m going to have to explain where I got the chart plotter I sent up to Tallahassee. Then the whole world will be wanting to see that boat. And they’ll find it, too, sooner or later.”

  “Damn.” Groud got out his wallet and took out a dollar. “Take care of this on my way out.”

  Troy nodded.

  “Go ahead and do it. I’ll explain things to Mortimer Potem. This, and the overtime for all the searching, has put a dent into our emergency reserve.”

  An hour later June told him to get on his department cell phone. It was Milo Binder. Milo had the surveillance duty on the Stiders. He had Troy’s Subaru and he was calling from the road. “I’m on U.S. 41, Chief. Heading towards Miami. They took off, the kid in the Porsche and old man in the Mercedes SUV. They gassed up at Rudy Borden’s station on the way out of town. I couldn’t do that without them seeing me and if I did it after they left I could lose them.”

  “How could you lose them? Barron Road is a five-mile straight road out to the main highway. All you had to do was stomp it to catch up.”

  “I know. I assumed they would turn left at U.S. 41 to go to Naples, so the gas wouldn’t matter. But they turned right. We’re already past the Everglades City road, S.R. 29, so they must be going on to Miami. Couldn’t call earlier until I got in range of the Ev City cell tower. I have maybe a quarter tank of gas.”

  “Once upon a time there was gas at Monroe Station, halfway along,” Troy said. “But that’s closed now. You’ll never make it to Miami. Turn around and come home.”

  “I’m sorry. I really screwed up, Chief.”

  “Yes, you did. And life goes on. Come on home.”

  June came back to Troy’s office. “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “Dumbness. My own dumbness. Always keep gas tanks full in vehicles,” Troy said. “Also, Judge Hans Stider and son Mark are energetic. They spent last night out in a boat in the Gulf of Mexico and canoed back to shore. Now they’re off to Miami with the Porsche, an all-day two-way drive. They make me feel old.”

  Chapter 26

  Thursday, December 26

  Troy drove to Rudy Borden’s service station. Eduardo Martinez worked there and the two of them hooked up one of Rudy’s enclosed rental trailers to Troy’s Subaru. Troy had called off the stakeout on Judge Stider’s house, the boat and Porsche both having gone away, and he had his car back. The sheriff’s deputy, a retired Air Force sergeant working as a sheriff’s auxiliary, would be along the next day to officially serve the eviction notice, but Troy and Eduardo wanted the family completely out before then so the kids wouldn’t see that.

  “Sorry to have to put you through this,” Troy told Martinez as he drove.

  “Not your fault, man. The law is the law. I understand.”

  “How are you and Rosa fixed for money?” Troy asked. “Pretty tough to lose a month’s rent and have to pony up the same again.”

  “More than that. We paid December’s rent. I suppose that was fair. Here it is almost the end of the month. But there’s a ‘last month’ rent and a damage deposit of another month’s rent. Do we get those back?”

  “I suspect not. You would have to sue Heth Summerall, and the cost of that would exceed the money you’re owed. Plus, if I have any say in the matter, he’s going to be in jail.”

  “He doesn’t seem much like a man of God.”

  Troy nodded. “People forget that, while Christ drove out and berated the money-changers in the Temple, they all came right back when he left.”

  Martinez looked out his side window and then back to Troy, who was driving. “Christ told them, ‘Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade,’ and that’s what Reverend Summerall is doing, I am thinking.”

  “Somewhere in
there is the reference to ‘A den of thieves’ too,” Troy said.

  “You right, man. For sure. Oh, I read my Bible. Rosa and I been here two months. We had some saved up. Didn’t plan to spend it this way but there you are. We can cover the new rent and deposit. My boss, Rudy, gave me an advance of half a month’s pay to help make that. Might have to live on beans and rice a few months to scrape by.” He laughed. “We’re Hispanic. People think we eat rice and beans anyway.”

  “Used to pig out on Moros y Cristianos along Tampa’s ‘Boliche Boulevard,’ when I worked up there,” Troy said.

  “Lot of Hispanics there? In Tampa?”

  “Tons. Came with the cigar factories long ago. Settled Ybor City which is now part of Tampa. Only town with a trilingual newspaper, La Gaceta. English, Italian, Spanish.”

  “That’s cool, man.”

  “Where are you and Rosa from? You sound a little bit New York City.”

  “She’s from Miami. Cubaño. I’m PR from the Big Apple.”

  “Puerto Rican.”

  “Yeah. You sort of mixed race,” Martinez said. “What they call you?”

  Troy grinned. “I’m black, white, Asian. From upriver from you. Troy, New York. Whichever race I’m with, they call me one of the other two. Apparently I’m not good enough for any of them.”

  “That’s bad, man.”

  “It has its ups and downs. I don’t much care, so long as they don’t call me late for lunch.”

  “You got one good thing goin’,” Martinez said. “The cops can’t profile and harass you.”

  Troy laughed. “Well, not in this town, at least.”

  On 19th Street the two of them, plus Eduardo’s wife Rosa and the two kids, loaded what few belongings they had into the trailer. It didn’t take them long. Troy drove them all to a small home they had rented on Snake Key. Eduardo had an old car to use but that was the only one for the family and he had left that at the service station. The new home wasn’t furnished, as the house on 19th had been, but Eduardo said they had enough money saved to buy the essentials for the family. By the time they had unloaded the trailer and Troy and Martinez towed it back to the service station it was late afternoon. Troy took out his wallet, which was one of the long ones big enough for a checkbook inside. He wrote a check for five hundred dollars and handed it to Martinez.

  “What’s this, man?”

  “Maybe you and Rosa can live on rice and beans,” Troy said, “but the kids need real food with meat in it.”

  Martinez tried to hand the check back. Troy waved him off. “You don’t have to use it. Just keep it for a while. Sort of an insurance policy. Just in case you need it. It’s a loan, not a gift. I expect you to repay me by the end of next year. That or bring me back the uncashed check. Take it. Don’t be proud at the expense of your kids.”

  “A loan you say.”

  “Yep. A loan only.”

  “You’re a good man, Chief Adam.”

  “Giving you a check doesn’t make me a good man, though I happen to think I am. But you’re a better man, Eduardo Martinez. And you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re taking the check. Even though you hate doing that, you’ll take it for your family.”

  Back in his office Troy found Cilla Dowling sitting on the leather couch and typing away on a laptop on the coffee table. She wore her usual uniform of tight shirt and tight short skirt. “Who let you in,” Troy said. “Reporters are supposed to be outside.”

  “Those bozos outside don’t know about the connecting door to the town hall,” Cilla said. “What’s new with you? Tomorrow night is town council meeting night. You’re up for review. You found that girl yet? I would hate to have to break in another new police chief.”

  “Director of Pubic Safety,” Troy said, pointing to the door.

  “Funny. Talk about Barbara Gillispie. See you got her photo on your desk. I just wrote about that for the Bayou Breeze website.”

  “When’s that going up?”

  Cilla looked at Troy. “You really are hopeless. It is up. When I write it, it’s out there in seconds. We’re not running some twenty-four-hour news cycle here, like those print pukes out there.”

  “Print pukes?”

  “Newspaper reporters. They’re so twentieth century.”

  “You used to be one of them.”

  “Actually, I was wire service. Wish I still was. Miss those days. Now, what about Barbara Gillispie?”

  “Nothing new I can tell you about. Working on a few things.”

  “Will those few things, um, bear fruit by tomorrow night?”

  “Probably not. When they do, I’ll call you.”

  “You better. This is big news. Nationwide. Worldwide. CNN and Fox are here. Saw the Reuters guy outside earlier. My replacement at the Miami/Caribbean Bureau. If he’s here then anything that happens here is going to be in a French or Chinese newspaper by the next morning.”

  “You’ll be first.”

  “I better be. Or I’ll have Bert Frey feeding you to the customers. On a bun. With sauce. Can’t believe you’re feeding the reporters out there Bert’s animal-product sandwiches. And they don’t know the difference.”

  “Sometimes I amaze even myself,” Troy said. “Now get out of here. I have important police chief things to do.”

  Chapter 27

  Thursday, December 26

  No sooner had Cilla Dowling left than June buzzed his intercom. “Got a visitor. Private investigator hired by the Gillispies.”

  “The hits just keep on coming. Send him back.”

  “How do you know it’s a him?”

  “I’m the police chief of Mangrove Bayou. I…“

  “…Know everything. Bullshit. Someone already told you.”

  “That’s a dollar,” Troy said.

  “Why do I bother to work here? You make me pay all my salary to the jar?”

  “I don’t make you go all potty-mouth on us.”

  “Cord MacIntosh,” the man said as he entered Troy’s office. He handed Troy a business card. He was taller than Troy and more muscular, with a deep tan, medium-length brown hair and blue eyes. “Don’t I know you?” he asked. “From Tampa P.D.?”

  “I believe so. Pull up a chair. Used to work with Ramon Bustello Prado in Major Crimes,” Troy said. “Seen you around.”

  “Good old Bust, yeah. He’s still there. I thought you got fired.”

  “I did.”

  MacIntosh sat in a visitor chair and looked around. “Looks like you landed on your feet.” He looked at Troy’s office door with the faded black lettering that read “Director of Pub ic Safety” and smiled. “This is pretty cool.”

  “I’m in hog heaven.” Troy looked at the card. “Cordwainer. You come from a long line of cobblers, do you?”

  MacIntosh smiled. “You know, almost nobody knows what a cordwainer actually is.”

  “Probably so. Only guy I ever heard of with that for a first name was Cordwainer Smith, who wrote science fiction long ago.”

  “Ah. That was actually a pseudonym for Paul Linebarger. Needless to say, I looked it up.”

  “I did not know that. Now what can I do for you today?”

  “Peter Gillispie has hired me to, as he put it, oversee your work. Finding his daughter,” MacIntosh pointed at the corner of Troy’s desk, “whom, I see, you have framed and sitting on your desk. Recognize her because Gillispie gave me a photo to use. Where did you get that one?”

  “From one of her friends.”

  “You always keep photos of victims framed and on your desk?”

  “She talks to me. Late at night. Her dad had mentioned that he might hire someone. So you hotfooted down here to read my files?”

  MacIntosh shook his head. “I told him I needed to look things over. I can do homicide. Done them in the past. But one that has dragged on so long, and down here in the—if you’ll pardon the expression—sticks. And no body. And over ground already covered. Are you guys any good? Gillispie didn’t t
hink so.”

  “We have our moments. You were anyone else, I’d give you my shit-kicker spiel.” Troy took out a dollar and laid it on his desk. “Tell you all we did here was write parking tickets. But I know you, or know of you. Bust thinks you’re good at this; he’s told me so. So, yes, we’re good too. And we’re making progress. No promises yet but we’re getting there.”

  “So what advice would you have for me?”

  “You’re fishing. No harm, no foul. Officially, I welcome an extra pair of eyes on the lookout. Unofficially, my advice is to drive back to Tampa and find some work that will last longer and pay better. If you get my drift.”

  “Aha.” MacIntosh thought about it a moment. “The pay is pretty good right now. But I like to earn it. That’s sort of a fetish of mine. You’re closing in on someone. I’m not only trailing in the dust, I may be two steps back at the finish.”

  Troy had a thought. “How much do you want to do to earn that pay?” he asked.

  “Not a slacker. Whatever it takes. Why?”

  Troy told MacIntosh about the Gillispie case, leaving out only the part about the chart plotter. It took some time and when he was done he put up the Gillispie file on his computer and pulled a legal pad closer. He wrote on the pad and ripped off the top sheet. “Here’s a way you can help.” He handed the sheet to MacIntosh. “Top item is the address and unit number of a storage unit rented by the Stiders. I sure would like to see inside it but I can’t get a search warrant. The good judge keeps shortstopping those.”

  “You want for me to B-and-E a storage unit in Naples. What would I be looking for?”

  “Heavens, Cord!” I never said such a thing. Why, that sounds unlawful. Or something. But, whereas I have to follow some rules, I know that P.I.s are given a little more latitude. Hypothetically speaking, I’d be interested in anything that could possibly have to do with the abduction and murder of one Barbara Gillispie.”

  “Hypothetically speaking. And the other note? Looks to be a car description.”

  “That’s the license plate, VIN and description of the car Mark Stider was driving up until yesterday.” He explained about the Stiders taking the Porsche and disappearing east on the Tamiami Trail. “They came back together in the judge’s Mercedes, so the Porsche is somewhere east of Everglades City. That probably means Miami or Ft. Lauderdale. My guess is that they sold it there, maybe to some chop-shop the good judge knows of. Or they had it scrapped…”