Death Among the Mangroves

by Stephen Morrill

The boys looked at one another. Apparently they had not decided upon a spokesman before coming into the office. Finally the one who had teased Troy spoke up. “We want to report something. But you gotta promise us not to tell where you heard it.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Phillip Pressley. This is Doug, Andy, Frederick,” he indicated each boy in turn. “But call him Fred.” The boys all nodded. Troy nodded back.

  “Newspeople would call that, ‘off the record,’” Troy said. “And, no, I won’t promise that. I’m a law enforcement officer, not a reporter.” The boys looked a little startled. Troy held up a hand. “Here’s what I can say. Say, not promise. If there is a way not to get you four into any trouble, I’ll use that way. Now what is it?”

  “It’s Principal Duell.”

  “What about him?”

  “He asked us to do something for him. We didn’t think it was right. We talked it over.”

  “All right. Tell me the story. From the beginning. Take your time. Any of you others want to chime in, do so at any time. This isn’t like the movies. We’re just sitting here chatting.”

  The boys told Troy that Duell had approached them after football practice—they were all on the high school football team—and asked them to beat up some woman in a park and make her leave town.

  Thank you, Jesus, Troy thought. He listened as Phillip Pressley continued. They didn’t want to do what Duell asked but he had threatened to lower their grades and take them off the football team if they didn’t do him this favor. He would pay each kid a hundred dollars if they did as he asked. The four boys had actually started to carry out the plot but when they got to the park and saw Georgette Green in a wheelchair, they decided to come to Troy instead.

  “He didn’t tell us she was an old lady in a wheelchair,” Pressley said.

  Troy looked from one to the next, across the line of faces. “Just curious. Would you have attacked a younger woman, not in a wheelchair, on Principal Duell’s orders?”

  They looked at one another. “I dunno. Maybe,” Pressley said. “I got a shot at an athletic scholarship. Without that, no college for me. Duell could screw that all up for me if I didn’t.”

  There it is, Troy thought. The Chasm. Sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing when the bad thing is easier. Sometimes the right thing is too painful. Sometimes it’s too expensive. What price an athletic scholarship, the dream of college? Hard enough for mature adults to choose the difficult over the easy. How do kids, threatened by an authority figure with infinite power over them, choose?

  “I have an idea,” Troy said. “Let me make a few calls. Stay here. There’s a break room and a room with exercise gear. I’ll send out for pizza and soft drinks. You’re going to be crime busters.”

  Chapter 42

  Wednesday, January 1

  The new year dawned cold, bright and quiet. Troy had spent most of the night, with three of his officers, patrolling town and beach and the tourist motels, trying to keep people from drinking too much, falling off balconies, screwing in public, or blowing off their fingers with fireworks. They gave up on the peeing on the beach entirely; it was that or fill the jail cells with people having weak bladders.

  The army of reporters and television trucks had gone away. Most were now focused on the medical examiner’s office in Naples. Others simply had other assignments for New Year’s Day. Some would probably be back by tomorrow. Ironically, a large piece of evidence was now resting, dripping, on the concrete just inside the seawall at the Snake Key boatyard. The tug captain and his crew had pulled the barge and crane alongside the seawall there last evening, and even in the dark, had expertly hoisted up the Stiders’ boat and laid it on the edge of the parking lot.

  Before dawn, Troy and Tom VanDyke, his evidence specialist, started in on the boat. They carefully lifted out the sandbags first. There were several two-inch holes cut through the boat’s bottom by a hole saw. They didn’t find a battery-operated drill. Troy made a mental note to look for it at the Stiders’ home, when he could, and see if it still had fiberglass dust on it. Then again, he thought, the Stiders had paddled home in a canoe. Probably just tossed the drill overboard and it was still on the bottom where the boat had been.

  Tom mixed up some Luminol and Troy went over the boat, inside and out, using a fine-mist spray bottle. In the darkness it was easy to spot the glowing blood spots—and there were a lot of them. Tom photographed the spots before the glow faded. Most of the blood was going to be useless, they knew, but there were several cracks or screw holes with pooled blood that had dried and crusted over. Troy drew circles around those with a grease pencil.

  “I think we can get DNA out of some of this,” Tom said. The sun was rising and the Luminol had faded, but now he knew where to take samples.

  When Troy walked into the station it was eight a.m. and he was tired. The station’s four cells were full, several with multiple inhabitants. All were young men. Troy sometimes suspected his police force of profiling. Sometimes drunk women got a pass; drunk men got handcuffed.

  Most of the arrests were trivial things like public drinking. Troy knew that if every police department in Florida actually enforced the rules about carrying beer bottles out of the bars and over to the beaches there would not be an empty cell in the state. On a New Year’s Eve night, in a Florida beach town, getting arrested for public drinking was an accomplishment.

  “For God’s sake,” Troy muttered to himself as he read the reports. “Were they doing naked body shots in the middle of Beach Street, or what?” He absently pulled out his wallet and got out a dollar even as he continued to read reports.

  Two men had been fighting, a more serious problem. Troy’s attitude towards fistfights was that, so long as major dental repair was not needed, the sore faces and sore knuckles were punishment enough.

  He reviewed all the arrests and gave each person the Official Stern Police Chief Talk and then kicked them all loose. Most went off in search of aspirin. The two men who had been fighting went off, arm-in-arm, in search of beer. Troy smiled and went back to his office. Another New Year survived.

  The Bayou Breeze, the town web site newspaper, had reports on New Year’s day of disreputable behavior on the beaches and in the motel rooms. People were shocked. The police had found a body in the Ten Thousand Islands but didn’t know who it was yet. There was a backstory on the disappearance of the young woman from New York state. There was a photo of the small fireworks display on the beach the night before. Troy admired that a moment. He had never quite understood how one took a photo in the dark of fireworks. But Cilla Dowling seemed to know how. Late the night before someone had hit a wild boar over on State Road 29 into Everglades City, smashing in the front of their car. Two more cars had then hit the first car. A total of eleven people were injured, some being helicoptered out of this battle zone. There was no word on the fate of the pig, though Troy assumed it was dead. And there was a photo of Georgette Green, beaten to a bloody pulp and lying next to her overturned wheelchair, accompanied by a story about how the Mangrove Bayou police department seemed unable to guarantee the safety of its citizens. Green was reported to have been taken by relatives to a Naples hospital and had vowed never to return to this evil town. Troy called Cilla Dowling.

  “Bayou Breeze. You talk, we squawk,” Dowling said.

  “That’s a ridiculous way to answer the phone,” Troy said.

  “It works. I know more secrets than you do. And I want to know more still. I owed you, big time. Are we square now?”

  “I don’t know. That story about us not being able to guarantee the safety of the citizens seemed a little over the top.” Probably not to Barbara Gillispie, he thought.

  “Did it work? Have you arrested Duell yet?”

  “No. But I’ll get back to you soon as it goes down. What happened to the pig?”

  “What pig?”

  “One over on 29.”

  “Oh. Can you believe that? Most nights you could get a good eight hours sl
eep lying on that road. And here three cars run into each other. Don’t people pay any attention to what’s in their headlights?”

  “Not when they’re drunk,” Troy said. “Usually not even when they’re sober. I’m just glad it happened over there, out of my jurisdiction.”

  “Well, the highway patrol didn’t tell me about the pig,” Dowling said. “They probably took it home to eat. After all, it’s already been grilled.”

  “Funny.”

  “Yeah. Now, we all know who that body is that you found up in the islands. When are you going to admit to it?”

  “Again, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “The hell I will. The Naples Daily News is right there, camped on the medical examiner’s doorstep. They’ll break the story soon as the M.E. knows something. I want some sort of exclusive. Something meaty. And something first.”

  “You’re in luck.” Troy told her about recovering the boat and finding some bloodstains in it. “Still got to check, though. See if we got any good DNA.”

  “So whose boat is it? It’s got a registration number on the bow. Got serial numbers in at least two places inside.”

  “I have sort of a cover story for you.”

  “Aha. I get it. You want me to print that boat story so you can watch to see what someone does about it.”

  “You have a suspicious mind.”

  “I like that song.”

  “The King,” Troy said.

  “Yeah. So am I right?”

  “Well. Yes.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “We had information that Judge Hans Stider’s boat had been stolen from his house here on Barron Key. We were able to recover the boat. It’s been sunk in salt water, so the equipment on board, all electronics and the engines, are worthless now. We found evidence of bloodstains and are hopeful we can get some blood type and DNA out of those. We’re examining the boat for other clues as to the thief.”

  “Holy shit. Judge Stider? ‘Stider the Slider’? And nobody else in the media knows this yet?”

  “Can’t say. The crew of the tugboat might have blabbed back at Marco Island. They wouldn’t know about the blood, but it’s not that hard for civilians to look up boat registration numbers. Funny thing is, the boat is now sitting in the boatyard on Snake Key where it would be in full view of all that mob of reporters, had they only been here to see it. But, soon as we can, we’ll have it up on some sort of trailer and in a storage shed.”

  “Cool. Thanks! I owe you.”

  Troy called Les Groud and asked if the mayor could scrounge up a suitable trailer for the Stiders’ boat. He went over to his storage shed on Snake Key and towed his sailboat out of that and a block down Perimeter Road to the gate to the boatyard. By the time that Groud showed up, around ten a.m., with a very old and very rusty empty trailer bouncing along behind his pickup truck, Troy had parked his trailer and boat off to one side and next to the police boat.

  “That appears to be an unlicensed vehicle,” Troy said, looking at the back of Groud’s trailer. “If there’s a trailer at all under that rust.”

  “Hey. You want it or not?”

  “I’ll take it. You think the springs will take the weight?”

  “Only one way to find out. Wouldn’t be the first time I dragged a trailer that was down on its axle.”

  They cranked the Stiders’ boat up onto it and took it to Troy’s storage shed, where Groud backed the boat into the shed and Troy locked the door.

  That afternoon Phillip Pressley and his cohorts Doug, Andy and Fred, all went to Principal Howard Parkland Duell’s home. Duel had read the town news web site and, as promised, he paid each boy a hundred dollars, talking all the while about how they had done the town a great service. One of the boys, of course, had his iPhone in his shirt pocket already dialed into the police department’s emergency line with its autorecording function. Once Troy had verified the recording and Tom VanDyke had taken down detailed statements from the four boys, Troy and Tom arrested Duell. Then Troy called Cilla Dowling.

  Mayor Groud hustled into Troy’s office at about seven p.m. just as Troy was calling it a long day. “What the hell is going on?” he said. “I got a call from Howard Duell’s wife. She said you had arrested him.”

  Troy decided now was not the time to enforce the Bad Word Jar rule. “I’m guessing you’re wondering what the charge is?”

  “Damn right. What’s the charge? And how dare you arrest a town councilman without so much as a courtesy phone call to me?”

  “You’re right. I should have called you first. It wasn’t the sort of crime requiring the utmost secrecy. I just didn’t think of it. Very tired. Sorry.”

  “Yeah, right. What’s he in jail for?”

  “Conspiracy to commit assault.” Troy told Groud about the four high school kids and Georgette Green. “Miss Green cooperated. We made her up, some fake bruises and a sprinkling of red watercolor paint, and Cilla Dowling took her photo and made up the story for the Bayou Breeze news web site.”

  “So where is this Green woman now?”

  “She actually is in Naples, as the story said. Not in a hospital, though. Her relatives arranged for her to stay in a nursing home there. I sort of…encouraged them, pointing out that sleeping in a wheelchair in a public park was not a good way to live.”

  “So, in a way, Duell got his wish. She’s out of town. No more vagrants around here. Where is he, by the way?”

  “He got his wish, though his methodology lacked finesse. He’s in a cell in back. In the morning we’ll run him up to Naples for an arraignment. He’ll bond out and probably get probation.”

  “Yeah. Well, he’s done here. We can’t have a school principal who employs his kids to commit crimes.”

  “Kind of a Fagin,” Troy said.

  “Yeah, except his Oliver Twist turned him in,” Groud said. Troy, who had been going for the esoteric, raised one eyebrow. He hadn’t realized that redneck fishing guides read Charles Dickens. Then again, why not? They apparently read Joseph Conrad too. “This is a mess. A hell of a mess,” Groud went on. “He’s the principal of the junior high too. We’ll have to get a replacement.”

  “County school board makes those decisions,” Troy said. “Not me. Not you.”

  “Yeah, right,” Groud said. “What are the odds they’ll keep him on?”

  “He’ll go on paid administrative leave—which is government speak for, ‘We know he’s guilty as charged but we’ll let him sit at home while we go on paying him a fat salary as long as possible.’”

  “Exactly. Well, not out of our budget, at least.”

  “Angela Phipps is already principal of the elementary school right next door. She struck me as efficient. And she sure knows how to handle fire drills now.”

  Groud grinned. “That was fun, wasn’t it? I’ll recommend her.” Back in July Troy had conducted unannounced fire drills at the schools for a week before the volunteer fire department learned to be quick enough. “But all this raises another question, Troy. We cannot relieve a town councilman of his duties until there’s an actual conviction.”

  “Which might be six months from now.”

  “Of course, your man Norris Compton is running against Duell, so, barring some miracle, Duell will be out of that job last Friday of this month. Oh, yeah, I know all about it. Mortimer Potem, my town manager and right-hand guy, called me about two minutes after Compton signed the papers.”

  “Norris is not ‘my guy’ and I didn’t put him up to it,” Troy said. “It was a surprise to me too. Didn’t even know until after he did it. But with Duell arrested, I’d say Compton is pretty much a shoe-in.”

  “So will everyone else. And they’ll say you arranged it all. Duell being the main obstacle to you getting this job permanently.”

  Troy nodded. “I like to think of this as one more example of the celestial orbs swinging into alignment.”

  Chapter 43

  Thursday, January 2

  Thursday morning Troy sent Bubb
a Johns up to the Naples jail with Howard Parkland Duell fuming in the back seat behind the cage. Bubba also had the blood samples taken from the boat.

  Troy and Juan followed in Troy’s car because Troy didn’t want to have to listen to Duell shouting at him.

  Rita Shaner at the state attorney’s office had persuaded a judge to issue a search warrant and Troy and Juan joined a Naples police officer in opening and searching the storage unit. They used a bolt cutter to take off the lock. Troy saw no reason to let the Naples officer see that Troy had a key. Juan took the gun case and the fishing bag full of ammunition and they relocked the unit with another lock Troy had brought along.

  Back in Mangrove Bayou, Troy had scarcely sat at his desk when Alicia Sydney, the Collier County medical examiner, called.

  “Gotta really thank you for that body bag trick,” Sydney said.

  “What trick was that?”

  “When we unzipped it, there were a dozen or so little brown crabs waiting to come out. Damn things ran all over the room before somebody had the wit to step on ’em.”

  “Oh. Sorry about that. It was not an easy thing, recovering that body. What can you tell me?”

  “We’re not done. But I know this now. First thing we found when we took off the clothing was a bullet hole in the shirt. The bullet hit her in the heart. Contact wound, big one.”

  “It was a her, then?”

  “Oh yeah. Young woman, late teens, early twenties.”

  “You get the bullet?”

  “I did. Big damn thing. I think it’s a .45 and it’s in decent shape. Missed the ribs.

  “I would bet it’s a .50,” Troy said.

  “How would you know that?”

  “I’m chief of police of Mangrove Bayou. I know everything.”

  “Yeah. Right. Listen, we’re still working on the body. We have some DNA from the father and mother you sent over to us.”

  “Sending more up today.” Troy explained about the samples from the boat.

  “We’ll look for those too,” Sydney said. “So far the girl matches the description as to weight and height and hair color. She’s the right blood type. No fingerprints because she had no fingers. She didn’t have any tattoos. That would have been too easy. It didn’t occur to the parents to bring along a dental chart or medical records when they flew down here but I have the medical records by email and the dental are on the way, by mail. Dentist in Albany, New York is so old-fashioned he didn’t have digitized charts. One more thing.” There was a pause.