“What’s that?”
“She’d had sex just before being killed. It was pretty violent, be my guess. She’d been beat up some too.”
“Raped, you think?”
“I think. But, of course, some people like their sex that way.”
“Not too many like to be shot to death right after. You get any semen?”
“We did. We’ll keep it on file here in case you get someone to match it to.”
“Got someone in mind, as we speak.”
“Good. Let me know. We’ll look at the blood samples from that boat and see if they match. Do you want the bullet?”
“I sure do,” Troy said. “In fact I’ll send a man by in a little bit to collect it. He’ll have the blood samples. Give him the bullet.”
Lee Bell walked into Troy’s office at noon. “Lunch time,” she said. Troy was leaned back in his chair, feet up on an open desk drawer, watching some people at the boat ramp across Sunset Bay trying to pull out too much boat with too little pickup truck. The process seemed to require a lot of blue smoke from burning rubber.
“Can’t you see how busy I am?” he said.
Lee looked. “That seems dangerous. Do they ever lose a car or truck in the water?”
“Oh yeah. Endless entertainment. Couple months back a car floated a good hundred feet out before it sank. It was still attached to the trailer. The boat sort of floated off, still attached by the bow line to the winch. Had to send Juan Valdez over there with his SCUBA gear to help Rudy Borden’s tow truck driver get all the mess out onto dry land again.”
“I hope the driver got out.”
“Yep. No harm, no foul. Just another car for sale on Craig’s List as ‘interior recently detailed.’ Old days, boat ramps were made like driveways slanted into the water. Smooth. They’d get green algae on them and it was worth your life to try to walk on that stuff. The one over by the Guide Club is that way still. One reason I use an all-wheel-drive car for my own boat. Even if the back wheels spin on algae, the front wheels can pull me up the slope. They’re not so steep as before, either, and the concrete has a lot of shell aggregate in it to make it rough, and they also cut drainage slots across the ramps. Still, there’s a reason most boat ramps have benches next to them. Those are for the ‘dock committee’ to sit on and amuse themselves.”
“I had no idea boat ramps were such fun. Let’s go to lunch.”
They walked out the back door and around the boat ramp and trailer parking lot. The men with the pickup and big boat had solved the problem by bringing up an SUV and attaching that to the front of the pickup truck frame with a piece of rope. “Done that too,” Troy commented as they walked past.
At the Sandy Shoes café there was a line but Lester Groud had just sat down at a table. He waved them over. The “Shoes” was open air on three sides, with a good view of a small park where they often had concerts in the evenings, and beyond that, the islands and Gulf of Mexico to the west. To the east, diners could watch the boat ramp, though the view was not as good as at the dock committee bench. The owner had rolled down the clear plastic sides to keep some of the heat in. The outside world was bright, but blurry.
“Oh,” Groud said to Troy as Troy and Lee sat. “Didn’t see you. I was waving to the tall redhead.”
“And why not?” Lee said.
They attended to ordering. When that was done Lester said, “So did you tell Lee about the boat?”
Troy brought Lee up to speed. It took some time and their lunch came as he talked.
Lee looked puzzled. “But why would he record the trip they took to get rid of the body? That only condemns the judge and the kid.”
“Chart plotters do many things,” Groud said. “GPS position, compass, drift, displaying the nautical chart. But recording the routes taken happens in the background and even then only for the most recent ones. If you wish, you can access that record and save off a route to follow at a later date. But all those things happen any time you have the chart plotter turned on. Most boaters have them wired into the Instruments circuit with everything else. My guess, Judge Stider didn’t even think about it.”
“Lucky for us,” Troy said.
“Lucky for us you knew all that and had the quick wits to chop that thing out of a sinking boat,” Groud said.
“I told him he had his teeth into this,” Lee said to Groud.
“So when are you going to arrest the kid?” Groud asked.
“Who said the kid killed the girl?” Troy said.
“Seems obvious.”
“Well, maybe to you and to me. But all we know is that the girl is about the same shape as Barbara Gillispie and was found at the far end of a route the Stider fishing boat once took. She had a bullet in her that I’m betting is from a same-size gun as one of the Stiders owns. We might be able to get fingerprints and some blood off the gun. And it’s an unusual gun.”
“They got rid of the car and the boat.”
“It’s not unlawful to sell your car. It’s probably unlawful to intentionally sink your boat even if you don’t file an insurance claim. Pollution, maybe. Or obstructing navigation. I’d have to check.”
That afternoon Troy had FedEx send to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement the .50-caliber pistol Cord MacIntosh had found, two magazines and a box of the ammunition they had found with the gun, and the bullet recovered from the body. The FDLE would do the ballistics comparisons and fingerprint check. Troy also asked for a DNA result on whatever was smeared on the barrel of the gun.
Chapter 44
Wednesday, January 8
Almost a week later Troy got calls from FDLE and the Collier County medical examiner. There was a match between a sample .50-caliber slug from Mark Stider’s Desert Eagle pistol and the one found in Barbara Gillispie’s heart. The only fingerprints on the gun and on the magazines were Mark Stider’s. The trace on the front sight was blood and the DNA result had been sent to the Collier County Medical Examiner’s office. The Collier County M.E. had matched the DNA from the body to that of her parents and had her dental charts as well. The blood samples from the boat were a match to Barbara Gillispie too.
Troy called Frank Lawton, the town’s attorney, and Mayor Groud, and asked them to come to the police station.
“It’s falling into place,” Troy told Lawton and Groud when they were seated in Troy’s office. “Here’s what I have.” He laid out the case against Mark Stider.
“Seems solid,” Lawton said. “It’s a safe bet that the semen DNA is going to match Mark Stider. Too bad we don’t have the car. I would bet it had a lot of blood in it. They would have cleaned it good but you can never clean that good.”
Troy nodded. “They knew that. Why they got rid of the car and sank the boat. My guess is that Mark raped her and she threatened him in some way and he just shot her. He’s a little tempestuous when he doesn’t get his way.”
“One question,” Lawton said. “The chart plotter course recording to that very spot where the body was found.” He looked at Groud, who was a fishing guide when not the mayor. “Could that be a coincidence? The defense will say so.”
Groud shook his head. “Not a chance. All the other recorded trips went to what was obviously a favorite fishing spot. Went there myself and looked. Great spot, there’s a three-foot-wide channel through an oyster bar and the tide runs through there fast. You can scoop up fish with a landing net.”
Troy looked at Groud. “Nice of you to tell me. You didn’t happen to look around for any evidence of, like, a crime, or anything?”
“Sorry. Guess we need to work on our communications skills,” Groud said. “But you didn’t even go look.”
Troy frowned. “I didn’t. I sent Bubba. He looked.”
“Oh. So why are you all over my butt about it?”
“You used confidential evidence from a criminal case for your own advantage, without my permission and without notifying me. Don’t do that, Les.”
“Oh. I see what you mean. I was just curious. So I
went and looked.”
“I have to know I can trust you, Les. Enough said. Let’s move on.”
“Okay,” Groud said. “That one track, alone, went far north into an area no one ever visits and then back into a spot almost impossible to reach. Get a jury of fishing guides and they would laugh you out of the courtroom if you claimed it was just coincidence.”
“Well, there won’t be a jury of fishing guides,” Lawton said. “There will be the usual jury of morons with no jobs to go to and so oblivious that they never read the newspaper or watch the news on television.”
“It’s good that you have managed to retain that youthful idealism in your job,” Troy said.
“Right. But the bullet matches the gun and the gun was apparently used only by Mark Stider. The blood from the boat is strong evidence too.”
“I’m waiting for a call from the M.E.’s office,” Troy said. “About the DNA result off the blood on the gun itself. If it’s a match to Barbara, one more bit of evidence.”
Lawton looked from Groud to Troy. “One thing makes no sense. Why the hell did he keep the gun? They got rid of a car that probably had the victim’s blood in it and a boat that did have her blood in it.”
“You can’t swear in…” Groud started to say. Troy held up a hand to stop him.
“It’s a twenty-five-hundred-dollar pistol,” Troy said. “Top of the line. But it’s more. It’s part of Mark’s psyche. Cord MacIntosh called it an ‘iron penis’ and he was exactly correct. Mark Stider would no more have tossed that gun into some marsh than he would cut off his dick. He thought he had hidden it pretty well, in a storage unit in Naples. Does ‘dick’ count as a swear word?”
“I think it counts as a synonym,” Lawton said.
Groud smiled. “Let the record show the town counsel says ‘dick’ is not a swear word.”
“At the gun range in Tampa where I used to shoot, I saw it all the time,” Troy said. “People would rent the biggest gun they could get. They shoot it off on the range and always, always, laugh and say something like ‘wow’! Then they take pictures of one another shooting it. The sales clerks and range safety officers just laugh at those people. They know that something like a .50-caliber pistol is extremely hard to use properly. In fact, Bubba Johns makes fun of me for keeping my old-fashioned .45-caliber that I practice with once a week.”
“But,” Lawton said, “given that they destroyed, or sold off at a song, somewhere close to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in car and boat, it seems stupid to hang onto something worth less than two percent of that.”
“One might think,” Troy said. “But the car and boat obviously had to go, they had blood in them and the good judge would know how hard it was to make that go away. I guess it never occurred to Mark or the judge that we’d find the body and the bullet. They weren’t far wrong; without that chart plotter trace there is almost zero chance that anyone would ever have found the body. Meat doesn’t last long out there and the bones left over would just fall down among the mangrove roots and vanish.”
“That’s for sure,” Groud said. “I spend most of my time out there in those mangroves. I could hide a dead elephant. So what do we do now?”
“I’ll get an arrest warrant for Mark Stider, no problem,” Troy said. “But I’m going to ask for one for the father too. For conspiracy to conceal the crime.”
Lawton sat up. “Wait a minute. You’re talking about arresting a sitting circuit court judge, and for a major felony.”
“Yes. I am. Why I asked you and the mayor to stop by. Frank, you and Lester don’t issue the warrants but you and Lester will catch any flak that comes our way in the form of lawsuits. And the good judge knows people, as we have already seen.”
“Jesus,” Frank Lawton said. “The judge issuing the arrest warrant will be sitting in an office down the hall from Judge Stider. Half the employees in the county courthouse will know about it in ten minutes. Half of them will call the newspapers and television stations. It’s not going to happen quietly.”
“What’s it going to cost us?” Groud said.
“Aye, there’s the rub,” Troy said, nodding.
“What do you mean?” Lawton asked Groud.
“I mean, if the judge sues the town, or Troy,” Groud said. “Or me and the councilmen, or whatever.”
“Oh. That,” Lawton said. “No way to tell. The town has insurance for that, of course. No problem.”
“No problem now,” Groud said. “But when we renew the insurance and can’t find any company to pick it up, or find the premiums have doubled, then we have a problem.” He looked at Troy. “Isn’t that so?”
Troy nodded. “That is…possible.”
“Winning the criminal case against the judge would torpedo any civil case,” Lawton mused. He looked up at Troy. “Can you guarantee a conviction?”
Troy shook his head. “On the kid, probably. Nothing’s guaranteed in a criminal trial. You know that. On the judge, best I can do with what I have now is to give Rita Shaner and the Naples state attorney’s office a running start.”
“Ah. I see the problem,” Lawton said. “So what is it you want from us now?”
“Vote of confidence, I suppose. I’m the chief law enforcement officer here so I get two votes. You each get one vote. Do I proceed with the request for two arrest warrants? Or do I drop the judge and just go for the kid?”
Groud stared at Troy then looked at Lawton. Lawton looked at his shoes. After a moment Troy said, “Well, gentlemen?”
“I think the son of a bitch should be arrested,” Groud said. “We’re dithering here about insurance costs. How about the cost to our business community and even to our souls when a visiting tourist gets murdered by one of us and we let it slide? Sending pere et fils to prison would be better publicity than what we’re getting now.”
“Pere et fils?” Troy said. “Lester, you sure you’re a fish-guts-covered redneck guide?
“I once had sex with a French girl.”
Troy nodded. “Haven’t we all. What about you, Frank?”
“Well, there was this girl from Quebec…”
“No, Frank. Not that. How do you vote?”
“I say go for it. Even if we can’t convict pere Stider on criminal charges, even if he sues us—maybe especially if he sues us—he will never survive the publicity. It’s an elected job and he’s finished as a judge. Getting Stider the Slider off the bench would be a good day’s work.”
“Four ayes, zero nays,” Troy said. “The ayes have it. I’ll get busy.” He leaned across his desk and shook hands with Groud and Lawton. “Remember,” he said, “we must all hang together or we shall surely hang separately.”
“Ben Franklin,” Lawton said.
“None other.”
Lawton left. Groud started to leave but turned at the door to Troy’s office and looked back. “You didn’t make Lawton pay the swear-word fines.”
“I’ll cover for him.”
“Generous. I’m just curious. What would you have done had Lawton and I voted no?”
“Well, Les, that would be a tie. I would have given myself a tie-breaking vote.”
Groud nodded. “I suspected all that politically savvy cooperation from you was too good to be true.”
“I needed to know that you had my back, Les. Now go catch a fish someplace. I have important police chief things to do.”
Chapter 45
Thursday, January 9
Rita Shaner, the assistant state attorney in Naples, got creative and submitted the arrest warrant requests to a midnight magistrate rather than a daytime judge. Troy got a phone call from her lowest-level clerk at three a.m. to say they were ready and would be emailed to his office.
He went in at six a.m. and printed out the warrants. At seven that morning Troy and three officers, the one going off-shift and the two coming on, arrested both Mark Stider and Judge Hans Stider.
Mark, of course, put up a fight. Dominique Reiss and Jeremiah Brown ganged him and took him down and T
roy bent over the three of them and snapped on the cuffs.
“I’ll kill you, you bastard,” Mark shouted at Troy as he was hoisted to his feet. Even with his hands cuffed behind his back he tried to kick Troy. Troy kicked Mark’s legs out from under him and Jeremiah reached down and picked Mark up with one huge hand.
“Behave yourself,” Jeremiah said. He was holding Mark Stider up off the ground with one hand. He held Mark a moment until Mark seemed less combative. For all the effort that entailed, Jeremiah could have been holding up a pillow.
“This is unlawful,” Judge Stider bellowed as Troy handcuffed him. “This is retaliation. I’m going to own this town when I’m done suing all of you.”
“You’re going to be an absentee landlord then,” Troy said. “You’re going to be up in north Florida, in a prison cell.”
“What sort of evidence do you claim to have, you idiot?”
Troy ignored that. “Jeremiah, read them their rights.” Jeremiah rattled off the Miranda warnings to each and Troy’s officers took the Stiders out to the police trucks.
After supervising as the Stiders were put into separate cells, Troy sat at his desk and started making phone calls. He told Cilla Dowling at the Bayou Breeze about the arrests. Rita Shaner had called from the state attorneys’ office to tell him that she had talked to the chief judge for the Twentieth Circuit and it looked as if Judge Stider would be suspended with pay for the time being.
Troy called Shaner back. “Wanted to thank you for the creative work,” he said.
“Yeah. I always wanted to go into private practice anyway,” Shaner said. “The salary here sucks.”
“Proud of you.”
Death Among the Mangroves Page 20