by Ralph Zeta
Martinez joined us. Southwood glanced at him expectantly.
“Checks out fine,” Martinez said, handing me my license.
“Mr. Justice, I’m gonna ask you a few questions,” Southwood said.
Deputy Martinez, a stout man in his early thirties was about a foot shorter than I, stood smartly a few feet to my left and slightly behind, feet apart, right hand resting smartly on his holster.
“Anyone with you?” Southwood asked.
“I’m alone.”
“Got anything on your person besides your wallet? Any weapons?”
“No weapons. Just my wallet and keys.” I nodded at the Porsche. “That’s my car. My briefcase is inside.”
“Any weapons in the vehicle?”
“No weapons.”
“Anything else we need to be concerned about?”
“Besides the goose egg on the back of my head?” I replied. “Nothing.”
“You injured?
“I was knocked unconscious.”
“Do you need me to call for an ambulance?”
I considered his suggestion before answering. “I’ll be all right.”
A newer model GMC Yukon XL rolled into the parking lot and glided up.
“That’s the sheriff,” Wren announced, and turning to the three amigos, he said, “You best get out of sight before he sees you snooping around where you oughtn’t.”
Reluctantly, they backed off another few steps.
The sheriff slid out of his truck. He was dressed in blue jeans, work boots, and a long-sleeved denim shirt, tails out. He seemed to be in his early fifties and had the broad shoulders and the thick neck of a former athlete. He wore his sandy hair high and tight. He had squinty, alert eyes and the bearing of someone accustomed to being in charge.
“Bring me up to speed,” the sheriff said to Deputy Southwood.
“This man’s name is Jason Justice,” Wren explained. “Lawyer out of West Palm. We ran him; he checks out. I told Judith and the other two to keep a lid on things. I haven’t questioned him yet.”
“Mr. Justice,” the sheriff said. He didn’t smile and didn’t offer his hand. His eyes lingered on me. I had the impression the man before me was a by-the-book lawman who could make my life miserable if I rubbed him the wrong way.
“I’m Ethan Powell, county sheriff. You’re coming with me.” To the deputies, he said, “You two follow us.”
Five
“Tell me what happened,” Sheriff Powell said.
We were moving along the empty stretch of country asphalt at a healthy clip. It was late. The sun had all but disappeared behind the towering wall of sugarcane, sending slanted orange fingers of light that bounced off the windshield at an oblique angle and lit up a thin layer of fog that hovered in spots above the pavement. It didn’t take me long to realize that the “fog” was a swarm of tiny bugs, thick enough to obscure the view. As the truck blew through, hundreds of tiny critters mashed against the windshield, misting it with a runny, light yellow smear that reduced forward visibility. I expected the sheriff to back off the gas, but he did not appear to notice, or if he did, he wasn’t bothered by it.
“Farmhouse,” I said, “about eight to ten miles ahead. There’s a dirt road to the right.”
“The old Lowry farm?”
“I believe so.”
“I’m familiar with it.” The sheriff gave me sideways glance and went back to driving. A long beat of silence followed. I decided it would be in my best interest to keep my answers brief and to the point.
“You called in to report you witnessed Milton Lowry’s death. Murdered. Is that correct?”
“Correct.”
“Who killed him?”
“I don’t know. Never saw his face.”
“How was he killed?”
“Strangled,” I said with clinical detachment. “When I walked in the house, I saw Mr. Lowry on the floor. A man decked out in tactical camo was straddling him. Had a length of twine around Lowry’s neck. As far as I could tell, Lowry was near death.”
“Garroted,” the sheriff observed, and nodded to himself as if the killer’s method made sense to him. “What did you do? You try to help?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“The killer wasn’t alone,” I said. “I was hit from behind. Knocked out cold. Didn’t see anything else after that.”
The sheriff regarded me for some time, gauging my credibility, I supposed, or perhaps my degree of complicity. I expected that Powell would proceed with caution. He had no choice, considering Milton Lowry’s high profile and considerable influence in his neck of the woods. And I couldn’t forget that to Powell I was an unknown quantity, and also a possible suspect.
A little smile crossed Powell’s lips. “How do you figure in all this, Mr. Justice?”
“I’m an attorney. My office is in West Palm. Mr. Lowry was referred to me by a mutual acquaintance. Lowry called me a couple of days ago and asked to meet here today.”
“About?”
“Can’t say, Sheriff. We never got that far.”
“Are you telling me you have a conversation with a man you don’t know and you hop in your car and drive halfway across the state without bothering to ask what the hell he wants?”
“That is exactly what I’m saying.”
He grunted and glanced at me sideways. “What kind of lawyer are you?”
It was my turn to glance at him. “Family law.”
He fired another quick glance at me. “Divorce?”
Powell was nobody’s fool. “Yes.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “So why meet out here? Why not Miami or Palm Beach?”
“He insisted,” I said, holding back what little I knew about Lowry’s suspicions that he was being followed. “He said privacy was important to him.”
“He didn’t want anyone to know he was meeting you?”
“That’s my understanding.”
A brief silence, then, “The killing—when did it happen?”
“I arrived at the house just before three p.m. I looked around for a couple of minutes. Front door was ajar. I called. No one answered. I went inside. Music was playing. Called out again. No reply. I kept after the music. I heard a sound. I went in the direction of the sound. That’s when I saw the man and Mr. Lowry. In the study. I tried to help. But someone knocked me out. I woke up where I went down, about an hour later. And this is where things get dicey, Sheriff.”
“Dicey how?” Powell glanced at me before slowing down. He spun the wheel. We had turned into a dark narrow cut in the fields. I wasn’t sure where exactly where we were. I could barely see past the layer of bug juice on the windshield. The tall sugar cane acted like a giant wall that blocked the dying sunlight and cast the dirt track in long shadows. The sheriff flicked on his headlights. Visibility improved but not as much as I expected. Again, the visual impairment didn’t seem to bother Powell. He barreled down the trail at highway speed, the truck bounding over the uneven road.
“When I came to, Lowry was gone. I checked the house. There was no one else. And the place was sanitized. Nothing out of place. Like it never happened. There was a leather briefcase and set of car keys on a table near the entry door when I arrived. They were gone. So was the BMW sedan parked outside when I arrived.”
Powell nodded but said nothing. He appeared to take his time digesting what I said. The pickup swerved to the right and came to an abrupt stop. We had arrived. Before us, the house’s verandah and white colonnades gleamed under the bright headlamps. The patrol cruisers pulled in next to us, their beams illuminating the looming structure. The vehicles were left running, headlights on. We got out and stood before the house. In the deepening night, the home seemed even lonelier. The remote location was, I came to realize, the ideal setting for a murder.
“You said this happened in the study, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Manny, check around back,” Powell said to Deputy Martinez. “Wren, you’re with us
.” To me he said, “Walk us through it.”
I pushed the front door. A stream of cool dry air streamed past us as two thin beams of light pierced the darkness ahead. I glanced at my escorts. Law enforcement types always seem to have a flashlight handy. Powell reached for the light switch and flicked it several times to no avail.
“Lights seem to be out.” Powell said and glanced at me. “Lead away, Mr. Justice.”
I led, pointing out the table where I had seen the briefcase and keys. We then went down the corridor to the study. I recounted the events as I remembered them, including the spot on the floor where the side table and overturned lamp and the broken wineglass were. The study was impeccable, nothing askew or out of place. It wouldn’t be difficult for Powell to conclude that no one had been in that room for some time. Even to me, my story seemed more preposterous than ever.
“You sure you saw what you saw?”
Powell asked, a skeptical frown creasing his brow.
“As sure as I’m standing here with you, Sheriff,” I said.
I went on to describe what Milton Lowry wore, as well as the killer’s getup. Sheriff Powell seemed to mull over what I told him. He then turned around and played his flashlight over the side table and studied its edges. He knelt and slid his fingers over the floor planks all around the small table. Powell came to his feet and faced me.
“What did you do after you regained consciousness and discovered Mr. Lowry was gone?”
“I went upstairs. Found no one. Came back downstairs and went outside. Noticed the BMW was gone. And my car appeared untouched. I found my keys, tossed on the dirt some forty feet away. My cell phone was near my car’s back tire. It had been smashed.” I described how I had noticed the back door of the house wide open when I arrived, then found it closed, the deadbolt set when I came to. I told him I found a place where the grass had been flattened. “I’m no tracking expert, but that tells me someone waited there recently,” I said. “There’s a trail through the brush. It runs west.”
The sheriff asked me to show him, and I did. After inspecting the area, Powell asked Deputy Martinez to scout the trail. Martinez nodded dutifully disappeared into the brush.
Powell watched his deputy vanish into the brush and said, “Martinez knows the area better than anyone I know. He’s hunted ‘round here his whole life. If they left a trail, he’ll find it.” He regarded me and said, “Let’s go back,” Powell said and started toward the house. “Tell me everything that happened here exactly as you remember. Start with what you saw when you arrived. Show me where Mr. Lowry’s car was parked.”
I retold my story. We went back to the front porch. Southwood scanned the gravel-covered parking area with his flashlight.
“Other than the cruisers tracks and the sheriff’s, I can only find one other set of tracks,” Southwood said when he was done.
“I know,” I said. “I couldn’t find any, either.”
“So what do you think happened here, counselor?” Powell asked eyeing me with those keen squinty eyes. “Why does someone strangle Milton Lowry, then remove the body and his car, then bother to clean up the scene?”
“Honestly, Sheriff, I haven’t a clue.”
“Which raises an important question, Mr. Justice. You are a witness in a potential capital murder case. So why let you live? I can’t think of a single reason a killer would allow a witness, one who could send him to death row, alive to talk about it. Can you?”
“No.” I shrugged. “But I never saw his face. And the killer knew it. But we don’t know what’s going on. Maybe what happened here is part of a plan. And killing me wasn’t part of that plan.”
“So you think you walked in on them and what? Surprised them?”
“It’s the only answer that makes sense.”
Martinez emerged from the darkness. His shirt was sweated through, and sandburs clung to his bootlaces.
“Found two, maybe three sets of tracks,” he said. “Fresh. Not more than a few hours old. Not easy to find. They did a pretty good job of covering them up.”
“Where you lose them?” Powell asked.
“Edge of the swamp.”
The sheriff asked me, “You sure what you’ve told us is what really happened to the best of your recollections, Mr. Justice?”
“Every word, Sheriff.”
His eyes scrutinized me carefully. He said, “There isn’t much to go on here. But I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, Mr. Justice. But if this is not as you’ve told me, or you’re holding back anything, I’m gonna come down hard on you. Do we understand each other?”
Six
It was dark when Sheriff Powell drove me back to the church to retrieve my car. The parking lot was brimming with dozens of cars and pickups. Church was in session. A small group of locals had gathered near my car, waiting, I supposed, for news of what I suspected had to be the biggest piece of news to hit this rural corner of the state in years. Before I slid out of Powell’s dark Yukon XL, he instructed me to ignore all questions from the group, which I did. I had the feeling Powell was on the fence about me and my story, and the last thing I needed was to go against his wishes this early in the process. He requested that I follow him to the clinic in Clewiston, and I agreed. Although he never said it directly, my impression was that he wanted to verify that my head trauma was consistent with my version of events. Of course, legally I didn’t have to agree to be examined or allow the doctor discuss my condition with anyone I didn’t expressly authorize, but playing along would go a long way to convince a skeptical lawman that I was telling the truth. Besides, Powell was just being thorough. And I suspected the man was good at his job—something that might prove useful later on.
After submitting to an X-ray and examination of my injury by a staff physician, I was diagnosed with a moderate to severe concussion, the result of recent blunt-force trauma. I was prescribed some medication for the pain and released. Powell’s attitude softened noticeably after the diagnosis. He even suggested that given my injury, I spend the night in town. He offered to call in a favor with the owner of a local motel and get me a room. “On the house,” he said.
I thanked him but said no, explaining that I had to be in court the next morning, and we left it at that. I gave him one of my cards and asked him to keep me in the loop.
“Oh, I’ll be in touch,” he replied.
I drove straight home. It was nearly ten when I pulled into my assigned parking spot at the marina.
Home, by the way, is a sixty-foot Viking Custom Convertible sportfishing vessel. The boat used to belong to my father. He called it his dreamboat. He worked hard all his life to build a successful reinsurance company, waiting until he felt he had earned the right to possess something he referred to as “uniquely magnificent.” He had placed the order for the custom craft two and a half years before he died and took delivery barely five months before brain cancer took him.
After his death, his will specified that the boat, along with all major assets held in his name, be sold and the proceeds held in trust for his charitable foundation. The foundation was designed to fund and maintain some of his favorite causes: college scholarships for disadvantaged kids, cancer research, and the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
For me, keeping my father’s dream alive was a no-brainer. I purchased the boat from the estate. Buying it meant drastic changes in lifestyle. I sold my beachfront apartment and practically everything else I owned. I also relocated my law practice from a building with impossible views of the Intracoastal Waterway and the Breakers Hotel’s twin Moorish towers, to my present address west of the Intracostal. I took up residence in my new, substantially less fiscally demanding digs, and the Bold Ambition II and I never looked back. It was a choice with plenty of consequences, to be sure, and one I have yet to regret.
I entered the main cabin and went hunting for my backup cell phone. I found it deep in a galley drawer, powered it up, and called the carrier and transferred the number from my smashed phone. Getting a new phone
would have to wait for now. Done with the process, I dialed Sammy’s number. It went to voice mail. I left a message, then ambled to the kitchen in search of liquor. I downed two prescription pills with a long swig of tequila and felt the warmth of the alcohol descend. I almost shivered. I lingered in the dark galley for some time, waiting, I suppose, for either the pills or the booze to take effect. After a while, I gave up and opted for a shower.
I found it almost impossible to shake off images of Milton Lowry struggling against the twine encircling his neck, the mask of agony distorting his face. When your mind is consumed by more immediate matters—like making a statement to a no-nonsense cop—it’s possible to fend off unwanted thoughts. But it never lasts. After the distraction passes the memories reassert themselves like a rising tide. Milton Lowry was a stranger to me. I owed him nothing, and yet I couldn’t think of anything else. I cast my mind back to our brief phone conversation. The dread in his voice now seemed entirely justified.
By its very nature, strangulation is a very personal, even intimate, act. I had witnessed death in many forms. But those deaths had been the product of far different circumstances. It was a war zone. Some deaths forever transform the survivors; the death of a fellow soldier, a dear friend, a brother or a sister. Men and women with whom, in a short time, we knitted a relationship that extended beyond the common bonds of friendship. Those deaths hit particularly hard and tend to become a part of the survivors. And then there are the deaths that most tear at the heart: the deaths of noncombatants, the innocent and the vulnerable— mothers, sisters, children caught in the crossfire. Collateral damage. The nameless and the forgotten.
After graduating from West Point Military Academy and serving in the first Gulf War, I left the service and attended law school. A few years after graduation, a group of hate-filled terrorists flew commercial planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Thousands of Americans died that September morning. The world changed that day. And so did I.
I took a leave from my cushy job in Manhattan, and a week later I was back in uniform. I did two more combat tours.