by A. E. Howe
You have to be very careful chasing down someone that you don’t want to tackle or take a chance of tearing off their clothes. Essentially, I had to run ahead of Marge and let her charge into me. I grabbed her in a bear hug, then eased her back down the drive.
Once Marge was sitting in her car again, I took the opportunity to observe Hank and Jane. Jane was comforting Marge, kneeling at the open car door and gently touching her arm while talking quietly. Hank, on the other hand, was pacing and staring off at the woods. He obviously didn’t want to meet my eyes or look at the distant body of his brother.
I had the sinking feeling that I’d made a mistake in not pushing Joe. He had known something, and now he couldn’t tell me what it was. And here I was looking at another man from the Parrish family who was troubled. I wasn’t going to go as easy on this one. I went over to Hank and walked right into his personal space.
“Your brother knew something that he chose not to tell me. Now he’s been murdered like your father. I want to know every secret that this family has,” I said bluntly.
Hank tried, but couldn’t hold my eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a recovering addict. That’s my big non-secret. What else do you want to know?” There was an edge to his voice.
“I want to know why your brother was visibly upset when I showed him the holes that were dug in the woods.” I hadn’t mentioned the holes during my previous interview with Hank, but I had a hunch that Joe would have told the others. Hank’s lack of surprise seemed to confirm this.
“Have you been to our lawyer?” he asked.
Where the hell did that come from? “No,” I told him.
“So you don’t know what’s in my father’s will?” He clamped his lips tight and his eyes went back to the woods. I followed his gaze and realized that we were looking at the same woods where the holes were dug. They were on the other side of a three-hundred-acre hay field and across the road, but they were there.
“At this point, all I know about the will is what your family told us. Were you all lying?”
“No, everything we told you was true. But there are a few small extra provisions in the will. One of them is for me.” He stopped. I was about to prod him when he continued, “Dad left me the woods that run along the railroad tracks.”
“Including the spot where those holes were dug, and the place where the person who killed your father was standing?”
“Yes. All told, about thirty acres on both sides of the tracks.”
“Why?”
Hank sighed. “Why? Good question. Dad and I had an interesting relationship. Some of that went back to his father. I don’t know if you ever met Granddad, but a harder, tougher, meaner old coot never lived. The only work he thought was worth anything was the kind you did with calloused hands and a strong back. I don’t think he would have cared if any of us went to college or not, as long as we knew how to farm and hunt. Mom and Dad were a lot more easygoing, but Dad also did whatever his father wanted, and his father didn’t want any dreamers in the family.”
Hank stopped for a moment to gather his thoughts, then went on. “I was cursed with an imagination. Something Dad and Joe didn’t have much of. One day when I was twelve, my teacher wanted everyone in our class to do a presentation on a local legend.” Hank stopped and his hands searched inside his pockets, finding a vaporizer. He took a couple of deep draws on it. His hands were shaking.
“Are those things really better for you?” I asked, trying to calm him down.
“Hell if I know, but I have to do something,” he said with the vehemence of an addict struggling to hold onto sobriety. “Anyway, I asked around, trying to come up with a topic. Then my mother told me about the old train robbery and how people believed that there was gold buried in our woods.” He was staring off at the distant trees again.
I remembered the story. “The legend of the Nazi gold. I was about the same age when I first heard about that. I remember reading an article in the Adams County Times.”
“They used to repeat the article every year or so. I got real excited and did all my research and began to dream about finding the gold. Dad went along with most of my daydreaming and didn’t give me too hard of a time. He even went down with me to the woods a couple of times while I swung an old metal detector I’d borrowed. But when Granddad found out, he was furious. Told Dad that he’d better beat that nonsense out of me. Now, Dad wasn’t going to do that. Even if he’d been inclined, Mom wouldn’t have allowed it. I went on hunting down in those woods for a few years, off and on.
“What I didn’t know was the price that Dad was paying for allowing me to pursue the legend. One day, I guess Granddad had found out from one of the farmhands that I’d been down there digging, and he raked Dad over the coals. Dad came to me and told me never to go into those woods again. Period. I was fifteen at the time, and I told him that he shouldn’t let Granddad boss him around. I got a little too close to the truth, I guess, and Dad hit me.”
I knew how complex father-son relationships could be. While my own grandfather had had the occasional mean streak when drinking, for the most part he had been an affable sort who’d never let my dad doubt that he was loved. If he had governed with the iron fist that Old Man Parrish had, my life might have been much different.
“Anyway,” Hank went on, “Dad and I hardly spoke for years after that. The sad thing is that we both knew as soon as the punch had landed that he regretted hitting me, but we couldn’t get past that moment in time. I think that’s what hammered down the wedge between my mom and Dad. She left him as soon as I turned eighteen and she never came back.
“Dad told me this last time I got sober that he should have told his father to go jump off a bridge. He thought that that was the moment things went wrong between us, and I think he was right. He said he wished he’d let me explore and use my imagination any way I wanted. Dad told me that he wanted to leave those woods to me as a peace offering.”
Did the holes and the murders have something to do with the legend of the gold, or the feud between Hank and his father all those years ago? And for all the information that Hank had offered me, I could tell that he was still holding something back.
“Do you think these murders have anything to do with the past or with you inheriting that piece of property?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.” He turned and went back to his sisters.
I looked back up the hill at Darlene, who was working the crime scene with Marcus, Shantel and a couple of deputies who’d volunteered to come out and help. I needed to fill her in. I trudged back up the hill and had almost made it when my phone rang. I looked at the ID—Deputy Andy Martel.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Got a guy here. Had a burglary that turned into a home invasion and now he wants to talk to you.” Martel was in his early twenties and had been with the department for a little over a year. Whenever I talked with him, I always felt like I was talking to a suspect rather than a colleague. He volunteered as little information as possible.
“What’s his name?”
“Griffin.”
“Albert Griffin?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he okay?”
“Banged up a little but, other than that, okay.”
I thought about asking if he’d cleared the house, but Martel wasn’t stupid, just stingy with information. “Put him on.”
“Deputy Macklin?”
“Hey, Mr. Griffin. You okay?”
“Thanks to Brutus. I’m a little shaken up, though. I… I’d like to talk with you if you have the time.” He sounded fragile. I knew that the older a victim was, the harder it could be to bounce back from an assault.
“I’m tied up right now, but I’ll be able to come by your place this afternoon. You should let Deputy Martel call an ambulance and get you checked out at the hospital.”
“No, no. I’m fine. Just fell down. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
“I’ll be there as soon as
I can,” I said as I heard him hand the phone back to Martel. “Make sure that he’s really okay, and get the house secured. How did they get in?” I asked him.
“Jimmied the back door. Old door, old lock.”
“Do me a favor and make sure it’s secure before you leave.”
“10-4,” Martel affirmed. As laconic as he was, he was a very conscientious officer.
Chapter Nine
I hung up the phone. Marge was still sitting in her car, staring at nothing. Jane and Hank were about ten feet from the car, talking too softly for anyone to hear them. Their faces were taunt and both of them looked ready to break out into an argument. Though why wouldn’t they be tense and emotionally vulnerable? Their father and brother had both been killed in a matter of days. Was all of this about the family? I knew that an outsider was involved at some level due to the stolen backhoe, but they could have been brought into the murders by a family member.
I walked over to Darlene, who was poking around the front yard, bent over and staring at the ground.
“I don’t really think there’s anything to find here. Looks like the killer stayed on the driveway,” she said without looking up.
“I didn’t see any defensive wounds on the arms or hands,” I said, “so he probably knew the killer.”
“Big man like that,” Darlene nodded over to where two of Dr. Darzi’s people were trying to figure out how best to remove the concrete statue without further damaging the victim’s body, “probably wasn’t afraid of much. He might have let his guard down around a stranger.”
Darlene brushed some leaves aside with her shiny shoes. Even when she wasn’t wearing a uniform it still looked like she was, in her green polo shirt with the sheriff’s office logo, khaki slacks and black polished shoes.
We spent another hour at the scene, even though there really wasn’t much to see. Inside the garage and the house, everything looked in order. We walked Marge, Hank and Jane through the grounds to see if they could spot anything out of the ordinary. Nothing. Just to be safe, we had our IT guy come over and wrap up all of the electronics in the house for forensic analysis.
I thought about everything that Pete had said about bonding with Darlene. Even though I really wanted to have lunch with Cara or Pete, I suggested to Darlene that we stop at the Deep Pit Bar-b-que for my third helping of their artery-clogging food in as many days.
With pulled pork sandwich baskets in hand, we found benches inside the restaurant near the stuffed deer.
“You’re from Tampa?” I asked as an opener.
Darlene looked up at me, setting her sandwich down and wiping her hands.
“I was raised there, but I was born in Missouri. My dad was a contactor and we moved to Tampa when the housing market was just starting to go crazy. Mom is a CPA.” She looked at me, then said, “You always call me Darlene. Not Darl.”
She’d made it a statement rather than a question, but I felt compelled to explain. “Darl is… kind of an ugly name,” I said carefully, wondering if being honest and open with her was going to turn out to be a mistake.
She laughed. “That’s the point. After having half a dozen guys call me Darling instead of Darlene, I knew I needed a gruff nickname to survive the world of cops. What’s in a name? Funny thing is, the new nickname made a difference. All the grab-assers decided I must be butch with a name like that.” She smiled. “Which I’m not. I’m just having a boyfriend dry spell at the moment.”
“I guess fitting in would be a bit rough,” I said, having seen some guys who couldn’t stand the level of testosterone that pervaded most law enforcement ready rooms.
“I had a leg up. I worked with my dad on construction sites for a couple of summers. Same thing. Only difference is hammers instead of guns,” she said. “So, do you like working for your dad?”
“Some days more than others,” was the glib answer I gave her and then thought better of it. “At first, no. I was too much in his shadow. I joined the department for him.” I paused. “Maybe that’s not entirely true. It might also have been because I needed to prove that I was an adult. I guess when I thought about what an adult was like, I thought of my dad.”
“You could do worse. From what I’ve seen, he’s a straight shooter.”
“Coming from Tampa, how’d you end up working for the Calhoun police?”
“I went to the Pat Thomas Law Enforcement Academy and Chief Maxwell was one of the recruiters that came and talked to our class. I guess I was pretty nostalgic for the small town in Missouri where we’d lived before coming to Florida. Also, Chief Maxwell has some pretty progressive ideas about law enforcement, so it seemed like the best of both worlds.” Darlene almost sounded wistful.
“Why’d you change jobs?”
“Bigger department. Besides, Maxwell might become sheriff,” she said with a mischievous smile.
Charles Maxwell was running against my father in the upcoming November election, giving Dad his first real challenge since he’d become sheriff. “Not if Dad has anything to do with it,” I shot back, but kept my tone light.
“I’m good either way,” Darlene said, picking up the last potato strip in her basket and eating it. “Best to stay out of politics.”
“So why have you been razzing me with the rookie thing?” I asked. She’d started in with the rookie nickname the second day we’d worked together and, for some reason, it rankled me more than it should have.
“Because you don’t take your job seriously,” she said bluntly.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck go up and my eyes narrow. “That’s ridiculous.” I had to work to keep my voice down. I wondered if I’d made a big mistake trying to get on friendlier terms with Darlene.
“Don’t bow up at me. You asked. For one, look at the way you dress,” she said.
What the hell? “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I had on a button-down shirt and khaki slacks and didn’t know where she was getting off criticizing my fashion sense. I felt the blood rising in my cheeks.
Darlene sat back in the booth and looked me straight in the face, her eyes dead serious. “The problem is you wear something different every day. Each day you come in and your holster is here or there. Your spare magazines are in a different spot on your belt. Sometimes your belt is leather, sometimes it’s a web belt. The point is, if you have to draw your gun, you’d never know exactly where the butt of the gun is going to be. You take a chance of losing precious seconds getting it out of the holster and on target.”
Now the blood was pounding in my ears. “How—” I bit back the dare you. “First shot off in a little over a second and a half, and on target. Anytime you want,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Now you’re getting all huffy.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s not just your tactical sense. What do you carry in the bag in your car?”
I wanted to end this conversation, but I couldn’t find the right exit. “Stuff…” I spluttered. “Same as everyone else. I’ve got extra batteries, first aid equipment, trauma kit, extra magazines, a change of clothes and a bunch of other stuff.” I couldn’t believe her gall in challenging my law enforcement skills.
“I’ve never seen you take any of it out of your trunk,” she said flatly. “In almost two weeks.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Do the batteries work? Are your extra magazines loaded? Has the ammo compressed the spring in the magazines? Would they feed correctly? Are any of the medical supplies out of date?”
“Just because you’re Little Miss Girl Scout doesn’t mean you’re a good investigator.” My response was churlish and silly, but the blood pounding in my head wasn’t helping me come up with rational, snappy comebacks.
“I heard you didn’t want to be a deputy, and what I’ve seen has just reinforced that idea. That’s why I call you rookie. You remind me of a rookie who’s joined up, but can’t make the full commitment.”
I counted to ten. If I hadn’t, I would ha
ve said things that would have made working together damn near impossible. I think it was her righteous tone and attitude that irked me the most. I wanted to say something that would burn her the way that she was burning me.
“You don’t like the way I do my job. I get it. I’ll just say there are things that you do that I find irritating and we’ll leave it at that.” Sadly, that was the best I could do.
“You know what? If you think this is some personal bullcrap that I’m throwing at you, then you haven’t understood a word I’ve said. So fine, forget it.”
Now she’s pissed at me? I thought. I suddenly noticed our waitress standing beside the table. She was young and looked embarrassed to have walked in on an argument. “More tea?” she asked in small voice.
“No,” I said, taking out a five and leaving it on the table as a tip.
I’d planned on bringing Darlene up to speed on the silly Nazi gold angle, but she’d gotten me so pissed off that I didn’t want to talk about it. We didn’t say another word to each other until we were in the car.
“I think we should look very closely at the family,” I said in clipped tones that I pretended were professional.
“I agree. With two murders in the same family, it’s not a stretch to think that the murderer is close by. Family, friend or employee.” Darlene sounded like we hadn’t just had an argument.
“I’ll call Hank and tell him to meet us up at the main house with his sisters.”
“And I’ll check in with Shantel and see if they’ve wrapped up at the scene,” Darlene said, taking out her phone.
I reached for mine to call Hank and almost dropped it as I took it off of my belt. I thought about what she’d said about fumbling my draw, then shook the thought off in irritation.
Chapter Ten
An hour later we were standing in the living room of the Parrish house with the surviving members of the family, as well as Clive and Andrew.