“Just calm down, Nick,” Harry said. His voice was soft and steady.
“Calm down, shit, Harry! You know me. You think I killed her?”
Harry ignored the question. “How did you meet her?” he asked instead.
Nick studied his shoes for a moment. “I was interviewing a dancer at that club, the Peek-a-Boo Lounge. I thought she might have witnessed a murder when she was working in a joint in our jurisdiction. It was the Bruder case, Jeffrey Bruder. Happened late last January and this dancer disappeared right after I started my investigation. I finally caught up with her in early March. The case is still open. You can read my daily reports and cross check ’em in my notebook.”
“So where does Darlene Beckett come in?” Rourke asked.
Benevuto shook his head and let out a breath. “She was at the bar. I saw her and recognized her, and when I was finished with my witness I struck up a conversation.” He shook his head again. “Her case had just finished up in court and it wasn’t very hard to recognize her. Hell, she was all over TV and the papers. And I knew she had gotten probation with some pretty heavy restrictions, so I asked her if she was supposed to be there.”
“Just being a good cop, right?” Vicky threw in.
Benevuto looked at her as though he wanted to grab her throat and hang on for at least a week. “That’s right, lady.” The final word was spoken with pure venom.
“Alright, knock it off, both of you,” Rourke snapped.
“What happened then?” Harry asked, throwing a look at Vicky.
“Well, she tells me there are no restrictions on her going to a bar, or restaurant, or anything like that. She says she’s just restricted about where she can live—like not close to a school, or playground, or anything like that. And she can’t hang out in places where kids hang or teach anymore.” He shrugged. “It was bullshit, of course, bars are always a no-no.”
“So you just kept chatting her up,” Vicky said, ignoring Harry’s silent admonition. He threw her another hard look.
Nick glared at her. “That’s right. And I even got her phone number and address, and told her I’d give her a call sometime. She seemed interested in the idea.”
“And it never registered with you that she was on probation and not a suitable social contact for a cop?” Rourke asked.
Nick looked him straight in the eye. “I wasn’t imagining her as a social contact. You think I was gonna start diddling some broad who fucks kids? I wanted her as a snitch.”
“Oh, Christ,” Vicky said.
Nick rounded on her. “Fuck you, lady.”
“Knock it off,” Rourke roared. “This is the last warning for both of you.”
Harry held up a hand. “So you called and dropped by her place,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“How many times?”
“Three, four, I’m not really sure.”
“We have you for two, both times in department cars,” Rourke said.
“It was more than that. Your neighbor missed one or two.”
“Was she wearing an ankle monitor the three or four times you saw her?” Harry asked.
Nick looked off as if trying to remember, then slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. I think she was wearing slacks each time I saw her.”
Harry held his gaze. This time the tell had been there and he wanted Nick to know he had seen it.
“So did she agree to be your snitch?” It was Rourke this time, skepticism dripping from every word.
Benevuto either didn’t hear it, or chose to ignore it. “Yeah, after a fashion,” he said. “The second time we met—that was the first time I went to her apartment—that’s when I hit her with the idea of working as a confidential informant. She wasn’t hot for the idea, but when I pressed her, told her I might be able to do her some good with her probation officer if she ever got jammed up, she said she’d keep her ears open and call me if she heard anything. I let it go at that, for the time being. Later I pushed her to see what she could find out from this dancer I interviewed at the Peek-a-Boo. The one I thought knew something about the Bruder murder.”
“Did Darlene agree to do it?” Harry asked.
Nick nodded slowly. “Yeah, she did, but not with a lot of enthusiasm. She said she didn’t want to get the dancer into any trouble. You all know what it’s like. Snitches’ll tell you stuff they hear, but they can think up all kinds of reasons not to go in and ask questions. They know doing something like that is risky. Usually you can only get junkies to do it, and only when they need some fast cash to score.” He shrugged. “Anyway, Darlene probably got iced before she ever had a chance to talk to this dancer.”
“But you’re not sure of that,” Harry suggested.
“Well, no. I can’t be sure of it, but I don’t think she did.”
“What are you thinking, Harry?” Rourke asked.
“Another possibility we have to pursue. Right now it’s just a what if.”
Rourke finished the thought for him: “What if she did ask the dancer some questions and the dancer went back and told somebody else.”
“Like the person who iced Bruder,” Benevuto said, grasping the offered straw.
“Oh, come on,” Vicky said. “That’s just a touch sketchy.”
“Yeah, it is,” Harry said. “But I don’t want to ignore it and then find out later we walked right by Darlene’s killer.”
“John and I can check it out,” Nick offered.
“No, you can’t,” Rourke said. “As of right now you’re off the case and on administrative duty. That means you’ll be riding a desk until this is cleared up. I need your reports and your notebook on the Bruder murder and I need Weathers in here to tell us about your computer skills. In the meantime I want your gun. You get everything back after Harry and IAD clear you.”
“IAD? This is bullshit.” Nick tossed his head toward Morgan. “Just because computer boy comes up with some bullshit theory that I altered department records, I get put on the rubber gun squad and my ass gets thrown to the fucking wolves.”
“It’s the way it has to be, Nick,” Harry said. “You know that. I promise you we’ll clear up our end as fast as we can. But as far as IAD goes, it would be the same story for any one of us. Cap’s hands are tied.”
“Bullshit,” Benevuto barked. He placed his gun on Rourke’s desk and glared at each of them in turn. “You’ll have the reports and notebooks before I leave today.” He spun around and headed out of the office.
“Tell John I need him in here immediately,” Rourke said to his back.
After John Weathers had confirmed that his partner’s computer skills began and ended with the power button and the keyboard, they left Rourke’s office and returned to the conference room.
“So where does that leave us?” Harry asked when they were seated around the table.
“I think it leaves us with Nick as a prime suspect,” Vicky said.
Harry looked at Morgan. “And what do you think, Jim?”
Morgan paused, taking time to study the top of the conference table. “All I know is that altering those records wasn’t a big deal,” he said, looking up. “Even if Nick didn’t know any more about computers than he said, if he had come to me I could have walked him through it in five minutes. Look, I hate this crap. I hate dropping a dime on a brother cop. I just didn’t think I could sit on the information when I came across it.”
He had spoken the words with passion, but Harry didn’t believe a word of it. Morgan was an ambitious young cop and Harry had little doubt he’d take whatever came his way if it gave him a leg up on a detective’s shield. “So you’re saying that Nick could have gone to any computer whiz and gotten it written down step by step,” Harry said.
Morgan looked pained by the question. “That’s about it,” he said.
“Well, it’s bullshit.” It was Weathers, his eyes ice now. He turned them on Vicky. “I don’t know what your problem is with Nick. Yeah, sure, sometimes he’s an asshole and he comes on a litt
le strong. And maybe he even did that with you. But I’ve worked with him for three years and he’s a good cop, and there’s no fucking way he’d ice some broad because she turned him down. Hell, if that was the case half the women in the county would be dead by now.”
Vicky held his eyes. “What if he really fell for her, John, and then found out she was picking up guys in bars? And what if he followed her one night and found her getting it off on a beach?”
“That’s a load of crap,” Weathers snapped. “Nick never falls for any woman. All he ever wants is what they have between their legs. I don’t think he even likes women. He told me once that if they didn’t have pussies we’d hunt them like deer.”
“Alright, let’s leave it there,” Harry said, holding up a hand. “Right now we don’t have any choice. Nick’s a suspect until we clear him. I personally think we will, but even then we’ll have IAD to deal with before he’s back working the case. In the meantime, John, you team up with one of the uniforms—you pick who you want—and keep working the case just like you were with Nick. You’re probably going to lose a lot of time talking to IAD, but that can’t be helped. I’ll keep on with the church angle.”
“You still think that’s the strongest lead?” Vicky asked.
“Yeah, I do. At least for now.”
“You want Jim and me to keep investigating Nick?”
Harry noted the skepticism in her voice. “That’s right. And come to me whenever you develop anything new. No matter which way it goes, pro or con. IAD is going to want to look over your shoulders. How much you work with them is up to you, but do not let them impede this investigation.”
“Are you going to work with them?” Weathers asked. His eyes were hard on Harry now.
“I’m going to avoid them like the plague,” Harry said. “If they want me they’re going to have to find me.”
CHAPTER TEN
It was five-thirty when Bobby Joe Waldo left his father’s private office. The outer office was already empty, the secretaries gone; the lights were turned off, but even in the faint light that filtered in through the windows Bobby Joe’s face looked drained of color and a nervous tic was visible at the corner of his mouth. His father’s office staff always left at five sharp so he doubted anyone had heard the old man’s angry shouts. But what difference did it make; they had heard them often enough in the past. He exited his father’s suite and headed to his own office farther down the covered walkway. Bobby Joe’s accommodations as associate minister were little more than a twelve-by-twelve-foot box and lacked any of the amenities his father enjoyed. The view outside his one small window was meager; there was no gracefully landscaped pond to look out upon. Instead there was a remaining patch of the dusty scrub pine woodlot that had dominated the land long before the church complex was built. The office furnishings, while comfortable and adequate, were also run-of-the-mill, a mass-produced desk and chair from a nationwide office supply chain, visitors’ chairs and lamps that could be found in any Wal-Mart, and durable low-end carpeting from Home Depot. It was something that normally rankled Bobby Joe when he left his father’s office and entered his own. Today he ignored it as he slumped into his chair, his hands trembling slightly with a mixture of anger and fear.
His father was way over the top about this cop poking his nose around. And the old man didn’t know the half of it yet. Billy Joe shook his head as that thought settled in. That was the operative word: yet. Because he was pretty sure the old bastard would find out every bit of it. And then all hell would really break loose. Especially when he learned that one of the church’s cars had been in an accident in the parking lot of a Tampa titty bar, and that his own son had paid off the dancer whose car had been hit. Paid her off and never told the old man what happened. And when he put together the fact that the bar had been a regular hangout for Darlene Beckett, well, then the shit would really start to fly.
Darlene. It always seemed to come back to her. The woman was more trouble dead than she’d been alive. But you had to give it to her. The whole thing started because she decided to get into that kid’s pants, and then pulled off a real winner by somehow getting the kid to clam up so she could pretty much beat the rap. His father had been off the wall about that, and then when the kid refused to repent before the congregation, it really set him off. He smiled momentarily at the memory. The kid’s mother had pretty much told the old man to stuff it when he came up with all the repentance bullshit. And the kid’s father looked like he was ready to rip somebody’s head off, if not the old man’s then Darlene’s for sure. Repentance shit. Every man in the congregation would have given their left ball to fuck Darlene—everybody except his fat, limp-dick old man. And truth be told, maybe even he would, the phony old bastard.
He sat back and smiled as he recalled the first time he’d met her. He’d followed her to the titty bar, and after checking out the room to make sure nobody he knew was there, he’d slid into the seat next to her. She’d turned to him right off, looked him up and down and smiled. And he knew right there that even with all that incredible beauty the woman was nothing but good, old-fashioned trailer trash.
As he thought back on it now, it all seemed to make perfect sense. He’d followed her because his father had made it clear that he wanted someone to get something on her, preferably someone in the congregation: “See to it that she gets her just desserts” was the way old man had put it. So he’d gone on the Internet and checked out the sex offender registry and found out where she lived. Then he’d parked himself outside her apartment and right away it paid off. That first time he’d followed her she went straight to the Peek-a-Boo and he thought he’d hit pay dirt. Then she’d turned those big baby blues on him and he knew there was no way he wanted her back in the slammer. God, sex came off that woman like sweat, and he’d just lapped it up, his dick so hard he’d been afraid to stand up. She saw it, that bitch, and she reached over and gave it a nice little squeeze.
And that was after he’d told her he was a minister. He still didn’t know why he’d done that, except that maybe it was a way to challenge her, or maybe he was still trying to do what Daddy wanted. Shit, that wasn’t it. He’d known that as soon as he’d looked down into that scooped-neck top she was wearing, known right off there wasn’t nothing bad he was gonna do to those beautiful tanned tits that were staring back at him.
Funny thing was that she seemed really turned on by the fact that he was a minister, and she’d asked him if he’d ever read a book called The Scarlet Letter. When he’d told her no, she just laughed and said maybe he was just a closet Reverend Dimmesdale. Then she’d taken him home and fucked his brains out. Score another one for Darlene—a fourteen-year-old boy and a goddamn minister.
He’d gone home that night and searched the name on his computer and found out that the Reverend Dimmesdale was this minister in this story who’d gotten boned by this good-looking married woman named Hester Prynne. Just reading that had gotten him hard all over again, and he’d known right then and there that he was gonna ball that woman every time she’d let him.
He spun his chair around and stared out the window at the dusty patch of scrub pine. And he’d done just that; gone back to her every time he could. And that’s when the shit started for him, and now he was drowning in it.
It was seven-thirty when Harry got back to his house, a duplicate copy of the murder book tucked under his arm. He’d planned to spend several hours reviewing everything they had, but when he walked through the door he found Jocko Doyle sitting on the couch.
“Maria made a big batch of roast pork and an even bigger batch of rice and beans.” He ginned up at his adopted son. “So … of course … she sent me over with a ton of it. She’s certain, with this big case, you can’t be eating right. And since you have no woman to take care of you …” Laughter cut off the sentence. “Well, you know the rest.”
Jocko had never referred to himself as Harry’s father, nor his wife Maria as his mother, even though they had always thought of themselves
that way. It was space they knew Harry still needed.
Harry grinned back at him. “She’s right … on all counts.”
“She always is,” Jocko said. “The food is in the kitchen, we just need to throw it in the microwave.”
“Let’s do it,” Harry said. “Have you eaten?”
“Yeah, but I can always be talked into a small bowl. You know how I love Cuban food.”
Jocko was tall and slender, and despite his fifty-five years his body was still as rock hard as the cattleman’s son he had once been. He had a long nose and receding salt-and-pepper hair and eyes that were the same soft blue as a Florida morning, eyes that always seemed to have a smile hiding inside.
When they were seated at the kitchen table Jocko’s eyes clouded and he looked like he was holding back on something he wanted to say. Harry suspected that he knew what it was.
“I got a call from a friend of mine,” Jocko finally began. “A dick who worked your mother’s case.”
Harry nodded. “I got a call too. A guy I know up at the prison.”
“Nobody from the Hillsborough state’s attorney’s office called you?”
Harry shook his head.
“Those pricks,” Jocko said.
“Just business as usual. Don’t let the victims get in the way of the paperwork.”
“Yeah, it never changes,” Jocko said. “How are you handling it?”
Harry shrugged, then drew a long breath. “As best I can.”
“It must be a bitch, you up to your ears in this Beckett murder at the same time. How’s that going?”
“Slower than I’d like.”
“Anything I can help with?”
Harry thought that over. “You did a stint in community relations, right?”
“Yeah, about a year; mostly going to lunches and holding hands with community leaders. It was the longest year of my life.”
“You ever come across a Reverend John Waldo?”
The Dead Detective Page 15