by P. L. Gaus
Rachel shook her head. “Not Billy, Dad. But that’s his blood type, in my truck.”
“How would they know his blood type?”
“I know his type,” Rachel said. “All my drivers take regular blood screens, and I know all their blood types. So, it’s a real big problem, Dad, that the DEA found drugs in one of my trucks.”
“Is Billy still missing?”
“Yes. And Evie Carson stopped by here, about an hour ago. Darba is going nuts, worried about Billy.”
“I got a call from Evie,” Cal said. “While I was still over at Caroline’s.”
“You going out to Darba’s?”
“Not until tomorrow morning,” Cal said. “Evie has her sedated, tonight.”
“Is Darba anything like Billy?”
Cal nodded. “She tends to nurse her little worries into bigger ones. And they’re both conspiracy theory nuts, about government surveillance.”
“Well,” Rachel said, “if she’s using her head for something besides a hat rack, she’s got to be worried that somebody killed Billy over those drugs.”
Cal sat and thought. Rachel stared at her monitor. Then she tapped the screen where Google Earth showed the parking lot at Bradenton Beach. “Billy’s my best driver, Dad. Reliable. Honest. Always hits his waypoints. And if he’s been hauling drugs, what about the rest of my drivers?”
“Billy’s a good man,” Cal said. “Maybe he isn’t involved in any of this.”
“Didn’t he used to be a drunk?” Rachel asked. “It doesn’t seem like him, now, but didn’t he used to be?”
“A long time ago. He was drying out at a rehab clinic where Darba was a volunteer—back when she was still teaching—and she helped him get sober.”
“They got married after that?”
“Many years ago. Darba didn’t have any mental struggles, then. She was the best teacher, too. Loved her kids.”
“They say she went a little nuts in her classroom,” Rachel led.
“She did,” Cal said, remembering. “She had to quit teaching, but Billy stood by her.”
Rachel smiled. “They stuck together through the rough years.”
Cal nodded. “Darba isn’t always ‘troubled.’ She has her spells. But most of the time, she is fine. And the Amish kids out there all love her.”
“Because of her Rum Room?”
“That, yes, but she takes the time to talk with them. Billy does, too. They help the kids figure out what they should do with their lives. You know—Amish or English—how they’re going to live.”
“That’s just the thing, Dad. Billy can’t be hauling drugs. It’s just not in his nature to be doing that.”
Cal nodded and looked up to study the monitor. “Will the DEA keep that truck of yours?”
“They will, if they can prove Billy was running drugs in it.”
Cal shook his head.
Rachel said, “Tomorrow, when I get to work, I expect there’ll be DEA agents crawling all over the place. We won’t be able to ship any product until this is all cleared up.”
“Is this all connected?” Cal asked. “Spiegle was from the Sarasota area.”
“I don’t know,” Rachel sighed. “You’ve got Spiegle and Miller, both dead. And Billy Winters missing, with drugs hidden in his truck. My guess is that there’s something that connects it all together. It just can’t be Billy, is all I’m saying.”
Cal got up and walked back into the kitchen, and Rachel followed him, asking, “You want some dinner?”
Sitting at the table, Cal said, “I was going to have pizza at Caroline’s, but then Bruce Robertson called. Wanted me to call Mike Branden.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. He’s getting on an airplane tomorrow morning, to meet Ricky Niell in the Tampa airport.”
“Why isn’t Robertson going himself?”
“Won’t fly,” Cal said, smiling.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Bruce Robertson won’t get on an airplane.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. He’s just not an airplane kind of guy. Not these days, anyway.”
Rachel rolled her yellow platform over to the refrigerator, climbed up and pulled a pizza out of the freezer, and stepped down. “Could you make yourself scarce, Dad? After dinner?”
“Sure, but why?”
“I’ve got my first session with the sheriff tonight. He sounded pretty nervous on the phone, so I thought I’d play some of my Jimmy Buffett songs in the background, to calm him down.”
“And you don’t want me here to spoil the mood?”
“Under the circumstances, Dad, I don’t think you’d be able to leave us alone.”
25
Friday, October 9
8:35 A.M.
RICKY NIELL met Michael Branden at Tampa International Airport with a rental car. They crossed Old Tampa Bay to Saint Petersburg and then drove over Tampa Bay on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, the long, arching span’s yellow cables cresting high into a deep blue sky. Ricky wore his sheriff’s department uniform, neat and trim as usual, all of the creases pressed and straight. Branden was in jeans, a yellow golf shirt, and a brown blazer, his graying beard set off by a deep tan.
As they came down off the high point of the Skyway, Ricky remarked from behind the wheel, “Cal said you’ve been in a library for a month, but you don’t look so pale to me.”
“There’s lots of sun in North Carolina,” Branden laughed. “Even if you’re out for just an hour a day.”
“You writing a book, or something?”
“Something like that. It’s a new biography of Sherman.”
Ricky rolled his eyes. “Don’t get Robertson started on that. We’ll never hear the end of it.”
On U.S. 41, they turned south into Bradenton, crossing through the busy city on State Route 684, and turning west to the point at the little trailer park in Cortez. Once they had passed over the northernmost reaches of Sarasota Bay on the low Cortez drawbridge, they turned left at the light on Gulf Coast Drive and then, after three short blocks, left again, to circle back into the sleepy little community of Bradenton Beach. The police station sat next to the bridge, with a marina on the water behind it, and a white-planked fishing pier jutting out into the crystal green water of the bay. The color of light butterscotch, the two-story stucco police building hunkered in the sun on a blazing white patch of sand and crushed shells. Parked next to it was a thirty-foot aluminum police skiff on a trailer, two large outboard motors hanging off the stern. Two cruisers were parked out front, and a beach patrol officer’s bicycle was chained to a steel rack beside steps and a wheelchair ramp leading up to the entrance on the second level.
They climbed the steps and entered a vestibule with a glass partition in front of a dispatcher’s console. When they had rung in, a middle-aged man in khaki slacks and a tan golf shirt came into the dispatcher’s room, keyed the intercom, and asked, “Business?” pointing to Niell’s uniform.
Ricky said, “Holmes County Sheriff, Ohio,” and displayed his badge.
The dispatcher wrote down Niell’s badge number and pushed a button to release the lock on the door into the department’s offices. Once they were inside, in a narrow air-conditioned hallway with offices to either side, the dispatcher introduced himself, offering his hand and saying, “Ed Vickers. The chief’s not in right now.”
Ricky said, “Rachel Ramsayer from Holmes County has been talking with Sergeant Raleigh Orton. So has our Sheriff Robertson.”
Vickers nodded. “We call him Ray Lee. Ray Lee Orton. This about the Stevens Clark shooting?”
“Well, yes,” Ricky said. “But we’re interested in the man who was killed in the attack. Jacob Miller, an Amish man from Holmes County, Ohio.”
Seeming to take his first note of the professor, Vickers stuck out his hand and asked, “You with the sheriff’s department, too?”
Branden nodded. “Reserve deputy. Mike Branden. I help out from time to time, but mostly I teach Civil War hist
ory at Millersburg College.”
“Seems like a curious mix,” Vickers offered. “Professor and reserve deputy.”
“I suppose it does,” Branden said. “You handled the shooting? Dispatching?”
Vickers nodded. “What a mess. It happened right over there, on the bridge road. You can see it from here, if you stand outside. Anyways, a family out for a walk on the beach saw it all, and when the dad called 911, the kids were all screaming in the background of the call.”
As he spoke, a policeman in a uniform shirt and bicycle shorts came up the end staircase into the hallway, and Vickers said, “Here’s Ray Lee now.” Vickers called Orton over and introduced the men, saying first, “Sergeant Raleigh ‘Ray Lee’ Orton,” and then as they shook hands, “Sergeant Ricky Niell and Professor Mike Branden.”
Orton noted Niell’s uniform and asked, “Where are you from?”
“Holmes County, Ohio,” Ricky said.
“Then I’ll bet you’re here because of that Amish man who was killed.”
“Right,” Ricky said. “And we have another murder up home. Another Amish man, Glenn Spiegle.”
“You’re kidding!” Orton barked out.
“No,” Ricky said, surprised. “You knew him?”
“He skipped out on his parole a couple of years ago,” Orton said. “We all thought he had been murdered down here, and his body disposed of.”
“Why?” Branden asked.
Orton turned to Vickers. “Ed, this Ohio case is gonna connect up with Old Connie.” Then to Niell and Branden, Orton said, “Let me show you something,” and he led them through the outside door.
They followed Sergeant Orton out onto the parking lot in front of the police building. Orton was muscular, but also lean, thick in the chest and arms, narrow at the hips. As he led them along the Cortez Road at the base of the long bridge, Branden asked, “Does riding bicycle patrol keep you so fit, Sergeant Orton?”
Orton laughed back over his shoulder and led on, saying, “It’s probably the kite surfing.”
Trailing, Ricky asked, “Where are we going?”
“Two short blocks,” Orton said. “I want to show you three things, and we can stand in one spot to do it.”
Ricky glanced sideways at the professor, but he followed Orton down the sidewalk shaded by old cypress trees, with tall palm trees lining the other side of the road. After one short block, they had reached the sand-blown intersection at busy Gulf Coast Drive, where a continuous parade of tourist beach traffic motored up and down beside the sand of Bradenton beach itself, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico easily visible over the barrier sand, with slender grasses waving in the cool Gulf breeze.
Standing at the corner, Orton pointed out the signal lights at the intersection of State Route 684 and Gulf Coast Drive. Then, as impatient drivers made their turns from the bridge road onto Gulf Coast Drive, some heading north onto Anna Maria Island and some south along the water toward Longboat Key, Orton pointed out the left-turn lane onto Gulf Coast Drive and said, “Right here is where your Jacob Miller was killed.”
Ricky produced a small digital camera and took several pictures of the intersection, saying, “We understand that he died instantly.”
“Twelve-gauge shotgun, at very close range. Took the whole side of his head off.”
“How’d you ID him?” Branden asked.
“Airplane ticket in his pants pocket. He didn’t have a wallet. Just a roll of bills.”
“You would have responded,” Ricky said. “You’re just around the corner.”
“We got here in less than a minute, Sergeant Niell.”
“Please, it’s just Ricky.”
“OK. Well, your Miller was in the passenger seat of an old pickup truck. They were waiting at the light, to turn left onto Gulf Coast, and he was shot by the driver who pulled up right beside them, in the right-turn lane.”
“Point blank range?” Branden asked.
“Right,” Orton said. “His driver—an old guy named Stevens Clark—was lucky, if you can call it that. Got clipped in the side of his face by six or seven pellets that blew past Miller’s head.”
“But did Clark make it?” Ricky asked.
“Yes. He’s in Manatee Memorial, over in Bradenton. Came out of his second plastic surgery early this morning. He was sedated before that, so we haven’t been able to talk to him much.”
“But did he see who shot them?” Branden asked.
“Oh, we know who did it,” Orton said, with satisfaction. “Clark recognized him when he first pulled up beside them. He told the paramedics, before they sedated him.”
“Has the shooter been arrested?” Ricky asked.
Orton shook his head. “There’s two more things I want you to see.”
They followed Orton, crossing over to the traffic island in the middle of the intersection and on to the far side, and circled around through beach sand behind a peach-colored house set near the water’s edge. Off to the north side of the house, directly in line with the T-intersection the bridge road made with Gulf Coast Drive, stuck in the sand some thirty yards back from the pavement, was a wooden cross painted white, draped with a garland of fresh roses that had been tied to the cross with white ribbon. Hand-painted on the cross, in red capital letters, was the name Ginny Lynn.
Orton toed the side of the cross gently and said, “Conrad Render pays to have a new one of these set every two months or so, and he pays a florist to bring fresh roses every day. He’s been doing that for just over twenty years, since the day Glenn Spiegle killed his teenaged daughter at this intersection. And right there, just half a block south of where we crossed over Gulf Coast, in that parking lot beside the Beach House Restaurant, is where we found Billy Winters’s abandoned truck.”
“So, this is where Billy always parked to watch the sunsets,” Ricky said.
“Right,” Orton said with obvious satisfaction. “And right here is where Jacob Miller was shot. Everything happened right here, going back over twenty years.”
Studying the intersection again, Branden asked, “Do you know why Winters always parked here?”
Orton nodded yes and said, “Because Billy Winters was with Glenn Spiegle the night he killed Ginny Lynn Render. They were both drunk as skunks, and they ran her over at this light. T-boned her little car and cartwheeled it forty yards out onto the sand, where it caught fire and burned.”
* * *
Back at the police station, in the conference room on the lower level, Orton poured three Styrofoam cups of coffee and pulled up a chair across from Niell and Branden. But as soon as he sat down, there was a shout from the booking room at the front end of the building, and Orton pushed up from the table with a groan and went out to help.
Through the open door, Niell and Branden saw a drunk with a serious sunburn take a swing at the booking officer. Orton helped wrestle the angry man into a set of cuffs chained to the wall. The drunk punched the wall and sucked blood off his knuckles, so Orton pulled the chains tighter, and the man settled down and sat still on the bench.
Once Orton was seated again in the conference room, he said, “We have to cuff the angry drunks to the wall. To keep them from hurting themselves. Or punching one of us.”
Ricky sipped his coffee and said, “We get some of that in Holmes County. Not sunburns like that one, though.”
“Anyway,” Orton said, “I’m surprised Spiegle lasted as long as he did. But all we knew is that he spent one day in town after he was released, and then he disappeared.”
“Did anyone look for him?” Branden asked.
“His parole officer, I suppose,” Orton said. “But, you’ve gotta figure that he was just one more guy who skipped out on his parole.”
Ricky asked, “Did anyone pick up Render, to question him about Spiegle’s disappearance?”
“Sure, but he denied that he did anything to Spiegle.”
“He wasn’t dead,” Branden observed. “So, no one could have found a body.”
Orton smiled. “C
onrad Render is an Old Salt. He’s fond of knives, and he keeps a couple of fish camps back up the Manatee River. If he had gotten to Spiegle, he would have taken him up there, and he would have made sure Spiegle took a very long time to die. Then he would have fed him to the gators, so we never really did expect to find a body. Spiegle just disappeared, and everybody figured Old Connie had made good on his promise to kill him.”
The drunk in the booking room started shouting obscenities, so Orton got up and closed the door. Sitting back down, he said, “Conrad Render is the worst sort of scum you could meet. He runs drugs into shore, on go-fast boats. Keeps low to the water and travels only at night. We’ve never caught him with any drugs, and with those go-fast boats, he can outrun anything the Coast Guard has on the water.”
Branden asked, “Are those go-fast boats like what we call cigarette boats?”
“They’re long, low, and fast. Make a racket in the water, when they’re out there rippin’ it up. We got him cornered once, at one of the passes, but he’d already off-loaded whatever cargo he was hauling. Out in open water, he can outrun anything but a helicopter. Go-fast boats, cigarette boats, I think they’re the same. And unless you deploy a fleet to box him in, you’re never going to catch Old Connie out on the water.”
Ricky thought, drumming his fingers on the table. “Do you think it was this Render who attacked Billy Winters?”
“That makes sense,” Orton said. “But then, he could have killed Billy any week he wanted.”
“So,” Branden said, “maybe they were running drugs together.”
“But why kill him now?” Ricky asked.
“Don’t know,” Orton said. “But I’ll tell you this. If Conrad Render went after Billy Winters, we’d never find his body.”
“Are you going to hunt him down, now?” Ricky asked. “For killing Jacob Miller?”
“It’ll be the sheriff who tries for him,” Orton said. “The Manatee County sheriff. About all we can do here in Bradenton Beach is put out an arrest warrant, and wait for him to get taken down on some other matter.”
“But,” Ricky asked, “you won’t go out looking?”