Sunshine State

by D P Lyle

  “You sound like Chief Morgan.”

  “Tommy Lee,” I said, “I’m not making excuses for them, just stating the facts.”

  “Yeah, well, facts ain’t gonna help Noleen none, are they?”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “So what is it you guys are actually doing? Trying to make a hero of Billy Wayne? I’ve already seen a lifetime of that shit.”

  “No, actually the opposite,” I said.

  He cocked his head again. His eyes darkened. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “The documentary we’re putting together isn’t about Billy Wayne. It’s about Billy Wayne’s victims. And their families and friends. How he impacted such a quiet and pleasant town.”

  Tommy Lee seemed to search for a response, but apparently couldn’t find one, so I went on.

  “We want to tell Noleen’s story. Your story. The story of this community. We think the victims are more important than the killer.”

  “That a fact?”

  “Sure is.”

  He nodded. “Okay. You’ve heard my story. Now what?”

  “This is preliminary right now. We’re gathering the facts. The plan would be to come back and do a video interview with you. If that’s okay.”

  He examined his beer bottle, ran a thumb around the lip. “I think that’d be good.” He looked at me. “I want everyone out there to know what a good person my sister was. Know she didn’t deserve this.”

  “That’s the story we want to tell.”

  He nodded.

  “I know you had some harsh words for the cops after all this,” I said. “Organized a protest of some type?”

  He took another slug of beer. “Like I said, they should’ve done more. And done it sooner.”

  “We also heard that you and Frank Clark and Terry Munson were friends.”

  “So?”

  “I’m just wondering how they took all this. You being angry with the department?”

  He stared at me for a few seconds before responding. “We were good friends. Back in school. And after. Me, and Terry, and Frank. Frank was always the serious one. Me and Terry just had fun. Chased women.” He gave a half smile. “Even dated the same ones from time to time. But then he and Frank got busy being cops and me with my fishing charters and we all seemed to have less time to hang out.”

  “Life does get in the way.”

  Tommy Lee nodded. “I guess you’d say we’re still friends. I mean, we still end up drinking together from time to time. Just less often than we did.”

  “So neither of them got too out of joint with your comments about their work? Or the department’s work?”

  “I think they understood. Leastwise they said they did.” He scratched his arm. “Eventually. They was pretty pissed early on. Especially Frank. As I said, he was more serious about stuff than me or Terry.”

  “Friends do forgive and forget,” Pancake said.

  “That’s the truth.” He worked the bottle’s label with a thumbnail. “It was Sara Clark’s murder that fixed all that. For me, anyway. I figured if they couldn’t protect one of their own then maybe I was being a shade too harsh.” He shrugged. “’Course, that didn’t bring Noleen back.”

  “We know she wasn’t married,” I asked. “Did she date anyone regularly?”

  “No. She went out now and again. Nothing regular though. She was more married to her job.” His head bobbed. “I used to tell her to get out more. Do stuff. But she preferred to work, read books, and watch movies on cable.”

  “What do you think?” I asked Pancake as we walked back up the dock.

  “I think he’s a hardworking man who lost his sister and got pissed at the cops. Probably the world in general, too.”

  “I think he still is.”

  “Yep. Just less so.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ALL HOPE ABANDON ye who enter here.

  According to Dante’s Divine Comedy, that was inscribed over the gates to hell.

  See, I did pay attention in school. Sometimes. At least I remembered that.

  Probably because I dated an English major for a while. She quoted things like that all the time. Liked to show off. Then again, she had a lot to be proud of. Another story, another time.

  Abandoning hope was exactly the way I felt when I reentered the gates of the Union Correctional Institute. If hell existed, this would be a good location for its portal. Nothing good resided inside these walls. The same smells, inmate shouts, and no-nonsense attitude of the guards that had greeted me on my previous visit did so again. When was I here last? Only a few days, but it seemed much longer.

  This visit was for a second sit-down with Billy Wayne Baker. Last night Ray, Pancake, Nicole, and I sat down in Ray’s room and went over everything we knew. The consensus was that we were on the right track. Nowhere but Pine Key would anyone have a reasonable chance to stage a murder, much less two, as Billy Wayne’s work. And Frank Clark was the center of our focus. He had access to Billy Wayne’s DNA, each of the crime scenes, and all the evidence collected. It would’ve been a snap for him to transfer DNA to otherwise clean bedsheets.

  What we didn’t know was why he would kill his wife. Spousal murder was common so maybe something was going on behind closed doors that no one else knew about. Not like that was rare either. Family and marital secrets. Okay, so far so good. But then, why kill Noleen Kovac? Pancake offered that it might have simply been to muddy the water. Make it less likely anyone would focus on Sara Clark’s murder as an anomaly but rather view it as another murder along Billy Wayne’s trail. And with his DNA at the scene, Billy Wayne’s protestations of innocence would fall on deaf ears. Unless, Billy Wayne had an ironclad alibi for the one or both killings. That would simply have been a risk Clark had to take. Still, if that’s how it played out, it was a clever move on Clark’s part. And ballsy.

  Which brought up another thing that had been bothering me. The timeline. I discussed it with Ray and Pancake earlier while we waited for the go-ahead from the warden on my visit.

  “If we assume Billy Wayne only did five of the murders and the final two here in Pine Key are Clark’s work, then Clark got lucky.”

  “How so?” Ray asked.

  “Look at the timeline. There were months, in one case a year, between killings.”

  “The so-called cooling-off period,” Pancake said.

  “Exactly. Except for number six. Misty Abbott. She was killed only twenty-four hours after Sara Clark. That breaks the pattern.”

  “Makes it more likely he didn’t do Sara Clark.”

  “But, my point is that Clark’s agenda and Billy Wayne’s were divorced from each other. Obviously, neither knew the other’s plans. Had Billy Wayne struck one day earlier, or Clark one day later, there would have been two killings the same night, at essentially the same time, in different locations. Clark’s plans would have gone up in smoke.”

  “Timing is everything,” Pancake said. “Luck helps, too.”

  “Billy Wayne had luck,” Ray said. “Right from his first killing. Apparently, Clark did, too.”

  “True.”

  “But they didn’t happen on the same night,” Ray said. “So, it’s a moot point.”

  “Except for the cooling-off period,” I said. “I need to ask Billy Wayne about that. He told me that with the final murder, Della Gibson, he felt antsy—I think that was the word he used—almost immediately. That’s why he stayed in Lynn Haven. He felt the need to go hunting again.”

  “That happens,” Ray said. “Many of these killers accelerate their activities right before they get caught. As if the need is getting out of hand and becoming less controllable.”

  “But,” I said, “there were four months between Misty Abbott, number six, and Della Gibson, his final victim.”

  “Good point,” Ray said.

  The same disinterested guard, Rafael Lopez, took my belongings and directed me to the same hard bench as before. As I sat there, waiting for my escort, I thought about
that conversation again. And a ton of other stuff about Billy Wayne’s world. And Frank Clark’s.

  One question that reared its head was, if Noleen’s murder wasn’t to create confusion and blur the focus, why kill her? Was there some connection between Frank Clark and Noleen Kovac? An affair? Possible, always possible, but we had absolutely no evidence of that. And to be honest, that wasn’t my take on Clark. For one thing, he’s the only guy I ever met who didn’t undress Nicole with his eyes. So I didn’t see him as a player.

  Which was why I was here to see Billy Wayne. As Pancake put it, we were getting ready to break some eggs and make an omelet. He of the food metaphors. Always part of his take on everything. But he was right. We were on the doorstep of digging into the private lives of some of Pine Key’s citizens. Frank Clark and each of the victims’ friends and family at least. Asking questions that sounded less like a benign documentary than an intrusive investigation. A fine line to walk. Breaking eggs.

  So, Ray suggested it would be nice to chat with Billy Wayne beforehand. Maybe now that we had refined our focus, he’d come clean. Let us know we were on the right track before we started breaking those eggs.

  I wasn’t optimistic. Billy Wayne had been adamant about revealing nothing. But maybe, just maybe, if we had come to this threshold on our own, without Billy Wayne’s help, he’d feel more comfortable with at least confirming that we were pointed in the right direction.

  Truth was that I was sure we were. With or without Billy Wayne’s input. Nothing else made sense. But, if Billy Wayne confirmed that, we’d all feel better.

  Ray thought he and I should go in together, but I felt if we did that, Billy Wayne would shut down. He might take it as an intimidation tactic. Something I believed he would resist. Not sure why I felt that, but I did. It was something in his eyes. For sure, Billy Wayne couldn’t stand up to a physical confrontation, too small for that, but he had that look. That hard gaze that said he could take whatever you offered and not only persevere but grind you down mentally.

  Yet, I also felt Billy Wayne had bided his time, waiting to tell his story, and now we offered that chance. He just might see us as his last chance. Or at least his only chance for the foreseeable future. I hoped so anyway.

  I was glad to see my escort was once again Marcus McKinney. I wondered if anyone there got days off.

  “You back for more?” McKinney asked.

  “Seems so.”

  “People will start to talk.” He laughed. “You and Billy Wayne an item.”

  I followed him through an iron door and along a corridor.

  “Oh, we’re an item, all right.”

  Another laugh.

  “Well, I’ll say you look less wide-eyed than last time.”

  “Must be getting used to the place.”

  “Hmmm.” He shook his head. “Ain’t no getting used to this place.”

  “How long you been here?” I asked.

  “Four years. A little more.”

  “How do you do it? I mean, dealing with all this?”

  He stopped and turned toward me. “You put on blinders. Look straight ahead. Focus on the job. Don’t think about the kind of people you have to hang with every day.” He shrugged and gave a half smile. “And I’m talking about the other guards.” He started walking again, shot a look over his shoulder, “The inmates are another thing altogether.”

  He unlocked and pushed open a door that led to another corridor, the interview cubicles along one side. He stopped near one, indicating with a wave of his hand that this is where I should wait for Billy Wayne.

  “We do have some bad dudes in here,” he said.

  “Like Billy Wayne?”

  “Truth is, he’s one of the easy ones. Never tries to paint outside the lines. Does what he’s told.” He shrugged. “Can’t say that for most of the others.”

  He left, saying he’d be just outside to take me back when I finished.

  Two minutes later Billy Wayne appeared beyond the glass. We each picked up our handsets.

  “Didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Billy Wayne said. “You guys are quick.”

  “We try.”

  “So, what’s the story?”

  “Need to ask you a couple of things.”

  “And I need to hear you tell me you have proof of what really happened.”

  “We’re working on that.”

  Billy Wayne took the handset from his ear, held it against his chest, and stared at me. His index finger gave the handset a couple of taps before he lifted it back into position. “If you haven’t solved the puzzle, why’re you here?”

  Here goes. Be cool. Ray’s catchall for don’t screw it up.

  “We’ve been down in Pine Key the last few days,” I said.

  “And?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me that’s where we should be looking.”

  “I see.”

  “Look, Billy Wayne, we want to believe you.”

  “You should. I haven’t lied about any of it.”

  “We focused on Pine Key because of the three victims there. Because it made no sense to look elsewhere. The logistics of planting evidence anywhere else is simply too impossible to believe. And we think Frank Clark is the likely suspect. He had access for sure.”

  “So, why’re you here?”

  “For you to confirm we’re in the right place. On the right track.” He shook his head. “Didn’t I say from the beginning that you’d have to do this without my involvement?”

  “You did. But now that we know all the players down there and have someone to look at, things are going to change. We’ve stayed off the radar. Been very friendly. In return, the folks down there, even the police department, have been helpful. Even welcoming. But now we’re entering a new phase. We’ll make some waves. Stir things up. We don’t want to go there unless we’re dead solid on the right track.”

  Billy Wayne stared but said nothing.

  “Okay, let me ask you this. You told me last time that after the murder of Della Gibson, you were restless. Didn’t want to go back to Tallahassee. Felt the need to hunt. Remember that?”

  “I do.”

  “Did you ever feel that after any of the other killings? Like you needed more?”

  He seemed to consider that for a minute. “Can’t say I did.”

  That definitely put Frank Clark in play.

  “Do you think Frank Clark is the bad guy here?”

  Still, Billy Wayne didn’t respond.

  “Okay, here’s our thinking. We eliminated Loretta Swift. She was the first victim in Pine Key. No one would’ve had any evidence to plant before her. So that one’s on you.”

  I studied his face. Nothing. Billy Wayne would make a good poker player.

  “So the other two there are in play. Let’s say Clark is the bad guy. He could’ve controlled the investigations, controlled the evidence, planted it. It would have been easy for him. He was at ground zero. But what we’re having trouble with is … why? I get him killing his wife. Maybe. Marriages do fall apart and end up with one spouse dead. And friends and neighbors are often shocked. Didn’t know there were problems brewing. Okay, I get that. But what about Noleen Kovac? The other victim down there. I don’t see any connection between her and Clark.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Do you know of any such connection?”

  “Me? I don’t know any of the folks down there. Don’t know who’s fucking who. Who’s backstabbing who. Nothing. I was simply in and out and …” He stopped. Shook his head. “I think I’ve said enough on that subject.”

  “You have,” I said. I gave him a nod. “That’s all I needed to know.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “So, what now? What’s your next move?”

  “Haven’t figured that out yet. Just wanted to make sure we were on firm ground before shaking things up. And now I am.”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “And I didn’t hear anything.” I smiled.

  Billy Wayne
smiled. “Guess you better get to work.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “WHY DON’T YOU do something useful?” Nicole said. “Like what?”

  “Go play with Pancake.”

  We were in our room. Fresh from a brief chat with Ray about my visit to Billy Wayne’s world, followed by Nicole’s invitation to an extended shower. Oh, yeah. She does love water—showers, jacuzzies, hot tubs. And she isn’t even an Aquarian.

  “So, after you’ve had your way, you want to toss me aside?”

  “It’s what we girls do.”

  “I feel so used.”

  “You’ll get over it.” She rolled out of bed. “Tonight. If you’re lucky.” She laughed.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Wash my hair.”

  “Your hair’s fine.”

  “Jake, go play. I’m sure Pancake is up for it.”

  “He’s up for anything that involves food and alcohol.”

  “My point.”

  That’s how I ended up motoring down the crowded Boardwalk. Actually, following Pancake as he parted the waters. He was good at that. And he appeared to be on a mission. Must be hungry. Big shock. We, of course, headed to Woody’s. Ray had some calls to make and said he’d join us later.

  I had opted for jeans and a cabernet-colored RGP shirt; Pancake jeans and bright green shirt. With his red hair glowing in the late-afternoon sun, he looked like a giant leprechaun. I told him so. He grunted, saying that’s what he was going for. He added, “Women love that look.”

  Which for Pancake was true. To emphasize that point, when we climbed the stairs and entered Woody’s, Laurie Mae, owner Betty Lou’s daughter, greeted us. She locked her arm with Pancake’s and led him to a table on the deck. I veered toward the bar, where I saw Angus Whitehead had planted himself on a stool. Looked like he was well into a day of drinking. It occurred to me that he might have an unusual take on the whole Billy Wayne Baker ordeal. Since he apparently spent so much time sleeping in the jail, he might have picked up something useful. If he was capable of picking up on anything. In his usual anesthetized state that might be wishful thinking. But, why not ask? I climbed on the stool next to Angus.