The Wind Is Rising 1

by Daniel Steele

  He looked at me, took another puff, and then shook his head and walked away in the other direction.

  Knight was waiting for me. He held a manila folder.

  “Maitland. Something I thought you might like to take a look at.”

  I took it from him and opened it, There was a photograph encased in a plasticene jacket, the kind used to avoid contaminating and possibly destroying evidence such as fingerprints. I examined the photo. A young woman sat in a rocking chair with an infant cradled in her arms. There were outlines of curtains on either side of the photo. It had to have been made with a telephoto lens because the curtains showed it had been made from outside the trailer and evidently some distance away.

  But every item of the young woman’s face and clothing was crystal clear, as was the back of the head of the infant. The baby couldn’t be more than a year old and he, if the hair was any indication, was suckling on her fat breast with enough force to make his mother wince.

  She was a pretty brunette and I’d never seen her before, but I could swear that I had. There was something familiar about her. I could tell that, even though some features of her face were obscured by a red ‘X’ marked through her face. The odd thing was the same red ‘X’ covered the back of the infant’s head.

  “Details?”

  “As you know, we had a man in Bell’s room but close to shift change a husband and wife got into a loud argument, actually throwing punches and hospital security was called in. He was drawn away for just a few moments. There was a gap of only a few minutes – no more than five minutes tops – when anyone would have had access to the room.

  “When our man got back inside he found Bell in distress and nurses and doctors flooded the room. There will have to be a lot more tests, but they’re pretty sure after they ran tox tests, that he wasn’t poisoned. There are other ways he could have been killed but they’re pretty sure he had a heart attack. A classic heart attack. He was on borrowed time anyway.”

  That paralleled the first information we’d gotten but the doctors hadn’t been as certain that a poison or some other physical method had been used to prompt the heart attack.

  “Pretty suspicious a fight breaking out just in time to draw away his protection,” I said. “And we know they already tried once to scare him to death. You wouldn’t need poisons to do that.”

  “That was the thought we had. So I had the hospital checked floor by floor for – anything – out of the ordinary. In the trash can at the end of Bell’s floor, we found this photo. We have no idea what it means, but it’s odd.”

  I looked at it again, trying to figure things out and it came to me. It was the woman in the picture, and something I remembered Bell telling me once. The only thing that didn’t make sense was finding the photograph, and finding it so close to Bell’s hospital room

  And then it did make sense.

  “Let me borrow this for a moment. I don’t think this will ever be used, but I can testify that it was in my custody from you to keep the chain of custody clear.”

  “Why?”

  When I explained, Knight’s expression grew grim.

  “The son of a bitch. He’s spitting in our face.”

  “Like I said, unless there are fingerprints or other tangible evidence as a tie-in, I doubt we can prove anything against anyone, but I’d like to know for sure. Just to give us all added incentive to put this bastard away.

  From the St. Vincent’ s administration office, I placed a call to the Ocala/Marion County Sheriff’s Office and Deputy Ned Colman and when I reached him told him what I wanted him to do. I had the photo faxed without compromising the integrity of the evidence.

  Then I had a photo of Mama Sutton copied and passed out around the hospital. Not that the photo would solve any our problems even if somebody identified it, but it might nail down what was going on. Then I went to work with Mitch McConnell tracking down some loose ends to confirm my suspicions.

  At 7 p.m., my cell rang.

  “Hi, Bill. I heard. I’m sorry.”

  “Hi, Dallas. How’s Miami?”

  “Hot, in all kinds of ways, and productive. I’ve picked up a couple of very important endorsements and a promise of some serious financial support for the campaign. But what about Sutton. Any break on anything?”

  I took a swig of Starbuck’s cappuccino that I’d had brought over from the courthouse. I’d moved into an unused administrative conference room on Bell’s floor that I’d taken over. The cappuccino, along with a platter of Zaxby’s chicken strips, would have to hold me tonight. I doubted I’d get out to eat or get a workout because there were too many aspects of Bell’s death I wanted to look at while everything was still fresh.

  “No. We’re still looking for any connection to that second murder, but nothing’s come up yet. And I expect that by tomorrow Macon will be filing motions to have Pizarro drop the case.”

  “Just remember that you have the final say on whether you go forward. Now that Bell is gone, his taped testimony is going to be as good five years from now as today. A lot of the urgency is gone.”

  “Macon tried that same argument on me, Dallas.”

  “It’s your call. You can go right down to the wire and pull up, if you feel you have to.”

  “I know. ‘

  “So tell me what you know.”

  I filled him in the facts that I knew, the mysterious photo and some other information I’d acquired.

  “Jesus, you can’t say they don’t have balls. Now we don’t have proof, so don’t go after Bludwurth or his people.”

  “Could be them but for some reason it doesn’t feel like it. That’s why I’m passing the other photo around.”

  “It won’t prove anything.”

  “Except how incredibly fucking arrogant Sutton and his mother are. And that might help in the long run.”

  “Well, keep me in the loop. I’m supposed to be going down to meet with another group of donors, so I’ll let you go.”

  “Good luck, Dallas.”

  “Thanks. It’s all a numbers game. You guys keep the convictions and the headlines coming and the money will keep rolling in.”

  “Do my best.”

  After he’d hung up, Dave Brandon walked into the room.

  “Any luck?”

  “Pretty much what we thought. Henry Drummer and his wife Miriam were home yesterday when they got a call from a female party wouldn’t identify herself. Said she knew that Miriam was coming in here to St. Vincents today to get tested for STDs Henry might have passed on to her from an affair he’d just confessed to. Said if they looked under their welcome mat, they’d find $10,000 in $100 bills. They checked and sure enough, it was there.

  “The caller said if they’d pretend to get into a knockdown drag out fight at exactly 3 p.m., on the dot after they’d synchronize their watches, they’d find another $15,000 around their house in the next week. The caller didn’t say what the fight was about, and the Drummers didn’t ask.

  “They were shocked of course when we detained them and said they might be involved in a homicide so they were very cooperative about running their phone records. The call came from a payphone, one of the few left in the city. No way to trace who called.

  “We also had a witness who saw a courier walk into Bell’s room just as Deputy Haoward walked out. From the company logo, we tracked him down. Johnny Sellers is a 55-year-old former Miami city cop. He said he received a manila envelope and a separate business envelope containing $1000 cash with the instructions to deliver it to Bell’s room at exactly 3:01 p.m..

  “He saw Howard leave, but like he said, he was paid not to be curious. He walked in, handed the envelope to Bell and helped him open it up. He never looked at the contents. Then he dialed a number and handed the phone to Bell. He said Bell’s face turned ‘whiter than a sheet of typing paper.

  He let Bell hold the photo for a moment, then asked if he could have it back, and when Bell gave it to him, put it back in the manila envelope and walked out. His in
structions had been to take it to the trash container on the next floor down and dump it.”

  Brandon shook his head.

  “You know the number he gave us tracked back to a public payphone off Dunn Avenue on the Northside. No witnesses to see who was calling. So…”

  “No eye witnesses, no phone numbers. I’m sure there won’t be any useable prints on anything,” I said looking down at the photo and the manila envelope that had contained it.

  Knight walked in behind Brandon with Chief of Detectives Harvey Barrow. Barrow was a white haired, heavyset cop who walked with a slight limp from a bullet a quarter century before. But he was valuable enough, and a good enough political game player, he’d refused to let it force him out. And he’d beaten the system.

  Another plainclothes detective came in quietly behind the two biggies. I wondered if homicide detective Bill Franklin owned anything other than the rumpled brown suit and brown tie that had been his uniform for the entire 10 years I’d been seeing him at crime scenes. He always looked like he was coming in after a 48-hour shift or a 72-hour drunk.

  He’d been a detective forever, had never gone for promotions, been content to be a homicide grunt working all hours, any day. I had no idea if he was married or had a family, but somehow I was certain he was a bachelor.

  “Our guys told me what we gathered,” Barrow said. “What do you have?”

  “A very slick murder. By terror.”

  “So you identified the people in the photo?”

  “Yeah. I called the Ocala SO. I remembered Bell told me about a granddaughter who’d had a baby shortly after the Sutton murder. She’d had problems with the delivery, had been in the hospital, and had occupied his mind and attention so that he just forgot about Sutton driving off at night.

  “I had Deputy Colman go out to the granddaughter’s home. She’s living in a doublewide in a trailer park near Ocala with the baby and his daddy. Colman showed the photo to her and she identified it as a photo of herself and her son, and said it had to have been taken the day before because of what she was wearing and what the baby was wearing.”

  Barrow sat down heavily at the table across from me.

  “And then the courier dialed a number where a guy undoubtedly reminded Bell that if a telephoto lens could peep in through a trailer window like that, it would be just as easy to train a sniper scope through the window the same way,” Barrow said. “And probably reminded him that a lot of high powered shells would go clear through the baby’s head, momma’s head, and the other side of the trailer.”

  “That was my thought. That’s the reason for the ‘x’s over the baby’s head and momma. A visual aid to drive home the point how easy it would be to take them both out in a second. I gathered Bell was fond of the girl, and his first great-grand. That would be enough to drive up anybody’s blood pressure, but for a sick old man whose heart was almost gone, it was enough.”

  Knight stood at the table looking down at the photo.

  “Turns my stomach. Killing a man without getting your hands dirty. Mean and effective and smart.”

  “Very smart. Which is why it could have been the Suttons or Bludwurth. But I’m leaning toward the Suttons.”

  “Me too," Barrow said. “That photo in the trash said it all. They’re giving us the finger, telling us they killed Bell and were going to get away with it. Bludwurth wouldn’t bother to brag. The more I see and hear of Sutton, the more I don’t like him.”

  “I have a head start. I’ve known him longer and I dislike him a lot more.”

  Knight stared down at me.

  “I’ll give you any support you need and I’ll have detectives see what we can dig up, but what are you going to do in the meantime?”

  “Try to figure out a way to stall, legally. We have Bell’s testimony on tape and we have one other piece of evidence that might mean something if we could tie it to the case. But we’re also scrambling trying to find something else on him.”

  “My guys in homicide told me about that possible second murder,” Barrow said. “You know that’s a long shot’s long shot. When you don’t even know for certain that there is another crime…”

  “I know. And I know a lot of people would say I should just drop the case and hope that something else turns up. But….you both know that the longer you go, the harder it is to make a case. And it makes me physically sick to think that that fucking wife and baby murderer will be walking free, a rich man, because he battered them both to death with a tire iron.”

  Knight and Barrow exchanged a glance. Franklin spoke for the first time.

  “There’s a pool going in the Sheriff’s Office and the PD on whether you’re going to drop the case and let him walk. The odds are 100 to 1 you’re going to go after him no matter what.”

  I looked down at the chicken strips and popped it into my mouth following it with a mouthful of lukewarm coffee.

  “A lot of people would say there’s a fine line between stubbornness and obsession.”

  “Yeah, that true,” Barrow said. “But, I have to say Maitland, if it was my daughter and grandchild who’d been murdered, you’re the guy I’d want on the son of a bitch’s ass.

  Knight looked down at the table and saw the photo of Mama Sutton.

  “I hear you have her here in the hospital?”

  “Yeah, they’re holding her down in security, two of your officers and two of my investigators.’

  “On what charge?”

  “No charge. I could try suspicion of being a monster, but I’m just going to settle for rattling her cage, and hopefully rattling Sutton.”

  They had her down in one of the surgical waiting rooms which we had emptied. One of Knight’s men stood at the doorway. I walked in and saw her sitting in a chair with a big black bag on the low table in front of her. She was dressed entirely in black, probably didn’t wear 90 pounds and 10 pounds of that had to be the iron-gray bun that appeared to be held in place by two crossed old-fashioned hair sticks or knitting needles. Each was slim and pointed and about six inches long. From the height of the bun, I probably should have had officers take the needles out as dangerous weapons.

  She gave me a look that could have chilled serial killers.

  “Your men took my cell phone, Maitland, but as soon as I can get to a phone I will have you charged with kidnapping, holding me against my will, abuse of power, brutality against an old woman and anything else my attorney can think of. What gives you the right to have your men grab an innocent woman in a hospital on medical business and treat her like a criminal?”

  “How have you been mistreated, Ms. Sutton?”

  “Your men came into my doctor’s office and marched me out like a common criminal. I will never be able to show my face in there again.”

  “They weren’t MY men, Ms. Sutton. They were deputies. And I was told they came in and very politely asked you to leave with them. There was no ugly scene, until you called them uniformed Nazis and asked other patients in the waiting room to get up a list of names of witnesses you could call to testify in your trial against the Sheriff’s Office and State Attorney’s Office.”

  “They came into the waiting room in their uniforms. Anybody with a brain would know they were arresting me.”

  “In that case, you’d be sitting in a cell right now, Ms. Sutton. Not in a comfortable hospital waiting room.”

  ‘Call it what you like, this is harassment, persecution, by an arrogant prosecutor who is obsessed with sending my son to his death because a miserable slut who trapped my son into a hellhole of a marriage was killed – by one of her lovers, undoubtedly. And now you’re not only persecuting my son, but harassing an elderly woman – who’s never even had a traffic ticket in her entire life.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. You can obviously take whatever legal action you feel is appropriate, but I think that any action you take will just be a waste of your time and money. When a jury, or a judge, hears the context of our actions, I feel confident we’ll be found justified
in our actions.”

  I sat down in a chair a few feet from the couch.

  “In case you haven’t heard, Wilbur Bell was murdered a few hours ago.”

  “I heard he had a heart attack.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Somebody. A deputy. A nurse. Someone. I don’t remember who.”

  “That’s possible, I guess. I think there’s a more likely explanation, but it would probably be impossible to prove that you knew he was murdered because you murdered him.”

  There was a stony lack of expression on her face as she stared at me. Why did I feel that she was smiling a big smile of satisfaction on the inside?

  “Even for someone as insanely obsessed with my son as you are, that would be a true marvel, Mr. Maitland. I was driven to Jacksonville by my friend who was in my presence from 10 a.m. this morning until your men took me away. And there were at least a dozen patients who will swear I was sitting in Dr. Moore’s office for three hours before your men arrived. Just how and when was I supposed to have murdered Wilbur Bell, who by the way, was the scum of the earth and richly deserved whatever death he endured? I just hope it was painful.”

  “I don’t know how painful it was. I know and we can prove he was murdered. You don’t have to put a bullet through somebody’s head, or a bullet through their heart, to murder them. People have been charged and convicted of murdering people by scaring them to death. Or setting up a situation that led to their death.”

  “So you think I’m the mastermind that killed that old liar?”

  “Not necessarily. I think it could have been your son. We may never know who actually set up or arranged for it to be carried out. But I know it came from one of you. And there is a very simple reason why I know you two did it.”

  She reached behind her to twiddle with one of the two needles in her bun. I wondered if that was a tell. I reminded myself to remember that. I hoped it showed her nervousness.

  “I’m dying to hear this.”

  “Your son is an arrogant son of a bitch. And he undoubtedly comes by that through you. He could have had Bell killed and we would never have been exactly sure what happened. We’d have had a pretty good idea, but we could never be certain. But he couldn’t resist the temptation to rub our nose in how much smarter he is than anybody else.