Mangrove Bayou
Mangrove Bayou
By Stephen Morrill
Copyright 2015 by Stephen Morrill
Cover Copyright 2015 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
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This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Mangrove Bayou
Stephen Morrill
Chapter 1
June
The cool days were past and another sauna summer approaching, with 90-degree temperatures and 90-percent humidityâwhat the locals called “the 90-90s.” It was still morning in the town of Mangrove Bayou, on the Gulf coast of Florida somewhere south of Naples and somewhere west of the Moon. Out on the Gulf of Mexico the first thunderheads were building into the blue sky. They would sweep ashore by late morning and in the afternoon collide with the east coast storms crossing over the vast Everglades between here and Miami. That daily artillery duel would continue to mid-October.
Troy Adam was standing on the town's small public beach admiring the clouds through polarized sunglasses. He was sweating already in his one dark gray suit that he wore only to job interviews. He looked at his wrist watch, sighed and turned and walked the few blocks to the town hall. He'd already applied to half a dozen other police departments with no luck. But he had always liked Mangrove Bayou, and he had hopes.
The mayor of Mangrove Bayou and the other two town councilmen had picked Troy's résumé out of a stack of two and, on seeing Troy, they weren't sure they didn't like the loser better. In thirty-five years he had grown accustomed to people staring at him. He was light brown, with black eyes with just a hint of almond shape, and with short jet-black straight hair, and the Mangrove Bayou town council was staring now.
Two of the men looked as if they worked with their hands and stood around in the sun. One was heavyset, with thick wrists and callused hands with scarred, thick fingers. He wore khaki slacks and a darker brown Columbia fishing shirt, vented across the back and with pockets all over it. Troy had a closet full of identical shirts. The other was shorter, slender, with softer hands, who wore creased denim slacks and a Polo shirt. The third was a tall, pale, skinny man with a bald, narrow head, sorrowful look, black suit and matching narrow black tie.
The four of them sat in the large meeting room above the town hall, three councilmen on one side of a cheap wood-grain-vinyl-covered table with folding legs, one police chief candidate on the other side. The yellow plastic chairs would stack neatly and there were more tables and stacks of chairs against one wall, useful should a game of bingo suddenly break out.
“I'm Les Groud,” the heavyset man said. “Besides being one of the councilmen, I'm the mayor when I'm not out guiding sport fishermen.” He pointed at Polo Shirt, “Councilman Max Reed. Max is a real estate developer out to bulldoze Mangrove Bayou into the modern day.” Reed gave Troy a small, pained smile. “And the other gent is Councilman Howard Duellâthat's like a sword duel but with two
l
s. He rides herd on our high school kids.”
“
Doctor
Howard Parkland Duell,” bald-head said emphatically. “I'm principal of the high school and the junior high as well. And I would like to know why you even want this job. It's not as if we've had a lot of applicants. Just two, in fact. It makes me wonder what past transgressions you are running from that you didn't mention in your résumé.”
Troy stared at Duell a moment, then switched his attention to Mayor Groud.
“Well?” Duell said after a long moment of silence.
“Oh. Was that a question?” Troy said, looking back at Duell. “Or just your assumption as to my integrity?”
Tamp it down,
he thought.
Give this guy a chance.
“We'll figure out quick enough if you're honest,” the mayor said. “That's why you would be hired on probation. We have six months to decide to keep you or throw you back.”
Troy smiled. “Like an undersized redfish.”
“Exactly.”
“You see,” Max Reed said, “we're a little cautious. You know, after Bob Redmond and all.”
“Redmond was the chief before you fired him last month?” Troy asked. “What did he do that scared you so much? And where is he now?”
“He left,” Groud said. “I don't know where he went and I don't care, just so as he's gone. He had a thirteen-year-old boy in jail for killing his father with a shotgun. My opinion, the old bastard deserved it. But I'm not the jury. Anyway, the kid was looking at being sent on up to Naples, sitting in county jail there, being tried as an adult, and sentenced to twenty-to-life in state prison. Redmond sat down with the kid in the jail cell here and explained to him how he could break up razor blades into tiny bits and swallow those.”
“Did he also recommend a good wine to go with that?” Troy asked.
Groud ignored that. “We didn't think our public safety director should be advising kids on how to commit suicide. There were other incidents but that was the last straw. We fired his sorry ass and shopped around for a replacement.”
“And you got, what, two outsiders interested? Why didn't someone on the police force ask for a promotion?”
“Ask them,” Groud said. “You look good on paper: Army MPs, Tampa police, college degree from some place up north⦔
“Cornell, actually,” Troy said. “Majored in history. And the college came first. Then the Army. Through ROTC. Then the Tampa police department.”
“History?” Duell said. “The classics.”
“Ancient and medieval history concentration,” Troy said.
Duell frowned. “But what good is that to a policeman?”
“Well, with that and a driver license, I can get a job as a taxi driver.” Troy often spoke only to amuse himself.
Duell frowned. “Perhaps we should let you do that.”
Groud was looking at Troy's application. “You never put down a next of kin. Something happens to you, who do we contact?”
“I have no next of kin. I grew up in The Orphans Home in Troy, New York. They named me for the town and also for the first man in the Bible.”
“That sucks,” Groud said. “Growing up like that.”
“His race might be a problem too,” Duell said. “With some prominent members of our community.”
Groud stared at Duell a moment. “I suppose so. With some of the scum of our community too.” He looked at Troy. “I'm not legally permitted to even ask you what race you are. But you are an odd duck, for sure.”
Troy grinned. “Nice work-around. But I don't mind. My mother probably was, perhaps still is, a light-skinned black woman, most likely a prostitute, who spent one night with an oriental man, gave birth to a mixed-race baby, abandoned me on the steps of The Orphans Home, and vanished.”
Mayor Groud glanced to his left at Councilman Duell. “We don't hire, fire or promote people here based on the color of their skin. You know that.”
Duell looked sorrowful. “Of course. And there are legal considerations too. Just thought I'd mention that there will be some pushback from certain quarters.”
“They can screw themselves,” Groud said. He grinned. “Besides, Adam, here, looks sort of beige, kind of like a Seminole. Around here that could be an advantage. He's gonna confuse the hell out of people.”
“Beige?” Troy said.
“It's a good color,” Groud said. “Goes with almost any furniture. Now, I talked to a few folks up in Tampa. Heard you were smart. They said you could sniff out a crime like a bloodhound. Said you had an IQ of 160 and could almost tell what a criminal was thinking, just by looking at a clue.”
“What am I thinking now?”
“You're thinking that Duell, here, is a pompous ass and that we're going to hire you anyway.”
Troy grinned. Duell opened his mouth to say something, thought about it, and closed his mouth. Max Reed gave out his pained smile.
“That alone can't be it,” Troy said. “What's the other reason?”
“People I spoke to said you might have gotten a raw deal from Tampa, that them firing you was a mistake. Why
did
they fire you?”
“I shot a teenager with a water pistol.”
The three men stared at Troy. “Well, that hardly seems serious,” Max Reed said.
“The teenager was the one with the water pistol.”
“Oh.”.
“That teenager was not exactly the apple of his mother's eye. He had just used the fake gun to commit a robbery but, no matter the perp's criminal record, the law takes a dim view of a police officer sparing the courts the trouble of a trial. The review board said I should have held my fire.” Troy shrugged. “Maybe I should have. I don't make excuses for my past actions.” Troy decided against telling them about the nightmares. Hard enough to get hired without people thinking you were mentally unstable.
“Wasn't just that, according to what I heard,” Groud said. “Guy named Prado said your main problem was that you wanted to run the show.”
“Ah. âBust' Prado.” Troy smiled. “Ramon Bustello Prado. He was my immediate boss. He loves me like a son.”
“Didn't sound like it. He said you didn't work well as an Indian. You wanted to be the chief. Well, here's your chance to be the chief. I'm curious to see how it works out.”
“I'm not,” Duell said. “Put another way, he was both trigger-happy and insubordinate to the point that he was fired from his last job and now we're talking about giving him a new job and promotion. And,” Duell said, speaking to Troy, “you were willing to come to this godforsaken place. Why is that?”
“I like it here. Been here visiting many times. This is a pretty town and well-laid out. Come here canoeing. Some sailing. Done the Wilderness Waterway, from here to Everglades City and then into the park and on to Flamingo, several times.”