Authors: Jonathon King
W
hen we got to the docks the sun was down and the last clouds on the horizon were bloodred. Dawkins’s boats were still out on the water. I pulled out some clean clothes and a towel from the cab of my truck and showered off with a hose that the boat captain used to spray the salt off his decks. I tossed my ruined jeans and shirt and boots into the truck bed. When I was dressed and half human again, I sat in the cab and called Billy.
“I don’t quite know what to say, Max,” Billy said when I told him of our discovery of the grave, as well as the PalmCo investigators and their admission that they were working for the attorneys who had offered him the bribe. “I suppose I had little optimism that it would go this far when we started. I’m pleased, but saddened.”
I told him I was convinced the investigators didn’t know about the grave and were just following instructions to follow and mark me. I also told him that we let the P.I.s leave before finding the grave and that I doubted they’d be able to find it on their own. I didn’t mention the shooting.
“I have some prosecutor friends in Collier County,” he told me. “With the evidence, I should think we can get a recovery team and a group of forensics people out there tomorrow.”
“All right. I’ll stop over in Lauderdale and see if Sherry has any pull with the homicide guys over in Collier—she can get them excited about an eighty-year-old cold case.”
“Speaking of Richards, she left a message earlier today, something about one of her fellow deputies getting a call about you from the sheriff up in Highlands County. That’s the Reverend Jefferson’s region, right?”
“Yeah. I ran into the sheriff while I was up there. Curious guy. Paranoid about some string of shootings in his jurisdiction.
“Well, he’s apparently curious about you and was checking out your credentials,” Billy said. “Richards said it might be nothing, but she was anxious to tell you about it. I tried calling her back, but I haven’t been able to get through.”
“All right, I’m heading that way. Let me know about the forensics response. I don’t think we’re gonna have to worry about intercepts anymore.”
“Be careful driving back, Max,” Billy said, and clicked off.
I went back down to the dock to say good-bye to Nate Brown. The old man had removed his shirt and used the hose to soak his head and chest. I tossed him my half-wet towel and he thanked me. While his face was in the towel I noted the scars on his back and under his rib cage. His chest hair was thick and snow white, and a stark tan line ran around his neck where his collar protected him from the sun. The wrinkles in his loose skin were pronounced and his stomach looked sunken and unhealthy.
“I’m heading back, Nate. I want to thank you for helping me, and I want to tell you not to worry about what happened out there with those company men. You’re clear.”
He did not answer.
“There will probably be some cops and scientific people out there tomorrow, and they’d probably pay to have you guide them back to the site,” I said, even though I could anticipate his answer.
“Don’t bother bringin’ my name into it if you don’t mind,” he said. “Them boys’ll take that GPS and find ’er just fine. Take ’em a while, but they’ll get it.”
He gathered up his shirt and tossed it into his boat, then handed my towel back to me.
“I’m a go check on that Nash kid. Like to get his daddy’s shotgun back to ’im if I can.”
I watched him lower himself down the ladder into his boat as smoothly as a surefooted cat. But I had the definite feeling that Nate Brown was not long for this world. He’d seen too much of what I had flippantly called progress. He didn’t like it, and I had a feeling he was ready to leave it.
He started his engine and tossed off a line and the boat drifted back into open water. He pulled the bill of his cap, pushed up the throttles, and was gone.
During the drive back across the state I tried Richards’s phone three times. I let it ring eight or nine times before hanging up. Her answering machine didn’t come on. I set the cruise control on the truck when I got into the eastbound lanes of Alligator Alley, but the cut of my headlights through the middle of the vast darkness on either side ended up hypnotizing me instead of keeping me alert. Twice I caught myself drifting out of my lane, my head snapping up with the realization that even though my eyes were open, I was seeing nothing. I rolled down both windows and turned off the cruise so I would have to concentrate on the speed, then searched for a Stevie Ray Vaughn CD that I had buried in the glove compartment. I popped it in, loud.
By the time I hit the traffic of west Broward County, it was after nine, but the city lights and the bustle recharged me. I drove straight into Fort Lauderdale, and when I pulled around the corner to Richards’s street and saw the kaleidoscope of spinning red and blue emergency lights, my heart felt like it had suddenly doubled in mass and dropped down into my rib cage.
I didn’t remember parking. I tried to control myself, like a cop, a professional. I walked around the news trucks and patrol cars and gawking clumps of neighbors. I caught a glance of a yellow tarp draped over a body on Richards’s front lawn. I passed two uniformed officers who must have mistaken my demeanor and stride as belonging to their brotherhood, but before I got to the house someone grabbed my elbow.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the man’s voice. “Do you have an I.D., sir?
I could not take my eyes from the yellow sheet, and I instinctively pulled my elbow out of the questioner’s grip.
“Who is it?” I said, still not looking at the cop behind me.
“I’m gonna need some I.D., sir. This is a secure crime scene, and…”
I spun on him and the kid took a step back, a touch of alarm in his face. Then I heard her voice behind me, from up on the front porch.
“It’s OK, Jimmy. He’s with me.”
She was still in her work clothes, a light gray suit and black heels. But she was disheveled in an uncharacteristic way. She said something to a man in a shirt and tie with a clipboard, then came down the steps to meet me. We walked together around the corner of the house by the driveway gate entrance. I wanted to step in to her and hold her, but held back.
“McCrary,” she said, looking down at first, avoiding my eyes. “Kathy called me and asked if she could come over while I was still on duty. She was crying and said she needed a place to stay, so I told her where the key was and that I got off at six.”
I bent my head down so that our foreheads were almost touching. We were having a discussion, quietly informational, not intimate.
“Didn’t take McCrary long to figure out where she’d gone, and he shows up in uniform and starts banging on the front door. The neighbors see a cop and figure, hell, he’s got something going on.”
She looked up and I could see the tears welling up, even though she was fighting them.
“He put his shoulder into the door, splintered the lock and came at her.”
“She shot him?”
“Yeah,” she said, quickly wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket, hoping no one would catch the movement. “With her service weapon. The neighbors heard the shot, saw an officer lying in the yard and called in a 911 officer down.”
“Cavalry time,” I said.
Richards nodded, took a deep breath, and gathered herself.
“She’s still inside, talking with homicide. Can you wait until they’re gone?”
“Of course. Sure.”
We went through the gate around back and Richards went inside through the French doors. I saw a knot of men huddled around the end of the couch where Harris had sat watching a movie with us just a few nights ago. Richards closed the doors behind her and I sat down heavily on the steps. The pool lights were on, but the aqua glow seemed to have gone cold.
I listened to the murmur of low, male voices and tried to blank it out because I knew what they would be saying. Did he threaten you? Did you fear for your life? Had he crossed the threshold of the doorway? Was he backing away or coming forward when you fired? I had been through it all before. So had Richards. After another hour I heard the door close, and cars out front were started. It was several more minutes before Richards stepped out with a steaming mug of coffee in her hands. I thanked her without saying so.
“She wanted to stay with me but IAD thought it was a bad idea, like we would stay up all night and concoct a story,” she said, sitting in a chair next to me and pulling her feet up beneath her.
“She have a place to go?”
“Her grandmother is up in Pompano Beach.”
“You get here with everyone else?” I said.
“Right along with the rescue squad and about thirty other cops coming in from every damn patrol sector in the city.”
“He dead when you got here?”
“Yeah. Right there on my front lawn. Bastard.”
I let the quiet sit uninterrupted for a while. Richards had already been through the mill, and no doubt would have another session with IAD in the morning, when they would want her to take them through Harris’s relationship with the deceased. After a time I tried to offer some solace.
“He deserved it,” I said.
I had expected a quick agreement, but Richards was thinking, thinking in that way good detectives think, without letting emotion get in the way of seeing the scene.
“She said he stumbled back out of the door and fell after she shot him.” Her tone was unconvincing. I let her think about it. If she wanted to share, she would.
“One shot. In the mouth,” she said after a few seconds. “She would know enough to take a head shot. She’d know he was wearing a vest.”
“He still deserved it,” I said, and then shut up. If Richards wanted to work through her question of premeditation versus an act of fear and self-defense, she was entitled, but I wasn’t going to join her there. I sat my cup down and reached out and put my warmed fingers on her wrist and listened to the night. She sighed and I thought I finally heard her give it up.
“Billy tell you that the Highlands County sheriff was asking after you?” she finally said.
“Yeah. What was that all about?”
“A sergeant friend of his with the office called me, knowing that I knew you. He said the sheriff had met you and wanted to verify some background. I gave him the basics. Hope you don’t mind.”
“I met the guy outside a café up in Placid City when I went up looking for the Reverend Jefferson. Seemed a bit inquisitive for a small-town sheriff.”
“My friend says the guy is as thorough as any cop he knows but a little obsessed. He says Wilson’s on the hook for four homicides in the last fifteen years. All similar. All unsolved.”
We were talking shop again, but I let her go on, hoping it would keep her mind off the possibility that her friend Harris had committed a justified but illegal assassination in her own home.
“He says they were all killed by the same big round. A heavy caliber. Possibly all from the same gun.”
I stopped drinking the coffee and the look in my face must have confused her.
“What?” she said. “Max? What?”
“He tell you the exact caliber?” I said while digging the cell phone out of my pocket.
“No. I’m not sure the sheriff told him, exactly.”
I speed-dialed Billy’s home number and got the machine. I tried his office. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hi, Max. Any luck getting Richards?”
“Yeah, I’m at her place now.”
“Good. I’ve been able to contact the prosecutor in Collier I told you about. He’s willing to get a forensics team together, but he’d like to get some interagency cooperation. Maybe Sherry can help us with that.”
“That’s great, Billy, but we might have a more urgent problem,” I said, trying to hold back my speculation. “Did Lott get back to you with anything on that old rifle?”
“No. My guess is he just stored it away. We didn’t put any priority on it. What’s up?”
“We need him to check it, Billy. We need to find out how recently it’s been fired. Now.”
The attorney went quiet for a second while he did his logic thing.
“Max, what’s up?”
I told him about my encounter with Sheriff O. J. Wilson up in Placid City. The way the little bulldog had charmed me into letting him look for a weapon in my truck. Then I filled him in on how Wilson had tried to check me out, through Richards’s friend and the string of homicides that had made him so paranoid.
“All large caliber. That could be anything, Max,” Billy said. But he was too good a lawyer to dismiss it as coincidence that easily. “Did you call this Wilson and let him know about the gun in Jefferson’s barn and its history?”
“It’s my next call, Billy. If I can get the guy this late at night.”
“Try hard, Max,” he said. “Earlier this evening I had a conversation with Mark Mayes. I filled him in on what we found and told him you’d discovered his great-grandfather’s watch. He seemed quite dumbstruck by the whole thing.”
“You told him about Jefferson?”
“I told him about the grandfather and the son. He was quite intrigued about the grandson having become a minister.”
“He thinks its his destiny,” I said, thinking out loud. “The letters with his grandfather’s deep beliefs, the whole search for what happened and that thing about forgiveness.”
Billy was reading me from the other end of the line.
“You think Mayes will try to contact Jefferson? To somehow bring the thing full circle?”
“Yeah, I do. But I’m not so sure that William Jefferson is so forgiving. You know where Mayes is now?”
“I’ll try his number.”
“Let me know,” I said.
The next call I made was to information, looking for the number to the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office. When I dialed it I got a computerized answering service giving me the office hours and instructions to call 911 if this was an emergency, or to press one for the county dispatcher.
“Highlands County dispatch,” answered a woman with a tired and bored voice. When I asked for a way to speak to Sheriff Wilson, she repeated the office hours and asked me to call back in the morning. That’s when I identified myself as Detective Richards of the Broward Sheriff’s Office and told her it was a matter of importance. She was much more agreeable, asked for a callback number, and said she would page the sheriff. I did not like to lie often, but I was very good at it when I did. Richards was staring at me when I put the phone down. Her night had been bizarre enough. I started to explain when O. J. Wilson called me back.