The Dead Detective (14 page)

Harry smiled up at him, thinking how pleased Pete Rourke would be. “Just tell him it’s police business,” he said in an unmistakable
fuck you
tone. Maybe Rourke wouldn’t be pleased.

“I’ll be sure to give him that message,” the young minister snapped back.

Harry watched him as he headed toward the stage, trying to keep a bit of swagger in his walk. He made a note to check Bobby Joe Waldo for a rap sheet. Instinct told him he’d find something.

Ten minutes later, as predicted, Reverend Waldo wrapped up his
preparation,
and Harry watched his son walk up to him and whisper in his ear. The older minister nodded and looked out to where Harry was seated. After giving some final instructions to the director’s booth and the people on the stage, he started toward Harry. Almost immediately the choir began its preparation of “Amazing Grace.”

Waldo wore a broad salesman’s smile when he reached Harry. But the smile never carried to his eyes which were narrowed and wary. He was a short, rotund man, no more than five-seven, Harry guessed, and he was pushing two hundred pounds hard. His son obviously got his height, slender frame, and sneer from a different member of the family. Waldo was easily in his mid- to late-fifties but there was no visible gray in his full head of hair. He was wearing a vibrant Tommy Bahama floral print shirt and sharply creased tan linen trousers that broke over gleaming, glove-soft Italian loafers, and there was a gold Tag Heuer watch on his wrist. It was high-end casual and Harry estimated that Waldo was wearing more money on his back than Harry spent on clothing in an entire year, maybe two.

“Well,” the minister began, “deputy is it?”

“Detective,” Harry said, opening his credential case. “The name’s Harry Doyle.”

“Well, Detective Doyle, my son tells me you need to speak to me on police business.”

“That’s right, reverend. It’s about Billy Hall. I believe the boy was once a member of your church.”

“Still is, far as I know.” A sudden edge came into the minister’s voice and he quickly masked it with another faux smile.

Harry took out his notebook and wrote the time, the date, and the minister’s name. When he looked up Waldo was shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. “If this is going to take some time, why don’t we adjourn to my office where we’ll both be more comfortable? The church secretary brews a good cup of coffee and I can always use one after a long session of preparing the way.”

Waldo’s office was like the man himself, oversized and expensively furnished. After passing through an outer office that housed a secretary and two assistants, they entered a twenty-by-twenty-foot room. With his first step Harry sank into a full inch of thick Berber carpet and his nostrils were filled with the scent of expensive leather and recently applied furniture polish. The room was dominated by a massive desk that was easily eight feet across, the surface empty except for a leather blotter and a gold pen set. Behind the desk was an equally large credenza that held a telephone console, a flat-screen computer monitor and keyboard, a photograph of a middle-aged woman who Harry assumed was the minister’s wife, and a solitary, well-worn Bible. Above the credenza a large picture window looked out on a pond that had been meticulously designed. There were bulrushes at one end and flowering lily pads at another. One bank held a large royal poinciana tree, its wide branches and flaming red flowers reflecting in the pond’s surface; another offered a white crape myrtle and a golden rain tree, while a third held a towering jacaranda, heavily laden with purple bell-shaped flowers and rich fernlike leaves. If the landscape architect was shooting for serenity, Harry decided he had hit the mark squarely.

The office interior offered its own sense of design, this time aimed at the minister’s image. To the left of the desk photographs of Reverend Waldo with various politicians and civic leaders filled an entire wall, including one that showed Waldo shaking hands with Harry’s ultimate boss, the Pinellas County sheriff. A second wall was filled with awards and plaques citing the minister for various meritorious acts. The final wall held a large portrait of Jesus Christ. Oddly, it was the only item that seemed out of place, and Harry immediately thought of the Bible quote that spoke of a camel and the eye of a needle.

Waldo settled himself into a high-backed leather desk chair that let out a discernable creak under his weight. He gestured toward one of two visitors’ chairs and Harry found himself sinking into soft leather. Almost immediately the office door opened and the secretary entered carrying a tray of coffee. Waldo thanked her, using the name Emily, but withheld any introduction to Harry, who jotted the woman’s name in his notebook. When the woman left, Waldo sipped his coffee, then sat back and brought his hands together like a man preparing to pray. “Now, what can I tell you about Billy Hall?” He offered Harry another smile.

Harry leaned forward and held the minister’s eyes. “Billy’s mother told us the boy was under a great deal of pressure to ‘repent his sins.’”

Waldo nodded. “Indeed he was.”

“She also said the congregation was encouraged to ‘seek justice’ for Darlene Beckett.”

Again, Waldo nodded. “Equally true.”

“Was there anyone in your congregation who showed a particular interest in doing so?”

Waldo let out a soft chuckle. “If you mean, did anyone try to get together a group to light torches and march on the courthouse, the answer would be no. I’m afraid I’m not that powerful a preacher. If you’re asking if anyone wrote letters to the court, or the state’s attorney, or even to Ms. Beckett herself, I would have to say I’m sure some might have, although I have no personal knowledge of any such letters. But I do know that we have a very committed congregation. Committed to the repentance of sin, committed to the punishment of sin, and also committed to the forgiveness of sin, I might add.”

“Was Billy Hall forgiven his sin?” Harry asked.

Now it was the minister’s turn to lean forward, his eyes harder. “Billy Hall would have been forgiven had he repented. But you must have one to have the other. Billy Hall did
not
repent his sins. He did
not
testify against that woman, as he should have. And his parents yielded to his refusal to do so. Because of that, a truly evil woman escaped justice.”

“I notice that you use the word
evil
.” Harry watched the man’s eyes.

“It’s clearly what she was,” he said. “Not that she, too, couldn’t have repented, forsaken her evil ways and received the Lord’s forgiveness.”

Harry stared at the minister for several moments. “Did you or anyone on your staff have any contact with Ms. Beckett?”

“Certainly not,” Waldo snapped.

“You’re sure you can speak for your entire staff on that?”

“I don’t directly supervise the staff. My son Bobby Joe, who is an associate minister here, does that. I’m sure he would have told me if that had been the case. But why leave it open to speculation? Let’s have him in so he can tell us directly.”

Harry waited while Waldo got on the office intercom and asked his secretary to locate his son. When he finished, Harry opened a fresh page in his notebook. “Exactly what denomination is your church?”

“We’re not part of any particular denomination. We’re an independent evangelical church,” Waldo answered.

“So your ministers aren’t ordained?”

“I ordain our ministers myself … after a suitable course of study and work within the church, of course. I, myself, was ordained the same way by my predecessor.”

Their conversation was interrupted as Bobby Joe Waldo entered the office. Harry noticed the smirk he had been treated to earlier was now missing and he wondered if Bobby Joe knew better than to cop that kind of attitude in front of his father.

“The detective here just hit me with a question I couldn’t rightly answer,” Waldo began. “He wants to know if anyone on our staff ever had any contact with that woman who molested young Billy Hall.”

Bobby Joe thought for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Why would they?” There was a slight movement of his eyes to the left when he answered, which Harry picked up on. It was a classic tell. It didn’t mean the young minister was lying, but it did indicate that he was not answering the question in a completely truthful manner.

Apparently his father picked up on it as well. He leaned forward in his chair again. “Just tell us if you know of anyone who had contact with that woman.”

Bobby Joe shifted the position of his feet—another tell
—
and shook his head. “I don’t know anyone who had any contact with her,” he said.

“How many ministers and staff do you have working here?” Harry asked before either man could say any more.

“That depends what you mean by staff,” the minister said. “My first associate minister, a man named Justin Clearby, and Bobby Joe here are the only ordained ministers. We have several lay ministers, who have regular jobs outside the church. Our music director, for example, is considered a lay minister even though he’s not ordained. And we have several folks who work with the children’s programs who we refer to as assistant lay ministers. As far as full-time paid staff goes, we have our regular ministers, my secretary and one assistant—the other is a part-time volunteer—the director of our school and three teachers, and a custodian. The folks who run the lighting and sound for our services are paid part-time employees.”

“I’d like to speak with any staff people who are here now,” Harry said. “And I’d like a list of both paid and unpaid staff with their home addresses and phone numbers.”

“Is all that really necessary?” Bobby Joe chimed in. “I already told you that nobody from here had any contact with that woman.”

Harry stared at the young man, but before he could say anything else, Reverend Waldo gave his son a clear and direct order: “You do what the man asked, Bobby Joe. It’s our job to help if we can. You have Emily put together a list and you see to it that Detective Doyle gets it.”

Bobby Joe seemed to shrink in size as he nodded his head. “I’ll do it right now,” he said, and headed back to the outer office.

Waldo rose from behind his desk, a smile fixed on his face again. “Come with me and I’ll introduce you to the people who are here,” he said.

They passed through the outer office and out onto the covered walkway that led back to the church and the other buildings. They had only gone a half dozen steps when the minister stopped. “Just a minute, I forgot to tell my secretary something that’s a bit pressing. I’ll be right back.”

Before Harry could say anything he had spun around and reentered the office.

Back inside, Waldo led Bobby Joe away from the secretary’s desk, then leaned in close so he could speak without being overheard.

“Now you listen to me, son. You sure this detective isn’t gonna find anything out that’s gonna come back and embarrass this church?”

“I’m sure, Daddy.”

“I’m countin’ on you to make sure it stays that way, hear? And you also better check that list Emily’s putting together and keep anybody off it who might be a problem.”

“I’ll see to it, Daddy.”

“Make sure that you do. You also make sure everybody else knows that’s how I want it to be.”

“I will.”

Waldo caught his son’s eyes moving toward the exterior door of the office, and he turned and saw Harry standing there.

“Hot out there,” Harry said. “Thought I’d come back to the airconditioning while I waited.”

The ready-made smile returned to Waldo’s face. “Good thinking,” he said. “But I’m afraid we’re going to have to head right back out into it.”

C
HAPTER
N
INE

L
ola Morofsky sat in one of her oversized office chairs,
her feet dangling well above the floor, her five-foot, hundred-pound body making her look like a small child who had stumbled into a giant’s living room. Lola adjusted her half-glasses on her long nose as she read the rap sheet Harry had just given her.

“Nasty fellow,” she said. She turned a page and raised disapproving eyes to Harry. “You realize, of course, that you have juvenile records here, as well as adult records—juvenile records that you are
not
supposed to have.”

Harry feigned surprise, without any attempt to be convincing. “Must have been a computer glitch.”

Lola looked at him over the half-glasses, her soft brown eyes incapable of anything more than a mild reproach. “Yes, I’m certain it was,” she said, her Brooklyn accent weighty with sarcasm. “What does your person of interest do for a living?”

“He’s come home to Jesus,” Harry said.

“What does that mean?”

“He’s a minister … ordained by his minister father. He works in Daddy’s evangelical church.”

“Quite a change for him,” Lola said as she went back to the rap sheet. “Let’s see, we had three instances of possession, along with several burglaries as a juvenile, which are charges that often go together. It seems that all were treated with in-house arrest and probation, except for one stint in a boot camp. Then, as an adult—he didn’t seem to learn anything in boot camp, which is often the case—we have several bad check charges, all dismissed after restitution was made.”

“Probably by Daddy,” Harry interjected.

Lola nodded. “Probably. It’s not uncommon for parents to open their wallets when young adults get into trouble. But it’s usually just a Band-Aid, not a solution, to the underlying problem.” She read on, nodding her head as she did so. “Next we have a possession charge which was dropped when he agreed to cooperate with a police investigation of his supplier. Then we have a conviction for fraud, where one Robert Joseph Waldo fleeced a retired couple out of ten thousand dollars in a phony home improvement scheme. This one Daddy couldn’t buy him out of and he was sentenced to a year. Since then nothing.”

“His jail record shows he had some trouble inside,” Harry said. “I don’t have anything in writing on this—it’s all verbal from people in corrections. But according to them Bobby Joe accused two inmates of sexual assault. Claimed they attacked him in a laundry room where they were all working. But the accusations never went anywhere. Three other inmates supposedly witnessed the attack, but claimed they didn’t see anything, so it became Bobby Joe’s word against the two men. Corrections, of course, took the easy way out. The two assailants got hit with some minor administrative punishments, loss of privileges, that sort of thing, and Bobby Joe got placed in an isolation unit. Down the road it was probably a factor in his early release—he got out after doing six months.” Harry offered up a shrug. “The sheriff doesn’t like news stories about inmates getting buggered in his jail, and the word going around is that he pushed to get Bobby Joe out early after he agreed to keep his mouth shut. The sheriff knows Bobby Joe’s father, although I’m not certain how well, beyond the fact that there’s a picture of them shaking hands on a wall in the minister’s office.”

“And, of course, you’re thinking that Darlene Beckett escaped more serious charges because the victim, after an agreement was reached with his parents, refused to testify against her.” Lola extended one palm up. “It’s an interesting coincidence, Harry. But as a motive for murder it is very, very thin.”

Harry nodded. “As thin as it gets, but I have to start somewhere. What do you think of Bobby Joe as a suspect?”

Lola gave him a noncommittal shrug. “His background certainly points toward him being a sociopath, but I’d need harder evidence to put that label to him. From what you’ve told me I suspect that his father is quite domineering. That could very well be the root of his psychological problems, but again that would require analysis, perhaps even long-term analysis.”

“So I’ve got nothing,” Harry said.

“You have a suspect, Harry. That’s always something.”

When Harry returned to the office he found Anita Molari, the exotic dancer known as Jasmine, going through driver’s license photographs of the men who had visited Darlene’s home. She was seated in the conference room next to Pete Rourke’s office, which now housed the additional members of the task force. One of the newly assigned uniformed deputies sat across from her.

Harry placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Go grab some coffee,” he said. “I’ll take over for a while.” When the deputy left Harry gathered up the photographs. “Let’s move out to my desk,” he suggested. “I’m expecting some phone calls I don’t want to miss.”

Anita Molari was a different person away from the Peek-a-Boo Lounge. The last time Harry had seen her she was wearing only a thong and a see-through beach robe that put her very shapely body on open display. Today she was dressed in an oversized T-shirt and loose-fitting shorts that made her seem small, almost frail. Her short, dark hair was damp, as though she had rushed straight from her shower, and the vivid blue eyes Harry remembered from the Peek-a-Boo Lounge simply looked tired. She reminded him of the saying: Rode hard and put up wet.

“Do any of the photographs look familiar?” he asked, as they seated themselves at his desk.

“Not yet.” She looked at him, head tilted to one side. “I don’t really understand why it’s important for me to look at these pictures if you already know these guys were at Darlene’s house.”

“I want to know if anyone who visited her home might also have followed her to other places.”

“You mean like a stalker?”

“That’s right. Anyone who might have been obsessed with her, or who might have been stalking her because of something she had done to them, or to someone else.”

“Like that kid they said she molested?”

“That’s right.”

Anita gave a small shake of her head. “I never understood that. I always wanted to ask her how she could do something like that, but we never got close enough where I felt I could.” She gave Harry a questioning look as though he might know the answer. “I mean she was beautiful, really beautiful. There aren’t many women who look like that. And the way men stared at her …” She shook her head again, then shrugged. “I get those looks when I’m up on the stage, practically naked. Darlene would have got them if she walked in wearing a burlap bag. And you know something? She wasn’t a bad person. I don’t know if she was a good person. I mean I talked to her and all, but not that much.”

“But enough to know she wasn’t a bad person,” Harry said.

“Yeah, that’s right. Somehow it just doesn’t make sense.”

“Many things don’t.” Harry opened his notebook to the last page he had used and started to turn to a fresh one.

Anita leaned forward suddenly and pointed at the notebook. “You’ve got the name of a church written there. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but see it … it just sort of jumped out at me.”

Harry looked at the notebook.
The First Assembly of Jesus Christ the Lord
was written in large capital letters and underlined. “What about it?” he asked.

“I know that church,” Anita said. “I mean from work.”

“How so?”

“One of their cars scratched mine in the parking lot.”

“The Peek-a-Boo Lounge lot?”

“Yeah.” She gave him a small shrug. “Whenever I park my car there, when I’m going to work, I write down the make, model, and license plate numbers of the cars on either side of me. I mean guys leave there pretty sloshed—hell, most of them get there pretty sloshed—and I want to be sure if somebody clips me I have a way to know who it was.”

“So you got clipped by a car belonging to the church?”

“I sure did.” She leaned forward. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I got a friend of mine who’s a cop to run the plate. And it comes up belonging to that church. So I called there and eventually got to talk to one of the ministers.”

Harry felt a rush of excitement. “You remember his name?” Anita screwed up her face. “It was a funny name, real Southern. You know what I mean?”

“Bobby Joe?” Harry asked in return.

“Yeah, that’s it. Bobby Joe Waldo, I remember now.” There was a big smile spread across her face, and Harry thought it made her look like a schoolgirl who had just gotten a difficult question right. “It was funny. He was real nervous when he got on the phone, and when I told him where the car was parked and that I was one of the dancers who worked there, he was even more nervous. He said the head minister at the church would be real upset if he found out, and that he’d like to handle it privately, no insurance companies or anything, just to tell him what it cost to fix the car and he’d get the money to me.”

“Did he send you a check?” Harry asked.

“No. It was only a small dent, and he told me to get an estimate on how much it would cost to fix it. I did and called him back the next day and he had the cash delivered to me the day after that.”

“Who delivered the money?”

“I dunno. Just some guy. I was working days that week and he met me in the parking lot of the club like we had arranged. I remember thinking that I’d seen him before someplace, maybe the club. But I couldn’t be sure. Unless a customer asks me for a private dance I don’t pay much attention to individual guys.”

“Can you describe him?”

Anita wrinkled her brow. “Sure, I guess I can. Let’s see, he was tall, not real tall, more like you. But real thin; there wasn’t any heft to him at all. The thing I remember most was his hair and eyes. His hair was down to his shoulders and real light, kind of a fake blond, like maybe a dye job. It was the same with his eyes. They were sort of a cold blue, not really natural. They kind of made me wonder if he was wearing those tinted contact lenses.”

“How old?” Harry asked.

“Oh, maybe late twenties. At least that’s what I thought at the time.”

She had just described Bobby Joe Waldo, and it was a description that would be good enough for any jury. Harry kept that information to himself. He didn’t want to be accused later of prejudicing a witness.”

“Did he give you his name?”

Anita shook her head. “He just said Reverend Waldo had sent him and handed me an envelope with the money in it.”

Harry slowly nodded, digesting what she had told him. “I need you to hang around just a bit longer,” he said at length. “I want to put together a photo lineup—that’s just a handful of mug shots—so we can see if you can pick this guy out.”

Anita glanced at her wristwatch. “My kid doesn’t get out of kindergarten for another two hours, so I guess I’ve got time.”

Twenty minutes later Harry had eight photographs lined up on the conference room table—all men in their twenties, all with long, blond hair. Anita picked out Bobby Joe Waldo on her first try and Harry told her he might want to do a live lineup sometime in the near future. But not quite yet, he thought. First he would do some serious digging into Bobby Joe Waldo.

Pete Rourke pensively tapped the side of his nose as Harry gave him a rundown on Bobby Joe, his father, and the First Assembly of Jesus Christ the Lord Church. When he finished he warned the captain that down the road he might be asking a judge for a warrant to seize church records and to search Bobby Joe’s home, car, and personal effects.

Rourke leaned back in his chair and raised a warning finger. “Before you do that, you better be pretty damned certain what you’re gonna find. And I mean ninety-nine percent certain. This is still Florida, Harry, and asking a judge to sign a search warrant for a church or its minister is like saying you want him to piss in the holy water font.” Harry smiled at the image, making Rourke raise the cautioning finger again. “I mean it, Harry. Don’t take this lightly, or your ass will be in more trouble than you ever dreamed of.”

“I know, cap.” Harry conjured up Bobby Joe’s father sending forth a proverbial river of outrage.

There was a knock on the door, interrupting them. Vicky came right behind the knock, pushing the door open and stepping up to the desk. Jim Morgan followed her, seeming a bit nervous over the sudden intrusion.

“Sorry, cap, but you and Harry need to hear this right away,” Vicky said.

Rourke glared at her. When he spoke, his voice rose steadily in volume and ferocity with each word. “This better be damn good,
detective
. One of the joys of being a captain is having a private office that people
cannot
barge into when the goddamn door is closed and somebody is sitting in the goddamn visitor’s chair.”

Vicky was unfazed, Harry was grinning, and Morgan looked as though he wished he were somewhere else.

Vicky gave Rourke a little girl smile that almost broke Harry up. “Trust me, cap,” she said wide-eyed and innocent, “this is something you need to hear forthwith.”

Rourke narrowed his stare. “Speak,” he growled. “And make it good.”

Vicky extended a hand toward Morgan, who still looked like he wanted a place to hide. “Jim really deserves the credit on this,” she began. “Turns out he’s a wizard with computers.”

Rourke threw an unhappy eye at Morgan just to let him know that, wizard or not, he’d stepped in the same pile of shit that she had. Harry wondered if the eager young deputy saw his future in the detective division hanging on Vicky’s next words.

“Jim came up with the name of the person who signed out the cars that ended up in Darlene’s driveway,” she explained. “The records were altered so it looked like the sign outs were never recorded, but they were still in the hard drive and Jim was able to get them out.” She threw an admiring glance at Morgan. “I have no idea how.”

“The same person took both cars out?” Harry asked.

“You betcha,” Vicky said. “And hold on for this. It was one of the detectives working this case, Nick Benevuto.”

Rourke stared at her, then groaned out the words, “Oh, shit.”

Harry gave a small shake of his head, almost as if driving off some annoying insect. “When were the records altered?” he asked.