Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery (22 page)

“So,” I said. “The Buns bartender still lives in there somewhere. Have a nice day, Tori. I’ll see you soon. If the cops don’t show up first.”

* * *

Gus and I were in my Explorer heading west toward home. My phone rang and the caller ID was blocked. I answered. “Matt Royal.”

“Mr. Royal, this is George Swann.”

“Call me Matt.”

“Mr. Royal,” he said, his voice sounding like a sneer might. “I have called to inform you that a Sarasota County grand jury has handed down a first-degree murder indictment on Abigail Lester. We’ll be going for the death penalty.”

I can’t say that I was surprised, but I had hoped Swann might have had better sense. He would have a hard time convicting Abby of second-degree murder, much less first, and the jury would not be excited about the state reaching for the death penalty. “George, I suspect the reason you’ve gone for the indictment and are putting the death sentence on the table, is that you think it will give you some negotiating leverage on a plea.”

“The grand jury indicted her, not me.”

I laughed. “I might have fallen off a turnip truck, but it wasn’t last night. Give me a grand jury and I can indict you for having sex with a coconut before noon. All that indictment means is that you decided to roll the dice.”

“We’ll see.”

“Okay, George, but write this down. Block letters, so you can read it and remember it. ‘There ain’t going to be a deal.’ We’re going to trial.”

“As you wish. FDLE will be arresting your client on the new charge within the hour.”

“Look, George, why don’t you just let me bring her in tomorrow, and we can have an immediate arraignment and get the bail continued.”

“No can do. She’s going to jail. No bail on this one. You want to rethink a plea?”

“Are you in Sarasota, George?

“Yes.”

“Don’t leave. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

“I’m not—”

I didn’t let him finish. I hung up.

The call had come through the hands-free system in the car, so Gus had heard the conversation. “Prick,” he said.

“Yep.”

“Is the indictment going to make a difference in the case?”

“Some. Mostly procedurally. Unless the state has some information I don’t know about. That’s the thing that keeps trial lawyers up at night. What do they know that I don’t?”

I called Abby and told her to get ready to be arrested again. I told her I would be at the jail by the time they brought her in. Then I made a couple more calls and turned onto I-75 toward Sarasota.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The previous night’s revelations about James and Linda Favereaux were rolling around in J.D.’s head as she sat at her desk sipping her first cup of coffee of the morning. There was a missing piece in the narrative she’d gotten from the Homeland Security agents. An operative as experienced as Jim Favereaux would have at least some suspicion of who killed his partner. These things just didn’t happen in a vacuum. Yet, according to Devlin and Katrina, neither Jim nor the agency had any leads or even suspicions as to why she was killed.

She was sworn to secrecy about the things she’d heard the night before. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use some of the information as part of her investigation, as long as she was careful not to divulge anything she’d been told. She called Detective Brad Corbin in New Orleans.

“Brad, does the name James Favereaux mean anything to you?”

“The guy whose wife was killed on Longboat Key?”

“Yes, but I was thinking more in line with a man in New Orleans twenty years or so ago.”

“That was before my time, but I can ask around. You think he was in New Orleans back then?”

“I’ve heard he was. I’d just like to know if he ever came to the attention of law enforcement.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Corbin said, and hung up.

She sat and sipped her coffee and thought some more. If Bannister was somehow involved in something that connected him to the Favereauxes, the case took on a different complexion. If Bill Lester was implicated in Bannister’s murder, would that mean that he was somehow involved in the killing of Linda Favereaux? She couldn’t see a way to make that connection. Yes, Lester might have had a reason to kill Bannister, either because his wife Abby was having an affair with him or because he himself was having an affair with Bannister’s wife and he wanted to make sure that Bannister didn’t give Maggie any more trouble. But what possibly could be the connection between Lester and the Favereauxes? Where was the motive? She didn’t see one.

She walked down the hall to the deputy chief’s office. He was wearing his uniform today, a single gold star tacked to his shirt collars. “Going somewhere important?” J.D. asked.

Sharkey grinned. “A little road patrol. Get the juices flowing. If I didn’t get out from behind the desk occasionally, I’d go nuts. Anything new on your murder case?”

“Possibly. I met with the Homeland Security agents last night, and they told me a lot of interesting stuff, but I had to take an oath of secrecy to get them to open up.”

“I’m surprised they’d do that.”

“I had a little help.”

“What?”

“Jock Algren.”

Sharkey laughed. “Ole Jock. He talked to the president?”

J.D. grinned. “Who knows? Whoever he talked to built a fire under the Homeland Security director. I wonder if the agents I’m dealing with could get some information from our camera surveillance system without anybody here or anywhere else knowing they were in the system.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Martin. They just asked me about getting that done.” J.D. didn’t like lying to a good friend, but she wanted to protect another friend, the chief.

“I would think they or the National Security Agency or somebody in the government would be able to hack into that system without us knowing a thing about it.”

“For some reason, they don’t want to do that.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, J.D. Nobody here can use the system without a password, and we will know immediately when somebody with a password accesses the data.”

“Who all gets that information on a regular basis?”

“If there’s a hit, that is if a license plate pops up that we need to act on, or if anyone attempts to run a specific plate, the chief and I are both notified in the reports that hit our desks first thing in the morning.”

“No way around it?”

“Not that I know of,” Sharkey said.

* * *

An hour later, Detective Corbin called back. “I talked to the detective who partnered with me when I was new to this job. He was working the gang units twenty years ago. He knew a guy named Favereaux who was quite the player, but he could never pin anything on him. He seemed to be some sort of money man for some bad guys who ran the rackets on the docks.”

“Did your friend know what happened to him?”

“He just disappeared, dropped totally out of sight. There were rumors that he pulled up stakes and moved on to St. Louis or Atlanta or someplace. He was out of our hair, so there wasn’t any follow-up.”

“Was there anything about him getting married before he left New Orleans?”

“Nothing.”

“How about him having a daughter?”

“Nope.”

“Was there any connection to The White American Party or Connie Pelletier?”

“No. What are you looking at, J.D.?”

“Just scratching around. Running down rumors. The usual crap.”

“Tell me about it. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

“Not a problem, Brad. Thanks for checking it out.”

J.D. sat, drinking a cup of fresh coffee. The remains of her lunch, take-out from Harry’s Deli, lay spread out on her desk. She sipped her brew and thought some more. She wasn’t going to be able to use the bridge cameras to check out Lester’s coming and going from the island on the evening that Bannister was killed without both Lester and Sharkey becoming aware of it. Her queries in New Orleans had turned up nothing. Her case was getting colder by the hour and her frustration level was rising to new heights.

She closed her office door to shut out the quiet din that permeated any office at work. She rested her head on the back of her chair, trying to close out the world. She was tired, and her eyelids drooped, her respiration slowed, her heart beat rhythmically, and vignettes of happy times flashed through her consciousness. Suddenly she was wide awake, completely aware of her surroundings, an idea percolating through her prefrontal lobes, dragging shards of facts from her memory banks.

Sometimes, when you let your brain range free over a problem, allowing it to swoop in and out, examining little bytes of data that you have consciously or unconsciously stored away, when you relax and sip coffee and contemplate the margins of the conundrum, insight strikes like lightning out of a clear sky, unexpected and shocking. A solution begins to take shape. Maybe not the perfect solution, or even the correct solution, but a possible solution at least. And so it was with J.D. that day in her Longboat Key police station office.

She called Bert Hawkins, the Twelfth Circuit medical examiner.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The video conference room at the jail was crowded. Reporters from all the local outlets had settled in, waiting for something juicy to happen. None of them had been kind to Abby. The stories were always a bit salacious, slanted awkwardly against a fine woman. Who knew why journalists sometimes decided to take sides in a case before all the facts became known? When a prominent man was murdered and a policeman’s wife charged with the crime, it was too much to pass up. The story was headline material, and the titillating hint of sex got everybody’s attention. The scandal would quickly lose its allure if it turned out that Abby was neither the murderer nor the lover of the dead man, or that Bannister’s murder was nothing more than a random event.

I’d called the judge’s assistant when I hung up with Swann. I told her what had happened, and asked if the judge would hear a bond motion this afternoon. He agreed and called Swann to tell him to be at the courthouse ready to argue the motion.

I’d also called Robin Hartill at the
Longboat Observer
. I could count on her to write the story straight, and I would give her an exclusive interview as soon as the hearing was over. I also owed her boss.

I’d dropped Gus at the hospital where his car was parked and then drove the short distance to the county jail. As I was setting up at counsel table, Swann swaggered into the room. “I was catching a plane to Jacksonville,” he said. “Now I’ve got to stay overnight.”

“Sorry, George, my guest room is booked for tonight.”

“You want to play games like this?”

“The game began when you indicted my client for first-degree murder and sent your hounds out to arrest her. We could have had a conversation with the judge and skipped a hearing. Just let her keep the bond she’s on.”

“I’m following the law.”

“You’re gaming it, George. Or trying to. Are you familiar with the Manatee High School football team?”

“No.”

“Well, they’re a damn good team, year in and year out. They win state championships. They play in the top class in the state. They’re coached by one of the best high school coaches in the country.”

“What’s your point?”

“In this game, the one you and I are playing, you’re the Manatee High School football team. You’re good as long as you’re playing in your class. But, I’m the Tampa Bay Bucs, and you’re playing way above your level of competence. You don’t stand a chance.”

“Hah,” he said. “We’ll see.”

Sometimes a poke in the eye is good for arrogance. It makes you stop and think, and it makes you mad. The anger is what survives, and anger brings about mistakes. The game that Swann was playing was a head game. I wonder if he understood that.

The TVs cranked up and Judge Thomas was on the big screen in the middle. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

“Good afternoon, Your Honor,” Swann and I said in unison.

“I understand that a grand jury has indicted Mrs. Lester for first-degree murder. I have a copy of the indictment. You want to continue the bond as set, am I correct, Mr. Royal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any objections, Mr. Swann?”

“Yes, sir. This is now a first-degree murder case. We’ll be going for the death penalty. That gives her good reason to flee the jurisdiction.”

“Have Mrs. Lester’s circumstances changed since the last hearing?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Other than the indictment, I’m not aware of any change, Your Honor,” Swann said, “but this is now a first-degree murder case.”

The judge rustled some papers on his desk, looked down at them, and said, “I see no reason to change the requirements of the bond. Mr. Royal, will the bonding agent agree to continue the bond in light of the indictment?”

“He will, Your Honor, and I have him in the hallway if you want to question him.”

“Your representation is good enough for me, Mr. Royal. The bond will hold over. Anything else?”

“Your Honor,” Swann said, “the complexion of this case has changed. It’s now a first-degree case.”

“Mr. Swann,” Judge Thomas said, “I’ve ruled.”

“Yes, sir, but I think you might want to rethink the ruling.”

“Mr. Swann,” the judge said, his voice tight and low, “when I rule, the argument is over. Don’t continue arguing. You’ve had your say.”

“But, Judge, I’m not sure you understand—”

The judge cut him off. “Mr. Swann, do you want to spend the night as a guest of the county jailer?”

“No, sir.”

“Then sit down and be quiet.”

Swann sat.

“If there’s nothing else, court is adjourned,” the judge said. His TV screen went dark.

I left the courtroom immediately, not stopping to speak to Swann. I saw Agent Lucas sitting in the back of the room, frowning. I nodded at him. He took no notice. There was a howling pack of reporters in the hallway, all shouting questions at me, the cameramen from the local TV stations jockeying for position to get a shot of me walking. “No comment,” was my only answer. I did swagger a bit for the benefit of the cameramen.

Robin was waiting for me by my car. We got in and cranked up the air conditioning. “Robin,” I said, “I don’t really have anything for you. I was a little surprised at the judge’s quick decision, but I don’t know any more now than the last time we talked.”