Collateral Damage (6 page)

I called Jimbo Merryman. “Top,” I said, when he answered, “it's Matt Royal.”

“How's the boy warrior?”

I laughed. “Hanging in there, Top. How're you?”

“Couldn't be better. You want to come down for a little fishing?”

“Can't right now. I need to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Doc Desmond showed up at my door this morning.”

“I told him where you lived. I hope that was all right.”

“It was. I owe him a lot, and it was good to see him.”

“He's got a lot of trouble, Matt. Losing his boy and all.”

“Tell me about him, Top.” I was using the name all army first sergeants are called informally by the men. They were the top sergeants. One of the most important ranks in the armed forces.

“He's made a lot of money over the years. He's done it honestly and by hard work. He's a good man, Matt. I hope you can help him.”

“He wants me to file a lawsuit against his son's murderer if we can find him. We would hope to gather some evidence that might be out of reach of the criminal prosecutors and turn what we find over to the cops for prosecution. Do you think he has any ulterior motive for such a suit?”

“No. I think he wants to find a little justice in all of this. His son is dead, his marriage may be dead too if Julie can't rouse herself from her grief. He's grabbing at straws, I think, but he's an honest man, Matt. He's the same guy we knew in Nam. Only richer. A lot richer.” He chuckled.

“Okay, Top. I just wanted your take on him. I'll do whatever I can.”

“I told Doc he could count on you.”

“I'll call soon and we'll go fishing.”

“You do that, L.T.”

Jimbo was not only the best soldier I'd ever known, he was also the best judge of men I'd ever met. Maybe the two went together. He was a great soldier because he could size up a man in an instant. I'd never known him to be wrong. Maybe this time he was.

I shook my head. I'd put the courtroom and all that it entails behind me. I didn't want to get involved again in the shenanigans that the modern-day lawyer uses. The defendant always pushes for delay. Delay is good for them. They get to bill more hours, make more money with which to stoke
the fires of the modern big firm demons. I'd found the tactics stifling, irritating, and detrimental to all the clients on both sides of a case.

The Holy Grail of the judiciary was a clear docket. Judges pushed hard for case closure, but never seemed to understand that by allowing some of the stupidity that bogged down the system, they were not clearing their cases. A closed case was not a billable case. Lawyers didn't like them, but judges lusted after them. It was not a happy forum for litigants with good causes.

I didn't want any part of it, not the other lawyers, not the judges, not the useless paper pushing that was the norm. But I owed Doc, and even if I didn't, I'd want to help. No matter how many years pass, men who forged bonds at war are still brothers and when one is wounded, the others gather round to lend what assistance they can. Doc had risked his life for me. The least I could do was deal with a few idiots for him.

I called J. D. Duncan and asked her to meet me for lunch at Nosh-ARye on Avenue of the Flowers.

The place was almost empty. I took a booth toward the back of the restaurant, but with a view to the front door. I ordered a Miller Lite from the waitress and told her I was expecting a guest. J.D. arrived about five minutes later. She swooped in, hugged me, shifted her gun around to a more comfortable position, and took her seat facing me.

She looked at the bottle on the table. “Beer? At lunch?”

“I'm a sybarite. What can I say?”

“Hmm,” she said. “I think something's on your mind.”

“I had a visit from a ghost this morning. An old buddy from the war. I haven't seen him since we left Vietnam.”

“Ouch. I know you don't like to think too much about those days.”

“Yeah. Have you had any luck on the murders?”

The waitress came for our orders. The menu was long and complicated. A lot of dishes were named for movie stars of the '30s and '40s. I knew it was all good, and I ordered potato pancakes and a brisket of beef. J.D. had a salad and a Diet Coke.

“Which murders?” she asked.

I noticed a little crinkle around her eyes. I looked at her, waiting for the smile. She favored me with it and I melted a little.

“Why don't you bring me up to date on all murders on the island in the last three months.”

“Does this have something to do with your visitor this morning?”

“Yeah. My pal's name is Charles Desmond. Ring any bells?”

She sat back in her seat. “The dead guy on the beach is your buddy's son?”

“Was.”

“Well, yes. Was.”

“I didn't make the connection until he came by this morning.”

J.D. blew out a breath. “He's a nice guy. I wish I could help him, but we've run into a blank wall on the investigation. He calls now and then, but I never have anything to tell him.”

“He wants me to file a civil suit.”

“Against the department?”

“No. He thinks you walk on water. He wants to use the suit as a vehicle to help you find evidence.”

“I knew he was rich, but I'd think he'd have to have more money than God to get you out of retirement. Who's he going to sue?”

“That's the problem. I don't know where to start. I was hoping you'd share your file with me.”

“I'd have to run that by the chief.”

“If you're willing to help, I'll call the chief myself and ask him about it. I didn't want to step on your toes.”

She grinned. “You were afraid I might react negatively and kick your butt or something.”

“There's that. Plus, I want you on board with me.”

“If the chief says it's okay, I'm all for it. I'll do whatever I can.”

“I'm not getting paid, by the way. Just in case you're interested.”

“I didn't think you were. Mr. Desmond must have been a good friend for you to come out of retirement for him.”

“A long time ago he put his life on the line to save mine. No matter what you do after that, you cannot repay the debt in full. It's one thing to save a life, like a nurse or doctor, but it's so much more when somebody puts saving your life in front of saving his own.”

“That's some motivation you've got there, friend. Be careful that you don't get too close to the fire. You could get burned.”

We ate a leisurely lunch, talked of things of little seriousness, laughed a bit, exchanged a couple of jokes. Her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. “Dispatch. I've got to take this one. Sorry.”

She left the booth and walked outside. She was back in a couple of
minutes, put a ten dollar bill on the table and said, “Duty calls. I've got to interview a lady who lost her watch at the airport in Detroit last March. Says she needs a police report for the insurance company.”

I laughted and handed her the ten. “This one's on me.”

“Wouldn't that fall under bribing a cop?”

“It might, but you can trust me. I'm a lawyer.”

She laughed, snapped the bill out of my hand, and left.

I went from the restaurant to the police station. I stood inside the waiting room and watched the dispatcher finish a telephone call. She rolled her chair over and opened the sliding glass window that separated her from the public.

“Hey, Matt,” she said. “Who're you here to see today?”

“Hey, Iva. Is the chief in?”

“Sure. Let me tell him you're here.”

She shut the little window and picked up the phone. She said a few words, hesitated, hung up, and motioned me through the door that led to the offices in the back of the building. I walked down a short hall and knocked on the open door of Chief Bill Lester's office. His head was down reading a memo, one of dozens strewn across his desk top.

He looked up. “Come on in, Matt. Damn paperwork gets bigger and bigger. How're you doing?”

Bill Lester was my fishing and drinking buddy and the guy with whom I regularly shared a grouper sandwich at the Sports Page Bar and Grille in downtown Sarasota.

“You gotta come out from under that mess sometime. You want to meet me for a beer at Tiny's this afternoon after work?”

“It's a date. But you didn't just stop by to offer me a beer.”

I told him about Doc Desmond and that I wanted his permission for J.D. to show me the police investigative file. I also told him what I wanted to do with any information I turned up.

“Might as well, Matt. We're at a dead end here. Who knows? You might turn up something that we can hang our hat on. Tell J.D. to give you the file and any help she can. I worry that I'm not keeping her busy
enough. I know several agencies around here that would jump at the chance to hire her.”

“I don't think she's going anywhere, Bill, but I'll put her to work.”

“Go for it. Keep me in the loop.”

The chief went back to his paperwork and I headed home. I called J.D. and told her what Lester had said and asked if she'd like to drop by my cottage later that afternoon. She said she'd make a complete copy of the file and bring it with her.

The file was not large, not for a murder investigation. J.D. explained there just wasn't much to go on. Very little evidence. There were statements from witnesses, but none of them were even sure where the shot came from. They had been on the beach and saw young Desmond fall backward when the slug tore into his chest.

J.D. and I were sitting in my living room, the file spread out on the coffee table. I was sipping from a can of Miller Lite and the detective was easing into a bottle of Chardonnay, one glass at a time. It was a little after five in the afternoon. The sun was moving toward the west, toward the sea into which it would soon sink. I looked at my watch. We had about three hours until sunset. The day was clear with a smattering of clouds hanging low over the Gulf. It would be a spectacular sunset, and I wanted to be sitting on the deck of the Hilton watching it.

“You got time for dinner at the Hilton tonight?” I asked. “We could sit on the deck and watch the sunset.”

“Sure. Just us and all the other tourists.”

I smiled. I loved our sunsets and she always kidded me about it. Said it was something for the tourists to enjoy. I took the position that sunsets were tonics for beach bums and since I was a beach bum we had to watch the sun set.

I pulled some photographs from one of the folders. They were grainy, black-and-white, some kind of security photos probably.

“From the elevator at the Grand Beach condos,” J.D. said.

“You're pretty sure that's where the shot came from?”

“Yes. It's the tallest building in that area and we found a filtered cigarette
butt and some scuff marks on the flat roof at about where the shot had to come from.”

“Did you find the slug that killed him?”

“Yes. It went right through him and hit the sand. We found it with a metal detector.”

“Did the bullet tell you anything?”

“Only that it was a thirty caliber.”

“Anything else?”

“No. And we couldn't pull any DNA from the butt. We don't even know if it belonged to the shooter. We're thinking it didn't, because it'd been on the roof long enough that the weather had degraded any DNA that might have been there.”

“You're sure you've got the right building?”

“Pretty sure. The crime-scene techs were able to figure a pretty good trajectory of the bullet. It fits with the Grand Beach and the scuff marks we found on the roof.”

“I'm not sure I understand the significance of the scuff marks.”

“We'd had a gully washer the night before. Lots of rain. It would have washed off any marks that had been on the roof. The new ones had to have been made that morning and the maintenance guys were the only ones with keys to the roof. Neither of them had been up there that morning.”

I held up the photographs. “Elevator surveillance?”

“Yes. Not much help.”

I looked closely at the pictures. Each one had a time stamp in the bottom right corner. Several were taken about an hour before the second group. I separated them out according to the time stamp. I saw a man wearing a light windbreaker jacket made of some dark material, jeans, running shoes, and a ball cap pulled low on his forehead. He never looked at the camera. In all the pictures, he had his head down.

“He knew about the camera,” I said.

“Yes. We never got a shot of his face.”

“He's carrying a briefcase in all of them.”

“We're assuming that was a container for his rifle. He could break it down and it would fit perfectly in the case.”

I looked more closely at the pictures. “Are you sure this is a man?”

“Because he's small?”

“Yes. It could be a woman.”

“I thought of that, but it doesn't seem too plausible. Women usually aren't professional killers. They have to have some other motive. Jealously, sometimes money, something that rattles their system and makes them angry enough to kill. Besides, most women wouldn't be trained snipers, and we think this guy had to have been well trained in order to hit the target at that range.”

I sat quietly for a moment, staring at the pictures. “How did the killer know that Jim Desmond would be jogging on the beach that morning?”

“I don't know.”

“Have you considered the possibility that the murder was random? That the killer just went up on that rooftop with the idea of killing somebody, anybody, and Jim came trotting up?”

“We considered that. But there have been no other killings in the past three years in Florida that match the pattern here. I think if it was just random, we'd have had more murders just like this one. A serial killer can't stop with just one.”