Mangrove Bayou (28 page)

“Don't. But you're in this Tats Michaels thing too. Courtesy call. Come on over and say hi. I miss you.”

“Will do. Take me a half-hour to get there, maybe longer. Damn storm ran square over us last night. Roads are tore up,” Rivers said.

“We'll be here for a while. Look for you soon.”

Troy sat in the Suburban. He looked at Compton. “Got to wait. Police business is usually pretty boring.”

“Gee,” Compton said, “on TV they always solve the crime in sixty minutes, minus the commercials.”

“Well, we're just not as good as those guys.” He saw a car coming up the road from town. It pulled in and parked and Cilla Dowling got out. Troy had forgotten that she had a police scanner. He got out to talk to her.

“Bloody clothes?” Dowling said.

“Stay on the asphalt,” Troy said. “Come look.”

She photographed the scene with her cell phone. “What do you make of it?”

Troy shrugged. “Some bloody clothes and a hole is what I make of it.”

“Um. Hum. You had two officers out here walking around right after a storm, when they would be better employed helping clean up the town. This isn't just coincidence. Hi there, Norris. I see they let you out.”

Compton had come to stand beside them. “Bad man goes free, thanks to the Chief here,” he said. He looked at the hole and the clothes and back at Cilla. “I'm sentenced to helping in the police station, attending AA and learning to fish.”

“Really? Our new chief seems to be a creative fellow.”

“Do I need to be here for this conversation?” Troy asked.

“Not really,” Cilla said. “So how did you and Lee Bell make out?”

“A gentleman never discusses such things.”

“Meaning you two did make out. Good for you. She's a catch.”

“Thanks for the recommendation.”

When Tom VanDyke showed up he got some evidence bags out of the back of his car. He photographed the scene and then put on some gloves. He pulled the jeans out of the hole and put them into one bag. He pulled out a tee-shirt, small, a pair of woman's underwear, and a small pair of sneakers and put each into separate bags. Next came several very wet tissues. Tom carefully opened one.

“Aha,” Troy said.

“What is it?” Cilla asked.

“Eye-liner.”

“And you would know, magically, whose eyes that came from?”

“I would. She killed him but also wept a few tears for him. Possible DNA too.”

At the bottom of the hole Tom found a small garden trowel. He pulled that out and held it up. “If our perp had used a real shovel, he could have dug a deeper and better hole.”

“Yes. But you can't carry a shovel in a purse,” Troy said.

“You figure these clothes come from the killer and not from another victim?” Tom said.

“Be my guess. We found Tats Michaels just a quarter mile or so that way,” Troy said, pointing. “After shooting Tats and dragging him down into the canal there she must have been covered in blood. Then she had to drive his truck up to Forty-One and ditch it by the Collier River.”

“She?” Dowling said.

“Our mysterious unnamed and alleged perp,” Troy said. “You want some exclusives on this, keep it to yourself for now. Otherwise I call the Naples
News-Press
and give them a statement.”

“Ouch. That hurt. You promise. Me first.”

“You first, Cilla.”

Troy and Tom looked up and down the canals for a hundred yards each way, both sides of the road, and saw nothing else. While they were doing that Kyle Rivers drove up in a sheriff's patrol car. Tom showed Rivers his bags of evidence. Rivers looked at the photos, displayed on the back of the camera.

“Be plenty of DNA in the panties and the shoes,” Troy said.

“Yeppers,” Rivers said. “Someone never expected the storm surge to open up this hole.”

“New. Dirt's still loose, not compacted.”

“Did you expect to find this? That why you had your people walk the roadsides?”

Troy shook his head. “I just thought it possible that there would be more clues, and right after a storm is a good time to look for anything not visible the first time around. You know what they say, ‘luck is opportunity meeting preparation.'”

“I don't recall reading that on the sergeant's exam.”

“Comes higher up. In the stratospheric realm of the chief's exam.”

“Oprah,” Cilla said. Both men turned to look at her. “Oprah Winfrey said that.”

Rivers looked at Troy. “You used to watch Oprah Winfrey?”

“Well, I was just hoping she would give away a chief's car.”

Troy and Norris Compton drove slowly on down Barron Road, with Tom VanDyke, Cilla Dowling and Kyle Rivers trailing him. They passed two big Florida Power & Light trucks parked by the side of the road. Three men were out in the marsh doing something on one of the towers there. Troy stopped twice more when he saw white circles in the road. One find was a battered red life jacket, faded to a pale yellow on one side.

“Whattya think?” Tom asked, holding it up.

“I think it probably blew out of some guy's boat several years ago while it was being towed down the road here,” Rivers said. “Seen that happen a few times. Laid out there in the marsh until the storm surge floated it up here. Sun's bleached it out.”

Tom tossed the life jacket into his truck. “No need to litter,” he said. Their next find was a used condom. “That float up here too?” he asked.

“Eww,” Cilla said. She took a photo of Tom, with green-tinted latex gloves, picking up a white latex condom.

“Lord only knows,” Troy said. “But it's DNA. Take it.”

“Please don't run that photo on the web site,” Tom said.

Cilla grinned. She looked at Troy. “Another side-benefit of being the town news reporter is that people will bribe me not to run photos on the web site.”

“She's demanding a bribe from a law enforcement officer,” Tom said to Troy.

“You two work something out,” Troy said. He got back into his truck. They drove on into town. Tom and Kyle Rivers went straight to the station. Cilla went to her office. Troy dropped Compton off at Compton's house, then turned in the truck back at the station. Tom had already catalogued the evidence and stored it in the evidence room. A printout was on Troy's desk. Tom had gone home.
Nice to have good staff
, Troy thought. Rivers was sitting in one of Troy's visitor chairs. He and Rivers walked over to the Sandy Shoes for dinner. Mangrove Bayou seemed to have electricity back.

“Looks like the town did OK in the storm,” Rivers said. “I heard you did some shooting, middle of the night.”

“Had to.” Troy told Rivers about Wanda Frister and Billy Poteet. “And then I had to leave the body there all night because I was too busy with the hurricane.”

“Sucks,” Rivers said. “Shooting him, I mean. I had to do it once. You ever had to use your gun before?”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Strong, silent type, eh. They're the worst. It sucks. How do you feel about it?”

“I don't know yet. Have to sleep on it a few nights.”
See if my dream is any different.

Rivers looked down at his plate a moment then up at Troy. “Yeah. Well, be careful. Seeing a shrink might be a good idea. That's even routine in some departments.”

“I'll think on that too.” In fact, Troy already had an appointment, made long before the storm.

“Slippery slope,” Rivers said. “Pulling the trigger gets easier. So I've heard.”

“Heard that too. I think it may be the other way around. My opinion. Anyway, there'll be a review board next week, up at the county admin center.”

“They'll OK the shooting,” Rivers said. “You got witnesses. Helps that the only guy to testify for the other side is dead. It's the winners who get to write the history.”

“Doesn't always work out that way,” Troy said.

Chapter 43

Thursday, August 1

Thursday morning Troy got to his office early. No one was around and he made the morning coffee. Back at his desk he went over the Barrymore file yet again. What was he missing? What could be revisited? He was in the break room refilling his mug when it came to him.

June had come in to work and he called her to his office.

“Who is our diver?” he asked.

“Diver? You mean like a SCUBA diver? We don't have one. Juan likes to dive, I know.”

“Call him in. Tell him to bring his dive gear.”

“He works the night shift this month. Remember that we just changed over. We'll be waking him up. And after that storm, he needs the sleep.”

“Call him.”

Juan looked enthusiastic when he came into Troy's office. “You need a police diver?” he said. “Is there extra pay? I'm your man.”

Troy sat back with his foot on his desk drawer, his hands folded in his lap. “One free tank of air per police-related job. And, of course, any OT you happen to luck into.”

“That's it? How about a promotion to corporal/police diver-in-charge?”

“You drive a hard bargain. I'll toss in one free swear-word per month.”

“That would be out-fucking-standing,” Juan said.

“Don't be so profligate with your new wealth,” Troy said. “You have almost the whole month to go through yet and here you've used up your free word.

“Is profli…whatever…a swear word?”

“No.”

“Works for me. What do you need today?”

“I want you to search the canals on either side of Barron Road.”

Juan stared. “That's five miles, Chief. Doubled, since there's a canal on each side of the road.”

“You don't have to do it all. I want you to search just where it enters the town. You'll look for a bicycle that was tossed in there in the past weeks. If you don't find one there I want you to look around and under the 11th Street bridge over to Airfield Key. If you don't find it there then I'll ask Bubba to bring the boat and run you up the Collier River to opposite the Barrymore house and search in there. Any idea how long that might take?”

Juan thought about it. “A bicycle is pretty big. Easy to find, even having to feel for it in murky water. Being recent it won't have gotten down into the muck so much. Couple hours each side off Barron Road. Not really canals at that point, just open bay but the bicycle would be close to the road and that's not deep. Maybe an hour under the bridge. Couple hours in the Collier River. There's not that much current so it wouldn't be swept downstream. Where is the Barrymore house?”

“Airfield Road, about six down from the museum.”

“I doubt that I would need the boat. I could swim that far from the bridge if the bridge doesn't pan out. But I would need tank changes. That's hard work even in shallow water. Probably go through four tanks if I need them all. I have two.”

“That will work,” Troy said. “We can refill one while you use the other. Or just rent extras from that dive shop next to the boatyard on Snake Key.”

“Donald Duck.”

Troy frowned. “What's that?”

“Guy's name is Donald Haslip,” Juan said. “Owns Diver Down and everyone calls him Donald Duck, on account of the water thing.”

“Whatever. Guess I'm still learning. I'll send two people with you, stand guard for gators.”

“Hadn't thought of that.”

“Why I'm the chief.”

“On probation,” Juan said with a grin.

“On probation. Don't get chomped. Might affect my performance rating.”

“I wouldn't like it much, either.”

“What about decompression?” Troy said.

“That shallow? Don't even worry about it. Just keep the snakes and gators off me.”

“Cottonmouths don't much bother people in the water,” Troy said.

“Right. I'll tell myself that next time one slithers up my wetsuit leg.”

Troy called in Angel Watson, who was on evenings in August, and Bubba Johns who was still doing the day shift. He sent the three officers off to search for a bicycle, Angel and Bubba with the two department rifles. He was burning the overtime at both ends, he thought, between this and the hurricane.

He asked June to call in Calvin Smith. Smith was off-duty and showed up almost an hour later in civilian clothes. Smith kept his uniforms and duty belt in his wall locker in the station locker room. Troy had already cleaned out Smith's locker and taken possession of the gun and badge.

“Got extra work for me?” Smith asked.

“Sit down.”