Mangrove Bayou (30 page)

“So are you going to arrest her now?”

“Let's wait for the blood results for those clothes we found. While we're waiting we can run down this serial number on the bicycle.”

Chapter 46

Friday, August 2

The psychologist to whom Troy had been referred turned out to be a bear—or so Troy fancied. Dr. Randy Groves lived in a house on Snake Key where Perimeter Road turned abruptly to follow the shoreline. Groves' house, on that corner, was on stilts and looked out on both the Gulf of Mexico across the islands between the town and the Gulf, and also on the Collier River where it emptied into the Gulf. Troy thought it was possibly the best view in all of Mangrove Bayou.

Groves was big, six-four and about two-hundred-fifty pounds, shaggy brown hair and brown eyes and a full brown beard. Even his eyebrows were large and shaggy. He wore large denim jeans and a large denim shirt and he was barefoot. “Call me Panda,” Groves said, shaking Troy's hand. “Everyone else does.”

“Quite a view,” Troy said. “Must have used a crane to get this table up here.” They were sitting outside on a wood deck that had a retractable fabric roof extended out over it. There was a six-by-four-foot table made of wrought iron and they had used just two of the six chairs. Groves had set a laptop on his side of the table. A dozen feet below, what would have been a lawn elsewhere was wild plants here.

“I don't have a lawn,” Groves said in response to Troy's look at the grounds. “I have a meadow. Why plant grass? Just have to mow it. And the storm surge like we had the other day would dump salt and kill it. I figure whatever is tough enough to grow here is right for the area.”

“Never owned a lawnmower,” Troy said. “Never lived in a single-family house.”

“I read your file,” Groves said. “A Doctor Barnes emailed it down from Tampa. You seem to have done well for yourself, considering.”

“Considering?”

“Abandoned child. Raised in a group home. Mixed race. No money, parents, prospects. Yet you managed somehow. Impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“So what's your problem?”

“Thought you were supposed to tell me that,” Troy said. “And don't you have an office? With a couch?”

“It was a rhetorical question,” Groves said. “I don't know what your problem is. Doctor Barnes in Tampa didn't know. You know but you keep it well hidden. It will bubble up someday. And this
is
my office whenever it's not raining bloody hell.”

“Nightmares,” Troy said.

“About that shooting,” Groves said. “Read about it. Tell me about the nightmare. Every detail. Take your time.”

“I warn you that I may vomit all over the table, here.”

“Do it anyway. I'm listening. Sit back and close your eyes and tell me what you're seeing.”

Troy did so. He didn't feel the urge to throw up. Maybe it was different when just describing it.

“But what I don't get,” Troy said when he had finished, “is that I don't seem to have nightmares about the second shooting up in Tampa, the one that got me fired. And a few days ago I had to shoot a man right here on Snake Key.”

“Read about that on the
Bayou Breeze
web site,” Groves said. “How common is it for a policeman to shoot someone in the course of a career?”

“Very rare. Lots of cops go decades without drawing a gun and most never shoot anyone at all.”

Groves nodded. “So you are either very lucky in having survived three shootouts, or very unlucky in having gotten into three shootouts.”

“Well, it's not like I did it on purpose.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. So why the nightmares?”

“I suppose I doubted myself. That first shooting. I'm not sure now that I was justified.”

“Yet you were cleared on that one. Why don't you have nightmares about the second, where you were not cleared but instead fired?”

“I suppose I thought I was correct in that decision, no matter what the review decided.”

“Ah. So you not only set yourself up as the one who decides to kill or let live, but you then decide if a review board of your superiors is right or wrong. What godlike entity gave you this awesome authority?”

Troy stared at Groves. That had no effect. Troy hardened his look to CopStare, which would have intimidated the average criminal suspect. Groves sat there looking back blankly, totally without emotion. After a minute Troy decided he was not going to outstare the psychologist. Maybe if he tried it with those silvered sunglasses.

“The second shooting was not even a conscious decision,” he said. “You can't wait for a conscious decision in those circumstances. I fired without even thinking about it. When I saw the gun. As for my opinion of the review board, let's put that down to free will.”

“Facile,” Groves said. “First, you didn't shoot by instinct. Nobody has that instinct. You shot because you had planned, long before, what to do in that situation. And then you had practiced that action until it came to you as an automatic reaction when the right stimulus presented. Trained reaction is not instinct.”

“All right. I can buy that,” Troy said. “So what?”

“So you trained and trained and when that training resulted in an action that saved a woman's life, you ended up being bothered by it, perhaps regretting it.”

“I ended up feeling guilty.”

Groves shook his head. “Don't get ahead of yourself. ‘Guilt' is a meaningless term until we know what's at the root. And we're not there yet.”

“Will we ever get there?”

Groves stared at Troy, deadpan. “Possibly,” he said.

Chapter 47

Tuesday, August 6

The bicycle had been sold to John Barrymore some eight months earlier and the rear tire on the bike matched the mud imprints on the road that Corporal Rivers had collected. The blood type on the small woman's tee-shirt and jeans that Milo and Angel had found beside the road matched that of Jarvess Michaels. A DNA test result was coming later. The DNA was back for the cigarette Rivers had found in Michaels' truck and all they needed was someone to match it to. It was all circumstantial but it was enough for a judge to issue an arrest warrant for Kathleen Barrymore, and search warrants for her house, cars and property grounds.

By the time Troy had all the paperwork it was after two in the afternoon. Bubba Johns and Milo Binder were finishing their day shifts at three and four, and Troy asked them to stick around. When Angel Watson and Jeremiah Brown, who were both pulling the evening shift, showed up he told them to skip the exercise hour and for Jeremiah to take the patrol alone for a few hours.

Bubba drove and Troy sat up front, with Angel and Milo in back behind the cage. Bubba drove them to the Barrymore house and on up the driveway to park blocking the garage. Bubba went around back while Troy, Milo and Angel went to the door.

Kathleen Barrymore answered the ring. She glared at them. “What now? Do I have to complain to the town council about you again?”

“Milo, why don't you do the honors,” Troy said. “I can never remember all the words.”

“Kathleen Barrymore, you're under arrest,” Milo said. He pulled out his handcuffs and slapped one on Kathleen's right wrist. Before she could do more than squawk, he had turned her and grabbed the left wrist. Milo read off the Miranda warning perfectly.

“Angel, if you would be so kind,” Troy said. Angel stepped in and ran her hands over Kathleen from head to toe. “She's clean. Externally anyway.”

“Let's check the house, for anyone else,” Troy said, as Milo dragged the complaining Kathleen out and over to the truck.

“Stay with her,” Troy said.

“The rear doors don't have buttons on the inside,” Milo said. “She can't get out.”

“I know that. Stay with her.”

There was no one else in the house. Troy opened the French doors that faced the river and Bubba came in to help search.

Chapter 48

Saturday, August 17

Troy locked the tiller of the Sea Pearl in place and stepped forward past Lee to roll up the mainsail around the rotating mast. Back in the rear cockpit he sat and rolled up the mizzen too. He had already started the small outboard but now he put it in gear and motored the twenty-one-foot open boat out of the Gulf of Mexico and into a narrow channel through the mangrove forest that made up the Ten Thousand Islands. Lee Bell sat up in the main cockpit, wearing a large floppy straw hat and her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. She had on a pale blue one-piece bathing suit and dark blue shorts over that. Troy wore some off-duty cargo shorts and a vented fishing shirt. He still wore the safari hat from his uniform, with the MBP crest on the front. Polarized sunglasses let him see the shallow spots.

They had brought the boat out early, to be in the Gulf by the time the sea breeze kicked up. Troy watched the passing trees and island shapes, comparing them to the chart he had open on the seat beside him. Mostly he didn't need the chart. He had long ago memorized the passageways through these islands.

“How can you know where you're going?” Lee asked. “It all looks the same. Everything is mangrove, same height, not a straight line in sight. You can't see ahead more than a few dozen yards at a time.

“Ever hear the joke about Carnegie Hall?”

“Of course I have. Why don't you just use a compass and a GPS?”

“Compass is useless in here anyway. Too many twists and turns. I have a GPS. But eyeballs and a chart, comparing what you see on paper to what you are looking at, that's a lot more challenging.”

“Old-fashioned, you mean.”

“I like my chart. And remember, while the GPS can tell me where I am on the surface of the planet, it is displaying this on a manmade chart. Same chart as this one.” He held up the chart he had spread open on the seat beside him. “And this is an area where the islands and channels change every time there's a big storm. People who slavishly follow GPS maps are called automobile drivers. Out here it's just one tool among many.”

He found Faka Key and skirted the island until he reached the tiny landing on the east side. It was barely fifteen feet wide, with red mangroves growing out into the water on either side, and the small sandy beach only visible at the last moment. He nosed the boat in, careful of the two masts and the trees, pulled up the leeboards at the last moment, shut off the small outboard and ran the bow aground.

“We're here,” he said.

“Where?”

“Lunch stop. Bathroom break. And a great view.” He climbed out over the bow. Lee followed. They pulled the boat up a little higher. Troy took the claw anchor off the bow, pulled out ten feet of chain through the hawse-pipe, and half-buried the anchor in the ground. He wrapped a few feet of chain around the big cleat on the foredeck. They got out a cooler and several folding chairs.

Just inside the landing there was a camping area, kept clear by occasional visitors, and one lone picnic table someone had donated years back. Troy led the way past that, carrying the cooler. Lee followed with the folding chairs slung over her shoulder. The path he was on started to slope upwards. It soon got to be fairly steep and he had to struggle a bit with both hands on the cooler. They reached the top of the mound. Here there was an open space, kept clear of bushes by the feet of occasional visitors. Lee gasped at the view. “It's beautiful,” she said. He set the cooler down and Lee opened the chairs.

Below them, extending for ten miles all around, was a wonderland of twisting narrow channels, oyster bars, larger bays, small islands. It was like looking down at an emerald-and-blue map spread out before them.

“Why couldn't I see this hill from down there?” Lee asked.

“It's a Calusa Indian mound, same as the one on the east end of Airfield Key, only this one has gotten overgrown. Top of the mound happens to be at the same height as the tops of the trees down there. So you don't see it, looking up. But up here, you're just slightly above the trees yourself, so you can look out.”

They got out the food and water and ate, chewing silently and looking at the mangrove forest below them.

“This is where Bubba and some other people rode out the hurricane,” Troy said. He told Lee the story. “They didn't sit up here, of course. They hugged the slope farther down. But that's why the Calusa built these mounds in the first place.”

“What do you mean? I thought they just ate a lot of oysters and dumped the shells in a convenient pile.”

“Sure they did. But they had a plan and built the mounds up intentionally. When a storm came—and they came without warning—the natives simply rode it out, sitting up on their high mound. In a way they were a lot smarter than we are. We bulldozed most of the mounds around Florida to make roadbed. The highest point in Mangrove Bayou proper is maybe five feet above sea level. Well, actually, the highest point is the top of the shell mound on Airfield Key. Ironic. The Calusa would have scoffed at our stupidity.

“The town emergency plan has a mention of sending the residents to sit out a bad storm surge on top of the Airfield Key mound. Hope not too many people are left in town if that happens. Might be some pushing and shoving for a spot.”