Suspicion of Vengeance (14 page)

Sincerley,

Kenny

After finding the letter, Denise Robinson called Walter Meadows to ask why it was still in the file. Meadows said he had spoken to Carol Malloy. She had received the other letters but had thrown them away unopened, and she didn't want this one either.

CHAPTER 9

Saturday night, March 10

Officers on the Stuart Police Department rotated from shift to shift—days, nights, midnights. Jackie Bryce had been on nights for a couple of months, working three to eleven. Some of the road officers complained when they rotated around to nights because it cut into their social life, but Jackie couldn't say she had much of that. Unless she went out, which wasn't often, she would sit around the house in her jeans and a T-shirt and read. The current topic was bloodstain interpretation. Some of the detectives had been talking about it earlier in the week, and Jackie had borrowed a book from her father's study. The book was open on the circular oak table beside her bowl of cereal. As she sliced a banana she read the section on impact spatter.

Road patrol was where everyone started, but Jackie wanted the detective bureau before she was thirty. It wouldn't happen any faster for her than for anyone else. Garlan had made it clear to Chief Pitts: no favors. That was all right, but Jackie could see how her relationship with the sheriff of Martin County was having an opposite effect. The brass didn't want anybody to think she had an advantage, so they cut her no slack whatsoever.

Jackie wrote a few words in her notebook.
Medium velocity: diameter 1-4 mm, usually blunt force injury.
She looked up at a movement across the kitchen. Diddy had come downstairs in his old bathrobe. His hair was damp, sticking to his head.

He shuffled across the room in his slippers. "What a day."

Jackie smiled at him. "It was a great party."

"Is there some cake left?"

"You'd better not have any more. Did you take your pills?"

"I will before I go to sleep." He found a bowl in the dish drainer and filled it with corn flakes. "I saw your cousin Gail today. Why didn't she come say hello?"

"They had an appointment to go to."

"She favors Louise, don't she?" Diddy poured the milk. "Your ma was slim like that, and the same color hair. Who's that man she was with?"

"Her boyfriend. His name is Anthony Quintana."

"He looks Spanish."

"He's Cuban."

"Same difference."

Jackie shook her head and went back to her book.

"Ain't she married?" Diddy pulled out a chair.

"She got divorced a couple of years ago."

"I can't keep up. After your ma died, her folks didn't visit no more. I used to like her sister. She was cute. What was her name? Gail's momma."

"Irene."

"Did they come to see you?" Diddy's hand shook. He ducked his head to get the spoon closer to his mouth.

"Who? Oh. No, they came to investigate a homicide that happened in 1989. Gail has a client on death row. She says he's innocent." Jackie took a napkin out of the holder and put it on Diddy's lap.

"Is that feller a private eye?"

"He's a lawyer. Why are you so curious?"

"Rusty wants me to find out."

"Tell Rusty to mind his own business." She ate a piece of banana.

"Why are you mad at Rusty?"

"You saw what he did with that bullwhip."

"Got some dust on the feller's pants is all."

"Rusty needs his butt kicked." She leaned over to look into Diddy's bowl. "Is that nonfat milk?"

"Yes, boss. Who got killed?"

Jackie had learned to follow the wandering path of her grandfather's mind. "A woman who lived in Palm City, Amber Dodson. Somebody came into her house and stabbed her. They're trying to find out who really did it."

"I remember. It was in the news. She was all cut up. Terrible."

Jackie and her grandfather ate their cereal, and for a few minutes metal clicked on china in two rhythms, one quick, one slow. She closed her book. "Diddy? I might go to Tampa and visit Alex. Would you be okay here by yourself when Dad's at work?"

"I reckon so. A girl ought to see her brother." He chased a corn flake with his spoon. "You coming back?"

She put a hand on his arm. "Of course I am." The flannel robe was frayed at the cuff. He had a new one but he wouldn't wear it.

"Alex went to Tampa and stayed there. He don't hardly visit."

"He writes you letters. He calls."

"Your mother left home too. She oughtn't to have done that." The old man's mouth opened, and his eyes darted around the kitchen. "Jesus. I can't remember. Did she die?"

"Thirteen years ago."

"That's right. Don't seem that long. I guess I'm tired. What a day."

Jackie collected their bowls, then bent down to kiss his white-stubbled cheek. "It's past ten o'clock. Why don't you go to bed?" She turned on the water in the sink.

He shuffled toward the hall. "You're a good girl, Jackie."

"Remember to take your pills."

Until a year ago, Jackie had rented an apartment in a new development off Kanner Highway. The walls were white, the carpet was beige, and the refrigerator was chronically empty. There was very little furniture. The men she dated would leave before dawn. One day she gave the keys back to the rental agent and went home to the house on the river, which had been built by her grandmother Bryce's folks. The house was two stories with a wraparound porch and yard full of shade trees. She lived in the apartment over the garage. It would have been too humiliating to move back into her old room upstairs. Garlan wouldn't let her pay rent, so she put money toward groceries and the light bill. She kept an eye on Diddy. Sometimes she would take him out to the ranch to pretend he still owned it, and Rusty would bring him home.

Rusty Beck was the son of one of Diddy's old friends. Charlie Beck threw Rusty out of the house at age sixteen, and Diddy let him live in a spare room in the barn, doing odd jobs and growing up wild as a weed. When the old man died, Rusty had inherited his grove land, then sold it and quit any kind of work. He built a cabin, raised a few horses and some cattle, and rarely came into town. Rusty seemed to like being alone out there where he could do anything he pleased, which included running his speedboat flat out over Lake O, hunting wild boar, gigging frogs, drinking cheap beer, chasing women from Indiantown, and otherwise raising hell. He liked Diddy, but everybody else kept their distance, like walking around an alligator sunning itself on a canal bank.

It bothered Jackie that Rusty had asked about Anthony Quintana. She wished she hadn't said anything, because Diddy might repeat it. Rusty was ticked off at Quintana for standing up to him, and if he got the chance, he would push him again. Jackie didn't think it would be easy. Most men, if they heard a bullwhip cracking over their heads, would run, and everybody would have a good laugh. Quintana wasn't that way. Meeting him the first time, Jackie had made a quick judgment: a hot-looking guy with too much jewelry and a shiny car. The truth was something else. There was more to Gail too. Jackie had always liked her, although she'd thought she was frivolous, even shallow. But she'd shown up on this old murder case, talking about saving her client from death row. Proving he was innocent, getting him out. She'd faced down Garlan Bryce. That took some guts.

On her way downstairs, after making sure that Diddy's pill box was empty in the section labeled SUNDAY, Jackie noticed the patch of light that fell across the old braided rug in the hall. Her father was in his study.

She knocked on the door. He looked up, and the lamp flashed on his glasses.

"Come on in."

She sat on the arm of the sofa. "You're working late."

"I've got a meeting tomorrow morning at eight o'clock." He nodded at the book. "What is that?"

She showed him. "It's one of yours. A couple of the detectives were talking about impact spatter, so I wanted to look it up."

"Good idea. Learn as much as you can. You could wind up needing the most obscure bit of information." Police reports were stacked on the desk. The ice had melted in his glass of bourbon. He said, "Got something on your mind?"

Jackie said, "I wanted to ask you about the Dodson case."

"What do you want to know?"

"Yesterday Gail talked to Tina Hopwood. At about the same time the eyewitness says she saw Clark, Tina Hopwood says he was with her. She supposedly told this to Ron Kemp, but he threatened to pull her in on a probation violation if she testified in court." Jackie could read nothing in her father's face. "What about that?"

"Who are you asking for? Gail Connor and her pal?"

"No, Dad. It's for me."

He laid his glasses on the desk and leaned back in the chair. His weight made the leather creak. "Going into that investigation, Ronald Kemp was the best we had on the force. If you want to learn something, read the file on that case. It's a model of police work."

She smiled. "Kemp did it, didn't he?"

Her father looked at her awhile. "You find this amusing?"

"No, sir."

"Never approach your job with anything less than the utmost seriousness and respect. Whether the victim is a young child or a crack addict, he or she deserves a methodical, thorough, and aggressive investigation. It's never easy. It's never to be taken lightly. If you believe otherwise, you're in the wrong career."

"Yes, sir."

He rocked slowly in his chair. "Let me fill you in on the Hopwoods. She had a criminal history. So did her husband. He was a drug dealer in the Port Salerno area, and he's now serving time for armed robbery. These are the people that Clark ran with. When Ron and his partner went to their trailer, the place was filthy. Tina was drunk and verbally abusive. Was Ron nice to her? I doubt it. Did he get the truth? I'm sure that he did."

Anthony Quintana's words drifted into Jackie's head.
You know how it works.
Kemp with enough experience to bend the rules. Garlan expecting him to.

"What did you say to the state attorney?"

"What would have happened, Jackie, if I'd gone to the prosecutor and said, you know, my officer was leaning on a possible defense witness because she was lying to us, and maybe you ought to disclose that fact to the defense lawyer. And say the defense lawyer went to the judge about it. 'Judge, judge, we've got some police misconduct in this case.' What might have happened?"

Jackie didn't like the condescension in his tone, but she gave the reply he was after: "Clark could have walked."

"That's right. And then I or Ron or Sheriff Can-would have had to explain to Ms. Dodson's family that after several thousand man-hours of work, a positive ID, strong physical evidence, and a self-incriminating statement to his cell mate, we're so sorry, but we had to let the guy go. That was unacceptable."

Several seconds ticked by. "I understand."

Jackie slid from the arm of the sofa onto the seat. A memory flickered in her mind. Standing in the hall. Her mother in here. Her father's voice:
That is unacceptable.

"No investigation is perfect," he said. "We do the best we can, and we stand behind each other. Loyalty. You're on a team. Remember that."

"Yes, sir."

"What was Gail doing at the ranch? What did she want with you?"

Jackie brought her eyes up from the floor. "An address. She wants to talk to the man Kenny Ray Clark supposedly confessed to."

"Supposedly. Whose side are you on?"

"I'm not on a side."

He tapped his pen up and down on his reports. "Are you going to help her out?"

"No. I'd rather not get involved."

He nodded, still looking at her. "Anything else you need to know?"

Unbidden, from years away, the words came into her head.
Why did my mother leave?
Jackie picked up the book from the sofa. "No.
I
guess that's it. Good night."

"Sweet dreams." He smiled at her but he didn't lift his arm as a signal to come around the desk and kiss him good night. They had stopped doing that years ago. He put his glasses back on and picked up his pen.

She sat for a long time in the dark on the wooden steps that led up to her apartment. The air grew chilly, and she pulled her hands into the cuffs of her sweatshirt. She thought about what she had said in the barn to Gail and Anthony.
My father would never.

But he had. He had known what Ron Kemp had done, and he had condoned it. Kemp telling that woman she was going back to jail. Telling her whatever was necessary so she wouldn't get on the stand and screw up their case. That wasn't bending the rules, it was fracturing them. Kemp had believed he was right. That was all Jackie could give him.

Maybe he
was
right.

Clark had made a statement to Vernon Byrd, his cell mate. Kemp wouldn't have invented that. They'd nailed Clark already. Clark had simply run his mouth. Perps would do that. Stupid, but they did it.

Kemp had lived with the case, knew the facts, knew the evidence. Gail had just come into it. Anything against her client, she would ignore. Jackie had seen how defense lawyers would pick and choose the facts that suited them. At trial some of her own cases, good solid arrests* had gone down the tubes. A lawyer twisting the facts. Cop treated as the bad guy.

Jackie retied a sneaker. Brushed some leaves off the step.

She thought about Vernon Byrd. Three hundred pounds of red-eyed mean. Hung out at a pool parlor, earning table time in exchange for keeping the drunks and whores off the premises. He'd been paroled after only a year on a heavy narcotics conviction. Why?

For a few more minutes Jackie sat and listened to the slow, winter chirp of the crickets, then got up and went inside.

There was a photograph in the top drawer of her dresser. All the family had gotten together at the Connors' house on Sewall's Point on the Fourth of July. Jackie had just turned twelve, and Alex was nine, still a little kid. The snapshot showed her mother, her brother, herself, in the back of Uncle Eddie's boat. Their mother with her arm around each of them. Her cheek pressed to Jackie's head, her honey-blond hair spilling onto Jackie's brown bangs. Laughing. Always laughing. So beautiful. And the smell of alcohol on her breath. Dead at thirty-six that September, smashed in her car, drunk.