Suspicion of Vengeance (7 page)
"Why?" He laughed. "It's your case."
"Anthony, I'm not going alone. And you can help me talk to the witnesses tomorrow. Okay?"
"Say please."
Gail gave him a playful shove. "Oh, stop it."
At the next intersection he went past a car going thirty in the left lane. Old people. He saw the tops of four white heads and the driver's knuckles on the steering wheel.
Gail looked up from her map. "Take a right on Ocean Drive. That leads to the bridge over the intracoastal."
He glanced into the mirror.
"Ay, cara'o."
Bright lights flashed into the car. There was a police car behind them.
Gail turned around. "What did you do?"
"Nothing. I was going the speed Emit." Anthony pulled into the parking lot of a bank and hit the button to lower his window. He turned off the engine and waited.
Blue and red lights pulsed in the darkness, headlights were on high beam, and a spotlight went on. He squinted into the side mirror. A figure in a dark uniform approached, then moved to a position behind the open window. All he could see was a navy blue shoulder. A slender arm.
"Sir, your driver's license and registration, please." A woman's voice, low and steady.
Anthony shifted to get to his wallet. "I wasn't speeding, officer. I am sure of that."
"No, sir. You ran through that red light back there."
"Red light?"
"Your driver's license, sir."
Gail leaned over his lap from the passenger seat. "Oh, my God. It's Jackie!"
The officer's face appeared as she came nearer to look around him. "Gail?"
Unbuckling her belt, Gail shoved the door open. She went around the front of the car, and they met at his window, where Gail held out her arms. "I don't believe it! This is so funny!"
Her cousin allowed a quick hug, then glanced at the passing traffic. "Hang on a second." She went back and turned off the flashers and spotlight. Anthony got out and Gail made the introductions.
In Miami, and if this woman had not been in uniform, Anthony might have politely kissed her cheek. They shook hands. Her face was young and smooth. A little makeup would have made it pretty. She wore her hair in a single braid. Brown eyes moved over him in a neutral way. "Glad to meet you. So. You guys just got in?"
"We were on our way to the hotel," Anthony said with an innocent lift of his brows. "I was a little lost, and if I didn't see the lightâ"
Gail hugged her arm. "Jackie, you look amazing. How are you?"
"Good, good."
"Your dad?"
"He's fine. Busy over at the sheriff's office. You know. Hey, I got your message, but I was in the middle of a DUI."
Gail laughed, delighted. "I remember when you were six years old you said you wanted to be a cop. I never doubted for a moment you would. I bet you're wonderful."
"Well. I like it." To Anthony's astonishment, she blushed.
Fingers linked together, the two women smiled at each other. Gail tall and slender, with delicate hands and a small waist. Her cousin in a bulletproof vest. There was no way to tell what was underneath. Pepper spray and a Glock 19 rode on one hip, a radio and collapsible baton on the other. Light gleamed on the badge over her left pocket, an American flag was sewn on the right, and patches decorated her sleeves. The silver name tag said J. Bryce. Anthony wondered how long it would take her to put him on the ground with a knee in his back.
She said, "Are you busy tomorrow afternoon? Diddy's having his birthday party out at the ranch. He just turned eighty years old, can you believe that? The historical society is putting it on. They're having barbecue, a band, games for the kids, a roping demonstration. See, Diddy hangs out a lot at the museum, telling stories about the way it used to be." She laughed and made quotation marks with her fingers. " 'Diddy Bryce, Martin County Treasure.' It'll be fun. I mean, if you're not busy."
"We'd love to come," Gail said. "What time?"
"It's on from noon till five. Drop by anytime." She pulled a pen and notebook from her left shirt pocket and wrote directions, then ripped the sheet out and gave it to Gail. "Call me if you get lost. I always keep my cell phone on."
The two women embraced again. "It's good to see you, Jackie."
"You too." She gripped Anthony's hand firmly, then let go. "See you tomorrow."
Jackie Bryce took a few steps toward her cruiser, then stopped, pivoted in her thick-soled black shoes, and came back, standing squarely in front of him. "You need to be careful on the road. Yellow means slow down, not speed up and get through it like down in Miami, okay? I'm going to let it go this time."
He made a slight inclination of his head. "Thank you."
"Sure. Y'all have a nice evening. Don't forget your seat belts."
She got back into her patrol car and pulled around the Cadillac. At the street a rear tire caught the curb, squealing.
Gail said, "Jackie really isn't as humorless as she seems."
"It's the rookie cop syndrome," Anthony said. "Did you notice the police department patch on her sleeve?"
"No, what about it?"
"City of Stuart. Sailfish Capital of the World.
Cono.
What a place."
CHAPTER 5
"Bonboncita,
let's not ruin dinner talking about this case. Where are your notes? Read them to me on the way to the hotel Tell me how the police came to arrest an innocent man for murder. "
"It's complicated."
"I'll stop you if I have any questions."
Monday, February 6,1989
The city of Stuart is surrounded on three sides by the St. Lucie River, which curves up and over, then flows south to the intracoastal waterway. In the late 1800s roads were so few and the scrub palmetto so thick that pioneers built their houses facing the river and visited their neighbors by boat. When the railroad pushed through, commerce followed, and the main highway has become a multilaned corridor of shopping malls, branch banks, fast-food franchises, and car dealerships. But those who control things keep development reined in, and Martin County remains green on a coast increasingly buried in concrete. Trains still run through the old section of Stuart. The narrow streets and small shops have been preserved. The county courthouse is still downtown. There is only one felony judge, P. R. "Pat" Willis. He is the same judge who in 1990 sentenced Kenneth Ray Clark to death for the murder of Amber Lynn Dodson.
Amber's senior portrait from Atlantic Christian Academy, which appeared in news stories, shows a pretty girl with long blond hair. The thin chain of a crucifix gleams on her skin. She was married at twenty-two in her family's church. Her husband, Gary, seven years older, practiced law in Stuart. After the wedding they bought a house in an area called Palm City, across the south fork of the river. It was a typical 1960s ranch style, and pine trees shaded the yard. There weren't many young people on their street, but the neighborhood was safe and quiet, a good place for a family.
A murder was unthinkable.
Then the call came in to 911. Within half an hour, the street was cordoned off. Blue and red lights flashed in the darkness, and people poured out of their houses to see what was going on.
Several backup units followed, then a lieutenant and six detectives. The crime scene technicians arrived with their equipment. Brass from the city of Stuart police department came by to see if assistance was needed. The Martin County sheriff would have been there, but he was in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer. By 7:30 p.m., the crime scene roster noted over thirty law enforcement personnel at the scene. The captain in charge of the criminal investigations division, Garlan Bryce, rushed back from a meeting in Vero Beach. He parked his unmarked Jeep Cherokee across the street, requested permission to enter the scene, then ordered anyone not essential to the investigation to clear out. Bryce went by the book and demanded that his officers do likewise. On the radio Bryce had already assigned the investigation to Sergeant Ronald Kemp, thirty-six, who had an unmatched success rate in closing cases.
The victim's husband had been put in the command van to keep him away from the scene, the neighbors, and the press. Bryce would speak to him, but he wanted to see Mrs. Dodson's body first.
It appeared that the attack had begun in the kitchen. Blood had fallen and dried on the white tile floor. There was part of a print made by a bare foot. Blood droplets. Swipes and smears. Then another footprint toward the hall, and drops leading away.
A crime scene technician stood back as Kemp led Bryce down the hall. The men stepped carefully on the beige shag carpet to avoid the blood. Kemp stopped at the baby's room. He explained that Dodson had been in the front yard holding the dead child in his arms when the first deputy had arrived. The child had no visible bruises. There were two bottles in the crib, one of them empty. In a corner of the mattress was a pool of soured milk. The paramedics had found vomit in the child's nose and mouth.
"He died of positional asphyxia," Gail explained. "The ME said the baby got stuck between the mattress and the bars of his crib. He couldn't get enough air when he threw up his milk. "
"Pobrecito.
And his mother, stabbed to death. Were all the knives in the kitchen accounted for?"
"According to her husband, they were."
Bryce came out of the baby's room and the men continued down the hall. Kemp pointed out a quantity of blond hair on the floor. Bryce knelt to see skin attached to the roots, as if the victim had violently wrenched herself away from her attacker.
The master bedroom was at the end. The door was the same ivory color as the carpet and wall, and there were swipes of blood on the jamb. On the back of the door, Bryce could make out the slide of fingers and a larger smear about four and a half feet off the floor where an upper arm might have been braced.
The wheels of the king-size bed had been knocked out of their casters, and the nightstand had overturned. Blood at the foot of the bed appeared to have been deliberately smeared. No clear shoe tread or footprint patterns could be seen.
The victim lay diagonally across the bed on rumpled sheets and a pale blue comforter. An electrical cord was tied around her neck. Her bare feet pointed toward the door. Her legs were parted, and red silk pajama panties hung from one ankle. It took Bryce a second to realize that her matching top was not pulled down, but pushed up over her breasts. Her torso was red from her own blood. The blood seemed to glow in the white flash of the crime scene camera.
The medical examiner would later testify that he counted twenty-seven separate stab wounds, but that the victim's chest and abdomen were so lacerated that not all of them could be counted. He would find under her collarbone a small gold crucifix driven there by the force of the blows. Despite the position of the panties, there was no evidence of recent sexual intercourse.
The pool of blood on the sheets had clotted, and the clear serum, which had separated out, made a ghostly brown outline. Lines of cast-off blood went over the pillow, up the maple headboard and the wall, and across the ceiling to the approximate limit of where a raised knife would have thrown them. Her face was bloody but without cuts except for a deep slash on her chin. There were defensive wounds on her hands and forearms but so few of them, four or five, that Kemp's first thought was that the killer had kept stabbing the victim after she had lost consciousness or was already dead.
Kemp drew Bryce's attention to the electrical cord, which was attached to a small white alarm clock. The cord went around the victim's neck twice and had been pulled tightly, indenting the flesh. That the cord extended across the wounds indicated post-mortem positioning. The alarm clock itself was not a digital model, but an older kind with hands, which had stopped at 10:23.
Bryce studied this awhile, then said it was time to get a statement from the victim's husband. Outside in the van he put his hand on Dodson's shoulder and assured him that they would not rest until they found the person responsible. Then the captain left the scene to Detective Kemp.
Kemp looked carefully at Dodson's hands and face. First apologizing that this was necessary, he asked Dodson to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. Dodson was cooperative. There were no scratches or bruises. His grief and shock appeared genuine but could have been caused by the death of his son. When told about the empty jewelry box on the dresser, Dodson confirmed that his wife had kept her jewelry in it. Kemp told him that no rings had been found on his wife's fingers, and Dodson said that she had worn two: an engagement ring and a wedding band that matched his. He began to cry.
A photograph taken outside the courthouse eleven months later shows Gary Dodson after his testimony. His parents walk on either side, and he appears to sag between them. He is a man of average height, perhaps a little too soft, his sedentary occupation taking its toll. At thirty-two, his hair is thinning. His cheeks are hollow, and his mouth is drawn inward. The reporter wrote that he broke down on the stand, blaming himself for leaving his wife and child at home that day.
The baby had kept them up most of the night with a stomachache, and Amber was so tired that Gary sent her back to bed and told her to sleep for a couple of hours. He called Amber's boss and the nursery to let them know. He left the house at 8:40 a.m. and arrived at his law office around 9:00 a.m., as usual, and just before 10:00 he called to check on the baby. The baby was finally resting, but Amber wanted to sleep till he woke up. Gary called her again at 12:30. There was no answer, and he assumed she had already taken the baby to the nursery and gone to work. It never occurred to him that anything was wrong.
Amber worked for a land development company, got off at 5:00, and would always pick up the baby on her way home. Gary arrived home at 5:50 p.m. and parked his car under the carport next to hers. The sun had gone down, and the yard was in shadow. He wondered why no lights were on. He walked to the kitchen door and opened it with his key. He called out, but there was no answer. Then he saw the blood on the floor.