Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (2 page)

“Who’s Jed?” I asked.

“Me.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Katie and I went to college together. When I was a sophomore, she
was a freshman. We met during rush week when all the freshmen are taking a look at the fraternities and sororities. I was wearing a name tag and at first she thought the ‘J.D.’ read ‘Jed.’ She called me that all night, until somebody told her my name was J.D., not Jed. She pledged my sorority, and I became her big sister. Do you know what that means?”

“She became your protégé.”

“Yes. I had to guide her through the pledge rituals and keep an eye on her. We became good friends. She called me ‘Jed’ as an inside joke. I think the message in the picture is to let me know that it’s really her.”

“Why do you think she’s dead?”

“She married a law student from the University of Miami named Jim Fredrickson, and when he graduated, they moved to Sarasota. He went with one of the silk stocking firms and had made quite a name for himself representing big-time white-collar criminals. He’d also gotten pretty rich.”

“I remember that story,” I said. “Happened early last year. They lived in a big house on the bay south of downtown. He was murdered and his wife disappeared.”

“That’s it. It was in January. She and I had kept up with each other and, when I heard about the murder, I came over to Sarasota and met with the detective on the case. He opened up his file to me. Jim had been shot in the head at close range with a .22-caliber revolver. The medical examiner found the slug in his brain during the autopsy and the forensics people found the bullet casing in the living room. There was also a lot of blood that belonged to Katie.”

“But no body.”

“No. She was gone, but the medical examiner thought that the volume of blood she’d lost would make it unlikely that she survived.”

“Any theories on why the killer would have taken her body?” I asked.

“None. It appeared that she’d been raped, so maybe the guy was just a weirdo.”

“What made the cops think she’d been raped?”

“The crime-scene techs found vaginal fluid on the sofa and all that blood on the floor. Both belonged to Katie.”

“Semen?”

“No. If there was a rape, the guy must have used a condom.”

“I take it the rape is just speculation,” I said.

“Yes. Without a body, the medical examiner said he couldn’t make a finding of rape.”

“Who was the Sarasota detective on the case?”

“It was run by Captain Doug McAllister, the chief of detectives at the Sarasota P.D. He’s the one I met with when I first came over to look at the file. He took a personal interest in the case. Apparently he and Katie’s husband were golfing buddies and McAllister took Jim’s death hard.”

“Nobody ever heard from Katie after the murder?”

“No. Not even her parents. That’s the reason we think she’s dead. She wouldn’t have just disappeared. She was close to her parents and would never have put them through this.”

“You’re sure that’s a picture of Katie?” I asked.

“Yes. Katie had long blonde hair and wasn’t as thin as the woman in the picture. But hair dye is cheap and people can lose weight. Her face is Katie’s, and she’s the only one I know who would have reached out to me by calling me Jed.”

“Where are her parents?”

“They live in the Orlando area, Winter Park. That’s where Katie grew up.”

“Maybe the parents have heard from her recently.”

“I doubt it,” J.D. said. “I talk to them every month or so, and the last time I called them they hadn’t heard from her. I think they would have let me know if they had.”

“You probably ought to get in contact with them.”

“I’ll call them tonight, but I don’t want to tell them about the picture. I’ll see if the phone company can tell me where the text originated.”

“How would Katie have known your cell number?” I asked.

“It’s the same number I’ve had for years. She would know it.”

“If she’s alive, why would she just now be getting in contact with you?”

“Good question. Maybe she was kidnapped and is just now able to make contact.”

“Why would she contact you instead of the police?”

“I am the police.”

“You’ve got a point. You want some lunch?”

“Sure, but let me get the phone company working on finding out where this text originated.”

During season, that time of the winter when the northerners flock to the island, the population of Longboat Key swells from about 2,500 people to 20,000. That makes having lunch out a dicey proposition. The restaurants are full to overflowing and there are always waiting lines. It’s not a time for the casual diner. One has to be either ravenous or a bit crazy to join the throngs, wait in line, endure less-than-great service, and settle for food left too long in the warming pans.

We were neither crazy nor ravenous, so we stopped by Harry’s Deli and got a couple of sandwiches, Diet Cokes, and potato chips and drove across the Longboat Pass Bridge to Coquina Beach. I pulled a couple of canvas beach chairs from the Explorer, and we sat on the sand bordering Longboat Pass and ate and watched the boats go by.

We were chatting when I heard a faint noise in the distance, a high-pitched warble that I realized was a siren. It caught J.D.’s attention as well, and she stopped talking in mid-sentence. The siren was growing louder, coming toward us from the Longboat side of the bridge.

“Wonder what’s up,” she said.

“Speeder?”

“Must be more than that. Speeders usually stop when the siren gets their attention.”

The siren grew louder as it neared the bridge. We sat quietly waiting for whatever was coming. The bells on the bridge began to clang, warning motorists that the span was about to rise. A couple of cars came to a stop as the crossing gates came down blocking the travel lanes. We watched as a vehicle moving at a high rate of speed came around the slight curve just to the south of the bridge. It was a new Jaguar, traveling north toward Anna
Maria Island. As it approached the stopped cars, the driver moved into the southbound lane, never slowing. Suddenly, the driver hit the brakes, hard. He was past the line of cars, now between the first car and the rising span. He must have just figured out that the span was on its way up. I glanced at the channel that ran under the bridge. No boats. None waiting on the other side. The bridge tender was helping the cops, raising the span to stop whoever was in the Jaguar from leaving the island.

The Jaguar’s tires were making that squeegee noise that comes with the hard application of disc brakes. The driver was in control, the car braking hard but staying on a straight-line course and within its lane. I was thinking he would not be able to stop before he hit the span when the noise from the braking tires stopped and the car accelerated. I heard the slight roar of the muffled engine and watched as the driver turned the steering wheel hard left. The car hit the curb that separated the vehicle lane from the bike and pedestrian path and went airborne, barely missing the bridge tender’s shack. The Jag’s undercarriage sliced off the top half of the bridge’s concrete railing, taking it into the channel below. The car’s trajectory took it a few feet from the bridge and into a flat landing in the water, where it briefly floated before beginning a nose-first descent toward the bottom. I knew this channel and knew that the water was about fifteen feet deep.

The cop car pursuing the Jaguar came to a stop behind the second car waiting for the drawbridge. I saw a uniformed officer throw open the driver’s side door and run toward the breach in the railing. J.D. was on her feet, shucking her equipment belt.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“I’ve got to get to that car. Maybe the guy’s still alive.”

I grabbed her arm. She shook loose. “No, J.D.,” I said. “You’ve got an outgoing tide, a strong current, and that car’s on the bottom with fifteen feet of water above it. You can’t save him.”

“I’m going to try.”

“No,” I said. “He’s dead. Let’s go to the bridge and see what’s going on.” I looked at her and saw challenge in her face. She didn’t like a mere man telling her what to do. Then it was gone and she shrugged, picked up her equipment belt, and started for my car. I followed.

By the time we reached the road, there were several cars stopped in the southbound lanes. A Bradenton Beach police cruiser was coming to a stop on the berm just before the bridge. I parked behind the cop. The officer recognized us as we got out of my car and walked toward him. “Hi, J.D.,” he said. “Matt.”

“Hey, Ned,” J.D. said. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Not much. We got a call from Longboat P.D. asking us to intercept a Jaguar coming our way. I guess the bridge was going up to block the car, but it looks like the Jag went into the water.”

“Yeah,” J.D. said. “We saw him go in. Looked like it might have been deliberate. I’ll check in. Can you get these cars turned around and headed in the other direction? We’ll have a crime scene on the bridge.”

“No problem.”

The cop turned and walked toward the stopped cars.

The people were not going to be happy. It was a long drive back across Anna Maria Island, over to Tamiami Trail, down to Sarasota and back to the southern end of Longboat Key.

J.D. made a phone call, talked for a minute, and hung up. She turned to me and said, “They’re setting up on the other side of the bridge, sending people back the way they came. I told dispatch where I was and she said the bridge would be lowered in a few minutes and we can walk over and meet the Longboat guys.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“That was Steve Carey chasing the Jag. The driver shot and killed somebody down around mid-key. A witness saw him get in the car and called 911. Steve was just down the street when he got the call and started the pursuit.”

J.D. and I had walked across the lowered bridge span and were standing with a group of Longboat Key police officers and a very distressed bridge tender. Divers from the Manatee County Sheriff’s office had been called and a wrecker was on its way.

“Do we have an ID on the victim?” J.D. asked Chief Bill Lester.

“A preliminary one,” the chief said. “His name was Ken Goodlow, according to a woman who lives in the condo complex where he was killed. He was an elderly guy who lived in Cortez and had stopped by to see her. He was leaving when the shooter pulled into the parking lot and shot him in the head. We have a couple of officers on the scene waiting for the medical examiner and the forensics people.”

“What about the witness?” J.D. asked. “Can she tell us any more about the victim?”

“The cops on the scene haven’t talked to her in any detail. She’s very upset and is with a neighbor.”

“I need to get a statement from her while it’s still fresh,” said J.D.

“Go ahead,” said Lester. “I don’t think there’s much you can do here until we get that car out of the drink.”

“I was with Matt. His car’s at the other end of the bridge. My car’s at his house.”

“Get one of the officers to drive you to your car,” said the chief.

J.D. turned to me. “Will you be all right?”

“Sure. Go on. I’ll stick around here until they clear the bridge.”

“That’ll take at least a couple of hours,” said Lester. “We’ve got a wrecker coming over from the mainland to pull the car up on Coquina Beach. The crime-scene people are going to want to take a preliminary
look at it before they haul it to the sheriff’s garage. They also have a lot to do here on the bridge.”

“You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you. I’ll walk home. I can come back for my car when you reopen the bridge.”

“We can drop you at home,” said J.D.

“No, thanks. I’ll stick around for a bit and see what happens. Call me when you finish.”

“That might take a while.” She and a cop walked toward the parked police cruisers, got into one, and backed down the bridge until they could turn around and head south to my cottage in the village.

The bridge tender had broadcast a warning to boats not to cross under the bridge and within a few minutes the Longboat Key Police boat and one from the Manatee Sheriff’s Marine Unit were on the scene to quarantine the area around where the car had sunk into the channel.

A wrecker drove onto the beach and backed up as close to the water’s edge as he dared. A police diver was in the water and attached a cable from the wrecker to the submerged car. I told Chief Lester that I was leaving, and he said he’d call me when the bridge reopened and I could come get my car.

I started walking south on the bridge, heading toward Longboat. The water in the pass was green and flat and dappled by the sun’s reflection, its face rippled in places where fish broke the surface. Boats rode at anchor, their occupants drinking beer and watching the police activity, waiting patiently for something to happen. A cooling breeze blowing in from the Gulf brought a hint of winter and brine, reminding me that it was February and the water was cold.

I pulled my windbreaker a little tighter and walked past the police cars stopped in the northbound lane and stepped off the bridge and onto the bike path that bordered Gulf of Mexico Drive. Ten minutes later, I was at Tiny’s Bar, a dimly lit tavern run by Susie Vaught, an island legend. She called the place “the best little bar in paradise,” and it was.

I ducked inside, got the hug that Susie dispenses to all the regulars, and took a stool next to my buddy Logan Hamilton. “Starting early?” I asked.

“Indeed,” said Logan.

“Did you have lunch?”

“I did. With my paramour, the beautiful and saintly Marie Philips.”

“Sounds like you may have drunk your lunch.”

“The bartender at the Mar Vista has a way with a Scotch bottle. Pours a bit heavy.”

“And that suits you.”

“It does.”

Susie put a cold Miller Lite on the bar in front of me. “What brings you in here this time of day, Matt?”

“J.D. and I were having a picnic at Coquina Beach, down by the pass. A car went off the bridge, and the police have closed it to traffic. My car’s on the other side. I was walking home.”

“I guess that explains the sirens,” said Susie.