After Midnight (15 page)

The first officer who arrived at the scene in response to Jess’s 911 call threw up his lunch.

He’d barely wiped his mouth clean and pulled out his notebook to take her statement when the wail of sirens heralded the arrival of the EMS ambulance. Advising Jess that he’d be right back, the deputy sheriff went to greet the med-techs.

She sat on an overturned oil drum, spattered from head to toe with blood, her left hand still fisted around the porch slat she’d wrenched free and used to beat off the Rotweiler. Wayne Whittier sprawled in the dirt a few yards away. The mangled flesh and torn cartilage of his throat and face had already attracted swarms of flies. The dog lay in a crumpled heap beside him.

Jess knew it was wrong, knew something inside her had tilted seriously off-center, but at the moment the death of the abused animal numbed her more than that of its owner. Maybe she’d feel something for Whittier later, when the shock wore off. Regret, perhaps. Or guilt.

No. Not guilt. Whatever else might come, it wouldn’t be guilt. Uncurling her fingers one by one, she let the bloody porch slat drop to the dirt.

The police didn’t recover the .38 until the med-techs got ready to transfer Whittier’s body onto the gurney. By then the media had augmented the small army of medical and law enforcement personnel at the scene. Panama City reporters with access to police scanners had converged by van and by vehicle, jockeying with each for the best camera angles and fighting like crows for their share of the gruesome kill.

The Walton County sheriff arrived hard on the media’s heels. Like Jess, he was in jeans and a knit shirt, but the badge clipped to his waist formed a solid wall between them. He cut a path straight to her, but didn’t speak more than a dozen words after confirming she wasn’t hurt, that the blood drenching her clothes wasn’t hers.

She understood. In his mind, she’d stepped over the line, descended to Whittier’s level. Profaned her mother’s memory. She also understood the taut lines in his face when he approached her some time later with the bagged .38. in his hand.

“Is this your Smith & Wesson?”

“Yes.”

“Has it been fired?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She lifted her head. His mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes, but she could feel them drilling into her.

“Why didn’t I shoot the dog before he ate Whittier’s face, you mean?”

“Answer the question.”

The harsh command whipped feeling back into her, small, stinging needles that straightened her spine and brought her head up.

“I told your deputy what happened, sheriff.”

“Tell me.”

“Whittier swung at me. I dodged the blow, caught my heel on a loose board, and fell off the porch. The revolver slid out of my tote.”

His tight, closed expression gave no clue whether he believed her.

“Whittier went for it, but he was drunk. He stumbled and landed right on top of the gun. It was under him when the dog attacked. I couldn’t get to it. I tried to pull the dog off by dragging on its chain, but it was too strong and it’s jaws…”

A hot, sour swell of nausea rolled through her belly.

“Its jaws were locked,” she finished grimly.

Another vehicle pulled into the clearing just then, a sedan with a blue and gold seal on the side. Steve flicked it a narrow glance, turned back to Jess.

“Are you aware that carrying a concealed weapon without a permit is a felony in this state?”

“I have a permit. I applied for it right after I moved back to Florida.”

A muscle ticked in the side of his jaw. Jess could guess what he was thinking.

“Yes, sheriff. The .38 was in my possession when I arrived in Florida. Do you think I used it to smash in Delbert McConnell’s skull? Or held it to Ron Clark’s head and forced him to put a hose to his mouth?”

“What I think,” he said softly, “is that you’d better talk to an attorney before you volunteer any more information than you already have.”

She dipped her head a mere inch, just enough to acknowledge the warning.

With that small nod, the iron band around Steve’s chest screwed even tighter. Advising her to lawyer up went against his every professional instinct. Ruthlessly, he suppressed his cop’s inherent urge to follow the spoor of blood. Just as ruthlessly, he resisted the impulse to wrap his hands around Jess’s arms, haul her off that rusted oil drum, and throw her into his cruiser before she said something that would widen the crevasse yawning under her feet.

Three of the five men who’d assaulted her mother all those years ago were now dead. Each of the deaths occurred under highly unusual circumstances, to say the least. All had happened since Jess’s return to Florida.

The string of coincidences would make a rookie’s nose start to twitch, and the detective from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who was taking a good look at the corpse before the med-techs wheeled it away was no rookie. Jim Hazlett took his time. Like most good cops, he recorded the details of the scene in his own mind before talking to the responding officer.

Unwrapping a stick of Dentyne in a futile attempt to kill his vicious nicotine craving, Steve strolled over to join him. He rarely regretted leaving the sophisticated resources available to the Atlanta PD, but this was one of those times he didn’t fully appreciate being sheriff of a sparsely populated county dependant on FDLE assistance in investigating violent crimes.

Not that this was technically a crime scene, he reminded himself grimly. Not yet, anyway.

“Afternoon, sheriff.”

“Hello, Hazlett.”

Already drenched with sweat after only ten minutes in the hot sun, Jim Hazlett tipped Steve a nod. As Steve had anticipated, his cop’s nose was already twitching.

“Seems like the folks in Walton County are finding more ‘n more ways to get dead these day.”

“Seems like.”

The detective’s glance drifted to Jess. “I understand that’s Lieutenant Colonel Blackwell. Is she the same Lieutenant Colonel Blackwell who was heavy on your suicide’s mind last month?”

“Yes. And the same Colonel Blackwell who went through the guardrail of the Mid-Bay Bridge ten days ago.”

Steve wasn’t telling Hazlett anything he didn’t already know. Nodding, the investigator confirmed that he’d already discovered the link from Jess’s accident to Wayne Whittier in the Florida Crime Information Center’s computers.

“I saw the Okaloosa County boys put a rush on their request for the paint analysis of that incident. Also saw where you’d tagged Whittier’s ’76 caddy as a potential match.” Swiping the back of his hand across his glistening upper lip, Hazlett eyed Steve thoughtfully. “What do you know about the deceased that I don’t, sheriff?”

Steve made a quick sweep of the media before replying. The incident at the Blue Crab and Jess’s connection to the three recent deaths would hit the news sooner or later, but there was no need to precipitate the headlines by feeding information into a super-sensitive boom mike.

Turning his back on the cluster of reporters, he lowered his voice and spoke directly to Hazlett. “According to Cliff Boudreaux, Whittier was one of five men who sexually assaulted Colonel Blackwell’s mother twenty-eight years ago.”

“No shit.”

“The incident occurred at the Blue Crab, a dive Whittier used to own. Helen Yount waitressed there.”

“I remember the place. Up on Highway 20, wasn’t it?”

“Right. Yount left town the same night as the alleged rape. No charges were filed.”

With an almost audible whir, the wheels of the investigator’s mind spun into overdrive. “Let me guess. Your suicide was one of those five men.”

Steve forced a nod. “So was the floater we pulled out of the bay a few weeks ago.”

His lips rounding in a soundless whistle, Hazlett looked to Jess once more. When he shifted his attention to the plastic evidence bag in Steve’s hand, his eyes gleamed with the joy of the hunt.

“Be interesting to find out whether the colonel always totes a .38 when she goes calling.”

Now. Steve had to say it now. If he withheld his personal interest in Jess Blackwell, he’d compromise them both and completely destroy any chance of being able to help her.

“I met Colonel Blackwell for the first time the night of Clark’s suicide. I think you should know we’ve gotten close since then. Very close.”

The investigator blinked. “Well, now,” he said, feeling his way cautiously. “Is the fact that you two have, uh, gotten close going to cause complications, sheriff?”

“No. You do your job. My people will do theirs.”

“Fair enough.” He made another swipe at the shiny beads on his upper lip. “Guess I’ll go see what Colonel Blackwell has to say about all this.”

Just in time, Steve bit back the suggestion that she might prove more cooperative out of the heat and the blood-spattered clothes that were attracting swarms of gnats and flies. At this point, he wasn’t sure just how cooperative Jess should be.

By the time Jess was told she could leave, her head throbbed and her skin itched from the combination of sweat and dried blood. One of the EMS techs had given her a package of moist towelettes, but the paper proved ineffective on the gore caked in the creases of her neck and arms and legs.

She should call her boss Jess thought as she abandoned the oil drum and pushed to her feet. Better Colonel Hamilton heard about this from her than see his Supply Squadron Commander on the ten o’clock news. Again.

Hitching her tote over her shoulder, she picked her way through the weeds. With each step she tried to summon the calm she’d need to face the reporters waiting for her to leave the sanctity of the taped off accident area.

That’s what this was, she reminded herself fiercely. An accident. Unless and until someone made a public statement to the contrary.

“Colonel Blackwell!”

“Colonel! Over here!”

Bracing herself, she approached the barricade of video-cams and boom mikes. She knew an appeal for consideration would be useless, but tried anyway.

“I’m sorry. This has been a horrible experience. I need to clean up before I…”

She should have known that blood would play better for the cameras than squeaky clean. Ignoring her plea, the eager reporters peppered her with questions.

“Why were you here?”

“How did you know the deceased?”

“Did you drive out to see Mr. Whittier on Air Force business?”

Shaking her head, she pushed past them. The news hounds followed, nipping at her heels.

“Where were you when the dog attacked?”

“Did Whittier incite the attack?”

“Is this incident in any way connected with your accident two weeks ago?”

The question came zinging over the heads of the other reporters. Startled, Jess made the mistake of glancing around and almost took a boom mike in the eye.

“I’ll answer that.”

Steve shouldered his way to her side. Sweat ringed the armpits of his yellow polo shirt and his face glowed a ruddy red under his tan, but no one mistook him for a civilian bystander. His air of authority guaranteed him as much attention as his badge.

“As some of you are obviously aware, Colonel Blackwell’s vehicle was forced off the Mid-Bay Bridge two weeks ago. The incident is being investigated by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s office, so you’ll have to ask them for an update.”

“Come on, sheriff! Give us something to work with here.”

“I can confirm that paint scrapings removed from the colonel’s car were sent to the Crime Lab in Tallahassee for comparison with the National Automotive Paint file. I can also confirm that the scrapings were a bright yellow in color.”

The video-cams shifted, zoomed in on the dented, chrome-laden Cadillac parked beside Whittier’s shack. The reporters scribbled furiously in their notebooks.

“So you think it wasn’t just a drunk driver who plowed into her?”

“Until the paint analysis comes back, it’s too soon for me to say what I think. Although…” His glance drifted to the bottles lying amid trash in the yard. “There’s certainly the possibility that alcohol was involved in that incident.”

Like a school of hungry sharks, they devoured that tidbit.

“What about today?”

“Was alcohol involved in this incident, too?”

“Possibly. We’ll furnish you a copy of Colonel Blackwell’s statement, in which she relates that Mr. Whittier appeared unstable when she confronted him. So unstable, he stumbled and fell and was unable to protect himself from the dog’s attack.”

He was covering for her, Jess realized. Implying that she’d driven out to this dump to take on the drunk who’d almost killed her. She supposed she should feel grateful, but they both knew he was just delaying the inevitable. It was only a matter of time until the past hit the headlines.

Terminating the interview a few moments later, Steve escorted her to her vehicle. “Can you drive?”

“Yes. Steve, I…”

“Get in the car. The video-cams are still recording.”

Biting her lip, she climbed behind the wheel of the Expedition.

“Go home. Get cleaned up.” His jaw worked. “Call a lawyer.”

The door thudded shut.

Jess went home, cleaned up, and called her boss. Her respect for the military chain of command went too deep to go outside the system before notifying her supervisor.

Colonel Hamilton wasn’t at his quarters, but he responded to the brief message she left on his recorder less than an hour later.

“What’s this about an off-base incident, Jess?”

“A man was killed. A civilian. Not one of ours,” she added quickly. “I thought I’d better brief you on it before you see it on the seven o’clock news.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“It’s… It’s complicated, sir. I’d rather tell you in person.”

“No problem. Peg and I are babysitting the grandkids. Why don’t you swing by my quarters? We’ll escape to the deck to talk.”

His wife called out in the background, seconding the invitation, but warning Jess she might get pressed into service at the swing set if she wasn’t careful.