Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery (11 page)

My friends Logan Hamilton and Cracker Dix were at the bar, arguing good-naturedly over which provided a better high, scotch or marijuana. Tiny’s owner, Susie Vaught, was behind the bar. “Hey, Matt,” she said, as she came around the bar to give me a hug. “I hear you’ve been busy the last couple of days.”

“Sort of. How are you, Susie?”

“Living the dream, listening to the highly intellectual chatter that appears to be a fixture in my bar.”

“They the only ones here?”

“Yeah. Mel Swartz will be here any minute. He gets here at four on the dot. Every day. You can set your watch. Where’s J.D.?”

“She’s on her way.”

“Miller Lite?”

“Yeah. And a white wine.”

Cracker said, “Hey, Matt. I hear you’re lawyering again.”

“Somebody’s got to do it.”

“Take care of Abby. She’s good people.”

“She is that, Cracker. Who’s winning the argument today?”

“Arguing with Logan is like talking to a puppy. He yaps at you a lot, but he makes no sense whatsoever.”

“The English are poor losers, Matt,” Logan said. “That’s Cracker’s problem.”

Cracker, the expatriate Englishman who’d lived on the key for thirty years, laughed and gave Logan the finger.

J.D. came in. She’d stopped at her condo to change into shorts, t-shirt, and flip-flops. “You look like a tourist,” I said.

“Hush.” She went to the bar and kissed both Logan and Cracker on the cheek. “Good to see you guys.”

Mel Swartz came through the door. Everybody in the place looked at his watch. Four o’clock on the button. “How’re you doing, Mel?” I asked.

“Better now that it’s four.”

I picked up our drinks and led J.D. to a high-top table in the corner. “You look tired,” I said.

“I am. I seem to be hitting nothing but dead ends on this case. How’s yours going?”

“Not much to tell. I met with Gus Grantham at lunch and talked for a long time to Abby. Tell me about your day.”

“Very strange. I think that DEA Agent Michel who called me yesterday is actually Homeland Security.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He’s not in the Tampa DEA office. I called Washington and finally talked to an assistant deputy director who shut me down and said he’d call back in half an hour. Guess who called back?”

“Agent Michel.”

“Bingo.”

“Wouldn’t that indicate that he was DEA?”

“I talked to an FBI supervisor in the division that oversees terrorism. He was well aware of The White America Party. He thought they might have been selling a few drugs, but he was never able to prove it. If they don’t deal in drugs in a big way, then why would DEA be interested in them?”

“Good point,” I said.

“The supervisor also told me he didn’t think Michel was FBI. He probably would have flat denied the existence of Michel if he was trying to hide his identity.”

“So, if not DEA or FBI, what other agency could possibly have any interest in a nineteen-year-old woman who disappeared twenty years ago?”

“Exactly. And when Michel called me back, I accused him of being with Homeland Security. He didn’t deny it.”

“So the question is, why would Homeland Security have an interest? They weren’t even in existence twenty years ago.”

“There’s more,” J.D. said. “The FBI guy sent me a list of the names and most recent addresses of people who had been members of The White America Party over the years. It wasn’t ever very big. There were only fifty-two names, but guess who showed up?”

“Darlene Pelletier?”

J.D. shook her head. “Close. The party was formed about forty years ago. One of the founders was named Bobby Pelletier.”

“Too much of a coincidence. Is he still running the show?”

“No. I checked back with the FBI. Bobby was shot dead about ten years ago. The case is still open. New Orleans PD has jurisdiction since it was a local murder, but the FBI has been monitoring the investigation all this time because of Pelletier’s connection to a group on the terrorist watch list.”

“I take it the list didn’t include Darlene Pelletier.”

“No, but it did have a woman named Connie Pelletier. She was apparently Bobby’s wife.”

“Is she dead, too?”

“Nope. She lives in New Orleans.”

“I wonder if Favereaux knew of his wife’s connection to that bunch of maniacs,” I said.

“He must have seen the tattoo.”

“Yeah, but that wouldn’t mean anything in and of itself. She could have told him it was just something she picked out at the tattoo parlor.”

“Maybe the husband found out about her past and killed her,” J.D. said.

“What would be his motive?”

“I don’t know. I’m just grabbing at straws.”

“Did you ever hear back from New Orleans PD about Darlene’s arrest?”

“No. I’m thinking about going out there to see what I can turn up. I’ll ask Bill if he has any travel money in our budget.”

“Want some company?” I asked.

She smiled. “Maybe, but don’t you have a case to work on?”

“Gus Grantham is trying to get me some evidence. I don’t think we’ll have anything on the DNA for a few days, so there’s not much I can do for now.”

“I’ll call Bill at home this evening. See if he’ll let me go. Tell me about your day.”

“It wasn’t as exciting as yours.” I told her what I’d found out and discussed the direction I thought the case might take. “Of course, at this point, that’s mostly speculation. This thing will unfold slowly over the next few weeks.”

“You want another round?” Susie called from the bar.

I looked at J.D. She nodded, and said, “Let’s go sit at the bar. Catch up on the gossip.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

One would think that you could take a flight straight across the Gulf of Mexico from Tampa to New Orleans. Not so. The gods of flight have decreed that you must stop first in Atlanta. Thus, a flight that should take an hour or so, turns into a five-hour ordeal, including a less-than-exciting tour of the world’s busiest airport: Atlanta.

We had driven the hour trip from Longboat Key to Tampa International Airport, lugged our bags through Atlanta’s never-ending concourses, and were on final approach to New Orleans. We’d gained an hour when we crossed into the central time zone, and it was now a little after noon.

J.D. had called Bill Lester when we got home the evening before, brought him up to date on what she’d learned, and got him to agree for her to go to New Orleans. She asked if he had a problem with me going along. He told her he would call the New Orleans police chief to give him a heads-up on J.D.’s visit, and would tell him that he was also sending along his department’s legal adviser.

I’d made reservations at an elegant little hotel on the edge of the French Quarter, a place I’d stayed in frequently when I was practicing law. We took a taxi from the airport to the hotel and dropped our bags with the concierge. We walked across the street to a little joint that was locally famous for its po-boy sandwiches.

After lunch, another taxi took us to the New Orleans Police Department headquarters on South Broad Street. I was wearing a suit and tie, wanting to look like what I thought a police legal adviser ought to look like. That is, if anybody cared. We were escorted to the chief’s office and introductions were made. “How can I help you, Detective Duncan?”

“I don’t know how much Chief Lester told you.” J.D. said, “A woman was murdered on Longboat Key early Monday morning, a very wealthy woman who lived in a Gulf-front mansion. When we ran her prints, it turned out that she wasn’t who she was supposed to be. Twenty years ago, she was arrested here on a misdemeanor shoplifting charge. She would have been about nineteen years old at the time. We’re trying to backtrack to see if there’s anything in her past that might lead us to the killer. I’m hoping you still have the records of that arrest.”

“I’ll check. What’s the woman’s name?”

“Darlene Pelletier.”

The chief buzzed his secretary and asked her to dig up any records on Darlene Pelletier. He gave her the approximate date of the arrest. “Do you have any suspects?” he asked J.D.

“Not yet. The husband is a possibility. He seems to have disappeared.”

The chief grunted. “The husband’s always a possibility.”

We sat for a few minutes making small talk until the secretary came back into the office. “Chief, that file was checked out on Tuesday.”

“To whom?”

“That’s the funny thing. There’s no card on it.”

“Then how do you know it was checked out on Tuesday?” the chief asked.

“The paper log shows that a detective asked for it and was sent back to the stacks. But, the detective’s name is redacted. Blacked out.”

“That’s odd as hell.” The chief looked at J.D. “When somebody checks out a file, they have to leave a card with their name and badge number written on it. The card is put into the space where the file would be, and a notation is made on a paper log kept by the custodian. That information is later put in the computer.”

“I called here about that file on Tuesday,” J.D. said.

“Who did you talk to?” the chief asked.

“I didn’t get a name. A man answered the phone in the records department.”

“What time did you call?”

“Late morning,” J.D. said. “Just before lunch. Our time.”

The chief turned back to the secretary. “Check on who was working there on Tuesday. Probably some kind of paperwork error.”

“Wouldn’t the Pelletier case file be in your computers?” I asked.

“Afraid not. We haven’t bothered to digitize the misdemeanor cases that far back. If it’d been a felony, we’d have it for you.”

The secretary came back in a couple of minutes. “Officer Jim Tatum was the custodian on Tuesday. He was off yesterday, and he hasn’t shown up yet today.”

“What time was he due for duty today?” the chief asked.

“Seven this morning.”

“Did you talk to his sergeant?”

“I checked with him. He said he’d tried to call Tatum this morning and got no answer. He sent a car by his house, but nobody was home. The sergeant put him on report. He told me that he thinks Tatum got his days off mixed up, and didn’t realize he was supposed to be at work this morning. He said Tatum was a good cop and always showed up for work on time. Never missed a day.”

“Thank you, Mildred,” the chief said. The secretary left, closing the office door on her way out.

The chief looked at J.D. “Tatum will show up tomorrow morning, and I’ll get to the bottom of this. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow and you can swing by and pick up the file.”

J.D. gave him her cell phone number and we left. “What now?” I asked. “Time for one of those funny Bourbon Street drinks with the little parasol in it?”

“Ugh. Let’s go see if we can find Connie Pelletier.”

We waved down another taxi, gave the driver Connie Pelletier’s address from the list, and were driven into a spooky area of town. The houses lining the narrow asphalt street were old and decrepit, their front yards more garbage dump than lawn. Young men stood on street corners, smoking cigarettes or dope or something, their steely gazes locking onto the taxi. A police patrol car drove slowly toward us from the opposite direction, the two officers surveilling either side of the street as they passed.

The place looked like a city in a war zone, one of several I’d seen when I was a soldier. The young men were just there, waiting for something, anything, their fate maybe, staring into a future that demanded death at a young age or incarceration that would take them into middle age.

The cabbie stopped before a small shotgun house. I asked him if he would wait for us. I told him it would be worth an extra fifty bucks. He shook his head and gave me a card with his cell number on it. “I ain’t staying in this blighted place,” he said. “But there’s a police substation about four blocks from here. I’ll wait there. Call me when you’re ready to leave, and I’ll come pick you up. Don’t leave the house until you see me pull up out front.”

“That bad?” J.D. asked.

“Worse, lady. Lots worse. I’ll sit here until you get in the house.”

We got out of the car. “You got your gun?” I asked.

“You bet. You?”

“Yep.” We’d checked them with our luggage and retrieved them before we left the hotel.

“I’m legal,” J.D. said. “Cop’s perk.”

“If anybody gets upset about me having a gun, I’ll tell them you gave it to me.”

“You’re a wuss, Royal. Let’s go.”

I knocked on the door, and in a minute or two a woman opened it. If this was Connie Pelletier, she would have probably been in her mid-sixties, given the time frame for the inception of The White American Party. She looked ninety. She was stooped, her back twisted by the prominent widow’s hump, her gray hair sparse and in disarray. She was absently scratching at a sore on her left wrist, her eyes staring blankly at us, her cheeks pasty and flaccid. She wore an ancient housedress with a faded floral design. She was barefoot, her toenails discolored and fractured and so long they curled under the ends of her toes. The odor of old smoke and sour whiskey billowed from the house as she opened the door.

“Yes?” she said, her voice raspy from cigarettes.

“Are you Connie Pelletier?” J.D. asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Detective J.D. Duncan.” I noticed she didn’t identify which police department she was with.

“What do you want?”

“Do you know Darlene Pelletier?”

“No.” Something passed across her rheumy eyes like a fleeting shadow. It was so quick that if I hadn’t been watching for it, I would have missed it. She was lying.

“Mrs. Pelletier,” said J.D. “I’m not here to cause you trouble or sadness.” J.D. had seen the same thing I had. “But Darlene has a tattoo identifying her as a member of The White America Party. It’s just not possible that in such a small organization, you didn’t know somebody with the same last name as yours.”

“She’s dead.”

“May we come in?”

“I guess so. I don’t want no uniforms breaking down my door in the middle of the night. Not with all them darkies they got on the force these days.”

We stepped into the living room. A mess. The furniture was old and stuffing was falling out of most of it. A filthy green shag carpet from the 1960s covered the floor and the place smelled of unwashed dog. I saw a small terrier cowering under the sofa, shivering, its skin showing through where patches of fur had been destroyed by disease. Despair seeped from the walls, enveloping all who entered with a miasma of hopelessness and regret. It was perhaps the most depressing place I’d ever seen.