Death Among the Mangroves (19 page)

“So what are you planning to do?”

“I was thinking, nothing.” Troy said. “But I'll swing by and talk to the woman. Maybe we can help her.”

“As I expected. Inaction. Indolence.” Duell stood and headed for the door. “And fix your damn office door. The lettering has been misspelled for the entire time you've been here.” He walked on down the hallway.

“Longer, actually,” Troy said. “It was like that when I came.” But he was talking to an empty stationhouse. Duell had slammed the front door on the way out.

That night Troy went back to his own condo at the Sea Grape Inn. Lee Bell let herself in as he was taking a long shower. He walked out of the bathroom naked and found some briefs in his bedroom and went into the kitchenette.

“I'm not much use tonight,” he said. “Long day and I was up all last night.”

Lee was looking in his refrigerator. “I know that. And don't you have any real food?”

“That is food. It's just frozen food in little boxes.”

“Well, I came over to cook for my main man. Looks like all I need is the microwave.”

“Works for me.”

They both ate. It didn't take long. “I'm worried about you,” Lee said.

“
¿Por qué?”

“Because Judge Stider is a powerful man in Collier County and his son, from what you've told me, is a violent sociopath. It's not just lawsuits I worry about. You need to watch your back.”

“I know that.”

She looked at Troy. “When I see you get up in the morning, wherever you are, here or at my house, and put on a gun and a flak jacket in order to go to work, it scares me a little.”

“It's a bulletproof vest, not a flak jacket.”

“Whatever. People shouldn't have to live like that.”

“People shouldn't,” Troy said. “They hire me, they hire my entire department, to live like that for them. We agree to stand the wall.”

“Stand the wall? What's that?”

“We stand on the wall and say, ‘Nothing bad will happen to the people behind us while we're on watch.' Did you know that, technically, police officers are never off duty?”

“Well, you certainly aren't.”

“None of us are. We may only get paid for part of each day but we're always on call. I can pick up that cell phone and have more officers here within ten minutes, some in their pajamas, probably. I can get help faster than I can order a pizza delivery. Now, if I may, I'm off to bed.”

“It's only nine p.m.,” Lee said. “If you go to bed now you'll be wide awake at three a.m.”

“That's okay. I often do that anyway. I'll get up and walk the streets. I like to do that when it's dark and quiet. Does that seem weird to you?”

“No,” Lee said. “It's like flying at night. Very peaceful. Can't see anything but stars and clouds. No sense of movement, really. Even the radio is quiet. It's kind of like Zen or something. You go to bed and then enjoy your walk later. I think I'll go sit in the hot tub down by the pool for a while. Maybe meet some man who's not such a workaholic.”

Chapter 29

Friday, December 27

By Friday afternoon the town of Mangrove Bayou looked like a fire ant nest someone had kicked over. Every citizen who didn't have something better to do—and most didn't—was out looking for Barbara Gillispie. “It's like an Easter egg hunt,” June Dundee said to Troy at one point. “With one egg.” Her phones had not stopped ringing all day.

Troy had Tom VanDyke and Angel Watson on the day shift. They were busy sorting out trespassing complaints and occasional fistfights. Troy's officers had long since searched all vacant properties on the islands but now they were having to arrest people for breaking and entering those same houses. Troy called in Juan Valdez on overtime to process paperwork and supervise the jail cells.

Troy had received phone calls from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Highway Patrol, the chairman of the Collier County Commission, someone from the governor's office, and a lawyer in town who said he now represented the Gillispie family. He had just hung up on the latter call when Collier County sheriff's deputy Kyle Rivers darkened his office door.

“Oh, thank God,” Troy said. “Now I can hand this entire case off to you.” He took out a dollar bill and laid it on his desk.

“Shit, I don't want it,” Rivers said. “Damn tar-baby.” Rivers knew the system and took out two dollar bills and laid those on top of Troy's.

“I don't believe you are supposed to refer to Uncle Remus stories when speaking to a person of color,” Troy said.

“I didn't know that. So what color are you?”

“Les Groud, our mayor, says I'm beige.”

“What is he, some kind of nance interior decorator?”

“Perfect. First you use a pejorative on me, now you insinuate that Les is homosexual, and in the process, damn all gay people, not to mention all interior decorators. You're on a roll today.” Troy added another dollar to the small stack.

Rivers took the dollar off the stack and handed it back to Troy. “Use of ‘damn' in that context—or this—is not a curse,” he said.

““Come to think,” Troy said, “you're right.”

“This is all very amusing,” Rivers said. “But I don't feel like trying to outspend you.”

“Probably could,” Troy said, “given my salary here.”

“You wanted the job. But I'll dial it back,” Rivers said. “So what are you doing with this tar-baby? My lieutenant sent me over in person to ask.”

Troy saw no reason not to tell Kyle Rivers everything he knew. So he did.

“Sounds to me like you are doing everything you can and you have some leads worth working,” Rivers said. “You need anything from me?”

“The weekend is going to be bad, with too many of our citizens off work and at loose ends,” Troy said. “Petty crime is busting out all over. Thinking of putting revolving doors in the cells. I could use a couple of your deputies to beef up the police presence. Take a load off the town's overtime budget.”

“By putting the overtime on the sheriff's department budget instead?”

“That would be my goal, yes.”

“See what I can do.”

Rivers had left when Troy heard voices from outside his window. He had the blinds closed but he got up and peeked through. He could see reporters on the street outside clustering around someone who was out of Troy's sight. “Now what?” he said aloud and got up to walk to the lobby and open the front door.

Councilman and principal Doctor Howard Parkland Duell was lecturing the crowd.
Oh boy, this should be good,
Troy thought. He stepped outside to hear better.

“…this opportunity to explain why I think we need change here in Mangrove Bayou,” Duell said. “Clearly the police department here is not up to doing the job we ask of them.”

“You mean the missing girl,” one of the reporters shouted.

“I mean that and a lot of things. Most recently, the outrageous theft of electricity.”

The reporters looked puzzled and more so as Duell went on and on about how a vagrant in a wheelchair was stealing the town blind on its electric bill. Troy stifled a laugh. A reporter saw him standing in front of the door and shouted across the street. “What do you have to say, Chief?” The reporter was grinning too. “Have you suspended the search for the missing girl while you go after the electricity thief?”

“I would not dream of interrupting,” Troy shouted back. He went back inside the station, laughing.

Chapter 30

Friday, December 27

Troy was looking at paperwork, trying to find excuses for kicking most of the arrestees in the back cells loose. He pushed aside his notes and sighed. Most of those people were voting and tax-paying citizens of the town who had acted stupidly in the heat of the moment. Troy thought that maybe, instead of officially arresting them, he could assign them to work parties. They could go around and repair the broken windows and doors they'd created in breaking into vacant buildings. Paying for everything themselves, of course.

It was afternoon shift change and Milo Binder and Jeremiah Brown were doing their workouts at the station. Troy had insisted that all officers exercise for an hour before going on duty and they had barbells and a treadmill. The schedules were staggered to take that into account. Jeremiah Brown was just done with his workout and he drove Troy to the God's Lightning Church on Snake Key.

“All pumped up?” Troy asked. He exercised too, and ran every morning because he found the treadmill boring. In fact most of the equipment was his, donated to the station and kept in a back storeroom they now called the “gym.”

“We need bigger weights,” Jeremiah said in his deep rumble. “Those toys, I just gotta do a lot of reps to make up the difference.” Jeremiah was six-two and nearly three hundred pounds of hard muscle, and when he climbed out of the patrol truck the big Suburban lifted an inch or two on the driver's side. He always reminded Troy of a large black rhinoceros.

“Jeremiah, we have weights up to two hundred and fifty pounds. I can barely bench-press half that.”

“You is pitiable.”

“Let's have some respect for your chief.”

“You is pitiable—Boss.”

“Thank you.”

Jeremiah looked at the church, with its metal sign on the front. “We going to church, Boss?”

“Sort of. Going to arrest the minister. Got the warrant back this morning.”

Jeremiah frowned. “Not proud to have to arrest a man of God.”

“You will be. Think Jesus in the temple with the money-lenders.”

“Don't blaspheme, Boss. If we gotta do this, let's get 'er done.”

The Reverend Heth Summerall was in his office doing something on his computer. He looked up as Troy and Jeremiah entered.

“You're back,” he said. “Here to harass me some more?”

“You bet,” Troy said. “Heth Summerall, you're under arrest.” He dragged Summerall to his feet and cuffed him.”

“What? You can't do this.”

“Sure I can. Jeremiah, read him his rights. I can never remember all that gobbledygook.”

Jeremiah did so. Summerall ignored him. “What charge?” he asked Troy.

“For starters, burglary, trespassing, fraud and grand theft. All relating to your unlawfully entering and then renting out a house belonging to a Mr. Mark Johnson,” Troy said. “Unlawful use of lifts in your shoes. Illegal hairdo. Might have to let you slide on destroying Frieda the Flipper's lockbox since I can't find it. Count your blessings.”

Back at the station and with the reverend sitting in a cell, Troy sat at his desk and called Rita Shaner, the assistant state attorney in Naples, and asked her to find a judge and get him a search warrant for the God's Lightning Church and office and the double-wide the reverend lived in too. Shaner pointed out that it was Friday afternoon. Troy asked for speed anyway. She said she would try. Troy processed the arrest paperwork on Heth Summerall, put that into a manila envelope, and had Angel Watson run that and the reverend both up to Naples and the county jail.

“You do realize that it's Friday afternoon,” Angel said. “That means the reverend will spend the night in jail before his arraignment on Saturday, when some judge will certainly let him out on bail.”

“Really?” Troy said. “Hadn't thought of that. I guess he'll miss the town council meeting tonight too.”

“Um. You got six people in the cells back there now. You're not sending any of them up to Naples with me?”

“Trivial stuff. I'll kick 'em loose in a little while.”

“Aha. You could have arrested Summerall yesterday. Right after you helped those people move their belongings. He'd have been back here by now and able to attend the town meeting.”

“Gosh. Hadn't realized that. Why, now that you mention it, by the time he gets loose we'll have a search warrant and be inside his office and his computer, and rooting around in it like hogs in a corn silo.”

Angel looked at Troy. “You know, sometimes you can be pretty devious.”

“
Moi?
I'm just a simple small-town cop. Mostly check for illegal thongs on the beach.”

Chapter 31

Friday, December 27

Mangrove Bayou town council meetings were held in the town hall meeting room upstairs above the town offices and were always well attended. They were not always well behaved. This was good entertainment for the citizens. Troy usually enjoyed the scene. Tonight, though, the town council was to decide, among other agenda items, his fate, and thanks to the missing girl and a bored press, do so in front of a dozen television cameras with bright lights. The town council had hired him the previous June on probation. Now the council would decide if he was to be made permanent or fired. Troy was fairly certain he could count on the mayor. He knew Councilman Duell was totally opposed and always had been. The key was Councilman Reed. Max Reed had gone along with hiring Troy because there had not been much in the way of alternatives, but had never expressed an opinion about keeping him.

Troy saw Kyle Rivers in the audience and sat down beside the sheriff's deputy. “You stayed here. Didn't go back to Everglades City,” he said. “Slumming?”

Rivers pointed to the sergeant's stripes on his uniform sleeve. “Came to say thank you. Didn't mention it before.”

“Appreciate it. Always knew you had what it took. The sheriff just needed my permission.”

“Yeah. Right. By the way, one of your guys had applied to the sheriff's, long time ago. His name came to the top of the pile last week. He turned us down. You must have some kind of charisma. That was a better-paying job.”