Death Among the Mangroves (28 page)

Groves put his fingertips together and touched those to his chin. He looked out to the mangrove islands offshore. “The brain is a marvelous instrument,” he said. “But as a recorder of history it's not always accurate.”

“I know that. Policemen all know that. We have a saying, ‘The worst sort of witness is an eyewitness.' Five citizens seeing a mugging on the street will give five different descriptions of the shirt the mugger was wearing. And that's simple.”

Groves smiled. “And yet you want to talk to those witnesses as soon as possible, and before the news reports start. Why is that?”

“That's because once one guy gets on the news and says the shirt was blue, the woman who originally saw a red shirt starts to think it was blue too. Pretty soon you have, not five versions, but one communal version of what happened. And it's not necessarily the right story.”

“Do you think those other witnesses are now lying? Or were lying at first?”

“Of course not. At first they tell us what they think they saw. Later they tell us what they think they remember that they saw. But there's a vast difference sometimes.”

“When you killed that man here in Mangrove Bayou…”

“Just up the street, almost,” Troy said.

“…here in town, in almost the identical situation, did you feel justified?”

“Oh. Sure. Billy Poteet was about to shoot Wanda Frister.”

“And since that night, six months ago now, no change in those dreams?”

“Not much. The faces alternate. The original man and knife, then Billy Poteet's face and gun. The endings vary. The man puts down his knife and says he's surrendering and then I shoot him. Billy Poteet pulls the trigger and kills Wanda Frister and then I shoot him.”

“And yet neither ending is what actually happened.”

“No.”

“Any pattern to the variation?”

“Yeah. The pattern is I dream, I wake up nauseated, I run to the toilet and barf up my guts. Then I can't sleep the rest of the night. That's the damn pattern.”

“But you have told me that you were fired from the Tampa police for killing a teenager. Why don't you dream about that?”

“Don't know. He had a water pistol that looked real. But if you point a real-looking water pistol at a policeman, in dim light, you are just committing suicide.”

“Think he was wanting to commit suicide-by-cop?”

“No. He was just being stupid. A lot of criminals
are
criminals just because they're too dumb, too uneducated, too lacking in any job skills to be anything else. I've read studies that show that the average I.Q. of prison inmates is around eighty. Only a fifth of them have finished high school.

“You're intelligent. You're in Mensa,” Groves said. “Do you think low-I.Q. people are more likely to commit crimes?”

“No. But they are more likely to get into trouble with the law. There's a small distinction there. Intent and all that.”

Groves nodded. Serious, he looked out at the water a moment.

“So we lock them up in stone prisons,” Troy went on. “Any ‘rehabilitation' measures are a joke and poorly funded and ineptly carried out. Then we let them out and expect them to suddenly be models of good citizen behavior. If there's anything dumber than the criminals, it's all the rest of us.”

Groves looked back at Troy. “So you shot to death a teenager of possibly too low an I.Q.—perhaps half of yours—to be able to sort out what he was doing.”

Troy frowned at the tabletop in front of him. “Seems odd that I never dream about that.”

Groves nodded. “I want you to keep a notepad by your bed. Make a note of which version of the dream you had and the day and time. Bring the notepad next time.”

“Probably need to keep the notepad in the bathroom. Is that an important clue? Which dream, I mean?”

“I don't know. Perhaps you can tell me. But it's information easily obtained. May as well obtain it.”

“Typical cop-think,” Troy said. “Why don't you come to work for me? I'd have one extra officer and could stop having to sleep so much on the sofa in my office. That solves my workaholic problem and I don't need to see you any more. Neat solution.”

Groves gave a thin smile. “Working long hours isn't your problem.
Why
you want to work long hours may be. And you are resisting me, not yet willing to come to the truth.”

“Don't your patients always resist coming to the truth?” Troy said. “After all, if you cured them on the first visit, you would be flat broke.”

“See what I mean,” Groves said. “Deflecting. And I don't cure my clients. They cure themselves. Or not. I'm only the tour guide.” He looked at his laptop on the table in front of him. “I'll see you next Friday. Same time, same channel.”

Chapter 48

Saturday, January 11

Oddly, it seemed to Troy, the weekend was quiet. He and Lee went sailing on his Sea Pearl on Saturday, spent the night at her house, and drove her red Corvette up to Sanibel on Sunday.

“Tell me why we're doing this,” Troy said as they sat in traffic on Periwinkle Way. Lee was happily drumming on the steering wheel in time to the radio. Troy was feeling grumpy. In-season, the Sanibel main road was a slow-moving parking lot.

“It's fun,” Lee said. “We'll do some shopping. I have reservations at the Old Captiva House for six.”

Troy looked out the passenger-side window. “Could have sailed my boat up here faster. Isn't there an airfield you could have flown to?”

“No. Now try to enjoy yourself. People pay thousands to come to this island. Maybe we can run by Butts-Up-Beach and get some seashells.”

“There's a place in North Fort Myers where you can get all the shells you want, already cleaned and lacquered.”

“Troy Adam, you don't have a romantic bone in your body.”

“I might have one.”

“That's not, technically, a bone.”

“Oh. I didn't know.

“How can you not know? You're the Mangrove Bayou Director of Pubic Safety. Says so on your office door.”

“It's a heavy, heavy burden.”

“It's not all that heavy.”

“I meant the reputation. This is making me horny. Did you happen to also reserve a room at the inn?”

“You're joking, right? Those were probably booked for this month at least three years back.”

“Maybe not. The Sea Grape Inn won't take reservations more than six months out.” Mrs. Mackenzie at the Sea Grape Inn gave Troy the cop-discount on one of their smaller rental condos. “I could flash my badge. That would impress them.”

“I think my charge card would impress them more,” Lee said. “But no. We'll drive home after dinner. I'll make it up to you then.”

“I don't know if I can wait that long.”

She glanced sideways at him, with that grin he so loved. “There's a small box of tissues in the console. Try not to make a mess on the upholstery.”

The Old Captiva House restaurant was everything Lee had promised. Troy had never been to it before.

“Do they keep the Santa Claus and candy canes up on the roof all year, or is that just a Christmas thing?” he asked as they drove away after dinner.

“I never noticed them before,” Lee said. “They weren't there last April. Let's go home.” The traffic had thinned a little but it was not until they got onto I-75 that Lee was able to stretch the car's legs.

“Ease it off,” Troy warned at one point. “Don't need to get stopped with a chief of police in the car.”

“Oh. Poo.”

Chapter 49

Wednesday, January 15

Five days after her husband and son had been released on their own recognizance, Martha Stider came to see Troy. June brought her back to his office and seated Martha in a visitor chair. June stared down at Troy and Troy stared at Martha. Martha's face was a mass of bruises and she had a cut over one eye. Troy almost blurted out that she looked as if she had gone fifteen rounds with a prizefighter, but stifled himself.

“Martha, would you like for June, here, to sit in on our conversation?” Troy asked.

Martha Stider glanced at June and then nodded. “That might be nice.” She fluttered her hands a little, like a wounded bird hopping. Troy motioned for June to sit in the other visitor chair beside Martha.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

Martha started to talk but broke down within the first few words. As she wept, Troy opened his top right-hand drawer, pushed aside the .40-caliber Glock pistol the department had issued him and which he never carried because he preferred his old-fashioned .45-caliber Colt, and got out a box of tissues. He handed those to June, who pulled several out and passed those to Martha. He sat quietly, looking out the rear window to his right at Sunset Bay and the town boat ramp where a man, woman and two boys had launched a small motorboat and tied it off to one of the docks.

Martha Stider wept copiously. June offered several more tissues. The man now had the cover off the outboard and was poking around in it. Outboards worked best when worked hard and often, but too many boaters never learned that lesson, or learned to run an engine dry of fuel before putting it away for a long time.

Martha finally stopped sobbing. Troy looked back at her. “Tell me about it,” he said.

“I'm so ashamed,” Martha said. Troy knew that telling her she had nothing to be ashamed of wasn't likely to make any impression on her at this time. She needed to hear that, but not now. “What kind of mother lets her own son beat on her?” Martha sobbed.

“The mother of a son who is twenty-four years old and six-feet-two,” Troy said.

Martha nodded. “I don't know why he hates me so. I have never laid a hand on him. Growing up, The Judge wouldn't let me even restrict him or anything else when he misbehaved.”

“Did the judge ever spank Mark or reprimand him when he misbehaved?”

Martha was wiping one eye and looking at Troy with the other. “No,” she said in a small voice. “Mark just grew up wild, with no restrictions, ever.”

Troy called up the computer file June had created. “I have hospital records here,” he told Martha. “Who hit you on these dates?” Troy said. He read off the several dates.

Martha stared at Troy. “You have my medical records? How on earth did you do that? Why?”

“We're here to serve and protect you, Martha. You can thank June for collecting that information.”

“Oh.” Martha looked at June and blew her nose into a tissue. She looked back up at Troy. “Mostly it's Mark. He hits me in the face. The Judge likes to hit me lower down so the marks won't show in public. He's who broke my rib and my arm.”

“So both of the men in your house hit you?”

She nodded. “Mark usually wins any argument with The Judge. Then The Judge will come and beat me to make himself feel better. Pretty much, whoever loses any argument between them will beat me.”

Now that she was talking Martha seemed to be past the weeping stage. She even held her hands still. “The Judge makes me wear long sleeves and ankle-length dresses when I go out. They don't let me go out very often.”

“How did you get out today?”

“The Judge doesn't go to work these days. He's been suspended or something. But they went to Fort Myers to buy Mark a new car. I sat and sat, and thought and thought, and then I ran here. I mean I ran all the way here.”

“Do you plan to go home?”

She burst into tears again. June started passing tissues. Troy checked on the family with the boat. They were hauling it back out again, the man gesticulating at the woman as she drove the car pulling the trailer up the boat ramp. Not a great showing for the man of the house in front of his two sons. Troy was glad he couldn't hear what the man was saying.

“I don't know what to do,” Martha said. “I came to you because you once said you could help me.”

Troy nodded. “And so I can. Not personally, but I know people. June, how about taking Martha into the break room and sitting with her a bit while I make some phone calls.”

Troy called Sondra Lowe, director of The Women's Center. “Sondra? Troy Adam. I need your help,” he said.

“You at the station?”

“Yes. I have…”

“Ten minutes.”

“Good. I have a….” Troy realized he was talking to a dead line. That was Sondra, he thought. It occurred to him that once Sondra arrived he was going to have a hard time questioning Martha. He went to the break room and sent June back to her counter in the lobby. He took Martha back to the interrogation room next to the back door, where he could have her give a formal statement.

Troy turned on the video and sound and explained things to Martha. She didn't seem to much care. Once she had started talking, it all spilled out. Yes, they both beat the hell out of her any time either one of them got frustrated, which was often.

June knocked on the door and Troy let her in. “Sondra is out in the lobby,” June said. “She's hopping up and down.”

Troy nodded. “Sit down with us and listen.” He gently slid into discussion of the murder of Barbara Gillispie and Martha said she heard Mark telling Judge Stider about it. Mark had raped the girl, threatening her with the gun. When Barbara fought back too much he had pulled the trigger. Mark and the judge had put the body into the boat, then gone off in the boat. The two of them had spent an entire night trying to clean up the car and the boat. The judge had told Mark that they needed to get rid of both of those because he didn't think they would ever get all the blood out.”