Death Among the Mangroves (30 page)

“Stop?”
Bubba said. “What does that mean.”

Troy looked at all of them, around the table. “It means tell them to halt and hit the ground spread-eagled and you call for backup. And kill the sons of bitches if they so much as twitch. Am I clear on this?”

His officers all looked at one another. For the first time they looked a little scared.

“I'll assign two of you to monitor the Stiders if we can catch them at home. Here are the Stiders' vehicle descriptions.”

Troy passed out printed descriptions of the Mercedes SUV and its plate. He had pulled the record for Mark's new Jaguar and printed that description too. “Of course, it's got the paper dealer tag still,” Troy said.

“What are we supposed to do when we see them, Chief?” Milo asked. “Assuming they're not attacking school kids.”

“Nothing unless you see them breaking even the tiniest law we could arrest them for. One of them drops a gum wrapper on the sidewalk, I want to know about it. But don't try to take them one-on-one. Try not to let them see you. Don't be a hero. Stay away from them. Report and follow. We'll work it out as we go so that we don't have all of us trooping along in a pack a block back from Judge Stider as he goes to eat his lunch in some restaurant. It's mid-season, so there are a lot of people on the streets to give us concealment. The bad news is that there are a lot of people on the streets.”

“What about our regular enforcement?” Juan Valdez asked.

“I'll stay here in the station to be in overall charge and sort of patrol around the immediate vicinity until something interesting happens.”

“You mean you're gonna stroll around acting like the tin duck in a shooting gallery,” Bubba said. “That's stupid. The ducky gets knocked over and the shooter wins the little prize.”

“You're probably right, Bubba. But the ducky isn't looking for the shooter. The ducky doesn't dodge and the ducky doesn't shoot back.

“Still, if anything happens to me, Juan takes over. Juan will take the other department cell with him. June, you will go home and stay there.

“But…

“No buts about it. One of the Stider clan smashes out a window and breaks in here, what would you do about it? You aren't a law enforcement officer and you're not armed. No, go home.”

“Last thing. In the Army we said we had to move, shoot and communicate. I want you out there moving and communicating. I hope you won't have to do any shooting. But, if you do, do it well. I've made you all practice once a month with handguns, shotguns and the rifles. If you have to use one, remember your training.”

They scattered, some to change out of uniforms, and one by one the private cars drove off from the rear parking lot.

Tom VanDyke was the last out. He paused and looked at Troy. “You know, Chief, this could all be a false alarm.”

“Sure. We took away their guns and they like to have guns so they bought some more. But why the hurry?”

Chapter 52

Friday and Saturday, January 17, 18

The Stiders went straight home from their Naples shopping spree, parked their cars under their house, walked up the stairs to the front door, and went in. The several officers on watch that afternoon and through the night reported no movement. At three p.m. on Friday the last of the kids left the schools. At five p.m. the last of the teachers left too and Troy called off those troops and sent them home to rest.

When darkness came Troy left the light on in his corner office and spent the night prowling around within one block of the town hall and police station. Nothing happened and he saw no one other than a few late-night fishermen recovering a boat at the boat ramp a block away. His officers checked in frequently and rotated the sleeping shifts.

One blessing, Troy thought, was the weather. It was chilly and for once a bulletproof vest was something that helped keep him warm, not just something that was uncomfortable to wear on a hot day. But, while it functioned as a thermal lining, it was probably not much use against the sort of firepower the Stiders had purchased.

By eight a.m. Saturday morning he was tired of staring at every little leaf that fluttered and taking cover every time a fish jumped in Sunset Bay. He got up from behind the corner of the low brick wall around the town hall parking lot, stretched his back and headed for the front door of the police station on the dead-end half-block of Connecticut Avenue. Out of the corner of his eye he saw, in the rear parking lot, the black plastic lid of the town hall's Dumpster rise. Without conscious thought he dove back behind the brick wall. There was a bang and one of the bricks flew off and over Troy's head, half of it disintegrated into a red dust.

Troy immediately crawled forward a good twenty feet, staying flat behind the wall. Several more shots hit the wall. The shooter was seeing if the .223-caliber could penetrate the wall, which it could not. Troy popped his head up and took a shot with his .45-caliber pistol. The bullet made a loud and satisfying bang when it hit the Dumpster but only ricocheted off the heavy steel side. But it forced Mark Stider's blond hair down for a second and Troy quickly jumped back the way he had come and took cover again. He had at least gotten within range for the handgun and had a decent angle to shoot, if he could do so without Mark Stider blowing his head off when he showed himself. In the distance he thought he heard a VHF marine radio talking. Odd, he thought, there were no boats using Sunset Bay behind him at the moment.

In the middle of all this, Don Roberts, head of the volunteer firefighters, drove into the parking lot and into his “Fire Chief” parking space. Mark Stider's head and shoulders popped up and he took a bead with his rifle on the rear window of Roberts' pickup truck. Troy heard shots, two from a big-caliber handgun and one from the rifle, almost together, and some more metallic bangs off the Dumpster. Someone else was in the fight too. He sat up in a crouch and looked. Angel Watson was standing by the corner of the town hall directly across from Troy, her gun out. As Troy watched she took another shot and Troy saw a piece of the plastic lid fly off near Mark Stider's head.

Christ, Angel
, Troy thought to himself,
We're in a direct crossfire. Be a wonder we don't shoot each other
. Mark was swinging his rifle from Don Roberts' truck toward Angel. Troy had only a head and part of Mark's shoulders to aim at. One reason he had tritium night sights on his pistol was because, while they had glowing dots that he couldn't see now that it was daylight, they also had good-sized white rings around them for daytime use. That made quick target acquisition and sighting easier. He focused on the front sight. Doing that, the rear sight and Mark Stider's head were both blurry. He squeezed the trigger
. Let it surprise me. Don't need to shoot Angel by jerking.

The gun barked and kicked up, the sound of the .45 distinctly loud, but matched in the same instant by a more distant shot. Mark Stider disappeared.

“I got him,” he heard Angel shout. Troy jumped the brick wall and approached the Dumpster, gun extended. Angel came toward him from the other side and Troy moved to his left so they were no longer in each other's line of fire.

“Who wants to stick their head into the scary Dumpster first?” Troy asked. He pointed at Angel and at the Dumpster and then reached out to rap on the side of the Dumpster nearest him. Angel took a quick peek from the other side while he looked in from his side.

“Ew,” she said. She put her gun away.

“‘Ew' is right,” Troy said. Mark Stider lay atop an assortment of thrown-away paperwork, bags of shredded papers, doughnut and pizza boxes and coffee cups, and garbage bags. What was left of his head ended at the bridge of his nose and there were brains and fragments of scalp, some with blond hair attached, splattered all over the bags under him. The blood continued to spurt for a few more seconds and then stopped.

“What the hell?” Troy heard someone say. He turned to see Don Roberts standing beside his truck looking at a bullet hole in the passenger side of his rear window. His windshield was shattered too. Angel's timely fire had made Mark Stider jerk the trigger and pull to the right as he fired.

“Sorry about that,” Troy called. It seemed inadequate to the situation but he didn't know what else to say. Telling Roberts,
“You drove right through the middle of a firefight and you're lucky your brains aren't hanging from your rear-view mirror”
didn't seem likely to get back that loving feeling.

The radio sound came again. Now Troy could hear it clearly. “Mark, are you there?” he reached into the Dumpster and found a marine VHF radio under Mark's shoulder. It was set to Chanel 68, one of the non-commercial talk channels for civilian use.

“Judge, is that you?” Troy asked.

There was a lengthy silence. “Judge?”

Hans Stider's voice came. “Who is this?”

“This is Troy Adam, Judge. I'll call you shortly. Out.” He turned off the radio and handed it to Angel.

“Why the radio? Angel said. “Why not a cell phone?”

“Judge Stider is clever. He knows we can track smart phones. My bet, the kid won't have a cell phone on him.”

Don Roberts had walked up and now he looked into the Dumpster. “Wow,” he said. “This the guy shot at me?”

“Yep. You can thank Officer Watson, here, for distracting him just as he pulled the trigger.”

Roberts looked at Angel. “Thank you, little lady.” He looked at Troy. “Who pays for my windshield and rear window?”

“Don't you have insurance?” Angel asked.

“Well, yeah. But I don't think it covers wars and civil insurrection.”

“Ask Mortimer Potem,” Troy said. “Our town manager loves to pay the expenses the police department runs up.”

Bubba Johns drove into the lot, parked and walked over. He looked into the Dumpster a moment.

“Well, at least he's in the right place at last,” he said.

“Be back soon,” Troy said. He walked to the back door of the police station and let himself in. In his office he looked up Judge Stider's phone and dialed that on his private cell phone.

“I take it that since I'm talking to you on the phone and not to my son on the radio, you've captured him,” Stider said.

“Actually, your son is in the Dumpster behind the town hall,” Troy said. “With his head completely blown off.”

“You threw my son's body into a Dumpster?”

“Seemed the right place for garbage. What are you going to do about that, Hans? Sue me?”

“I might. I might do a lot more.”

“Listen, Hans. You're starting to really bore me. You want to come over here and double-down on this stupidity, or would you rather come out and give yourself up?”

“I've done nothing wrong. Mark slipped out last night when I wasn't looking. He used the elevator we have for hauling up groceries, so your man didn't see him going down the stairs.”

“Mark wasn't bright enough to think of that. You sent him here.”

“You can't prove that. Whatever he did I know nothing about.”

This all needs to end now
, Troy thought. “Judge, your kid is dead. Your wife has left you. You are going to prison and I'm going to send you there. They really like judges in prison.”

“None of this is my fault,” Stider said. “If that stupid cow Martha had raised the kid right he would have been a lawyer, then the next Judge Stider.”

“I guess you didn't beat on her enough.”

“Damn kid was always trouble. I tried. I tried so hard to make him right. But he was vicious from childhood.”

“I can only wonder why.”

Stider didn't seem to hear Troy. He was talking to himself.

“He raped girls in high school. I got him out of that, thanks to Chief Redmond. He barely scraped through college and raped some more girls there that I had to buy off. He was forever getting into trouble with his fists. This is all his fault. He managed to flunk out of law school even after I ordered the staff there to keep him in. If they had taken better care of him, he would have graduated.”

“Everything is always someone else's fault for you,” Troy said. “But in prison everyone is innocent and nobody cares whose fault it is that you are there.”

“I'm not about to go to prison.”

“Sure you are. You and I both know it. You helped your kid get rid of Barbara Gillispie's body. Then you helped him get rid of evidence. The car thing was a good trick, sending it out of the country. But we got the boat and the body and the gun, and those and Martha's testimony are all we need.”

“It's still only a conspiracy charge for me. Mark did all the really bad things. I'm not to blame for killing that girl.”

“You still don't get it,” Troy said. “
Any
prison time for you is a death sentence. You're going to have friends. Many, many friends. Tell you what, I want to be your friend too so I'm going to help you out. Every month, for as long as you survive in prison, which I would not expect to be very long, I'm going to mail you a big jar of Vaseline.”

“You bastard.”

“In my case an accident of birth, but you are a self-made man. I'm going to enjoy your trial. I'll be there at the sentencing. You are going to spend your last days in a small room with a stainless steel toilet and a three-hundred-pound sexual predator roommate nicknamed ‘Tiny,' and the only good news is that it won't be for long. Someone will shank you before you've gone through your first jar of Vaseline, is my bet.”