Hawk Channel Chase (17 page)

I washed my face, brushed my teeth, pulled on a KWPD T-shirt, and presented myself.

“Humorous,” she said.

“Ominous.”

She poured two and we took them outside. Even with the sun up, the porch still smelled of fresh, damp night flowers. A throaty, high-revving motorcycle over on Fleming field-tested its compact exhaust system. Mikey Bokamp’s empty Smirnoff Ice bottle sat on the table, full of sugar ants.

Beth inspected it, turned her head and fixed her eyes on me. “A fine vintage.”

“Please state your mission,” I said. “Any leads, any suspects?”

“Nada. But I’ve rethought my decision not to use your immense photo talent. I have an offer for you.”

“If it’s a vanity portrait of your motorcycle, I can discount my rate card.”

“I logged onto the department’s secure server,” she said. “One of our ghoulish sergeants took bad pictures.”

“Surely the body’s been moved by now,” I said.

“Long gone. We’ve got dozens of body shots and six or seven of the immediate crime scene. I want a post-forensic review. Every room in the house.”

“What are you after?” I said. “A certain class of suspect?”

“Druggies looking for stuff that’s easy to resell,” said Beth. “With the jails overcrowded, you can’t believe how many dopers and burglars get early release.”

“Okay,” I said.”Addicts and heavy users know what flips fast. Game consoles, iPods, hard drives, laptops and cameras.”

Beth turned her head for a moment, toward Eaton Street. “That’s what makes Hammond’s place so strange. The laptop was still on his desk. There were plenty of things that dirtbags would have scored, small objects of value.”

“How was he killed?”

“For starters, he was hit on the head with a candlestick.”

“Sounds like a childhood board game.”

Watkins ignored me. “That was step one. It knocked him down or out cold. He was strangled, garroted, with an electric cord attached to a hair dryer.”

“A hair dryer in his dining room?”

“How do you know where it was?” she said.

“Colonel Mustard told me.”

She wasn’t humored.

“Your words, Detective,” I said, “as Julio Alonzo would be my unwilling witness. You hoped Carmen’s ill will didn’t extend to the man’s dining room. Maybe not your exact words, but close.”

“Okay, okay. I don’t know why the hair dryer was in his dining room, but you asked the question and none of my people did. That’s why I want you in there to look around. You’re good for a full-day rate if you can start in half an hour and work for two. Or less if that’s all you need.”

“You want my photos in your files so the sheriff’s office won’t claim-jump your case.”

“That might help… I’ll admit that,” she said. “They’ll be less likely to steal my thunder. The sheriff or the state. If the pictures give me ideas or, better yet, clues.”

“I have to face a motivational issue. If I didn’t care about the man prior to his death, what compels me to give a crap now?”

“Forget him,” she said. “Care about murder, the crime, the manner of death.”

“But you said his lifestyle could have contributed.”

“Do it for me. Make his life the pavement on the road to my approval.”

“You set the bar so high,” I said. “How long did you watch me sleep?”

“Don’t worry. No tent poles, no audible rudeness.”

“Does your approval win me free coupons and fun tickets, or fewer felony accusations?”

“He was your neighbor…”

“Even though I didn’t know him,” I said. “I’ll do it for his dog.”

“That dog’s going to need a new…”

“I travel too much. She’d spend her whole life at the kennel.”

Watkins went for the door. “Take pictures. Help me find a killer.”

“Just like that? B follows A?”

“Remember this about cops, Alex,” she said. “Having unsolved cases or being proved wrong makes us feel useless. More important, we don’t want bad guys to get away. Who’s driving a Dodge Charger and watching you?”

I clammed.

“You asked what I knew about Bay Point,” she said.

“That I did. And you paired that with the Charger? Now we both have secrets to discuss.”

“Later. After Jerry’s mess.”

The kitchen wall phone buzzed. I didn’t recognize the local number on my caller ID. Facing down my intense, debilitating fear, I picked up but said nothing.

“At noon, let us pray,” the man’s voice said. “Yes, no?”

It was Copeland Cormier wanting to meet again at the chapel.

I paused for a mental picture of Sam driving away on Bad George Road. “Yes,” I said and hung up, stepped away. The phone rang again.

Sally Catherman’s name on the ID. Her father, trying to weasel a status report.

At this point did I owe him that? I’d warned him that I’d be solo for a day or two. My main concern was for Sam. If I answered to comfort Bob or to learn anything he might have for me, how many other people would listen in? I knew for sure that I was wallowing in bad soup. His daughter was probably dead and her car was locked in an impound lot. What the hell else did I need to know?

I let it go to my message service. The listeners probably got to hear it anyway.

Sorting my camera equipment took a few minutes. The bag was still filled with gear I had taken to Bimini. Flash deflectors, a diffuser, a mini-tripod, Ziploc bags. I whittled it down to two cameras, backup batteries and two oatmeal raisin granola bars for emergency use. I added my digital voice recorder, a twelve- and a six-inch plastic ruler, a notepad and a pen. If she wanted me to wear them, Watkins could provide rubber gloves. I changed into dark shorts and a shirt that couldn’t be ruined by leftover fingerprint dust. The last thing I did was to print out a full-day job invoice, no location fee, no mileage charge, payable in thirty days.

Walking Grinnell, I watched traffic crawl each way on Eaton. Gawkers drawn by instinct to yellow crime scene tape. Fortunately there wasn’t a crowd when I turned the corner. A uniformed cop whom I knew only as Frinzi stood on Jerry Hammond’s stubby walkway, face-to-face with a man of medium build, high blood pressure, short light brown hair, and a tightly trimmed beard. Frinzi looked displeased and bored. The belligerent man claimed to be a “soul-pal, and not what you think” of the deceased. Beyond a quick solution to the heinous murder, he demanded a first search of Jerry’s home for “mementos.”

I stood away from the men, scoped the house. By Key West standards it was a modest one-and-a-half-story Classic Revival. By the look of its paint it probably was restored in the 1990s. The front door and corresponding interior hallway were offset to the right. The window curtains at the peak suggested that Hammond had converted his compact attic to a sleeping loft. Every window in the house was wide open, either a devil’s swap of reducing death stench by turning off the air conditioning or, more to my liking, fresh plus cold air and a big utility bill for Hammond’s estate. I looked up to see Watkins at the front door. She directed the officer to let me pass.

“No drop cloths, brown paper to walk on?” I said.

“Useless out here from the get-go,” said Watkins. “The sidewalk was open to use before he was found. Three different mail carriers, a UPS delivery woman and who knows who else. I was the first detective on scene, so I disqualified it.”

“Mail carriers he worked with?”

“You’re here to bring me up to speed?”

“If it pissed you off, you can fire me,” I said.

“We checked them out.”

“The front porch?” I said.

“Documented and processed. Cat piss, lizard skeletons and toxic dust bunnies. That residue circle under the trellis is dried tequila, no salt. The snoop team leader claimed he tested for sneaker tracks and scrape marks.”

“How do I treat it?”

Watkins shrugged. “Inside and out, you walk anywhere. They did their thing, they gave the whole place a green light. Could I ask you to look at these?” She motioned me in the door, opened a manila envelope and pulled out a half dozen five-by-seven informal portraits of men, one per picture. Each faced the camera and sat or stood in a local setting, or somewhere that looked just like Key West. “You’re a man about town,” said Beth. “Do you recognize anyone?”

“I’m a what?”

“You know a lot of people.”

“This is an outdoor town, Beth. Everyone knows more people than if they lived somewhere cold or rainy.”

“Speech over? Tell me if you know these fellows.”

I knew two by name. A charter boat captain and a Duval Street shop owner. Three I didn’t recognize. I looked carefully at the last one. “I know his face but not his name.”

“Know him from where?”
 

“He hangs at the Green Parrot. I saw him once at the Half Shell and wondered how he had unglued his regular bar stool from his ass.”

“You never spoke with him?” she said.

“Never introduced. I can’t recall even nodding hello.”

“That’s Jerry Hammond.”

“So I knew him but I didn’t know him,” I said. “Who are these others?”

“People we want to talk with.”

“Look on the laptop for his Christmas Card list.”

Her face tightened, then relaxed. “Okay, assuming you weren’t being facetious, that’s a good idea. That’s why you’re here. The charter captain and shop owner, do you know if they’re gay?”

“I have no idea. Who was the guy on the sidewalk when I arrived?”

“We interviewed him yesterday, and I just took his picture. He had a rock-solid alibi which, like his name, we don’t need to discuss just now. Do you want some mint toothpaste?”

She smeared a streak just under my nose and led me inside.

Hammond’s decor confirmed that our tastes varied in more ways than music. I quickly absorbed the scene analysis mess. Lengths of disposable plastic measuring tape, a crop of small flags, mini-memorials to mark spots of interest (though I saw no blood), fingerprint lift kit smudge and general disarray. Beyond that, his front rooms had the warmth and coziness of a hotel lobby. But it all looked fresh, new.

“He did this on a postal worker’s salary?” I said.

“We’re looking into his finances. We’ve heard there was an inheritance. He was about the right age to have dead or dying parents. You want to start work, Alex?”

I opened my camera pouch. “It doesn’t matter that I don’t know forensics? The tech people have gone into overdrive since I started this little sideline. I feel a bit intimidated here.”

“Techs are good at identifying perps,” she said. “That’s not enough.”

“That’s more than you could get ten years ago.”

“Screw history. I want more than just locating bad guys. I want evidence I can use to grab juries by the short hairs. I want arrests but I also want to convict the fuckers.”

“So you want me to photograph motives?”

“That would be a good start,” she said. “Motives in high-resolution, full color. Compulsion snapshots, psychopathic portraits, whatever you think best. I need to make a call. I’ll leave you to it.”

I wanted to walk the house, do a general survey. But first I quit moving, stood in one spot. It was a trick I had learned from Bobbi Lewis several years ago when she was in a mood to share. She had counseled me to get a feel for a place where someone had died, to attempt a higher level of focus, to know another dimension of a room I had never seen before or observed carefully, and absorb a sense of what belonged or didn’t.

Right away the living room bothered me. There were no pictures of people, no family, no friends. Maybe I would find them in other rooms. Hammond had installed high-traffic carpeting, tables with rounded corners, four chairs and twin sofas designed for hard use, and bland knick-knacks positioned to fill space. He had hung a jumble of opulence:
 
primary-tone abstracts, watercolors of Old Island facades and backcountry scenes, and swirling art deco prints. Expensive-looking, no doubt hip in some circles but, to me, visual cacophony.

His CDs and DVDs also bothered me. Unlike the orderly state of the tasteless room, they were strewn in disarray on two broad shelves and, while the stereo and TV looked expensive, new, there weren’t many movies or music disks. Why own upscale electronics and not have a media collection? The room had a split personality. It held no clues to direct my thinking. All I knew for certain was that the air conditioning was not in use.

I walked the hall past the dining room where Hammond had been strangled, where Beth now stood in a far corner talking into her phone. I passed a half-bath with a walk-in shower under the loft stairway. A square pantry gave to the master bedroom at left and the kitchen to the right. My powers of observation dwindled as I walked. Chemicals used a day earlier by the city’s forensic team were making my eyes water. The mint toothpaste wasn’t working. I might have been smarter to push wasabi up my nostrils. Even with cracked windows and the mint, the death stink still registered. Beth had done me a favor by advising me not to shower. I wondered if a complete interior repainting would fix the home’s odor, or if the IRS would allow me to write off my clothing. The prospect of inhaling fresh air drew me through the kitchen, out the back door to a small porch.