Shadows (14 page)

Fleur took off with a boyfriend, a grunge musician from Seattle, she said. His band worked various gigs around the country, but the jobs ran out and their bus broke down in Atlanta.

The musician boyfriend asked Fleur to call her mother for money. She refused. They argued, but he apologized later the same evening and fixed her a drink in their motel room. Twenty-four hours later, she woke up bruised and sick, with a splitting headache. He was gone, with whatever money and good jewelry she had.

“The only thing I feel bad about,” she said mournfully, “was my watch. My dad gave it to me on my eighteenth birthday.”

“What did the cops do?” Nazario asked indignantly.

“I didn't call them.” She shrugged. “I brought it on myself. It's not like it never happened before.”

“Dios mío, niña.
You got to pull your act together. How'd you get here from Atlanta?”

“Hitched.”

“¿Qué?
That's dangerous!”

“A trucker brought me most of the way. Nice guy.”

“You're lucky to be alive! Please don't ever do that again. You using drugs?”

“He had some pot.”

There was little food to speak of in the huge stainless-steel kitchen or in his apartment refrigerator, and she was hungry. He ordered a pizza.

While Fleur showered, Nazario called Sonya Whitaker, W. P. Adair's longtime secretary/bookkeeper, at home.

“Fleur's there? Is she okay?”

“A little down on her luck,” Nazario said. “Think the old man would mind if she spent the night?”

“Do what's right, Detective. Fleur's not welcome right now, thanks to Shelly. But blood is thicker, you know. Between you and me, Fleur will still be W. P. Adair's daughter long after his current wife is gone and, hopefully, long forgotten. I watched Fleur grow up. The poor kid got a raw deal.

“But don't mention her to Shelly, or to him, if they call. I'm the sole survivor from his original staff only because I know enough to stay out of that woman's way.”

Fleur's color began to look a little better as they ate, though she insisted on beer with her pizza. He'd ordered salad, too, and a side of eggplant parmigiana.

“So, your name, it sounds French.”

“They named me for the place where I was conceived. A town where artists congregate. It's where Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear.”

“Nice.” He frowned. “Look, you can stay here tonight. But that's it, unless you talk to your dad and he tells me different. I have to leave early in the morning. I'll be back tomorrow night or the next day. By then you gotta be outta here.”

“Sure.” She put down her fork and bit her lip. “Don't worry about me. I'll go to work tomorrow, find myself a place.”

“What kind a work?”

“I go to parties.”

“You mean you—”

“No. I'm not hooking, if that's what you're asking.”

She explained as he rinsed the dishes in his little sink.

When he turned, she held his gun in her hands.

“Cool,” she said. “Is this real?”

“Hey!” He snatched it from her.

“I was just looking at it,” she protested. “It's beautiful.”

“Yeah, a work of art. But it can do ugly things.”

When he went downstairs to check the property, he took the gun with him, unloaded it, and locked it in the glove compartment of his car.

 

“Why'd you come up here to go to sleep when you grew up in the main house?” he asked.

“I don't have a room anymore. My dad always kept my old bedroom for me, no matter who he was married to. But when Shelly redecorated, she got rid of my stuff. She made my room into a giant closet for her evening clothes. Has her collection of Judith Lieber evening bags on display, like art, in glass cases. So tacky.

“Besides, I always liked it up here.” Her expression waiflike, she glanced around the familiar room. “When I was little and my parents were fighting, I'd sneak up here and sleep with Maria, our housekeeper.”

Nazario gave her a T-shirt to sleep in.

“Take my bed. I'll sleep on the couch in the next room.”

She tumbled into bed, then patted the spot next to her. “There's room right here.”

“Look,” he said firmly, “your father trusts me with his property. I can't take advantage of his daughter.”

“You're not taking advantage,” she protested. “I'm not sixteen years old, I'm twenty-four.”

He shook his head. “You're making me uncomfortable.”

“Sorry.” Her voice sounded small. “I always do that to people. I don't mean to.”

“I didn't mean it that way. It was my poor choice of words.”

She didn't answer, alone in his bed.

He sighed and said good night.

He was nearly asleep when she came into the room and curled up next to him.

“What are you doing?” he grumbled.

“I don't wanna be alone. Just hold me.”

He sighed. “I don't like being put into this position.”

She began to whimper.

He got up, went to find a blanket, covered her, then sat down next to her. “Okay.” He put his arm around her. “Get some rest and together we'll work things out for you, I promise.”

“Sorry to trouble you so late, but I have to go back to Miami tonight,” Stone explained.

“No apology necessary, Detective.” Dr. Peter Jensen, the Collier County medical examiner, fumbled for his key. The building, adjacent to a hospital, was minuscule compared to the Miami–Dade County Medical Examiner's sprawling complex. “Right now I welcome any reason to return to the office. My mother-in-law and her sister are paying their annual visit. They've been with us for the last ten days. Four more till they say adios.”

Jensen, tall and bookish, with salt-and-pepper hair, tugged at his lower lip. He might remember the case, he said. When he pulled the file, he was sure.

“Yes, sir. Rang a bell when you mentioned that the victim was a former Miami law enforcement officer. That one struck me as out of the ordinary at first.”

“How so?”

“He was the first dead jogger to come in here wearing a gun.”

“Ray Glover was armed when he was killed?”

The doctor raised a thoughtful eyebrow and nodded. “A .25 caliber automatic weapon, fully loaded, as I recall. On a sunny spring Sunday, mind you, in this bucolic area with little crime or traffic. He wore it concealed in a cloth body holster. You know, the ones that wrap around the rib cage and fasten with Velcro. Unnoticeable under a baggy T-shirt.

“Unusual. Thought it might be worth looking into, an indicator of foul play or even suicidal tendencies, psychological problems, or paranoia on the victim's part.

“But there was a logical explanation once he was identified. Our dead jogger was a former Miami law enforcement officer, from a city where the violent crime rate had been enormously high.

“Wearing a gun was obviously his habit, a sign of the times and the environment to which he'd been accustomed. Probably wore a weapon routinely, the way I wear a wristwatch.”

“Can I see the pictures and the autopsy report?”

“Certainly.” The doctor shuffled out the eight-by-tens like oversized playing cards.

“Did you injure your hand, Detective? It looks swollen.”

“A small mishap. It's fine.” He picked up one of the photos. “Did you go out to the accident scene, Doctor?”

“No,” Jensen said. “It was a Sunday. After church we brunch with friends at the country club. I think I got a call but the deputy said he didn't require my presence.” He peered through his reading glasses at a document from the file.

“According to the report, the victim remained unidentified until late Sunday afternoon when one Katie Abernathy called the hospital to ask if there had been any accidents. Said her live-in boyfriend had never returned from his morning jog. She was referred to the sheriff's office, then came in and made the positive ID. I took my first look at the body on Monday.” He leafed through the pages to the autopsy report.

“Ankle fractures and a grill pattern higher up on the thigh indicated that he was erect, on his feet, when hit, then went airborne. His head struck the windshield or roof of the vehicle that hit him, resulting in a scalp laceration and a depressed skull fracture. Then he fell off to the side. Typical scenario in pedestrian versus car fatalities.

“He had other fractures and internal injuries, but the head injury was the primary cause of death.”

Stone stared at the grotesquely sprawled corpse on the blacktop and remembered the husky young cop whose strong arms had lifted him up on the darkest night of his childhood.

“I understand they never found the car or driver,” he said. “Was there much physical evidence?”

The doctor frowned at a printout. “Flecks of white paint on the victim's clothing and in his hair, possibly from a GM vehicle, and bits of glass and plastic from a broken headlight and turn signal lens embedded in his skin. Nothing much good without a vehicle to match it to.”

Stone frowned. That should have been enough to identify a make and model, he thought. “This was a divided stretch of roadway?”

“Yes, sir. Still is. Northbound. Drive it every day myself. There's a gully, a big, wide, grassy median that separates it from the southbound lanes. Joggers often use the bicycle path, which is about three feet off the roadway. That's where this fellow was hit. See here, in this photo? You can see the scuff mark made by his running shoes on impact.”

“The road looks straight.”

“Like an arrow,” Dr. Jensen said. “Due north.”

“So the weather was clear, the road straight, and he was jogging several feet off the pavement. How do you think he happened to be hit?”

The doctor shrugged. “Anybody's guess. Distracted drivers take their eyes off the road for all sorts of reasons. To retrieve a dropped cigarette, change the radio station or CD, make a call, swat an unruly child. Might have swerved to avoid another vehicle, or an animal darting across the roadway.”

Stone frowned.

“Maybe the driver had been out drinking all night and was impaired,” Jensen said. “Could be why he didn't stop.”

Stone rubbed his chin as he studied the pictures, one at a time. “Who found him?”

“A woman passerby called nine-one-one from a pay phone at a Texaco station three or four miles north of the scene. Saw a dead body in the road as she drove by. Said she didn't stop because she was late for church. Deputy drove out to check her story and, sure thing, there he was.”

“He's hit by a northbound car,” Stone said, thinking aloud, “hurled off to one side, lands out in the roadway. But if he was thrown to the side, how did he get tire impressions on his clothes and his skin?”

“Let me see that.” The doctor examined the two photos Stone handed him. “Often, after a pedestrian is hit, other motorists run over the body.”

“Right,” Stone said. “But the lanes are northbound. Look at the impressions. You can see where a tire backed up, rotating his T-shirt down toward the pavement, dragged his clothing downward across his skin. Then there's another impression….”

“He should not have tire marks.” The doctor's eyelids fluttered behind his glasses.

“But here,” Stone said. “It looks like a wheel depressed the side of his torso—it's even more obvious in the morgue pictures—mashing it down as a tire backed up and over his body.”

They stared at each other.

“I see what you're suggesting.” Jensen ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Maybe my first instinct, my gut reaction, was right.” He got to his feet to study the photo more closely, under a high-intensity lamp.

“You know,” he said, almost as an aside, “that I am at the mercy of the police investigators. Some are better than others. The deputy who handled the scene was convinced this was a simple hit-and-run accident.”

“Was he a trained, full-time traffic homicide investigator?”

“No, not much call for one in these parts back then.”

“Do you mind if I borrow the file for a consultation with our chief medical examiner? He's an expert on pedestrian-crash reconstruction.”

“No, not at all,” Jensen said. “I'd be extremely eager to hear his conclusions. Give my regards to your chief. I did an internship in his office years ago, the high point of my professional career, the greatest learning experience I ever had. In Miami, pathologists see cases they wouldn't see in a hundred years anywhere else.”

“Not always, sir,” Stone said. “Sometimes pretty bizarre things happen in places you'd least expect.”

He signed a receipt for the file and left, a man in a hurry. As he pulled out of the parking lot, Dr. Jensen emerged from the building and waved him down.

“I just checked our log for that date. That same Sunday a local boy dove off a pier into the lake and fractured his neck. Drowned before anyone realized he was in trouble. That evening a light plane crashed. A local county official, his wife, and daughter, coming home from a family reunion in Mobile. Killed all three. Might be a slow day in Miami, but for this office it was a full house.

“I have an assistant now, but back then I was the only doctor, running a one-man office.”

“Sure,” Stone said. “I understand. Sometimes things fall through the cracks.”

He found his way back onto Alligator Alley, then drove east through the dark, his mind racing far ahead of his headlights.