The Dead Detective (18 page)

“I think I’m learning why churches are made of stone,” Harry said.

“That bad, huh?”

“That bad. And the entire staff of ministers and assistant ministers— all except for my boy, Bobby Joe Waldo—is the biggest collection of Biblethumping religious zealots I’ve ever come across. But, what the hell, this is Florida. How are you and Jim doing?”

Vicky jerked her head toward the squad room and when Harry looked past her he could see Nick Benevuto seated at his desk in a far corner. “It’s a little weird when the suspect you’re investigating is sitting across the room from you.” She paused, hesitating to say more.

“You haven’t come up with anything that might clear him? Or at least raise some doubts?”

Vicky gave him a steady look. “No, Harry. Not a thing. Are you still convinced the killer is someone involved with that church?”

Harry nodded and watched Vicky shift her weight in her chair. When he looked past her he saw that Jim Morgan had lowered his eyes. Harry smiled for the first time that day.

“Hey, guys, this is what homicide is all about. You follow every lead, every gut feeling. And when it’s all over, with a bit of luck, you end up with the right guy.”

Vicky stood and stared at him. “So it’s not just the dead detective’s well-known instinct for getting inside a killer’s head. Or all that mysticism about victims talking to him.” She returned his smile, but hers was cold and hard, her voice dripping sarcasm. “I think the captain actually believes in all that. I think he’s even counting on that bit of homicide voodoo to get Benevuto off the hook.”

Harry stared at her, allowing the bitterness in her voice to hang between them. He continued to hold her gaze as he leaned back in his chair. “Let’s get back to work, partner.”

Harry’s use of the word
partner
hit her like a slap, and Vicky realized they probably wouldn’t be using that word between them for a very long time.

Harry gathered his things, including the old mug shot of Bobby Joe Waldo. He had decided to show it to Darlene Beckett’s neighbors and friends to see if anyone could place the young minister with her in the weeks preceding her death. As he left the conference room Nick Benevuto approached him.

“Harry, I gotta talk to you.”

Harry nodded and stepped back inside the conference room. “What can I do for you, Nick?”

Benevuto’s eyes kept darting toward the main door of the squad room. “It’s your partner and her new sidekick. Especially Stanopolis. She’s really out for my ass, Harry, and she’s really bought into everything this kid Morgan claims he found.” He shook his head. “Okay, maybe I was off base tryin’ to dick that Beckett broad. And maybe I was stupid using one of our unmarked cars when I stopped by her place. But sweet Jesus, Harry, I never snuffed her, and I sure as hell never tried to alter department records to hide the fact that I was in an unmarked car when I went to her place. Shit, I wouldn’t know how to alter a computer record.”

Harry looked steadily into Benevuto’s eyes. “Did you ever see Darlene Beckett’s body?” he asked.

“No, Harry, I never did.”

“She looked scared, Nick. But the fear came later, when she realized she was going to die. First she looked surprised, and that sense of surprise never completely left her face. I think it was a surprise that came from something she saw. Like maybe she knew her killer, or she was surprised that someone like that would
be
a killer, because maybe he was a minister, or a cop, or a kid, and it surprised her that someone like that could have just cut her throat. So it’s like I told you before, Nick, the squad has no choice; they’ve got to check you out.”

Nick shook his head vehemently. “Those two, your partner and this Morgan kid, aren’t just checking me out, Harry. They’re out for by sweet dago ass—every pound of it. And they’re not gonna stop until they see it hanging from the nearest goddamn palm tree. Every time they look at me I can see it in their eyes. They’re gonna make their bones on my goddamn back. And all of it’s based on some computer bullshit that this kid dreamed up. But your partner, Stanopolis, she acts like this Morgan kid is some kind of genius detective, not some wet-behind-the-ears punk right out of a patrol car.”

“I still don’t get what you want me to do, Nick.” Harry, too, was now glancing toward the squad room door and this time he saw two suits enter. They had to be the people Nick had been anticipating. Harry could almost smell them from across the room. “I think we’ve got company,” he said.

Nick followed his gaze. “Shit,” he muttered.

“Look, I’ll do what I can. But it’s not gonna be much. I can’t tell them to back off.”

“I know you can’t. But Jesus, Harry, reign in this Morgan kid and his computer bullshit. Explain that it’s another cop’s blood he’s after.”

Harry nodded but made no promises. Benevuto was scared and, as a cop, he wanted to believe him, at least as far as Darlene’s murder was concerned. But he wasn’t about to impede another cop’s investigation. He started across the squad room and found himself braced by the two suits coming toward him.

“You’re Harry Doyle, aren’t you?” the larger of the two said.

“That’s right.”

“My name’s Dwight Jimmo.” He nodded toward his partner. “This is Barry Brooks. We’re from Internal Affairs and we need a few minutes of your time.” As Jimmo was talking, Brooks looked past Harry and called out to Benevuto who had started back across the room. “Don’t go anyplace, Benevuto. We need to talk to you too.”

Harry stared at each man in turn, the contempt clear on his face. “You’ll have to catch me later.”

Harry started to move past them when Brooks stepped in front of him. “We need to talk to you
now
.”

Brooks was a big man, most of it fat built up from sitting behind a desk. A small, cold smile gathered on Harry’s lips. His voice was just one level above a whisper. “You step in front of me like that again, and I’ll dump you on your fat ass—”

“Maybe you didn’t hear us,” Jimmo interrupted. “We’re from Internal Affairs and we want to talk to
you
.”

“And like I said, you’ll have to catch me later. Right now I’m working an active homicide, so you can set up an appointment with my captain, and when he tells me to drop what I’m doing and talk to you, I will. In the meantime, you can take your Internal Affairs creds and shove ’em up your ass sideways.” This time Harry stepped past them without any interference.

“You’ll be hearing from us,” Brooks called after him.

“Be still my heart,” Harry called back.

Bobby Joe insisted that he hadn’t told his daddy everything, and the man he was now talking to believed him.

“Your daddy seems to scare the hell out of you. Why is that?” The man asked the question casually, almost as though he didn’t care about Bobby Joe’s answer.

“I’m not afraid of him,” Bobby Joe said. There was a slight quiver in his voice as he spoke. “I just know what I can tell him and what I can’t.”

“You think he won’t stand by you if you tell him you did something that offends him, something that goes against his beliefs?”

Bobby Joe snorted.

“Maybe he won’t,” the man said. “Maybe his beliefs are too important to him, or maybe he’s just all used up with all the stuff you’ve pulled over the years.”

“Yeah, well maybe I’m used up with him.” Bobby Joe paused. He didn’t want this man going to his father and telling him what he had said. “No, I don’t mean that. I’m not used up with him. It’s just that sometimes he’s a hard man to get along with.”

“He’s a wonderful man.”

Bobby Joe shook his head. “Yeah, maybe he is to you. But I know one thing you don’t. He’s a hard man to have as a father.”

The man gave him a cold, distant smile. “I wouldn’t know about fathers … never had one; not a real one anyway. I just had a string of creeps my mother hooked up with from time to time, before the state sent me off to foster care.” He let out a barking laugh that sounded hollow even to him. He shook his head and continued. “The creeps, they only wanted one thing; they just wanted me out of the way so they could …” He let the sentence die. Then he smiled again. “Well, you know why they wanted me out of the way.” The smile widened, turning colder as it did. “If Darlene had a kid, you probably would have wanted him out of the way for the same reason.”

They were seated in the man’s car in the parking lot of Frank Howard Park, and beyond the low wall in front of them they could look straight out into the calm waters of the gulf. It was seven o’clock; sunset was still more than an hour away, and only a handful of people dotted the beach.

“I love the Gulf of Mexico,” the man said. “It always has a calming effect on me.” He turned slowly to look at Bobby Joe again. “Did you know that Darlene was killed on a beach? In fact, it was very close to where we are now. She was with a man she’d just picked up. He was killed too. I suppose it could just as easily have been you, Bobby Joe.” He looked back toward the water and his voice became distant and dreamy. “But that’s not really relevant. That’s just the luck of the draw.” He cocked his head to the side as if considering what he’d just said. “Anyway … whoever gave Darlene what she deserved moved her body after she was dead; took it to Brooker Creek. But the man’s body was left behind. A park maintenance crew found it a day later.” A glimmer of a smile began to form then faded away. “Pretty ripe by then, what with lying out in the sun all that time. Crabs too. They can find a body faster than anything.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Bobby Joe said.

The man nodded slowly. “Well, I would, wouldn’t I?” He continued to nod his head. “I mean I was doing what your daddy asked us all to do. I was watching her … just like you were.”

“I wasn’t watching her that night.” Bobby Joe twisted nervously on the seat.

“You weren’t?”

“No, dammit. I was nowhere near her that night.”

“Can you prove that, Bobby Joe?”

He was silent for a moment. “No, I can’t.”

“Too bad … be better if you could. The detective you’ve got hanging around your neck seems to be looking at you pretty hard. Man’s like a dog with a bone. And I don’t think he’s about to give it up. If I were you I’d get myself an alibi.”

Bobby Joe stared out the window. “You could say I was with you … like we were doing something for the church.”

The man shook his head as though Bobby Joe’s suggestion was the dumbest thing he’d heard in a long while. “Now given my situation, why would I shine that kind of light on myself? Why would I put myself in the middle of
your
problem? Don’t you think I’ve got enough of my own?”

“But you were watching her too. Don’t you forget that. We even ran into each other at that club that one night.” Bobby Joe’s voice had become sharp and petulant.

The man turned to face him. As he did his arm slid along the top of the bench seat until his hand was behind Bobby Joe’s head. “But I didn’t keep going back inside that club. And I wasn’t sleeping with her behind everybody’s back. Only you were doing that. Only you had that kind of
personal
relationship with that slut.”

“Still …”

“You’re not threatening me, are you, Bobby Joe?”

The man’s eyes had turned so cold and so hard it sent a shiver through the young minister.

“No, no, of course not.”

“Good. Because it would be a terrible mistake if you ever decided you could threaten me.” The man moved in close, his face only inches from Bobby Joe’s.

Bobby Joe leaned away until his back was against the passenger window. “You know better than that.” There was a noticeable tremor in his voice.

“Yes, I know better. The question is, do you?”

“You don’t ever have to worry about it. Look, I don’t want any trouble with you. I need your help, that’s all.”

The man placed his hand on the back of Bobby Joe’s neck and he could feel a trembling that radiated up from his shoulders. “You’re on your own in this, Bobby Joe. Just make sure you never drag me into it. You understand what I mean?”

“Yeah, I understand.” The trembling intensified. “Listen, you don’t have to worry about it. Really, you don’t.”

The man watched Bobby Joe’s eyes and he knew there was no way he could trust him. He was weak and foolish and when it came down to it, he’d only think about saving his own skinny backside. But you don’t know everything, Bobby Joe. And there’s one thing you sure don’t know. You don’t know you’re already a dead man.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

B
y the time he finished the canvass of Darlene’s neighbors,
Harry had three positive IDs on Bobby Joe Waldo’s photo. All were reasonably sure they had seen him entering or leaving Darlene’s apartment. Joshua Brown, the elderly neighbor who had provided Harry with the list of license plate numbers, was the most certain. Brown claimed that Bobby Joe had nearly knocked him down as he hurried out of Darlene’s apartment one evening.

“I ’member him ’cause he was in such a rush to get away,” Brown said. “Even tol’ me to watch where I was goin’ with my damn dog. That’s what he said: ‘your damn dog.’ Little pissant. And I ’member thinkin’ at the time that he musta parked his car on another street so nobody would see it here. I even thought maybe I’d follow him and get his plate number, but he was movin’ too fast for me to keep up.”

Harry drove the short distance to the Peek-a-Boo Lounge. He already had a positive ID from Anita Molari, but now he wanted to see if any of the other dancers could place Bobby Joe in the club.

The interior was just as it had been on his earlier visit, the air still permeated with the same unpleasant mix of stale liquor and human sweat. He spoke individually to each of the twelve dancers working that night and three were sure they had seen the young minister at the bar. Of the three, two were even certain they’d seen him sitting next to Darlene Beckett, with one insisting that Darlene had been “giving the kid her best moves,” and that the next time she’d looked they were gone.

The call came into Harry’s cell phone just as he was crossing the parking lot headed back to his car, and minutes later he was speeding toward Pinellas County with lights flashing and siren blaring.

The trailer park was on a small lake just off Keystone Road, a neat, quiet, secluded community with a scattering of large shade trees that kept the sun off the tin structures. Jim Morgan was standing beside an unmarked car; Vicky was thirty feet away helping a crime scene officer set up a laser to determine the trajectory of the bullet that had smashed through a trailer window.

Harry walked up beside Morgan and raised his chin toward the trailer. “Your place?” he asked.

Morgan nodded. “It used to be my aunt’s. She left it to me when she passed.”

“Were you inside when the shot was fired?”

Again, Morgan nodded. “I’d just gotten home and I was in the kitchen making a sandwich and I hear this thud as the bullet hits my refrigerator.”

“Just the thud? No sound of a gun being fired?”

Morgan shook his head. “That’s the thing, Harry. There wasn’t
any
sound. I mean, even if it had come from inside another trailer I would have heard
something
.”

“Did you hear a car?”

“I don’t have any recollection of a car. But that wouldn’t be unusual. There are almost a hundred units in the park, and there are cars going in and out all the time, so I wouldn’t have paid much attention if I heard one approaching. I also hit the floor as soon as I realized what was happening, so I could have missed the sound of a car pulling away. The first thing I thought of when I was laying on the floor was that it’s too thick in here for a bullet to have come from a long distance, so I got my own weapon out, called it in on my cell, and crawled to the back door so I could work my way around the house. Of course, there was no one there by the time I did. I don’t want to be dramatic about it, but the only thing I can think of is that whoever did this used some kind of suppressor.”

“You seem pretty calm given what happened.”

Morgan gave him a boyish grin. “Yeah,
now
I am. With all you guys here. You should of seen me right after it happened. I had to check to make sure my pants were dry.”

Vicky approached holding a plastic bag. She held it up. There was a mangled bullet inside.

“It’s a.38. But as far as ballistics go, the slug is useless. The laser shows a trajectory that indicates the shot was fired from the same height the shooter would have been at if he was seated in a car.”

“No chance it came from a trailer across the road?”

“Only if the shooter was lying on the ground in front of the trailer directly across from the window.”

Harry turned and studied the trailer on the opposite side of the narrow road. He turned back to Morgan. “Who lives there?”

“An elderly couple, late seventies, early eighties. I can’t see either of them being able to handle a weapon.”

“We’ll check them out, but I agree, it doesn’t sound very likely.” Harry studied the ground for a moment. “Any enemies from past police work? Or anything personal?”

Morgan shook his head. “Nobody I can think of.”

“There could be one,” Vicky piped in. “But not from the past; from the case we’re working on now.”

Harry had already thought of Nick Benevuto, but was waiting for someone else to voice the suspicion. “Let’s work the scene here first. If we don’t find anything we’ll brace Nick.” He turned to Morgan. “Vicky and I will do it. I don’t want you there. He’s pretty hot about you and the computer stuff you found, and I don’t want to aggravate the situation.”

Morgan seemed suddenly agitated. “You’re not taking me off the case, are you?”

“No, don’t worry about that,” Harry said. “I just don’t want you there when we interview Nick about this.”

The canvass of the trailer park produced nothing. No one in the immediate vicinity of Morgan’s trailer had heard or seen anything untoward. Reluctantly, at ten p.m., Harry moved on to Nick Benevuto.

Nick lived in an older condo complex in Countryside, a densely populated residential area on the northern fringes of Clearwater. Twenty-five years earlier it was among the first to fall victim to the real estate boom, its sprawling orange groves and horse farms seeming to disappear overnight. Now the only country left in Countryside was its name.

Nick’s car was parked outside his unit. Harry placed his hand on the hood. It was hot to the touch. Vicky gave him a questioning look.

“It’s been driven recently,” he said. He watched a small smile begin to form at the corners of her mouth, and added: “For whatever that’s worth.”

“At least we know we’re not wasting our time,” she said.

It took Nick almost a full minute to answer the door, and when he did he had a drink in his hand. His eyes told Harry it had not been his first. Harry saw suspicion flood Nick’s face. It only hardened when his gaze switched to Vicky. He looked back at Harry.

“I guess it’s not a social call.” He raised his chin toward Vicky. “Not if you need your partner with you.” His voice was steady, no slur that Harry could detect.

“Wish it was. Can we come in? It won’t take long.”

Nick was dressed in khaki shorts and a T-shirt that emphasized the belly he had earned through a lot of hard drinking. He gave Harry a long stare; then a small who-gives-a-damn shrug. “Sure, come in. After dealing with those rat bastards from IAD, how much worse can it get?”

Nick’s apartment was as rumpled and disheveled as his life. The living room he led them into was furnished out of a Rooms To Go catalog with a leather sofa, two matching chairs, an ottoman, and glass-topped coffee and end tables. All the glass tops had water rings and food stains, and through an archway Harry could see several days’ dishes piled in the sink. He didn’t want to see Nick’s bedroom.

Nick picked up a dirty shirt and shorts from one of the chairs, told them they could sit if they wanted, and offered them a drink, which Harry and Vicky both declined.

“So what’s this about?” he asked as he took a seat at one end of the sofa, stretching out a leg so no one could sit next to him.

“Do you own a.38, Nick?”

Nick raised his eyebrows. “Sure, what cop doesn’t, especially if he’s been on the job as long as I have? I’ve got my first service revolver, the one I carried when I was on patrol, and a snub-nosed Chief’s Special, that was my first piece as a detective. That was in the good old days, before we switched over to Glocks. But you’re too young to remember those days, right, Harry?”

“I remember, Nick. I grew up in a cop’s house.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” He paused a moment. “You know Jocko knows me. You tell him about this bullshit they’re tryin’ to pin on me?”

“I told him,” Harry said.

“And … ?”

“He said he thought it was a crock.”

Nick nodded as if that should settle the matter.

“Can we see the two.38s?” Harry asked, bringing him back.

“What for?”

“Somebody took a shot at Jim Morgan tonight. Whoever it was used a.38. I just want to rule you out.”

“Morgan okay?”

“He’s fine.”

Benevuto nodded but said nothing more.

“So? Can we see them?” Vicky pushed.

Nick glared at her. “Yeah, you can see ’em. There in my locker at work. When I had it, I kept my Glock here. As far as the other weapons go, I didn’t want to take a chance of somebody breaking in and walking off with them. Too many people around here know I’m a cop.”

Harry nodded. “I’d like you to go to the office with us so we can have a look.”

“Tonight? It can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid not, Nick. By the way, what time did you leave work?”

“Around four, right after those humps from IAD left.”

“You come straight home?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Your engine’s hot, like the car’s been driven recently.” Harry glanced at his watch. “It’s been six hours since you left work.”

“I ran out of bourbon and went out to the liquor store. You’ll find the empty bag with a receipt inside on the kitchen counter.” A sneer came over his face. “But hell, maybe I stopped on the way to squeeze one off at Morgan.”

“I’ll take the bag and the receipt with us,” Harry said, ignoring the comment. “You okay to drive?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Then just follow us down.”

Nick stood in front of his locker, his shoulders shaking with what could have been rage … or fear.

“They were fucking here, damnit. They were here this morning.”

Harry stepped around so he could look into Nick’s face, see what was there.

“Are you sure, Nick? Do you specifically remember seeing them this morning?”

He stood there thinking about what Harry had asked. “If you mean, could I swear to it in court and not worry that I might find out later they’d been missing for three days … no, I couldn’t.” He shook his head. “Shit, Harry, they were covered with that cloth you see on the top shelf. I mean I might not have noticed they were gone until I actually looked for them.”

Nick reached for the cloth but Harry laid a hand on his arm, stopping him. “I want to have the inside of the locker dusted, Nick. If anyone took them, they would have been sweating the idea of a cop walking in here, so they probably did it in a hurry.”

“And they might have gotten careless,” Nick said hopefully.

“Is there any chance you left the locker open?”

Nick shook his head. “Never happen. Hell, you know as well as I do, cops steal.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of the maintenance people. They’re in here late at night cleaning up.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, hopeful again, “and it would be easy to have one of them standing watch outside while the other went through lockers seeing what he could find.”

Vicky stared off, clearly annoyed. “That’s a really big stretch, isn’t it? Alright, maybe a maintenance guy would pick up a loose gun, figuring he could sell it, but almost all of the people who come in here are cops. Why would another cop wanna steal Nick’s weapons?”

“What if it isn’t theft?” Harry asked.

Both she and Nick stared at him, openly confused.

“We’re assuming the weapons, or at least one of them,
might
be involved in the shooting at Morgan’s house. But the bullet was so mangled, even when we find Nick’s guns, there’s no way to prove or disprove that one of those weapons fired the shot. And maybe Nick’s missing guns had nothing to do with any of it.”

“What do you mean?” Vicky asked.

“Maybe somebody took them for an entirely different purpose. Maybe IAD searched Nick’s locker and took them to see if they could tie them in to something else.”

“Then there’ll be a warrant,” Vicky said.

“Not necessarily. This is sheriff’s department property—the building, the room, the locker. Who’s to say they can’t go inside a locker just with the okay of a boss? They do it every time a cop dies, or gets fired. It’s department property.”

Nick’s features darkened. “Those fuckers. I never even thought of them. They coulda been looking for evidence that would tie me to Darlene; noticed the two.38s and just grabbed them to see if they could score a hit on something else.”

“So we’ll ask them,” Vicky said.

Both Harry and Nick looked at her as if she were out of her mind.

“Okay, dumb idea,” she conceded. “What do you suggest?”

“We’ll wait, see if their prints show up.”

Harry got home at midnight. Checking his mail, he found a letter from the Florida Parole Board. It was formal notification that his mother had been granted a hearing on the following Tuesday. He had expected the letter; had known it was coming, but it didn’t stop his stomach from churning. He read the letter again, noting the time: nine a.m. Then he read it a third time. Finally, he threw the letter on a table, went to the kitchen, and poured his nightly orange juice. He went out on the lanai, headed for a long beach walk, and found Jeanie Walsh curled up asleep on one of the chaise lounges. A sense of relief flooded him, and he sat down next to her and gently stroked her face. She smiled in her sleep, then her eyes fluttered and opened.

“I was just dreaming about you stroking my face.”

“The power of positive dreaming,” he said.

“Mmm, that’s a nice thought.” She smiled up at him. “If it works that way maybe I’ll go back to sleep and dream about you doing something else.”

“Are you trying to seduce me?”

She closed her eyes again and smiled. “Sure am.”

“I’m not that easy,” he said.

She laughed. “Oh, yes you are.”

He scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the house.