Fatal Decree (20 page)

“Note?” I asked.

“No. And nothing on his computer.”

“Did the canvass of the neighborhood turn up anything?” asked J.D. “Strangers in the neighborhood, that sort of thing?”

“No,” said Jock. “And only one of the landscape crews showed up today. A lot of the companies take the day off when the weather gets bad.”

“Do we know which company had a crew working today?” I asked.

“Not yet, but the cops are working on it. None of the neighbors paid any attention to it.”

“Those crews are just part of the landscape,” I said. “No pun intended. They’re here every day.”

“Sharkey said the members of those crews are almost all Mexicans,”
Jock said. “I suppose a Guatemalan could slip in without any of the neighbors noticing.”

I shook my head. “Jock, I think you’re seeing Guatemalan boogie men under every bush.”

Jock sat quietly for a beat. “J.D.,” he said, “I’d like to tell you something, but I need to swear you to secrecy.”

“Does it have to do with any of these cases?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can’t do that, Jock. It might be something that I’d have to share with the chief or other law enforcement agencies.”

“Fair enough,” Jock said.

The waitress came and took our lunch order, commented on the nasty weather, and left.

“Aren’t you going to tell me, Jock?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, J.D. I can’t. Not without a promise of confidentiality.”

We ate our meal in virtual silence and returned to my cottage.

Jock said he had to make some calls and went to his bedroom and shut the door. J.D. paced back and forth across the living room, a look of concentration on her face.

“Matt,” she finally said, “I’m not going to stay cooped up here while somebody else is doing my job. I’m the only detective in the department. I’m supposed to be looking for these killers.”

“They’re certainly looking for you.”

“They may be,” she said, “but if they want me badly enough, they’re going to get me. If those Sarasota goons had been better at what they do, they’d have taken me out and you as well. They aren’t too picky about whom they kill.”

“I don’t know, J.D. If I’d been with you at Lynches, that guy probably wouldn’t have come at you with a knife.”

“You’re probably right. He’d have used a gun and gotten us both.”

She had a point, but I didn’t like it. “Okay,” I said, “but two pairs of eyes can be a plus when you’re trying to dodge a killer.”

“You don’t object to Jock going out by himself, and he thinks there may be somebody after him.”

“Jock’s the most competent person I’ve ever met.”

She glared at me. “And you don’t think I’m competent?”

“That’s not my point. I know that you can take care of yourself, but Jock spends every day of his life dodging people who’re trying to kill him. You don’t. And neither do I. It’s just second nature to Jock. He’s always on the lookout. Normal people like you and me don’t have to worry every day that some killer is going to jump out of the bushes and whack us.”

“So, Sir Matthew in his shining armor takes care of the damsel in distress.”

“I’m hoping that sarcasm isn’t becoming a way of life with you.” My voice was tight, perhaps a bit strident. This wasn’t the J.D. I knew.

“I’m sorry, Matt. I’m not being fair. I’m just frustrated, and I guess I’m taking it out on you.”

“The murders are very real, J.D. And they all seem to be part of a plan to kill you.”

“The murders may not be connected,” she said.

“I’ve thought of that. The two whale tail murders certainly were connected, and I think the guy in Lynches’ parking lot, Bagby, was connected to them. I’m not sure about the Guatemalans who tried to take us out at the police station, and I can’t see how Gene’s murder is connected to any of the others.”

“If Nell’s murder was random, like we think, would the people who killed her have a motive to take out Gene?” she asked.

“I don’t see it. Not if Nell was just a random victim. But suppose she wasn’t? Suppose her killing is connected to Gene’s. Maybe the killers were looking for Gene and Nell got in the way somehow.”

“But Nell’s murder was definitely connected to the whale tail murders in Miami. And if this was all a plot to get Gene, why would somebody threaten me? And why would Qualman, if he really was the one who killed Nell, come after me?”

“Good questions,” I said. “And what was Bagby’s connection to any of this?”

“We may never know. I wonder what Jock wanted to tell us at lunch.” I chuckled. “We may never know,” I said.

Her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. “It’s the chief,” she said, excused herself, and walked into the kitchen to take the call. I only heard three words of the conversation, including a word I thought foreign to J.D.’s vocabulary and two others that stunned me. They were loud and angry and profane. “Bullshit,” she said, “I quit.”

I sat on the sofa, dire scenarios dancing across my brain. J.D. had only been on the island for a year, but she had somehow burrowed her way into my psyche. My world would be greatly diminished without her in it. It was damned disconcerting, but I did not have the moral authority to ask her to stay.

J.D. came out of the kitchen, a big smile on her face. “I’ve got to go,” she said, sending my heart down into the pit of my stomach.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I’ve got a murder case to solve. Cases, I guess.”

“You’re not leaving the island?”

“Why would I do that?”

“I heard you on the phone. You quit.”

“Actually, I threatened to quit if Bill Lester didn’t take the leash off me. He agreed that he was being a bit silly, so I’m back to work. Without babysitters or bodyguards.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Absolutely. I’ll stop by this evening to pick up my stuff. Tell Jock I’ll see him later.”

She was out the door before I could respond. I breathed deeply, relief chasing away the despair. She was going to stay on the key, at least until the murders were solved. I could live with that.

Jock came out of the bedroom, carrying a small duffel. He looked around the room. “Did I hear J.D. leave?”

“Yeah. The chief turned her loose on the murder cases. She says she doesn’t need our protection anymore.”

He grinned. “She never thought she needed us. I think she’s going to be okay.”

I pointed to the duffel. “Going somewhere?”

“I’ve got to go to Washington.”

“What’s up?”

“The director wants me up there for a briefing. Gene’s murder may be part of something pretty big.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“I’m not sure of the details, but Gene was doing some work for the agency. He was trying to ferret out a mole. It looks like somebody has been leaking information. We lost two field agents about three months ago.”

“Lost them?”

“Dead. Their cover was apparently blown, and somebody took them out.”

“This is the first you’ve heard about it?”

“Yeah. I knew about the agents, but something like a mole is held real tight. I’m not sure anybody other than Gene and the director were in on it. I’ll know more when I get back.”

“Did you check flight schedules?” I asked.

“The director is sending a plane for me. It’s already on the way. It should be at Sarasota-Bradenton in about an hour. I’ll be back Sunday evening.”

Jock left in his rental car, and I cracked my first Miller Lite of the day. Just as I settled into my recliner with a book, my phone rang. David Parrish.

“Matt, a couple of days ago the Drug Enforcement Agency busted some guys over near Clewiston. They were living in an old house out in the cane fields. There’s an airstrip about a mile from the house that we suspected was used to fly coke in from Mexico. DEA’s been watching it and got a tip that a load was coming in last Tuesday night. They were there and got the pilot and the guys who were there to pick up the dope. The interrogations produced some names and the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District sent a list up to me to see if any of them were of interest to me. Guess who showed up?”

“Bagby?”

“No. Who’s Bagby?”

“He’s the guy who tried to take out J.D. the other night.”

“Right,” he said. “But no. It was Qualman.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Yep, and the mileage from Longboat Key to Clewiston and back is pretty much the same as the mileage that showed up on Nell Alexander’s car after she was killed.”

“What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know, but DEA is willing to let the Longboat cops interview the guys they picked up. They’re in the Hendry County jail in LaBelle.”

“Okay. I’ll tell J.D. Have you heard that Nell’s husband, Gene, was murdered this morning?”

“No. What the hell is going on down there?”

“Beats me, but Jock just took off for D.C. for a meeting with his director. Gene was one of theirs, you know.”

“Yeah. If anything comes up that might interest me, give me a holler.”

“I will. Thanks for the information.”

I called Bill Lester and told him what David had said, and that Jock was on his way to Washington. “Can you get somebody down to Clewiston to interview the drug guys?”

“I doubt it. We’re jammed here with all these murders. Steve Carey is still on light duty so I’m shorthanded. Where are they being held?”

“The county jail in LaBelle.”

“Can you get down there?”

“Sure, but the feds aren’t going to let me talk to the bad guys.”

“I know the agent-in-charge of the Miami DEA office. I’ll call him and tell him you’re our special consultant and liaison with another federal agency that’s interested in this mess.”

“Let me know,” I said, “and tell them I might be bringing my assistant, Logan Hamilton.”

The chief laughed and hung up. The law enforcement community is sometimes a small world, and a lot gets done through what amounts to a good-ole-boy network. We’d see if Bill could work some magic. He’d done it before.

I called Logan. “Want to do some sleuthing in South Florida?”

“Sure. We going to South Beach?”

“LaBelle.”

“Where the hell is LaBelle?”

“It’s the county seat of Hendry County. We might also get to go to Clewiston.”

“Damn. Probably too good to pass up. When do we leave?”

“In the morning. I’ll call you.”

I went for a run on the beach. The rain had let up, but the clouds were still obscuring the sky. It was cool, but I knew I’d be sweating by the time I finished. The sand was hard packed, the legacy of the high tide kicked up by the onshore wind the night before. We’d have a little more erosion, a little more of our key taken back by the sea. Beach renourishment was an expensive fact of life for the island’s taxpayers, but no one complained. The beach was too important to our tourist dollars and to our way of life.

J.D. was a problem that I had not anticipated. On a couple of levels. I hadn’t heard of her a year ago and now I was having a hard time contemplating life without her. Would she leave the island once these cases were over? Would I follow her? Did I have it in me to leave the place where I’d finally found peace, where friendships abounded, where the lazy days passed without interruption? I didn’t know. It was a conundrum that I hadn’t seen coming before lunch that day.

I thought about the murders. They seemed disparate, unconnected, but it would be too much of a coincidence that we had three murders and four attempted murders on the key within a week. We also had four dead bad guys, but that didn’t count. They were part of the murders or the attempts and they got their due. Maybe the next day would start to move back the curtain that obscured our view, to give us some inkling of why the murders were committed and if they were somehow connected to J.D. or maybe Jock.

I could always count on Logan, who had once been a combat infantryman. He and Jock were the only two people in the world in whose hands I would put my life, without reservation. It had been different back in the army. We depended on each other under difficult circumstances and part of the training had been to always cover your buddy’s back. We did
that without thinking about it. And over time, the bonds grew so that each soldier in the unit operated as if he was part of a family. Even if one didn’t particularly like another member of the group, he would always respond as he would if his brother was in danger. I guess in a real sense, Jock and Logan were my brothers.

I sensed that J.D. was also a part of the group to whom I could trust my life, but I was starting to have doubts. If I couldn’t trust her with my heart, then where was I? Okay. That sounded a little melodramatic, and the fact that she wanted her life in a different place than where I wanted it did not make her untrustworthy. She didn’t owe me anything. If she couldn’t continue to enjoy her life here on the key, she would move on. I couldn’t hold her.

I chuckled to myself. Life sure does take some interesting turns. I’d been in love once with a pretty girl whom I’d married and then let slip out of my life because of inattention. She’d moved on and found happiness. I’d lost her through my own fault and I had not realized the full extent of what I’d had until she was gone. Would J.D.’s leaving be a repeat of that part of my life? Would I be the biggest fool in the world to refuse to give up my island and lose the girl? Would I be happy with her if I were living in Miami and watching her go out day after day to investigate homicides in some of the bleakest parts of the city, knowing that any day might be the one when she wouldn’t come home? That some demented fool might blow her head off? Would I go back to the practice of law to give me something to do during the days and nights that she was prowling the streets of Miami?

No. I couldn’t do that. If I followed J.D. to Miami, within a couple of years I’d be so miserable that even her love couldn’t salvage me. If I were to be that miserable, her life would be miserable as well. No, I wouldn’t leave the island, even for J.D. It would be her decision to make. If she wanted me, she’d have to stay. But wouldn’t that scenario provide us a mirror image of what my life would be like in Miami? Would she be so miserable here that I couldn’t make it work for her? Wouldn’t any marriage fail simply because two people were incompatible in an environment that emotionally castrates one of the partners?