Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (34 page)

Katie put her head in her hands and choked back a sob. She didn’t look up, but said, “He made me sleep with his buddies.”

“It’s okay, Katie,” J.D. said. “Do you want to stop?”

“No,” Katie said, and looked up, defiance on her face. “That bastard made me undress in front of his friends, the same ones from the house in Avon Park. I’d take one of them into the bedroom. Jim took pictures of them screwing me.”

“God,” said J.D. “I’m so sorry, Katie.”

“This went on for weeks,” Katie said. “One of the men made me do unspeakable things. Things I won’t talk about. But I did them. I’d do anything for the next high. I knew what was happening and I was so ashamed I wanted to die. I thought about suicide, but couldn’t do it.” She was quiet then, her hands clenched together in her lap, her head down.

J.D. touched Katie’s arm, a calming gesture, or one of condolence for lost innocence, a bit of human contact. “Do you know who the man was?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Oh, yeah. I remember him like it was yesterday.” She raised her head, her eyes blazing, a look of disgust crossing her face. “I was never so glad to see somebody dead. The day I read about his murder in the paper was one of the best days I’ve had since I got off the drugs. The sorry bastard was named Porter King.”

“Let’s take a break,” J.D. said. “I’ll get some clothes on and fix breakfast. Katie, why don’t you use the guest room, it’s the one in the middle down the hall. You make yourself at home there. You’ll stay with us until we get this sorted out. Take a shower if you like. Breakfast will be ready in thirty minutes.”

Katie picked up her backpack and said, “Thanks, Jed. I’ll be out in a few minutes. The worst of the story is almost over.”

We finished a breakfast of eggs, grits, toast, and bacon just as the sun began to emerge from the mainland. It was going to be a beautiful day. We put our dishes in the sink and went back to the living room, taking our coffee.

“Are you up to continuing?” asked J.D.

Katie smiled. “Yes. I need to get this out of my system.”

“How long did this ordeal last?” J.D. asked.

“Several weeks. Jim was getting rich, and all his buddies were getting me on a regular basis. I was as high as a kite and deathly afraid that my loving husband would withhold the drugs I needed. I did whatever he told me to do. Until one evening in January of last year. I don’t know what happened. Maybe the drugs were wearing off and I was having a lucid moment before the fear and depression set in. The big boss, the one who reported directly to Bonino, was at the house with a girl whom I think was a prostitute. They were all naked and the girl and the boss were having sex on the sofa. Jim was standing there with an erection, watching. I was dressed. Jim told me to get naked. He said the boss would deal with me as soon as he got finished with the girl on the sofa.

“I noticed a pistol on top of the clothes Jim had left on a chair. It was
the one he’d begun carrying regularly. I’d never fired a gun, never even picked one up. But I’d watched enough TV to know you just pulled the hammer back and pulled the trigger and the gun would fire. I picked it up and pointed it at Jim’s head and pulled the trigger. He went down and the boss started screaming at me.

“Jim had left a backpack on the floor next to his clothes. I’d seen the boss give it to him when he first came in with the girl. There was cash in the bag, lots of it, although I had no idea how much. It turned out to be almost a hundred thousand dollars in various denominations. I picked up the bag and ran out the front door.”

“Why didn’t you shoot the boss?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Jim was the cause of my becoming,” she paused, “whatever I was. I guess I just thought that if he was dead, my troubles would be over. Or at least Jim wouldn’t be around to keep me in some sort of drug-induced stupor.”

“How did you get away?” J.D. asked.

“When I got to the street in front of my house, I saw an elderly man in a car. I think he might have been parked in front of one of the neighbors because he was just pulling away from the curb. I called to him and he stopped. I told him I’d give him a thousand dollars to drive me to Tampa. He took me there to the Greyhound station, and I got on the first bus headed north. The old man wouldn’t take any money. Just wished me well.

“When the bus got to Atlanta early the next morning, I put some cash in my pocket and stashed the backpack in a locker and took a taxi to the nearest hospital. I was in pretty bad shape. I’d been without drugs for about twelve hours and I was going to pieces. I told the emergency room doctors that I’d been on drugs and needed to get clean. They recommended a treatment center and a driver in a van came and took me across town to a pretty place on the north side. I checked in and told them I could only stay a few days. I knew I had to get back to the bus station and get the money I’d left in the locker. I didn’t know how long it was going to have to last me, and I knew the boss had a lot of power and resources to find me. I had to establish a new identity right from the start. I gave the people at the center a false name. I didn’t have any identification and told them I’d probably lost it somewhere. I don’t know if they believed me, but
they took me in and worked hard to get me clean. After a few days, I got one of the drivers to take me back to the bus station and I retrieved the money and spent the next three months in the center. It was the most peaceful time I’ve known in years.”

I could tell Katie was running down. She’d been talking nonstop for the better part of an hour. She seemed to be in a rush to get it all out, to tell us what her life had been like for the past year. I said, “Maybe we ought to let Katie get some rest.”

“I’m okay,” Katie said. “Let me get this done and then I’ll rest. Ask me something. They’re probably blanks I need to fill in.”

“Why did you wait so long to contact me?” asked J.D. “Didn’t you trust me to help you?”

“I killed a man, J.D., and you’re a cop. I wasn’t sure what the police knew. Had they figured out that I had killed Jim? I just didn’t know the lay of the land. I assumed I was a fugitive.”

“How did you get the pictures texted from Detroit?” I asked.

Katie laughed. “I guessed that you’d figure out where the pictures originated and I didn’t want to let you know that I was in Tampa. My best friend in the center was a young man who was going home to Detroit when he finished his rehab. He left before I did. I went to a Wal-Mart and bought seven disposable phones and paid cash for enough minutes on each to last for a couple of years. I labeled each phone with a day of the week and told him that if I needed him, I’d call on the phone that matched the day I was calling.

“When I decided to send J.D. the picture, I sent it to my friend through my computer, and he then texted it to J.D. I knew you’d run into a dead end when you tried to track where the text had come from.”

J.D. said, “Let’s stop for now. You take a nap. We’ll make sure you’re not disturbed and we can finish this when you’re not so tired.”

“Okay,” said Katie. “You’re probably right.”

“I do have one question,” J.D. said. “Do you know the boss’s name? The one who was there when you shot Jim?”

Katie smiled ruefully. “You won’t believe me.”

“Try me,” said J.D.

Katie shrugged, as if she didn’t care whether we believed her or not. She said, “He’s a Sarasota policeman. Captain Doug McAllister.”

When Katie was gone, I said, “Jock, somebody tried to take J.D. and me out last night.” I told him about the shoot-out on Broadway. “The guy driving the garbage truck was the same one who tried to kill us on Sunday.”

“You’re sure it’s the same guy?” Jock asked.

“Positive.”

My doorbell sounded and I went to open the door. It was Chief Bill Lester and Officer Steve Carey. I invited them in, offered coffee, which they declined, and told them to take a seat. Jock went into the kitchen and returned with another cup of coffee.

“How’re you holding up, J.D.?” asked Lester.

“I’m fine, Chief, considering I killed a man with a shotgun less than twelve hours ago.”

“You did the right thing, but you know you’ll have to be on administrative suspension until the sheriff’s office sorts this out.”

J.D. made a face, but she knew the rules. Any officer-involved shooting requires a thorough investigation by another police agency, in this case the Manatee County sheriff’s office. “How long will that take?” she asked.

“A few days,” Lester said. “I’ll try to hurry them along.”

“What do I do in the meantime?” she asked.

“I’m putting you on paid leave until the investigation is done.”

“Wait, Chief. You don’t think I did anything wrong here, do you?”

“Absolutely not. But if you’re on leave, you don’t have to sit in the office and do paperwork. You’re free to pursue any activities you want as long as it’s not official business.” He winked.

J.D. laughed. “Okay. Thanks, Bill. I’ll try not to embarrass you. Have you come up with IDs on the bad guys yet?”

The chief looked at Carey who said, “Yeah. You’ll be surprised to know they were all in the system. The one who went after you and Matt on Sunday was a local named Carlton Owens. He was picked up last year for trying to intimidate one of our citizens who owned a used car business that our friend Sal Bonino was trying to buy. The man sold his business and refused to press charges. The other two were strangers to the local law. They had records in New Jersey. We don’t know how long they’d been here, but they haven’t gotten into trouble since they left Jersey.”

Bill Lester stood up. “Steve needs to take statements from you. I’ll be on my way. Call me if you need anything, J.D.”

Steve put a digital voice recorder on the coffee table and began to question J.D. and me. I told him that the man I’d shot in the back had almost got me with his first shot, but turned to run when J.D. let loose with the shotgun. I thought he was running for the cover of the open car door. If he made it, I’d be a sitting duck. He’d have a clear shot at me and I had no place to take cover, at least no place I could get to before he settled in and killed me. Steve smiled. When we finished, he shut down the recorder and said, “Self-defense, Matt. If the shooter had reached the door of his car, you’d be dead.”

“You know that wasn’t what I was thinking when I shot the bastard.”

He grinned. “I just deal with the facts, sir, and I have the facts on my trusty recorder.”

After Steve left, Jock said, “We’ve got to take McAllister out.”

“I agree,” I said.

“What about due process?” J.D. asked. She had always had a problem with Jock’s methods. What he did for his country was almost always extralegal. He didn’t have time to follow laws that were made for normal people living in an orderly society. He operated in a jungle that was beyond J.D.’s understanding.

“You mean like the due process he gave Katie?” Jock asked.

J.D. was quiet for a moment. “I don’t like it,” she said. “You know that, Jock, but I’m beginning to see that sometimes your way might be the only way. McAllister is so wired with the Sarasota P.D. that he might walk. It’d be Katie’s word against his, and Katie has already confessed to killing her
husband. McAllister’s a decorated police officer. It wouldn’t be much of a contest.”

“Do you believe Katie?” I asked.

J.D. thought about that for a beat. “Absolutely,” she said. “She’d have no reason to make any of that up.”

“It could be a complex excuse for Jim’s murder,” I said.

“Then where did the money in the backpack come from?” J.D. asked. “And what about the Avon Park house, the weapons, and the safe? And how would you explain a pitiful ten-acre grove with a few producing trees going for ten million bucks in a bad economy?”

“You should’ve been a lawyer,” I said.

She grinned. “Couldn’t do it,” she said. “The minute they found out I had principles, I would’ve been kicked out of law school.”

“Well,” I said. “There’s that.”

“I agree,” said Jock. “I believe Katie. I think we need to confront McAllister when he’s out of his element. Where his badge doesn’t protect him. Do you know where he lives, J.D.?”

“No, but I can probably find out.”

“I’m thinking we take him at home,” said Jock. “Tonight.”

“What’s your plan?” I asked.

“I want to put the fear of God into the bastard,” Jock said. “If we go in at night, late, after he’s asleep, I think I can do that.”

“I’d bet on it,” said J.D., sardonically.

“Do you know if he’s married?” I asked.

“Divorced,” J.D. said, “and I don’t think he has anyone living with him.”

“We still need to find out a few things from Katie,” I said. “Like what she knows about U166 and why she would have given us that clue in the last text.”

“I’d also like to know who the other two guys were,” Jock said.

“Other two?” I asked.

Jock said, “Katie told us there were five guys, including Jim, at the Avon Park house the first time Jim tried to get her to join the fun. We know that McAllister and King were there. Who are the other two?”

“Good question,” said J.D.

“Another thing,” I said. “I was surprised at Katie’s reaction when I told her I’d been to see her parents.”

“So was I,” said J.D. “At first, I thought it might just be her fear that if they knew she was alive, they might mention it to McAllister. But then, why wouldn’t she trust them enough not to tell anybody if she asked them not to?”

“We still don’t have a lot of the answers, Jock.”

“I don’t want to overdo this,” said J.D. “Katie’s been through a lot. She’s pretty fragile.”

“You’re right,” I said, “but I think she’s tougher than you give her credit for. What could be worse than what she’s already told us?”

J.D. shrugged, but the answers to that question would make me despair of the human race.

Jock and I went for a run on the beach. J.D. stayed at the cottage to watch over Katie and be there when she awoke. The late-morning temperature had barely climbed into the sixties. The beach was deserted and we made good time on the hard-packed sand. We were finishing up and walking toward the North Shore Drive beach access when I saw a tall angular man standing at the beach end of the boardwalk. He waved at us.