Shattered (3 page)

“So how do we control it?”

Case shrugged. “We can't. It’s greed, you see. We've got four hundred and sixty motel rooms in St. Theresa County—you figure six kids to a room—and maybe two hundred rental houses open this time of the year, and you can get ten, fifteen kids easy into a one of those beach houses. There are maximum occupancy laws, but who's going to enforce them? And what about the merchants that cater to college kids? March first like clockwork and here they come, like the goddamn swallows to Capistrano—T-shirt stands, head shops, surf shops, skateboard rentals ...”

Guy smothered a grin. “I don't think they're called head shops anymore, John.”

“Same difference.” Case waved an impatient hand. “What it amounts to is no better than a sign over the freeway saying This Way to a Good Time. Nothing's going to change until A”—he ticked it off on the index finger of his left hand— “we pass an innkeeper's ordinance with some teeth in it and B”—second finger—”The merchants stop targeting kids and transients. In other words, roll up the welcome mat and slam the doors, just like they did in Fort Lauderdale— only do it before we turn into Fort Lauderdale.”

Guy said, “March is not exactly a boom month for tourism in St. T., you know. A lot of realtors refuse to rent to spring breakers, but those who do seem to be pretty happy with the profits. And some of the merchants and restaurants reported making one third of their yearly income in March last year. So what do you think it's going to take to get them to roll up the mat?”

“When the bill for damages is more than their profit,” Case replied promptly. “I just hope it doesn't come to that.”

“Or maybe,” suggested Guy with a smile, “we could impose a special tax on spring breakers and put it into the sheriff’s department budget.”

“You're joking, but that's not such a bad idea. What people don't realize is that maybe spring break only lasts a month, but the mess we're left to clean up can go on for years. Take that Conroy kid, disappeared during spring break last year. Now the parents are claiming somebody saw her here, in St. T., the day she disappeared, so I've got to assign an investigator. And that was not even in my jurisdiction. As far as I can tell, that kid's just another runaway—hell, they get dozens of them every spring break. What makes this one any different? She's going to turn up walking the streets somewhere—”

He broke off abruptly, a faint red line of embarrassment creeping up his neck as he realized what he had said and to whom he had said it. Guy kept his attention on his notes and his expression unchanged, and in a moment Case went on, a little self-consciously. “Anyway, you ask me, the worst thing that ever happened to this county was taking down the toll booth on F. W. Jackson Bridge. Not too many troublemakers will pay five dollars each way to get to the scene of the crime, if you know what I mean.”

“Not too many tourists, either.”

“Like I said.”

Guy flipped his notebook closed, smiling. “Sounds like another article, John.”

Case gestured toward Guy's notebook. “You're going to make me sound like a real son of a bitch in this one, aren't you?”

Guy reached for his jacket, which he had tossed carelessly across the arm of the chair, and absently brushed at the wrinkles as he stood. “Toughest gun east of the Mississippi,” he assured him.

“Well, as long as you spell the name right.” Case walked him to the door. “So how'd you get stuck doing piss-ant little stories about spring break, anyhow? Seems like I remember you from much bigger things.”

“Didn't you hear? I got a promotion. I get to pick my own stories now.”

“And you picked spring break?” Case gave a sad shake of his head. “I hate to tell you, my friend, but that ain't the way to becoming a prize-winning reporter.”

“Yeah, well you do me a favor and be sure to give me a call the next time the Democratic party holds its national convention here.”

Case grinned. “Hell, I'd probably just get your answering machine. 'Gone fishin,' it'd say.”

“Yeah, you got me there.”

They had reached the outer office and Guy paused, glancing around casually. Two deputies, a man and a woman, were at their computers, filling out up reports with that pained hunt-and-peck method favored by law enforcement officers everywhere. Maryanne, the dispatcher, had her earphones on and was talking to someone about a dog—lost or found, it was difficult to tell. Static and muffled voices came from her scanner as the units talked back and forth to one another, and in another part of the room a tinny-sounding radio was tuned to a country-western station. Garth Brooks.

Guy glanced toward the back wall, where a steel door separated the jail from the offices. He said, keeping his tone negligent, “So what's the story on that guy the state police brought in?”

Case's eyes narrowed with amusement and mild incredulity. “You sneaky S.O.B., you suckered me right in. You tie up a busy public official with an hour and a half of bullshit about spring break—”

“More like forty-minutes.” Guy lifted a shoulder toward the jail. “So how about it? 'According to Sheriff John Case.’

“He's gone,” Case said.

“Yeah, I know. Four o'clock this morning.”

“So there's your story.” Case turned back toward his office.

“Big-time drug pusher, huh?”

“Come on, Guy, all we did was store him. And you know how the state boys feel about locals riding on their coattails.”

“So what'd the state police ever do for you?”

“Cute.”

“I heard you confiscated eighty kilos.”

Case grunted. “Where are you getting your information? More like a hundred eighty.”

Guy gave a low whistle, scribbling in his notebook. “False bottom in the trunk, right?”

“Wheels. Jesus, what are you writing this down for? Nobody said you could have the story.”

“ 'According to an unnamed source ...’” Guy quoted, not looking up. “What's the street value?”

“You figure it out. You know more about this shit than I do.”

“I'm flattered. What did you do with it?”

“What?”

“The coke.”

“It's evidence. The state's sending a crime lab van for it.”

“Meantime?”

“What do you mean, meantime?”

But his eyes betrayed him with a sliding glance toward the steel door that led to the jail, and Guy burst out laughing.

“Are you kidding me? You're holding several hundred thousand dollars worth of high-grade cocaine prisoner in the county jail? Now, that's a headline.”

“Goddamn it, Guy—”

Guy put his notebook back in his pocket, still chuckling, and slipped on his coat. “Now do you see why I love working here?”

“Now you listen here, Guy—”

Case was starting to look alarmed, so Guy said, “Relax. I'm not going to say anything to impugn the integrity of your high office. You're too valuable a source.” He pretended to think about that for a minute before adding, “In fact, in a county this size, you're my only source.”

Case scowled at him, still disgruntled. “You better not forget it, either. That jacket looks like you slept in it.”

Guy glanced down at the jacket, brushed again at the wrinkles, and said, “Damn. I've got a lunch meeting with the commissioners, too.”

From her desk three feet away Deputy Marge Albrecker spoke up, her attention focused on her computer screen. “Hang it on the shower rod with the hot water going full blast for fifteen minutes. It’ll look good as new.”

Guy glanced at his watch. “Don't have the time or the shower.”

Marge grinned at him as she got up to collect some papers from the printer. “Then don't worry about it. People expect reporters to look rumpled—it’s part of their charm.”

“Yeah, I guess. Kind of makes me wish I was one.” Guy lifted his hand to both of them as he opened the door. “Thanks for the story, John. You know my number if you think of anything you want to add.”

Case replied sourly, “Nothing you'd want to print, Ace.”

Guy grinned and stepped out into the salty Florida sun. There were times, bleak, self-pitying times, when he wondered what the hell he was doing here. But on days like this—which outnumbered the bad days a good two hundred to one—he couldn't imagine why he had ever left.

If Guy Dennison's resume could be plotted on a chart, it would look like the world's longest roller-coaster ride. It began with a Wakefield, North Carolina, radio station and progressed to the Miami Herald, a giant upward curve. A sharp fall led to the position of general reporter on the Gulf Coast Sentinel and another, smaller, upward curve took him to investigative reporter on the Franklin County Summit, then a straight run to newswriter for WECV-TV in Panama City, and another giant leap to crime reporter for WLTL, Tallahassee. A sharp downward slope resulted in a job as staff writer for the Tallahassee Herald and then a small hill and a straightaway took him back to the Gulf Coast Sentinel as managing editor, which position he currently held with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

It was no secret that his lack of ambition had been a major point of stress in his marriage and no doubt a contributing factor to its ultimate failure. Carol used to accuse him—usually at high pitch and in strident tones—of going out of his way to disguise his talent lest someone offer him a decent-paying job, and sometimes he thought she wasn't far from wrong.

After the divorce, which for some reason took Guy completely by surprise, he had been seized by the need to prove Carol wrong, or perhaps by the unconscious hope that if he worked hard enough and became important enough, she would somehow love him again. Toward the end of his marriage, he had taken the television job in Panama City and refused to understand why it only exacerbated matters between Carol and himself—which anyone with any insight at all into the woman he loved could have predicted. He had left her home alone with a career and a demanding teenage daughter while he worked long hours sixty-five miles away, and he told himself he was doing it to please her. The truth was that he was escaping from something he didn't understand and couldn't control, and by the time he realized his actions were only punishing them both, it was too late. He let the tide carry him to Tallahassee because he had no place better to go, and was well on his way to becoming the most relentless television reporter in the state when he—inexplicably, most people said—left to write the news again.

Small-town newspapers were what he knew and what he liked and he no longer apologized for that. He knew that he was living in the end of an era; already the print paper was supported almost entirely by its web version and the ads it generated.  The daily newspaper was going the way of the dinosaur and there was nothing he could do to stop it, but as long as it survived, Guy Dennison wanted to be a part of it.

The occasional crooked councilman, the land-use debates, the small-time drug bust— those were enough excitement for him. He liked a paper where the managing editor could go out and round up stories, where county officials didn't care if he came to lunch wearing a wrinkled jacket, and where, when the mood struck him, he could turn the whole thing over to his staff and go fishing without worrying that the fate of the free world might be irretrievably affected by his absence. He liked knowing that, for as long as his career lasted, he never had to look at another gunshot wound or gangland-style execution or listen to a mother's choked, terrified voice describing the last moments of her missing child. He never, if he chose, had to even know about another missing child.

He lived on a boat. He owned a cell phone, a police scanner, and a television that picked up one station when the tides were right. When he went into a restaurant or a bar, people called him by name. Sometimes he was alone more often than he wanted to be, and he often spent more time regretting the past than he liked to admit, but he was, in general, satisfied with his life ... or at least as satisfied as he ever expected to be.

The office of the Gulf Coast Sentinel was on the river side of town, a small brick building with a twisted live oak shading the crushed-shell parking lot. There was a sandwich shop on one side and a bait-and-tackle shop on the other, and half a block down, the paved road turned into a sandy track that led into the marsh. If St. T. had possessed a low-rent district, this would have been it.

The office was arranged like a beehive, with the reception/subscription desk centered in a small cool foyer that was decorated with Press Club awards and banner copies of memorable front pages. The reporters' room—three desks, six telephones, and a computer—branched off to the east, advertising to the west, Guy's office to the south, and the publisher and general manager's office to the north adjacent to the front door. Ed Jenkins, the publisher, was on the telephone and beckoned to him from behind the open door of his office as Guy came in. Guy waved to him and picked up his messages from the receptionist’s desk.

Rachel, the receptionist, gave him an exasperated look as she noted the wrinkled coat he carried casually in his hand. “You know, you could save a fortune in dry cleaning if you would just hang your jacket up once in a while.”

“What? You're supposed to dry clean these things?” He glanced through the message slips as Rachel took the jacket from him and, with an air of exaggerated forbearance, hung it on the coat rack next to the door. “Who is this?” He waved one message slip at her, the name of which he didn't recognize.