The Names of Our Tears (21 page)

Hurried, the girl nodded and walked away with her pad and pen. Behind the drink counter, she poured iced sweet tea from a large plastic pitcher and set the glasses on a small round tray. Then she pushed through the kitchen doors, leaving the drinks on the serving counter.

When Tapp returned, she was carrying a tray of food over her head. She delivered it to a server’s folding stand at one of the center tables, and another waitress served the plates from the tray while Jodie retrieved the two glasses of tea for the Brandens.
As she set them on the table, Caroline asked again if she was Jodie Tapp, and Jodie took note this time, saying, “Do I know you?”

“No,” the professor said, “but we’re from Holmes County.”

Jodie brightened and stood a little straighter, eyes shifting back and forth between the Brandens expectantly.

Caroline said, “I’m afraid we have some bad news, Jodie. Can you sit?”

Jodie looked over her shoulder and said, “I shouldn’t. Do you want to order?”

“Jodie,” the professor said. “It’s not good news. About Ruth Zook.”

Jodie hesitated, then cautiously drew a vacant chair from the adjoining table. She sat down and asked, “Is she OK?” seeming to Caroline to be resigned, as if she were inclined toward the negative or forewarned of something tragic.

Branden leaned across the small table toward Jodie and said, “She’s been killed, Jodie.”

Jodie threw a hand over her mouth, stiffened, and stifled a cry. Eyes wide, she asked immediately, “Was it an accident? On the highway?”

“No, Jodie,” Caroline said. “She was murdered.”

Hand still covering her mouth, Jodie began a muted wail, as if she wanted to cry out but had managed only to direct a scream inward where she alone could hear it. Caroline reached for her hand.

Choking down her cry, Jodie popped up on her feet and swayed out of balance. She grabbed for the edge of the little table, and it toppled over, spilling glasses of iced tea across the floor. Jodie landed on her butt, legs out straight, one arm planted behind her, the other still covering her mouth.

From across the room, a manager lady in Mennonite garb came immediately toward the Brandens, who both had knelt to help Jodie to her feet. They righted her chair and got her seated, and as they were pulling the table up onto its legs, the manager reached them, solicitously inquiring if the Brandens were hurt. Caroline assured the woman that they were not, and without
inquiring about Jodie, the manager turned for the corner closet and came back with a mop. As she drew the mop through the spill, she said to Jodie, “Get two more teas.” To the Brandens, she said, “This is on the house.”

“Really, it’s no problem,” the professor said.

He would have said more, but Caroline advanced on the manager and insisted, “Jodie has had some bad news. Maybe you could give us a moment, here.”

The manager seemed startled. Caroline held a determined stare, with polite antagonism showing openly in her gaze. The manager read her rebuke and retreated.

The Brandens positioned their chairs to flank Jodie, and Caroline said, “We heard you were friends, Jodie. Tell us about Ruth.”

Jodie had to struggle to bring her mind into focus on Caroline’s words. She didn’t answer.

Intending encouragement, the professor said, “They tell us you were friends with Fannie Helmuth, Jodie. Were you also friends with Ruth?”

Alarm showed in Jodie’s expression, but she said nothing. Realizing he didn’t actually know it to be true, Branden said, “We think Fannie is fine, Jodie. And we have a friend who wants to ask you some questions.”

Jodie said nothing.

“Our friend is a Holmes County detective,” Caroline said. “He wants to ask you some questions about Fannie. And maybe Ruth, too, if you knew her.”

Jodie nodded, but slumped on her chair. She seemed to pull inward, becoming as small as a frightened child, as wounded as a broken wing. Slowly she began to turn her head from side to side. Her eyes closed and opened again to stare denial into vacant space. “It has to be a mistake,” she said. “No, really, you’re wrong.”

“It’s not a mistake,” Caroline said. “She was murdered. Shot.”

“But she was just here,” Jodie said, searching Caroline’s eyes for agreement.

Branden spoke, and Jodie turned slowly toward him. “Jodie,” he said, “she brought drugs up to Ohio on the bus.”

After a long pause, as if her thoughts were forming themselves inside a confusing dream, Jodie asked, “How?”

“In an extra suitcase,” Branden said. “It was cocaine. We don’t think Ruth knew what it was until she opened it the next morning.”

Jodie stared incredulously at the professor. He added, “She dumped the drugs out in the farm pond behind her house, and then when she met someone in a secluded glade the next morning, they shot her.”

It took Jodie a full minute to ask her next question. “Who would kill an Amish girl?” As she asked it, her fingers rubbed her cheek, as if remembering a wound.

“That’s what Detective Niell wants to talk with you about,” Branden said. “How did Ruth get the suitcase?”

Caroline added, “And was it anything like the one you gave to Fannie Helmuth?”

Jodie’s fingers came to rest beneath her eye, and she looked back and forth between the two Brandens as if confused. “Is Fannie OK?” she asked. “Did they hurt Fannie, too?”

“Who would hurt her, Jodie?” Branden asked. “Who do you mean?”

Jodie looked even more puzzled and seemed to recoil from her thoughts. She stood, eyes wide open, then sat back down, shutting her eyes. She pulled her fingers away from her cheek, slowly opened her eyes, tugged nervously at her long dress at the knees, and then resumed rubbing mechanically at her cheek.

The manager came back and asked for someone to explain to her what was wrong.

Jodie looked up at her vacantly and said, “I need to go home.”

The manager lady started to protest, but Caroline said, “Jodie has gotten some really bad news about Ruth Zook.”

“Just what kind of bad news?” the lady asked.

“She’s dead,” the professor said, and watched the manager for a reaction.

Jodie moaned in her seat, and the manager said, “You’re kidding!”

“No,” Branden said, “and if you don’t mind, we’re going to take Jodie home early.”

Directly, the manager said, “She can’t leave her truck parked here. I need the spot for customers.”

Caroline stood and advanced. “She’s gonna come with us, now.”

“Where?” the lady demanded.

“To our beach house on Longboat Key, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Well, one of you is going to have to drive her truck.”

Jodie stood and tried to mollify the manager. “I can follow them,” she said. “Or I’ll just go home.”

“You follow us, Jodie,” Caroline said. “We’ll make you some dinner on the grill, and we can talk.”

“OK,” Jodie said distantly.

Caroline took her arm and began guiding Jodie between the tables toward the front door. “Better yet, you ride with me,” she said. “Mike can drive your truck.”

Hanging back, the professor pressed a crumpled ten-dollar bill into the manager’s hand and said, “We’ll pay for our tea.”

WHEN RICKY Niell pulled up to the butterscotch building of the Bradenton Beach police station, beside the long and low Cortez drawbridge spanning the waters of northern Sarasota Bay, Ray Lee Orton was climbing down an aluminum ladder he had propped against the side of a forty-foot cabin cruiser. The all-white boat was awash in lights from two tall floods that Orton had set up behind the stern, and the fiberglass hull of the boat rested on the padded supports of a salvage trailer that had been used to haul it out of the channel waters of Longboat Pass. A ragged hole in the starboard hull, well below the waterline, showed the damage where someone had placed a charge inside a lower hold of the boat to scuttle the craft.

Niell stopped his rental car at the edge of the light, on the parking lot of white sand and crushed shells, and as he got out and walked up to the ladder, he called up to Orton, “This the boat you told Robertson about? Stolen boats and drug running?”

Orton stepped down the ladder and stuck out his hand with a smile. “Yes. Hi, Ricky. Good thing you called first. I was headed home.”

Orton was out of uniform, dressed in cutoff jeans, a flowered tropical shirt in peach and turquoise hues, and white loafers. He
had the muscular legs and narrow waist of a bicycle cop, and he was strong in his arms and broad through his shoulders from what Ricky remembered was Orton’s passion, kite surfing along the windy stretches of beach on the barrier islands west of Sarasota Bay.

Niell shook hands with the sergeant and said, “I flew down this morning. I’ve been over in Pinecraft since I drove down from Tampa, interviewing bus drivers.”

“Robertson asked me to send the Brandens to meet you,” Orton said.

“They did. And they stayed to talk to Jodie Tapp. To tell her about Ruth Zook’s being shot.”

“Good,” Orton said. He drew a handkerchief out of his hip pocket and rubbed at the tips of his fingers on his right hand. Then he nipped a splinter with his teeth, spat it out to the side, and rubbed on the wound again with his handkerchief. “Splinters,” he said. “I’ve been poking around in bullet holes.”

Orton put his handkerchief away and rapped his knuckles against the hull of the tall boat. “We’re dealing with a bad outfit, here,” he said. “The owners of this boat have been missing for about two weeks, now. Can’t really be sure about the time, because they were boating casually between Key West and Marathon. Their float plan didn’t put them back to Fort Myers right away, and their kids didn’t report them missing for a couple of days after they were supposed to have gotten back.”

Niell paced the length of the boat to inspect its hull, and then he returned to the hole. “Why would anyone sink it?” he asked Orton, lightly fingering the frayed fiberglass strands along the edge of the breach.

Orton pulled his ladder down and folded it on the ground. “They use them only once, Ricky. They hijack the boats in the Keys, make the run up the coast, offload on one of the remote beaches at night, and then scuttle the boats out in deeper water. We find debris floating in on the tides, and twice we’ve been able to find and dive on the wrecks. Mostly, nobody ever sees the boats again.”

“This the first one that didn’t sink?” Ricky asked.

“We think so.”

“Why do you have it here?”

“As opposed to what?”

“Well, there’s the Coast Guard, customs, other agencies that would want it.”

“Customs is coming for it tomorrow morning,” Orton said. “The Coast Guard has already been through it.”

“You’ve gone through it, too?”

“I was taking a second look,” Orton said. He pulled his ladder up again, propped it against the side of the boat, and led Niell up to the aft deck.

The stern lounge consisted of padded wraparound seating along the back of the boat, with a deck table bolted between that and two padded swivel chairs. A sliding glass door gave access to a small salon inside, and outside passage was available along either side of the salon to the bow. Ricky could see through the glass that inside the salon a companionway led belowdecks and a short run of steps led up to the wheel deck. The exterior brass work and stainless trim shined brightly in the light from Orton’s flood lamps, but the teak decking planks under Niell’s feet were dull gray and smooth from wear. Standing on the stern deck, Niell could see no evidence of a gunfight.

He asked Orton, “Bullet holes?” and Orton said, “It’s all inside. All I’ve got is nine-millimeter holes. The Coast Guard extracted all the lead for ballistics, not that it’ll do them any good without a weapon to match it to. But there are bullet holes sprayed around inside the salon, all down the companionway, and into the galley. Same thing up on the bridge.”

Niell crossed into the salon, climbed to the upper wheel deck, and examined an irregular line of bullet holes crossing through the instrument dash, the side panels, and the back of the wheel chair. Orton led him down into the quarters below, and Niell saw more bullet holes splintering through the galley and into the stateroom door.

Back out on the stern deck, Niell asked, “You think they just killed the owners?”

“Boarded, killed them, and put the bodies overboard. We’ll never find them.”

“It looks like all their personal gear is still on board.”

“Whatever didn’t wash out when they scuttled her,” Orton confirmed. “All these drug runners want is the transportation. They don’t bother with the gear, equipment, anything. They just jack the boats, use them once, and blow holes in the hulls when they’re done.”

Niell stepped over the gunwale and started down the ladder, with Orton following. They folded the ladder again, carried it to the side of the police station, propped it against the building, switched off the floodlights, and went inside the lower entrance, through the booking station with its single cell, into Orton’s ground-floor conference room. Niell took a seat at the long table there, and Orton produced a file folder, saying, “Photos taken underwater.”

While Orton ran out two glasses of water at a corner sink, Niell opened the folder and started laying out pictures, most of them five-by-sevens, in sequence according to numbers on the backs of the prints. One set of photos showed a smaller cabin cruiser lying on a sandy ocean bottom, its ruined hull exposed like a crater, edges blown out around a jagged hole. The second sequence of prints showed a similar fate for a sport-fishing cruiser, its bow blown out, as well as its hull at the keel line, as if two separate charges had been used inside the larger boat.

Niell stacked the photos loosely, returned them to the folder, and said, “Looks like they’ll take any type of boat.”

Orton sat across the table from Niell and straightened the photos in the folder. “This is a bad crew, Ricky. We think they fly in junk from South America, hijack boats in the Keys, run up the coast—even in daylight, they’d look just like pleasure boaters—and then offload and scuttle at night.”

“Do they really just kill the owners outright?” Ricky asked.