The Way We Die Now (5 page)

"Unmarked cars, too? That doesn't make sense."

"That's the rule. I'm going to type up the notice and post it on the bulletin board now--after I finish my coffee."

"Any other truly important news at the meeting?"

"Yeah, there is. Every division's got to appoint a crack committee. They want us to come up with something or other to help the new Crack-Cocaine Task Force. According to new statistics, Miami's got more crack houses than New York had speakeasies during Prohibition. So something drastic has to be done. You didn't shave this morning, Hoke, so you're the new chairman of our Homicide Crack Committee."

"You told me yesterday -not- to shave, you bastard!"

"I know I did. But I don't have anyone else available just now. You can pick out two more detectives for your committee, and start thinking of ways to crack down on crack abusers and crack houses."

Hoke ripped up the pool card, tossed it into a wastebasket, and went down to the basement cafeteria. He got a cafe con leche, dark on coffee, and sat at an empty table. He was due in court at ten-thirty, making an appearance as the investigating officer in an old case that had already been continued several times. It would, in all probability, be continued again because the defendant, who had killed his wife with an aluminum baseball bat, had fired his courtappointed lawyer and the court would have to appoint a new one.

Hoke finished his coffee and lighted a Kool, wondering what, if anything, he could come up with (as a homicide detective) to combat the use of crack in Miami. He couldn't think of anything, except to charge crack sellers with seconddegree murder. Crack abusers died off eventually, if they didn't break the habit. But legislation like that was unlikely. He would select Sergeant Armando Quevedo and Detective Bob Levine for his committee. The three of them could go out for a few beers at Larry's Hideaway, kick the idea around, and then come up with a meaningless report of some kind. Hoke hadn't been out drinking with Quevedo and Levine for some months now, and this was a reasonable excuse to have a few beers and shoot the breeze with his old buddies. He was getting too housebound for his own good.

It was unfair of Bill Henderson to make him the chairman, but Hoke didn't resent the appointment. He knew that if he had been in Henderson's position, he would have appointed the first man he happened to see, too. The idea was stupid in the first place. A committee like this one was just busywork, another public relations ploy the new chief could hand out to the media to make it look as if something were being done about drug abuse. Education didn't work, Hoke thought as he stubbed out his butt in the ashtray. He knew he shouldn't smoke, and he knew he shouldn't drink, but that hadn't stopped him from smoking and drinking. So far this year thirty-six Miamians had died from smoking crack, but crack use increased daily.

Hoke returned to his office and slipped into his leisure suit jacket. He decided to drive over to the Metro Justice Building a little early because it was difficult to find a parking space over there. The phone rang.

"Hoke," Ellita said, when he picked up the phone, "you know the house across the street, the run-down place that's been for sale for the last year?"

"What about it?"

"A man moved in this morning. They unloaded a van of furniture earlier, and the guy who moved in has a little Henry J. It looks like a brand-new car."

"You must be mistaken, Ellita. They haven't made any Henry Js since the fifties."

"It's a Henry J, Hoke, and it looks like a new one. After the van left, the man brought a dining room chair out to the lawn, and he's been sitting and staring over at our house for the last hour. The grass over there's a foot high, and he looks funny, just sitting there in a chair and staring at our house."

"What about it? If he bought the house and moved in, he's entitled to sit on a chair on his front lawn, whether he mows it or not. I'm glad the house finally sold. Now someone'll have to take care of the yard."

"I don't like it, Hoke. I know he can't see me, or anything like that, because I'm here inside. But every time I go to the front window and look over at him through the curtains, he's staring directly at our house. He's wearing a dark blue suit, and it must be ninety out there in the sun. It bothers me."

"What do you expect me to do about it, Ellita? I've got to go to court this morning."

"I thought maybe you could find out who he is."

"Hell, you can do that yourself. Call the realtor and ask him. The sign out there was Paulson Realtor, wasn't it?"

"I already called the realtor, and they let me talk to a Mrs. Anderson. She's the woman who handled the sale, but she wouldn't tell me anything. She said if I was interested, the neighborly thing to do would be to go over and introduce myself. Then if he wanted to talk about himself and why he bought the house, it would be up to him."

"That seems reasonable, Ellita. Why don't you do that?"

"I don't know. It's just that he looks so weird over there. Like a sitting statue or something. Wearing a blue suit."

"Look, I've got to go to court. If you're afraid of him, take your pistol along--"

"I'm not afraid of him. It's just that it looks--Never mind. If your case is continued again, will you come home for lunch?"

"I don't know. I'll try to call you from the courthouse."

As Hoke suspected it would be, the case was continued, although the angry judge said it would be the last time. The new lawyer, a young woman from the public defender's office, requested a thirty-day delay so she could prepare a defense. Hoke almost felt sorry for her. This was her first homicide case, and she would certainly lose it. The defendant, an insurance salesman and Little League baseball coach, had killed his wife with a bat because she had berated him for not letting their son pitch. His son could neither pitch nor hit, he told the desk sergeant when he turned himself in and handed the bloody bat over and confessed at the station. Hoke had prepared the supplementary reports on the simple case. If the man's signed confession was allowed as evidence, the guy would go to prison, no matter what kind of defense the attorney attempted.

Hoke called Ellita from the courthouse.

"I've been waiting for your call, Hoke--"

"Go ahead and have lunch without me. I've got too many things to do today to come home for lunch."

"I found out who that man is, Hoke. And I don't think it's a coincidence. It's Donald Hutton!"

Hoke laughed. "Hutton's a common name, Ellita. My Donald Hutton's still doing twenty-five years in Raiford. A mandatory twenty-five before he's eligible for parole."

"You're wrong, Hoke. This is -your- Donald Hutton. I went over and introduced myself. He told me he was waiting outside for the water man and the FPL to turn on his utilities. He said he just moved down here from Starke, that's where Raiford Prison is, and he's had his furniture and little Henry J in storage for the last ten years. Then he told me his name was Donald Hutton. I didn't tell him you lived in the house with me, but I've got a hunch he already knows that. That's why he bought the house--"

"Did you ask him if he was in prison?"

"That isn't something you ask a person you're meeting for the first time, Hoke. I couldn't very well say, 'Did you just get out of prison?,' could I?"

"I guess not. I'll check it out while I'm here at the courthouse."

"Call me back. I'm not going out."

"I'll call you."

Hoke recalled the Donald Hutton murder case well. This had been Hoke's second homicide investigation, and he had worked hard on it, trying to prove himself as a new detective.

Donald Hutton, and his older brother, Virgil (Virgil was five years older than Donald), had moved to Miami from Valdosta, Georgia, in the sixties. They had started a knotty pine paneling business. They already owned hundreds of acres of pinelands in Georgia, and they specialized in paneling offices and dens in new homes. During the building boom of the early seventies they had prospered in Miami. Eventually they had twenty-two employees. They lived together in an old mansion in the Bayside section of Miami, overlooking Biscayne Bay.

Virgil had married a modestly successful interior designer, a young woman named Marie Weller. She had kept her maiden name when they married, because of her established business. Her new clients were often advised to panel one or two rooms in knotty pine (she could get them a substantial discount). Then Virgil Hutton disappeared.

Donald Hutton had made a nuisance of himself at the police station, demanding that they find his big brother. Virgil had no known enemies, and according to everything Hoke could find out, he had been a "good old boy." Virgil did the selling for the two-man firm. Donald took care of the paperwork and also supervised the actual paneling that was put in by their hired craftsmen.

Donald also complained to the media, claiming that the police were not looking hard enough for his brother. How could a two-hundred-and-forty-pound man, six feet tall, disappear into the hot, moist air of Miami?

Marie Weller couldn't understand it either. She and Virgil had been married only for a year and were happy together, she claimed. In fact, they had even talked to the attorney, Randy Mendoza, about the possibility of adopting a child. At thirty-two Marie Weller was capable of bearing a child, but Virgil, forty-three and fifty pounds overweight, had a low sperm count. Virgil had disappeared without a trace. No money had been taken from his bank account, and his Cadillac was still in the three-car garage. His extensive tailored wardrobe was still intact.

One Saturday morning a photograph of Donald Hutton and Marie Weller appeared in both newspapers. Considering the possibility that Virgil might be suffering from amnesia, Marie and Donald had gone downtown and checked the skid row breadline at Camillus House, believing that Virgil, if he were having an amnesia attack, might be sleeping under an overpass at night and getting mission handouts. They had notified the newspapers of their impending trip downtown, and photographers and reporters had been there to check the breadline with them. Virgil had not been among the homeless men, of course, but some excellent human-interest photos of other bums in the line were published in both papers.

Negative PR like this put additional pressure on Hoke Moseley and the Homicide Division.

Because of their partnership agreement, Donald Hutton, in essence, now owned one hundred percent of the business. Marie Weller, naturally, continued to live with her brother-in-law in the big Bayside mansion. Donald Hutton--although he didn't have to--paid Marie Weller a fair share of the profits from the business, but until Virgil was declared officially dead--not just missing--the business was all his, not Marie Weller's. If the body was found, Marie Weller would inherit her husband's half of the firm.

Hoke discovered the body.

Before he found the corpse, Hoke had learned, during routine checks of Donald's movements in the weeks preceding Virgil's disappearance, that Donald had purchased three pounds of strychnine at the Falco-Benson Pharmaceutical Company, in Hialeah, ostensibly to get rid of rats at his house. Inasmuch as the Huttons had a live-in cook, a daytime maid, and a gardener who spent two days a week taking care of their yard, why would a busy executive like Donald Hutton decide to kill the rats himself? Wouldn't he hire an exterminator, or else tell the regular exterminator who visited the house every month, to take care of the rats? It wasn't much to go on, but the third judge Hoke talked to signed a second search warrant. Hoke discovered the body buried under the garage floor beneath Virgil's parked 1974 El Dorado. The house had been searched briefly earlier, when a two-man detective team looked about for evidence in the disappearance, but they hadn't moved the Cadillac during this first, and rather perfunctory, search. Donald Hutton was arrested when the autopsy revealed traces of strychnine in his body. Marie Weller had been in North Carolina attending a furniture convention when Virgil disappeared, so she was not a suspect.

The evidence was largely circumstantial, and perhaps a good criminal lawyer could have obtained a not guilty verdict for Donald Hutton, but Donald had retained Randy Mendoza, and Mendoza, a corporation lawyer without criminal law experience, made the mistake of putting his client on the stand. The prosecutor had managed to make Hutton lie, after accusing him of sleeping with Marie Weller, his brother's wife, during a long weekend in Key West. After Hutton had denied the allegation, the prosecutor produced a photocopy of the hotel registration card (obtained by Hoke during his investigation). He also put another witness on the stand, a hotel maid, who claimed that the two of them were in bed together on the morning she entered their room (at their request) to clear away their breakfast dishes. Marie Weller was then put on the stand. She admitted sharing the bed in Key West with her brother-in-law but said that she did so only because all the other rooms were booked up. They had slept together, she said, but they "hadn't done anything."

The jury found Donald Hutton guilty of first-degree murder but recommended life imprisonment. The magistrate accepted the jury's recommendation. Life, on a murder one conviction, meant twenty-five mandatory years in prison before Hutton would be eligible for a parole. Technically Donald Hutton should still have fifteen years to serve...

Judge Hathorne was not in his chambers, but his law clerk informed Hoke that Hutton's case, on a third appeal, had been granted a new trial by the state supreme court. Hutton's attorney, they concluded, had prepared an inadequate, incompetent defense. Mendoza should not have put Hutton on the stand, and he should have accepted a plea bargain of guilty for the reduction of the charge to seconddegree murder. If Hutton had pleaded guilty to seconddegree murder, he would have been eligible for parole in only eight years. Rather than retry the case (now that Hutton had served ten years), the state attorney had gone along with the recommendation to release Hutton for "time served." And so Hoke learned that Ellita was right. -His- Donald Hutton, a man who had promised to "get him" someday, a threat Hoke had considered empty at the time, was back on the street, or, more specifically, living in a house directly across the street from Hoke's house.