The Dollar-a-Year Detective Read online

  My Colt is on the table beside my chair.

  Waiting for Lance Porter, or perhaps someone he hires for his wet work.

  I turned off my iPad. My chair is positioned so that someone coming through the bedroom door won’t see me, especially in the dark room. I put pillows under the bed covers to resemble two sleeping bodies.

  As a Fort Myers Beach detective, I have no jurisdiction in Fort Myers. But Cubby Cullen knows the Fort Myers police chief and the Lee County sheriff and got them to buy into my plan.

  A sheriff’s SWAT team is hidden somewhere outside. The team has been instructed to let Porter, or anyone else, enter the house. If they stopped him outside, he couldn’t be charged with anything except trespassing, and maybe illegal possession of a firearm if he doesn’t have a license for it.

  If the SWAT guys hear gunfire, they’re instructed to rush inside to see who has survived. If nobody shows up, I’ll take the SWAT team to Dunkin’ Donuts, on me.

  Three twenty a.m.

  Three forty.

  Four ten.

  Maybe Porter doesn’t know about REM sleep cycles.

  I hear a noise.

  Not so much hear it as sense it. That’s a skill I learned in the marines while on night patrol. You come to sense a disturbance in the atmosphere around you. An intrusion into your force field. An enemy approaching.

  Then I hear the creaking of footsteps on the wooden stairway. Apparently, Porter, or whoever it is, doesn’t know how to step on the outside edges of a stairway to avoid the noise.

  I stand, pick up the Colt, and press my back against the wall behind where the door will swing open.

  The door slowly opens, a moment passes, and then the room is filled with the sound of cracking gunfire as a man dressed in black, wearing a black ski mask, assassinates the pillows.

  I noticed that they are the popular My Pillow brand, four of them at $49.99 a pop. I know that because I’ve seen the infomercial a zillion times. In fact I’ve come to hate it. I’d rather rest my head on a rock than on a My Pillow. The Gordons are going to need new ones.

  The assassin’s back is to me. On TV and in the movies, the cop always calls out, “Halt! Police! Drop the gun! Do it now!” Real cops, at least those who survive to fight another day, don’t do that. If they want to take the perp alive, they hit him on the head with a heavy object, preferably a piano, if one is handy. If it says “dead or alive” on the wanted poster, they shoot.

  I need Porter, or whoever it is, alive. There is no piano in the bedroom, so I whack him on the back of the head with the butt end of my Colt.

  He goes down fast and hard. He’s holding a semiauto pistol, which he drops as he falls. I kick it away from his reach—although he’s down for the count and not about to reach for anything. I take a pair of handcuffs off my belt and cuff his wrists behind his back, then roll him over and pull off his ski mask.

  “Hello, Representative Porter,” I say. “You just lost my vote.”

  37.

  Cellmates

  By now comfortably ahead in the pre-election polls, Dr. Mitchell Gordon held a fund-raising dinner in the ballroom of the Hyatt Place Fort Myers, the same room where Lance Porter addressed the Citizens for a Sane Environment’s awards banquet.

  Marisa and I are there, seated at a table with Cubby Cullen, Fort Myers Police Chief Carl DeJohn and his wife, Tessa, and Lee County Sheriff Clark David and his wife, Sally.

  We are served the same chicken Oscar that we got at the Citizens for a Sane Environment event. I assume it was prepared for us today, and is not left over from the earlier event, but I have no solid evidence of that without an autopsy.

  When it’s time for Dr. Gordon to speak, he doesn’t tap the microphone and cause that awful squelch. He’s too experienced for that. When the applause dies down, which takes awhile, he begins: “I have a great many people to thank for my impending victory, and I am going to do that. And I am going to reaffirm the principles I stand for, and restate my campaign promises. But before I do, I want to acknowledge some special guests seated at table two, right over there.”

  He points to our table. “You all know about the arrest of Lance Porter,” he tells the crowd, “and about how he tried to win the election by killing me.” He turns toward Laureen, seated near him on the dais. “As you can see, he was unsuccessful.”

  He looks again at our table. “Those men seated there, backed up by their strong women, are the reason that Laureen and I are here with you tonight. They are the embodiment of the kind of effective law enforcement our society requires during these troubled times.”

  He moves to his place at the table, picks up his wine glass, returns to the podium, raises the glass in our direction, and says, “Gentlemen, and ladies, I salute you!”

  This time we get the standing ovation.

  Marisa whispers in my ear: “I like the ‘backed up by strong women’ part.”

  Lance Porter is initially charged with the attempted murder of Mitchell and Laureen Gordon, criminal trespass, destruction of property (the pillows), unlawful discharge of a firearm, and resisting arrest, which he hadn’t really done because he was unconscious, but it was his word against mine. He did have a permit for the .22-caliber Sig Sauer Mosquito semiauto pistol he was carrying.

  But Lee County Attorney Lenore Whiteside wants Porter for the murders. The circumstantial evidence against him is compelling: Porter knew that the Hendersons would be sailing in Pine Island Sound on the day he killed them because his boss, Russell Tolliver, had asked him to schedule a meeting with Marion on the day they’d planned their sail. And, of course, he knew Tolliver’s daily schedule, and so he knew when he planned to be out on his boat fishing. Turner Hatfield, like Dr. Gordon, threatened Porter’s political career, and was killed in a similar manner as the other victims.

  But a jury trial is always a toss-up, especially with only circumstantial evidence. Lenore Whiteside, who is one tough cookie with a batting average rivaling Bryce Harper’s, is able to convince Porter and his lawyer that the bullets recovered from the murder victims would demonstrate to a jury that it is highly probable they’d been fired from Porter’s gun. The bullet dug out of Porter’s living room wall came from that same gun, she tells them, proving that he fired the shot through his own window.

  The ballistic tests do not show that conclusively, but a number of Supreme Court rulings, including Frazier v. Cupp in 1969, have held that deceptive interrogation tactics are allowable under certain circumstances.

  Porter and his lawyer would find out about that ballistic falsehood during pretrial discovery, but before that can happen, Whiteside puts a plea-bargain offer on the table, with a twenty-four-hour expiration date: in return for confessing to the four murders, Porter will receive a recommendation for consecutive life sentences in a state prison. The alternative is that the prosecution will request the death penalty.

  Whiteside did not attempt to connect Porter to the murder of Grimes, which occurred before Porter joined Tolliver’s staff. The circumstantial evidence in that case is less compelling, given that Grimes’s widow, Samantha, took over his seat in the state senate. But Whiteside does meet with Samantha Grimes to tell her that the man who’d almost certainly killed her husband is in custody.

  Porter took the deal, with one exception. A big one. He did not kill the Hendersons. He has a rock-solid alibi for the night of their murders. He was hospitalized for three days at—ironically—the hospital where Dr. Gordon does his surgeries, following complications from an appendectomy. He admits that he killed his boss Russell Tolliver in order to take his job. The Henderson murders gave him the opportunity to do a copycat killing to draw suspicion away from himself by making it appear that all three murders were related to the offshore oil drilling controversy.

  Smart man.

  Stupid me.

  38.

  The Murder Book

  I was fresh out of suspects for the murders I’d initially been hired to investigate. It was some consolation that Lance
Porter had accepted the plea deal and was serving his time in the Union Correctional Institution in Union County.

  If I wanted him to, Cubby Cullen could use his law enforcement connections to check up on how Porter is doing, including what job he’s been given and who his cellmate is. But it’s more fun to imagine that his job involves scut work, such as cleaning the bathrooms. I hope he becomes the prison bitch of a sweaty, inked-up behemoth cellmate with bad teeth and worse breath named Mad Dog. Talk about doing hard time. As long as he doesn’t kill his roommate to get the bottom bunk, parole is a possibility, if remote. If granted, he might be young enough when he gets out to run for governor, murder his opponent, win the election, and then pardon himself.

  I’m tempted to tell Cubby I’ve had enough of the investigation, as Marisa urged me to do. So did Joe. When I briefed him on the situation, he meowed, which I took to mean, “Maybe you should get a higher-paying job.”

  In fact, I do tell Cubby that. Over lunch at Stan’s Diner, he says, “You took Lance Porter off the street, and that’s not nothing. About 64 percent of murders are unsolved, according to federal crime stats. There’s no shame in batting .500 for our local crime wave.”

  “I know,” I agree.

  Our food arrives. We eat in silence for a while. Then Cubby looks at me, smiles, and says, “You’re not really going to quit, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Atta boy.”

  Samuel Goldwyn, the famous film producer, said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

  True enough, but work on what? is the question of the moment. I’ve carefully sifted through the lives of Larry and Marion Henderson, thought I’d solved the case, and was dead wrong.

  Had Leticia Baker killed Marion, and also Larry, to get Marion’s job as president of Citizens for a Sane Environment? It was, after all, the kind of thing Lance Porter would do.

  In the absence of real ideas, those were the kind of loopy thoughts I was having.

  Back to square one.

  Actually, back to page one—of the Murder Book, which is a file containing everything known about a homicide. My Murder Book is in the evidence room of the Fort Myers Beach police station. Before going to the station the next day, I have lunch with Marisa at Captain Jacks, a clam strip roll for me, Manhattan chowder for her.

  “Tell me again the main causes of murder,” she says.

  “That would be love and money.”

  “You’ve tried money, Sherlock. You looked at Larry Henderson’s bank. You discovered that Lance Porter killed those people to get his boss’s job, which led to money from his car dealerships. Might be time to look at love.”

  She was right. There had to be something in Larry or Marion’s personal life I’d overlooked.

  In order to fuel my thinking, I ask the waitress for more tartar sauce.

  Cubby finds me in the conference room at the station, starting to review everything we have so far about the Henderson murders: Harlan Boyd’s notes, the Coast Guard report, the autopsy report, the FBI audit of the Manatee National Bank, a copy of the Fort Myers police file, and my notes on Reynold Livingstone’s suicide, which contain the erroneous conclusion that Lance Porter did the deed.

  “Finding anything?” Cubby asks.

  “Just that my investigation has led to a dead end concerning the Henderson murders.”

  After reading the file, I go for a run on the beach, looking for inspiration. All I get is a pulled groin muscle. I limp back to the car, drive to my boat, shower, and head over to The Drunken Parrot.

  Spring break has ended, along with the main tourist season, so the bar is populated with local regulars. One of them is Phil Gold, a self-described secular Jew, meaning he likes lox and bagels and tongue sandwiches but feels no particular affinity for the Old Testament. Phil, who owns a hardware store on Estero Boulevard, is bellied up to the bar with a brandy and Mexican Coke, the latter of which we stock just for him. He’s explained to me that Coca-Cola USA switched from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup sometime in the 1980s, but bottlers in Mexico still use the sugar. Coke aficionados can tell the difference, he said. Sugar gives a better taste and is healthier, he claims. I’ve tried both and can go along with the taste, it’s not as sweet, but as to healthier, Phil tips the scale at the weight of a pro football lineman. Enough said. Diet Coke, to him, tastes like kerosene.

  “Hey, Phil what’s shakin’?” I ask when I join him.

  “Lucinda and I just had our fortieth wedding anniversary,” he says. “I told her I really appreciate her sticking with me through thick and thin, although I haven’t seen thin in a while. There was the time I was deer hunting and one of the guys shot me with a double-0 load. And the time I fell off the ladder while cleaning the gutters and broke my hip. And the time a tornado took off our roof, and the time lightning stuck the store and burned it down …”

  He takes a sip of his drink and adds, “You know, Jack, I’m beginning to think the woman’s bad luck.”

  I never discuss an ongoing investigation with civilians, except for Marisa and Joe, so I say, “How about them Cubs?”

  Phil is from Cleveland originally, but he doesn’t take the bait.

  39.

  The Second-Worst Thing

  On Saturday morning, by prearrangement, I visit Tom and Lynette Henderson at their house, a cedar-shingled ranch on Cypress Avenue in a tidy residential neighborhood of Fort Myers. A Ford F-250 truck is parked in the driveway and an aluminum fishing boat on a trailer sits on the lawn beside the garage. Many of the homes I pass in the neighborhood have trucks and boats. These are solid, working-class residents who enjoy the outdoor life Florida offers.

  I’m here to deliver the unhappy news that Larry and Marion’s killer is still at large. When Porter’s arrest was announced, Tom called to thank me for catching his brother and sister-in-law’s murderer. He said that brought a measure of peace to him and his wife, and would do the same, eventually, for the children.

  The worst thing about a homicide detective’s job is delivering the news to next of kin that a loved one is dead. The second worst is telling them that we have not been able to apprehend the killer, at least not yet. If a detective can’t do that, then we are just men and women in suits with guns and gold shields who drink coffee, eat doughnuts, and drive around in unmarked sedans talking on the radio.

  Tom greets me at the front door, holding a mug of coffee: “When you called you said you have some information about my brother and sister-in-law’s murders.”

  It wasn’t the kind of news I wanted to give him on the phone. “Can we talk about it inside?” I ask.

  “Sure, sure, sorry,” he says, stepping aside and holding the door open.

  Lynette comes out of the kitchen. When the three of us are seated in the family room, Lynette says, “The children are at friends’ houses. I didn’t know what …”

  I get right to the point: “We’ve found out that Lance Porter didn’t kill Larry and Marion. He was in the hospital when it happened. He did kill two other people, Russell Tolliver and Turner Hatfield.”

  They exchange glances and wait for me to continue by telling them the real killer has been caught. As I said, this is the second-worst thing about the job.

  Next up are some Saturday chores: do the laundry, wash the car, take some shirts and slacks to the cleaners, and pick up a refill of Lipitor at Walgreens (can’t imagine why I need it for high cholesterol, must be genetic—couldn’t be the double bacon cheeseburgers, nothing that good could be bad for you). None of those tasks requires deep thinking, which, in terms of my investigation, isn’t working out very well at the moment. Sometimes you have to take a Zen approach to problem solving: clear the mind and let the answer come to you.

  I can report that my mind is, in fact, clear, but the answer is showing no sign of appearing. Maybe I should don a saffron-colored robe and sit cross-legged in a mountain cave, breathing deeply and chanting. But I don’t know where to get a robe like that and there are no mountain
caves in Florida, so I go back to work on Stoney’s Dilemma. The world of fiction is often preferable to real life.

  Stoney’s Key West fishing trip was all catch and release. Now, back on the job in Chicago, that goal had changed. In Stoney’s opinion, you only released a perp when the criminal justice system malfunctioned.

  “Nice tan, Jack. Now it’s time to get your head back in the game.”

  This said by Lt. Davey Davis, the Homicide Division commander, a tall and lean man in his fifties who always wore impeccably tailored suits, as he found Stoney in the break room, pouring a mug of burned coffee. There was a doughnut box on the counter, inhabited only by crumbs.

  Stoney looked at the box.

  “Early birds get the pastries,” Davis said.

  “You being one of them, loot,” Stoney replied. “You got powdered sugar on your shirt.”

  “Why I’m your boss. I start my day before ten.”

  “So what’s new while I was gone?”

  “Same old. More shootings on the South Side than during a comparable period in Afghanistan combat.”

  Davis poured his own mug of coffee. “You talked to your partner yet?”

  “I told Bobby I’d get with him right after this.”

  Davis took a sip of coffee and made a sour face. “Next time, we hire a barista for a secretary instead of a pretty girl. Any who, you and Delahanty are assigned to the murder of a priest.”

  Stoney left the break room and went to his desk in the squad room. Bobby Delahanty sat at an adjacent desk, feet up, reading the Trib. Bobby, who was five years older and twenty pounds heavier than Stoney, also had powdered sugar on his shirt front.

  “Anything about the deceased padre in the paper?” Stoney asked his partner.

  Bobby put down the paper and sat up. “Page one. It seems that Father Bernard Jacoby of Saint Mary’s Parish was found yesterday afternoon in the concession booth …”