A Hard Death (21 page)

I
t was past seven p.m. when Rudge dropped Jenner at the ME office. The main municipal building was brightly lit but the lab wing was dark.

Jenner reached for the door handle, then turned to Rudge and said, “Hey, can I ask you something? When we were at the farms, did you get the feeling we were being watched? Not by the management, by the workers, I mean. I could swear one of the field hands made a phone call about us as we were leaving UFL.”

Rudge nodded and grinned. “Actually, Jenner, the first call was made by the guy at the
taqueria
in Bel Arbre. No two ways about it: they're watching us.”

“The farm owners, you think?”

“Unless they own the taco stand too, I'd say no: I'm thinking it's the Mexicans.”

“The same people who approached Adam Weiss?”

“Maybe them, maybe bad guys—no way to know. It's a tight community, and we're sticking our dicks in it.” Rudge stretched. “Okay, Jenner, I gotta go write up my notes. See you tomorrow.”

Jenner crossed the shadowy lobby and went down the hall into his office. The voice mail light blinked aggressively on his phone. He scanned his desk for the envelope, then stepped back into the hallway to check the mailboxes.

Still no paycheck. Christ.

He sat at his desk, punched in his code, and listened to his messages. There was a message from Anders's receptionist Arlene, asking him to see the sheriff as soon as possible. She stressed that no matter what time he got back, the sheriff would be in, and that he wanted to see Jenner urgently.

The last message was from Deb Putnam. She spoke softly and with an unforced warmth. She was following up—they'd talked about maybe getting dinner tonight. She'd called during the day, but he'd been out. She figured he might be too tired, but if he felt like it, he could give her a call when he got the message. She wasn't doing much anyway, so if he wanted to hit Outback, they could do that, or maybe one of the fancier places down on the Promenade.

He added her number to his call list, then hung up.

He pulled out his cell. He hesitated for a second, then dialed Maggie Craine's number.

His call went straight to voice mail. After an instant of indecision, he said, “Hey, Maggie. It's Jenner. It's about seven thirty p.m., and I'm about to get off work. Wondered if you felt like getting a drink or something. I'll catch up with you…Take care.”

He hung up, feeling like a high school boy—regretting the call, regretting the message even more.

Jenner left the gloom of the lab wing and crossed the glass-block passage into the main building. The walkway was brightly lit from outside; the glowing corridor of white light made him think of near-death experiences, and then of his own death. He grinned—he'd never been good at thinking about his own mortality.

The door to Major Crimes was open, and seeing Rudge, Jenner stuck his head in.

“Hey.”

Rudge nodded grimly. Detective Bartley, a tanned man in a khaki suit, with brush-cut hair and a gold earring, was sitting on his desk near Rudge; he glanced at Jenner but said nothing. The two were looking at the TV.

Jenner turned to see what Bartley and Rudge were watching so intently. He recognized the show instantly—the lurid red-white-and-blue graphics (truth, justice, and the American Way) would have been enough, even without the tawdry
American Crime
logo in the corner.

Jenner was on TV.

Of course. That was why Amanda Tucker had come herself rather than sending one of her winged monkeys—the horrible deaths of four
men alone couldn't have dragged her down to this godforsaken swamp. Marty Roburn and his wife, rotting gently in a drowned car for weeks? Also not enough.

She'd come for Jenner.

She'd come to play with him, come to carve him up again, pop out his limbs like some gluttonous king tearing apart a chicken, come to open him up and serve him to her public.

He pulled up a desk chair and sat.

American Crime
had put together a biography of Jenner; they'd done their homework. Over the caption
INQUISITOR PATHOLOGIST IN FL
, the camera panned slowly across a photo of him in medical school, his mother and father applauding as he received the prize in physical diagnosis. Then a montage from the ensuing years—on Miami Beach, Jenner next to the body of a drowned swimmer. Video of Jenner in court, gesturing emphatically as he testified in a child abuse case. A
Miami Herald
photo of him standing next to a bullet-riddled car in Liberty City, the bloody body of a man dangling through the driver's-side window.

He watched it all, almost unable to hear. The location shifted to New York—a skyline shot of Manhattan, sliding down the West Side from the Empire State to the World Trade Center. Then the familiar 9/11 video—the planes hitting, the towers collapsing, the thousands of dust-covered workers fleeing in horror. Then Jenner's photo from his New York ME ID card, the word
QUIT
in red block letters suddenly stamped across his face. His face was then replaced by head shots of the Inquisitor victims punching into the screen with a rat-a-tat rhythm. When they showed Joey Roggetti's funeral, the detective's flag-draped coffin surrounded by a welling ocean of blue serge dress uniforms lining the streets of Queens, Jenner could barely breathe.

And then Ana de Jong. Ana. The
New York Post
telephoto shots of them on the sidewalk in front of his building, Jenner fully dressed, Ana in one of his sweatshirts, bare-legged in sneakers, up on tiptoe to kiss him. Then Jenner with his arm around her shoulder, lifting his coat to shield her from the photographer. Then grainy ambush video, slowed to a crawl, the two of them running down Crosby, fleeing the paparazzi.
Jenner hadn't seen that one before; it was from after he'd killed Ana's tormentor, when he'd brought her home from the hospital.

He watched the flow in silence, the images gushing through him. Amanda Tucker now, the return of the “creepy, creepy sexual opportunist” clip. Then Jenner, his New York State Physician Identification, the words
LICENSE SUSPENDED
forming onscreen. A map graphic showing southern Florida in orange, with Douglas County highlighted and a yellow star for Port Fontaine. The camera zoomed to the star, then cut to standard tourist footage of the town—beaches, the Promenade boutiques, a waterfront seafood restaurant.

Then Marty and Bobbie Roburn, and an artist's rendering of four men hanged in a jungle, then what looked like a yearbook photo of Adam Weiss, the images stacking into a neat pyramid on the screen, with Weiss at the top.

Amanda Tucker in front of the municipal building, chatting with Tom Anders, walking the marble halls to his office. Anders in front of the huge bronze bust of his dad at the entrance to his office, talking about the investigations. Then in the sheriff's office, Anders's sweaty sheen an uncomfortable contrast to Amanda Tucker, cool and dry in her cream pants suit.

Jenner stood. He didn't need to see this.

But he didn't leave.

Onscreen, Amanda was showing Anders their video biography of Jenner. She then asked the sheriff if he'd known that Jenner had lost his license in New York. Anders stressed that, though he was vaguely aware of Jenner's involvement in the Inquisitor case, today was the first he'd learned of the suspension. The late medical examiner, Dr. Roburn, had recruited Jenner and had spoken extremely highly of Jenner's skills.

Amanda pushed it. “And now that you're aware of these issues, will you be looking into Dr. Jenner's qualifications? Have there been any problems with his performance?”

Anders pursed his lips, then nodded, saying, “I would say that some of Dr. Jenner's decisions have seemed questionable to me.”

“And, Sheriff Anders, do you now feel that Dr. Jenner is…the ideal
person to be investigating these killings? Particularly given that one of them is his former mentor, Dr. Roburn.”

“Well, I'll tell you this, Amanda. My office will review his credentials, and if there's anything that doesn't meet Douglas County's standards, appropriate actions will be taken.”

“And what would you mean by ‘appropriate actions'?”

“Well, today I've spoken with the Dade County medical examiner's office in Miami; they've agreed to provide emergency coverage, should the need arise.”

Amanda Tucker nodded, a look of firm approval on her face, said, “I see.”

The outro clip was the slow motion video of Jenner and Ana running to the safety of his loft.

And then they were in a commercial break, an earnest Vanessa Redgrave–lookalike urging Americans to invest in gold in a time of crisis.

Rudge, with a long whistle, leaned back, then looked at him. “Hey, Jenner—maybe if you're really extra-good this year, Santa will bring you the DVD…”

Jenner, unsmiling, shook his head.

“That all true?”

Jenner stood. “What do you mean ‘true'? Yeah, that was me. Yes, I did those things. Yes, I was with the girl, and yes, she was an Inquisitor victim. But it wasn't like I…you know,
planned
it or anything—it just happened. I was having a hard time, she was having a hard time, and it happened. And it's all right now, she's gone.”

“And the cop? The detective? Roggetti, was it?”

“What about him?”

“What
really
happened?”

“Just like it said in all the papers: the guy got the drop on us. He beat the crap out of me, killed Joey Roggetti, and cut up another detective real bad.”

Rudge thought for a second, nodding.

“You're lucky to be alive.”

“Well, I'm luckier than Joey,” Jenner said, forcing a fake grin.

Rudge raised his hands in irritation. “Jesus, you gotta let that shit go. Roggetti was a cop, one of New York's Finest. He knew the risks—we all know the risks, but we know the odds are in our favor, know what I'm saying? And sometimes it don't work out, and we lose. But we do what we do because we believe in it. Roggetti died doing what he believed in. He protected and served, right? He's a hero. And you killed the man who killed him, right? You tracked down that muthafucka and flat-out killed him dead. You did what had to be done for Roggetti, so in my book you're a hero too.”

He shook his head. “You can't go around carrying this shit, Jenner—I saw you tense up when the funeral came on. Sooner or later you have to tell yourself: ‘It's not my fault'…”

Jenner said, “Look, I watched Joey die in front of me, watched him bleed out maybe four feet from where I was lying. That man beat me down, beat me so bad I couldn't move—all I could do was watch my friend die. Joey died in my building, trying to help my girlfriend. So don't tell me whose fault it is or…”

“Dr. Jenner?” He turned to see Anders right behind him. “You and I need to have a little talk.”

D
eb Putnam sat on Jenner's porch, stomach growling.

Jenner had blown her off twice now, and normally, for her, one strike and a guy was out; she could afford to be picky. Coming to his motel was probably an awful idea, but Deb had been brought up to believe it was worse not to try than to fail.

There was something different about Jenner; she'd recognized it the first time she saw him at the Visitor Center at the Glades. He was standing on the edge of the parking lot, ignoring the tourists swarming the gift shop, just watching the marsh. He didn't take a single photograph, just looked out over the windswept plain of saw grass, taking it all in. Watching him, Deb had decided that Jenner understood the beauty and purity of the land to which she'd devoted her life.

She grinned as she thought of him describing his trek out to the mahogany hammock in the dark, certain he was being hunted by gators. Her father would've liked Jenner. And, she figured, Jenner would've liked the old man, too.

The sadness came back quietly. It had been horrible to watch her dad waste away; he never complained, but by the end, he'd clearly welcomed death. She remembered how afterward the silence had descended on her life like a fog, how the emptiness had trickled into the little home they'd shared. Some days, it felt like she'd tracked that emptiness into her new place, as if the old furniture she'd brought with her came with the sadness still attached.

Jenner was new; she was grateful for that. She liked that, for him, her loss was something already in the past. When she'd told him about her dad, he'd offered no kneejerk pity, no rote condolences; he'd just been kind and sincere.

And listened to her talk about snails.

She smiled.

If something happened, it happened. If not, Jenner was a decent guy, and there was no shame in trying for something more.

She looked at Jenner's weird dog again. It lay with its belly flat on the floor, its pointed snout resting on her foot by the water and food bowls.

The handwriting on the envelope tacked to Jenner's door was delicate and feminine. Deb was curious but too polite to snoop.

So she'd learned something new: she might have competition. The thought pleased her—an opponent added spice to the game. Let them bring it! Deb liked her chances. She was smart, she was well-read, she was pretty.

And she could cook.

She glanced at her watch: almost eight thirty p.m. She was ravenous—she hadn't eaten since breakfast, just after six a.m. And there she was, sitting on Jenner's porch with two thick roast beef sandwiches on homemade bread, a bottle of pinot noir tucked away in her book bag. Showing up with dinner and wine was completely transparent, but Jenner would hardly be astonished to discover she was interested.

Besides, Deb was happy on the porch. The air had cooled with the seeping dark, and the mosquitoes weren't too bad.

She stood, walked casually to the door. She turned on her cell phone, and peered at the envelope in its glow. The fat, looping J and the billowy letters weren't just feminine, they were downright
girly
. Deb smirked.

She shielded her eyes from the glare as high beams flooded the porch. It was an SUV; Jenner drove a rental Accent. The SUV pulled up in front of Jenner's cabin, and a young couple with matching sunburns and FIU windbreakers climbed out. They said good evening, and went into the cabin next door.

It was closing in on nine p.m.—what if Jenner had been called out?

Her stomach rumbled. With a short sigh, Deb finally gave in. She tore open the wax paper and chomped into a sandwich, wolfing down the rare roast beef, the Swiss cheese, the horseradish mayonnaise.

She had eaten half her sandwich when headlights tipped over the low
ridge from the street, and Jenner's car settled slowly toward the cabin. She hastily jammed the other half back into the wrapping and stuck it back into her bag. She watched Jenner park and climb out. He stretched stiffly, then reached inside for a bag of clothes. He headed toward her; Deb swallowed frantically.

The dog shuffled to the porch step, and Deb followed. From the shadows, she could see Jenner's face clearly in the pathway light—his surprise at the dog, then his grin as he saw her silhouette moving forward.

But when Deb stepped into the light, his expression turned guarded—the smile stayed, but he was disappointed. He'd thought she was someone else, and, when he saw it was just her, he was disappointed.

He said, “Hey.” He looked exhausted.

“Hey, Jenner.” Deb fought to hide her own dismay. “You look beat.”

“Damn! I knew I should've used more concealer under my eyes—they're one of my problem areas.” He smiled grimly. “It was a rough day.”

“Yeah, well, I know.” She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “I guess you heard about
American Crime
?”

“Heard about it? Oh, yeah.” He paused. “Tommy Anders just fired me.”

“Oh my gosh—I'm really sorry to hear that.” He looked thoroughly beaten. “Is there anything you can do?”

“Nope. I was basically a temp here, and the guy who hired me is dead. On Monday, pathologists from Miami are taking over until the county finds a replacement. I've got a week to finish up my paperwork and get the hell out of Dodge.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” Jenner produced an envelope from his pocket and waved it. “On the bright side: I finally got paid.”

“Well, good.” Deb held up her book bag. “Look, I figured you could do with some company tonight, so I brought you a bite to eat. Just sandwiches, but…”

“Deb, you're amazing! Thank you.” His smile was warm and genuine.

With a puzzled look, he gestured at the dog. “How come you brought him back?”

“Nothing to do with me—he was sitting there, snoring, when I got here. There's a note.” She nodded toward the door; she couldn't stop herself. “It's from a girl, I think.”

Jenner stepped to the door, plucked the envelope, and read in the porch light; his expression didn't change.

He folded it into his pocket, and turned back to her. “It's a bit of a dump in there. Want to eat on the porch?”

“That'd be nice.”

He disappeared into the cabin, and she unwrapped the sandwiches on the small table and pulled out the bottle. She called out, “Got a corkscrew, Jenner?”

“There's wine? You're an angel!” He appeared at the doorway with a box of mosquito coils. “I've got a knife with a corkscrew.”

She sat. “Hey, you want to have a shower or something, go right ahead.”

“Really?” He hesitated, smiling. “If you can hang on, a shower would be fantastic.”

She smiled back. “Wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it.”

Smelling the food, the dog waddled up and pressed his paws on her leg. She shooed him away, unwrapped Jenner's sandwich, then her own half-eaten one.

Deb looked at her half-sandwich and grinned.

Fuck him! She was glad she'd eaten it.