Mangrove Bayou (5 page)

“I erased them.”

“Oh. Well, don't do that any more until we hear them too.”

“There's prob'ly more by now today. But they fill up my voicemail.”

“Sure they do. Let's put up with that for a few days while we investigate. Go home now and wait for the officer. I'll also have a patrol car swing by your house a few times each shift. If you see Billy hanging around, call us at once.”

“I don't want the neighbors to see no police car stopping at my house.”

“I'll send him in a private car. Would that be all right with you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Troy. Call me Troy.”

“Troy. Sir.”

“June will show you out. June, get Wanda's car description and plate for the file. Wanda, remember, if anything or anyone bothers you, anything at all, you pick up a phone and call us.”

“Thank you sir.” Wanda and June left. Troy swiveled his chair and stared out the west windows toward the boat ramp. The town had, years back, dredged out what was then Snake Bayou, renamed it Sunset Bay, and installed four boat ramps, two piers to service those and a parking lot with the long slots for vehicles with boat trailers. It was popular now with the sport-fishing crowd and occasionally hosted tournaments. Beyond Sunset Bay he saw a flash of yellow moving around the front of the Sea Grape Inn. Mrs. Mackenzie was on the job. In a few moments he heard someone walking in the hallway with squeaky shoes. Milo Binder strolled in, a cup of coffee in one hand. “You wanted to see me?”

“Sit down.”

Milo sat. He put his Styrofoam cup on Troy's desk. Milo was twenty and cocky, five-feet-eight and a sturdy build. Despite the doughnuts, he wasn't fat. He parted his brown hair in the center so that it swept down over his ears on both sides. He was trying to grow a moustache and not having much luck with it. To match the moustache he had a two-day beard, which, in his case, was light.

Troy was leaned back in his chair with one foot up on an open desk drawer. He folded his hands across his stomach, turned his head to his left, and stared at Milo, deadpan. Milo stared back for a moment out of blue eyes and some confusion, then looked out the window to his left. He took another sip of his coffee and put the cup back down. He looked back at Troy. “Whattya want?”

“Pick up the coffee cup. I didn't give you permission to use my desk for your goddamn dining table.”

Milo grabbed the cup. “Geez, Louise,” he said.

“Just curious, Officer Binder. Your mom or dad ever read
Catch-22
?”

“What's that?”

“Book. Novel by Joseph Heller.”

Milo thought about that for a moment. Troy let him.

“Don't think so,” Milo said at last. “Never heard of it. Why?”

“Never mind. I'm guessing one of them did but it doesn't matter. New rule. When June, me or anyone else connected with this department yells, ‘Milo! Get your ass in here,' you will move your ass instantly and swiftly to the sound of the voice. Is that clear, Officer Binder?”

Milo shrugged. “I was eating breakfast. Came as soon as I was done.” He looked down, found he was still clutching the coffee cup, and took a sip.

“Milo, I don't give a sweet damn if you were having gall-bladder surgery. When someone calls you, you answer right then. Or don't you like this job?”

“It's OK. I'm only doing this until I can get on with the sheriffs.”

“As I understand, you're only doing this at all because the mayor is your uncle.”

Milo grinned. “That's the way it works here. If you got a problem with that, go back to Tampa.”

“Good to know where I stand in the chain of command here. Now, I have some actual investigating for you to do. Probably want to add that to your résumé with the sheriffs. Get out to Wanda Frister's house. Can you drive a stick shift?”

“Well, yeah. I can. Why?”

“I hope so.” Troy fished out his keys and peeled off his car key. He kept the remote beeper. “Use my car, not the Suburban. It's a five-speed manual, and if you wreck my transmission I'll hang you.” Troy copied Wanda's address onto a fresh notepaper and handed that to Milo. “She says that she's being stalked by a guy named Billy Poteet. Do you know him?”

Milo nodded his head. “Yep. He's an asshole. Works in the Snake Key boatyard. When he works.”

“I think that's Wanda's opinion too,” Troy said. “Listen to whatever is on her voicemail. Look around the neighborhood for a red F-150 truck or Billy Poteet or anything else that seems out of the ordinary. Then come back and report.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Oh. OK, Chief.”

“I gotta call you Chief?”

Troy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his badge. He turned his chair and held the badge angled sideways so the light from the window helped him read it. “Says right here.
Chief
. So, yes, a little courtesy would go a long way, Officer Binder.”

“OK, Chief.”

“And Officer Binder, one more thing.”

“What's that?”

“What's that,
Chief
” Troy said.

“What's that,
Chief
.”

“Don't ever again come to work without a clean shave. I'll send you home and dock you a day's pay for it. The 'stache is OK if it does not extend beyond the upper lip. But conservative haircut and daily shave, if you please.”

After Milo left, Troy checked with DMV and, sure enough, William Poteet was the owner of a red Ford F-150 truck. Poteet had a record too, Troy learned with more research, for assault, D.U.I., assault, bad checks, a long list of traffic offenses, assault, a partridge in a pear tree, and more assault. Poteet had spent some time in prison for some of the charges. As a convicted felon he would not be allowed to legally buy a gun, but that never slowed anyone down in Florida. Troy hit the print button and added all that to the file he had started. Wanda sure knew how to pick 'em, he thought. It would probably take a court order to trace the phone that had called Wanda, and Troy assumed it was a cheap disposable cell phone anyway, with preloaded minutes and bought off some store rack. By now it would be in a Dumpster behind some apartments somewhere.

He walked out to the lobby. “June, make a note on our shift log. Have patrols swing by Wanda Frister's house a couple times per shift.” He handed June a note. “There's the address. And have them look for a red F-150 truck there or anywhere else and note its tag, location and the time.”

“You got it, Chief,” June said.

“And put out the word. Tomorrow at eight a.m. I want everyone here. Total departmental meeting. Anyone not on duty gets an hour overtime.”

“Ooh. Major damn announcement? You hiring more people? We could use two more at least.”

“I'm only here on probation, remember. Was going to hire someone, I'd hire me. Just have everyone here.”

Chapter 8

Monday, July 22

Troy was still standing next to June's desk in the lobby when the phone rang, the 9-1-1 line with its distinctive ring. “Shit!” June said, staring at the phone as if it were a rattlesnake. Troy waited while June talked to someone. She mostly listened. She hung up and looked up at Troy. “That was the manager at the yacht club. Dead body on one of their boats.”

“The Osprey Yacht Club?”

“We got any other fucking yacht club?”

“What's the doctor's name at the clinic?” The town medical clinic shared the long side of the town hall “L” with the town hall offices and the volunteer fire department.

“Vollmer. Barry Vollmer.”

“Get him headed that way ASAP, with a body bag and the town ambulance. Lights, siren.”

“What's the hurry? The guy's dead.”

“We don't know that. Some yacht club manager
thinks
that. That's not something we pencil in on our calendars for when we have a spare moment.”

June dialed up the doctor and got him headed out. Troy watched. “We need to redo the phone lines here,” he said. “The clinic should be a one-button transfer. Same for the fire department. Shouldn't have to dial them up on a regular phone number. Tom VanDyke is our evidence specialist, isn't he?”

“Yep. He was night shift last night. Probably home sleeping.” June looked at a schedule in her computer. June usually made up the monthly shift schedules. “He'll be off until Wednesday now.”

“Call him. Tell him he's now on overtime and to meet me over at the yacht club with his evidence kit.”

Troy took the one Suburban left in the lot and drove north across the 11th Street bridge to Airfield Key. The airport had one four-bay hangar, but there was no tower or terminal or anything much else. The single concrete runway ran east-west almost the full length of Airfield Key. A few small aircraft were parked in a large field on the far side from the road, tied down.

Troy turned left onto Airfield Road. To his left as he drove were large homes set back on 200-by-400-foot lots that ran from Airfield Road back to the Collier River. Most of the homes were screened from the road, and from the aircraft noise, by trees and shrubs.

The yacht club was a two-story concrete-block building with stucco, shaded a light brown, with the west side facing the Gulf of Mexico where the Collier River met the Ten Thousand Islands. The north side facing the parking lot had no windows on the ground floor, only a few small windows at one end on the second, and just a double front door. It looked about as nautical as a welding shop. On the east side, behind a chain link fence and member-only parking/unloading area, seawalls and three long piers on the Collier River provided docks for the members' boats. The river's deeper channel winding out between the islands was the only way for many of the boats to get out to the Gulf, several miles away.

A man leaned on the fence smoking a cigarette by an electronic rolling gate that had been locked open. Behind him was some parking for boat owners, and a few small boats stored there on trailers. Troy drove into the fenced area and parked. The town ambulance truck, red with Rescue in shiny gold lettering on the sides, was already there, the back door open, nobody around. The man was about fifty, an inch shorter than Troy's six feet, skinny and tanned and weathered with a mop of loose gray hair. Like Bubba, he was darker than Troy. He wore a white shirt with epaulettes and the club crest, tan chino trousers and tan Topsiders boat shoes. Embroidery on his shirt announced to the world that the inhabitant was Con Lohen, Dockmaster.

Troy parked the Suburban to one side of the gate and got out. He was not wearing a uniform. “Who are you?” Lohen said. He eyed Troy and the truck. “And where did you get the police car?”

“I'm Troy Adam, the new police chief. Truck was sitting out back of the station and I just sort of took it.”

The man straightened up and dropped the cigarette on the ground. “You got some police identification?” With his right shoe, he scrubbed out the cigarette on the asphalt.

Troy took out his wallet and showed Lohen his police I.D.

“Ain't you got a badge?” Lohen said.

“I don' need no steenking badge,” Troy said in his best
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
sneer. The badge was in his shirt pocket but he was getting annoyed. “Where's the body?”

Oh. Sorry. Just…a nig…a black police chief. Or sort of one. Lawsey me. I'm Con Lohen. Dockmaster.”

“I deduced that,” Troy said. He put out a hand. Lohen stared at it a moment. He extended a callused hand to shake.

“First day on the job?” Lohen said.

“First month anyway. Where's this body?”

Lohen led him out onto one of the floating piers and to a forty-foot trawler design. The name on the boat was
Wayward.
A
short, fat man, balding, with brown hair in a comb over, was standing on the dock by the boat.

“This here is the new police chief,” Lohen said.

“Troy Adam,” Troy said. “Adam with no
s
.”

“I'll be damned,” the man said, staring at Troy. “Well, anyway, I'm George Trapper, the club manager.” Trapper wore a navy blue yacht club blazer with embroidered crest, white trousers and black shoes. Troy, in his fishing shirt, jeans, and .45 semiautomatic in a concealed holster on his right hip, was feeling underdressed. Maybe, for a special occasion like a death at a yacht club, he should have put in new bullets.

“Where's Doctor Vollmer?” Troy asked.

“Inside, with some helper. He already told me the guy's dead. Which is what Con, here, told me too.” Troy deduced that George Trapper had not wanted to brighten his day by looking at a dead body. Troy could relate to that. Trapper was guarding the dock.

“How did you find out about the body?” Troy asked.

“I got a call this morning from Kathleen Barrymore,” Trapper said. “She said her husband hadn't come home, that he had gone down to the boat to do some work on it last night and never came back. We don't allow live-aboards here, but sometimes people sleep overnight onboard, especially if they've just had a fight with the wifey. I asked Con to check on it and he found John Barrymore's body.”