Mangrove Bayou (8 page)

“Tom, go to the hardware store. Buy some padlocks and replace the ones on the two outside doors on that boat. Bring me the invoice and the keys when you're done.”

“But she said there were no other keys.”

“I know she did. You ever buy a padlock that didn't come with two keys?”

“You always this suspicious?”

“I'm always this careful.”

“She sure seemed cold about all that,” Tom said. “Her husband's just been found dead and she's more concerned about selling the boat.”

Troy nodded. “She didn't blink when I told her there would be an autopsy. Most people would want to know why a medical examiner was going to chop up their loved ones. Would be upset a little that we might think a crime had been committed. Most people, told that their boat had been sealed off by the police, might wonder why and demand an answer. She didn't.”

“Most people,” Tom said, “married just a year now, would be screaming their heads off.” Troy pulled into the yacht club parking lot and Tom opened his door. “She seemed almost happy about all this.”

“You never know how people will react, especially when drunk,” Troy said. “For all we know she's back there now, weeping, prostrate on the floor with grief.”

“Do you really think so?”

“No.”

Chapter 11

Tuesday, July 23

It was five-thirty in the morning and the sun was on the horizon and the temperature was nearly eighty, with the humidity about the same. South Florida summer. Troy was running, as he did most mornings. He wore lightweight running shorts and some New Balance shoes and little else. He carried a hand towel in one hand but the sweatband on his forehead stopped the sweat from getting into his eyes and blinding him.

Troy, running from the Sea Grape Inn to the microwave tower and then out to Government Key, passed through the old and new. Some of the old homes were tiny wood frames sitting on lots that were mostly limestone rocks. Houses that would sell for $10,000 in nearby Immokalee, Florida would here fetch twenty times that, just for the lots. Yet owners were reluctant to sell, always thinking they could get still more, someday.

Given the state of global warming and the rising sea level, Troy sometimes thought with amusement, maybe they should sell quickly, that sooner or later everyone in Florida would have waterfront property, just not all at the same time. He'd once heard a cynical realtor comment that no one should ever buy a house from an agent who had a tide table in her car. He smiled at the memory as he ran.

The causeway to Government Key ran across Oyster Bay and no one was ever likely to build here. Those days had ended. Oh, sure, generally in Florida, land developers bulldozed wetlands, paying for the privilege by buying “mitigation” credits that supposedly re-created wetlands elsewhere but which never seemed to work. Having cleared away all the cypress, oaks and mangroves and scraped the ground down to the limestone rock, they trucked in landfill and some representative one-inch-diameter maple trees and threw up cheap particle-board condos in developments named Cypress Mill or Oakwood Estates. By the time the trees died, the thin asphalt roads buckled up and the particle-board houses succumbed to the high humidity, the developers were long gone, having retired to places not yet despoiled by people like them.

Mangrove Bayou was different; one reason Troy loved it so. It sat now in the middle of a national wildlife preserve, adjacent to a national park, facing the Gulf of Mexico, and surrounded on the other three sides by inviolate wetlands—shallow salt water and oyster-and-mangrove-spattered bays. Today, it was virtually impossible for even the most politically connected developer to bribe enough local, state and national legislators to let him fire up a bulldozer in a state preserve. There were easier pickings and greedier county commissioners and legislators elsewhere.

On top of that, the town had some strict zoning and had been laid out, on a standard grid, as a company town back when the lumber mills still operated on Barron Key. The streets were uniformly wide and with wide, tree-shaded sidewalks. The influx of wealthy retirees and those of working age who could do their jobs from a remote location had brought along shops to serve their needs. The crush of tourists in winter was big business for the motels and shops along the Gulf waterfront. The last major land change here had been in the mid-1960s when the town converted one large island in Oyster Bay into Government Key and dedicated that to service functions. Today, Troy thought, they probably couldn't get the required permits.

He reached the chain-link fence around the town storage area on Government Key and swung around and started back.
Feeling good
, he thought.
Save the final sprint for when I reach the microwave tower and from there back to the station. Impress the taxpayers.

Chapter 12

Tuesday, July 23

Troy showered and changed and drove over to Snake Key to a storage shed he had rented for his sailboat, canoe and camping gear that he rarely had time to use now. He loaded equipment into the Subaru and drove back to Barron Key and to the Krispy Kreme shop.
Bad planning
, he thought.
Put the doughnut shop at the other side of the island from the police station. Probably cut their sales by half.

Back at the station Troy spent a few minutes unloading boxes and equipment from the back of the car. In the break room he put out two dozen doughnuts and made a big pot of coffee.

His office television told him the storm was strengthening in the Caribbean. The Cayman Islands and Cuba were bracing for what had become tropical storm Donald. Which, Troy thought, was a stupid name for a storm. He missed the days when storms were all named for women. Maybe, he thought, he was a little too old-fashioned.

Calvin Smith, just off night shift, came in and got an early start on the doughnuts and coffee in the break room. Troy joined him. Tom VanDyke came in and helped himself to a doughnut. Others trickled in.

“You do the fingerprints on the boat?” Troy asked Tom VanDyke.

Tom nodded and swallowed a bite of doughnut. He took a sip of coffee. “Got some. Don't know how much use they'll be. Anyway, it was just an accident, right?”

“Maybe,” Troy said. “Especially interested in whatever was on the drill and the plug.”

“Got some off the drill after all. Got some partials off the cord and plug. Problem is, the dockmaster had put his fat fingers all over the same areas, pulling the plug loose. Hey. Maybe the dockmaster did it.”

Troy looked up from his coffee. “Con Lohen? Why? Angry at Barrymore for not tipping enough for helping him tie up?” Helping tie up a boat was usually good for ten dollars to the dock staff.

“Hell, I don't know. They pay you to think, they just pay me to write parking tickets.”

“Well, I'll keep it in mind. At the moment that's as good a theory as any.”

“Want me to send those prints on over to F.D.L.E.?” Tom asked. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement had a good file of Florida-related fingerprints. The FBI had many more, but requests could take some time.

“Go ahead. Probably worthless but no harm in asking. Take some of Con Lohen too, if his aren't already on file.”

“Already did that.”

“You're a good man, Tom, no matter what June says about you.” Everyone chuckled.

Milo Binder showed up last and his shoes still squeaked. They borrowed a few extra chairs from the lobby and Troy's office and then squeezed in a bit around the long table. Troy sat at one end, June at the other.

“Got a lot to go over,” Troy started. “Everybody got coffee? Doughnuts? Ready to sit a while and listen?” He looked around the table. A few of them nodded. Nobody seemed to need more coffee. Bubba slid a Krispy Kreme box down to Angel Watson, the petite blonde officer who doubled as the department computer guru. She looked at the doughnuts as if they would bite her and she pushed the box away.

“I've been working my way in slowly,” Troy said. “I know I'm an outsider. Pretty soon I'll be an insider. And now it's time for a few new rules and practices.”

He looked down at a legal pad in front of him. “Let's talk discipline. I don't see much evidence of any around here. In fact, when I call a meeting for eight a.m., I expect to start talking at eight a.m., not at eight-ten. So here are some new rules. “First-name basis is fine. Insubordination is not fine. Giving sass back to the citizens is not fine. We're in the serving and protecting business and they're the paying customers. They're not always right, we know that, but politeness goes a long way.”

“Some of those people will walk all over you if you let 'em,” Calvin Smith said. “Got to let 'em know who's boss right off when you snag 'em.”

Troy looked at Calvin. “Snag 'em?”

“You know, stop 'em for something.”

“Aha. Keep in mind that they are not ‘those people,' but rather ‘our people.' And
Contempt of Cop
is not an actual law on the books. One thing we're paid to do is to swallow a few insults if necessary.”

“Shit. I let 'em know who's boss, what I do.”

Troy stared at Calvin a moment. He looked around the table and then down at his legal pad. “Don't just go out there and drive around. Get out of the air conditioning and talk to people. Park and walk around a bit. Look behind things, go where you can't see from the truck windows. Break up the patrol routines. Appearance is important and I'm changing the uniforms. No more black long trousers and black long-sleeve shirts with sweat salt stains on the backs. Maybe that's good up north. Not here.”

“That's what they wear in Tampa, where you come from, Miami, most other places,” Jeremiah Brown rumbled. He was a black man and very dark, the oldest among them, with gray showing in his short hair. He was two inches taller than Troy and much wider, about the size of a Mack truck diesel engine and, Troy suspected, about as powerful. He weighed close to three hundred pounds and not much was fat. Even the Suburbans leaned a bit when he climbed into one. Whenever Jeremiah Brown spoke he rumbled like distant thunder. He sang the bass parts in his church choir.

“I don't care about most other places,” Troy said. “They wear that because black uniforms are intimidating and don't show vomit and bloodstains so much.”

“I could have lived without that knowledge,” Angel Watson said.

Troy smiled. “We're switching off to khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirts. Come winter we'll also have long pants and long-sleeved shirts and you get to choose which to wear on any given day. Down here, even in winter, we'd only need those a day or two now and then. Wear your black shoes from your old unis. We have some calf-high brown socks to match the shorts and shirts. Walk around in shorts with black socks and people think you're some tourist from Chicago.”

“We gotta buy these new uniforms?” Milo Binder asked.

“Not at first. I got some cash out of the town council.” In fact, Troy had only gotten the money for two outfits per person. He'd kicked in the majority himself. “June already had all your sizes, so we bought each of you a half-dozen of the summer outfits. There's a matching wide-brim safari hat with the police logo on it. Use the duty belts you already have. We'll hand out the uniforms after the meeting. We'll start wearing them next Monday. Give you time to get them pressed and starched.

“Now, when you're not cleaning your uniforms, you're cleaning your equipment. I want those Suburbans looking spotless and waxed. Whoever is on the Saturday day shift can run them through the car wash up on Bay Street. I've spoken to them and they'll bill the department direct. We're going to practice with the weapons, once per month or more often if you wish and, frankly, I prefer that you wish.”

Some of the officers sat up and looked interested. “Yeah, Chief,” Calvin said. “Boom-boom.”

“Right. I usually practice once a week,” Troy continued. “Anyone wants to join me is welcome. I've asked the public works people to bulldoze up a practice range out on Government Key. After practice we'll clean those weapons and keep them clean. If you have a personal piece for a backup gun I need to know about it and it needs to be clean too. I'll be checking.”

“You ever actually shoot someone, Chief?” Calvin Smith asked.

Troy stared at him, then looked around the table.
“Day and evening shifts there's just two of you on duty, three on weekends. Plus, June here handling dispatch. Plus, me on call. If there's anyone in a jail cell, one of you must stay here in the stationhouse. We never leave a person locked up alone who can't get out if there's a fire or if he or she has some medical emergency. If you need to, call me and I'll come down and be here.”

“Bob Redmond never needed to keep someone in the station,” Angel Watson said.

“And how did his career work out for him?” Troy looked around. No one had an answer to that. He made a mental note to get a large couch for his office if he was going to be sleeping in the station too many nights.

“And from now on we're going to look good physically.” Troy pointed at the
doughnut boxes. “These make fine cop food but we need to work that off too. I want cops who are neat looking, polite and in fighting shape. There's a bunch of weights in the back storeroom now and I'm having a used treadmill delivered later today. We will all use those. You and I will spend an hour a day working out. Personally, I find treadmills boring. I already run every morning before I come in here and any of you who want to run with me are more than welcome. But it's one or the other. Bring your own sweats or whatever for the workout, take a shower after, put on your uniform and hit the streets on patrol.”