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 …”

“That’s a confession booth, aka confessional. A concession booth is where they sell beer and hot dogs at Wrigley. When’s the last time you were in a church?”

“Not since my mother’s funeral service. As I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, the priest was found by a cleaning lady in whatever that box is called, shot three times in the chest. Clearly by someone in the opposite side, given the three bullet holes in the partition.”

“Hhmm,” Stoney said. “So if the doer had no sins to confess on the way in, he definitely did on the way out. Any leads?”

“The Trib story notes that the good father had been accused of sexually abusing altar boys in a parish in South Dakota. Never charged, but the church paid the families an undisclosed amount of hush money.”

“How long ago?”

“Eight years. Jacoby did a year in one of those rehab centers the church runs, this one in Arizona, and had been at Saint Mary’s ever since.”

“I thought the church didn’t give pedophiles another shot,” Stoney said. “Maybe, due to the shortage of men of the cloth, not to mention nuns, they’re changing that.”

“Remember the case in Joliet some years ago? An altar boy grew up, did a stint in the Marine Corps, came home and gutted his former parish priest with a combat knife? Claimed the priest had abused him.”

“Yeah,” Stoney said. “So maybe a trip to South Dakota is in order.”

“If nothing else, we could see Mount Rushmore,” Delahanty said.

Without having been to Mount Rushmore, my uninformed opinion is, you’ve been there once, you’ve been there one too many times. But maybe I’m wrong about that. At any rate, I didn’t have to head to the Black Hills of South Dakota to get back to the mystery of the Hendersons’ deaths.

What I know so far, or think I know, is that the Henderson murders are apparently not related to Larry’s connection to the Manatee National Bank or to Marion’s activities as an environmentalist. I realize that I haven’t dug very deeply into their personal lives after thinking I’d solved the case.

I decide to start with Larry. During the next week I reinterview the Hendersons’ neighbors and an updated list of Larry’s friends provided by Tom Henderson, and also the pastor at the church the Hendersons regularly attended. Larry and Marion helped build Habitat for Humanity houses. He did not serve in the military, attended weekly Kiwanis Club meetings, was active in the University of Florida alumni organization, liked to fish, and coached his son Nathan’s Little League team.

Well, that was new information. I guess Tom forgot to put that team on the list the first time around.

And, as it turned out, it was while interviewing that team’s assistant coach, a man named Hector Diaz, that I learned the father of one of the players had threatened Larry for not playing his son enough.

“We didn’t take the threat seriously,” Hector tells me when I visit him at the auto body shop he owns in Fort Myers. “When you get involved in youth sports, that kind of thing isn’t unusual. Some parents become irate if they think their son or daughter is spending too much time on the bench during baseball or basketball games or soccer matches. The kids don’t seem to mind, it’s the parents. It makes you sorry you took a coaching job.”

“Who’s the father?” I ask Hector as we stand beside a Toyota Celica that’s been involved in an accident.

“A guy named Alex Kramer. He’s a fishing guide.”

“What was the threat?”

“After one of our games, Kramer approached Larry in the parking lot. I was just getting into my truck nearby. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was shouting and poking his finger into Larry’s chest. Later Larry told me that Kramer said Larry was favoring his own son over Kramer’s, they both played center field, and that Larry would regret it if he didn’t give his kid equal playing time.”

“Was that true, about the playing time?”

“I don’t really know. I mainly work with the pitchers and catchers and organize the schedule. I don’t pay much attention to how often other players are rotated.”

“Where can I find Kramer?”

“I don’t know where he lives, but he keeps his boat at Turtle Key Marina. It’s a Boston Whaler, I think.”