Dressed in my work clothes—starched white button-down, khaki slacks, and Chuck Taylors—I descended to the Pensacola Insider offices on the second floor. My work area was nestled between two windows in the southwest corner overlooking Palafox Street, Pensacola’s main downtown street.
The neighborhood of Palafox had a New Orleans French Quarter feel to it. City leaders with the help of the banks created a grant program during the seventies to encourage owners to build balconies with wrought iron railing above the retail shops, restaurants, bars, and offices on the avenue. Red brick sidewalks lined the street, and history permeated the area.
From my southern window I looked down on Blazzues, a jazz club located on the site that had been Andrew Jackson’s house when he was the first governor of the Florida Territory in 1821. One block further south Plaza Ferdinand marked where the Tennessee general was sworn in as the military governor. Winos toasted his bust daily.
A fire destroyed the Jackson residence in 1839 and robbed the city of a possible tourist attraction. Only a bronze plaque erected in 1935 by the Pensacola Historical Society near Blazzues’s outdoor seating marked the town’s one connection to the White House.
Jackson, the patron saint of grudges, fought thirteen duels, many over his wife Rachel’s honor. Biographers claimed he was wounded so frequently in the gunfights that he “rattled like a bag of marbles.” One bullet from an 1806 duel was lodged so close to his heart that it could never be removed, causing him pain for the rest of his life. It probably fed his ill temper, but he won the duel and killed the man who shot him. Roger told me that was very apropos of Pensacola to win the duel but carry the victim’s bullet for the rest of his life.
The bartenders at Blazzues often talked about the bar being haunted. Doors locked when they took out the garbage. Beer taps suddenly started flowing. Glasses fell off the bar with no one near them. No one went into the big cooler without a fellow worker standing guard. Probably the ghosts had been court-martialed or shot by Jackson. They had grudges for good reasons.
Big Boy and I would have the office to ourselves for a couple of hours before the staff arrived. It was our quiet time. The dog jumped up on the couch next to my desk. His gray snout gave away his age, although he was so boisterous many mistook him for a puppy. He never barked but moved among the work areas and watched over the office. Whenever a visitor arrived, Big Boy perked up and joined the guest on the couch, hoping for some petting. If the guest ignored him, he would reach out a paw and tap him on the leg or arm and flash his adorable brown eyes. Big Boy was the star of the office, and he knew it.
Up until last Thanksgiving, Big Boy had been Roger Fairley’s dog. Fairley was an outstanding citizen who built a nice fortune opening temporary employment and day labor agencies along the Gulf Coast. He once owned the Pensacola Conquistadors of the defunct Continental Basketball Association. The voters had elected Roger to several terms on the Pensacola City Council and Escambia Board of County Commissioners. He taught me how Pensacola politics worked and where the bodies were buried.
We enjoyed each other’s company. He explained to me the mysteries and intricacies of Pensacola politics. When he died, he bequeathed Big Boy to me. He also had owned the three-story building that housed our offices and me. His widow told me that Roger left instructions that she could sell the building only to me—that is if I ever pulled together enough money to buy it. Until then, we didn’t pay rent as long as we ran ads for the Pensacola Symphony and Pensacola Opera.
When I sat down at my desk, constructed from an old door on top of two sawhorses, I cranked up Cowboy Mouth’s Voodoo Shoppe on the computer, took a sip of my coffee, and began surfing the web. I perused the top Florida papers: Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida Times Union, Orlando Sentinel, and Tallahassee Democrat. Like some evil troll under the bridge of my life, my blog had to be fed.
A web journal that I created about the same time as the maritime park initiative, the blog was my mistress, demanding constant attention. I fed it news, viewpoints, and political buzz constantly. And the public loved it, making it one of the most popular political blogs in the state.
On the blog, I honed my writing skills, pushed ideas, battled the naysayers, and made my paper relevant daily. It required—no, it demanded—perpetual attention. Readers wanted more and more. And I gave it to them.
After scanning the state newspapers, I looked online at the Pensacola Herald, our town’s Barnett Press-owned daily newspaper. Barnett USA ran the largest newspaper chain in North America with more than two hundred newspapers in the United States and Canada. It specialized in medium-sized markets like Pensacola that could only support one daily paper. Without competition, the paper set the ad rates and drained the community dry. Very little real news was reported, especially if the article would impact ad sales.
A cash cow for Barnett Press, the Herald gobbled up all the ad dollars and continually developed new websites and faux publications to saturate the market and satisfy their corporation’s insatiable hunger for more profits.
I hated them. In our paper’s early years, I read the daily newspapers obsessively to see if they reported one of our stories before our weekly issue came out, but they seemed to have adopted a policy of ignoring anything we published or else going in the complete opposite direction. They loved defending Bo Hines and not too subtly attacking my journalism. Their ad reps used it to poach our customer list, and we were seeing our ad revenue slip.
An alt-weekly in a small market had no chance to beat a Barnett daily. They had all the money, resources, and staff. If they made the decision to go after the Pensacola Insider, Barnett would crush us. Until then, we danced on the razor’s edge. Taunting and weaving through the decades-old grudges as we pushed the ancient, self-important city ahead.
Ultimately, we would fail. I had no exit strategy with a big payoff. The only uncertainty was when the executioner’s ax would fall. Would it be today? Next Week? Or in five years?
I woke up every day knowing this. No amount of jogging, drinking, or writing could change that fact or erase it from my thoughts when I sat at my desk drinking coffee and watching downtown Pensacola wake up.
Morbid? No, realistic.
Pensacola’s current narrative had me as the bastard who tried to ruin their hero, Bowman Hines. An unprofessional tabloid journalist, or worse a blogger, set on building his reputation by destroying the man who had selflessly helped Pensacola all his life. Bo Hines was one of their own; I was not.
At eight o’clock, I donned my blue blazer and walked two blocks to the M. C. Blanchard Judicial Building and sat outside Courtroom B waiting for the prosecutors to arrive. Television crews were already there. The Herald had a photographer and two reporters ready to cover every nuance of the trial.
As we waited, all their phones suddenly began to vibrate at the same time. A sheriff’s deputy approached us. Mrs. Bowman Hines had been found dead at her residence. The judge had postponed the start of the trial.
A few of the reporters looked to me for a comment. I brushed them off and found a corner of the judicial center to call Bo. Though dreading the conversation, I had to call. He didn’t answer. Thank God.
“Bo, I am so sorry to hear about Sue,” was all I thought to say in the message I left on his voice mail. Brilliant. But I meant it. That was all I could summon. And like everything else, it was the truth, alone and naked and standing there.
Maybe I should disappear for a few days. I hadn’t taken a vacation in years. However, I didn’t have the cash to leave town and my credit cards had maxed out.
I had friends in Cajun country, deep in the swamps near Thibodaux in south Louisana. Those weird places in the bayou where nobody knew or gave a crap about your name. I could go there and eat gumbo and jambalaya and wash it down with a six-pack of Dixie beer.
My phone vibrated. It was a text message from Bo: “Leave me alone.”
I was so screwed.
I texted Jim Harden to call me. A private investigator and a somewhat reliable source that had helped me in the past, Harden spent most of his life on the fringes, having lunch meetings at convenience stores and roadside food trucks with people who contacted him via notes shoved under the mat of his office, which was sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and Domino’s Pizza in a bad part of town. He might know what had happened to Sue.
I needed to call Dare. No, I would visit her offices. This conversation needed to be face-to-face.
Dare was the president of the Evans Timber & Land Company, the largest landowner in Northwest Florida after the US military, and the widow of Rory Evans. Rory had leveraged his family name, wealth, and superior intelligence to become the Florida Senate president by age 36. He had died nine years earlier of a massive heart attack while giving a speech on the Senate floor.
The Evans dynasty didn’t skip a beat after Rory’s death. Dare took his place in Florida politics and the Northwest Florida business community. No one trifled with Dare Evans.
As a wealthy widow, Dare was never criticized too harshly, either. She expressed her opinions and asserted her influence without fearing pushback from the country club wives. The whole of Pensacola society found no reason not to take her seriously—or if they did, they were too afraid to say it.
Rory and Bo had grown up in the same neighborhood. Because the Hines and Evans families were close, he had been an usher in Hines’ weddings. Dare loved Sue, who ‘adopted’ her when she moved to Pensacola in 1991 to marry Rory, but she never liked Bo.
“Too cocky,” Dare once told me. Still, Sue was her friend, and Dare cherished her friendships.
My phone vibrated as I began to leave the Blanchard building. I needed another cup of coffee. The caller ID said “Dare Evans.”
“Do . . . do you know what happened?” she asked. “I’ve tried to call the house and Jace. Nobody would pick up the phone.”
“A deputy told me about it just as we were about to go into the courtroom,” I said. “How did you find out so quickly?”
“I subscribe to the Herald’s web alerts. Walker, this is horrible.”
“I’m so sorry, Dare. I know you two were close.”
“She was a good friend.” Dare paused, and I didn’t rush to fill the silence. I did note it however. “The online article on the Herald’s website makes it sound like it could be suicide.”
I said, “I haven’t had time to do anything. The daily rushed to break the story. But you need to prepare for the worse.”
“Sue wouldn’t take her life, not Sue,” she shouted, her temper flaring. “She was upset about the trial, but she was convinced Bo would be found innocent. We had an unspoken rule not to talk about you, but she was fine when we had lunch on Monday.”
“Dare, you never know what’s in someone’s mind, what’s happening behind closed doors—”
“I knew Sue. She wasn’t suicidal, dammit.” After Dare interrupted me, she hung up.
I should have consoled her, but my mind had jumped far past that. Like a dropped needle skipping over vinyl . . . scratch, thump . . . sheesh, I had already moved on to trying to figure out this puzzle and its impact on the trial.
I tried to pull up the Herald website on my cell phone but couldn’t get service.
It vibrated. Harden texted: “@ Breaktime.”
The Breaktime Café was one block north of my office. It was 8:48 a.m. The runners had already pranced home or to their offices, but the bums were out rummaging through the trashcans. They nodded as I passed. They knew I was about as broke as they were.
The heat was beginning to surpass the humidity. I perspired heavily as I walked into the cafe. A line of customers stood in front of the long counter that dominated the narrow space and waited for their lattes, mochas, and espressos. Many turned away as I called out to Bree, who manned the cash register. It would only get worse once they learned of Sue’s death.
Bree smiled and handed me a large cup of house coffee. I didn’t know if she was happy to see me or only wanted to get me away from her other patrons.
Bree wore an unbuttoned blue blouse over a stretched-to-its-limits yellow tube top. The shirt covered tattoos that the owner frowned upon, but the flowers and birds peeked out now and then. A devoted runner, Bree ran Palafox Street every afternoon at three. Men timed their afternoon breaks to see her bounce by their offices. She almost made me want to take running seriously and buy trendier athletic gear. Almost, but not quite.
Jim Harden peeked around the corner from the back room when he heard my voice and waved me back. Bree winked and let me through. She and Jim had already figured out how to hide me away from the regular customers.
Harden was Pensacola’s version of the Invisible Man. He was so nondescript and blended so well into any crowd that you had difficulty remembering where you last saw him. He was five foot ten, not too skinny or too fat, and odorless. Sometimes he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a light brown T-shirt and black slacks. Your eyes naturally passed over him when you scanned a room.
A retired FBI agent, former Navy SEAL, and one of the more sought-after private investigators in Pensacola, Harden could dig up dirt on anybody. We hadn’t been on the same side of every issue, election, or referendum. You never quite knew who Harden was working for on any given day. Most of the information he shared was accurate, but you still needed to verify his tips.
Harden had saved my ass a few times, and I had helped him disrupt the plans of a few mutual enemies. Though he denied it, I thought he had been paid a few times to follow and report on me. Trust was not part of our relationship, but it always paid to listen to Jim Harden.
“You on top of Sue Hines’ death?” I asked as we sat down out of earshot of Bree and her customers.
Harden nodded, “I listened to dispatch route the officers and EMS to the home and was on the scene when they hauled the body off. I thought you might want someone there, and I knew your staff probably hadn’t gotten out of bed yet.”
“What did you learn?”
“It was most likely a drug overdose,” Harden said. I always liked his directness, but this time I would have appreciated a warning.
“Her husband called 9-1-1 after finding her on the floor of the bathroom off the master bedroom this morning at 7:25 a.m.,” said Harden leaning over a notepad next to his coffee cup to read the words written in tight, perfect cursive. “She was putting on her makeup and getting dressed for the trial.”
Bo must have just gotten home from his television interview.
“She died before the ambulance arrived.”
“Damn,” I said. “Was there a note?”
“The cops didn’t find one,” Harden said, still reviewing his notes. “Holmes, Mrs. Hines may have overdosed on Phenobarbital. The police found open prescription bottles in the bathroom. We will need to wait for the ME’s report.”
“Sue took the drug for her epilepsy,” I said when Harden paused to see my reaction to his news. Sue had chaired the local epilepsy board of directors and openly talked about her seizures.
I continued, “She has—had—been afflicted since eighth grade. It would be just like Sue to forget she had taken one dose and down another. Maybe it was accidental.”
Harden looked down and sipped his coffee. He didn’t believe it was an accident but didn’t care enough to argue with me. He let me hold on to that ray of hope but only for a few sips.
“The media will blame you, Holmes,” he said. “The state attorney might even ask for a delay in Hines’ trial. They are worried about finding open-minded jurors. Her death will be all over the media for the next two weeks. You forced their hand on this case. Hines pushed to get in court as quickly as possible, which has hampered the prosecutors who wanted more time to prepare for the trial. Some in the state attorney’s office would like to see it and you go away.”
I didn’t say a word, just continued drinking my coffee. I felt everything slipping away—my newspaper, my friends, and my life.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said and stared into Harden’s eyes. “Maybe Bo will change his plea to guilty.”
Harden half smiled. “You have always been a hard-ass.”
I looked back at Harden as I left a tip on the table for Bree and walked toward the front door. “You let me know if you hear anything else.”
As I turned the corner from the backroom, I ran into Jace Wittman, Sue Hines’ stepbrother. His face looked weary and his blue dress shirt was untucked and wrinkled. His hair needed to be brushed. His goatee was unkempt.
Before I could offer any condolences, Wittman hurled his vanilla latte at my head.
“You son of a bitch,” he shouted. “You killed my sister.”
I shielded my face, and most of the hot liquid scalded my arm. I smelled the vanilla and imagined my skin blistering.
Wittman doubled me over with a punch to my exposed gut. Bree screamed for him to stop. I slipped and hit my head on the corner of a table. Harden blocked Wittman’s path and pushed him as he tried to deliver a kick to my ribs. They had been cracked one time too many and wouldn’t have taken the kick well.
Even though he had twenty pounds on Harden, Wittman knew he was overmatched. He turned angrily and walked out of the cafe. Harden stayed with me. “You okay?” he asked. “We need to get that shirt off and see how much damage Wittman did. Want to call the cops?”
I shook my head imagining that I felt my brain rattle around in my skull. I struggled to catch my breath and not show any emotion. Bree, Harden, and the customers stared down at me.
“He must have come looking for you,” said Bree. “His eyes were glazed over when he walked in until he saw you. I thought he was going to kill you.”
“I have that effect on people,” I said.
She handed me a ziplock bag filled with ice for my head. When they got my shirt off, my left arm was pink, but the starched sleeve had repelled most of the coffee. There were no blisters. Funny how my writer’s imagination had gotten carried away. I also had a knot on the back of my head from the fall, but no other injuries.
Bree gave me a kiss on the forehead and a green, red, yellow, and blue tie-dyed Breaktime T-shirt to wear. Harden walked with me back to the Insider office.
It was a little after nine o’clock in the morning, and I’d already had my ass kicked and seen my chance for redemption possibly evaporate. Perfect.