Two weeks passed. It was a Saturday and the recruits had graduated in the afternoon. It had been a splendid sunlit ceremony, with flags and gunshot salutes and an eloquent speech about tradition. A pity the speech had come from Baggs, who wrote little of it and understood less. Our dual mea culpa media moment was one week past. There’d been a news blitz for a couple days, then a guy in Orange Beach got bit by a shark and everyone forgot about cop stuff.
I had a small party at my place. Harry was among the crowd, of course, with Sally Hargreaves. Director of Forensics Wayne Hembree attended with his wife. Rein Earley was there, taking bows for a fine and funny speech about her days at the academy. A patrol officer for a year now, Rein was Harry’s niece, though few knew it. Doc Kavanaugh floated in, as wizardy as always. I’d invited Clair, not really expecting her to attend, but she arrived with a date, a fortyish cardiologist who was so good looking I figured he had to be gay or have issues or both.
Wendy was there, naturally. I hadn’t seen much of her the last few days, what with cramming for the exams. She aced everything, by the way. I wish I could have invited the entire recruit class as thanks for rebuilding the video and its second life. But I’d offered some gratitude last week by taking everyone to a dinner I’d be paying down for months.
I was leaning against the rail and sipping a Sazerac. I turned my cell phone off, since everyone I wanted to talk to was at my house. Dropping it back into the pocket of my jacket, I felt a piece of paper. It was the message Roy McDermott had left on my office phone, The snook are calling.
I’d paid it no heed at the time, too much going on. But now it called up a conversation from a year ago, Roy and I flyfishing for snook at the Ding Darling Nature Preserve on Florida’s Sanibel Island, the outflowing tide pulling the elusive, aerodynamic sportfishes though the brushy passes as the setting sun turned the twilight air to gold. A light breeze rattled the leaves of the palmettos. The early stars were winking down.
“My idea of heaven, Roy,” I’d said, unwinding a cast, the water warm and lapping at the hem of my cutoffs.
“Close enough for me,” Roy said, a dozen feet to my side and tying on a new fly. Then, after a long pause, “You ever think of changing jobs, Carson? A lot of places could use someone like you, give you a leadership role. They treating you right at the MPD?”
I’d launched a cast across the shimmering water. “They’re treating me fine, Roy.”
“Things are changing at the FCLE,” he’d said, quietly, almost as if talking to himself. He looked up. “If I ended up with some control over hiring, Carson, you wouldn’t be against my giving you a call, would you?”
Three foot of fish rocketed from the water ahead of me, my fly in its mouth and my rod bending near in half. “Got a better idea, Roy,” I’d laughed, following the fish out into the channel as line sizzled from my reel. “Have the snook give me a call.”
I was mulling over the incident when Wendy walked up and leaned beside me. “Howdy, stranger,” she said. She was wearing a sleeveless white blouse and very brief pink skirt. Her hair floated in the warm breeze and she looked so very young.
I tucked away my recollections for the moment and pretended to shoo her away.
“Sorry, lady, real cops aren’t allowed to talk to newbies.”
“That so? Maybe I’ll go talk to the guy Dr Peltier brought. Yum.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. Wendy leaned close and gave me a peck on my cheek. “How goes the Nieves investigation?”
“New twists and turns every day. We found an animal trap in Nieves’s truck and cocaine in the glove box. Both explain a lot. But the big find was on his mantel: a vase filled with pennies. Each coin had a name taped to the back – people who Nieves thought insulted him is the presumption. He probably shook out a penny, then went into stalking mode.”
“My God. How many pennies?”
“Forty-three.”
“Talk about thin-skinned. Were you a penny?”
“Oddly enough, no cops were. Five names were people in the EEOSA. Others we may never identify.”
Harry and Sally walked up, Sally shaking Wendy’s hand. “Congratulations, graduate. Carson says you played a part in figuring out the Nieves motive.”
“Oh no. It was just a game in class, a hypothetical.”
“You started me thinking about pain having meaning beyond its infliction,” I said. “It helped make the connection in the Square.”
Wendy frowned. “But weren’t you already thinking along those lines, Carson? ‘A murder is too good a thing to waste?’ Part of your hypothetical?”
“I, uh …”
“Of course he was,” Harry said, slapping my back. “Trouble is, the poor boy’s too dumb to realize how smart he is.” It got a laugh, and provided a distraction, as Harry knew it would. Sally noticed her wine was getting low and went to refill, Wendy following. Harry watched them weave through the crowd to the kitchen.
“Lawd, Carson … how did we both end up with ladies that put us to shame?”
“I’m afraid Wendy’s too young for me, Harry,” I lamented. “May–December or whatever.”
Harry laughed so loud it echoed off the house next door, like laughing twice. “For chrissakes, Carson. You can’t even tell time. It’s March–June or thereabouts.”
“I’m still over ten years older than her.”
“You happy? She happy?”
I nodded.
“Then let’s change the subject, because it’s ridiculous. You met with Ema Nieves this morning, right? How’s she doing?”
I’d promised Ema I’d check on her every few days and stopped by earlier. “Ema’s had time to think, Harry. Things are getting clearer.”
“How so?”
“She mentioned something from the Ceaușescu days called the Departmentul Securitari Statului, one of the largest secret-police organizations in the Eastern Bloc. The DSS had officers at the orphanage and Ema suspects her brother was molested by them. They wore blue uniforms.”
“Jesus. The Blue Tribe. But Nieves’s only police contact here was with Austin and Mailey, and Austin did everything to help the guy.”
“We’ll never know what Nieves was seeing in his head. Or how it got there.”
“But Ema’s doing better, I hope?”
“She’s quit her job, too torn up to work, but it seems she’s the sole beneficiary of Nieves’s will.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. “Sole beneficiary?”
I nodded. “Gets it all.”
He took a sip of his drink, both of us watching a light far out on the water, a freighter, I figured, halfway from hither and crossing to yon.
“I know Gregory Nieves got destroyed in childhood, Carson, but his money will do more good with a person like Ema. I sense a strength in there. She’s a survivor.”
“Ema might even wring some good from the horror,” I said. “She’s considering writing a book about how she missed warning signs of her brother’s illness, hoping to keep it from happening to others. An agent already contacted her.”
“My Brother the Killer?” Harry mused. “Those true-life things can go big, Cars. Bestseller list. Oprah. A movie. Has Ema told Doc Szekely yet?”
I nodded. “Ema called Szekely as soon as a book came to mind. Ema wants the Doc to make a few contributions from the psychological side.”
“What does the Doc think of the idea?”
I glanced up at the moon, moving toward full and wearing a hopeful face – at least, that was how it appeared to me. After all the horror and uncertainty of this case it was finally good to have something positive to say.
“Szekely thinks writing a book is exactly what Ema needs,” I said. “A project to keep her occupied.”
I heard my phone ring in the kitchen, watched through the window as Wendy answered. She listened for a moment, raised a quizzical eyebrow, then put her palm over the receiver and called to me through the screen.
“It’s some guy who says his name is Mr Snook, Carson. You want to take it?”