“Sheriff’s on a call. Won’t be back till this afternoon.”
Nine A.M., Sugarman stood in the front office of the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department. He was wearing black jeans and a blue oxford shirt and his best boat shoes. Picking the wardrobe carefully, he’d tried to split the difference between city slicker and shit kicker. Even in a supposedly broadminded age, a black man in rural Florida had to be prudent.
Sheriff Timmy Whalen’s gatekeeper was a plump woman in her seventies named Nina, who wore a purple blouse that clashed with the valentine red of her froth of hair. And the heavy slash of crimson on her lips clashed with both. On the metal file cabinet beside her was a vase of plastic flowers and a collection of gift-shop figurines, mostly brightly colored tropical fish, but none as gaudy as Nina.
She eyed Sugarman from his boat shoes to his courteous smile, then picked up her notepad, studied it for a few seconds, and set it down.
“You’re the one from Key Largo. Rachel’s friend.”
“You know Rachel?”
“I do now. Talked to her for most of an hour. Got the goods on you, that’s for sure.” She picked up an emery board that lay beside her ancient Selectric typewriter and took one pass across a nail. “The sheriff’s supervising a crime-scene investigation. Says to send you over when you arrive.”
Nina tapped her emery board against her desktop, lifting her nose as though trying to catch a whiff of him.
“Rachel tells me you’re a private eye.”
Sugarman nodded.
“And you’re poking around into Abigail Bates’s death?”
“Poking isn’t the word I’d use.”
“The granddaughter,” Nina said. “Mona Milligan. She hired you.”
“I really can’t say,” Sugar said.
“That girl made a lot of noise after her granny died. Nearly every day she was in here huffing and puffing at the sheriff. Calling us bunglers, a bunch of backwater idiots. A little snot, if you ask me.”
“I can’t disclose my client,” Sugarman said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. Got to keep it hush-hush.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, good luck on keeping anything hush-hush in this town.”
Nina was a gabber. No doubt she had tried to wheedle juicy bits from Rachel, but he trusted his friend’s savvy. She would’ve spotted Nina as a gossip and given her just enough to chum the waters, prime her for Sugar.
“I take it the sheriff officially closed the Bates investigation?”
“Drowning,” Nina said. “Medical examiner ruled on it, not a shred of doubt. The way her lungs were, I forget all that scientific mumbo jumbo.”
“And what became of the young man who had the violent encounter with Ms. Bates, this guy Kipling?”
She waved the thought away.
“A wuss,” Nina said. “Charlie Kipling couldn’t swat a mosquito. He’s still renting canoes just where he’s been for years. Out on Highway 70.1 marked his place on the map.”
Nina picked up a sheet of paper from her desk and held it out for Sugar. He took it, thanked her, and looked it over.
It was a hand-drawn diagram. The sheriff’s department on East Cypress was marked with a star, the crime scene the sheriff was working was marked with an X, and the canoe-rental place was assigned a C. All the streets had been rulered out, their names printed alongside each one. Compulsive Nina.
“And were there any other suspects? Anyone might’ve had a grudge against Abigail Bates?”
Nina laughed. “Suspects?” She set her emery board aside and straightened a stack of papers that lay on her ink blotter. She chortled again, then looked up at him with the grin still in her eyes. “Mr. Sugarman, there’s more than thirty-five thousand residents in unincorporated DeSoto County. The county covers six hundred and eighty-four square miles, and I guarantee you there’s only a handful of folks in all that area who didn’t celebrate Abigail Bates’s death.”
“The wicked witch?”
“You got it,” Nina said. “When I was a girl, this was God’s green acre. Clean air, pure water, rivers flowing, birds and trees and possums and people all getting along. Then that Bates woman inherits her daddy’s empire and, Lord have mercy, single-handed she spends the last forty years trying to trash every square mile from here all the way up to Tampa. And if that wasn’t enough, she decided to work her way down to the Gulf, where all the rich folks dock their yachts. That’s when her unfortunate drowning occurred.”
“Phosphate mining, that’s what you’re talking about?”
“Yes, sir. Gray gold. It’s making somebody rich, but nobody I know. And next to coal it’s the dirtiest business there is.”
“Hires a lot of people, though. Must affect the local economy.”
“Hires a few, and even some of those are celebrating her death. You want suspects, I’d take a gander at the school videos. Cast of thousands.”
“School videos?”
“Protest speeches. Tearing into Abigail Bates and her gang. They stood there at the podium, said the awfulest things right to the faces of Bates people. I think there were four meetings. All of them recorded.”
“Maybe I’ll check it out.”
Nina cut a glance toward the sheriff’s office door. “Maybe you should.”
Sugar took his leave and drove his Honda through Summerlanďs historical district: a brick courthouse, a mom-and-pop drugstore, a hardware store, a diner, a dress shop, lawyers’ offices, then a main-street stretch of antebellum mansions with big generous wraparound porches. He worked his way down a few potholed backstreets until he found the intersection for Highway 70, then turned north and followed Nina’s drawing, passing the canoe-rental shop along the way.
A few minutes later he pulled into the lot of a small cement-block building seven miles from downtown Summerland. The crime scene.
The shop was squat and unpainted with a Confederate flag fluttering from a pole on its roof. Sugar heard the tune echo in some sound chamber of memory. The land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten.
The billboard out front identified the business as Hankinson’s Army Surplus and Gun Shop. Parked in the gravel lot were two police cruisers, white with green accents, and a white DeSoto County crime-scene van.
Rammed through the security bars and double front doors was a blue Ford pickup truck. The entire length of the truck’s hood was lodged inside the store, its windshield shattered, a corner of the air bag hanging out of the driver’s window. Must’ve been rolling at least forty miles an hour to crash that far inside those reinforced doors. Hell of a collision.
Kneeling down beside the deflated flap of air bag, a black woman in khaki trousers and a dark blue shirt was clipping part of the material free. Only African American on the scene.
Sugarman came up behind her and watched for a moment over her shoulder. The section of material she was snipping loose was smeared with red. She wore latex gloves, and when the fabric was free, she pinched an edge of it and dropped it into a plastic evidence bag.
“Nice scissors,” he said.
The woman rose and turned to face him. She was a few inches shorter than he, slender, with none of the Caucasian ancestry Sugarman had inherited. Dark-skinned, with large lips, widely spaced eyes that were caramel-colored with a hint of gold, she had a fine, high forehead and wore her short hair in a finger wave. A couple of curly strands dangled across her forehead.
“Buck ninety-five at Wal-Mart. Nothing special, but they do the job.”
“Somebody had a sudden urge for guns.”
“Ten years in law enforcement, I’m still waiting for my first criminal mastermind.”
“Truck was stolen, I suppose.”
She squinted at him, hesitating a moment. He tried for a harmless smile.
“Stolen, yes,” she said. “Dealership in Sarasota. They didn’t know it was missing till we called.”
“Well, you got the bad guy’s DNA, that’s a start. You been an ID tech long?”
She shook her head and held up the plastic bag.
“That look like blood to you?”
He was leaning close to see the specimen when a man came huffing up. Five-six, five-seven, close to three hundred pounds. Ratty jeans, grease-stained white T-shirt with a Harley logo on it, a melon-belly. His face was red and bloated, and he’d braided his chin hair into a three-inch pigtail.
“I got the inventory,” he said. “Sheriff Whalen.”
He spoke her title with such blatant scorn that Sugar felt his hands curl into fists at his sides. But the sheriff just smiled, apparently used to these peckerheads. Probably took this level of shit every day. Sugar looked at her again. Sheriff Timmy.
“So what’d our brazen bandit make off with, Mr. Hankinson?”
“M-fourteen with the Kevlar stock, uses the three-oh-eight rounds. Took the one with the high-capacity magazine. Thing just came in last week. Asshole must be a vet, served in Nam or Iraq. Knew to skip the M-sixteens. Fuckers jam all the time. Only niggers and morons steal those.”
“The clip is high-capacity?”
“That’s right. But it’s preban, it’s legal.”
“How high is the capacity?”
“Holds twenty rounds.”
“Anything else missing, Mr. Hankinson?”
He gave her a lazy sneer that seemed to say, “Don’t push me, I’m getting there.”
Sugarman forced his hands back open, spread his fingers, took a breath.
“An HK forty-five handgun, five boxes of shells, one camouflage jacket.”
“That’s it?”
“I know my stock, and that’s what he got. Asshole wasted a brand-new fucking pickup truck to rip off a rifle, a handgun, and a jacket. Oh, yeah, and two cheap walkie-talkies.”
“Somebody’s going hunting,” Sugarman said.
Hankinson gave him a sour look, then turned back to the sheriff.
“You got twenty-four hours, Whalen. You don’t slap the cuffs on the fucker, me and the boys kick it into gear. Twenty-four hours.”
She nodded wearily. Heard it all before. Didn’t bother with a civics lecture, like she knew the guy was all bluster and bullshit.
“I hear a bass boat got stolen last night, too,” Hankinson said. “Off the lot at Fisherman’s Paradise.”
The sheriff nodded.
“This fucking town been going to the dogs ever since you took over.”
She let Hankinson get halfway across the lot before she called his name. He halted but didn’t turn. Not only was the sheriff a female, but black to boot. The very idea must have tormented his lizard brain.
“You behave yourself, John. Don’t let me hear about you and your boys harassing our good citizens. Last time I checked you chalked up two strikes. Third fall’s the charm, baby. So you take care now.”
He turned his head and gave her a red-eyed withering look and stalked back to his gun shop.
“And you must be Mr. Sugarman of Key Largo.”
She peeled off her gloves, then held out her right hand. She had a firm, no-bullshit grip.
“Welcome to Florida’s heartland, where the glorious Southern traditions live on.”
“Those guys are everywhere,” Sugar said. “You don’t have a corner on the bubba market.”
She gave Sugar a brisk look of appraisal as if he might be gaming her. Probably happened a lot to her. This town, these people. A constant struggle to find the proper balance between authority and deference, goodwill and suspicion. Sugar couldn’t tell by the slight softening of her gaze if he’d passed the test or was still on probation. Probably the latter.
“So you’ve been employed by the Bates family to second-guess my police work. And out of the generosity of my heart and professional courtesy I’m supposed to throw open my books.”
Sugarman sighed, watched the deputies who were milling around the front of the store trying to look busy. A tow truck pulled into the lot, and a twenty-year-old kid with long hair jumped down, paced around a little, keeping to himself, sizing up the mechanics of the job.
“For eleven years I was a deputy for the Monroe County sheriff in the Upper Keys. I have nothing but respect for the position. The professionalism required, hard work, the whole deal. Nothing but respect. If you’re inclined to share some information with me, that would be generous, but if you’re not so inclined, I’d certainly understand.”
“A speechmaker.”
“I polished it a little on the drive up.”
She fought off a small smile.
“You used to be a deputy, but you quit. Went private.”
“I was bumping against the good-ol’-boy ceiling,” he said. “It was either spend the next twenty years running in place or take a risk on my own.”
“Has it worked out?”
“Less paperwork,” he said, “but I sure miss my dental plan.”
That got a full smile. Good teeth. Very white and straight.
“You didn’t know I was the sheriff, did you? You walked up, decided to hit on the black woman. Play the race card. Afro to Afro. See what you could trick out of the poor dumb colored girl.”
Sugarman was silent.
“True or false?”
“Somewhere in between,” he said. “Not the ‘poor dumb colored girl’ thing. Just trying to do my job. Same as you.”
After a few seconds of watching her deputies, she held up the plastic bag and gave him another look at the fabric.
“Look like blood to you?”
It came across as part challenge, part something else. Sugarman couldn’t put a finger on the second thing, why she’d engage him like this. Intrigued, he noted it, printing it in bold letters for later consideration.
“When did the break-in go down?”
“I put it at around midnight,” she said. “Cut the phone line to disable the alarm, then rammed. Two hours ago a passing cruiser spotted it.”
“Well, that’s too bright, too red to be blood nine hours old.”
“So what do you think? What’s your professional analysis?”
“What it looks like is lipstick.”
Timmy Whalen smiled again, but the test continued.
“That’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think? A woman puts on her lipstick before she goes off to steal a truck, heist some guns.”
“Force of habit,” Sugar said. “Ritual. She’s not thinking about it, just going through her routine to keep her nerves steady.”
Timmy Whalen watched the tow-truck guy amble over to one of the deputies. Both of them lit up smokes, started talking.
“Not bad. For most guys, trying to decipher the female mind is right up there with cracking the atom.”
“That’s what you think?” he said. “Person who rammed the truck into the gun shop was a woman?”
“Either that,” she said, “or one hell of a kinky guy.”
Sugarman smiled, then took another look at the truck. One of the CSI guys in jeans and a police T-shirt was taking photos.
“Something I’m wondering.”
“Yeah?”
“Why doesn’t she throw it in reverse, use the rear bumper to crash the doors? A lot less damage to the truck and to her. If things go right, she drives off after it’s done. This way she’s got to walk away loaded down with her loot. Or she’s had to stash her own vehicle somewhere nearby. Or I guess she could have a partner, and he drives her away.”
“This one’s a hard-ass,” the sheriff said. “Going in backward? No, I don’t think it ever crossed her mind.”
“No?”
“First, if things don’t go right, she’s stuck just the same, so there’s uncertainty. Plus, backing a truck in the dark at thirty miles an hour, I don’t see it. Too tricky. Too many ifs.”
Sugarman rubbed the back of his hand across the stubble on his cheek.
“Still, it’s weird,” he said. “The whole deal, headfirst or not. It has desperation written all over it.”
Sheriff Whalen watched her deputies work.
“What’re you doing, interviewing for a job?”
“Just trying to be helpful,” Sugarman said. “Maybe bond a little.”
She smiled again, meeting his eyes. “Candid, aren’t we?”
“It’s the only way to go.”
“All right, Mr. Detective. Anything else pop out?”
“Not really. Just what the owner said. She goes to all this trouble, steals a truck, rams it into the front, then only steals four or five things, including a camouflage jacket? It’s a weird list. Very short. Very precise.”
She took a deliberate breath and her eyes blurred again. When she spoke, her voice was flat, a long way from banter.
“It’s what you said. She took what she needed. She’s going hunting.”
The solemn tone, her eyes bouncing off his, then fixing on a blue scrap of sky, gave Sugar another thing to jot down on his memory pad.
Sheriff Timmy was confiding in him. But what and why, he had no idea.