book title

Nobody said a word on the way to the Key West Police headquarters. I sat in the back of a radio scout car, still unsure as to why I was getting the business from the local po-po. Detective Meadows followed in her unmarked Dodge Charger with tinted windows. Police cars had come a long way since my early days with Detroit PD. By the time I’d gotten an unmarked, it was the shittiest Crown Vic in the fleet.

That car had leaked exhaust fumes through the dash, and I’d had to drive with the windows down even in the winter. Otherwise, I would’ve passed out from carbon monoxide poisoning and careened into a group of schoolchildren waiting for a bus. That had been my biggest fear anyway. I froze for two years until I stepped up to the second-shittiest Crown Vic.

We had a short drive to department headquarters, just across from the marina on Roosevelt. Shit, we could have walked there in five minutes. The building was precisely what you would imagine a police headquarters to look like on a small island in the Florida Straits. A small concrete fortress that was clean, organized, and had nothing gaudy about it. Like a well-manicured lawn with a perfectly shaped maple tree in the center. The building had three floors and smelled like lilacs. Before Detroit PD moved to its new location on the west side, we’d fought for space with rats and had to endure asbestos in Midtown. So, I always expected the worst when it came to HQs. Now, of course, times had changed, and Detroit PD was a modern force with an appropriately modern building. At least in appearances anyway. But I hadn’t been around long enough to appreciate it.

We took an elevator to the second floor and Meadows put me in a small, tiled room with a stainless-steel table bolted to the floor and two stainless-steel stools bolted on either side next to it. Throwing tables and chairs was a common occurrence in Key West apparently. Or maybe there had been a brash of thefts targeting only stools and tables. Whatever the reason, the room was not comfortable and that was, most likely, the point.

Probably a poor word choice given my present situation. Uttering shit when cops suspected you of a crime gives the impression you might have had something to do with it. I'm speaking from experience, of course. I’d happily interrogated suspects during my tenure with the Detroit Police Department, where they would preamble their confessions with the word shit. I’d then locked them up for the rest of their natural lives. Unfortunately, for me, shit was my go-to word when I was at a loss for anything profound to say.

Meadows locked the door behind her when she left—a bolt lock, strong in a steel frame. There was a small, enclosed camera in the corner of the ceiling. They most likely had the room wired for sound, too. And to add to the discomfort, it was cold. Hell, the whole building was a meat locker. Floridians loved their air-conditioning.

The wait time for that coffee would be minutes or hours. It all depended on the crime. If I were in charge, and the crime were serious enough, I'd leave me in here for a good long time, make me eager to share any dirty details I might have. Technically, I wasn't under arrest, so I could split anytime I wanted. However, technically, they could hold me for a few hours without slapping the cuffs on me. Our justice system was full of all kinds of little gray areas like that. I knew them all because I’d used them all when I was a cop.

I did my best to get comfortable on the stool. I was bored, tired, hungover, and not in the best of moods. Then there was Dan and whatever he’d done to get me locked up in an interrogation room. It did cross my mind he was playing a practical joke on me. Wouldn’t be the first time, but it would be a good one. Made perfect sense. Everybody I talked to knew who he was. The police probably did, too. I kept that thought in the back of my mind, just in case. I wasn’t going to let Dan Yarnall get me, even after fifteen years.

There was a time when we were both second-class petty officers with the Naval Security Group. We’d both been cryptologists. We’d met in A School, a technical school the Navy sent new sailors to according to their job. We’d been two Midwesterners way out of our comfort zone. Dan was from Pittsburgh and was gung-ho, almost ravenous. I was quiet but focused. We’d made fast friends and spent the next five years joined at the hip, creating quite a reputation for ourselves.

One night while on liberty in Yokohama, Japan, we’d walked into a local jazz bar. It had quickly become apparent we were the only Americans in the joint, which wasn't a big deal until the bartender told us sailors weren't allowed in his establishment. Dan had shown his displeasure by turning on a fire hose and blasting the poor bastard into a rack of whiskey bottles, reinforcing the bartender's reasoning behind his policy regarding gaijin.

Unfortunately, the locals tended to frown on such poor communication skills, and they’d called Shore Patrol. I’d helped Dan escape the clutches of the natives and avoid the shackles. The next day, however, he stood before the Old Man anyway. He didn't go to Captain's Mast for the fire hose incident, but because he’d clocked the officer of the deck when we got back to the Independence. Dan had ended up with thirty days restriction and loss of pay, but he kept his rank. Our commander had been a reasonable man but was severely disappointed in the behavior of his R brancher. NAVSECGRU was a tight-knit group, a small community, the top five percent of the Navy. Dan had pulled extra duty. No big deal. Kept him on the straight and narrow, though. Changed his life.

At the end of his first enlistment, he was a first-class petty officer and a lifer. I wasn’t, though. The Navy had forced me to pass through. Afghanistan took its toll on me. I’d loved being a sailor, but Afghanistan was too much, too soon. I hadn’t understood why I was there humping the mountains with a radio on my back with special warfare operatives. I’d gone from the confines of a sealed area within a ship to the wide-open air of a country I knew nothing about, nor cared to find out. And I had done things I could never forget, nor forgive. I’d ended my time as a second class, honorably discharged with conditions. I wasn't allowed to come back without a review letter signed by someone with Admiral in his title. It was a long story, but it had something to do with my problem with authority, which was the direct result of my disobeying an order given by my old friend Dan Yarnall.

He’d been a watch leader and the one who wrote the report. Because of it, I’d stood before the man. But I knew before then I’d taken my time with the Navy as far as it would go. Dan and I had gone as far as I was willing to go, too. We’d both held the same incident against each other. The difference was Dan had made it official. He’d been honorable. I’d made it personal. The day I’d flown back to the real world, the Navy had already shipped Dan to Japan. I was supposed to follow him. He hadn’t known I was ending my enlistment. We hadn't seen each other since.

Now I was sitting in a windowless icebox waiting for Detective Meadows to show up and grill me on my whereabouts last night because my old pal had somehow implicated me in a crime. That was the worst-case scenario. I wondered if he was sitting in another interview room, too. The best-case scenario was this was a joke, courtesy of my old friend. So, I waited.

As it turned out an hour was the magic wait time, which made me nervous. If this was simple destruction of property or theft, I would’ve been on my second cup of coffee by now. I heard the bolt lock disengage and the door opened. It was Detective Meadows, and she was holding two paper cups of coffee and a folder.

I sighed heavily and shifted in my seat. I knew the game. She was trying to build a rapport with me, get me comfortable, get me to let my guard down. I didn’t have time for any of that. I wanted to nurse my hangover and take a nap. But most of all, I wanted to know why she was referring to my old friend in the past tense.

I sat back away from Meadows, who was now glaring at me. Dan wasn’t playing a joke on me, and he wasn’t sitting in another interview room. Dan was dead. Even worse, someone murdered him. That was the only reason why I was in the Key West Police Department drinking bad coffee and sitting on a steel stool. Police don’t bring you in for questioning about heart attacks or accidents. I was suspect number one. And I knew the only way I was going to find out any information was to cooperate with the police, even as a suspect.

I wouldn’t be a suspect for long. I wasn’t only innocent, I was seen. At the Green Parrot Bar all night. Witnesses galore. Even spent the night in the arms of a woman. My alibi was as strong as the steel stool I sat on.