The Little Death Read online

  “Lieutenant, did you know Mark Durand?” Louis asked.

  “Just by sight,” Swann said. “He hasn’t been in town very long.”

  “Do you know Reggie Kent?” Louis asked.

  “Everyone knows Mr. Kent,” Swann said. “He’s lived here for years and is a fixture here. People like and respect him.”

  “Do you think he’s capable of murder?”

  Swann blinked and raised a brow. It was an odd reaction from a cop who should have been used to making evaluations about anyone accused of a crime. But then, one look at the guy’s wall revealed that it was highly unlikely that Swann had ever solved a serious crime, let alone worked a murder.

  “I’d really like your opinion, Lieutenant,” Louis said. “Have you ever seen a display of temper from Kent? Does he drink too much? Does he have a criminal history?”

  “No, he has no record whatsoever, and he drinks no more than most people here,” Swann said. “I’ve never seen him lose his temper, either. In fact, that argument Mr. Kent and Mr. Durand had at Testa’s was about as angry as I’ve heard he’s ever become. It was most unusual for him.”

  “Did this argument get physical?” Louis asked.

  Swann hesitated, then went to the file cabinets and withdrew a paper from a manila folder. “One of our officers responded to a disturbance,” he said. “It began inside, and according to witnesses, Mr. Kent followed Mr. Durand outside to the sidewalk. The summary illustrates the level of violence.”

  Louis took the report that Swann held out to him. It was written by a patrolman who detailed his intervention in what was described as a “minor verbal altercation.” The last line read: “The only property damage was a broken flower pot. Neither subject was injured.”

  “Detective Barberry told me he was very pleased that we documented everything so thoroughly,” Swann said. “He feels this argument will go a long way in showing motive.”

  Louis thought it was a little pathetic that Swann seemed to want this Barberry’s approval so badly. But he could imagine that Swann would be impressed by the gold-badge guy from the big department tossing him a compliment.

  “Did Kent tell you that Durand wanted to move out and get his own place?” Louis asked.

  “I heard that’s what he told Detective Barberry,” Swann said, “but if you want my opinion, Mr. Durand didn’t want to move out as much as he wanted to break up.”

  “Break up?” Louis asked. “You mean, Reggie and Durand were…”

  When Louis didn’t finish the sentence, Mel stepped forward. “Were they lovers, lieutenant?”

  Swann nodded, amused at Louis’s surprise. “Of course they were. Everyone knew that.”

  Louis looked to Mel before he addressed Swann. “Kent claims they weren’t. You have any idea why he’d tell us that?”

  “Well, this is just my theory,” Swann said. “Like I said, I didn’t know Mr. Durand, but I got the sense he was having a little trouble with the closet door. Mr. Kent was always open about his homosexuality, but maybe he was trying to protect his friend’s wishes.”

  Louis looked back at the report. He knew that a domestic partner was always the first suspect when a dead body turned up. And the fact that Kent and Durand had argued the night Durand was killed didn’t help Reggie’s case. Louis also knew that when one lover brutally killed another, there was often a third person waiting in the wings.

  “Did you guys pursue the idea that maybe Durand was seeing someone else and you might have a triangle here?” Louis asked.

  “It wasn’t our case,” Swann said. “And I get the feeling Detective Barberry wasn’t thrilled at the idea of hunting down Mr. Durand’s other bed partners. He felt he had his suspect.”

  “But did the possibility occur to you?” Louis asked.

  “Me personally?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  Swann took a drink of his water before he answered. “Yes, it occurred to me. Briefly.”

  “I’ll ask you again,” Louis said. “Do you think Kent is capable of murder?”

  “Maybe. But…” Swann said.

  “But what?”

  “You’d have to know Mr. Kent to understand,” Swann said. “I think the idea of chopping off someone’s head would simply be too repulsive to him.”

  Louis laid the officer’s report on the desk. Swann had an interesting point. Not only was decapitation an indicator of extreme rage but the act required a taste for the macabre that normal people didn’t have.

  So why was everyone so quick to believe this mild-mannered middle-aged walker had committed this crime? Why were they, as Kent said, trying to set him up as some sacrificial lamb?

  “I’m sorry,” Swann said. “I have a meeting to attend. Allow me to walk you out.”

  Swann held the door for them and followed them back to the front lobby. He said goodbye and left.

  “Batzarro’s a polite little bastard, isn’t he?” Mel said.

  “Who?”

  “Swann.”

  “Why’d you call him Batzarro?”

  “Jesus, didn’t you read comic books when you were a kid?”

  “No. Just tell me, all right?”

  “Batzarro was a character in the old DC comic books,” Mel said. “He worked in Bizarro World and was the world’s worst detective.”

  Louis looked back at the station door. “We’re not going to get any help here,” he said.

  Mel held up his Evian. “But we got French water.”

  A door clicked open and a uniform came out. “Mr. Kincaid,” he said. “Lieutenant Swann forgot to give you this.”

  Louis went to him and took the slip of pink paper. It was a ticket. On the right side was a list of possible violations, everything from speeding to jaywalking. The box next to “Vehicle Appearance” was checked with a small X, followed by the neatly printed words: “Dirty with cracked taillight.”

  “You’re giving me a repair order for my car?” Louis asked.

  “It’s not a repair order,” the officer said. “It’s a ticket. Per city ordinance one-five-three-point-eight, all cars parked on the public streets must be in good working condition and inoffensive to the eye.”

  “You have an ugly-car law?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

  “How much is the damn fine?”

  “Ninety dollars, sir. You have ten days to take care of it. If you do not, we will ask a judge to revoke your driver’s license.”

  Mel chuckled.

  The uniform left. Louis jammed the citation into his pocket and looked up at one of the security cameras. He gave a stiff salute, then pushed out the front door. He was yanking off his blazer as Mel came up to his side.

  “Why didn’t you give him the finger?” Mel asked.

  Louis managed a smile. “Let’s go see some real cops.”

  Chapter Four

  In Palm Beach, it was all about form. From the undulating eaves of the Spanish-tiled roofs to the precise placement of the potted geraniums on Worth Avenue, everything was designed to please the senses.

  Here, five miles west of the ocean and on the ass end of the Palm Beach County airport, it was all about function. From the grab-a-Slurpee gas stations on every corner to the treeless tracts of multilaned boulevards, everything was geared to moving cars along as quickly as possible.

  The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office fit right into its surroundings. It was a huge, blocky complex painted a Crayola-flesh color, tarted up with waxy plants that could survive a decade’s drought. A monolithic addition of the same pallid stucco rose in the back, its slitted windows identifying it as a jail.

  Louis parked the Mustang near a white and green sheriff’s cruiser, and he and Mel went inside.

  The lobby was standard law-enforcement fare: yellow cinder-block walls and bulletin boards plastered with wanted posters and notices. The three rows of metal folding chairs were occupied by the usual sorry-looking souls watching Wheel of Fortune on TV while they waited for their numbers to be called
.

  After the sergeant behind the desk tossed Louis and Mel visitor’s passes, he buzzed them through. The squad room was a maze of cubicles. There was a lingering odor of tacos and burnt coffee in the air, along with the steady ring of phones.

  Louis had called ahead, and Detective Ron Barberry met them at the door to the Violent Crimes Division. He was a squat man with a lion’s mane of white hair and a face made for a caricature artist: flat, apelike brow, ragged salt-and-pepper mustache, and horseshoe jaw. His bleary gaze, rolled-up sleeves—revealing a nicotine patch—and unkempt nails tagged him clearly as a cop who lived in the station and the local tavern.

  Probably the strip joint Louis had seen at the corner of Gun Club Road.

  “You got fifteen minutes,” Barberry said as he waved them toward the back of the room.

  Barberry parked his butt on the corner of a messy desk. His gaze lingered on Mel like he couldn’t figure out what kind of man wore yellow sunglasses. His hard brown eyes finally swung back to Louis.

  “You working for Kent?” he asked.

  “Not exactly,” Louis said. He felt Mel’s eyes on him but didn’t turn to him. “We’re just checking things out right now.”

  “So what do you want from us?” Barberry asked.

  “Kent’s afraid you guys have already made up your minds about him and aren’t going to look any further,” Louis said.

  Barberry rooted through the debris in a drawer and came out with a pack of Big Red gum. As he folded a stick into his mouth, he glanced at Mel, who was making his way through the desks toward an empty chair.

  “What’s wrong with him?” he whispered to Louis. “He got trouble seeing?”

  “Yes, I do,” Mel said, turning back. “But I can hear really well.”

  Barberry reddened and pulled out his own chair. “Oh. Sorry, buddy. Here.”

  Mel gave him a hard stare and came back to sit down, crossing his arms.

  Barberry turned back to Louis. “Look, I’m gonna make this easy for you. That fudge packer Kent is as guilty as a whore with the clap. He needs to hire himself a good lawyer, not a couple of out-of-work PIs.”

  Louis heard a squeak and looked back to see Mel slowly spinning his chair around away from Barberry.

  “Detective,” Louis said, looking back at Barberry. “How about a little cooperation here? Mel and I are both ex-cops, and we’re not trying to make anyone here look bad.”

  Barberry glanced at Mel. “You worked in homicide?”

  Mel nodded. “Miami.”

  “So what’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “Retinitis pigmentosa.”

  Barberry blinked. “My mom’s got the same thing.”

  “That so?” Mel said.

  Barberry nodded brusquely. “Yeah. Shit… that’s tough. I mean for you being a cop and all.”

  Mel took off his sunglasses. His face was sunburnt, and he had two white circles around his eyes. “How’s your mother doing?” he asked.

  “She’s got a nurse, but it still ain’t easy for her.” Barberry cleared his throat and reached for an accordion file on his desk. “Out of consideration for that, I’ll throw you two dogs some bones. They found the corpse in Devil’s Garden.”

  “What’s that?” Louis asked.

  “Some dot-on-the-map place south of Clewiston,” Barberry said. “Lots of cattle farms out there. Anyway, some dogs sniffed out Durand around dawn. He was laying in a crappy old cattle pen, naked as a jaybird.”

  “Did you find his clothes?” Mel asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What about a wallet, jewelry, anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Has the head turned up yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you find a weapon?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about a time of death?”

  Barberry plucked a set of stapled reports from the accordion file and flipped a few pages. “ME’s best estimate puts the TOD between midnight and three A.M.”

  “How did you identify him?” Louis asked. “Prints?

  Barberry nodded. “We got lucky. The sucker was in AFIS.”

  “He had a record?”

  Barberry grinned. “Don’t they all? He was busted in Miami on a solicitation charge.” He set the papers down and picked up his pack of Big Red. He offered a stick to Mel, who shook his head and pulled out a pack of Kools.

  “You can’t light up in here,” Barberry said. “It’s a new law. You gotta go outside with the other lepers.”

  Mel paused, Zippo lighter in the air, then pocketed the Kools. “How’d you tie him to Kent?” he asked.

  “That’s the address on record for Durand’s driver’s license. The boyfriend came here to confirm the ID. Once I met Kent, I knew exactly what I was looking at.”

  “Any witnesses to anything going on that night?” Louis asked.

  Barberry swung his eyes back to Louis. “I guess you’ll read this in the papers, so I might as well tell you,” he said. “We don’t have anyone who saw anything around the cattle pen, but we got a sighting of a car cruising through Clewiston around one A.M. the night before we found Durand.”

  “What kind of car?” Louis asked.

  “Maybe a Rolls-Royce or something like it.”

  “Get a plate?”

  Barberry shook his head, looking for something in the report. “The witness just described it as a ‘big rich-guy car,’ so we showed him photos of Rollses and Bentleys and shit. He couldn’t say for sure what it was. Just that it was a big rich-guy car and it might have been light brown.” Barberry closed the file and tossed it onto the desk. “Or maybe white or tan. Or gold.”

  Louis heard a metallic click and glanced at Mel, who was rhythmically opening and closing the Zippo.

  Barberry watched Mel for a moment, then looked back at Louis. “The witness said he read in the Clewiston News that we found a body, so he thought he should report the fancy car,” Barberry said. “He said he just thought it was weird to see a car like that in a place like Clewiston.”

  “A Rolls or a Bentley would have a very distinct kind of tire,” Louis said. “Did you get any tracks from the area of the cattle pen?”

  Barberry shook his head. “No tires. Only dog paws, cowboy boots, work boots, and bare feet that probably belonged to Durand. Oh, and horse hooves, too.”

  “Horses?” Louis said.

  Barberry paused. “Yeah. It was some cowboys down there that found him.”

  “If the ground was soft enough for all that,” Louis said, “didn’t you wonder why there were no tire tracks?”

  Barberry shrugged. “The main road going in is asphalt and then hard-packed gravel. Kent probably parked on the gravel and made Durand walk to the pen.”

  Louis couldn’t quite envision things the way Barberry described them. He couldn’t imagine that, out there in the middle of nowhere, there had been no tire tracks at all. The people who worked out there had to drive some sort of vehicles.

  “What kinds of cars do Kent and Durand own?” Louis asked.

  “Durand had some beat-up black Honda that’s been in the garage for three weeks. The older fudge packer doesn’t even own a car.” Suddenly, Barberry’s eyes shot to Mel. “Hey, do you mind not doing that?”

  Mel paused, staring at Barberry, then snapped the Zippo closed. He set it on the desk, his eyes never leaving Barberry’s face.

  “Kent would have needed a car to transport the body out there,” Louis said. “You’re going to have to tie him to a vehicle to make your case.”

  “No shit,” Barberry said, bristling. “But Kent could’ve borrowed a car. I’ll place him behind the wheel of something, and once I do that, it’s over for him.”

  “Swann told us Kent and Durand had a relationship,” Louis said. “Did you consider there might have been—”

  Barberry smirked. “Another man? Sure, I thought about that. But why should I waste my time hunting down some phantom fag when Kent won’t even admit he was sleeping with Dura
nd? Give me a fucking break.”

  The phone on Barberry’s desk rang. Barberry answered it, turning his back. Louis looked at the accordion file. He wanted to see the crime scene and the autopsy photos.

  Barberry hung up his phone. “Well, gentlemen,” he said. “It seems I have somewhere to go. Can I walk you out?”

  Barberry gestured toward the door, leaving them no choice but to head in that direction. Mel pushed from the chair, and Louis followed him out to the lobby.

  “Tell the fudge packer I’ll be over to see him soon,” Barberry said at the door, and started away.

  “Hey,” Mel said sharply.

  Barberry turned. “What?”

  “Knock that shit off,” Mel said.

  Barberry stared hard at Mel, like he didn’t get it. Then he gave him a hard grin. “Whatever you say, pal.”

  Outside, they paused as Mel reached for his Kools and stood there in the hot sun, patting his pockets for his lighter.

  “Damn, I left my lighter in there,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Louis slipped on his sunglasses. The whine of a jet coming in for a landing drew his eyes up for a second, then back to two uniformed officers coming up the walk. They didn’t give him a glance as they went inside.

  At home, in Lee County, he was used to getting nods of recognition from the local cops. His relationships with the sheriff and the chief were prickly but at least respectful. But here, in Bizarro World, as Mel called it, nothing felt even close to comfortable. Not only was he hitting brick walls with two different police departments, but their own client was parsing the truth about his sex life.

  Client. Louis shook his head slowly. Despite his loyalty to Mel, he wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with Kent.

  “They found the head,” Mel said.

  “What?”

  Mel came down a step, lighting up a cigarette. “They found Durand’s head,” he said. “It’ll be here in about a half hour.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “When I went back in for the lighter, I heard the phone conversation,” Mel said. He blew out a stream of smoke. “We need to go see the ME.”

  “He isn’t going to talk to us, Mel,” Louis said.