Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery (36 page)

“Three years, approximately.”

“What brought you to the Sarasota area?”

“I was sent here by my agency to infiltrate a large drug operation.”

“Did you do that?”

“I was working on it. I thought the man running the operation on this coast was a guy named Mark Erickson. I’d been working on getting closer to him for the past year.”

“What kind of work did Mr. Erickson do? Other than drugs.”

“He’s a professor at the University of South Florida.”

“Tell me about your relationship with him?”

“It wasn’t much. My wife Linda and I would take Erickson and his wife Julie to dinner occasionally, and I donated a million dollars to the university to endow a chair that the Ericksons hold jointly. They’re both tenured professors in the same department at USF.”

“Where did that money come from?”

“It was essentially drug money that had been forfeited to the Department of Homeland Security from other operations I’d handled over the years. It was decided at the top levels of DHS that if we gave the money to the university, it would be a good use for it and at the same time, it would put me in good with Erickson. It would also show him that I had the wherewithal to be a big money player in the drug business.”

“Did you have another agent working with you?”

“Yes. My daughter.”

“Was that Linda Favereaux?”

“Yes.”

“You just called her your wife.”

“Yes. That was part of a subterfuge that we used as we worked undercover drug operations.”

“She was posing as your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Years ago, I had to pull her out of a bad situation. At the time I was an undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency. My daughter was an adult by then, but needed my protection from some very bad people, some of whom suspected she was my daughter. It seemed prudent to give her a different identification and then make it appear that I’d married her, so that no one would connect her to the young woman who was my daughter.”

“And you’ve worked together ever since?”

“Yes.”

“Was she also an agent of the Department of Homeland Security?”

“Yes. A fully trained agent.”

“Was Linda making any progress on the investigation?”

“Yes. She had made contact with the local money man, the guy who was responsible for laundering the funds brought in by the drug cartel. He wasn’t the top guy, but she was working up the chain of command. She had found out who the money man reported to and she had begun to accumulate the evidence that would convict them both.”

“Were you close to having them indicted?”

“No. We were working our way up. We wanted to find the top people, the ones who ran the whole operation.”

“I take it this was a long-term investigation.”

“Yes. It could take years.”

“Who was the money man?”

“Nate Bannister.”

Swann was on his feet, objecting loudly. “Mr. Royal is trying to besmirch the reputation of a dead man.”

“Overruled.”

“Did you get far enough in your investigation to determine who Bannister reported to?”

“Yes. Mark Erickson.”

“The University of South Florida professor?”

“Yes. The information Linda got from Bannister confirmed that Erickson was the man who ran the operation on this coast.”

“Until that time, had you been able to confirm your suspicions that Erickson was the kingpin?”

“No.”

“Tell me about what was going on with Bannister.”

“We’d picked up rumors among the lower level drug folks that Bannister was the money launderer. He was quite the lady’s man, and Linda made arrangements for the bartender at the Ritz Carlton to introduce them. Over a couple of months they became friendly, and Bannister invited her to his condo for drinks the evening she died. She felt she was making progress. She had talked around the issue of putting some money into the drug operation. She had led him to believe that she was the disgruntled wife of a rich man who’d made his money in some shady deals. She thought if she could put some money into a drug deal, she could make a lot of money for herself and leave her husband.”

“Tell me about the early morning hours of April first of this year. Did you see Linda?”

“Yes. She got home late from Bannister’s. She was very upset. She told me that she’d been to Bannister’s home for a drink. They had a couple of glasses of wine, and Bannister attempted to seduce her. She put him off, but he became insistent. He’d apparently had a lot to drink before Linda arrived. He was a bit loose-tongued and was beginning to open up to her about his operation. Trying to convince her that he was a big-time guy who could make her rich.

“She finally acquiesced and had sex with him. She didn’t want to interrupt the flow of information he was giving her. It was the first time he’d opened up so completely about his part in the drug business and his relationship with Erickson. She wanted him to continue.”

He stopped, choking back emotion. I gave him a minute to compose himself.

“Did that bother you, Mr. Favereaux? Your daughter and colleague having sex with Mr. Bannister?”

“No. She had affairs from time to time, and it wasn’t the first time she’d had sex with a suspect we were working on some undercover operation. I wasn’t bothered by it.”

“Did anything else happen that evening, Mr. Favereaux?”

“Yes. After they had sex, Bannister went into the living room to get some more wine. Linda was in the bathroom getting dressed when she heard a gunshot. She rushed into the living room and saw Bannister on the floor with a gunshot to the head. A man was standing over the body. Linda slammed the bedroom door shut and locked it. Mr. Bannister’s condo unit was adjacent to the emergency stairwell and he had installed a door from his master bathroom directly into the stairwell. I think it was his escape hatch. Linda left that way.”

“Did she get a good look at the killer?”

“Yes.”

“Did she recognize him?”

“Yes. She’d met him once when she was with Bannister.”

“What was his name?”

“Wes. At least that was the way he’d been introduced to her by Bannister. She never heard a last name.”

“Did the name mean anything to you?”

“Not at that time.”

“Did Linda tell you what Bannister had to say that evening about his involvement in the drug business and with Mark Erickson?”

“Not a lot. She was going to fill me in and we’d file a full report with my boss in Washington. But before I could do that, I had to meet Mark Erickson in Bradenton.”

“What was that all about?”

“Erickson had called me a few minutes before Linda got home that night. He said he needed to meet with me on an urgent matter. He asked me to meet him at a McDonald’s on Cortez Road at midnight. I told him that was an odd hour and place for a meeting, but he assured me that the McDonald’s and the midnight hour would provide the anonymity that was crucial.”

“Wasn’t that a bit odd? Kind of cloak and daggerish?”

“Sure. But I’m in the cloak-and-dagger business. I’ve met a lot of strange people in a lot of strange places during my career, so I wasn’t particularly surprised. He did tell me that he lived north of there on the Manatee River and he thought the McDonald’s would be convenient for both of us. He also thought we’d be inconspicuous that late in the evening.”

“Did he tell you anything about why he needed to meet with you?”

“Only that a mutual friend, Nate Bannister, had suggested the meeting.”

“Didn’t that seem a little strange to you since you had never met Bannister?”

“Yes, but then I figured if Bannister had anything to do with it, Erickson wanted to talk about a drug deal. I’d dropped some hints to Erickson, but he’d never followed up. I figured that Linda had told Bannister enough about her husband—me—that he thought I might be interested in putting some money into a drug operation. He talked to Erickson, and now Erickson wanted to meet with me.”

“You’ve testified that you knew Erickson.”

“Yes, like I said, we were social acquaintances, and I’d endowed a chair for him at USF. But we’d never talked about drugs, and Erickson had never even touched on the subject. At least not until he brought Bannister’s name into the conversation on the night Linda died.”

“So, even though Linda had just missed being murdered, you thought you needed to make that meeting?”

“Yes. Even more so after Linda came home and told me that Bannister was dead. Erickson was the only lead we had into the drug cartel. I thought the cartel must have found some reason to kill Bannister, and I was hoping that Erickson could tell me something about why he was killed. I thought I could better protect Linda, and at the same time make progress in moving up the chain of command in the drug cartel.”

“So you went to the meeting?”

“Yes. He told me that he needed ten million dollars to finalize the deal he and Bannister had been working on. Something about a condo project over near Lakeland. I told him I would have to meet with him and Bannister to flesh out the details. Erickson told me that Bannister was no longer part of the deal and he was now the sole owner of the project. At first, he was anxious to get the money immediately, but then agreed to meet later in the week to talk in detail about the project and my part in it.”

“Did he ever bring up drugs?”

“No, but I was pretty sure that was where we were going since Bannister was part of it. Of course, Erickson had no way of knowing that I knew Bannister was dead or that he was probably laundering money for the drug dealers. At least I don’t think he knew. I didn’t think he knew that Linda was a witness to the murder.”

“How long did the meeting last?”

“Twenty minutes or so.”

“Did you leave then?”

“Yes. I got a burger to go and drove back to Longboat.”

“What did you find when you got home?”

“I walked into the living room and saw Linda on the floor. A man was standing over her with what appeared to be a tire iron.”

“Did you recognize the man?”

“No. I’d never seen him before.”

“What did you do?”

“I went after him. He turned and ran out the door toward the beach. I thought I heard Linda moan, so I stopped the chase and went back to her. She was lying facedown, and I turned her over. It was clear to me that she was dead. I left immediately and drove to the Tampa Airport.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I was pretty sure we’d been compromised; that the cartel knew we were federal agents. I couldn’t do anything for Linda but I could get away and sort things out. My agency had a protocol for just such an event. I had a fake driver’s license that I kept in my wallet, and that would get me on a flight out of Tampa. I called the duty officer in Washington and was told to meet another agent in Atlanta and he would take me to a safe house. That’s what I did.”

“Why have you come forward now?”

“I saw a picture of Florida Department of Law Enforcement Agent Wesley Lucas in the online version of the
Sarasota
Herald-Tribune,
in a story about this trial, and I realized immediately who he was.”

“And?”

“He was the man standing over Linda’s body, holding a bloody tire iron.”

It was almost five o’clock. Time to wrap up the day. My timing hadn’t worked as I’d planned, but the last thing the jury would hear before they went home was the testimony that Wes Lucas, not Abby Lester, was the murderer. They would have all night to think about that. Swann would have time to prepare his cross-examination, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to put a dent in Favereaux’s story.

“I have nothing further, Your Honor,” I said.

“We’ll be in recess until nine in the morning,” the judge announced. We stood and watched the jury file out. They would have a lot to sleep on that night.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

J.D. and Detective Harry Robson were in an interview room in the Sarasota police station, sitting across the table from Wes Lucas. It was almost six in the evening. After his arrest in the courtroom, a uniformed patrolman had brought Lucas to the station. The detectives had stayed for the conclusion of the day’s testimony, and then arrived at police headquarters to begin the final act of the tragedy that was Wes Lucas.

“Wes,” Robson said, “we’ve known each other for a long time. I wouldn’t say we’ve been friends, but I’d like to think there was a bit of mutual respect between us. You were a good cop. What happened?”

Lucas was wan, his demeanor that of a defeated man. He sighed and smiled ruefully. “Fulton Hancock happened.”

“The governor’s chief of staff?”

“Yes. He was a state senator back then, and his son, Fulton Hancock, Jr., was my best friend. We’d grown up together, played high school football together, gone off to college at Florida State together. When we graduated, we both came back to Tampa. I hired on with the sheriff’s department and Fulton Junior got a real estate license and went to work for one of the established brokerages in Tampa. He made a lot of money and was spending it on cars and women. He had a beautiful condo in one of the high-rises overlooking the bay. I didn’t see much of him for about five years.

“I had just made detective when I got a call to a murder scene at a grubby little house over near Plant City. It was apparent that it was some sort of a drug deal gone bad. The place was full of drugs and cash, over a hundred thousand dollars. Three bodies were in the house, all shot through the head. One of them was Fulton Hancock, Jr.”

“Was he in the drug business?” J.D. asked.

“In a big way, as it turned out.”

“What did you do when you realized that your friend was among the dead?” Harry asked.

“I knew the deputy who was the first on the scene. A neighbor had heard gunshots and called 911. I had just finished a witness interview on another case and was close to the scene of the murder when I heard it on the radio. I told the dispatcher I would respond. I was at the scene within five minutes of the first deputy’s arrival.

“As soon as I realized that one of the bodies was Fulton Junior, I called in and told the dispatcher not to send anymore deputies because I didn’t want the scene compromised. The crime scene techs were on their way, but I figured I had about a thirty-minute window if I needed to do something to protect the Hancocks. I called Fulton Senior and told him what I’d found. He told me he didn’t want to have Fulton Junior’s name dragged through the mud and asked if I could get the body out of there before the rest of the investigating team arrived.”