Micanopy in Shadow (11 page)

“Deputy Walker says you had an appointment.”

“He said he had information I wanted. It was about the death of my great-grandmother. I wonder.…”

Noble interrupted. He was already looking toward the house. “My partner will take you to my office. She’ll want a full statement.” He started toward the body, turning toward the deputy. “You check for footprints or tracks?”

“This lady had already been to the house. Her prints are on the paved walk and the lawn. Someone else could’ve walked on the paved driveway. If they did, they didn’t leave prints. No one else came over the grass.”

“Can’t be helped.”

Another car spun up to the curb, followed by a van—the crime scene techs, probably the medical examiner, too. Brandy edged as far as she dared toward the scene.

She heard Noble. “God a-mighty, I hate to see this. He was always good to me, but he did rile a lot of people.”

Noble’s partner had already reached the scene. “Heard he was a bit rough on the bad guys. Had that reputation.”

“Kicked in a lot of doors. If
we
did what they say Shot Hunter did, we’d be playing rock hockey in Atlanta now. The Sheriff asked him to take early retirement.” Noble squatted beside the body. “I could name several guys had him in their sights. The Sheriff didn’t like that stuff. He’s by the books.”

“We’ll check it out. Didn’t he have to testify again soon? One of his cases being re-tried?” Noble nodded. “Wife left him, too. Another guy. Something else to look into.”

Brandy watched two techs hurry across the front lawn. Noble stepped aside for the techs and spoke to the first. “Go over every square inch of this house and grounds.” One carried cameras and began taking measurements. The other, carrying an evidence kit, began making a quick sketch. The detective glanced behind him and added, “Let the ME in.”

The medical examiner was a tall skinny physician with a black string tie hanging crookedly from his collar. In one bony hand he held a kit of his own.

Noble turned next to the crime scene tech with the kit. “Examine those scraps of cardboard near the body. I want a good picture from every angle of the open door, the shots in the chest, and the cardboard. They remind me of a case in Tampa about thirty years ago. The Richard Cloud murder. He was also a former detective, but still after the mob. He was gunned down when he answered the door.”

Noble glanced up at the doorframe and the screen, still half open. A slug had torn through it. “That killer was carrying a box, like a deliveryman. Killer held his weapon inside the box and shot right through it. The Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office nailed the shooter by identifying the slug. Caught the bastard and convicted him. Unless the techs find some brass, Hunter was shot with a revolver, too.”

He stared at the scene for a second, then looked at his partner. “I’m going to start canvassing the area. See if anyone heard anything. You take Miss O’Bannon in to the office and tape her statement.”

Brandy moved closer. She hadn’t forgotten something that could be significant. “When I was here on Saturday, I saw a file folder on Hunter’s kitchen table. It concerned an old case I’m interested in. It was labeled
The Losterman case
. Will your people look for the folder? It could be important. It had information he said he’d share with me this morning.”

“Yeah, sure, M’am. Won’t be a toothpick we don’t look at.”

“Could I find out what’s in the file?”

Noble shook his head. She was taking too much of his time. “Lady, we keep any evidence we find. Just how old is this case, anyway?”

When Brandy said eighty-one years, the corners of his mouth twitched up. He shook his head again. “Miss O’Bannon, go with my partner, Detective Tennis.”

Brandy asked to follow the detective in her own car so she could continue on to Payne’s Prairie. In spite of everything, she didn’t want to miss meeting Grant Wilson and his grandfather.

* * *

The fog had finally lifted but the day remained gray and damp. Brandy sat in Noble’s office on a fake leather couch and waited for Sergeant Tennis to take a seat behind a wooden desk cluttered with papers and an overflowing in-box. A portrait of a woman with a boy about nine sat on one corner. Brandy assumed they were Mrs. Noble and her son. The only picture on the institutional beige wall was one of Florida’s governor, the only document a framed bachelor’s degree.

Tennis looked about thirty. Her brown hair was short and neatly cupped to her head and her lithe figure was rounded in the right places. She probably elevated a few pulses when she joined the Crimes Against Persons Squad, but today she was all business. She set a small tape recorder on the desk and glanced up. She had wide-set gray eyes and a shapely nose and mouth.

Brandy looked at her watch. “I need to call my apartment first. I’ve got a sitter. She needs to know that I won’t be home for lunch.”

Before the interview began, the desk phone rang. When Tennis picked up, she turned her head away, but Brandy still could hear Noble’s baritone. “About two hours before O’Bannon got there, a woman down the road heard a heavy car go by. Find out if O’Bannon heard or saw it.”

Brandy spoke up, “I didn’t see any car at all this morning. Last time I was there a small, light-colored car was parked beside the vacant lot almost a block away—a two-door model or a compact—but not a big, heavy one.”

Tennis walked out into the hall carrying the phone and lowered her voice. When she returned it to its cradle, she said, “Shot twice, thigh and chest, probably with a revolver. You hear any shots?”

“No.”

“Neither did the lady down the block. They’ll be able to recover both bullets.”

No officer was likely to report developments to her. Brandy explained that she was researching a book about Micanopy. The Sergeant led her through the account of her previous visit and then the discovery of the body this morning. Brandy gave her every fact and impression she could recall.

Before they left Noble’s office, Tennis put in another call to him and took it outside the room again. When she returned, Brandy stood. “Did they find the folder I told him about?”

Tennis shook her head. “No folder labeled “Losterman.” They’ve checked every drawer, every nook and cranny inside and outside. The folder’s not there. Before you leave, we’ll trouble you for your fingerprints.”

“Sure, but I didn’t touch anything in the house, only a bench under the arbor Saturday, and nothing today except Hunter’s wrist.”

“We’ll check.”

Brandy rose and followed the Sergeant out of the room. She knew she’d seen the folder. It disappeared.

After a deputy finished rolling her fingertips on a pad, Brandy walked out into the wan light of the parking lot. Strands of Spanish moss hung motionless from the branch of a live oak. It was good to be outdoors again.

* * *

By 1:55 Brandy turned off Route 441 at the entrance to the State Preserve. She pulled up to the toll booth, a small stone house, sheltered by a tall water oak and cabbage palms. A woman in a park preserve uniform stepped out to the car.

“I’ve got an appointment here at 2:00,” Brandy said. “Grant Wilson’s the ranger’s name.”

The woman handed her several Prairie trail maps. “I’m filling in here for the attendant,” she said. “You must be the lady wants to meet old Mr. Wilson. Grant’ll be here in a jiffy. He’s been surveying for the next burn and trimming back underbrush.” She glanced ahead at the road into the park. It narrowed at its first curve and picked up a border of long-needle pines and a fringe of saw palmettos. “He’s coming in now.”

A four-wheel ATV ground to a stop in a grassy area across the road. A lanky young man unfolded his legs from under the wheel, stood, set his cap firmly over dark brown hair and approached Brandy’s car. High cheekbones and an angular forehead formed planes around his deep-set eyes.

He bent to the level of the driver’s window. “Mrs. Able?” Brandy nodded. “Best you follow me. My granddad lives near the Hawthorne Trail between Gainesville and the Prairie.”

Brandy agreed, and a half an hour later drew up beside Grant at Boulware Springs Park. They walked east on a paved path so wide that they were not shaded by the laurel and turkey oaks that rose on either side. Bikers passed, bending low over their handlebars, as well as hikers with sweaters tied around their waists. Brandy decided not to mention Hunter’s murder. Grant would have too many questions, and she didn’t want to take the time. A few modest houses lined the walkway on their left. Grant opened a chain link gate to one of them, and Brandy followed him past myrtle oak and saw palmetto into a yard overgrown with wiregrass and rattlesnake weed.

“Hope we don’t run into Aunt Liz,” he murmured. “Granddad’s daughter and caretaker.” His lips curled in a wry smile. “Your interest is in Zeke Wilson. She’s the chief keeper of the town marshall’s flame. Aunt Liz had a bad experience with a journalist who wrote a magazine article some years ago. She distrusts all reporters.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Could be the same journalist who offended Mr. Stark. Brandy looked beyond a neglected concrete birdbath at a screened porch. An old man sat there in a wheelchair.

“Granddad likes to watch people pass along the Hawthorne Trail.”

Brandy had read about a series of sinkholes that sprawled across the Prairie basin, many water-filled—all that remained of Lake Lachua, once large enough for a small steamboat. Truck farming and ranching took a toll on the Prairie before the Gainesville Garden Club rescued it in the 1960s and 70s.

Grant added, “Now, you know, Granddad’s ninety-three.”

Before Brandy could respond, he opened the screen door. Both stepped onto the porch and Grant approached the wheelchair. “I brought this young lady to talk to you, Granddad. Remember?”

The cadaverous figure didn’t move. Savage Wilson had a narrow, hawk’s face, eyes like crevices in rocks, and sunken cheeks. His long fingers rested on bony knees covered by trousers shiny with wear. An oxygen tank rested beside his chair, the plastic tubing coiled. Brandy was aware of the sour smell of a very old, unwashed body. But there was motion in his electric blue eyes, and they darted toward Brandy. Yet when she held out her hand, the old man still didn’t move.

Did he remember she was coming? Brandy dragged a plastic chair from against the wall and sat directly opposite him, not close enough to threaten. Grant leaned against the frame of the doorway, arms crossed. A slight smile flicked his lips.

“I want to ask you about your father when he was town mar-shall,” Brandy said quietly.

The old man’s thin voice sounded hollow. “Wilsons and Savages—my papa and mama’s people—lived here since the early 1800s.” His voice took on an injured tone. “Ranching, building dikes. Developed the Prairie, they did. Citrus groves, too, before the big freezes in the 1890s. Pioneers, you could call’ em. Things aren’t like they used to be in the old days.” He paused, then swept one hand toward the Trail. “Before I got so laid up, I could walk down there a-ways and take a path toward the Prairie and set on a bench. I’d watch that there nearest sinkhole. Set real still, you might can see deer and turkey and red-tailed hawks. Can’t see the buffalo and mustangs from there, though. Got to be further along.” Brandy had read about the Prairie’s small herds of American bison, once common in Florida, and its wild mustangs, descended from horses of the Spanish. Grant intervened gently. “Remember, Ezekiel Wilson.”

Old Mr. Wilson swiveled his head around and stared up at his grandson, as if seeing him for the first time. He shifted topics, but spoke in the same shallow whine. “Elected sheriff of the whole plumb county, state senator, ought to been governor if the ballots had been counted fair. Everybody knew that.” The frail head bobbed up and down. From Grant’s bored expression, Brandy knew this was a familiar refrain.

She determined to remain on target. “I’d like to see the Marshall’s records from 1921.”

Now she became the focus of his agile blue eyes. “I know, I know,” Old Man Wilson said, impatient. A skeletal hand clamped down with emphasis on the arm of the wheelchair. “Got ’em right here. You just another nosy reporter?”

Brandy stifled her irritation. “I am a journalist,” she said, “but that’s not why I want to see the records. I’m trying to find out how my great-grandmother died. Ada Losterman.”

“Drowned,” the old man said. “Ever fool in town knows that.”

“I want to know why she drowned, Mr. Wilson. I’ve read the newspaper stories, but Zeke Wilson was a careful investigator.” She stressed the word
careful,
careful herself to show respect. “Not everything he learned, or suspected, would get into the papers.” She took her notepad from her canvas bag and noted “Savage Wilson” at the top of a new sheet.

“You the second one lately to ask what Papa knew about that woman,” the old man grumbled. “Someone called a few days ago, talked to Liz.” Brandy’s fingers tightened around her pencil. Had Hunter “rattled a cage” here? “Don’t rightly know what she told him. Not much, I reckon.”

Grant walked over to a plastic file box in one corner of the porch. The old devil had the records on the porch all the time. Brandy supposed he just wanted to talk.

His grandson unlatched the box. “How do you arrange the files, Granddad?” His fingers were already busy among the folders.

Brandy leaned toward Grant. “I’d be interested in seeing a photo of Zeke Wilson, too, if there’s one.”