The Quick Adios (Times Six) (10 page)

Odd, I thought, to be bragging about an arrest. Greg Pulver didn’t care if his lies were ups or downs. Unless, of course, he was trying to build bad-dude cred to mask his informant status.

I walked to the road, aimed south, then shot westward toward I-75, and again to the north. Looking into the morning sun, I took three of Beeson’s building. I knew as I kept pressing the button that my pictures showed very little and had no pizzazz. I wondered again how I had duped myself into thinking this was a dream assignment.

I heard a vehicle approach, stepped to the shoulder to give it space. A dark green Ram pickup slowed to a stop, its passenger-side window sliding down. Beeson’s slick, talkative and barely awake mechanic, Luke Tharpe, gave me a thumbs-up sign.

My phone vibrated again. I checked Tharpe’s ride, gave him a puzzled look.

He reached out, patted his dashboard. “I work on old rattletraps. Doesn’t mean I have to own one.”

“You here to lend me a hand?”

“Help you move partitions and furniture, and set up lighting,” he said, no doubt repeating the instructions he had received from Justin Beeson. “I took a sick day at my regular job.”

He looked the part with watery eyes, reddish nostrils. Substance abuse from the previous evening or the previous hour? He wore an unbuttoned, checkered flannel workshirt over a gray T.

“Is there a tall step ladder inside?” I said.

“Give me three.”

I checked my voicemail while I waited.

This one from Beth: “Yes, I wanted your advice. Yes, you are in Sarasota. Where on my wish list was a Mystery Man? Is this still Act One of the play? Would you walk on the wild side and give me a fucking call? Love and kisses.”

Luke returned with a heavy-duty ten-foot ladder in his truck bed and stepped out of the vehicle. “You can set it smack on the center line,” he said. “This is a dead-end service road with no traffic.” He made no move to help.

“I’ll be through here in ten,” I said, lifting the ladder, setting it on the pavement. “If you can start inside, I’ll need a couple of shop lights with clamps, so I can position them anywhere. If you can find a pole lamp with a flexible top section, I can use that, too. And please check the cubicles. Find one that still has a monitor and a keyboard. I’d like to shoot a couple that look like they’re in use.”

He handed me his keys, started toward the building. “Try not to scratch my baby when you load that sucker,” he said. “You can park up by the front door. I won’t be going around back today.”

Twelve feet off the ground, I ran again through the string of cardinal-direction photos. I found a hole in the tree line to the west through which I snapped long-lens shots of semis on the Interstate. Thin scraggly Spanish moss hung off trees like an aging rock star’s facial hair. My east-facing views still fought harsh sunlight and shadows. Boring, except for losing my balance, almost tilting the ladder, but the best I could get. I loaded the ladder and drove Tharpe’s truck to a far corner of the parking lot. Standing in the pickup’s bed so I wouldn’t have to fool again with the ladder, I aimed northward, caught an oblique angle and captured one. Not a winner but close enough.

I parked next to Justin Beeson’s Escape. He saw me coming, probably had been keeping an eye on me, and met me at the security door, watched as I ran the gauntlet. His security sensors didn’t complain about the camera hung from my neck strap.

“Do we have spectacular exterior photos?” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “We scored a few points for truth in advertising.”

He looked me in the eye, swiveled his head to stare at the far wall, then turned back to face me. “I get it,” he said. “Anya told me I owed you an apology. This isn’t the glamour job that I oversold you in Key West. I may need a miracle to sell this structure, but I don’t require magic from your photo gear. All I need is an honest day’s work.”

“I’m fine with that,” I said. “I look at every job as…”

We heard a horrifying guttural moan from back in the cubicle farm. It had to be Luke Tharpe, and I couldn’t fathom the agony that would produce such a drawn-out, low-pitched wail. Beeson and I started down an aisle between the cubicles. With a series of deep grunts, Tharpe crawled from a workspace into the aisle, holding his hands to his eyes, vomiting on himself and the carpet. My first thought was that he had been sprayed with acid or poison, had kicked open an unused bug bomb.

Tharpe lowered his hands. His eyes bugged out filled with terror. He pointed into the space he had fled, said, “Amanda,” then threw up without aiming downward.

Beeson ran ahead of me, slipped in a puddle of spew, and went down. Pivoting on one knee, he leaned around the corner, recoiled in shock then pulled himself up and lunged forward, almost slipping again.

I followed, stepping carefully, giving Luke Tharpe room to crawl to another workspace. The woman’s arms were spread, her wrists duct-taped to uprights in the cubicle wall, her ankles taped to the opposing casters of an upside-down office chair. An elegant, unbuttoned silk blouse was all she wore. A stubby dull orange blob, perhaps five inches long, hung from her mouth. Finger-length narrow orange worms drooped from her nostrils.

“Call 911,” cried Beeson. “Call 911!” Bracing his fist against the dead woman’s shoulder, he grabbed the orange shape and pulled it from her mouth. It took him two rough tugs and it came out with a sucking noise and a rush of dark brown fluid.

I realized I wasn’t really watching Justin Beeson. I was seeing him through my camera’s viewfinder, taking pictures as fast as I could. Pictures of the entire space, the man in a panic, the woman strangled by the kind of expanding foam sealant used for building insulation and bug-proofing. I was documenting the desk, the keyboard she sat upon, her body slouched to her left, held up by a stack of empty wire mesh filing trays.

Who has time to parse differences: reflex, instinct, constructive panic? Give it a hundred names. I took pictures. Out of habit, another name for it, I took some with flash, some without. I changed lenses, stepped sideways carefully, clicked and moved two steps backward…

…and, I thought, no hurry with the 911 call. But when I looked Luke Tharpe was gone. Then I heard his voice in Beeson’s office, stammering nonsense, trying to give someone bad directions, arguing left and right turns.

Describing the trio of luxury cars in the building’s workshop the night before, Beeson had said, “This is Amanda’s stable. My ex-wife likes attention.” Beeson, the bitter ex-husband, was on his knees, sobbing, hugging his ex-wife’s legs. Indeed, I had seen her before. She was the woman posing with Anya in the photo I had stuck in my bag ninety minutes earlier. The “mom” of the photo in Eileen’s backpack.

My work was done for the day.

Amanda would see no tomorrows.

Who was I to tell Justin Beeson not to destroy evidence? He owned enough TVs. He understood such things. I put away my camera and walked to the office.

Luke knew he was babbling. He handed me the phone.

“Alex Rutledge speaking,” I said. “I assume you have Automatic Caller Location. Three of us arrived here to find a dead woman in the building, an apparent murder victim. No one else is in the building. There is no need for paramedics.”

“We send them anyway,” said the dispatcher. “All three of you, please leave the building, wait outside for officers to respond.”

I gave her my cell number.

Luke was slumped in the office chair, making volcanic noises. I was still catching my breath when I got a call from “
PRIVATE NUMBER
” I guessed what it was, correctly.

Detective Glenn Steffey identified himself. “Right now, how many people are in the building?” he said.

“Three,” I said. “Please bring bottled water and Rolaids. One man took ill.”

“Were you told to go outside?”

“Yes, we were.”

“You don’t have to leave,” he said, “but stay in one place and away from the body. The whole building is a crime scene, so don’t touch diddley and don’t anyone leave. Got that?”

I walked back between the cubicles and found Justin Beeson sitting on the floor, his back against a temporary wall, his face in his hands. He was shivering.

“The sheriff’s office is on their way,” I said. “They said we could stay inside but asked us not to touch anything.”

“Will they arrest me for hugging my murdered wife?” he said and went again to tears.

She’s your ex-wife, Beeson, and you’ve already contaminated the evidence. No matter what they find, your fingerprints will be part of it.

I found Luke pacing the hallway that led to the car maintenance area. When he saw me approach he tried the door, found it locked, shook his head. He started back toward me looking trapped, turned away again.

“Luke,” I said, “a sheriff’s office detective called back and asked us to stay in one place. He asked us to keep away from… the scene.”

“I’m trying to calm myself here,” he said. “You want to fucking back off?”

“Here are your truck keys.”

“Put them down somewhere, Rutledge. I’ll get them later. Put them anywhere. I’ll pick ‘em up.”

“You bet, Luke.”

Two squad cars arrived, one deputy in each vehicle. The officers remained in their cars and hawk-eyed the front door, obviously not considering the rear entrances. Six minutes later three detectives from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office showed up, followed by a quartet of EMTs who rushed to the door with a stretcher, a medical box and a defib kit. Finally an oversized white van with green sheriff’s markings and the words “Crime Scene” on its front and back.

After assessing the scene, sending away the EMTs and showing us their IDs, the detectives launched their formulaic game plan. They separated us.

Detective Steffey, treating me like a long-lost friend, took me to the office next to Justin Beeson’s. He patted the single chair in the room, indicated that I should sit, closed the door and left. I fought the urge to review the photos on my camera. I did not want to revisit the discovery of Amanda or Beeson’s short period of intense grief. But I didn’t want to be accused of stealing evidence or trespassing a crime scene. Or taking pictures for the tabloids. I would hand them over when I found an investigator I trusted. To save time when the detectives got around to me, I removed my driver’s license from my wallet, placed it on the desk.

Ten minutes later Steffey returned, the picture of calm. Again, he motioned for me to sit. He probably was about my age, about four inches shorter, and he looked like a heavy man who recently had lost weight. He wore dark slacks, an open-collar blue button-down shirt and a rumpled tan sport coat. The color of his sagging facial skin suggested that he was a sailboater or a fisherman.

“Happy to stand,” I said, knowing that he wanted the psychological advantage of height.

He pulled a small yellow box of Chiclets from his shirt pocket, offered me some by rattling the gum inside. I declined and he helped himself to three pieces. He said, “My occupational hazard is I sit all day long, unless there’s a tragedy.”

I sat in the chair, gave him his upper hand.

He picked up my driver’s license, studied it for a moment and handed it to me. “Key West, eh? Bet you’re about ready for your breakfast beer. When did you get here this morning?”

“Can I say something first?” I said. “In case no one has mentioned it, Beeson has a young daughter who should be notified. I believe she’s in school right now, and I think the deceased woman is her mother. Her name is Eileen.”

“Oh, fuck,” said Steffey. “No one said a damned word. Thank you.” He used his cell to pass the info to his supervisor.

When he shut off his phone I gave him the larger details of staying at Beeson’s home on Cormorant Lane, hearing Anya Timber leave at dawn, my ride with Beeson by way of McDonald’s and Tharpe’s arrival shortly after that.

“How long were the two men inside while you took pictures?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes max,” I said. “Probably closer to ten.”

“Camera in that bag, with the pictures intact?”

I nodded. “No time and date stamp on the images, but Nikon attaches that info to each digital file.”

“Yep,” he said, “my kid’s cheapo Walmart peashooter does that, too.” His first attempt at attitude. Here come the hardballs, I thought. Along with curves and sliders. Good thing I didn’t kill anyone.

“Before this morning, when was the last time you were in this building?”

“Last night around seven pm, my first time here,” I said. “Beeson, his daughter, his lady friend and I had just flown in from the Keys.”

He pulled a ballpoint from his pocket, looked around for a scrap of paper. “What airline?”

“Private plane,” I said. “Beeson said it belonged to a friend of his.”

“Where did you disembark?”

“Silver Wings Aviation. Both Beeson and Anya had their cars parked nearby. She and the daughter went home. Beeson and I came here.”

“Was anyone else in the building when you arrived?” he said.

I mentioned Tharpe and gave him Torres’s name, explained I had no address or phone info. He didn’t appear interested, made no moves to track down Edwin of the neck tattoo.

“You and Beeson talked, I’m sure,” he said. “Did you discuss his ex-wife?”

“He made a few remarks. He doesn’t like her approach to raising their child. This morning he complained that he should have kept his boat and given her the house.”

“What brought on that statement?” said Steffey.

“He said that even with his lady friend next to him in bed, his ex-wife… what did he say… inhabited the darkness. He called her a loopy bitch.”

“Present tense?”

“I suppose,” I said. “He didn’t say that she
used
to be loopy.”

“Okay, maybe he didn’t know she was dead,” said Steffey. “Saying crap like that, he sounds to me like a million other divorced guys.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been…”

“Don’t tell me,” said the detective. “I’m a two-time loser.”

“Or winner, depending,” I said.

Detective Steffey stifled a laugh then stared, narrowed his eyes and sized me up. “That’s a sick mess out there, and you’re pretty calm,” he said. “You’ve been through this kind of shit before. Are you a cop or a serial killer?”