Chapter THIRTY-NINE
Jock came in brushing rain off his bald head. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I stopped by Matt’s to get into some dry clothes.”
“Did you turn up anything?” I asked.
“Maybe. There were fingerprints on the gun that didn’t belong to Gene. Forensics is running them now. We’ll see.”
“Did the gun belong to Gene?” asked J.D.
“The cops don’t think so,” said Jock. “The serial number was filed off, but that might just mean that Gene got it from the agency. The director is checking on that.”
“Did Gene call anybody before he died?” asked J.D.
“No. He didn’t call the director, and if he’d called someone else in the agency, it would have been reported immediately. No 911 calls either. Bill Lester checked.”
“Note?” I asked.
“No. And nothing on his computer.”
“Did the canvass of the neighborhood turn up anything?” asked J.D. “Strangers in the neighborhood, that sort of thing?”
“No,” said Jock. “And only one of the landscape crews showed up today. A lot of the companies take the day off when the weather gets bad.”
“Do we know which company had a crew working today?” I asked.
“Not yet, but the cops are working on it. None of the neighbors paid any attention to it.”
“Those crews are just part of the landscape,” I said. “No pun intended. They’re here every day.”
“Sharkey said the members of those crews are almost all Mexicans,” Jock said. “I suppose a Guatemalan could slip in without any of the neighbors noticing.”
I shook my head. “Jock, I think you’re seeing Guatemalan boogie men under every bush.”
Jock sat quietly for a beat. “J.D.,” he said, “I’d like to tell you something, but I need to swear you to secrecy.”
“Does it have to do with any of these cases?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can’t do that, Jock. It might be something that I’d have to share with the chief or other law enforcement agencies.”
“Fair enough,” Jock said.
The waitress came and took our lunch order, commented on the nasty weather, and left.
“Aren’t you going to tell me, Jock?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, J.D. I can’t. Not without a promise of confidentiality.”
We ate our meal in virtual silence and returned to my cottage.
Jock said he had to make some calls and went to his bedroom and shut the door. J.D. paced back and forth across the living room, a look of concentration on her face.
“Matt,” she finally said, “I’m not going to stay cooped up here while somebody else is doing my job. I’m the only detective in the department. I’m supposed to be looking for these killers.”
“They’re certainly looking for you.”
“They may be,” she said, “but if they want me badly enough, they’re going to get me. If those Sarasota goons had been better at what they do, they’d have taken me out and you as well. They aren’t too picky about whom they kill.”
“I don’t know, J.D. If I’d been with you at Lynches, that guy probably wouldn’t have come at you with a knife.”
“You’re probably right. He’d have used a gun and gotten us both.”
She had a point, but I didn’t like it. “Okay,” I said, “but two pairs of eyes can be a plus when you’re trying to dodge a killer.”
“You don’t object to Jock going out by himself, and he thinks there may be somebody after him.”
“Jock’s the most competent person I’ve ever met.”
She glared at me. “And you don’t think I’m competent?”
“That’s not my point. I know that you can take care of yourself, but Jock spends every day of his life dodging people who’re trying to kill him. You don’t. And neither do I. It’s just second nature to Jock. He’s always on the lookout. Normal people like you and me don’t have to worry every day that some killer is going to jump out of the bushes and whack us.”
“So, Sir Matthew in his shining armor takes care of the damsel in distress.”
“I’m hoping that sarcasm isn’t becoming a way of life with you.” My voice was tight, perhaps a bit strident. This wasn’t the J.D. I knew.
“I’m sorry, Matt. I’m not being fair. I’m just frustrated, and I guess I’m taking it out on you.”
“The murders are very real, J.D. And they all seem to be part of a plan to kill you.”
“The murders may not be connected,” she said.
“I’ve thought of that. The two whale tail murders certainly were connected, and I think the guy in Lynches’ parking lot, Bagby, was connected to them. I’m not sure about the Guatemalans who tried to take us out at the police station, and I can’t see how Gene’s murder is connected to any of the others.”
“If Nell’s murder was random, like we think, would the people who killed her have a motive to take out Gene?” she asked.
“I don’t see it. Not if Nell was just a random victim. But suppose she wasn’t? Suppose her killing is connected to Gene’s. Maybe the killers were looking for Gene and Nell got in the way somehow.”
“But Nell’s murder was definitely connected to the whale tail murders in Miami. And if this was all a plot to get Gene, why would somebody threaten me? And why would Qualman, if he really was the one who killed Nell, come after me?”
“Good questions,” I said. “And what was Bagby’s connection to any of this?”
“We may never know. I wonder what Jock wanted to tell us at lunch.” I chuckled. “We may never know,” I said.
Her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. “It’s the chief,” she said, excused herself, and walked into the kitchen to take the call. I only heard three words of the conversation, including a word I thought foreign to J.D.’s vocabulary and two others that stunned me. They were loud and angry and profane. “Bullshit,” she said, “I quit.”