Chapter FORTY-FOUR
We spent a couple of hours at the house, giving our statements, meeting the sheriff, and telling our story again. The forensics team came, did whatever they do, and left. The ambulance had taken the bodies to the morgue to await the medical examiner. I wanted to get away from the house before Jenny’s dad showed up. The sheriff would have to tell him that his daughter was dead. I didn’t want to see that kind of grief, the kind that would take a strong man to his knees.
Logan and I started back to Longboat Key, stopping for take-out at a fast-food restaurant’s drive-through. We ate as we drove.
“I hate shit like that,” said Logan.
“You talking about the food?”
“Jenny.”
“I know.”
“If she hadn’t called those goons.”
“But she did,” I said. “She wasn’t the sharpest arrow in the quiver.”
He gave me that look I always get when I say something he thinks is stupid. “Did the name she gave you mean anything?” he asked.
“No. I’ve never heard of anybody connected to these cases named Jeff. But he might be buried in that stack of papers J.D. got from Miami. If we can put somebody with that name in Glades Correctional, we may have found the first thread that’ll unravel this. He may be somebody J.D. arrested.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” he said. “It never is.”
I called J.D., using the hands-free function so that Logan could listen in. I brought her up to date on what we had been doing, including the fact that we’d left two people dead in the cane field. She was quiet on the other end of the line, or whatever cell phones use to connect us.
“That’s too bad, Matt,” she finally said. “Poor girl. But I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Thanks. How’re you coming along?”
“Buried in all this paper from Miami. Trying to find some kind of connection.”
“Anything going on with Gene’s case?”
“No. The fingerprints the forensics people found on the gun used to kill Gene aren’t in the system, so we have no idea who they belong to. If we arrest somebody, we’ll at least have the prints for comparison.”
“Are you seeing any connection between his murder and the others?”
“Not yet. There might not be any.”
“Did you check out the yard crew that was in the neighborhood?”
“Yeah. It was legit. A local company that does a lot of work on the key. They don’t have any Guatemalans on the payroll.”
“Did you talk to the crew members? See if they saw anybody that looked like them that didn’t belong on their crew?”
“I talked to every one of them. Took me most of the evening and part of this morning. Nothing suspicious.”
“You think they’re telling the truth?”
“Hard to tell,” she said. “None of them speaks English, so I had to use an interpreter. That makes it a bit more dicey.”
“If there’s a gang connection in this, the guys on the crew might be too scared to talk about it.”
“Yeah. I thought of that. Not much we can do about it, though.”
“Has the name Jeff popped up in all that Miami paperwork?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I’m still going through it. Why?”
“Jenny, the girl who was killed, said Qualman told her he was working in Sarasota for somebody named Jeff. They met in prison at Glades Correctional.”
“No last name?”
“No. Sorry.”
She sighed. “I’ll look for Jeff. If we can find him, we may be able to start putting these people together somehow.”
“Check the sheet the super at Glades sent on Qualman. That’s probably your best bet to find Jeff’s last name.”
“I know. I’ll let you know if I find out anything. Is Jock with you?”
“No. He went to Washington yesterday. Be back tomorrow evening.”
“He called me this morning. Didn’t say he was out of town.”
“What did he want?”
“Asked if we’d found a laptop at Gene Alexander’s. He said it could be important to something he was working on.”
“Was there a laptop?” I asked.
“Not that we found. I checked with the forensics folks, too. Nobody saw a laptop.”
“Did he say why it was important?”
“No. And I haven’t had time to call him back to let him know we didn’t find anything.”
“I’ll call him. I need to talk to him anyway.”
“Tell him I’d like to sit down with him tomorrow evening.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She hung up.
“She’s back in full cop mode,” said Logan.
“I’m glad. She needed the stimulation.”
“I worry about her getting bored here on the island.”
“I do too. She said as much at lunch yesterday,” I said.
“This has got to be a big comedown for a Miami-Dade homicide commander.”
“Assistant commander,” I said.
“Well, you get my meaning.”
“I do. But there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
“I wonder why that laptop seems important to Jock,” Logan said.
“I’ll call him when we get home. Probably not a big deal.”
“I’ll be off island for a week or so,” Logan said.
“Where’re you going? You just got back from the keys.”
“Marie’s got a business trip to New York City, so I thought I’d go along, and we can catch some shows, maybe run up to Nahant to see some of my family for a couple of days.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“If we decide to go to Boston, we’ll probably be gone the better part of two weeks,” Logan said.
“The key is always a little quieter when you’re out of town. Some of the bartenders who depend on you might go broke if you’re gone too long.”
“You’ll just have to drink more. Take one for the team.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
We drove on in silence, Logan fiddling with the radio, trying to find some decent music among the Saturday afternoon infomercials. I thought about the cases, the victims, J.D.’s thoughts about leaving the key, Jock’s concerns about Gene Alexander’s death being connected to his agency. But mostly, I thought about a pretty girl growing up in the cane fields with no hope of anything better and of her children who would never know their mom. And I thought about her father, a hard-working man who had done his best and lost everything.