Clay was subdued.
McCoy was convinced he was on the right track to catch a killer.
After picking up the trash, Dylan and Tag returned to the shop to drink coffee, until it was time for Dylan to go to school. Dylan was left out of the conversation the evening before and so he needed to listen to men who were there to get some hint of what went on.
For a time there was little conversation. Usually the gathering was full of chatter and the conversation resembled a free for all. It was a different place without Ivan’s influence and no one took his place as the man everyone came to talk with.
The coffee was strong enough to keep most people awake for most of the day. It wasn’t the coffee Ivan made but Tag’s was close. Clay’s coffee came to resemble Ivan’s over the years, after Ivan came home to build his cove empire.
Ivan always had followers from his school days forward. Followers who came for coffee and conversation these days. These included campers who needed some semblance of order in a life that was on vacation. The coffee clutch had grown to include the captain of the fishing fleet, a senator, a professor, and now a homicide detective. As each new day dawned, Ivan served coffee to anyone who came in the door.
McCoy was waiting for daylight to arrive. In the light of day, he’d go back to conduct a search for evidence. His theory would develop around the evidence he found at the crime scene. The evidence would support the theory and point to the killer.
Drinking coffee was always a good way to pass the time for Angus McCoy. He enjoyed coffee at the cove because he was surrounded by freethinkers not constrained by a conservative superstructure that at times was unyielding. The group of people surrounding Ivan thought for themselves.
The coffee wasn’t as enjoyable without Ivan’s commentary on the times, the people, and the new day taking shape. After drinking two cups of high octane coffee, and enduring the third lull in the conversation, McCoy decided to gather some information on Ivan.
“Will dad get coffee this morning?” Dylan asked.
“You can bet the sheriff will get his coffee,” Clay said.
“Not yet he won’t,” Tag said. “He won’t be out of bed for another hour.”
“The problem is, as I see it,” McCoy said, “Ivan and Mason had a history that needs to be considered. Mason sounds like a reprehensible character, but no one else threatened Mason as far as I know.”
“If I wanted to kill a guy, I’d pick someone who had an enemy like Ivan, and I’d kill him in that guy’s front yard. Open and shut case, except Ivan didn’t kill anyone.”
“Taggart, no one would think up something like that,” Clay said.
“It’s one of the more interesting things I’ve heard,” McCoy said.
“My father didn’t kill anyone,” Dylan said without hesitation.
“He didn’t even know Mason was here. I rented him wilderness 2, and I didn’t know he was Mason,” Tag said. “He didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen before.”
“Did the killer kill Mason here because he knew Ivan threatened him, or was Mason’s murder a coincidence? The guy who killed him followed him here and decided it was a good place to catch Mason off guard?” Clay asked. “Who else wanted Mason dead? A guy like that had enemies,” Tag said.
“Who indeed, and that’s a whole new kettle of fish,” McCoy said. “My job is to find out who, and I have a crime scene with evidence that will lead me to the killer.”
“What are you doing here, McCoy?” Clay asked.
“I’m waiting for enough light to see the evidence,” McCoy said.
“That sounds like a good plan,” Tag said.
When McCoy talked, the people at the shop listened. They wanted to find a way out of this murder mystery.
One pot of coffee went by the wayside and Tag made the next pot. It soon followed the first pot into oblivion as they waited.
At half past seven, Harry walked into the shop. He walked past Clay and McCoy, pouring himself coffee, after he used a paper towel to wipe the cup clean. He went to sit behind the gigantic mahogany desk.
“Tag, you better make a fresh pot. I’d do it, but if you want to drink it, you don’t want me to make it,” the senator said.
“Yes, Sir,” Tag said, pushing himself off the counter and dislodging Dylan to get to the coffee pot.
No one said anything. They waited for Harry to speak.
“What’s the word, Harry?” Clay asked.
“Thunderbird,” Harry said, not missing a beat.
“What?” Clay said.
“Just a remnant of my misspent youth,” Harry said. “What’s the word? Thunderbird?”
Tag laughed and everyone looked at him.
“Cheap wine. Thunderbird is a fifty cent bottle of wine,” Tag revealed.
“Surprised your senator knows a thing like that, Taggart?” Harry asked.
“Not a bit. I grew up around here, too, Senator. I know the word. Thunderbird. What’s the price? Thirty cents twice.”
Harry laughed.
Harry sipped his coffee before revealing what he was doing there.
“McCoy, you’re in charge here for the duration of this thing. Chicago has been informed and they’ve signed off on the governor appointing you a special investigator. Your identification is being created by the governor’s office and will be sent to you later today. Florida authorities have been notified about that appointment. There’s a new sheriff in town, Gentlemen. You de man, McCoy. The only one who doesn’t know about the change is Sheriff Davis. They gave me everything, except for notifying Sheriff Davis of the change. They tossed me that hot potato. Bob won’t let his people touch it. No telling what the fallout might be politically. I’m bulletproof, and Bob wanted to make me squirm a little.”
“I’m not the acting sheriff. That’s not anything I’m going to do. You need to figure out how to keep the sheriff’s people functioning,” McCoy said.
“Not a problem,” Harry said. “I’ll put Eva in charge of the deputies. I’m going to make the call to get the ball rolling. If anyone has anything to say, say it now.”
Harry picked up the phone. He dialed the number.
“The sheriff, please. He is not at work? It is almost eight o’clock. You’re telling me the sheriff has yet to come to work?” Harry said with a touch of outrage in his voice.
“Who am I speaking too, please? Eva. Morning, Eva, this is Senator Harry McCallister calling to speak to the sheriff. I’m fine. How are you? We’re all fine. That’s fine, You’re telling me, the sheriff hasn’t come to work yet? Tell you what. You call Sheriff Davis. You tell him that Senator McCallister will be in his office in ten minutes. If he isn’t in his office, I’m going to want to know why. Can you do that for me, Eva? Good. You have a nice day too, Eva. Nice talking to you,” Harry hung up.
“More coffee anyone? I’ll be fashionably late. The son-of-a-bitch isn’t at work. He likes to sleep in, she said. Who the hell is in charge around this place anyway?”
McCoy raised his hand.
Harry laughed.
“I’m not taking the sheriff’s job, Senator. I’m here to do a homicide investigation. That’s what I plan to do.”
“Spoken like a true patriot. Don’t worry. If Sheriff Davis is responsible for keeping the peace around this place, Eva can do it. I’m just making mischief because I can. I was up late last night and it’s too early for me to be out of bed.”
*****
Angus McCoy stood in the sheriff’s office, looking around. It wasn’t neat but most of the clutter wasn’t in his way. While he agreed to investigate the Mason homicide, the sheriffing was to be left to the current department deputies and Eva. As Harry suspected, Eva was delighted to assume her new role at the head of the class.
The sheriff showed up wiping the sleep out of his eyes. Harry explained the plan.
Sheriff Davis grumbled, “You want my goddamn job, you can have it.”
He’d relent after one of his deputies told him, “Eva’s in charge, Gerald.”
McCoy did what he agreed to do and let Harry to do the heavy political lifting.
He would be better off without the Neanderthal looking over his shoulder. McCoy was certain the deputies could take up the slack. Harry didn’t worry a bit.
He calculated he’d need to slow his brain down to match the pace of the place, Once he did, no one would even notice him. He calculated that the pace here was similar to what you might find on a Montana cattle ranch. That put McCoy in the proper mood. There was plenty of light now, but while he was at the sheriff’s station, he wanted to read the sheriff’s report from the day before. Once he did that, he’d return to wilderness 2 and do a complete search of the area. His experience told him that he’d find clues there and those clues would eventually lead him to the killer.
As McCoy read, he became certain that Sheriff Davis was no Bill Shakespeare, but he wasn’t either. His handwriting was surprisingly neat. His thought process was all over the map. There was no organization, and his vocabulary was limited. What it amounted to was there was a dead body on wilderness 2 at the Cove Campgrounds, along with a fire of suspicious origins.
McCoy stopped reading, he knew that already. The report contained no sign of any investigation. As he expected, the sheriff didn’t return to the crime scene. This brought McCoy back to the original question he had the afternoon before.
The report did nothing to answer it.
So why did the sheriff come to arrest Ivan? Nothing in the report indicated Ivan or anyone else killed Mason. McCoy needed to give this some thought.
Someone called Sheriff Davis? How else would he know to arrest Ivan?
You can’t arrest someone without probable cause. Unless you’re the sheriff of a tiny town, but on what basis did he arrest Ivan? A good prosecutor wanted probable cause.
“Why did you arrest Ivan Aleksa?”
The devil made me do it, McCoy thought. The report was no surprise at all. He didn’t expect Sheriff Davis to name the killer. If there was a surprise, it was that the sheriff wrote a report at all.
It was his cop shop. He could do anything he wanted. In Chicago, in front of the commander, a report like this would have the commander checking both sides in search of a report before asking, “Where’s the report?”
This wasn’t Chicago.
McCoy took a notebook out of his pocket. He began to write.
Nothing written pointed the finger at Ivan. The sheriff came to arrest Ivan a few hours after the discovery of the body.
Who called the sheriff? Mason was an asset for a secret agency. Why was the man here? Who knew he was here? Who knew Ivan threatened Mason? Ivan and Mason were assets for the same people. The senator knew the details. He had something to say the night before. He never said it. Why’d the senator fly home? The two most interesting questions of all, before he did any investigating, were: Why was Mason here? Why did the senator fly home?
Did the senator know everything the Company knew? No, Harry knew what Ivan told him. He knew what the Company told him. What did the Company tell Ivan?
What could a senator find out that he wasn’t being told?
Almost anything.
Sitting in an office, while trying to fit the pieces together, didn’t answer any question.
Who killed Mason and why was he killed? Who kills a man everyone hates?
McCoy was sidetracked by the senator taking care of business. There were no obstacles standing in his way now. He probably wouldn’t see the senator again, until he went to see him, but there was a lot to do before he asked the question he had for Harry.
*****
Harry had arrived at the shop about the time McCoy was going to go back to wilderness 2. They’d ended up in the sheriff’s office and McCoy stayed once Harry left. He read the report before going back to the crime scene to search for clues.
This time he had the sheriff’s roll of crime scene tape. He started at the end of the path coming from the beach and he circled wilderness 2 with it. It was officially marked as a crime scene, until he removed it.
The sheriff didn’t put up crime scene tape and McCoy didn’t know why. He doubted he’d get a chance to ask. There wasn’t any evidence to suggest anyone had been on the site since the body had been removed. Once he finished with the tape he went to work.
McCoy started at the tent. He lifted the flap nearest the path that went to the beach. Getting on hands and knees, he began to crawl while feeling for anything out of the ordinary. He used the flashlight to check every inch of the lodging.
It was a tad warm and it was more humid than it had been. Even in shorts and a lightweight button-up shirt, he was sweating profusely. When he backed out on the far side of the tent from where he started, he had a collection of things of interest on Mason’s bed. He carefully put them out on a white towel that was convenient for the task at hand.
He was glad the sheriff took so little interest in the case. No one had been through the tent before him. When he felt in the bedding that was still damp from where he lay for hours, McCoy found the prize he was most interested in finding. Mason’s wallet.
McCoy had worked cases handicapped by fires set by the killers to conceal the murder. The killer assumes that fire will destroy any evidence of the crime and an investigator is left with nothing but ash.
At one time, fire may have consumed most of the evidence of a crime. That was no longer true. Killers left the kind of evidence that puts them at the scene of the crime. Things like tire tracks and footprints tie the killer to the scene.
While killers are about as smart as they’ve ever been--and how smart can you be if you think that you could get away with murder?--technology has the upper hand. Technology has put the world of an investigator under a microscope, and there were labs that saw things the human eye could never see before.
While collecting the evidence at the scene of a murder, McCoy kept the technology in mind. The seemingly insignificant item might be the evidence that solves the crime. He didn’t know what could point directly at the killer.
Killers always leave something of themselves at the scene. McCoy’s job was to find it.
McCoy found the blood evidence right where he expected it to be. The body was gone but the blood was still moist. It was remarkable how much blood there was in the human body. Putting on his rubber gloves, he collected two tubes of the dirt and sand that had mingled with Mason’s blood as it leaked out of him.
He was stabbed where the body was found. His campfire was going and he’d put the coffee pot on over the fire. The pot still lay on its side a few feet away. The perp kicked the fire on his way out of the campsite. He scattered the hot coals hoping they would catch the brush on fire and it would destroy any evidence. McCoy collected some of the ash. The perp no doubt had some of the same ash on his shoes.
He’d once interviewed a suspect in the murder of his girlfriend. He sat in the interview room fabricating a story as the interview unfolded. McCoy, on a hunch, told the suspect, ‘The blood evidence is on your shoes. You killed her and that’s her blood.’
The guy looked at his shoes. There were droplets of blood on them. He confessed. It was her blood. If killers were as smart as they think they are, they’d never kill anyone, and they’d change their shoes before they were interviewed about the murder.
Mason was awake long enough to put the coffee on. He probably went back into the tent while he waited. The position of his feet told the perp where he was. If Mason had his eyes closed… McCoy lifted the tent flap with two fingers to see that it made no noise. It’s what the killer did before he struck. Mason never knew what hit him.
This guy wasn’t fooling around and he didn’t wait around. The size of the knife assured the kill. Anyone who knew anything about Mason’s occupation wouldn’t get close enough to allow Mason to get his hands on him. There were two things that McCoy found most interesting. The first: three bobby pins. He collected those, once he knew to look for them. The tent had a cloth bottom. It was small but expensively made, and it kept things from being lost in the dirt. The second item was Mason’s wallet.
The sheriff hadn’t gotten any information from the vic’s wallet, because it was still where Mason left it. The tent showed no sign of the perp or the sheriff going through it. Everything was left for McCoy to find. It was his lucky day. McCoy looked at the three bobby pins he held in his hand. He bagged them. No telling what they might tell an analyst. Could there have been a woman involved? Did they belong to Mason’s wife? Was he even married? Maybe a girlfriend? Maybe a girl?
McCoy sniffed the air inside the tent and definitely got a whiff of perfume. It wasn’t fresh, but it wasn’t more than a day or two old. A woman was in the tent, or possibly, Mason had an odd taste in men’s cologne. Did he use bobby pins in his beard? Nothing was out of the question when you didn’t know anything.
McCoy left the tent with Mason’s wallet in hand. It was too much to hope the killer left his wallet in the tent. He removed everything from what turned out to be Mason’s wallet. He was careful not to touch anything without gloves.
Seated on a conveniently placed log, he looked down at everything he took out of the wallet. He got out more evidence bags and put them beside the wallet.
“No pictures. He wasn’t a family guy,” McCoy said to himself. “A Company man without family ties. A free agent who traveled light.” That was how McCoy imagined men like James Bond. Nothing distinctive about him, except that beard. He looked like a wild man. His look alone would have scared away the curious, or was that to keep Ivan from immediately recognizing him? It took a lot of time to grow that beard. Maybe not. Mason may have been one of those guys who needed a shave right after a shave.
McCoy unfolded a small slip of paper and read, “Meet me at the usual place. C.” He looked on both sides and gave the words some thought.
“Carol, Carl, Carlos, Charlie, Chuck, Clay, Claudia, Cisco, Cindy,” McCoy said to himself as he considered the C.
There was nothing else on the paper apart from the writing. It was neat and the letters were perfectly shaped. McCoy’s bet, it was a Claudia or a Carol. He put the note into an evidence bag by itself. It was a clue and the only personal item in the wallet. Everything else went into a separate evidence bag along with the wallet.
Mason wasn’t on the job. His CIA identification from Langley was in the wallet. While he was at work, a spy didn’t carry an ID announcing he was a spook. Besides, McCoy remembered, the CIA wasn’t supposed to conduct business inside the US of A.
McCoy smiled to himself. If he only did the things he was supposed to do, he’d never catch anyone.
Carrying his official ID probably meant he’d just left Langley before he came to camp at the cove, but that was just speculation, even if it made sense.
As he considered whether or not Mason was involved in some covert operation that brought him here, it took McCoy back to the most important question of all.
Why was Mason camping here? He had to know Ivan wouldn’t like it. He’d been here a year ago, and when Ivan yelped, to the senator, Mason was gone the next day. Why had he come back?
Mason wasn’t talking, but there was one person who might be able to shed some light on that subject. He already had it in mind to consult privately with the senator while he was home. The senator was careful about what he said in front of Clay the evening before.
The senator came in like gangbusters. He definitely had something on his mind, but McCoy sensed that it was never said. McCoy had the feeling that the senator never said what he came home to say, which created another question.
Why did the senator fly home?
McCoy was working the case by senatorial fiat. The senator saw McCoy being on the job before he agreed to take the case. It was the senator’s out. He came home to talk to Clay. It wasn’t Ivan’s arrest that brought him home. It was something else.
What was behind Harry’s reaction to Ivan’s arrest?
What did he come home to say to Clay?
A roadblock had been set in McCoy’s way. He needed it removed.
After McCoy finished at wilderness 2, he walked to campsite 9 to fetch Mildred. They walked hand in hand up the beach.
McCoy explained what was going on. Mildred had heard a body was found. McCoy’s behavior told her he’d become involved. She never questioned Angus on such things. She’d be told when the time was appropriate. This was the time. “As I said, Mil, when the senator came home, he immediately wanted me to do the investigating. This is such a small place, no one here is as qualified as I am. I know Ivan and clearing his name is important to me, Mil. There are complications I won’t go into, but I’ll go to speak to the senator after we have lunch, and if he isn’t forthcoming, well, my investigation will come to an end. But he wants me on this case, and he’ll tell me what I need to know to continue. I imagine it will take weeks to months.”
“I shall want to go home next week. I don’t want to leave you in the lurch, Angus,” Mildred said.
“No, of course not. We were leaving next week until this came up. The girls need one of us there, and I’ll be so busy here I’ll hardly notice that you’re gone.”
Mildred saw the wisdom in her husband’s approach. He loved his work. She was a cop’s wife and she wouldn’t stand in his way when there was a need for his skills.
After lunch, McCoy walked Mildred back to the campsite. She would leave Monday. He’d drive her to the airport and keep the car. Her car was at the house and she’d fly back to Chicago on Monday morning.
Once he left Mildred, he found himself stopping at a familiar place. He sat on the log at wilderness 2 and let his eyes wander. McCoy knew that jumping to conclusions wasted time. If you didn’t ask the questions, the investigation could jump the rails.
“You weren’t on the job, because you carried your official CIA ID. Were you at Langley before you came here? Probably. Because you were, what transpired at Langley had you coming back here. Did you come back to finish what you started the last time you were here?” McCoy asked himself. “You came here before. Ivan warned Harry. You left. You came back to finish what you started to do last year. That makes sense.”
It wasn’t unusual for McCoy to talk to vics and perps while he was trying to make sense of a case, but he usually had a partner he asked the questions of. They asked each other questions as they came up. It’s how he and his partner stayed on the same page.
McCoy could call Langley and ask them the questions. Better yet, he could ask the senator to call Langley and ask the questions, or did he already know the answers?
He’d never been fired from a case the day he was put on one, but there were firsts for everything. Sitting in his car at the front door of the senator’s house had him thinking of an approach that wouldn’t insult the senator’s intelligence.
A rather substantial black man came to the door and stood watching McCoy as he considered driving away.
He was caught now; the senator sent his body man to the door to let McCoy know that he knew the detective would come calling.
All he needed now was a good reason for parking at the front door of the senator’s house.
“I was just passing by and I thought I’d drop in,” McCoy said, thinking how feeble it sounded.
The senator was a sharp cookie. He’d see through anything that wasn’t true.
Besides, McCoy was a terrible liar.
He opened the car door and stepped out. The senator’s body man was waiting.