A little more than an hour after leaving with Ivan, McCoy brought him back into the sheriff’s station. He escorted Ivan past Eva’s desk, and she did her best to hand McCoy his messages. McCoy wanted to put the tire impressions up where they couldn’t be broken before they were completely dry. Ivan’s help allowed them to make it in one trip.
“In a minute, Eva,” McCoy said in passing.
The intercom buzzed a minute later. Eva knew how to tell time, and she was undeterred by McCoy’s brush off.
“Yes, Eva?” McCoy said after getting seated.
“Harry called. Didn’t leave a message. No last name. Said you’d know who he is. Call him,” Eva said. “Hi Ivan.”
“Hi, Eva,” Ivan said.
“Hi, Ivan?” Eva said. “The sheriff called. He sounded right put out with you. Said for you to call him as soon as you returned. He’s not coming back until you leave his office,” she said. “I hope you plan to stay a while.”
“I’ll do it if it’s just to piss your sheriff off, Eva,” McCoy said.
She laughed approval before letting go of the intercom button.
“Did he leave his number?”
“No, but I have it right here,” she offered. “I need to call him in the morning to be sure he’s up.”
“Burn it, Eva. I don’t have anything to say to him,” McCoy said. “If anyone asks, I’m interrogating the suspect. I’m not to be disturbed.”
McCoy used his official voice and the intercom chatter was over.
“Senator McCallister is here,” Eva said over the intercom ten minutes later.
“He’s OK, Send him back. Thanks,” McCoy said.
Ivan got up to hold the door open for Harry.
“They treating you OK?” Harry asked. “No, they made me eat pizza and McCoy took me back to the scene of the crime,” Ivan revealed with appropriate disdain.
“McCoy, what are you up to? Do you have any idea who the killer is yet?” Harry asked, as if he expected the case to be solved by now.
“I’ve gone as far with the crime scene as I can go. The firemen and sheriff trampled all over it. I found his wallet and other personals. Some interesting things about the wallet. Ivan helped me get tire impressions from the side of the road. They’re meaningless at this point, but when I nail a suspect, one might match a tire on his car.”
“I need you to get me what you can on Mason’s history with the Company, Harry. Right now I have little to go on and this could be related to something Mason did in his activities with the Company. The more I know the better able I am to find the killer. Even something that seems irrelevant might prove to be the piece of the puzzle that puts me onto the trail of who did this.”
“I’m limited in what I can ask for, McCoy. They’ll conduct their own investigation. I’d rather not alert them that you’re looking over their shoulder and conducting a parallel investigation. If I ask them for too much, they’ll wonder what I’m up to. They’ll want to see what you’ve come up with. I’d rather keep them in the dark.”
“They might be content with Ivan’s arrest. They may not see the case going any further than Ivan,” McCoy said. “I’d like to know if that’s the case. I need to be more careful with them sniffing around.”
“I have an aide who is close to an operations officer at the Company, as in she’s married to him. She can ask him what he knows about Mason being killed. I’m not the most popular guy at Langley, because I stopped them from exploiting Ivan beyond a certain point,” Harry said.
“And I’ve always appreciated that, Harry. I never felt like I’d be allowed to walk away from what I was doing as their asset,” Ivan said.
“They did react to me knowing you and wanting them to give me some accounting of what you were doing for them,” Harry said.
“There was a point in my work for them, when my treatment changed. I was treated better and given more leeway. Until then, Harry, one of them was always with me, no matter where I went.”
“They view me as someone who stands in their way of doing anything they decide to do. If they believe Ivan did this, they won’t look at anyone else,” Harry calculated.
“It might help but it isn’t crucial. I’m looking for anything at this point. What did the FBI agents have to say?” McCoy asked.
“I did my best to find out who sent them. It was a dead end. I got the number of the man in charge at the Tampa office. He was way too seasoned to give me anything. His orders came from above and he called Holcomb and Trotter back to Tampa, but he said, ‘I’ll give you the weekend before I ask if the arrest order is still in effect.’”
“Harry, they were sent after Ivan the day after Mason’s body was found. They were here less than thirty-six hours after his death. This is the US government we’re talking about. How’d they even know Mason was dead? This isn’t a place where news travels fast,” McCoy said. “There’s a bad smell to this case, if you ask me, Harry.”
“Who knew enough about what was going on here to have agents come for Ivan the next day? Someone here has to be talking to someone at Langley,” Harry reasoned. “Did someone come with Mason? Or was someone sent to see if Mason was here yet?”
“How can we find that out?” McCoy asked.
“We can’t. The CIA isn’t allowed to operate inside the country,” Harry said.
“Coming to speak to me wasn’t necessarily an operation. He came to talk to me about an operation,” Ivan said.
“Mason being here was a crime?” McCoy asked.
“Operating and talking are two different things. Technically Mason was conducting CIA business. Who is going to charge that? No one in the government I’m part of. The CIA is pretty much does what it pleases,” Harry said.
“I take your word for it, Harry. It wasn’t the CIA that came for Ivan, the FBI did. Does the FBI do the CIA’s bidding?” McCoy asked.
“I wouldn’t think that’s the case,” Harry said. “But the FBI is the federal police force. They might arrest the killer of a federal agent. Mason is a government employee, in or out of the country.”
“The government isn’t known for its speed,” McCoy said.
“You sound efficient, McCoy,” Harry said. “Let me first say, I’m glad I have you on board. I do not know who knew about Mason’s being here. Let me remind you the government has ears and eyes everywhere. Someone here may be talking to someone at Langley. Mason may have been with a handler. An asset may have been sent to check to see if Mason was here yet.”
“So, they may be thinking they have Mason’s killer in custody, and they want him,” McCoy said. “No need to investigate further.”
“I don’t like that line of thought,” Ivan said.
“I talked to your people in Chicago before coming over, McCoy,” Harry said. “As far as they are concerned, you answer to me for as long as I need your services.”
“That was nice of them, since I have nearly four weeks of vacation coming to me,” McCoy said.
“I found them to be quite generous with your time, McCoy. I’m going to keep finding out what I can from the Company, but you’re likely on your own when it comes to finding Mason’s killer,” Harry said.
“Not what I wanted to hear, but it’s what I expected, Harry. Thanks for the favor.”
“Don’t mention it. Especially don’t mention it to Clay,” Harry said. “I told them not to send Mason here, and I told them you’d never work for the Company again, Ivan. I knew they weren’t going to listen to me, but I never saw this coming.”
“You told him I’d say no?” Ivan asked. “You knew I’d say no.”
“I told him that you told me you wouldn’t work for them again. I told him that I’d clear the way for Mason to talk to you, and when you said no, they were to back off and leave you alone. I knew they wouldn’t back off.”
“What good am I to them in jail?” Ivan asked.
“I guess if they can’t have you, no one can,” Harry said.
“How does a government end up with people like that?” McCoy asked. “I mean, aren’t there some principles involved?”
“They get what they want, and they’ll have me one way or the other,” Ivan said. If you told them not to send Mason, I wouldn’t be in the mess, Harry.”
“Yes, you would. They’d have sent him anyway. I tried, Ivan. My mistake was not calling you to tell you Mason was coming.”
“Harry, since Ivan didn’t know Mason was here, you calling or not calling is irrelevant. We know the general outline of how Mason ended up at the Cove Campgrounds. Now, I need to track down his killer. I can tell those government boys that I have evidence that proves Ivan didn’t do this, but it won’t stop them. I’ve dealt with the FBI before. Until I have the actual killer, and can prove it, they’ll have Ivan.” “With the CIA and FBI on the case, they’ll do what they want,” Harry said.
“Can I call Clay while I’m in the office, McCoy? He needs to know I’m probably going to be taken to Tampa in a few days. He’s going to want to see me. Dylan is going to need to see me,” Ivan said.
McCoy pushed the phone across the desk to Ivan.
“Time for me to get out of here before people began to wonder what their senator is doing at the sheriff’s station,” Harry said, standing up to leave.
“Hey, Babe, it’s your jailbird lover calling.”
*****
It took less than a half hour for the receptionist to speak over the intercom, “Clay Olson here to see you, Sheriff McCoy.”
“Does that woman need hearing aids?” McCoy asked Ivan.
“Eva isn’t known for being fast on her feet,” Ivan said.
“You’re telling me. I guess I’m the new sheriff in town,” he said.
A minute later Clay knocked on the door and Ivan opened it.
“You the doorman?” Clay asked, as he stepped into the office. “Glad they’re keeping you busy.”
“Hey, Babe. How you holding up?” Ivan asked.
McCoy was amazed by Clay’s appearance. The dark circles under his eyes were hard to miss. He wasn’t holding up well and that made McCoy want to speed up his investigation for Clay’s sake.
Clay moved a chair over beside Ivan’s chair. They held hands as Clay kept his eyes on Ivan, like he was trying to memorize his face.
*****
Monday morning, Harry taxied the Beechcraft onto the runway. In another minute, he lifted off into the clear blue morning sky. A minute after that, he was well out over the Gulf of Mexico. Flying directly west, checking all the plane’s systems, once satisfied, he turned the craft north.
With May passing swiftly, Harry planned to stay in DC for the rest of the month, or until they passed a budget bill.
Clay drove Dylan to school after the trash was picked up and they’d had a cup of coffee at the shop with Tag. None of them had much to stay. Even seeing Ivan on both Saturday and Sunday, Clay still felt the world closing in on him. Dylan had little to say either time as he dealt with his inability to have access to his father when he wanted to see him.
Ivan spent most of the time in the sheriff’s office during the day. By this time no one even looked up when McCoy and Ivan passed on their way to and from the office. Mostly Clay brought them food from Mama’s kitchen, but they’d managed to order pizza on Saturday afternoon. On Monday, Angus McCoy drove Mildred to Tampa and watched her plane to Chicago take off before heading back toward the cove. By the time Mildred got off the ground, Harry was at cruising speed somewhere over central Alabama.
No one was in any particular hurry. Their schedules were loose at both ends. Only Dylan had to be at school on time. No one else had anything planned as the new week unfolded. McCoy didn’t particularly like driving a few hundred miles before lunch, and he’d be happy to see the sheriff’s station. That happiness would be short lived. He had nothing planned but solving the cove’s murder. Today, he’d go over the evidence he had and what he knew.
McCoy whistled as he drove, once he was on the highway to the cove. He felt better now that Mildred was on her way back to their girls. He had his work cut out for him, but there was no doubt in his mind, he’d catch the killer.
He had thoughts of ordering an everything pizza for their lunch. Checking his watch, it was almost noon. He could drive past the sheriff’s station and go to the Pizza Emporium and take the pizza in with him, but he liked the idea of having it delivered after Ivan was in the office and could get his pizza while it was still hot.
McCoy forgot about the pizza when he made a left turn into the sheriff’s parking space. Parked at the front door was a black four door sedan, government issue. Jumping out, McCoy walked past the sedan, seeing Ivan in the backseat. His head leaned back with his eyes closed. As McCoy stepped on the steps, Special Agent Holcomb stood just inside the front door. He had a big smile on his face.
“What’s going on?”
“This is going on,” Holcomb said, pushing the papers into McCoy’s chest.
Eva sat behind her desk and deputies Kelly and Jameson stood a few feet away. They had no idea what might happen next.
“Can I speak to him before you take him?” McCoy asked.
“You used up all our goodwill on Friday, McCoy. You don’t get to talk to our prisoner. You have a nice day, you hear?” Holcomb said, pushing through the door with Special Agent Trotter in tow.
McCoy stood at the door and watched the black sedan back into the street and turn toward the Interstate.
McCoy felt empty. His job became a bit harder without Ivan here. He had no desire to be the one to tell Clay that Ivan was heading for Tampa. He’d need to call and leave a message for Harry. He’d want to know that the FBI had Ivan, but the senator knew this was coming.
*****
Angus McCoy sat at the sheriff’s desk an hour later and he finally picked up the phone. It had to be done, although he didn’t relish doing it. He’d put it off long enough and he dialed Clay’s number, reading it from the ink blotter where he’d written it.
“Is this Clay?”
“Yes. Is he gone, McCoy?”
“Yes.”
The line went dead.
They shared a few words and the world came to abrupt halt for one of them. McCoy had made dozens of calls to set up a time for him to go to someone’s house and tell them the person they loved and who had gone missing was dead. Telling Clay that Ivan had been taken to Tampa was nearly as difficult. He was emotionally tangled in the murder in the cove. Knowing Ivan created a unique dilemma. What he knew of Ivan told McCoy he was an innocent man. The evidence stacked against him was circumstantial and perplexing and it led to the wrong person. He would buckle down and get the killer before Ivan faced the music. McCoy was emotionally involved in this case because he had become acquainted with the people at the cove. He had feelings about the case he was investigating. He wasn’t sure he was objective enough to bring this case to its proper conclusion. Since Friday, it had been obvious Ivan would end up in the hands of the federal authorities. Now that it had happened, he felt impotent. Thank heavens Mildred was on the way home. They’d stayed too long and now he was on his own. He’d spent years trying to prove a killer’s guilt. For the first time he needed to prove a man was innocent.
It had turned into a bad day for McCoy. When he looked up, Sheriff Davis was standing in the now open door. He stood with a silly little grin on his face, his thumbs looped through his gun belt.
“You done here, McCoy? I want my department back,” he said.
McCoy’s brain was filled with sadness and the emptiness Ivan’s departure left him with. He raised his eyes until he met the sheriff’s delighted gaze. He wanted to slap the smirk off his face.
“I haven’t even gotten started good, Gerald. If you’d like to run errands for me, I can always use a reliable gopher,” McCoy said in a sweet voice that came through his own smirk.
When Sheriff Davis stormed out of the sheriff’s office, McCoy finally had something to smile about. He enjoyed that way more than he should have. He was on vacation. He deserved a little fun.
He didn’t like pretentious lawmen like the sheriff.
“Damn that felt good, though,” McCoy said to himself. McCoy opened the top drawer and took out the note he found in Mason’s wallet. He ran C names through his brain again, knowing how futile it was. Why was it the only personal item Mason had carried with him?
It had to be a new note. This wasn’t a wallet he carried, except when he needed to get to Langley. He was there before he came here. Someone left the note for him after he was at Langley and before he came to the cove. Who was C?
*****
Monday afternoon, until he picked up Dylan at school, Clay was beside himself with worry. While Ivan was still in the cove, it wasn’t too bad, but now he had been taken to Tampa, and Clay had to tell Dylan.
Clay didn’t know what to say to his son. He was late leaving his lab and late picking up Dylan, but he didn’t need to say anything.
One look at his father’s face and Dylan knew.
“They took my father away,” Dylan said with an unusual calm for the situation they were in.
Clay didn’t speak. He nodded and turned back onto the highway.
Dylan sat back in the passenger seat. He didn’t have any books. He never had any books. Books stayed at school and Dylan lived his life paying little attention in school. His mind was now dealing with a reality he always suspected would come one day, but not today. He never wanted it to happen today.
How could Ivan be gone? He was there every day for one third of Dylan’s nearly fifteen years. He was there to laugh, poke fun at him, keep Clay from going off the deep end with discipline, and to start a business and succeed beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. How could he be here, be part of it one day and be gone the next?
Daddy-O could do anything he set out to do. The thing he did best was love his son and be there for him, since he came home.
Now he was gone. To Dylan it felt like it did before Ivan came home.
Turning into the driveway at Ivan’s house, Dylan finally spoke to his father.
“He didn’t do anything.”
“I know,” Clay said. “McCoy will get the killer and Ivan will come back home.”
When Clay said it, he knew they were hollow words. No one knew what McCoy could do, or if he could prove Ivan’s innocence. Could McCoy shift the guilt to someone else?
An hour later they sat on the deck and looked out at the endless waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Clay had a Coke and Dylan had a root beer. Last week’s edition of Time magazine was open at the place where Ivan had stopped reading. His chair was empty and Clay and Dylan had nothing to say about that.
The time they’d both dreaded since Ivan’s return five years before had arrived, and they could do nothing about it.
*****
McCoy sat in the sheriff’s office and looked over some of the material on Mason that Harry had sent special delivery from DC. It was his government pay records and a lot of information on the places Mason had flown on the government’s dime.
McCoy would never have thought of that and not only did the senator ask for that, but Bill Mason had an address in Tampa, Florida, where official records were sent for tax purposes. He would need to make a trip to Tampa to see what he could see. Algie brought the package by late on Tuesday. The senator had told him it was to go to McCoy as soon as it arrived at the house. It was more than McCoy expected, but the senator was all in on proving that Ivan didn’t kill anyone.
McCoy looked at an eight by ten head shot of a guy way younger than the dead guy. Mason had been around the world a few times. If there was trouble somewhere in the world, Mason was usually there. The picture was in a 201 file, or it was with copies of things from Mason’s official file. It was the kind of thing a senator could get, but a homicide detective wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it.
McCoy remembered what Ivan said about Mason. He tried to imagine the brutal Mason, one of those men who managed to gain some measure of power, and used it to make other people miserable. Misery was an all-purpose tool for bad men. They liked inflicting pain. Mental or physical, it really didn’t matter. Sadists weren’t that particular what it took to get a thrill.
The third time through, McCoy stuffed the file back into the sheriff’s desk. He needed to remember to take everything that didn’t concern the sheriff out of the desk once he finished at the cove.
He sat back to think over what he’d been reading. The man had only been in the country a couple of months over the past decade. How is it he came home to get himself killed?
Who were you, Mason? McCoy asked no one.
McCoy sat back in the sheriff’s chair to think. When he had a partner, they bounced things off each other while they were in the car. One would talk about the thing that had his attention and the other responded in kind. It didn’t always help, but once in a while they’d both have the same thought at exactly the same time. That’s when they were on the way to a solution. That agreement told them that they were on the right track.
McCoy had no one to bounce things off. Ivan was a good listener and smart enough to know when to respond, although he never got around to explaining what it was he did for the Company in Cambodia. It wasn’t crucial but it would give him a new perspective on why we have people over there.
McCoy needed to go to Tampa and maybe while he was there, he could call Holcomb and see if he couldn’t see Ivan. By that time he’d know more about the direction the investigation was taking him in.
McCoy saw Jameson walk past the door. He didn’t look in. He did his best to appear like he wasn’t watching McCoy and reporting his every move to the sheriff. It wasn’t Jameson or his treachery that got McCoy’s attention. It was the ticket book he carried in his hand.
“Jameson,” McCoy called. “Step into my office.”
“Yeah,” he said, leaning in the door.
“What’s that in your hand?”
“My ticket book,” he said, stepping inside to show it to McCoy.
“What do you write tickets for around this place?” McCoy asked, feeling a slight bit optimistic. “Speeders. We get a lot of those. They get off the regular highway and end up coming through here. No one sets out to come here most of the time. Tourists always speed,” Jameson explained.
“That’s it?” McCoy asked.
“No, we have your run of the mill reckless driving. Locals are famous for that, and failure to yield. They figure they know where they’re going once they get off the highway, then they get here and try to read their map to see where they went wrong. I write a dozen of those a month. They apologize, say they’re lost, and I give them a ticket and wish them luck,” Jameson said, chuckling. “There’s a place just around the curve, where you first see the water, I set up there with my radar gun. It’s a big moneymaker. Usually they’re going over fifty in a thirty mile an hour zone.”
“Parking?” McCoy asked. “Parking near the shop or the campgrounds. I don’t suppose you write people up for parking?”
“Oh, yeah. People come here to go on that boat cruise they have for the campers. Lord knows why anyone wants to ride out into open water, but some of them don’t mind parking anywhere they feel like. Around JK’s, people park funny around there. He’s got a lot. It does get full on weekends, but you can’t park anywhere you like. It’s against the law,” Jameson complained and he smiled about it.
“You work the overnight shifts. What do you do when you go out on patrol? Where do you patrol, Jameson?” McCoy led the deputy.
“We go five miles east of here, five miles west,” Jameson said.
“The coves three miles,” McCoy said.
“Yeah, but we go up past the senator’s driveway and up over the bridge that crosses the river. That’s where we turn around. It’s maybe seven miles out to the bridge. Not much traffic up that way.”
“How far back does that ticket book go?” McCoy asked.
“Fill one up every month. We get a new book first of the month.”
“How many tickets have you written so far in May?”
“Maybe fifty,” Jameson estimated. “It’s not the end of May yet, maybe closer to forty so far.”
“Can you leave the book with me for an hour? It’ll be on my desk when I finish looking through it,” McCoy said.
“Sure. I’m off duty. I won’t need it until tonight,” Jameson said. “I just come by to see how Eva’s getting along.”
“You like, Eva?” McCoy asked.
“She’s nice to me,” Jameson said.
McCoy was hoping he wouldn’t hear how nice.
There were seventeen tickets from the week Mason died. McCoy was looking for something that might tie into the killing. Ivan said Mason registered Sunday night and he was murdered Thursday morning.
McCoy stopped at a ticket written on Tuesday night. Jameson wrote a ticket for illegal parking on the shoulder of the highway at the cove a little past four thirty on Tuesday.
McCoy pressed the intercom and asked for Jameson to be paged. Five minutes later he was sitting across from McCoy looking at the ticket in question.
“It was an illegally parked car. An ‘83 Toyota. Brown, I believe,” Jameson said.
“Tell me the story. Why did you write this?” McCoy asked.
“He was parked on the side of the road. You can’t park along there,” Jameson protested. “I write two or three tickets a week along that section near the campgrounds.”
“Where exactly was it parked?” McCoy asked.
“Just before the Dive Shop. A hundred yards north.”
“He was parked south of the driveway leading to the Conservancy and north of the Dive Shop?” McCoy asked.
“Yeah, he should have been in the campground’s parking.”
“He was parked near where the fire trucks were when they put out the fire at the campgrounds?”
“That’s where,” Jameson said. “You can’t park on the shoulder there,” Jameson explained.
“Read me the tag number you wrote on that ticket,” McCoy said.
Jameson read the number on the ticket. McCoy wrote it on the ink blotter. He told Jameson he could go, thanking him for his help.
A minute later he was dialing a number he had memorized.
“Hagerty, McCoy. You able to access Florida’s DMV?”
“Sure. What do you need, McCoy?”
“Run this number for me. This is personal. Call me at this number when you get the name and address,” McCoy said, reading him the license plate number.
“You in Florida?” Hagerty asked.
“Yeah, doing a favor for a friend,” McCoy said.
“This will take an hour or so. Depending on how easy it is to access. I’ll call you back when I get it,” Hagerty said, hanging up.
It was worth a try. It probably wouldn’t go anywhere, but it was worth a try. The killer would have looked the place over, once he knew Mason was staying there. He wasn’t coming in cold. He stood in the woods the day he killed Mason, waiting for an opportunity to do what he came to do.
When Hagerty called back, McCoy had the note from Mason’s wallet in front of him. He was certain this tied to the murder of Mason. It was something he felt in his gut, but he had nothing else to go on.
“A Mr. Hagerty for you, Sheriff,” Eva said.
“Thank you, Eva,” McCoy said, no longer correcting her.
“Yeah, Hagerty, what do you have for me.”
“The car is registered in Tampa. I’ll give you the address.”
McCoy wrote down the name and address beside the tag number.
“Raymond Ortiz,” McCoy said to himself. “You couldn’t be a Charles, Carl, or Cecil, could you?”
“Eva,” McCoy said into the intercom. “Any chance you know where I can get a Thomas Guide for Tampa, Florida?”
“Behind you. The middle file cabinet. The sheriff keeps his Thomas Guides in the bottom drawer,” Eva said.
McCoy separated the Thomas Guides until he found the one for Tampa. He opened it beside the address he’d been given for the license number in question.
He didn’t have a plan yet but he had a lead. He needed to check out Mason’s permanent address, and now he needed to find out if Raymond knew Mason. He didn’t know how he’d do it, but he would.