Cooler Than Blood (21 page)

CHAPTER 34

A
t six fifteen, after thinking I’d never fall asleep only to wake feeling as if I could sleep forever, we gathered on my back porch. Hadley III condescendingly perched on top of the grill, her wide eyes taking in the blinking red channel marker that hadn’t yet clocked out for the day. She cut me a glance and meowed. She must have eaten the year’s worth of food I’d given her a few days ago.

I placed the tape recorder on the glass table next to my Tinker Bell alarm clock. I hit the “play” button, and Jenny’s voice filled the dawn. Her youthful voice energized me and lightened my mood. Morgan listened with his chin in his left hand and his left elbow resting on the arm of the chair. He stared at the floor. Morgan has a theory that all the senses are related and that you can elevate one by gearing down the others. He claims that’s how he located Kathleen on the deserted beach where her kidnappers had taken her. I had a theory that the pulsating red channel marker was mocking me and thought that one day I might just have to squeeze off a few rounds at the son of a bitch.

Jenny’s irritation over Rutledge’s hang-up with Sherman was even more obvious the second time around. I glanced at my watch. PC hadn’t gotten back to me yet. I assumed he hadn’t been able to talk to that many people at the apartment complex last night and hoped he had remembered to hit it early. Some people leave for their jobs by seven, or even earlier. I texted him and reminded him of that. I was upset that I hadn’t explicitly given him directions as to what time to be at the apartments. I knew I was berating myself to kill time, to pretend I was moving forward as I sat and did nothing. PC immediately texted back that he was already on the site. I remembered that, to my knowledge, Jenny’s photo was still tacked to the Laundromat bulletin board. That hook hadn’t registered a nibble. Maybe I’d have PC take it down.

Jenny said, “Eric, right?” and Morgan nodded. A little later, Rutledge gave the time—6:17 a.m.—and names and location. The birds sang, and the tape went silent. I glanced up at the bay as a flatboat with a fishing tower cleared the end of my dock. A man rode the tower like a pelican gliding over the waves. His buddy was down below, his hand on the wheel, hair flying behind him. I spent too much time watching men in boats go by and not enough time in my own boat. When you live on the water, you’re constantly a fan to someone experiencing that special day they’ve looked forward to.

“Can you rewind it?” Morgan asked. “To the part where he says, ‘Then what?’” He had paid no attention to the boat, which was an incredible feat. Just as a man watches a woman as she leaves an elevator, it’s nearly impossible, living on the bay, for a man not to glance up when a boat goes by.

“Any reason?” I asked, as I punched the rewind button. I hit “play” again and came in during the Sherman exchange. That was close enough. Morgan didn’t acknowledge my question but instead shrank back into his Rodin pose.

“There,” he exclaimed, and popped out of his position like a cork blowing out of a champagne bottle. “Did you hear that?” He knew my hearing was poor on my left side. Between my bad ear, creaking left knee, and now bum left ankle, if I were a boat, I’d be listing badly to the port.

“Tell us,” Garrett said.

“Tape’s been cut.”

“How do you know?” I asked. Another boat approached from around the bend. Serious fishermen are early risers. I kept my attention on Morgan.

“The osprey. You hear them—there are two—in the middle of the conversation, but they really pick up their distinct screech, or chirp, toward the end. I clearly hear where their call is interrupted—cut. Play it again. It’s right before Rutledge coughs.”

I hit the end of the Sherman sequence again and listened. I couldn’t detect a damn thing. The osprey does
have a distinct cry that is a series of short, high-pitched blasts. Rutledge coughed. Jenny said, “I was on top of him before I knew it.”

“Hear it?” Morgan asked.

“I caught it,” Garrett said.

“Not me,” I added.

“Plus,” Morgan said as he gained steam, “I think this is a recording of a recording. I think someone recorded the playback then cut it right before Rutledge asked, ‘Then what?’ His cough, more like clearing his throat, was inserted later.”

“What if he’s right?” Garrett asked. “What if Jenny’s answer to Rutledge wasn’t that she was on top of him? What if she said something else first?”

“But who would splice it?” I asked. “How many people had access to the tape before we finally received our copy?”

“Again,” Morgan said. I fiddled with the recorder, and for the third time, Jenny’s irritated voice sparred with Rutledge over General William Tecumseh Sherman. We listened without comment until the end. Outside of Rutledge’s cough, nothing seemed out of rhythm.

“You met Rutledge, right?” Morgan asked me.

“We did.”

“He cough much? Loud? Like on the tape?”

I glanced at Garrett as every conversation I’d had with Detective Eric Rutledge raced through my head. Garrett’s stare was waiting for me.

He knew.

“No coughs,” I said. “Think Rutledge tampered with it?”

I also knew. Everyone in the world knew. Like a boat’s swelling wake out on the bay rolling toward me—a motion that nothing in the heavens or the universe can halt—I knew where the conversation was going long before it got there. Part of my mind had already disengaged and was waiting onshore, bracing
for the tsunami.

Garrett said, “Zach’s alleged phone call to Jenny.”

“Rutledge said Jenny’s phone didn’t show any such call,” I said. “But what if it did? I never did think that was a point the Colemans would lie about. Rutledge suggested they might have physically abducted her and used the phone story as a ruse to possibly lighten charges against them, saying that she came voluntarily.”

“He suggested, meaning he planted it in your mind,” Garrett offered.

“Maybe Rutledge never bothered to check her phone, and he’s just covering his ass for a job he didn’t do. Or he’s been lying all along. Jenny must have told him about the money and—”

My phone rang, and I snatched it off the table.

PC said, “Bingo, baby!”

“What’ve you got?” I stood, and Garrett did likewise. I put the phone on speaker and placed it back on the table next to the pink recorder.

“Guy on the second floor—I was talking to him when I sent you the text. He sets up the rental stand, you know, the paddleboards and stuff, on this end of the beach. Early bird. He takes a cup of coffee—three cubes of sugar—on his patio every morning before he hits the sand. Said he saw a car crawl down Estero that morning. Creeping, he said. Moment later, it returned from the other direction. It pulled in, you know, into that pygmy public parking lot across from him. He said from his angle he couldn’t see if another car was parked there. But this guy definitely went in; his rear end stuck out a little. No biggie, right?”

“What’d it look like?”

“I’ll get there. But, like two, three minutes tops, my guy says he pulls out. He didn’t think much of it. He had breakfast, hit the head, and brushed his teeth—his words; personally, I brush my teeth before I hit the head—and went to close the patio door. When he did, he saw another car crawl into the same space. It’s there maybe five minutes, and then it leaves.”

“This guy’s in the act of closing the patio door yet hangs around for five minutes?” Garrett asked.

“Roger that. Because Sugar Boy, when the second car’s in there, hears glass break and then clanking, like metal on metal. Couldn’t figure out what it was, but it kept him on his patio until he was late for work. He planned to check it out, but by noon the whole beach knew. Body found, police tape around the beach scene and car.”

“Police ever question him?”

“Negatory, Chess Man. He grows the holy crop in his apartment, so he didn’t come forward. Been afraid of a knock on the door ever since, so he moved his horticultural activity to a friend’s.”

“Plates? Anything to identify either car?”

“Florida on the second vehicle. Bland model. Guy says he doesn’t really know wheels. Didn’t need to on the first one, though.”

“Why? Did the car stand out in some manner? Give me a description.”

“You’re going to love it.”

“Just tell me.”

“Sheriff’s car, Jake-o.”

“Sheriff’s car?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You sure?”

“No mistakin’ bacon. Lee County white with one ugly-ass green stripe down its side.”

CHAPTER 35

T
he wake crashed onto the shore and crushed me against the concrete seawall.

Fucking idiot. Fucking idiot. Fucking idiot. All that clutter in my head, and I can’t think. Can’t see. Rutledge drumming his fingers, blowing off Zach’s phone call, and me not checking Zach’s phone. Deflecting my question about prints on Billy Ray’s car. I gave up the Winking Lizard. Rutledge—I’m willing to bet—has big IOUs in Vegas. I gave her up. I’ve got to be the biggest—

“JT, you there?” PC asked, interrupting my annual binge of constructive self-criticism. “I said I got the guy’s cell. Said you could call him anytime.”

I told him to text it to me and thanked him. He asked if I wanted him to do anything else, and I told him about Jenny’s picture in the Laundromat and asked him to take it down. We disconnected. I found myself standing next to my grill.
How’d the cover get so dirty? Cat paws prints all over the place.

“Billy Ray told Jenny about the money,” I said to Garrett, although I would’ve preferred talking to the grill, as it was incapable of judging me. “She tells Rutledge, and he takes off looking for the car. He finds Billy Ray’s car and has enough prescience to keep moving. No doubt his cruiser has a GPS in it that tracks his movements, not to mention a camera. Rutledge told Susan he lived not far from her. He goes home, gets his car, and returns.”

“He wiped down the trunk,” Garrett said as he eyed me from across the porch. “What time did McGlashan tell us they found Coleman’s car?”

“Ten.”

“Any doubts on that?”

‘“Around ten the following morning’ was what he told me. The scene is less than half a mile south of Billy Ray’s car. If Jenny had told Rutledge there was money in the car, he easily could have broken into it, taken the stash, then sat back and let it play out.”

I broke away from Garrett and out toward the water. It all seemed the same. On the flats, a fisherman tossed a cast net over the side of his boat, and the sun reflected off the splash. At the marina across the bay, a boat was being brought out from the racks to where it would be lowered into the water.

“He cut it out of the interview,” Morgan explained, “but in the second interview, Jenny would mention the cash. Rutledge didn’t snatch her; the Colemans did. Do you think they’re working together, and Rutledge had the Colemans kidnap her?”

“No,” I turned to Morgan. “I’m confident the Colemans have nothing to do with Rutledge. They would’ve rolled when we talked with them. Plus they’re the ones who initially told us that Jenny did
mention that Billy Ray had told her about the money. We just didn’t connect the dots.”

“Zach’s call to her.” Garrett added.

“You know it’s on her phone. Rutledge saw it. He offered to have me look at it, knowing I wouldn’t take him up.” I shook my head in disgust. “Nice bluff. He outplayed me.” I realized what else had bothered me during that conversation with Rutledge in the truck as we’d left the Colemans—what had flashed in my mind but I couldn’t hold on to. I verbalized it as the thought hit my brain. “When I informed him that Jenny had told the Colemans that Billy Ray had spilled to her about the money, Rutledge’s first reaction was to claim she never told him.”

“A reflexive, defensive remark.”

“He moved on quickly from there,” I added as I recalled the conversation. “Tried to sound nonchalant about the whole thing.”

“But in the second interview,” Morgan cut in, returning to his earlier comment, “wouldn’t this have come out?”

“Rutledge wasn’t worried about the second interview,” Garrett said and took a drink from a bottle of water. “He would have blown right through her. He’d simply deny she had mentioned it the first time around. Who’d believe a runaway eighteen-year-old girl over a detective with a tape recording to back him up? Besides, we don’t know exactly what he did say to Jenny. When she disappeared, it was a gift in his lap. Who are you calling?”

“Binelli,” I said as I punched my phone. “She said something earlier that I didn’t pay much attention to. Something about recognizing one of the names when I’d told her McGlashan and Rutledge were the detectives in charge. I’d assumed she’d meant McGlashan, with his Super Bowl ring and all, but maybe she meant Rutledge.” I left a voice mail and told her to run a check on Eric Rutledge. I didn’t know why the FBI would have anything on him, but it was another line in the water.

I looked at Garrett. “Toss me that.” He threw his bottle of water at me, and I finished it off. “When it was just Rutledge,” I said, picking up where Garrett had left off, “he could steamroll Jenny’s assertions about the money. But once we discovered there
was
money in Billy Ray’s car, meaning there were other people who could corroborate her claim, her story gained credence. Her kidnapping impedes his case. He can’t say she was confused and neglected to mention it during the first interview. And we led him to that conclusion.”

“You’re jumping,” Garrett said. “Making unsubstantiated conclusions. Maybe it was McGlashan who left the crime scene and found the car. Maybe it was a third person we don’t even know.”

“Rutledge is a Vegas junkie. Want to bet he doesn’t owe money to nasty people?”

“He might, or he could just be an opportunist.”

“Rutledge didn’t interview the renters at the apartment,” I added, as my mind replayed all the missed signs. “Even McGlashan questioned that and said he’d ask him to reconsider. Everybody viewed Jenny as a runaway who had run again. That gave the police a free pass. No one gave a damn, and that’s not the worst of it.”

I paused, but neither Garrett nor Morgan was going in. They both knew and were too considerate to incriminate me. I hanged myself. “I gave Rutledge the Winking Lizard,” I said to no one, and then everything was astonishingly quiet. No boats, no birds, no waves crashing off my seawall. Even the wind died in symphony.

Hadley III whined, and Garrett said, “We use that. We focus on Rutledge, and we find Jenny.”

“McGlashan indicated that Rutledge had only been with the department a short time,” I said, “and based on McGlashan’s comment on Vegas, and his own preference for fishing, I don’t make the two out to be after-hours buddies. McGlashan said Rutledge had relocated from Tampa. Maybe he still keeps a place up—”

“I’ll see what I can find,” Morgan said, darting into my house. He was gone longer than I would have thought. I was about to yell at him and tell him where my iPad was when he came back to the porch with it and plopped back down on the chair. I knew what he would say before he spoke.

He said, “I fed Hadley the Third.”

Okay, so I didn’t know. He continued with what I’d expected. “Over four million people. Too many hits to chase them down one-on-one. Middle initial?”

“No clue,” I said.

Morgan punched the pad and said, “According to the Lee County site, it’s Eric W. Rutledge.” He struck the tablet a few more times and said, “That cuts it down, but there’s no way of knowing who uses their middle initial and who doesn’t.”

“I’m giving McGlashan a call. I’ll bring him up to speed and see if Rutledge’s missing.” I picked up my phone.

“Ease off,” Garrett said. He kept his eye on me as a fishing boat,
Reel Girls,
with three outboards cruised off the end of my dock. I’d not seen it before.

“Why?”

“What if McGlashan’s interests aren’t aligned with ours?” He paced the far end of the porch like a caged cat. “You don’t know him that well. He might be a political animal, and his prime concern is to protect the department. He could end up working against us.”

“I’ll go with my gut. He’s on our side. He won’t hide behind department bureaucracy. I don’t think there’s any love lost between him and Rutledge.” I hit McGlashan’s number but got voice mail. I asked him to give me a call and said it was urgent.

Binelli called back and said she was still checking on Eric Rutledge. The name wasn’t the strong hit for her that I’d hoped it would be. She professed a belief that she had at least seen it somewhere because, “They generally don’t pass out a list of good people.” I told her he might have Vegas debt and to cast a wide net in her search for information on him. We disconnected.

“We’ve got another problem,” I said.

“Dangelo,” Garrett responded. He ceased his motion and faced the water. “He’ll think we took Jenny, maybe even finger us for the money. We need to let him know it wasn’t us. Before we focus on Rutledge and Jenny”—he turned to me—“we have to talk with him.”