A False Dawn

FIFTY-SIX

I saw a TV news reporter and his cameraman slip under the crime scene tape.

Dan said, “O’Brien! Wait a damn minute!”

It was too late for Dan to pull me back or have an officer tackle me. Slater saw me coming. There was a mixture of nervousness and contrived arrogance in his eyes.

“What are you doing here, O’Brien? Might have known you’d be here. Anytime there’s a body, there’s O’Brien. Now why’s that?”

“I know you killed her.”

“I’m having you committed. We’ll Baker Act you for your own protection.”

“How is it investigating your own crime, Slater? Which do you like best, the killing part or coming back as the actor, acting like you’re investigating a crime when you’re covering up one? Doing your best to make it a cold case.”

The pupils in his eyes became tiny enraged dots.

“Fuck you!” He raised his right hand, and I grabbed his wrist, turning his hand over, exposing a fresh scrape on his palm. The portable lights from a TV news crew turned on, freezing an image of Slater while I gripped his wrist. He drew back his left fist to connect just above my eye. I felt my skin split and the blood flow.

Two uniforms pulled me back. A reporter yelled, “Get a close up!”

“Get them back behind the tape!” Slater bellowed. “This is a crime scene!”

Dan ran up. “All right, gentlemen, behind the line, you know the rules.”

“What’s the argument about?” asked a reporter holding a microphone.

“Just a little misunderstanding in the middle of a crime scene investigation. The gentleman was overcome with grief and struck out at Detective Slater. I’m sure there is nothing intentional. Emotions are a little frayed at a time like this.”

Dan was good. He turned toward Slater, the cameras still rolling and said, “I’m sure if the gentleman volunteers to leave the property peacefully, we won’t have a need to file charges under these trying circumstances. Don’t you agree Detective Slater?”

Slater didn’t know how to react, his mouth opening, trying to form the right words. He said, “Yeah, I’m sure it was just an overreaction, but this is one reason why we can’t allow anyone to cross into a working crime scene.”

“How was the victim killed?” asked another reporter.

Slater stepped closer toward the TV camera. His composure regained. “This has been one of the toughest nights in my life. We’ve lost one of the finest members of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department…”

Dan motioned for me to follow him to one side. Under the seclusion of a tall tree he said, “That was so dumb! What were you trying to prove? You take a swing at the chief of fucking detectives while TV news crews are camped out to record it. And I know you saw them coming!”

“Let’s hope they got their close ups.”

“What are you saying? You know, Leslie had her doubts about you. At first, she didn’t know if you were really good or just plain lucky. She felt you were good. Maybe the best. Why’d you go off like a nut? Slater can have you committed, and he can get a court order tonight. This the kinda shit you did at Miami PD?”

I looked at my watch. “Call your office and record the 11:00 news. You have twenty minutes.”

“Why?”

“I want to see if they got a close-up of Slater’s hand.”

“Why?

“Because it was scraped and bloody, just like he slid into home plate.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes, and if the cameras saw it, you have visible proof.”

“A scrape on the palm of his hand won’t get a conviction.”

“It will if you can get some skin samples off the sidewalk. The sprinklers didn’t hit the sidewalk. A tiny sample might be still there. Right where the old man pointed.”

“Maybe.”

“Use sheets of clear adhesive plastic to lift anything if something’s there. Bring in klieg lights and shine them at a low angle across the sidewalk. Look for fibers, grass, blood, anything. Find the hooded sweatshirt he wore. Analyze it for the grass and water stains. Do a chemical analysis on the grass. Her yard is St. Augustine. The grass leaves a distinct stain. The well water will be like nature’s fingerprint swirling with good stuff like iron and sulfur. Take a sample from Leslie’s well. Compare that with what’s in Slater’s sweatshirt. If the stuff matches, book the bastard, Dan.”

I started toward the Jeep.

Dan said, “Sean, wait a sec.” I turned to face him. “Leslie was right about you.”

“He’s not convicted yet. And he’s not in this alone. Find that sweatshirt. Get a court order, knock down his door, do whatever it takes. Find it tonight while he’s here.”

“Where you going?”

“To be with a friend.”

I sat with Max on my screened porch and watched the fireflies play tag in the dark down by the river. Heat lighting danced in the sky. I stretched out in my rocking chair, my feet up on the cypress table, Max curled in my lap. The cicadas and the crickets seemed to alternate their chanting. A bullfrog droned across the river.

I sipped three fingers’ worth of Jameson over ice and thought about Leslie, thought about the last thing she’d said to me, Let’s find a place where there are a lot of tropical flowers, turquoise sea and gentle people with genuine smiles. My chest felt like a vice was compressing it.

The temperature started dropping, and the wind picked up, pushing the air across the river. I could smell rain coming. I scratched Max behind her ears. She didn’t even open her eyes. “Max, let’s go to bed.”

I finished the Irish whiskey, picked up Max, and started for the bedroom. As I walked past Sherri’s framed picture, I stopped, my eyes falling on hers. “Goodnight,” I said. Max licked my chin, and we went to bed.

I lay there in the dark for more than an hour, the events of the day played back in my mind, scenes in slow-motion, intercut with my own public service messages of how I could have prevented Leslie’s death.

Max sensed my restlessness. She inched up beside me and laid her head on my chest. I rubbed her neck for a few minutes, my eyes heavy, my mind drifting to the sea. Then darkness descended like a high tide at midnight and carried everything away.

They had no faces. I felt myself reaching out to catch one. All I wanted to do was get my hands around a neck. They were dark figures at the foot of the bed. Faceless apparitions. Standing, staring, appearing somewhere between the threshold of madness and dreams.

In the white flash of a lighting bolt, I sat straight up in the bed. I tossed the sheet off, sweat dripping through my chest hair and down my sides. My heart pounded, and my lungs seemed to ache for more air than what the bedroom could provide. Distant thunder rumbled downriver. Through the windows, I could see the live oaks swaying in the wind.

Max stuck her head up like a prairie dog coming out of her den. She looked at me through sleepy eyes, her tail wagging. She crawled in my lap and licked my hand. She made one of her yawns that seemed to whinny at the same instant.

“Want some fresh air, Max?”

I opened my back door to the porch and stepped out into the night air. It was after 3:00 A.M. Standing on my front porch, I thought about Joe Billie and the native people that once populated the river basin. Maybe some of my night stalkers were spirits of these long-forgotten people. Maybe they were angry that I was here. I couldn’t fault them. After we annihilated their race, they had a right to be pissed off.

A cool breeze brought the promise of rain and the scent of blooming night jasmine. Within a minute, the first large drops began plopping, almost one at a time, on the tin roof. They were soft tears from heaven, and then the gentle weeping turned into frenzied sobbing.

Thunder hit on top of us with the percussion of mortars, lightning slicing through the black sky striking a large oak at the river’s edge. The light was a searing explosion of white heat, shearing a thick limb in a split-second freeze frame of rain and raging wind.

The air smelled of sulfur, burnt oak, and wet Spanish moss. I sat down in the porch rocker and put Max on my lap. Within a few minutes she fell asleep. I listened to the rhythm of rain beating the tin roof, the palm fronds scraping the screened porch, and the frogs singing in chorus of thousands. Long rolls of thunder seemed far away now.

The storm passed, and the night shadows became gray ghosts that faded into trees in the dawn of morning light. A mist rose from the river’s surface. Soon the sun, like a glowing red coal, cleared the tree line and backlit the mist. The light painted the river in red brushstrokes, steam rising, slowly twirling as if ruddy spirits were slow-dancing across a watery stage.

The reclusive dream weaver finally came. I was a young boy again walking through an orange grove on our farm. I stood on my tiptoes to pick one of the ripe oranges. I jumped and snatched the orange like a shortstop grabbing a fly ball barehanded. With my pocketknife, I sliced the orange in half. The juice dripped down my hands and wrists. The sun was warm on my face. I bit into the orange, and the sweet liquid quenched a thirst deep in the back of my throat.