Bobby Joe leaned away until his back was against the passenger window. “You know better than that.” There was a noticeable tremor in his voice.
“Yes, I know better. The question is, do you?”
“You don’t ever have to worry about it. Look, I don’t want any trouble with you. I need your help, that’s all.”
The man placed his hand on the back of Bobby Joe’s neck and he could feel a trembling that radiated up from his shoulders. “You’re on your own in this, Bobby Joe. Just make sure you never drag me into it. You understand what I mean?”
“Yeah, I understand.” The trembling intensified. “Listen, you don’t have to worry about it. Really, you don’t.”
The man watched Bobby Joe’s eyes and he knew there was no way he could trust him. He was weak and foolish and when it came down to it, he’d only think about saving his own skinny backside. But you don’t know everything, Bobby Joe. And there’s one thing you sure don’t know. You don’t know you’re already a dead man.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By the time he finished the canvass of Darlene’s neighbors, Harry had three positive IDs on Bobby Joe Waldo’s photo. All were reasonably sure they had seen him entering or leaving Darlene’s apartment. Joshua Brown, the elderly neighbor who had provided Harry with the list of license plate numbers, was the most certain. Brown claimed that Bobby Joe had nearly knocked him down as he hurried out of Darlene’s apartment one evening.
“I ’member him ’cause he was in such a rush to get away,” Brown said. “Even tol’ me to watch where I was goin’ with my damn dog. That’s what he said: ‘your damn dog.’ Little pissant. And I ’member thinkin’ at the time that he musta parked his car on another street so nobody would see it here. I even thought maybe I’d follow him and get his plate number, but he was movin’ too fast for me to keep up.”
Harry drove the short distance to the Peek-a-Boo Lounge. He already had a positive ID from Anita Molari, but now he wanted to see if any of the other dancers could place Bobby Joe in the club.
The interior was just as it had been on his earlier visit, the air still permeated with the same unpleasant mix of stale liquor and human sweat. He spoke individually to each of the twelve dancers working that night and three were sure they had seen the young minister at the bar. Of the three, two were even certain they’d seen him sitting next to Darlene Beckett, with one insisting that Darlene had been “giving the kid her best moves,” and that the next time she’d looked they were gone.
The call came into Harry’s cell phone just as he was crossing the parking lot headed back to his car, and minutes later he was speeding toward Pinellas County with lights flashing and siren blaring.
The trailer park was on a small lake just off Keystone Road, a neat, quiet, secluded community with a scattering of large shade trees that kept the sun off the tin structures. Jim Morgan was standing beside an unmarked car; Vicky was thirty feet away helping a crime scene officer set up a laser to determine the trajectory of the bullet that had smashed through a trailer window.
Harry walked up beside Morgan and raised his chin toward the trailer. “Your place?” he asked.
Morgan nodded. “It used to be my aunt’s. She left it to me when she passed.”
“Were you inside when the shot was fired?”
Again, Morgan nodded. “I’d just gotten home and I was in the kitchen making a sandwich and I hear this thud as the bullet hits my refrigerator.”
“Just the thud? No sound of a gun being fired?”
Morgan shook his head. “That’s the thing, Harry. There wasn’t any sound. I mean, even if it had come from inside another trailer I would have heard something.”
“Did you hear a car?”
“I don’t have any recollection of a car. But that wouldn’t be unusual. There are almost a hundred units in the park, and there are cars going in and out all the time, so I wouldn’t have paid much attention if I heard one approaching. I also hit the floor as soon as I realized what was happening, so I could have missed the sound of a car pulling away. The first thing I thought of when I was laying on the floor was that it’s too thick in here for a bullet to have come from a long distance, so I got my own weapon out, called it in on my cell, and crawled to the back door so I could work my way around the house. Of course, there was no one there by the time I did. I don’t want to be dramatic about it, but the only thing I can think of is that whoever did this used some kind of suppressor.”
“You seem pretty calm given what happened.”
Morgan gave him a boyish grin. “Yeah, now I am. With all you guys here. You should of seen me right after it happened. I had to check to make sure my pants were dry.”
Vicky approached holding a plastic bag. She held it up. There was a mangled bullet inside.
“It’s a. 38. But as far as ballistics go, the slug is useless. The laser shows a trajectory that indicates the shot was fired from the same height the shooter would have been at if he was seated in a car.”
“No chance it came from a trailer across the road?”
“Only if the shooter was lying on the ground in front of the trailer directly across from the window.”
Harry turned and studied the trailer on the opposite side of the narrow road. He turned back to Morgan. “Who lives there?”
“An elderly couple, late seventies, early eighties. I can’t see either of them being able to handle a weapon.”
“We’ll check them out, but I agree, it doesn’t sound very likely.” Harry studied the ground for a moment. “Any enemies from past police work? Or anything personal?”
Morgan shook his head. “Nobody I can think of.”
“There could be one,” Vicky piped in. “But not from the past; from the case we’re working on now.”
Harry had already thought of Nick Benevuto, but was waiting for someone else to voice the suspicion. “Let’s work the scene here first. If we don’t find anything we’ll brace Nick.” He turned to Morgan. “Vicky and I will do it. I don’t want you there. He’s pretty hot about you and the computer stuff you found, and I don’t want to aggravate the situation.”
Morgan seemed suddenly agitated. “You’re not taking me off the case, are you?”
“No, don’t worry about that,” Harry said. “I just don’t want you there when we interview Nick about this.”
The canvass of the trailer park produced nothing. No one in the immediate vicinity of Morgan’s trailer had heard or seen anything untoward. Reluctantly, at ten p.m., Harry moved on to Nick Benevuto.
Nick lived in an older condo complex in Countryside, a densely populated residential area on the northern fringes of Clearwater. Twenty-five years earlier it was among the first to fall victim to the real estate boom, its sprawling orange groves and horse farms seeming to disappear overnight. Now the only country left in Countryside was its name.
Nick’s car was parked outside his unit. Harry placed his hand on the hood. It was hot to the touch. Vicky gave him a questioning look.
“It’s been driven recently,” he said. He watched a small smile begin to form at the corners of her mouth, and added: “For whatever that’s worth.”
“At least we know we’re not wasting our time,” she said.
It took Nick almost a full minute to answer the door, and when he did he had a drink in his hand. His eyes told Harry it had not been his first. Harry saw suspicion flood Nick’s face. It only hardened when his gaze switched to Vicky. He looked back at Harry.
“I guess it’s not a social call.” He raised his chin toward Vicky. “Not if you need your partner with you.” His voice was steady, no slur that Harry could detect.
“Wish it was. Can we come in? It won’t take long.”
Nick was dressed in khaki shorts and a T-shirt that emphasized the belly he had earned through a lot of hard drinking. He gave Harry a long stare; then a small who-gives-a-damn shrug. “Sure, come in. After dealing with those rat bastards from IAD, how much worse can it get?”