And Swann had no doubt that Mead had seen a lot more than he had written.
He checked his watch. It was almost four P.M. and the swing-shift officers, including Mead, would be wandering in soon. Swann knew Mead was always on time and always got dropped off by his girlfriend across the street at Hamburger Heaven. Swann would wait for him there.
Mead saw him as soon as he shut the car door. With a glance at the station, he took off his sunglasses and came toward Swann. He had the look of a boy who’d just learned his father had been charged with a crime.
Swann understood. Like everyone in the department, Mead knew Swann had been suspended and maybe had already heard he’d been let go. It had to rattle the kid a little. Swann had been his training officer and then his boss for the last four years. If there was anyone to trust in that building, it was this kid.
“Did they fire you?” Mead asked.
“Yeah,” Swann said. “But I’ll be fine. You just need to keep going in there every day and do your job. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for being here so you could tell me yourself.”
“Well, that’s not the only reason I’m here,” Swann said. “I wanted to ask you some questions about a call you took last night at the Lyons house.”
“Oh, wow,” Mead said. “That was a weird one.”
“I need to know exactly what the scene looked like when you walked up.”
Mead’s eyes slipped to the station across the street. “You sure I can tell you all this?”
“It’s important, Gavin.”
Mead nodded. “Well, you know it’s a long walk from the cruiser up their drive. I was hustling, because Dispatch said there might be an altercation between the intruder and Mr. Lyons, but as soon as I got there, I saw Mr. Lyons already had the subject subdued and was trying to drag him somewhere.”
“In which direction?”
Mead shrugged. “I wasn’t sure,” he said. “Maybe around the side of the house. It was hard to tell, with the place looking like a jungle and all.”
“Was Kavanagh fighting him? Struggling?”
“No, sir,” Mead said. “Mr. Kavanagh wasn’t in any shape to fight anyone. Mr. Lyons had already kicked the crap out of him.”
“What did he look like?” Swann asked.
“Who?”
“Byrne Kavanagh.”
“I told you, he was beat up.”
“No, physical characteristics. Clothing.”
“Oh,” Mead said. “He was wearing jeans and a nice white shirt, but it was all bloody. I recall from his stats, he was twenty-three, six foot, and one-sixty.”
“Was he a good-looking guy?”
“Sir?”
“The kind of guy women would like?”
Mead shrugged. “He looked like the kind of guy you see in a catalogue.”
“Where was Mrs. Lyons while you were in the yard?”
“She was hanging around the open front door,” Mead said. “One time, when she came out into the porch light, I caught a glimpse of her. It was a little freaky.”
“Why? Was she hurt, too?”
“No, but she was all dressed up,” Mead said. “Hair ribbons and this ruffly white dress.”
“A wedding dress?”
“No, it looked more like one of those old-fashioned doll dresses.”
“Did Mrs. Lyons say anything?”
“She just whimpered and mumbled a lot,” Mead said. “Mostly about making sure Mr. Kavanagh wasn’t hurt-wait-she called him Byrne.”
“So, she knew him?”
Mead looked away for a moment, then sighed. “I really hate assuming things, sir, and I know we’re supposed to keep our thoughts to ourselves, but…”
“Say it, Gavin.”
“I got the impression that Mr. Lyons had come home unexpectedly and interrupted Mrs. Lyons and Mr. Kavanagh playing some sort of… um… sexual game, if you get my drift.”
“You don’t think Mr. Lyons knew him?”
“Mr. Lyons was pretty drunk, sir,” Mead said. “It was hard to understand most of what he was yelling, but I can say with some certainty that he didn’t.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because when I walked up, I noticed Mr. Lyons had Mr. Kavanagh’s wallet in his hand. When I told him I couldn’t leave without removing Mr. Kavanagh, Mr. Lyons threw the wallet down and said, ‘It doesn’t matter, I know who he is now, anyway.’”
“What happened next?” Swann asked.
“I asked Mr. Lyons if he wanted me to arrest Mr. Kavanagh for trespassing or anything, and he said no, just take him away. So, I helped Mr. Kavanagh to my cruiser and escorted him across the bridge to the Circle K.”
Swann knew that the Circle K, a block from the bridge in West Palm, was their drop-off point for vagrants, drunks, and anyone else they wanted to throw off the island.
“Did Kavanagh say anything to you during the ride?” Swann asked.
“Not a word, until I asked him if he felt he needed medical attention,” Mead said. “He said no, all he wanted to do was go home and make a call.”
Swann ran a hand through his hair, trying to make sense of Mead’s story. If this case was about what they thought it was, then Byrne Kavanagh would turn out to be the latest in a series of young men who were being employed by older, rich women for sex. And based on what they knew so far, at least two-maybe three-of the men who had come before Byrne had ended up dead.
“Sir,” Mead said, “did I do anything wrong last night?”
“No,” Swann said. “You did exactly what the department would expect us to do.”
Mead stuck out a hand. “It’s been great working with you, Lieutenant,” he said. “You let me know where you end up, would you?”
Swann said he would, and Mead trotted off across the street. Swann stood there for a moment, then turned and went inside Hamburger Heaven. He got five dollars in quarters and stepped outside to the pay phone. He needed to call Louis and let him know what he had just found out.
But there was one other call he needed to make first. If not for Reggie, then for himself.
He dropped in eight quarters and dialed the number. On the sixth or seventh ring, he started to wonder if maybe he had misdialed it, but then a man answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Dad,” Swann said. “It’s Andrew.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Byrne Kavanagh’s apartment was at the end of an L-shaped building of pink stucco and blue doors. A rusty piece of tin mounted on the roof still tagged the place as the Breezy Palms Motor Court, but a newer and bigger sign near the driveway read CORONADO EFFICIENCIES-RENT BY WEEK OR MONTH.
Louis had the passenger door open before Swann put the BMW in park. When they stepped from the car, Louis unsnapped the holster on his belt and chambered a round in his Glock. He caught Swann looking at him.
Swann hadn’t said much on the ride over to West Palm Beach, but Louis knew what he was feeling. He had just been fired. He had no gun, no badge, no legal authority to be here.
“You don’t happen to have any plastic gloves in the car, do you?” Louis asked.
“Gloves?”
“Yeah,” Louis said. “If Kavanagh doesn’t answer, we’re going in.”
Swann went to his trunk. Louis looked up at the sky. It was only a little after six P.M., but it felt much later. Storm clouds were curling in from the west, billows of black and gray, made freakier by the lasers of lightning deep within.
Swann returned with two pairs of latex gloves. Louis couldn’t help but notice that they were top-of-the-line, dusted on the inside with talc to make them easy to slip on.
Louis led Swann to apartment twelve and knocked on the door. They had stopped at the Lyons home before coming out to West Palm, hoping to grill Dickie on last night’s altercation with Kavanagh, but there had been no answer. Mel had stayed back in Palm Beach, his assignment to keep trying to contact Dickie or Tink.
Their job was to find Kavanagh. Maybe to get some answers about how this prostitution ring ran and what had happened to the other three men. Even more important, they had to make sure Kavanagh himself wasn’t going to become victim number four.