Here, five miles west of the ocean and on the ass end of the Palm Beach County airport, it was all about function. From the grab-a-Slurpee gas stations on every corner to the treeless tracts of multilaned boulevards, everything was geared to moving cars along as quickly as possible.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office fit right into its surroundings. It was a huge, blocky complex painted a Crayola-flesh color, tarted up with waxy plants that could survive a decade’s drought. A monolithic addition of the same pallid stucco rose in the back, its slitted windows identifying it as a jail.
Louis parked the Mustang near a white and green sheriff’s cruiser, and he and Mel went inside.
The lobby was standard law-enforcement fare: yellow cinder-block walls and bulletin boards plastered with wanted posters and notices. The three rows of metal folding chairs were occupied by the usual sorry-looking souls watching Wheel of Fortune on TV while they waited for their numbers to be called.
After the sergeant behind the desk tossed Louis and Mel visitor’s passes, he buzzed them through. The squad room was a maze of cubicles. There was a lingering odor of tacos and burnt coffee in the air, along with the steady ring of phones.
Louis had called ahead, and Detective Ron Barberry met them at the door to the Violent Crimes Division. He was a squat man with a lion’s mane of white hair and a face made for a caricature artist: flat, apelike brow, ragged salt-and-pepper mustache, and horseshoe jaw. His bleary gaze, rolled-up sleeves-revealing a nicotine patch-and unkempt nails tagged him clearly as a cop who lived in the station and the local tavern.
Probably the strip joint Louis had seen at the corner of Gun Club Road.
“You got fifteen minutes,” Barberry said as he waved them toward the back of the room.
Barberry parked his butt on the corner of a messy desk. His gaze lingered on Mel like he couldn’t figure out what kind of man wore yellow sunglasses. His hard brown eyes finally swung back to Louis.
“You working for Kent?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” Louis said. He felt Mel’s eyes on him but didn’t turn to him. “We’re just checking things out right now.”
“So what do you want from us?” Barberry asked.
“Kent’s afraid you guys have already made up your minds about him and aren’t going to look any further,” Louis said.
Barberry rooted through the debris in a drawer and came out with a pack of Big Red gum. As he folded a stick into his mouth, he glanced at Mel, who was making his way through the desks toward an empty chair.
“What’s wrong with him?” he whispered to Louis. “He got trouble seeing?”
“Yes, I do,” Mel said, turning back. “But I can hear really well.”
Barberry reddened and pulled out his own chair. “Oh. Sorry, buddy. Here.”
Mel gave him a hard stare and came back to sit down, crossing his arms.
Barberry turned back to Louis. “Look, I’m gonna make this easy for you. That fudge packer Kent is as guilty as a whore with the clap. He needs to hire himself a good lawyer, not a couple of out-of-work PIs.”
Louis heard a squeak and looked back to see Mel slowly spinning his chair around away from Barberry.
“Detective,” Louis said, looking back at Barberry. “How about a little cooperation here? Mel and I are both ex-cops, and we’re not trying to make anyone here look bad.”
Barberry glanced at Mel. “You worked in homicide?”
Mel nodded. “Miami.”
“So what’s wrong with your eyes?”
“Retinitis pigmentosa.”
Barberry blinked. “My mom’s got the same thing.”
“That so?” Mel said.
Barberry nodded brusquely. “Yeah. Shit… that’s tough. I mean for you being a cop and all.”
Mel took off his sunglasses. His face was sunburnt, and he had two white circles around his eyes. “How’s your mother doing?” he asked.
“She’s got a nurse, but it still ain’t easy for her.” Barberry cleared his throat and reached for an accordion file on his desk. “Out of consideration for that, I’ll throw you two dogs some bones. They found the corpse in Devil’s Garden.”
“What’s that?” Louis asked.
“Some dot-on-the-map place south of Clewiston,” Barberry said. “Lots of cattle farms out there. Anyway, some dogs sniffed out Durand around dawn. He was laying in a crappy old cattle pen, naked as a jaybird.”
“Did you find his clothes?” Mel asked.
“Nope.”
“What about a wallet, jewelry, anything?”
“Nope.”
“Has the head turned up yet?”
“Nope.”
“Did you find a weapon?”
“Nope.”
“What about a time of death?”
Barberry plucked a set of stapled reports from the accordion file and flipped a few pages. “ME’s best estimate puts the TOD between midnight and three A.M.”
“How did you identify him?” Louis asked. “Prints?
Barberry nodded. “We got lucky. The sucker was in AFIS.”
“He had a record?”
Barberry grinned. “Don’t they all? He was busted in Miami on a solicitation charge.” He set the papers down and picked up his pack of Big Red. He offered a stick to Mel, who shook his head and pulled out a pack of Kools.
“You can’t light up in here,” Barberry said. “It’s a new law. You gotta go outside with the other lepers.”
Mel paused, Zippo lighter in the air, then pocketed the Kools. “How’d you tie him to Kent?” he asked.
“That’s the address on record for Durand’s driver’s license. The boyfriend came here to confirm the ID. Once I met Kent, I knew exactly what I was looking at.”
“Any witnesses to anything going on that night?” Louis asked.
Barberry swung his eyes back to Louis. “I guess you’ll read this in the papers, so I might as well tell you,” he said. “We don’t have anyone who saw anything around the cattle pen, but we got a sighting of a car cruising through Clewiston around one A.M. the night before we found Durand.”
“What kind of car?” Louis asked.
“Maybe a Rolls-Royce or something like it.”
“Get a plate?”
Barberry shook his head, looking for something in the report. “The witness just described it as a ‘big rich-guy car,’ so we showed him photos of Rollses and Bentleys and shit. He couldn’t say for sure what it was. Just that it was a big rich-guy car and it might have been light brown.” Barberry closed the file and tossed it onto the desk. “Or maybe white or tan. Or gold.”
Louis heard a metallic click and glanced at Mel, who was rhythmically opening and closing the Zippo.
Barberry watched Mel for a moment, then looked back at Louis. “The witness said he read in the Clewiston News that we found a body, so he thought he should report the fancy car,” Barberry said. “He said he just thought it was weird to see a car like that in a place like Clewiston.”
“A Rolls or a Bentley would have a very distinct kind of tire,” Louis said. “Did you get any tracks from the area of the cattle pen?”
Barberry shook his head. “No tires. Only dog paws, cowboy boots, work boots, and bare feet that probably belonged to Durand. Oh, and horse hooves, too.”
“Horses?” Louis said.
Barberry paused. “Yeah. It was some cowboys down there that found him.”
“If the ground was soft enough for all that,” Louis said, “didn’t you wonder why there were no tire tracks?”
Barberry shrugged. “The main road going in is asphalt and then hard-packed gravel. Kent probably parked on the gravel and made Durand walk to the pen.”
Louis couldn’t quite envision things the way Barberry described them. He couldn’t imagine that, out there in the middle of nowhere, there had been no tire tracks at all. The people who worked out there had to drive some sort of vehicles.
“What kinds of cars do Kent and Durand own?” Louis asked.
“Durand had some beat-up black Honda that’s been in the garage for three weeks. The older fudge packer doesn’t even own a car.” Suddenly, Barberry’s eyes shot to Mel. “Hey, do you mind not doing that?”