When Louis pulled up to the pink house, a young man came out the front door, the sun glinting off something silver on his chest. He was just a silhouette in the brightness, but Louis recognized the crisp blue sleeves, the bulge of a holster and the swing of the baton at his hip.
“Can I help you?”
Louis walked to the porch, stepping into the shade of a palm tree so he could see the officer’s face. He was definitely Fort Myers police, and his face still had that eager look that went with being new. He wasn’t a detective, so why was he here? As far as Louis knew, no one at the department cared about Kitty Jagger.
“My name’s Kincaid. I’m here to see Bob Ahnert.”
The officer grinned. “Oh yeah, Dad’s been waiting on you. He’s been excited all morning, thinking someone wanted to come ask about some old case.”
“You work for Chief Horton?” Louis asked.
“Yeah, just passed my six-month mark. You know Horton?”
Louis nodded. “Met him last March.”
Suddenly, the officer’s face changed. “You’re that Kincaid.” He recovered enough to stick out his hand. “Dave Ahnert, pleasure to meet you.”
Louis shook his hand, wondering what Dave Ahnert had heard about him.
Dave Ahnert turned to the open front door. “Dad! You got company!” He turned back to Louis. “I gotta get going. Let yourself in.”
Louis watched him trot to the curb, where a blue and white cruiser was pulling up. When Louis turned back to the house, Bob Ahnert was standing on the porch.
He was a big guy, pushing sixty, with a silver brush-cut atop a fleshy sunburned face. Black-rimmed glasses circled piercing blue eyes.
“Mr. Ahnert?”
“That’s me,” he said.
“I’m Louis Kincaid, I called earlier.”
Ahnert stared at him through the glasses, his lips drawn in a line.
“I called Sheriff Mobley,” Ahnert said. “Asked him if he knew what you might want with me. He said you were looking into the Kitty Jagger case. That true?”
Louis nodded, feeling the sun on his back.
“Why?” Ahnert asked.
“I think the Spencer Duvall case and Kitty’s murder might be related.”
“Jack Cade was convicted of killing Kitty. That isn’t good enough for you?”
Louis shook his head. “No, it isn’t.”
Ahnert stared at him a long time. Louis squinted at Ahnert, trying to read his face. “You going to talk to me or not?” Louis asked finally.
Ahnert nodded toward the house. “Come on in,” he said.
Louis followed Ahnert through the living room and into a dimly lit den. Louis paused at the doorway, struck by the smell of stale cigar smoke. The blinds were drawn and the television was on, tuned to a rerun of Barney Miller.
The walls were covered with framed pictures, lots of family portraits that showed a young Ahnert with his brunette wife and two kids, and then a succession of portraits capturing the kids as they grew. A second wall was given over to photographs of cops in various color uniforms and group photos of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. There was a portrait of a very young Ahnert in his uniform. He looked remarkably like his son Dave, the same eagerness there in the eyes.
Ahnert settled into a frayed green chair stained at the headrest. He picked up the remote and muted the sound but didn’t turn it off.
“Take a seat,” Ahnert said. “I don’t like looking up at people.”
Louis took the chair next to him. On the small table between them was the remains of a turkey sandwich and an ashtray that held a dead cigar and a book of matches from O’Sullivan’s Bar.
“Did you read my case file?” Ahnert asked.
Louis nodded. “Once through.”
“Then you see what I saw.”
“There’s more to a case than ink and paper. You were there. You spoke with people. You saw the crime scene. You must have gotten a sense of Kitty’s case.”
Ahnert snorted softly, looking toward the television. “A sense? What good are senses? It’s evidence that convicts, not ESP.”
Louis leaned forward. “Jack Cade asked about you.”
Ahnert’s eyes shot to Louis’s face. “Why would he do that?”
“You tell me,” Louis said. “He wondered what your ‘take’ on him was. Why would he care? What kind of relationship did you have?”
Ahnert picked up the matchbook. Louis hoped he wasn’t going to light the cigar.
“I didn’t care about him, and the relationship as you call it was non-existent,” Ahnert said. “I was a cop, he was a suspect. I never gave him any reason to think I wanted anything but the truth.”
“Did you get it?”
Ahnert looked back at the television again. “I’ve worked thirty-five years for this department, Mr. Kincaid. It was and is a good department, with good officers. We did everything right on that case. We did it by the book. We had everything we needed to charge Jack Cade and get him convicted.”
“I know. I saw the evidence. But I still have questions.”
Ahnert nodded, flipping the matchbook open and closed with his fingers as he stared blankly at the TV screen. “All right then. Go ahead and ask.”
“I read that Kitty’s father reported her missing around midnight the night she didn’t come home. There’s no missing person’s report in the file. Did you take one?”
Ahnert didn’t look at him. “Procedure was twenty-four hours.”
“Small town in the sixties, a minor girl?” Louis paused a beat. “So why didn’t you take a report?”
Ahnert didn’t answer. Louis was about to ask again when suddenly Ahnert pushed himself out of the chair and went to the far wall. He took down one of the framed pictures and held it out to Louis.
“This is why,” Ahnert said.
Louis took it. It was a color portrait of a teenaged girl with long dark hair, aged seventeen or eighteen. It was probably a class portrait, but the girl wasn’t wearing the usual prim blouse or sweater. She was dressed in a rainbow tie-dyed dress, a bright green headband tied across her forehead. She was wearing a collar of white beads. He’d seen the beads before. Amy, his baby-sitter, used to wear them, along with those big hoop earrings and heavy mascara that made her look like a very young Cher. What did they call those damn beads? Peace beads? Puka beads, that was it.
“That’s my daughter, Lou Ann,” Ahnert said. “She ran away from home on Thanksgiving night. Ran off to San Francisco to be a goddamn hippie. ‘Make love, not war,’ they said. Called me-her own father-a pig the night she left.”
Louis handed the photo back.
“Her mother died a couple years later,” Ahnert said, hanging the photo back up. “Lou Ann didn’t even send a card.”
“Kids can be self-centered.”
Ahnert didn’t answer. He came back and sat down in the chair, his eyes going back to the television. Louis waited, watching Detectives Fish and Dietrich mouth an argument.
“You thought Kitty Jagger was a runaway?” Louis said finally.
Ahnert gave a small nod. “When that call came in, I didn’t see much sense in pulling overtime to chase down an ungrateful teenager who was probably out smoking dope.”
Louis could feel his anger welling up inside. Willard Jagger reported Kitty missing one hour after she left work. If she had been abducted-or even gone willingly with someone-there was a good chance she was still alive when Ahnert got the call.
“You made a mistake, Detective,” Louis said. “She might have still been alive at midnight.”
Ahnert’s shoulders visibly tightened. “I don’t believe she was.”
It’s easier to believe that, Louis thought. But he said nothing. He should have known Ahnert would protect his procedure. And his case. Anything less would make him look incompetent. There was nothing left to try but a little fishing.
“Did you know Kitty?” Louis asked.
Ahnert’s fingers paused on the matchbook. “I knew of her.”