Cold Case Killer Read online

  “You mean big headlines and all that.”

  “Right. Headlines and all that. If Punt was the one to bring Dyanne Darby’s murderer to justice, the advertising would promote the Fotopolus and Ashford Agency. Such promotion might be more valuable to a new business than monetary payment.”

  “Won’t beg. Jacksons no beg.”

  “With your permission I’ll call Punt and ask for an appointment for the three of us—you, me, and Randy. How about it?” I wished I hadn’t felt so trapped into this situation, but maybe Punt could ease me out of the action by agreeing that his firm would do the investigating for the publicity it might be worth.

  “Do I really have a choice?” Maxine asked.

  “Do I?” I countered. I started to punch in Punt’s number.

  FIVE

  “Wait,” Maxine jerked my hand from the phone. “I’ll have to ask my Randy before I agree to this. He may not want Punt Ashford’s help.”

  I rolled my eyes. “As if Randy has a lot of choices! As if he can afford to be so high-handed.” Then I pushed the phone toward her. “Go ahead. Call him. Get his promise that he’ll go with us to talk to Punt if Punt’s willing to listen.”

  Maxine shrugged and set the phone down. “No can do, Keely. My Randy, he’s off island today.”

  “Off island where?”

  “Yesterday afternoon he flew to New York City. The Big Apple.” Maxine gave me an aggrieved look. “Never been there myself, but my Randy, he go and he fly first class. He’s booked at Four Seasons hotel. First Class. You don’t believe this, I can give you his telephone number at that posh hotel.”

  I looked into Maxine’s eyes and her gaze met mine without wavering. “Please tell me why Randy has booked a flight to New York City. How does he happen to have money for a first class ticket, for a first class hotel? That makes no sense when you tell me he has no money to pay for an investigation that might clear his name in the eyes of a community that still may doubt his innocence. Someone might offer him a job if they felt him worthy of their trust.”

  “Important lawyers in New York pay Randy’s tab. Reverend Soto’s, too. Bigwigs. They’re putting them on a TV program so they can tell the whole world what’s happened to my Randy and to other freed ex-convicts. These lawyers and this TV station want the public to be aware.” Maxine looked at her watch, tapped it with her forefinger. “If you snap on TV we can watch the program in a few minutes.”

  My gaze darted from Maxine to my TV and then back to Maxine again. “Do we have time to go to your place to watch?”

  “Your TV broke?”

  “No TV problem. But I want to see that program and there’re too many chances for interruption here. Consuela’s my next client and she may arrive early. I’ll leave a note on my door telling her I’ll be back soon and asking her to wait.”

  Maxine chuckled. “Can’t imagine that one waiting for anyone, but come along with me then. We gotta hurry or we’ll miss the start of the program.”

  I had no idea where Maxine and Randy lived. A few weeks ago, a friend had recommended Maxine’s cleaning to me, and all my contacts with her had been by telephone. She’d parked her old Ford in the alley behind my office. The car looked as if rust might be the only thing holding it together. But I understood that. The salty tradewind in the Keys rusts everything but plastic. I took a half-breath. No point in dirtying my lungs with the alley’s garbage and spilled beer smell.

  “Maxine, you were lucky to find a parking place—even here in the alley.”

  “I know. But early morning is a good time to find parking—sometimes even on the street.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I refuse to own a car. I let the tourists vie for the parking places. That’s my green bicycle chained to the lightpost by my back door.”

  “I’m surprised someone doesn’t cut the chain and steal it.”

  “Sometimes I wheel it inside at night if there’s a parade or some other special after-dark activity.”

  “What if you need to go a long distance?” Maxine jingled her car keys as she opened her car door.

  “Then I call Maxi-Taxi, but that doesn’t happen often. On an island only two miles wide, almost everything’s within biking distance. Of course bicycling to home appointments or to meet clients is unhandy and it takes time, but for the most part my clients come to my office.”

  Maxine eased her roly-poly bulk under the steering wheel. “Guess a body can park a bike almost anywhere there’s a lamppost to chain it to.”

  “Right.” Upon entering Maxine’s car, I shoved a tin of Skoal lying on the seat aside and ducked to avoid a head-on collision with a pair of felt dice dangling from the sun visor. Maxine grunted as she tried to reach the dice, tuck them out of the way, but they kept falling down and she gave up that effort and concentrated on shoving the Skoal into the glove box.

  “Randy’s junk;” Maxine explained as if I hadn’t guessed. “He won the dice at a carnival before he went to prison and I had no heart for throwing them away. And now they stay put because Randy still likes them and because me and him, we share the car.”

  I needed a deep breath and I almost gagged on the smell of tobacco and stale cigarette smoke that clung to the car’s interior. Randy Jackson made me shudder.

  After we fastened our seat belts, Maxine revved the motor and we headed onto Duval and then turned toward the beach. Her radio was on and static crackling from her police scanner threatened to drown out any conversation until she snapped it off.

  “Where do you live, Maxine?”

  “Stock Island. Sometimes it’s quicker to drive by the beach than to take Flagler with all its traffic.”

  Stock Island! I didn’t know anyone who lived there, but I knew of its rough reputation as a service community for Key West. Marinas. Drydocks. Bars and taverns. Former home of the greyhound track. Gram said that in years past, men in dimly lit shacks on the island gambled on late-night cock fights. Don’t know how she knew that. Gossip, maybe. Cock fighting’s illegal now, but roosters still crow, and stray hens and chicks have become a nuisance in the lower Keys. Police kept busy on Stock Island.

  On South Roosevelt, we passed elegant apartments and high-rise condos that overlooked the beach and the sea. This morning, orange-jacketed teenagers picked up empty cans and Styrofoam boxes and shoved them into canvas bags.

  “Caught a few last night, didn’t they?” Maxine chuckled. “Right. Quite a few at that.” The police always give the kids they cite for using false IDs or for being drunk and disorderly the chance to work off their fine in lieu of being arrested and having their misdemeanors reported to their parents. Today’s workers projected a somber mood and moved with scant enthusiasm.

  “Has Randy ever been to New York before?”

  “Several times. My Randy, he’s a pretty good talker once they get him to open up and tell his story. The program people ask him questions and he gives them the answers they’re after. Why, he’s been on the Oprah show and Good Morning America. Even spoke out on Larry King Live. Also he’s done his talking on shows nobody’s ever heard much about—like the one today on Public TV.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Wrongfully Convicted. It’s a special program sponsored by Florida Public Television.”

  “I’ve never read anything about Randy’s TV appearances in the Citizen.”

  Maxine snorted. “Not likely you will, either. News people try to squelch the bad stuff whenever they can. Don’t want no tourists thinking that ex-cons are roaming Key West streets right along with regular folks.”

  Traffic picked up near the airport then thinned again as we passed what used to be Houseboat Row. Only two small catamarans remained lashed to the seawall. After over thirty years of arguments and legal maneuvering between the police and the houseboat owners, authorities had finally forced the houseboat dwellers out. They’d left kicking and screaming for less picturesque and more expensive moorings at nearby Garrison Bight. I sorta missed them. They lent a certain ambience to the islan
d, but then, I’d never had to deal with the water pollution near their boats. Nor the smell.

  When we crossed the Boca Chica Bridge, I looked down at fishing guides in their small crafts. Most of them were loaded with lunch coolers, bait, and fishing rods along with hopeful clients heading out for a day in the back-country flats. Fishing. Lots of sun. Calm winds. A great day. Fishing’s what I’d be doing this afternoon.

  Sunshine poured onto the golf course like liquid gold and also onto the ash-colored hill that rose close behind the fairways. Mount Trashmore. That’s what the locals called the mound when the city used it as a landfill. Gas stations. Bait shops. Quick Chick Café. At MacDonald Avenue Maxine turned right and we passed a large marina before we entered a street lined with trailer homes. Some looked to be in good repair, but others looked as if a strong wind would blow them away.

  “Wilma touched down here in several places,” Maxine said as if reading my mind.

  “But that hurricane happened almost two years ago.”

  “Takes some folk a while to get things going again.” Maxine slowed down. “Lived here over forty years after my husband bailed out.” She parked in a narrow slot next to an aluminum trailer with a blue canopy that formed a porch near the door.

  I didn’t ask about her husband or why he had “bailed out.” Husband talk’s off limits as far as I’m concerned.

  Maxine has a green thumb. Pots of pink geraniums, white orchids, and lavender hibiscus marked the boundary of her outdoor living area. A bougainvillea vine twined across the top of the trailer, dropping scarlet blossoms on her doorstep. Her home stood out like a beauty spot on an ugly face.

  “Randy grew up here. He’s known only two homes. Stock Island and Florida State Prison. He was a good boy, Keely. Mel Fisher called my Randy one of his best divers and hardest workers. He spoke out for my Randy at his trial, but his words make no nevermind in that courtroom.”

  “Where did Randy go to school?”

  “Key West High School. Got good grades, too. Never straight As, but good enough. Randy, he liked to read. Next to swimming and diving, he liked reading. And he liked the classics—those books most people pretend they’ve read. Well Randy read them. He told me that Shakespeare and Dickens and Tolstoy helped save his sanity during all those years in prison. Of course he liked Dick Francis and John D. McDonald, too. And who’s the fella what wrote the westerns? Hillerman. Tony Hillerman. Randy like Hillerman’s books, too.”

  After we got out of the car, Maxine unlocked the trailer, opened the door so I could enter, and then stood back. I’d just started to step inside her home when something darted across my path. I jumped, startled and frightened, but Maxine laughed.

  “Meet Lavonna.”

  I turned to look at a small iguana—head and back green as an emerald contrasting with a long dark tail. Maxine opened the trailer door wide, and Lavonna entered first.

  “A house pet?” A chill traveled up my backbone clear to my scalp. “She looks like a miniature dragon. Does she bite?”

  “Only fruits and veggies.” Maxine grinned and pulled a chunk of lettuce from her refrigerator and laid it beside a water dish on the floor protected by a piece of newspaper. The creature began eating. “Yes, she’s my house pet but she runs free while I’m at work. I thought for a while she must be someone’s pet, but nobody’s ever come to claim her.”

  “And she doesn’t run off?”

  “She sticks around because I feed her. She’s my work partner when we go to Mallory at sunset.” Maxine snapped on the TV and began flipping through the channels. “Have a chair, Keely.” She checked her watch. “Program will start soon.”

  “Your work partner?” I could barely cork all the questions that crowded my mind as Maxine channel skipped until she found the right station.

  “Yes, my work partner. Lavonna and me, we do sunset with the buskers at Mallory two or three nights a week. It’s a touristy thing. You ever go there?”

  “Not at sunset. Too crowded. But what do you and Lavonna do? Is she tame?”

  Maxine motioned to a camera on a shelf above the TV set. “I carry Lavonna to Mallory in a cage. She’s tame enough in my home, but I don’t want the crowds to scare her into running away. At the dock, I snap on her collar and leash. Then I gentle her with bananas and avocado treats while I offer to take her picture with the tourists. Some like to send a shot of themselves and an iguana back home to loved ones. I like to set Lavonna on a person’s shoulder and sort of wrap her around the subject’s neck.”

  “And Lavonna puts up with all that attention?”

  “She loves it. I give her a treat after each shot I take. She rates lots of oohs and aahs and the crowd presses closer. Soon I have the snowbirds lined up and waiting for the privilege of posing with Lavonna. They’re ready and willing to pay. One night I drew a bigger crowd than the French fellow with the trained cats.”

  I tried not to shudder, tried not to imagine the creature wrapped around my neck.

  “Do you carry insurance, Maxine? What if there was an accident? What if Lavonna bit someone?”

  Maxine just laughed. “Lavonna, she never bite. She’s gentle. She likes to go to Mallory, likes everything about it—except that bagpiper. I keep my distance from that one and his noise.”

  The usual spate of commercials flashed on the TV screen and I hoped Maxine would mute them, but she didn’t. She seemed to enjoy them—especially the one where the man demonstrating a vacuum cleaner pulled the spots from a Dalmatian. I looked around the trailer trying to imagine living in such confined quarters for decades.

  The home would have made a good ad for promoting Maxine’s housecleaning. Everything looked spotless. I even smelled the telltale aroma of chocolate-chip cookies. The bed built into the back of the trailer lay neatly made and the blue-and-white-polka dot bedspread matched the curtains at either end of the bed. I looked at Maxine’s bloomers and wondered if Sears or Big K had promoted a fabric sale. Or maybe she’d mail-ordered it.

  The middle of the trailer housed a built-in stove and refrigerator, both spotlessly clean, and we were sitting in the living room that consisted of two easy chairs and a couch.

  “The couch folds out into a bed,” Maxine said as if reading my mind. “That’s where Randy sleeps—usually. On nice nights he sometimes sleeps in the hammock under the canopy outside the door.”

  Forty years. Forty years. The words replayed through my mind. Maxine had lived in a Stock Island trailer for forty years. A man’s resonant voice brought my attention back to the TV screen. The Reverend Soto. He was well-known in Key West. Today he wore an ankle-length white robe with a mandarin collar. A green cord nipped the robe in at the waist and the green stole around his neck matched the cord. Soto sat in a captain’s chair beside a small table that held books and papers. The man sitting facing him at the other end of the table wore jeans topped by a denim jacket over a crew-neck T-shirt. When he changed positions, squirming in his chair, I read the words Hog’s Breath Saloon on his shirt. And he wore barefoot sandals.

  “The guy closest to the camera’s my Randy.” Maxine whispered as if her words might be heard by the men on stage and interrupt the program.

  “Oh.” I’d sometimes heard people say, “Words failed me,” and now I experienced that sensation. I’d never seen Randy Jackson before, but I’d built up a mental picture of him that in no way matched the reality on the screen. From Maxine’s talk, I’d guessed Randy to be between 40 and 45, but he looked more like 60 or 65. His steel-gray hair hung straight to his shoulders, sometimes revealing the gold stud in his left earlobe. His piercing eyes were like blackened nail heads gleaming above a gray moustache and a scraggly beard that only partially hid a deep Z-shaped scar on his right cheek. I tried not to imagine him swigging beer from a long-necked bottle concealed in a brown paper bag.

  Because of Maxine’s roly-poly stature, I’d expected Randy to be short and stout, too. Wrong. He must have inherited his father’s genes. Even sitting in his slouched position, hi
s head rose above the minister’s and he looked beanpole thin. The word emaciated sprang to mind.

  Anger began to bubble deep inside me. Were the city slickers backing this program deliberately trying to make Randy Jackson look bad?

  “Good morning, viewers. Welcome to this week’s edition of Wrongly Convicted. I’m today’s emcee, Reverend William Soto from Key West, Florida.” Soto smiled into the camera. “I’ll be introducing today’s guest, Randy Jackson, our special visitor from my home town. Randy, say hello to our audience.”

  SIX

  Without smiling, Randy gave a cursory nod toward the camera. The Reverend Soto said a few more words of introduction before the program broke for announcements. I reached into my jumpsuit pocket, fumbled past the mini-tape recorder I always carried to record patient comments, until I could pull out my cell phone. Keying in Punt’s number, I waited. The more Punt knew about Randy and Maxine Jackson before he met them, the less I’d have to explain to him at the meeting I hoped to set up.

  “Keely here, Punt,” I said when he answered. “Please tune quickly to Public Network TV, and watch Randy Jackson.” I broke our connection before he could respond, and focused again on the TV.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Soto said, “I’m sure you’ve all read about convicts who’ve been exonerated when their lawyers presented DNA evidence that proved them innocent. Our guest today, Randy Jackson, has experienced this situation. No. Correction, please. Randy Jackson is experiencing this—this ongoing nightmare.

  “I and Attorney Shelley Hubble of Key West, Florida, brought Randy’s situation to the attention of the sponsors of this program, and now we’re bringing it to a larger audience, you viewers of this TV show.

  “First and foremost, wrongly convicted prisoners want their freedom along with legal exoneration. But once they’ve achieved those things, society’s backhand slaps leave them bitter and angry. Doesn’t that describe, partially at least, the way you’ve felt since the court granted your freedom, Mr. Jackson?”