Randy White - Dead Silence

N ever lie to a cop…

An old rule. This time, I was sticking to it, even though Captain Les Durell was trying to make it easy to lie, offering ready-made excuses for his pointed questions.

Nudging a suspect into a perjury maze-another police gambit.

Now he was sitting with me in the backseat but with the Plexiglas safety screen open so Detective Palmer could listen. If she missed anything, the digital tape recorder clipped to the Plexiglas was available for her review.

It proved Durell was right. I had acquired a serious case of the stupids. I was answering questions that could lead to a murder charge, the electric chair, without a lawyer present or even a second tape recorder for my own files.

A worthy cause, I kept reminding myself.

My status had been upgraded from person of interest to person of reasonable suspicion, a legal term. It meant police believed they had enough evidence to warrant temporary detention. But because I wasn’t officially a suspect, I wasn’t handcuffed. I would have almost preferred it, because I found myself checking my watch obsessively, recalculating the deadline: eight hours thirty-one minutes… eight hours twenty-five-minutes…

So I tried to slow the minutes by focusing on Durell’s questions, learning what I could from the few facts he let slip. He didn’t slip often.

The man started by stating procedural formalities for the recorder-time, place, subject, names-then began with an easygoing southern congeniality that would have put me on alert if I wasn’t already.

“Right off the bat,” he said, “let’s deal with the sillier stuff our folks are calling evidence. I’m gonna be right up front with you, Doc. The medical examiner hasn’t issued his final report, but he thinks the football player died sometime between midnight and dawn on Friday, January sixteenth. We know you flew to New York Friday morning. Took the six forty-five Delta flight to New York. ”

“Newark,” I corrected, then listened to the man chuckle at his intentional error.

“Newark,” he echoed, making a note on his clipboard. “But you’re with me so far on the date and time of death? Heller washed up two days ago on Naples Beach, lungs full of water. But he died six days earlier while you were still on Sanibel.”

Lungs full of water. Heller had drowned. It was Durell’s first slip. I doubted if the medical examiner had issued such a narrow time window for the same reasons I’d explained to Tomlinson: Saltwater creatures eat land-dwelling creatures. Something else an examiner would have considered was the watch I’d planted. Its crystal was crushed, the date frozen on Saturday, January seventeenth, the day after I’d arrived in New York. Captain Durell was setting a trap.

I shrugged and said nothing.

“Our guys took statements from folks who said you and the football player got into a brawl ’bout a year ago. That he licked you pretty good. That true?”

I said, “I still have headaches.”

“Kinda surprising to me-you bein’ an All-American wrestler back in the day.”

“I wasn’t. I never made it to the quarterfinals at nationals.”

Durell said, “Even so, Heller musta jumped you from behind, huh?,” establishing a pattern by offering me an out.

“No,” I said.

It threw off his rhythm. “Well… that’s not the way I figured it. But then Heller was found guilty of murder, second degree. Shot a friend of yours, a Sanibel fishing guide.”

“Javier Castillo,” I said. “He’d moved his boat to Pine Island a few months earlier. Javier was a decent man.”

“He was a friend.”

“Close friend. Left a nice family, a wife and two girls… and no life insurance.” Then I added, “Javier crossed the Florida Straits in an inner tube, that’s how bad he wanted to get into the U.S.,” thinking Durell might be impressed.

Instead, he ignored me, saying, “I read about your fund-raisers at the marina. Only natural for you to have hard feelings toward a man who shot your Cuban pal. Anyone would.”

I didn’t respond. After a few seconds, Durell answered for me, saying, “But not enough to try some stupid vigilante stunt by killing him. I’ve told our people that, personally, I think they’re pissing up a rope. That you’re an educated man. Bookish and quiet. I told ’em, ‘Hell, look at his picture! Looks like a history teacher I had, Mr. Harrison.’ ”

He was studying the clipboard, the dome light on, chewing his cigar, as we passed mobile home parks, a Pizza Hut, lighted billboards. He said, “According to these notes, the folks at Dinkin’s Bay Marina wouldn’t hardly talk to our boys. That surprise you?”

“Next time, come at sunset,” I said. “That’s cocktail hour.”

“We heard that, too! Heard it from someone who went to the marina’s Friday-night party. Got a weird name to it, sounds like… Epcot?”

“Perbcott,” I said. “Sort of a local joke.”

“The person at that party said Heller showed up, and you two almost got into it again-this was just two weeks ago. But this person could’ve been exaggerating. They usually do when a cop shows up asking questions.”

I said, “It was the week before I left for New York. We didn’t know Heller had been released. And it’s not like the marina invited him.”

“Heller showed up on his own?”

“That’s right.”

Durell said, “Hell, then he came to Dinkin’s Bay looking for trouble!” He leaned toward the Plexiglas and said to the woman, “That’s a detail your team shoulda noted, Detective Palmer. Sorta thing that changes the whole story around.” He settled back. “That’s why it’s good we can talk like this, Doc. Get some of this puny-assed stuff straightened out. You were saying?”

I said, “Heller made a move on a woman who lives near the marina. Her name’s Marlissa Engle.”

“That the actress?”

He knew who Marlissa was. The islands attract a lot of famous people, possibly because they can leave more than the mainland behind when they cross the bridge. I could see Palmer watching me in the mirror as I said, “We dated for a while, now she’s a workout partner, when she’s in town. Marlissa told Heller to get lost, but he wouldn’t leave her alone.”

“Then I don’t blame you for getting pissed off,” Durell said. “The man’s a convicted rapist.”

“ Serial rapist,” I corrected.

“Thirty-some women, the feds are thinking now, coast to coast. But like you said, taking the law into your own hands isn’t something you would do.”

“You said that,” I replied. “Not me. If there was a legal way to get rid of Bern Heller, I would have given it serious consideration.”

Surprised, the man hunched over his clipboard to regroup. “But you didn’t really think about killing him, did you? Not seriously, I mean.”

I said, “There is no legal way, so why would I waste my time? But I’m glad he’s dead, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Durell was nodding, his expression saying Nothing wrong with that, before getting serious, his face showing concern. “But here’s the thing, Doc. The football player died between midnight and dawn on a Friday. Our guys spoke to some beach walkers who say they were out before sunrise that Friday morning. Near Lighthouse Point, looking for shells. You know how shellers are, doesn’t matter what hour as long as the tide’s right. Around four a.m., they said, a small boat came flying around the point. Only one person aboard.

“Then our guys talked to someone who lives bayside near your marina. This person was up at about the same time-I won’t say why-but this person says a flats boat came through the cut into Dinkin’s Bay between four a.m. and four-thirty. Your flight was at six forty-five?”