Jonathon King - A Visible Darkness

What McCane had not said-except to a bartender he was probably trying to hit on at Kim's-was whether he had ever been in Moultrie. I put the file down and stared out at the sun flashes on the small shore break. Coincidence that McCane had worked in the same Georgia prison as the middleman who might be killing Billy's women? Was the old cop chasing down a lead he wasn't filling me in on? How well did these guys know each other?

I was getting more coffee when my cell rang.

"Billy?" I answered.

"Richards," she said, her voice professional and with an edge.

"Hey. What's up? They call you off the homicide?"

"Freeman. Didn't you tell me at Lester's that your partner the insurance investigator was trailing some middleman?

"Yeah, he was doing surveillance on the guy's place and trailed him to the liquor store."

"Said his name was Marshack?

"Yeah. A psychiatrist named…"

"Dr. Harold Marshack," she finished my sentence. "Max, you better get down here."

I called Billy and filled him in on the homicide of Dr. Marshack, McCane's middleman and the county jail psychiatrist. Billy jumped ahead of me.

"And the Moultrie prison psychiatrist. You're thinking they knew each other?"

"Let's get the paperwork before I call McCane," I said, getting up to leave. "Call me."

When I found the address along A1A in Golden Beaches, I again pulled into a lot filled with squad cars and a couple of unmarked units parked alongside. A team of crime scene guys was going over an old-model Caprice in a spot nearby.

As I got out I could see Richards and Diaz, standing next to their boss. Hammonds cut his eyes toward me and then turned back to say something to his detectives before walking away. Richards met me halfway across the lot.

"We've got to quit meeting like this," she said, but the joke had lost some of its humor. "The boss man is hot again."

I nodded, tried to catch the color in her eyes, but gave up when Diaz joined us.

"Hey amigo. Told you we would meet again," he said, the smile undiminished. "You want to tell us again how your private investigation somehow involves the stiff we got upstairs who works for us?"

"Good to see you too, Vince," I said, before running through the case again, only leaving out the Moultrie connection. No use throwing that in the mix until Billy had it nailed down.

"So what'd you tell Hammonds?" I asked when I was through.

"Told him everything we've got," Richards said. "The five naturals. The theory on the insurance scam. Marshack's name coming up as a possible middleman in the deal."

"And?"

She said nothing.

"And she got her ass chewed for not puttin' all that in the report on the killing at the Thompson house," Diaz said.

I looked again at Richards, who was shaking her head like it was no big deal.

"What's passed is passed," she finally said. "You're in, Max. Let's go upstairs and take a look."

"Come on, let's take a look," said Diaz, when I didn't move. "Enlighten us once again, Mr. Philadelphia."

I started to follow them to the entrance door of Marshack's building when Hammonds called out my name. He didn't move. I had to go to him.

He was a thin man, in his late fifties, and he carried the kind of attitude in statement and action that came from years of giving orders. He was in a suit, the knot of his tie cinched up tight against his throat. Our previous encounters had not been genial. He had resented what he considered my interference in his domain.

"Mr. Freeman," he said when I got close. "Bad things seem to happen around you."

No question was asked, so I didn't feel an obligation to respond.

It was an uncomfortable standoff that he finally broke. "If you plan to keep showing yourself around the county, I suggest you at least get a P.I.'s license."

Again, since a question had not been asked, I only nodded my head.

"Go take a look," Hammonds said. "And I'd rather not have you holding back on us this time."

I rejoined Diaz and Richards and shrugged. All three of us turned and continued to the front entrance.

Marshack's two-bedroom condo had been tossed. Badly. Books off the shelves. Cushions and mattress flipped. Drawers emptied and blood on the kitchen floor.

"They come up with a murder weapon?" I asked.

"Sharp end of a broken bottle," Richards said. "Hennessy Cognac."

We traded looks. I thought of McCane's suggestion of getting a warrant and searching the place. When Richards had given me the name I'd paged the insurance investigator to ask if he'd been on surveillance or just drinking last night. He hadn't called me back.

The desk against one wall of the living room had been pried open. The computer monitor was flipped on its side and the keyboard shoved aside. The hard drive was gone.

"Some old lady down the hall called nine-one-one when she heard a ruckus but she stayed behind her own locked door until the first uniform guys got here. Didn't see a thing," Diaz said.

"Print guys got a lot of latents but could all be the doc's. No jewelry that we could find, and the guys wallet and wrist watch were missing."

"The outside doors are buzzed open after ten and the condo door wasn't jimmied or forced," Richards added. "Makes it look like he let the killer in, put up a fight, might have even broken the bottle of booze himself for protection but got it taken away and jammed in his own neck."

It was the first impression, but I wasn't going for it.

"Then the guy goes through the drawers, the files, the closets and runs out the door with what?" I said. "The wallet, okay. The jewelry, sure. But the hard drive?"

Diaz shook his head.

"How you gonna figure some psycho from the cuckoo's nest if he comes to pay back the doc for puttin' him up in Chattahoochee for a few good years of his sexual prime?" Diaz said and Richards rolled her eyes.

"And what, Vince? He goes through the files and takes the hard drive to get his name off the nut farm list?"

"Like I said," shrugged Diaz. "Cuckoo's nest."

A burglary gone bad, or a bad job of making it look like a burglary, I thought. There wasn't much to look at.

Richards put the crime scene tape back over the door when we left. In the elevators she said the M.E. was giving a preliminary time of death of 4:00 A.M., which matched up with the 911 call.

When we got outside, Hammonds was still talking with the crime scene supervisor, going over the Caprice. When Richards shook her head he never blinked, just went on.

"The trunk lid was popped with a ball peen hammer, just punched it through," Hammonds said to all three of us when we walked up. "But it looks like he missed the false bottom in the glove box."

He held up a plastic evidence bag that held a white, printed bank envelope.

"Six hundred-dollar bills. Still crispy," he said. "The techs are going to run the prints they found inside along with the ones upstairs, but a lot of them looked smeared. We'll try to match them to prisoner files on the forensics unit first. Maybe we get lucky."

No question had been posed, so I shut up. If Richards remembered the hundred-dollar bills, she didn't say anything. When Hammonds left, both detectives walked over to Diaz's SUV.

"Hey, amigo. Thanks for the help, eh?" Diaz said. "We gotta get back to the shop."

"Call me when you hear something?" Richards said, and the look was deeply uncertain.

I was still leaning against my truck, looking up at the high tower of Marshack's condo building when my cell rang.

"Freeman," I answered.

"Yo, G."

I told him I wasn't with the government.

"Yeah, you said. You know where D.C. Park at?" said the voice of the leader of the three-man off-limits crew.

"I'll find it."

"Meet us there, man, we got somethin' for you."