J. Black - The Shop

“I don’t see probable cause here.”

“Somebody shot her, Louis. There’s your PC.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

But she had the feeling he wouldn’t. Not if he knew the caliber of people who might be taking part in wild parties on Indigo Island.

Few people would touch something that radioactive.

Jolie drove to the neighborhood down the hill from the Starliner Motel and parked outside the house with the boat on blocks. A barechested man in baggy shorts answered her ring. Sixty or so, uniformly tanned from the sun and water, had wild gray hair that made him look like Nick Nolte in his booking photo. He wore a choker around his neck with a shark’s tooth tied into the leather cord.

“Help you?”

Jolie saw him looking at the gold shield on her belt. She gave him her spiel, that she was a detective with Palm County Sheriff’s, that she had two kids in custody whom she believed were committing burglaries in the neighborhood. She told him a neighbor had seen kids crawling out from under his boat, and asked if she could look under there for evidence.

He regarded her skeptically. Jolie wondered if her lying skills had gone downhill. Lying was like that cartoon coyote running off the cliff into thin air. You were fine unless you looked down.

“What are you expecting to find there?”

“Fingerprints.”

He nodded. “Let me get my sandals on, and we’ll go take a look.”

They went out to the boat. The man lifted the edge of the boat so Jolie could see under. There were the beer bottles. There was the snuff can.

This time she had evidence bags and gloves with her. She donned the gloves and bagged each bottle and the snuff can.

Back at home, she pried the lid off the snuff can—Copenhagen Wintergreen. The rich tobacco smell wafted out at her with its twin siren promises of comfort and death.

Inside, surprise, surprise—snuff. The can was about half full. She touched her finger to the snuff and pushed it around. And there it was. Wedged crosswise across the bottom of the can, packed in cellophane and previously hidden by plugs of chew, was what could have been the tiniest cigarette lighter in the world.

Only it wasn’t a cigarette lighter. It was a USB flash drive. Using gloves, Jolie carefully extracted the flash drive from the can and plugged it into the USB port on her laptop. And waited.

She got impatient, her heart thumping hard. Electricity running through her veins as the computer took a couple of seconds to digest the information. Then the window came up. She clicked past the window, and the data on the flash drive came up.

There was only one file on the drive: “Photos.”

She clicked on it, and up they came. Five thumbnail photos.

At first glance, four of the photos were broken up into light and dark space. The dark spaces formed a V shape in two of the photos. The last photo showed a crowd—men in dark slacks and mostly dark polo shirts, and something white. Very white.

She started at the beginning and clicked on the first photo. There were three sets of dark trousers. Two of them standing, forming the V of light area she’d seen. One set of legs kneeling on the floor—she could see the bottoms of the man’s shoes. He was on his hands and knees, the bottom of a tan polo shirt pulling from belted trousers. Beyond the kneeler, between the trousered legs of the standers, Jolie saw what looked like another leg. A naked leg, stretched out on what looked like gleaming tile. Saltillo tile.

She clicked on the next thumbnail. The picture was out of frame, as if Luke had been too excited and had clicked it hastily. But still, Jolie could see the kneeler better. He’d moved a little, so she could see his shaved head. Big guy, massive , his face turned away. He wore an earpiece. The kind worn by the Secret Service.

She saw more of the naked leg between the trousered legs. Men bent forward. One of the leaning men stretched out an arm, reaching toward something Jolie couldn’t identify.

In the next photo the angle was different, and Jolie could see the unidentifiable thing a little better. Red as a beet against the tile.

Mashed, pulpy.

Jolie had seen photos like this before, in crime scene pictures. She’d seen them in person, too. People who had been beaten beyond recognition.

Her stomach recoiled. She knew the man lying on the floor was Nathan Dial, although he would be impossible to identify.

Once again, she was amazed at what one person could do to another. Fourth photo: the man in the tan polo shirt bent over the supine man, administering CPR.

Fifth photo: the men in the polo shirts and slacks and earpieces hustled another man away from the man on the floor. The tableau had the quality of a medieval painting, soldiers ushering someone away to safety—or to his doom. The man they were hustling was pale and clearly bewildered. His gray hair stuck out from his head. She couldn’t see his face. Every line of his body told Jolie he was stunned, that he had difficulty moving under his own power.

A thick white terrycloth towel was wrapped around his waist.

Now what?

She’d been vindicated. Great. But now what?

This was proof, but it wasn’t proof.

Chain of evidence .

There was none.

Maybe if Luke had been arrested before and he had fingerprints on file—this could link him to the flash drive.

It would be helpful. And Jolie bet he had been arrested before.

But was this the vice president? She couldn’t tell. Was this Nathan Dial? She doubted his own mother would know him. The man with the shaved head giving CPR—perhaps he could be identified.

There was the Saltillo tile. Jolie hadn’t spent very much time at Indigo. She guessed the tile belonged to one of the cabanas, but since she’d never been to the cabanas she wouldn’t know.

There were other furnishings, but they were a blur. Something that could be a wall sconce. What looked like the edge of a bed—a bedspread, just one corner. Pale green, a striped design.

Louis met her at the JB’s in Gardenia. JB’s was filled to the gills with the lunch crowd, and the babble covered anything they might say. The waitress was harried, banging down ceramic coffee cups and a carafe, taking their order quickly. She returned in ten minutes with Louis’s food, and Jolie knew from experience she wouldn’t be back for a long time. Jolie had coffee but nothing else; she opened her laptop on her side of the table.

Louis said, “You said something about photos?”

Jolie pushed the laptop across to him.

“What are these?”

“What does it look like to you?”

“Somebody got beat up bad. Where’d you get this?”

Jolie told him about her search for Luke’s missing phone. “No one has his phone—not Gardenia PD or the FBI or you guys.”

You guys . Jolie realized what she’d just said, and she understood then that she didn’t feel part of the Palm County Sheriff’s Office anymore.

“This is what you wanted me to look for on Amy’s phone? What do you want me to do with it?”

“Investigate. It’s part of your case.”

“Where do I start? There’s no chain of custody. I can’t use this.”

“I suggest you start at the beginning.”

“What’s the beginning?”

“The standoff at the Starliner Motel on Memorial Day weekend. That was the same weekend the vice president was here—at Indigo.”