“Around twenty to twelve.”
“Tuesday night,” Brenda said, nodding.
“This past Tuesday night. The twelfth,” Jerry said.
“Eleven-forty P.M.,” Brenda said, nodding again.
“You heard these shots coming from the Toland boat?”
“Oh yes.”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing near the Toland boat?”
“Walking toward where we’d parked the Banner Year.”
“We were staying a few nights,” Brenda said.
“Sleeping on the boat.”
“Came over through Lake Okeechobee...”
“Spent a night in Clewiston...”
“Went down the Caloosahatchee to Punta Rosa...”
“And then took the Intercoastal north to Calusa.”
“We’ve got courtesy privileges at Silver Creek.”
“Got there around seven that night,” Brenda said.
“Showered ashore...”
“Got all tarted up...”
“Went in for dinner around nine.”
“They stop serving at ten-thirty.”
“Dining room closes an hour later.”
“I had a delicious broiled lobster,” Brenda said.
“I had the red snapper.”
“Finished a bottle of really good Chardonnay.”
“Headed back for the boat around eleven-thirty, I guess it was.”
“Just ambling back to the boat,” Brenda said.
“Just taking our good sweet time.”
“Nowhere to go but to bed.”
There are cars moving out of the parking lot as they enter it at the dining room end. Late diners like themselves heading home. Headlights blinding them as they move toward the waterfront planking that runs past the boats parked in their slips. The activity is short-lived. The sound of automobile engines dies on the still September night.
Now there is only the sound of water lapping at dock pilings and boats. The occasional sound of a lanyard clanking against a mast. Marina sounds. The sounds boat people love.
The walkway is lighted with low all-weather mushroom-shaped lamps that illuminate the path and cast some reflection onto the tethered vessels bobbing dockside. The Bannerman boat is in slip number three. As they recall it again now, Toy Boat was tied up at slip number five that night. This would make Werner’s recollection of the geography accurate. He had told us he’d tied up his boat at slip number twelve, some six or seven boats down the line from the Tolands.
The cockpit lights are still on as the Bannermans, arm in arm, approach the luxury yawl. There is no one sitting at the cockpit table now, but there are lights burning in the saloon. It has taken them ten minutes or so, looking over all the parked boats, admiring some, dismissing others, to amble their way from the dining room to this point just abreast of the Toland boat. It is twenty minutes to twelve when...
“We heard shots.”
“Three gunshots.”
I looked at them both. Not many people know what gunshots sound like. It is not like in the movies. In the movies, even the smallest caliber gun sounds like a mortar shell exploding an inch from your ear. I am not an expert on all guns, but I do know what an Iver Johnson .22-caliber Trailsman Snub revolver sounds like when it is fired three times from a car parked at the curb, the first bullet taking me in the shoulder, the second taking me in the chest, the third going Christ knew where because by then I didn’t even hear that next shot, possibly because I was suddenly gushing blood and screaming in pain and falling into a deep black hole in the sidewalk. The sound of the gun that catapulted me into an eight-day coma was nothing more than a small pop, an insignificant crack.
“What’d these gunshots sound like?” I asked casually.
“We know guns,” Jerry said.
“We keep guns.”
“We go to the range every Saturday.”
“We know what a gun sounds like.”
“These weren’t backfires.”
“They were gunshots.”
“Coming from the saloon of the Toland yawl,” Jerry said.
“Three shots,” Brenda said.
“What’d you do?” Andrew asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you say you heard three gunshots...”
“We did.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Went back to our boat. Went to bed.”
“Didn’t report the shots to anyone?” I asked.
“Nope,” Jerry said.
“Why not?”
“None of our business.”
“When did you come forward?”
“When we heard this man had got killed.”
“Brett Toland.”
“We called the S.A.’s Office right away, volunteered what we knew.”
“Which was that you’d heard three shots coming from the Toland boat at eleven-forty last Tuesday night.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Did the state attorney ask why you didn’t report those shots?”
“He did.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“That we weren’t eager to confront anyone who had a gun in his hand.”
“Is there a telephone on your boat?”
“A radio.”
“Why didn’t you use the radio to report...?”
“We didn’t want to get involved.”
“But you’re involved now. You’re a witness in a...”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to Lainie Commins. If you’d reported those shots when you heard them, someone might have apprehended whoever...”
“We didn’t say anything that linked those shots to Ms. Commins,” Jerry said.
“We didn’t see her on the boat, so how could we have implicated her in any way?” Brenda asked.
“My guess is they’ve got someone who can place her there around the time we heard the shots,” Jerry said. “That’s why the careful timetable. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. But if you’d reported those shots immediately...”
“No, we couldn’t do that,” Jerry said.
“Why not?”
“We just couldn’t,” Brenda said.
“Why not?” I asked again.
“We didn’t want anyone rummaging around.”
“Rummaging around?”
“Our boat.”
I looked at them both again.
“Why didn’t you want anyone on your boat?” I asked.
“Turn that thing off,” Jerry said, and nodded toward the recorder.
Andrew hit the STOP button.
Jerry looked at his wife.
Brenda nodded okay.
“We had a little pot aboard,” Jerry said.
“Marijuana,” Brenda said, explaining to the two squares in the seersucker suits.
“Just a few ounces,” Jerry said.
“For recreational use,” Brenda said.
“We were on vacation.”
“Just the two of us on the boat.”
“Just a little for our own use.”
“Not enough to hurt anybody.”
Except Lainie Commins, I thought.
6
Etta Toland arrived at 333 Heron Street at the stroke of ten on Monday morning. She was dressed casually — disdainfully, my partner Frank later said — in jeans, a loose-fitting, tunic-style, melon-colored blouse, low-heeled very strappy sandals, and a brown leather belt with a handcrafted brass buckle in the shape of a lion’s head. Her shoulder-length black hair was pulled to the back of her head and fastened there with a brass barrette. She wore no lipstick. The lids over her dark almond-shaped eyes were subtly tinted with a tan liner. It was obvious that she expected to get the hell out of here as fast as she could and get on with the more important business in her life.
This was for real.
This was under oath.
Her personal attorney, Sidney Brackett, was there in my office and so was a woman from the State Attorney’s Office, presumably to protect Etta’s rights, though depositions are customarily open-ended and nonleading, and no one does any cross-examination. I expected that if I asked Etta to reveal anything that constituted privileged communication — as, for example, a conversation between her and her psychiatrist, if she had one — I would at once hear from either Brackett or Mrs. Hampton, which was the ASA’s name, Helen Hampton. But I didn’t intend to tread any dangerous ground, and my partner Frank was there to nudge me in case I did.