O’Brien pushed the jeep, hitting speeds of near one hundred miles an hour though the back roads of rural Lake County. Dan Grant sat in the passenger side, hands gripped on the door and center console. He said, “Hey, man. If you kill us driving like this, who the hell is gonna stop this perp?”
“What’s the next turn?”
“Should be the next left. Quarter mile up, tops. Dispatch told me that the post office says this mail carrier ends his route on River Lane, a long mile stretch.”
O’Brien turned down River Lane and took out a plastic trashcan someone had set too near the street. “Whoa!” yelled Dan.
“There he is!” said O’Brien, looking at a slight incline where the white mail truck poked along. The postman was opening a mailbox when O’Brien brought his Jeep to a screeching halt directly in front of the truck. Both O’Brien and Dan got out and approached the frightened letter carrier. He reached for his cell. “I called 911! Cops are on their way!”
“We’re here. Fast enough for you? ” Dan said, flashing his shield.
“I didn’t do anything!” the postman shouted.
“Everyone’s done something,” said O’Brien. “But that’s not why we’re here. Do you remember the Johnson’s residence. Lyle and Anita Johnson?”
“Sure. I got three Johnson’s on this route. But I know their box.”
“Do you recall making a delivery there today?”
“Yep. That’s an easy one because Mrs. Johnson was at the mailbox to greet me.”
“What’d she say?” asked Dan.
“Not a lot. Looked a little anxious. I remember the only letter she got today.”
“How so?” asked O’Brien
“Because it was a handwritten letter…large block letters with a guy’s kinda handwriting. None of that stuff is the postal service’s business. But I remember reading something right below the zip code.”
“What was that?” asked Dan.
“S-W-A-K.” he said, almost shyly. “You know, sealed with a kiss. Used to see that all the time. Now, hardly ever. Maybe it’s because of email.”
“Did she say anything to you?” asked O’Brien
“Not really. Mrs. Johnson seemed…seemed anxious, I guess is the best word.”
O’Brien asked, “Did you see anyone around? You know, maybe a delivery person…a car or truck there that you don’t normally see?”
He thought a moment. “No. What happened? Is she okay?”
“She’s dead,” said Dan
O’Brien and Grant were less than a mile away from the Pioneer Village when O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Tucker Houston.
“Sean, state’s refusing to hear it. I’ve got it hand-delivered to the Fifth Circuit. A clerk’s ready to receive it.”
“Good!” said O’Brien. “You can put this in that habeas corpus mix-we have another body. Wife of the prison guard who overheard Spelling’s confession to Father Callahan. Neighbor found her murdered. Now I know Russo didn’t do it.”
“Then who did?”
“Buy me a little more time and I will find out.”
“What this latest murder will buy us is coverage on the whole damn broadcast spectrum. If we can get the exposure we’ll get the ear of somebody’s court.”
EIGHTY-THREE
The yellow crime scene tape was still around the front porch of the old general store. O’Brien looked at the porch from a half dozen angles. He watched the windmill turn. He listened to the cluck of nearby chickens and tried to picture the scene the night Lyle Johnson died on the front porch.
Dan said, “They found his body sitting right there in that chair.” He pointed to a rocking chair on the porch.
O’Brien said nothing. He knelt down in the Bahia grass next to the porch and looked at the surface of the old cypress slats. He stood and slowly walked up the three timeworn steps leading to the porch. He looked at the bloodstain beneath the chair and then at the wooden barrel behind the chair.
“Place has been gone over by a team, Sean. Except for the blood, Johnson’s pistol lying next to the chair, they got nothing. I know you wanted to come here, but we might be wasting time we don’t have.”
O’Brien said nothing.
Dan said, “What do you do, man? Go into some kinda zone? Do you put yourself in the vic’s place or the perp’s. Because the expression on your face looks damn funky right now.”
O’Brien studied at the pitchfork and looked across the porch, staring at a spot in the knotty wood. He pulled a paper napkin out of his pocket and used it to move the pitchfork from the back of the barrel to the front. He stepped across the porch, knelt and looked at a small hole in the wood. “Look at the angle of this hole.”
“Lots of old wormholes in these planks. Some ought to be replaced.”
“This is new, Dan. Rain and mildew haven’t had time to set in, but there is rust in there. Wood doesn’t rust. And look at the angle. That could only have been made from something coming from a trajectory near the rocking chair.”
“What are you saying?”
O’Brien pointed to the far right prong on the pitchfork. “The rust on this point has been knocked off. The other three prongs all have a covering of rust on the tips. This one doesn’t, and like the hole in the porch, the elements haven’t discolored it.”
“You think Lyle Johnson picked up this pitchfork and threw it like some kind of javelin at the perp, right?”
“That’s exactly what I think. Maybe he made contact. Maybe not. But get a forensic team to check for any DNA that might be in the hole and on the pitchfork. Get this stuff to the lab quick as you can.”
Dan looked out toward the windmill. “O’Brien, you’re like a bird dog. Wish I could have worked with you in Miami. Where to…Sherlock?”
“To where Sam Spelling was shot.”
EIGHTY-FOUR
Grant led O’Brien up the side entrance steps of the U.S. district courthouse in Orlando, a forty-year-old building. Dan pointed to the top step. “Spelling had reached this point. The federal marshals escorting him said Spelling had turned around and asked if it would be okay to smoke a cigarette over there on the side before he went in to testify. He was nervous. The sniper’s bullet caught Spelling about here,” he pointed to a spot between his heart and top of his shoulder. Bullet was a. 303 British.”
Dan took half dozen steps and pointed to the far left door. “That spot on the door, the one that’s been sanded, filled and painted over, is where we dug out the round after it passed through Spelling. Clean shot. Didn’t even hit a bone.”
O’Brien looked in the direction of a parking garage across the street. Then he backed up and stood next to the door. He marked his height at six two with his right hand, made a small line on the door with his pen, and used his driver’s license to mark off three-inch increments down to the spot that was sanded and painted. He looked at the place where Spelling was standing when he was shot.
Dan said, “I see where you’re looking. I almost hate to say it, but they combed the garage. It’s only nineteen floors. Spent two days up there. Metal detectors. Dogs. Nothing. Not even a sweat stain or boot mark left anywhere that we could see.”
“How well do you think they checked the roof?”
“That’s the first place they started.”
“Should have been the last. How about the third floor?”
“Out of nineteen floors, the largest parking garage in the city, why the third?”
“The building is about one hundred yards from this spot. Spelling was five-eight. If he stood right there, and the round hit here, the bullet dropped about a half inch. The shot came from between the second and fourth floors. Let’s go in the middle, to the third.
O’Brien parked his jeep close to the opening of the third floor that provided a view of the courthouse. He got a pair of binoculars out of the glove box and said, “Let’s try to see it from the shooter’s perspective.”
“I guess that would be the closest thing we got to a scope right now,” said Dan.