BY ELEVEN THAT night, Stoltz had spoken to the cop, who was shaken by the incident, and to two of the witnesses, who said the fight lasted several minutes and the cop did everything short of running away before he shot the man and then applied immediate medical aid. Stoltz knew the other witnesses had corroborated that sequence of events – except for Sammy Walker, the surfer, who was waiting in a nearby room and whom Stoltz intended to question next. As he set up the recorder and waited for his partner to come back from the bathroom, Carla Lazaro stuck her head in the small room.
“You done yet?”
“One more witness.”
“The surfer?”
“Yeah.”
“He says it was murder.”
“I still want to talk to him, if you don’t mind. The others say it was justified.”
The prosecutor slipped her wide but shapely frame into the room and lowered her voice. “I’m telling you, Stoltz, you write it my way or your ass will be out of Homicide so fast your clip-on tie will stay at your desk.”
“Look, Carla – ”
“I’m serious. The way the murder rate is going and the new blood that wants in at your unit, you’ll be in Warrants or Fraud, slogging through buckets of financial records until the day you pull the plug.” Her flushed face showed she was not kidding and that this had become personal. “See if you can ever figure out who killed Jane Doe number sixty-eight while working midnights at the airport.”
That brought him up short. He stared at her. “What do you know about Jane?”
“I know that if you’re out of the Homicide Unit, no one will ever give a shit about her. I know she cost you your wife. And I also know she won’t let you fuck up here. That’s why you’ll do as I tell you.”
Thankfully his partner walked up behind Carla with the surfer in tow.
The prosecutor took a seat and said, “I’ll sit in on this interview.”
Stoltz could’ve protested but knew it wouldn’t do him any good. “Whatever you want, Carla.”
The surfer, Sammy Walker, had seen the whole thing. He recounted in detail how the cop had swung at the man’s head and how the officer had drawn his gun and fired before ever issuing a warning. The whole time, the assistant state attorney nodded her head in acknowledgment and made an occasional note. The look on her face approached pleasure.
Stoltz felt her eyes on him every once in a while, and he met her gaze a couple of times, sensing her satisfaction at the young man’s story. He knew she was serious about having him transferred and believed she probably had the clout. She knew just what to threaten him with and how it would hurt.
He hadn’t always felt this way about the job. Originally he started because the benefits and retirement were much better than those of his job as a teacher at a private school in the north end of Fort Lauderdale. His wife had worried about the change at first, but with his better pay and benefits, she was able to go part-time at the bank, and she realized her husband wasn’t stupid and wouldn’t take ridiculous chances. Then, after becoming a detective, he had started to change. Slowly at first. Working a few extra hours or bringing home reports to review. Then, as he transferred into Homicide, the job took on more of a global effect. When he wasn’t at the office, all he talked about were cases or the guys he worked with. Now, through some slow evolution, he had come to view not only his job as a cop but his assignment in Homicide as who he was rather than as a part of his life. Then Jane Doe number sixty-eight entered his life. Other than in her resemblance to Jenny, he never knew why this young woman had taken ahold of him, but she was almost as big a part of his life as his own daughter. In a way, over the last three years, he had spent more time thinking about Jane than about Jenny.
Now he listened as the surfer seemed to lay out a compelling case for believing that the cop had acted without proper cause to shoot the homeless man, who, it appeared, had lived behind a shopping plaza across the Intracoastal.
Stoltz let the young man finish everything, made a few notes, and looked up and nodded at the assistant state attorney.
She nodded back and let a slight smile cross her pretty face.
“So, Sammy,” he started slowly, “have you ever been arrested?”
“What?”
“Have you ever been arrested? For anything?”
The young man hesitated, rapping his fingers on the table. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“That sounds like a ‘Yes, you have been arrested.’”
He brushed back his long bangs. “Yeah, a couple of times.”
“What for?”
“Why?”
“Look, Sammy, I can run a criminal history on you. I just want to know what you’ve been arrested for.”
“Usual.”
“What’s the usual?”
“You know. Burglary, possession, auto theft. That sort of stuff.”
“Possession of what?”
“Drugs, you know. Crack, weed, a few pharmaceuticals.”
“And you live over on this side of the Intracoastal, right?”
“Yeah, with my parents, in a condo.”
“And the arrests happened where?”
“Hollywood, mostly.”
“Just in Hollywood?”
“And Davie, I think.”
“What about here?”
“Where?”
“Here, in this town?”
“Over here? Near my folks?”
“Yes, here, near your folks.”
He took a long breath and said, “Yeah, a couple of times.”
“Now here’s an important question, and you better tell me the truth.” He looked at the young man to impart the gravity of the situation.
“What’s that?”
Stoltz asked, “Did the officer you saw in the shooting ever arrest you?”
The young man hesitated and looked to the prosecutor, to whom he had obviously already spoken.
Stoltz pressed him. “C’mon, Sammy, did this officer ever arrest you?”
“Well, I, ah…”
“Sammy, the truth.”
“Yeah.”
“What for?”
“Burglary of a conveyance and possession and maybe once for shoplifting.”
“Three different arrests?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you talk to him today?”
“No, I don’t think he ever even saw me.”
“Now, before you’re in real trouble, do you want to tell me what you saw today? And this time, no bullshit.”
The young man slowly nodded his head and told a story a little more believable than the first one. It matched the others.
OUTSIDE THE ROOM, as Stoltz prepared to wrap up the on-scene investigation, the assistant state attorney approached him. “You know that doesn’t change shit, Stoltz. We need an indictment on this.”
“No jury would ever convict.”
“That’s fine, then it’s the jury’s fault for not convicting him, but the state attorney’s office has to take action. We’re gonna indict at the grand jury.”
“How?”
“You know how. The standard is just probable cause, not reasonable doubt. We could indict Don Shula for loitering if we present it right.”
“But if you put me, the lead detective, on the stand, I’ll just tell the facts, and you’re sunk.”
“We’ve got a few weeks. You think about life in another unit. You take some time to decide if you want to answer a fucking phone, ‘Stoltz, airport traffic.’ Look at the Jane Doe file. You think it over, and we’ll see what you say when the time comes.”
Stoltz resisted drawing his small.38 and putting it to the prosecutor’s head as she turned and stomped out the main door.
He did have a lot to go over.
THE WEEKS AFTER the shooting were filled with investigative duties: the autopsy, criminal checks on the corpse and witnesses, reviewing the 911 tapes and radio logs, going over the department’s policy on the use of the ASP and the state’s guidelines on the use of deadly force. The whole time, a cloud seemed to hang over Ben Stoltz as he considered his possible transfer if he didn’t proceed the way Carla Lazaro had instructed him. He dreaded a transfer more than he had his divorce. He might find another wife, but he’d never get back into Homicide. He felt his ulcer start to flare up; his migraines returned worse than when Craig had introduced him to his “friend” Alex. He lay sleepless most nights, imagining life on the Fugitive Unit or the Property Crimes Unit. And he did go back to the Jane Doe number sixty-eight file more than once, getting lost in the photos of the lifeless form in a vacant lot. He wondered who missed her. How might the world be different in fifty years if she had not been treated like discarded trash? He looked at the photos and felt as strongly about her now as he had when he was on the scene.