“Many things don’t.” Harry opened his notebook to the last page he had used and started to turn to a fresh one.
Anita leaned forward suddenly and pointed at the notebook. “You’ve got the name of a church written there. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but see it… it just sort of jumped out at me.”
Harry looked at the notebook. The First Assembly of Jesus Christ the Lord was written in large capital letters and underlined. “What about it?” he asked.
“I know that church,” Anita said. “I mean from work.”
“How so?”
“One of their cars scratched mine in the parking lot.”
“The Peek-a-Boo Lounge lot?”
“Yeah.” She gave him a small shrug. “Whenever I park my car there, when I’m going to work, I write down the make, model, and license plate numbers of the cars on either side of me. I mean guys leave there pretty sloshed-hell, most of them get there pretty sloshed-and I want to be sure if somebody clips me I have a way to know who it was.”
“So you got clipped by a car belonging to the church?”
“I sure did.” She leaned forward. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I got a friend of mine who’s a cop to run the plate. And it comes up belonging to that church. So I called there and eventually got to talk to one of the ministers.”
Harry felt a rush of excitement. “You remember his name?” Anita screwed up her face. “It was a funny name, real Southern. You know what I mean?”
“Bobby Joe?” Harry asked in return.
“Yeah, that’s it. Bobby Joe Waldo, I remember now.” There was a big smile spread across her face, and Harry thought it made her look like a schoolgirl who had just gotten a difficult question right. “It was funny. He was real nervous when he got on the phone, and when I told him where the car was parked and that I was one of the dancers who worked there, he was even more nervous. He said the head minister at the church would be real upset if he found out, and that he’d like to handle it privately, no insurance companies or anything, just to tell him what it cost to fix the car and he’d get the money to me.”
“Did he send you a check?” Harry asked.
“No. It was only a small dent, and he told me to get an estimate on how much it would cost to fix it. I did and called him back the next day and he had the cash delivered to me the day after that.”
“Who delivered the money?”
“I dunno. Just some guy. I was working days that week and he met me in the parking lot of the club like we had arranged. I remember thinking that I’d seen him before someplace, maybe the club. But I couldn’t be sure. Unless a customer asks me for a private dance I don’t pay much attention to individual guys.”
“Can you describe him?”
Anita wrinkled her brow. “Sure, I guess I can. Let’s see, he was tall, not real tall, more like you. But real thin; there wasn’t any heft to him at all. The thing I remember most was his hair and eyes. His hair was down to his shoulders and real light, kind of a fake blond, like maybe a dye job. It was the same with his eyes. They were sort of a cold blue, not really natural. They kind of made me wonder if he was wearing those tinted contact lenses.”
“How old?” Harry asked.
“Oh, maybe late twenties. At least that’s what I thought at the time.”
She had just described Bobby Joe Waldo, and it was a description that would be good enough for any jury. Harry kept that information to himself. He didn’t want to be accused later of prejudicing a witness.”
“Did he give you his name?”
Anita shook her head. “He just said Reverend Waldo had sent him and handed me an envelope with the money in it.”
Harry slowly nodded, digesting what she had told him. “I need you to hang around just a bit longer,” he said at length. “I want to put together a photo lineup-that’s just a handful of mug shots-so we can see if you can pick this guy out.”
Anita glanced at her wristwatch. “My kid doesn’t get out of kindergarten for another two hours, so I guess I’ve got time.”
Twenty minutes later Harry had eight photographs lined up on the conference room table-all men in their twenties, all with long, blond hair. Anita picked out Bobby Joe Waldo on her first try and Harry told her he might want to do a live lineup sometime in the near future. But not quite yet, he thought. First he would do some serious digging into Bobby Joe Waldo.
Pete Rourke pensively tapped the side of his nose as Harry gave him a rundown on Bobby Joe, his father, and the First Assembly of Jesus Christ the Lord Church. When he finished he warned the captain that down the road he might be asking a judge for a warrant to seize church records and to search Bobby Joe’s home, car, and personal effects.
Rourke leaned back in his chair and raised a warning finger. “Before you do that, you better be pretty damned certain what you’re gonna find. And I mean ninety-nine percent certain. This is still Florida, Harry, and asking a judge to sign a search warrant for a church or its minister is like saying you want him to piss in the holy water font.” Harry smiled at the image, making Rourke raise the cautioning finger again. “I mean it, Harry. Don’t take this lightly, or your ass will be in more trouble than you ever dreamed of.”
“I know, cap.” Harry conjured up Bobby Joe’s father sending forth a proverbial river of outrage.
There was a knock on the door, interrupting them. Vicky came right behind the knock, pushing the door open and stepping up to the desk. Jim Morgan followed her, seeming a bit nervous over the sudden intrusion.
“Sorry, cap, but you and Harry need to hear this right away,” Vicky said.
Rourke glared at her. When he spoke, his voice rose steadily in volume and ferocity with each word. “This better be damn good, detective. One of the joys of being a captain is having a private office that people cannot barge into when the goddamn door is closed and somebody is sitting in the goddamn visitor’s chair.”
Vicky was unfazed, Harry was grinning, and Morgan looked as though he wished he were somewhere else.
Vicky gave Rourke a little girl smile that almost broke Harry up. “Trust me, cap,” she said wide-eyed and innocent, “this is something you need to hear forthwith.”
Rourke narrowed his stare. “Speak,” he growled. “And make it good.”
Vicky extended a hand toward Morgan, who still looked like he wanted a place to hide. “Jim really deserves the credit on this,” she began. “Turns out he’s a wizard with computers.”
Rourke threw an unhappy eye at Morgan just to let him know that, wizard or not, he’d stepped in the same pile of shit that she had. Harry wondered if the eager young deputy saw his future in the detective division hanging on Vicky’s next words.
“Jim came up with the name of the person who signed out the cars that ended up in Darlene’s driveway,” she explained. “The records were altered so it looked like the sign outs were never recorded, but they were still in the hard drive and Jim was able to get them out.” She threw an admiring glance at Morgan. “I have no idea how.”
“The same person took both cars out?” Harry asked.
“You betcha,” Vicky said. “And hold on for this. It was one of the detectives working this case, Nick Benevuto.”
Rourke stared at her, then groaned out the words, “Oh, shit.”
Harry gave a small shake of his head, almost as if driving off some annoying insect. “When were the records altered?” he asked.
Vicky glanced at Morgan.
“The day the body was discovered,” he answered.
“Before or after the body was discovered?”
“After. It was done right after the end of shift,” Morgan said.
“So somebody changed the records the day after the murder and after the body was discovered,” Harry said, as he jotted the information in his notebook.
“That’s right.”
Rourke pulled a folder from his desk and opened it. “Benevuto was off duty the day Darlene was killed.”
Harry stared into space. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said at length.