Sand Sharks Read online

  When the mid-morning break arrived, I was more than ready for it.

  CHAPTER

  19

  The burden of proof is upon the party affirming, not on the party denying.

  —Justinian (AD 483��565)

  DETECTIVE GARY EDWARDS (TUESDAY MORNING,

  JUNE 17)

  As soon as he got off the phone with Judge Knott, Detective Edwards called headquarters and arranged to have an officer stationed by Judge Fitzhume’s bed.

  Next, he called the SandCastle Hotel and asked to speak to Mrs. Fitzhume.

  “I’m sorry,” said the desk clerk, “but Mrs. Fitzhume checked out about ten minutes ago.”

  Edwards identified himself, then asked, “Did she happen to say if she was on her way to the hospital?”

  “No, sir, but I do know that she was moving over to a hotel in town to be nearer the hospital. The Hilton.”

  A call to the Hilton confirmed that she had reserved a room, but had not yet checked in.

  As he showered and shaved, Edwards decided that Martha Fitzhume would no doubt go to the hospital first, so he stopped by the department, where he picked up the list of names he had compiled earlier and checked to see if any progress had been made on identifying the license plate on the red Geo Metro.

  “It looks like the plate was deliberately smeared with mud or something,” the squad’s computer jock told him. “It also looks like one of those specialty plates, but I haven’t been able to match it yet.”

  North Carolina issues dozens of different license plates to special interest groups. From its many colleges to the Sons of Confederate Veterans to horseless carriage enthusiasts, each group has a plate with a different design. Most of them carry the state name in blue along the bottom, and while Edwards could make out a fuzzy—TH CAROLINA when he peered at the screen, the design was unfamiliar. Nor did it fit any of the electronic templates that had been tried so far.

  “Any chance that those first three letters at the bottom are S-O-U instead of N-O-R?” he asked. Wilmington was only about seventy miles from the border.

  “Hey, that’s a thought,” the younger man said, and his fingers flew over the keys.

  “Buzz me if you get anything,” Edwards said, and headed over to the hospital through a steady rain that was causing deep puddles in low areas of the street. An oncoming car threw up such a sheet of water, he had to brake until the wipers cleared the windshield enough for him to see through the gray morning light.

  Inside the medical center, the sharp hospital smell hit him as soon as he passed the main reception desk and turned down a wide hall, a chemical blend of cleaning agents, antiseptics, and bleached linens. The smell always upped his anxiety level, rousing dormant childhood memories of his younger sister, who had died of leukemia when he was twelve. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering if he would feel differently about hospitals if he and his ex had had a baby. Would a joyous birth balance out death? He was forty-four years old and glumly aware that every year increased the odds that he might never know.

  At the intensive care unit, Martha Fitzhume and her son were emerging through the door that led to the ICU pods when he arrived. He spoke to the uniformed officer and then to the judge’s wife. There were dark circles under her keen blue eyes and she looked drawn and tired, yet she recognized him immediately and her voice was strong when she asked, “Have you found the car, Detective Edwards?”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Not yet. How’s Judge Fitzhume?”

  “No change,” the son said, positioning a chair for her. He had his mother’s bony face and nose and there were a few gray hairs at his temples.

  “You’re mistaken, Chad. When I spoke to him and squeezed his hand, it felt as if he squeezed back.”

  “I know you want to believe that, Mom, but are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

  “I do know the difference,” she said crisply, but did not argue the point. “Why are you here, Detective? And why is that rather large officer here, too? Is he guarding Fitz?”

  “It’s just standard procedure, ma’am.”

  “Oh, please,” she said. “Credit me with a few brains.”

  Chad Fitzhume grinned and shook his head.

  Edwards smiled, too. He’d always had a weak spot for opinionated old women who spoke their minds. “You’re right, ma’am. We may be closing in on the reason why your husband was run down.”

  “Reason can have nothing to do with it,” she said tartly. “Explain.”

  Trying to match her straightforwardness, Edwards repeated his conversation with Judge Knott less than an hour ago.

  She frowned, reliving the lunch in her mind, then nodded. “Deborah’s right. That’s exactly what Fitz said, and I should have picked up on it myself. I wish I could say that we discussed it again later, but we didn’t.”

  Edwards drew a list of names from an inner pocket of his tan sports jacket. “I questioned everyone from the conference who was in the restaurant that night. Fourteen judges, five attorneys, and assorted spouses or friends. Twenty-seven names in all. I’d like you to go over the list and mark anybody you think your husband would not have known if he saw him in the restroom.”

  “Men only, I suppose?”

  “No, because maybe it was a woman he saw as he came out.”

  She put on a pair of reading glasses and asked for a pen, then very carefully went down the list, commenting as the pen point touched and then marked through names. In the end there were three names left: one wife, one attorney, and two male judges.

  Judge and Mrs. Albert Beecher, Judge James Feinstein, and Bill Hasselberger.

  Hasselberger he remembered because he was an attorney, not a judge, but the other three had not stood out from the group when he questioned them earlier.

  “These are the ones I don’t know, at least not by name,” said Mrs. Fitzhume. “Fitz might, though. Albert Beecher was appointed to the bench last month and we haven’t met him or his wife. Some of the others on the list I know only by sight, but if I could recognize them on the street, then they should have looked familiar to him, don’t you think? Or are you just clutching at straws?”

  Before he could answer, his phone buzzed and he excused himself to walk a few steps away. “Edwards here.”

  “You were right,” said the voice in his ear. “It’s South Carolina. Want to hear something funny? It’s a ‘Share the Road’ plate.”

  “Too bad the judge wasn’t riding a bicycle,” Edwards said grimly.

  “I got enough numbers to cross-match it to a Sidney Kyle Armstrong of Myrtle Beach, age twenty-six. I ran the name through our records here and there’s a speeding violation from last December that has a local address on it and South Carolina’s going to E us the picture from his driver’s license.”

  Edwards jotted down the address that had been written on the speeding ticket, a building off Market Street. The name Armstrong sounded familiar, but he could not put a face to it. Turning back to the Fitzhumes, he asked, “Does the name Sidney Armstrong mean anything to you?”

  Mother and son both shook their heads.

  “You sure? Sidney Kyle Armstrong? Twenty-six years old?”

  “Kyle?” said Martha Fitzhume. “One of the waiters at Jonah’s was named Kyle. He’s an actor, but he’s only eighteen or nineteen and I didn’t get his last name.”

  Edwards riffled through his notes and there it was. He had interviewed the slender young man at the restaurant on Sunday. Like Mrs. Fitzhume, he had pegged the guy as being in his late teens. Judge Knott was there to look for a lost earring, and after denying it emphatically, this Kyle kid finally admitted seeing Jeffreys when Judge Knott and the headwaiter practically drew him a picture.

  “Would your husband have noticed him?” he asked, knowing that most people never really look at a waiter’s face.

  “Yes, of course. He waited on our table.”

  “What you have to understand, Detective Edwards,” said Chad Fitzhume, “is that if a waiter says, ‘Hi,
my name’s Kyle and I’ll be your server,’ she’ll introduce herself and then find out how long he’s been working there, his favorite dish on the menu, the name of his first puppy, and what he’s doing with his life.”

  “My son exaggerates, Detective Edwards, but Kyle did tell us about his acting career. Surely he wasn’t the driver of that car?”

  “The car’s registered to him,” Edwards said and rose to leave.

  “I trust you will keep me informed,” she said, and gestured to the uniformed officer, who obediently came over to her. “I’m Martha Fitzhume, Officer. And you are?”

  Edwards suppressed a grin as he stepped into the elevator and turned his thoughts back to Judge Fitzhume’s unfinished words.

  “I didn’t see anyone I knew, but—” Fitzhume had said.

  “But our waiter was there”?

  Is that how he would have ended that sentence had he not been interrupted?

  It occurred to Edwards that Kyle Armstrong had been standing nearby when Deborah Knott said something about Fitzhume being the last to see him as they passed in the doorway of the restroom. The very next afternoon, he ran down the judge.

  But how would Armstrong know where to find him? Figuring out which hotel was hosting the conference would be easy, but how could he possibly know that the judge he wanted would be crossing the parking lot at 6:30? A lucky guess? A stakeout?

  Well that was something he could ask the twerp when they picked him up. He called for his partner to meet him at Jonah’s and gladly left the hospital and its depressing smells behind.

  As Detectives Edwards and Wall entered the restaurant, the perky young waitress at the reception stand said, “Two? Inside or out?” Then she giggled at her own question. “Sorry. It’s just automatic to ask. Obviously you don’t want to sit out in the rain.”

  “Naw, we left our umbrellas in the car,” said Andy Wall, shaking raindrops from his iron-gray hair. He was eight months away from retirement and not out to risk anything by calling her honey or flirting with her as he once would have, even though she was terminally cute with those two ponytails on either side of her head that bounced when she moved.

  As did other things.

  They identified themselves and her blue eyes widened. “Oh, wow, yeah. I heard that one of our customers was killed and dumped in the river. I had the weekend off and missed it all.”

  “We need to speak to Kyle Armstrong again. Is he here?” Edwards asked.

  “I don’t think he’s working lunch,” she said. “Let me check.”

  She returned a few moments later, followed by a stocky middle-aged man in a short-sleeved white shirt and a loosened tie that he was tightening as he walked toward them.

  “I’m the manager here,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “We’d like to speak to one of your waiters,” Edwards said. “Kyle Armstrong?”

  “He doesn’t come in till four. If he comes in.”

  “If?”

  “He was supposed to work the dinner shift last night, and he never showed up. Kids today! They work when they want to, take off when they want to, never think twice about if they’re screwing up everybody else’s workload. He don’t show up at four on the dot, though, his ass is so fired.”

  “Does he still live at—” Edwards fumbled in his pocket for the scrap of paper he’d written the address on and read it off.

  The manager shrugged. “So far as I know. What’s this about? More questions about Saturday night?”

  “Something like that,” Edwards said.

  “Y’all come back now,” said the bouncy waitress as they trudged back out into the rain.

  “Kyle?” said the young man who opened the door to the walk-up apartment two blocks off Market Street. “He moved out in February.”

  A very pregnant brunette appeared at his elbow. “Y’all looking for Kyle? He’s got a place near the Cotton Exchange.”

  No, she did not know the address, but it was one block up Walnut Street and there was a hardware store on the ground floor.

  “He still have that red Geo?” Edwards asked.

  “So far as I know,” the former roommate replied.

  They circled the block before pulling up in front of the circa-1920 brick building. No sign of a red Geo. As always, it was a toss-up as to whether to risk getting soaked or struggle with an umbrella. This time they found a parking space right in front, close enough that they could make a dash for it.

  The tiny lobby showed remnants of bygone glory. The outer door was bronze, tarnished now, as were the filigreed mailboxes, but still bronze. The grungy floor was white marble with a long crack across the middle. Three names were listed for Apartment F: G. Smith, K. Armstrong, and R. Loring. No response when they pressed the buzzer, but the inner door wasn’t locked and they were able to walk up the four flights without challenge.

  It took several loud knocks to get a response.

  “Yeah?” said the beefy thirty-something man who opened the door in boxer shorts and a faded blue BORN TO RUMBLE T-shirt. They had evidently awakened him from a very deep sleep and he stared at them with bleary eyes. “Whas’up?”

  “Smith?”

  “Loring. Who’re y’all?”

  Andy Wall flashed his badge. “We’re looking for Kyle Armstrong.”

  “He ain’t here, man. He’s gone.”

  “When do you expect him back?” asked Edwards.

  “I told you. He’s cleared out. Split. And don’t ask me where ’cause he was gone when I got back.”

  Loring told them he was a long-haul trucker. He had gotten in from Arizona around two a.m. to find all of Kyle’s things gone from his side of the room. “Clothes, CD player, clock radio, toothbrush, razor, his stupid bicycle, everything.”

  “When?” they asked.

  “How the hell do I know when he left? I told you. I just got in.”

  “What about your other roommate?”

  “George?” He shrugged. “His shit’s still here, so I guess he’s at work. He’s a carpenter on that TV show.”

  “Dead in the Water?”

  “Naw, the other one.”

  “Port City Blues?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  They put out a BOLO for one Sidney Kyle Armstrong, driving a red Geo Metro, and drove out to the sprawling Screen Gems complex on North 23rd Street. At the gate, they were directed to the Port City Blues sound stage. Inside the building, they passed a set that looked like the interior of a nightclub and another that duplicated a courtroom. The place seemed almost deserted.

  “They’re shooting on location today,” a passing technician told them. “Taking advantage of the rainy day.”

  “We’re looking for a George Smith.”

  He pointed them to a door that led outside to a picnic table and benches under a metal roof. Three young men sheltered there out of the rain to smoke their cigarettes. As always, Gary Edwards found himself half envying them. He had been quit for eight months, three days, and sixteen hours and he still missed the way that first drag hit his lungs with its jolt of fresh nicotine.

  He correctly assumed the smoker with the leather tool belt was George Smith. As soon as Andy Wall flashed his badge, the other two men ditched their cigarettes and went back inside.

  “Kyle’s split?” Smith asked. “You sure about that?”

  “That’s what your other roommate says.”

  “Ronnie’s back?”

  For a moment Edwards wondered if there was something besides tobacco in that cigarette. “Don’t you guys talk to each other?”

  Smith shrugged. “It’s not like we’re best friends. I’m usually in bed by the time Kyle gets home and I’m gone in the morning before he wakes up. My name’s the one on the lease and I need two roommates to split the rent. Ronnie’s gone so much it doesn’t bother him to share the second bedroom and Kyle’s saving his money to get a nose job. He thinks that’s why he can’t land a role. Like a new nose is gonna put his name in lights.”

  “H
e say anything to you about the judge that was murdered Saturday night?”

  “Nope.” Smith took a final drag on his cigarette and ground it out in a can of sand that sat on the table. “I think the last time we even saw each other might’ve been last week sometime. He didn’t say anything about moving out. You sure he’s gone?”

  “That’s what your friend Ronnie said. Took all his clothes and his bicycle.”

  “Well, hell. Now I’ve gotta find another guy to move in.”

  They left him lighting up another cigarette.

  CHAPTER

  20

  The deified Hadrian stated… “You have to determine what in your best judgment you are to believe or what you think has not been proved to your satisfaction.”

  —Justinian (AD 483–565)

  At our mid-morning break, I decided it’d be quicker to run up to my room than wait in line to use the ladies’ room. Out in the main lobby, the SandCastle’s child-friendly policy was getting a full test as rain continued to fall. There was an arts-and-crafts playroom downstairs on the ground level next to the exercise room, but judging from the grumbling I heard in the elevator, both were filled to capacity.

  When I came back downstairs, a staff member had been stationed next to the touching tank to keep bored preteens from getting too rough with the sand dollars and starfish, while another tried to keep toddlers from banging their action figures on the glass aquarium that lined the hall to the restaurant. At the concierge’s desk, discount vouchers were being offered to beleaguered parents to tempt them to try some off-premise attractions.

  I saw Bernie Rawlings’s pudgy daughter being hauled out through the revolving door by Bernie’s equally pudgy wife. Both were red-faced and angry and I heard the child shriek, “But I don’t wanna go on a stupid trolley ride! I wanna watch SpongeBob!”

  There was one oasis of quiet in the lobby, though. Rosemary Emerson sat on a couch with four or five small children clustered around. They leaned against her or perched on the arms and back of the couch to hear her read Horton Hatches the Egg, while their mothers relaxed nearby with coffee or soft drinks.