In his email to Lacy, Napier said, curtly: The witness says it looks “very similar” to the one he saw. This narrows it down to about five thousand gray Chevrolet pickups in this state. Good luck.
Further digging revealed that Bannick was quite the truck trader. In the previous fifteen years, he had bought and sold at least eight used pickups of various makes, models, and colors.
Why would a judge need so many trucks?
He was currently driving a 2013 Ford Explorer, leased from a local dealer.
* * *
—
On Monday, March 31, the thirteenth day into the assessment period commenced by the filing of the complaint, Lacy and Darren flew from Tallahassee to Miami where they rented a car and drove south through the Keys to the town of Marathon, population 9,000. Two years earlier, a retired lawyer named Perry Kronke had been found dead, beaten and strangled in his fishing boat as it drifted in shallow water near the Great White Heron preserve. His skull had been shattered, there was blood everywhere, the cause of death was asphyxiation caused by a length of nylon rope pulled around his neck so violently that the skin ripped. There were no witnesses, no suspicious characters, no suspects, no forensics. The case was still considered active and few details had been released.
Jeri’s go-to man, Kenny Lee, had been unable to obtain crime scene photos from the FBI clearinghouse.
The Marathon police department was the domain of Chief Turnbull, a snowbird from Michigan who had never gone back home. He was also the homicide detective, among other duties. He greeted Lacy and Darren warmly but with suspicion, and, like Sheriff Black in Biloxi, cleared the air immediately by establishing that the two were not cops.
“We don’t pretend to be,” Lacy said with a megawatt smile. “We investigate complaints against judges, and with a thousand of them in this state that keeps us very busy.”
Nervous laughter all around. Gotta get those crooked judges.
“So, why are you interested in the Kronke case?” Turnbull asked.
Darren had once again been told to keep quiet. His boss would do the talking, all of it. They had rehearsed their fiction and both thought it sounded plausible. She said, “Just some routine stuff, really. We’re digging through a new complaint filed against a judge in Miami and we’ve run across some possible criminal activity by the late Mr. Kronke. Did you by chance know him before he was murdered?”
“No. He lived out at Grassy Key. Are you familiar with this area?”
“No.”
“It’s a swanky retirement enclave on a bay north of here. The residents tend to stick to themselves. Out of my price range.”
“The murder was two years ago. Do you have any suspects?”
The chief actually laughed, as though the idea of a decent lead was so far-fetched it was humorous. He collected himself quickly and said, “I’m not sure I should answer that question, as bold as it is. Where are you going with this?”
“We’re just doing our jobs, Chief Turnbull.”
“How confidential is this conversation?”
“Totally. We have nothing to gain by repeating any of this. We work for the State of Florida and it’s our job to investigate allegations of wrongdoing, same as you.”
The chief pondered this for a moment, his nervous eyes darting from one to the other. He finally took a deep breath, relaxed, and said, “Yes, early on, we had a suspect, or at least we thought we were on the trail. We’ve always assumed that the killer was in a boat. He found Mr. Kronke alone, fishing for red drum, something he did all the time. There were several fish he’d caught in the cooler. His wife said he’d left home around seven that morning and was expecting a pleasant day on the water. We went to every marina within fifty miles of here and checked the records for boat rentals.” He paused long enough to pull reading glasses out of a shirt pocket and open a file. He scanned it quickly, found his number. “There were twenty-seven boats rented that morning, all, of course, to fishermen. The murder was August the fifth, red drum season, you understand?”
“Of course.” Lacy had never heard of a red drum and wasn’t sure what one was.
“We checked all twenty-seven names. Took us a while, but hey, that’s our job. One guy was a convicted felon, served some time in a federal pen for assaulting an FBI agent, pretty nasty dude. We got excited and spent some time with him. But he eventually checked out.”
Lacy doubted if Ross Bannick was careless enough to rent a boat in the vicinity at about the same time he murdered Perry Kronke, after stalking him for over twenty years, but she feigned deep interest. After spending fifteen minutes with Chief Turnbull and seeing his operation, she was not impressed.