“Active?”
“Yes. Verno and Dunwoody are probably not the only two.”
The two cops absorbed this with more coffee. Napier asked, “Would he have the money for surgery like this?”
Both nodded. Yes.
Lacy said, “I suppose that over a long period of time he could chip away at the project and eventually do all ten fingers.”
“That’s quite a commitment,” Black said.
“Well, he’s committed, determined, and very intelligent.”
More coffee, more thoughts rattling around. Could this be their big break after so many dead ends?
The sheriff said, “It makes no sense, really. I mean, if this guy is so smart, why not pitch the phones in a lake or a river? Why get cute and drop them off in a postal box to be sent to my daughter’s apartment? He had to know that we’d track them and find them within hours. This was a Friday. There was no way the two smartphones would sit undiscovered until Monday.”
“I’m not sure we’ll ever understand what makes him tick or what he thinks about,” Lacy said.
“Pretty stupid if you ask me.”
“He’s making mistakes. He almost got caught by Mike Dunwoody. Later, his truck was spotted at the post office when he dropped off the phones. And, it looks like one of his gloves slipped or maybe tore a bit and now we have a thumb print.”
“Yes we do,” the sheriff said. “So now the question is what do we do with it. The next step is obvious—get some prints from your suspect. If there’s a match, then we’re in business.”
Napier asked, “What are the chances of getting his prints?”
Lacy shot a blank look at Darren, who shook his head as if he had no idea.
“A search warrant?” asked the sheriff.
“Based on what?” Lacy asked. “There is no probable cause, as of right now. Our suspect is a judge who knows forensics as well as he knows criminal procedure. It would be impossible to convince another judge to issue a warrant.”
“So they’ll protect him?”
“No. But they’ll want to see a lot more proof than we currently have.”
“Are you going to give us his name?”
“Not yet. I will, and soon, but I can’t say any more.”
Sheriff Black folded his arms across his chest and glared at her. Napier looked away in frustration. She continued, “We’re on the same team, I promise.”
The cops barely kept their cool as they stewed for a moment. Napier finally said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Lacy smiled and said, “Look, we have an informant, a source, the person who brought us the case. This person knows far more than we do and is living in fear, has been for years. We made promises about how we will proceed. That’s all I can say for now. We have to be extremely cautious.”
Sheriff Black asked, “So, what are we supposed to do for now?”
“Wait. We’ll wrap up our investigation and meet again.”
“I want to get this straight. You have a solid suspect in a double murder, though you admit that you don’t investigate murders, right? And this guy is a sitting judge in Florida who has committed other crimes, correct?”
“That’s right, though I did not refer to him as a solid suspect. Before today, we had no physical proof of his involvement in any crime. There’s still a chance, gentlemen, that our suspect is not the man. What if the partial thumb print doesn’t match?”
“Let’s find out.”
“We will, but not right now.”
The meeting ended with forced handshakes and smiles.
* * *
—
Lieutenant Ohler with the Florida state police called with the expected news that the envelope had produced nothing interesting. Two prints were lifted and traced to the man who delivered the mail each day around noon.
29
By Thursday he was weary of the well-wishers, their texts and voicemails, their concerns about his health. He waited until the mailman stopped by at noon. He put on gloves, retrieved his mail, and saw another plain envelope. Inside, there was another poem:
greetings from the grave
it’s rather cold and dark down here
whispers, voices, groans
no shortage of things to fear
your crimes took no courage
the shock, the rope, the knot
you’re a coward in your sickness
the worst of a loathsome lot.
a pathetic student of the law
the most pompous in the class
i had you pegged for failure
a cocky, bumbling ass
“She’s writing about her father now,” he said to himself as he stared at the sheet of paper on the kitchen table.