Grave Truth

Chapter 7

7

There wasn’t much I could do the next morning to find Addy. I needed to talk with her friends and the substitute teacher, Ms. Halliway, but I couldn’t very well do either during school hours. Nor was there an easy way to find where she was staying, since she and her boyfriend had probably crashed with his friends. In the unlikely event they went to one of the shelters, the various staff I’d spoken with knew she was a minor, so maybe they’d call me. If not me, perhaps they’d call law enforcement to cover their asses on a runaway. In other words, as much as I hated the thought, my best shot at finding Addy was to hit the clubs again tonight and find the boyfriend.

That meant, after wrapping up a few things on outstanding cases, I worked on Mr. Weber’s mystery without guilt or distraction. I soon found myself thankful I hadn’t indulged in more alcohol the night before. Computer record searches make up the bulk of my work, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy them. And one thing that makes the monotonous clicking and scanning even less enjoyable is doing so with a hangover.

The Florida Youth Reform School was closed down in 1998. Mr. Weber was right about the former director being dead. Wilbur Richard had overseen operations at the juvenile facility for nearly forty years but dropped dead of a heart attack in 1991 while still on the job and possibly under investigation. His name had appeared in a Gainesville newspaper article earlier that year about a young man who’d died at the facility under suspicious circumstances. The family alleged the boy had died as a direct result of not receiving medical treatment, but the exact illness or injury wasn’t specified in the article. Either the investigation went nowhere, or the state had settled with the family to keep it quiet; I didn’t see a follow-up article.

The reporter whose byline appeared on the story no longer worked at that paper, but they gave me the name of his new employer. I left a message for him there, but with no prior relationship, I wasn’t holding my breath on a return call. I had a journalist friend I could contact if I got desperate, but for now I’d focus on talking to whomever was left who might have direct knowledge of the facility. I didn’t have time for tangents.

Mr. Weber couldn’t recall the name of the number two man when he’d worked there, nor was that man mentioned in the investigation article or any of the other handful of stories I could find about the facility. Many of Florida’s smaller newspapers had slipped into obscurity without being digitized. Only the big boys (with national circulation) were digitized back as far as the decades that interested me. Better to go to the source.

The Florida State Archives was bound to have something about the facility, maybe even copies of their employment records. Plus Frank, the head librarian, had a soft spot for me. No food or beverages—or pens, for that matter—were allowed in the Archives, but I often smuggled him a macadamia nut cookie. I called and let him know what I was interested in, and he said he’d pull some things for me.

That set in motion, I glanced at my calendar… dammit! My chair spun away and slammed into a bookshelf as I jumped up, scrambling to pack up my laptop. I’d forgotten I had scheduled maintenance for Cecil, maintenance that would hopefully remedy the funny noise he’d been making lately.

My regular mechanic, a friend of my teenaged neighbor Ben, was off on some sort of cross-country adventure, so I’d made an appointment at one of the chain places based solely on the criteria that there was a cafe with wifi next door. In my experience, an appointment at a chain mechanic meant you were choosing whether to give up an entire morning or an entire afternoon; the actual reserved time was meaningless. Unless, of course, you were late.

Someone had parked a beater truck on the street with its nose poking past my office driveway. Poor Cecil rocked as I bumped over the curb to get around the truck, steering one-handed while the other was busy gesturing obscenely at the absent owner. I avoided the main thoroughfares of Monroe and Tennessee, knowing they’d be clogged like a fat man’s arteries, and stuck to one-way streets tight with parked cars and occasional overhanging canopies. I was only three minutes late handing over my keys, but the young woman behind the desk still gave me stink-eye.

It was midday, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and attributed her crankiness to low blood sugar. It certainly wasn’t doing anything for my mood, so I walked next door and ordered a caprese sandwich and what looked like a gallon of iced coffee. The round table I’d chosen was a bit too close to the door and a smidge too small to be eating and working at the same time. I struggled to not drop chunks of tomato or basil on my keyboard. (My jeans would wash, and the local mozzarella was so good I’d be tempted to pick it up off the floor.)

I tried a few variations on my juvenile facility searches, but turned up nothing new. Now what? My fidgety fingers tapping the edge of the table drew an annoyed look from a college student in an FSU hoody sitting nearby. See, this is why I needed to eat regularly. Twenty minutes ago, I would have stuck my tongue out at her. Instead I stopped tapping, sighed, and stood to bus my plate. And collided with someone heading for the counter.

“I’m so sorry—” I began. But I recognized my victim.

John Driscoll’s navy uniform was still crisp with the start of shift. He’d gotten a haircut since I’d last seen him, which made him look closer to mid-twenties than thirty. He bent to pick up my dropped napkin, and I saw the hair in back was buzzed close to his skull, a sheen of pale scalp peeking through the golden-brown stubble.

“Officer Driscoll,” I said. “You’re early, aren’t you? Or have you switched over to days now?”

John’s official, stern Tallahassee Police Department expression softened into a smile. “Ms. Brennan, I didn’t know you ventured out in daylight, either. Hunting sleeping vampires?”

“Something like that,” I said. “Can I buy you coffee by way of apology?”

He leaned toward me. “Don’t tell anyone, but they usually comp my coffee.”

“Then I’ll save you from taking graft and contributing to the public perception of law enforcement corruption.” I stifled a laugh when he frowned at my remark, and asked, “Hot or cold?”

After closing my laptop (a paranoid PI’s habits die hard), I purchased a hot coffee every bit as ginormous as my iced one, and John joined me at my table.

“How’s Emma?” I asked.

Emma was John’s cousin, and coincidentally the friend of Deidre I’d tracked down for Roger a couple of months ago. John and I had first met during a nighttime traffic stop, but I’d unexpectedly bumped into him again while looking up his cousin.

“Emma’s good.” He sipped gingerly through his lid.

“She still dancing?” I asked casually.

“Yeah,” he said, but couldn’t help the slightest shake of his head. She may not be breaking any laws, but he still didn’t approve of his cousin’s profession. “So what’s up, Sydney? Sorry, but I don’t have much time.”

I retrieved the picture of Addy and her boyfriend from my bag. “You ever see this guy?”

“Should I have?” he asked.

“Probably not,” I admitted. “But I’m trying to track him down. He hasn’t been in town long. Might be a small-time dealer, and I figured he’d probably hit the clubs to get the lay of the land. I was wondering if you could shorten my list of potentials.”

“And you think I’d know the clubs because I’m gay?” he asked, a hint of Southern drawl coloring a voice that was just short of challenging.

“No,” I said, dragging out the syllable as I would with a recalcitrant child, then teased him with, “I thought you’d know because you’re young and pretty. But more importantly, because you mentioned once you used to be the TPD’s go-to guy when it came to keeping an eye on the clubs.”

John blushed and—shame on me—it just emphasized his hazel-green eyes and full lips and made him prettier.

“Right,” he said. “If he’s small-time, he’s probably not hooked into the meth or heroin or one of those scenes. Not yet. You have a sheet of paper?”

I found an envelope (unpaid office electric bill—note to self) and pushed it and a pen across the table. John scribbled down four places.

“Those are your best bets,” he said, sliding the envelope back to me. I held out my hand for the pen, and he added, “I wouldn’t go super late. People are too messed up by closing to be counting real money. Can you read it?”

I skimmed quickly and nodded. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said. “What about the girl in the photo? Can’t she give you a lead on him?”

Stupid! It never occurred to me that he’d ask about Addy, and I really did not need her on law enforcement radar. I shrugged, hesitant to lie to his face, and glanced at the wall clock behind the counter. “Don’t you have to go?”

He slid his cuff to check his watch, then almost spilled his coffee lurching to his feet. “Hell, yes. Thanks for the coffee.”

I nodded, then closed my eyes in relief. I had to be careful. I had a feeling that was my one lucky freebie, and keeping Addy secret wouldn’t be so easy in the future.