Page 105 of The Newcomer
40
Saturday Morning
“HEY, JOE.”
He opened one eye. Oscar Jensen stood in the breezeway outside Letty’s room, unlit cigarette in hand, looking down at him with a bemused expression.
Joe yawned. It was just past daylight. He stood up and stretched. His back was killing him.
“What’s going on?” Oscar whispered, glancing around furtively. “You staking out Letty’s room, or what?”
Joe plucked the cigarette from Oscar’s fingers. “You gotta quit smoking out here, Oscar. Also, you didn’t see me. Understand?”
Hewas just emerging from the shower when he heard the phone ringing on his nightstand. He dove for it, stubbing his toe on the metal frame of his bed. “Goddamn!” he howled, tappingACCEPT.
“Excuse me? I’m looking for Officer DeCurtis?” It was a man’s voice. Joe looked at the caller ID screen and saw a South Florida area code.
“Oh, sorry. This is Joe DeCurtis. Who’s this?”
“This is Chief Deputy Warren Davis, down here in Collier County. I’m just following up on a lead and I see your department has an outstanding warrant for a Charles Sheppard?”
“Who?” Joe sank down on the bed, examining his little toe, which was bleeding.
“Charles Sheppard. White male, age sixty-three. Wanted for theft by taking, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud. Your warrant is from 2014. Sound familiar? Looks like he and a couple associates had a racket going at a motel up there in Treasure Island. Buying estate silver and gold and jewelry and bilking senior citizens.”
“Chuck!” Joe exclaimed. “You mean Chuck Sheppard?” His toe was bleeding all over the floor. “Don’t tell me you caught up with that piece of shit.”
“Yeah, I guess you could say we caught up with him. Or what’s left of him,” the deputy said, chuckling at his own joke.
Joe padded into the bathroom, tore a piece of toilet paper off the roll, and wrapped it around his toe. “He’s dead?”
“Oh yeah,” the deputy drawled.
“When was this? What happened?”
“We found his remains four days ago, but we couldn’t identify him until yesterday. We were able to lift his fingerprints from the vehicle he was driving, and that’s when we found out his name and discovered the outstanding warrants.”
“How was he killed?”
“Somebody wanted us to think that he was killed in a car fire. His body was discovered on a county road down here, in a stolen vehicle, a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. The Jeep was smashed up and partially burned. We found your guy in the driver’s seat.”
“But he wasn’t killed in the wreck?”
“Probably not. Our medical examiner found a bullet lodged in his cerebellum.”
It took a moment for the finality of Chuck Sheppard’s death to sink in for Joe. “Does your medical examiner have any thoughts on when he was killed?”
“The body was in pretty bad shape. That road’s in a remote part of the county, way back in the swamp. It was discovered by a couple of hog hunters. Doc says rough estimate, death occurred about a week ago.”
“Well, damn,” Joe said, toweling his hair dry and looking around for his clothes. “I don’t suppose you have any suspects?”
“I was hoping you could help us with that,” the deputy said. “Since he had no ID on him, we don’t know where he was staying or what he was doing here.”
Joe thought back to where his mother had started her ill-starred acquaintance with Chuck Sheppard. “Do y’all have any Indian gambling casinos in your area?” Joe asked. “That’s where he liked to hang out when he was living up here, at the Seminole casino in Tampa. That is, when he wasn’t ripping off old people.”
“The Seminole tribe has a casino here in Immokalee,” the deputy said. “I’ll look into that. But from what I can tell, the last time Sheppard was detained, he was working with a couple of associates. A woman named Tanya Carnahan and a Declan Rooney. Do those names ring a bell?”
“They do,” Joe said. “Tanya Carnahan died about a month ago.”
