Читать книгу The Scientology Murders - William Heffernan - Страница 12

Chapter Five

Regis Walsh looked across his desk at his assistant, Ken Oppenheimer. It was seven a.m., the time of their regular morning meeting. “So where are we with our dead detective?” he asked.

Oppenheimer smiled. Like Walsh he was a tall man, but he was far from the lean, fit man he had been when Walsh had hired him ten years ago. He ran a hand through his thinning sandy-brown hair. “Rolf is working at the marina where our friend keeps his boat. He’s well disguised now, so I doubt our once-dead detective will be able to pick him out. And as you know, we have others watching him as well.”

“How did you arrange the job at the marina?” Walsh asked.

Oppenheimer’s smile widened. He knew Walsh would appreciate what he was about to tell him. “The dockmaster proved easily bribable. I told him I worked for an organization that was negotiating to buy the marina and we had decided we would like him to stay on. I suggested that he hire Rolf as an assistant, but there was no need to pay him, since he worked for us. I’m sure once Rolf is on the payroll his salary will find its way into the dockmaster’s pocket each week. Do you know what the people who keep their boats at the marina call him?”

Walsh shook his head.

“They call him the dock Nazi. He’s little more than a joke to everyone who rents slips there. Mostly he parades around in a pith helmet and flip-flops looking for things to complain about. He’s so easy to corrupt it’s almost laughable.”

“And perfect for our needs,” Walsh said. “I think our detective friend would be quite mortified if he knew how easily we’ve put the man he’s searching for right next to him.”

“I’m glad you’re pleased,” Oppenheimer said.

“Can you reach Rolf easily?”

“Yes, he has one of the cell phones I keep in my name. I told him to throw his away and only use the one I gave him. I also told him that he was not permitted to give the number to anyone.”

“Give me the number. I want him to meet with me late tonight. I’ll call him myself.”

Oppenheimer wrote the number on the back of a business card and handed it to Walsh.

* * *

Harry brought the boat into its slip at seven a.m. He had awakened just before dawn, thrown on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, raised the anchor, and headed in, leaving Meg asleep in his bed. Traffic had just started to form its regular morning madness on the Clearwater Memorial Causeway as he tied the boat up and went down into the galley. The clothing they had left scattered on the floor had been picked up, telling him that Meg was probably showering in one of the two heads. He checked which one she was in, then went to the other to shave and shower.

When he came out, wrapped in a towel, he found her in the galley cooking bacon. She raised her chin toward the Keurig coffee maker. “I just put on a cup of French Market for you so grab whatever you put in it.”

Harry squeezed by her, kissing her on the back of the neck. “Thanks for making breakfast.”

“I figured I owed it to you. Just consider it a display of gratitude for the way you rocked my socks last night.”

“You rocked a few socks yourself.”

“I sure hope so.” Meg turned, rose up on her toes, and kissed him softly on the lips. “I want you to come back for more.” He reached around her and started to pull her toward him but she spun quickly away. “But not now or I’ll burn the bacon.”

“God forbid,” Harry said. “I hate overly crisp bacon.”

* * *

Tony Rolf squatted next to an electrical box on an empty slip. The slip was located on a pier with a clear view of Harry’s boat. Rolf watched as Harry and a woman came out of the main cabin, climbed down, and stood talking on the dock. He had watched Harry bring the boat in early that morning. He and the woman had clearly spent the night out on the water. He studied the woman closely, studied the way she dressed. Her clothing was clearly provocative—short shorts that barely covered her, a shirt tied at the midriff obviously intended to show off her bust. Of course the detective had probably seen her naked. The slut wouldn’t have missed the opportunity for that.

The woman boarded her sailboat and climbed into its main hatch, as the detective headed down the dock toward the parking lot. He decided to follow the detective, see where his investigation was taking him. He cautioned himself to do it slowly, carefully, to make sure he wasn’t seen. It would be better to lose him than have his eagerness give himself away. He knew Regis Walsh would never forgive him if he blew his cover and lost the chance to continue spying on the detective. No, he had learned long ago that Regis Walsh was not the forgiving type.

* * *

When Harry reached the parking lot he found his partner Vicky Stanopolis leaning against his car.

“Hi, sailor,” she said.

“Why didn’t you come down to the boat?” he asked.

“I did. But I heard voices and since one of them was obviously a woman I decided not to interrupt . . . Harry Doyle, you’re blushing.”

“I am not,” he snapped. “I got a lot of sun yesterday.”

She started to laugh, partly because of how guilty he looked, partly to hide the jealousy she could feel growing inside her. She pushed it away. “You said we had a busy day today.”

“We do. To start with, the Clearwater PD’s sending another police artist to work with my dad. I want to check in on that.”

“I thought they already did that.”

“They did, but he was still so groggy they want him to take another shot at the guy’s facial features. Then, as long as I’ve got you here, I’d like to meet this woman you know, the one who told you that some Scientologists had accused Mary Kate of being gay.”

“Her name is Lilly Mikinos and finding her shouldn’t be a problem,” Vicky said. “She works in her parents’ shop on the Sponge Docks.”

“Are you sure she’ll be there?”

“You really don’t understand Greeks. Unless there’s been a death in the family, they’ll all be there trying to squeeze a few more bucks out of their business.”

* * *

The police artist seated next to Jocko’s bed was halfway through his sketch when Harry and Vicky arrived. Jocko, appearing more animated than at any time since he’d been shot, had regained most of his color and was eagerly responding to the artist’s questions. It told Harry he would soon be demanding to be sent home.

“Hey, Pops, you look good,” Harry said.

“You do,” Vicky echoed. She bent down and kissed his forehead.

“Yeah, for a dumb ex-cop who forgot how to duck,” Jocko rasped.

“Now I know you’re truly on the mend,” Harry said.

“How’s that?” Jocko asked.

“Your cranky disposition is back. I’m gonna call Mama and tell her to get over here to keep the nurses safe.”

“Tell her to bring my cigarettes,” Jocko said.

Harry shook his head and laughed, then turned to the police artist. “How’s the sketch of the perp coming?”

“We’re getting there—”

“I don’t like it,” Jocko interrupted. “It doesn’t look anything like the guy.”

“It will. It just takes time.” The artist extended a hand to Harry. “I’m Jeremy Jeffords. I work out of forensics.”

“Harry Doyle, the son of this tough old billy goat and also a detective with the sheriff’s office.”

“Yeah, Max Abrams told me about you.”

“Can I see what you’ve got so far?” Harry asked.

Jeffords handed over his sketch pad. Harry stared at it, studied the drawing of the man’s face—the long narrow jaw and nose, eyes that were close set, a mouth that seemed to hold a hidden sneer. “Not a very pleasant-looking guy, but definitely somebody who might shoot you in the back.” He passed the sketch to Vicky. “This is my partner, Vicky Stanopolis,” he explained.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like the guy who shot me,” Jocko insisted. “I liked the first sketch better.”

“We’ll get there,” Jeffords replied. “Just take it slow and easy like your doctor said.”

“We’re going to move along,” Harry said. He turned to Jocko. “Did you come up with anything else about this guy?”

“I remember a tattoo, but I can’t remember where it was on his body. It was a knife, a stilleto. I think it was on his forearm but I can’t remember for sure. It’s drivin’ me nuts.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said. “What you gave me is terrific. Just relax and let whatever else there is come to you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jocko said.

Harry leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll talk to you later.” He turned back to Jeffords. “Don’t work him too hard.”

* * *

They drove north eight miles to Tarpon Springs. When Harry was a child his mother had brought him and his brother here. Back then, a quarter of a century ago, the road from Clearwater to Tarpon Springs weaved through seemingly endless orange groves and horse farms. Now it was bordered by one walled housing development after another and rush-hour traffic clogged every road, including Route 19 that had been widened to four lanes to accommodate all the new housing. Needless to say, all the horses and orange trees had fallen victim to this version of progress along with the bulging bank accounts of fat-cat developers. But Harry knew that blaming the developers was only the easiest answer. A fishing boat captain he knew said air-conditioning was the true villain. It allowed people to live in subtropical climates year round, rather than just the winter months. Air-conditioned homes, air-conditioned cars: it made paradise available to all.

Harry thought back to what he had learned over the years about Tarpon Springs. In 1876 this small coastal area with numerous bayous flowing into the Gulf of Mexico began to attract wealthy Northerners in search of winter homes. These newly arrived residents spotted tarpon jumping out of the waters and named it Tarpon Springs. At the turn of the new century sponge beds were discovered off the coast of Tarpon Springs and a local entrepreneur, John Cocoris, recognized its potential as a major sponge-harvesting area. Cocoris promptly recruited sponge divers from his native Dodecanese Islands in Greece and by the 1930s this new industry was generating millions of dollars a year.

Today, even with the sponge industry greatly diminished, the “Sponge Docks” remained the focal point of Tarpon Springs, a place where boats still unloaded the remaining sponges to professional buyers, and Greek-owned shops and restaurants catered to a continuing stream of tourists.

“Where is the shop we’re going to?” Harry asked, as they turned onto Dodecanese Avenue.

“It’s almost directly across the street from the Sponge Docks,” Vicky said.

Harry drove past the shops and restaurants that lined both sides of the avenue until he reached the Sponge Docks and its row of gaily painted sponge-diving boats with their strings of freshly cleaned sponges hanging from bow to stern. He pulled to a stop next to a bronze statue of a sponge diver, his massive brass hard hat held heroically in the crook of his arm. Parking wasn’t permitted on that stretch of road, so Harry flipped down his visor to display an Official Sheriff’s Business card. “Let’s go find Lilly Mikinos,” he said, as he slid out of the car.

Vicky led him across the street and into a shop offering a plethora of clothing and baubles and seashells and sponges and what all, each item identified as coming from Tarpon Springs, the Sponge-Diving Capital of the World.

They found Lilly at the rear of the store unpacking a new delivery of T-shirts, each bearing the name Tarpon Springs with a diving helmet below and the word Spongers beneath that.

Vicky greeted Lilly in Greek, jabbered away for a few moments, then turned to Harry and switched to English. “This is my partner, Harry Doyle,” she said.

Lilly looked Harry over and smiled, then spoke to Vicky in Greek. Whatever she said brought a faint blush to Vicky’s cheeks.

Vicky quickly changed the subject, switching back to English and bringing up Mary Kate O’Connell’s death.

“I read about it in the paper,” Lilly said in English. “So sad, but then her whole life was sad.”

“Why do you say that?” Harry asked.

Lilly looked around and called to a woman on the other side of the store. “Mama, I’m going outside to take a short break.” The woman waived her hand dismissively and Lilly turned back to Harry and Vicky. “Let’s go across the street to the docks. This place is going to fill up with customers before you know it.”

They followed Lilly across the street. She appeared to be in her mid to late twenties, close to Vicky’s age. She was a small woman, barely an inch or two above five feet, with a slender figure and large brown eyes beneath wavy black hair. She had a long, slender nose and a wide mouth, and she was dressed in tight tan jeans and a loose-fitting white T-shirt emblazoned with a large red heart.

They stopped near one of the sponge boats tied up to the seawall. Two young men were working on the deck, checking out a compressor that would send air into the diver’s helmet by way of a heavy rubber hose. Harry noticed that they also took the time to check out Vicky and Lilly.

“So, tell me why you feel Mary Kate’s life was so sad,” Harry said.

Lilly didn’t hesitate; it was as though she had been waiting for someone to ask her that very question. “People who come to Scientology are desperately seeking answers,” she began. “And most have been seeking those answers for years. But it doesn’t matter what the questions are, Scientology promises that you will find the answers if you follow what they teach.”

“Do people find the answers they’re looking for?” Harry asked.

“The church tells them they have. I just don’t know if they do or not; if I did or not. But I do know there are rules, strict rules that you have to follow. And there are taboos that are simply not permitted.”

“Like homosexuality?” Harry asked.

Lilly nodded. “Yes, that’s a biggie for them. If you’re suspected of homosexual behavior you’re labeled as 1.1. You can also find yourself labeled 1.1 if you’re involved in casual heterosexual sex, or if you refuse to disconnect with your family.”

“Does everyone have to disconnect from their family?” Harry asked.

Lilly thought for a moment. “Eventually, yes, unless the family follows their child into the church. You see, the religion is for believers only, and if you’re a believer you don’t associate very much with anyone but other believers, not on a personal level. Oh, you can work with nonbelievers, if necessary. But you don’t socialize with them too much; you never talk about church matters with them, unless you think they can be converted. And in those cases, you bring in help from the church.”

“Was Mary Kate considered to be 1.1?” Vicky asked.

“I think so, and I think it might have been justified.” The words seemed to offend her as she spoke them. “Justifiable for them,” she added. “Based on what they believe.”

“Did you think Mary Kate was gay?” Vicky asked.

“I suspected that she was, yes.”

“Did she come on to you?” Harry asked. It was the question everyone had been circling around.

“I think so. Oh God, who knows? It was nothing terribly overt. But it was a definite feeling I got. Maybe it was because I knew other people who thought she was gay. I mean she was so goddamn needy. She seemed to want to be close to everyone, to be protected by everyone.” She folded her arms across her chest, creating a barrier. “You do know that everyone in Scientology is watched, right?”

“I’ve read about people being watched after they leave the church,” Harry said. “Cars supposedly parked near their homes that follow them wherever they go; same for people who write about the church, or simply go around asking too many questions.”

“Yes, there’s that,” Lilly said. “But the people inside the church are also watched. There’s a whole department that keeps track of us.”

“The office of church discipline,” Harry said.

“That’s right. When I left the church and came home there were people all over the Sponge Docks keeping track of me. Then I’d see them parked near my house. It was pretty scary being watched like that.”

“No one spoke to you?” Harry asked.

“Just one time. A woman entered the shop and asked if I was coming back to the church. That’s the way she said it: coming back to the church, as if I had defected or something. You see, they don’t let go very easily.”

“Do you still see them? Up here, I mean.”

“Every so often I see someone who looks familiar.” Lilly shrugged. “But Tarpon is a popular place for tourists, so who knows?”

“Was Mary Kate being watched?” Harry asked.

“Oh yes. And she knew it was happening. She said there was a scary-looking guy with white hair and very pale skin who watched everything she did and it really scared her. I knew who she was talking about. We used to call him ‘the albino,’ and whenever he was around everyone seemed nervous.”

* * *

Tourist activity had increased and Tony Rolf used it to get closer to the three people he was watching. He stepped inside the Hellas Bakery, bought himself a pastry, and took a table near the front window.

He knew both women Doyle was talking to—he had seen the detective’s partner on other occasions. Like Doyle, she did little to conceal the large automatic pistol she wore on her hip, leaving no doubt that she was a cop. The other woman had taken a bit longer to place. Then he remembered the great stir she had caused when some bearded Greek priest dressed in a cassock had approached her on the street right in the heart of the church’s Clearwater compound and demanded she return to her parents’ home. And she had gone with him. In an act of open betrayal she had walked away from the church.

Now what was she up to? They were undoubtedly talking to her about the woman he had been forced to kill. Had she been one of her lovers? Did she know something about him? Since she had been a member of the church it was quite possible that she knew he worked for the office of church discipline, as many members did. She might even have known from the woman herself that he had been assigned to her case. But she couldn’t have known that he was assigned to take her out to the cruise ship Freewinds for auditing. Even the O’Connell woman hadn’t known that until just before she died. But what did this Greek woman know, especially about him? And what was she telling these two cops?

He knew he had to find out, and he had to do it quickly.

* * *

He waited until the shops began to close, then took a position near a small gyro shop at one end of the Sponge Docks. From there he could drink a soda and watch the front of the Mikinos store from which Lilly should soon emerge. He had already checked the rear of the shop for a car but found none. He had called his office and learned that the home address they had for Lilly was only a few blocks away on Athens Street. She would be walking, unless someone picked her up, and if so she should be turning onto Athens Street minutes after she left the family shop. He only hoped she would be alone.