Quint Mitchell 01 - Matanzas Bay Read Online Free

I’m a private investigator.” Even as I said the words I knew how lame they sounded.
    Conover moved closer to me. I smelled peppermint on his breath. “Believe me, Mr. Mitchell, we’ll be in touch if we have any more questions for you. Right now, Dr. Poe is the only one we need to speak with. Routine questions, that’s all.”
    With that, he turned his back on me and guided Poe by the elbow toward his squad car.

THREE
    Poe climbed into the back of Conover’s cruiser, and they pulled away leaving me rubbing my aching abdomen and nursing a bruised ego. Yellow police tape had been strung around the entire church parking lot except for a gap to allow official vehicles to enter and exit. While I watched, a man in his late fifties arrived in a white van. He approached Horgan who stood by the excavation site, a clipboard in one hand, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.
    Horgan greeted the new arrival and passed the clipboard to the man, who wore a limp seersucker jacket that looked like it may have been purchased at a 1978 JC Penney summer sale. He tucked a small black valise under his left arm in order to hold the clipboard and signed in.
    As the primary investigating officer on the scene, Horgan was responsible for documenting the chain of evidence. If I was right, the gentleman with the retro coat and black bag was the county medical examiner. They conferred for a minute before Horgan pointed to the hamper where Marrano’s remains were now attracting dark clouds of gnats and flies.
    The medical examiner’s first order of business was to confirm the victim’s death. His next task would be to estimate the time and cause of death. The corpse’s temperature provided an approximation as to how long the victim had been deceased. But most of the answers would be found during the autopsy.
    Standard crime scene investigation procedures call for photographic documentation of the scene in order to create a permanent historical record, collecting of trace evidence and writing a detailed report, including diagrams, of everything found at the scene. But prior to all of this, I knew the police were required to clear all non-essential personnel from the crime scene.
    Right on cue, Horgan looked up and spotted me.
    “Mitchell, what the hell are you still doing here?” he blared out from his position next to the excavation site. “Even a PI should know a crime scene when he sees one. Now move your ass before I ask one of these officers to escort you to headquarters. If we need you, we know where to find you.”
    As he yelled, Horgan’s eyes bulged to the point I expected to see one of his orbs pop out of his head and roll across the ground like a marble.
    “Don’t get your tighty-whities in a twist, detective. I was just leaving.”
    Horgan didn’t need to remind me the police were in charge of this investigation, but as I walked away from the church, I worried about my friend. Jeffrey Poe was obviously more than a person of interest. He was at the top of the SAPD’s suspect list, and I didn’t want to see him railroaded because he and Bill Marrano had disagreed over St. Augustine’s future skyline.
    I’ve known Poe for about five years. We’ve grown increasingly close, particularly after his wife Gail died three years ago. She suffered through an agonizing bout with liver cancer, Poe suffering along with her, a part of his spirit departing when she died. In the weeks following her death, he retreated behind a wall of grief, refusing to answer his phone and ignoring the friends and neighbors who came to check on him. Poe eventually dug himself out of his pit of depression, but now, I worried how he would react to this latest trauma.
    After Poe was taken in for questioning I spent an hour sitting on a bench in the Plaza de la Constitución making phone calls and observing the waves of tourists washing over the old city. The Plaza was slung between Cathedral and King Streets. Tourist guides tout it as the oldest public