Murder Key Read Free Page B

the Florida legislature had passed a law that allowed any citizen who took a one-day course and passed a perfunctory test on the use and safety of firearms, to be issued a concealed weapons permit. I had one. I thought it was time I took advantage of it.
                  The phone rang. I answered.
                  “Mr. Royal? This is Ken Brown at the Herald Tribune .” I hung up. It rang again. I ignored it.
                  I knew some of the islanders would be worried when they heard about Tiny’s, and they’d be calling. I’d let the answering machine pick up, and I’d call my friends back later. The press could go to hell.
                  I lay down on the bed with my revolver on the bedside table. The front door was dead-bolted and the sliding glass doors to my balcony overlooking Sarasota Bay were secured with steel rods in the slide-ways. I felt relatively safe as I drifted off to sleep.
                  The dreams came that night, murky with dread and remorse. I hadn’t had them in a long time, but I knew the men knocking on my psychic door during that long night. I woke with the dawn, glad the specters were gone, but knowing they’d be back and that I could do nothing about it, except drink myself into a stupor. I didn’t want to start that again.

37
     
     
    Murder Key
                               
     
     
     
     
     
    FOUR
     
     
     
     
     
                  The Blue Dolphin Café sits in the middle of the Centre Shops, a small strip mall with a tree lined parking lot near the north end of Longboat Key. Bill Lester was waiting in a booth when I came in. I was wearing a light windbreaker over a golf shirt, cargo shorts and boat shoes. Bill was in uniform, the two stars on his collar glinting in the fluorescent light.
                  He said, “I hope you’ve got a permit for that thing.”
                  I looked down at my belt line. “Is it that obvious?”
                  “Only to a trained observer, such as myself. Permit?”
                  “Yeah, I got one. Want to see it?”
                  “Your word’s good enough for me, Matt. Do you really think you need a gun?”
                  “After last night, I’ll feel better just having it.”
                  “Well, try not to shoot any innocent bystanders.”
                  “Bill, I appreciate the cops at my place last night. I’m really spooked by this. Have you found out anything?”
                  “No, and you know it’s being handled by the Manatee Sheriff’s Office. You’re not one of their favorite people.
                  Longboat Key is a small island, about ten miles long and a quarter-mile wide. The Town of Longboat Key encompasses the whole island, but it’s divided by the county line that runs across the key at its middle. Manatee County is to the north, and Sarasota County lies to the south. When the very rare major crime is committed on Longboat Key, the Sheriff’s Office of the county in which the crime occurred handles the investigation. The Longboat Key Police Department is in charge however, and the deputies report to Bill Lester.
                  “I’m not sure why I’m in such bad favor at the Manatee Sheriff’s Office,” I said. “I did what I ha d to do to save an innocent man. Banion was a bad guy.”
                  I’m a lawyer by training, but I retired early and moved to Longboat Key. Some months before, I’d come out of retir e ment and tried a case defending Logan Hamilton from a charge of murdering his girlfriend. In the process I’d destroyed the reputation of a drunken Manatee County detective named Michael Banion, and Logan had been acquitted. Banion was a mean drunk who should have been put out to pasture years before.