Mortal Dilemma Read online

  “He’s a piece of work. Lots of money, no brains,” Linder said. “I see him most mornings at the Citrus Club. He’s usually there for the free breakfast buffet they put out for the members. He always wears a coat and tie and makes a big production about going to the office or having some major piece of legal work to handle. It’s all a load of crap. He hasn’t handled a legal matter in decades.”

  “Have you heard any gossip about his being involved in something shady?”

  “Not specifically. A few years back, I heard he was in financial trouble, but he apparently pulled out of it.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Not much. Just the usual talk down at the University Club. He was way behind on his dues there as well as at the Country Club of Orlando. He wasn’t paying the mortgage on that huge pile of bricks he lives in with that new wife. You know how bankers talk when they have a few scotches. But he pulled out of it, caught up on everything, and paid off his house.”

  “Do you know how he did that?”

  “The prevailing wisdom is that he sold some of the property his grandfather accumulated out west. Maybe Montana, Wyoming, one of those places.”

  “How’s he been doing lately?”

  “Financially? Fine, I guess. I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.”

  “Is the firm doing well?”

  “Seems to be, but I don’t think he’s making much money out of it. I heard he sold what was left of his interest back to the firm years ago. I know they don’t pay him much of a salary. They won’t let him practice law.”

  “What does he do with the firm?”

  “Nothing. He has an office there, but I think that’s just because he carries one of the founder’s names. He doesn’t show up most days.”

  “Could the money he got from selling his interest in the firm been enough to pull him out of his difficulties several years ago?” I asked.

  “One of the partners told me they didn’t pay him enough to buy a car, so I’m sure that didn’t take care of his problem. Besides, I think that buyout happened before he really got into money trouble.”

  “Do you think he would get himself involved in something illegal to make enough money to climb out from under his debt?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past him. If he thought he could get away with something and make a little money in the bargain, he’d do it. All those ex-wives are expensive.”

  “Even drugs or gambling?”

  Linder was quiet for a moment, thinking. “There was a rumor several years ago that old Wes had a gambling problem. That was kept pretty quiet and even the bankers over at the club didn’t know anything about it.”

  “What were the rumors?” J.D. asked.

  “Just that he was laying a lot of money off on a bookie, betting on professional sports. I heard he was losing more than he was winning. He might have pissed some bad people off, but I think he’d be sleeping with the fishes, as they say, if he’d done that.”

  “Or gone to work for them,” J.D. said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you have any ideas about what happened?” I asked.

  “No. The talk just dried up. If he was in trouble because of the gambling, I guess he worked it out. He’s still here and still breathing.”

  “Who would know about the land sale out west?” J.D. asked.

  “Lloyd Deming probably. He owns most of that land with D. Wesley. Their grandfathers, the two guys who founded Gilbert and Deming, were partners in all their land deals and Wes and Lloyd inherited it.”

  “No other heirs?” I asked.

  “No. The old men each had only one child, a son, and each of the sons each had one son. So D. Wesley and Lloyd jointly own whatever’s left. They’re about the same age.”

  “Is Deming a lawyer?” I asked.

  “No. He’s a retired airline pilot. I’m surprised you don’t know him.”

  “Never met him. What can you tell us about Lloyd?”

  “As I said, he’s a retired airline pilot. Before that, he graduated from Florida State with an Air Force ROTC commission. After pilot training, he flew more than three hundred combat missions in Vietnam and later flew C-5As, including a career in the Air Force Reserve. He retired from that as a lieutenant colonel. He lives up in Altamonte Springs.”

  “J.D.,” I said, “that’s where Ken Brown’s office is. Do you think we have time to meet with Deming if we can set it up?”

  “I don’t see a problem. Our meeting with Ken is at four. We could maybe see Mr. Deming at three and still have time to sit in on Skeeter’s interrogation. We’ll be a little late getting home, but that’s not a problem.”

  “Can you set up a meeting for three, Paul?”

  “Sure. If he’s not on a trip somewhere on his motorcycle, he’ll either be at home or at Starbucks.”

  * * *

  Altamonte Springs is an Orlando suburb, about a twenty-minute drive from downtown. Lloyd Deming was a thin gray-haired man in his late sixties. He introduced himself and invited us in. His wife Gale offered iced tea. We declined and she left the room to, as she said, let us talk business.

  “Gale can’t stand D. Wesley,” Deming said. “Paul Linder said you have some questions about him. He told me Wes might be part of a murder investigation, so, of course, I want to do anything I can to help, but Wes and I’ve never been close. I don’t know how much I can tell you.”

  “Mr. Deming,” J.D. said, “I would appreciate your confidence on this. Mr. Gilbert may be completely innocent of any wrongdoing, but his name came up in the investigation, and I’m obligated to look into him. If he is involved, I wouldn’t want him to know we’re looking into his activities.”

  “I’ll keep this just between us. How can I help?”

  “We understand that you and Mr. Gilbert own land together out west,” J.D. said.

  “True.”

  “Have you sold any of it in the past few years?”

  “The last time we sold anything must have been about ten years ago. There’s not much left.”

  “Do you know if Mr. Gilbert owned any other land somewhere other than in Florida?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. As I said, we’re not close. In fact, I think the last time I saw him was when we sold an orange grove left to us by our dads.”

  “Do you know anything about him having financial problems three or four years ago?”

  “No. But I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Why not?”

  “Our grandfathers bought a lot of property when it was cheap. They didn’t believe in selling it, so when Disney and the other attractions showed up in the area, our dads got rich selling the land. My dad was a lawyer and a member of Gilbert and Deming, but he died of a heart attack when I was in Air Force flight training. He and D. Wesley’s dad were close and I saw a lot of him when we were growing up. I didn’t like him very much back then. His dad got him into law school and when he graduated, he came back to the firm and did nothing. When his dad died, about two years after Wes got out of law school, Wes inherited from his dad and, unfortunately, I inherited Wes as a partner. He always seemed to spend more money than he had, and he was constantly on me to sell the property we’d inherited. He always seemed to need money. I usually refused.”

  “Did you ever hear anything about him having a gambling problem?” J.D. asked.

  “When I was at Florida State, Wes was at the University of Florida. I heard he’d gotten into some trouble betting on horses. I think his dad bailed him out. Maybe more than once. After his dad died and Wes inherited his interest in the jointly owned property, he came to me and wanted to put the property up as collateral on a loan. Said he needed the money urgently to pay off a debt. He needed my agreement in order to sell the property and I refused.”

  “Did he say what the debt was all about?” J.D. asked.

  “No, and I didn’t ask. I wasn’t going to put the property up, so it was none of my business.”

  “Do you know what he did about t
he debt? Where else he might have gotten the money he needed?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “One more question, Mr. Deming,” J.D. said, “and we’ll get out of your hair. Do you think Mr. Gilbert would be capable of getting involved in a murder plot? Or maybe with gamblers or drug runners?”

  “I’m sorry, Detective, but I just don’t know. From what I know of him, and what I saw even in childhood, my guess would be that for the right amount of money, he’d be capable of anything. To be honest, I think he’s a psychopath.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3

  KEN BROWN HAD been busy, buried in the documents Reuben Carlson had sent him that morning. At midafternoon, the documents were spread over the top of his desk, order in their apparent randomness. Ken would pull one out, discuss it, and show how it related to another document.

  “I’ve made a cursory analysis of the documents Reuben Carlson sent me,” he said, “and it looks like there was an awful lot of money going from the Fortson trusts into a lot of different accounts, mostly in the Tallahassee area.”

  “Did any of that money go to Wayfarer, Inc.?” I asked.

  Ken thumbed through a small stack of documents. “I looked at what I’ve got so far, and extrapolated over the three-year period since Rachel’s death that approximately ten million dollars was transferred to Wayfarer.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” J.D. said.

  “Yes,” Ken said, “and all the checks were for ninety-five hundred dollars.”

  “The feds don’t get too excited unless the checks are for ten grand or more,” J.D. said.

  “Right,” Ken said, “and these checks were sent to several different accounts that Wayfarer controls. I’ve listed them as Wayfarer numbers one through twelve.”

  “That hides the transaction even better,” I said, “Were all the accounts on the same bank?”

  “No. Each account was in a different bank. The banks are mostly small community banks in little towns between Pensacola and Jacksonville. And Wayfarer wasn’t the only corporation where lots of money was being sent.”

  “How did the trusts work when it came to sending money?” I asked.

  “Simple. Peter Fortson signed checks just as if they were drawn on his own account. He was the co-trustee with the bank, but he was the only one who could sign a check. Everything was run through the bank in Orlando that served as the co-trustee.”

  “The bank was probably co-trustee, so the trust would continue in the event of the deaths of the beneficiaries,” I said. “In this case, Rachel and Peter.”

  “I looked at some of the corporations that were receiving the money Fortson sent,” Ken said. “Most of them are like Wayfarer. We don’t know who any of the board members are, or who runs them. Their offices of record seem to be for the most part just mail drops; boxes in stores where those who rent the boxes can remain anonymous. But there were some individual names that popped up who were sent large amounts, often by wire transfer. Most of them had to do with business transactions, but I think that was bogus. I couldn’t find anything anywhere that would indicate that the business deals were ever consummated. No return on investment, no transfers back to the trust, nothing.”

  “Were you able to figure out who the recipients of that money were?” J.D. asked.

  “I found out quite a bit on some of them. Several were bookies with mob associations.”

  “You think Fortson was involved in gambling?” J.D. asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Does it look like Peter was in any kind of money squeeze at the time of Rachel’s murder?”

  “It would appear so. The trust documents were in the stack we got from Parrish’s office. The trust was set up so that Peter and Rachel’s dad was the sole beneficiary, but he could also borrow from it. It looks like the grandfather was afraid that his grandchildren might be a little more profligate than his son, so the trust documents provided that upon the death of the son, that is Peter and Rachel’s father, the trust would be split into two parts. There was a firewall between the two parts of the trust. Neither of the kids, Peter or Rachel, could invade the other’s half. When one of them died, if he or she had no children or a spouse, the money in the decedent’s trust would revert to the remaining child’s trust. When Rachel was killed, Peter got everything.”

  “What did Peter’s trust look like at the time of Rachel’s murder?” I asked.

  “It was almost gone. Peter had borrowed so much from it that the principal had been depleted to almost nothing. He would have been destitute within a year or so.”

  “Where did Peter’s money go?” J.D. asked.

  “I don’t know. Yet. I haven’t had time to go through the documents on Peter’s trust that preceded the time of Rachel’s death. But I can tell you that there were big checks going out of his trust to some of the same people the checks were going to just after Rachel’s death. A cursory look at those documents makes me think that Peter depleted his trust funds by sending the money to some pretty bad people over a number of years.”

  “What happens to the money now?” J.D. asked. “Peter told me it would go to a bunch of charities, but I never saw the trust documents.”

  Ken said, “The trust will survive, but the money generated by it all goes to various legitimate charities. At least that’s the way Grandpa Fortson set it up. But there’s a hitch. Several weeks ago, Peter petitioned the probate court in Orlando to allow him to change the terms of the trust. He wanted all the money to go to one entity that appeared to be a charity, rather than the ones his grandfather had set out in the original documents. Last week the probate court issued an order refusing to change the beneficiaries. The money will go to the charities Grandpa set out.”

  “What was the charity Peter wanted to leave the money to?” I asked.

  “It’s called Ishmael’s Children. He’d given a lot of money to it over the past three years or so. But there’s something funny going on with it. Fortson’s federal income tax returns were included in the documents on his laptop, and he never took any deductions for donations to Ishmael’s Children. I checked it out. I don’t think it’s a charity. It’s on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of organizations that support al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations. It may be a terrorist group itself. That wasn’t clear, but I’d bet my last buck it isn’t a charity.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3

  SKEETER EVANS SAT in the same interview room that had held Xavier Duhns several hours earlier. His right arm was shackled to the O-ring cemented into the floor. He looked like a big dumb redneck. He was wearing a sweatshirt from which the sleeves had been torn, revealing muscled arms tattooed with a mixture of prison tats and work done at a tattoo shop that catered to people who thought caricatures of naked women were fine art. His red hair hadn’t been washed or combed in weeks, if ever. He sat scowling across the table at Detective Glenn Howell. J.D. and I were back in the anteroom watching through the one-way glass.

  Glenn sat quietly, looking directly at Skeeter. A couple of minutes passed and then Evans opened his mouth and proved my hypothesis that he was dumber than a stump. “What the fuck you looking at, you blond motherfucker?”

  The detective smiled, reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, and pulled out a small aerosol cylinder, held it near Skeeter’s nose, and pressed. A quick spurt of spray, short and pungent, pushed Skeeter back in his chair. I smelled the odor of pepper spray escaping the small room. Skeeter howled and put his free hand to his face, trying desperately to make the burning go away. Glenn pushed his chair back, stood, and walked out.

  “Was that pepper spray?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It’s kind of a sedative. It’ll make him a bit more docile.” He walked into the breakroom down the hall and returned with a plastic bottle of water and a washcloth. He went back into the room and handed them to Skeeter. “Here. Wash out your eyes. When you’re finished, we can either have a civil conversation, o
r I can use up some more of that spray.”

  Skeeter nodded.

  “Talk to me about the car you stole.”

  “I didn’t steal no car.”

  “You paid Xavier Duhns two thousand bucks to steal one.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where’d you get that kind of money, Skeeter?”

  “Okay. A dude gave me the money. Told me he needed a car. Xavier was like a subcontractor, you know?”

  “Who’s the dude who paid you?”

  “Didn’t get a name.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Never saw him.”

  “How did you set up the deal?”

  “Phone.”

  “How did you get the money?”

  “One of those messenger dudes brought it to me.”

  “Messenger dude?”

  “You know. Those guys what drive those little cars and deliver packages and such around town.”

  Glenn nodded. “Okay. How much did he give you?”

  “Two thousand dollars.”

  “Are you telling me you just handled all this, set up the car theft, and all out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “The dude might have paid me for my time.”

  “How much?”

  “A grand.”

  “When was this set up?”

  “Last Wednesday.”

  “What time of day.”

  “I don’t remember. Sometime in the morning.”

  “Early?”

  “Yeah. Right after I got out of bed.”

  “What time do you get up?”

  “Usually around ten.”

  “Who were you supposed to kill?”

  Glenn leaned back in his chair, giving J.D. the signal to enter. As she walked in the door, Skeeter did a double take, recognition dawning across his face. He slumped a little in his chair, confusion replacing recognition in his facial expression.

  “It’s good to see you again, Skeeter,” J.D. said, taking a seat next to Detective Howell. “You don’t look so tough without that shotgun.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Skeeter said in a voice that carried no conviction. He was had and he knew it. He wiped at his red eyes some more with the wet washcloth.