Motel Murder (eBook)

Chapter One:
Monday, Sept. 9

In the Woods, and an Old Car
With New Holes

My name’s Denise Sumpter, deputy sheriff, Wassahatchka County, Florida. The county seat is Seminole Pines, population—God knows. A few thousand?

Sheriff Pee-Wee Marion calls me “Midge” for “midget” because he’s about the size of Mt. Rushmore and I’m all of five foot three and 130 pounds. He makes fun of me for being so small. Okay. First day I was on the force, he called me “Midge” for about the hundredth time, and I said, “Sure, Pee-Wee, whatever you say.” You should’a’ seen his jaw drop. But then he laughed, and we’ve been at it ever since.

Pee-Wee’s six foot seven and goes about 320. His real name’s Beaumont. He’s been on the force just over forty years—forty! Sometimes “Pee-Wee” makes him a little mad, but only a little. I make him laugh, so he puts up with me. White man his size who laughs at my jokes, okay by me. I don’t have any bad words for Pee-Wee Marion. He’s a good sheriff and treats me and all his deputies fairly. The citizens of Wassahatchka he treats the same; black, white, hispanic, Asian—don’t matter. If more lawmen were like him, we’d have a fairer and better country.

Tell you something else: when Pee-Wee retires, I’m gonna run for sheriff and I’m gonna win because I’ll get every black person in Wassahatchka to vote for me, and there’re enough white folks with sense—so I’ve heard—to put me over the top.

There are only two of us deputies who are black, me and Junior Madison. But, then, the whole department ain’t but six people, so 33% of the department is black. I got a B- in English in high school, but I got an A in math.

Just so you know: You’re hearing first hand from somebody born in Seminole Pines, Wassahatchka County, Florida—a little town out in the piney woods of North Florida east of Tallahassee, West of Jacksonville, south of the Georgia line, north of Southern New York—Miami and Coral gables—and underneath the bluest sky you’ve ever seen. And in the middle of about a million acres of pine trees and palmettos.

I grew up in an African-American neighborhood, and proud of it. Where I grew up, we’re a close-knit community, and we take care of each other. Maybe you’ll learn something about me, about language, about yourself, when you hear my story. Cut me some slack and hear what I’m gonna tell you. I hope you don’t got a problem with my accent, my “dialect.” This is my voice. You want to hear a good story? It’s coming. I dictate into a machine and my friend Pheebee (not Phoebe), who I’ll tell you about some other time, writes it all out. She don’t change nothing without my say-so. My language is a part of me. So, all y’all readers—enjoy the story.

It’s a story about the murder in my grandmama’s motel and it’s pretty spicy. It just happened recently. You’re gonna see the real North Florida—some good people, and some who’d scare Satan into peein’ his pants. We have our share of prejudice, for sure, but also our share of love and respect, decency and kindness. We’ve got violent crime, sorry to say, just like other places. But just like other places, we’ve got cracker-jack detectives to figure it out.

Namely, me.

So I come in 7:30 sharp every morning to do my shift, whatever Pee-Wee asks me to do. Mostly it’s the usual crap: man the speed trap, security at the courthouse or the Friday night football game at the high school, check on a break-in at the Feed and Seed.

Or we’ve got Titus Chancey (he’s white) smacking his girlfriend Emaine (not Elaine; E-maine) around, but she won’t press no charges. She don’t like it, but she puts up with it. Don’t know why. She’ll call the cops (here in Seminole Pines, that’s the Sheriff’s department) to get him to stop, then he’ll get mad and hit her even more when we’re gone. I ask Pee-Wee if I can go ‘round on my own to check on her, make sure he don’t break her neck or kill her, and he says okay by him so long as I do my duty list first. But by the time my duty list is out of the way, I’ve got no time and I’m dead tired most days. Being a sheriff in Wassahatchka County’s no piece of cake, no shit—excuse my French. Tell you what, though: Emaine’s bigger than Titus, and some day she’s gonna whack him back and their relationship will either get real or just fall apart.

You’ll meet Titus later, I guarantee.

If it ain’t Sunshine Chancey beating on his girlfriend, then it’s I got to go five miles down some unimproved forest service road—half sand, half clay, and all ruts, cut right out of the pine woods—to check on another local ray of sunshine who’s got a meth lab and a still hidden ‘mongst the trees and palmettos. We grow a lot of corn in Wassahatchka, and it don’t all go to cookouts, popcorn, and grits. You’d call it moonshine. Some of it’s crap, but some of it would make Jesus pray for more.

Last time I was out in the woods trying to bust somebody for cooking up ephedrine into meth, it was scary shit. The guy’s name is Clayton Angier—believe it or not, an old high-up white family in Wassahatchka, but come down in the world considerably. I went up and down them crappy roads a month looking before I finally rousted that rattlesnake outta his hiding place. Clayton ought’a’ been a big success in life because he’s smart and went to the university down in Gainesville, but he’s so cracked up on meth himself—or booze, or dope, or coke—that he done fell apart a year after high school.

So he’s out in the woods making his deadly shit—got battery acid and drain cleaner, for Godsakes—and he’s turned mean. He’s got long hair and a long beard and a military-grade assault rifle, and I showed up next to his shed to check it out on a Friday a couple weeks back, got out of my car, and he fired a burst over my head and told me to beat it and he wouldn’t consider me trespassing.

I stood on the driver’s side opposite his meth works and still, crouchin’ down and looking over the hood. I yelled back, “I ain’t tresspassin’, Clayton Angier, and you know it. This is National Forest land—public property. I can’t rightly trespass on what I partly own, now can I? I’m just out to pay a friendly visit and check out whether you’ve got a camping permit for out here. You’ve got to get a camping permit from the forest service, now ain’t that right? You got one?”

Quick got to mention my patrol car. It’s a hand-me-down from FHP—Florida Highway Patrol—like half the equipment we got. Wassahatchka’s the second poorest county in Florida but the second largest in size, so we’ve got Pee-Wee and five deputies to keep a lid on crime, and I get to tool around in a ex-FHP Crown Victoria that’s ten years old and has already been shot up at least once—and while I was in it. Let me tell you, a ten-year-old patrol car’s like a ninety year old old man—it can’t move without a walker and it don’t rightly know what it doing in this world no more. If I floor that sucker, I’ll still get to sixty myself before it does even though I’m only 26.

Of course, I know Cutie Clayton ain’t camping, and I don’t know whether you’ve got to have a permit to camp way out here or not. Made that shit up on the spur of the moment so I can get him talking and hopefully not shoot at me. He’s got that assault rifle—a real AK-47—and I’ve got a Glock 37 hand-me-down from the FHP. It’s a good pistol and I’m good with it, but I ain’t trying it out against Clayton Angier who can shoot twice as far and more accurately than I can. I ain’t that dumb.

But Clayton’s fixing on trying my patience. “If it ain’t Deputy Denise herself. Too bad it ain’t Sheriff Marion; shootin’ him is like shootin’ a barn door from ten feet. You, I got to have a telescopic sight to find you from the same distance. Ha, ha, heh!” He thinks he’s funny. Have to admit, I was laughing. Problem is, his meth ain’t a joke, his liquor is illegal, and he’s probably got no permit for that AK he’s shooting over my head.

So he keeps on about ten minutes. “You got to twist up rubber bands to make that sorry-ass car go? Ha, ha, ha. You must’a’ come in here when I was gone and sampled my shine. You back for another sip? Cost you twenty dollars a quart jar. Probably improve your disposition, and make you think you’re taller. Ha, ha, ha. Shit, my shine’ll make you think you’re white and sing like an opera star. Hee, hee, hee!”

There was more, but he ain’t told two jokes in his life worth repeating. And I don’t take his racist jibes too seriously. Clayton’s just trying to rile me. I’ve had good whiskey before and I’ve never wanted to be white. You’ll notice he talks more black than I do white.

I’ve got patience, but after a few minutes of the Clayton Angier show, my patience is about the same as a stud-bull in the cow pen, so I say, “Hey, Clayton. I’m gonna have to take you in, Sunshine, and you know it. Come along peaceably. You shoot me, Beaumont Marion’ll be...