Chapter thirty
Leo Banks had grown up in Tampa. He went straight from high school to the police academy, much to the chagrin of his parents. His mother was a high school graduate, but his father had only gone to the tenth grade. His mother had worked in a department store since a week after she graduated. His father worked in a boat factory as a fiberglass applicator. They had scrimped and saved their whole life with the anticipation having a college-educated son. The problem was that like the dreams of many parents the son didn’t share the dream, at least not then.
Leo’s grades at the academy were excellent and when he graduated, he went to work as a Tampa City patrol officer. It took him less than half a year to decide this wasn’t what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. For one thing, it seemed to him that many of the officers he worked with were crude and often mean. He thought they went out of their way to make the underprivileged citizens of Tampa more miserable than they already were.
After six months on the force, to the amazement of his parents, he signed up for night courses at The University of South Florida. He maintained a 3.8 GPA and graduated in three years with a degree in criminology. Six months later, he was promoted to sergeant and received his gold badge. He worked vice for the first six months as a detective, but didn’t think it was what he was cut out for. He put in for a transfer to homicide and a month later received his transfer.
He had met Ann while taking night classes. She was working on getting a teaching certificate. They had been going steady since the day they met. She wasn’t crazy about the fact that he was a cop. She had grown up in an area of St. Pete that didn’t have much admiration for policemen. She was working hard to get an education and distance herself from that life, but still, old prejudices die-hard.
Leo loved her for her ambition but that wasn’t what attracted him to her. Ann was a congenial girl that made friends easily. The first thing he noticed when they started going together was that everyone seemed to like her. She collected friends the way a person walking through a field collects stick-tights and cockle burs.
Ann saw in Leo all of the attributes he credited her with plus a few more. She loved the way he treated not only her, but all people. The men in the area she had grown up in were not known for their courteous treatment of women. Although she was well aware that many women found this treatment demeaning, she loved it. She loved that he held doors and chairs for her. He had once even picked her up and carried her across a muddy parking lot to get to their car while she giggled like a school girl.
The day he received his gold badge he asked her to marry him. She had agreed, but her consent was conditional. She wanted children and lots of them. She didn’t feel that the Tampa Bay area was the place to raise kids and Leo agreed. They had both grown up in the area and although they had both turned out just fine they knew that the odds were not good. Leo had known kids whose fathers were cops when he was growing up and the ones he knew felt they had a point to prove and not in a good way. He assumed it was like the adage of the preachers kids.
The problem, as he saw it, was that there was a greater likelihood of a kid finding trouble in the city than in a small town. After discussing it at length, they had both agreed that they would move from the city once they had children. Leo and Ann were both aware, that as with all big cities, there were very nice areas in Tampa. However, the chance of moving into one of those areas on a cop’s salary was slim, and Ann had made it clear that when they had children she wanted to be a full time mother.
Ann did though, want to finish her degree before getting married. She had already seen many of her friends’ marriages fail, as had her parents’ marriage. She felt that a woman needed something to fall back on just in case. Then there was the unspoken fact that she was marrying a cop, not the safest profession in the world.
When Leo and Ann were still dating, he took her to the firing range. Much to her surprise, she enjoyed target practice a great deal. To the surprise of both of them, she had a real knack. They started going to the range on a regular basis and Leo bought her a Colt nine millimeter. It wasn’t very long before Ann was consistently turning in better scores at the range than Leo. It became a running joke at the precinct that you didn’t have to worry much about Leo, but you best beware of his wife. Truth be told though, Leo had one of the highest qualification scores in his department.
The day she found that she was pregnant Leo started a job search. Six months later, he held the title of Chief of Police in Crystal River Florida. At the time of his appointment, Crystal River was little more than a wide spot in the road and he took a one third cut in pay to make the move. That coupled with Ann’s loss of wages made for quite a change in life style. She had quit her job when they moved to Crystal River, and had no intention of getting another until their last child was out of school. On the plus side, housing was much cheaper in Crystal River than Tampa and they were able to buy a large home to house the brood that they both hoped for.
The house and the ten acres it sat on was what were left of a large cattle ranch. The owner had died some years back and the kids had sold the acreage off over time. Some of the land they sold to adjacent ranches and some they sold as small home plots. The remaining land, except for ten acres and the house, was sold to a housing developer that went belly up. That land remained vacant for years. The house had been vacant for two years and was in need of work to say the least. Leo worked on the house in his spare time and Ann worked on it while he was at work. By the time the baby was born, they had everything done with the exception of two of the bedrooms and a small out building that they planned on turning into an office.
Ann and Leo both believed that raising children required a fulltime mother; in their case it was very true. Over the next nine years, they had six children. Five of their own, three boys and two girls, plus one more that Leo saved from a flaming car wreck on SR 19. Her father had been killed instantly and her mother died a week later. The baby escaped with only scrapes and bruises. Leo had talked Family Resources into letting him take her home with him until her mother recovered and she never left.
Leo and Ann were both well aware of the shortcomings of children’s services. They found no fault with the establishment or its employees. The problem was lack of funding and personnel. They were also aware that many people were into foster care for the money alone, with the welfare of their charges being secondary. They were also aware that once in the system the chance of ever escaping it was slim. So when the mother died they started adoption proceedings and since there were no relatives to claim the child, within a year she was a Banks.
Ann spent a good deal of time compiling a history on the girl’s dead parents. She retrieved photo albums and trinkets from their home and stored her mother’s jewelry and personal items. Leo and Ann settled with the insurance company on the girls behalf and sold her parents house. All of the proceeds were invested in her name and when she graduated from high school, she was, if not rich, very well off.
All six of the Banks children had done well in life. One was a cop in Tampa, three had gone to college, two of which were working for corporations while the other was a schoolteacher. One became a carpenter and now had his own building company. He employed the remaining brother as a mason. Ann and Leo’s lives, aside from work and friends revolved around their children and grand children. Leo, although eligible for retirement was planning on working for at least another five years. He enjoyed his work but both he and Ann were looking forward to the time off.
They had been frugal over the years and had made some sound investments. When they first moved to Crystal River Leo was taken with the low cost of land, even that on the water. Having come from an area with a much higher cost of living, he could see the opportunity here. He and Ann agreed that as beautiful as the area was the prices wouldn’t stay low for long. They were also aware that the baby boomers were nearing retirement age and that Florida was the number one destination for retirees.
They started buying land as fast as they could afford too and it paid big dividends. Not only did the sale of property provide for their children’s education, it made down payments on their first homes. Although the Banks were not rich, they were comfortable and continued to salt money away for retirement.
Leo was a man that loved a mystery. Perhaps this was due to his profession or perhaps it was the part of his personality that caused him to be drawn to that line of work in the first place. Regardless he was fascinated with the case of the Moore’s. He felt that he may have solved the mystery with his theory of the witness protection plan, but was plagued by the thought that there was more to it than that. He just couldn’t get over the feeling that he had overlooked a key piece of evidence.
He and Ann had discussed this case many times, as they did with many of Leo’s cases, especially the ones he found either frustrating intriguing. Leo had learned to trust her intuitiveness as much as he did his own. Neither of them could bring themselves to believe that the Moore family had a dark side. That they were hiding something was as plain as the noses on their collective faces. However, Leo knew that not everything hidden indicated malfeasance. He was almost certain that Rick and Sarah’s duplicity was for their own protection rather than any criminal subterfuge.
Leo, after all his years in police work, was well aware that not all mysteries were solvable. He did, however put a great deal of faith in perseverance or as Ann would call it “plain old bullheaded stubbornness.” The fact that they were becoming friends with Rick and Sarah made the mystery even more frustrating. Leo had on more than one occasion tried to draw Rick out and have him confide in him to no avail. Leo remained almost as frustrated by his inability to help his friend as he was by the elusiveness of the mystery itself.