by Claire Booth
Shaking hands came forward and rested on the airbag. Sam lunged forward and grabbed both wrists. He used his body as a weight to pin the half-conscious driver back in the seat and reached down to undo the seatbelt. Then he hauled her ass out of the car and forced her facedown on to the roadway. He used his belt to lash her wrists together behind her back as she moaned and groaned.
‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said, ‘but you’re under arrest for the murder of Vic Melnicoe.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
It was a different lifetime, twenty-five years ago. She had just gotten divorced and needed to support herself. After a good amount of time at a women’s shelter up in Springfield, she finally found work at White Tail Manufacturing because she had a knack for bookkeeping. That was when she met Nell. They hit it off immediately. Best friends for sixteen years, until Nell passed on.
Sheila crossed her arms and frowned. Belinda stared back with no expression.
‘Did you give her pills?’
‘No.’
‘Use a pillow?’
That made her flinch. ‘No. I held her hand.’
‘Was she on an IV?’
A pause. ‘Yes.’
‘You put something in it?’
Silence.
Sheila moved on. ‘What happened after that night when Clyde and the other bocce players came over here?’
Belinda half-raised a weary hand toward her husband. Clyde had recognized her right off, of course. He was stunned that all this time he hadn’t known that Ward had married his wife’s best friend. Why, he asked her, hadn’t she said something – to him or even to Ward? She tried to brush it off, but Clyde persisted. He was genuinely puzzled, kept talking about how he’d hadn’t seen her since the memorial service and before that, the morning that Nell had died.
And that was it. Nell had died in the afternoon, Sheila knew from the death certificate. Lonnie had been there. Clyde had gotten home minutes too late.
‘You did what you did, and you left. And then Lonnie came to see his mom. And that’s who Clyde put the blame on, all these years.’
‘He looked at me, here in my kitchen, and he … supposed things,’ Belinda said. ‘I could tell. He was thinking – why would I keep Nell a secret from Ward when I knew he and Ward were friends? Clyde stared at me and then he walked out. I thought and thought about it, and then I went to see him.’
‘Belinda, for God’s sake, stop talking.’ Ward was still pressed against the sideboard, shards from his dropped glass around him on the floor. ‘We’ll get you a lawyer. Please.’
‘Oh, honey. You were my reward, for all the stuff before. My horrible ex and the threats and the hitting and the poverty. I couldn’t let this – I couldn’t let us – get screwed up. I just went to talk to him. To make sure everything was all right.’
But it hadn’t been. Clyde was raging, in his quiet way. Nell hadn’t been ready to go, he told Belinda. It wasn’t her time. Belinda pointed out that at the end, the poor woman was just a collection of bones knit together by nothing but pain.
Clyde kept saying, ‘No, no, no,’ over and over as Belinda kept talking. He walked away from her, into the kitchen and then down the hall, muttering about calling the police. He wouldn’t listen to her. She followed him, and he turned and exploded.
‘He was yelling and crying and saying all these horrible things. Half of it I didn’t even understand. Things about Lonnie and him. And he started to come back at me. I was there in the hallway and I had to back up to get away. I ended up in a little area by the back door with the laundry, and I was frightened. I grabbed for anything. I put my hands on something heavy, and I swung at him.’
Ward whined something about self-defense and begged her again to stop talking.
‘Why didn’t you just go out the door?’ Sheila said. ‘Or swing once, and then run away? You followed him down the hallway into his bedroom. Why?’
Belinda lifted her hands off the counter and then limply dropped them back down.
‘He kept calling me a murderer. Saying what a horrible person I was. Telling me I’d as good as killed their son, too. I swung again. By that time he was in the bedroom. I swung again and then I left.’
‘You didn’t “swing”,’ Sheila said, leaning forward over the counter. ‘You beat him to death. And then you took the murder bag of balls and you wiped your prints off the doorknobs and you locked up the house and you fled. You did all of these things, yes?’
They stared at each other a good long minute. Belinda finally broke the connection and turned her head toward the window. Sheila took out her handcuffs and thought about the cell phone they’d found on Clyde’s nightstand. It must have been what he was looking for as he walked through his house for what turned out to be the last time. Now she made a manacled Belinda take what would almost certainly be her last walk through her home. She guided the woman out of the kitchen and across the living room toward the front door, the shattered glass crunching underneath their feet.
‘Son, you run this lady off the road? You best step away now.’
‘Hell, no, I didn’t. I don’t know who she is, but she’s driving a car last seen at the site of a homicide body dump. I’m placing her under arrest.’
The Branson PD officer had his hand on his gun. Sam couldn’t really blame him, seeing as he looked like some random dude who’d dragged a lady out of her car and was holding her wrists together as she lay facedown on the pavement. He rattled off his badge number and pointed out that he’d called 9-1-1 asking for backup, and that there was a BOLO out for the car. The officer radioed to verify the BOLO, but no one could confirm whether someone named Samuel Karnes worked for the sheriff’s department. Sam listed every city officer he knew who could vouch for him – none were on duty. That resulted in both him and the woman sitting handcuffed on the side of the road while Officer P. Romero tried to get a hold of someone at the sheriff’s office in Forsyth office. Finally, he got patched through to somewhere.
‘Yeah, I got somebody here says he’s Deputy Samuel Karnes. His DL confirms his ID, but he’s got no badge.’
‘Is he driving a Ford Bronco, faded red?’
‘Yeah, he is. That mean he’s legit?’
‘Yes, he’s legit. Can I talk to him?’
The officer still looked super skeptical. He walked over and instead of uncuffing Sam, stuck the radio mic in his face. ‘Talk,’ he ordered.
‘Hi, sir,’ Sam said.
‘Sammy, are you all right?’ Hank’s voice crackled over the radio. ‘I’m a little busy here and—’
‘Sir, I found the blue Civic. From the body dump. I have the driver in custody. I haven’t searched the car because I’m still handcuffed and—’
There was some commotion on the other end of the radio, then Hank said, ‘Officer!’ with such authority that all three people on the side of the road reflexively straightened.
‘Yes sir, Sheriff?’ Romero said.
‘I need you to uncuff my deputy. And I’d appreciate any help you could give him. This suspect could have vital information about a homicide and a missing person.’
Romero responded as Sam tried to keep an I-told-you-so look off his face. He couldn’t wait to search the car. He’d need Kurt or Alice for the trunk – he was positive that was how the unlucky Vic Melnicoe was transported out to the woods. He was thinking through the calls he’d need to make once his hands were free when the woman scrambled to her feet and started running. She went down the sloping shoulder of the road and into the trees, her hands still locked behind her with Romero’s spare set of cuffs.
Sam yelled and heaved himself upright at the same time. Romero swore and lumbered forward. Sam didn’t wait – the officer probably weighed the same as him and the woman combined. He crashed forward off balance and barely kept his footing as he tried to gain ground. What the hell was she thinking? This was close to several populated areas. It wasn’t like she was going to be able to get away. She was just making it harder on both of them. A bare br
anch lashed his cheek as he tore through the trees. He hoped the same was happening to her as she bulldozed forward about ten yards ahead.
He cursed his dress shoes as he slipped and slid on the slick leaves. At least she seemed to be doing the same in her Ugg boots. Their pale color was about all he could see of her in the dark. He focused on them and dug in, finally gaining some ground. She heard him coming and tried to cut to the side. It made her stumble and try to right herself just in time to avoid a sapling. Sam angled toward her and launched himself with a grunt and a prayer. With his wrists locked behind him, he crashed forward like a falling tree and hit her full on. She shrieked and came tumbling down. He landed on top of her, crushing the breath out of both of them.
The woods went silent. Sam didn’t move – he couldn’t exactly haul her to her feet and he certainly didn’t trust her to stay put. Slowly, their lungs started to work again as Romero blundered toward them with a flashlight. He could hear sirens in the distance as the older officer uncuffed him. He rolled off his escapee and lurched to his feet. Romero handed him the flashlight and trained his gun on the woman. Sam took a grateful step away and took stock. He’d demolished the sapling and most of the skin on his chin. And he wasn’t quite sure how his shoulders would ever work properly again.
He waved the light to guide the arriving Branson city officers. They hauled the mystery woman to her feet and marched her out of the woods. Romero looked down at the cuffs that had just been around Sam’s wrists and turned red. He started to speak, but Sam waved him quiet. Then he found the dress shoe that had come off during his leap and limped his way toward the pulsating emergency lights on the road.
THIRTY-NINE
Hank switched Lew’s handcuffs to the front and put him in the back of his cruiser. But he couldn’t leave. Not yet. He had three adults clustered on the front step who would not be put off in their demands for an explanation.
And now there was Sammy, somehow finding the car in the Melnicoe homicide and getting himself taken into custody by city police. He hadn’t heard anything from the Pup after ordering the Branson officer to release him. He’d call once he sorted his own family out as best he could, he thought as he trudged back up the lawn to the house. Maggie, Dunc, and Fin had stopped talking. Which was more worrisome than the cacophony before.
He looked around at three sets of blue McCleary eyes, and held his hands out to his sides in a gesture he knew was both placative and beseeching. ‘I’m sorry. I have to take him in. I have to arrest him. There’s no getting out of this for him. His only hope is a little bit of leniency if he tells us where Tina’s body is.’
‘He said he didn’t kill her,’ Maggie said. ‘He admitted to the other stuff. He would’ve admitted to that, too, if he did it.’
‘Murder’s a damn sight different than fraud,’ Hank said. ‘He’s not going to admit he killed her, especially if we don’t have a body.’
‘That’s a problem, isn’t it?’ Fin said. Hank nodded. She looked at him and gently moved Dunc to the side so she could come down the steps. She straightened her tweed skirt and walked across the grass to the squad car. Hank started to say something, but thought better of it and went to crack the back window so she could talk to her husband.
‘You need to tell them where Tina’s body is,’ she said. ‘She has a family. They need to know, they need to bury her. You can’t make this right. You can’t take it back. But at least do this. Tell them. Please.’
Lew started talking, saying the same things he had on the front porch. Hank’s cell buzzed in his pocket and he took a few steps back and pulled it out. Sammy.
Suspect ran but back in custody now. No ID. BPD transporting her to our jail. Will take prints there.
And then a photo of a scraped face, broken glasses, angry eyes. Oh, God.
‘Fin … Fin. Stop. Come here.’ He gestured her closer as he texted Sam a question. Just to confirm what he was seeing. He got a one-word response. Yes. He put his arm around Fin and steered her toward the house. He leaned closer and spoke softly as he showed her the picture on his phone.
She stopped dead. ‘I didn’t believe him.’
She said it so quietly, Hank wasn’t sure he’d heard anything at all. She turned to the side and his arm fell away from her shoulder. She looked back at her husband and then sank to her knees in the wet grass and started to cry.
‘I need you to come to my house right now.’
Sheila, just leaving Branson with a confessed murderer in the backseat, was about to refuse. But there was something in his voice. She turned the car around. When she pulled up, his squad car was parked on the lawn, its spotlight washing everything with cold white light. He and Maggie were crouched in the grass with an older woman in between them. It looked like they were trying to coax her to her feet. Sheila parked, cracked the windows to give Belinda Ullyott some air, and approached just as the woman tried to rise. She looked terrible, her face a devastated mess of both guilt and grief. What the hell was going on?
Hank saw her and nodded. He and Maggie managed to get the woman up just as the father-in-law came out carrying a blanket. Hank stepped back and Maggie and her dad helped the woman into the house, the blanket shawled around her trembling shoulders.
‘I need you to transport a prisoner for me. I can’t leave.’ He pointed at the little group as it disappeared inside.
‘I already got a prisoner,’ Sheila said. ‘I made an arrest in the Timmons case.’
Hank pivoted toward her car and bent so he could see inside. ‘An old woman?’
‘She confessed.’ Sheila paused. ‘Well, we had a chat, and then she confessed. I was on my way to book her when you called.’
Hank straightened and raked both hands through his hair. ‘I had no idea. That’s … that’s fantastic. I …’ He trailed off and looked at the house and then at his car, where Sheila finally noticed someone sitting hunched in the back. She walked closer and peered in. He looked almost as ravaged as the old woman did. She turned back to Hank and raised an eyebrow.
‘Is that the body dump employer fraud guy? Are you arresting him for murder, too?’
‘No. Because it turns out the secretary isn’t dead.’
She gaped at him. ‘Say again?’
‘Sammy just arrested her – in the car seen at the body dump site.’
‘So all of this is Columbia-based,’ she said, giving the old man a more careful look. ‘And we have to mop it up.’
Hank glanced at Lew and then up at the house. ‘That’s an understatement.’
Sheila wouldn’t want to be him right now. Though he seemed to be … OK. Not great, but not terrible. He caught her scrutinizing look.
‘I’ve had a few more days to get used to the possibility of a criminal in the family than they have.’ He contemplated his relatives for a minute. ‘Except Fin. It turns out that what Lew did wasn’t as bad as she thought … which, it turns out, is worse.’
Sheila had no idea what he was talking about. But now was not the time to ask for an explanation. ‘All right. How we going to play this? I don’t want either of these geriatrics expiring because they’ve …’
She stopped as Maggie came outside. She walked across the lawn and gave Sheila a wan smile. Then she ordered her husband to leave. Hank started to protest, and she laid a hand on his chest.
‘No – you need to go. You find out what the hell is going on with that secretary woman. She’s caused immeasurable grief here, and I want to know why. And maybe it’ll help Aunt Fin. So go.’
She kissed him fiercely on the mouth and went back in the house. A muffled sob came from Hank’s backseat. Hank stifled a groan. Sheila thought a minute and pulled out her keys.
‘Want to switch cars?’ She didn’t care if the old man wept the whole way to the jail. And he knew it as he saw her approach. He shrank back as she opened the driver’s door. Good. You don’t make an auntie cry – that was one of the cardinal rules of life. Especially one from Hank’s precious family.
No
one was responding to Sam’s request to open up the outer sally port door. He waited in awkward silence as Romero tapped on the steering wheel impatiently. Usually there was no delay, regardless of which agency was bringing in a prisoner. Usually the jail had a full staff, though. Why it didn’t on this particular day wasn’t something he wanted to get into with a Branson city officer. He tried again. Was there anybody in the building at all? Romero was starting to scowl.
Finally, the metal door rolled up and Romero nosed the car inside. They waited until the door shut behind them to get out. Romero opened the back door.
‘Welcome to the well-oiled machine that is the county jail,’ he drawled as he took the woman’s arm and guided her out of the car. Her hands were still cuffed behind her. Her glasses were broken and hanging crooked on her face and she was covered in mud and leaves, a sight that was enormously satisfying to Sam. He’d tried to brush the same mess off himself before he got in Romero’s car but hadn’t been very successful. And that was the least of his problems. His chin was scraped and felt like it was embedded with tree bark. He had a slash on his right cheek that was starting to hurt like hell, two wrenched shoulders, and wrists rubbed raw where the cuffs had cut into him.
He looked at her wrists. They weren’t as bad, probably because the Branson officer had tightened the middle-aged woman’s more gently than he had the twenty-something man’s when he cuffed them on the road. His plan, once Romero left, was to put her in an interview room still sporting dirty clothes and unwashed cuts. Keep her uncomfortable. She could change into clean jail scrubs later. He took her arm and walked her toward the door into the facility. No one was there to buzz them in. He swore to himself and Romero grumbled something about not wanting to be stuck here all night. He was saying something even less polite when the outer door rolled up again.
Both men spun toward it in astonishment. It was totally against procedure. The whole point of the structure was to ensure a completely secure transfer into the building. The door shouldn’t have gone up unless the prisoner was inside the locked building. Instead, a sheriff cruiser pulled two feet into the garage and stomped the brakes just in time to avoid rear-ending the city squad car. The tire screech echoed off the walls and the concrete floor. It hadn’t even died down before Sheila was talking over it.
