Jon's Spooky Corpse Conundrum

by A J Sherwood

  I stared at him in stunned surprise. Oh hell. This made things interesting. I gestured for the handheld. “Neil, Ayers thought of Richard sort of like a father figure. He’s still angry about the rejection.”

  Neil gave a lazy blink, processing this information. “But you just wanted to help him. Like the old days?”

  “Yeah,” Ayers agreed thickly. “Just like the old days. It was good then. It could have been good again. Start with a clean slate, work on restoring an old house. I could have gotten my life back on track. But he wouldn’t even let me into the house. Told me to go or he’d file a restraining order.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “I lost my temper a little. Maybe played some pranks, made him think the place really was haunted. It’s why he called Maggie. I heard him call her one night and talk to her about the weird stuff happening. She was coming down to check up on him.”

  Annnd he admitted to openly to stalking Witherspoon before his death. Maggie had been right. Ayers was not good at covering his tracks.

  “And that panicked you. Maggie wouldn’t stand idly by if you were near her father again.”

  Ayers snapped upright and growled, “She’s a vicious little bitch. So self-righteous, like she’s never done anything wrong. She totaled two cars in college, did you know that? Both while driving drunk. She claims she cleaned up her act, that she hasn’t touched alcohol since, but Richard didn’t do more than complain about her. He replaced both cars, got her help. And what does he do with me the minute I slip up? He kicks me out.”

  Oh yeah, serious father complex here.

  “The pressure must have been serious,” Neil soothed, acting like a sympathetic ear. “You still have those gambling debts to pay. Those don’t just magically go away because you do a stint in prison, do they?”

  “I just needed a job,” Ayers rasped, so tightly wound it was a wonder his bones didn’t snap under the pressure. “But no one would hire me. And Richard, he wouldn’t even talk to me. Wouldn’t give me a letter of reference, nothing. He was going to dump half his savings into that house and it was me who needed the money.”

  “It’s why you took the debit card, right? Because you needed the money desperately.”

  “I told you, he gave me that debit card!” Ayers slammed both hands against the table, still shaking.

  “I know you loved him like a father, Ayers. It’s why his attitude hurt so much. But he never loved you like a son.”

  Ouch. Neil, that was brutal.

  Ayers flinched, as if he’d just been dealt a mortal wound.

  “He didn’t give you that card. He never would have. You’d already taken too much from him, in his mind,” Neil said softly, iron in his tone. “You took that card from his body.”

  Shrinking further into himself, Ayers refused to answer. Refused to even look up.

  “Why did you move the body?” Neil asked, still in that gentle tone.

  “I…” Ayers trailed off and stalled, still staring at the table.

  Neil tried a different tactic. “Why burn the body?”

  Fear. Fear radiated off of him. I couldn’t read his lines well enough to guess at what he was thinking.

  “Were you trying to remove trace evidence? Giving the man a Viking funeral? Trying to ruin bacon for the rest of us for life? Tell me, Ayers.”

  I motioned for the walkie-talkie. “Trace evidence. He lit up when you said that. He was afraid we’d link him through trace evidence.”

  Neil didn’t even nod to show he’d heard me. “Can’t you tell me how you moved him downstairs? It was damn impressive. I only know one other man who thinks he can pull it off. You have to be crazy strong to lift a man like Witherspoon, especially when he’s all dead weight.”

  Still nothing.

  “Ayers, I’ve got a psychic reading you right now. We know you did it. Don’t you want to confess, get this off your conscience? It will only make it easier on you.”

  Ayers didn’t respond for a long moment. “I want a lawyer.”

  We all leaned back, and Donovan dropped his hand for a moment, letting the walkie-talkie dangle at his side.

  “At least he learned something in prison—when to lawyer up,” Caleb commented with a sad shake of the head. “Shame he didn’t learn that crime doesn’t pay.”

  “Tell me about it.” I felt sorry for the idiot as well. His anger management issues and feelings of betrayal certainly had landed him in a world of trouble. “At least Neil’s sure he’s got the right man. I suppose we should drag him to Sevierville for now. We still have one more interrogation to do, assuming the warrant for Stephenson came through.”

  Caleb shrugged offhandedly. “We probably won’t know that until we’re almost home. Even fast-tracked, those things take time. If we’re lucky, you might wrap up two cases today.”

  I knocked a hand against the window trim. “Let’s hope we’re lucky, then.”

  Between escorting Ayers out to the SUV, getting people sorted, and driving to Sevierville, it was nearly six in the evening before we could even think to eat. Still, we had Stephenson in jail, and we all wanted a close on that case. As much as we could get one before an actual trial, anyway. Neil stepped in to relieve Garrett and Sho and let them knock off for the night. They’d been stuck combing through the records for evidence while we’d been running around. They were surely glad for the break.

  Donovan raided a vending machine, getting me a Snickers and him two different protein bars. It sufficed to stifle the monster growling in my stomach.

  This time, I wasn’t in a different room while the interrogation took place. Neil asked me to sit in with him, and I was pleased as punch to do so. Caleb was right on this account: his husband was very commanding when in his element. It was fun watching Neil work up close, but even better to be tag-teaming with him against a criminal.

  Andrew Stephenson looked scared. Rabbit in front of a wolf scared, the white of his eyes showing, a tremble in his hands. He kept clasping his fingers together in front of his beer gut, only to release them, then grasp them again a second later. Someone had grabbed him straight from work—he was still in a sports coat and khakis.

  “Neil,” Stephenson started as soon as we came through the door, then stopped and stared at me in growing alarm. “Why do you have the psychic with you?”

  “I think you know why, Andrew.” Neil took a seat, holding the one out next to him for me. “For the record, this is October twenty-eighth, 6:08 pm. I’m Detective Neil Singleton, with Psychic Jonathan Bane. We are interviewing Andrew Stephenson in the case of Jenny Cartwright.”

  Stephenson stared at me miserably.

  From his pocket, Neil drew out Jenny Cartwright’s ring and placed it on the table. Stephenson went impossibly paler at the sight and swallowed convulsively, his eyes darting about the room, avoiding it.

  “I think, Andrew, this would go better if you’d just tell us what happened,” Neil suggested gently.

  “Can’t he tell you?” Stephenson rasped out, jerking his chin toward me.

  “I know only the facts,” I answered steadily. “I know she’s dead.”

  Stephenson flinched. “Yes.”

  “I know you were with her when she died.”

  “Yes.” His lines were a cacophony of the bright-hot red of anger, the hot pink of self-loathing, the deep forest green of terror, mixed in with a sort of muted pumpkin-orange of anticipation. He knew what was coming out of my mouth next.

  “I know you hid her body. You shortchanged any chance she had of living past that night.”

  “She was already dead,” he whispered, barely audible. “Her neck was at this angle…this impossible angle. I knew she was dead.”

  He might have been right. Caleb hadn’t been able to determine from what remained of the corpse how long Jenny Cartwright had lived after her neck was broken. “I know you feel guilty for her murder. We don’t know exactly what happened.”

  All emotion drained out of him except his guilt, leaving him
hollow in return. His eyes came slowly up to meet mine. “Can you see that I loved her?”

  I had to focus—really intensely focus—to be able to see that. It was so far buried underneath his guilt and self-loathing it had been almost completely erased. “I see the memory of it.”

  That pleased him, for some reason. Perhaps he’d needed assurance the emotion wasn’t gone completely.

  “Andrew,” Neil prompted, tone still gentle. “Take it from the top, yeah?”

  Andrew buried his face in his hands for a second, his hands visibly shaking, his breathing not much better. It took him a long moment to pull himself together, and the words were halting at first.

  “Jenny was…everything. Everything.” His hands came down, eyes blind to us. “The brightest woman I’d ever seen. I fell for her before I really understood what love was. I never could get her attention, though. She always had her eyes on bigger and better things. On scholarships and a career. Boys didn’t seem to interest her. I thought I’d made some headway, our senior year, then the word got out of her full ride scholarship. I was paralyzed with fear. If she left, I knew she wouldn’t come back. She hated Sevierville. Felt it was too small-town.

  “After the graduation party, some of us snuck up to the Wheatlands Plantation to drink. An after-party of sorts. It wasn’t Jenny’s scene at all, and I was surprised to see her there, but I took it as a sign. One last chance. I caught her alone, pulled her into the distillery to talk to her. Confessed. She was nice about it, at first, trying to let me down easy. But she wasn’t really listening to me, either. It’s like I didn’t even register with her. I grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her, trying to get her to listen. And then she got scared. Scared of me, and I couldn’t…” He choked off on a sob, head bowing down so low it nearly touched the table. “I couldn’t believe she didn’t see me. Didn’t see how much I loved her. I didn’t want to hurt her.”

  But he had. I bit my tongue before I could say that aloud.

  “We got to wrestling, me trying to hold on to her, her trying to escape. She was screaming, and I panicked. I put my hand over her mouth, just to silence her. To reassure her. In the dark, we couldn’t really see our surroundings, and the sliver of light from outside didn’t do much. I tripped over something, I don’t know what, and she fell backwards with my weight on top of her. The sound of her neck breaking—” He was crying now, fat tears that ran down his face, splashing on his hands gripping the edge of the table. “It’s haunted me for decades. I didn’t mean to kill her. God, I’d never wanted that.”

  Second-degree murder. Compounded when he hadn’t reported what happened, which made it so much worse for him.

  “I cut my hands, trying to hide her body,” Stephenson whispered dully. “I kept wiping the blood off her, but I guess I missed the ring.”

  Some love he had, to hide her body and then pretend he had no knowledge of her for over four decades. His type of love was more like obsession, and it didn’t shine gold to me at all. Clearly it wasn’t really love. He’d had no trouble pretending he was fine all this time, after all.

  Although at least this explained why nothing in Jenny Cartwright’s diary had indicated Stephenson. Why her family hadn’t even thought of him. To her, he really hadn’t been anyone noteworthy. All the feelings had been extremely one-sided.

  Neil and I shared a speaking look, but really, there wasn’t anything left to ask. Or much left to say, either. Neil cleared his throat. “Andrew Stephenson, I’m arresting you for the murder of Jenny Cartwright. You were read your Miranda rights on the way here. Would you like for me to repeat them?”

  Stephenson gave a small shake of his head, no.

  “Alright. Want a phone to call a lawyer?”

  “Yes. Please.” Stephenson lifted his eyes to meet mine once more. “You knew the minute you met me I’d murdered her, didn’t you?”

  “I knew you’d murdered someone. I wasn’t sure of who at the time.”

  He snorted a laugh that was far from humorous. “Forty-three years I’ve been sitting on this. Haunted by it. And just when I think it’s past me, that it’s all done with, Caleb Bane’s son takes one look and sees it all. I find that funny. Why is that funny?”

  Because you’re mentally cracking? I shook my head and stood. This was Neil’s show from now on.

  “You’re wrong, Andrew,” Neil corrected, also standing. “He’s my son too. I’ll get you to a phone in a minute. You stay put.”

  That made me immeasurably happy. I had to keep myself from skipping out the door as we left the grey interrogation room behind us.

  “Pleasure solving crimes with you, Neil,” I teased him.

  Neil lit up with a mint green so strong, he resembled an air freshener. He slung an arm around my shoulder and hugged me to his side. “I’m calling you in from now on.”

  I hugged him back, grinning up at him. “You better believe you will.”

  Epilogue

  A tingle of expectation raced along my spine as I sat in my truck. Garrett was riding shotgun, both of us ready to go. On my dash, Garrett’s cell was clipped in to a holder, Carol on speaker.

  Carol hummed a ditty that sounded suspiciously like A-hunting We Will Go as we patiently waited for a location. I felt like we were going Trick-or-Treating. Adult Trick-or-Treating where it was all trick and no treat. Although I had no doubt we’d be going drinking at some point today, after our little errand was over.

  Garrett and I had sworn to each other that as soon as we had the cases solved and a day off work, we’d handle the little problem of Sho’s stalker. Garrett was ready to lay into the man. Me? I was here to watch the show. And, you know, backup. Not that Garrett needed backup.

  “Found him,” Carol reported triumphantly. “He’s in Mt. Juliet, heading along West Division Street.”

  Garrett and I shared an unhappy look. Roy wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Mt. Juliet. That was part of the restraining order.

  “On our way,” I told her, swinging the truck around and heading for the eastern side of Nashville. “Can you tell which direction he’s heading?”

  “Afraid not. My talents don’t give information like that. I’ll do another reading in five minutes, and then I’ll be able to tell you.”

  “You’re as talented as you are beautiful,” Garrett crooned at her.

  “I’d be flattered, but we all know who you’re really after.”

  “Be flattered.” Garrett grinned even though she couldn’t see it. “It’s still true.”

  I might have ignored the speed limit as we sought out our unfortunate prey. Garrett didn’t even notice, so intent he was on the hunt. Then again, did it surprise me? He’d been uneasy now for a few weeks, worried about Sho. If we hadn’t been focused on two overlapping cases, we’d have dealt with this situation long before now.

  “I could almost feel sorry for this punk. You two are far too happy to chase him down.”

  “You say that, but you’re helping us.”

  “I said ‘almost.’ ‘Almost’ was the key word. And I’m not really clear if this is for Sho’s sake, or if you’re just really excited to have an excuse to go looking for trouble.”

  I had to admit, it was a little of both.

  Garrett let out a sound like a buzzer in a game show for the wrong answer. “Ito ang aking harana, as the Havilis would put it.”

  I winced and put a hand up against my ear. His pronunciation was so terrible it hurt my soul. “Stop, stop! I hate you for conjugating that correctly.”

  He rolled his eyes at me.

  “Focus, boys. I’m about to do another reading.”

  We shut up and let her focus. After all, Carol was doing this on a day off just for Sho’s sake. That should be respected.

  Traffic was light for a Thursday, comparatively speaking, and we made good time getting into the Mt. Juliet area. Barely five minutes later, just as I hit Interstate 40, Carol piped up again.

  “Got him. It looks like he’s stopped at a Cheddar’s. He’s
right off the Forty, on Mt. Juliet Road.”

  “I know exactly where that is. Do another reading in ten minutes, make sure he’s still there?”

  “You got it.”

  I owed the woman dinner for this.

  Garrett did a double check on his Glock, eyes dreamy as he caressed it. “Do you think he’ll resist? That isn’t too much to hope for, is it? That he’ll be mouthy and resist arrest?”

  “From everything Sho’s told me about this guy, odds are good. And really, if he arrives a little broken and bloody, I don’t think anyone will be upset about it.”

  “I can still hear you two.”

  Oops.

  “Do I need to call Jon?” Carol continued severely.

  “Uh, pretty sure Jon would help us beat him up,” Garrett threw in, not at all cowed by the threat. “Just saying, if you’re looking for a heavyweight to make us behave? I would not choose him. Only reason he’s not here is that he’s spending some time with his mom right now.”

  She sighed impatiently. “Fine. Just don’t say stuff like that in my hearing. I need plausible deniability for later on.”

  “Aww, Carol. I knew we liked you for a reason.” I had to bite back the urge to cackle.

  “You two are terrible. You must have been a CO’s headache when you were in service together.”

  “That I cannot deny. He still there?”

  “I’ll check.”

  I saw the exit for Mt. Juliet Road coming up and switched lanes. I figured it was about the right timing to call Borrowman. I could trust him to handle this. I hit the Bluetooth button on the steering wheel and gave the vocal command, “Call Borrowman.”

  It rang twice, audible through the truck’s speakers. “Donovan,” Borrowman greeted with a groan. “This better be good. I’m taking my kids trick-or-treating in literally two hours, I don’t have time for your shenanigans.”