I had a feeling that there was more to the story than what she was telling me. Probably he came over, and the two of them started doing drugs, she went to bed, he did as well, and he was dead when she woke up. If that was the case, then definitely her urinalysis would prove that. If the UA showed that she had opium in her system, then the state would have a much better case than if she was sober and just let him sleep on her couch.
I was definitely going to have to find out the results of her drug test before I went and spoke with her. If the drug test showed that she was clean at the time that she was arrested, then it would be no problem getting the case dismissed. I didn’t know why they would actually charge her in this case unless there was something else that I didn’t know. At any rate, the prosecutors would have to drop the charges against her if she was clean at the time of the death, because there would be no way that they could win at trial, unless they showed that she supplied the drugs to him somehow. It would be an open and shut case, and a waste of money for them.
I called Gretchen, told her what was going on, and then immediately headed down to the police station. I was going to get my mom’s records, see what kind of questions they asked her in the interrogation room, and, most importantly, get the results of her urinalysis and see if she had drugs in her system.
I left the office building where I had been talking to Dr. Jordan, opened the door, and a blast of cold hit me in the face. When I went to see Dr. Jordan, the weather had started to change from the 70° it had been earlier, dropping to around 50°. That was the one thing that people always said about the weather in Missouri – if you don’t like it, just wait a minute, and it’ll change. And it certainly did on that day. It was early fall, October, and the leaves were just starting to change and fall from the trees.
I hugged my coat closer around my body as I made my way towards my Mercedes SUV that was out in the parking lot. It was a new car for me, the one luxury that I bought when I settled a large medical malpractice suit a few years back. In that case, it turned out that the doctor who had given my client’s son anesthesia that he was allergic to, did so deliberately. He was an angel of mercy, which was what he fashioned himself to be, for he was an anesthesiologist who was killing people who were terminal. It turned out he had a son who had died slowly of cancer, going through much pain and agony along the way, and he didn’t want anybody else to have to suffer that. So, when he got the records of his patients and found out that they were terminal, and that they were going in for surgery of some sort, he would deliberately give them the wrong anesthesia or too much anesthesia, and they ended up dead. The upshot of that was that everybody was entitled to punitive damages against him because it was an intentional act, and I was the first in line and I got a large settlement from him.
Once I got that $4 million settlement, I put most of it away for my kid’s college, and I gave Harper a good percentage of it as well. I bought a new house, close to where Harper lived in the Brookside area, and this new Mercedes SUV. The rest of it, I squirreled away. After growing up poor, in a trailer, with a mother who didn’t work and who was constantly cycling men in and out of the home, I was constantly insecure that I was going to be poor again. No matter how much money I had, it was never going to be enough for me to feel like I was never going to be on skid row again.
I got to the jail, and told the guard that I needed to see my mom’s file. They knew me there, because I was there all the time, so they gave me her file without questioning me or asking me for an ID. I opened it up and immediately saw the results of my mother’s blood test – she had tested positive for opiates. Also in the file were the results of the toxicology test that they did for Tracy Dunham, and he too, had opiates in his system. Specifically, the results of the toxicology examination showed that the heroin that showed up in his system was high-grade and extremely pure.
And, it did look like mom’s “blood pressure” meds weren’t actually blood pressure meds, but was heroin. The officers indicated that they had probable cause to seize the meds and test them because mom dropped a dirty UA and her companion had died of an apparent overdose. So, the label on the pill bottle said Nifedipine, but it was actually heroin, according to the toxicology report on my mother’s prescription BP pills.
I looked through the interrogation documents and saw that my mom did not admit to doing anything except for what she told me – she told the cops that she was sitting in her trailer home, minding her own business, when Tracy came to her door. According to my mom, Tracy told her that he’d been thrown out by his wife, Priscilla. She then went to bed, and she woke up to find him dead. That’s what she told the cops, over and over again. They never told her that they knew that she was lying, and that she had opiates in her system at the time Tracy died.
It looked like I was going to have to confront my mother with her lie.
I went back up to the guard station, and told them I was there to see Olivia Ward. The guard nodded her head. “Just a second, I’ll let you through.”
I went through the first set of double doors into the hallway, took the elevator up to the fifth floor which is where my mother was staying, went down the long corridor door and got to her pod. Once there, I rang the guards, and they let me through. I told the guard inside the waiting area I was there to see Olivia Ward, the guard nodded her head, and told me to wait just a few minutes.
Mom came out a few minutes later, looking her usual self. She was down to about 100 pounds or less, and her hair, which was usually dark or bleached blonde, was currently pink. Or, rather, it was streaked pink. I could see her usual brunette hair peeking out from underneath the pink streaks, along with a lot of grey roots. She was dressed in an orange jumpsuit that absolutely hung from her skinny frame.
“God, I could use a smoke, and a drink.” She put her hands on the table, and they were shaking. It looked like she was going through the DTs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, as much as she drank. “I’ve been puking in this place. Nobody cares. Got the shakes so bad I feel like I’m going to rattle and roll right out of this joint.”
“Mom,” I said to her. “You tell me that you need a smoke and a drink. And I’ll be honest with you, you look like you’re worse for the wear.”
“I look like something the cat dragged in, and I know it. You don’t have to rub it in, kiddo.”
“I’m not saying this to be mean. I do need to ask you a question, though. You told me over the phone that you were not doing drugs with this Tracy Dunham person.” I stopped my sentence right there, because I wanted to see her reaction to what I was gonna say to her. I wanted to see what kind of facial expression and body language she displayed.
To my surprise, she didn’t flinch. “Yeah, I told you that, because it’s the God’s honest truth. I told you that I wasn’t doing drugs with him, and that’s what I mean. I was sitting in my trailer, minding my own damn business, and he came over and crashed on my couch.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do I think you think I’m lying? I got the sneaking suspicion that you’re over there thinking that I told you a tall tale.”
I leaned forward. “Mom, I took a peek at your file before I came to see you. According to the file, there were opiates in your system at the time you were arrested. Heroin was also found in the bloodstream of the victim. You care to explain that?”
“Dammit. I told you I wasn’t doing drugs with him. I told you I don’t do drugs. I drink, I get shit-faced on that, I smoke a lot. I do weed. And that’s it. No cocaine, no meth, no heroin, no hillbilly heroin, no nothing. I don’t get into that crap. I know, I know, I used to do all that crap. All of it. But I gave it up about 10 years ago, and I’ve never looked back. Drinking, smoking cigarettes, and smoking bud are all I do now.”
“Mom, I don’t believe you. If it’s true what you’re saying, why were opiates found in your system?”
“Hell, I don’t know. You tell me.”
I closed my eyes. “Mom, this is important. If there were not drugs in yo
ur system, then there would be no way that the prosecutor could possibly prove that you were doing drugs with him. If they can’t prove that, then the whole case goes away, unless they can prove that you supplied Tracy with the heroin that killed him. I mean, they could still try to pursue charges, but it would be so easy to prove to the jury that you had nothing to do with his death that they would have to drop the charges. But if there was really heroin in your system, it’s gonna be a little more difficult for me to have the charges dismissed.”
She shook her head. “What is this bullcrap, anyway? Is that how it’s going to be? You doing drugs and somebody bites it, and suddenly you’re on the hook? I never heard of that.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not unheard of. All around the nation, people who were just doing drugs with another person who died are being found guilty, or at least charged, for their death. Usually, however, the charge is a murder only when somebody actually supplies the other person with the drugs. Regardless, it would be helpful if there were not drugs in your system.”
“It sounds like somebody was cooking the books here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what it sounds like. Somebody doctored up my damn record and made it look like I was taking drugs when I wasn’t. And you know when those pigs found drugs in my house, I knew for sure that they’re full of crap, because I damn well know I had no drugs at the house. Listen, everything I said to you earlier on the phone is the God’s honest truth. I didn’t give that man no heroin, I didn’t take no heroin with him, I had nothing to do with none of it, and I certainly didn’t have no heroin in no prescription bottle.”
I made a steeple with my hands, and stared at them for a minute or two. “Did you know that he was on drugs?”
“Hell no. I told you me and him were sex buddies, nothing more, nothing less. We get together, drink and smoke weed, hit the sack, he’d leave. That was all there was to it.”
“How did you meet him?”
She rolled her eyes. “At some fancy-schmancy thousand dollar plate dinner. The governor himself was the guest of honor.” She shook her head. “I met him at a bar. A dive bar. He asked me to dance, I said yes, we hit it off, he came back to my place, boom boom boom, that was that. No muss, no fuss.”
“Do you remember the bar you met him at?”
“Why the hell does that matter? I don’t remember which bar it was, probably someplace in Lee’s Summit where the fake bikers go. You know the guys I’m talking about, the muckety-mucks who got full-time jobs as executives who like to ride their hogs on the weekends and act like they’re tough. A bunch of those fake bikers were hanging out at the bar that night, that’s all I remember. I don’t remember which bar it was.”
I made notes as we spoke. “Was Tracy Dunham one of those fake bikers?”
She shrugged. “I suppose so. I don’t really know. All I know is that I get up to go to the little girl’s room and take a leak, and when I come back, there’s a guy sitting there at my barstool. Never seen the guy before in my whole life. It’s crowded, there ain’t no place to sit, and he’s sitting in the one seat that was open. My seat. I even have my purse on the bar in front of him. I go to take my purse from the bar, and try to find some other place to sit. He just looks at me, drags on his cigarette, tells me to sit on his lap. I ain’t in the mood for that, I tell him to go to hell. He keeps going, says he wants to buy me a drink because he took my seat, I say why not? Free drink, all I got to do is hang out with the guy. So I did. I hung out with him. Got my free drink. Free drink turned into about six more, next thing I know, we’re back in my dump screwing around. He leaves, I figure I’m never gonna see him again, but he pops back in a couple weeks later, and it just kind of went like that. He’d come over like a booty call, and I let him come over like a booty call. I didn’t know nothing about him, he didn’t know nothing about me. That was how I liked it. He liked it too.”
“Okay. So you knew nothing about this guy. You don’t even know if he was doing drugs on a regular basis, then.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Why do you keep asking me these questions like you don’t believe what I’m telling you? Listen, you’ve always been a shit to me. You’ve never trusted me any further than you can throw me. But I’m telling you the God’s honest truth right now. I knew nothing about that guy.”
“What else can you tell me?”
She shrugged. “I told you everything I can tell you. Everything I’m gonna tell you. You can either believe me or not, but I’m telling you what I know.”
I tapped my fingers on the table, wondering why it was I had a nagging feeling that there was much more to the story than what she was telling me. Maybe there wasn’t more that she knew, but there was something that was behind this case. Something I wasn’t seeing, and maybe my mother wasn’t seeing it either. I just wished she knew something more about this guy. I believed her when she said that she didn’t know anything about him, however. My mother was just that kind of person. She had sex with men that she didn’t know, and she didn’t always get their backgrounds or histories. She wasn’t somebody who would even get a person’s last name all the time.
“Okay, then. I guess I’ll go talk to the prosecutor’s office, and find out why it is that they’re doing this to you. Maybe I’ll be able to glean something from them. In the meantime, you just sit tight, and I’ll try to figure out what’s going on. I guess your initial appearance is tomorrow, so I’ll try to get a bond for you.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Do what you gotta do. God knows I’m not going nowhere anytime soon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As I drove home that night, I thought about what my mother was telling me in the jail. I didn’t doubt her story, but at the same time, what was up with her file saying that she had heroin in her system? Did somebody really falsify that record, and if they did, why would they do something like that? And who would do something like that?
Something was fishy, and I was going to find out what exactly it was.
Chapter 3
I got home, a little bit after 10 PM, and went straight to Nate’s room to see what he was doing.
He was sitting at his desk, looking at his computer, apparently playing a video game. He didn’t look in my direction when I came in the door, so I went over to him and put my hands on his shoulders and squeezed them lightly. “Hey, buddy. How are things going?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and said nothing.
I sat on the bed. I waited for him to turn around and look at me, but he kept on playing his game. I remembered what my therapist, Dr. Jordan, told me – she told me not to be discouraged if Nate didn’t want to open up, but to not let him shut me out.
Without turning around, he said “Dad, you were supposed. to be home hours ago. You promised me that you would be home tonight after you talked to our therapist.”
I took a deep breath. “Nate, I know what I said this morning. But something came up. Something came up with your grandmother. She’s in trouble. A lot of trouble.”
Nate finally turned around, his green eyes looking haunted. “What kind of trouble?”
I debated about how much I wanted to tell him about what was going on with my mother. I knew that Nate was very close with my mother, and he always had been. Even when I went through a period of time when I didn’t want to talk to her, he would always ask about her, asking when she would come and visit them. My daughter Amelia felt the same way about her. I knew that both kids were going to be upset when they found out about my mother being charged with murder.
It was such a precarious time with Nate, I hesitated to say anything to him.
“She’s just having a problem. I really wanted to be home tonight with you guys, make you dinner, watch movies with you, just hang out. I had every intention of coming home right at six, and I would have if I didn’t have to go and see my mother.”
Nate turned back around and started playing with his video game again. “It’s okay, dad. Really, it’s okay.”
The way he said that made me know that it really wasn’t okay. I just had the feeling, the sinking feeling, that I was losing him. I remembered my own childhood, how I was going down the wrong path, stealing cars, smoking and drinking when I was eleven, the same age that Nate was now, generally getting into trouble and raising hell. Once I got out of prison for a crime I didn’t commit, I swore that I would turn my life around completely, and that no child of mine was going to go the route that I did. Yet, here was Nate, shutting me out, shutting out the world, and I didn’t know how to reach him. I didn’t know what he needed from me. He wasn’t telling me.
I felt adrift.
“No, Nate. It’s not okay. It’s not okay that I told you one thing and then went back on my word. You can tell me, buddy. You can talk to me. You can tell me anything that’s on your mind, and I want you to. If you hate me, I want you to tell me that. If you’re angry, tell me. Don’t be shy.”
What was ironic was that his sister, Amelia, was the opposite of him. She told me anything and everything, and if she was mad, I knew it. She didn’t mince words, even though she was only 9 years old. She had stared down death, and beat it. She told the Grim Reaper not today, and that gave her the kind of strength to face anything that life threw her way. She was tested by her battle with cancer, and by how close she came to death’s door, and she came out the other side.
In a way, Nate was tested along with her. He suffered right along with her. True, he didn’t go through all that she went through – the infections, the nausea, the pain, the fatigue, the fear. The constant tests, the stays in the hospital. He didn’t actually go through those things. But, he was a very sensitive boy, so he absorbed her pain. When she hurt, he did as well. I knew that.
Until Proven Guilty Page 2
