I was getting excited, because Beck was finally coming clean. “So that’s what happened? Larry helped William Page become Adele Whittier?”
“Yeah. He did. And he just happened to have a cousin who was working in the Vital records department of Boston, Massachusetts, so he was able to doctor up her death certificate. The cousin accidentally misspelled Adele Whittier’s last name,” Beck said, making air quotes when he said the word accidentally. “So it all worked out. William gets a new birth certificate, he gets a new Social Security card, and he becomes Adele Whittier. And that’s what happened there.”
“I see. Now, can you please tell me why it was that you lied to me about your relationship with her? Don’t you think that this piece of information was something that I needed to know? I mean, come on, it seems to me that there’s at least one person in this scenario who had reason to kill her. If not Jordan, then Vincent Sharpelli, would have had reason to kill her.”
He sighed. “I just didn’t tell you, that’s all. Listen, I didn’t want you going down that road. I knew that if I told you the truth about William Page, and how he became Adele, that you would jump to conclusions and just assume that her past caught up with her. That Jordan or Vincent were the ones behind her murder. But I don’t think that.”
I hung my head. “Let me tell you how this works. I’m trying to get you off of murder by showing that somebody else killed Adele. Which means that I need to know anybody and everybody who would’ve had motive to kill her. And that means anybody and everybody, not just people that you want me to look at. So, I need for you to be completely straight with me. I think you’re still hiding something. In fact, I know you are. You’re hiding the reason why it was that you lied to me about not knowing Adele in the first place. You told me that she was a random person that you met at the bar, the two of you went out to mess around in your car, you found out that she was a guy, and then you sent her on her way. That’s what you told me. You certainly didn’t tell me that you knew her, and that you’ve known her for years.”
“Listen, man, I knew William. I knew William, and I hardly knew this Adele person. I mean, I knew her. But not really. She certainly was nothing like William.” He nodded his head. And then he looked away. “She certainly was nothing like William.”
For some reason, the way that Beck talked about how Adele was nothing like William, I had a hunch. I looked into his eyes, and I think that my hunch was confirmed.
“Beck, what relationship did you have with William?” I had to ask the next question, but I was very hesitant to do so. I knew that asking this question was going to be something that was going to set him off, either because it wasn’t true, or because it was. Nevertheless, I felt I needed to get to the bottom of it.
“We were homies. We knew each other. We ran around together.”
“And when you knew William, did you understand that he wanted to be a woman?”
Beck shook his head rapidly. “Hell no. I had no clue about that. Trust me, if I would’ve known about that, it would’ve pissed me off.”
“And why would that have pissed you off?”
“It just would’ve, man. He was my homie, he was my friend, and I certainly didn’t want him becoming a chick.”
And here was the question that I was going to ask earlier, the question that I knew was going to generate an intense reaction. But it was a question I knew I had to ask. “Beck, were you in love with William Page?”
Chapter 22
“What kind of a question is that?” Beck demanded. “Why would you think I’m some kind of faggot?” He stood up, and looked at me menacingly. “Seriously, man, why would you say something like that to me? Do I look like some kind of faggot?” Beck’s eyes were wild, and he was shaking. “Answer that question. Do I look like some kind of queer? A faggot?”
I tried to be as calm as possible. “I just have a feeling. I have a feeling that your feelings for William were the real reason why you never told me that you knew him. The real reason why you told me that you didn’t know Adele. Maybe it’s true. Perhaps you believe in your mind that you didn’t really know Adele, because that was who William became, and you didn’t like that. Maybe you didn’t like that because you liked him as a man.”
That made sense to me. If Beck had feelings for William Page, and if Beck were gay, then obviously he wouldn’t want William becoming a woman. It would be the same thing as if I was dating a woman who decided to become a man. I obviously wouldn’t be able to be with her. Perhaps Beck felt the same way about William. William became a woman, Beck decided he didn’t want to have anything to do with him, and that was why he felt that he didn’t know Adele. Maybe he felt like he was telling me the truth when he told me that he didn’t really know her.
I looked at Beck, and I realized I struck a nerve. By now, he did have tears in his eyes. He finally just lowered his head, and shook it. “Goddammit,” he said softly. “Goddammit, me and William, we had a good thing going. We did. We were talking about living together. Me and him, we were good. Real good. I ain’t never experienced something like that, what I had with him.”
“How did you and William meet?”
“We knew each other in high school. I always knew he was gay. Everybody knew it. Nobody knew I was gay, though. You know, it’s just something that you don’t really tell people. My dad, if he knew that about me, he would’ve beat the crap out of me. Shit, he probably would’ve had somebody come along and knock me off. No way did he want some kind of faggot son.”
I wondered about Charity. I wondered if she knew about Beck’s sexuality. I had a feeling that she didn’t. If she did, she probably would’ve told me the truth. She seemed the kind that was pretty on the level. “Did your sister know about this?”
“No dog, I ain’t telling Charity nothing about that. Listen, I’m telling you, you don’t know my dad. He would’ve hated me if he would’ve known that I was some kind of a sissy boy. Even though he was in prison, he probably would’ve sent some of his men after me, for shaming him. You know, being gay is some kind of dishonor to guys like my dad. He’s old school. He’s old school. He comes from a time when guys who like guys get the crap beat out of them.”
I wanted to ask him a few questions about how much he was influenced by his father. After all, his father was somebody who was an avowed white supremacist. But he was telling me the story about William Page, so I wanted for him to keep talking. If anybody was going to want to kill Adele Whittier, it might’ve been him, because, after all, he was angry with her for becoming a woman.
Was he angry enough with her to have actually killed her?
“So you knew William in high school. Did you hang out with him then?”
Beck hung his head. “No. I didn’t hang out with him in high school. My homies in high school, they wouldn’t want nothing to do with me if I was hanging out with a guy like William. Like I said, everyone knew he was gay in high school, so we dudes were afraid to be hanging out with him. We didn’t want people saying that about us.”
“So when did you guys start hanging out, then?”
“We started hanging out when we met up at a bar. I saw him over at Buddies on Main Street. He comes over to me and says ‘I didn’t know you were gay,’ and then told me he had been crushing on me all through high school. And, you know, I’d never been with a man before. But, I was at Buddies, so I guess I was curious. And we started hanging out after that.”
“Who else knew you were gay?”
“Now let me get one thing straight. No pun intended,” he said with a laugh. “I ain’t gay. I like women. I fuck women. But me and William, that was a different story. I don’t know, I just kinda dug him.”
“So, were you in love with him?”
Beck stared at me for a second, and nodded his head slowly. “Yeah, I think I was.”
“So when he decided to become a woman, how did that make you feel?” I needed to see his reaction. I needed to see if he was going to give me subtle indications that he was
angry enough at William becoming a woman that he killed him.
“I threw a party,” he said sarcastically. “How do you think I felt about that? I loved William. At first it was okay, because right after me and William started hanging out, I got nabbed and put into the joint. William came and visited me, all the time, while I was behind bars. And so one day he tells me that he’s on the run from a mobster, and he has to get a new identity. I thought, cool. I thought he would get some plastic surgery, and just become another dude. But then he tells me that he’s gonna become a woman, and the woman that he was going to become was someone who had just died.” He shook his head and gritted his teeth. “So he’s gonna become a woman. I wasn’t down with that. I wasn’t down with that at all.”
“How mad were you at him becoming Adele?”
“I know where you’re going with this. I wasn’t pissed off enough to have killed him. If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I just have to ask the question.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It was just weird. All of a sudden, I get this chick visiting me in the joint. I don’t know who she is. She says she’s William. But she ain’t looking like William no more. You know, she’s all looking different. And her voice is different too. You know, she got this voice coach, this voice coach that helped her sound like a woman. And she sounded like a woman. She really did. You know how like you see these dudes becoming chicks, but their voice still sounds the same? They still sound like a man? Or you see these chicks becoming a dude, and they still got a girl voice? Well, that wasn’t the case with Adele. Her voice was a woman’s voice, and she looked like a woman. Completely like a woman.”
“The two of you obviously worked it out, right? I mean, you were hanging out at the bar that night. Right?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Nah, I just ran into her. I see her at the bar, you know, I ain’t been out of the joint for that long. When I see Adele come visit me in the joint, I tell her not to come back. I was through with her. But she sees me at the Zoo Bar, we get to talking, it’s kind of like old times, because I’m drinking. I didn’t think of her as being William no more, but, like I said, I like chicks, too. I like banging chicks. So, I’m kinda thinking, maybe I can start hanging out with her. I needed to get past the fact that she had a dick. That’s something I’ve never done.” He laughed. “I’ve done guys, and I’ve done girls, but I ain’t never done someone who’s halfway between. But, you know, I loved William when he was William. I thought maybe I could try to adjust to him being Adele. So, she went home with me. She went home with me that night.”
I nodded my head. “So that’s why she was found in your neighborhood. Well, that makes some sense. That answers a question that has been nagging at me since the beginning. I’ve often wondered how it is that she would’ve been dumped by your apartment, when you claimed that she didn’t go home with you that night.”
“Yeah. She went home with me. She left my apartment, very much alive, around midnight. I don’t know, I tried to mess around with her, but it was just too weird. Like I said, I ain’t never done somebody who was not quite a dude and not quite a chick. So, it kinda grossed me out. If you want to know the truth.”
This added a new dimension to the case. I wondered if there was somebody who was in Beck’s neighborhood who knew Adele, and would’ve had reason to kill her. I was going to have to try to figure that one out.
I suddenly knew that I had another way to look at this case. I was happy that Beck finally came clean. However, it still didn’t answer the over-riding question I had.
Who killed Adele?
Chapter 23
I met Nick and Tom that night. Tom called and told me that he had some information about somebody else who might have had reason to kill Adele. In my mind, I was looking at Jordan Kennedy. After all, when Adele was William, she stole all that money from him. That was the reason why he became Adele in the first place. What if he found out that William was Adele, and he killed her? Of course, the only other thing that I had to figure out was if there was some reason why he also hated Beck. He killed her by Beck’s apartment, after all, and from what I understood, Jordan didn’t live in the neighborhood. That would had to have meant that, somehow someway, he had some kind of a spy who saw the two of them leave together. And that spy followed them home, killed Adele, and dumped her body by his apartment, all in the name of framing Beck for her murder.
But Tom and Nick told me that there was another person who was coming into view. I was anxious to find out exactly who this person was.
We met at a bar. As usual. I got there early, and I hoped that Tom would not only have information for me about a new suspect in Beck’s case, but might also be able to to tell me some dirt on Baron Wicker.
“Hey buddy,” I said when the two guys came in. I gave them each a hug, and they sat down. “So what do you have for me?”
“I think I found some pretty decent information about who Adele was working with,” Nick said. “I talked to some guys on the street, and they tell me that Adele was on the up and up, working as a nurse. She wasn’t dealing any street drugs. But that’s the operative word here – street drugs. Seems like Adele, she didn’t want anything to do with dealing cocaine and heroin, but she sure wanted to still be in the drug trade.”
“Let me guess. She was working in a hospital, and she was stealing prescription painkillers?”
“Bingo. But she wasn’t stealing them and selling them. I mean, she was selling them, but she had a middleman. She had a guy who she was working with, a guy who was distributing these drugs on the street. He gave her a cut of every sale he made. From what I understand, our victim was making quite a lot of money out of this.”
“Who was her middleman?”
“His name is Charlie Williams.”
Charlie Williams. I had to wonder if he was the same Charlie Williams who was Heather’s boyfriend at one time. The same Charlie Williams who threatened Heather into becoming a drug mule for him. I wondered if that was the person that Heather was afraid of. When she came into my office, she was obviously afraid of me fingering somebody. Maybe it was Charlie? Maybe Heather knew that Charlie was involved? And she wanted me to be looking in a different direction?
“So what happened? Why do you think that this Charlie Williams is a suspect at this point?”
“I’ll tell you why I think that Charlie might’ve done it. Listen, he had a deal with Adele for her to steal those drugs from the hospital. But Adele apparently told him that she wasn’t going to do it for him any more. She was afraid that she was going to get caught, and she didn’t want to go to prison. You know, she was still technically a guy, so she knew if she went to prison that it would be a men’s prison, where she probably wouldn’t live very long. At any rate, she was hearing noises that the hospital was onto what she was doing. She managed to steal a shit ton of Percocet and Oxycontin, because she worked on the oncology floor, where most of those patients are on some kind of powerful painkiller. She would administer a smaller dose than what they needed, and would literally pocket the rest. But the hospital was getting wise, and she knew that it was just a matter of time before she got caught, so she told Charlie that she wasn’t going to do it anymore.”
“Okay. Now tell me why it is that Charlie would’ve killed her? Are you saying that just because she told Charlie that she didn’t want to steal drugs for him anymore, that would’ve given him reason to kill her?”
“Something like that,” Nick said. “Actually, the reason why he might have killed her was because I found out that the police were closing in on her. They were getting ready to arrest her at the time that she died. Charlie might’ve gotten word that she was about to be arrested, and he was afraid that if she was arrested, she would’ve given him up to save her own neck. And Charlie is somebody who has been on the police radar for quite a long time. He hasn’t been busted yet for what he does, but he was afraid that Adele was going to change that. He was rightfully worried that she w
as going to sing like a canary. So that gives him reason to have killed her.”
Hmmmm…. “I’ll definitely have to go down that road. I’ll try to find all I can about that situation, but I wonder how Heather, the girl who put me up to this, is going to think of this. I think she’s afraid of Charlie. I think she’s afraid of Charlie and she’s not going to want me to go down that road. Not that that’s going to stop me. But I should definitely talk to her before I start gathering evidence about this Charlie Williams, and how he might’ve been the one who did this.”
“Well, that’s what I found out. I also found out some pretty good things about Baron Wicker. There are definitely juicy things that I found out about him.”
“Oh? What did you find out about him?” My ears were perked up. Ever since I was served with that paternity petition, I had been on pins and needles.
“I found out the real reason why he’s suing you for custody of your daughter. And that’s not all. I found out something that’s going to really sink him in court.”
I rubbed my hands together in glee.
This was going to be good.
Chapter 24
“First of all, I found out that Baron Wicker is definitely not the father of Amelia,” Nick said.
Huh? “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, from the people I’ve talked to, they all say that Baron had never been to Kansas City until about a year ago. He never visited the city. Which made me kind of wonder how it was that Sarah would’ve met him. As far as you know, was Sarah doing any traveling at about the time that Amelia was born?”
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