Half Past Dead

by Meryl Sawyer

  “If I don’t help him, then I can’t leave?” she again asked the warden, unable to believe they could refuse to release her.

  “I’m afraid not.” His voice deepened with concern. “I’m legally bound to keep you incarcerated until what Harlan has discovered becomes public record.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Who knows? It’s a large-scale investigation. It could go on for a year or two.” Harlan’s shrug said: Who cares?

  They’d discovered she was innocent but weren’t going to make the facts public. Betrayal whiplashed through her. She should be allowed to leave. She hadn’t planned on returning to Twin Oaks. Why would she? Her own mother and sister had turned their backs on her. She intended to go to Miami and start over.

  “I want a lawyer.” She ground out the words, hardly able to keep from shouting. “You’re violating my civil rights.”

  “Do you have the money for an attorney?” Harlan asked in a snide tone.

  Kat didn’t bother to respond. They both knew she didn’t have a cent.

  The warden cleared his throat. “It could be months before a PD could find the time to handle this.”

  PD. Public defender. She’d been forced to use one at her trial. The guy had been nothing but an empty suit. She refused to trust her fate again to one of those jerks. If you were rich enough to afford a first-rate lawyer in America, you could get away with just about anything. Everyone else did time. “What would I have to do?”

  “For good behavior, you’d be released on a work furlough program,” Harlan explained. “That’s what we would tell people. You would return to Twin Oaks and work at the Tribune.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You’ll be assistant to the editor, David Noyes. No one will know about your connection to the bureau.”

  “Bureau? Like the FBI?”

  “The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.”

  This wasn’t logical. Not at all. Why would the bureau need her? “What will I be doing for them?”

  He gazed at her with the haughty superior stare she recognized from the courtroom. “We believe someone will contact you about the robbery. Not all of the missing money was recovered. We believe they’ll double-check to see if you have it or know where it is.”

  “What am I supposed to do if they contact me?”

  “We’ll give you a number to call. We just need to know the identity of the caller.” He said each word slowly and deliberately as if he was trying to have an intellectual conversation with a toddler. “It’s possible this is part of a larger money laundering scheme.”

  This must be a bigger operation. That’s why the MBI was involved. She was being used as bait in what was probably a dangerous situation.

  “If I refuse to do this—”

  “You’ll remain in jail until you come up for parole next year.” Triumph crackled in Harlan’s voice. “Your mother might die before then.”

  She gasped, shock seeping through every pore and spreading through her body with a mind-numbing speed. “Is my mother ill?”

  Harlan glanced at the warden with a frown, then turned to Kat. “Your mother didn’t tell you she has ovarian cancer?”

  Kat shook her head. She didn’t bother mentioning she hadn’t heard anything from her mother and sister since she was arrested. How could Tori not have at least dropped her a note about their mother?

  Cancer.

  Her mother was dying. The revelation hit a target she hadn’t realized still existed—the hollow spot that had once been her heart. The news resurrected old demons, feelings she’d believed had died here in prison.

  Kat had convinced herself that she no longer cared about her mother. She hated her mother for deserting Kat when she’d most needed her. Her feelings toward Tori were more ambivalent. No, Tori hadn’t come to her aid either, but there had been times, when they’d been growing up, that Tori had tried to help Kat. Above all, Tori never tattled. If Kat slipped out to visit her friend in the trailer park, Tori kept her mouth shut.

  “Work with us and you can go home and see your mother,” Harlan said.

  “Okay,” she replied. She didn’t have a choice, and both men knew it.

  “You’ll be undercover. Only you and your contact will know the truth. Don’t tell anyone—not even your mother.”

  She would be free but everyone in Twin Oaks would still think she was a criminal and treat her like one. This just kept getting better and better. It didn’t matter, she decided. Anything was better than being in prison.

  “The field agent who will handle you is with the bureau’s office in Jackson. Contact him if you have anything to report. He’ll give you another number. It belongs to an agent who’s been working undercover in Twin Oaks. Don’t call it unless there’s an emergency.”

  “Tell me what’s really going on,” she demanded. “Will I be in danger?”

  Harlan lifted his briefcase off the floor and stood up. “I don’t have the details. I’m sure the agent who picks you up tomorrow will brief you.”

  KAT NEVER RETURNED to the kitchen. Instead she went to her cell and stretched out on her bunk. The paperwork was complete, and she would be released first thing in the morning. The agent from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation office in Jackson was scheduled to drive her to Twin Oaks. He would get her a car and arrange for a place for her to live.

  Her mother had ovarian cancer. Unbelievable. How long did she have to live? Would her mother want to see her? Kat thought about it and couldn’t decide.

  Her mother had barely tolerated Kat when she’d been growing up. She’d often wondered why her mother loved Tori but not her. She’d asked her father. He’d solemnly told her that it was his fault. Loretta Wells still loved Tori’s father.

  Being near death changed people, or so Kat had heard. Despite the way her mother deserted her, despite Kat’s vow to never see her again. Kat knew she had to say goodbye.

  “Hi,” Abby said when the guard opened the cell door for the redhead. “I’ve been assigned to latrine duty.”

  “Newbies always get latrine duty. It makes everything after that look good.”

  “Where are the latrines? We have our own john in here.”

  “There are toilets by the showers, near the exercise yard, and at the guard station. They’re the worst. Most of the guards are men with lousy aim.”

  “Oh, yuck!” Abby climbed up to her bunk.

  “Get to know Etta. She’s one of the guards. Black hair in a long ponytail. She’s in charge of job assignments.”

  “I—I’m innocent. I shouldn’t be here. You don’t know what it’s like to—”

  “It doesn’t matter. It is what it is—and then you deal with it. You have to learn to get along here. Even if you’re innocent, it’s going to take time to arrange for a new trial.”

  Abby sniffled. “I’m scared. Really scared.”

  Something about Abby’s tone struck a chord in Kat. With a pang deep in her chest, she realized she’d been Abby once—a green newbie at the mercy of a cruel system. No one had clued her into the unspoken rules that inmates in the Graybar Hilton lived by. She’d had to learn the bitter lessons on her own.

  Once the guards had it in for you, it was a one-way ticket to hell. It didn’t take much to anger them. Kat had turned them against her when she complained about a guard fondling her breasts while supposedly searching for drugs.

  “Weren’t you frightened when you first arrived?” Abby asked.

  “I’m still frightened. Everyone here is. They’re lying if they say they’re not.”

  “You get used to prison. It gets better, right? This is a federal prison, not a jail loaded with killers.”

  Kat couldn’t bring herself to lie. “No. It doesn’t get better. Don’t kid yourself. Danville has just as many hardened criminals as other prisons.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if my mother can’t get me a new trial.”

  Kat detected the threat of tears in Abby’s voice. “How long is your
sentence?”

  The words hung in the air like a noxious cloud. Kat couldn’t see Abby in the bunk above her, but she suspected the girl was crying.

  Finally, Abby said, a quaver in her voice, “Fifty years.”

  “What? Fifty years for robbing the post office?” Kat jumped to her feet so she could look up at the girl.

  Abby let out a gulping sob, “Travis shot a customer who tried to stop him.”

  “That explains it.” She could be wrong, but Kat thought the possibility of another trial was remote. Even if Harlan Westcott hadn’t discovered the truth, Kat would have been up for parole next year. This poor kid would be a shriveled-up old crone by the time she came up for parole, her life over. Spent in hell on earth.

  “I’m sure your mother will get you a new trial, but you’re here until she does. I’m leaving in the morning.”

  “How?” Abby sat bolt upright and swung around so her legs were dangling over the side of the bunk.

  “I’m getting out on a work furlough for good behavior.”

  Tears trickled down Abby’s cheeks. “Th-that’s great.”

  “Come down here.” Kat sat on her bunk. “There are a few things I need to explain to you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  JUSTIN STUDIED the coroner’s report on the body that had been discovered in the woods. Like many small towns, Twin Oaks did not have a full-time coroner. Autopsies were seldom necessary. When they were, a local mortician performed them. This autopsy did not reveal a cause of death.

  Justin had arrived at the scene just before the woman’s body had been removed. It was obvious the victim had been dumped in the heavy underbrush. She hadn’t simply wandered off and died. It was murder. But what had killed her?

  He’d instructed the coroner to take extensive photos and collect tissue samples. Now it was time to call in a favor. He phoned a guy in the New Orleans coroner’s office.

  By noon the samples and the body were being driven to New Orleans by one of his deputies. There was little else Justin could do for now. There had been nothing at the crime scene. Spring rains had washed away what trace evidence there might have been.

  “Come on, boy,” he said to Redd.

  The dog cautiously popped his head out from under the big wood desk that had belonged to Sheriff Parker for over thirty years. Redd had spent last night at the vet’s and this morning at the Dog Spaw. Nothing could be done to save his fur. Redd’s coat had been given a boot-camp cut. The groomer had been able to trim his ears so they were still a little fluffy, but his tail had to be shaved, too.

  “You’re a sight.” Justin stroked the dog’s head, and Redd wagged his tail. “Come on. We’re outta here.”

  Redd trotted at his heels. He seemed to sense he was Justin’s dog now.

  “If you need me, call me on my cell,” he told Nora Adams.

  “Yes, indeedy,” she replied.

  Nora was older than the pharaohs and looked like one. She had dyed black hair pulled straight back into a golf-ball-sized bun that emphasized her thin face and taut skin. She’d been the receptionist/dispatcher since Justin had been a child.

  With little crime and five deputies who did their best to raise revenue by catching speeders and writing up DUIs, Justin figured Nora pretty much ran the place. Well, hell, that was about to change. But he wasn’t rattling her cage until he’d settled in.

  “Do you want me to have Sheriff Parker’s cruiser tuned up for you?”

  “Good idea,” Justin said, and waved as he walked out the station’s door.

  He didn’t plan to use the cruiser, but it wouldn’t hurt to have another car in good repair. Something was always going wrong with patrol cars, and with the budget crunch in Twin Oaks, he wasn’t likely to get any new equipment.

  He opened the door to his pickup, saying, “Get in.”

  Redd hopped in the passenger side. Justin walked around, opened his door, and lowered the window for Redd before he climbed in. Like all dogs, Redd loved to hang out the window, nose to the breeze.

  He pulled out of the space marked Sheriff Parker. “I guess we’ll have to find a house with a fenced yard for you.” He thought about it for a moment. He didn’t like leaving a dog alone in a yard all day. There wasn’t any reason he couldn’t take Redd with him most of the time. “Deputy Dawg,” he told Redd, but the dog was too busy sniffing the fragrant honeysuckle in the air to pay attention.

  Justin’s cell rang. It was Mayor Peebles.

  “Any news on the homicide?”

  “No. I’ve sent the tissue samples and photographs to New Orleans along with the body. A friend owes me a favor.”

  Peebles was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Justin knew what he was thinking. The evidence was going to another state.

  “He’s going to rush it for me. You know the state crime lab takes forever.” Justin didn’t add anything about how sloppy their work was.

  “Have you ID’d her?”

  “Not yet. The coroner thinks she was Hispanic. We’ll see if my friend agrees.”

  “We’ve got a lot of illegals these days that spilled out of Texas. Most of them work at the casino.”

  “I’ll ask around out there.”

  “Okay. I called to give you a heads-up. David Noyes wants to interview you about the case and your new job.”

  “He’s a reporter at the Trib?”

  “Nope. He’s the new editor. Came here about a year ago from Boston. He won two Pulitzers while he was there.”

  “You’re saying Noyes will ask tough questions.”

  “He could put on the heat. He did a whole series on how the casino was polluting the river. Stirred up a whole lot of folks around here. I don’t want everyone going ballistic, thinking there’s a killer on the loose.”

  Justin smiled inwardly. Politicians. Weren’t they a trip? “What are they supposed to think? A woman was murdered.”

  “I’m guessing a transient or a tourist at the casino committed the crime. Someone long gone.”

  “It’s possible.” Justin got the message. He was supposed to tell Noyes this was his theory so it would appear in the paper and calm Twin Oaks.

  “One other thing,” Peebles added. “Judge Kincaid wants to see you.”

  “About what?”

  “Didn’t say, but he’s not happy you’re sheriff. He wants to have a special election now. I told him, no way. The city is too broke. You’re acting sheriff until the next election.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He understood my reasons, but the judge is one tough dude. Don’t rile him. You hear me, Radner?”

  Cross my heart and hope to die.

  Justin snapped his cell phone shut. Judge Kincaid was Buck Mason’s best friend. Might as well take the bull by the horns, he decided.

  Turner Kincaid like Buck Mason had old money, which in this neck of the woods meant their families had been plantation owners at one time. They socialized together and married each other. Even those who’d lost their money along the way were still part of the group. Ancestors were what mattered, what made you important and acceptable. In their eyes, he was poor white trash from the trailer park—and always would be.

  Judge Kincaid’s law offices were on Acorn Street just off the town square. Technically, a judge wasn’t supposed to practice law when he had a position on the bench. Kincaid claimed his son did all the work, but everyone knew the judge still worked for friends.

  Justin parked his Silverado in the shade and walked past Kincaid’s black Cadillac. Every year Kincaid purchased a new Caddy from the dealership in Jackson. He looked down on foreign cars and made it a point to tell everyone his opinion. Justin doubted Kincaid did this out of patriotism. More likely, Kincaid thought this would enhance his political career. It was an open secret Judge Kincaid intended to run for Senator Foster’s seat when the senator retired next year.

  He walked into the oak-paneled office. Classical music played softly from speakers Justin couldn’t see. Pictures of Kincaid with ev
ery political figure in the state and several past presidents paraded across the walls in silver frames.

  He quickly glanced around. There wasn’t a single photograph of Clay Kincaid. Go figure. The judge just had one child. You’d think there would be at least one picture, but you’d be wrong.

  “Chief Radner to see the judge,” he informed a blond receptionist with Texas hair and enough makeup for a dozen porn stars. “I’ve got about two minutes for him.”

  “I’ll let him know.” The woman teetered off on spiked heels that matched her screaming red lipstick.

  He wondered how much work the woman actually did. Kincaid’s wife, May Ellen, had a reputation for popping pills and drinking too much. Rumor had it the judge kept a mistress in Jackson. Justin wondered if he even bothered to go that far.

  The receptionist reappeared. “You may go in now. The door at the end of the hall.”

  Justin walked down the hall, rapped his knuckles on the door, then opened it without waiting to be invited in. Kincaid was seated behind a desk the size of an aircraft carrier, with more pictures of himself with dignitaries on the wall behind him. Tall and patrician with a thick head of silver hair, Turner Kincaid looked like central casting’s version of a judge—or a senator.

  “I hear you’re looking for me, Turner.” Justin deliberately used the judge’s first name. He knew Kincaid liked everyone to call him “judge.”

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing by coming back to my town?”

  “Last I heard it was still Twin Oaks, not Kincaidville. You may be a judge, but this town belongs to a whole lot of folks.”

  “You were always a smart-ass. Clay said so way back.”

  Justin had gone to school with Clay, the judge’s son. He’d beaten him out for the quarterback position in junior high and Clay had never forgiven him. Not that he gave a rat’s ass. He’d always found Clay to be a sneaky, self-centered rich kid.

  “Get out of town.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s a promise.”