by Joel Goldman
I followed her through the living room with its intricate woodwork and fireplace flanked by matching sculptures of cherubs, into the kitchen where Queen Anne had given way to Frigidaire and Corian countertops and into the morning room. White wallpaper with a green leaf pattern gave it an outdoor feel. Sunlight poured in through large double-hung windows on the west side. A mirror hung over a fireplace, the reflection making the room seem larger than it was.
A woman in a wheelchair, her head held in place by cushions on either side of her face, sat in the center of the room. She opened her mouth wide when she saw us, a sound coming out I didn’t understand, though Roni did, bending to give her a kiss.
“Hi, Mama. I love you.”
Her mother answered. This time her gurgle was easier to decipher. “Love you too.”
“I don’t blame you,” Roni said, both of them giggling.
Terry Walker stood next to Lilly Chase at the windows, one hand on her shoulder, Lilly’s gaze fixed on the mid-distance; then she turned toward us, watching Roni and her mother.
Lilly was red-haired with an oval face, her green eyes not dulled by age. She must have been a beautiful woman when she was young, and she was still attractive, her back straight and her carriage square and confident.
Roni’s mother stirred in her wheelchair, raising her left hand, tapping the armrest, smiling a crooked smile. Lilly knelt besides her, squeezing her hand as they exchanged looks and murmurs.
“Martha needs to lie down. I’ll take her,” Lilly said.
“I’ll help you,” Roni said, following her mother and grandmother.
Terry circled the morning room, admiring the view from the windows, running his hand along the backs of the furniture, taking inventory.
“Good to be home?”
He looked at me, eyebrows raised, cocking his head to one side.
“Roni told me,” I said, answering his unspoken question. “She said you lived here as a kid but moved away. What’s it like after being away so long?”
“It’s more strange than good. Nothing’s what it was when I left, including Lilly and me.”
“What made you decide to come back after all these years?”
He shrugged. “I’ve spent my whole life on the road, always looking for the next stop and never thinking about where I’ve been. Now I’m of an age where there’s a hell of a lot less in front of me than behind me. Got me thinking that maybe it was time to circle back, see if any of my old crew was still kicking around. I lived down the street from Lilly. I came to have a look at the old neighborhood and saw her sitting on the porch. Hadn’t seen her in fifty years, but I never forgot that red hair of hers. Some things just burn into your memory.”
“You planning on staying this time?”
“Not likely. Wasn’t enough to keep me here when I was a kid, and I doubt there’s enough now. I imagine I’ll say my hellos and good-byes and be on my way.”
“What about family?”
“Had a brother, but Lilly told me he’s dead. Got shot robbing a liquor store thirty years ago, which isn’t much of a surprise since he was born bad.”
“In the DNA, huh?”
“Hard to say if it’s the blood or the time and place.”
“Probably some of both. I get the sense that you’ve been in a few scrapes.”
He fingered his clipped ear, smiling. “A time or two. How about you? What’s your small-world story?”
“Me? Roni is taking a look at some financial records for me.”
We traded smiles, the twinkle in his eyes reminding me again that the first liar didn’t stand a chance, but I had no reason to share a murder investigation with Northeast’s prodigal son.
“That’s so?”
“It is.”
The doorbell rang, and I heard footsteps clattering down the stairs. “More company?”
“Not for Lilly. It’s for Roni and me, a police detective who’s working on the same case I asked Roni to help me on.”
“Those financial records.”
“Yeah.”
“Well then, have at it. I’ll show myself out.”
Chapter Thirty
Lilly Chase led Roni and Quincy Carter into the morning room. Judging from her stiff posture and stern glare, she wasn’t pleased to be entertaining the police. Mindful of the power that beauty and age bestowed, she clasped her hands, commanding the room with a bank robber’s brass.
“Detective Carter,” she said, “my granddaughter only just now told me you are here to question her. I’ve told her not to talk to you without an attorney.”
“With all due respect, m’am, that’s up to her.”
“You’ve no right to harass her. She’s done nothing wrong. If she hadn’t shot Frank Crenshaw, I’d be wearing black, mourning my granddaughter.”
Carter nodded. “I got the word a couple of hours ago from the prosecuting attorney. She’s in the clear. He agrees with you and me that it was straight-up self-defense.”
“Good,” she said, as if checking that off her mental list of deal terms. “That leaves the second shooting, the one that killed Frank. Not that he didn’t deserve killing after what he did to Marie, but you can’t think Roni had anything to do with that.”
“I’m just here to ask her a few questions.”
“I know how the police do things. You ask questions, insinuate guilt, and badger people who are innocent into confessing to things they haven’t done and wouldn’t do. I won’t have that. Not in my house.”
“We’re just going to talk, ma’am. No bright lights or rubber hoses.”
She glared at Carter. “Detective, I’ve spent my life selling houses owned by people who didn’t know they were moving to people who didn’t know they were buying, so don’t try to sell me. I told Roni that she shouldn’t say another word to you without having a lawyer here to look after her. But you’d have thought I told her the moon was pink. And, you Jack, for some unknown reason, Roni thinks you’re better protection than any lawyer I could hire, though in my experience a man who works for free is rarely as committed as the man whose next meal depends on making the sale.”
A spasm squeezed me from the inside out, clenching my eyes, tugging my chin to my chest and pulling it up and past my left shoulder. I managed to keep my mouth shut but couldn’t smother the accompanying grunt. When the spasm passed and I opened my eyes, Lilly Chase was staring at me.
“When Roni told me you had a movement disorder I thought you had a bowel problem. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Grandma!”
“It’s okay,” I said, catching my breath.
“Can’t you call it something else?” Lilly asked.
“Mostly, I call it a pain in the ass, but I don’t think that solves your problem.”
“He shakes sometimes. It’s no big deal,” Roni said.
Lilly smirked, undeterred. “That’s what the seller always says about the water in the basement until it turns out the house is floating on an underground spring. I always tell my sellers to make full disclosure of any defects in their property. Saves a lot of aggravation.”
She was pushing, but I didn’t blame her. I’d made it a practice to explain my condition, believing that the more people knew, the more at ease they would be.
“It’s called tics. It’s a lot like Tourette’s. It makes me shake, spasm, and stutter.”
“Can you control it?”
“Not much.”
Lilly crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me something, Jack. If you were me, would you entrust your granddaughter to a man with the shakes?”
“If it’s this man, I would,” Carter said. “I know Jack better than I’d like. Most of the time, he’s a pain in my butt. Still, if it were me, I’d want him on my side.”
“Careful, Detective,” Lilly said. “It’s very tricky to work both sides of a sale without screwing somebody.”
“Lilly,” I said. “I told Roni she should get a lawyer. She said she doesn’t want one because she hasn’t do
ne anything wrong. But you’re right that these things can take a turn no one expects. If Roni wants a lawyer, all she has to do is say so. Detective Carter will wait, and I’ll go on my way.”
Lilly turned toward Roni, one eyebrow raised in an unspoken question.
“No sale, Grandma. I’ll be fine.”
Lilly stared at her, waiting for Roni to fold. When Roni didn’t, she dropped her arms to her side. “Well, let’s see what tomorrow brings.”
“Thank you, Lilly,” I said as she headed toward the kitchen.
“Don’t be so quick with gratitude, Jack, because if any harm comes to my granddaughter, you won’t be thanking me. Trust me on that.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“I’m sorry,” Roni said after Lilly left. “She means well.”
“There’s no question about that,” I said. “It’s good to have someone like that in your corner.”
“Let’s get this over with before she comes back and tries to sell me a house,” Carter said.
There are all kinds of ways to conduct an interrogation. A lot depends on how much you know going in and your objective. If it’s early in the case and you’re after information, you take it slow, build trust, ask open-ended questions, and give the witness time to think and reflect.
If the witness is a suspect, you pin them down to their story as soon as possible, investigate, and build the case against them, then come back when you know enough to go after whatever it is they are holding back. And everyone holds something back. That’s when craft separates from the manual. Sometimes, I’d hit a suspect right out of the gate with my best shot, catching him off guard. With others, I’d take my time, chipping away at their story until it collapsed. Even though the prosecuting attorney had given Roni a pass for shooting Frank Crenshaw at LC’s Bar-B-Q, that didn’t mean she wasn’t a suspect in his murder at the hospital.
Roni sat on the floral-print sofa, Carter and I taking chairs opposite her. I glanced at Carter, wondering how he would play it. He opened with a hungry smile that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Roni, I know we’ve been over this a couple of times, but I want you to walk me through what happened last night one more time. Yesterday was a long one, and I want to make sure I’ve got everything right.”
She sat straight up on the edge of the sofa, hands in her lap. “Sure, no problem.”
He took her through it, five minutes of slow-pitch batting practice, looking at his notes, nodding as she answered each question, adding that’s right and yeah, yeah to her responses. Roni was getting too comfortable, and comfortable people made mistakes. I decided to throw Carter off his rhythm.
“What did you see on the hospital surveillance tapes?”
He looked at me, flashing annoyance, then muzzling it. “The hospital’s cameras cover the entrances and lobby. They don’t have cameras in the stairwells or on the patient floors.”
“So, you didn’t see anyone who jumped out at you?”
“Not yet. We’re still studying the tapes.”
“Any other leads?”
He took the same deep breath he always took when he was trying to decide whether to shoot me. “The investigation is ongoing.”
“Then I guess we’re done here.”
“Yeah, we’re done,” he said, tucking his notepad inside his suit-coat breast pocket. “By the way, Roni, the gun you shot Crenshaw with, you should be able to pick it up in a couple of days. Just come downtown. There’ll be some paperwork, but it won’t be too painful. In the meantime, do you have another gun you can carry until then if you feel the need?”
“I do, but that’s okay. I never shot anything except a paper target until a couple of days ago. I’m still sorting that out. I don’t feel like carrying anything right now.”
“I know what you mean. All that time on the range doesn’t prepare you for the real thing. What kind of gun is it?”
“It’s a Ruger LCP .380.”
Carter leaned back in his chair. “Really? That is a sweet little gun, fits right in the handbag. Perfect for a woman. I’ve been thinking of getting my wife one for her birthday. Mind if I take a look at yours?”
Roni’s eyebrows shot up, her mouth opening halfway as she sucked in and swallowed a sharp, shallow breath.
I took my cue. “We’ll skip the show and tell. I think we’ve had enough fun for one day.”
Carter stood, leaning toward her, using his height to full advantage to pressure her. “Is there a problem, Roni? Some reason you don’t want to show me your gun?”
I came out of my chair, wedging myself between them. “What’s going on, Carter?”
“I’m just wondering why Roni about crapped her pants when I asked to see that gun.”
Roni retreated, scooting against the back of the sofa, grabbing a pillow and clutching it to her chest. “What’s he talking about, Jack? What’s going on?”
“Detective Carter is playing you. Do you have a permit for the Ruger?”
“Of course.”
“Then he knew about it before he walked in the door. Probably ran your name last night, checking for any other handguns you owned if he hadn’t already done that on Sunday. Now he wants you to show it to him, but I don’t think that’s because he’s shopping for his wife’s birthday present. He thinks it has something to do with Crenshaw’s murder, but he didn’t hand you a search warrant for the gun. Why is that, Carter?”
He smiled, his lips bloodless. “Why do you think, Jack?”
It didn’t take long to figure out why. I glanced at Roni, who refused to look at me. I shook my head and let out a sigh.
“Because you’ve already got the gun, you know it was the murder weapon, and you wanted to see her reaction when you asked to see it.”
Roni doubled over on the sofa. “Oh my God!”
I shot my hand in front of her face. “Not another word.”
“C’mon Roni,” Carter said, reaching for her arm. “We’ll finish this conversation downtown.”
He pulled her off the couch and spun her around, cuffing her hands behind her back.
“What’s the charge?” I asked.
“We’ll sort that out later, but I’d say she’s looking at conspiracy to commit murder at a minimum.”
The color drained from Roni’s face. Her mouth trembled as she blinked back tears. “Jack, please, I never…”
“No talking, Roni. Don’t say a word in the car or when you get downtown. I’ll have someone there as quick as I can.”
“You! I want you to be there!”
“Sorry,” Carter said. “Visiting day isn’t until Sunday. I guess you should have hired that lawyer after all.”
I followed them outside, standing on the curb as Carter put her in the backseat of his car and drove away. Lilly Chase watched from the front porch, arms folded tight against her chest. I started toward her, but she turned, marched into the house, and slammed the door.
Chapter Thirty-two
I leaned against Lucy’s car, bracing one hand on the hood as gut-ripping spasms jacked me to my knees and strangled my breath. On the bright side, the onslaught saved me the trouble of kicking myself in the ass for letting Carter blindside Roni.
I should have known better. He wanted to meet at her house. There had to have been a reason, and I should have been smart enough to figure it out or at least ask the questions that would have tipped me off to the trap he set for her. Worse, I’d let him play me, accepting the pat on the head he gave me in front of Lilly Chase like a schoolboy getting a gold star.
No one touched by violent crime is objective because it’s impossible to separate our inner lives from what we do. Pressured to clear cases and win trials, cops settle on a suspect, and prosecutors shape the evidence to prove the cops are right. Needing a big fee to pay for the condo in Aspen, defense lawyers pretend it’s all about the state’s burden of proof and that their client’s guilt doesn’t matter. Confusing vengeance with justice and passing it off as closure, victims and the
ir families demand immediate arrests and ironclad convictions.
Memories and nightmares of my dead children haunt my inner life, teasing me with second-chance fantasies that always end badly, waking me in a cold sweat. Helping Roni was my way of doing penance, but I’d let my twin burdens of grief and guilt color my thinking, making me give her too much benefit of the doubt, forgetting that I had to give doubt its due. I’d screwed up because I wanted her to be innocent too badly to consider the possibility that she wasn’t.
Her lawyer would fashion an explanation for how her gun became the Crenshaw murder weapon. Odds were it would be some variation of the lost or stolen gun defense offered by way of cross-examination of the state’s witnesses, denying the prosecuting attorney the chance to dismember Roni in front of the jury.
When I could stand and breathe, I called Kate.
“I need Ethan Bonner’s phone number.”
“Why, where are you?”
My vocal cords seized, my answer escaping in short staccato bursts. “Somebody used a gun registered to Roni Chase to kill Frank Crenshaw. Quincy Carter just took her downtown.”
“What does she say about the gun?”
“She didn’t have to say anything. Carter asked to see the gun, and she came apart. I didn’t want her to dig a deeper hole, so I didn’t give her a chance to explain. Ethan has to get to her before Quincy Carter gets her in a room.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll call him. Where are you?”
“In front of Roni’s house. Tell me where you are, and I’ll meet you.”
“The way you sound, not a chance. Give me the address, and if you get behind the wheel of that car, I’ll break both your legs above the knee.”
I gave her the address, the words fighting their way out of my mouth.
“Good,” she said. “Now sit tight until we get there.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one shaking.”
“You are a crazy person. Don’t move. Oh shit, I did it again,” she said, laughing, and hung up.
I slid into the driver’s seat of Lucy’s car, my inner schoolboy glad that I’d made her laugh. Ten minutes later, Kate pulled alongside, and Lucy brought me up to date as we traded cars.
