Shocking True Story

by Gregg Olsen

  I didn't ask Ashlee where I had fit into that list. I hoped that the new senior producer had deemed someone else on the show with one of those names. It couldn't have been me.

  “Kevin, if you have anything softer that might work for a show, call me. We're switching to relationship and inspirational shows. Triumph through adversity, that sort of crap.”

  I pretended to write down her new direct-dial phone number. I was free of Ashlee and Rita and the nightmare in Manhattan. I even asked her to repeat it as I disregarded each digit she uttered. It had been for nothing. All of it. I wasn't going to get a bump from the exposure for Murder Cruise. As much as I wanted a bestseller, I knew it was better to be midlist than trashed in front of millions jobless TV watchers.

  I had been grilled like a Whopper, but now I was free. I printed out a chapter and looked for another Kit Kat. Things were good.

  ♦

  NOTE TO VAL: If ever you were going to make Mexican food again after that enchilada reference back in Part Two, I'm feeling pretty sure that's off the menu for good after you read this one L. Sorry, Babe, I write like I see 'em.—K

  ♦

  Love You to Death

  PART TEN

  DANNY PARKER SHIFTED IN THE HARD plastic chair that could scarcely contain his bulk. He had three empty cans of Sprite, all turned on their sides, in front of him. He wanted something to eat and he had to go to the bathroom. Raines told him that their interview was over. Though the detective didn't say so, he would try his best to see that Parker's sentence was tempered with mercy.

  The man deserved compassion. He had been used.

  Raines went to Moan-a-lot's desk and took another piece of saltwater taffy. He just couldn't shake the stupidity of it all.

  “No mother would delay contacting the police if she suspected child abuse,” he said. “Danny's too dumb to see that.”

  “Too in love,” Mona offered, slapping her colleague's candy-stealing hands.

  Raines ignored her and continued. “We need those panties. We can't run another search warrant on Janet's place.”

  “We can make a report to CPS.”

  A sly smile broke out on Raines' face. “Let's do it. Get the panties out of the woman's freezer and get them to the lab. Let's see whose blood is on them.”

  Later that day, frozen Wizards of Waverly Place panties were taken from a mostly empty freezer in Janet Kerr's apartment and sent by legal courier to the state crime lab in Olympia for semen and blood analysis. DNA swabs from Paul Kerr were tagged and bagged and sent along. Paul Kerr had cooperated fully. He insisted he had never touched his daughter in any inappropriate manner. Never in a million years. He didn't need an attorney to advise him.

  “I'm on the side of right,” he said.

  Three days later, Raines got a call from the lab.

  “Big surprise on the Wizards of Waverly Place panties you sent to us,” the lab tech said, almost with a sense of glee.

  “Whose blood did you come up with?”

  “No one's.”

  “Not enough to type?”

  “No blood at all.”

  “What about semen?”

  “None.”

  The lab tech started to laugh.

  “What's so funny, buddy?” Raines tone shifted from interested to annoyed.

  “Picante sauce, dude. The panties were stained with, you know, taco sauce. Someone might be trying to pull a fast one, but who would fall for taco sauce?”

  -

  WORD CAME DOWN FROM THE county attorney's office an hour after the picante sauce news hit the Justice Center: Danny Parker would be offered a deal in exchange for testifying against Janet Lee Kerr and her mother, Connie Carter. He had been manipulated and misled. He was mentally impaired. Danny would still serve time in prison for shooting Deke Cameron, but the sentence would be light as a Twinkie. He would have five years to think about the next time he fell in love.

  Danny was glum when Raines and a junior prosecuting attorney told him and his public defender the offer. The public defender who smelled of breath mints and hair oil assured his client that it was a good deal. All of it, of course, hinged on Parker's testimony.

  “You shot Cameron, correct?” said the prosecutor, a recent law school graduate who wore the same Macy's suit every day.

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it planned?”

  Danny nodded.

  “We need to hear you say the words, Danny,” Raines said quietly.

  Tears came from the lovelorn's deep-set eyes and he began to sob. “Yeah, I did,” he answered.

  “Who planned it?”

  Amidst his tears and delayed by a slight hesitation that had more to do with his brainpower than anything, the answer finally came. “Janet did. Janet did. She told me that he was beating on her. She even showed me bruises. She said we'd never get him out of our lives. The only way to save Janet was to kill Deke. The only way to save Lindy was to kill Paul Kerr. She promised she'd marry me in Las Vegas. She did.”

  Danny Parker pulled himself together and wiped his eyes. “Mr. Raines, I'm scared. Can I have a hug?”

  -

  MONTHS LATER, WHEN ALL THAT HAD HAPPENED in Timberlake was a vague memory for most, a jailer found a note rolled into a tube and shoved behind the plastic molding of the county jail cell. It was written in pencil on the back of a napkin. The handwriting was pitiful, letters in search of a baseline on which to anchor themselves. It had been written by Danny Parker.

  Dear Janet,

  Forgive me. They made me lie about you. The told me terrible things about you. I love you. When I told them about you and your mom they made it sound like you had tried to trick me. I know now that it was a big fat lie. I hope that when I get out of Walla Walla you and Lindy will be waiting for me. Hoping that you will be there for me is all that keeps me from killing myself. Mom tells me to forget you, but I can't. She tells me that you are no good, but I know better. I'm your man. You and Lindy are my family.

  Love Danny,

  Your Sugarbutt

  NOTE TO KEV: You're right, honey. We're now officially a taco-free zone. Thanks for that. Why on earth doesn't Danny get off his sugarbutt and get some kind of reality check? His note to Janet is about the most pathetic thing I've read so far. No one will be waiting for him when he gets out of prison. —V

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Wednesday, October 9

  IT RAINED EVERY DAY THE WEEK after we returned from New York. I had not cleaned out the overflowing gutters which were hopelessly clogged with fir needles, badminton birdies, tennis balls and leaves. It was one of those late summer projects that was so easy to put off. I had waited too long. I put on an old sweatshirt and a pair of jeans and took a stepladder outside. The three steps that I allowed myself to climb did not give me sufficient height to see what I was fishing out of the gutters, even though I was over six feet tall. Black, stinky debris fell in sticky bunches onto the front step. The ladder teetered on the aggregate walkway and I held tight as I scooped out the mess with my bare hands. Two hours later, I showered, shaved and left for Riverstone.

  If I hadn't made such a big deal about it with those snippy Community Relations toads at the prison, I would have postponed my interview with Connie Carter. I was not up to it and I was certain it would show in both my questions and my attitude. I decided to abandon going over the story—I knew she would say she was innocent—in favor of discussing her relationships with her daughters. Valerie had raised a good point during her last reading: Jett was on the outside, innocent; a victim of her mother and sister.

  Muriel Constantine escorted me into the now-familiar conference room. This time the red-haired flack wore a powder blue suit that I thought was a Chanel knockoff. I allowed myself to believe that it was another quasi-benefit of her job. She probably sold another piece to the National Enquirer.

  Seated at the interview table, Connie looked thrashed. She didn't have a speck of makeup on, and her hair was either wet or oily. Her lower lip was swollen
and as I leaned over the table to shake her hand I noticed that her wrist had been taped.

  “What happened to you? Are you all right?”

  “I'm okay,” she answered.

  “What happened?”

  She picked at the adhesive tape. Its gummy edges had collected dirt and sweatshirt fuzz. “Got in a fight with Janet and her lover, and it looks like I'm just a little worse for the wear.”

  “Looks like you were beat up,” I said, shaking the picture of what she was describing from my mind.

  Connie Carter asked the guard stationed at the end of our table if she could get a glass of water. The Buddha in the polyester uniform looked up from his Lee Child paperback and cocked his square head toward the water dispenser. He told her to be quick. I understood it wasn't because he thought she was going to make a run for it. It was simply that the prisoner was getting in the way of his reading. As long as she was sitting down talking to me, he didn't have to look at her. Warily, and impatiently, he watched while Connie drank two cones of water, returned to her chair and resumed her story. The guard and Jack Reacher were reunited in fourteen seconds.

  “Those girls make me sick and I told them so,” she said. “That was it. It made 'em mad enough to attack me in the shower. Sometimes I wonder about Janet. I wonder if I even know her. She's selfish. She's stubborn. She'll let nothing stand in her way. She'd sell her mother up the river if she thought it'd do her some good.”

  I turned on my recorder.

  “She sounds a lot like Marnie Shaw's daughter in The Over the Counter Murders,” I said.

  Connie looked completely blank. “Not familiar with it.”

  “My book,” I said with a smile, though I wondered why she hadn't read it. I considered it one of my best. A minor true crime classic, at the least.

  She shrugged and pulled a piece of red licorice from her pocket and tore off little bits and ate them one at a time. “Sorry. Haven't read any of your books. I'm going to as soon as the prison's library orders them.”

  “That's okay,” I said. “What I'm getting at—now, don't blast me for doing my job—is after talking with Paul and Liz Kerr, I get the distinct impression that the sexual abuse allegations made by your daughter were the sole catalyst for your hatred for your former son-in-law. I mean, before that you thought he was an okay dad, right?”

  “Okay would be a fair assessment, I guess. Not great.” Connie picked at a piece of red candy that stuck to her upper molars. I watched her fight with the licorice until she liberated her teeth from the gooey bondage.

  “Are you convinced that there was sexual abuse involving Lindy?” I asked.

  Connie Carter did a slow burn. “What are you hinting at, Mr. Ryan?”

  “Kevin, please.”

  “What are you suggesting, Kevin? There is no doubt in my mind that there was abuse of my granddaughter. I saw the evidence with my own eyes.”

  I said nothing. I let her fill the silence. Connie's posture stiffened and her eyes flashed a bitterness that I had not detected before.

  “I saw it,” she said.

  “Saw what?”

  “The panties... that's what. I saw the baby's bloodstained panties. I never needed any backup beyond that. Would you?”

  I didn't know what to say. She was in such denial. The panties were picante-stained! It wasn't blood from Lindy. Connie flatly ignored the lab reports and trial evidence. It left me with only one sad conclusion: Danny and Connie had been set up by Janet Lee.

  Connie started to weep when I prodded her for information about Jett. She bit down on her lower lip, causing it to bleed anew. Her train of thought was scattered. I wondered where she was going when she began to ramble.

  “I can't talk about Jett. I miss her. When God judges me—and God is the only one who can—he'll know that I loved her. She was gone so long and now she's back. During the times when life was better and I sobered up, I thought of my baby girl coming home again. I counted the days, I'll tell you. And now look at where I am? Just look at me. I'm in prison and she's out there. She's almost as much a victim as I am.”

  ♦

  MY OFFICE LANDLINE PHONE WAS RINGING when I returned from the women's prison.

  “I hate to sound like some CNN finance-babe reporter,” Martin Raines said without so much as a hello, “but to solve the Parker murder we've got to follow the paper...the paper trail.”

  Of course, I knew he was referring to the Shantung Rag found in Mrs. Parker's hand. I wanted to tell him what I learned at the library, but something told me not to say anything about it. Instead, I turned it around, to seek information—not give any.

  “What more do you know about the paper?” I asked.

  “What more is there to know? It was never sold in the U.S. The only active market is the only place that ever had it—Japan. From what we know, this so-called Shantung Rag hasn't done all that well there. It is still made, but in very rare quantities. We figure that whoever killed her had access to it from a trip to the Orient.”

  I didn't mention the reader response card from Artist Today. Instead, I changed the subject. I was worried.

  “Any more on the signature?”

  Raines didn't skip a beat. Maybe there was nothing to say about Shantung Rag.

  “Yes and no,” he answered. “Yes, the signature shows similarities to yours, but it more than likely was made by someone else.”

  “More than likely?” I wondered what he was getting at. Of course, I hadn't signed that stupid piece of paper.

  “Yeah. It's an odd forgery, though. It is only similar to yours. If someone really wanted to screw you over and point the finger of accusation at you, the killer could have made it more of a ringer to how you normally sign....”

  I felt my heart erupt through my T-shirt. My mind wandered over a number of scenarios. None were particularly pleasant. I sank so low into my chair that I had become part of the cushion, its loosely woven mesh fabric imprinted the back of my legs. I needed air.

  “Kever?” Marty was the only one who called me that. I kind of liked it.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was asking you how the Rita Adams Show went? When's it going to be on the tube? I want to Tivo it.”

  I snapped myself back to the conversation. “I don't feel so good,” I said. “I'll call you back later.”

  I let the handset fall softly into its cradle. The clock face on the phone showed that I had been on the line for seven minutes. Seven minutes and my whole world had changed forever. I looked down at my hands as if they belonged to someone else. They were trembling. I clasped them tightly together to stop the shaking.

  It could not be true. What had crossed my mind was so ugly, so gruesome, it could not be true. The laser printer with an output now as crisp and black as a priest's collar had stopped humming and I reached for the perfect little pages of Love You to Death. I doubted that I'd ever finish the book.

  I doubted that I could live with myself if I did.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  ♦

  Love You to Death

  PART ELEVEN

  CONNIE CARTER WAS NO LONGER a barmaid, those Good Time Gal years far behind her. She now cleaned up flatware and glasses behind the bar at the Rusty Anchor and mopped the floors of the restrooms marked: BUOYS and GULLS. Her hands smelled of Pine-Sol and the big white cakes of deodorizers wedged at the bottom of rust-stained urinals. Martin Raines parked in front of her little yellow house at 394 Seastack Ave. S. the morning after Danny Parker had implicated her in the murder conspiracy scheme.

  He saw a woman sitting near the front window, a television on in front of her, a bank of cigarette smoke moored against the yellowed ceiling.

  She answered the door right away. She had flinty eyes, roto-tilled hair, and a crinkled-bag mouth from a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. Connie Carter was exactly as Deke had described her.

  Rode hard and put away wet.

  “Mrs. Carter? Connie Carter? I'm Martin Raines. I'm the investigator handling the Camer
on shooting case.”

  Connie, of course, knew that, but he was required to identify himself. Proper procedure always meant repetition and stating and restating the obvious.

  “Yeah? And it's about time you got your butt in gear and came to see me. I want to know when my daughter's getting out of your goddamn jail! You have some nerve in taking so long. I want my Lindy away from that pervert of a father of hers,” she said.

  Such a pleasant greeting. Such a lovely woman.

  “Mrs. Carter, I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Not without a lawyer, mister. My daughter told me what you've been up to and I'm not going to put up with your bullshit. You know why?”

  Raines said nothing. He wanted her to keep going on her own. She had probably been sitting in her chair all morning, maybe all night, judging by her disheveled appearance, thinking it over. She had hours to come up with the words that would sting cops, but set her daughter free.

  “I fuckin' don't have to talk to you at all. You can't make me say anything. You can't. You know it and I know it. And you know what? We've got an attorney for Janet and he's gonna get your badge for how you treated us. Civil rights. We got rights.”

  -

  OUT OF THE HOSPITAL AND BACK on his feet, Deke Cameron was waiting for Martin Raines. His recovery had been remarkable. So was his attitude. He was eating one of Moan-a-lot's candies and showing his grotesque wounds to everyone who passed by her desk.

  “Look-ee here,” the young man said, pulling up his dirty sweatshirt to reveal a spare-tire stomach white-walled with ten yards of gauze. “Janet did this to me.”

  When he saw the sheriff's detective, Deke pulled down his shirt and lumbered over.

  “Detective Raines! I brought some proof for you.”

  Raines, surprised to see Deke out of the hospital, ignored his remark at first. His face showed genuine concern. “Deke, what are you doing out of Pac-O?”