by David Archer
One of the twins stepped close to Sam and looked hard at him. “What was your name?”
Sam took out a business card and handed it to him. “I’m Sam Prichard. Good to meet you boys.”
The other boy was holding a cell phone and frantically pecking at its keys with his thumbs. “Yep,” he said to his brother, “it’s him.” He looked up at Sam and grinned hugely. “We follow you on Twitter,” he said. “Ever since that case when your bass player got arrested. That was slick, how you figured that one out, that it was the crime scene investigator who was actually the killer.”
“What? You got all that out of Twitter?” Sam knew that Indie was running a Twitter account for him, but he avoided anything to do with it as much as he possibly could. He didn’t even know for sure what his Twitter handle was.
“Not just off Twitter,” the boy standing beside him said. “We follow you on Twitter so we know when the blogs get posted.”
“Blogs? What blogs? What are you talking about?”
“Your wife, dude,” the boy said, chuckling. “Indie. She writes up all your cases on her blog. That way we get to read all about them, and everything you have to do to solve each case.” He looked at his brother, who gave him a thumbs-up sign, then turned back to Sam. “You’re the reason we want to be private eyes when we grow up.”
Debbie was shaking her head, just staring at the three of them. “My, what a small world it is,” she said. “These boys have been telling me about their hero, the private eye who saves the world, for the last year or so, but I thought it was some fictional character in a book. And yet, here you are, sitting in my kitchen. There has to be something supernatural at work here, that’s all I can say.”
Sam looked at her, his face registering the latest shock to his system. “Ma’am,” he said, “you have no idea.”
The commotion, with the boys getting so loud in their exuberance, brought the last of Debbie’s children into the room. A girl of about twelve, already showing hints of the beauty she would be when she was fully grown, walked into the room and leaned against the doorpost. She didn’t even wait for Debbie to make introductions but looked Sam dead in the eye.
“Do you think he did it?”
“Mr. Prichard, this is my youngest daughter, Kaylee. Kaylee, this is…”
“I heard,” Kaylee said. “So? Do you think he did it?”
“At this point,” Sam said carefully, “I don’t know enough to be entitled to an opinion. If I said I don’t think so, that would only mean that I’m trying to say what I think you want to hear. If I said I think he did, then it would mean I am already prejudiced against him. Either way would be a mistake, since an investigator’s job is to keep an open mind until there are enough provable facts to come to a conclusion. I don’t have that many facts. As a matter of fact, I don’t have any at the moment. All I know is that your uncle has been accused of murdering his mother, and that at least one reporter feels that there wasn’t enough evidence to justify convicting him. I know that your mother believes he’s innocent, and so do several other people, but that isn’t a fact that can be used to substantiate either his guilt or his innocence. It’ll be my job, now that I’ve taken the case, to find those facts. If I can find enough of them that indicate that he did not commit this crime, then it will be my job to work with an attorney to try to get the court to agree to a new trial.”
“Then, you’re saying that you don’t know either way, right?”
“That’s right. At this moment, I don’t know either way.”
Kaylee walked toward him and held out a hand, fingers together and palm facing upward. “Good. Everybody else who says they want to help tries to tell us how they ‘just know’ he’s innocent, and they always end up wanting money. My mom doesn’t have any money—she spends every penny she can get her hands on trying to get someone to listen to her.”
Sam nodded. “I know about people like that,” he said. “Here’s a promise from me to you: I will never ask your mother for any money. I’ve already got a client on this case, so this isn’t going to cost her anything. You have my word on that.”
Sam reached out and slapped the girl’s palm, then flipped his own hand over so she could return it. The power she put into the return slap suggested that he went too easy on her.
“Okay,” Kaylee said. “So what do we do first?”
“And can we help?” Andy and Alex chorused together.
All three of the kids sat down at the table, and Debbie beamed at them, her pride in her children just about overwhelming her for a moment. Sam could see the tears threatening to brim over, but she kept them under control.
He shrugged. “Well, I need to know everything I possibly can about the case. I get the feeling all of you know it pretty well, so who wants to start telling me?”
Debbie started to speak, but Kaylee beat her to it. “Mom gets emotional, and my brothers just try to talk over each other all the time. You’ll get it better if I tell it.”
Sam, his eyes wide, glanced at Debbie for permission and then nodded toward Kaylee. “Please proceed.”
“It was a little after three o’clock in the afternoon,” Kaylee said, “June fourth, eight years ago. A lady named Geraldine Pyle said she heard my grandmother screaming, so she called the sheriff. She said it sounded like my grandma was begging someone to stop hurting her, but she couldn’t make out the words for sure. 3:21 p.m., a sheriff’s car pulled up in front of the house, and two deputies got out. They walked up and knocked on the door and heard someone yell for them to come in, so they opened it and walked inside. As soon as they opened the door and stepped in, they saw my grandmother with blood all over her head and face and clothes, and then they saw Uncle Ross sitting in the chair right beside the one she was in. He had blood on his hands, but the only blood on his clothes was from where he had touched himself. There were bloodstains on his pant legs from where he laid his hands on his thighs, and on his sleeves, because he has a tendency to hug himself a lot when he gets upset.”
“Yeah,” said one of the twins. “There was blood splattered all over the chairs and the wall behind them, but there was none on his shirt or his face. If he had been beating on her hard enough to make the blood fly around like that, then he would have got it all over him, right?”
Sam blinked. The boy was echoing his own thoughts. “That’s how I would see it, yes. What about the murder weapon? Did they ever find one?”
“No, they didn’t,” the boy said. “Their theory was that Uncle Ross beat her with just his fists, but they never had him examined. They never had anyone look at his hands to see if they were bruised or had any kind of injuries on them. If he had managed to bash her skull in with just his fists, he would have had bruises on all his knuckles and fingers. There’s no possible way to avoid it, and some doctors will even say it’s impossible to break somebody’s skull that way.”
“What was the actual cause of death?” Sam asked.
“Penetrating depressed cranial fractures due to blunt force trauma,” Kaylee said. “The medical examiner said it means that pieces of her skull were driven into her brain and that’s what actually killed her.”
Sam turned back to the girl. “Go on, please.” He was amazed at how calmly and logically the girl was telling him the story.
“3:29 p.m., Deputy Johnny Moore came walking out with Uncle Ross in handcuffs and put him in the back of the car, and he told a bunch of people standing around that Uncle Ross had killed his mother. He called the sheriff’s office on the radio and told them what they found and that he had already arrested Uncle Ross. The sheriff’s detective, Ray Weimer, showed up about ten minutes later and took over. He looked everything over and said there was no doubt in his mind that Uncle Ross did it, so he took Uncle Ross back to the jail and locked him in the little room they use for interrogating criminals. That was about four thirty in the afternoon. At three o’clock the next morning, Weimer came out and said Uncle Ross confessed.”
Sam stared into the girl’
s eyes. “And that was the extent of their investigation, right?” He turned toward Debbie. “Debbie, how soon did you find out what was going on?”
“Oh, right after they brought Ross out,” Debbie replied. “I only lived a couple blocks over, and one of my mother’s neighbors sent her little boy to get me. He didn’t tell me what was going on, just that I needed to get over to my mother’s house right away. I dropped everything and told Mindy to watch her brothers and sister and took off running. When I got there, some of the neighbors kept me from going inside, and then the other deputy, Bob Fry, he came out and told me that my mother had been beaten to death and that Ross did it. I told him then there was no way Ross could do such a thing, he was too gentle, but they said it was obvious and I would have to learn to accept it.”
“Did you go with your brother to the jail?”
Debbie pulled her head back a bit and widened her eyes. “No, they wouldn’t let me,” he said. “Besides, I had kids at home. I had to go back and take care of them, and had to tell them that their grandmother was gone.”
Sam nodded his understanding. “Okay, did your brother ever get to speak to an attorney?”
“Weimer said he refused one,” Kaylee said. “He said Uncle Ross was advised of his rights but refused the services of an attorney and agreed to answer questions.”
Sam snapped his attention back to her. “But I’m sure I’ve been told that your uncle has autism? I realize there are different types and levels of autism, but shouldn’t that have some effect on whether he was mentally competent to understand what was happening, the questioning and everything?”
“Judge Hausman ruled,” Kaylee said, “that the fact he held a job and was able to manage his own money meant that he was mentally competent. Since they claimed he had given his statement of his own free will, and had refused an attorney when it was offered to him, that meant his confession had to stand. The prosecutor didn’t even bother to present any other evidence against him, resting his entire case on the statement he gave during interrogation. The public defender tried to argue that Uncle Ross didn’t understand what they meant when they said he could have an attorney, and that the statement should be thrown out, but the judge overruled him.”
Sam looked at the young girl for a moment, then nodded. “Something tells me you’re thinking about a career in law?”
Kaylee smiled sweetly. “I’m buying used law school textbooks online and studying them on my own,” she said. “I plan to be number one in my class when it comes time to graduate.”
“There’s not a doubt in my mind that you’ll accomplish it,” he said. He glanced at her twin brothers. “You know, a really good defense attorney will need her own investigators. You might want to keep these guys owing you favors.”
“She’s already good at that,” Debbie said with a chuckle. “She does these videos on YouTube where she talks about issues that kids face nowadays, and what they can and can’t do about them. She’s actually had several lawyers contact her and tell her how good she’s doing, and it makes her several hundred dollars every month. Needless to say, her brothers are constantly indebted to her for one thing or another.”
“So where will you start?” asked one of the twins.
“Well, since I’m here,” Sam replied, “I think I need to go and meet with your uncle. Debbie—may I call you Debbie? If possible, I’d like to go with you to visit him. You can probably help me to explain to him what’s going on, and how I’m hoping to help.”
Debbie smiled. “We’re heading out there this morning,” she said. “I go twice a week, and the school is good about letting the kids go with me, sometimes. We could go now, if you like.”
Sam smiled back. “Now is fine,” he said.
6
Since the three younger kids were going along and Debbie’s car was pretty small, Sam suggested they all go in the Ridgeline. With the teenagers snugly belted into the back seat and Debbie Jenkins riding shotgun, Sam followed her directions out to the prison.
Sam wasn’t carrying his gun, so he didn’t have to worry about going through all the headaches of putting it into a locker and such. Instead, his professional ID was taken into a security office for several minutes and then was brought back to him by the lieutenant on duty.
“Mr. Prichard? I’m Lieutenant Willoughby. I understand you’re here to see Ross Cameron?”
“I am,” Sam said. “I’ve been hired to look into the possibility that there was other evidence that might have exonerated him, evidence that was overlooked or never discovered. I need to speak with Mr. Cameron and see if he can give me any insight into where I might look for such evidence.”
Willoughby frowned. “I’m not trying to tell you your business, Mr. Prichard,” he said, “but I’m not sure how far you’re going to get in trying to interview this guy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Cameron is a model prisoner. He never gives anybody any problems, and the only time he’s ever even been in a fight is when he happened to be in the way while somebody else was being attacked. You ask me, this guy doesn’t have a violent bone in his body, but I can tell you from personal experience that he will not discuss what happened to his mother. He’ll tell you he didn’t do it, but if you try to ask him about who else might have done it or how you can prove he didn’t do it, he clams up. Won’t say another word after that.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “Really? That seems odd. You’d think he’d want any help he could get in proving his innocence.”
“If it was anybody else, I’d agree in a heartbeat,” Willoughby said. “Cameron, though, he’s an entirely different kettle of fish. I don’t know why, but he doesn’t seem willing to open up at all about that day. Our counselors have tried to work with him since he first got here, and they’ve gotten nowhere.” Willoughby shrugged. “Of course, it could be that he doesn’t trust anyone connected to the prison; I considered that, as well. Unfortunately, the state won’t allow any outside psychologists to come in and talk with him.”
Sam nodded slowly. “That could be a problem, if he won’t talk,” he said. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate you giving me a heads-up.”
Sam was escorted into a room with Debbie Jenkins and her kids, and a few moments later Ross Cameron was brought in. They all sat down around a stainless steel picnic table, and Ross was watching Sam the entire time as he took out a small pad and a pen.
Sam, in turn, was watching Ross. Ross was about sixty years old, but he seemed to be in pretty good physical condition. He didn’t appear to have any problems moving around and seemed to be in good health. His hair was showing some gray, but it was still mostly dark.
“Ross,” Debbie said, touching his hand, “you remember how I’ve been praying for some kind of a miracle? Well, this is Mr. Sam Prichard, and he is a private investigator from Colorado. He’s come to meet you today because he’s been hired to help prove you didn’t do this.”
Sam held out a hand to Ross, but he only glanced at it and looked away. Kaylee reached out and took hold of Sam’s hand, pulling it down to the table and gently shaking her head. “He doesn’t shake hands,” she whispered.
Sam grinned at Ross. “Ross, I’m glad to finally meet you,” he said. “I’m hoping to be able to find evidence that will back up your insistence that you did not commit the crime that put you here.”
Ross turned his face toward Sam, but it was obvious that he was not looking directly at Sam’s face. Instead, his eyes seemed to be focused on a point slightly off to the right. “I didn’t kill my mom,” Ross said, and Sam was surprised at the clarity in his voice. “I know they said I did, and I guess it looked like I did, but I didn’t.”
Sam nodded. “And a lot of people believe you’re telling the truth,” he said. “Ross, do you have any idea who might have actually done it?”
Beside him, Kaylee whispered, “Uh-oh,” but Ross simply continued to look at the same point, not turning his head even slightly toward Sam. “I didn’t do it,” he said, “but somebody else did. I don’t kno
w who the somebody else was. I was out for a walk, and when I came home, Mom was all bloody.”
Ross suddenly turned to his sister and, looking at the wall just to the left of her face, asked about the oldest girl, Mindy, so Sam took the opportunity to lean close to Kaylee. “Hey, quick question,” he said softly. “Did anybody report seeing Ross out walking that day? Did anyone see him coming or going from the house?”
“No, but that’s probably because he would have gone in and out through the back door. He liked to go walking in the woods, and where they lived was right on the edge of town. At the back of the yard was all woods and forest, so he could go straight from the back door out into the woods and come back the same way.”
“And I’m assuming no one saw anybody else enter or leave the house?” Sam asked.
Kaylee narrowed one eye. “There was one kid, Jason Garrity, who said he saw somebody running out the back door into the woods. The deputies said it must’ve been Uncle Ross, but Jason insisted that it wasn’t. The trouble was that Jason was always into some kind of trouble, so nobody believed him.”
Sam nodded and sat up straight again. When Ross turned to look his way again, Sam was ready. “Ross, did you see anybody else in the woods when you were walking that day?”
There is almost no such thing as a person sitting absolutely still. There are enough motions going on inside the human body to make perfect stillness nearly impossible, from breathing and heartbeat to the simple little unconscious twitches that take place in different muscles at different times. Because of those things, it’s almost impossible for a human body to be completely still other than in death, but Ross almost achieved it. As soon as Sam asked the question, he froze, and there was an absolutely eerie stillness about him for several seconds.
