by Mike Markel
“There was a reporter covering it, a young woman named Shields. Valerie Shields. She went up to Cletis Williams after the meeting adjourned. She identified herself appropriately, told him she wanted to tape his response. She asked him if he’d called Virginia Rinaldi a dyke. Williams said he had not, that she had misheard him. So the reporter interviewed Bjornson, asked him if he heard Williams say it. He looked a little flustered but told her that he did not, and if Cletis Williams denied saying it, that was good enough for him.”
“Virginia Rinaldi saw this going on—I mean, with the reporter?”
“Yes, she did. She got in Williams’ face, raised her voice, accused him of being a homophobe and Bjornson of being a coward. Bjornson came over and got between them because he saw Williams getting red in the face and looking like he was losing his temper. Bjornson hustled Cletis Williams out of there, but Virginia stayed and gave a long interview to the reporter about how the board—she called it a ‘dumb old boys’ network’—was in collusion with the legislature and the university to placate the business interests and keep the state backward to lower labor costs.”
“But the university president was there to ask for increased funding. How is the university in collusion with the legislature?”
Chief Murtaugh sighed and shook his head. “Virginia saw it as a choreographed dance. The college president pretends to be asking for more money, but really he’s okay with the status quo. The state board pretends to listen, but then they side with the legislature, which has no interest in supporting the universities because they’re a bastion of liberals.”
“Okay,” I said. “So then a few days later Cletis Williams resigns. If he didn’t call Virginia Rinaldi a dyke, why did he resign?”
“Presumably, Bjornson and the rest of the board pressured him to resign. He’d become an embarrassment—whether or not he called Virginia a dyke.”
“All right, thanks, Chief. Ryan and I’ll see what we can find out about Cletis Williams, see if he has any anger-management issues.”
The chief nodded, and Ryan and I headed back to the bullpen. I went into the break room to get some coffee while Ryan sat down at his computer.
I got back to my desk. He was still clicking around, so I let him be for a couple more minutes.
Finally, he looked up at me. “Cletis Williams owns the Williams Group, which has six car dealerships here and in Wyoming. He started out with one in Billings about twenty years ago. He was on the state board of ed from 1996 until a week ago.
“What’s his link to education?”
“None. Most of the members of the board appointed by the governor these days have a background in education or in high-tech industry. Cletis Williams was a holdover from the old days: a business guy without any higher ed himself.”
“He’s keeping it real.”
Ryan gave me a small smile. “He represents the old-time Montana values: born in-state, no education, built a business empire through hard work and raw talent. That kind of thing. Generous philanthropist—there’s a pediatric unit at the hospital with his name on it. He endowed a business professorship at the university. He supports the Optimists, the homeless shelter. Kids’ sports teams. A local success story.”
“He in the system?”
“A DUI fifteen years ago. A disturbing the peace even earlier than that.”
“What was that about?”
Ryan looked at his screen. “Just a fight outside a bar. It didn’t go any further than that.”
“But the chief said Williams looked like he was losing his temper when Virginia got in his face.
“I do remember that.”
“Let me ask you something: a professor goes on a rant about LGBT stuff in a public meeting. How does Williams know she’s a lesbian?”
Ryan scratched at this chin. “That would be one of the questions we should ask him.”
Chapter 9
Cletis Williams stood up from behind the massive cherry desk in his office, a big, burly guy in a brown Western suit, white shirt with blue piping and silver snaps, and a bolo tie with a gold longhorn steer beneath his fleshy chin. His serious gut was cinched in by a thick, tooled leather belt with a gold buckle larger than my fist.
“Cletis Williams.” He wore a big, insincere smile as he extended a meaty right hand with a heavy gold ring with diamonds in the shape of a horseshoe. His grey eyes, milky with age but alert, jumped back and forth between me and Ryan. The wheels were turning as he tried to figure out who we were and why we needed to see the boss. With me being forty-two but looking fifty-two and Ryan being twenty-nine but passing for twenty-five, we obviously weren’t a couple. And the vibe was all wrong for mother and son. Ryan’s wool suit said he ran the finance department at a large law firm downtown. My polyester was from the You’re Lucky You Still Got a Job collection at J. C. Penney.
“Detective Karen Seagate. Rawlings Police Department.” I shook his hand. “My partner, Detective Ryan Miner.”
Cletis Williams’s smile was locked in tight, but his eyes showed he knew this was worse than a couple of local yuks asking for a donation for some charity run. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance. Indeed I am.” His voice was raspy but strong. I heard decades of cigarettes but couldn’t smell anything.
I glanced down at the desk. No ashtray. No computer, no paper, no pens—like he never did any work. Most likely he just sat there, gazing at the six framed photographs only he could see, or the four old-time rodeo trophies standing guard at the front of the desk, flanking his nameplate. Seated in a high-backed leather chair, he could see, to his left, one wall covered with grip-and-grin photographs of him with the Rawlings mayor, three or four Montana governors, and Ronald Reagan. To his right, the wall was covered with certificates and awards for all his citizenship and philanthropic work.
Someone had obviously put some thought into how to make the point that this was an influential and generous guy who hung with the other worthies. To me, the point was that he was an insecure blowhard who figured out that giving money to good causes not only lowered your taxes but moved more new cars.
The office didn’t say Cletis Williams was such a bad guy he must have killed Virginia Rinaldi. But it didn’t say he was such a good guy he couldn’t have killed her.
Ryan and I took the seats. “Let me tell you why we’re here,” I said.
He waved me on.
“We’re investigating the death of Virginia Rinaldi.”
He pulled back, just slightly. “The professor?”
“That’s right.”
“I … I didn’t know about that. Was she ill?”
“We don’t think so. It might have been an accident. It might have been a homicide.” I let that word hang there a moment. “We don’t know yet.”
He closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”
I didn’t say anything. I wanted to see if he was the kind of guy who started talking when there was a pause. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. We stared at each other for three or four seconds.
“Can you help us with the investigation?”
“Of course, Detective. Of course.” He leaned forward theatrically. “How can I help?”
“Any thoughts on anyone who’d want to hurt her?”
“Can I be frank with you, Detective?”
“That would be great.”
“I am sorry that she has … passed. One of God’s children. But I wasn’t her biggest fan.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t think she was right for Central Montana State. Not for the university, not for the students. Not for the city. I’m a firm believer in religious freedom. It’s in the Constitution, you know. And she represented a serious threat to that freedom.”
“How’s that, Mr. Williams?”
“She wanted to give special rights to LGBTs. She wanted to take away the religious freedom of ordinary Montanans who disapproved of their lifestyle and didn’t want to do business with them.” He put up his palms. “As s
imple as that.”
Ryan cleared his throat. “Mr. Williams, why did you call Professor Rinaldi a dyke?”
Cletis Williams’ eyes narrowed. Then he caught himself and put on his smile. “I’m sorry, Detective. I didn’t catch your name.”
“Detective Miner. Why did you call Professor Rinaldi a dyke?”
“I did no such thing.”
“Many people at that meeting heard you call her that.”
“Many people misheard.”
I glanced through the half-closed blinds on the picture window behind Williams and saw a row of sedans with helium balloons on ribbons tied to their door handles. The balloons were fluttering and bobbing in the breeze. Some things never change.
I said, “Mr. Williams, how did you know Professor Rinaldi was a lesbian? Technically, she was bisexual. But how did you know?”
His eyes darted to the side for an instant. “I didn’t call her a dyke—because I had no knowledge of her sexual preference and wouldn’t have commented on it, anyway. My disagreement with her was about that issue—her attack on religious freedom—and nothing else.” He was starting to breathe deeply. His face was getting flushed.
“What was your relationship with Virginia Rinaldi?” I said.
He shifted his big frame in his high-backed chair. “Listen, do I look like the kind of man who’d have a relationship with a woman like that?”
“You mean a dyke?”
“Your word, not mine. But yes. Do I look like I’d have anything to do with a … a dyke?”
“You know, Mr. Williams, I’m a lesbian myself, and I find that statement highly offensive. Why wouldn’t you have a relationship with Professor Rinaldi?”
“Listen to me. I’m going to explain this once. Only once. Then, you arrest me or talk to my attorney. Is that clear?”
“Tell us about your relationship with Professor Rinaldi.”
“I had never been in the same room with her, never seen her until that state board meeting. But she had been poking at me for years.”
“What do you mean ‘poking at you’?”
“Emails, text messages, phone messages. She didn’t agree with my positions. That’s her right. But she was highly abusive. Calling me names, insulting me.”
I shrugged. “That happens, right? The name calling?”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean I have to like her.”
“So that was the extent of it? She used to complain to you and taunt you?”
“No, that was not the extent of it. I would hear from other faculty at the university, from students, too. They would tell me things about her activities on campus. Things about her course. Do you know she taught a course in pornography?”
“It was a sociology course.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I suggest you take a closer look at that course, Miss.”
I glanced over at Ryan, who was writing in his skinny notebook. “You should call me Detective, Mr. Williams. I’m not here to buy a car. This is official police business.”
He bowed his head to concede the point. “You’re right, Detective. I apologize. I do. I realize you’re just doing your job.”
“All right, sir. Now, you’re saying when you called Virginia Rinaldi a dyke, you were just showing your disapproval of her teaching methods, is that correct? Is that your position?”
“I regret that it happened. I regret it.”
All right, we got that out of the way. “I’m going to ask you one more time about your relationship with Virginia Rinaldi. And I want you to think a moment before you respond. Because if this turns into a murder investigation—and there’s a very good chance it will—and we determine you haven’t been honest with us, we have to look at you different. Here’s the question: How did you know about her sexual orientation? It wasn’t public knowledge.”
He looked down at his hands in his lap. After a few seconds, he looked up at me, his eyes shining with tears. “She had been taunting me for some time. Like I said, her messages and emails were very abusive. I was going through … going through a very difficult time. My wife was dying of breast cancer. We were two months from our fiftieth anniversary. I would visit her every day. In the hospice. She asked me what was bothering me. I told her it was nothing. I didn’t want her to be worrying about me. You know what I’m saying. She’s bedridden at this point, in considerable pain. And she sees me upset about some professor who’s saying nasty things about me. That’s what I’ll never forgive that professor for. What it did to Arlene.” He paused and wiped a finger at a tear.
“So what happened?”
“My wife passed. Even though I knew it was coming—had known for a while—I didn’t handle it well. Not well at all. I wasn’t thinking clear.” He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “I got the name of a prostitute. I paid her some money to go over to the professor’s house. I had some kid take photographs of the prostitute going into the professor’s house.”
“Why?”
He looked at me. “I wanted her to stop harassing me. I wanted—” He started to weep. “I just wanted her to stop.”
“What were you gonna do with the photographs?”
“I told her—”
“You met with her?”
“No, on the phone. I was very upset. I told her to stop contacting me. That I had these photographs and I would show them to the president of the university—”
“President Billingham knew about this?”
Cletis Williams shook his head. “No, he never knew anything. But I assumed she wouldn’t know that. I wanted her to stop bothering me.”
“What did she say to you?”
“She told me she knew I had hired the prostitute.”
“How did she know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the prostitute told her.”
“What else did Professor Rinaldi tell you?”
He took a deep breath. “She told me my life was going to explode in five days.”
“Those were her words? She said ‘explode’?”
He nodded.
“What did she mean by that?”
“That’s what I asked her. She hung up.”
“Was that the end of it?”
“Next day, I get another call from her. My life was going to explode in four days.”
“What did you do?”
“She kept calling. Three days. Two days. One day. That last day, I said to her, ‘What do you want? What do you want me to do?’”
“What did she say?”
“She said she wanted me to resign from the state board. I was to say it was for personal reasons. And never play any role in public life in Montana for the rest of my life.”
“So you stepped down.”
“That’s right.” He nodded. “I knew it was wrong, what I had done. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Did Professor Rinaldi contact you again?”
“I never heard from her again.”
“You have any proof Virginia Rinaldi made those calls?”
“You can check my phone records, see the calls coming in. But I have no idea whether she was using a real phone, or whatever. For all I know, she could’ve been using a pay phone.”
“You have nothing from her in writing?”
“No.”
“And you said you never met with her.”
“Just that state board meeting.”
“Do you know the name of the prostitute you hired?”
“No.”
“How did you contact her?”
“All I had was a phone number.”
“Where did you get the phone number?”
He looked at me, his eyes shining. Then he lowered his gaze and spoke slowly. “My wife was sick for a long time. Someone gave me her number. I’m not proud of what I did. I never knew her name.”
“Mr. Williams, did you kill Virginia Rinaldi?”
His face was red and shaking, like he had some kind of tremor. “I did not.”
“
Can you tell us where you were last night? Ten to midnight?”
“I was home. I live alone. I was watching television.”
Cletis Williams was wrung out—hunched over, breathing heavily, his face blotchy. Ryan and I thanked him for his time and told him we’d get back to him if we needed any more information.
Back in the Charger, I put down the visor to block the late afternoon sun coming in at eye level. “That bit about how Virginia Rinaldi was attacking religious freedom. That’s bullshit, right?”
“Yeah, that’s bullshit.”
“Let me see if I understand his story. His wife’s dying, so he starts nailing this hooker. Then he hires her so he can blackmail the professor to leave him alone. Is that what you got?”
“That’s what I got.”
“You buy it?”
“I think I do.” Ryan tapped a finger on the dashboard. “Stress and grief can make you do strange things.”
“There’s no evidence Virginia told him his life was gonna explode.”
“True, but it doesn’t sound like a phrase he would make up,” Ryan said. “At any rate, there wouldn’t be any evidence. She was too smart to put anything in writing.”
“He’s got no alibi,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“So what do we do about him?”
“One thing: He said we need to look a little closer at the porn course.”
The phone in my big leather bag rang. I pulled it out and checked the screen. “Let me take this,” I said to Ryan. “Yeah, Helen.” It was Helen Paddington in Vice.
“I got a possible ID on your prost Krista. Can we get together?”
“We’ll be there in five.”
Chapter 10
“You IDed our prost?”
Ryan and I were at headquarters in a medium-sized room that said “Vice” on the door. Vice and Anti-Gang got their own little playhouses. They say it’s about unit cohesiveness. They say things like that.
Last time I’d been in Vice’s room, it was an all-guy pit, and it looked it and smelled it. There was a tattered, stained couch, a full-size refrigerator, and all kinds of takeout wrappers. But since Helen Paddington came on board six or eight months ago, the place had been cleaned up. The couch went, along with the refrigerator and the garbage. I don’t know whether she kicked their asses or shamed them into it.
