by BJ Bourg
“I swear I didn’t kill him.”
I stared at her for a moment, watching her sob and shake, and then I let out an audible sigh. “Are you sure you didn’t kill him?”
“I’m positive!”
“So, you wrote the will but didn’t kill him?”
“Yes, please, you’ve got to believe me.”
She hadn’t even realized she’d just admitted to writing the will, so I didn’t make a big deal about it. “When did you write it?”
She hesitated, stared around the room as though looking for a place to hide.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s out in the open. We all know you wrote the will. Now, all we need to do is prove you didn’t kill Chester.” Of course, I wasn’t convinced she hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell her that at this point. I needed her cooperating so I could get down to the bottom of this case. If she did kill Chester, I needed the evidence to convict her. If she didn’t kill him, I needed to move on to someone else. “So, what day did you write the will?”
She had stopped sobbing and just sat there breathing heavy, dabbing repeatedly at her eyes with the tissue. “Um, I don’t remember exactly, but it was after I found out he had been killed.”
“Why’d you make the will after he died?”
“Because I wanted to fulfill his wishes—it’s what he would’ve wanted. We were supposed to get married and use that property to make a life for ourselves. He believed in my ideas and supported them. They became his ideas. We were going to make something useful out of the Forbidden Swamps. For the first time in our lives we wouldn’t have to worry about money. With his land and my plans, we were going to be a part of something special—something great.” Her mouth twisted into a sneer. “And then someone went and killed him and robbed me of all my dreams.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, they stole away everything I’d worked so hard to get. Finally, I was going to amount to something, and they just took it all away from me. It was so unfair. I just had to do something about it. I couldn’t sit idly by and watch my dreams fade into the dark night like he did.”
I was a little stunned by her revelation. Her emotions were raw and she was surprisingly candid. “So, you drew up the will to make sure you got his property?”
“It was already mine.” She sniffled and stood a little straighter. “We were engaged to get married, so he’d basically already given it to me. I mean, if he would’ve died after the wedding, it would’ve all been mine anyway, and he knew that. I was just honoring his wishes by making sure the property went where he wanted it to go. His children sure weren’t going to see to it that his dreams were realized by developing the property.” She scoffed. “They were against it from the beginning, trying to tell Chester I only wanted him for his land.”
I sat and studied this woman, who unapologetically detailed how she’d attempted to steal the Raymond family land from Chester’s children. She sincerely thought she deserved the land. While I was repulsed by her greed, I had to admit it was unlikely she killed Chester. Had she wanted him dead to steal his land, it would’ve been easier to wait until after the wedding. No, someone else killed Chester Raymond…but who?
“I want the names of everyone who knew about your relationship with Chester.”
She cocked her head to the side and stared up at the ceiling, trying to remember. “Let’s see…well, of course Dickie, Junior, and Patricia knew about us. So did some of the people who worked with Chester at the fair. Um, my mom knew about us—”
“Wait a minute”—I traded glances with Susan—“your mom knew about Chester?”
Shelly nodded. “I made her swear not to tell my dad, because I knew he wouldn’t approve. You see, he’s ten years older than my mom, so he’d always had a thing about me not dating older guys. He would’ve been especially angry to know I was dating someone old enough to be my dad.”
“Is it possible your mom told your dad?” I asked slowly.
She shook her head. “No way—she’d never give me up.”
“What about your brother? Did he know about Chester and you?”
She nodded. “I tell him everything.”
“You tell your mom and your brother everything, and the three of y’all keep secrets from your dad, is that right?”
“My dad just gets too uptight about things. He’s so judgmental. He expects us to live our lives the way he wants us to, rather than allowing us to live them how we see fit. I love him, don’t get me wrong, but he’s hard to handle sometimes.”
I remembered what Susan had said earlier about Mrs. Smith fainting for a reason. She had access to her husband’s .22 caliber rifle and his truck, and she was connected to Chester through her daughter.
“I’ll need to interview your mom,” I said, “and as soon as possible.”
“My mom?” Shelly’s mouth fell open. “Why? What’s she got to do with this?”
“I’m not sure, but I want to cover all of my bases…” I allowed my voice to trail off when Susan’s phone rang.
She quickly walked out of the interview room to take the call. She was only gone for a few seconds. When she stuck her head back into the room, I didn’t like the look on her face. “Can I see you for a second?” she asked. “You’re not going to like this.”
CHAPTER 40
I sank against the wall in the hallway when Susan told me she’d just gotten off the phone with Tracy from the crime lab and the two rifles didn’t match the spent shell casings.
“If it isn’t Joel and it isn’t someone connected to Terry,” I said out loud, “then who in God’s name killed Chester?”
Susan just stood there, shocked, shaking her head slowly. “I really thought Joel’s rifle was the murder weapon, but if not, I figured it had to be Terry’s.”
My head was spinning, going over every piece of evidence we’d collected and every interview we’d conducted up to that point. Had I missed something? Could this really be a random act committed with a stolen truck?
“What do we do now?” Susan asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“Since Chester’s dead, I guess we have no choice but to release Shelly. Since the victim’s dead, he won’t be able to testify against her in a forgery trial.” I rubbed my forehead, stopped to squeeze the bridge of my nose. “As far as the murder goes, I’m not sure—” I pushed off of the wall. “Look, just because the rifles don’t match, it doesn’t mean Shelly’s clean in all of this. She could’ve used another gun, or her brother could’ve done it. For all we know, he might have ten twenty-two firearms. We need to get in his house and search it, and we need to interview her mom—”
“Clint.”
I looked up to see Lindsey standing in the hall. “There are more people here for you.”
“What do they look like?”
“Well, one looks like a lawyer and the other two look like they could be related to the girl in the interview room.”
While Susan re-entered the interview room, I strode to the lobby. Sure enough, Mrs. Smith was standing there with her son and a lawyer. I introduced myself and informed them I wanted to interview Mrs. Smith and her son, but the lawyer smiled curtly and shook his head. “These are my clients and they won’t be giving any statements today.” He looked past me toward the dispatcher’s station. “And Shelly Smith won’t be giving a statement either.”
“Shelly’s already given a statement, at which point she confessed to a crime—a felony.”
The lawyer’s face fell slightly. “Is she being booked?”
I paused for a long while, watching Mrs. Smith squirming in my peripheral vision. Finally, I shook my head. “Not today, but that’s not to say I won’t be getting a warrant for her in the future.”
“Well, if she’s not under arrest, I’d appreciate it if you released her immediately.”
“It’s actually her call, not yours, but we’re done with her. Wait here.” I closed the door to the lobby and returned to the interview room. Shelly was talking and laughing with Susan, clearly feeli
ng relieved after revealing the truth about the forged will.
“Your mom and brother are here,” I told Shelly when there was a break in their conversation. “She’s got a lawyer with her and they want you to be released.”
Shelly’s face twisted in confusion. “A lawyer? Why would they bring a lawyer?”
“You’re in a police department talking about a murder case. Need I say more?” I asked.
She didn’t smile. “Detective, what will become of the forgery case? Will I be arrested? I swear, I didn’t do anything wrong. I was only going after what was rightfully mine.”
Instead of telling her what I thought of her for trying to steal Chester’s land out from under his children, I simply said, “You’re not going to jail today.”
I led her to the lobby and watched as she ran up to her mom and threw her arms around the elder’s neck. I knew I didn’t have enough probable cause to obtain a warrant to search their home and property for another rifle, but I couldn’t help but wonder if one of them had another .22 caliber firearm that could’ve been used in the murder.
Once they were gone, I retired to my office and slipped another disc in my computer and began watching more fair footage. I could hear Susan down the hall in her office. She was talking on the phone and it was about the wedding. If I had to guess, I’d say it was her mom.
Lisa Wilson was a small-framed woman in her late fifties. Other than their brown hair and eyes, she and Susan were nothing alike. Lisa’s movements were unsure and she appeared frail, as opposed to Susan, who had an air of confidence about her—probably due to her professional fighting skills. Susan’s father had died in a boxing match when Susan was young so I never got to meet the man, but I imagined she was more like him.
Susan’s voice droned in the background as I watched the minutes tick by and slowly turn into hours. It was well after knock off time and I had gone through at least twenty discs when Susan stuck her head in my office to check on me.
“Well, anything?”
I shook my head and pushed back in my chair, pointing to the screen. “I’m getting dizzy watching all of these people film themselves on the rides, and I’m suddenly feeling really good about myself as a dancer after watching some of these people shake a leg.”
Susan approached and sidled up to me. She rested her hand on my shoulder and I shuddered when her fingers brushed against the back of my bare neck.
“We’re about to get married and I didn’t know you were a dancer. What else have you been hiding from me, Clint Wolf?”
We both laughed and turned our attention to the current video that began to play. The creator was some lady who appeared to be in her late forties and she was commentating as she filmed, letting her viewers see a blow-by-blow replay of her activities. The phone jostled as she stumbled around, but it was in the middle of the day and the quality of the footage was clear.
“I just got off the alligator ride, y’all,” she said into the camera, slurring her speech. “It was a-mazing! And now I gotta pee.”
With that, she stumbled toward the bank of portable toilets, holding her camera up as she walked. People pushed by her, some complaining that she had bumped into them. She didn’t seem to care or notice, because she was on a mission. The portable toilets drew closer. As they did, Susan and I leaned closer to the computer monitor.
I glanced down at the timestamp on the video, tapped it with my finger. “The time is just about right.”
Susan only nodded, chewing on her lower lip anxiously. I scooted my chair even closer, straining to see if I could detect Chester moving around in the area. In the distance, Hulk and Blondie were making their way toward the bathrooms. Susan saw them at the same time I did, but she reacted first.
“Look! It’s the Alberts!” she said. “And Alastair is looking around like he’s mad.”
They were still too far from the toilets to see if they had anything in their hands, but it was hard not to notice Courtney’s tall figure in the crowd. It was definitely them.
My jaw was slack as the camera reached the portable unit, hoping the woman would stay outside long enough to see the Alberts reach the toilets, but she turned toward the door and opened it.
“Wait, back it up,” Susan said. “Just a second…right when her camera covered the unit next to hers.”
I paused the video and backed it up to the spot she’d requested and squinted.
“The unit next to her is locked,” she said. “The others are unlocked.”
I backed it up a little more and counted from the left and stopped on the locked unit. “Chester’s in there right now!”
She nodded. “It’s the one in the middle, and that’s where we found him.”
We backed the video up more and moved it forward one frame at a time, studying every face and hand in the area, but no one had a gun that we could see. We even checked the surrounding games and what we could see of the parking lot—which wasn’t much—but there was no indication that a murder was about to occur.
I continued playing the video and Susan glanced sideways at me as the lady settled into the bathroom. “I don’t know if I want you seeing this,” she joked. “It might get graphic.”
“I wouldn’t think a grown woman would video herself using the potty, but she is drunk.”
We watched and, sure enough, she kept the camera rolling. Thankfully, she trained it on the door, but she couldn’t help herself…she continued to talk about what she was doing. We could even hear a tinkling sound between the pauses in her speech.
“Oh, this feels so good,” she said. “I was about to pee on myself…”
“Who in the hell is she recording this for?” Susan asked as the woman continued talking.
I shook my head and listened, hoping to hear the sound of gunshots. All of a sudden, an electric guitar screamed in the distance and someone started pounding on a bass drum.
Damn it!
The woman who was recording the video screeched when she began hearing music. “That’s my song!”
The phone fell to the ground and the camera pointed upward, but she didn’t care and jumped straight off the toilet seat. I had never seen a woman pull up her panties and pants from that angle, and it disturbed me a little.
Susan gasped out loud and turned her head violently. “Please, make it stop!”
I laughed and watched as the woman picked up her phone and pushed through the door. When her camera panned the parking area across from the toilets, it was my turn to gasp. There was a red pickup truck parked in the area where we’d located the spent .22 shell casing and it had dark tinted windows. The driver side window was halfway down and, in that fleeting moment, a face emerged from the darkness of the cab.
I quickly grabbed the mouse and scrambled to click on the rewind button. I couldn’t find it fast enough and the woman began walking toward the band.
“Hurry, stop it!” Susan’s voice betrayed the excitement she felt. “Go back to that face!”
I finally found the rewind command and reversed the film to when she was stepping out of the portable unit. Frame by frame we went until the camera moved over the truck, and the face in the open window came into view. I lurched back in my chair when it became clear who was sitting in the driver’s seat. Just to the right of the driver, I could see a linear object moving toward the window, and there was no mistaking what it was—the barrel of a rifle. The camera panned away from the truck before we could see the shooter actually fire the shots, but we’d seen enough. We knew who our killer was.
“I’ll type up an arrest warrant,” I said.
“And I’ll get Melvin and Takecia in here right away.”
CHAPTER 41
Ninety minutes later…
After obtaining the arrest warrant, I called Alf and asked to speak with Patricia. It was late into the night and I thought she’d be sleeping, but she sounded alert.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“There’s been a major break in the case, but before we move
on it, I want to run everything by y’all.”
She pulled the phone away from her ear and spoke briefly to Alf. When she came back, she told me they were on their way to the police station.
Old Alfie must’ve violated some speeding laws in town, because he lived at least seven minutes away but arrived within three. I heard the car doors slam outside and walked into the lobby to greet them. Junior was still carrying a revolver on his hip and I pointed to it.
“You’re going to have to put that thing away or you’ll have to wait in the lobby.”
Patricia turned to him. “Go put it in the car.”
He shook his head. “I don’t disarm for anyone.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, “you can stay out here while I meet with Patricia and Alf.”
I led Patricia and Alf through the hallway and into one of the interview rooms. Once I was seated across from them, I handed Patricia the journal she’d given me earlier. “I’m done with your dad’s journal. I won’t need it anymore.”
There was a confused look on her face. “I thought you needed it to prove the will was a fake?”
“I did, but Shelly confessed to forging the will, so we won’t need the journal. Your land is safe.”
Patricia sighed deeply. “Thank you so much!”
I was about to speak again when the door to the interview room opened and Susan leaned in. “Clint, can I borrow you for a minute?”
I excused myself and closed the door behind me. Susan and I then walked to the lobby, where Junior was slouching in a chair at the corner of the room. He looked up and straightened when we stepped into the room.
“What’s going on?” He looked past us. “Where’s Patricia and Alf?”
“They’re in an interview room,” I explained. “Look, I’ll need you to keep your cool, okay?”
He glanced suspiciously from me to Susan. “What’s going on?”
Car doors slammed outside.
“I’ve got two officers about to bring a prisoner in here. This prisoner is a suspect in the murder of your dad, so I’m going to have to trust that you remain calm. I’ll also need you to have a look at his face and tell me if you recognize him.”
