“Were you worried that Jack hadn’t called?” Wade chimed in.
She gazed down at her purse. “I guess maybe I should’ve been, but you have to know Jack. Before all the trouble in Henshaw and his arrest, he rarely came home at night before ten o’clock. That man worked from the time the sun rose until long past dark. He always told me that trucking was a 24/7 gig and that was who I married.” She chuckled. “I was raised by a man who worked similar hours, so it never bothered me.”
Powell nodded along, but he felt the first tingle in his gut that something was off. Kat’s answer sounded too good, as if rehearsed. “When did you get worried?” he asked. He saw her jump back a bit at the volume of his voice, but Powell didn’t apologize. He knew he talked loud by most standards, but by this point in his life, Powell Conrad had resolved to just roll with it. He thought the high volume came from being a union worker’s kid from Decatur “By God” Alabama. When Powell was a boy, his daddy let him tag along to work, and he had to scream over the whir of the machines to be heard. Or, hell, maybe God just put extra woofers in his pipes because the Big Man upstairs makes us all a little different. Powell didn’t know, but he’d found that his voice carried weight in a courtroom, especially in the cross-examination of witnesses and when emphasizing key points during closing arguments. He’d grown to like and embrace this quirk about himself during his second year of law school, when he had made Professor Tom McMurtrie’s trial team. The Professor preached that juries see right through lawyers who are faking it. “Real is what wins over the people in that box,” the big man would say, pointing at the area where the jury sat. “Own who you are, and let the jury hear from that person. Anything less and you’re cheating them . . . and you’re cheating yourself.”
Powell blinked the thoughts away and refocused on Kat Willistone, who had yet to answer the question on the table. “You called 911 around one o’clock Wednesday morning,” Powell said. “Stands to reason that you were worried by that point.”
She nodded. “When I still hadn’t heard from him when I got home from Pepito’s—which was a little after midnight—I was very concerned.”
“Jack’s cell phone didn’t show any calls or texts from your number after seven that night,” Wade said. “If you were concerned, why didn’t you try to reach him?”
Kat glared at Wade and then Powell, and her face flushed pink. “I thought you guys said you had arrested someone for Jack’s murder. Why do I feel like I’m still under investigation?”
“Because you are the victim’s wife and you are Bully Calhoun’s daughter,” Powell said. “Any defense attorney for Newton will come at you and your father hard under an alternative theory, and we don’t want there to be any surprises.” Powell paused and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Kat said. Then she looked at Wade. “Jack didn’t like to be bothered when doing business. He always said he had no room in his life for a ‘nervous ninny.’ I had left him a voice mail and a text from earlier in the day to call me. I’m sure the records will reflect that.” She turned to Powell. “Satisfied?”
“You stand to collect three million dollars in life insurance proceeds on account of Jack’s death, true?” Powell asked, ignoring Kat’s question and hitting hard with the heart and soul of any defense theory that Jack Willistone’s wife murdered him.
“Damn right,” Kat said. “And being that man’s wife for seven years entitles me to every penny of it.”
Powell was surprised and impressed by the defiance in Kat’s voice. “Why do you say that?”
“Oh, let’s cut with the bullcrap, Mr. Conrad,” she said, standing from her chair. “Jack Willistone was a ruthless son of a bitch and a serial cheater. A ‘man of the flesh,’ as my daddy would say. I was seduced by Jack’s money and charm, but the only reason he married me is because of my daddy’s wealth.” She smirked. “Ironic, huh? I got played just like so many others who dealt with Jack. But that life insurance money is mine. It’s the only thing Jack had left of value, and I intend to collect.”
Powell glanced at Wade, who took the cue to change gears. “When I met with you before,” the detective began, “you told me that you were at Pepito’s with Callie Sanderson, Melanie Towry, and Breck Johnson.”
“That’s right. We all work out at Don’s Gym around the same time each day and have become friends.”
“Did you work out this past Tuesday?” Powell asked.
She nodded. “I work out most weekdays at 6:00 p.m., same as Callie, Mel, and Breck. The gym has women’s and men’s locker rooms, and we shower there on Tuesdays and head to Pepito’s.”
She has an alibi from six o’clock until past midnight, Powell thought to himself. With three witnesses . . .
“What about your father?” Powell asked.
“What about him?”
“Where was he the night of the murder?”
Kat gave a half smile. “I assume he was back home in Jasper.”
“Did he stick around after he dropped Jack off?”
“No, he did not. He gave me a hug and a peck on the cheek and headed back to the Sipsey Wilderness.”
Powell reviewed his notes. “Ms. Willistone, there’s one more thing I’m curious about. The visitor’s log for the St. Clair County Correctional facility shows that you never went to visit Jack while he was in prison.” Powell paused and looked up from his notepad. “Jack’s ex-wife, Barbara, visited several times. Her and Jack’s son, Danny, did as well. But in eighteen months you didn’t come to Springville a single time to visit your husband. Why?”
“Because he told me not to,” Kat said, folding her arms. When no further response came, Powell closed his notepad and stood from the couch. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Willistone. We’ll be in touch.”
Powell cranked the ignition on the Charger as he and Wade gazed through the windshield at Jack Willistone’s mansion. For several seconds, the only sound was the whirring of the air-conditioning and the crickets chirping from outside. Finally, Powell grunted.
“I know,” Wade said. “Too clean. But it doesn’t change the fact that Wilma Newton is our killer.”
“All the same,” Powell said, putting the Charger in gear, “after we talk with Jack’s ex-wife again, I think we’re going to need to take a road trip.”
Wade sighed. “Jasper.” Even the name of the town made the hairs on the detective’s neck stand up. “Make sure you pack your revolver.”
Powell grunted as he turned onto McFarland. “No need. Once you pass the Walker County line, if you’re aren’t packing, they hand you a gun.”
When the front door was safely closed, Kat Willistone reached into her purse and took out her cell phone, which was on during the entire interview. “Well?” she asked, keeping the device on speaker.
“Perfect,” a man’s deep voice said. “Dead solid perfect.”
Kat Willistone let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Daddy.”
16
Tom arrived back at the office at nine o’clock. As he trudged up the stairwell, he found a familiar face waiting for him on the top step.
“Where’s your dog?”
Tom stopped and squinted at her. Tonight she wore a red “Tuscaloosa Middle Soccer” T-shirt, black athletic shorts, and white tennis shoes with a red Nike swoosh. Her hair, which she’d done up in a ponytail, was matted on the sides from dried sweat, and her face was red from exertion. “You just get out of practice?”
She nodded. “Then I came here.”
Tom continued up the stairs and unlocked the door. This time Laurie Ann’s visit wasn’t a surprise. She had called him on his way home from Henshaw. Tom needed to drop by the office to look over a few files that had deadlines looming, so he had reluctantly agreed to talk with her for a few minutes.
They passed into the air-conditioned office, and Laurie Ann plopped down on the couch in the reception area. “So you met with Mom?”
Tom took a seat in a straight-back chair across from her. He
placed his hands in his lap and tried to catch his breath from the walk up the stairs and the overall fatigue of the day. It had been a while since he had worked a day like this. Not since Pulaski, he knew, feeling a sense of exhilaration mixed in with the aching of his back muscles.
“I did.”
“And?” For the first time since he’d met Laurie Ann Newton, her voice contained a trace of fear. The ball was in his court now. If he said no, then Wilma Newton would likely be represented by the public defender. And we have a good one, Tom knew. But given the evidence that Wade had mentioned in the parking lot and the stacks of files in the PD’s office, the public defender couldn’t possibly give Wilma’s case the time it would need.
“It’s OK,” Laurie Ann finally said, her tone a mixture of disappointment and bitterness. “It was a pipe dream expecting the great Professor to take this case.” She began to walk toward the door.
“I didn’t say no,” Tom said as he forced himself to rise from the chair.
“But you didn’t say yes either. Mom’s case is going to need someone to go all-in with it. No testing the water with your feet.” She paused with her hand on the doorknob and glared at him. “Her attorney will have to jump.”
Tom shook his head. “Where did you learn to talk that way?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been on my own since I was twelve years old. I didn’t have a choice. When we were ripped away from Mom, I wasn’t given the option of testing the water. I was thrown in the deep end, and me and Jackie were either going to swim or drown. Mom’s cousin Tawny has the intelligence of a box of hammers, and her husband, Sam, is even dumber. I’m the one who makes sure Jackie has her lunch money before school and I’m the one who helps her with her homework. If I need a ride after practice, I get it myself. If I can’t line one up, then I run.”
“Is that how you got here?”
She nodded.
“That must be a three-mile hike from the school.”
She shrugged. “It’s five miles from the school to Tawny’s house. You want to ask me how many times I’ve run that?”
Tom didn’t answer, and Laurie Ann pulled the door open. “Adios, Professor. Thanks for the memories, old man.” She continued to talk as she descended the stairs. “I ought to let you kick me in the knee before I head home. You know, just for old times’ sake. Your whole existence has just been one big size-fourteen boot in my family’s ass.”
Tom caught up with her halfway down the stairs. When he reached for her shoulder, she wheeled on him with fists raised. “I was just joking about the kick in the knee.”
For several seconds, he gazed down at her, unsure of what to do. Then, shaking his head and cursing under his breath, he walked past her. He’d have to look at his other files in the morning. “Come on.”
“What are you doing?”
He spoke without turning. “You’re not running home tonight.”
Ten minutes later, Tom pulled to a stop in front of a double-wide trailer in a mobile home park in Northport. On the way, he had gone through the Taco Casa drive-through, and the smell of burritos and refried beans filled the interior of the Explorer.
“Thank you for the ride and the food,” Laurie Ann said, grabbing the to-go sack and opening the door. Tom rolled down the passenger-side window, and Laurie Ann leaned her head back in, piercing him with her brown eyes. “I appreciate you going to the jail today, Professor. You didn’t have to do that.” She extended her hand through the window and Tom took it. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” Tom managed.
She let go and took a step back, and Tom gazed over the steering wheel at the other trailers that lined the park.
“Well . . . bye,” she finally said, and began to walk toward the front door of the mobile home.
“When do you get out of school?” Tom yelled, and Laurie Ann turned and continued to walk backward.
“Next week.”
“Would you like to work in my law firm as a runner this summer? We could use the help.” He paused. “Especially if I’m going to be handling a murder case.”
She stopped and placed her hands on her hips, smiling down at the ground. When she looked up at him, tears streaked her cheeks and merged with the dried sweat. Her face shone in the light from the half-moon above. “Really?”
“Really. You can come in after school next week as soccer practice allows and then full time once you’re out.”
“S-sounds good,” she said as her voice cracked with emotion. “Thank you so much.”
“You may not be thanking me when this is over. We’ve got a huge hill to climb, and the Tuscaloosa district attorney is as good as they come.”
Laurie Ann approached the Explorer and placed her hands on the window seal. Her face was all business. “So what’s our first step?”
Tom squinted at her and then leaned back in his seat, gazing over the wheel again. “Pulaski,” he finally said. “I’ve got to go back to Pulaski.”
Laurie Ann wrinkled her face in confusion. “Why?”
“Because there are some things I need to know about your mother.” He paused and cracked a weary smile. “And I need to recruit some more help.”
PART THREE
17
Just past the Giles County Line on Highway 64 is a dilapidated building that a person would probably miss if they weren’t looking for it. Tom put his right-turn blinker on and pulled his Explorer into the barren gravel lot. The front door was boarded up, and “For Sale” signs adorned the entrance and exit to the place, but Tom could still read the faded letters on the side of the structure: “The Sundowners Club.”
Tom climbed out of his vehicle for a better look. Last year, a wealthy Pulaski businessman and landowner named Andy Walton had been murdered in this parking lot. Two shotgun blasts from close range. The corpse was then moved a half mile down the road to his farm, where it was hung from a tree and set on fire. In his younger years, Walton had been the Imperial Wizard of the Tennessee Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and his brutal killing had garnered a lot of press. Tom and Rick had represented the man accused of the crime in a week-long trial that ended with the charges being dismissed and ten members of the Klan being brought to justice for the 1966 hanging of a black sharecropper named Roosevelt Haynes. One of the ten Klansmen was Larry Tucker, the longtime owner of the Sundowners. Shortly after the trial, Tucker was murdered himself before he could be arrested. His club closed a week later.
Good riddance, Tom thought, squatting and scooping a handful of gravel. He gripped the pebbles in his right hand and let them slowly run through his fingers. The Sundowners Club closed its doors in early November, 2011. Unfortunately for his new client, the club was very much open during the spring and early summer of 2010. He raised his eyes to the upstairs windows, which weren’t boarded up. Inside one of them, he could see what looked like a recliner. In his consultation with Wilma at the jail, she had told him that Jack Willistone wouldn’t agree to Wilma’s price to perjure herself on the stand in Henshaw until she had sex with him in one of the VIP rooms on the second floor of the Sundowners. Tom trudged toward the front door, gazing upward through the dusty glass at the room that had been a house of horrors for his client.
For him to effectively represent Wilma, he had to understand her motives, and he knew that this place had been a turning point for her. A place of no return. She had made a deal with the devil and been burned.
Wilma had told Tom that she had almost killed herself in the aftermath of the trial and losing custody of her children. She said she’d even shot out a mirror in her rental home. But she hadn’t done the deed because she couldn’t give up on her daughters. Tom had yet to meet the younger one, but he sure had met Laurie Ann, and there was a fierce determination that he felt the girl must have inherited from her mother. “Nothing for me. Everything for them.” Tom whispered Wilma’s mantra out loud and nodded his head as he ran his hand over the two-by-fours that ran crossways over the front door. She’d told him that
she would say those words over and over to herself in the dark days before the trial in Henshaw and even more so during her incarceration for twelve months in the Giles County Jail. Tom glanced around the building one last time, trying to envision the place as it had once been, with its neon signs and the marquee at the entrance, which had long since been removed, advertising “Exotic Dancers” in red flashing lights.
Wilma had subjected herself to the evils of this place so she could put her girls in pretty clothes and provide more opportunities for them. Her reasoning for lying on the stand in Henshaw was one and the same, and she didn’t defend herself on the prostitution charges because she couldn’t risk the repercussions for Laurie Ann and Jackie. Jack Willistone and JimBone Wheeler had threatened that they would kill her daughters if she ever came forward with the truth, so she had kept her mouth shut. “Nothing for me. Everything for them,” Tom repeated.
For all of her faults, Wilma didn’t feel like a revenge killer to Tom. Murder would be too costly for her daughters, and Wilma was actively pursuing regaining custody of them.
Then how come Jack was murdered with her gun?
Tom sighed and shook his head. Assuming Wade was correct—and Tom had no reason to doubt his old friend’s veracity—explaining the gun would be critical to a viable defense. When he returned to Tuscaloosa, he would need to have a come-to-Jesus talk with his client about the murder weapon.
As the afternoon sun beat down on his neck, Tom squinted toward Highway 64 as a familiar car approached and put its blinker on. To have any chance of winning this case, he would either have to discredit the state’s forensic report concluding that the murder weapon was Wilma’s pistol or . . . convince a jury that someone else killed Jack with Wilma’s gun.
The Last Trial (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers Book 3) Page 9
