“But … ”
Victor went on. “Did he tell you about his wife?”
“Yeah. She’s in Minneapolis, helping their daughter with a new grandchild. She’s coming back as soon as the daughter gets back on her feet.”
“Well, part of that’s true,” said Victor.
“What part?” asked Mary.
“His wife’s in Minneapolis, but she won’t be coming back.”
“Why not?”
“Because a couple of years ago she got fed up with Wilkins. It was as if a ten-year-old dead girl was the other woman in their marriage. Finally she went back to her family. Permanently.”
Mary sat there, bewildered. Had Whaley been telling the truth? Had Wilkins touched the third rail of police work and gotten brain-fried for his trouble? She couldn’t say; she didn’t know. She looked at Victor. “You know what’s weird about this?”
“Everything is weird about this,” he replied. “But what specifically?”
“Whaley wants to hassle Zack Collier into a confession to save his old partner. I think the real killer or killers are hassling Zack Collier into a confession to save themselves. Everybody’s drawn a bull’s eye on Zack Collier, for totally different reasons.”
“I think it’s the same reason,” said Victor.
“What?”
“Because he’s the scapegoat. The guy’s different; different scares people.”
She turned to him. “I hate to admit it, but sometimes Zack scares me. I’ve seen the bruises he’s put on Grace’s arm.”
“What are you going to do if his DNA comes back on those underpants?”
“I’ll start working up a defense. Even if his DNA does show up, it still doesn’t mean he killed her. It’s circumstantial evidence.”
“And then we’re back to square one.”
She laid her head back on the sofa. “Crazy, isn’t it? The murder that can’t be solved.”
He put his empty beer bottle on the coffee and scooted closer. “I want to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I’ll do anything I can to help you. Whatever I’m working on, I’ll always be with you—always on your side, win, lose, or draw.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, thinking that not once had Jonathan Walkingstick ever said such a thing to her. She wrapped her arms around Victor and pulled him close. The back of his neck felt gritty with dried sweat and when she kissed him, he tasted like salt. He took off his shirt, then he took off hers. They slid to the floor, making love in front of the fireplace. His body and his warmth made Grace and Zack and George Turpin and even the United Methodist Women seem insignificant; they were problems that might plague her tomorrow, but they were now just distant gnats hovering, waiting to assail her in the morning.
Thirty-Six
The United Methodist Women turned out to be a captive audience. Neither Turpin nor Prentiss Herbert showed up, so Mary had the microphone to herself. She gave her ten-minute stump speech, then for the next half hour she fielded questions. Most of the ladies were polite and interested, asking her about concealed carry prosecutions and hiring more women in the DA’s office. A few, though, kept grilling her about why she was defending the retarded man who killed Teresa Ewing. “Everybody knows he did it,” said one woman whose flowered dress gave her bosom the look of low hanging melons. “You seem like such a nice girl … I don’t know why you’d want to defend somebody like that.”
“Because everyone is entitled to the best counsel they can get,” Mary explained. “That’s fundamental in American law.”
“That’s why rich people get off and poor people go to jail,” said another woman.
“But what if you win and he gets arrested?” asked Melon Bosoms. “Will you just let him go?”
“No ma’am,” said Mary. “Should I win, I’ll convene a grand jury. If they return an indictment against Zack Collier, I’ll recuse myself, which means a different prosecutor will take the case and Zack Collier will have to get a new attorney.”
“Well, he’d better get a good one,” someone else grumbled. “All I know is it’s about time he paid for what he did.”
A few minutes later, the meeting ended. Though even Melon Bosoms stood and applauded, Emily Kurtz just shook her head. She stood and waited for Mary to make her way through the crowd, to the back of the room.
“You had every one of these women,” Emily said pointedly. “Until—”
“Until they asked me about Zack Collier.” Mary finished Emily’s sentence.
Emily shrugged. “I counted twenty-two votes in your column until the Z-word came up.”
“And how many votes did the Z-word cost me?”
“Every woman over fifty. Maybe a few of the younger ones too. And from here on out, it’ll only get worse. Turpin and Pugh aren’t going to give you a free pass on this.”
Mary’s temper flared. “Then why don’t we get some people to ask Prentiss Herbert what his conviction record is? Or how many female attorneys are currently working in Turpin’s office? Or why Turpin allows men to plead down in domestic abuse cases while he prosecutes the women big-time?”
“I can find the figures,” said Emily.
“Then find them. I’m sick of being blamed for representing a compromised man who hasn’t even been charged with as much as jaywalking!”
They parted then, each angrily striding off to opposite ends of the parking lot. Mary got in her car, amazed at how quickly politics could spoil her mood. After a wonderful night with Victor and a great start with the Methodist women, she was back trying to dig out of the endless hole Zack Collier always put her in. Even worse, she’d only gotten Jack Wilkins’s voicemail since yesterday morning. After hearing Victor’s assessment of the man, she was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of hiring the old detective. If that arrangement blew up in her face, she could kiss the DA’s office good-bye forever. She pulled out of the church parking lot and turned south. It was time to go out to Grace’s and find out what Wilkins was up to.
She saw him the moment she pulled into Grace’s driveway. He was standing, talking to a man in green work clothes. For a moment, she felt foolish about her concern, then she saw that the two men were surveying what had yesterday been Grace’s front window. Now it was a just jagged, gaping hole covered from the inside by a pink flowered sheet that rippled in the wind. She parked her car and hurried over to them.
“What on earth happened?” she asked Jack, whose face was speckled with what looked like a hundred tiny shaving nicks.
“An interesting night,” he said, recounting the phone call, the attempted entry into the kitchen, then someone scratching on Grace’s window screen.
“What happened next?” asked Mary.
“Something spooked them. A car horn honked, I heard footsteps, like someone running. I got to the living room just as somebody shot out the front window.”
“Are you okay?”
“Just a few cuts from the glass shards. I returned fire, striking an older sedan above the right rear tire and I winged one individual, who proceeded to escape in the car.”
“Damn, Jack!” cried the glass man, who was short, bald, and had the name Daniel Boone embroidered on his dark green work shirt. “If you’d hit that gas tank them intruders would have been barbecued.”
Jack laughed. “I guess my aim isn’t what it used to be.”
“Did you get a plate number?” asked Mary. “A description of the guy you shot?”
Jack shook his head. “It was too dark, too far away.”
“You’re not a-wanting bulletproof glass in this window are you?” Daniel Boone interrupted, eager to get to work.
“No,” said Jack. “But put the regular stuff in fast. I want to be ready if they come back tonight.”
“Hold on, Jack.” Mary took his arm. “Let’s go talk about that.”
> They went inside, to the kitchen. Mary fixed a pot of coffee, though Jack acted as if he had gone through several pots already. He paced around the kitchen with his gray hair sticking up in little tufts, his face looking as if it had barely escaped the death of a thousand cuts.
She handed him some coffee. “Did you call the cops last night?”
“No, I called them this morning. They said they’d send someone out.”
“Did they?”
“Not yet.”
“Why did you call someone to fix the window before the police could file a report?”
“Because I know where those reports wind up. I need to get going on this, but I didn’t want to leave the house without a front window. Boone’s an old buddy of mine, so I called him.” He took a slurp of coffee. “His crew will have everything fixed up in a little while.”
Mary sat down across from him. “What do you mean, you’ve got to get going on this?”
“Find those bastards. I’ve got a pretty good idea who they were.”
“Who?”
“Russell, Shaw, and McConnell. The three remaining boys-to-men members of the Salola Street gang.”
“Shaw left yesterday for South Carolina. He’s helping his family move.”
“Even better. That leaves just Russell and McConnell.”
She frowned. “I would agree with you, Jack, except these guys are close to forty. Broken windows and crank phone calls smack of somebody just out of juvie.”
“But don’t you see—these boys have never grown up! They’re stunted. Teresa Ewing’s murder messed them up for life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at them—Russell still lives with his mommy, McConnell can barely keep his daddy’s business afloat, and Shaw is a vagabond photographer. They don’t think like grown men! They figure if they can scare Zack with Barbie dolls and beheaded toys, he’ll cop to Teresa. He did it once before.”
Mary didn’t know what to say. Though a possibly off-his-rocker cop had come up with a theory that made a good deal of sense, she still had her doubts. “But don’t you think this could be the next generation of stupid redneck kids, out to raise a little hell?”
Jack shook his head. “Teresa Ewing is ancient history to the teenagers slamming mail boxes today. I doubt any of them have even heard of her.”
“You’re right.” Mary did the math. “Most of the people who care about Teresa Ewing are well over forty years old.”
“I think if I just put in a little legwork, I can catch them.” Jack’s blue eyes almost sparkled. He reminded her of an old hunting dog that had caught the fresh scent of a rabbit in the field.
“I’m sure you could, Jack. Unfortunately that’s not why I hired you. You’re supposed to keep this house secure. Let the police take over now.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. They already think Teresa Ewing drove me over the edge.” He put both hands on the table and leaned toward her. “Don’t you see? This is probably my last shot at proving I’m not nuts.”
She studied him, tired and eager, young and old, all at once. “Okay,” she said, not knowing what else to tell him. “See what you can find out. But be back here by dark, alright?”
“No problem,” he said, starting for the door.
“And answer your cell phone, Jack. I called you about fifty times this morning.”
He blushed, as if he’d gone outside with his fly unzipped. “Sorry,” he told her. “I guess I’m still not used to carrying a damn telephone around in my pocket.”
Jack left Mary and Daniel Boone and drove toward town. He knew a PI license wouldn’t get him all the information he needed, so he pulled over at a gas station and called his old partner, Whaley.
“I need you to look something up for me,” he said after they’d gone through their usual list of complaints—Whaley carping about the police department, him griping about his bad leg. “I’m playing dick today.”
Whaley laughed. “You say you’re playing with your dick today?”
“May as well be,” said Wilkins. “Listen—I need you to find out if anybody showed up at the hospital last night with a gunshot wound.”
“What kind of gunshot wound?”
“A .45, fired from thirty yards away.”
“That’s a pretty serious hole, Jack.” Whaley was no longer laughing. “You haven’t gone all Dirty Harry, have you?”
Jack gave him the short version of what had happened the night before. He said he was aiming at the car when he hit the guy running away.
“Yeah, right.” Whaley’s tone was sarcastic. “Where were you?”
“Honeysuckle Lane. Out near the county line.”
There was a long silence. “Jack, are you working for Mary Crow?”
“I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Jack, there are only three houses on Honeysuckle Lane and the only one that gets dispatch calls belongs to Grace Collier, who happens to be a client of Mary Crow.”
“Okay,” said Wilkins. “I’m working for Mary Crow.”
“What the fuck for?” cried Whaley. “She’s representing that Collier bastard.”
“I don’t care who she’s representing,” Wilkins replied. “What I’m doing is figuring out who killed Teresa Ewing.”
“Oh Jack.” Whaley didn’t bother to hide his disgust.
“You guys at the station haven’t come up with anything,” said Wilkins. “Humor me, Buck.”
For a moment he heard only silence—he knew Whaley considered him nothing more than an old cop who couldn’t let go. But Whaley owed him. Years ago he’d “lost” the breathalyzer test that put the still-on-duty Whaley way over the legal limit for driving under the influence. Whaley later admitted that he owed Jack his career. Today he was calling in his debt.
“Okay,” Whaley finally said. “What time did all this go down?”
“Shortly after midnight. I think the wound would have been buttocks or back of the thigh.”
“Ouch,” said Whaley. “That’s a gift that keeps on giving. He’ll never sit down in quite the same way.”
“My heart bleeds. I only grazed him—he managed to scramble back into the car.”
Whaley chuckled. “And I bet his jockeys looked like fudge pie. You get a make on the vehicle?”
“A not-too-new sedan, black, I think.”
“Okay, buddy. You got it. I’ll call you back if I find anything.”
“Thanks, Buck. I guess we’re square now.”
“Don’t take this any further, Jack. You’re not wearing a badge anymore.”
Jack clicked off, wondering if he should go pay Devin McConnell a call. The little shit would know Whaley on sight. Him he’d likely forgotten—he would be just another faceless senior citizen come to tire-kick with his dog. He drove through town under a low-hanging sky that promised rain. He turned down Main Street, passed the Burger King, then saw the green Mylar balloons floating against the sky.
“Good old Tote-A-Note,” he whispered as he pulled into the turn lane and put on his blinker. “Hasn’t changed a bit.”
He parked beneath the faded leprechaun that leered from the roof. When Teresa was killed it was Hartsville’s only used car dealer, and Big Jim McConnell advertised on the TV station out of Asheville, batting down high prices with a plastic shillelagh. He smiled at the memory—his kids used to watch TV on Saturday mornings and laugh harder at Big Jim than they did at Bozo the Clown. But as funny as the guy had been on the tube, he’d grown dead serious when they started looking at Devin for Teresa Ewing’s murder. He sentenced the kid to house arrest, making him permanent babysitter to his houseful of brats. It was harsh, even by the time’s stricter standards, which made him wonder if Big Jim knew more about Devin’s activities than he ever admitted.
He got out of the truck, rolling the windows down to give Lucky
some air. He strolled toward the first rank of cars, parked facing the highway. All were sedans, mostly Japanese imports in shades of gray and silver.
He ambled around the lot, waiting for Devin to emerge from the little office. When, after five minutes, nobody had come out to sell him some lady-driven number with only a hundred thousand miles, he walked over to the office and tried to open the door. It was locked. He stepped over and looked in the window. The lights were off, the desk stood vacant. Nobody was working at Tote-A-Note today.
“Okay,” he whispered. “So much the better for me.”
Whistling, he strolled around the office, to the back fence. Padlocked and concertina-wired, it enclosed old, rusted vehicles destined for the scrap heap. He saw a red Ford with a number 9 painted on its side and a black Subaru that looked as if a boulder had fallen on it. Then, backed up behind the office, he saw a dark gray Corolla. Though mud covered most of the body, it was several cuts above the other specimens in this lot. He walked over to the far side of the fence to check out the passenger side of the car. He hoped to find blood smear, or even a bullet hole. Instead all he saw was a regular old Corolla, its rear bumper bashed in.
He gave a disgusted snort. “I should have known this wouldn’t be easy.”
He stepped back, trying to avoid an oil slick when suddenly the loud brrrppp of a siren caught him totally off-guard. As Lucky began barking furiously, he turned to see a police cruiser just inches from the back of his truck, its light bar flashing. Immediately, he lifted his hands, figuring someone had made a prowler call. Then the passenger door of the cruiser opened. Buck Whaley emerged.
“I thought I might find you here,” Whaley called, draping his fleshy arms over the door.
“You son of a bitch.” Jack lowered his hands. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Yeah? Well, you almost gave me one, saying you might have put a slug in someone’s ass.”
“Did you find out who?” asked Jack.
“Possibly,” said Whaley. “Get over here and we’ll talk about it.”
A Judgment of Whispers Page 25
