Nate gave him a closed-mouth smile. “I try. I know you don’t like me very much. But you can trust me.”
Matt shifted in his seat. “It’s not that I don’t like you,” he said, realizing it was true. “But, please, I need you to promise you won’t tell Mom or Sedona.”
“Listen to me. This is a murder investigation. What I will promise is we’ll work together to figure out what needs to be said to others.”
“I didn’t tell the police the truth about the night Crystal died.” Blood rushed to Matt’s head, an ocean between his ears. He told Nate he’d driven out to Catalina, and Crystal had invited him inside. “We drank a lot of beer.”
Nate listened intently, watching Matt without a flinch of judgment. He said nothing until Matt finished. Then Nate stared at him, his head cocked slightly. “Why was it your fault? Did you have an argument with Crystal? Were you angry over her affair with your father?”
He told Nate the truth—he was mostly sad about Danni and angry with himself for the way he’d behaved at the wedding, how he hadn’t yet known about his dad and Crystal.
Nate studied him for a moment in which Matt felt naked, like his stepfather could see right through his clothes and into his core. “Is there something else you’re not telling me?”
Matt saw the opening. It was like being lost in the darkest part of a cave and seeing a flash of light that gave him hope for a way out.
“You can trust me, Matt. I’ll help you if I can. I know you’re scared. Anyone would be.” Nate’s tone was soft, almost sad.
“Why would you want to help me when I’ve been nothing but a jerk to you?”
Nate smiled. “Sometimes we have to bend the bitterness to get ourselves straight again.”
“I lied to the police. I lied to everyone.” Matt kept looking at Nate, trying to see inside him, trying to determine if he really could trust this man his mom had married, this man he’d once thought of as his enemy. “Crystal lit some candles and we started dancing. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“For what to happen?”
“I didn’t mean for us to do it. To have sex.”
When Nate continued to look sympathetic, Matt’s tears fell for the first time since Crystal died. He didn’t deserve understanding or anything else from this man.
Nate reached across the coffee table and covered Matt’s hand. “You may have used poor judgment, but it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened.” He stood, found a box of tissues on the end table and handed them to Matt.
“She’s dead,” Matt said. “And now my father is in jail.”
He blew his nose, then told Nate about Crystal’s anger when he’d mentioned telling Travis, about her wanting him to sleep off the beer. How he’d awakened because he heard a car out front. “At first, I was afraid Travis had come home. I checked the clock. It said 10:38pm.”
“That would have been your mother and me.”
“I fell back to sleep and when I woke up the second time, I heard the front door open and close, then a car door slam.” He explained how he’d run to the window to make sure it wasn’t Travis, then into the bathroom to throw up and that’s when he saw Crystal in the tub. He told Nate the reasons why he didn’t call 911.
“Did you see the second car? Did you recognize it?”
“No. But it couldn’t have been a Lincoln. The taillights were round, not the four stacked rectangular lights on Dad’s car. And it turned north on Oracle. My dad would have headed south to go home. He was there at 9:30 when you dropped off Sedona. And I don’t think he would have left her alone.”
Nate’s face changed and in it, Matt saw a little fear. “Why did you clean everything up?”
“I was scared. I didn’t want Travis to know I’d been there. I wanted to drive home, but I had to stop Travis. I couldn’t let him see—”
“I can understand that,” Nate said. “I might have done the same thing if it were my friend.”
“I don’t know what to do now.”
“Come with me.” Nate led him back into the kitchen, then handed him a yellow lined tablet and a pen. He pulled out a chair at the oak table. “Write down exactly what happened, just like you were writing a school essay. I play racket ball at the club with a criminal defense lawyer. I’ll call him, ask him to come by and look over what you’ve written.”
Nate grabbed the phonebook from the kitchen drawer and thumbed through it. “After that, we’ll call Detective Radhauser and set up an appointment.”
Matt knew his stepfather was right. Sometimes you get a glimpse of something and then you realize you’ve known it all along. There was no other way—he had to tell Radhauser the whole truth. Every single bit of it.
While Nate called his lawyer friend, Matt wrote out everything he could remember about that night.
An hour later, Nate’s friend read it over. “I’d be happy to go with you to see Detective Radhauser,” he said to Matt. “It would be best if you had an attorney present.”
“I don’t want to do that.” Matt feared it would make him look guiltier than he already was.
“Are you sure?” Nate asked. “It’s for your own protection.”
“I’m positive.”
Nate looked at his friend and shrugged. “He’s eighteen. It’s his decision.”
Ten minutes later, with his stepfather’s hand firmly planted on his shoulder, he phoned Radhauser.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Nate said. “Our best defense is the truth.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
When Radhauser arrived at the Catalina Station on Monday morning, Matt Garrison and his stepfather sat in the waiting area. The kid’s hands were tucked, palms together between his knees. His hair was disheveled—a little too much white in his eyes. He looked like he feared being tortured and strung up by his heels.
Figuring Matt had come to plead his father’s innocence, Radhauser took off his Stetson, nodded to the overweight sergeant behind the desk, then turned to Matt and Nate. “You’re early. Are you that eager to see me?”
Neither of them spoke. Just before he hung his head, Matt’s gaze flitted to the left, where his stepfather sat.
Nate cleared his throat. “Matt has some things he needs to tell you.”
Radhauser beckoned them both to follow him. He pulled a chair from the break room and dragged it down the narrow hallway. It made a harsh, rasping sound as it slid over the vinyl tiles. He led them into the same interrogation room where he’d first questioned Matt. Radhauser closed the door. He arranged the third chair for Nate, then sat across from them at the table. “Can I get either of you anything?”
“No thanks.” Nate answered for both of them.
For a moment, Matt seemed absorbed in adjusting the sleeves of his jacket.
Radhauser set up the tape recorder.
Matt got a panicked look on his face. “Does that have to be on? Can’t we just talk in private?”
Radhauser flipped it off and waited. He knew a lot about Matthew David Garrison from the interviews he’d conducted. Knew he’d been a normal, happy kid, until his cousin drowned. Radhauser had researched the newspaper archives and found the story. Matt had been the only witness.
When he’d interviewed Matt’s sixth grade teacher, Radhauser learned about Matt’s behavior right after the drowning. About his quitting baseball the same year he’d been voted most valuable player on the team that had taken the state and regional championships and was headed for the Little League World Series.
At Canyon del Oro High School, Radhauser read a copy of the essay Matt had written on the place where the dead wait—the place Matt most wanted to visit. For reasons no one had been able to shed light on, Matt punished himself. And it had been going on for years.
Matt handed Radhauser the yellow sheets with his account of the night Crystal died.
Radhauser took them and set them face down on the tabletop. “What did you do that night at Crystal Reynolds’ house that has you feeling so guilty?”
>
The kid’s face was red and blotchy. Radhauser could see the words forming, almost hear them rising in Matt’s throat. But whatever he’d wanted to say stayed caught there. Even the silence knotted.
“Answer the question, please.”
Matt stared at him for a long moment.
Nate stood behind Matt now, with both hands clamped on the boy’s trembling shoulders, protecting him. He glared at Radhauser. “What’s the matter with you? This is hard. Give him a chance.”
“It’s okay,” Matt said. “He’s given me several chances.”
In the distance, Radhauser heard the sound of tires humming along Oracle Road, the lonely howl of a coyote in the desert behind them.
Matt was frozen to his chair, his eyes wide and unblinking.
Radhauser knew he had to orchestrate this carefully. “There’s something I want to tell you, Matt, and it’s really important.”
He waited until the kid’s breathing had grown more regular and he felt it was safe to go on. “There can be no redemption without telling the truth.”
For a few seconds, Matt stared at him.
Radhauser could almost see the kid’s mind working, comprehension washing over his face.
“I know that now,” Matt said. “It’s why I’m here.”
“I want you to tell me, in your own words, what happened the night Crystal died.”
“I already wrote everything out for you. They are my words.”
“It’s important that you speak them,” Radhauser said.
Nate squeezed Matt’s shoulder, then sat back down beside him. “Just tell Detective Radhauser what you told me.”
Matt fumbled for a moment, then started to talk. He didn’t stop until he’d told everything.
As he listened, Radhauser’s mind worked overtime and it was all he could do to contain his excitement. He’d just gotten the missing piece. The context. A new slant on Loren Garrison’s motivation. Radhauser’s anxiety over arresting the wrong man lifted, then disappeared completely as he closed his eyes and let the scene play out with lightning speed in his mind.
Garrison had driven back to Catalina that night. Maybe he’d gone with good intentions, wanted to apologize for the way he’d behaved earlier. Maybe he’d wanted to tell Crystal it didn’t matter whose baby it was, that they’d get married and raise it together. Or maybe he wanted to volunteer to go with her for the abortion, hold her hand through the procedure. But when he got to her house in Catalina, he’d found his son’s car parked in the carport. Loren knew Travis was at the dance and his curiosity got the best of him. The house was unlocked. He walked inside, just like he’d done dozens of times before. Loren Garrison hadn’t planned to murder Crystal. He’d merely wanted to talk to her.
When he found no one in the kitchen, only empty beer bottles, he wandered into the living room, found the candles still burning. Feeling confused now, he tiptoed down the hallway, saw the short denim skirt, her white low-cut blouse, her bra and panties strewn on the hallway floor. Crystal’s door was closed, but not latched. Loren Garrison had eased it open.
And when he did, he saw his son in his lover’s bed. Garrison was enraged. What man wouldn’t be? It was one thing to know your lover had slept with someone else. But this was too much. The thought that the baby Crystal carried might belong to his son—to Matt—must have lingered in his mind for a moment. A moment in which he saw Matt’s dreams for college and his future disappear. The bathroom light was on. He’d show that bitch. He picked up the scissors she’d used to cut her hair. Crystal had drunk too much and dozed in the tub. What could be easier?
“Detective Radhauser, are you listening to him?”
Snapped back into the present by Nate’s voice, Radhauser opened his eyes.
Nate stood behind Matt again, both hands on the boy’s shoulders.
Radhauser stood. “Thank you for coming in, Matt. I know it took courage to tell me all of that.”
“Aren’t you going to arrest me?”
“No. The evidence supports your story. Your fingerprints were on the beer bottles. The tire tracks in the carport matched your Mustang. And I found evidence of vomit on the toilet seat—which I now know was yours.”
“If you already knew all of that, why didn’t you call me in? Put me in jail for perjury or something?”
Radhauser knew he’d bent the rules in ways he never would have predicted. But Matt was only a kid, scared out of his wits. “I wanted to give you a chance to come forward on your own.”
“So, you’ll let my father go now.”
“I’m afraid not. We’re holding him over for arraignment. It’s scheduled for today at 10am.”
Matt leapt to his feet. “But I told you, he didn’t do it.” With a little help from Nate, Matt sat back down. “Weren’t you listening to me? I was there.” Matt repeated what he’d already told Radhauser about the sounds he’d heard, the water running into the tub, the car he’d heard at 10:38, which turned out to be his mother and Nate. And then he’d awakened again around 11:20 and heard the front door open and close. How he’d gone to the window and looked out, heard a car door slam across the street, the engine turn over as the car started and drove away.
“Did you see the car?”
“It was dark.”
“So, you didn’t see it?”
Matt grimaced and swatted at Radhauser’s words as if they were flies. “But it couldn’t have been my father’s car. The taillights were all wrong. And he was home at 9:30 when Nate dropped off Sedona.”
“That’s right,” Nate said.
“You love your father, don’t you, Matt?”
“I guess so.”
“Someone killed Crystal Reynolds. Your father had motive, means, and opportunity.”
“I’m sure other people had motive, too. How about her boss? Travis said he was really pissed off at Crystal for missing so much work. Or the man who impregnated her? It wasn’t my father.”
“Thomas Baxter can account for his time. And he has a witness willing to swear he never left the premises. There’s a motion light over his garage. It comes on whenever the garage door opens.”
“Witnesses can lie,” Matt said. “And those scissors I found in Dad’s car were bogus. Someone planted them.”
“Your father parks in a closed garage. By his own admission, he never leaves the car unlocked on campus or in a shopping center. We found no evidence that a lock had been tampered with. The only other person who has access to that car is you. And you didn’t plant the scissors, did you?”
Matt sat up straighter in his chair. He shook his head. “No way. But somebody did.”
Radhauser watched the boy struggle to compose himself.
“The morning after Crystal died, my dad swam laps in the pool like he always does on Sunday.” Matt told him about the repairman, how Sedona said he claimed he’d gotten a call about a garage door malfunctioning, insisted he was in the neighborhood, why not let him check it out. “The truck said Anderson’s Garage Doors. We do it up and down.”
“And I suppose she let him in?”
“She opened the garage door for him. I was eating cereal at the kitchen counter. When I looked again, the door was closed and he was gone. My dad got the car greased at the Chevron Station last Tuesday. Don’t you see? Opportunities existed. Someone could have planted the scissors.”
“What did the garage door man look like?”
“I didn’t see him. But Sedona might remember.”
“You have a good imagination, don’t you, Matt?”
“I’m telling the truth now. I’m not imagining anything. Haven’t you ever arrested someone who turned out to be innocent?”
“Yes. And some of them were exonerated when new information came into light.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” There was frustration and urgency in the kid’s voice. “I’m giving you that new information.”
“Humor me for a minute,” Radhauser said. “Just close your eyes and imagine your fathe
r returning to Catalina to talk with Crystal, his lover. The woman who’d just accused him of fathering her child.” Radhauser lowered his voice, the way a person does when he hopes his capacity for cruelty will be forgiven. “Now imagine how he might have felt when he found his son in her bed. Imagine the thoughts that may have gone through his mind.”
“That’s enough,” Nate said. “I’m taking him home now.”
As soon as Nate touched his arm, Matt’s mouth dropped open as if he were about to say something more, but no noise came out. Instead, his face crumpled and his eyes filled with something that to Radhauser looked a lot like doubt.
* * *
At 10am, Karina slipped into the first row of benches, closest to the empty jury box, to await Loren’s arraignment. The courtroom smelled like cedar, leather, and old books.
She wore a dark blue skirt with a matching jacket, a tailored white silk blouse, and a pair of sensible navy pumps. When she’d talked with Loren on the phone this morning, after Nate and Matt left to meet with Radhauser, she had tried to reassure him that new information was still being uncovered.
Even though she believed Loren would be released on his own recognizance, Karina had spoken to a bail bondsman and had come prepared to post up to $300,000 bail. This was a terrible mistake, one she hoped Nate and Matt would help to remedy. Her job for this morning was to do whatever it took to bring Loren home.
As she sat waiting, moments in her life with him came together in a swirl of scenes that moved back and forth through time—scenes sometimes filled with happiness, and just as often tinged with sadness. She tightened her grip on her own arm. This was the man who’d held her hand through the births of both their children. The first man she’d ever loved. The man who’d had an affair with her friend. The man who’d betrayed and humiliated her.
Redemption Lake Page 27
