by David Archer
“Tell you what, Brittany,” Sam said. “Give me a large straight coffee, and could you possibly tell me who would have been working the drive-through window yesterday morning?”
Brittany suddenly looked wary. “Um, I was on drive-through yesterday morning, until about noon.” She turned around and started making his coffee.
Sam took out his cell phone and called up the picture he had taken of Candy. When the girl turned back to him with the cup, he held it up in front of her eyes. “You didn't happen to see this girl come through yesterday morning, did you? Probably sometime between ten and eleven?”
The girl glanced for a split second at the picture, then lowered her eyes to the counter. “No, I'm sorry, I didn't. The police called and asked me that yesterday, asked me about whether I'd seen a lady with hair like that. I told them the same thing, I didn't see her.” She slid his cup across the counter. “That'll be five twenty-six.”
Sam paid for his coffee and thanked the girl, then walked out the door and got into his car. Something about the way she avoided looking at the picture was bothering him, as if it was troubling her to say she hadn't seen Candy the day before. It was possible she was simply feeling stupid for not noticing hair like that, but she’d almost seemed agitated when Sam had first asked who was working the window. The only time he'd ever seen people act like that was back during his Narcotics Division days, when he was questioning a witness who had something to hide, or who had been pressured to lie.
It wasn't likely the barista was involved in the murder, so the only question was who might have any reason to ask her to lie. According to Karen Parks, this girl was in no way connected to either Carlos or Candy, so there would be no reason Sam could imagine for anyone to ask her to forget seeing the Neapolitan hair.
Sam reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the slip of paper Karen had given him. Charlie's grandparents lived only a few blocks away, so he started the car and headed for their place. The drive took him less than five minutes, and he pulled up in front of a very nice home. There was a Lexus sedan in the driveway, so Sam parked on the street and got out.
The sky was overcast, and Sam's hip was telling him that it was going to rain sometime soon, so he took the cane out from behind the seats. Leaning lightly on it, he walked up to the door and rang the doorbell.
A woman who looked to be in her early fifties answered the door, and Sam smiled. “Mrs. McAlester? My name is Sam Prichard, and I'm a private investigator. I'm working for your former daughter-in-law, who has been accused of murdering your son but says she's innocent. I was wondering if I might speak to Charlie for a moment?”
The woman stood there and stared at him for a good twenty seconds. “My son is dead, Mr. Prichard, and that woman is the one who killed him. Don't you think this family has been through enough already? That little boy had to hide in his room and listen while she killed his father. There is no way on this earth I'm going to let you talk to him, and I would like it very much if you would simply leave.” She began pushing the door closed.
“Mrs. McAlester, I've already come across some strange things in this case, and it could very well mean that Charlie's mother is telling the truth. Now, I don't doubt that Charlie believes what he told the police, but I'd really like to ask him if he might've heard anything else, anything that could shed more light on the subject.”
Mrs. McAlester stopped and looked at Sam again. “Apparently, you didn't understand me the first time. Charlie has been through all the trauma he needs, right now, and if I let you speak to him you're only going to make it worse. It's not going to happen. Now, please leave, or I will call the police.” She slammed the door and Sam heard the deadbolt turn.
Sam shook his head, but turned and walked slowly back toward his car. He could understand the woman's position, but he desperately wanted to find out what else Charlie might have heard or seen that morning. The only problem was how he might accomplish it.
One way was to speak to Karen Parks. It was possible he might convince her to arrange a meeting, but he needed to find at least a few things to lend credibility to Candy's story. Just the fact that the barista didn't want to meet his eyes wouldn't be enough.
He started the car and was just pulling away from the curb when his phone rang. “Hello,” he said as he answered.
“Hey, Sam, it's Chris. Listen, Candy just called and said that they're taking her over for arraignment in about twenty minutes. I was just wondering if you had any ideas yet.”
Sam sighed into the phone. “Nothing yet, Chris,” he said. “I've come across a few things that don't seem to add up, but nothing that's going to sway the cops or the prosecutor. Arraignment just means they're going to officially tell her what she's charged with, and she might get to enter a plea today. She said you got her a lawyer, I hope he's a good one.”
“I've used him before, and he got me out of some trouble. He'd better be good, he sure costs enough. I had to give him ten grand as a retainer.”
“Yeah, lawyers don't come cheap. If she calls you again when it's over, call me back and let me know what happened.”
Chris promised to do so, and they ended the call. Sam drove through the residential streets, trying to figure out what his next step should be. With nothing else to do, he drove over to the neighborhood where Carlos had lived.
5
It wasn't hard to tell which house had been his, because it was still surrounded by police crime scene tape. There was a crime scene van, as well, and Sam recognized Jackie Porter, who was taking fingerprints off of the front storm door, as one of the techs he used to see when he was in homicide. Jackie had been working crime scenes and evidence for as long as Sam had been around the force. She looked different lately, her once-short black hair now long and tied back into a ponytail, but Sam knew it was her by her height; at six foot three, she was one of the few women he knew who were taller than he was. He pulled up in front of the house and climbed out of the car, once again taking the cane with him.
Jackie's partner was somebody new, and he spotted Sam walking toward the van. “Sir, I'm sorry, this is a crime scene. I'm afraid it's off-limits.”
Jackie heard him talking and looked up, then smiled when she recognized Sam. She set down the things she was holding in her hand and came toward him down the walkway. “It's okay, Ned,” she said. “That's Sam Prichard, one of the best detectives Denver ever had. Sam, baby, how long has it been?” She opened her arms and pulled Sam into a hug.
Sam smiled right back. “I guess it's been about four years, now, ever since I left homicide for narcotics. I see they've still got you training the rookies, right?”
“Of course, that's because I'm the best. Listen, I read the arrest report on the suspect. I gather she was part of your band?”
“Yeah, our bass player. I went down to see her this morning, and she swears up and down she didn't do it. I'm a PI now, although I'd sort of retired from it since I got into the music business. I told her I'd try to find any kind of evidence that might help prove she's telling the truth. Don't suppose you've run across anything I might be interested in, have you?”
Jackie turned and looked at the house for a second, then looked back at Sam. “I can't actually say I have, but if you put on the booties and gloves, I'll take you inside to look around. Who knows, you might spot something the rest of us missed.”
Sam grinned. “I don't know that I'd take any bets on that,” he said. He sat down in the back end of the van and slipped on the disposable paper shoe covers and the rubber gloves she handed to him. “Okay, lead the way. I promise not to touch anything without your approval.”
He followed Jackie up to the front door and inside the house. It was pretty easy to determine where Carlos had died; while there was a fair-sized bloodstain on the carpet, his body had been outlined with red masking tape. He stepped up close and looked down at the spot.
“That's where the victim was lying when they got here,” Jackie said. “You can see where his little boy apparent
ly stepped in some of the blood, because when he turned around to get the phone, he left some fading bloodied footprints.”
Sam looked where she had pointed, and sure enough, there was the imprint of a child's sneaker at the edge of the big bloodstain, and three or four footprints that got steadily lighter the further they got from where the blood had pooled. The footprints were apparently headed toward the dining room, and Sam carefully stepped around the tape outline to follow them.
He started to go into the dining room, but glanced over his shoulder at Jackie. She smiled and nodded, so he stepped through the doorway. There was a cordless phone sitting in its base on a sideboard, and Sam guessed it was the one Charlie had used to call for help.
He continued looking around the dining room for a few moments but didn't see anything else he thought was interesting. Another doorway on the other side of the room led into the kitchen, and Sam hobbled into it. The room was fairly neat, and there was a block on the counter that held the butcher knives. One of them was missing, and Sam was sure that would have been the one that was taken out of Carlos's chest.
Once again, he looked around the room, but nothing jumped out at him. There was a hallway that ran through the middle of the house, and another door led to it from the kitchen. Sam stepped over to it and looked up and down the hall, then frowned. He turned around and looked at Jackie.
“Jackie, is there anything about this that strikes you as odd?”
The woman wrinkled her brow. “Odd? How do you mean?”
Sam shrugged. “Well, I'm standing here looking into the hallway and staring straight at a back door. I'm having a little trouble figuring out why Carlos didn't try to get out that way. I mean, the murder weapon was a butcher knife, right? If they were arguing in the kitchen, then Candy—assuming she actually did this—would probably have grabbed the knife out of the block there on the counter and turned around to threaten Carlos, the victim. Look where the block of knives is, there on the counter in the corner of the kitchen that's farthest away from either of the doors. In order for her to reach out and grab it, and then even try to stab Carlos with it, he would've had to have been standing somewhere behind her. Why didn't he try going out the back door? Why would he have gone further into the house, into the living room?”
Jackie looked over to where Sam was pointing at the corner of the kitchen, then turned and looked back through the door and the dining room. When she turned back to him, her face had a thoughtful expression. “You know, that really is kind of weird.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the door to the hallway, then walked through it and to the back door. That door was secured by a simple deadbolt, but it turned easily when she tried it. “He could've gotten outside, yelled for help. At the very least, she probably wouldn't have tried to chase him out into the yard. So why would he have gone for the living room?”
Jackie came back into the kitchen and knelt down, looking at the floor closely. “Nothing here,” she said. “No blood, no apparent scuff marks, like you might see if there'd been a struggle.” She got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the dining room. “There's a normal wear pattern on the tiles in here, most of it leading to the living room. You can see a small amount of wear around the table and under it, but the normal traffic pattern would have been from living room through dining room to kitchen, and vice versa.” She got up and moved into the living room, pausing at the doorway, where Sam caught up with her.
“The kitchen and dining room are both very neat,” he said, “everything in place. Somebody running for his life and screaming might run into things, might grab things and throw them at his attacker. It seems to me there should be some more visible indications that there was an altercation taking place.”
Jackie shrugged. “It all depends,” she said. “A lot of times, when people know their attackers, they don't actually panic until it's too late. It's like they think they can talk the person out of whatever they're trying to do, so they don't really get scared until the last minute. Still, the little boy said he heard his father screaming.” Jackie looked back toward the kitchen for a moment and then motioned to Sam. “Follow me,” she said, then turned and went back into the dining room and through another door that led into the hallway. She turned toward the back of the house, where another hall turned off to the right. She followed that one, walked between two doors that were directly across from each other, and opened the second door on the left side of the hall. “This was the kid's room. You step inside here, and I'm going to go to the living room and yell. I want to know how well you can hear me.”
Sam nodded and stepped inside, and Jackie pulled the door shut behind him. A moment later, Sam heard the faint sound of Jackie's voice calling his name. He could barely make it out, and would have missed it had he not been expecting it.
He opened the door and called out, “I could just barely hear you.”
“Okay,” she yelled back. “Let me warn Ned that I'm going to scream. Let's see if you can hear that from in there.”
Sam heard her calling out the front door to her partner, just as he shut the door again. A few seconds later, he heard what sounded almost like a siren going by on the street outside. He opened the door to confirm that what he was hearing was Jackie's scream, and then walked back toward the living room.
“I could hear you, but it was so muffled I wasn't sure if I was hearing a scream or an ambulance going by. That room is just darn near soundproof.”
Jackie looked him in the eye and nodded. “Yeah, I'd say it is. I can scream pretty damn loud, and I just gave it all I had.” She pulled her notebook out again and looked through it for a moment. “Yeah, I thought I made notes on this. The kid said that he was in his room with the door shut, because his dad made him go in there when his mom showed up. Sam, after what we just learned, I'd have to say it would be pretty hard for him to be sure of anything he heard from inside that room, especially if it was coming from all the way out here in the living room.”
Sam nodded, but gave a sigh. “Yeah, but that's not enough to completely discount his story. The prosecutor would come up with some expert to swear that a kid's hearing is better than an adult's.”
“True, but that's not what's bothering me the most about this right now. I'm still stuck on your observation, that if somebody pulled a knife on him in the kitchen, it would have made more sense to run out the back door. Now, if the two of them were actually fighting when this happened, I'm having a hard time imagining that he was in the living room while she was in the kitchen grabbing a knife. Domestic squabbles like this, people tend to chase each other from room to room.”
Sam nodded his head again. “From what Candy said, Carlos was that sort. She says she told him she was leaving to calm down for a bit and would be back, and he grabbed her by the arm, tried to keep her from getting out the door. She yanked her arm away and got scratched.”
Jackie lowered her eyebrows. “They did find traces of skin under the fingernails of his right hand. Which arm got scratched?”
Sam closed his eyes and thought for a moment, then said, “Her left arm, three moderately deep scratches, probably about two or three inches long.”
“On the upper arm, or the forearm? And inside or outside?”
“Forearm, about halfway between elbow and wrist. Outside. I could see them clearly while I was talking to her. She had her arms laying on the table for a few minutes, and they were clearly visible.” Jackie pursed her lips, and Sam asked, “Okay, what are you thinking?”
“That that doesn't sound like a defensive injury. If someone is being attacked with a knife, they have a tendency to grab at the knife hand with both of their own hands. That often results in scratches, but they should be close to the hand, and because they wrap their own hands around the attacker's wrist, some of the scratches ought to be on the inside.” She held out her own left arm. “Can you show me, sort of rake my arm with your fingers like you're trying to scratch me the same way?”
Sam reached out with his right h
and and grabbed Jackie's arm, then pulled it slowly back, letting his fingers drag diagonally across the outer part of her forearm. “Sort of like that,” he said.
Jackie was nodding again. “Then I'm right, and those aren't defensive injuries. I don't know if she actually left or not, but I'd say she's telling the truth about how she got scratches. It sounds like she was trying to move away from him, and he grabbed her arm to hold onto her. She yanked her arm away, and that's what makes that kind of scratches. She got scratched because he was trying to hold on tightly.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, that's exactly what she says.”
Jackie walked over beside the outline of the body and stared down at it. From the position the body had been lying in when the police arrived, it appeared that Carlos had been facing the door into the dining room, at an angle. He would have been standing almost dead center of the living room, facing the dining room door and with his back to the front outer corner of the room.
“Looking at this from a whole new perspective, now,” she said. “What if your girl really did storm out the door? From the position the body was in, it looks like he was maybe standing at the window, and turned around and took a step or two when someone approached him from behind. If an attacker had come in through the back…”
“Or was already hiding in the house,” Sam interjected.
“Or was already hiding in the house, right, and went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and then came in here…The victim might have heard something, turned around, saw someone he knew and started walking toward them, but then the knife comes out from behind that person's back and stabs directly into his heart. The victim was shocked, the attacker yanks the knife out and plunges it back in several times, and the victim falls back without ever having a chance to fight for his life.” She looked back toward the dining room door again, nodded her head once and turned back to Sam. “That's actually a very viable scenario, and could be the way it really happened. Sam, your girl might be telling you the truth. All you gotta do is come up with proof.”