by David Archer
Karen hesitated for a second. “Sam, you do know that there are people in the department who think you're just a little bit crazy, right? I've got to confess that I'm starting to be one of them. Okay, fine, come on over to my house. You know where it is?”
“Yeah, I remember. We'll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
11
Karen opened the door as soon as Sam pulled into the driveway, and waited for him to walk Charlie up onto the porch. “Well, hello, Charlie,” she said. “I've had a lot of people out looking for you. I'm glad to see you're safe.”
Charlie looked down at his feet. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to make trouble.”
Karen stood aside and let them enter the house. “I'm not worried about that,” she said. “We were just all worried that something bad might have happened to you.”
Charlie shrugged and shook his head. “I just had to get away from my grandma and grandpa. All they talk about is how they want my mom to go to the electric chair, and every time I said I wanted to talk to her they got mad at me. My mom isn't a bad person.”
Sam and Charlie sat on the couch, but Karen took a seat across from them. Her daughter, a girl of about fifteen, came into the room with cans of soft drinks and offered them around. Sam and Charlie gratefully accepted.
“Charlie, when we talked the other day, there at your house, you told me that your mom killed your dad. Has something happened to change your mind about that?”
Charlie shrugged. “I'm not really sure what happened,” he said. “The only thing I know for sure is that she wouldn't have done it unless she had a good reason. But me and Mr. Prichard have been talking, and now I'm not so sure she did. I was in my room and it's real hard to hear what's going on in the house from there.”
“Yes, I heard about that,” Karen said. “Mr. Prichard and one of our officers actually tried it, and found out that he couldn't hear what was going on in the living room very well at all, with your door closed. Do you have any other idea what might have happened to your dad?”
Charlie shook his head again. “I don't know. Mr. Prichard asked me if maybe somebody else might have come in, while my mom was gone. Like I said, I couldn't hear very well from inside my room, but I know that sometimes people come in the back door.”
Karen glanced at Sam, then looked back to Charlie. “What kind of people?” she asked.
“Well, sometimes his girlfriend came in that way, but I think there were other people who had a key, too. We always kept the back door locked, so whoever came in that way had to have a key.”
“Do you think anyone came in the back door that morning?”
“I don't know about that,” Charlie said. “The only times I ever heard the back door open was when I had my bedroom door open a little bit. I never saw who came in, though.”
Karen looked at him for a moment. “Why do you think there were other people besides your dad's girlfriend who came in that way?”
Charlie hesitated for a moment. “Well, sometimes I'd hear the door open and close because I had my door open a little bit, and then I would hear somebody talking. Sometimes it wasn't a girl talking, sometimes it was a man.”
Karen nodded. “And could you hear what they were saying?”
Charlie shook his head. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Sometimes I'd hear somebody say my dad's name, but that was about all I could make out.”
“And what about his girlfriend? Who is she?”
“I don't know, my dad always made me go in my room whenever she was supposed to come over. He said I was too young to know her.”
Karen glanced at Sam, who shrugged. “You never heard your dad use her name or anything?”
“No, he just called her his Sweetie Pie. I only saw her once, from the back, and it was dark in the room. I think her hair was black or brown, and it was pretty long. That's all I know.”
Karen thought for a moment, and then changed her tack. “Charlie, tell me more about why you didn't want to stay with your grandparents.”
Charlie shrugged again. “They were just mean, every time they talked about my mom. It's like they hate her. I mean, I know they think she killed my dad, but they don't think about the things that he did.”
Sam and Karen both raised their eyebrows. “What kind of things, Charlie?” Sam asked.
Charlie pulled his head down, as if trying to hide from the question. He sat there in silence for more than a minute, but neither Sam nor Karen said anything more. The silence bore down on the boy, and finally he looked up at Sam.
“My dad hurt people,” Charlie said. “I heard him talking about it a couple of times, about how he had to go and make people do stuff. He said it was funny, how people would cry and beg when he was breaking their arms or something.”
“Was he telling you about it?” Karen asked. “Or was he talking to someone else?”
Charlie hesitated again but only for a couple of seconds. “He was on the phone. I don't know who he was talking to. I told my grandma and grandpa, but they said I was making it up.”
Karen looked at the boy for a moment, then glanced at Sam. “Sam, Charlie looks like he's pretty tired, don't you think?”
Sam nodded and grinned. “Yeah, I think sleeping on the concrete floor last night probably wasn't too comfortable, was it, Charlie?”
Charlie shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “But I don't think I would have gotten any sleep, anyway. I was trying to figure out how to go save my mom.”
“Charlie,” Karen said, “my son Michael has bunk beds. Would you like to get some sleep, and we can talk more about this tomorrow morning?”
Charlie nodded without speaking, and Karen called her son down from his room. The boy was a little younger than his sister, and Sam was surprised to see how much he looked like his late father.
“Michael, this is Charlie. He's going to stay with us tonight, so why don't you take him upstairs so he can get a shower, and then show him your room so he can get to bed.”
Michael nodded and smiled at Charlie. “Sure, mom. Hey, Charlie, come on with me.”
Charlie picked up his backpack and followed Michael up the stairs. Karen waited until they had gotten out of earshot before she turned to Sam.
“I called the Department of Human Services right after you called me, and told them I was probably going to keep Charlie here tonight.” She gave Sam an exasperated sigh. “What do you think you're doing to my investigation? Sam, doggone it, you're throwing so many monkey wrenches into my works that I may have to start all over.”
Sam shrugged. “Would you rather see an innocent woman go to prison? I don't think Candy did this, Karen. From the things I've learned, especially this stuff we're hearing from Charlie tonight, I've got a feeling there was more than one person who might have wanted Carlos dead.”
“Yeah, and probably starting with his girlfriend! What kind of man keeps his girlfriend secret from his kid?”
Sam started to shrug, but then he suddenly looked Karen in the eye. “What kind of man keeps his girlfriend secret from his son? I'll tell you what kind. It's the kind of man whose girlfriend is married to somebody else!”
Karen pursed her lips and nodded. “You may have just hit on it. So now we've got several other potential killers in the mix, including the girlfriend, probably her husband or boyfriend, goodness knows how many people Carlos has bullied, and then there's the mystery man who comes to visit and maybe also talks to Carlos on the phone. And that doesn't even touch on what's going to happen when I tell the prosecutor that my one and only witness is no longer sure of his statement.”
“They're not going to cut her loose, not yet,” Sam said. “I don't know who you got on the prosecutor's table…”
“It's Monica Purvis,” Karen said. “She's a bear, she's got political ambitions.”
“Okay, well, she's undoubtedly going to claim that Charlie is changing his story, and go with the first interview you did with him on camera. That video will carry a lot of weight with the jury, so
she's going to figure she can discredit Charlie's recant.”
“True. Which means that you and I have a lot of work to do.”
“I'm already working on it,” Sam said. “With what Charlie has given us tonight, I'm going to start beating the bushes to find the girlfriend, and go back and talk to Carlos's coworkers. Hopefully I can get somebody to give me a lead on whoever he was breaking legs for.”
“Good. I'll be doing some similar things. Oh, incidentally, you wanted to know about the cases where witnesses suddenly changed their minds, right? I put together a list for you, but I forgot it at the office. If you come by in the morning, I'll give it to you.”
“I'll be there. By the way, I told Charlie that I could arrange for him to see his mom tomorrow. Can you set that up?”
Karen nodded. “Yeah, no problem. It might even do me a little good to watch how they interact. Maybe Charlie will say something to her that he wouldn't say to us.”
Sam thanked her, and got up to leave. His hip was giving him trouble again, and he had to lean heavily on the cane as he walked out to the Ridgeline. He put the truck in gear and backed out of the driveway, then called Indie as he headed for home.
The call went to voicemail, so he just left a message saying that he loved her and Kenzie. He got to the house a few minutes later and went inside to sleep on his couch again.
At eight thirty the next morning, Sam pulled into the parking lot at Davidson lumber. The same clerk directed him back to the docks to find Dean and Leon, and Sam got the impression that he wasn't a bit happy to see the private detective coming back. Sam ignored him and went through the doors to the yard.
Dean was on the forklift, this time, while Leon was holding a clipboard and checking off items that were being loaded onto a truck. Sam walked up to him and held out his ID.
“Leon Schmidt? I'm Sam Prichard, private investigator.”
Leon nodded once. “Yeah, I'd heard you were around asking questions the other day. Don't think I've got anything to say.”
Sam put steel into his eyes. “Do you really think you want to take an attitude like that with me? I'm trying to find out who really killed Carlos McAlester, because I'm pretty darn sure his ex-wife didn't do it. Trouble is, she's the one sitting in jail and facing the possibility of death row. Now, she seems to think of you as a friend of hers, so I'm really hoping you're going to act like a friend and tell me whatever you can that might help her.”
Leon kept looking at his clipboard, speaking out of the corner of his mouth. “Look, man, Carlos was not a nice guy, but he was an absolute choirboy compared to the people he worked for. As far as I know, Carlos never killed anybody, but I'm pretty sure he would have, if they had told him to. I'm also pretty sure that it wouldn't be the first time those people wanted somebody permanently out of the way, know what I mean? I've got a wife and kids, man, I can't afford to have them people mad at me.”
“Look, I can understand exactly what you're saying.” He took out the crosshaired photo of Kenzie and showed it briefly to Leon. “That's my little girl, and I had to take drastic measures to make sure these people couldn't get to her, so I'm with you. I'm not asking you to point fingers or testify, I'm just looking for a lead. Can you give me anything I can use to try to figure out who those people are?”
Leon checked off a couple more items, then turned slightly toward Sam, his voice down to a whisper. “Gerald Pennington,” he said softly. “He can tell you more than I could, and he's not nearly as afraid to talk as I am. That's all I got, and I'd appreciate it if you don't come back.”
“Cool,” Sam whispered back. “Now, cuss me out and throw me out of this place. Loudly.”
Leon looked at the clipboard for another second, then turned around and looked Sam in the eye. “I told you, I got nothing to say to you,” he yelled. “Now you either get lost, or I'm going to toss you right out on your ass! And don't come back!”
Sam pretended to be surprised at his outburst, called him a jerk and then turned around and stomped as well as he could back to the door into the store. He didn't even look at the clerk as he passed the counter, then pushed through the outer doors and headed for the Corvette. He pulled out of the driveway before he took out his phone.
He googled Gerald Pennington and found out that the name belonged to a remodeling contractor. He called the number listed and asked for an appointment to speak with the man, but Pennington invited him to come right on out to his current job site. Sam got the address and punched it into his GPS, and arrived only a half hour later.
12
Pennington saw the Corvette pull in and walked toward it as Sam got out. He extended a hand, and Sam shook it, then produced his ID.
“Mr. Pennington, I'm Sam Prichard, a private detective. I'm trying to get some information that may help me prove my client is innocent of a murder charge, and somebody told me you might be able to help.”
Pennington looked him over for a moment, then smiled. “You working on the McAlester murder? Carlos? Normally I wouldn't say this, but it couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy. You ask me, whoever did it should have made him suffer more before he checked out.”
Sam grinned. “I'm hearing that a lot lately,” he said. “I take it you knew him?”
Pennington rolled up his left sleeve and Sam saw a thick surgical scar. “That's a reminder,” he said. “Carlos paid me a visit about a year and a half ago, and when I told him to get lost he took my arm and broke it like a piece of kindling over the tailgate of my own truck. That probably wouldn't have done him much good, but then he threatened a couple of my employees with even worse things, so I finally agreed to go along with what he wanted.”
Sam's eyebrows went up. “And what was it he wanted?”
Pennington looked around to make sure no one was in earshot, then turned back to Sam. “He wanted me to drop a lawsuit. See, my wife was killed by a drunk driver two-and-a-half years ago, and I had filed a wrongful death suit against the guy who did it. The driver was a local doctor, and somehow or other they managed to lose the breathalyzer report from the evening it happened. The doctor got slapped with a fine and his insurance company paid off fifty grand to me, but I wanted the SOB to pay. Since I couldn't do anything about getting any criminal charges brought back up on him, I filed a wrongful death suit for ten million. I didn't want the money, you understand, I just wanted the man who killed my wife to at least feel some impact over it.” He glanced up at the sun, then took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off of his face. “Anyway, Carlos came around a couple of times telling me I should drop the lawsuit, that I should be content with what the insurance paid and let it go. I told him he could kiss my ass, that I wasn't backing down for any reason, and then he came back a third time. I was alone on a job site, and that's when he busted my arm. I told him I didn't give a crap how many bones he broke, there was no way I was going to drop that lawsuit, but then he showed me a picture. It was one of my drywall guys, with his family. Carlos asked me how I would feel if he and his kids were in a bad wreck of their own, and after what he had just done to my arm, I was pretty sure he'd follow through on that threat. I decided I didn't want anyone else to suffer because of me, so I took out my phone and called my lawyer, told him to drop the lawsuit. Then I went to the hospital and ended up in surgery, getting a couple of steel plates and a dozen screws put into my arm. Now I set off metal detectors everywhere I go.”
Sam shook his head. “Mr. Pennington, do you have any idea how Carlos got involved in this? Did that doctor hire him?”
Pennington laughed, shaking his own head. “He didn't have to,” he said. “All he had to do was call up Randy Whitaker. Whitaker's the one who sent Carlos to visit me.”
Sam's eyes went wide, as the name registered. “Randy Whitaker? The county attorney?”
Pennington was nodding. “The very same,” he said. “Whitaker came after me five years ago, before he was got the county job. I was building a strip mall down on Zuni Street, and he wanted me to go al
ong with a modification to the property survey. He had a client who owned the property right next door, but he needed seven more feet of street frontage to qualify for some government grant or other. They offered me what was probably a fair price for the East End of my property, but that would have forced me to have a whole new building designed, parking lot and all. I turned them down, but Whitaker kept pushing the issue. The last time we talked about it, I told him he could forget it, but he said I ought to take the deal while I could. I asked him what he meant, and he said something about having Carlos explain it to me. Bet you can guess who showed up the next day, right?”
“Carlos McAlester,” Sam said, and Pennington grinned and pointed a finger at him.
“Give that man a cigar,” he said. “Carlos made it clear to me that if I didn't go along with the sale, I'd be looking at having some extremely bad luck in the near future. When I asked what kind of bad luck he was talking about, he just said it would be something that I didn't have enough insurance to cover. I wasn't quite as cocky back then as I am now, and I caved in. I sold that stupid little strip of land for thirty-eight thousand dollars, and then it cost me seventy thousand for a whole new architectural layout.”
Sam settled himself onto the fender of the Corvette. “So maybe Whitaker hired whoever Carlos was working for. What makes you so sure that was Whitaker himself?”
“Because I know a half-dozen other people who went through the same thing when they butted heads with Whitaker. Sometimes it was just Carlos who came to see them, but a couple times Whitaker was with him. Randy Whitaker isn't just a lawyer, he's the worst kind of power broker that any city could ever have. If you want something to go your way, all you have to do is let Whitaker know about it, and not long after that you'll be quoted a price. If you're willing to pay, then whatever you wanted is what happens. I know for a fact that it's Whitaker who gets the money, and Whitaker who pays it out to the lowlife bastards like Carlos McAlester that he sends out to do the job.”