“Thanks, Aaron,” he said. “We’re going to follow up on all this. I’ve got something else that might point his way.”
As they walked out, Aaron said, “I heard Ricky Richards on the radio a while ago. Will Roy did one of those phone interviews with him. He was about to get out of the hospital and said Burt Hilliard was going in with him on starting up the gym again over at the shopping plaza. He sounded real good.”
Sam finally made it home for lunch at half past twelve. Hunter knew when he turned the corner nearest their house, because Flannery suddenly jumped up, let out an excited whine and headed for the back door.
She got up and straightened her shoulders. She didn’t intend to let Sam open a single take-out container until he had looked at the two letters that were waiting for him at the table.
As it turned out, Sam asked about them as soon as he came in the door, and sat down to study the two letters, looking back and forth from one to another, putting his finger on an ampersand here and a misspelled word there. He forgot all about lunch.
“Thanks for picking up on this,” he said to Hunter. “This is really incredible. It may tie everything together.”
While he called Taneesha and Skeet, Hunter opened the containers, placed one in front of him and got a pitcher of sweet tea from the refrigerator.
So far, she thought, maternity leave was turning out to be interesting.
CHAPTER 20
“We’re going to bring Russell Carson in for questioning,” Sam told Taneesha, who got there first.
“You think he was out to get China?” she asked. “He sure is one amazing actor then.”
“Well, he’s obviously got a flare for drama if he wrote these,” Sam said, pointing at the letters, “and I’m thinking now that all his carrying on meant that the interviews with him weren’t as tough as they might have been.”
“How would this tie in with the letter about the fire at the gym?” Taneesha asked.
“Maybe if he loved her so much, he was jealous,” Hunter volunteered. “Maybe he was worried about her spending so much time at the gym – or with Ricky Richards.”
“He blew up about the gym when we were out there,” Taneesha said, “Sort of like he was blaming the gym for China’s losing weight and even for her getting killed.”
“And there may be more to consider with Russell,” Sam said, “Aaron just gave me an interesting report. “
He looked out the window.
“Here’s Skeet. I want to send him to pick up Rondelle, and we’ll question her separately.”
“You think she might be part of it?” Taneesha asked.
“I doubt it,” Sam said, “but if he’s our shooter, she might know a lot more than she’s told us.”
A half hour later, Taneesha and Sam were looking through the kitchen windows of Russell Carson’s house. What they saw was an ordinary tidy kitchen and every indication of an empty house. The van with Carson Cleaners printed on it was there, but Russell’s pickup truck was gone.
“He’d have taken the van if he was on a job,” Taneesha said. “Maybe he’s just running errands.
Sam’s phone buzzed.
“I hate to bother you,” Hunter said, “but I think, well I’m not sure, but I’ve had one not-so-bad pain, and one that kind of real bad, you know…”
“I’m on my way,” Sam said.
His phone buzzed again.
“Hey,” Skeet said, “I’m at Rondelle’s. Her car trunk’s been broken into. Looks like somebody took a crowbar to it. I’m not getting any answer at her door.”
“Call Taneesha,” Sam said, “She’s in charge as of right now. I’ve got to go see about Hunter.”
When Skeet and Taneesha broke the back door to get in, they found Rondelle lying face down on the floor by her bed. There was blood all over the back of her nursing tunic, but she was breathing.
“It’s in the shoulder,” Skeet told Taneesha called the dispatcher.
Rondelle opened her eyes and said, “Russell…”
“We know,” Skeet said. “Don’t worry.”
“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled, frowning, “Don’t worry.”
“We’ve got the EMS on the way,” Taneesha told her.
Rondelle seemed to be gathering her wits.
“Don’t want you tearin’ the place up,” she said. “His gun’s in the freezer on the patio.”
Skeet went off to look.
“Do you know where Russell’s gone?” Taneesha asked.
“I think to the hospital—After Ricky Richards,” Rondelle said.
“It’s an AK47,” Skeet called from the kitchen door.
“Leave it there for the Crime Techs,” Taneesha called back, “And call Bub to help you. I need to call the hospital and get over there.
As she drove, Taneesha called T.J. to meet her at the hospital and got a quick call through to the hospital administrator.
“He signed out this morning,” he said. “Against his doctor’s advice, I might add. His wife brought a wheelchair for him. I assume he’s home. Do you think this person might come here with a gun?”
Taneesha was describing Russell Carson to the head of security as she pulled into the curved driveway at the front entrance of the hospital. She stopped for a family to walk in front of her car, and saw T.J. pull up behind her. She had just stepped out of her car to ask him to call the Richards’ house when she saw Russell Carson.
He was walking calmly up the side ramp to the main entrance, carrying a deer rifle.
She reached for her gun.
The emergency room doctor wasn’t easily surprised, although he did raised his eyebrows when he was told that the man Lt. Taneesha Hays has shot in the leg and then tackled was the brother of the woman who had just gone into surgery to have a bullet removed from her shoulder.
Taneesha, who had never shot anybody, asked T.J. a question she had never imagined asking him
“Did I do the right thing? I couldn’t let him go in the hospital with a gun.”
He looked at her with surprise.
“You were awesome,” he said. “Oh, and you need to have somebody guarding Carson.”
“I know that,” she snapped, back in charge. “Skeet’s taking the first shift, and then he’ll be handcuffed to the bed, and Aaron’s going to stay. I want to make some phone calls to the families.”
“Have you called Sam?”
“I’ve tried, but he has his cell phone off,” Taneesha said. “Mallory’s in the waiting room. She says everybody says it’s all going as it should, but it seems like it’s taking forever to her.”
Mallory sat in the waiting room outside the maternity unit. She had been into Hunter’s room long enough to give her a hug, and then the doctor and nurse had shown up.
Sam had come out once and assured her that everything was going normally, and the doctor thought it might be a couple of hours if she wanted to go back to work.
“I’ve got my laptop,” she said. “I can stay.”
Mary Bailey arrived, went in to visit, and came back out to talk.
“I think this little one’s going to take a while longer,” she said. “I’ll be back with Bethie once we hear from Sam.”
Hunter, in the meantime, wanted to know if Russell Carson was going to be arrested.
Sam took out his cell phone and showed her that it was turned off.
“Taneesha’s in charge,” he said. “Not my problem.”
“I don’t believe you,” Hunter said. “I want to know.”
He shrugged.
“They were just going to question him,” he said. “They’ve probably got him in the conference room now. He might ask for a lawyer, and that would slow things down.”
“Did you even try to talk him into putting the gun down?” Rondelle Carson asked Taneesha with a disapproving glare.
“No, Ma’am, I did not,” Taneesha said. “He was heading for the lobby of the hospital with a rifle in his hand. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.”
“And
he’s also lucky she stopped him,” T.J. Jackson said. “He’s got enough charges against him as it is.”
“Well, that’s all he’s lucky about, I guess,” Rondelle said. “One of the nurses told me you could have given him brain damage, the way you hit his head on that pavement.”
She was propped sideways on a hospital bed.
“Poor Russell,” she said, “He was just so crazy about that silly girl.”
“If he was so crazy about her, why did he shoot her?” T.J. asked.
“I don’t know,” Rondelle said. “Maybe he didn’t mean to. Maybe he was just after Ricky Richards, and she got in the way.”
“Ms. Carson,” Taneesha said. “If that gun from your freezer turns out to be the one used in the shootings on the bridge, your brother is going to be charged with killing three people and seriously wounding another, He’s also going to be charged with shooting you, and I should point out that he left you for dead. How about telling me how that happened.”
“It was about the gun,” Rondelle said. “I had taken his deer rifles away after China died because I was worried he was going to shoot himself. I told y’all about that. And anyway I hadn’t given them back, and I found that ugly old black military rifle under his bed yesterday.
“He went out to put some more flowers on China’s grave, and I was changing the sheets for him, because I knew he wasn’t going to take off the ones she had slept on. Anyway, I pretty much knew what his having that gun meant, so I took it and hid it while I could decide what I had to do. I didn’t go back to his house because I knew I couldn’t even look at him without his knowing something.
“So when did he come to your place?” T.J. asked.
“It was almost eleven,” she said, “He was breaking into my car trunk first. I went out and started yellin’ at him about damaging my car that way, and he had it open by that time and started yellin’ back, which he never has done to me. He followed me into my house askin’ me where the other gun was, and I told him I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about and to go away or I was going to call 911 even if he was my brother. Then I turned to go get my phone, and he shot me. I can’t believe Russell would shoot me. Then he was tearin’ all around the house lookin’ for the army gun, and finally he left. I was just layin’ there playin’ dead. After he left I tried to get up a couple of times, but I fainted both times.”
She stopped and said. “I’m gonna be fine, but he needs a good lawyer, doesn’t he?”
Taneesha nodded, thinking to herself that she didn’t want it to be Jeremy.
“I guess we’ll have to sell some land,” Rondelle said, as if she were ready to take charge again. “We need somebody good, maybe from Atlanta.”
Piano music suddenly came over the intercom.
Taneesha stopped and listened.
It was “Rockabye, Baby.”
The sound of clapping came from the nurses’ station.
Rondelle looked exasperated.
“They do that every single time a baby is born,” she said.
Taneesha turned to T.J. with a smile and said, “The maternity wing is right around the corner. Do you want to go and see how Russell is doing? I’ll be just a minute.”
In the delivery room, Baby Bailey was five minutes old, and still adjusting to a world of bright lights, warm touches and gentle sounds.
Just outside, in the waiting room Mallory Bremmer was adding a banner at the top of The Magnolia County Messenger’s website. She finished, read it over once and saved it as she called Tyler Bankston.
“Look at the website,” she said to him.
“Just tell me,” he said impatiently.
“No, Hunter said you had to see it on the news.”
“The website isn’t the news!” Tyler said.
“Well, then you can wait until Wednesday,” Mallory said, laughing.
Tyler grumbled and found his way to the icon for the website.
At the top, he read the announcement, printed on a blue banner:
Hunter Jones and Sam Bailey
Announce the birth of their son and Bethie Bailey’s baby brother, Tyler Bankston Bailey on April 24th.
(8 lbs. 3 oz.)
“So?” Mallory asked after a long wait, “How’s that for a scoop?”
Tyler couldn’t make his voice work quite right.
“They really did that?” he finally managed to ask.
“They really did,” Mallory said, “And here come Bethie and Sam’s mom, and Taneesha’s right behind them. I need to get some pictures!”
CHAPTER 21
Hunter cradled little Tyler in her arms as Bethie sat on the side of the bed studying him intently.
“Was I this little?” she asked her father.
“He’s not that little for a newborn,” Sam said. “He’s over eight pounds. You were only seven.”
“Can I hold him?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Hunter said. “It’s still my turn. Your Daddy got him first and wouldn’t give him up until he was all bathed and dressed.”
There was a knock on the door, and Mallory tiptoed in.
“Do you want to see the announcement?” she asked. “I think it made Mr. Bankston cry.”
She held her laptop for Hunter to see.
“That’ll show ’em!” Hunter holding her baby a little closer and smiling. “We finally printed some news that nobody already knew!”
Then the smile became a yawn.
“I think Mom needs a nap,” Bethie said to Sam. “Can I hold Tyler now?”
In another room, on another floor, Russell Carson lay perfectly still with one wrist handcuffed to the bed rail.
Skeet sat beside him, looking at a fishing magazine.
“I never meant to kill China,” Russell said.
“You have a right to a lawyer,” Skeet said automatically.
“I don’t care,” Russell said. “I just don’t want anybody to think I meant to kill China. I didn’t even know it was her on that bike. I didn’t even know she was going to ride with them that morning. I thought it was Ricky Richards’ wife. My glasses got fogged up.”
“If you’re going to talk about it, I’m going to record what you’re saying,” Skeet said, reaching for his digital recorder and his cell phone at the same time. He turned the recorder on and pressed a number on his cell phone.
“I don’t care. I just want it in the papers and on the radio that I never meant to kill China. I wouldn’t have killed China no matter what she did. I would have forgiven her and even raised that baby for my own, but I didn’t even know she was pregnant until y’all told me.”
Taneesha came through the door a minute later.
“Mr. Carson,” she said formally, “You are under arrest for the murders of China Carson, Jim Jordan and Annie Chapman, for shooting Ricky Richards and Rondelle Carson, and for arson in the case of the GetFit Gym. You have a right to remain silent…”
“Whatever you say,” he interrupted, “as long as y’all know I didn’t ever mean to kill China, no matter what, not even if Ricky Richards got her pregnant. I didn’t know that was China I shot. I thought it was Richards’ wife. She’s skinny like China got to be. I thought it was her. I didn’t know…”
Taneesha had a dozen questions she wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to do anything that might be a problem in the trial later, so she said, quite clearly for the recording, “Mr. Carson, your sister says she is going to arrange for your legal representation.”
“Is Rondelle alive?” he asked.
“Very much so,” Taneesha said. “You just got her in the shoulder.”
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, “I just went a little crazy when I heard Ricky Richards on the radio, talking to Will Roy like everything was just wonderful. Here my China’s dead because of him, and he’s back on his feet like nothin’ happened at all. I thought I’d run him outta business by settin’ that fire in the gym, and then somebody comes right along to help him get the whole thing started again.”
Shellie Carstairs was about to leave work and take some flowers to Hunter at the hospital, when she remembered to check her e-mail one more time.
And there it was: the message and picture Hunter had wanted to be sent from the Ocoochee County Sheriff’s Office.
She opened it to forward it to Hunter’s e-mail, and decided to see if she recognized the girl who had sent Jim Jordan her picture in an unsigned Valentine.
She did.
It was China Carson.
The next morning, with full cooperation from the Ocoochee County Sheriff’s office and the GBI, Jim Jordan’s laptop computer and a box of his personal papers, including a Valentine drawn by China Carson, was on its way to Merchantsville.
On Wednesday, just as The Magnolia County Messenger was about to go to press with a banner headline of ‘Carson charged in Foxtail Creek shooting,’ Hunter was waking up from a much-needed nap on the sofa.
“Ty’s still sleeping,” Sam told her, “Four hours. I think that’s his record so far. Mom’s here and Miss Rose is in the kitchen making chicken salad sandwiches. I need to go interview Russell Carson now that he’s got a lawyer.”
“Who’s representing him?” Hunter asked, struggling to sit up. “Did Rondelle find him a hotshot lawyer from Atlanta?”
Sam laughed and sat down beside her.
“I’m afraid not,” he said, “He made a mistake when he shot Rondelle. Once she got her head clear she decided to look after her own interests and got some legal advice. She’s already gotten him to sign his half of the house and the business over to her. Taneesha was a witness. Rondelle told Russell that Ricky Richards might sue over his business losses, and Russell’s still fixated on Ricky.
“Nobody’s told him it wasn’t Ricky?” Hunter asked.
“Nope, and Rondelle doesn’t know either,” Sam said. “Taneesha’s told Molly Bloomfield, though.”
“Molly’s representing him?”
“For now, anyway,” Sam said. “He’s indigent now that he’s signed everything over to Rondelle.”
Over Troubled Water: A Hunter Jones Mystery Page 18