by Mike Markel
“All right, Mary,” I said, “thanks for that. Could you look up Cory McDermott?”
She hit some keys, then read for a few moments. “Cory McDermott entered the university the same year as Lake, but he was a year or so younger—he wasn’t a transfer. Football scholarship, like Lake, but he went on academic probation and never managed to pull his grades up. He stayed two years, then left.” She looked up at me and Ryan. “It’s such a shame when that happens. We have all kinds of programs in place, especially for the athletes. I know the athletics department does everything it can to monitor their progress. They have tutors on call, and when they learn that a student’s in trouble … well, it’s just a shame.” She paused a second. “Is Cory in some kind of trouble?”
Since Mary felt free to tell me why she couldn’t identify the girl who accused Lake of rape, I felt free to tell her about my job. “Cory is a drug dealer. Has been for years. He’s a bad guy. We think he might have sold Lake the drugs that killed him.” Mary ran a hand through her hair and exhaled. “We don’t have an address on him. We’d like to get him off the streets under any circumstances. That’s why we’d like to contact the girl. If she knew Lake, she might know Cory. We’re not gonna publicize her name or do anything to embarrass her. But it would save us a lot of time. We’ve got a bulletin out on Cory now. If we could get to him soon—before he has a chance to throw his stuff in the back of a pickup and hit the interstate—we’d have a better chance of putting him in prison.”
Mary Dawson knit her brows. I could see she really wanted to help us but couldn’t. “You understand I’ll do anything I can to help you.”
As Ryan and I stood, I said to her, “I do know that, Mary, and I’m sorry to put you in a bind like this.” I pulled a card out of my big leather shoulder bag and wrote my personal cell number on it. I handed it to her. “Any time, day or night.”
Ryan and I left the dean of students’ office and made our way out to the parking lot in front of the Administration Building. We got in the Charger.
“Well, that’s good to know.” I turned to Ryan. “Cory was on the football team with Lake.”
“Yes, that certainly is.”
“What else did you get?”
“The girl was probably his girlfriend,” Ryan said, “or at least a social friend. He didn’t jump out of the bushes and attack her.”
“Because she said he was getting angry and aggressive?”
“That’s right. And the girl was white.”
“Huh?”
“Remember what the girl’s father said when he attacked Lake?”
“Something about how it was crazy that anyone would believe him over his daughter.”
“How Lake was an animal,” Ryan said. “Which is code for black—if you’re white, that is.”
“Okay, smart boy, how are we gonna find her?”
“I’ll need twenty minutes …” He raised an eyebrow, inviting me to ask him some more.
I just looked at him.
Finally, he spoke. “Of course, I’d be happy to tell you how: It’ll be in the photos.”
“What photos?”
“Game photos, publicity photos of the players going to the pediatric ward to meet with sick kids, photos of the team doing tourist things at away games.”
“How are those photos gonna identify her? And before you answer, I just want to go on record: You’re extremely annoying.”
“You’re a black kid from a bad background. You earn your keep playing football at a white-bread school—in Montana, of all places. What kind of white girl are you going to go after?”
I’m not nearly as smart as Ryan, and the gap between us is getting bigger because I’m getting older twice as fast as he is, but most days I can still think at a rudimentary level. “The kind who shakes pom-poms.”
“Very good.”
“Isn’t that kind of a cliché?”
“Your point is that a black football player wouldn’t want to hook up with a pretty white girl because the other players would make fun of him because it’s a cliché?”
“Okay, let’s go back to headquarters. I’ll give you twenty minutes.”
I drove us back and carded us in the rear entrance. We settled into our chairs. A little while later, Ryan leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his back. He cleared his throat theatrically.
I looked at my watch. It hadn’t taken Ryan twenty minutes; it had taken fourteen minutes. Like I said: extremely annoying.
Chapter 5
Ryan said, “The student who said Lake raped her was named Alicia Weber.”
“You found a newspaper story or something?”
“No, Karen. There are no newspaper stories.” He spoke slowly and patiently, his tone just this side of obnoxious. “She never filed legal charges, and the university disciplinary committee never reached a finding.”
“Let me see what you’ve got.” I walked around behind him and leaned in to see his computer.
He hit a key, and the computer began to scroll through a series of photographs, one every five seconds. There were photos of the cheerleaders working the sidelines. Then there were photos of the cheerleaders and the players at banquets, at a middle-school football camp, at the zoo with a bunch of toddlers and moms, at a zip line near town. Each photo included the same tall, athletic woman with broad shoulders, high boobs, and a wide smile. Her fine light-brown hair was shoulder-length. She had wide-set grey eyes, pale skin with faint freckles on her cheeks, and a slender nose. In every picture, she was standing next to Lake. As the slideshow progressed, she and Lake got chummier. Then a photo showed Lake kissing her on the cheek; she was laughing and hugging him.
There was one more photo: a blowup of a portion of Alicia Weber’s transcript, complete with a headshot in the upper left, showing her complete withdrawal from the university the fall semester, when the incident occurred, and her re-enrollment the next fall.
I stepped back and gave him a look.
“I rest my case.” Ryan put up his palms and tilted his head.
I appreciate that Ryan saves me all kinds of time by doing stuff I don’t know how to do, but sometimes his cheerful efficiency pisses me off. “Good work. But this was seven years ago, right? She might have a new name, a new address.”
He leaned back in and hit some keys, which pulled up her wedding announcement from the newspaper. Alicia Weber had married Stephen Templeton four years ago.
“That’s a new name, not a new address.”
He raised his index finger and held it there. His expression said, Don’t make me do it.
“You’re hideous.”
He gave me one of his big grins. “Say it, Karen: ‘I am in awe of you, Ryan.’”
My phone rang. I walked back around to my desk. The phone screen read “Lab.” I picked up and hit Speaker. “Hello, Robin.”
“Bad news first?”
“Why not?”
“The fingerprints on the drug baggie are no good. By the way, it was heroin.”
“And the good news?”
“She left her blood in the syringe.”
“She?”
“You know: a female human.”
“You saying there was no blood from the vic?”
“No, I’m saying it was a party: one male human and one female. The blood from the guy is probably the vic’s, but I can’t say for sure yet until you authorize me to type the DNA.”
“Do it, both of them.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Thank you.” I hung up.
Ryan said, “Could be the woman out at the camp.” He flipped a page in his notebook. “Kendra, they said her name was. Want to go out there?”
I thought for a moment. “No, let’s see if Robin can identify her. If it’s Kendra or someone in our system, yeah, we’ll follow up. But if Robin can’t tell us who it is, we’ll have wasted a trip—the guys aren’t gonna tell us anything.”
“Talk to Alicia?”
“Yeah, let’s try to figu
re out if Lake really raped her or she was just pissed at him—”
“For seeing other women?”
“Seeing them, screwing them, whatever.”
“Then the father?”
“We’ll give her a chance to level with us. If she bullshits us, we’ll decide whether to talk to her father. That sound good to you?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Okay,” I said, “where do we find Alicia Templeton?”
“At Alicia Templeton Real Estate, of course.”
“Of course. Bring the photos of her with Lake, in case the whole episode has slipped her mind.”
Ryan copied the file to his tablet and we headed out to the parking lot and drove the twelve minutes to Alicia Templeton Real Estate, a narrow storefront in a sixties strip mall. A dozen property listings were taped to the inside of the window. We opened the glass door.
A woman of around thirty-five looked up from the reception desk. We introduced ourselves. She looked concerned. I told her there was nothing to be alarmed about, but that Alicia’s name had come up in an investigation. She told us Alicia was out staging a property and gave us the address. It was a mile out of town, in a development called the Willows.
We drove over. There were no willows, but there was an Audi SUV and an unmarked panel truck at the curb. The front door was open an inch. I walked in and called out, “Hello?”
An Hispanic guy, late twenties, jeans and T-shirt, came out. “Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for Alicia Templeton.”
He shook his head, like he’d never heard of her.
“The real-estate agent? The woman who hired you?”
He nodded and smiled. “Sorry. In the dining room.” He pointed, then walked off in the other direction.
The house looked about five years old, a standard three-bedroom, two-bath, two stories. No furniture. The off-white paint on all the walls looked and smelled new. We walked across the freshly cleaned beige carpets into the empty dining room, which had a hardwood floor. Beneath the glass chandelier, a tall, athletic woman was on her hands and knees, head cocked, her light brown hair grazing the floor. The hair was cut a little shorter than in her photos, but it was clearly the same woman. She seemed to be checking out whether the floor needed refinishing.
She looked up as she heard us approach. “Can I help you?” She offered us a business smile, half annoyed that we had stopped by unannounced and half hopeful that we were looking for a three-bedroom, two-bath. Her eyes darted from me to Ryan. She was trying to figure out what kind of weird couple we were. I was too young to be his mother but too old and too beat up to be his wife or girlfriend.
“Ms. Templeton, my name is Detective Karen Seagate. This is my partner, Detective Ryan Miner.” She rose to her feet in a single motion, the way some fit young people can. Her expression was clouded. “There’s no problem, Ms. Templeton, we just need to talk to you a few minutes.”
Relieved, she exhaled, then smiled. “Thank goodness.” I wanted to ask her which toothpaste she used. Her tangerine blazer over a sheer white blouse said she was ready for business—but still fun! Her figure was perfect, a little on the slender side. She hadn’t put on a pound since college.
“Is there someplace we can talk?” The guys were clomping around as they carried furniture into the house.
“Let’s go upstairs. They’ll be down here a while.”
Ryan and I followed her up the stairs and into the master bedroom, which was empty. Light shone in through a big bay window looking west.
“How can I help you?”
“We’re working on a case, and your name came up,” I said. “LaKadrian Williams. He died.”
I stopped right there. Telling a person that someone they knew had just died won’t necessarily tell you anything important, but it’s always a good idea to pay attention to how they react. Alicia Templeton’s eyes widened in disbelief before a look of sadness came over her face. Either she didn’t know he was dead or she had put some thought into how she would react when we stopped by. My instinct told me she didn’t know.
“Oh, my God.” She shook her head, her hair swaying. “What happened?”
“We’re not sure yet, but we think he died of a drug overdose.” Her gaze drifted off into the distance. “Have you seen him lately?”
She came out of whatever reverie she was in. “Seen him? No, not in years.”
“Could you tell us about your relationship with him?”
She straightened her posture. “I don’t have any relationship with him.”
“I mean, when you two were in college.”
“He was a football player. I was a cheerleader.” She put out her palms, as if there was nothing more to it than that.
“Ms. Templeton, we can see you’re pretty busy, getting this house ready. So let’s save everyone some time. Lake Williams died last night. He and a woman were shooting heroin in the homeless camp out in Ten Mile Park, which is where he lived the last few months of his life. We need to find that woman and talk to her about what happened.”
Although Alicia Templeton didn’t look even remotely like a junkie—her grey eyes were bright and focused, her skin clear, and she was full of energy—I saw no reason to suggest I had ruled her out as Lake’s shooting buddy.
“You have to be kidding. You think I took drugs with Lake last night?” She smiled in disbelief.
I wasn’t smiling. “Ms. Templeton, we don’t think anything. We’re just talking with you, seeing if you can help us understand what happened last night.”
“I have no idea what happened to Lake. I haven’t seen him in years. I didn’t know he was homeless. Why are you asking me about this?” She seemed a little more upset by my attitude than she had been, a moment earlier, when she learned he was dead. That happens.
“Can you tell us why the two of you broke up?”
“Broke up? What are you talking about?”
“All right, Ms. Templeton. We’ll stop here.” I turned to Ryan. “We have Ms. Templeton’s home address, right?”
Ryan nodded gravely. “We do.”
“How about this, Ms. Templeton? We’ll stop by this evening to talk more. You’ll be home, correct?”
“What? Wh-what are you …?”
Her arms were out in a gesture that said, This can’t be happening. But in fact it was. Nothing works like a phony threat to stop by a married woman’s house later to talk about a dead former boyfriend.
I pointed to the bay window, with a built-in bench topped by a custom-fitted cushion. “Would you take a seat, please, Ms. Templeton?”
As she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, I could see a slight tremor. She went over to the bench and sat down. Ryan closed the bedroom door, and I drifted over toward her. She sat with her knees together tight, her arms folded across her chest.
“Okay, Ms. Templeton. We don’t need to stop by your house, interrupt your family time, if you’ll work with us now. But you need to understand where we are. This is a police investigation. If you lie to us or withhold information that could help us understand what happened, that’s obstruction of justice. At least a misdemeanor, could be a felony. You could be arrested and prosecuted.” I paused. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She nodded but wouldn’t make eye contact.
“Ms. Templeton, please look at me. Answer my question. Do you understand what I’m saying—about obstruction of justice?”
She raised her head. “Yes.” Her eyes were glistening. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking about Lake or the possibility of getting into some legal trouble.
“Thank you. Now, let me ask you again: Why did you and Lake break up?”
“He was fooling around with other girls.”
“So you just broke up? That was all there was to it?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. We were college kids, we went out for a while, then we stopped. I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Ms. Templeton, I’m going to ask you the qu
estion one more time. Your next answer is important. If you lie again, we will take you in for questioning and have you make a formal statement. You’ll have to send the furniture guys away and lock up the house. It could take some hours.”
Ryan drifted over toward the window so that the two of us were standing over Alicia Templeton. Her body tensed up, and she looked frightened.
“So you just broke up?” I said. “That was all there was to it?”
She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Lake cheated on me. A lot. I knew that about him. All the players were like that. The girls on the squad knew that.”
“The cheerleaders?”
“Yes, we all knew that. But, you know, it was exciting, going out with them.”
“If you knew the guys cheated, why did you break up with him?”
She was silent a moment. “He became violent. He hit me a few times. He used to be the sweetest guy. He was so gentle. Then, all of a sudden, he would go crazy.”
“What made him go crazy?”
“It could be anything. Something I did or said. Or wore. Or something that happened to him that day. A bad practice, a fight with another player or one of the staff. Or a bad grade on a quiz or something. Anything at all.”
“Did he take drugs back then?”
“He used to smoke weed, I know that. All the guys did. And he had pills for the pain.”
“Where did he get the pills?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. But all the players took pills. And I know they got injections, too. Painkillers.”
The guys downstairs were laughing and speaking loudly in Spanish.
“Tell me about the disciplinary hearing at the university. You charged him with rape.”
Sometimes people are so ashamed or embarrassed or traumatized about stuff that happened they won’t bring it up, but if someone mentions it matter-of-factly so they don’t have to say it themselves, they won’t deny it.
“He hit me sometimes. But then he would be very loving. He’d want to make up with me. Sometimes it, you know, it turned into …” She couldn’t say sex.