by Ace Collins
The other assignment: talk with Heather Jameson, Evans’ law partner and Kaitlyn’s best friend. Curtis was a crime-scene investigator;she usually farmed out the interviews with witnesses. She believed it was a lot easier to sort out the lies by reading a transcript than by sitting across from a witness. The upcoming interview might be even worse than babysitting the vic’s husband.
It had been a busy morning. She had already been back to the crime scene, where she was informed no bullet fragments or any other clues of real use had been uncovered. She had reviewed her notes on the law partner. And she had checked on the search for the missing deputy. Still nothing. Hope for her survival was dimming.
The only good thing about the morning had been the pancakes and bacon. Jameson had agreed to meet for coffee at Fannie’s. Thankfully, Curtis had gotten to the cafe in time to tackle her first real meal in days, alone, just the way she liked it. There was nothing like the taste of real butter and pure maple syrup in solitude to relieve the stress of an unwanted assignment.
As she ate, she kept going over the details of the case. No car appeared to have crossed Old Iron; on the other side of the bridge, the muddy road wasn’t disturbed. On the highway side of Burns Creek, near where the bridge used to rest, there were signs of a vehicle pulling off the road and onto a mostly rocky area. The rain, the darkness, and some bushes would have made it difficult for anyone to see even a white car on that night. That was probably where the killers were when Deputy Stuart arrived at the scene.
Curtis sipped some coffee. Maybe they couldn’t cross the bridge, which the evidence seemed to prove. They must have driven out in the few minutes between when the ambulance left and the backup arrived. And they took Deputy Stuart with them. Drowning had been all but ruled out. Curtis’s team and the locals had searched all of the area downstream from the bridge and found nothing.
But there was one big hole in that theory: why would the killers shoot two people and not a third? Especially a deputy who just happened on the scene. Or did she? Had she heard something that made her investigate closer to the creek?
The background check on Stuart proved fruitless. She was as clean as a whistle, a dedicated lawman who was respected by her peers and the local citizens. There was nothing to say that Stuart was involved. For now, that was off the board.
“Then what happened to her? ” Did she actually say that out loud? She had. Yet if anyone in the busy cafe heard the question, they didn’t respond. They were too engrossed in their own response to the town’s tragedy. The mood in the cafe was somber. The whole town was that way. It was like the whole town was in shock. This wasn’t like the city, where a person died and no one seemed to notice.
After savoring the last bite of pancake, Curtis swiped her mouth with her napkin and leaned back in the wooden chair. A large white-haired woman in an apron approached her table.
“Did y’all like the fixin’s? ” Her voice was almost as big as her body, and while her desire to please appeared to be sincere, her smile seemed forced. Like everyone else, she probably had known Kaitlyn Evans.
“It was wonderful,” Curtis replied. “I can’t tell you when I’ve enjoyed a meal as much.”
“Glad it hit the spot,” the woman said, her tone now more serious. “It’s on the house. I know you’re looking for Kaitlyn’s killers. I want you to know my place is your home kitchen as long as you’re here. I loved that little girl like she was one of mine. Lije is special to me too, and to about everyone else here too, so you get whoever did this and put them away. It’s only by doing that that the healing can start. And this town’s hurtin’ plenty right now.”
“We’ll do all we can,” Curtis replied. Looking the woman in the eye, she added, “But you don’t have to give me anything. It’s my job.”
“Well, I’m not figuring a bill for you, deary.”
“That is very much appreciated. Thank you, but there’ll be a large tip on the table.”
Tears welling in her eyes, Fannie said, “If you leave anything, it’ll go to one of Kaitlyn’s projects. A lot of us are going to make sure her touch is felt for a long time around here.” The older woman turned and shuffled sadly back to the kitchen.
“Kaitlyn Evans sure made an impact here,” Curtis said quietly. Again her words were meant for no one, but this time someone did hear them.
“YES, SHE DID,” SAID A YOUNG WOMAN APPROACHING the table. “Since I know everyone else in here, I’m assuming you are Agent Curtis.”
Curtis looked up. The woman appeared barely old enough to be out of college. Well-dressed, attractive, average height. And nervous. Heather Jameson, the lawyer.
“Miss Jameson,” Curtis said as she pointed to an empty chair. “Would you like something to eat?”
“No. Fannie will bring me some coffee when she gets a moment. I really haven’t been very hungry since …” Jameson didn’t finish, just let the words drift off as she took a seat facing the window.
Curtis was prepared. She had an ABI file on Jameson, put together for her overnight, and some of the things in that report didn’t match up with the person who was sitting across from her. Curtis had come to know that the adage “you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover” definitely applied in criminal investigations. At least it did when working with evidence, so surely it applied when interviewing people.
It was Jameson who finally broke the silence. “Any leads?”
“Not much. Have you seen Lije yet? He’s due to leave the hospital around noon.”
“I stopped by the hospital on my way here. Lije wanted me to pick up some clothes from the house. He’s sore but seems pretty strong. You know the whole town’s helping him get through this. You wouldn’t believe how many pies and cakes are on his table right now. All of us are worried about him. Kaitlyn was the most important person in his life.”
“I think that’s obvious,” Curtis replied. She was determined to put an edge on this conversation and make sure the other woman sensed that her primary concern was not a mourning man but finding a woman’s killer. After a calculated pause, she plunged forward. “I hope he’ll take care of himself, be careful. We have a man there keeping watch on the house to make sure no one tries to finish what was started two nights ago.”
“I met your agent this morning,” Jameson said. “He seems like a nice man. But you need to know that keeping Lije under your control won’t be easy. When he gets to feeling better, he’ll resent the security, the babysitting idea. I know him well. When he wasn’t with Kaitlyn, he liked to be by himself. From what I’ve been told, he’s always been a loner. So he’s not going to want you looking over his shoulder.”
“Understood.” Curtis smiled. How did this young woman know what Lije’s habits were when he wasn’t with Kaitlyn? “But that’ll be my call, not his, and certainly not yours. So Lije, and you for that matter, will need to get used to seeing me and my people around.” My people, that sounded good. She liked it; she could get used to it too.
“I understand and I even agree with you, but Lije might well be a challenge for you. So be warned.” Jameson was picking up Curtis’s tone.
It appeared to Curtis that Jameson wanted to cut short this meeting. So instead of saying anything, she simply stared at the other woman. Her look was cold and calculating, and within seconds Jameson began wilting under the pressure.
“I really don’t think I can be any help to you,” Jameson said. “And I have a great deal to do to help plan for the funeral …”
Curtis repressed a grin when Jameson let her words drift off and nervously crossed her legs. She then turned her head toward the street and drummed her fingers on the table.
Curtis had this woman worried. She was beginning to understand why Barton loved this process, this one-on-one, so much. Picking people apart, making them sweat—it was actually fun. As she remained quiet and watched, the other woman seemed to shrink before her eyes.
According to the ABI report, Jameson had come to town three years before. Lije hired her, an
d Kaitlyn adopted her like a sister. The two women went to church and the gym together and even played on the same softball team. They made frequent shopping trips to Little Rock. They were like family. It would seem that this closeness, combined with her excellent work at Evans’ law practice, made her the last person anyone would suspect of being involved in a serious crime. But the woman the town knew and the woman revealed in the file resting on the table were very different indeed. It was the hidden Jameson that Curtis relished unveiling, and there was no better time to start than now.
“Miss Jameson, I understand you partied hard in college.”
The question caught Jameson by surprise. “Yes, but I don’t see—”
With a gesture, Curtis interrupted her. She opened the file and leafed through some pages. She wanted to let Jameson squirm a bit longer before dropping a series of bombs on her.
“You almost died one night from an overdose. During your junior year, you were caught forging checks to pay for your habit. Opted out of jail time by entering a rehab program. Then you came back to college, seemed to get your life together, and were accepted into law school. Does that pretty much sum up your college life? I can toss out some affairs, a bit of cheating, and a few other things, but why bother?”
“I wasn’t Snow White,” Jameson said.
Curtis didn’t reply. She read through an email message she had printed out that morning. One of her investigators, Art Skymanski, had looked into Jameson’s family and discovered her father was an alcoholic. In the last few years, the booze had affected his focus and pretty much ruined his life. He even lost his business. His wife, Jameson’s mother, had grown so distraught she committed suicide about five months ago. “Your mother’s death must have hit you hard.”
“It wasn’t easy. Don’t think I could’ve gotten through it without Kaitlyn…. Am I being charged with something?”
“Should you be? ” Curtis sat back and gauged the woman’s reaction. She was not shocked when the words came quickly and with great force. Denial was often the first line of defense.
“No. No way. The Evanses were like family to me, and I’d rather die than have anything happen to Kaitlyn.”
Ignoring the protest, Curtis plunged on. “Your father is up to his gills in debt. He’s close to losing his home. I can’t begin to imagine what it’d be like for me if I saw my dad in that situation. I’d do just about anything to save him.”
Jameson appeared both angry and hurt but kept her voice down. She knew everyone in the cafe, so she probably wasn’t ready to be openly hostile. Though you had to be impressed that the woman kept punching back and remained in the fight.
“If you’re implying that I might have been involved, then you’re way off base. If I needed any kind of help, I could’ve asked Lije and Kaitlyn directly. They would’ve jumped right in.”
“I would agree with you,” Curtis replied, “if it was just your father who needed help.”
“What’s your point?”
Everyone in the cafe heard her this time—exactly what Curtis wanted. Taking a deep breath, the agent, lowering her voice a bit, aired out her theory. “I think it’s possible that the pressures of your father’s problems, combined with your mother’s suicide, awoke some old demons. It’d be very understandable if you collapsed under the weight and got reinvolved with drugs. It says here that cocaine was your drug of choice, and that’s not cheap.”
Jameson didn’t pause to consider the accusation. “Unless you have proof, you appear to be out on a limb. I’m clean and have been for years.”
Curtis nodded, then continued calmly, “Your bank account is overdrawn by more than a thousand dollars. You’re behind on your car payments. In the past three months, you have somehow gone through more than twenty-five thousand in savings.” Pointing, she added, “You obviously need money and need it badly.”
Jameson was now close to cracking. Curtis recognized the signs. Even if the financial meltdown wasn’t caused by drugs, when word got out, imagine what this would do to her pristine image in this small town. It would kill her law career before it really had a chance to get started. She was in deep trouble, and she probably was just beginning to realize how everything Curtis had laid out must look.
Jameson looked down at her hands and the napkin her fingers were shredding. When she looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. “I know the pain that comes with causing a death. I still have problems living with that. My … I could never … I just could never.”
Curtis absorbed her words; they sounded sincere. They seemed as honest as any she had heard in a long time. But what was she referring to? What death? Her mother’s suicide? If Curtis had learned anything in all of her investigations, it was that people can get a warped sense of blame, of responsibility. The other thing she had learned was that everybody lies. The file in front of her spoke volumes.
“Heather, I don’t have any more questions now. But I’m asking you to stay in town, where you can be reached,” Curtis said and closed the file.
Head down, Jameson cried silently for a moment, then she looked up at Curtis, put on a brave smile, and got up and left. Curtis watched as she got into a well-used car and drove away.
The agent jotted down a few notes in the file and sat there, just thinking. Then she dug out a ten-dollar bill, placed it on the table, and got up to go.
She stepped outside and took in the scene for a moment, this time as a tourist, not as an investigator. From the century-old two-story courthouse to the sidewalks that sat four feet above the streets, Salem looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It was the America of the past, a living postcard of a day when people didn’t lock their doors and paid for everything with cash. Yet there were cracks in the veneer; many of the beautiful stone and brick buildings that lined the square were empty, the businesses they had housed replaced by discount chains and new stores out on the highway. The whole country was changing that way. Progress. She wished she could’ve seen the town in its heyday, when the buildings were filled, business was bustling, and the sidewalks were crowded.
“It was a nice town until two nights ago,” Fannie announced from the door of the cafe.
Curtis turned back.
“You know,” Fannie said, “I remember as a kid getting cherry Cokes over in the stone building on the left side of the square. Humphrey’s Drug. They had real cherry Cokes. You ever tasted a real one, mixed by hand? I doubt if I’ll ever taste anything that good again.”
Curtis looked at the place where the drugstore had once operated. On the outside, the building looked sound. A Coca-Cola sign still hung in the window, neon letters spelling Rexall still topped the awning, and store hours were still posted on the door. Driving by, one might think the store was open. But from where she stood, she could see through the dusty glass that there was nothing inside but a memory. The building was simply a shell, a relic from another age.
“It was an innocent time then,” Fannie added. She pulled her apron up to her eye and wiped a tear. “They’ll bury that innocence this week with Kaitlyn.”
Curtis nodded. What she kept trying to understand was how one woman could mean so much to so many different people. Maybe it was because this was such a small town and everyone knew everyone. Whatever the reason, the agent had never experienced anything like it.
Of course, this case had presented her with a lot of firsts.
“Thanks for the wonderful breakfast,” Curtis said.
The woman nodded. “You’re wrong, you know.”
“About what?”
Forcing a smile, Fannie corrected the agent. “Not what. Who. Heather didn’t have nothing to do with what happened. I warn you, if you spend your days chasing down that trail, the one that matters will go cold.”
Curtis didn’t reply. She tossed off a quick wave and made her way to her car. Leaning against it, she again took in the scene, but this time she didn’t see the cracks in the architecture or the lack of shoppers. All that was an out-of-focus blur as
she stood there and thought about the case. Her gut told her to go after Jameson. There was something that young woman wasn’t telling her.
LIJE EVANS STARED OUT THE WINDOW AT THE TOWN that lay below. It was midnight, and for the first time since he had been released from the hospital, he was essentially alone. Sure, there was an ABI agent somewhere on the grounds, assigned to make sure no one got a second chance at killing him, but the friends who had gathered in his hilltop log home had finally departed, so the agent could let his guard down a little.
Turning from the window, Lije collapsed into an overstuffed antique leather chair and took a deep breath, surprised that physically he felt as good as he did. Except for a bit of soreness in his abdomen, there were no lingering signs of his having experienced near-death just two days before.
But that didn’t help his wounded spirit. There was a huge hole in his life, one that would never again be filled. That hole was bottomless, filled with cold darkness.
Men in his family had never shown deep emotion. He had no memory of tears from his father or his grandfather, no memory of anger or of love. His parents had never shown any sort of affection for each other in front of him when he was a child. So maybe that explained why no tears had poured from his eyes and why he fought them every time they threatened. Even as he had spoken with others about Kaitlyn, his voice had rarely wavered. It was unusually strong, his words cracking like baseballs off a wooden bat.
But now, alone in his study, surrounded by mementos of a life that was no more, he no longer had to keep up the false front. Everywhere he turned, in each corner and on every wall, there were memories of Kaitlyn. All those good times—together—now gone forever.
For hours he sat there, unmoving, lost in myriad thoughts, trying to shuffle through the questions and come up with answers. Yet there were no answers. There was no logic. No cause and effect. He had never had a major dispute with anyone. He had stayed away from controversy. He had never even publicly supported a political candidate. He had never been a joiner. And he realized that he had never been much of anything. Nothing he could name or list. If anyone could go through life standing for nothing, he was the one; he had made fence-sitting into an art. He had no enemies, and not a single person held anything against him. He had been generous with those who worked for him. Even the bond between him and the man who mowed his lawn was solid. There was simply no reason for anyone to be gunning for him. He was certain of that.