“You know her a lot better than I do,” Phyllis said. “But I wouldn’t think so.”
“I hope she’s got a good lawyer. Even when you’re innocent, you need a really good lawyer these days when the cops go after you. No offense. I know your son’s a deputy.”
Phyllis wondered if Mike had been one of the deputies who took Lindsey in for questioning. She would find out later, she supposed.
“I guess I knew there’s really nothing we can do,” Marie went on. “I just had to talk to somebody about it, and I didn’t want to bother Russ at work. There’s just been so many bad things happening lately, what with Shannon being killed and all, and now this… .”
“What about at home?” Phyllis asked.
“What?” Marie sounded surprised and confused. “What do you mean? Everything’s fine at home. Thank God for that. With everything else that’s going on, I don’t need any family uproars.”
Sam must have been right after all, Phyllis thought. Russ hadn’t told Marie about the way Shannon had tried to pressure him into having an affair with her. Phyllis was a little disappointed in Russ. He should have done the right thing.
She could take care of that for him, if she wanted to.
But even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew she wasn’t going to say anything to Marie about it. Marie was right; she had enough on her mind right now. Anyway, Phyllis reminded herself, it was really none of her business. What went on between Marie and Russ was personal.
At least, it would have been if it didn’t have any possible bearing on a murder case.
“On top of everything else,” Marie went on, “the money that was stolen during the carnival is still missing. Sometime we all need to get together and talk about how we’re going to deal with the shortfall in funds for the rest of the school year.”
“That’s something for you and the rest of the board to discuss,” Phyllis said. “Are you taking charge of it now that Shannon is … gone?”
“I guess so. According to the bylaws, the fundraising chairman is also the vice president. But if anybody else wants the job, they can have it.” Marie laughed hollowly, without any real humor. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.”
“I wish you the best of luck with it—”
“Maybe you and Carolyn could come to the next meeting?” Marie broke in. “I hate to ask such a big favor of you, but we’re going to need some advice from older and wiser heads. No offense about the older part.”
“None taken. But we’re not members of the board. We’re not even members of the PTO. It just wouldn’t be proper for us to horn in—”
“Consultants,” Marie said. “That’s what you’d be. Businesses hire consultants all the time. There’s no reason why the PTO board shouldn’t do the same thing. Although we can’t actually hire you, of course. You’d have to volunteer.” She paused. “Come on, Phyllis. I could sure use a hand.”
“Well … I’ll talk to Carolyn.” Marie was more adept at this than she thought, Phyllis mused. Already she was learning how to talk people into doing what she wanted and helping her. “I can’t make any promises, though.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be in touch and let you know when we’re getting together. Maybe by then we’ll know more about what’s happening with Lindsey.”
Phyllis was curious about that herself. If Lindsey Gonzales was the killer, there was a chance this whole horrible experience would soon be over, and she could stop worrying about what she should—or shouldn’t—tell the authorities.
Chapter 23
One last time, Mike was going over the inventory of items that had been found during the search of Gary Oakley’s house, searching for anything that the sheriff could use to justify holding the custodian longer.
Former custodian, Mike supposed he should say, since it was a foregone conclusion that Oakley would be terminated from his job at Loving Elementary, if he hadn’t been already. He would be lucky just to keep his freedom. Being charged with a felony could result in the revocation of his parole and mean that he would have to go back to Huntsville to serve out the remainder of his original sentence for the prior burglary conviction.
Sheriff Haney would have preferred sending Oakley to the penitentiary for murder, though, so he had ordered Mike to go over the results of the search again. Although Mike didn’t know for sure, he suspected that the district attorney had told Haney to either come up with more evidence right away or else let Oakley go.
It looked like the sheriff was going to be disappointed, because for the life of him, Mike couldn’t see anything in the report to indicate that Oakley was guilty of anything.
The door into the office where Mike was working swung open, and when he glanced up he saw Sheriff Haney standing there. “You’ve been part of this investigation all along, Mike,” the sheriff said. “Come with me.”
Mike pushed the papers aside and got to his feet. “Has there been some new development, Sheriff?”
“You could say that.” Haney gave him a smug grin. “We’ve brought in another suspect for questioning.”
Mike couldn’t stop his eyebrows from lifting. He hadn’t heard anything about another arrest being imminent, even if it was just someone being brought in for questioning.
Haney didn’t pause to explain. He strode down the hall toward the interrogation room with Mike following closely behind him. They went into an observation room. On the righthand wall was a sheet of one-way glass. Mike looked through it and saw a young blond woman sitting at the table in the adjacent interrogation room, looking scared and panicky. She was familiar to Mike, but he couldn’t recall her name.
Sheriff Haney supplied it without being asked. “Lindsey Gonzales,” he said. “She’s one of the members of the PTO board at Loving Elementary.”
“The one who found the body,” Mike said, remembering Lindsey now.
“That’s right. And mighty convenient that she did, too, since we know now she had an argument with the murdered woman not long before that.”
Mike frowned and said, “Sheriff, I hate to point this out, but there could be a lot of people who had arguments with Mrs. Dunston that day. She ran roughshod over most folks she dealt with.”
“She’s the only one where we have eyewitness testimony that she screamed at Mrs. Dunston and threatened to kill her.”
Mike had to admit that was a pretty good point, and probably reason enough to ask Lindsey some questions. But he was still curious. “How come we didn’t know about this eyewitness until now? If somebody saw that happening on Saturday, shouldn’t they have said something about it when we questioned everybody that day?”
“Yeah, but the guy didn’t come forward until this morn ing. You know how people are, Mike. They don’t want to get involved, or they don’t think that what they saw or heard could really be important. In this case, the guy who saw the argument has a little girl in the same kindergarten class as Mrs. Gonzales’s son. So he knows her and didn’t think she would kill anybody. But he kept worrying about it and finally decided he’d better talk to us. I took his statement myself.”
“What was the argument about?”
“The witness didn’t have any idea. He just saw the two of them yelling at each other in that hallway, near the place where the Dunston woman’s body was found a short time later. He claims Gonzales was saying that she wasn’t going to take Dunston’s crap anymore and that she was tired of getting all the blame for everything. She told Dunston to lay off or she’d kill her.”
“And then Mrs. Gonzales was the one who found the body.”
“Yeah,” the sheriff said. “She never really explained what she was doing up at the end of that hall, either. She said she was just wandering around the school because she wanted to get away from the noise of the carnival for a little while. I think what she really wanted to do was make sure she was the one who stumbled over the body, so nobody would think that she had anything to do with it.”
It could have been like that, Mike thought, but he reminded
himself that only a day earlier Sheriff Haney had been just as convinced that Gary Oakley was guilty. He wanted to hear what Mrs. Gonzales had to say before he made up his mind one way or the other.
“What are we waiting for?” he asked.
Haney nodded toward the one-way glass and the scared woman on the other side of it. “She refused to answer any questions without her attorney being present.” He nodded solemnly. “Lawyered up.”
Mike couldn’t stop himself. “Sheriff, did you ever say that before all the police procedural shows on TV?”
“What?” Haney frowned at him.
“Lawyered up. It just sounds like something they’d say in New York, not Weatherford.”
“What the hell are you—”
A knock sounded on the door of the room before the sheriff could go on. The door opened as he and Mike turned toward it, and a deputy stuck his head in to say, “The lady’s lawyer is here, Sheriff.”
“Tell him we’ll be there in a second,” Haney said.
“He’s a her,” the deputy replied. “Juliette Yorke, with an E.”
“Whatever.”
Wisely, Mike refrained from asking the sheriff if he used to say whatever.
They left the observation room. A woman in her forties stood beside the door of the interrogation room where Lindsey Gonzales waited nervously. The attorney wore a dark brown suit and sensible heels, and had her light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She held an inexpensive briefcase in her left hand. Silver-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. Intense green eyes peered through them.
“Sheriff Haney,” she said as she put out a hand, “I’m Juliette Yorke. With an E.”
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Yorke,” Haney said as he shook hands with her. “I don’t believe we’ve run into each other before.”
The attorney shook her head. “No, I haven’t been practicing in Weatherford for very long. I moved down here a short time ago from Pennsylvania.”
The sheriff frowned slightly and said, “You’re not Ms. Gonzales’s regular attorney?”
“No, I’ve never met her. I assume she doesn’t have a regular attorney.”
“Then, no offense, why did she call you?”
“I have no idea.” Juliette Yorke was all business. “Can you get me up to speed on this case, Sheriff?”
“Yeah, sure.” Haney glanced over his shoulder and seemed to remember that Mike was there. “Uh, this is Deputy Mike Newsom. He’s one of the investigators heading up my team.”
That was the first time Mike had known that he was heading up anything. He nodded politely and said, “Ms. Yorke.”
Curtly, Yorke returned the nod, then swung her gaze back to Haney. “What’s my client being charged with?”
“She’s not being charged with anything yet. We brought her in for questioning in the murder of Shannon Dunston.”
For the first time in this conversation, Juliette Yorke’s expression changed from a cool blank. She frowned slightly and said, “The woman who was killed at that school carnival a few days ago?”
“That’s right. You read about it in the paper?”
“Yes, I did. I didn’t realize this was in relation to a murder case.”
“Well, it is. That gonna be a problem?”
Yorke shook her head. “No, of course not. You believe my client is the killer?”
Confidently, Haney said, “We have a statement from a witness who saw Ms. Gonzales having a violent argument with the victim a short time before the murder took place. Not only that, but Ms. Gonzales was the one who ‘found’ the body.”
Yorke picked up on the emphasis the sheriff put on the word. “The person who discovers a body isn’t necessarily a suspect,” she said.
“But it’s funny how it works out that way a lot of the time, isn’t it?”
Yorke didn’t reply to that. She said, “Have you questioned her at all? Was she advised of her rights?”
“Absolutely she was,” Haney declared. “When you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll know that we’re not slipshod about procedural matters, Ms. Yorke. Mrs. Gonzales requested that we not ask her any questions until she had legal counsel present, so we waited to talk to her. Now that you’re here”—he leaned his head toward the door of the interrogation room—”why don’t we go see what she has to say?”
“Of course. I’ll want a moment alone with her first, though.”
Haney’s mouth tightened a little, but he didn’t hesitate before nodding and saying, “Sure. That’s her right. Just don’t make it too long.”
“We’ll try not to delay your interrogation too much, Sheriff,” Yorke returned.
Mike could tell that Haney didn’t like that much, either, but he just opened the door of the interrogation room and held out a hand for the attorney to go right ahead. Yorke went inside and Haney pulled the door closed. “I hope she tells the woman it’ll go easier on her if she cooperates with us.”
“Unless Mrs. Gonzales didn’t have anything to do with the murder,” Mike said.
Haney shook his head. “Not likely. But we don’t rush to judgment around here.”
It seemed to Mike that was exactly what Haney was doing yet again, after jumping to the conclusion that Gary Oakley was guilty. But he knew what the sheriff meant. Under normal circumstances, Royce Haney was a solid, more than competent lawman. He had to be feeling a lot of public pressure, though, because a murder being committed in an elementary school—in the middle of a school carnival, at that—really got people’s attention.
They stood there in the hall waiting for several minutes before the door opened again and Juliette Yorke said, “My client is ready to talk to you now, Sheriff.”
Haney went into the room, followed by Mike. They all sat down, the two lawmen on one side of the table, Lindsey Gonzales and her attorney on the other. The sheriff started the tape rolling in the recorder and announced the details of the interrogation. Then before he could ask any questions, Yorke said, “My client would like to make a statement.”
Haney leaned forward eagerly. Mike knew he was anticipating a confession. “All right. Go ahead, Mrs. Gonzales.”
Lindsey still looked pale and scared, but her voice was relatively strong as she cleared her throat and said, “I did not kill Shannon Dunston. I had nothing to do with her death.”
Haney’s expression hardened. “We have eyewitness testimony that you were engaged in an argument with her not long before her death and even threatened to kill her. Then you were the one who found the body and started screaming your head off so everyone would know you found it.”
Lindsey took a deep breath and said, “I did not kill Shannon Dunston and had nothing to do with her death.”
Haney’s expression was darkening with anger as he switched his gaze to Juliette Yorke and said, “Counselor, you should advise your client that it would be wise to answer our questions.”
“You haven’t actually asked her any questions,” Yorke pointed out. “You’ve simply made a statement, Sheriff, and so has my client. One that covers things sufficiently, I believe.”
Haney sat back in his chair, looking stunned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that Mrs. Gonzales has denied any involvement with Ms. Dunston’s murder, and she won’t be making any further statements or answering any questions. Since that’s the case, I suggest that unless you have any actual evidence against her, you release her now.”
“But … but we have a witness’s testimony—”
“That an argument took place. Does your witness claim to have seen my client kill, attack, or otherwise harm the victim in any way?”
“Well … no.”
“Do you have any physical evidence to link my client to the actual crime?”
“No,” Haney snapped. “But I have a history of ill feeling between the victim and your client, and I have the testimony regarding that argument … which I notice your client hasn’t denied.” A note of stubbornness came into his voice. “That’s probable cause to
bring her in for questioning.”
“We’re not denying that. But Mrs. Gonzales has cooperated with your investigation and now has nothing more to add.”
“Damn it, stonewalling’s not going to get her anywhere!”
Juliette Yorke didn’t appear to be fazed by the sheriff’s frustrated outburst. She said, “On the contrary, it’s going to get her out of here … unless, as I said, you have some other evidence against her.”
With a visible effort, Haney brought his anger under control. He turned to Lindsey and said, “Mrs. Gonzales, did you see anyone attack Shannon Dunston on the afternoon of the carnival at Oliver Loving Elementary School?”
Lindsey glanced over at Yorke, who nodded. Lindsey swallowed and said, “No, I didn’t.”
“Just before you discovered her body, did you see anyone leaving the area?”
Lindsey shook her head. “No.”
“You walked up that hall, didn’t see anyone around, went around the corner, and found Ms. Dunston’s body?”
A little shudder went through Lindsey’s body as she closed her eyes, obviously remembering the scene. “Yes,” she replied in a half whisper.
“And when you saw the body you started screaming?”
Lindsey nodded. “Yes.” She glanced at Yorke, who gave her a tight but reassuring smile.
“Do you know of any reason why someone would want to kill Shannon Dunston?” Haney asked.
“No,” Lindsey answered without hesitation. She added, “A lot of people didn’t get along with her, including me, but I don’t know anyone who wanted her dead.”
Mike saw a flash of irritation in Juliette Yorke’s eyes, as if the attorney wished that Lindsey hadn’t added that last comment, but Yorke didn’t say anything.
Haney turned toward her and said, “Now your client has cooperated with our investigation.”
“So you’re going to release her?”
“Wait here,” Haney said as he got to his feet. He didn’t have to tell Mike to come with him. They stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind them.
Murder by the Slice Page 19