by David Archer
Sam turned and looked at the Airstream again, then got back into the Ridgeline. Kim, who had had her window down, looked at him nervously.
“You think something happened to the witch?” she asked.
Sam shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it strikes me as odd that this old woman thinks she was forced into that car, just a few hours after meeting me.”
“But why? Who would know she talked to you?”
“I’m not sure,” Sam said as he started the truck and put it in gear. “I do know that it felt like someone was watching me when we were at the house a few minutes ago. Did you feel anything?”
Kim’s eyes went wide. “I don’t even remember being there,” she said. “That was Beauregard, remember? And before you ask, he says he didn’t feel anyone watching.”
Sam shook his head in frustration. “The only people I even mentioned getting the keys to were the Garritys and Detective Moore. That old woman said she was hustled into a car by another woman, though. I don’t believe Mrs. Garrity would have any motive to bother her, since she had an ironclad alibi for the original murder. This case just gets stranger and stranger.” He took out his phone and then got out the business card Detective Moore had given him. He used his thumb to dial the number and then put the phone to his ear. It was answered a moment later.
“Johnny Moore,” the detective said.
“Detective, this is Sam Prichard. I came back over to look at the house once again, and I discovered a couple of strange things. First off, I found a string, a dark thread, that was rigged so someone standing outside the house could cause that cabinet door to open. The only possible person that could have done it would be the woman who gave me the keys, and I think I know who she was. There’s a woman named Daisy Willis who lives in a trailer park in Thompsonville, and she fits the description of the woman I saw. I found out where she lived and went to her trailer, but a neighbor said another woman came by some time ago and appeared to have forced Daisy into a car.”
“I know Daisy,” Moore said. “She’s been around here just about forever—people think she’s a witch. You said she got into a car?”
“There’s a blue trailer just across from hers in that park, a little distance away, and the woman there said it looked like whoever showed up forced Daisy to get into the car and go with her. It strikes me pretty odd that something like that might happen just a few hours after she talked to me.”
“I agree,” Moore said, “it does sound strange. Daisy’s got a son who lives down in Carbondale. Let me call him and see if he knows anything. I’ll call you back in five minutes.”
Sam ended the call and set the phone in his lap. He made it about halfway back to Benton by the time it rang again.
“Prichard,” he said.
“I talked to her son, and he doesn’t know anything about it. He said his mother won’t even get into his car, so her being forced does make sense. You said the witness was in the blue trailer?”
“Yes. The back door of the blue trailer faces directly toward the silver one that Daisy lives in.”
“That would be Rosie Parks. I’ll send a deputy out to talk to her, see if he can get any more information. I’ll let you know what I find out. Meanwhile, tell me this: how many people knew that you got the keys from her?”
“Nobody, not specifically,” Sam said. “Only you and Jason and his mother knew that I had gotten the keys at all. I just spoke to Mrs. Garrity, and she told me that Daisy might fit the same description as the woman I got them from, which is why I went looking for her.” Sam neglected to mention that a reputed ghost had put him on Daisy’s trail in the first place.
“I can’t see Royce dragging Daisy into a car. All right, I’ll call you again whenever I know something.”
The two men said goodbye, and Sam put the phone back in his pocket. A moment later he pulled it back out and dialed Debbie Jenkins’s number.
“Debbie,” he said when she answered, “this is Sam Prichard. I’m down in the Thompsonville area, and there are some strange things going on.”
“Strange things? What you mean?”
“Well, for starters, I went by your mother’s house, and a woman showed up and offered me the keys so I could look inside. While I was looking around, I found what appears to be the hat that Ross saw in the woods that day. It fits his description, and there are some old, muddy bloodstains on it.”
“You found it? Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“Yeah, but there’s more. I was told by Royce Garrity that you had given the keys to a woman named Marie who died a few years ago, and that the keys had never been found. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is,” Debbie said. “Oh, my gosh, I had forgotten about that. Marie was the only one down there that had keys. Oh, my goodness, you don’t think…”
“No, I don’t,” Sam said. “I think I’ve ascertained that the woman I met was a local character named Daisy Willis. I gather the locals think she’s a witch.”
“Crazy Daisy,” Debbie said. “You know, she and Marie were good friends. I wonder if Marie gave her the keys before she died. That might make sense, right?”
“It could. My problem now is that I went to talk to Daisy and found that somebody may have abducted her. A neighbor said she saw someone apparently force Daisy into a car and drive away with her.”
Debbie gasped. “Abducted? But why?”
“At the moment, I’ve no idea. The only thing I can suspect is that Daisy might know something about what actually happened that day, but I’m very surprised that anyone would wait this long to do anything about her. It’s also odd that this happens only hours after she and I spoke. Can you think of anyone who might be concerned about me digging into the case down here?”
“Oh, my goodness, no,” Debbie replied. “Of course, since we know Ross didn’t do it, then somebody out there probably doesn’t want the truth to be found out.”
“Okay. Now, something else I never thought to ask you. Did you have anyone in mind as a suspect? Someone you thought might have actually been the killer?”
Sam could sense the slight hesitation before she answered. “Well, not really. Mom didn’t really have any enemies, but there was one person she just couldn’t get along with down there. I wondered for a little while if she might have done it, but…”
“Who was it, Debbie?” Sam asked.
“Well—it was Royce Garrity, but it couldn’t have been her because she was in the hospital when it happened.”
Sam nodded into the phone. “Okay. I actually considered her a suspect myself today, until I found out she’d had a hysterectomy that very morning. They didn’t get along?”
“No, not at all. Mom thought Royce was a terrible mother, and there was some other kind of bad blood between them. You know I had an older sister, right? I probably forgot to tell you about her, but she was gone before I was born. She’d gotten pregnant, and the father was Royce’s dad. Mom and Dad sent my sister away to have her baby, but then she ran away from wherever she was at, and then Royce’s dad disappeared and everyone figured they ran off together. I think that was the thing that started all the trouble between them, between Mom and Royce.”
“Yes, I’d heard about that. Do you know anything about what happened to your sister? I heard that she had died sometime back, but nobody seems to know anything for sure.”
“Well,” she said, “Mom told me she’d lost her mind and ended up in the loony bin, and died back when I was still a little girl. That’s pretty much all I know about it.”
“What about Bill Parkinson? The man she was supposed to have run off with? Did your mother ever mention him?”
“Not directly, no, but she did tell me once that he spent some time in prison. I never heard any of the details about it. I think the last time Mom ever mentioned him was maybe a year or so before she died. She said she got a letter from him but that she didn’t want to bother with replying.”
“Really? Any idea why?”
Debbie hesitated again. “She said—she said, ‘dead things need to stay dead.’ I remember asking her what she meant by that, but she just shook her head and wouldn’t tell me anything else.”
“If he’s still alive, then he could conceivably be a suspect. Debbie, I need you to think hard. Did your mother ever tell you where he was?”
“No, she wouldn’t talk about him at all after that. After she died, when we cleaned out the house, I found boxes and boxes full of letters, but I never took the time to look through them. It’s possible that letter is still in one of them. I have them in the garage. I’ll dig them out and take a look through them.”
Sam chuckled. “Sounds like a good job for your twin detectives,” he said. “Tell them I’ll pay a fifty-dollar reward if they find it.”
“You don’t have to do that, Mr. Prichard,” Debbie said. “If it will help solve this mystery, or help get Ross out of prison, then we’re happy to do it.”
“Tell them, anyway,” Sam said. “Their goal is to become private eyes. Trust me, nothing motivates a private eye like the prospect of money. Now, one more thing. There are others who have come to the conclusion that your mother’s injuries could not have been caused by Ross’s fists, but it appears that the medical examiner at the time simply went with what the sheriff’s office was telling him. Debbie, would you consent to having your mother’s body exhumed and reexamined? A proper autopsy, even this long after the fact, could determine exactly what type of weapon was used on her. That could very well be enough to overturn Ross’s conviction, though it wouldn’t guarantee he would not be tried again.”
Sam thought he heard a sob, but Debbie apparently pulled herself together quickly. “Mr. Prichard, if it will help my brother, I’ll do whatever it takes. How would we go about it?”
“I’ll check that out on Monday and get back to you. I’m already talking to Johnny Moore. He’s a detective now, and he admitted to me that he has also had doubts about whether Ross was guilty. He’s trying to get the case reopened, and if he succeeds, then we might be able to get the state to agree to the exhumation. If not, we’ll have to go after it privately and get a forensic pathologist to do it.”
“But—Mr. Prichard, wouldn’t that cost a lot of money?”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Sam said. “My client on this case wants to see justice done, and that means doing whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. I happen to know that he isn’t going to mind paying for it.”
He said goodbye and cut the call off, then put the phone back into his pocket. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kim looking at him strangely.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Kim said. “I just realized what you’re doing. From what you said, Debbie doesn’t have a lot of money. If you get Millie’s body exhumed, you’re going to be paying for that yourself, aren’t you?”
Sam’s lips twitched upward. “Well, look at it this way. Beauregard—no matter what he is or isn’t—has helped me out a number of times, and even saved my life more than once. We’ll just chalk it up to me repaying some favors, okay?”
“Uh-huh,” Kim said. “It was also pretty nice of you to offer to pay those boys to help out. They probably don’t get much of an allowance, so fifty dollars might be like winning the lottery to them.”
Sam puffed up his cheeks and blew air out. “I kinda like those boys,” he said. “And that Kaylee, she’s got a mind like a steel trap. If she becomes a defense attorney, I pity the prosecutor who ever has to go up against her.”
Kim smiled. “Beauregard says to tell you you’re not nearly as mean as you pretend to be.”
Despite himself, Sam smiled.
They got back to the motel about fifteen minutes later and found Indie, Grace, and Kenzie all piled up on one of the beds watching a movie. Kenzie jumped up to give her daddy a hug, but her attention returned to the television a moment later.
“Anything new?” Indie asked.
“You could say that,” Sam said as the two of them sat down at the table in the room. He told her what had happened, with Beauregard telling him to “find the witch,” and the strange apparent abduction of Daisy Willis. Indie’s eyes got wider and wider as he told the tale, and she was shaking her head in wonder when he finished.
“Sam, this is really getting out-there. What are you going to do next?”
“Probably isn’t much I can do over the weekend,” he said. “Monday morning, I’m going to see the police chief here. He was the detective on the case when it happened, and I’d really like to know why he never discovered some of the things I’ve found out in the last couple of days. This should be a cold case, but it’s looking pretty hot at the moment.”
“And what if he won’t cooperate?”
“Well, that brings up the second thing I’m going to do.” He told her about asking Debbie to allow exhumation and a new autopsy. “We’ll have to foot the bill for this ourselves,” he said, “but it shouldn’t cost more than a few thousand. We’ll take it out of the reward money Harry gave us, and I can always write it off come tax time.” He looked at her questioningly. “You don’t mind, do you, babe?”
Indie smiled at him. “Mind? I’m not even surprised. I know the kind of man you are, Sam Prichard. Harry dropped an awful lot of reward money on us, not that you didn’t deserve it. I think this is an appropriate way to use some of it.”
“Yeah. I told your mom I’m just thinking of it as repaying some of the favors Beauregard has done me.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “That sounds like a good enough reason to me.” She was about to say something else, but there was a knock on the door. They both looked at it, and Sam got up to answer.
There was a tall, dark-haired man standing there, and he was holding out a badge and police ID. “Sam Prichard?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m Ray Weimer, chief of police here in Benton. Could we step out and talk for a few minutes? I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
Sam’s eyebrows went up a bit, but he simply turned around and waved at Indie before stepping out and shutting the door behind him. “There’s a coffee shop right next door,” he said, and Weimer nodded. They went down the elevator and out the front door, then walked across the parking lot to the restaurant.
A hostess seated them and took their orders for coffee. As soon as she had brought it to them, Weimer looked Sam in the eye.
“I understand you’re looking into the Cameron murder,” he said. “That was my case, back when it happened. I was with the sheriff’s office then.”
“I’m aware of that,” Sam said. “In fact, I was planning to come see you Monday morning. There are a lot of things about this case that don’t add up. I’m curious why you thought it was so open-and-shut at the time.”
Weimer shrugged. “When the deputies arrived, they found Ross Cameron sitting next to his dead mother with blood all over his hands. Looked pretty obvious to them, and I agreed. The Cameron boy is retarded, and people like him have an awful lot of strength. Let his temper get out of hand, and God only knows what he might be capable of doing. Besides, he confessed.”
“Chief, are you aware that there’s a big difference between retardation and autism? Autistics display a number of common characteristics, and one of them that almost all of them share is an inability to understand deception. What that means is that they can’t lie. To them, the world is simply as it is and there can’t be any other truth, so they can’t even formulate the possibility of a different version of events than what actually happened. On top of that, Ross Cameron is one of a percentage of autistics who remember absolutely everything. I spoke with him a couple of days ago, and he explained it to me that he didn’t want to confess because it wasn’t true, but you told him that if he did, he’d get to go home. He wanted to go home. Ergo, he had to say what you wanted him to say, whether it was really true or not.”
Weimer grinned and shook his head. “I never said that,” he said. “The only t
hing I told him was that he could never go home until he admitted he did. I never said he’d get to go home once he confessed.”
Sam felt anger rising within him but shoved it back down. “To him, it amounted to the same thing. If he could not go home until he said what you wanted him to say, then logically he could go home if he did. That’s how it works with people like Ross.”
Weimer shrugged again, the grin never leaving his face. “You believe whatever you want to,” he said. “I put a killer away that day.”
“No, you didn’t,” Sam said. “The fact is, Weimer, that it’s physically impossible for anyone who hasn’t had excessive strength training to do the kind of damage that Millie Cameron’s skull suffered. A professional boxer might be able to crack somebody’s skull, but they couldn’t drive pieces of it into her brain, and that was the cause of death. There was a murder weapon, and you didn’t even bother to look for it.”
The grin faded away quickly. “Are you accusing me of not doing my job properly?”
Sam shrugged and grinned, just as Weimer had done a few minutes earlier. “Believe what you want,” he said. “All I know is that I’ve uncovered evidence you didn’t even bother to look for. Remember Ross telling you about a hat with a feather on it?”
Weimer’s eyes narrowed. “He was talking a lot of crap,” he said. “We looked around the house and the yard—there was no hat.”
“But you didn’t look in the woods behind the house. That’s where Ross said he saw it, remember that? He does. He described it to me in great detail. Now, imagine my surprise when I went to look at the crime scene today and found that very hat inside one of the kitchen cabinets. It still has dried blood and mud on it, just as he described seeing it that day eight years ago.”
“There wasn’t any hat in any cabinet,” Weimer sputtered. “We looked through that house from top to bottom, just to be sure we didn’t miss any possible murder weapon.” He punctuated the last two words with finger quotes. “I don’t know where this hat of yours came from, but I’ll guarantee you this: if it turns out you’re trying to manufacture evidence, I’ll hang you out to dry.”