by Ann Mullen
“And, last night I killed two people. Why didn’t I get arrested?”
“Because somebody’s trying to cover up the whole ugly mess.”
“It’s gotten out of control,” I said, beginning to see the light. “It’s the domino effect; only one has to go down, to bring down the rest. Where’s that picture, Billy? I think it might hold the clue we’re looking for.”
“It’s in my jacket.”
“Let’s have a closer look at it.”
Billy went to the closet and searched through his coat pocket, retrieved the photo and returned to where I was standing.
“We’ve looked at this picture a hundred times,” he said. “What do you think we’re going to see that we haven’t already?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, “but it’s worth a try. We could have missed something. It won’t hurt to take another look.”
We examined the photo, looking for the slightest hint of a clue as to why this picture was so damaging to Clayton Tyler, but found nothing. Billy had put names to most of the faces and had determined that this party was not held at an FOP lodge. Instead it was held at the previous home of Mary and Roy Keen; the one they enjoyed living in, thanks to drugs and dirty money.
“Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “That’s Chicky the paramedic standing with those two guys by the sliding glass doors. Don’t you see him in the background?” I pointed to the men in the photo. “Holy Moses! That’s Wake Hudson beside him. I’ll bet that other guy is Clayton Tyler!”
Billy took a closer look. “How can you tell it’s Sheriff Hudson? You can’t see his face, and the other guy has his back turned to the camera.”
“I recognized the hair and his small frame. Look at the reflection in the glass doors. You can almost make out the other guy’s face.”
Billy squinted and held the picture out as if the further away he held it, the better he was going to be able to see. “I can see a face in the glass. What we need to do is find out what Clayton Tyler looks like and see if this is him. It has to be him. We know he’s in this picture somewhere.”
“I’d like to know why the new sheriff of Greene County is socializing with a scumbag like Clayton Tyler. This picture was taken almost a year ago. I’d bet money that Wake Hudson used to be on the Charlottesville Police force before he was elected as sheriff. He’s probably one of Tyler’s men. That would explain a lot.”
“To say the least,” Billy agreed. “Can you imagine the power Tyler would have if he had a sheriff in his pocket? There’s no telling what he could accomplish. Too much power is dangerous.”
“If he has a sheriff on his payroll, I’m sure he probably has others of influence on it, too. Perhaps he has a few members on the Board of Supervisors or some City Council members in Charlottesville on his side. Who knows how far his power stretches?”
“We can’t fight them all. We have to nab the top man. We have to get him, before he gets us.” A far-off look appeared on Billy’s face as he studied something in the back of his mind. He turned, walked toward the bedroom door, and then mumbled to himself as he started to walk out.
“A-yo-hu-hi-s-di u-we-ji-a-ska-’ya!”
I didn’t even try to decipher what he said. Instead, I ran up to him and tugged on his shirt. “Hold on, Tonto. Exactly what have you got up your sleeve? I want you to tell me what you’re going to do, before you do it. I don’t want any surprises. I’ve had enough of those recently to last me a lifetime.”
His cold stare threw me for a loop when he uttered, “He’s a dead man.”
“Whoa, pal,” I said. I shuddered at the thought. “I don’t think I like what you’re saying. You aren’t really thinking of killing Clayton Tyler, are you? Please tell me that’s not what you just said. I’m serious, Billy. I have to know the truth.”
Billy came back down to earth and realized he was scaring me with his words. He tried to ease my fear.
“I’m not going to kill the creep, Jesse. Do you think I’d do something like that? I’m not crazy. First of all, I would never kill anybody unless it was in self-defense. I surely wouldn’t risk going to jail over dirt like Tyler. I’m talking about putting him out of commission—sending him to jail where he belongs.”
“I sure hope that’s what you meant,” I said, relieved. “I’d hate to think you’d even consider the idea of murder.”
“You know I wouldn’t,” he said. He kissed my cheek, trying to calm me. “I just want that man behind bars. I want us to feel safe again.”
“I’m with you!”
Chapter 20
The weather outside was bitter cold as frigid winds propelled me down the front steps. I buttoned my coat and held on tightly to the porch hand rails, praying I wouldn’t slip and hurt myself. My poor body had had enough bumps and bruises. The gray sky only added to my anxiety, as I followed Jake, the SWAT man to the Humvee that was parked bumper-deep in the snow.
“I was surprised when Officer Lewis said she was sending a SWAT team member to pick me up,” I said to him. “I thought you guys were reserved for more important things, like hostage situations.”
“Well,” he responded, opening the car door, “if we were so engaged, I’m afraid you’d be on your own.” He held out his hand to help me climb in. “We do errands on occasions that are not in our job description. Out here you have to be flexible. Someone’s life might depend upon it.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, closing the Humvee door and waiting for him to get in on the other side before I continued. “This is a pretty neat piece of machinery. I’m impressed.”
“The ride’s a little bumpy,” he replied, starting up the engine. “But it gets you where you want to go and it can go anywhere.”
“Can we wait a minute? Billy wants to follow us in his truck.” I looked at him and rolled my eyes. “He wants to make sure I have a ride home.”
The truth was that there was no way of talking Billy out of going—and I wouldn’t have tried. I wanted him to be there with me during the interrogation. I also was a little concerned that the police would try to keep me at the station on the premise that they didn’t have a car available.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Jake, the SWAT man replied. “The roads are pretty bad. I had a rough time getting here myself, and look at what I’m driving. There are trees down and limbs scattered all over. Half the time you can hardly tell where the road starts and stops. I ran into a ditch a couple of times. If he’s worried about you getting home, I can assure you we’ll see to it that you have a ride.”
I made a flimsy remark about men being men, and giggled as the man next to me showed a humorous distaste in my display of stereotypical behavior.
He laughed and added, “And women will be women.”
“No doubt,” I agreed.
Our small talk ended when I saw Billy come out of the house. “Ah, there he is. Okay, I’m ready to go.”
Earlier, while we were waiting for Jake, the SWAT man to show up, Billy had gone outside and cleared the snow off the windshield. It took him fifteen minutes to get the door lock unfrozen, but he wanted to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. He didn’t trust the police and wasn’t about to let them get one step ahead of us. “Always be prepared.” That was one motto I’d heard him say many times. That, along with, “Don’t get caught with your pants down.” Those two credos might just pertain to this situation. The police have a way of making your life miserable.
Billy gave the thumbs-up sign as he walked past us and jumped into his truck. The look on his face was reassuring. He was not going to let anyone mess with me. He was going to take care of me.
Jake, the SWAT man led the way, paving a path for Billy’s truck as he drove. A harrowing thirty minutes later, I was deposited on the doorsteps of the Charlottesville Police Department, with a pain in my chest, and a shortness of breath. I was on my way to a full-blown panic attack—a condition that hadn’t plagued me for a long time. But some things never really go away... they just lie dorma
nt.
Some people think that anxiety attacks are usually brought on by stressful situations that you allow to take control. In other words, you bring it on yourself. But that’s a load of crap. They just don’t know anything about this condition. If they did, they would be more compassionate. Instead, they give you a stupid look and tell you to calm down; you should have more control over yourself. I’m sorry, but I didn’t allow this to happen. I had nothing to say in the matter. Yet, here I was, my heart beating out of my chest, sitting in one of those gray, wooden chairs lined up against the wall in the police waiting area, and breathing into a brown paper bag. I had carried the bag in my purse for so long that it was now wrinkled and split at the top. I felt like a total dork. This was one of those times I had told Billy about, but he had never seen the full effect.
“She gets like this sometimes,” I heard Billy tell Captain Waverly as if this was a normal occurrence. “I’ve never seen it this bad before, but I’m sure everything will be fine in a few minutes. She needs to sit back and catch her breath.”
“I understand completely,” the captain responded. “I have a sister who suffers from the same condition. She has it so bad that she carries a folded paper bag in her purse with her everywhere she goes. It’s really quite awful when she has one of those attacks. Sometimes my brother-in-law has to rush her to the hospital. She says each episode feels like she’s having a heart attack. I can imagine how scary that must be. She says you just never know if it’s the real thing or not. Just to play it safe, they make the trip to the hospital.”
“I don’t understand too much about her condition,” Billy whispered. “I just know she freaks out and can’t breathe. I guess when we get married, I’ll find out all there is to know about it. For the time being, I just sit back and wait for it to pass.”
“You don’t have to whisper behind my back,” I huffed, taking the bag down from my face and folding it up. “I think I’m going to live this time. You two sound like mourners at a funeral. You’re depressing.”
“Ah, she’s better,” Billy smiled.
Captain Waverly took his cue from Billy to proceed and started barking orders to his people.
Men in blue hustled to his commands as Officer Lewis, the bimbo I had talked to on the phone earlier, led me arm-in-arm to his office. Billy and I were served hot, bitter coffee in a paper cup and told that the captain would be with us shortly. She left the room and closed the door.
From past perceptions, I thought all rooms at the police station would be grimy, tiny holes-in-the-wall with a large watt bulb hanging down from the ceiling. That was not the case here. All the rooms I had passed were spacious, clean and uncluttered, reeking of efficiency and control, which said something for the way Captain Waverly ran his ship. His office was even better. It was set up like a conference room with a large, mahogany table and eight chairs situated in the middle of the room. Overstuffed comfortable chairs sat along two walls. Metal file cabinets and a bookcase, overflowing with books, lined a third wall, and a desk the size of a picnic table sat in front of the remaining wall. This was an impressive room.
“Nice office,” I whispered to Billy as we sat down at the conference table and waited for what was sure to be a complete and thorough interrogation. “Do you think they rough up suspects in this room?”
“I don’t see any blood on the walls,” he replied, causing me to scan for signs of leftover brain matter. “I was just kidding, Jesse. They wouldn’t do that in here... they have a special room down the hall.”
“Sorry, but I can’t help feeling a little bit intimidated. I have no idea what they might have in store for me. You know how they are. One minute you’re their best friend, and the next minute they’re locking you up.”
“After what happened last night, Jesse, if they were going to lock you up, you’d be in jail right now. Relax. All you have to do is cooperate and tell the truth. However,” he said as he leaned closer to me, “I don’t think I’d mention anything about our visit to Brad and Laura’s house. They might not understand.” He winked at me.
“I get your drift,” I said, glaring back at him. “They’d throw both of us in jail. See, that’s what I was talking about. You try to do what’s right, and then they catch you in something a little iffy, and boom, you’re sitting in the slammer. Sneaky little...”
“That’s why I’m here—to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Captain Waverly entered the room, followed by two men wearing suits and sporting FBI badges. A scraggly-looking homeless man came in behind them and closed the door.
“This is Agent Andy Turner,” the captain said as he pointed to each one respectfully. “This is Agent Pete Brackens, from the FBI. Sheriff Hudson of Greene County called them in as soon as the Mary Keen kidnapping was reported.” He then pointed to the ragged guy dressed in a tatty jacket and torn jeans, “And last, but not least, Mike Cortez—Vice.”
“Obviously undercover, I presume,” I remarked, and stood, eyeing his attire. “You do look a little rough.”
“Let’s get right to the point,” Agent Turner blurted out, taking a seat at the table as the rest followed suit. “I want to hear your side of the story, starting with your first contact with Mary Keen.”
They weren’t wasting any time getting to the heart of the matter so I launched into a monologue explaining the events that had taken place since that fateful day Thor had dragged home the hand. Thirty minutes later, I finished my story, offering up my suspicions of Clayton Tyler’s involvement in the murders, and suggesting a relationship between him and Sheriff Hudson. “Tyler’s the one you should be after. He orchestrated this whole mess. I firmly believe he has the sheriff under his thumb. I’m convinced he has others we don’t know about. There might even be some men on your force who are on his payroll.”
“Do you have any proof of this accusation or are you just rendering an opinion, Miss Watson?” The captain demanded an answer, his face red with anger at my suggestion that one of his men had gone bad. “If you’re going to slam one of my guys, I want to see your evidence.”
Billy pulled out the photo from his coat pocket and handed it to Captain Waverly, thus causing a furor among the two FBI agents the minute they saw it. They looked back and forth at each other.
“Why didn’t you turn this photo over to the police earlier?” Agent Turner asked, accusingly. “Do you realize the penalty for withholding evidence? We could throw your...”
“Shut up, Turner,” Captain Waverly said.
Obviously shaken from what he saw in the picture, the captain rattled off the names of everyone, including the three men standing by the sliding glass doors in the background.
“Here’s Clayton Tyler, Wake Hudson and Chicky Sterling! I don’t believe it! Where did you get this photo?”
“We found...” I started to say, but was immediately interrupted.
“We want complete immunity before we answer that question,” Billy said to Captain Waverly. “You know that we were just pawns in Tyler’s little cat-and-mouse game. We had nothing to do with the deaths of Mary or Roy Keen. The shooting deaths of Brad and Laura were in self-defense. You even said that yourself. I think you know more than you’re telling and I’d like to know just what it is. Why were you following Brad and Laura when they showed up at my place?”
I cringed when Billy made reference to Brad and Laura’s death. The only way I’d been able to deal with what had happened was by not thinking about them. I made myself shut out their faces, along with the horror of what I had done. My focus drifted back to last night and that terrible scene, replaying the anguish I felt when seeing their blood pooled on my floor. I had the sudden urge to wretch. Between the many cups of coffee and the lone piece of dry toast I had for breakfast, my stomach churned and threatened to rebel. No longer being able to control my nausea, I jumped up from the chair, covered my mouth with my hand, and mumbled, “Where’s your ladies’ room?”
Chairs scraped the polished wooden floor as everybody in
the room jumped back as if they were expecting a volcano to erupt any second. Hobo Cortez was the first to come to my aid, ushering me out of the room and down the hall. The door had a picture of a man and a woman on it. I hesitated at first, but Cortez explained that it was for the general public.
“The door locks from the inside,” he said.
I barely made it to the toilet in time to empty my stomach of its acid liquid. The first thing that popped up in my mind was the chief’s prediction of my future status as a soon-to-be-mother. “No, it just ain’t so! It can’t be.” If there was the slightest chance the chief might be right, I was in for a real ordeal. If being pregnant started out this bad, I could just imagine what the next nine months were going to be like. “Stop it!” I told myself. I brushed that ridiculous thought aside in an effort to convince myself that it couldn’t possibly be true. I haven’t even missed a period. So take that, chief! After washing my face with a wet paper towel, I pulled myself together and tried to regain any pretense of dignity I had left.
“Are you going to be all right?” Billy asked as I came out of the restroom. “I was beginning to worry about you.”
“I’ve had better days,” I mumbled in a low voice as we walked back to Captain Waverly’s office. “I’m sorry,” I apologized to the men in the room. “After last night, my stomach hasn’t been the same.”
That wasn’t all together true now that I had a chance to think about it. My stomach distress started right after... Billy and I had been intimate. Oh, Lord...
“It’s understandable,” Captain Waverly said, coming to my defense. “You’ve had a traumatic experience. Last night must have been pretty horrible for you and your family. I think we’re finished here.” He turned to the two FBI agents and dismissed them. “I think you have what you came for. I’m letting Mr. Blackhawk and Miss Watson leave.”
“Whoa, hold on a minute,” I spat. “We’re not finished. What are you going to do about Clayton Tyler? He’s going to have my family killed if you don’t stop him. Also, I thought you wanted to know about the picture. Did I miss out on something while I was in the bathroom?” I glanced at Billy in an attempt to read his facial expressions.