“The police took it into evidence, but they never tested it,” Sonya said.
“They wouldn’t have bothered once Ray pled guilty,” Angela said.
“How long will it take to do the test?” Matt asked.
“That depends on the district attorney,” Jesse said. “It’s his call. If he agrees to do it, it won’t take more than a few days. But my guess is that we’re going to have to go to court. Unless Holt confesses.”
“Why would he confess?” Sonya asked.
“Same reason Ray did. To avoid the death penalty. Lonnie Shelton will make sure the DA takes the deal,” Jesse explained, referring to the current state attorney general who had prosecuted the case against Ray when he was the district attorney in Snowden. “The last thing he’s going to want is a long trial that will remind everybody he sent an innocent man to prison. I’ll call our lawyer, Sean O’Brien, and have him get in touch with Holt’s attorney.”
He went into his cubicle, emerging a few minutes later. “Sean is going to speak to Holt’s lawyer at five o’clock, when he gets out of court.”
Matt looked at his watch. Ten thirty. It was going to be a long day.
“But even if Holt doesn’t confess, Ray will still get out of jail, won’t he?” Sonya asked.
“Yes, assuming Holt’s fingerprints are on the beer bottle,” Jesse said. But there was something in the way he said it that made Matt think he wasn’t too worried about the test results. “We better not tell our investigators about this,” he joked to Angela. “They work on cases for years without anything to show for it, and these two kids solve one in less than two months.”
“Beginner’s luck,” Angela said.
True enough, Matt thought. Harold Holt was an ideal candidate for America’s Dumbest Criminal. Only an idiot would bring a beer to a break-in and then hang around afterward to drink it.
Matt spent the rest of the day on the phone, talking football with the town’s merchants and watching the minute hand on the clock slowly inch its way toward five o’clock.
Five fifteen came and went with no word from Sean. At five thirty Jesse and Angela sat down with Matt and Sonya and went through the agenda for the fundraiser. They were still at it when Jesse’s phone finally rang.
“Hey, Sean.” Three heads swiveled toward the phone. “How did it go with Holt’s lawyer?” Jesse’s face fell as he listened.
Crap, Matt thought. Holt wasn’t going to confess. It was depressing to think it could be months before Ray was released from prison.
“Are you sure?” Jesse asked. “Yeah. I’ll tell them,” he said softly and ended the call. “Holt couldn’t have done it.”
“What?” Matt and Sonya shouted in unison.
“He was in the hospital when Gwen and Walter were killed. He got into a fight that morning. Somebody cracked his head wide open with a crowbar. He went to emergency at ten in the morning and didn’t get out until noon the next day.”
THIRTY-ONE
“I am not looking forward to this,” Sonya said as she and Matt walked into Jolene’s apartment building. Jesse had offered to be the bearer of the bad news, but Matt and Sonya felt it was their responsibility. They were the ones who had a relationship with Jolene, and they were the ones who had made the mistake of prematurely telling her about Harold Holt.
“I still can’t believe Holt didn’t do it,” Sonya said.
“Me neither. But unless Harold Holt managed to sneak out of the hospital with his brains spilling out of his skull, he had nothing to do with the murders.”
“I wonder…” Sonya started to say.
“What?”
“What if the real killer left the bottle of Rolling Rock in the kitchen to make the police think Walter and Gwen were killed by the same person who committed the break-ins? Jolene said Walter hardly ever drank beer.”
“Hardly ever isn’t never. And anyway, nobody knew about the Rolling Rock,” Matt pointed out. “The police kept it secret, remember?”
“They didn’t tell the public. But they knew about it.”
“Are you seriously suggesting a policeman did this? Went to all that trouble to steal a few things that were hardly worth anything?”
“It was just a thought,” Sonya said as she buzzed Jolene’s apartment.
Jolene greeted them with a smile and a warm hug. “I want to show you something.” She led them into the spare bedroom. The floor was covered with drop sheets. A man in white painter’s coveralls was hammering the lid back onto a paint can. The ceiling and all four walls had a fresh coat of white paint.
“I’m all done for today, Mrs. Richardson,” the painter said, heading for the door. “I’ll come back tomorrow to put on a second coat.”
“This is Ray’s room,” Jolene told Matt and Sonya. “I know white is boring, but I thought it was the safest choice. We can put prints on the wall to give the room some color, but I’ll let Ray choose them. After all, he’s the one who’s going to have to live with them.”
Matt and Sonya looked at each other. This was going to be harder than they’d thought.
“Is something wrong?” Jolene asked.
“Let’s go into the living room,” Sonya suggested.
“What is it?” Jolene asked anxiously after they were seated.
There was no gentle way to break the news. “Harold Holt didn’t do it,” Sonya said. “He was in the hospital when Walter and Gwen were killed.”
Jolene stared at them blankly, as if she hadn’t understood. “That can’t be. That can’t be.”
Matt and Sonya stared at each other helplessly.
“I don’t feel so good,” Jolene said. She slumped in her chair, sweating profusely and gasping for air.
Sonya rushed to her side. “Call 9-1-1,” she told Matt. “I think she’s having a heart attack.”
“That’s not necessary,” Jolene said weakly. “I don’t have any pain in my chest.”
Matt hesitated. “Do it!” Sonya ordered. She helped Jolene lie down on the couch and loosened her sweater while Matt described Jolene’s symptoms to a dispatcher.
“The ambulance is on the way,” he told Sonya after hanging up. “He says to give her an aspirin.”
“In the medicine cabinet,” Jolene murmured.
Matt rushed off, returning a moment later with an aspirin and a glass of water.
Sonya supported Jolene’s head so she could swallow the pill. “You’re going to be okay,” she said calmly. She held Jolene’s hand and talked to her reassuringly until the paramedics arrived ten minutes later.
Sonya accompanied Jolene to the hospital in the ambulance while Matt followed in Sonya’s car.
“How did you know it was a heart attack?” he asked Sonya in the hospital waiting room. “She wasn’t having any chest pain.”
“Women often don’t,” Sonya said. “I took a first-aid course last summer. This is the first time I’ve had to use it.”
“You were so cool. I was freaking out.”
“Believe me, so was I.”
An hour later Jolene’s doctor, a youngish woman wearing a white lab coat, came toward them. Matt and Sonya got to their feet.
“Your grandmother had a mild heart attack,” the doctor told Sonya, who had had the presence of mind to identify herself as Jolene’s granddaughter, knowing the hospital would only release information to family members. “We’re going to keep her under observation for a few days, but she’s going to be fine.”
Matt and Sonya hugged each other in relief.
“It’s a good thing you called 9-1-1 right away,” the doctor continued. “If you hadn’t, she could have had a more serious attack later on. You probably saved her life. You can see her now. Your boyfriend can go with you.”
“He’s not—thanks,” Sonya said.
Jolene was sleeping, her tiny frame dwarfed by the hospital bed. She was hooked up to an IV drip. A machine monitored her vital signs.
Matt looked at her sadly. It’s our fault, he thought. They had given Jolene hop
e, and now it had been taken away. She would have been better off with no hope at all.
THIRTY-TWO
“Any word from Ralph?” Matt asked Sonya when he arrived at the office Monday morning.
She shook her head.
In the week since Jolene’s heart attack, Ralph Chadwick had eliminated two of the three names on his list, leaving only one potential witness: Adrian Rice, who had lived directly across the alley from the Richardson house at the time of the murders.
Time for the Hail Mary, Matt thought as he sat down at his desk. It was a term they used in football—when your team was at midfield, needing a touchdown to win, with only enough time for one more play. They called it the Hail Mary after the Catholic prayer because your only chance was to throw the ball as far as you could and pray that someone on your team would catch it. You had a better chance of winning the lottery.
Matt and Sonya spent the day working on the fundraiser, then went to pick up Jolene, who had been staying at Lenore Patterson’s house since she had gotten out of the hospital. Ray’s grandmother hadn’t suffered serious damage from her heart attack, but the doctors said she shouldn’t be living alone. She had decided to move into a retirement home, and Matt and Sonya had volunteered to help pack up her apartment.
Jolene and Lenore were on the porch, talking to a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed goatee specked with gray. Jolene didn’t look as frail as she had at the hospital, but she didn’t look a whole lot better either.
Lenore introduced her son, Leon, who was visiting from Brazil. “Matt and Sonya were the ones who emailed you about Ray’s case.”
“Sorry I wasn’t able to be more help,” Leon said.
“You’re sure it was Ray you saw in the alley?” Matt asked.
“I’m sure. I was at home watching a movie. It’s funny the details that stick in your mind. I can still remember what I was watching. The Dirty Dozen.”
Matt nodded. He knew the movie, a war movie starring Jimmy Brown, one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. He’d seen it with his dad.
“After it was over I went upstairs to pack for a business trip. I looked out the window and saw Ray come through the back gate, wearing his Lakers hoodie.” Leon smiled. “I think he wore it just to tick people off. Everyone around here is a Celtics fan. Then he headed down the alley to Delaney, cool as a cucumber.”
Cool as a cucumber. Like Oklahoma’s quarterback, Jamelle Holieway. Matt reminded himself to choose some clips of Jamelle running the wishbone offense when he got home. Coach Bennett wanted to show them to the team before the first practice on Wednesday.
“Why didn’t you tell the police you saw Ray?” Sonya asked.
“By the time I was back in town, he’d already pled guilty. There was no point driving another nail into the boy’s coffin.”
“Thank you so much for doing this,” Jolene said when they got to her apartment. She had a defeated air about her, as if the disappointment over Harold Holt had finally squelched her spirit. “There’s not much left to do. Lenore and Leon helped me get rid of a lot of stuff yesterday.”
“Where should we start?” Sonya asked.
“I can only bring a few pieces of furniture into the retirement home. Everything else is going to the Salvation Army. Except that.” She pointed to the cabinet with Walter’s model-car collection. “I sold the cars to a collector in Harrisburg. Ralph Ellison. He was a friend of Walter’s, so I know he’s giving me a fair price.”
There was no more mention of saving the collection for Ray, Matt noticed.
Jolene lowered herself onto the couch. She took a three-ring binder off the coffee table and handed it to Matt. “There’s a list of the cars in here,” she said. “I sent a copy to Ralph. That’s how he was able to come up with a price. We should check to make sure it’s accurate.”
The binder had a master list and an information sheet for each car. Each sheet contained four color photographs of the car from different angles, along with typed notes under the heading Aftermarket.
“What does Aftermarket mean?” Matt asked.
“Those are the extras Walter put on the cars. He would never build them the way they came in the kit. He always customized them to make them more realistic.”
Matt flipped through the binder. Walter had done something extra to every car. New headlights, disc brakes, seat belts…the list went on and on.
There looked to be close to fifty cars in the cabinet. They were all older models, most of which Matt and Sonya didn’t recognize, but Walter had affixed a license plate with the year and the make on each.
After Jolene ticked a car off the master list, Matt and Sonya carefully wrapped the model in bubble wrap and packed it into a cardboard box. Four cars to a box.
“That’s the last one,” Sonya said when they were all done.
“Are you sure?” Jolene asked. “There should be one more. A 1959 Cadillac.” She showed Matt and Sonya a picture of a bright-red convertible with huge tail fins like a rocket ship’s.
“I didn’t see it,” Matt said. Sonya shook her head as well.
“I bet it was the movers,” Jolene said. “A lot of stuff disappeared when I sold the house on Huntington Terrace. I’ll have to let Mr. Ellison know, so he can adjust the price.”
“Where should we put the cars?” Sonya asked.
“Put them in Ray’s—in the spare room.”
The spare room still smelled of fresh paint. Sonya sighed heavily. Matt put his hand on her shoulder, but he didn’t say anything. There were no words that could make them feel better.
Matt boxed the photographs in the living room while Jolene and Sonya packed up the bedroom. He gazed at the picture of Jolene and Ray in front of the beach backdrop at the prison. It’s the closest Ray will ever get to a beach, he thought.
When everything was done, the three of them walked to the front door. Jolene stopped at the doorway and took a last look around. “I lived here for fifty-six years,” she said.
Then she closed the door behind her.
They had just dropped Jolene off at Lenore’s house when Ralph Chadwick called. Matt was suddenly certain he was calling to say he’d found Adrian Rice and that Adrian had seen the real killer.
He was right on the first count but wrong on the second. Chadwick had managed to find Adrian. He was living in an off-the-grid commune in Washington State. But he hadn’t seen a thing.
They had tried the Hail Mary. But their prayer had gone unanswered.
THIRTY-THREE
Matt had just finished his swim the next morning when the din of young voices echoed off the tiles, signaling the arrival of the Snowden Adventure Camp delegation. Caitlyn spotted him right away and greeted him with a wave and a smile. He noticed that her whiny camper, Ashley, was missing.
He waited until the kids were in the water and then swayed toward Caitlyn, dismissing the inner voice telling him not to make a fool of himself.
“I see you got away with it,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“No Ashley.”
“If anybody asks, we went to a movie last night.”
“I still can’t believe you wouldn’t share your popcorn with me.”
Caitlyn laughed. “Ashley’s sick today.”
“Do you want to get together this weekend?” Matt blurted out.
“I’d love to.”
“Really?” The word was out of his mouth before he could stop it. Smooth move, dude.
“You’re cute. Yes, really.”
Matt floated to the locker room. He turned around at the door. Caitlyn was talking to the lifeguard, but she was looking at him. She returned his wave with a beaming smile. Desire surged through his body like an electric current. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like this.
“So?” Sonya asked when Matt was at his desk.
“So what?”
“Was Caitlyn there?”
“She was.”
“And?”
“And we’re
going out this weekend.” He shrugged as if it was no big deal.
Sonya nodded knowingly. Who do you think you’re fooling?
The front door opened, and a courier entered with a package. “It’s the football jersey for the silent auction,” Angela said, opening the box. “The school sent it over.” She held it up. It was covered with signatures.
“If only I had an extra thousand dollars so I could bid on it,” Sonya said dryly. Matt and Angela both laughed.
“You need to sign it too,” Angela told Matt.
“Got to keep my fans happy,” he said to Sonya as he got to his feet.
“You the man.”
He scribbled his signature on the jersey. A heaviness settled over him as he looked at his name, surrounded by those of his former teammates. It was as if it belonged to someone else.
“Try it on,” Angela said.
“That’s okay,” Matt said.
A moment later Jesse burst through the door. This time he didn’t open and close it again. He was too excited.
“We just heard from the lab. They’ve identified the DNA on the bandanna found outside Bill Matheson’s house. It belongs to a man named Alan Markwood.”
“Fantastic,” Angela said.
“It gets better. Markwood’s a career criminal with a history of violence.”
“Does this mean Bill’s getting out?” Matt asked.
“It’s just a matter of time. The DA will make things difficult, but there’s no way he’s going to be able to convince a judge that Bill is guilty. My guess is he’ll be out by the end of the year.”
Matt felt a mix of emotions. He was happy that Bill’s nightmare was finally coming to an end, but the joy was tinged with despair. When Bill Matheson walked out of Pembroke Valley State Prison, Ray Richardson would still be locked up inside. And he’d be staying there for the rest of his life.
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