by Rene Fomby
Tara concentrated, staring at her hands. “Not really. You’d probably have to ask Brett about that, they’ve been good friends since grade school. But—”
“Yeah?”
“On the other hand, Casey, I think he might have had some bad blood recently with Katy and her dad. By recently, I mean back when her father was still alive. Couple years back.”
Gavin leaned in closer. “Really? What kind of bad blood?”
“Again, I don’t really know any of the details, but Brett might. I understand he handled some of the paperwork.”
Again, Espinosa caught Gavin’s eyes behind her back. “Paperwork? You’re saying Casey had some kind of deal going down with Katy and her father that went sour somehow, and Brett knew all about it?” he asked.
Tara held up her palms. “I’ve probably said more about that than I should. Brett’s always warning me about attorney client privilege, about repeating what he tells me about his law business, and I don’t want to get him into any trouble…”
“We’re talking murder, here, Mrs. Cutler,” Gavin pointed out. “I would think attorney client privilege is the last thing any of us are worried about right now.”
31
Casey
They thanked Tara for her time and gave her leave to head back upstairs, Gavin jokingly warning her not to leave the area. By unspoken agreement, the next interview target was Casey, who had clearly been holding back a great deal of highly relevant information the last time they had talked. Espinosa climbed the stairs to the salon and found him standing in the galley with his fiancé, finishing off a sandwich. Casey seemed to understand immediately what was going on the moment Espinosa locked eyes with him, and he handed the remainder of his lunch to Jillian without a word and walked briskly across the salon toward the interview area set up in the starboard pontoon.
Casey’s eyes were jumping around the little room as he sat down, clearly concerned about being interviewed again by the two federal agents so soon. And right after they had talked to Tara.
“What did she tell you?” he demanded before Gavin and Espinosa could even get in a word.
Gavin set his legal pad down in front of him, drawing out the moment before he answered. “Uh, Casey, we just have a few little—discrepancies—to clear up with you, things that don’t quite add up, is all.”
“Discrepancies? What kind of discrepancies? I’ve been completely honest with you, I swear—”
“Yeah, nothing to worry about. Just some little niggling things, is all.” Gavin picked up his legal pad again, flipping the pages back to his earlier interview. “Like, for example, your name.”
“What about my name?” Casey asked, momentarily confused before his face suddenly cleared. “Oh. You must have run a background check on me. And it turned up my real name. Antoine.”
“Right on the money,” Gavin replied. “So, tell us about that. Where did the name Casey come from?”
Casey sat back, relaxed now. He could see where that might have seemed like a red flag of sorts to federal agents, but it really wasn’t all that much of a big deal. “As you probably figured out, I was born in Kansas City, Kansas. Lived there up until the start of sixth grade, when my dad got a new job down in Texas. Working for an electronics company based in Southlake. I had never been all that much into organized sports back then, but with the new school and all, I figured trying out for the football team might be a good way to make some friends.”
“And you were immediately pegged as a star wide receiver,” Gavin suggested.
“No, actually, I sat on the bench that whole first year, and only saw action during practice. You gotta understand, Southlake is a football machine, and those guys had been slotted into their various positions almost since birth. Showing up out of the blue like I did, I didn’t really fit into the master plan at first. Plus, I wasn’t all that good, never having played anything other than street ball before I got to Texas.”
“Okay,” Espinosa weighed in. “But how does any of that explain the name Casey?”
“Oh, well, being the new kid from out of state, all the guys on the team started calling me K.C., for Kansas City, and the nickname stuck, all the way through college. Then, after I graduated and got a job in tech sales, I changed the spelling to Casey, which just sounded a little more refined. A better brand, if you know what I mean.”
Gavin smiled and slumped back in his seat. “All right, that makes perfect sense. Glad we got that straightened out.”
Casey smiled back and glanced eagerly over his shoulder at Espinosa. “So that’s it? That’s all you needed? I’m free to go?”
Espinosa shook his head. “Actually, Casey, we have one last little thing we need to clear up. The business proposal you shared with Katy Mulcahey and her father. Tell us about that.”
Casey’s smile faded quickly. “Tara told you about that.” He sat back, hot anger washing over his face. “What a bitch, always poking her nose into where it don’t belong. She calls it ‘investigative journalism’ but in reality it’s just being an ass.” He stopped and sucked in a big breath of air. “Okay, what exactly did she tell you?”
“Let us worry about that,” Gavin said. “For now, we just want to hear your take on what went down with the deal.”
Casey stared out the window, his breath sounding labored, and when he did finally speak up, his voice was softer, almost inaudible.
“Like I told you, my dad worked for an electronics company. He was an EE, an electronics engineer. Anyway, one day we were out for a drive, looking for I think a barbecue shack or something, and I was riding shotgun, using Google maps to locate the place, when suddenly it struck me. Dad’s car had a browser built into the head unit, but he didn’t buy the navigation package. That’s why I was using my phone, right? But then I had this brainstorm. What if we built a standalone GPS unit that broadcast a WiFi signal that could be picked up by the browser? I mentioned it to my dad, and he went wild, pulling over immediately to work out all the details. We could plug the unit into the OBD port, the On-Board Diagnostic port that mechanics hook their computers into in order to diagnose problems with the car’s engine. The OBD would provide power, plus it spits out info about how fast the car is going, the tachometer rate, engine temp, gas gauge, that sort of thing. All pretty useful information, when you think about it.”
Gavin was studiously recording all of Casey’s comments onto his legal pad and looked up when Casey stopped talking. “Okay, I can see where that would be useful. Kind of a poor man’s nav system. And you don’t have to juggle your phone in one hand to use it.”
“Exactly. And my dad also managed to rig up a heads-up display, all using off-the-shelf components, while a friend of mine whipped up an Android proof-of-concept app. Worked just like Google maps, except that the map and the turn-by-turn directions got broadcast to the car’s browser and the heads-up display.”
“Sounds like a winner of an idea,” Gavin said. “So what went wrong?”
“Well, to make all that come together quickly, before somebody else jumped in ahead of us, we needed some serious cash, plus connections to Chinese manufacturing. So I turned to Katy, who passed the idea along to her father. Supposedly he looked over our rudimentary business plan, then made some phone calls. In the end, Katy says he couldn’t make the numbers work, so he passed.”
“Well, that was his right,” Gavin pointed out. “You’re not saying he was somehow obligated to invest in your idea, are you?”
“No, no, of course not. But the thing is, several months after he’d turned down my idea, suddenly an almost identical product pops up on the market.”
“And you think Senator Mulcahey stole your idea.”
Casey hesitated. “Well, I can’t be sure, but the timing was certainly suspicious. I asked Brett to look into the business entity behind the whole thing, and when he did, he discovered that the unit was being produced by a Russian doll company.”
“Russian doll?” Espinosa
asked, looking to Gavin to confirm that he’d heard it right.
“Yeah. Like, you take the lid off the first company, and there’s another company tucked up inside. Take a look at that company, and there’s yet another shell company inside that. And so on and so on, with no real indication of who’s ultimately in charge, who really controls it all.”
“And you suspected it was Mulcahey?” Gavin jotted down “shell companies,” then underlined it.
“I mean, it’s possible somebody else came up with the exact same idea at the exact same moment. It’s not really rocket science, you know? But then you gotta ask yourself, why go to the trouble to build out the Russian doll? What did they think they needed to hide?”
Gavin tapped the end of his pen against his teeth. “You know, a cynic might say that was a good motivation to want to see Katy dead. A pay-back for selling you out, for betraying your trust and your friendship. What do you say to that?”
Casey took his time answering, finally shaking his head, his voice low. “Yeah, well, that’s not the way it was, okay? Particularly with Katy. I mean, she can’t be held responsible for what her father did, you know? Besides, I’m the one who screwed up. I should have filed for patent protection before I ever showed it to anyone, so that’s on me. And it’s not like I didn’t have some heads-up that the senator might be a little ruthless. After all, he made a fortune in a New York minute out in the oilfield, and that isn’t exactly a gentleman’s game, right?”
Espinosa and Gavin shared a long look, and Espinosa decided to move on to the next issue.
“Okay, let’s agree that we can’t completely settle that issue right now, so we’ll just leave the question of motive behind and talk about opportunity. We’ve had confirmation from all the other members of the group that you and Billie stayed well out in front of everyone the whole night.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“But here’s the deal. One thing we didn’t consider is how easy it would have been for you and Billie to tuck in behind a coral head, then kill your dive lights and circle back unobserved in the dark. Circle back and kill Katy Mulcahey. You’d get your revenge on the Mulcahey family, and Billie would get, well, whatever reason he wanted her dead.”
Casey went silent. Outside a low peal of thunder rolled through the boat as lightning poured in through the window. Casey’s face lit up brightly, but his expression remained very dark. Finally, he broke the silence, staring down at his hands.
“You have no evidence to support that allegation. That’s just idle guesswork is all. Plus, for that to happen, Billie would’ve had to be in on it. And there’s no way that would have ever happened. Billie would never touch a hair on Katy’s head. He owed her big time.”
“How’s that?” Gavin asked.
“Look, I’m not going to pull a Tara and get into everybody else’s personal business, okay? Alls I’m saying is, you want to know why Billie would have given his left nut to protect Katy, just ask him. Then you can put all of this nonsense about my wanting her dead and buried to rest. Even if you did assume that a business deal gone bad would be motive enough for me to kill an old and very dear friend. Which is by far the stupidest idea I’ve heard in a long time. Bone-headed, in fact.”
Gavin nodded solemnly, his eyes still locked on Casey’s face. “Nevertheless, it’s not something we can easily ignore. We’ll get back to Billie soon enough. But before we do, I have one last question for you.” He paused, one finger pressed pointedly onto his notepad. “If in fact you are innocent, why did we find your dive knife on the sea floor at the exact same spot where the murder took place?”
“What do you mean, my knife?” Casey spluttered, jumping to his feet. “My knife was still in its little pouch on my BC. You saw it, Agent Larson—hell, you even pulled it out and looked at it. So how the hell could the knife you found have been my knife? It was Trevor’s. It had to be! That was the only knife that was missing.”
Espinosa shook his head. “And yet we have ample reason to believe otherwise. So, back to Agent Larson’s question, what was your dive knife doing at the scene of the crime? How exactly did it get there?”
Casey sat back down, slowly, and fell silent again, examining his hands. Gavin considered reminding him of the question a third time when he finally stuttered out an answer. “I—I’m not sure I can explain that. You—you sure it’s mine? I mean, what about Trevor? His knife was the one that was missing.”
Gavin didn’t falter. “We technically have one more little test to run on it before we can be absolutely certain, but yes, we’re ninety-nine percent sure it’s yours, it’s your knife. So, once again, Mr. Thompson, what was your knife doing down there at the murder scene?”
“I—don’t know. Honestly, I didn’t even know that I had a knife in that vest. Never paid attention to that sort of thing, and since it was a hand-me-down from Trevor, I obviously didn’t read any of the sales literature that explained all the little features and nuances of the vest. But I guess that doesn’t mean much to you at this point.”
Espinosa circled something in his notebook before answering. “I’m afraid that’s what we in the police business would call a non-verifiable fact. Or, more commonly, an amazingly convenient excuse that just won’t hold water. Especially since it was your knife. In that water. At the scene of the murder. You see why we might be a bit skeptical here?”
Casey’s normally cocoa skin had blanched almost white, his eyes wide and shifting behind his glasses. “Look, I understand where you’re going here, I really do. But the truth is, I didn’t do it, that’s the God’s truth, I swear it. So if my vest did come with a knife, and that knife somehow wound up on the bottom of the ocean near where Katy was killed, then either it accidentally fell out while I was fooling with Billie’s issues, or somebody planted it there. I mean, you guys found it, and it had to be like a needle in a haystack down there, right? If I’d actually killed Katy, something that clearly would have taken a great deal of planning, don’t you think I’d have had the smarts enough to check out my equipment and steal a knife from one of the other wing vests to replace mine? I mean, I’m not stupid, you know? If I’d come up with a plan to kill her, don’t you think I’d have covered all the angles?”
“That’s not exactly an argument in your favor here,” Gavin drawled. “Whoever killed Katy obviously had this whole thing planned down to the T, and who better than you out of the whole scuba club you got going on here would have the brains to pull it all off?”
That comment seemed to rattle Casey more than anything else in their encounter, and it took him over a minute to recover. Gavin noticed his hands starting to twitch a little as he finally responded.
“I—you—I’m feeling kinda blindsided here. I mean, there’s two of you, and just one of me, and clearly you have some information about this case you’re holding back. I—I think I need a lawyer at this point. I’m invoking my rights.”
“But you’re in Mexico, amigo,” Espinosa reminded him. “You have no rights here, muchacho. Best to come clean now than face Mexican justice later, no?” Espinosa gave Gavin the eye to remind him to stay silent as to Mexican law.
If anything, Casey’s face turned even paler. He looked to Gavin for support, but the American agent was busy writing furiously into his legal pad. Casey’s face melted. “Look, guys, I don’t want to go to jail for something I didn’t do. I understand your issues, here, I truly do. But—I didn’t do it! I don’t know what more I can say to make you understand that. Just—talk to Billie, okay? He’ll tell you what happened, he’ll tell you I was never anywhere near Katy the whole night. And he’ll tell you why he was probably the only person on this entire trip who had no reason to ever lie about something like that.”
“We’ll do that, Mister Thompson,” Gavin told him, standing up. “In the meantime, you’ll remain confined to this boat, and you’ll let us know the moment you’ve uncovered any additional information related to this case, no matter how minor it may s
eem. That sound okay with you?”
“Of—of course, thank you. Look, I care as much as anyone on this boat about finding out who killed Katy, I really do. I truly loved her, you know? But—but in the right way, you understand? Like a sister.”
Gavin smiled equivocally. “We get that a lot, Mr. Johnson. Like a sister.” And we both know just how bad sibling rivalries can be. Loving each other to death, even.
32
Billie
When the three men returned to the salon, Billie was gone, busily trying to restart a bilge pump that had failed, allowing water from the storm to collect in the starboard pontoon. Tara had fixed Gavin and Espinosa each a sandwich, which they wolfed down thankfully, chasing them down with cold glasses of iced tea.
Tara opened the door to the small refrigerator and glanced in. “Just thought you’d like to know we’re running way short on supplies. I’ve got enough tea bags to keep us all hydrated, and the ice maker is running non-stop, but other than canned beans and tuna we’re almost out of food. Do you mind if I make a run to the island to replenish? Or are we close to finally wrapping things up here?”
Gavin looked to Espinosa before answering. “Sorry, ma’am, but I can’t give you a timeline on the investigation just yet. The information you gave us earlier has opened up a new line of questioning we need to follow up on. And as for any of you leaving the boat anytime soon, I’m afraid I can’t authorize that, at least not until we’ve cleared some of you completely of any complicity in Katy’s murder. But if you want to draw up a list, I’m sure we can get some of Espinosa’s people to make a grocery run for you.” He glanced over at Espinosa again, who nodded.
Tara closed the refrigerator door with a click. “Well, I suppose that will have to do. I’ll get working on that list. Wine and beer okay? Although I’m sure Sally will insist on something stronger.”