by A. E. Howe
“You. He’ll see you as the senior investigator. Start easy, get tough, that’s our motto.”
“I’ll even suggest that he could walk out with his badge and gun,” Pete said, tapping them. “You know he’ll probably be armed.”
“Probably? Guaranteed. And that’s the risk we’re taking going with the casual interview scheme. We can change our minds and treat him like we would any suspect, including a search before we bring him in. But I say we take our chances.”
Pete agreed, but we both found ourselves unconsciously adjusting our posture and our handguns so that they would be easily accessible. I hated to admit it, but I was depending on Pete getting the draw on Nichols if things went south. I was pretty good, but Pete was the man when it came to the quick draw.
Nichols walked in fifteen minutes later. Pete and I pretended to be absorbed in the case file. We looked up casually and greeted him. Nichols was dressed in a polo shirt and jeans and looked relaxed.
“That the file?” he asked, trying to glance at it from the opposite side of the table.
“Yeah, we’ve almost got everything we need,” Pete said. “Have a seat. We’ve just got a couple more i’s to cross and t’s to dot,” he joked. “We need to get you back on duty.” He nodded to the gun and shield sitting on our side of the table.
“I hear that,” Nichols said, seating himself across from us. I noticed that he didn’t pull his chair in all the way to the table. Better access to his concealed gun?
“We got your report and, with our earlier interview, we have a clear picture of your account of the shooting. However, a few discrepancies have come up.”
Pete shuffled through the papers. I noticed Nichols looking at his gun and shield longingly.
“Here’s one of our problems,” Pete said, looking at a report of my interview with the neighborhood watch professional, Mrs. Gavin. “We have a witness who states that you pulled up behind the shopping center and turned off your lights for a few minutes, then turned them back on about the time she reports hearing the shots.” Pete paused as though he was trying to figure something out. “See, that doesn’t fit with your account at all.”
“Witness?” Nichols asked in a cold and brittle tone. But he didn’t sound too surprised. I thought that was odd.
“Yeah,” Pete said, not elaborating and just letting Nichols stew on it.
“I gave you my account. That’s the way it happened.” Nichols had tensed up and his friendly tone was completely gone.
“Of course,” Pete said lightly. “We just have this witness…” He let that hang, implying that we wanted to dismiss the witness as much as Nichols wanted us to.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t change my story to fit your witness.” He had relaxed a little, but was still clearly on guard. “Who’s this witness? Where was she?”
Pete had a decision to make. Should he give a little information in order to get the interview back on track? “Just some old busybody. But if we can get that cleared up, it will make it a lot easier to move forward.” Pete glanced again at the gun and badge sitting on the table next to him. Nichols’s eyes followed Pete’s.
“I see that. You know, now that I think back on it, I might have turned my lights off.” Got him, I thought. Nothing says “guilty” like changing your story when confronted with facts.
“I came around the building looking for anything out of place, like I told you. Now that I remember, I turned my lights off so that I wouldn’t scare off anyone who was doing something they shouldn’t. You know, breaking-in or engaging in an illicit act.”
“Makes sense. You were trying to catch them with their pants down,” Pete said lightly and smiling.
I could see Nichols relaxing again, and I got ready for my big scene. Pete and I had practiced this several times.
“Okay. That pretty much clears everything up,” Pete said, putting papers back in the file. Once he had everything gathered up, he reached over and put his hand on Nichols’s gun and badge and began to slide them across the table to Nichols.
“Wait, there was that one other little thing,” I said on cue, reaching out and pulling a photo from underneath the file. Nichols glanced over at me, but his eyes went back to his gun and shield, so close and yet still out of reach.
I held up the photo of the handicap sign. “Did you report this as missing?”
As Nichols looked at the picture it felt like someone had opened the window and let the icy cold January wind blow through the room. His mouth dropped open and his eyes betrayed him. He knew the significance of us having that sign. His brain couldn’t switch gears fast enough.
“I… I might have. I think I did report a sign like that missing.” But he realized he’d taken too long to come up with the answer. “What does that have to do with the shooting?” His voice was cold and defensive.
Pete slid the gun and badge back to our side of the table. Nichols’s right hand left the table and went out of sight. At the same time, Pete’s hand went down to his waist and he smiled at Nichols.
“It has to do with the rapes. Would you like to tell us the real story now?” Pete asked calmly.
Nichols thought long and hard about his next move. Finally he said, “I think you’re just screwing with me.” He stood up. “I think I’ll bring my lawyer the next time you all want to chat.” He waited for us to respond, but we just stared back at him. He slammed the door when he left.
My one regret from the interview was that I couldn’t ask Nichols about his meeting with Matt.
Dad walked into the room as we were gathering up the file. “Okay, you proved it to us,” he said. “Now you just have to get some solid evidence on him.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “I’m going to take Shantel back to the Conway house and go over everything again. If we can find a fingerprint or any other evidence that Nichols was in the house, or by the pool, we’d be a lot closer to having something we can take to court.”
By the time I got home, Ivy was mad at me for a late dinner and for not giving her a full evening of cuddle time. I tried to buy her off with some turkey from the sandwich I’d picked up for dinner. She forgave me enough to choke down her turkey.
I texted Cara: Just got home. Call if you have the time. My phone rang a couple minutes later.
“Long day?” she asked, which just felt awkward.
“At least I feel like we’re making progress on the case. How about you?”
“Normal day at the farm.” The farm was her nickname for work, sort of a pun on the vet’s name. “Dr. Barnhill had offered to do several free spays and neuters for the shelter, which is great of him, but he hadn’t let Sandra know so the schedule was totally screwed. I didn’t get home much earlier than you.”
“Would you like to do something together this weekend?” I knew I was pushing things, but couldn’t stop myself.
There was a long pause. “Maybe. Call me Thursday.” She wasn’t as quick to forgive as Ivy. I couldn’t decide if she was really considering it or was simply putting off telling me no.
We talked for a few more minutes and I rashly ended the call with, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said, but it was shrouded in such a tone of sadness that it didn’t give me much hope.
Chapter Twenty-One
I got to the office early on Tuesday. Not my favorite thing to do on a cold and frosty winter morning. A dozen times each winter there was enough ice on the windshield that I had to use the plastic scraper I kept in the trunk. This was one of those mornings. But Shantel had told me to get there before eight if I wanted to cart her off to the Conway house.
“If you give them a chance, they’re going to find something else for me to do. We get gone before anyone else gets there, and I can spend most of the day helping you go over your crime scene,” she’d told me.
For me, going off with Shantel meant I had a good excuse to put off working with Matt. So I was there to greet her as soon as she walked in the door. I helped h
er gather up some supplies and equipment and off we went.
“So what has you looking like a boy who’s lost his puppy?” Shantel asked after she had me stop and buy her a coffee.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I did, but I wasn’t in the mood to get into it, especially not before nine in the morning.
“Still having problems with your girl?”
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” I said, giving her the eye.
“Well, that’s too bad. ’Cause I don’t intend on working all day with your old mopey face. So get a damn smile going or tell me what the problem is.”
“I just bought you a cup of coffee and you talk to me that way?” I asked, trying desperately to redirect her attention.
“You bought me this coffee because I’m going out to your crime scene to crawl around on my hands and knees looking for the smoking gun that might pull you out of the cesspool that you and Pete find yourselves in. Now you tell Aunt Shantel what’s got you looking like the Internet’s next grumpy candidate. I already know it’s the girl. So come on and spill your guts before we get to the crime scene so we aren’t wasting time.”
“You’re right. It’s the girl.” I thought if I admitted it quickly, I could cut this off sooner rather than later.
“Details. Come on. I’m a woman. Maybe I can help. Bound to make you feel better talking about it. ’Sides, we’ll get it out of the way early.”
I looked at her. Why the hell didn’t we have her doing interrogations?
“Fine. She’s pissed at me because I didn’t fill her in on all the gory details when we found Conway’s body.”
“Uh, huh.”
I didn’t look, but I was sure Shantel was shaking her head sadly.
“What?” I asked, exasperated.
She just kept shaking her head. Knowing that it wasn’t going to end there, I sighed heavily.
“Is it unreasonable to want to keep the crap in my life separate for the things that are good?” I really didn’t want to have this argument with Shantel. As much as I respected her and appreciated her friendship, I’d always thought that she didn’t have a reasonable sense of where other’s personal space began.
“I got my thoughts on that,” she said and then added, “If you want to hear them.”
I’m sure you do, I thought. What choice did I have?
“Well…” I hesitated. We weren’t that far from the Conway house.
“You’re damn lucky,” she said bluntly.
“I don’t quite follow.” I wasn’t liking where this was going.
“You know I was married?”
“Yeahhhh.” I vaguely remembered her mentioning it.
“He was in the Army. A Ranger out of Fort Hood. We got married—I was twenty-two, he was twenty-five. His name’s DeWayne. Second year we were married, he got sent overseas. Middle East. We were able to talk to each other once in a while. Neither of us were big letter writers. I thought we were getting along fine. I missed him. Still loved him. I’d gone home to live with my family and finished school.”
Where is this going? I wondered in my I-still-haven’t-completely-woken-up-yet state.
“We’re almost there.” I turned onto the drive that led to Conway’s house.
“Yeah, well, you can just park it and listen to me.” Shantel knew I was trying to get out of her lecture. “As I was saying, I worried about him getting hurt. But I never thought about what he was going through. I mean inside. When DeWayne came home nine months later, I was all about making him happy and getting our lives on a path to having a home and maybe, God willing, some kids. But, and here’s the thing, I was all wrapped up in my world, my life that I thought was his world too. But it wasn’t, or at least not all of it. And right then it wasn’t the part of his life that was most important to him.”
I parked the car in front of the locked gate and turned to look at Shantel. She took a drink from her cup of coffee, steam still rising off the top.
“Before I knew it, we weren’t a couple anymore. He was in his world and I was in mine. I should have cared more. He tried to be as concerned with all the details of our life as I was, but both of us were missing the point.” She stopped and stared at me.
“And what was the point?” I asked, knowing that was the quickest route to getting to wherever we were going.
“What was over there…” Shantel waved a mocha-colored hand vaguely toward the east, “…in that desert, was a part of him, a part of us. As the months went by he got mad. We had fights. I got madder. Crazy shit. Finally, we both knew it was over.”
The emotion in her voice was beginning to break down my irritation. But I still didn’t really see her point.
“What you’re saying seems to agree with me. Living a life that’s full of crap destroys the good in life. My point is to keep the one from infecting the other,” I argued.
“No, you’re wrong. DeWayne got remarried about six months after we separated. A girl from our neighborhood back in Savannah. Funny… Growing up she was all tomboy. Never hung out much with the girls. Pretty, but nothing compared to me.” Shantel smiled. “Her name’s Theresa. She’d gone to work for her dad’s trucking company. She’s running it now. DeWayne stayed in the Army, had more deployments.
“I saw them about ten years after they were married. Both of them seemed really happy, and I was glad for them. Five years earlier and I might have torn her hair out, but I’d gotten over it in a decade. One night I got the chance to talk to them, and I asked how they dealt with DeWayne being overseas and all the problems that went along with it.” Shantel paused for dramatic effect.
“And?” Against my better judgment I kind of wanted to know. I respected Shantel’s no-nonsense attitude.
“DeWayne spoke first. He said that she asked him about everything. Wanted to know all the details that went on when he was in a war zone. Sometimes there would be stuff that he didn’t want to tell her, or that he hadn’t had time to process, but eventually he’d tell her because he knew she really wanted to be a part of his life. Every part of his life. My mistake was being in love with the man I wanted DeWayne to be and the life that I wanted for us. Theresa was in love with the real DeWayne, and she wanted to be a part of his life no matter what that life involved. And DeWayne needed someone to share the bad experiences with more than he needed a wife to share the good times. Theresa knew that. Sounds like Cara knows it too.”
Shantel let that hang in the air for a bit, giving me a stern look. Then she threw open her door to the cold morning air and said, “Let’s go find some evidence. Oh, that reminds me. Our IT guy said that the phone from the hot tub was a burner that hadn’t even been used yet. So no luck there, and he added that if you ever send him something that smells that bad again, he’ll make sure you can never log on to another computer as long as you live.”
“There are days that wouldn’t break my heart,” I said honestly.
Shantel got out and opened the lock on the gate and I drove the car up to the house, thinking about what she had said.
The big house, surrounded by woods in the frosty morning light, looked like a monument to a dead world. Which is what it had become for the Conways. A reminder of a life when they had a child, a boy that represented their hopes and dreams for the future. Now it would be a memorial to a future that could never be.
I was carrying most of the equipment, so Shantel opened the door. We got to work combing the house for fingerprints and trace evidence. By noon we’d vacuumed most of the house and dusted the doorknobs, appliances and countertops. After a lunch break we tackled the bathrooms, delving into the drains to pull out hair and other unsavory items.
Exhausted, I told Shantel, “Enough.”
“You’re right about that,” she said, indicating the three boxes of trace evidence we’d collected. “All of this and we’ll be lucky if we got one hair or a latent fingerprint that matches Nichols.”
“That’s all we need. He’s never officially been here, and he cl
aimed that he’d never been here for any other reason, so if we can find something that proves he was in the house, we’ll have caught him lying about being at a crime scene. A crime scene linked to a shooting that he was involved in.”
“He always seemed like one of the good ones,” Shantel said thoughtfully. I knew what she meant.
“That’s life. How often do you get the outcome you expected or wanted?” I picked up one of the boxes and headed for the door.
After dropping Shantel and the evidence at the office, I drove home, thinking about the advice she’d given me. As soon as I walked in the door, I called Cara.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” I started out weakly.
“Like what?” She said it a bit tauntingly, but it sounded like she was in a good mood. I was encouraged.
“Look, I don’t want to talk over the phone. Can I come over? Or could we meet someplace?” There was a long pause as she thought this over. I figured I should put her mind at ease. “If you’re afraid that we might get into an argument, you have nothing to worry about. I’m prepared to surrender unconditionally.”
“Seriously?” She sounded perplexed.
“Listen, I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.” I left it open for her to decide when that would be.
“Hot chocolate at my place?” she suggested tentatively.
“That sounds great to me,” I answered sincerely.
Ten minutes later, having explained to Ivy that I wasn’t going to be able to spend all evening scratching her belly and receiving a disapproving look in return from the strong-minded tabby, I was out the door and headed back to town.
I knocked on the door and waited under the porch light, watching my breath in the night air. When Cara opened the door, my heart swelled at the sight of her and any misgivings I had about capitulating melted away.
“You said that you were surrendering. I didn’t really see this as a war,” she said earnestly as we sipped our hot chocolate on the couch.
“I was kind of kidding. I just meant that, having thought about things, I can see your point of view.” I didn’t tell her about Shantel’s input. I didn’t want to complicate the discussion.